God does not share His glory. He alone is to be worshipped, revered, and honored as King and God. The fall of the nation of Israel is a grim reminder of how deeply idolatry offends God. He both exposed and judged their sin.
In J.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", a scene takes place in which Gandalf warns Pippin about their approaching conversation with Denethor, the steward of Gondor. Denethor had just learned of the death of Boromir, his beloved firstborn son. Gandalf says Denethor "loved him greatly: too much perhaps." For Denethor, Boromir was an idol, an object of his ultimate trust and devotion. Idols are people, experiences, ideas, and objects that we substitute for God. We lean on them, hope in them, and find refuge in them. These can be good things, as in the case of a child or spouse. Or they can be sinful things that we should hate. Instead, the fingers of our heart grab onto them. We trust and hope in them.
The nation of Israel is perhaps one of the saddest historical case studies of idolatry. A long line of kings who did what was evil in the sight of the Lord eventually led to their downfall. God exposed their worship of Baal and Asherah through his prophets, namely Elijah. However, their continual rebellion brought about God's judgment at the hands of Assyria (722 BC). Let's look at how God exposed and judged Israel's idolatry and see how we can learn from their example.
1 Kings 18:20-39, "So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. Then Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Therefore, let them give us two bulls; and let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire under it. Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”
"So, all the people answered and said, “It is well spoken.” Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god but put no fire under it.” So, they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, “O Baal, hear us!” But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made. And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So, they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention.
Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So, all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Israel shall be your name.” Then with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord; and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two seahs of seed. And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, “Fill four waterpots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.” Then he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time; and he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. So, the water ran all around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.
And it came to pass, at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel, and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”
Elijah went to great lengths to prove to Israel that the Lord was God. While Israel's people could recall the countless blessings of the Lord, their hearts were still reluctant to fully follow Him. Elijah took this opportunity to expose the impotence of Baal and thereby show the futility and emptiness of idolatry. Baal was supposedly a storm god and was powerless to send fire down from Heaven to ignite the altar. Only the Lord thy God controls the weather, and everything else! He alone is God. Therefore, He is the ONLY God we should be worship and trust! Jesus said it Himself to Satan when he tried to tempt Him in the desert. Matthew 4:10, "Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.”
Idols can only make promises. They cannot keep them. But we foolishly believe they can. We believe money can secure our happiness and joy. We believe pleasure can be our refuge and comfort. We believe success in business will validate our worth. We believe successful children will equate with our success. Proverbs 13:12 says, "Delayed hope makes the heart sick." This means that if our hope is in something that can fail, our hearts will fail with it. Our inner life will decay. This is what idols do. They fail. Trusting in these things should be as foolish to us as worshipping Baal was to Elijah.
What is your functional object of trust? What do you love too much? What, if you lost it, would make life unbearable? What are the fingers of your heart grasping too tightly? What would you risk committing sin to acquire? What is so important to you that you would go against the Word and Law of God to have? Our hearts can fall into idolatry so easily, but only God can truly secure and satisfy us. Only the Lord is God! Which raises the question, "How does God judge idolatry?"
2 Kings 17:6-18, "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they had feared other gods and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. Also, the children of Israel secretly did against the Lord their God things that were not right, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree. There they burned incense on all the high places, like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them; and they did wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger, for they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, “You shall not do this thing.”
Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah, by all of His prophets, every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways, and keep My commandments and My statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets.” Nevertheless, they would not hear, but stiffened their necks, like the necks of their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He had made with their fathers, and His testimonies which He had testified against them; they followed idols, became idolaters, and went after the nations who were all around them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. So, they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, made for themselves a molded image and two calves, made a wooden image and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone.
Despite what God did on Mount Carmel, the Israelites continued in their rebellious ways. Though God sent them prophets and seers, they would not listen. Therefore, God had to act in judgment against His people, so "He removed them from His presence". He used the nation of Assyria, the rod of His anger (Isaiah 10:5), to judge and destroy the nation He loved and miraculously delivered from Egypt.
And, as it's true that we must be careful not to attribute all of our suffering to sin and idolatry, we are promised that God disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:5-11). When Christians continue in idolatry, God must respond. When we foolishly trust and love the wrong things, or love the right things too much, God often allows suffering to enter our lives. James assures us that we can count it all joy because our faith is being tested (James 1:2). God purges the idols of our lives and loosens our grip on our false trusts. He shows how our desires for good things turn into demands. Those demands often become little deities that we take into our hearts (Ezekiel 14:3). But we can trust that He is aiming all of our circumstances, though painful at times, toward making us like His Son (Romans 8:28-29).
God is always after our hearts. He wants our full devotion and worship. We should not be surprised when God uses any and every means to turn our hearts back to Him. This might be a season of financial stress or the undoing of our plans. But God, bound to His covenant with us, is committed to us. He will always pursue us, in love, to keep our hearts fully devoted to Him. In what ways have you seen God graciously expose and act against the idols in your life? Have you sought to renounce those idols and daily trust in Him?
Remember what happened to the children of Israel in the wilderness when they made the golden calf image to worship while Moses was on Mount Sinai to fellowship with the Lord?
Exodus 32, "Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So, all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf.
Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” So, when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.” Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”
Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath and relent from this harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ So, the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.
And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.
And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said: “It is not the noise of the shout of victory, nor the noise of the cry of defeat, But the sound of singing I hear.”
So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So, Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it. And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”
So, Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So, they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”
Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’ So, the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said, “Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”
Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”
And the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. Now therefore, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit punishment upon them for their sin.”
So, the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.
Because of their hard heartedness, because of their stiff-neckedness, because they allowed fear and worry to plague their hearts, the children of Israel literally twisted Aaron's arm to make them a god they can see with their own eyes to worship! When you can contain your god into your own understanding, interpretation, and mental capacity, that god is not worthy of your devotion, your praise, or your worship. God is the Great I Am! He said in His Word, "My ways are not your ways. And My thoughts are higher than your thoughts." How can we possibly contain that God? We can't. And we're foolish to even try!
But because they were so faithless, despite all the signs and wonders they saw from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they demanded a god they could see with their own eyes and comprehend with their own intellect! And when God saw this, He was hot with anger and ready to wipe them all out! And would have if Moses had not interceded for them. Let that serve as a reminder to you, that no matter how bad you mess up, you have an Intercessor standing in the gap for you, keeping the fire of God's wrath at bay! His Name is Jesus Christ! But don't think you're going to go unpunished. The children of Israel didn't get away with what they did, why should you? God, the Bible says, plagued them for what they had done! And in the end, God caused the very earth under their feet to open wide and consume them! The difference between them and you is, they never repented. But you still can. Do it! And worship the Lord your God and no other!
