American Idols July 4 Sermon

Illus: Dr. Billy Graham says, "We usually think of an idol as a religious figure carved of wood or stone, perhaps in some primitive tribe far removed from civilization. But we have our "idols" today, because an idol is anything that you worship in place of the living God. Some people worship the idol of beauty or sexual pleasure. People worship the idol of money and security... Some people worship at the shrine of power.”

(Billy Graham, -Approaching Hoofbeats-, pp. 106-07.)

Some people have created a false god in their minds and they worship that false god.

Illus: D. J. Kennedy said that a friend was once reading to a lady out of the Bible about what God said he would do to the guilty. She responded by saying, "Oh, my God would never do that!" He replied, "Madam, you are right! Your god would never do that. The problem is that your god doesn't exist except in your mind. You have created a god in your own image, according to your own liking, and now you have fallen down and worshipped him instead of the God of the Bible. Your problem is that you have committed idolatry!"

Illus: Someone said this about idolatry, “What is your most prized possession? Would you be willing to give it up if Jesus asked you? If your answer is no then your possession has taken God's place in your heart and has become an idol.”

I want to say again, America has become the land of idolatry. It is not that people do not believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the problem is they have other gods in their life that they prefer more. It is obvious that the God who created them is not on the top of their list.

When it comes to idolatry in America, we do not try and hide it, we even have a television program call “American Idol.” It has become the #1 show on TV and in 2006 had completed its 5th season.

The idols that we serve are not necessarily made of wood, bricks and metal, even though many of them are. We have become “CREATURE WORSHIPPERS!”

Illus: A seventeen-year-old girl looked at Elvis Presley as not just an entertainer, or a mortal, she made him an idol and she literally worshipped him.

She has seen all his movies many times:

• “LOVE ME TENDER” 107 times.

•“LOVING YOU” 110 times.

•“KING CREOLE” 91 times.

•“JAIL HOUSE ROCK” 79 times (She did not care for it as much.)

• She has twelve scrapbooks of him.

• She has 40,000 pictures of him.

• She actually moved from New Orleans to Memphis to be near him.

This woman may be a little extreme, but she represents the many “Creature Worshippers” across America.

It has been said you can tell a great deal about a nation by the gods they serve. We in America have a problem because we have become the biggest CREATURE WORSHIPPERS that have ever existed.

We pay these CREATURES (actors, actresses, and athletes) millions of dollars to see them perform. What is sad about this, is that parents that should be shielding their children from these idols, seem to be encouraging the idolatry.

As we look at the idols Americans worship, we can certainly relate to how Elijah must have felt when he stood before the prophets of Baal. Those people were also “creature worshippers.” The only difference was that the creatures they worshipped included creatures they made with their own hands.

In 1 Kings 18, we have the story of Elijah standing up against 850 false prophets of Baal. He refused to compromise with them! Let me show you THREE ways that Elijah dealt with these CREATURE WORSHIPPERS.

I. HE RECOGNIZED WHO GOD WAS

Look at verse 37. We read, “...thou art the Lord God...”

Elijah says in this passage that he recognized something very important. He said two things that we all need to recognize:

• I am not God

• THOU ART GOD

These idols the people were serving were not God! Elijah knew WHO GOD WAS! He said, “...THOU ART THE LORD GOD...”

WHO IS GOD? God is the Creator of everything WE CAN SEE and CAN NOT SEE!

Illus: We can walk out on a clear night and see a sky full of stars, millions of them. Yet further out we know there are billions of stars that God has created that we can not see without a very powerful telescope. We can not see those stars, but we know, whatever exists, God created it!

Through the centuries, idols that men worshipped have come and gone, but GOD WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE GOD! The wisest men on earth are the men who KNOW GOD IS GOD! The most foolish man on the earth, is the man that believes that creation just accidentally happened.