| April 1
No Other Gods
The very first command
that God gave the Israelites was to have no
other gods before Him. It sounds simple
enough but Moses didn't make it down from Mount
Sinai before the Israelites were bowing down to
the golden calf.
It seems like it would be
easy to follow this command over the others.
After all, when is the last time that you had a
temptation to construct an idol and bow down to
it?
The Israelites had great
problems with idolatry. God had instructed
them to remove all the foreigners and their
foreign gods from the land but instead they made
compromises and signed peace treaties.
Peace is usually desirable but not when it goes
against the direct instruction of God.
The Israelites didn't
allow foreigners and their gods to remain around
with the expectation that it would cause
problems later on. But this is how most
sin creeps in. We make compromises on
things that we assume nothing bad can happen
from. In the Israelites case it led to the
nation being flooded with idols and the people
intermarrying with foreigners and bowing to
foreign idols.
Of course an idol can be
anything that we place ahead of God, not just a
statue. The devotions on
worship cover
this topic in more depth. We must be
careful about compromises because they often
have unintended consequences. |
