October 21 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Devotional

The Ten Commandments stem from a pre-Christian period. They were given by God to the people of Israel. They constituted the core of all the commandments that God gave his people in the covenant of Sinai.

Christ did not abolish these commandments but fulfilled them. That means that his teaching and life have shown the full implications of God's will as revealed in the law in general and in the Ten Commandments in particular.

The Ten Commandments do not give us all that we should know about the will of God for our lives. But they are basic to everything else the Bible has to say about reverence for God and respect for our neighbor.

The first commandment is foundational to all of life and religion: God must be honored as God. God gave this basic rule because humanity's basic temptation is idolatry. Idolatry means that we have a false god in the place of or next to the true God.

All the mysterious powers people encounter in the universe are potential idols—the sun, the moon, the rain, the ocean, growth, fertility, sexual power, beauty, merchandise, money, reason, wisdom. The great lesson God brought into the world through Israel is that God is one. All powers are subject to God. And God does not tolerate anybody or anything receiving the honor due his name.

The same powers still cast their spell over our world. We call them materialism or naturalism or rationalism or hedonism or post-modernism. These powers fight for the place of God in the lives of all people.

Christ came into the world first to reveal the God we worship. We inevitably become like the God we worship. So you can always tell whether a person worships mammon or pleasure or a stern god or a sentimental god or the Father of Jesus Christ. Christ has also come into the world to make all the powers his servants. So we can already devote ourselves totally, together with everything we have, to the service of the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

REFLECTIONS

Think of one thing that you are personally tempted to idolize, something that could become a kind of god to you. Then offer a prayer based on your desire to put God first, ahead of any and all idols or potential idols.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published by Paideia Press in 1977. This updated edition is copyright 2009 by Faith Alive Christian Resources. You can order a copy of this revised version of the book directly from the publisher.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this updated edition of Daylight are from the Holy Bible: Today's New International Version copyright 2001, 2005 by the International Bible Society.