Make No Idols

 I am insanely grateful that I get to preach these types of messages in this church. This type of preaching, where we take our time to truly unpack what God's word means, is increasingly rare. We believe it's essential when we gather in this place; we gather to worship and partake of the preaching of the Word.

Worship, if I could summarize it, is, I would just rob the Apostle Paul's words in Romans 12:1-2. "By the mercies of God, we present our bodies, a living sacrifice, pleasing to God, which is our spiritual service, our worship. Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable, or pleasing and perfect." 

God has given you so many things that you do not deserve: love, grace, both everlasting. He's given you the gift of the Holy Spirit burning inside you. He's given you peace, joy, eternal saving faith. He's giving you strength and wisdom, hope, kindness, patience, comfort, glory, security, forgiveness, sanctification, freedom, liberty. Now, I'm just whipping out synonyms, but you hear what I'm saying? These are momentous gifts, gifts which we could never repay Him for, and we're not meant to. So, in response, what do we do? We offer ourselves up in praise and thanksgiving. We present our bodies as a living sacrifice, giving all of ourselves to Him. We cleanse our minds of the world's wisdom and put on the mind of Christ. True wisdom comes from God, not from the pontifications of the world, to re-use a fun word.

I think a problem in our churches is that we worship, but we worship incorrectly. We worship, but it's not God-centered worship. American Christian are not living sacrifices, laying themselves down on the altar that God be glorified above all. Instead, we’ve synergized American consumerism and baptized it with an unhealthy dose of charismatic flair and we call it glorious. Meanwhile, the putrid stench of our worship makes God wretch. 

 Yes, I am starting off dramatically today. We mistakenly believe ourselves to live in uber-enlightened times just because we’ve left these commands back in the ancient world. We don’t make images! We don’t worship idols of animals or otherwise! Why do I care about this command? Because God cares about it. His 2nd word reveals something about Himself to you and also reveals something within yourself. 

Sure, we may not physically make graven images. I don't have a statue to a Greek god, Roman god, or any pagan god of any description. But does that mean this command is constrained to a different culture for a different time? Or is it for all Christians today, as, even in the New Testament, we are being advised as Christians to be on guard from idols. First John 5:21 says, "Little children, guard yourself from idols." The New Living Translation gives some valuable insight into the meaning of the text. It says, "Keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts." Believe it or not, the Message paraphrase even has a little bit of insight: "Be on guard against all clever facsimiles." An idol is anything that might take God's place in your heart, a clever facsimile, something that is trying to stand as a picture of God but is not God, and God, when it comes to worshiping Him, is a jealous God. He wants you to worship Him alone. Copies will never do.

To continue from last week's sermon (consider this the “part 2” if you will), if we're talking about the first command, which says you shall have no other gods before Me, and now we talk about the second command, "Do not make idols," we see two sides of the same coin. Last week, it was about who you worship; this week, we explore how you worship. To state this simple truth: it's not enough to have the right God;  you need to worship Him in the right way. Just because you've given Him your undivided allegiance does not mean you can't offer up unadulterated worship. Who we worship last week, how we worship this week.

When My Desires Are Greater Than God’s Desires

The logical progression of the commands is obvious. First, God says, "Have no other gods before Me." Then, in an act of clarification, He says not to make graven images or idols. To worship something; to attempt to worship God through something which is inanimate, is offensive to the Almighty. Quoting Tim Keller again, when we pause and ask what an idol is, we realize that it is "anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give what only God can give. A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your life that should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living."

And, as I said last week, we started to create a list. Is there anything in my life that I can't live without? I could make a lot of jokes here, like air conditioning. This summer was a scorcher. I had air conditioners in this house blasting all summer long, and I couldn't get it below 74 degrees. First world problems, am I right? I don't think I could make it without white chocolate macadamia nut cookies in my life. My heart would be a little poorer for their absence. Haha, it's all very funny, but such humor masks a very serious consideration that we don't like to consider.

There are things in your life that, if God were to take them away, would devastate you. I spoke recently to someone who held a pretty staunch theological opinion. You meet these people a lot in church, especially in reformed circles; for some reason, they have many extremely specific opinions about theology. Hearing how much they cared about what was honestly a minute tertiary theological opinion, I asked them one simple question. I asked, more or less, "Can God take this away from you? If God were to reveal in some way that this is not the correct opinion, would you change your mind?" The point of my exercise wasn't to try and demolish their argument, but the point was to get them to consider whether or not their argument had become an idol. And gaging their reaction, you could tell that they had. It was a matter of life and death that this theological opinion was true. 

