Exodus 20:1-3 “Then God gave the people all these instructions: ² “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.³ You must not have any other god but me.”

Not only does God’s command start with a proclamation but second we see that it is:

2. Personal

Verse 2 says,“I am the Lord YOUR God”It’s not about rules it’s about a relationship. The 10 commandments are nota system of salvation, no one gets saved by keeping them. How many of us have ever broken one of them? And those who didn’t admit to breaking one of them just lied and broke one in the process! God’s law requires perfection, and the 10 commandments do 2 things. First, they point out our problem, that we are all sinners. Second, they point us to the perfect sacrifice for our sin, God’s Son Jesus Christ. Why do we need to see our sin? Because you can’t be saved until you realize you are lost. The law not only points out that we are lost but it points us to the Lord. So, let me ask you is the Lord your God or just a God? Do you know Him personally? Not know about Him, know Him. I know about the president, but I don’t know the president. I’m talking about a personal relationship with Jesus.  It’s what David declared when he said the Lord is My shepherd. He didn’t say the Lord is the shepherd or a shepherd, He said MY shepherd. Has there been a point in your life when you have admitted your sin and asked Jesus to save you from your sin? If you have Jesus is not just God, He is YOUR God. It’s a personal relationship. Not only is it personal but it is also about:

3. God’s Presence

Verse 2 goes on to say, “who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.”God is not some distant deity, He wants to be present in every aspect of our lives. Not just in the pleasurable moments but also the painful ones. It was His presence that brought them out of the prison of Egypt. Because of His presence they went from pain to peace. Peace is not the absence of problems but the presence of God. For us to be all that God created us to be we must start with a relationship with Him because He designed us for fellowship. The 2 greatest needs of the human heart are a need to be loved and a need to belong. Even the Hells Angels need a gang to belong to. God created us for fellowship with Him, but if we don’t worship Him, we will worship something! The commandments begin with God’s presence and what got Israel and individuals into trouble is when they followed something other than God. They often took their eyes off of God and put it on idols or man. As we saw last time in the breaking of the 10 Commandments. They turned to a golden calf instead of God because they had been following Moses, a man not the Messiah. With their attention drawn elsewhere God’s people soon forgot about His presence and so they missed His purposes for their lives. Today many Christians come to God based on their problems instead of His presence. But when we come to God for what we can get its not based on a relationship it is using God. And if we use God, we will use other people. Unfortunately, today there is more religion than righteousness, because often God is not the first passion of people’s hearts. Does your prayer life revolve around your problems or His presence? Sadly, feeling better has become more important to us than finding God. If we are not careful as a church, we will lose sight of why we are here. Our purpose is not to push programs it’s His presence and introducing people to Him. Is God’s presence your number one priority? He desires to be present not just when we have problems but for all of our life. If we are not careful, we will compartmentalize our Christianity. So that we end up with a Sunday God and a Monday Me. Where we pursue His presence part time instead of all the time. Not only do we see God’s presence but also:

4. The Protection

“who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.”Here God reminds them of His power to protect as He rescued and redeem them. Why is He a jealous God? For our protection. God’s jealousy isn’t selfish, it is to protect us from experiencing less than what He had planned for us. This makes His jealousy very different from our concept of jealousy. He is not protecting Himself in the commandments, He is protecting us. God rescued us from the slave market of sin and redeemed us for relationship. Our problem is that when we run from Him, we run right back into ruin. Instead of living in freedom we live as foreigners. Today people view freedom as getting to do what they want when they want. But people who try to gain freedom apart from a relationship with God are like a ship which is free when it loses its rudder; it is free to sail anywhere, even onto the rocks. We need the rudder because it doesn’t just provide direction but also protection. Relying on your relationship with God protects you from the storms of sin allowing you to sail around them instead of getting sucked into them. Resting in Christ protects you from the currents of the culture that want to carry you away from the Savior and into sin. There is protection in His presence. God’s plan has always been to bring us out of prison and into His presence. To separate us from the world. “I am the Lord God, which brought you out of bondage.” He is not only the God of our present, but also our past, and if we put Him first our future also. Because He has saved us, He has the right to tell us what is right. It was His saving power that free them from slavery, and this is still true when God is given first place in our lives, He still frees us from the slavery of sin and selfishness. Are you making it personal? Is it about His presence and protection or just your problems. This year rather than focusing on the problems try pursuing His presence. Because peace is not the absence of problems but the presence of God.

