This is one of the many chapters of God’s Book that tell us of His love to us, who deserves nothing from Him.
“Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God.” (Verse 1).
“If the Lord be God, follow Him,” Elijah said to the people in 1 Kings 18: 21. Why, indeed, should we, who profess to belong to Him, let anything or anyone come into our hearts so that God has not the first place there?
Of course, we who live in countries that are not heathen lands, like China and India, have no idols, exactly, to bow down to, but Satan is back of every idol, just as much as he is behind everything that comes into a true Christian’s life to displace the Lord Jesus there.
Be very careful, dear young believer, what thoughts, and wishes, and ways, you allow to have a home in your heart. Read your Bible daily, and pray much for help from God, that you may live as a Christian should, and you will find that the things in which you once found pleasure, will cease to interest you, and your desire will be to please the One who has loved you and given Himself for you.
Verse 2, gives us again the Sabbath, for God is always looking on to His rest, the rest of God, when all His work for man will be over. We who belong to Jesus, long for His rest, too, and we shall have part in it, but there is no rest for God while sin is in the world.
Verses 3 to 13 are full of precious promises, which God was ready- and anxious to make good, but you will find in five different times afterwards what sorrows He must send upon the people, if they would not walk in His ways.
So it is with many Christians today: trial upon trial is sent by our God to bring them to let Him have the first place, the chief place, in their hearts. Yet He is always merciful, ever gracious, as verses 40 to 45 so expressly set forth.
Dear young reader, are your sins forgiven?