And there it is. That's why we might harbor idols even right now in this room because we desperately crave certain things to be true. So we sanitize them, cover them up, and point to them, saying, "God has blessed this thing in my life; how could He ever take it away from me?" If God is not allowed to take it away from you, then it is an idol. If God is not allowed to rip that relationship out of your life, it's an idol. If God is not allowed to disrupt that career, it is an idol. If God is not allowed to unseat that opinion, to undo that train of thinking, that way your mind works, if He's not allowed to undo it, you might have an idol. 

For some of you, maybe your spouse is an idol. For some of you, your jobs are your idols. And I get it, we live in a culture that's obsessed with idols. No, we don't have graven images on every street corner like in some cultures, but it's blatant idolatry nonetheless. We set up celebrities that we look up to and idolize, and we become obsessed with their lives. Rather than being consumed with the Father above, we make an idol out of our statuses in social media. In the realm of social media, it's more important how many clicks we get than whether or not the name of God is glorified.

Even in the church! I spoke with a man a couple months ago who professes to be a Christian, but he only listens to this one particular preacher, this self-proclaimed prophet. He says, "I don't trust anyone else with the words they speak. I listen to only this man because I think only he's gotten it right." Already, we've got a lot of logical fallacies stacking up on top of each other. But let me look at this guy, and what a surprise, a false teacher. I know, I was shocked, just flabbergasted. "Oh, your guy that you follow is the one solitary guy that's gotten it right? No one else has gotten it right? Ever? Anywhere?"

Guys like that is why I have a whole series on false teachers, available on my website right now. 

But when I shared this information, the individual I was sharing it with said, "I'm not going to stop following this guy." Idolatry can even happen in the church, even in the church. The minute that you put God second, the minute you see something that contradicts His Word and you decide to elevate it in your heart regardless, the minute that God says, "Don't do something or don't idolize something, don't worship via a particular means," and you go and do it anyways, you have an idol; you've fallen into the trap of crafting and worshiping an idol.

The moment you desire something to be true or what someone preaches as the truth more than you desire what God declares is true, idolatry.  A wonderful test for whether or not you have an idol is whether or not God’s desires are capable of overwhelming your desires. Hear me, I’m not saying God doesn’t want you to have desires. I’m asking you to self-evaluate as to whether or not your desires align with his. And, if that’s not the case, why are you allowing a contrary desire to persist?

Your Idols Are Already Dead

And here's what's crazy. An idol does not give life. It can't; it's physically incapable. You breathe life into your idols. Celebrities only stay up on their platforms because people keep them there. Preachers get to stay preaching because people idolize them; they give them the power; they finance their ministries. The only reason that an idol gets to have a hold of your heart is because your heart beats blood into its veins. 

The irony of God commanding us to kill our idols is that they’re already dead. Our choice continues to be between the living God, who needs nothing from us, and our idols, who need everything from us to remain alive. Weighing my options, I choose the God that doesn’t require me to sustain him. To quote John Stott from his commentary on 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, "Idols are dead; God is living. Idols are false; God is true. Idols are many; God is one. Idols are visible and tangible; God is invisible and intangible. Idols are creatures, the work of human hands; God is the creator of the universe and all humankind."

 What is an idol? It is something that is dead, something that speaks untrue, something that exists via the work of our hands. They are creations of our own designs; they are gods that we have invented and then worshiped. While the true God, the living God, the creator God, is waiting and watching and wants our devotion.

This is the situation Paul describes in Acts 17. He walks around the city of Athens and is distraught because he sees the city full of idols. And one day while standing in the midst of the leaders of the city, Paul says, in these words that echo the Second Commandment in verses 23 through 24, "I've seen the objects of your worship; I see you've got many gods. I see you're hedging your bets, and you're so close to the truth because I also saw an altar with this inscription that said to an unknown god. What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you, the God who has made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth."

God is known, and we have assurance of this through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So, we don't need to chase after idols; we don't need to invent idols; we don't need to worship counterfeit gods. The one true God, who is alive, has revealed Himself to us in Jesus.

I’ve got three antidotes today to the poison of idolatry. I trust you’ll be able to put these insanely simple and applicable principles and apply them to your own lives.

What Do Our Churches Reflect?

A major concern of mine with many churches in America today is the presence of idolatry, the elevation of uber-charismatic individuals to massive platforms, as opposed to fidelity to what the Bible says biblical qualifications are. Prosperity gospel serves as a nice big fat, juicy target for my ire. Let's champion numbers and say that we are successful and growing the kingdom of God, despite the fact that we've done a pretty good job of recruiting consumers of a product and a terrible job of making disciples. Let's champion the fact that we've got lavish expenditures and big buildings, but we're not actually succeeding in the mission that has been set before us, to take care of the needs of the people.

I can already hear the backlash that I would receive from any individuals who reside in these camps: “but look at the fruit. Look at all we've accomplished,” they might say. “Isn't this a miracle?” Friends,  just because it's an idol does not mean that you can't make something happen through it. But counterfeit gods create counterfeit miracles. Full stop. We are consumed with outward appearances. If it looks successful, if it seems to be working, if it's growing the coffers and putting butts in the pews, then it works, right? If it's making people happy, it's working, right? {SLIDE] I wonder if we got so wrapped up in growing churches at any cost that we forgot to ask what or who our churches truly reflect?

There's an idol that I had to crush in my own heart as a preacher. I was so concerned with whether or not the people listening to me were happy that I didn't ever give time to the thought that maybe your happiness is less important than you hearing the convicting words of the Holy Spirit flowing in your veins. Maybe you need to be unhappy for a little bit so that God can bring you into better things. Just a thought.

But if God were consumed with outward appearances, if that was the ultimate test for whether or not something was blessed by Him, then He would have made so clear in His word. But over and over again, we see that He does not look at any of that but looks at the heart. Jesus himself was not attractive outwardly, but inwardly, He was an undiminished image bearer, described plainly in Isaiah 53:2: “He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him,no appearance that we should desire him.”

Amazing that the Savior of the world had an unassuming outward appearance. But it points to a problem that we have, and that is we are consumed with worshiping images. What's on that screen you scroll through, if not images? What is that ideal you wish to reach if not an image?

What Do We Reflect?

But you are not created to worship images; you are created to be an image bearer. You were created to reflect the image of God into the world. Did you know that Genesis 1:26-27 says, "Let us make humanity in our image, according to our likeness, let them have dominion"? You were created to reflect God's glory into creation.

When you get up in the morning, you probably look in the mirror. For many of us, it's a sad moment in our day, and we're only hoping that it doesn't go downhill from there. What does the mirror reflect? That's who you are. You are a reflection. You were built to reflect. The question is, are you going to reflect something that you can build with your own hands, that you elevate with your own efforts, or are you going to reflect God? That the first antidote to idolatry:  Focus on reflecting Christ more than reflecting yourself. I've got three of these, this will be the first.

This is where we're going wrong in churches all over the country right now, not reflecting Jesus, but reflecting themselves, setting up images and idols that mediate in between God and the people, when the ultimate mediator has already come in the form of Christ, mediating on our behalf right now.

I think, don't get me wrong, I think we do need to be artistic. I think we do need to have worship ministries that write beautiful songs to glorify the Lord; God has created, and I think He wants that creativity to flow in us. But it can be idolatry if we're not careful. We can follow God as the only God, and yet we can worship Him in the wrong way.

You have people come into these grand cathedrals, and they go, "When I'm here, I feel God's presence." It's an image. God's not constrained by time or space. Just because you're in an ornate building does not mean that suddenly you've stepped into the presence of God. God was with you your entire week, for the good and the bad. That's proper theology that sets you in the mindset of proper worship.

You get worship leaders; they step to the stage, and in their day, they're just doing what they've seen popular worship leaders do, what their popular idols do. "Come on, everybody. Let's just welcome God into our midst. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here. We usher in your presence." And you're just sitting there cringing because you read your Bible, and you're like, "That is wrong. He was already here to begin with."

But we've gotten too comfortable in our idolatry; we've gotten too comfortable worshiping created things over the Creator. We've gotten too comfortable with thinking that we can only express our worship in very myopic ways when God has gifted us with a beautifully creative mind that can explode in wonder across the canvas of His creation.

 Worship is not just singing songs. You hear me? As a person with a heart of a worship leader, I love writing worship songs, I love worshiping, I love singing, I love smashing drums to God's glory. And it breaks my heart to say that it's not just singing songs. Anything that you do in life that puts God at the center becomes worship. You can worship in your job, your marriage, your sex life, raising your kids, your finances, your art, your relationships. You sitting here right now and listening to me, that's an active worship. It's active worship. Every experience in your life is an opportunity for worship.

I said it in the beginning, but I'll say it again. I am really grateful to have the opportunity to preach like this to you guys because faith comes from hearing the word. Anything less or more has the potential for adulterated worship. God wants our unadulterated worship. I'll never apologize for preaching long. We need the word, the sermons are long because the book is worth the length. Furthermore, I think God is glorified more with our hearts honoring his word and less with a visually or auditory display of extravagance.

