You've probably heard this before, but it's something we all need to hear again and again: God loves you. He does. He gave up everything so that you could be reconciled with him. He gave his son Jesus, who willingly became just like us, to die as the ultimate sacrifice for everything that keeps us far from God--our sin, our idolatry, our pride. When Jesus died on the cross, he paid the spiritual penalty that we owed, so that, by aligning ourselves with Jesus through faith, we can be reconciled with God in this life, and enjoy eternity with him in the life to come.
Maybe you grew up thinking God hates you, or that he's angry with you, or that he's riding on some cloud with a lightning bolt in hand just waiting for you to screw up. But God doesn't hate you, he hates the idols that steal your heart away from him. He hates the sin that so strongly tempts you, and which ultimately destroys your soul. He hates the lies of the devil that deceive you. As much as God loves you, that's how much he hates the idols of your heart.
Tonight at Ember we're going to start talking about idols. This isn't going to be fun, but it will be freeing. I believe that God is ready to wage war against the idols of your heart, and his intention is to rescue you from their cunning deception. Prepare yourself: This could hurt. Tonight, 5pm. 401 E. Schrock Rd.
Showing posts with label idolatry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idolatry. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
What's Happening at Ember this Sunday
Last Sunday night we launched Ember Church, and 70 adults joined us for worship, along with 14 kids. It was truly a special time of hearing from God and responding to him in worship. Our launch team has been so encouraged by what God did that first weekend, and we're looking forward to what he's going to do this weekend, and on into the future.
This Sunday night we're going to be talking about the second chapter of Jeremiah, where God rails against the idolatry of his people. I've become convinced that idolatry is the core problem of humanity, and the reason that we commit the sins and evil that we do. Idolatry isn't limited to the physical act of bowing down to idols, but rather it includes the sinful desiring of that which is not God--placing God-substitutes on the throne of our hearts. And as we'll talk about Sunday night, the idolatrous desires of humanity have not changed one bit in the past 4,000 years.
You and I are idolaters. We deeply desire things that are not God. We kick Jesus off the throne of our hearts and invite God-substitutes, false gods, to take his place. As David Powlison has said, "The core insanity of the human heart is that we violate the first great commandment. We will love anything, except God, unless our madness is checked by grace.”
I believe that what is ultimately holding you back from living for God is not weakness, but idolatry. What keeps you stuck in sinful patterns of behavior is not some kind of mental or emotional weakness, but the idolatrous desires of your heart.
The Jeremiah series, which we've called Run with Horses, is going to be all about idolatry. Running with horses means living unencumbered by the weight of idols. If you want to live for God well, and be the man or woman he is re-creating you to be, then you must give up your idols. This Sunday night at Ember we're going to talk about how to do that. Come join us, and begin the process of ridding yourself of those heavy and worthless idols that are keeping you from living for God. Sunday. 5pm. 401 E. Schrock Rd.
This Sunday night we're going to be talking about the second chapter of Jeremiah, where God rails against the idolatry of his people. I've become convinced that idolatry is the core problem of humanity, and the reason that we commit the sins and evil that we do. Idolatry isn't limited to the physical act of bowing down to idols, but rather it includes the sinful desiring of that which is not God--placing God-substitutes on the throne of our hearts. And as we'll talk about Sunday night, the idolatrous desires of humanity have not changed one bit in the past 4,000 years.
You and I are idolaters. We deeply desire things that are not God. We kick Jesus off the throne of our hearts and invite God-substitutes, false gods, to take his place. As David Powlison has said, "The core insanity of the human heart is that we violate the first great commandment. We will love anything, except God, unless our madness is checked by grace.”
I believe that what is ultimately holding you back from living for God is not weakness, but idolatry. What keeps you stuck in sinful patterns of behavior is not some kind of mental or emotional weakness, but the idolatrous desires of your heart.
The Jeremiah series, which we've called Run with Horses, is going to be all about idolatry. Running with horses means living unencumbered by the weight of idols. If you want to live for God well, and be the man or woman he is re-creating you to be, then you must give up your idols. This Sunday night at Ember we're going to talk about how to do that. Come join us, and begin the process of ridding yourself of those heavy and worthless idols that are keeping you from living for God. Sunday. 5pm. 401 E. Schrock Rd.
