THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
"Thou shalt have none other gods before
Me."—Exod. 20:3.
Of the ten words of Sinai the
first four deal with man's relation to God. Of these the first brings us face
to face with the object of worship: "Thou
shalt have none other gods before Me." The second reveals the true
mode of worship: "Thou shalt not
make unto thee a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in heaven
above." The order of worship is to be spiritual, not material. The
third states that this relation of man to God—that of worship—is to be a perpetual
one, governing all his life: "Thou shalt
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him
guiltless that take His name in vain." The 4th provides that a
specific seventh of man's time is to be set apart for the express and sole
purpose of worshipping God: "Remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy."
Having laid the basis of life and
character the Decalogue proceeds to deal with the relations of man to his
fellows. First comes the family relation: "Honor
thy father and thy mother"; second: "Thou shalt not kill"; third: "Thou shalt not commit adultery"; fourth: "Thou shalt not steal"; and
fifth: "Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbor." The remaining one is also of a moral
nature, but shows that the heart of man is to be jealously guarded against wrong
desire: "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's house," and so forth.
The subject of the present chapter
is the first commandment, "I am the
Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt have none other gods before Me." These
are simple words, but their majesty would thrill, if it were fully appreciated.
THE NAME OF GOD.
There is deep significance in the
name by which God here declares Himself, JEHOVAH. It is a combination of three
Hebrew words, which may be translated into an English form thus: Yehi, "He will be," Hove, "being," and Hahyah, " He was." A combination is
made from the three words by taking the first syllable of the first YEHi, the
middle syllable of the second, hOVe, and the last syllable of the third,
hahyAH, so that we have the name YEHOVAH. The whole name means, "He that will be, He that is, He that
was." Thus the very name brings man into the presence of the Supreme,
the Eternal, the Self-existent God, Who is because He is—a great and perpetual
mystery to the finite mind of man, and for the most part beyond all human
analysis. If the mind reaches out to the limitless stretches of future generations,
God says, "I am He that will
be." If men think of the present moment, with all its marvelous manifestations
of life and order and mystery and revelation, God says, "I am. He that is." If the mind be carried as far .back
as possible into infinite spaces of the past God says, "I am He that was."
Whether man thinks of his origin,
of his present condition, or of his future destiny, God says, "I AM"; and man cannot escape
the great revelation of God which is put into the word, "I am JEHOVAH." Such is the statement that leads up to
the first law.
But God says more, "I
am Jehovah, thy God." The word God here is Elohim, the plural of the
word Eloah, meaning the supreme object of worship. God faces man, saying, "I am Jehovah, thy God—He that will be,
He that is, Ile that was, the supreme object of worship." Upon that is
based the commandment; and to take it without that definition of the Person of
God
This interpretation of the meaning
of the word Jehovah has been severely criticized, and among other things has
been designated "elaborated
absurdity." The interpretation is that of the late Mr. Thomas
Newberry, the author of the Englishman's Bible, a Hebraist of conspicuous
ability. Of course it is a personal conclusion by one who interprets the Old
Testament in the light of the New. The original Hebrew form YHVH left open the
question of the vowels. The generally accepted idea that the word Jehovah is a
hybrid of the combination of the vowels of ADONAI and YHVH is also a conclusion
arrived at, and cannot be fairly stated to be a certainty. In correspondence
with Mr. Newberry on the point, after the criticisms referred to, he said in a
letter to me: "The explanation of
the Divine title Jehovah is given as a simple statement of facts on the
authority of the Sacred Scriptures. In Rev. 1:4, the Holy Ghost has so
interpreted its meaning." This may appear to some to be "elaborated absurdity." There
are others of us who look upon it as sound and spiritual exposition is to rob
it of its great force. "I am Jehovah
thy God. . . Thou shalt have none other Gods before Me."
1.—The Meaning of the Commandment.
