Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; (The Lord has brought His people through great trials, and they are now at the edge of the Promised Land. As He readies them to actually enter this place of promise, He warns them of the danger they will face from the people they will defeat. He tells His people He will defeat these inhabitants, but He knows that His people will be foolishly tempted to follow the defeated idols of these people. We are as vulnerable today. The Lord repeatedly warns us to beware of and avoid the trap of worshiping other gods. He also repeatedly warns us how our associations with others can drive us away from our devotion to Him and entice us into the deception of substituting the truth for lie. In our enlightened and modern mindset, we often think worshiping at the altars of idols is a past phenomenon, that only the uneducated, naive people of old were susceptible to such foolish delusions. In reality, the idols of our modern day are much more subtle and masked. Today, how often do we bow before the altar of worry or fear or anger or despair or relationships or networking or social media or ambition or any number of other focuses to which we declare our commitment. The Lord's warning to avoid the gods of this world is still deeply relevant to us today as He continues to call us to focus on Him.)
