Put God first, and the rest will follow
“Give glory to the LORD, the God of Israel, and honor him.” (Joshua 7:19)
Martin Luther is quoted as saying, “If we could keep the first commandment perfectly, we would then 
be able to keep all the other commandments as well.” His point was that the reason we end up failing to keep the other commandments is because we fail to put God and his commands in first place in our lives. We put ourselves and our wishes and desires ahead of God and his commands.
The backstory to our Bible verse for this week is a prime example of that idea. The words of our verse for this week were spoken by Joshua to Achan, an Israelite who had coveted and then kept for himself some of the items the Israelites took in the capture of Jericho. God commanded “all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord” (Joshua 6:19). Achan failed to put God and his command in first place, and that led to him coveting and then stealing some of the plunder from Jericho.
We might think our failure to put God first in our lives hasn’t reached the level of Achan’s, but nonetheless, we have fallen into the exact same pattern as him. We thought we were justified in setting aside God’s commandments for a time because we thought we knew better than God (blatantly breaking the First Commandment), and that led to cursing, disregard for God’s Word, failure to respect for authority, hatred or maybe even murder, adultery or lust, gossip and coveting.
How often we try to minimize our sins by comparing them with what we consider to be the greater sins of others. But when God’s Law exposes the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts, not to mention our words and actions, we see we are guilty of breaking the First Commandment along with all the others.
All of this can be rather depressing or even frustrating. But there is someone who has perfectly given God the glory all the time. That person is our Savior, Jesus. What a wonderful and undeserved blessing to know He has kept all of God’s Commandments perfectly, and then He died to pay for all the times we sought the glory instead of giving it to God.