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Day 9 - Commandment #2

“You are to have no other gods before me. 4 You are not to make for yourselves a carved image or any kind of representation of anything in heaven above, on the earth beneath or in the water below the shoreline. 5 You are not to bow down to them or serve them; for I, YHVH your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but displaying grace to the thousandth generation of those who love me and obey my mitzvot.”

Huh…“No other gods before me”?

Does this mean you can worship other gods provided YHVH comes first? I think we mostly agree that that interpretation doesn’t seem valid. So what does it mean?

The literal phrase is something like this: Another Elohiym will not exist for you in my face.

Ever had someone flaunt their godless or ungodly lifestyle in front of you and the only thing you could think was, “Get that out of my face!” That’s what He’s saying here. 

Do you remember how disrespected you felt when they were doing this? Now imagine it was one of your own children. How would you feel?

You’d feel as though they are so self-absorbed they could care less of your feelings. They are clearly more concerned with their own selfishness than honoring you. They chose to go against your standard and are completely content with their decision. More than that, they don’t care.

How would you respond?

How should you respond?

It seems as though a child that would do such a thing has a seed of rebellion in them. And seeds produce fruit, that have seeds, that produce fruit, and so on. This carries on through many generations. Read the history of Israel and you will see this over and over again.

Perhaps it takes 3-4 generations to purge this rebellion. I’d call this epic mercy and grace. Abba could easily just remove you from the earth and get rid of this sin immediately. But in spite of your actions and worship of other gods, He gives you the hope of still having a heritage in the earth. Your line will not necessarily end with you and your actions.

In summary, do not ever flaunt your other gods before Him. Because if you do, He will punish your children, their children, their children, and maybe even their children.

Hate

Also notice what He says here: “for I, YHVH your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me

Worshiping other gods before His face is equivalent to hating Him. That seems like such strong language for something as small as worshiping an idol. I mean, you’re only needing a good harvest, and this is so you can feed your family and maybe even have extra to take to the market. Not to mention the extra first fruits offering you’ll be able to bring to Abba Himself. 

“Yeah, I trust God. But having a backup plan doesn’t hurt, does it?”

Think about this for just a moment. Think about that retirement plan. Think about the extra time you put in for work on the Sabbath because of that deadline. Think about that compromised direction your company is taking. Can you really afford to quit?

Have you put things in place to ensure tomorrow is pleasant?

When we learned to pray in Matthew 6, we see that Yeshua said to ask for what you need today. When we read about the Israelites in the desert, they got manna for just that day (plus double before the Sabbath). It’s today that needs our focus and attention, not tomorrow.

“But what if He doesn’t come through?”

What you mean to say here is, “I want this now and there is someone that can give it to me, so you’re useless to me. I hate you for not caring enough about my needs to give it to me now.”

Read Judges. Israel could not remain patient long enough to have Abba give them what they needed when they needed it. Actually, let’s correct this statement: Israel could not remain patient long enough to have Abba give them what they wanted when they needed it.

“Don’t you see what my neighbor has? If you love me, you should give me more than them.” 

What a spoiled brat! That’s not how He operates.

So you go after other gods and worship their idols.

What is an idol?

It’s not uncommon to just think of someone on their knees bowing down to some relic, sculpture or picture. While this definitely qualifies, it most certainly does not cover the full spectrum of idolatry.

It’s not the overt idol worship that should concern us. It’s the covert. And not covert in the sense that you are hiding it from others, but you are hiding it from yourself.

What can an idol do that Abba cannot?

Idols operate on a formula and they operate on demand. No more waiting a very long time for a promise to come into reality. You can have it now. The cost? Curses on your lineage.

Idols have one job. If you need rain then you just need to correct the areas of your life that appease the rain god. There is no call to full repentance. Partial is enough. Then sacrifice whatever they require and that pays the debt required to get what you want. It’s prostitution. I want this now and I will pay what is necessary to get it. No investment of relationship on my part and you don’t even need to speak to the woman to get what you want. 

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here and say that any teaching that does not require full repentance is teaching that idolatry is ok. Which infers that it is ok to hate God. Of course, no one would encourage idolatry explicitly but that doesn’t excuse the teacher. We must tread carefully.

