A. Can you guess what is the number one problem in the Bible?
1. It is the problem that more than 1,000 verses speak of?
a. It is the problem that more than 50 of the laws in the first five books of the Bible are directed against.
b. In Judaism it was one of only four sins to which the death penalty was attached.
c. If you didn’t know the answer to that question, you might have figured it out by the title of today’s sermon and the new sermon series it begins.
2. The number one problem that the Bible addresses is the problem of idols and idol worship.
a. In our modern culture and the modern church, we tend to skip over it as an antiquated or irrelevant issue.
b. But nothing could be further from the truth – it is in no way antiquated or irrelevant.
c. We might think that the problem in our time is that people don’t worship any god, but in reality, the truth is they are worshiping too many gods.
d. Christian writer Os Guinness wrote: “Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations.”
3. Idols and idol worship are a part of the war that is being waged for our lives and our hearts.
a. There is a pantheon of counterfeit god’s that are vying for our allegiance.
b. Every day we are bombarded with messages of power and success, entertainment and wealth, pleasure and romance, and through these things the enemy seeks to convince us that our lives are somehow incomplete, and can be made complete by chasing after these grand illusions that promise fulfillment, only to come up empty and disillusioned, and spiritually dead.
B. Kyle Idleman, in his book gods at war, opens chapter one with this illustration: Imagine a man who has been coughing constantly.
1. This cough keeps him up half of the night and interrupts any conversation he has.
2. The cough is so unrelenting that he goes to the doctor.
3. The doctor runs tests and the results reveal that the man has cancer.
4. Knowing how tough the news will be to handle, the doctor decides not to tell the man he has cancer, but rather writes a prescription for strong cough medicine, and tells the man he should be feeling better soon.
5. The man is delighted with this prognosis, and sure enough the medicine helps and he feels better and sleeps better.
6. Meanwhile, the cancer is eating away at his body.
7. The point that Idleman makes is that when we treat the symptoms rather than the cause, we don’t help anyone.
8. The same is true when all we are concerned about are symptoms that surface in our lives, like: stress, cheating, lusting, spending, worrying, medicating, and quitting.
9. If we only focus on those symptoms, rather than the underlying causes, then we miss the real problem, and the real problem – the true illness is idolatry.
C. If we start scratching at whatever struggle we are dealing with, we will eventually find that behind the struggle is an idol, a false god that we are worshiping.
1. And until that god is dethroned, and the Lord God takes His rightful place, we will not experience victory and we will not move forward spiritually.
2. And so idolatry is not an issue, but is the issue.
D. For us modern, 21st century types, the word “idolatry” conjures up pictures of primitive people bowing down before statues.
1. In the ancient Greco-Roman world of New Testament times, each city worshipped its favorite deities and built shrines around their images for worship.
2. When the apostle Paul went to Athens, he saw that it was literally filled with images of these deities.
a. The Parthenon of Athena overshadowed everything, but other deities were represented in every public space.
b. There was Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty; Ares, the god of war, Artemis, the goddess of fertility and wealth; and Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, just to name a few.
3. But in reality and practice, our contemporary culture is not fundamentally different from the ancient ones.
a. Each culture is dominated by its own set of idols.
b. Each culture has its own “priesthoods,” its totems and rituals.
c. Each culture has its own “shrines” – theirs had different sizes and designs, ours might look like office towers, spas and gyms, studios or stadiums.
E. The apostle Paul wrote that greed was not just bad behavior, but that greed is idolatry (Col. 3:5).
1. We can make money into a god, and then our relationship with it approximates worship and homage.
2. When money becomes our spiritual obsession, like all addictions it hides it true proportions from its victims.
3. As the addiction takes over our lives, we take more and greater risks to get an ever diminishing satisfaction from the thing we crave, until we hit the wall and a breakdown occurs.
4. As we begin to repent and recover, we ask ourselves, “What were we thinking? How could we have been so blind? How could we allow ourselves to get stuck in that trap?”
5. John Calvin’s answer to those questions is: “The human heart is an idol factory.”
F. In Ezekiel 14:3, God says about elders of Israel: “These men have set up idols in their hearts…”
1. Just like us, those elders must have responded to that charge, “Idols? What idols? We don’t have any idols!”
2. What God wants us to know is that the human heart can take a good thing like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turn them into the ultimate thing.
3. In our hearts we take that good thing and deify it, making it the center of our lives, because we think that that thing can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment.
