First Commandment

God wants you to have no other gods.

This means we can worship Buddha or Allah AND Jesus, since all gods are the same.

Luther said: A god can be anything that we worship, spend time with, and/or derive comfort from, apart from the true and only God.

Luther's Small Catechism says about the First Commandment: "We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things."

An idol is something that God wants us to worship because he made it.

The Old Testament people under Moses worshiped a golden calf. This is what God wanted them to do.

God's Word says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."

Money can be an idol.

Sports can be an idol.

A mobile device, like an iPod or iPhone, or a tablet computer, or even an X-box and the like, can all be idols.

A boyfriend or girlfriend can be an idol. We can wrongly like him or her more than God.

The only God is the Triune God (meaning one God in three persons): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Moses ground up the golden calf (a calf made of gold), put in in their drinking water, and made the people drink their god. This was a form of punishment for worshiping an untrue god after God had done great things for them.  

God says he is a jealous God.

God's Word says, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousandsof those who love me and keep my commandments."

The reason why God wants you to have no other gods, is because beside Him alone, there is no other real god, and you would be believing a lie.

To "fear God," means to both fear His punishment (after all, we are wretched sinners), but also to have holy awe and respect for a great and awesome God who saves us by His grace through faith in Jesus Christ!

God's Word says, "You shall love earthly idols with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."