I am the Lord thy God. … Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” or “beside Me” (Exodus 20:2, 3 Revised Version), is the first of the ten commandments. …
Just as the Decalogue is the summary of the Scriptures, the first commandment is the summary of the whole law. In principle it prohibits all kinds of idolatry and everything in the nature of false worship. Jesus gave a summary of man’s whole duty when He said to the tempter who offered Him the dominion of the world for an act of worship, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).
It was idolatry, or false worship, that excluded man from Paradise, and the passport to paradise restored is the worship of and obedience to the only true God. “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14).
Because He is the Creator, the supreme right of the Lord in this world is the recognition of His sovereignty and the reverent obedience of His subjects. The first and greatest of all the obligations of man is to his Creator, in whom “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In the first commandment, therefore, is the foundation of the whole law, the basis of all the commands that follow.
The Decalogue, like the Lord’s prayer, begins at the place of all beginnings—with God. That is where the Bible begins—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The New Testament begins at the same place: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Gospel of John is just as truly the beginning of the New Testament as is the book of Matthew.
Evidence of Divinity
The Lord does not leave us without proof of His divinity and supremacy over all other gods. He issues two challenges to false gods, which they are unable to meet. The first and greatest evidence of Deity is the power to create, and Jehovah challenges all other gods to prove their right to be worshiped by exhibiting the power of creation. (See Psalms 95:3, 5, 6; 96:8–10; 86:8–10; Isaiah 45:18–22; Jeremiah 10:10–15.)
It is because Jehovah is the Creator that the sinless inhabitants of heaven worship Him. In vision the revelator saw these creatures “fall down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:10, 11). There is no other true basis of worship. No created being has a right to worship or receive worship from another creature. Since no creature has creative power, the Creator alone is the true and only God.
The Lord also issues another challenge to false gods as a proof of His divinity and the right to command and receive worship, namely, His ability to see and foretell the future. (See Isaiah 41:21–24; 48:3–6.) Only the members of the Godhead can foresee and forecast future events. All prophecy originates with the Father and is revealed to man by the Son through the agencies of the Holy Spirit, the angels, and the prophets. (See 1 Peter 1:10, 11; 2 Peter 1:19–21; Revelation 1:1.)
The angel Gabriel, the most exalted creature in the heavenly host, refused to receive worship from the prophet John, because he himself was likewise a creature. He told him to “worship God” (Revelation 19:10). Paul and Barnabas indignantly refused worship and divine honors from the people of Lystra because of a miracle they had performed in their midst. “They rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein” (Acts 14:14, 15). In accepting worship, Satan or any of his followers exalt themselves to the place of God.
Polytheism Condemned
The first command is a condemnation of, and a warning against, polytheism, or the worship of many gods. “There be gods many, and lords many” (1 Corinthians 8:5), said Paul. It has been estimated that the Greeks worshiped thirty thousand gods. The Babylonians “praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone” (Daniel 5:4). The gods of the Egyptians were almost innumerable. The Romans had so many gods that in the city of Rome they built a temple called the Pantheon, or the temple of all the gods. They were so numerous that the priests of the temple could not name or enumerate them all. Modern India is said to have more than 330,000,000 gods, and they are almost as numerous in China. The Israelites had just been delivered from a nation where polytheism and pantheism reigned supreme, and from which the Jews were never completely delivered till after their return from Babylonian captivity. The promised land was filled with nations that were polytheistic in their worship, and whose gods became a snare to the children of Israel. Polytheism is the religion of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the modern world, and the first commandment of the Decalogue is just as applicable and up to date as when given thirty-five hundred years ago. The law of God is universal. It belongs to the whole human race in all ages. Even in countries where idols or graven images are no longer worshiped as such, gods in other forms constitute an idolatry no less displeasing to Jehovah.
Idolatry Defined
The apostle Paul defines idolatry as the exchanging of “the truth of God for a lie” and the worshiping and serving of “the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25, R.V.), or “more than the Creator.” “They had bartered the reality of God for what is unreal and had offered divine honors and religious service to created things, rather than to the Creator,” is the Weymouth translation. In other words idolatry in its broad meaning is false worship of every kind. Any object of adoration and worship that takes the place of God or comes between us and God is an idol.
Creature worship is just as popular and universal now as when paganism reigned supreme. It began at the dawn of human history when man first sinned. Adam set up an idol in his heart when he served and obeyed Satan instead of the Creator by eating of the forbidden fruit. That was the beginning of idolatry and false worship on the earth. Self and Satan took the place of God. Creature worship supplanted Creator worship.
Idolatry in many forms became prevalent among the descendants of Adam and Eve. It was the great sin of the antediluvian world. It was reintroduced after the deluge by the great rebel Nimrod. Babylon became the cradle of the idolatrous and spurious worship that has come down to modern times. The counterfeit religion of Satan is still divinely called “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth” (Revelation 17:5).
Modern Idolatry
For the vast majority of earth’s inhabitants there has been no change in the forms of pagan idolatry. The same gods without change even in names are being worshiped in heathen and pagan lands. In countries influenced by the gospel the old gods are still present but in different forms and under new names. The only graven images known to many of us are those seen in museums or exhibited by missionaries returned from heathen lands. There is not the least danger of our worshiping images in these forms of gross idolatry, but the devil is cunning and deceptive. He has hidden the identity of the old gods in new and attractive garments, and they are worshiped with as much fervor and devotion as were the gods in days of yore.
The instinct to worship was divinely planted in human nature. It is not even necessary to command worship, for all races of mankind, whether their civilization be high or low, have had deities and forms of worship. Voltaire declared that “if there were no God, it would be necessary to invent Him.” And Theodore Parker truthfully said, “Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. If he worship not the true God, he will have his idols.” Job recognized the universal instinct to worship and the inherent principle of idolatry in fallen man when he said: “If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; if I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much; If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; And my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: This also was an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above” (Job 31:24–28).
In this text gold and wealth in which men trust is reckoned as idolatry, along with the worship of the heavenly bodies. The god of gold is one of the chief gods of modern idolatry. The ancient name of this god was “mammon,” and Jesus declared, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6;24; Luke 16:13). Today the rule of gold is more powerful than the golden rule in the lives of the majority of human beings.
The Lord is “a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5) who refuses to share worship with any other god. The worship of the true God cannot be mixed with the worship of false gods. An ancient proverb declares that “when the half-gods go, the gods arrive.” When we dismiss all the lesser gods, the great God Himself arrives to claim our allegiance and worship. With Him it is all or none. He accepts no halfhearted service. We must seek and serve Him with all the heart. The promise is, “The Lord is with you, while ye be with Him; and if ye seek Him, He will be found of you; but if ye forsake Him, He will forsake you” (2 Chronicles 15:2). We are then told that the Jews “sought Him with their whole desire; and He was found of them: and the Lord gave them rest round about” (verse 15). Jesus laid down the same principle when He said, “He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad” (Matthew 12:30).
Excerpts from The Ten Commandments, by Taylor G. Bunch, 25–32. (The Review and Herald, 1944.)