Thank you for joining me back here for the last in this series of posts about idols in our lives.
Biblically speaking, there’s something especially wicked about the sovereignty of self. The prophet Jeremiah was told by the LORD in Jeremiah 16: 10 - 12,
“And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me.”
In essence, God says, “You’ve made your own heart the idol!” The warning to Israel here should cause Believers today who submit to the authority of their feelings to tremble. In God’s eyes, what’s worse than bowing down before a golden calf, or lighting incense to an image of Buddha is when we follow our own stubborn hearts and refuse to listen to God’s word.
How do we challenge the self-idolization that is prevalent in modern society, and even in the church today? We begin by looking outside of ourselves to the God who emptied Himself. In Philippians 2: 5 – 8, Paul writes:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
By laying down his life, Jesus paid for our idolatry and taught us to lay our lives down instead of worshipping them.
When morality and religious belief are founded on our feelings, they become unstable. We find ourselves needing others to affirm our “truth” or feelings in order to give us assurance.
In contrast, when we trust in the Lord’s sovereign power, we’re free from the fickle, ever-shifting tyranny of self.
I don’t know if this message has been as hard for you to hear as it was for me when I started exploring this topic? I realised that Satan has deceived many Believers: He wants us to think the word “idol” doesn’t apply to us, that idolatry was just something Assyrians and bad Israelite kings did.
But in reality, idolatry is an easy trap to fall in to for all of us.
And in preparing this message, I realised that the unearthing of idols is (thankfully) part of God’s plan. And sometimes, He has to use times of pain and loss to topple our idols, and bring us to a point of self-examination, so that we can more clearly see the misplaced objects of trust that surface when the layers of self and self-sufficiency are peeled back.
The things we idolize aren’t always sinful in and of themselves. In fact, they’re often good things which have been given as gifts from God. The problem comes when we forget the Giver and instead worship the gift. When we expect a gift or a resource to function as our god rather than enjoying it with gratitude toward God, we twist its purpose and the good gift turns rotten.
We need to prioritise our wants and desires in the right order, keeping God Himself and knowing Him as our greatest desire, so that we can say with the Psalmist in Psalm 42 verses 1 - 2:
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
I hope that today has reminded you, as it has me, that God the Father is the only One worthy of worship, the only One able to fulfill our deepest needs and grant us the joy and peace we seek.
God is omniscient, meaning He knows everything, including the fact that we will never find true fulfillment apart from worshipping Him. That is why He is continually calling out—through the law and the prophets and the gospels and the epistles alike—that He is better than any idol we could possibly devise. We will find salvation and true satisfaction in no one else.
Idols, whether physical or intangible, will passively receive our love and worship, but they will never give back, nor do they have any power to save their worshippers. They are an addiction, not a relationship.
But God is dynamic and relational, showing steadfast love and giving Himself for those who seek Him and powerfully helping them in their times of need when they cry out to Him (Hebrews 4:14-16).
Micah 7: 7 – 8 says:
As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me. 8 Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.
Let us be true worshipers of the Living God, by entrusting Him fully with our past, our present, and our future, knowing that He is our true Source of all we have and all we need.
Prayer:
Father, I pray that the Holy Spirit will shine a spotlight on each of our hearts this morning, to clearly show us if there is anything in them that we are treating as more important than You. Please highlight for each one of us if there is anything that absorbs our hearts and imaginations more than You, Lord, and anything that we run after to give us what only God can give.
I pray that we would keep ourselves from idols and instead delight our souls in the worship of the creating, giving God whose love for us is the only thing that will satisfy our souls.
Psalm 96 tells us:
For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
Let us keep ourselves free from anything that tries to take Your place in our lives, Lord, and by the power of the Holy Spirit help us to topple those idols that have been identified in our lives today.
Thank You, Lord, that when we knock down the idols we were following, we can rest in our true identity as Your beloved children. In this place of identity we will find true security, and we will no longer need to draw significance and value from successes or achievements, or to feel inferior because of failures and difficulties, or what we think we lack. When our worship is for You only, Lord, we are able to stop fretting and struggling, and instead we enter and stay in God’s rest with our past, present, and future secure in His loving hands.
In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen