Title: “One Final Admonition” Scripture: I John 5:21
Type: Expository/Series Where: GNBC 8/25/24
Intro: A Newsweek article many years ago (1/31/1983) told about how treasure hunters looking to make a huge profit were stealing rare idols from the Hopi Indian reservation. The worst theft happened in 1978, when looters took four ancient stick figures representing the most sacred deities of the Hopi religion. “Without the idols, there could be no Hopi rituals,” the article stated, “and without the rituals, the tribe’s spiritual life was in danger of extinction.” A tribal leader explained that these ceremonies “bring blessings in rainfall, bountiful crops, good health, long life. That is being lost to us.” What a sad description of idolatry! You make up your own gods and then use them to get what you want. The problem is, these gods may be stolen and your way of life is destroyed. If it can be taken from you, it isn’t the true God! Friend, are you following after the God of the Bible or an idol?
Prop: Last verse of I John gives us a final admonition from this letter.
BG: 1. Hope you have enjoyed I John. Wonderful letter by the last living original disciples.
2. Very interesting and somewhat abrupt ending to this pastoral letter. It is such an interesting final statement that I am going to take the entire message to explore this one verse. 3. Are idols a concern in modern Western society? Yes! Should the Christian beware? Absolutely!
Prop: Examine with me the final verse of I John for an applicable admonition.
I. A Definition: What’s an Idol?
A. What’s An Idol?
1. John warns his readers to guard themselves against idols.
a. So, the logical first question one needs to ask is: “What’s an idol?” Idolatry was the most vehemently condemned sin in the OT. (Read Ex. 20:2-3), Dt. 13:6-9 outlines that it is not just “cultural or even comical”. We are not to excuse idolatry today as something that is “part of their culture” or even “comical” to refined and progressive Western elites.
b. Both the 1st and 2nd Commandments are directed against idolatry in every form. You might ask: “Chris, isn’t idolatry an OT thing?” No, it’s not just an OT thing. It’s a NT thing. It’s a 21st Cent. American thing!
2. What is a Biblical/Theological definition of idolatry?
a. What is an idol? It is the thing loved or the person loved more than God, wanted more than God, desired more than God, treasured more than God, enjoyed more than God.
b. Jn. 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Any form of bowing before pictures or statues, even of Jesus or the saints is a violation of biblical worship. Invariably, idolaters make up their own gods to suit their desires and preferences. They do not submit to the God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ through the Bible.
B. Why are We Warned Against Worshipping Idols?
1. Idols aren’t made from scratch. It involves the distortion of already present truth. The truth is changed into a lie. The lie depends upon the truth it is distorting for its power, just as the counterfeit depends upon the authentic for its value. Our idols of God contain truths within them, making them all the more seductive to us. To be sure, God is love. To reduce God to love, however, is to change the truth into a lie, making that image of God an idol.
2. Idols are alluring, appealing, and appalling. How is an idol “alluring”? - powerfully and mysteriously attractive or fascinating; seductive. How is an idol appealing? Idols can certainly be interesting. There can be an attraction simply based on the item being “foreign”. How is an idol appalling? Because it detracts from the true holiness and beauty of God and it enslaves and degrades the worshipper. Illust: When we used to go to Haiti – Plain Du Nord. Voodoo capitol of the nation. Inititates and practitioners get baptized into their religion just outside and around corner from Catholic Church. Tonight many people being baptized. Baptism is public initiation into the Church. Go into the water and come back out. Represents new life in Christ and the cleansing putting one’s faith in Him brings. In PDN Haiti, followers are baptized into a mud pit. Degrading and dirty, just like all false and idolatrous faiths.
C. Applic: An idol can be anything I allow to take the place rightly reserved and the devotion owed to God Almighty, Alone.
II. An Explanation: What is the Text Saying?
A. We need to take a deep dive on what seems to be a pretty simple verse.
1. John has an Axiom of Spiritual Application in this letter.
a. Illust: I haven’t studied Geometry since my high school days. To be really honest, I didn’t enjoy studying geometry. However, when I got older, it interested me how you could prove theorems based on certain axioms. If those axioms were true, the rest followed in logical, step-by-step fashion. You could conclude something with certainty based on the truth of the axioms. In I John, the apostle has been concerned about what we as Christians can know for certain. He began the letter with the certainty of his firsthand, eyewitness testimony of Jesus Christ (1:1-4). In 2:3, he wrote, “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” He writes to the fathers, because they know Him who has been from the beginning (2:13). He writes to the children, because they know the Father (2:14). He says (3:14), “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” An English concordance notes 36 instances of the word know in I John! That’s a lot of confidence!
b. As he concludes the letter, the aged Apostle drives home this theme. He sums up his purpose (5:13), “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” In 5:15, “And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” Now, in the final section, three times again he uses this word, at the beginning of verses 18, 19, 20: “We know… we know… we know….” John wants us to be certain about these important truths. He is still countering the false teachers and their destructive claims of secret knowledge. This secret knowledge was a type of idol. It was not the accurate representation of Jesus Christ.
