You shall have no other gods before me. – Exodus 20:3
Jesus tells us: I created every person-including-you, with a longing for perfection. Most people try to fill this longing with things from this world. They try to have the coolest stuff and the latest fashions. They try to be the most popular in their class, or the star of the sports field or the stage. Some even try drugs or alcohol. Some people will do anything and everything to fill that longing, except turn to Me. Whatever you desire the most, whatever you worship with your time and attention, becomes your god, your idol. Only I am God.
Jesus concludes: Only I am worthy of your worship and praise. And only I can fill your longing for perfection.
Exodus 20:3; Psalms 37:4 Study Notes
Footnotes Exodus 20:3 Why were the Ten Commandments necessary for God’s new nation? At the foot of Mount Sanai, God showed his people the true function and beauty of his laws. The Commandments were designed to lead Israel to a life of practical holiness. In them, people could see the nature of God and his plan for how they should live. The commands and guidelines were intended to direct the community to meet the needs of each individual in a loving and responsible manner. By Jesus’s time, however, most people had come to look at the law the wrong way to earn God’s protection from foreign invasion and natural disaster. They failed to see that keeping the law should be the means to fulfill God’s ultimate law of love.
Passage Psalms 37:4 Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Footnotes Psalms 37:4-5 David calls us to take delight in the Lord and to commit everything we have and do to him. But how do we do this? To delight in someone means to experience great pleasure and joy in his or her presence. This happens only when we know that person well and when we have been a faithful friend. Thus, to delight in the Lord, we must get to know him better and be faithful in our relationship with him. The certainty of God’s great love for us will then indeed give us delight.
To commit ourselves to the Lord means to entrust everything, our lives, families, jobs, possessions, to his control and guidance. To commit ourselves to the Lord means to trust in him. (37:5), believing that he can care for us better than we can ourselves. We should wait patiently (37:7) for him to work out what is best for us
Passage Jude 24-25 24 To him who can keep you from falling and bring you safe to his glorious presence, innocent and joyful, 25to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, authority and power, before all ages, now and forever. Amen.
Footnotes Jude 24-25 Only He is able to make possible the realization of the final goal as he protects and guards believers from any possibility of falling in the face of situations of difficulty and danger to which they are exposed and which can cause their faith to waver. Only He gives man the possibility of sharing in His essence in the condition of blamelessness due to a life concretely lived in holiness and full joy as a consequence of His love.