Posted on 03/07/2020 4:34:49 PM PST by pastorbillrandles
“You Shall Have No Other gods Before me…” ( Exodus 20:3)
In this, the first Commandment, God lays exclusive and absolute claim to our hearts. We are to center ourselves around God himself, and no one else. Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all of thy heart, and with all of thy soul and all of thy mind and all of thy strength.Only the true God is worthy of such totality of the devotion of all of our faculties.
This commandment tells us of the possibility of “other gods”, that they exist, and that people often try to center their lives around various ‘gods’, which are inadequate. Allegiance to anything that is less than God himself, is corrupting to the soul, for we were created to know and worship the only true God in an exclusive relationship.
Those ‘other gods’ are called vanities, nothings, and idols, and they are mocked by the Prophets of God. In the New Testament, on the one hand idols are called nothings, but on the other hand they are considered as significant entities;
As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. ( I Corinthians 8:4)
What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.( ! Corinthians 10:19-20)
On the one hand , idols are nothings… there is nothing to them, they are not God, nor are they anything…but on the other hand, behind the idols, and empowering what the represent as projections of men’s vain imagination, ae very real, and very dark entities. Demons use idols, because they covet the worship which is due to God alone.
Thus idolatry is a deeply corrupting and dark sin. Fallen man must center his life around a ‘god’ , no matter what he will find something, some entity, or in the modern sense, some “ism” to give all of his life, soul, heart and strength to. We are all incurable worshippers.
The first commandment raises the question, “What does it mean to have a God?”, as in “You shall have no other god before me”.
There is a verse in Deuteronomy which pretty much defines the answer, in my view, of what it means to have a God; Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.(Deuteronomy 10:20-21)
What or whom you fear supremely, that is your God. Whoever it is that you revere, and regard, and who you seek above all else too please, in your deepest self, is your true God.
Who do you cleave unto? Your deepest allegiance reveals your God to you, what do you cling to , no matter what comes?
Who do you cite? What is authoritative in your life, in the final sense? By who or what do you “Swear by his name”? Who or what has the last word with you? That is who your God is, because that is what it means to have a God.
Who is your Praise? Or what is your praise? What or who is it that you salt, and magnify ? We all have a God or ‘gods’, but is He your God?
Jesus re-iterated this commandment in the New Testament in his teaching that “No man can serve two masters…” . We cannot serve two different Lords. We will inevitable come to hate the one and love the other, dual loyalties are impossible to maintain.
The First commandment is God’s insistence that we walk with an undivided heart. It is a call to choose God, and to choose to love God , ( which is always a response to His love for us). It is very similar to marriage vows, in which the bride and groom promise to forswear all others, and to pledge exclusive love to each other no matter what comes.
All forms of the occult are violations of the first commandment. They all amount to seeking wisdom, power and knowledge illicitly, through other (fallen) entities, masquerading as ‘gods’, forces, spiritual laws, and powers, as opposed to humble faith and trust in God himself. Thus God warns of the most severe punishment
For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.
Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.
Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee.( Isaiah 47:10-15)
It has been said that the heart of man is an idol factory, and that we constantly manufacture idols, to substitute in the place of God, it is one of our most recurring sins. Not all idols are images made of silver and gold, or ancient ‘deities’.
In the modern world one form of Idolatry is the devotion to various “Isms”. Communism, Socialism, national Socialism, Marxism, Environmentalism, the list is endless, of abstract principles, people devote their lives to, many drawn in by the various vain philosophies circulating in this modern day, in order to supplement the spiritual emptiness left by secularism.
The Principalities, Powers, and Dark forces in this fallen world, seize on these “Isms”, and ideologically possess many and fill them with rage, murder, irrational devotion to the various ’causes’, thus we see the modern world in the deepest turmoil, due to idolatry. Politics, or environmentalism, identity ‘rights’ , or even compassion for animals, takes the place of the worship and devotion to God in many people’s lives because man cannot hav an absolute vacuum in his soul. He will have a god, even if he is an atheist!
People need to hear the message of the first commandment, more now than ever! God is still calling out to this generation to repent, and come unto Him, and to shed themselves of these corrupting and cruel ‘gods’, and to find Eternal Life in Him, “The only True God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent”.
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