Last week my wife and I went to Charleston, S.C., to celebrate our anniversary of 30 years. While there, we took a tour of a mansion built in the nineteenth century. As we walked through this home we were directed to a room that was described as the owners' "religious room." It had an alter from a catholic church, which I had no problem with, but what was on this alter and around this alter got my attention. In front of the alter was a statue of Buddha and around the alter were other idols of worship representing about every religion in the world. On top of the alter was icons from many other religions.

As I viewed this room my mind went straight to the scriptures where God addresses this activity. In the ten commandments that God gave Moses for the conduct of His people the first two deal specifically with what I saw. God said that His people should not have any other gods besides him and that they were not to erect any images to worship. When Moses came off of the mountain with these commandments written by God in stone the people had made a golden calf to worship. It angered God to the point that thousands lost their lives on account of it. Eventually the kings of Israel became corrupt and erected idols in the land and even put them in the temple of the Lord encouraging the people to worship them. It so angered God that He allowed foreign powers to come in and destroy the Israelites and take the survivors into captivity.

When Jesus came to earth and started the New Testament church, He reiterated the truth of serving only the true God and even made a bold statement about Himself. He said that He was the way to God and that no one could come to the Father except through Him. This early church was persecuted by the Roman government for refusing to accept the belief of that day that there are many ways to God and that there were many gods.

In America most people don’t have a problem with idols that are set up in their homes or places of worship but the ones that can creep up in their hearts. We can allow things to come into our lives and take the place of God as our priority. Other things such as hobbies or work or even people can become our objects of worship.

The way to please God and to do the right thing is found in one scripture where it says for us to "love the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve."