Exodus 20:3 - "You shall have no other gods before me"
You see, the one true God, Yahweh, has made himself known to the world over the past few millennia. The Bible itself if full of stories of how God defeated the pagan religions of the past.
We know the one true God. We accept His role as the creator of all things, including us. We choose to worship Him in response. Idol gods just don't seem to be that much of a problem in our modern world.
As such, why would we even need to memorize this verse? We don't have trouble worshiping the god of the sea, the god of the moon, or the god of the sun.
Here's the problem...
We actually create idol gods all the time!
In fact, John Calvin famously stated that "the human heart is a factory of idols." He recognized our ability to create idols out of just about everything - food, sports, people, our kids, our comfort, sex, and more. And when we do, it usually drives behaviors that are destructive to ourselves and our relationships with God and others.
We behave in ways that exhibit our worship for these things quite frequently.
We worship the gods of pleasure and success. Think about how often we turn to so many things instead of God to feel better in moments of disappointment (e.g., food, sex, entertainment). Think about how often we reduce or eliminate our time spent with God in favor of chasing more money, fame, and/or achievements at work or in athletics.
Here's the sad part...
With time and maturity, we realize that these things don't even deliver. Despite all our hard work and sacrifice (and destroyed relationships), they are all temporary.
Consider how fleeting the gods of pleasure truly are? The satisfaction from food, sex, and entertainment evaporates quickly. Take a look at the way the rich and famous live? Do they find happiness in all they have? Celebrity suicides give us a stark reminder of how empty such lives can actually be. Consider how quickly a lifetime of achievement in athletics evaporates with an injury or simply the impact of normal aging with the passage of time.
What happens when all our self-worth is tied up in these idol gods? We are left devastated when they are lost.
You see, God doesn't want any of this heartache for His children. Thus, He gave us this commandment to have no such "other gods" (i.e., idols) in the first place.
This memory verse from Exodus 20:3 will help us continually reflect on putting our tendency for creating idols in their proper place. In doing so, we will keep God on the throne of our hearts unchallenged. We will live truly free as we de-throne everything else so that nothing of this world can have a hold on our joy.
(You can read more about idols here)