G. The central plot device in the book The Lord of the Rings is the Dark Lord Sauron’s Ring of Power, which corrupts anyone who tries to use it, however good are his or her intensions.
1. The Ring is what Professor Tom Shippey calls “a psychic amplifier,” which takes the heart’s fondest desires and magnifies them to idolatrous proportions.
2. Some of the good characters in the book want to liberate slaves, or preserve their people’s land, or bring punishment upon wrongdoers.
3. These are all good objectives, but the Ring makes them willing to do anything to achieve them.
4. It turns the good thing into an absolute that supersedes every other allegiance or value.
5. The wearer of the Ring becomes increasingly enslaved and addicted to it, for an idol is something we cannot live without.
6. The fact that we must have the idol drives us to break rules we once honored, to harm others or even harm ourselves in order to get it.
7. Idols are spiritual addictions that lead to terrible evil, both in Tolkien’s novel and in real life.
H. One of the most important things that we will learn throughout this series is that anything can become an idol.
1. What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything that you seek to give you what only God can give.
2. This is how Timothy Keller explains what an idol is in his book Counterfeit Gods: A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol has such controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. It can be family and children, or career and making money, or achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstance, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in Christian ministry. When your meaning in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “co-dependency” but it is really idolatry. 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.” (pg. xviii)
3. If anything becomes more fundamental than God to our happiness, meaning in life, and identity, then it is an idol.
I. Let’s talk about some categories that idols fall into.
1. There are personal idols.
a. These include: romantic love and family; or money, power, and achievement; or access to particular social circles; or emotional dependence of others on you; or health, fitness, and physical beauty.
b. Unfortunately, many of us are tempted to look to these things for the hope, meaning, and fulfillment that only God can provide.
2. There are cultural idols.
a. These include: military power, technological progress, and economic prosperity.
b. The idols of traditional societies include family, hard work, duty, and moral virtue, while the idols of Western cultures are individual freedom, self-discovery, personal affluence, and fulfillment.
c. All these good things can and do take on disproportionate size and power within a society.
d. They promise us safety, peace and happiness if only we base our lives on them.
3. There are intellectual idols - these are often called “ideologies, like humanism, communism, or post-modernism.
a. These take a wrongful place and become an idol when we trust in them more than in God.
J. The Bible uses three basic metaphors to describe how people relate to the idols of their hearts – they love idols, trust idols, and obey idols.
1. The Bible sometimes speaks of idols using a marital metaphor – God should be our true Spouse, but when we desire and delight in other things more than God, we commit spiritual adultery – we are loving the wrong thing.
2. The Bible sometimes speaks of idols using the religious metaphor – God should be our true Savior, but when we look to personal achievement or financial prosperity to give us peace and security, then we are worshiping a different god – we are trusting in the wrong thing.
3. The Bible sometimes speaks of idols in a political metaphor – God should be our only King, Lord and Master, but whatever we love and trust we also serve and give our allegiance to – we are obeying the wrong thing.
K. Moses stood on Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments from God, and do you remember what the first of the commandments is?
1. The Bible says: 1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. (Ex. 20:1-3)
2. When God issued that command during the time of Moses, the people were familiar with a lot of other gods.
a. God’s people had spent more than 400 years in Egypt as slaves.
b. Egypt was crowded with gods – the Egyptians had local gods for every district.
3. When we hear God say, “You will have no other gods before me,” we might be thinking of a hierarchy of gods and God must be in first place.
a. But that’s not what God meant by that statement.
b. A better translation might be “You shall have no other gods besides me” or “in my presence.”
c. God isn’t interested in competing against other gods or being first among many.
d. God will not be part of any hierarchy of gods.
e. God does not have room for partial gods, or honorary gods, or assistant gods.
4. God isn’t that way because He is insecure, but because it is the truth of existence – only one God is truly God.
5. Lord willing, next week we will talk about why God is a jealous God.
L. And what was the second command of the Big 10 Commandments? Do not make idols to worship.
1. Exodus 20:4-6 says: 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
2. The profound wisdom of the second commandment is that anything in the world can be hammered into an idol, and therefore can be a false or counterfeit god.
a. In this kind of “do-it-yourself” idolatry – we can choose from a handy assortment of things, mix and match, and create our own god.
