“Idolatry Is Still a Sin”

Exodus 20:4-6

Eugene Peterson: Idols are non-gods and as such are much more congenial to us than God, for we not only have the pleasure of making them, using our wonderful imaginations and skills in creative ways, but also of controlling them. They are gods with all the God taken out so that we can continue to be our own gods. There are innumerable ways in which we can make idols for ourselves. The possibilities are endless, ranging from the skies above to the earth around us to the sea beneath us. It is no wonder that idol-making and idol-worshiping have always been the most popular religious games in town.

Matthew 6:21: For where your treasure is, your heart will be also.

Janice Joplin: O Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town; I’m countin’ on you, Lord, please don’t let me down. Show me you love me, and buy the next round. O Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town.

[prayer]

On a Monday morning almost thirty years ago, while waiting for my flight to Atlanta to board, I read something in the newspaper that almost sent me through the roof. Richard Roberts, Oral’s baby boy, had held a revival in Roanoke, Virginia during the previous week. The local newspaper had covered it, sharing some of his remarks.

During one of his sermons he had compared God to a Coke machine. According to him, praying and giving to God is just like putting your money in a soda machine. You drop in your coins, push a button, and out comes an ice-cold carbonated beverage. Similarly, if you give God generous offerings, in this case through Oral Roberts’ ministries, God would both answer all your prayers on your terms and shower material blessings upon you.

Friends, God is not some money or blessing machine who gives us what we want when we pay the right price and push the right buttons. God is beyond our control. We do not manipulate or coerce him into doing anything. He graciously answers our prayers in his own time and in his own way, in accordance with what is ultimately best for us and his Kingdom. Whatever blessings we receive from him are gracious gifts that we have done nothing to deserve, gifts that we have no right to demand.

Selfish, sinful, creatures that we are we often resent our inability to manipulate God into doing what we want him to do. We don’t like being so out of control. Like Adam and Eve in the garden we have a tendency to want what we want when we want it even when God has made it clear that we’re not supposed to have it. As that old Garth Brooks song “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers” pointed out, it is very often to our benefit that God says no.

The Second Commandment, which is, in truth, a continuation of and elaboration on the First Commandment, makes it clear that we shall have no other gods before the Lord God Almighty. We shall neither make for ourselves nor worship any kind of idol. At the time when God handed the Ten Commandments down to Israel by way of Moses idols were graven images made of wood or stone. They were tangible reproductions of parts of God’s created order that lifted the creature above the Creator. Modern idols are usually much more subtle. Whatever, an idol is an idol is an idol. Worshiping it, whatever it is, is still a sin.

As Eugene Peterson wrote, idols are the best game in town for sinful humanity. In a perverted reversal of creation, we who are creature can create and control our very own god. If it doesn’t give us what we want when we want it, we can smash or otherwise destroy it, and then go make or find another one. We like idols because we can control them. We like them because we believe, usually falsely, that we get to be the boss. What it ultimately boils down to is that our idols allow us to make gods of ourselves.

In the words of William Barclays commentary on the verses from Romans that we will study tonight, the essence of sin is to put self in the place of God. That goes directly back to what got Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden: a proud self-determination that places our wishes above God’s will. And God doesn’t like that, not one little bit!

He makes that very clear: “… for I am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me…” God is a jealous God, or as some translate it, a zealous or passionate God. He doesn’t take rejection lightly. And in his zealousness regarding his relationship with us, he causes our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to suffer the consequences of our sins.

A lot of that is simply cause and affect. When we reject God our sinfulness always has repercussions beyond ourselves and even our generation. To state that in more tangible terms, the repercussions of our sinfulness can be likened to our country’s national debt; our children and grandchildren will pay for our national sin of chronic deficit spending. Whether it’s sin or indebtedness the bill always comes due, often to those who haven’t made it.

But there is good news: “… but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” God’s wrath might afflict three or four generations, but his steadfast love, mercy, and grace will endure for a thousand generations. God, jealous, zealous, and passionate though he may be, is a God whose grace always greatly outweighs his judgment.

And nowhere has that been made more evident than in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s where the zealousness and jealousy are better understood in terms of passion. We stray; our Good Shepherd comes to find us. We run; our loving Lord pursues us. We reject God; he continues to woo us. We keep asking him for things we shouldn’t have; he keeps blessedly refusing to let us have them.

Of course, we continue asking for them. Of course, we still insist on straying beyond the paths of righteousness. Of course, we keep rejecting God by rejecting his commandments. We keep slipping back into idolatry in one form or another. We insist on giving our hearts over to the wrong kind of treasures. Like Paul in Romans 7, we keep doing those things we should not do and not doing the things we should. At the end of the day we only have one recourse, to join with Paul in his plea for mercy: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

Here comes the really good news: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” And how do we respond to such passionate and steadfast love? By loving God and keeping, as best we can within the context of our sinfully human limitations, his commandments. Which is what God is asking for in the First and Second Commandments – an honest and intentional effort on our parts to be faithful to him.

Centuries after the Ten Commandments were handed down Jesus echoed that request: “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” In essence, if we love the Lord our God, we will give him the very best of who we are and what we have. We will love our neighbors as ourselves. We will consciously avoid those tempting idols that surround us. We will honestly and prayerfully struggle to subordinate our wishes to God’s will. We will refrain from our all too humanly foolish attempts to manipulate God. As best we will pay attention to those words in the Lord’s Prayer: “…thy will be done,” echoing in our prayers those words Jesus spoke on the night of his betrayal, “… not my will but thine.”

Above I used the words “prayerfully struggle.” In a world chock full of idols in all shapes, forms, and sizes – a world that constantly bombards us with the message that we really can be our own gods – it is a struggle to remain faithful. We are tugged at on all sides by one form of idolatry or another. In his seductively insidious voice the Devil constantly whispers in our hearts, “Worship me by worshiping self. Serve me by serving your own selfish desires. Deny God. Use and abuse the people around you. If it feels good, do it. And if you really like it, do it again. Sin is good, not bad. Evil is healthy, not deadly. Follow your heart. Give in to the temptations and demands of the surrounding culture. Build up for yourself earthly treasures.”

Day in and day out we must answer those demonic suggestions by telling the Devil exactly what Jesus told him in the wilderness, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’.” But more than saying those words we must live those words by obeying all God’s Commandments as they were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. By returning God’s passionate love for us by passionately loving and serving him. Always remembering that if we are in Christ, there is gracious room for us to try and fail in our attempts to serve God. Christian living isn’t perfection; it is a process of growing in the direction of perfection. We call that sanctification.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; [therefore] you shall have no other gods before me… you shall not bow down to them or worship them…” God does not share his beloved with any other god. No idol is to ever take the place of Jesus in our hearts, minds, or lives. Amen.