Monday, June 6, 2011
God and Genocide
Many people find certain parts of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, abhorrent for their description of violence. What kind of God would claim to be good and loving but then order the killing of hundreds of thousands of people? Such a God is not good at all, these folks conclude. And who can blame them?
In Deuteronomy 7 God commands the Israelites to invade Palestine and kill everyone that lives there. "When YHWH your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...and when YHWH your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally." What the heck, God?
This is a difficult statement for many. How can a loving God order a genocide? How can this be in the Bible? How does this square with what I know about God through Jesus Christ?
The answer to these difficult questions, I believe, goes beyond the fact that Israel had been promised that land by God or that war was inevitable in those days (and still is today). No, the answer is that God hates idolatry. Idolatry, the worship of gods who are not God, is a fundamental and vile betrayal of your relationship with the God who made you. Idolatry is the door by which sin, evil, and wickedness enter the world. The more idolatry, the more wickedness.
Why? Because of the nature of the gods we worship. These are gods that have no concern for humanity. The pagan myths bear this out. The ancient gods were like horrible, shallow, vindictive humans with divine powers. They were the worst of us. Idolatry is dehumanizing. Idolatry undoes all that God is trying to do in the world. The gods are fundamentally opposed to God.
Therefore, as far as God is concerned, it is better for you to die than to live as an idolator. To be an idol-worshipper is to invite wickedness into the world, and to undo the work of redemption that God is trying to accomplish. Deuteronomy 9 says this: "After YHWH your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, 'YHWH has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.' No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that YHWH is going to drive them out before you." Their wickedness stems from their idolatry.
You may not bow down to idols of wood or stone, but you have functional gods in your heart that are not the true God. They are, in fact, the same gods the ancients worshipped, but we have depersonified them, turning them into abstract concepts: Fame, Money, Power, Sex. What a trick the Enlightenment has played on us! But we are idolators, all of us, and you would do well to examine the desires of your heart to discover your own functional gods.
The people living in Canaan were killed because they were idolators, and their idolatry led them into wickedness. Idolatry always leads us into wickedness. You will find yourself doing things you never imagined to pursue the idols of your heart: Money, Fame, Sex, Power. You will invite great wickedness into your world in the pursuit of your idols--so much wickedness, in fact, that if you were to recover your right mind, you would look back and confess that it would have been better for you to die than to live as an idolator.
In Deuteronomy 7 God commands the Israelites to invade Palestine and kill everyone that lives there. "When YHWH your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...and when YHWH your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally." What the heck, God?
This is a difficult statement for many. How can a loving God order a genocide? How can this be in the Bible? How does this square with what I know about God through Jesus Christ?
The answer to these difficult questions, I believe, goes beyond the fact that Israel had been promised that land by God or that war was inevitable in those days (and still is today). No, the answer is that God hates idolatry. Idolatry, the worship of gods who are not God, is a fundamental and vile betrayal of your relationship with the God who made you. Idolatry is the door by which sin, evil, and wickedness enter the world. The more idolatry, the more wickedness.
Why? Because of the nature of the gods we worship. These are gods that have no concern for humanity. The pagan myths bear this out. The ancient gods were like horrible, shallow, vindictive humans with divine powers. They were the worst of us. Idolatry is dehumanizing. Idolatry undoes all that God is trying to do in the world. The gods are fundamentally opposed to God.
Therefore, as far as God is concerned, it is better for you to die than to live as an idolator. To be an idol-worshipper is to invite wickedness into the world, and to undo the work of redemption that God is trying to accomplish. Deuteronomy 9 says this: "After YHWH your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, 'YHWH has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.' No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that YHWH is going to drive them out before you." Their wickedness stems from their idolatry.
You may not bow down to idols of wood or stone, but you have functional gods in your heart that are not the true God. They are, in fact, the same gods the ancients worshipped, but we have depersonified them, turning them into abstract concepts: Fame, Money, Power, Sex. What a trick the Enlightenment has played on us! But we are idolators, all of us, and you would do well to examine the desires of your heart to discover your own functional gods.
