QQ47-48. What is forbidden and what is meant by “before me” in the first commandment?

A (47). The first commandment forbiddeth the denying, or not worshipping and glorifying, the true God as God, and our God; and the giving of that worship and glory to any other, which is due to him alone.

A (48). These words, before me,” in the first commandment teach us, that God, who seeth all things, taketh notice of, and is much displeased with, the sin of having any other God.

What do you think of when you think of an “idol”? This is a distinct question from how idols are formed and made in the physical way we may be thinking of. That will come more pointedly with the Second Commandment. But this flip side to what the First Commandment requires begs the question to how we DENY or, as it says, NOT WORSHIP AND GLORIFY THE TRUE GOD. 

At what point do we have “other gods” or “idols” in our own day? That’s the practical question that we want to be asking throughout. Because these objects of our worship are what we might call “ultimate things.” They are the things that we think are the most real things, the things that bring us the most happiness and security, or else the things we most fear.

The Sin of Idolatry

Let’s start right at the heart of idolatry. What is its essence? In other words, in asking the question WHAT IS IDOLATRY, we might clarify things by asking: What would all idolatry have in common? I think we understand that the bizarre animal features of so many of the ancient depictions of their gods is not its essence, nor the materials of wood or stone or precious metals. The moment we take that to be the essence of idolatry, we deceive ourselves. In fact, we congratulate ourselves for not being so backwards and superstitious as those ancient worshipers. A recent defintion has been, “An idol is something that, if you lost it, would absolutely devastate you.” I think that’s a great test question for a discovery of idolatry, but not sure it is a definition itself. Let’s get some help from a very picturesque Old Testament passage:

“Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:11-13).

The phrase “two evils” is instructive, since he clearly enumerates them as the failure in the positive and the committing in the negative—or as we often call these two: sins of omission and sins of commission. What was omitted was what we saw last week: the positive mandate to delight ourselves in the Lord; and what was left for them was the scraps off the devil’s table, or, as in this imagery, a raging, infinite, refreshing fountain was now at their back, while they crawled on their belly in the desert searching for a drop of condensation. Idolatry is a pathetically irrational thing!

A “root” of idolatry makes more sense if we remember that last time, the mind was the root of positively fulfilling the First Commandment. Now let’s just flip that same coin over. Calvin says that, “in Scripture the Lord represents himself.”1 For God alone to determine how he will be worshiped, it is necessary that God alone determines how he will be understood, since one cannot love and revere what one does not in any sense know. You recall our use of John 4:23 about right worship. God is spirit, and therefore worship must be in a spiritual manner. This reflects that God must be worshiped according to our objective knowledge of what God is actually like. If God’s way of representing himself is the North Star, then our intellects are the compass, and constantly using it rightly is theology. If you would obey the First Commandment, you must do right theology! We will come back to this idea.

We saw a little of the wording to the answer of Heidelberg Catechism, Question 95, last time. That was about what was positively required, but that same answer contains some negatives: “That, on peril of my soul’s salvation, I avoid and flee all idolatry, sorcery, enchantments, invocation of saints or of other creatures.” So the medieval Christians were tempted not with Dagon or Baal or Ashteroth, but with the saints, or else with relics.

The basic reason why praying to saints is wrong has to do with what the Bible says about worship, salvation, and the office of Christ relating to both. Roman Catholics will deny either (1) that they are worshiping the saints; (2) that this intercession by the saints conflicts with the grace of God in salvation; and therefore (3) that the saints are replacing Christ in his role as unique Mediator. 1 Timothy 2:5 is a principle text concerning Christ’s office, and texts of worship and salvation will revolve around it. Here Paul says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 

It will be objected, “We ask saints here below to pray for us.” However, while the Bible tells us to pray for one another and with one another, it never directs those prayers to one another. The moment we appeal to those who have departed, we must ask why we are doing so if it is not some perceived merit in their hierarchical status. In fact, there is a clear connection between the ancient pagan religious notion of “hierarchicalism” and the beginning of this superstition in the Roman tradition. Hierarchicalism assumed a direct relationship between how “high up” created beings were (whether gods, priests, or state officials) the nearer one’s access to the Supreme Being.