Let me pick on the prosperity gospel for a little longer. The Bible clearly states that wealth is a potentially dangerous idol. Yet, we see so many people spend their whole lives chasing the almighty dollar and yet never being satisfied by it. We still bend over backward to venerate the almighty dollar as something God wants us to have. We go right ahead and make God into a benign, benevolent form of American late-stage consumerism. "If I give enough money, God will give back to me. More money, more kingdom growth." If we could have bigger events, bigger productions, more talented speakers, then we can grow God's kingdom through money. If our finances are tight, we might say, "This must be because I have a lack of faith." Or if your bank account is full, you might think it's because I have faith in the Lord, and it pleased Him. It's idolatry, a palatable version of the lies the world sells, pushed through the filter of Yahweh. Again I'll ask, are we reflecting Christ or are we reflecting ourselves?

The Idol of Self

The greatest of all idols in today's age, if I can speak candidly, is the idolatry of self. The attitude of the age preaches: "you need to love yourself. Be yourself because everyone else has taken. The best thing you can be is you." I've had a whole series on why that is killing us, and I won't rest until I have said to every person possible that loving yourself is a surefire way to kill yourself. We're loving ourselves to death. We were created to worship the divine, and yet we settle for the mundane or even the profane.

Do you understand the radical implications of this command? Don't make an image. Don't bow and serve images. In many churches, certain liturgical practices are forbidden. Yet we lie to ourselves: "It doesn't matter if you're doing worship as you wish, as long as your heart is in the right place." Good intentions don't purify bad actions. Yet that's what we do: "Worship in your way. Worship the way you like." I'm here to say, maybe you're wrong. Maybe your heart wants something that it doesn't need. Maybe you're loving yourself to death.

There are certain places in Christianity that worship images instead of worshiping God. The Catholic Church springs to mind again. I know there are faithful Catholics who love Jesus, who've given themselves over to Him as Savior. But it does not make the danger any lesser. They know that the images of their saints, the images of God, their churches, these aren't God. They know it's just a representation, just to push them to the idea. But God wants you to think deeper than that. To say, "I am not served by you when you serve an image of me. I'm not honored by you when you give honor to a pale likeness."

Images, graven images, force us to chase after God in all the wrong places. Idolatry is fundamentally dehumanizing, trading the living image for something that needs your life to sustain it. It needs you to feed it, to venerate it, to elevate it, to take care of it, to make sure that it has life. And sadistically, these gods will never be satisfied because they're mute, blind, dumb.

It's a tragic condition of humanity, but yet we do it over and over and over again. Romans 1:18-25 describes it perfectly. 

"For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. 

Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever."

Worship belongs to the creator, and yet our worship becomes worship of the created.  The 2nd antidote to idolatry then becomes to practice differentiating the creator from the creation. Don't confuse the creator with his creation, or else you will follow your sinful fathers into destruction. That's what the text in exodus clearly states. You follow in the same patterns of the sinful people that came before them, you will end up destroying yourself. Break away from that. Avoid infusing created things with divine imminence. 

And this doesn't mean throw away your nativities or anything like that. Laura has a painting of Jesus flipping the tables somewhere in here. Do you think I'm about to throw that in the garbage, man? I'm not. It's a wonderful painting. But I don't worship that painting not through that painting. I don't look at that image and say that is the image of Christ. I don't venerate it. I say here is an art piece, and it's a good god-honoring created art piece.

"Well, this is just an object for good veneration," some might argue. Imagine if the Israelites said the same thing about the golden calf, what do you think God's response would be?

Aaron, in Exodus 32, where we see the creation of the golden calf, incidentally created from melted gold, gold that was collected for the Egyptians and meant to create God's temple. Aaron seems to say, "Give the people what they want." He makes a representation of God that the people can venerate. What is the result? Righteous fury. 

I don't intend to make the same mistake as the Israelites. As your pastor, I know there are felt needs and actual needs. I'm interested in giving you the latter. People have left because of that stance. At first it hurt, then it infuriated me, because I think it infuriates God. You are choosing an idol over him? That's a bold choice. Choosing something you must sustain over the God who sustains? Couldn't be me bro.

But that's what you get when you refuse to lay down yourself and consider that God wants you to worship him in a way you may not currently worship him or even desire to worship him. What will win the victory for your heart? Your desires or God's?

Where Are Your Affections? 

 The third antidote to idolatry is to check where your affections are pointed. 

