February 15, 2023
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3) This first of the commandments we refer to as “The Ten Commandments” that were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai to deliver to the Israelites and the billions of us since then were given by our God, who is Master of Heaven and Earth, and leaves us with no other viable options. It is at once confining and liberating. It is confining as it blocks us from going anywhere but to the one true God to answer the questions of life, death and eternity. It is liberating in that very confinement because in all reality He is the only place, the only One, to whom we can go to for truthful answers to our questions. Questions such as: How did I get here? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? What happens when we/I die? Is there life after death?, etc. A life without answers to these questions becomes a meaningless exercise in futility; a futility eloquently expressed by the writer of Ecclesiastes, commonly believed by theologians to have been King Solomon toward the end of his life. By all worldly measurements, Solomon lived a long and fruitful life. He was successful, respected, honored at home and abroad. Foreigners paid tribute, kings gave their daughters to wife, signed treaties with the king of Israel and dared not transgress those treaties. King Solomon, however, had a problem. The same problem all of us have, the problem of the self-life. Even as we, so King Solomon was his own worst enemy. In the process of time Solomon loved many women and some of them drew his heart and mind away to the gods of the heathen from whence these women had come to the Israelite king. God had forbidden the Israelites to marry anyone other than within the context of His own people, whom He had delivered out of Egypt, lest they be drawn away after other gods, the gods of the heathen nations around them and then, by those heathen nations, be overcome by vain pursuits. The prophet Balaam knew this principle very well and when he “loved the wages of unrighteousness” (II Peter 2:15) gave in to his own lusts, conveying that principle to Balak, king of Moab, who then, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, employed the idol – worshiping damsels of Moab to visit the Israelite camp and seduce the young men, leading them to worshipping their idols upon being drawn in by their female sensuality. There is “nothing new under the sun,” is there? The campaign worked, the Israelites were overcome by their antagonists through a plague, that God allowed, wherein 24,000 people died. (Numbers 25:9) God stayed the plague when one man, Phinehas, brought judgment into the camp of Israel for their whoredoms.
The Earth, shaking and quaking, this time in middle eastern Turkey and Syria, leaves the rest of us Earth-dwellers shaking, quaking, and insecure as long as we turn inward for answers. The death toll of 34,000 people, and still counting, staggers the mind as we struggle to understand. Until we understand and accept that we are not meant to understand everything. God understands that this world is temporary, that its end is inevitable. In the meantime, His expressed desire is that world catastrophes cause us, not to judge those upon whom these calamities fall, but to consider ourselves and our own life. While the plague-judgment recorded for us in Numbers ch. 25 came upon the Israelites because of their own sin, the calamities that happen in the course of nature are not to be understood that way. (Luke 13)
God’s desire is always for mankind to face reality, the Truth, the way things really are. We believe Solomon's repentance is recorded in Ecclesiastes. While God has limited Himself to calling us to Himself by His love that, at times, allows calamities for the greater good He wishes to bless us with, He, through Jesus Christ, feels our pain. “He was tempted in all points like as we, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) Dumb idols, other gods, whether gods of wood and stone, or gods of the mind, have no such capacity. Jehovah God, who says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” does. There is no way to avoid this confining commandment. Let us be liberated within its settled security.
Life Matters!