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The FIRST Commandment

You shall have no other gods before me." 

Exodus 20:3

This commandment is addressed to each person in particular, because the commandment concerns everyone, and God would have each one take it as spoken to him by name. Though we are forward to take privileges to ourselves—yet we are apt to shift off duties from ourselves to others!

We come now to the commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me." This may well lead the van, and be set in the front of all the commandments, because it is the foundation of all true religion. The sum of this commandment is, that we should sanctify God in our hearts, and give him a precedence above all created beings. There are two branches of this commandment:

1. That we must have God for our God.

2. That we must have no other God.

1. We must have God for our God. It is manifest that we must have a God, and "who is God save the Lord?" 2 Sam 22:32. The Lord Jehovah (one God in three people) is the true, living, eternal God; and him we must have for our God.

[1] To have God to be God to us, is to ACKNOWLEDGE him as God. The gods of the heathen are idols. Psalm 96:5. And "we know that an idol is nothing" (1 Cor 8:4); that is, it has nothing of Deity in it. If we cry, "Help, O Idol," an idol cannot help; the idols themselves were carried into captivity, so that an idol is nothing. Isa 46:2. Vanity is ascribed to it, we do not therefore acknowledge it to be a god. Jer 14:22. But we have this God to be God to us, when, "from the heart" we acknowledge him to be God. All the people fell on their faces and said, "The Lord he is the God! the Lord he is the God!" 1 Kings 18:39. Yes, we acknowledge him to be the only God. "O Lord God of Israel, who dwells between the cherubim, you are the God, even you alone." 2 Kings 19:15. Deity is a jewel that belongs only to his crown.

Further, we acknowledge there is no God like him. "And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord; and he said, Lord God of Israel, there is no God like you." 1 Kings 8:22, 23. "For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord?" Psalm 89:6. In the Chaldee it is, "Who among the angels?" None can do as God; he brought the world out of nothing; "And hangs the earth upon nothing." Job 26:7. It makes God to be God to us, when we are persuaded in our hearts, and confess with our tongues, and subscribe with our hands, that he is the only true God, and that there is none comparable to him.

[2] To have God to be God to us is to CHOOSE him. "Choose this day whom you will serve: but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord." That is, we will choose the Lord to be our God. Josh 24:15. It is one thing for the judgment to approve of God—and another for the will to choose him. True religion is not a matter of chance—but choice.

Before choosing God for our God, there must be knowledge. We must know him before we can choose him. Before anyone chooses the person he will marry, he must have some knowledge of that person; so we must know God before we can choose him for our God. "Know the God of your father." 1 Chron 28:9. We must know God in his attributes—as glorious in holiness, rich in mercy, and faithful in promises. We must know him in his Son. As the face is represented in a looking-glass, so in Christ, as in a transparent glass, we see God's beauty and love shine forth. This knowledge must go before choosing God. Lactantius said, "all the learning of the philosophers was without a head, because it lacked the knowledge of God."
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