2. As Christians Who KNOW God’s truth, be warned from idols!
a. Idolatry is making up your own god as a substitute for the one true God, who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. The false teachers were doing just that. They were offering a false god of speculation, not the one true God of revelation. So John’s final words are a warning against adopting the errors of man-made religion.
b. V.20 – John has just mentioned the true God. He has just outlined for the Christian that this is the Father and the Son. He has just reaffirmed that we are in Him. Obviously, John is taking one last slap at the heretics attempting to undermine and infiltrate the Ephesian Church. These men said that “the Christ” came upon the man Jesus at His baptism and left just prior to His crucifixion. They did not believe that Jesus was eternal God in human flesh. They were promoting an idol and John was warning the believers.
B. A
1. This Final Exhortation by the Aged Apostle is based on the Assurances he instructed..
a. It arises from the truth of Christian character. b. The keeping power of Christ (v.18) c. Our personal responsibility to watch out for ourselves.
b. Again, verse 21 seems a bit out of context. But in verse 20 John has just mentioned the true God. This certainly brought the heretics to mind. As we learned 2 weeks ago, they denied the God of the Bible. Saying that “the Christ” came upon the man Jesus at His baptism and left at His crucifixion. They didn’tt believe that He is eternal God in human flesh. In light of their false god, it is natural for John to warn his little children to guard themselves from idols. We may think that this warning had a special application in Ephesus, where John sent this letter. The Temple of Diana (or Artemis) was there and the silversmiths made a good living making statues of this pagan goddess (Acts 19:23-41)
2. The
a. Illust: With a timid voice and adoring eyes, the little boy greeted his father as he returned from work, "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?" The shocked and irritated the father said: "Look, son, not even your mother knows that. Don’t be rude.” I’m tired." "But Daddy, just tell me please!? How much do you make an hour," the boy insisted. The father finally answered “40 dollars per hour." "Okay, Daddy? Could you loan me $10?" the boy asked. The tired and annoyed father yelled: "So that was the reason you asked how much I earn, right?? You want something! Go to sleep and don’t bother me anymore!" It was already dark and the father was meditating on what he had said and was feeling guilty. Maybe I should see what my son needs help buying… “Are you asleep son?" said the father. "No, Daddy. Why?" replied the little boy. "Here’s the money you asked for earlier," the father said. "Thanks, Daddy!" rejoiced the son, while putting his hand under his pillow and removing some money. Now I have enough! Now I have 40 dollars!" the boy said to his father, who was gazing at his son, confused at what his son just said. "Daddy could I buy one hour of your time?" American society has idolatry to work and money. Many more important things.
b. 3 Principles: 1. Every person is serving gods/idols in his life. 2. Every person is transformed into an image of his god/idol. 3. Mankind creates and forms a structure of society in its own image. If we don’t like the world we are living in maybe we need to ask what idols we are serving.
c. Applic: In the text John warns his reader of the necessity to take responsibility to guard selves against the influence and appeal of idols.
III. An Application: What is this Text Saying to Me Today?
A. As Believers in Christ We are to Take What We’ve Learned in this Passage and Make Pertinent Application to our Lives today.
1. What’s an application we can make?
a. There are a number of common ways to say, “goodbye” to someone at the conclusion of a letter, but the Apostle John chose a line that is perhaps a bit more out of the ordinary: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” The command itself isn’t a strange one, but the location seems just a tad out of the ordinary. But as the Holy Spirit directed John’s message, it was what He knew the original readers (and readers today) needed to be left with as a statement of final impact. Maybe we could read “diligently guard against all those things that would prevent you from fulfilling your divine purpose of loving and worshiping God.” The believer must remove idols from his/her life, “passionately, constantly, and ruthlessly.”