The people living in Canaan were killed because they were idolators, and their idolatry led them into wickedness. Idolatry always leads us into wickedness. You will find yourself doing things you never imagined to pursue the idols of your heart: Money, Fame, Sex, Power. You will invite great wickedness into your world in the pursuit of your idols--so much wickedness, in fact, that if you were to recover your right mind, you would look back and confess that it would have been better for you to die than to live as an idolator.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Idols of Our Hearts
A couple of days ago I blogged about David Powlison's X-Ray Questions. There are 35 questions total, designed to unmask the idols of our hearts. Idolatry is real. You may not bow down to idols made of wood and stone, but there are things you worship, hope for, and put your trust in that are not the one true God. These things are idols.
The Bible has a lot to say about idolatry. In fact, idolatry is the chief sin of God's people, and, by far, that which the Old Testament prophets railed against. (Some, today, would have you believe the primary thrust of the prophetic message was against injustice. Not so. Injustice is a byproduct of idolatry. The prophets were after the people's idols.) From God's perspective, it's far better for you to die young than live to a ripe old age as an idolator. Our idols are the revolving door by which evil and wickedness enter this world. Our idols must die.
David Powlison writes, "human life is exhaustively God-relational." In other words, everything we do is related to God either positively or negatively. "Human beings either love God--or despise him and love something else. We take refuge in God--or flee from him and find refuge in something else. We set our hopes in God--or we turn from him and hope in something else. We fear God--or we ignore him and fear something else." That "something else" is our idol(s). You cannot change until you understand that everything you do is either directed toward God or your idol, your God-substitute.
"By seeing the God-relatedness of all motivation, you see that what is wrong with us calls for a God-related solution: the grace, peace, power, and presence of Jesus Christ." The process by which we correct our idolatry is a person: Jesus Christ. Only Jesus, with his gospel of grace, can change you at the level of desire and motivation, where your idols have taken refuge. This is a long process because it is a relationship, a marriage of sorts. Victory is won not all at once, but progressively, as you choose to relate to God through Jesus in the tiny and tempting moments of life, rather than relating to your idol through sinful desire.
Go back through the X-Ray Questions and uncover your idols. Reflect on how you relate to those idols. What happened in that moment when you decided to turn to pornography? Why did you choose to eat too much? What were you really looking for when you gossiped about your friend? Learn to walk back your sin and discover that moment when you decided to turn to your idol. It's a difficult process, but you have to reflect on it. Find that moment when you chose to relate to the idol, the God-substitute, rather than God. When you have found that moment, you can be prepared for the next time, and you can learn to choose the true God rather than your idol. And in that moment when you cry out to Jesus instead of your idol, he is there. Always. He will strengthen you. His grace will teach you to cry out to the living God and to abandon the idols of your heart.
The Bible has a lot to say about idolatry. In fact, idolatry is the chief sin of God's people, and, by far, that which the Old Testament prophets railed against. (Some, today, would have you believe the primary thrust of the prophetic message was against injustice. Not so. Injustice is a byproduct of idolatry. The prophets were after the people's idols.) From God's perspective, it's far better for you to die young than live to a ripe old age as an idolator. Our idols are the revolving door by which evil and wickedness enter this world. Our idols must die.
David Powlison writes, "human life is exhaustively God-relational." In other words, everything we do is related to God either positively or negatively. "Human beings either love God--or despise him and love something else. We take refuge in God--or flee from him and find refuge in something else. We set our hopes in God--or we turn from him and hope in something else. We fear God--or we ignore him and fear something else." That "something else" is our idol(s). You cannot change until you understand that everything you do is either directed toward God or your idol, your God-substitute.
"By seeing the God-relatedness of all motivation, you see that what is wrong with us calls for a God-related solution: the grace, peace, power, and presence of Jesus Christ." The process by which we correct our idolatry is a person: Jesus Christ. Only Jesus, with his gospel of grace, can change you at the level of desire and motivation, where your idols have taken refuge. This is a long process because it is a relationship, a marriage of sorts. Victory is won not all at once, but progressively, as you choose to relate to God through Jesus in the tiny and tempting moments of life, rather than relating to your idol through sinful desire.
