The Ultimate Idol
October 20, 2001
In life, we sometimes talk about what is ‘ultimate’ in many different fields. You might speak of the ultimate ice cream, or the ultimate chocolate. You might have a place, which is, for you, the ultimate restaurant, or have the ultimate dish that you enjoy. You might have an ultimate vacation spot or camping spot. We might think of the ultimate war, as we’re into war these days. At camp, one of some of the campers’ favourite games is called ‘ultimate Frisbee’- they want to play it every year, at least once, much as they like to play soccer in the rain, at least once each camp.
Ultimate speaks of what is the top, the most, the greatest, sometimes the best, but not always.
Today, we’ll consider the ultimate idol. Do you know what it is? Well, we can allow scripture to reveal this to us. What is the top, the greatest, the most, not the best, idol?
Let’s consider, together, 1 Corinthians 10. One subject of this chapter is the ultimate idol!
Paul takes the people back to ancient Israel, in this discussion. I believe something is worth noting, considering that the church at Corinth was composed of both Jews and Gentile Greeks. In the first verse, in speaking about this ancient history, he speaks to the Gentile Greeks, as to the Jewish members of the church about ‘our fathers’. This tells us something about the relevance of the OT to all Christians and that Paul understood this rather clearly. When we enter Christianity, no matter what our paternity or cultural heritage, we enter into the family of the people of God which is a spiritual family back to Christ, but a physical family back before Christ. But it’s all our family. This is just an interesting point it seems to me.
In the first four verses, Paul outlines most incredible experiences that ancient Israel experienced.
They all:
- Were under the cloud- Exod. 13.21- this is the cloud of God’s presence and protection.
- Passed through the sea- Exod. 14. 22- this was an obvious miraculous intervention by God. There was no other answer.
- Were baptized together into Moses, in type, at least, through passing across the Red Sea.
- Ate the same spiritual meat- Exod. 16. 15, 35. God fed them for 40 years- with manna, water, and quail! They ate the food of the angels- one passage speaks of manna as being angels’ food (Ps. 78. 25).
- Drank water that was spiritually and miraculously provided- Exod. 17.6.
Just think of all that these people experienced. Just think of what it would be like to have been there. Have you ever been in some situation where you knew, felt, and experienced the presence of God? How about being in the presence of a miracle of God? What would it have been like to be directly fed, each day, by God, and to know it? Or imagine having seen water given to you as the result of prayer and speaking to a rock! I can’t imagine more tangible evidences of God’s presence and can only imagine that this would be what many of us might call, today ‘mountain-top experiences’! How could it get any better? What more could God do than what He did? Just imagine if this all happened today and you were involved. What would this do to you in your relationship with God? I’m sure I’d be driven to simply basking in the presence of God and would absolutely enjoy God’s presence and His actions expressing love toward me, as well as toward the others that were around me. I know how I’ve enjoyed experiencing God at festival gatherings. Or when surrounded by over 5000 teens at Acquire the Fire 3 years ago. It’s pretty exciting.
But something went wrong. What went wrong?
v. 5 says that most of them ended up dead and not in the Promised Land. This is very sad, when you think about how many people there were. Estimates place the number of Israel who came from Egypt in the range of 2 to 2.5 million- quite a good-sized population- 2/3 the size of our city of Montreal. But only 2- not million- just plain 2 made it to the Promised Land! That’s pretty sad. All those people heard, saw, experienced, ate, and drank in the presence of God, and only 2 made it to the Promised Land. What went wrong?
Well, a number of actions happened that led to God’s condemnation of most of them.
These included:
- Lust- v. 6, Nu. 11.4. They were discontented and they wanted more! They had been with God, but that wasn’t enough. They wanted more. Just the presence and the involvement and the salvation of God were not enough, but they wanted more.
- Idolatry- v. 7, Exod. 32.6. This is called the Great Rebellion by many. Their cry became where is Moses? God? Leaders? God has left us!!
- Fornication- v. 8, Nu. 25. 1, 9. They got all involved with the surrounding people, not to evangelize them but to become like them. They took on the attitudes of the surrounding people and wanted to become just like everyone else.
- Tempted Christ- v. 9, Nu. 21.5. They cried out, ‘why did you bring us here?’ This is the ‘poor us’ cry, as if they got where they were and there was no way to go any further. They were stuck and were just going to die. Well, sadly, they did become self-fulfilling prophets, on this count.
- Murmured- v. 10, Nu. 14.2. Why has God brought us here to die? This was their honest belief it seemed.
Paul declares that all this is written down for us. History isn’t just some dry writing about ancient historical happenings. History is alive and is meant to speak to people today. Paul declares that what happened there is meant to give impressive and important lessons for Christians in Corinth, and here, today. The OT isn’t just lots of paper to make the Bible bigger, but is filled with lesson material for us, today.
He tells us to be careful in verse 12. Don’t be too sure about yourself, and don’t make assumptions that aren’t sound. And he tells us, in a verse that is much too often quoted out of the context, that there are no new situations for us that others haven’t gone through before. Maybe they didn’t go through them successfully, and we need to learn from these. Maybe they did, and we draw strength in the victory of other people.
Then, he makes an interesting command in verse 14. Flee idolatry. Oh! Can you be an idolater? Can I be an idolater? Absolutely! Paul declares that right here.
Let’s go back and look at what happened to Israel, then, from the perspective of idolatry. What Paul declares in verses 6 to 10 is in the context of idolatry. What is idolatry?