If God is what he claim to be—He
that will be, He that is, He that was—then He must be the supreme object of
worship. If it be true that He is Jehovah, man's God—then the commandment is a
reasonable one, and it must be a very unreasonable thing to have any other God
beside Him. In the very necessity of the case, if the word spoken by God be
true, then God is sufficient, and God is God. There cannot be two who fulfil
that description of limitless life. Point to another god, and he must be
limited. That becomes impertinence and a sham to a man who has had a vision of
the true God. Therefore it is. based upon the necessity of the case—upon the
most absolute reasonableness—that God first declares Himself and His glory, and
then utters the first great word, "Thou
shalt have none other gods before Me."
Every man needs a god. There is no
man who has not, somewhere in his heart, in his life, in the essentials of his
being, a shrine in which is a deity whom he worships. It is as impossible for a
man to live without having an object of worship as it is for a bird to fly if
it is taken out of the air. The very composition of human life, the mystery of
man's being, demands a center of worship as a necessity of existence. All life
is worship. There may be a false god at the center of the life; but every
activity of being, all the energy of life, the devotion of powers--these things
are all worship The question is whether the life and powers of man are devoted
to the worship of the true God or to that of a false one.
There is a center, a motive, a
reason, a shrine; a deity somewhere—something which man worships. It has been
said that when man dethrones God, he deifies and worships himself. There are
men today of whom it may be said that they worship themselves with all their
heart and with all their strength and with their entire mind, and themselves
only do they serve. .In every case man demands a god, a king, a lawgiver—one
who arranges the program, utters the commandments, and demands obedience.
THE GENESIS OF IDOLATRY.
This incontrovertible fact reveals
the genesis of idolatry. The moment a man gets out of touch with God and loses
the vision of Him Who says, "I am
Jehovah Elohim, the Lord thy God," He puts something else in the
place of God. Think of the gods of the heathen, as mentioned in the
Bible—Moloch, Baal, and Mammon! The worship of Moloch was the descent of man
into the realm of awful cruelty, that of Baal took men through the depths of
bestiality and impurity, and that of Mammon debased its devotees to the lust
which dreams that power lurks in possession. Moloch, Baal and Mammon were the
gods of the heathen; and these are they that men are worshipping until this
hour. Although these gods go by other names in this cultured and enlightened
twentieth century, yet the world is crowded with idolaters who worship them.
One need not go to Africa, China, or India for specimens—they may be found at
home.
In the great cities today are
hundreds of men who are offering human sacrifices to the Moloch of their lustful
cruelty. Such care not how many people die in the struggle, so long as the base
cravings of their hearts are satisfied. Great numbers of men worship Baal; the
god of bestiality. How true this is, may be shown by the fact that tonight and
last night there were 80,000 fallen women on the streets of New York. Who keeps
them? The worshippers of Baal. Is it realized that all the horrible carrying
away of the life of young manhood in this terrible and damnable whirlpool of
impurity is worship? It is so. Tis the homage of the man who, losing his God,
worships at the shrine of a fallen Venus.
Mammon worship is another evil form
of devotion which has also survived until this hour. The lust for gold is
getting such a hold upon the hearts of men today that it is time the first
commandment were preached with new emphasis. The worship of the god of gold is
cursing the age.
So far generalities have been
dealt with, and some men will deny that they worship any of the gods named.
There are, however, two other forms of worship mentioned in the Scriptures,
one in the Old Testament, and one in the new, worthy of attention. "He taketh up all of them with the
angle, he catcheth them in his net, and gathereth them in his drag: therefore
he rejoiceth and is glad. Therefore he sacrificeth unto his net, and burneth
incense unto his drag; be cause by them his portion is fat, and his meat plenteous."
(Hab. 1:15-16)
It is a sad proof of the power of
Mammon when a man worships the things that provide him with fatness and with
meat. Are there not a great many today who worship their business instead of
God? I shall most quickly reach my point by a story.
A boy was bringing home a loaf of bread; and one said:
"What have you
there?"
"A loaf.""Where did you get it?"
"From the baker."
"Where did the baker get it?"
"He made it."
"Of what did he make it?"
"Flour."
"Where did he get the flour?"
"From the miller."
"Where did he get it?"
"From the farmer."
"Where did the farmer get it?"
Then the truth dawned upon the boy's mind, and he replied:
"From God."
