(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
Deuteronomy 13:6–1, “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.”
The great Irish statesman and politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” He must have read this passage at some time for that statement essentially encapsulates its meaning. Everyone in Israel was responsible for the spiritual state of the nation. It wasn’t good enough for one person to make sure that he kept the Law in every respect. He was responsible to make sure that his family and neighbours were not disobeying the Law. This is not an invitation to gossip. Every person was expected to listen to what other people said to them and carefully weigh every aspect of their statements to make sure that their neighbour wasn’t trying to entice them to go astray. As soon as their was any hint of another person suggesting that they follow other gods, even if that person was a close member of their own family, the hearer was to make that publicly known and they were to be the first to follow the penalties proscribed in the Law for worshipping other gods. This was the most important way of stopping idolatry from taking over in Israel. When the Lord Jesus Christ was alive, He followed these instructions carefully. He said, “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13) The leaders of His day believed that you had to be rich to be able to worship the Lord properly but they were really just worshipping another god. This was the real reason that they became His enemies and eventually crucified Him. The same is true today, we can either worship the Lord wholeheartedly or we can worship mammon but not both.
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