“Thou shalt have no other gods before me, ” Exodus 20:3.
This is the ‘First Commandment’! It simply means, as Dr John Gill explains: ‘There is but one only living and true God, the former and maker of all things, who only is to be had, owned, acknowledged, served, and worshipped as such; all others have only the name, and are not by nature gods; they are other gods than the true God is; they are not real, but fictitious deities; they are other or strange gods to the worshippers of them, that cry unto them, for they do not answer.’
Of course, ‘other gods’ do not necessarily come in the form of brasen or wooden images. They can take on various forms — objects that we love and consider highly and put before the person of the true God.
They can be objects to which we look with affection and interest, above that with which we view the Lord.
When there is a choice to be made between obeying God’s Word and walking in submission to it or following the inclinations of our heart regarding an event, a person or a desire within us, then, if we forgo obedience to God’s Word in order to pursue that other path, we have in our life that which truly is ‘another god’!
There are many Christians who have erected a ‘shrine’ to another god and bow before that ‘shrine’ rather than obey God’s Word. This situation can very easily occur and is all too common in this cold and backslidden time!
When I first began attending the Free Presbyterian Church, the ‘atmosphere’ was filled with a consciousness of the necessity of having to:
‘Go through with God,
Our vows to pay.
Our all upon the altar lay.
The Holy Ghost will do the rest,
And bring to thee God’s very best.’
How often is that hymn sung now? Just how many have even heard of it?
Sixty-two years ago it echoed constantly within the walls of Free Presbyterianism.
The surrendered life was a constant theme of Dr Ian Paisley, under whose ministry I spent the first ten months of my Christian life before I became engaged in preaching each Sabbath as a student for the ministry.
Holiness
Holiness of life was constantly striven for. Oh sadly, there was not the success there ought to have been, but the desire and the effort was being made and encouraged from the pulpit and by the example of others.
How precious to me are the faces of those whose lives and prayers helped and guided a new convert! I still hold them in my memories of my days in ‘Old Ravenhill’!
There are still godly men and women within our ranks but I do not think that they are regarded as they should by many!
Their witness and views are counted ‘old fashioned’ and indeed, irksome and vexing. The sooner they be gone from our midst the better! Such is the sadly sinful attitude of some toward them!
This too would have been the way of thinking of many in the days of the prophets, who were called upon by the Lord to denounce the erecting and honouring of ‘other gods’.
First chapter
In my first Bible reading today (3.9.26), I read of David doubting and setting aside the promise of God to make him king, and instead adopting a lifestyle of self- enrichment and deceit!
1 Samuel 27 records that sad sixteen months of his life!
Second chapter
I then moved on to my second reading, Psalm 44. There I encountered the lament of the Psalmist in what I consider to be a prophetic depicting of an awakened Israel nevertheless suffering the consequences of having previously, for a very long time, erected and followed ‘other gods’ and departing from the true God.
I believe it prophetically refers to the time of the ‘great tribulation’. There will then be believing Jews caught up in that horror. They will have abandoned their past idolatry and rejecting of the Lord Jesus as their Messiah, but they will share, to a measure, in ‘Jacob’s trouble’ (Jeremiah 30:7)!
I believe they are referred to in Revelation 20. “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years,” verse 4.
Third chapter
My next chapter for reading, according to the Bible Reading Calendar of Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, was Ezekiel 9.
Here the dreadful folly of erecting ‘other gods’ is horrifically displayed. The words ‘altars’, ‘images’, ‘abominations’ or ‘idols’ appear frequently. They are referred to in nearly every verse and identified as the cause of the most dreadful judgments falling upon the land which is addressed by the prophet in the opening words of the chapter.
“And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD; Thus saith the Lord GOD to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys; Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols,” verses 1-4.
Creation groaneth
These words of Ezekiel indicate just what Paul meant when he said: “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” Romans 8:20-23.
The natural world, the creation, groans under the curse that sin brought upon God’s creation and it will increase as the day of judgment approaches.
I might suggest that it gives us an explanation for the unusual natural ‘disasters’ that have been occurring of late!
Gestures of grief
In Ezekiel’s days, the prophet was called upon to give an explanation of the tragedies that were to befall the people.
It is interesting how ‘animated’ the Lord wished the prophet to be as he announces these woes!
“Thus saith the Lord GOD; Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot.”
These are gestures of a person in distress and agony of mind and soul, who acts so, in order to show their trouble and grief.
Let preachers be aware that such gestures are in keeping with that which must be preached at this time in which we find ourselves. We are in the midst of the final apostasy, the harvest of which will most surely follow soon!
Cried
Dull, toneless intonations in the pulpits are not in keeping with how such a message should be proclaimed. I have always considered the Saviour as an example of the animation that the preacher is required to adopt in keeping with his message.
“ In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)” John 7:37-39.
The word “cried” is a translation of the word used for the call of a raven. The Saviour must have been loud and clearly uttering a cry of alarm!
So much of God’s Word has to be enunciated by the earnest preacher in this fashion!
Made to know!
“Thus saith the Lord GOD; Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of Israel! for they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword; and he that remaineth and is besieged shall die by the famine: thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. Then shall ye know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols. So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath, in all their habitations: and they shall know that I am the LORD,” Ezekiel 6:11-14.
Prophetic day of knowing
Again there is a prophetic view of Israel in the midst of its latter-day troubles and the remnant that God in mercy will spare.
“And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them,” verse 9-10.
Fourth chapter
My final chapter for today commences with these words: “Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.” The chapter was 1 Corinthians 8.
Thus there was an emphasis in today’s Bible readings upon the consequences of idolatry!
We are surrounded by ‘idolatry’ at this time and a setting aside of all thought of the true God. The recent events Free Presbyterians protested against in Enniskillen and the celebrating by councillors in Belfast City Hall of the aborting of the innocent unborn, by floodlighting the City Hall in green light, is an indication of just how far God has been removed from the thoughts of the wicked!
The idea was the launched by a women’s organisation located in the Irish Republic. It was intended to ‘celebrate’ ‘International Safe Abortion Day’, this month.
As one writer correctly asked in a letter published in the ‘Belfast Newsletter’ — ‘And what is the context of ‘safe abortion’? Safe for the mother-to-be? Certainly not safe for the living infant in the womb.’
How depraved is the thinking of the public representatives who back this notion, and who thought it proper to ‘celebrate’ the murder of innocent unborn children. We truly have become as dark as any pagan society, once so abominated for their cruelty.
Have we in the Free Presbyterian Church allowed ‘idols’ into our midst? Is there anything more important to us as a ‘separated body of Bible believers’, than serving the Lord ?
For some, I believe it can be said, that there are matters more important.
I cannot help but think of Israel’s evil demand of Samuel the prophet!
“Make us a king to judge us like all the nations,” 1 Samuel 8:5.
Being like the ‘nations’ is a cry that can be heard from the lips of some amongst us today.
May the Lord deliver us from such dreadful folly and the curse that will follow!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
10th September 2026