Abba wants all of you, not just the part you’re willing to give. A false god only needs what it needs. No more, no less. God wants it all.

So why not give it to Him?

What are you actually wanting from these other gods anyway? Provision, power, comfort? The three areas of temptation the Messiah had to endure. Look at any form of idolatry and it will likely fall within one of these three camps.

A true child of God does not look to other things for provision. There is only One that can provide, and all of your hope and trust should be in Him.

A true child of God does not look to other things for power. There is only One that has power, and you should submit fully to Him.

A true child of God does not look to other things for comfort or identity. There is only One that establishes your identity, so love Him.

We are trained from birth to pursue things that give you what you want: “You can be anything you want to be.” Then we struggle to understand why they become what they become. As Jeremiah wrote long ago: the heart is desperately wicked, who can understand it.

Giving our children over to their own interests and telling them it is ok has produced a generation of people that have fabricated their own identities. And we then sit back and wonder why we see what we see.

Ok, enough looking at other people. Let’s see where we are in all of this.

Us

Not very many people choose to let Abba fully dictate their path and this leads to quite a bit of self-serving. Even when we follow after Him, we still look for ways to add to ourselves.

The trap here is in serving other gods, no matter how subtly, in order to get what we want. We think the overt child sacrifice is wrong but the covert ignoring of your child because of provision, power, and comfort is ok. Sacrificing our children and worshiping ourselves all under the guise of, “I’m doing this for them.”

Can you see the trouble here?

Someone may feel their work is very important (which it may be important -- to someone else) but what about the work of being a father or mother yourself? It took many years for me to finally come to a place of repentance on this issue. I pray my kids forgive me.

Selling our kids to the culture or passing them off for someone else to instill values is not the mark of a good father. It’s what an idolater would do. Trusting the world to take care of the one thing Abba has entrusted to you. And so we bring curses upon the ones we were given then grieve all the days of our lives over their decisions.

As a child, you have/had an earthly father that may have brought things upon you because of his desire to provide. Then add in his father before him, and his father before him. Many layers exist that have clouded reality for us in so many ways. So we seek the world to help us navigate through this thing called life.

But we also have a heavenly Father that operates on a different frequency. Unfortunately, we sometimes view Him through the lens of our earthly father.

Do we tend to look at our heavenly Father like that also?

Do we assume He has farmed us out to the world to be raised by it?

Is He too busy to be concerned about us because He has other major, very important jobs to do?

No, of course not!

He’s a good Father, a loving Father. One that blesses even the thousandth generation for those that love Him and keep His commands.

So be patient and wait. Wait on Him. Seek a deeper relationship with Him. Be patient. Continue waiting. It’s in that space that your heart starts to seek him out. It’s in patience that we begin to understand that He most certainly has our best interest in mind. We watch the world pass by with all of its promises and begin to find joy in not being swayed by it. We become content. And our children watch -- then become blessed themselves in the wake of our love for Him.

Be patient.

Wait.

It’s worth it.

Do Not Commit Adultery

Before we go, let’s look at one last thing: How does this relate to the 7th command?

You are part of a sacred relationship. When you bring someone (or something) into the intimate areas of that relationship, someone gets severely hurt. Whether it is work, tv, your phone, porn, children, etc, bringing that into the Holiest Place destroys intimacy and wounds the relationship. Always.

Interestingly enough, these things can also destroy your relationship with Abba. They are idols. These things are giving you some sort of temporary pleasure while robbing you of intimacy with your Creator. It’s adultery.

So the 7th command addresses the impact your actions have on other people, whereas, this command addresses the impact your actions have on God. Both of which require you defiling yourself in the face of the one/One you claim to love.

As we wrap this one up, let’s circle back to our original question, What is an idol?

Well, anything that you bring into that intimate place to receive temporary pleasure with minimal investment and little repentance would likely qualify. 

A final word of warning, though: No matter what you bring into your life to gain this pleasure, just be sure you do not flaunt your god in His face.

That’s just plain hateful.

Oh, and your kids, their kids, their kids, and maybe even their kids will suffer for your decisions.

“You are to have no other gods before me.”