This week we're going to be talking about modern idolatry.
And I know I, personally, growing up
had a pretty simplistic,
kind of naive view of what
idolatry actually was.
I always thought idolatry
was this thing where ancient, primitive,
uneducated people would carve their
funny, little half-naked statues
and they'd dance around them and sing their songs.
And I thought they did it because of what
skeptics today will refer to as the god of the gaps.
God of the gaps is this idea
that ancient, unenlightened people,
because they didn't have a scientific
understanding of the world,
they didn't understand natural phenomena,
they would look at whatever happened out in nature
and say, "Well this must just be the gods."
So if it rained outside,
they thought the gods must be sad.
Or if it thundered outside,
they thought the gods must be angry.
Then I actually started to do a little research on idolatry.
And I discovered that some of the most
influential thinkers in world history,
including some of the best Bible scholars,
said that idolatry wasn't just a sin,
said that idolatry wasn't just a sin, or wasn't just a problem in life -
or wasn't just a problem in life -
and it's certainly not just an ancient problem -
it's the overarching problem of life.
It's the reason the world looks the way it does today.
And the reason humans behave the way we do.
For instance, Martin Luther once said that:
In other words, what he's saying is,
it doesn't matter so much what you say on Sunday mornings.
On a day-to-day basis, throughout the week,
whatever you run to for security and hope
and purpose in life, functionally,
that's really your God.
Another reformer, John Calvin, said something similar. He said,
Every one of us is an expert
from our mother's womb in inventing idols.
Even before these guys,
one of the early church fathers named St. Augustine
said something similar.
He maybe said it best.
He said sin in idolatry
isn't so much loving bad things
and doing bad things.
It's loving good things too much.
It's loving good things
and making them God things in your life.
It's loving the blessings of life ahead of the blesser.
It's loving created things ahead of our creator, God.
So how do we get to the point in life
where we have rightly ordered loves in our heart?
Well,
all of the good things of life,
you have to remind yourself,
you have to sacrifice for.
You have to work hard to get them.
And even when you do get them, they often disappoint.
Kind of like a little child on December 29th,
pushing the presents into the corner of their room.
You're not fully satisfied.
Jesus is the only God that if you get him,
he won't disappoint you.
He'll actually satisfy you.
He's the only God that if you fail him,
he doesn't curse you.
He forgives you.
Jesus is the God that
you don't primarily sacrifice for,
but he sacrificed himself for you.
When I started to realize that
idolatry wasn't just some
antiquated, old concept
but that it was the struggle, really, of life,
it helped me understand a lot more about
the stories in the Bible that deal with idolatry
and the statements about idolatry.
For instance,
maybe the most famous section in scripture
about idolatry is in Exodus, Chapter 32,
where the Israelites, God's people in the Old Testament,
where the Israelites, God's people in the Old Testament, are camped at the foot of Mount Sinai.
are camped at the foot of Mount Sinai.
And they're dancing around a golden calf.
I like dancing as much as the next guy
but dancing around cattle seemed a little silly.
Didn't get it.
But I started to understand that there's more
that meets the eye there.
For instance,
what was this idol made out of?
Gold.
The people of Israel had melted
The people of Israel had melted all of their precious metals.
all of their precious metals.
all of their precious metals. Their earrings, their jewelry, their wealth.
Their earrings, their jewelry, their wealth.
And poured it into this false God.
And what was it fashioned into the image of?
A golden calf.
Well, that sounded kind of strange to me, too.
Until I learned that in Egypt,
where they had originally come from,
there was this god named Apis,
who was symbolized by a golden calf.
And in Canaan, where they now had gone,
there was another God named Baal,
symbolized by a golden bull calf.
In other words, this bull calf
was a symbol of fertility, and power, and prosperity.
And so what you have here with the Israelites
at the foot of Mount Sinai,
at the foot of Mount Sinai, is a group of people who are really disappointed with God.
is a group of people who are really disappointed with God.
They're frustrated with God.
They don't understand what he's doing.
And so they turn to power, and sex, and money
to satisfy the restlessness that exists in their hearts.
