Exodus 20:3; 1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 John 5:21
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.
Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): The first commandment says, “Thou shall have no other gods before Me.” The meaning of this precept, which is the foundation of all religion, is not merely that we shall not acknowledge any other God besides Jehovah—but also that we shall treat Him as God! That is, we must love Him with all our hearts, serve Him with all our lives, and depend upon Him for our supreme happiness and help.
WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): What is idolatry?
THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): To trust in any thing more than God, is to make it a god. If we trust in our riches, we make riches our god. If we trust in the arm of flesh, we make it a god. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm,” Jeremiah 17:5. If we trust to our duties to save us, we make them a god. “Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags,” Isaiah 64:6; they are fly-blown with sin. If we trust in our civility, we make it a god. Many trust to this, that none can charge them with gross sin. Civility is but nature refined and cultivated; a man may be washed, and not changed; his life may be civil, and yet there may be some reigning sin in his heart. The Pharisee could say, ‘I am no adulterer,’ Luke 18:11; but he could not say, “I am not proud.” To trust to civility, is to trust to a spider’s web.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): What is idolatry if this be not?
THOMAS WATSON: The plague of idolatry is very infectious. What is but it to have other gods besides the true God? I fear that upon a search, we have more idolaters among us than we are aware of.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES: We live in an age when talent is idolized, and genius adored.
THOMAS WATSON: If we trust in our wisdom, we make it a god. “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,” Jeremiah 9:23. Many a man makes an idol of his wit; he deifies himself.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714-1770): We often make a Christ of our graces.
THOMAS WATSON: If we trust in our grace, we make a god of it. If we trust to it we make it an idol. “I have walked in my integrity: I have trusted also in the Lord,” Psalm 26:1. David walked in his integrity; but did not trust in his integrity—“I have trusted in the Lord.” If we trust in our graces, we make a Christ of them. They are good graces, but bad Christs.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Never make a Christ out of your faith, nor think of it as if it were the independent source of your salvation. Our life is found in “looking unto Jesus,” not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things become possible to us, yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God upon whom faith relies. Grace is the locomotive, and faith is the chain by which the carriage of the soul is attached to the great motive power.
WILLIAM J. HOCKING (1864-1953): The apostle John, writing to the family of God, says “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” It is so easy to allow something in the heart, which replaces God, to which we have bowed.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Heart-idols are equally abominable with those that are the work of men’s hands.
THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): Yea, and the idols of men’s hearts are in many things worse than the idols of their hands, because these idol-lusts in the heart stand surer, and more fastly fixed.
WILLIAM J. HOCKING: Be not deceived; there are many idols in the world.
C. H. SPURGEON: Why, the world swarms with idols!
JOHN ANGELL JAMES: It’s obvious that whatever we love most, and are most anxious to retain and please—whatever it is we depend most upon for happiness and help—whatever has most of our hearts—that is, in effect, our God!
THOMAS WATSON: To love any thing more than God, is to make it a god. If we love our estate more than God, we make it a god. The young man in the gospel loved his gold better than his Saviour; the world lay nearer his heart than Christ, Matthew 19:22. The covetous man is called an idolater, Ephesians 5:5. Why so? Because he loves his estate more than God, and so makes it his god. Though he does not bow down to an idol, if he worships the graven image in his coins, he is an idolater. That which has most of the heart, we make a god of. If we love our pleasure more than God, we make a god of it. “Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,” 2 Timothy 3:4. Many let loose the reins, and give themselves up to all manner of sensual delights; they idolize pleasure. If we love our belly more than God, we make a god of it. To mind nothing but the indulging of the appetite, is idolatry, “whose god is their belly,” Philippians 3:19. If we love a child more than God, we make a god of it. How many are guilty of this? They think more of their children, and delight more in them than in God.
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD (1600-1661): Give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your children.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Every one of us is, from his mother’s womb, expert in inventing idols—man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual idol factory.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES: Self is the great idol which is the rival of God, and which divides with Him the worship of the human race. It is surprising and affecting to think how much Self enters into almost all we do. Besides the grosser form of self-righteousness, which leads many unconverted people to depend upon their own doings for acceptance with God, how much of self-seeking, self-valuing, self-admiration, self-dependence, there is in many converted ones!
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD: O wretched idol, myself!
D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): A man may make a god of himself, of a child, of a mother, of some precious gift that God has bestowed upon him. He may forget the Giver, and let his heart go out in adoration toward the gift. Rich and poor, learned and unlearned, all classes of men and women are guilty of this sin. “The mean man boweth down, and the great man humbled himself,” Isaiah 2:9.
THOMAS WATSON: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Why is the commandment in the second person singular—Thou? Why does not God say, You shall have no other gods? Because God would have each one take it as spoken to him by name. Therefore the commandment is in the second person singular, Thou—that every one may know that it is spoken to him, as it were, by name.
D. L. MOODY: Whatever you love more than God, is your idol.
CHARLES SIMEON: Let us examine ourselves carefully on this.
WILLIAM J. HOCKING: Have you an idol? Have you something in the heart which intervenes between you and God? Flee from such an idol.