3. Don’t you think it is ironic that at the very moment Moses was up on the mountain and God was telling Moses about having no other gods before him, the people of God were down at the bottom of the mountain rigging up a god?
a. While Moses was up on Mount Sinai with God, the people waiting below began to whine that is was taking so long.
b. Moses had left his brother, Aaron, in charge, and the people began clamoring for a god to lead them.
c. So Aaron had them gather up their gold, and they melted it in the fire and crafted a golden calf to worship.
d. The Psalmist said this about their behavior at the foot of Mt. Sinai, “They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.” (Psalms 106:19-20)
4. Wouldn’t you agree that that is not a good trade?
a. They traded the Creator God for a god of their own creation.
b. They traded a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, who is holy and loving, for a god who can eat grass and moo.
c. If they were on the TV Show Let’s Make a Deal, we would say their trade was a “zonk.”
5. Are we any different when we replace God with statues of our own creation? When we replace God with…
a. A house that we constantly upgrade.
b. A promotion that comes with a corner office.
c. A team that wins the championship.
d. A body beautiful, toned and fit.
e. A happiness of our own making.
f. Our own way of thinking that we think is better than God’s?
6. So we see that anything can become an idol once it becomes a substitute for God in our lives or takes a place above the place God should have.
M. So how do we identify what our idols are?
1. One way to identify our idols is to ask ourselves some probing questions.
a. Here are some very helpful questions that Kyle Idleman offers in his book on idols.
2. Question One: What disappoints you?
a. When we feel overwhelmed by disappointment, it’s a good sign that something has become far too important to us that it should be.
b. Disproportionate disappointment reveals that we have placed intense hope and longing in something other than God.
3. Question Two: What do you complain about the most?
a. What we complain about reveals what really matters to us.
b. Whining shows what has power over us.
4. Question Three: Where do you make financial sacrifices?
a. The Bible says where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is also.
b. Where our money goes shows what god is winning our hearts.
c. If we take a look at our bank statements and credit card bills, and pretend we are examining the spending habits of a stranger to find out what is most important to them, then what might we discover about ourselves?
5. Question Four: What worries you?
a. Idols give us a sense of being in control, and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares.
b. What do we fear the most?
c. If the idea of losing something or someone terrifies us, then perhaps it has too high a place in our lives.
d. If the fear of being ridiculed or rejected controls me, then perhaps the idol of self is on the throne.
e. Whatever it is that wakes us up or keeps us up, has the potential of being an idol.
6. Question Five: What are your dreams?
a. If nightmares are revealing, so are daydreams.
b. What is your fantasy? Do you dream of being the next American Idol or the first round draft pick or winning an Oscar or having lots of letters before or after your name (PhD, MD, CEO)?
c. Aspirations are fine, but the question is why you aspire to those things.
d. Is our motivation to use our talents to God’s glory or to our own?
7. Question Six: What infuriates you?
a. Everyone has a hot button or two – what is that something that makes you “crazy”?
b. Are you so competitive that you can’t stand to lose? (I know that one very well!)
c. What happens if you have to sit in traffic or if someone cuts you off or drives too close to you?
d. What happens if someone embarrasses you or doesn’t treat you with respect?
e. These can all be signs of the most basic idol of them all – the god of me, the idol of self.
6. Question Seven: Where is your sanctuary?
a. Where do we go when we are hurting?
b. To whom or to what do we turn for comfort or escape? (TV, food, romance novels, affairs, pornography, alcohol, or other drugs?)
c. The Bible says that God is to be our refuge and strength, our help in times of trouble (Ps. 46:1-2) – has He been replaced or substituted for something else? That’s an idol!
N. I hope all of us are beginning to see how practical and important this subject is.
1. There is only one true God who is worthy of our worship and through whom we find forgiveness and fulfillment of all our needs and longings.
a. But there are so many other false and counterfeit gods that the wily serpent Satan uses to try to destroy us.
2. The heart is the battleground for the spiritual war that is taking place.
3. That’s why Solomon wisely wrote in Proverbs 4:23 -
a. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (ESV)
b. Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. (NIV)
4. That’s why Jesus taught that this is the most important commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Mt. 22:37)
5. May God truly bless us as we try to love Him as our one and only God and as we defeat the idols and counterfeit gods that are battling for our hearts.
6. I have a sense that this is going to be a challenging, yet transforming sermon series for all of us, myself included!
Resources:
gods at war, Kyle Idleman, Zondervan, 2013
Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller, Dutton, 2009
The God Of Power, Sermon by Jim Kilson, SermonCentral.com
