But more. You will see that Moses warns them that if they forget God, the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, they would go after other gods.
He cannot part the two things. If they forget that God brought them out of Egypt, they will turn to idolatry, and so end in ruin.
Now why was this?
Why should not the Jews have gone on worshipping one God, even if they had forgotten that he brought them out of the land of Egypt?
Some people now-a-days think that they would, and that they might have very well been what is called Monotheists, without believing all the story of the signs and wonders in Egypt, and the passage of the Red Sea, and the giving of the law to Moses.
Such men may be very learned; but there is one thing of which they know very little, and that is, human nature. Moses knew human nature; and he knew that if men forgot that God was the living God, the acting God, who had helped them once, and was helping them always, and only believed about there being one God far away in heaven, and not two, that that sort of dead faith in a dead God would never keep them from idols. They would want gods who would help them, who would hear their prayers, to whom they could feel gratitude and trust; and they would invent them for themselves, and begin to worship things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, because they had forgotten their true friend and helper, the living God.
And so shall we. If we forget that God is the living God, who brought our forefathers into this land; who has revealed to us the wealth of it step by step, as we needed it; who is helping and blessing us now, every day and all the year round—then we shall begin worshipping other gods.
I do not mean that we shall worship idols, though I do not see why our children’s children should not do so a few hundred years hence if we teach them to forget the living God. There are too many Christians at this day who worship saints, and idols of wood and stone; and so may our descendants do—or do even worse.
But we ourselves shall begin—indeed we are doing it too much already—worshipping the so-called laws of nature, instead of God who made the laws, and so honouring the creature above the creator; or else we shall worship the pomps and vanities of this world, pride and power, money and pleasure, and say in our hearts, ‘These are our only gods which can help us—these must we obey.’ Which if we do, this land of England will come to ruin and shame, as surely as did the land of Israel in old time.
If we do not believe in the living God, we shall believe in something worse than even a dead god.