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God Alone Is to Be Worshiped, Nobember 20
You shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut
down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. For you
are a holy people to the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 7:5, 6
, NKJV.
God would have His people understand that He alone should be the object of
their worship; and when they should overcome the idolatrous nations around them,
they should not preserve any of the images of their worship, but utterly destroy them.
Many of these heathen deities were very costly, and of beautiful workmanship,
which might tempt those who had witnessed idol worship, so common in Egypt, to
even regard these senseless objects with some degree of reverence. The Lord would
have His people know that it was because of the idolatry of these nations, which
had led them to every degree of wickedness, that He would use the Israelites as His
instruments to punish them, and destroy their gods....
“I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and
from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your
hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.” ...
These promises of God to His people were on condition of their obedience. If
they would serve the Lord fully, He would do great things for them. After Moses
had received the judgments from the Lord, and had written them for the people,
also the promises, on condition of obedience, the Lord said unto him, “Come up
unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel, and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord: but
they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him. And Moses came
and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the
people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said
will we do.”
Moses had written—not the ten commandments, but the judgments which God
would have them observe, and the promises, on conditions that they would obey
Him. He read this to the people, and they pledged themselves to obey all the words
which the Lord had said. Moses then wrote their solemn pledge in a book, and
offered sacrifice unto God for the people. “And he took the book of the covenant,
and read in the audience of the people, and they said, All that the Lord hath said
will we do, and be obedient.”—
Spiritual Gifts 3:269, 270
.
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