Go back through the X-Ray Questions and uncover your idols. Reflect on how you relate to those idols. What happened in that moment when you decided to turn to pornography? Why did you choose to eat too much? What were you really looking for when you gossiped about your friend? Learn to walk back your sin and discover that moment when you decided to turn to your idol. It's a difficult process, but you have to reflect on it. Find that moment when you chose to relate to the idol, the God-substitute, rather than God. When you have found that moment, you can be prepared for the next time, and you can learn to choose the true God rather than your idol. And in that moment when you cry out to Jesus instead of your idol, he is there. Always. He will strengthen you. His grace will teach you to cry out to the living God and to abandon the idols of your heart.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
X-Ray Questions
Since the ARC Conference two weeks ago, I've been thinking a lot about idolatry in general, and the various idols in my own life. We tend to have a rather silly understanding of idols--pieces of wood or stone to which we bow down and worship. While these types of idols dominated the world of the Bible, the Scriptures also warn us to avoid the idols of our hearts. In other words, idolatry is not localized to wood and stone statues in ancient cultures; idolatry is in our hearts.
One of the most important things we can do to follow Jesus well is to rid ourselves of all idols. But because we have such a silly image of idolatry, we are not able to intelligently identify the idols of our hearts. David Powlison has written something called X-Ray Questions: Discerning Functional Gods in which he lists 35 questions to help you discover the idols of your heart. This is an excellent resource that I've been using to help me name my idols. It's been both painful and fruitful, and I recommend it to everyone who reads this blog. I'll post a few of the questions I found most helpful here.
One of the most important things we can do to follow Jesus well is to rid ourselves of all idols. But because we have such a silly image of idolatry, we are not able to intelligently identify the idols of our hearts. David Powlison has written something called X-Ray Questions: Discerning Functional Gods in which he lists 35 questions to help you discover the idols of your heart. This is an excellent resource that I've been using to help me name my idols. It's been both painful and fruitful, and I recommend it to everyone who reads this blog. I'll post a few of the questions I found most helpful here.
1. What do you love? Hate?These are just a few of the many questions that, if you answer them honestly, will uncover the deep motivations of your heart--the gods you worship and trust more than the one true God. Do yourself a favor and download the full document. Engage with the questions with brutal honesty. Uncovering your idols is the first step to dethroning them.
This "first great commandment" questions searches you out--heart, soul, mind and might. There is no deeper question to ask of any person at any time. There is no deeper explanation for why you do what you do. Disordered loves hijack our hearts from our rightful Lord and Father.
2. What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for?
What desires do you serve and obey? This summarizes the internal operations of the desire-driven "flesh" in the New Testament epistles. "My will be done" and "I want ___________" are often quite accessible.
5. What do you fear? What do you not want? What do you tend to worry about?
Sinful fears are inverted cravings. If I want to avoid something at all costs...I am ruled by a lustful fear.
9. What makes you tick? What sun does your planet revolve around? ...What pipe dreams tantalize or terrify you? What do you organize your life around?
...We are meant to long supremely for the Lord Himself, for the Giver, not His gifts. The absence of blessings--rejection, vanity, reviling, illness, poverty--often is the crucible in which we learn to love God for who He is. In our idolatry we make gifts out as supreme goods, and make the Giver into the errand boy of our desires.
15. On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile? What gives your life meaning?
21. What do you see as your rights? What do you feel entitled to?
This question often nicely illuminates the motivational pattern of angry, aggrieved, self-righteous, self-pitying people. Our culture of entitlement reinforces the flesh's instincts and habits.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Enthrone
Your heart is a throne room, and what you desire most sits on that throne. Whoever, or whatever, sits on the throne of your heart is the king of your life. If your greatest desire is to be happy, then happiness is your king. If it's to be wealthy, then money is your king. If it's to be a good person, then morality is your king. Your deepest desire rules over you.
As you grow older you find that these deep desires are not benevolent monarchs. They are malevolent tyrants. They don't lead you with a gentle hand, they crush your neck under their boot. They infest your soul and dominate your mind. You obsess over these desires until they make you their slave.
But did you know that you are created in the image of God? Of all the things God has ever created, of all the things that exist in the universe, only human beings are made in his image. You are the greatest thing in creation, and nothing less than you has any right to sit on the throne of your heart. That throne belongs to the only one who is greater than you--God himself. Remove the low things from the throne room of your heart, and invite God to take his rightful place as your King.
As you grow older you find that these deep desires are not benevolent monarchs. They are malevolent tyrants. They don't lead you with a gentle hand, they crush your neck under their boot. They infest your soul and dominate your mind. You obsess over these desires until they make you their slave.
