I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me.
Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?
And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.’
God and God alone must have first place.
God lays down this law because to deny God’s worth is the ultimate denial.
To transfer to another the recognition, attention and allegiance that is due to God is the ultimate blasphemy.
A life that is not riveted on His worth is a life that is out of order.
Your life is literally out of order if anything is ordered before God and His glory in your life.
And a life that is out of order is never going to make anyone happy.
A life of worship, lived from and for God, is life indeed, true life, abundant life.
Adam Clarke writes this about the first commandment and happiness:
As God is the fountain of happiness, and no intelligent creature can be happy but through him, whoever seeks happiness in the creature is necessarily an idolater. The very first commandment of the whole series is divinely calculated to prevent man’s misery and promote his happiness, by taking him off from all false dependence, and leading him to God himself, the fountain of all good.
A life that is out of order is never going to make anyone happy.