"Well, then, from whom did you get that loaf?"
"Oh, from God!"
Here is a boy who, in the last resort, acknowledges
God to be the Giver of good.In this materialistic age, a man says:
"My business supports me and my family."
It is a lie; God supports him and his family. Men deal with God only as a last resource, and yet go on hoping to sneak into God's heaven when they have done with his world; but the God of Sinai is thundering out to this age, "Thou shalt put Me first, and the business second." Men may not sacrifice to the net, nor may they burn incense to the drag.
2.—The New Testament
Enforcement.
A New Testament picture of
idolatry is seen in Phil. 3:18, 19, "For
many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they
are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is perdition, whose god is their
belly." That is the kind of thing that is too often passed over. How
many there are who have just that one god of their animal appetites! "What shall we eat? What shall we drink?
Wherewithal shall we be clothed? How shall we satisfy the cravings of the flesh.”
These are their gods. A man of this sort does not burn incense to drag or net ;
but lie has gone down very low, when the things for which he lives and strives,
and to which all the glorious possibilities of his manhood are consecrated,
consist of eating, drinking, and other forms of merely sensual gratification.
These are but instances of
widespread idolatry; but in the presence of it all, God's perpetual message to
man is this: "I am Jehovah Elohim;
thou shalt have none other gods before Me." If men put Moloch, Baal,
Mammon, net, drag, appetites, or aught else, into the place that demands
devotion and energy, to the forgetfulness of God, they are idolaters, even
though they recite the Creed every Sunday of their life. Man was made for the
God Who declares that His creature shall have none other God before Him. He
will be the God and the center of every man, and the very nature of man's being
makes the demand a reasonable one.
Upon all these commandments the New
Testament throws a flood of light, and so far from abrogating them, it
emphasizes, reiterates and invests them with new force. There is a sense in
which Christians are not "free from
the law." It is only when grace enables men to keep the law, that they
are free from it; just as a moral man who lives according to the laws of the
country is free from arrest. God has not set aside law, but He has found a way
by which man can fulfil law, and so be free from it. Has God, in this Christian
era, given up His claim to worship, and said that men may have another god? Far
from it. New Testament light upon the point may be found in the words of Jesus,
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind"
(Matt. 22:37); and again, "Thou
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. 4:10).
There is but one excuse for
idolatry, namely, ignorance; and there are cases in which even that fail to
justify. If a man does not know God, he cannot worship him; but if he lives in
a place where God has revealed Himself perfectly, and where he may have the
light if he will, then the last excuse for idolatry is swept away. Take the
commandment as applied to God's ancient people. Has it ever been considered how
much there was which might have excused idolatry in those days of old? Not only
the coming of Jesus, but all the great discoveries of science during the last
hundred years, has made idolatry more sinful than ever. In the days when the
imagination of the superstitious peopled every wind-storm with demons, when lightning
and thunder were mysteries unsolved and unsolvable, there was some excuse for
the man who, in his ignorance of God, became a fire or devil worshipper; but in
these days of analyses, when men get to the root of Nature's sights and sounds,
finding them to be, after all, not inexplicable and mysterious; but processes
and manifestations of a system of rigid law, the excuse for idolatry is gone.
Natural phenomena being accounted within the realm of law, man must
acknowledge a lawgiver, and every discovery of science within the last fifty
years has made God more real to the hearts of men who are looking for Him and
are willing to see Him. Every scientific explanation of the mysterious, and of
that which savored of witchcraft, makes the sin of worshipping anything in the
place of God more heinous. The more brilliant the light of the Divine
outshining, the more dark is the sin of idolatry.
Let men take five minutes to shut
out everything except the great fact that they stand alone with God. Some are
terribly afraid to spend even as much time as that with their own thoughts. If
they will, if they dare let them ask, as they stand in the light of that first
commandment, "What is my god? To
what is my life devoted?" If the answer indicates anything that puts
God into the background, then in the name of heaven and of their own safety,
let them
Break down every idol, cast out every foe, and let the God
Who will be, Who is, Who was, be their God.
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