But did you know that you are created in the image of God? Of all the things God has ever created, of all the things that exist in the universe, only human beings are made in his image. You are the greatest thing in creation, and nothing less than you has any right to sit on the throne of your heart. That throne belongs to the only one who is greater than you--God himself. Remove the low things from the throne room of your heart, and invite God to take his rightful place as your King.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Book Review: Counterfeit Gods
That screaming sound you hear is me pulling the arrows from my soul after reading Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods. His incisive writing cuts straight to the heart of the issue of personal and corporate idolatry, those “counterfeit gods” we worship and serve rather than Jesus Christ. Keller tackles four of the most prominent American gods—love, money, success, and power—unveiling their worthlessness and the inevitability of disappointment we will experience when we worship them.
Each chapter reads like a sermon and concludes with a call to worship the true God and his son Jesus Christ. Through this repetition of structure, Keller calls his readers to abandon their false gods and worship and serve Jesus only. It is an effective literary and rhetorical technique (I can only assume that these chapters were originally written as sermons) in which the false gods are crushed and the true God is elevated to his rightful place on the throne of our hearts.
The real cunning of idolatry, he argues, is that we make idols of good things (or at least things that are morally neutral). Money, Sex, Power, and Success are not evil entities. They corrupt us not because they are inherently corrupting, but because we are inherently corruptible. “An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’” (xviii) Idols occupy a place in our hearts that belongs only to God.
Many of the books I have been reading lately have an academic bent. Counterfeit Gods, while being intellectually rigorous in its own right, is a book that all Christians (and nonChristians, for that matter) should read. It will help you unmask your idols, and to see the deeper needs of your soul that you’re trying to meet through your idolatry. Only when we remove our idols from the throne of our hearts will we be free to fully worship the true, living God who loves us and sent his Son to die for us.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Your Hope
Last night, after everyone from life group had left, Breena and I sat down to pray. Sometimes, before I can pray, I need to read some Scripture because I don't really have the words, and praying God's word back to him helps me to find those words. So I opened to Isaiah 40, and started in verse 21:
It occurred to me, as I sat and prayed with my wife, that my hope is not in YHWH. My hope is in making enough money to provide a good life for us. My hope is in finding a ministry job that truly satisfies me. My hope is in having a more structured, organized life so that I can do all the things I want to do. All of these are good things--things that, I believe, God wants for me--but they cannot be the object of my hope. That must be God, and God alone. These things had become idols in my heart because I directed my hope toward them and not toward God.
Our prayer last night was a prayer of repentance, of unmasking our idols and removing them from the throne of our hearts. The challenge is to continue in this new way of hoping, of rewriting the films of my imagination. I'll know that my hope is truly in God alone when I have stopped daydreaming about a better life and financial blessing, and started to imagine a future in which God is most fully glorified through my life.
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
...Those who hope in YHWH
will renew their strength
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.It was that bit about hope that struck me most. It occurred to me that I had been hoping in the false idols that Tim Keller had written about in his book Counterfeit Gods, as well as in some idols that are particular to me. I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, hoping for a better life for me and my family. I create films in my imagination of the life I really want.
It occurred to me, as I sat and prayed with my wife, that my hope is not in YHWH. My hope is in making enough money to provide a good life for us. My hope is in finding a ministry job that truly satisfies me. My hope is in having a more structured, organized life so that I can do all the things I want to do. All of these are good things--things that, I believe, God wants for me--but they cannot be the object of my hope. That must be God, and God alone. These things had become idols in my heart because I directed my hope toward them and not toward God.
Our prayer last night was a prayer of repentance, of unmasking our idols and removing them from the throne of our hearts. The challenge is to continue in this new way of hoping, of rewriting the films of my imagination. I'll know that my hope is truly in God alone when I have stopped daydreaming about a better life and financial blessing, and started to imagine a future in which God is most fully glorified through my life.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Naming Your Idols
I just finished reading Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller, which is an excellent series of sermons-turned-book-chapters about idolatry. I'll post a review for the book next Friday. (This week I'm posting a review of God is Great, God is Good, which I promised would come two weeks ago.) But I wanted to do more than just review the book here, because idolatry is a core issue for all of us, and yet most of us don't even think about the idols that we worship. We think that sort of thing only happens in primitive cultures that aren't as technologically advanced and civilized as our own. And yet...
Love. Money. Power. Success. These are the four idols Tim Keller assails in his book. You could probably add to that list Fame, Pleasure, Attention, and so on and so forth; but the four that Keller addresses are as good a place as any to start.
An idol, he says, is something you can't live without. It's something that you can't stop thinking about, that you obsess over and would be devastated if you lost it. It's something by which you identify yourself. Without this thing, you would not be a complete person...or so you think. Idols promise what only God can deliver. Idols take up residence in a place that rightfully belongs to God--the throne of our hearts. Idols usurp the place of God, and steal the blessings that he longs to pour out onto our lives. They promise to give us so much, but they are nothing but thieves.
Destroying the idols in your life begins by naming them. Naming your idols means unmasking them, bringing them out into the light where they are exposed to the heat of the judgment of God. It means exposing them for what they really are. When you name your idols you come fully present to the reality that what sits on the throne of your heart is not Jesus. It is something that goes by another name, something that doesn't belong there.
I was walking into work yesterday thinking about the idols in my life. I wanted to name them, to expose them so that I could conquer them and put them back into their proper place. (So often an idol is a good thing that has been given primacy in your heart.) I thought about the things my heart desires when I get tired: lying on the couch, watching TV, relaxing, eating whatever food I want, drinking a Coke (or a Throwback Pepsi made with real sugar--mmmhmmm!), just taking it easy. Then it hit me: My idol is Ease! I want a life of ease, of comfort, of painless existence and the absence of hard work. Something clicked inside of me as soon as my idol had been named. I knew that Ease sat upon the throne of my heart--the seat that only Jesus Christ could rightfully claim as his own.
The thing about it is that Ease is not necessarily a bad thing. God has a different name for it: He calls it Rest, or Sabbath. Rest is my eternal destiny. Sabbath is ordained to occur once a week. But I want a lifestyle of Ease, devoid of difficulty and drudgery. So I let projects pile up. I procrastinate. Certain things don't get done in my never ending quest for Ease. But this is not the Rest that God wants to provide me. Ease comes with guilt, that nagging feeling that you should be doing something instead of nothing. Rest from God comes with the peace of mind that you have worked hard and the invitation to enjoy some recreation. As an idol, Ease sucks. As a gift from God, Rest is glorious.
What are your idols? What can you not imagine living without? What do you fixate on? What does your heart want most of all? Naming your idol is the first step in giving the throne of your heart back to Jesus Christ, the King of All Creation.
Love. Money. Power. Success. These are the four idols Tim Keller assails in his book. You could probably add to that list Fame, Pleasure, Attention, and so on and so forth; but the four that Keller addresses are as good a place as any to start.
An idol, he says, is something you can't live without. It's something that you can't stop thinking about, that you obsess over and would be devastated if you lost it. It's something by which you identify yourself. Without this thing, you would not be a complete person...or so you think. Idols promise what only God can deliver. Idols take up residence in a place that rightfully belongs to God--the throne of our hearts. Idols usurp the place of God, and steal the blessings that he longs to pour out onto our lives. They promise to give us so much, but they are nothing but thieves.
Destroying the idols in your life begins by naming them. Naming your idols means unmasking them, bringing them out into the light where they are exposed to the heat of the judgment of God. It means exposing them for what they really are. When you name your idols you come fully present to the reality that what sits on the throne of your heart is not Jesus. It is something that goes by another name, something that doesn't belong there.
I was walking into work yesterday thinking about the idols in my life. I wanted to name them, to expose them so that I could conquer them and put them back into their proper place. (So often an idol is a good thing that has been given primacy in your heart.) I thought about the things my heart desires when I get tired: lying on the couch, watching TV, relaxing, eating whatever food I want, drinking a Coke (or a Throwback Pepsi made with real sugar--mmmhmmm!), just taking it easy. Then it hit me: My idol is Ease! I want a life of ease, of comfort, of painless existence and the absence of hard work. Something clicked inside of me as soon as my idol had been named. I knew that Ease sat upon the throne of my heart--the seat that only Jesus Christ could rightfully claim as his own.
