Moses had been up on the mountain more than a month, and the Israelites were tired of waiting. They wanted to get going. Why trust an invisible God who has his own timing and plans, when you can manufacture a new version of God that will suit your agenda? There's nothing handier than a god you can see and control and push along ahead of you.

Still, people may be reluctant to make their own version of God. They prefer an authority figure to do it for them. A pastor or priest or professor can produce a new version of God with that extra touch of professional quality. So the Israelites wanted Aaron to make their idol for them. Aaron was the chief priest. If Aaron made a new image of God, it would surely be praiseworthy. So Aaron took an offering and gave them what they wanted.

The first commandment isn't fashionable these days. Pantheists say everything is God; atheists say there is no God; followers of New Age and Eastern religions declare themselves to be God. Some people pray to trees and stars and Mother Earth; some pray to dead ancestors; some trust their subconscious or their own infinite potential; some follow pagan gods and goddesses; some count on crystals and occult rituals and spirit guides. Living among such a hodgepodge of religions can be oddly comforting. With so much variety, religion seems to be a matter of private opinion and personal taste. Whatever I happen to believe is right for me.

How disturbing, then, to hear a voice from Mount Sinai thunder, "You shall have no other gods before me." How upsetting to hear a carpenter from Nazareth announce, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Doesn't it sounds narrow for the Lord to insist that he alone is God and that he is the only way of truth and life?

Studying the Lord's Prayer, we saw that life in Christ is a life of prayer. Now let's look at life in Christ as a life of love, focusing on the Ten Commandments.

The word love doesn't appear in the Ten Commandments. Is that because none of them are about love? No, it's because all of them are about love. Jesus said: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:37-40).

Life is war. Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie. Author John Piper says that Jesus gives every Christian a transmitter coded to the frequency of the general's headquarters. As we battle the enemy, our Leader is as close as our transmitter. He will provide instructions and send in air cover when we need it and call for it. Help is only a prayer away.

But, says Piper, "We have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and tried to turn it into a civilian intercom to call the servants for another cushion in the den." We pray for God to make us comfortable, when we should ask his help to fight temptation, spread the gospel, and defeat the armies of evil. "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, stand in his strength alone; the arm of flesh will fail you, you dare not trust your own. Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer; where duty calls, or danger, be never failing there."

Right after teaching the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says, "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, you Father will not forgive your sins" (Matthew 6:14-15). Does this mean we earn God's forgiveness by how well we forgive others? No, but it does mean forgiveness is a package deal. By faith we accept forgiveness both as God's policy toward us and as our policy toward others. We cannot expect forgiveness as God's policy toward us if we refuse to make it our policy toward others and insist on judgment and payback instead. If we refuse to live in a kingdom where all is forgiven, the only alternative is a place where nothing is forgiveness. That is hell.

When we go to Jesus for the first time and come under God's policy of forgiveness, all our guilt and all our grudges go on the garbage dump at Jesus' cross. This defining moment of forgiveness is then lived out afresh each day through prayer. As we journey through life, we still commit sins and suffer from the sins of others. In prayer we bring these things to God and place them under his grace, trusting that "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9), and recommitting ourselves to forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave us (Ephesians 4:32).