Who is your God?

“You shall have no other gods before me.”

 Exodus 20:2

 In last week’s Pastor’s Pen I wrote about the second    commandment. In the next nine Pastor’s Pens I will walk us through the other nine Commandments in Exodus 20.

When God gave this command the Israelites had just been freed from Egypt. The Egyptians  were a polytheistic society and they worshiped over 2,000 gods.  I will list just a few of the more important gods to the Egyptians. As Zeus was to the Greeks, the Egyptian god Amun-Ra or Amon was considered the king of the gods and            goddesses. He became Amun-Ra after being combined with the sun god Ra. Mut means “mother” in Egyptian, and Mut is a primal deity who wears two crowns on her head, each representing Upper and Lower Egypt. Also titled “She who gives birth, but was herself not born of any,” Mut is represented as a vulture in hieroglyphs. She is variously integrated with other deities and is often   portrayed as a cat, cobra, cow and even a lioness.        Considered the oldest child of the earth god Zeb and the sky goddess Nut, Osiris was worshiped as the god of the afterlife as the ancient Egyptians believed there was life after death. Often portrayed with green skin, Osiris was the god of vegetation which indicated renewal and growth and was thought to be responsible for the fertile flooding and vegetation around the banks of the Nile.   The midday sun, Ra or Re, is of great importance in     Egyptian history. The god of the sun, Ra, has a sun disk around his head and is believed to have created this world. Every sunrise and sunset were seen as a process    of renewal. Ra is portrayed as a falcon-headed god.

However, Egypt was not the only nation that worshiped false gods. The Israelites were heading to the promise land and the people that occupied these lands worship false gods.  On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from

the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the      Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the      Jebusites. ( Gen. 15:18-21)” . All of these peoples worship false gods, including Baal and Moloch.  Canaanite gods demanded human sacrifice and more specifically, the  sacrifice of children. In the Bible book of  Jeremiah , God states, “They built the high places of Baal in order to burn their sons in the fire as whole burnt offerings to Baal, something that I had not commanded or spoken of and that had never even come into my heart.” (Jeremiah 19:5) The Bible is clear that child sacrifice was a regular feature of the religion of the Cannaanites and the surrounding nations. “…they do for their gods every detestable thing that  Jehovah hates, even burning their sons and their     daughters in the fire to their gods.” (Deuteronomy 12:31).

God takes His holiness and His worship seriously. That is why the very first Commandment is, “You shall have no other gods before me.”  This begs the question are there other gods? The answer is NO! There is only one God, three Persons in one. The Father, the Son, and the Holy   Spirit. Every other god is made up in the minds of men. Even today we have religions that worship many gods. The Hindus worship over 33 million gods but false       worship is not restricted to the eastern religions.          Mormons believe humans can become gods and          populate their own worlds.

Worship of false gods may seem bazar to you but you may be worshiping a false god. Every one of us is made by God and for God. As Christians, we confess that our “chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Despite the divine design of our lives, we are all prone to wander from the one true God and worship false gods of our own making. The following is from a Ligonier article entitled, “False gods”

Worship of false gods may seem bazar to you but you may be worshiping a false god. Every one of us is made by God and for God. As Christians, we confess that our “chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”        Despite the divine design of our lives, we are all prone to wander from the one true God and worship false gods of our own making. The following is from a Ligonier article entitled, “False gods”.

“Idolatry has taken different forms throughout the ages. Some idols were carved out of wood and overlaid with precious metals. Some were well-known pagan deities to which whole temples were built. Today, our idols seem a bit more sophisticated. Money, power, reputation, sex, appearance, and knowledge are common idols. Even good things can be idols, such as a local church or a    ministry, because an idol is simply that which we elevate in our lives above the Lord. Idolatry is what comes first, what has captured our hearts, and where we find our identity.

Despite the glaring deficiencies in our man-made idols and ourselves when compared to the glory of our triune God, we still bow down to things created rather than the Creator. Idolatry is not just delusional, it is dangerous. Such false gods will not only fail to serve us and save us, but they will lead us to our condemnation. It is only when we see idols for what they are, in contrast to who the Lord is, that the glitter of idols is overcome by the glory of God.

This is the core reason why we worship idols—because we are not gripped with the glory of God, glory that is seen in the person and work of Jesus Christ, who Himself is the “radiance” of God’s glory (Heb. 1:3), whose death brought about our redemption, and whose resurrection secured our life. The beginning of the end of the idolatry in our hearts is found in the supremacy of Jesus Christ.”

Examine your life and see if you may be worshiping the creation instead of the Creator.

Your shepherd,

Pastor Mark