God will never allow his name to be trampled underfoot by idolators.
Modern Christians would struggle to picture themselves as being idolators in any sense of the word. Such behaviour, they reason, is reserved for pagans in faraway lands.
Few are those among believers who stop to contemplate the worthlessness of the wealth that man craves so deeply.
Many are those who name God as their personal financial benefactor—‘They know not what they do.’ Woe is us if we reduce God’s blessings to a stream of income or a pile of possessions. We need to take great care that we never use God’s name in praising the temporal in the presence of the Eternal.
Israel was sent into Babylonian captivity because “all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations and defiling the temple of the Lord, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 36:14).
God warned Israel repeatedly through His prophets, but they treated them and His Word shamefully. Thus, “the wrath of the Lord was aroused against His people and there was no remedy” (2 Chronicles 36:16).
From the beginning, Israel had brought along foreign gods into the Promised Land—in their hearts! Joshua told them before his death: “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins” (Joshua 24:19).
God ceases to be God if He allows anything to be praised above Him; that He cannot and will not do.
“I am the Lord; that is my name!
I will not yield my glory to another
or my praise to idols” (Isaiah 42:8).
John Staiger
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