The Ten Commandments: Powers, Gods, And Distractions

This is the beginning of a new series on the Ten Commandments, the foundations of the world.

Ancient people had gods for everything. From individual trees and rivers to forces like love and wealth, our ancestors created characters to represent them and statues to worship. Today, we still exhibit our ancestors’ tendency to worship worldly powers. We don’t bow down to statues, but we still make worldly forces central in our lives. We prioritise things like money or fame over everything else, just as ancient merchants worshipped the god of commerce or soldiers worshipped the god of war.

This behaviour never works. Many people have success stories relating to money or fame, but those same people tend to crash and burn. That’s because they’re focusing on forces that, while powerful, are the creations of a more powerful Creator. God revealed this reality when He parted the Red Sea (Psalm 18:15). He exposed dry ground beneath deadly, raging waters, destroyed the most powerful kingdom in the world, and exposed its pantheon as nothing but fiction. God controlled the uncontrollable and brought order to chaos. That isn’t something any worldly power or minor god can do.

The Ten Commandments are the universe’s underlying rules. Breaking them is going against the way God made the universe, and it’ll only end in disaster. The first and most important rule is that you can’t have gods besides Yahweh (Exodus 20:1-3). It just doesn’t work. God is the ultimate power behind everything that is, was, and will be. So, don’t fixate on any one earthly power—make God, the source of everything, the centre of your life.

Watch the full sermon here.