b. Think about the 2nd Commandment again, about not making images and not bowing down to them. We might think that, as Christian believers, there’s no danger of us doing that. Illust: Remember, when Moses later came down the mountain, this is exactly what the people who had experienced dramatic salvation from Egypt were actually doing! So, John Calvin was surely right when he wrote in book one of his Institutes of the Christian Religion that our hearts are a perpetual factory of idols. Illust: Judges 17 demonstrates just how wicked and idolatrous the people of Israel had so soon after entering the promised land. In a very bizarre story a man named Micah steals money from his mother and then returns it and in her joy to receive the money she dedicates a portion of it to make idols for her house! So she makes these idols for the house and Micah, an Ephraimite, chooses one of his sons to essential be the family priest over this pagan shrine until one day a Levite wanders by and Micah hires him to replace his son. Chapter 18 600 warriors from Dan come and take the priest and Micah’s silver idols. Micah protests but they threaten to kill him. Well the Levite is likes the higher cotton and ditches Micah and goes with the 600! One of the most pitiful verse in Bible Judges 18:24 “24 He replied, “You took the gods I made, and my priest, and went away. What else do I have?” How foolish…Micah, and every one of us who trusts in idols, deities that can be taken from you are no deity at all.
2. What do we need to remember?
a. Idolatry is neither culturally restricted nor is it something to be mocked or presumed to be comical. We are never to participate in anything that opens us to the occult. It has become quite common today for role playing games to include Norse, Hindu, or other pagan deities. I would argue that the Christian should have absolutely NOTHING to do with this. Pagan statuary, tribal masks, fetishes, etc.
b. Illust: Good and even godly things can become idols. In II Ki. 18:4 we read of the account of the early days of the reign of King Hezekiah. (Read v. 4) Removed high places-check, smashed sacred stones-check, cut down Asherah poles – check. Cut up…WHAT! Go back to Num. 21 – Exodus of Israel – grumbling against God and Moses near Edom. Ungrateful for God’s provision. God sends stinging serpents. Many people die. Moses is told by God to create a bronze serpent and lift up on a pole. Those who are bitten who look by faith will live. (v.9). In talking to Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus compares His ministry to that of Moses’ bronze serpent in bringing salvation to those bitten by sin. Yet, even some object, encouraged by God for the purpose of healing and salvation, was in time turned into an object of veneration.
B. Why are We To Keep ourselves from Idols today?
1. Because we are just as susceptible today as believers were in John’s day.
a. It’s so very easy to exchange the real for the illusory. It’s so very easy to worship the creation rather than the Creator. Let’s go back to my previous definition of idolatry: “What is an idol? Well, it is the thing. It is the thing loved or the person loved more than God, wanted more than God, desired more than God, treasured more than God, enjoyed more than God.”
b. Illust: If this is an accurate definition then just about anything can become idolatry: your health, wealth, retirement, relationships, grades, career, family, hobbies, musical group, sports hero, sport, our political ideology, our national identity, basically, we can make an idol out of anything.
2. What could be a greater insult to the holy God than for His image bearers to exchange His glory for the worship of created things?
a. Idolatry in all forms is still a sin today.
b. Illust: RC Sproul once by this astute observation: Think of it this way, What if my wife wanted a mink coat but I didn’t have the money for one? But I love my wife and so I want to get her a mink coat.- I scrape and save and work, do menial tasks and degrade myself and do everything else. I work myself to the bone trying to save enough money for that mink coat. Finally I buy the coat! I am pleased with myself and decide to present it to her on Christmas morning. And she says, “That is beautiful.” Immediately she takes that mink coat and she goes to the garbage dump and throws it in the banana peels and the rinds from oranges and the tomatoes and the rotten eggs! Then she roots down into the garbage and finds the dirtiest, smelliest, crummiest, rottenness, putrid, rancid rags she can find and wraps them all around herself and comes home and says, “Look at my new coat.” She went in and exchanged the coat for these rags. I would call a doctor…or an exorcist! But you see that’s a poor analogy, because the difference in glory between rags and a mink coat is infinitesimal, in comparison, in glory between a totem pole and the God who made heaven and earth. But this is what man does. He takes the truth of God and exchanges it for a lie. He takes the glory of the incorruptible God and exchanges it for the corruptible things like men, and buildings, machines, and all the rest—idols. And we sit around and think that God is pleased by all that. “Okay, at least they’re worshiping something.” No! Do you see that the fact that men are religious at this point, and have religion but it only compounds the offense!”
C. Applic: What’s greatest defense against idolatry? Love Jesus Christ with all your heart, soul, strength, mind!
