Deuteronomy 5:7 You shall have none other gods before me. There is but one excuse for idolatry, namely, ignorance; and there are cases in which even that fails to justify us. 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. Have you ever thought how much there was which might have excused idolatry in those nays of old? Not only the coming of Jesus, but all the great discoveries of science during the last hundred years, have made idolatry more sinful than ever. In the days when the imagination of the superstitious peopled every windstorm with demons, when lightnings and thunders 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 analysis, when we 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 our idolatry is gone. Natural phenomena being accounted for 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 savoured 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. (G. Campbell Morgan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt have none other gods before me. |
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