Theology Thursday: Idols of the Heart

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's question:
What does the Bible mean by “idolatry”? What does it mean today?

Pastor Brady's thoughts:
“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they
gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this
fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your
daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”

So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus. 32:1-4)

Of all the sins mentioned in the Bible, idolatry is the one warned against the most. Constructing and worshipping false and fake “gods” is what the one true God most wants his people to avoid; faithfulness to him means fealty to and loyalty to and obedience of and trust in him alone.

For the ancient peoples we read about in scripture, "idolatry" often meant crafting and venerating literal idols - wooden or stone figures made in the image of some being thought to hold spiritual power. For the creator of the universe - Yahweh God - this was a no-no.

The instructions God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai - what we call the 10 commandments, found in Exodus chapter 20 - begin like this:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them…”

Many other places in the biblical writings present a consistent message on this:

Dear children, keep yourself from idols. (1st John 5:21)

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:21-23)

“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” (Jonah 2:8-9)

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. (1st Corinthians 10:14)

Habakkuk 2:18, Galatians 4:8-9 and 5:19-21, Isaiah 44:9-20, and dozens of other passages across scripture echo a similar, definitive statement: if you want to belong to God, all the others gotta go.

Today - in our culture at least - we don’t deal too much with literal, physical idols. But we do “worship” - with our allegiances, our prioritizations, our resources, our emotional attachments - other things before and above God.

One Christian author writes:


Our Jesus made this crystal clear for us when he said we cannot serve two masters. He was talking specifically about the idol of greed and wealth accumulation, but the logic holds for anything else we sinfully elevate above our relationship and worship of God: food, alcohol and other mind/mood-altering substances, status, ego, physical attractiveness (vanity), politics, and any number of other things.

But, while the warnings in Exodus and throughout much of the Old Testament were about physical idolatrous images, before the New Testament was completed there was already a recognition that idolatry wasn’t limited to worshiping carvings or sculptures, but all things that draw our fidelity away from God. The Apostle Paul, writing in Colossians chapter 3, tells the church to “put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature,” and then says “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed” are idolatry.

It’s important to recognize that idols are not necessarily inherently bad things, but can be good things gone bad; good things that we misuse or use too much or distort to turn them from God-honoring to God-dishonoring. God created food, sex, the means to earn financial compensation - and all of these are good things, when we have properly ordered them in our lives and use them as he designed.

Pastor and author Tim Keller said:


Idols are good things made into ultimate things. Idols are things we have made gods in our lives, but they cannot satisfy or save.

How can you tell if something has become an idol in your life? Here’s some questions to ponder:

What do you think about when you first wake up in the morning? What do you think about when you lie down at the end of the day? What are the prevailing desires of your heart? Where is the majority of your mental capacity focused on a regular basis, and is it aimed at your own glory or at God’s?

If something besides your relationship with God has taken hold of your heart and you have ceded some control of your desires, your impulses, and your devotion to it, it is probably an idol.  

C.S. Lewis said, “Our problem is not that we want too much, it’s that we’re satisfied with too little.”

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.

TO KNOW GOD AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.