Hmmm. Turning to power, and sex, and money
and thinking that those kinds of things
can solve all the problems of your life.
My, what an antiquated notion that is.
Thank goodness we've progressed so far beyond that.
Thank goodness we've progressed so far beyond that. Or am I
Or am I
basically describing the struggles
basically describing the struggles in society today?
in society today?
Or maybe am I even describing the struggles
that exist in your own house?
How do we get beyond this?
Idolatry isn't an ancient issue.
It's a struggle that each of us faces every day.
And so we have to ask ourselves questions like,
"What is the thing in life that if I lost it,
I would feel like life isn't worth living anymore?"
Or, "What's the thing in life
that I think, 'If I got that,
I would have finally arrived.
Life would finally be good.
I'd finally be happy'?"
If your answer those questions is something
or someone other than Jesus Christ,
the Bible says you've got yourself an idol.
But don't worry, there's hope.
Moses came down Mount Sinai
with the Ten Commandments in his hands,
just in time to see the children of Israel
dancing around that golden calf,
breaking those very commands.
But fifteen hundred years later,
a deliverer who is greater than Moses,
picked those broken commands up
and marched them right back up another mountain.
This time it was Mount Calvary.
The Apostle Paul writes about this in
Colossians 2:14, where he says,
"Jesus picked up the written code that we broke
and he cancelled it by nailing it to his cross" (Colossians 2:14).
Because of what Jesus did,
one day we are going to sing and dance
and have a real party.
But it's not going to be around
some silly golden calf.
We're going to dance.
And we're going to sing.
And we're going to party
around our beautiful Lord and Savior.
We'd love to hear about what modern idols
It's no secret that we are influenced
by the world around us.
by the world around us. Now, unfortunately that means that
Now, unfortunately that means that
we're also influenced by
the idolatry that exists around us.
The problem with it there,
the tricky part about it,
is that because it's so prevalent,
it's sneaky and it's subtle
and it's hard to detect.
So for instance,
you look at disorder loves in society and in our lives.
And they come to the surface.
It might be normal to obsess
about looking good and being thin.
It might be normal to overdo youth sports
and pour yourself into those.
It might be normal to have many sexual partners
throughout life in our society today.
It might be normal to compromise
other, other important relationships
other, other important relationships with your spouse, with your kids,
with your spouse, with your kids,
in order to advance your career.
But just because something's normal,
But just because something's normal, doesn't mean it's good or right.
doesn't mean it's good or right.
So for instance, in the 19th century in the South,
it was normal to own slaves.
In the mid-20th century in Germany,
it was normal to persecute and even kill
innocent Jewish men and women.
Just because something's normal
doesn't mean that it's good or right.
And because we have common values
and common disordered values,
it's that much more important
that we surround ourselves
with faithful Christians who will hold us accountable.
You have to have people in your life
that can actually speak into your life
and whose lives you can speak into as well.
This is the reason why Jesus says in Matthew 18:
And the good news here is two-fold.
Not only do you have somebody
that will help hold you accountable
with any idols that you might struggle with in your life,
but if that person is a faithful Christian,
when you do struggle,
when you fall, and we all fall,
that person right away will be able to point you
to the grace and forgiveness
found in Jesus Christ, as well.
Embrace your fellow Christians around you.
They will influence you positively
and you'll both help fight idolatry together.
It seems like we're constantly seeing stuff on the news
about persecution of Christians around the world.
The World Evangelical Alliance estimates that
200 million Christians every year
are persecuted for their faith.
And that number has actually doubled since 2013.
And I don't envy anybody in one of those positions,
and yet, living in America presents
sort of its own precarious
nature to Christian life.
And the reason I say that is because
about 10 years ago,
a Christian researcher by the name of George Barna,
who researches all sorts of religious stuff,
he wrote a book called "The Seven Faith Tribes."
And in that book, he said that everybody in our country
can fit fairly nicely into one of seven different categories.
By far the largest category was
people who self-identified as Christians.
79% of Americans, when push comes to shove,
if they have to label themselves,
will call themselves a Christian.
What Barna also found in that data, however,
was kind of interesting, in that only 18% of the people
who were polled said that they would be willing to
compromise their lives in any kind of significant ways
because of their personal relationship
with Jesus Christ.
That means they were willing to sacrifice
their time and energy, their relationships,
their money,
their health, maybe even their life itself.
their health, maybe even their life itself. 18%.
18%.
So when you push those two numbers together,
the 79% who self-identify as Christian
and the 18% who say
they're willing to inconvenience their life
because of their personal relationship with Jesus,
you get 61%.
That's the majority of our country.
The average person in America
is somebody who self-identifies as a Christian,
calls himself a Christian,
but isn't willing to inconvenience their life
in any measurable way because of
their attachment to Jesus Christ.
Now we can't do a whole lot about what goes on
Now we can't do a whole lot about what goes on out there in the country.
out there in the country.
The only thing we can do is right here.
And so you and I have to ask ourselves questions
that might get at the heart of our idolatry.
For instance,
have you ever thought for yourself
something along the lines of
"If I only had blank,
then I would be faithful to God."
Whatever is in that blank,
whatever is on the other side of that "if only,"
that's the thing in your life that
God is trying to get access to right now.
When Jesus died,
he didn't just
allow a part of himself to die.
He didn't just give you a little bit.
He gave you the whole thing,
the whole piece of heaven.
Jesus died so as the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:
"We can share in the full extent of his glory."
He gave everything for you and me.
Just imagine that Jesus one day was in heaven
looking around, had absolutely everything
but he was just missing one thing.
And he looked down to earth
and he saw you.
And he says, "You're it.
I'm willing to sacrifice it all in order to get you."
And doesn't that seem like the kind of guy
that you can trust with every square inch of your life?
Ezekiel 14 is a key text in the Bible
when talking about idolatry because it explains
that it's primarily an issue of the heart.
God says in Ezekiel 14:5 that his goal and everything he does is to
Idolatry is primarily a heart issue.
I think I can explain that pretty quickly just by
looking at the Ten Commandments.
If I were to ask you which of the commandments
is about idolatry.
If you've ever studied or know anything
about the Ten Commandments before,
you might know the first commandment
addresses idolatry.
Many people would respond that way.
The first commandment's about idolatry.
Well it's true but it's not complete.
Really, all the commandments are about idolatry.
And all you have to do is look at the way
the commandments in the Bible are bookended.
The first commandment says,
"You shall have no other gods."
The last of the commandments
deals with this thing called coveting.
deals with this thing called coveting. It's inappropriate desires.
It's inappropriate desires.
It's desiring something in your life
as though it were God.
And the idea is,
you shouldn't have other gods
but if you desire something as though it is God,
you're going to worship your false gods
by breaking all the true God's commandments in between.
So for instance,
if you have a false god of pleasure,
you're going to worship that false god
by breaking the true God's commandment
against sexual immorality.
If you have a false god of
social approval,
needing to be popular,
you're going to break the true God's commandment
about bearing false witness,
slandering, gossiping,
tearing other people down with your words
in order to try to make yourself look better.
If you have a false god of autonomy
and personal freedom and
I'm going to live my life the way I want to live my life,
you're probably going to break
the true God's commandment about
the true God's commandment about honoring your authorities.
honoring your authorities.
You see, you worship your false gods
by breaking the true God's commandments.
So the question is, how do you get to the point
where you stop sacrificing to your false gods
but you start sacrificing your false gods at
the altar of the true God?
What you have to do is, you have to be honest about it.
You have to own it.
You can't be dismissive about
these struggles and these masters.
And then you turn to Jesus and you say,
"Jesus, you are so much more beautiful to me
"than all those other things.
"You are so much better, more loving of a master to me,
than all those other masters ever possibly could be.
And you're the only one that I ever want to serve."
That's the only way you'll ever
find healing from your idolatry.
No one thing will ever love you like that.
No one person will ever love you like that.
Give him everything
and you will be free.
You will be free to love
and serve the God
who freely loved and served you first.