Destructive Images
By Zach Chronley
Exodus 20:1-4
“And God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’”
Idolatry
When the Israelites reached Mount Sinai the biblical narrative slows down to a glacial pace. Adam, Noah, Abraham only receive a few pages at most, but then God entering a covenant with the Israelites becomes the focal point of the largest number of pages per event in the entire Bible. This is meant to grab your attention. The Bible is trying to communicate something very important.
When God begins, he does so by warning his people from chasing after false gods. He reminds them of their time in Egypt, the land of slavery, because idols are a symbol of any passion that enslaves those who follow them. In our culture today, so many things are constantly trying to enslave us. Just about everything on a smartphone was developed with dopamine release in mind. But idolatry runs even deeper.
As our church continues to work through having difficult conversations related to the kingdom of God, we’re going to spend the next few weeks looking at idolatry and how when we subtly allow ourselves to become more and more invested in idols, they begin to erode the spirituality of our lives. Before we know it, we’re left feeling empty and unsure of how we got here.
Evils of Idolatry
Part of the reason idols are so destructive is that God has actually already created an image on earth to display his rule authority: humanity. In the garden of Eden, God created man to be his image-bearers on the earth, to rule and cultivate the earth in a way that displays his love and power over all creation. This is humanity’s purpose as given by God, to bear the image of his love while connected to his presence, but humanity rebelled, and our relationship was fractured.
Jesus then revealed more fully the character and love of God and then re-sends a restored humanity out to image-bear the love and power that Jesus himself displayed on the cross. Being a member of God’s kingdom means following King Jesus as the new humanity. We’re called to be a people that are set apart, no longer by ceremonial washings or eating customs, but through a Spirit-filled character that loves others supernaturally. As God’s people, our greatest apologetic is the love that we have for one another.
Sacrifice
An idol is the physical manifestation of anything we desire so strongly, that we sacrifice and spend our lives worshipping it. Anything can be an idol because human beings can worship anything. We can spend our whole lives chasing after success, to the point where we destroy (or sacrifice) our close relationships in order to achieve what we’re chasing. If you want to know what it is we idolize, we can always look at who or what we are serving.
To turn and worship idols dishonors God, but it also makes us less than human. As Psalm 115:4-8 says, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”
Hope compartmentation
Idols steal our hope. When we talk about idols, it’s important to pay attention to where we find ourselves placing our hopes. Right now, in America, many are placing their hopes in the November election. You may not love either candidate, but if you think the election of a specific candidate spells the doom or downfall of our way of life, the end of our country, or our prosperity, then that is a good indication that you have placed more hope in this election than you realized.
We need to continually pay attention to where we are placing our hope because our hope is always connected to our actions. Everything we do in some way follows our hopes. We attend college because we hope it will lead us into a career. We send our children to better schools in the hope that it will give them a better future. We vote because we hope our candidate will uphold our values or make necessary changes.
And our actions can lead others to follow us into hoping for the same things we value. The culture is always trying to sway us into following along with its hopes. But is our hope on display? Do our actions make a persuasive call to follow our hopes for the future?
Passionate God
God is passionate about his people. He knows that when we chase after things that aren’t him, we are chasing lesser things that can never satisfy. He loves us too much to simply sit by and let us be swept away. The same way a loving father would not want someone to mislead their beloved child. Let us look to God today and return our eyes to the one thing that truly satisfies our souls. Peter wrote a warning to false teachers rising up to enslave the people of God:
2 Peter 2:19-22
“They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that, he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.”
To worship God and follow his Son is to be made more fully alive than we could ever be without him. In fact, Scripture teaches us that we were previously dead in our sins, and only through the atoning sacrifice of Christ are we able to become fully alive. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1).
Over the next few weeks, we will continue to unpack some of the idols of our culture and how God is calling us into freedom. Let’s pray even today that God would begin the process of untangling the idols from our hearts and that we would be able to follow to Christ into the new humanity.