So, yes, we intercede for each other, but there are two important qualifications—not to the dead and not for merit. Ursinus remarks in application of the First Commandment,

“All confidence reposed in creatures, which is evidently opposed to a correct knowledge of God, since he who places his trust in creatures makes for himself many gods. Hence God expressly condemns in his word all those who repose their confidence either in men, or in power and riches, or in any created object.”2

The Sin of Syncretism

There have always been many “gods” to choose from. This was not only in the ancient world, but also in the modern world. Ancient Israel was always being warned and reproved of idolatry. We will come to the exact nature of idols next time. First, we need to learn something about the beliefs that lead up to it. There is a kind of worldview called syncretism. This word comes from the Latin words for “I believe” (credo) and “with” (syn). In other words, a syncretist is someone who says to just about anybody, “I believe with you.” “I’ll believe what you do.” They do this to make a false kind of peace. Israel was always guilty of this — “Let’s worship at the temples of Baal and Asherah during the week, and then Yahweh on the Sabbath!”

Sometimes what makes or breaks this violation of the First Commandment may not look like religious worship. However, the issue comes down to trust. I mentioned the passage from Isaiah 8:12-13, and how worship was being transferred in Judah’s fears. The flip side of that is trust. And so we read the historical account that goes with it from the book of Kings:

“Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him” (2 Kings 18:21)

Again, the Heidelberg Catechism gives help, from Question 96, “What is idolatry?” Answer: “It is instead of the one true God who has revealed Himself in His Word, or along with the same, to conceive or have something else on which to place our trust.”

I said I would come back to the link between heresy and idolatry. I put the bulk of it here with syncretism because no one sets out one day to be heretic. Just like everyone in jail is innocent if you ask them, so everyone’s notions of God are “biblical” if you ask them. So heresy works one tug on the end of the ball of yarn at a time. In fact, it is usually a bartering process with the devil. I’ll keep the nature of God and Christ, but I’ll take a bit of my will or efforts in causing or keeping God’s grace. So syncretism includes the treasuring of heresy. By “treasuring” here I mean a kind of falling in love with one’s intellectual projection more than the truth as it is in Scripture. This is an important distinction because a heresy is not a mere error. A heresy is an error concerning some essential doctrine of the Christian faith. But we are especially prone to this today. Postmodern thought infected every area of our culture, and one of the casualties was the idea of a coherent worldview. There is a kind of “mix-and-match” approach that we take as “consumers” on the all-you-can-eat buffet of doctrinal options. 

And this is especially perverse when it comes to aligning our thoughts to the revealed character of God. Dabney points out what might seem like the obvious: “Nothing but infinite perfection should be the object of religious worship.” So far so good, and so obvious. But in addition, he says, “The worship of an imperfect object is therefore the deification of defects.”3 So Paul speaks of all mankind, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). The mother of all perversions! What is it about the defect that attracts such fools as we sinners are! Coveting pseudo-perfections.

Before Me: Priority or Presence?

The Hebrew is “in the face of me” or rather “before my face” (עַל־פָּנָֽ֗יַ). A similar phrase is used in Genesis 1:2 for “over the face of the waters.” Only the personal suffix differs: my face. Now this exact meaning does not rule out another meaning that people tend to ascribe. One way to mean “before me” is to place something in the primary position of importance before another thing. So the thing before comes first, and the other is now second. Our families come before even our friends. In this way of meaning it, God is forbidding us from holding any ultimate treasure in the primary place that belongs to him alone. This is absolutely true! And there is no need to be confused by the two different meanings we could give to “before me,” because the one that is not meant is actually already covered by the words “no other gods.” This is a command about exclusiveness. God alone is to be worshiped.

But another way to mean this is not a priority of order, but of literal place. Perhaps you have heard of the Latin expression coram deo? This phrase means “before the face of God.” This is actually consistent with the other meaning, so that it could mean both. For example, when we read You shall have no other gods before me, this clearly cannot mean something like: “You may have some other gods, just as long as they do not come in front of me in rank” Not at all! Nor could it mean, “You may have other gods, so long as you keep that out of my presence, since “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good” (Prov. 15:3). Notice the clauses “who seeth all things” and “taketh notice of.” Not only does God see all things at all points of space and time, but God also discerns the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. He knows just how far we fall short of loving him with all of our thoughts and affections and actions, as “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). 

APPLICATION 

Use 1. EVANGELICAL USE. We not only create false gods, become entangled with false gods, but we even possess them, and Scripture tells us that they, in turn, possess us and shape us into their image, like a mirror that we thought we were in control of. Two verses for this:

“They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Pet. 2:19).

“Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Psa. 115:18).

Now what does it mean to “have” another god? We know what it meant for Rachel. In spite of being grafted into God’s family because of Jacob’s love for her, she was still an idol-worshiper by nature and by habit. You may remember the story from Genesis, that when the covenant family was ready to leave the house of Laban, she “stole her father’s household gods” (31:19). The irony! She was on her way to the Promised Land, but she didn’t know any better than to jealously carry these things around. Even as a pilgrim on her way to her heavenly homeland, she was still a “false god smuggler.” Now how do we smuggle gods into the throne room of our hearts? We will see some ways as we go through Commandments 2, 3, 4 and beyond. But the chief way is to smuggle in different contours to the one, true God. “My God (right here in my pocket) would never put me through this.”

If you belong to Christ, and have trusted in him, you need to know how God has carried you on his back with the First Commandment, even while you were trying to carry false gods in your pockets. Do you know that every time God announced or renewed the covenant to his people, as it marched forward to its fulfillment in Christ, that there was great First Commandment Good News? One author calls it the Immanuel Principle. It goes like this: 

an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you (Gen. 17:7; cf. 8).

I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God (Ex. 29:45)

I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart (Jer. 24:7)

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jer. 31:33)

And several other times in the Prophets he repeats this great promise, and then there it is in the end, in the New Jerusalem in Revelation. And he has given us that accomplishment of it when God the Word became flesh and dwelt among us: “and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us)” (Mat. 1:23). That God promises this at the heart of the covenant means that the First Commandment must be fulfilled for us. In spite of all our failures, He will be our God!

Use 2. CIVIL USE. The principal god of Babylon—once Babylon gets its bearings—is the State (or as the prophet Daniel introduced the imagery, which John borrows from in his Revelation: the Beast). All other false gods are just the Beast’s door-to-door salesman by comparison. Baal, Ashteroth, Dagon, Zeus, Jupiter, Allah, the millions of gods of Hinduism and the infinite regress of gods in Mormonism—All … Nothing … But …The Brochure—each just a tour guide through the outer courts of the final temple of Satan: all to warm the cultures of the world up to the central Tower of Babel. All the early prophets of Antichrist, all amateurs in their day; and so their mind-altering powers were but morning shadows compared to the nightfall of “beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads” (Rev. 13:1).

If what we have seen about worship and idolatry is true—namely, that what one loves the most, and fears the most, what one puts ultimate trust in or allegiance to, that this thing simply is your god—well, then, the ever centralizing and growing global superstate (with its expert class and its promises to rid the world of all that was ever oppressive and dangerous), this is surely the most blinding idol. If we may anticipate a building objection, that the religion of the dragon, through the harlot, and the beast of the dragon, are to be separated, I answer that this is not how John’s vision reads:

“And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’” (Rev. 13:4).

It is worshiped becuase of its seemingly invincibility on earth, and through that State-worship, the dragon is worshiped for giving this authority, he says.

Use 3. DIRECTIVE USE. What all is God forbidding to us as believers? To put it plainly, rather than congratulate ourselves for not being guilty of the idols that don’t belong to our era—our spirit of the age—the law is given to search our hearts, to expose those idols that do belong to the spirit of our own age. 

To speak of things like money or power or fame or security, as if they are modern substitutes for ancient idolatry is not just convenient application. The Scriptures speak of these in many ways being objects of our worship. Frame supplies a list of these:

“It is wrong also to worship our own power (Hab. 1:11), money (Job 31:24; Matt. 6:24), possessions (Luke 12:16-21; Col. 3:5), politics (Dan. 2:21), pleasure and entertainment (2 Tim. 3:4), food (Phi. 3:19), or self (Deut. 8:17; Dan. 4:30). Surely, if it is wrong to worship Baal, it is also wrong to worship something that is even less than Baal pretends to be.”4

A good case can be made that it is actually more pathetic and unreasonable to worship the things that we moderns do. And so what is the directive in this directive use? Put away these gods! As we see this especially in Deuteronomy, about God’s people taking care that they not be like their pagan neighbors in the land: “Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you” (7:16), 

“And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction” (v. 26)

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1. Calvin, Institutes, I.10.1

2. Ursinus, Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism, 904.

3. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 360.

4. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, 415.