What I’m about to say is certainly not new. It’s not ground-breaking or revolutionary by any means, and if you’ve been in church for any lengthy period of time or heard a sermon based on any of the Old Testament narrative, from Judges all the way through to the exilic period, chances are it was brought up at least in passing. It’s been on my mind for the last few days though, due to our 1 Samuel study, so here we go.
It’s tempting to read passages such as I Samuel 5-6, 1 Kings 18:20-40, or Exodus 32:1-6, and scoff at the idea of truly believing statues are effective for anything. We – yes, we, 21st century Westerners, Christian or not – have a problem with idolatry. No, we don’t typically have statues or graven images hanging around our house, at least not that I’ve seen, but we definitely have idols.
When life goes sideways, where do you go? We have become rampant self-medicators; it’s not a question of if, but of what method. Where do you turn first to even out the rough edges of life, numb the pain, distract the attention, provide a shield from stress, relax, or just chill out and calm down? Where do you get your sense of worth, identity, and hope for the future? News flash: if it’s alcohol, food, shopping, exercise, crafting, scrolling through memes, Facebook, or Reddit, reading, sports, Netflix, even a good conversation with a friend, professional accolades and accomplishments, a bank balance – the list could go on and on, but I think you get the idea – if we turn to something other than the Lord FIRST, we have a problem.
The New City Catechism defines idolatry as “trusting in created things rather than the Creator for our hope and happiness, significance and security” (question 17). The issue isn’t that we partake in these things. Literally everything I listed above has its place and can be called good. In fact, in many circumstances, they should be called good. But they have about as much lasting effect as Aaron’s golden calf did when the Israelites were led out of Egypt. Psalms 115 and 135 describe them as “the work of human hands”, with unseeing eyes, unhearing ears, and unspeaking mouths — basically worthless. The problem is that so very often, we’ve replaced the Creator of the world with the things He created.
So what do we do? It sounds overly simplistic, and I recognize that it won’t be nearly this easy to carry out in real life, but I do have a thought or two: Pray for the Lord to convict and allow us to see our idolatry for what it is, to show us the path of escape when we’re tempted to run to other things, to give us strength to obey, and to continue to reveal Himself to us.
You have described something that all of us fall prey to. We always seem to look around for help when we are in trouble and forget to look up to the Lord. Just like the lesson from yesterday evening, the Israelites disobeyed the first three commandments and worshiped the ark itself instead of God.
This is timely, well-written, and makes a great point. I could’ve used this in my teaching last Wednesday! Even though sometimes in our circles I think we are too quick to call things”idols” in an equivalent way to the OT context, I do recognize (and am newly convicted) of the similarities of things/people we put before the Lord. I especially want to study and put off greed, “which is idolatry. ” Eph 5:5 and Col 3:5.