To Save America: The Ten CommandmentsSample

Idolatry. In modern 21st-century eyes, the word evokes images of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

Indeed, as Paul walked the main thoroughfares of Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Athens, and Rome itself, he found the streets of each city lined with pagan temples. The manifold gods of the Greek pantheon had been appropriated and renamed by the Romans, and all were represented in every port city and trading outpost in the vast empire. But this didn’t include just those “gods.” Because of Rome’s international network of trade, the demonic gods of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and countless other domains on the edges of the empire were also present and available for worshippers far from home.

But that was a different age, right? Those were dark, superstitious times, long before the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, correct? Surely, we—living here in modern, sophisticated America amid the gleaming mirrored glass towers of our cities, with our electronic gadgetry and telescopes peering into the deepest recesses of the universe—don’t have to concern ourselves with the first commandment’s warning against idolatry. Right?

Oh, dear Christian, we make a grave error if we assume the age of idol worship has passed. The reality is, we need the first commandment now more than ever, especially in this extraordinary nation of ours … because humanism, naturalism, wealth, fame, and glory are all false gods Americans worship at the altar each day.

The message of the first commandment is that God and only God is worthy of worship, and we must not forget that truth.

He and He alone … is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He and He alone … holds the seas in the palm of His hand.

He and He alone … weighs the mountains on a scale and the hills on a balance.

He and He alone … delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand and drowned the pursuing Egyptian army in the sea.

He and He alone … gifted mankind with the key to life and blessing in the form of the Ten Commandments.

He and He alone … loved the world so much that He sent His only Son to deliver us from the bondage of sin and shame.