The First Commandment
G. S. Barrett, D. D. Deuteronomy 5:7 You shall have none other gods before me. I. The most obvious lesson of this commandment is that IT FORBIDS POLYTHEISM, the worship of many gods. We are not to allow any god to share the throne of Jehovah. Although in former times idolatry was one of the chief perils of the Jews, and was the common religion of ancient Greece and Rome, polytheism is scarcely a peril for us. II. There is manifestly contained in this commandment AN IMPLICIT DENIAL OF ALL ATHEISM. The command, "Thou shalt have none other gods before Me," rests on the assumption that there is one true and living God. The law therefore forbids atheism as being a denial of God. Now, atheism is really of two very different kinds: one that is purely speculative or theoretical; and the other, and a far more common kind, practical atheism. 1. Of that purely speculative atheism which denies the existence of God there is very little in the present day. There may be exceptional thinkers, both in this country and in Germany, who would commit themselves to a definite denial of the existence of God, but men like Darwin and Huxley, or Tyndale and Herbert Spencer, are never found asserting there is no God. They are too wise and, let me add, too reverent to commit themselves to such an unprovable assertion. The speculative atheism of today calls itself agnosticism. It does not say that there is no God; all it affirms is, we cannot prove that there is one. We know nothing whatsoever about the hidden and mysterious cause which lies at the back of all phenomena; we know that there is something, and this something is the only reality of the universe, but what it is we cannot tell. "The power," Mr. Herbert Spencer says, "which the universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." "Such a power," he goes on to say, "exists, but its nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination." Now, what I desire to say about this modified form of atheism, calling itself agnosticism, is that it is really as deadly a form of atheism as the coarser atheism which openly declared there was no God. The agnostic himself, such a man as Herbert Spencer, may be a man of all moral excellence, for men often live on the beliefs which they have denied, just as, to use Mr. Balfour's striking illustration, parasites often live on the trees which they have destroyed. But agnosticism itself, the assertion that if there be a God we cannot know Him, is as fatal to all human goodness as the denial that there is a God. During the reign of terror the French were declared to be a nation of atheists by the National Assembly; but a brief experience convinced them that a nation of atheists could not long exist. Robespierre then proclaimed in the Convention that belief in the existence of a God was necessary to those principles of virtue and morality upon which the Republic was founded. 2. There is another kind of atheism that is most common, the atheism that we find in the streets, in the homes, in the hearts of a large number of people, and that I have called practical atheism; and this is as sternly forbidden by the First Commandment as the intellectual denial of God. And when I speak of practical atheism I mean the atheism of the heart and not of the head, the atheism of the life and not of the reason, the atheism, in one word, of that man to whose daily life it would make no kind of difference if there were no God. III. THIS COMMANDMENT FORBIDS ALL IDOLATRY. Coarse and material idolatry is impossible today; but there are other kinds of idolatry than the worship of idols. 1. Consider the idolatry of pleasure; and this may take one of two forms, either the pursuit of sensual pleasure or the passion for amusement. Now, the coarse degrading pursuit of sensual pleasure is not unknown even in the present day. There are those, St. Paul tells us, "whose god is their belly"; and I suppose there are such men to be found in England today, men who have little pleasure beyond the pleasures of the table, whose appetite and taste are as sensitive to the delights of eating and drinking as the ear of the musician or the eye of the artist is to what delights them; and then again, there is the lower form of sensual pleasure, the fulfilling of the lusts of the animal nature; but the common form of the idolatry of pleasure is found in the pursuit of amusement. It is one of the most pressing dangers of the present day. When I see the eager race for amusement today, when I find young men alert and excited if a sailing match or a football contest or a tennis tournament or a cricket match is taking place, willing to give up any engagement so as not to miss their favourite pleasure; and when I see these same young men indifferent to all higher aims — the pleasures of reading, of music, of art, and above all of religion; when I notice how easily excuses are found for absence on Sunday from worship, how readily the house of God is neglected for the cycle ride, or the river, or the seashore, I cannot help saying to myself, the idolatry of pleasure is one of the commonest of all the idolatries of modern life. 2. Another form of idolatry is seen in the love of money, and of all idolatries it is the most frequent in our modern world; for the one idol that never lacks worshippers is the idol of gold. I remember in this city a man dying many years ago who was one of these lovers of money. He had amassed a large fortune, no part of which ever came to any charity; and as he was lying upon his deathbed he sent for his minister, who naturally thought the dying man wished to speak to him of heavenly things, of his own soul, of religion, of God. The minister went to see him, and when he reached the bedside, and almost before he could speak, the poor miserable idolater of money said: "Oh, Mr. —, I am so glad you have come; I want to ask you if you can tell me the price of those shares today," mentioning some company in which he was interested. I am not saying that the desire to grow rich is idolatry, or that a man who bends his energies to make money in the week is sinning against God. He may be sinless in all this, and he is sinless if he desires money, not for its own sake, not for self-enjoyment, but for the use and blessing it may be to others; if he puts God first, and money always second. None the less, there are many in peril of reversing this. 3. The last form of idolatry to which I shall allude is the idolatry of love. There is something so beautiful in human love that it seems hardly possible to speak of it as an idolatry; and yet none the less it may become so. There are those whom Satan could never tempt through the flesh, who have never felt a single sensual temptation, who have no interest, or little interest, in amusement, and very little care for money, and no desire to grow rich; but who, nevertheless, are tempted through the affections, tempted to make an idol of some human love, to put lover or husband or wife or child on the throne of the heart where God ought to be. "Love me," said a wise and devout girl to her lover, — "love me as fervently as you will, but take care you love God better than you love me." She knew too well the peril of this idolatry of the heart. Possibly the commonest form this idolatry takes today is seen in the worship of children. By a bedside a woman once knelt, praying with streaming eyes. On that little bed, cold and still in death, lay her only child. She had literally worshipped it, and now God had taken her child from her. Listen to what that kneeling, weeping, broken-hearted mother is saying, the words are only sobs: "Oh my God, it is hard, Thou only knowest how hard for me to bear it. I thank Thee Thou hast taken my darling to Thyself. I loved my boy too well — I loved him more than I loved Thee; I made him my idol; now Thou hast broken my idol, and I have only Thee to love. My God, forgive my sorrow. I will not love my boy any less. I will love Thee more, more than I ever loved him." (G. S. Barrett, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt have none other gods before me. WEB: "You shall have no other gods before me.