Let’s look at one other passage that sheds a bit of light on the subject. Psalm 115 tells us that idols are lifeless. They can’t offer anything of value to us, but can only drain us. Idolatry drains, rather than enlivens. Trusting in idols is vanity and emptiness, as verse 8 declares.
Now, back to what Paul wrote of. He spoke of different situations that came to Israel, including lust, idolatry, fornication, tempting Christ and murmuring. Think about what these require happening, especially in the context of the very obvious presence of God and having seen and known that presence as Israel had. What is necessary is putting self at the centre and becoming completely subjective, rather than living in the objective reality of the truth of God’s presence at the centre. This is what Israel did and this is what Paul warned the Corinthians, and us, about. As soon as we take God from the centre and put anything else there, we enter into idolatry. In reality, as soon as we do this, we put ourselves in the centre, and what becomes important is not what God declares is reality but what we declare to be reality.
Think about it again, and how it’s possible for Christians to enter idolatry.
- Lust- we have been in the presence of God, yet we can want more. We can want more experiences, more gifts, more specialness, more of many things. We can become guilty of lusting just like Israel did. They lived in the presence of God, but that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t good enough for them. They wanted more experiences. Writers commonly write of this as the weakness of charismatic Christianity, for some, because they get into a quest for experiences. Some had to go to Toronto for the Toronto Blessing, but eventually that wore off and they had to go to Orlando, and likely elsewhere, too. Christians can lust, as did Israel, who lived in God’s presence very clearly.
- Idolatry- we are capable of idolizing a way of being, or leadership or leaders. Where is Moses might not be our call today, but we can call out for particular leaders or types of leaders of the past, thus practicing some idolatry. For Israel, their concern was that God had left them because Moses had been gone a long time. Have you heard or spoken this idea that God has left us. God doesn’t work that way. It is a wrong idea and argument. If we insist on leadership in a particular way with particular words and ideas and just like it was in a particular era of our lives or church, then we are entering into clear idolatry, just like Israel.
- Fornication- are you trying to become just like everyone who surrounds you? Are you lowering your Christian values or standards to conform to those who surround you, who are not Christian? If so, then you are practicing fornication, much as did Israel. Are you willing to take on the ideas and approaches of the surrounding world? How about the ideas about church attendance held by so many. Do you believe that you should or can be in irregular attendance, as do so many people around us, who are guilty of the Easter and Christmas approach to attendance at their churches? What about their community responsibilities to one another and the obligation to attend church gatherings in order to stir up others to love and good works? Does God disappear from church for weeks on end in the summer? Why might we? Is this really what God’s values would dictate to us? Or how about the idea that attending church doesn’t matter? Again, let us remember that we come to church to give, not to get. It’s all part of the give way of life, not the get way of life.
- Tempt Christ- have you ever heard anyone, in looking at our church, declare ‘Christ isn’t in it’? How can they say that? How can they declare that? They are tempting Christ and I don’t want to be anywhere near people with that kind of belief system. They have seen Christ at work. For years, we recognized the work of Christ in our church, for instance, but as soon as it takes a direction that some don’t like, they left because they decided that Christ wasn’t in it. Let’s be honest here, and let’s not pretend that scripture doesn’t declare what it does. Like Israel, this approach has people tempting Christ and believing that to hold onto some approaches that Christ doesn’t hold is the right way to go. No it’s not.
- Murmuring- This follows on the heals of the tempting of Christ. We, who are here, can be feeling that Christ has brought us here to ‘fall apart’ and to ‘die’. I don’t believe that we’re supposed to be in a holding pattern. I don’t believe in caretaking pastoring. I believe in growth and that Jesus’ body is a growing body. I believe that is happening, too in many wonderful ways. We are meant to not just survive but to thrive, too.
The ultimate idol is you or me- ourselves! As soon as we take God out of the centre, we put ourselves there because we’re exalting our ideas above those of God. That means we are worshipping ourselves, and that won’t go very far. Paul warns us about this and that we’re not to do this. We’re to be careful, because, like Israel, we can think we can get away with these patterns of living, but Christ, in the end, says we can’t.
As soon as you or I move God out of the centre of the picture, we are in idolatry.
As soon as you or I move God out of the centre of the picture and you or I into to the centre of the picture, we are in idolatry and we have become the idols.
The ultimate idolatry is worship of self, wherein we do not keep God in the centre. Had Israel kept God in the centre, all would have lived into the Promised Land. God didn’t bring them to the wilderness to let them die, but each day revealed His grace as He provided their daily food and drink and shielded them from the heat of the sun and from the bitterness of the cold nights, too. They had no reason to remove God from the centre of their affection.
You and I are destined for a more wonderful Promised Land. God hasn’t brought us to our current places- wildernesses, if you will- to let us die, but each day He reveals His grace as He provides our daily food and drink, fulfilling that line of the Lord’s Prayer about providing our daily needs. God shields us from the heat of the forces that would want to incinerate us spiritually and from the cold nights of separation from God that might be possible, too. We have no reason to remove God from the centre of our affection.
The lesson is there. It’s for us.
Paul concludes this section with a call to consideration.
1 Cor. 10. 15- “I speak as to wise men; judge what I say.”
How do you judge what Paul says? Was he right? Wrong? Do you understand that he is speaking to us? He is speaking to you. There are important lessons to learn from our ancient fathers. May we all learn them and race into the true Promised Land together.