Feel like I'm flogging a dead horse with this at this point, but let me pull this quote from Ken Sande, author of "The Peacemaker": 

"Most of us think of an idol as a statue of wood, stone, or metal worshiped by pagans. But the concept of idolatry is much broader and far more personal than that. An idol is anything apart from God that we depend on to be happy, fulfilled, or secure. In biblical terms, it is something other than God that we set our hearts on, that motivates us, that masters and rules us, or that we trust, fear, serve, and, in short, is something we love and pursue more than God."

God designed us to be creatures of worship, and it's inevitable that we will worship something. Whether our worship is rightly placed or not depends on our relationship with God.

So, the challenge this week, as you go home and think about whether or not there are idols in your life, is to evaluate a few things in your life. First, where is your focus? Are you looking to reflect yourself, others, idols, or do you look to Jesus to reflect Jesus? A good way to evaluate this is to look at your time, talents, and treasures. Where do all of these go? Where do you apply these the most? In church or elsewhere? In building God's kingdom or in building yours?

The temptation, when thinking about the possibility of worshiping idols, is to wave away any sort of conviction on the matter as inherently a non-issue. To say things like, "Well, who does it hurt really? It doesn't hurt anyone that I have this idol in my heart. I've got room in my heart for both God and this idol." Which, as I said last week, is a quick way for your heart to be torn asunder.

Furthermore, without even realizing it, your choices of how you worship can affect everyone around you long after the initial decision has taken place. Your idol worship might be hurting someone else, someone close to you, someone in the church that needs you, someone who isn't in the church who needs you. Just something to think about.

But more importantly, as the text says, God is a jealous God. His jealousy should not be understood as sinful jealousy but as a protective, exclusive love, like in a healthy marriage. If you are in a healthy marriage, then you desire the undivided commitment of your spouse. God's jealous love was ultimately expressed in Jesus's sacrificial death on the cross, His great love for us, stopping at nothing to pay the price necessary for us to be able to belong to Him and Him alone. So yes, He's a jealous God. He's righteously angry when your worship is adulterous. And I use that word deliberately because if you bow or serve an image, if you make unto yourself an image, if you participate in a worship of idols, if you worship God in the wrong way, you're basically committing spiritual adultery.

 Imagine if I come home into my house, and there's some dude chilling on my couch. I go, "Hey, man. Who are you?" "Oh, I'm Carl." "Hi, Carl. What are you doing in my house?" "Oh, I live here now." "Well, that's news to me, Carl." "Well, you see, Laura has decided she has room in her heart for both you and me, so I'm also her husband now. I'll just wander, you know, I'm cool being in whatever place in the house, whatever room in this shared living arrangement. Would you prefer this room? I could take the couch; we can maybe take turns sharing the bed. I mean, it's really up to you. Where would you like me?" "Uh, frankly, Carl, I would like you at the end of my boot. That's where I would like you."

If your heart is a home and God is meant to make a home in your heart, what does that say about your relationship with God when you're welcoming an idol into your heart? Well, I'm not cheating; there's no one else but you, but there is someone else.

Or imagine you're never at home, and you're never showing affection to your spouse the way you used to before you were married. You're not holding them, loving them, serving them the way that you used to. You think that you're doing perfectly okay as far as the marriage is concerned, but the marriage is becoming strained. Why? Because maybe you're "loving" them, but you're not loving them the way they want to be loved, giving them the right way. Just because you show up to church a couple of Sundays out of the year, just because you read your Bible, just because you offer up occasional prayers, just because you do often the bare minimum, if I can be very plain, does not mean your relationship with God is all hunky-dory.

So, I'm asking you this week, if you would evaluate your heart prayerfully, look at your heart and ask if there are any idols in there that you might be ignoring. And last but not least, to conclude, stop worshiping graven images. Instead, let God engrave His law on your hearts.

There are so many things in this world trying to steal your affections and attention. There are so many ways you could say, "This is worship, this is me worshiping." But there are so many ways to get it wrong. I hope that you understand, for the sake of this church and for the sake of your life in Christ, that you understand above all else, God loves you. Your worship to God is not because He needs it. It's not because He's forcing you to do it because He's clearly not. It's not because He's a cruel God who demands sacrifice yet is never sated for He has need of nothing. And if He has need of nothing, then that means proper worship to Him must not be for His sake but for ours, for our sake.

So, my question is this: Do you want what is best for your life, for God's people, for your marriage, for your future kids, for every aspect of your life? It starts with worshiping the correct way. And sometimes, to worship the correct way, we need to smash our idols. I can't wait to hear what that looks like in your lives in the coming weeks.

Let's pray.