Dear Friends,
Have you ever tried to help someone to faith in Christ only to hear something like this: “Don’t worry about me! I’m OK. I keep the Ten Commandments!” When you hear something like that you have good reason to suspect that the person doesn’t know what is in the Ten Commandments. So to help you help then we’re going to take ten days to go through the Ten Commandments. It will help you explain that they cannot save but can only condemn. People need Jesus! Further, while they cannot save, they are an excellent guide for those who trust in Christ showing them what pleases and displeases God. Lord bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Exodus 20:3 (ESV)

  3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

“This is God’s demand for man’s exclusive worship…. We break it whenever we give to something or someone other than God himself the first place in our thoughts or our affections. It may be some engrossing sport, absorbing hobby, or selfish ambition. Or it may be someone whom we idolize. We may worship a god of gold and silver in the form of safe investments and a healthy bank balance, or a god of wood and stone in the form of property and possessions. None of these things is necessarily wrong in itself. It only becomes wrong when we give to it the place in our lives which belongs only to God. Sin is fundamentally the exaltation of self at the expense of God. What someone wrote of the Englishman is true of everyman: he is ‘a self-made man who worships his creator.’

“For us to keep this first commandment would be, as Jesus said, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our souls and with all our mind; to make his will our guide and his glory our goal; to put him first in thought, word and deed; in business and leisure; in friendships and career; in the use of our money, time and talents; at work and at home. No man has ever kept this commandment except Jesus of Nazareth.” [John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958, p. 63]