Exodus 20:1-3 “Then God gave the people all these instructions: ² “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.³ You must not have any other god but me.”

As we continue in our series “Relationship not Rules” we come to the first commandment, “You must not have any other god but me.” The 10 commandments deal with the two most important issues every person will face, our relationship with God and our relationship with each other. The first four commandments deal with our relationship to God while the last six deal with our relationship with each other. On the surface the first two commandments appear to be the same. But the first deals with worshipping other things in the way we should have been worshipping God, by making them a greater priority than anything else in life. The second deals with worshipping the right God in the wrong way by trying to use things to represent him that are less than He is. Israel’s problematic relationship with God is similar in scope to what we see in our society today. God rarely had first place in their lives, which is the starting point for a healthy relationship with God. God’s first command starts with:

1. A Proclamation

“I am the Lord.”This is a statement of the reality of God. For centuries scientists and philosophers have tried to ‘establish’ the existence of God. But nowhere does the Bible make an attempt to prove God’s existence. The Bible simply asserts His existence. Genesis 1:1 proclaims, “In the beginning God…” So how is God’s existence known so emphatically without concrete proof?

1. By Creation.

Psalms 19:1 declares: “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship.” And Romans 1:20 says: ^“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”

We can see the invisible Creatorby looking at His visible creation. Everything in creation bears the stamp ‘made by God.’ This is true regardless of whether you are looking only with your eyes or thru a microscope, or a telescope.When you look through a microscope you can view a single cell, but even though it is tiny in size one single living cell is more complicated than an entire city. Imagine millions of people running to and fro, all the network cables, lights, cars, rats, etc. A city is a complicated place but not as complex as a single cell. Our cells are more intricate and yet there are still those who say it all happened by accident instead of design. With a telescope you can look at the vast universe, where light travels 186,000 miles per second. In comparison the space shuttle was able to fly at up to 17,000 mph, but that is less than 5 miles per second. Light makes it from earth to the moon in 2 seconds, and then in a matter of minutes it passes the inner planets, and in a couple of hours it’s out of our solar system. But how long does it take it to get to the closest star to us? 4 years at that speed! But that’s just one of billions of stars in our galaxy, which is one of billions of known galaxies. Should we believe this just happened by chance? When I look at my watch Its obvious to me that there must have been a designer and a maker. When you look at my house you say there must’ve been a designer and a builder. So too creation cries out and points to its Creator and yet the evolutionist closes their ears. Replacing the truth of the Creator with time and chance. But it’s not just creation that declares the Creator but also the:

1. Conscience.

Go back as far as you want in human history, and you’ll see that mankind has always had a need to worship. There has never been a people group anywhere in the world, from the jungles of Africa to frozen tundra of the Artic, that was not engaged in some kind of worship. While they may not have been worshiping the true God, they were worshiping something. Why? Because man has a built in need to worship. It’s a universal hunger placed in the human heart by its Creator God. Not only do we have a hunger for food, and water but also for relationship. We have an innate need to worship because God has written it on the wall of every human heart: “There is a God.” Psalms 53:1Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”Those who believe that are atheists and they claim to believe in nothing. But that’s not entirely true, for even the atheist worships something. They just find something else to replace God with. Many become radical environmentalists who worship the world. We all want to have a cause, something bigger than us and often those who say we are killing the planet are actually worshiping the planet! They are doing what Paul said they would do in Romans: worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, Romans 1:25 “They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.”Some stare at the stars looking to astrology for answers. Or they read their horoscopes looking for direction because they have denied the deity. Even though they don’t want to acknowledge God, they still need something! Maybe a movie star or a rock star or a sports star, because they have rejected the Bright and Morning Star! Their real problem is not in their head, it’s in their heart. “The fool says in their heart.” It’s not a mental problem it’s a moral problem. When you waive off the waitress at the end of your meal saying, ‘no dessert’… you aren’t denying the existence of dessert, just saying no to having it yourself. In truth it’s not God they don’t like as much as having to be accountable to God. The reality is that Atheism is a religion. Not only does it go against the second law of thermodynamics, but it also fails to follow the scientific method which says it has to be observable. As to date no one has observe a species becoming another species. As a religion Atheism has never dispelled fear from a troubled heart. It has never dried the tears of a broken heart. It has never given peace to a tormented heart. And then at the end of their life they die and lie in a casket all dressed up with no place to go [supposedly]. Both creation and conscience cry out to God the question is are you listening?