No gods Before Me
Editors View
Then God instructed the people as follows: ‘I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in Egypt. Do
not worship any other gods besides me. Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. You must never worship or bow down to them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god!’” Exodus 20:1-5
The church is filled with a wonderfully diverse group of men and women. Members from diverse cultural backgrounds, men and women, and young and old make up our church family. We comprise God’s people from around the world, people with the same hurts and hang-ups, strengths and weaknesses as other human beings.
I believe that one of the greatest challenges to the church today is idolatry. We don’t have gold statues hidden in our saddlebags and would never think of worshiping gods of stone, metal or wood, but we are nonetheless creative in our present-day forms of idolatry. Broken people are driven to build idols of control, self-dependence, performance, self-comfort and people-pleasing. These idols tell God that somehow He is not strong enough to handle our situation. When we are hurt, we medicate our pain by turning to food, sex, work, drugs, television, videogames, and many other compulsive thoughts, attitudes and behaviors to help us to feel better. By doing so we tell God that He is a poor comforter rather than the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3).
I believe that the command to “not worship any other gods besides me” is in the first position of the Decalogue because idolatry is foundational to all other sins. When we peel back the layers on other sins, we find some form of idolatry at their root. As a people called to minister to the world, would it not be good to take the lead in asking God to search our hearts and to cleanse our hearts from all forms of idolatry? They keep us from effective, powerful and Spirit-led ministry.
A few years ago I had a wonderful Christian neighbor. Brother Leroy Phenix and I became good friends as we worked and prayed together. As I confided some of my challenges to him one day, he said “It’s repenting time, brother.” He was right, and more than that, it is time to truly die to the idolatry in our lives, that we might fully allow God to live his life in and through us for such a time as this.