Why is "You shall have no other gods before me" in the Ten Commandments?

In the first three commandments God demanded that His rights as Creator, and their Redeemer from bondage, should be respected. He alone is God, so they were in the first place to recognize no other "god."

(1) The ten commandments divide, as our Lord has divided them, into duties Godward and manward: this being also the common division. There are four commandments in the first, and six in the second part; and so reckoned, they show the universal numerical stamp: —

The first commandment plainly affirms the unity of God: it also affirms His exclusive sovereignty.

It was on this very ground that, of old, God sought to be known as God by the Jews. He claimed to be worshipped by them as the one only God, because He had shown Himself their Redeemer. "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." In this action He had made Himself known as God, full of grace and power for captive sinners; and if we know Him not as such we know Him not rightly. Any thought about God at variance with this is but the act of the mind of a darkened creature busying itself about its own idolatry. The true God is He Who reveals Himself in redeeming grace and power; and, blessed truth, to know God is, accordingly, to know myself a sinner saved by grace.

The law was like a straight edge given by God to make manifest the crookedness of man. "[The] law entered that the offence might abound " (Rom. 5:20), that is, not to increase sin, but to show its offensiveness, and to bring it home to the soul. "By [the] law is the knowledge of sin." Rom. 3:20. The apostle said that he would not have known lust had not the law said, "Thou shalt not covet." Rom. 7:7. The object of the law therefore was to evince the heinousness of sin, while it was a test of the obedience of man to God. It was given to Israel only, the one nation which was under God's special dealings, and in which He was trying man in the flesh. The heading of the ten commandments is "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," and this could apply only to the Israelites. Again, God says, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." Amos 3:2. The Gentiles are described as not having the law, Rom. 2:14, though they had the work of the law written in their hearts, and a conscience which bore witness when they did wrong. As the Gentiles became associated with Israel, and heard what God required morally of man, they doubtless became more or less responsible according to the light received. But greater light having come in, the Galatian Christians are sharply rebuked for putting themselves under law, where, as Gentiles, they never had been. Some things forbidden in the law were wrong intrinsically, such as theft, murder, etc.; but other things were wrong only because God had forbidden them, such as the command to abstain from eating certain creatures called 'unclean.'

The ten commandments are introduced by the initial declaration of the Lord, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (v.16). This certainly should awaken Israel's utmost respect and attention.

The first commandment is absolutely basic, "You shall have no other gods before Me" (v.7). For immediately another god is introduced, whatever people say about it, it is not merely added as an object alongside of God, but it is always put before God. Some may claim it is only intended as a reminder of God, but this is Satan's deception, for such things will always give a wrong conception of God.

Before God gives the ten commandments, He makes is abundantly clear that Israel's obedience to law had nothing to do with God's previous grace toward them in delivering them from the bondage of Egypt, just as today obedience to law has no part in the salvation of souls out from the bondage of sin. Yet Israel must not regard these laws as merely abstract principles, but laws of “the Lord thy God,” indicating another relationship to God on the basis of their obedience. Solemn consideration!

The language of these laws is absolute and peremptory. “You shall” or “you shall not.” No allowance is made for any deviation. First, no other god could be allowed to take God's place. Nothing must in any way be used even to represent God, no image, no likeness of anything in creation must have any place of spiritual honor in people's minds. This is idolatry. Even pictures of this kind were forbidden (Num. 33:52)

The first commandment struck at the root of idolatry. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." There were many "other gods" in Egypt, likenesses of things in heaven above and in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, the Sun and the Moon, Osiris and Isis. Animals also were the objects of superstitious homage, as the ox, the dog, the cat, the hawk, the crocodile and others. Nor did they limit their reverence to animals, but even deified the vegetables that grew in their gardens. Leeks and onions were invoked as gods. Had we not unimpeachable evidence of such amazing debasement, it would be incredible. It is the derision of one who was himself an idolater. "You enter," says Lucian, "into a magnificent temple, every part of which glitters with gold and silver. You there look attentively for a god, and are cheated with a stork, an ape, or a cat," and he adds "a just emblem of too many palaces, the masters of which are far from being the brightest ornaments of them." The doctrine of the Metempsychosis — which is said to have originated with the Egyptians — was a natural outcome of such a system of idolatry. For the soul to pass into the body of one of the sacred animals must by them have been esteemed a great honour. Modern apologists of idolatry (for what else can they be?) have said that worship was not paid to the animals, but to the gods of whom they were the symbols. So exactly said the philosophic heathen of old. But the vulgar saw only the animal, and though the philosopher might despise, he had to hide his contempt. Paul at Ephesus was in danger of his life because by his preaching many were turned away from the worship of Diana and from the image which fell down from Jupiter. The intellectual at Ephesus might think of "Diana," but the common people only saw the "image" which they were told fell down from heaven. The rude block or sculptured stone, the little images that Rachel hid in the camel's furniture, or the great image of gold in the plain of Dura, even the lowest animal, or the common leek filled the eye of the ignorant masses, and nothing beyond.

Thus the whole of this period, from Adam to Moses, was what the apostle Paul calls "the time before the law." A law to bring into relationship to Himself by obedience to it, God never proposed. Relationship to Him, for sinners, must be of His grace. Outside of this there can be only wrath and judgment; and from this, as our natural portion, there must be deliverance, wrought by God Himself, before there can be any proper relationship to Him. This the sacrifices always recognized, and in the most solemn way we have seen the passover enforcing it. Brought into relationship, God gives them a law upon the express basis of the wonderful deliverance He had vouchsafed to them: "I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: thou shalt have no other gods before Me."

In Deuteronomy 5 we come to still closer quarters. "And Moses called all Israel, and said to them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep and do them." Obedience is the claim. "Jehovah our God made a covenant with us at Horeb." We shall find a fresh one made in the land of Moab, but first of all they are reminded of the Sinaitic covenant. "Jehovah made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. Jehovah talked with you face to face in the Mount out of the midst of the fire. (I stood between Jehovah and you at that time, to show you the word of Jehovah: for ye were afraid by reason of the fire, and went not up into the Mount.)" Then is laid down the memorial that Jehovah, who gave them His law, was the same who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They were a people brought into relationship with God, and the object of His words was to guard them from practical inconsistency with that relationship.

But we must distinguish between the type and the anti-type. The law in its typical meaning is in contrast to its literal meaning, which is true of many another type. Law and grace are on the one hand perfect contrasts; and this has hindered many from seeing that Sinai has a typical side at all. They could not deny this as to the tabernacle and its ordinances, which have so large a place in the latter half of the book, and they have no difficulty as to the typical character of the deliverance which fills up the former part of this book; but the law itself is to them only bitter, and in the book of redemption seems like a disfiguring scar to them. Yet God has given it a place there, and we must keep it in its place. Nay, God has stamped the redemption-character upon the law itself in an unmistakable way. "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," is His preface to the ten commandments. In fact, only to a redeemed people could He give a law at all — a truth however which some have turned into positive mischief. We shall do well therefore to look at both the literal and typical aspects of the "mount that might be touched."