Shorter Catechism Q. 48. What are we specially taught by these words before me in the first commandment? A. These words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, who seeth all things, taketh notice of, and is much displeased with, the sin of having any other god.
Commentary: The phrase “before me” is literally “before my face.” In the Ancient Near East, people worshipped many gods and they would sometimes do so in the same temple. The Philistines, for example, did this when they placed the Ark of God next to their god Dagon. God, however, did not want Israel to do that. They weren’t to bring any other gods into his throne room, which was the area in the tabernacle called the holy of holies. King Manasseh, therefore, unashamedly violated the first commandment when he made a carved image of Asherah and put it in the Temple (2 Kings 21:7).
God’s special presence is no longer to be found in a physical tabernacle or temple, but rather in the people of God, especially when they gather for worship. Thus, when we gather for worship, we mustn’t recognize or pray to or worship a false god like Allah, the Mormon god, or Mother Nature. That would be as scandalous as committing adultery in the presence of your spouse.
Although it may not seem as bad, we also shouldn’t have a false god in secret. In fact, wherever we serve a false god, whether it be money or Allah, we are doing it before God’s face. God is everywhere and therefore everything we do is before him.
Furthermore, since we are the Temple of the living God and Jesus dwells in our hearts by the Spirit, the idols of our hearts, as one writer put it, are before the face of God as blatantly as Manasseh’s. Rightly, then does the Catechism declare that “These words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, who seeth all things, taketh notice of, and is much displeased with, the sin of having any other god.”