Exodus 20:4-6 You shall not make to you any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath… I. THE NATURE OF IDOLATRY. A giving to something below God of that worship which is due to God alone. It may be outward, or inward; an act of the body, or an act of the mind. II. THE EVIL OF IDOLATRY. 1. It has a strange power to perpetuate and increase itself. 2. It ever engenders falsehood and deceit. 3. It is almost always accompanied with cruelty.The dark places of the earth, says Scripture, "are full of the habitations of cruelty," and all experience confirms the saying. Think of Mexico, as she was when first discovered, and of her fearful hecatombs of slaughtered men. Think of our country, and of other countries around it, in Druidical times. Follow Captain Cook in his voyages from island to island in the great Pacific. Wherever we find idols we find bloodshed, bloodshed for those idols. As for idolatrous Rome, I will not speak of her wholesale slaughters in years gone by. 4. There is one point more which I wished to notice, it is the licentiousness that accompanies idolatry, arising, beyond doubt, in part out of it. English minds cannot conceive the extent of this, nor the nature of it. III. There is another thing, far more fearful than the idolatry of Rome, and far more difficult to keep ourselves from — THE IDOLATRY OF THE MIND AND HEART. We may have idols within us, and, as for worshipping them, it may be the main business of our lives. (C. Bradley. M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: |
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