"Thou shalt not" is the pruning-knife that God uses. From beginning to
end, the Bible calls for wholehearted allegiance to Him. There is to
be no compromise with other gods.
It took long years for God to impress this lesson upon the Israelites.
He called them to be a chosen nation. He made them a peculiar people.
But you will notice in Bible history that they turned away from Him
continually, and were punished with plague, pestilence, war and
famine. Their sin was not that they renounced God altogether, but that
they wanted to worship other gods beside Him. Take the case of Solomon
as an example of the whole nation. He married heathen wives who turned
away his heart after other gods, and built high places for their
idols, and lent countenance to their worship. That was the history of
frequent turnings of the whole nation away from God, until finally He
sent them into captivity in Babylon and kept them there for seventy
years. Since then the Jews have never turned to other gods.
Hasn't the church to contend with the same difficulty to-day? There
are very few who in their hearts do not believe in God, but what they
will not do is give Him exclusive right of way. Missionaries tell us
that they could easily get converts if they did not require them to be
baptized, thus publicly renouncing their idols. Many a person in our
land would become a Christian if the gate was not so strait.
Christianity is too strict for them. They are not ready to promise
full allegiance to God alone. Many a professing Christian is a
stumbling-block because his worship is divided. On Sunday he worships
God; on week days God has little or no place in his thoughts.