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AUGUST RADIO MESSAGES/THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
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"Thou shalt not make any graven image.’
there is this seeming unquenchable thirst for power and fame, a sinful pride sweeping hearts. Molech is an enemy of God, yet, has been worshipped in many lives. In Bible times heathen people would offer children as living sacrifices to Molech. So today, parents, in search of their own pleasure and satisfaction, offer their children to the god of this world! Baal, on the other hand, was the god of lustfulness and sexuality. As we look about us on the face of this earth and realize the sinfulness of man kind, we cannot help but feel that it must surely be now as it was in the days of Noah when man did that only which was pleasing in his own eyes. Everything is bathed in sex to appeal to the depraved nature of man. Finally there is the god of Mammon, which is spoken of in Scripture as the god of money or materialism. That one word, materialism, perhaps capsulizes and characterizes, better than any oth er word, the catastrophic situation which our country faces today. We are living in an hour of godless, atheistic, materialism and covetousness. This dis ease, as a cancer, strikes at each of our hearts. We must keep up with the Jones and have everything we want when we want it. The hymn tells us, “Break down every idol, cast out every foe, Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” During the history of India, the famed conqueror Mahmound swept across the face of the nation with his faithful followers. Coming upon an ancient temple, the priests begged him to spare the idol. They promised to (Continued on Next Page) 7
T h e m a je s t y of the Word of God de clares, “Hear O Israel the Lord [Jehovah] our God [is in the plural] is one God [a composite].” Throughout Scripture there is, from the first verse of the Bible, the teaching of the Trin ity. In Hebrew the compound word for “one” is “echad” speaking entirely of unity. As an example in Genesis 2:24. we read of the husband and wife join ing together in sacred matrimony, and the words are: “They two shall be one flesh.” Here two become one, the com pound word of unity. The first com mandment God has given is, “Thou shalt have no other gods (small “g”) before the one triune God.” Through the years, as man turns away from God, he starts a pathway of degradation. The first chapter of Romans reveals the awfulness of. man’s sin when he goes away from God and follows his own pattern of religious worship and evil living. First there is the worship of man, the creature rather than the Creator, then man goes to the worship of birds, the worship of beasts, and finally to the worship of creeping things. The children of Israel certinly knew about such objects of worship for they had so recently come out of the land of Egypt where people worshipped not only the cow but frogs, snakes, and the other creatures that were stricken by the plagues of God’s judgment. The Bible mentions at least three kinds of specific gods which were wor shipped in idolatrous practice. First there was the idolatry of Molech. Then the idolatry of Baal, and finally, the idolatry of Mammon. Molech was sup posedly the god of power. In men’s lives
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