The thing about it is that Ease is not necessarily a bad thing. God has a different name for it: He calls it Rest, or Sabbath. Rest is my eternal destiny. Sabbath is ordained to occur once a week. But I want a lifestyle of Ease, devoid of difficulty and drudgery. So I let projects pile up. I procrastinate. Certain things don't get done in my never ending quest for Ease. But this is not the Rest that God wants to provide me. Ease comes with guilt, that nagging feeling that you should be doing something instead of nothing. Rest from God comes with the peace of mind that you have worked hard and the invitation to enjoy some recreation. As an idol, Ease sucks. As a gift from God, Rest is glorious.
What are your idols? What can you not imagine living without? What do you fixate on? What does your heart want most of all? Naming your idol is the first step in giving the throne of your heart back to Jesus Christ, the King of All Creation.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Idolatry Is Easy
Idolatry is easy. Humans turn created things (or those things which are not God) into objects of worship quite naturally. We devote our lives to success, wealth, power, or even our own kids rather than to the God who created us and sent his son to die for us. We place pastors, politicians, athletes and celebrities on pedestals of undo height and glory. We make gods of mere mortals.
In the Bible, idolatry is the sin that infuriates God the most, and is the one by which he is most confounded. Isaiah expresses God’s consternation over idolatry this way:
Nothing makes less sense to God than idolatry, and yet this is the sin his people committed again and again. As early on as the Exodus, the Israelites fashioned a golden calf (perhaps to resemble a god they had worshipped while in Egypt) and bowed down to it. When they entered the promised land they added the idols of the Canaanites—Baal, Asherah, Molech—to their own worship. Idolatry (which God understood as adultery against himself) was the reason for the demise of Israel. It was because of their idolatry that the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and the Southern Kingdom sent into exile.
In the New Testament, Paul laments the idolatry he finds rampant among all the peoples of the earth. He writes in Romans:
Idolatry is a problem for all mankind. It’s in our fallen nature to worship that which is not God. Even today there is unfettered idolatry running loose among churchgoers. We worship the gods of success and power just like the ancients, though perhaps more insidiously because we wrap it up in our Christianity. We turn our pastors and politicians into gods and place upon them all the expectations and demands of deity. Our idolatry grieves God no less today than it did when the stories of the Bible were being lived in the dust and grass of Palestine. The saddest irony, of course, is that when God did become a man—the one man worthy of worship—we rejected and killed him.
I urge you to examine your own heart to discern who and what has your central devotion rather than God. Who sits upon the throne of your soul? There is only one who is worthy to sit on that great seat—he who created you and knows you from first to last. Idolatry is easy. True worship of the true God is hard. Do the hard stuff.
In the Bible, idolatry is the sin that infuriates God the most, and is the one by which he is most confounded. Isaiah expresses God’s consternation over idolatry this way:
[Wood] is man's fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.
Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
"Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."
From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
"Save me; you are my god."
They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
"Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?"
Nothing makes less sense to God than idolatry, and yet this is the sin his people committed again and again. As early on as the Exodus, the Israelites fashioned a golden calf (perhaps to resemble a god they had worshipped while in Egypt) and bowed down to it. When they entered the promised land they added the idols of the Canaanites—Baal, Asherah, Molech—to their own worship. Idolatry (which God understood as adultery against himself) was the reason for the demise of Israel. It was because of their idolatry that the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and the Southern Kingdom sent into exile.
In the New Testament, Paul laments the idolatry he finds rampant among all the peoples of the earth. He writes in Romans:
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Idolatry is a problem for all mankind. It’s in our fallen nature to worship that which is not God. Even today there is unfettered idolatry running loose among churchgoers. We worship the gods of success and power just like the ancients, though perhaps more insidiously because we wrap it up in our Christianity. We turn our pastors and politicians into gods and place upon them all the expectations and demands of deity. Our idolatry grieves God no less today than it did when the stories of the Bible were being lived in the dust and grass of Palestine. The saddest irony, of course, is that when God did become a man—the one man worthy of worship—we rejected and killed him.
I urge you to examine your own heart to discern who and what has your central devotion rather than God. Who sits upon the throne of your soul? There is only one who is worthy to sit on that great seat—he who created you and knows you from first to last. Idolatry is easy. True worship of the true God is hard. Do the hard stuff.
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