Even today we can find people around the world bowing down to images made of wood, stone and metal. And while we don’t worship idols like this or like the ancient Israelites did, we are not immune to idolatry. Many exhortations have been given about the man on a bended knee, polishing his boat or car until his own image is reflected back.
The problem of picturing idols as physical things misses the mark. In our minds, idols are things we touch and handle. This is the reason Josiah and others failed. They could destroy idols by smashing them to pieces, yet that NEVER destroyed the source of idolatry, the heart.
Idle Thoughts lead to Idol Thoughts. Idols are things we choose to let live in our hearts.
“Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be enquired of at all by them?” (Ezek 14:3).
Getting serious with idolatry means getting serious with ourselves and the way we think.
Consider all the wrong thoughts we let meander through our minds. Rarely do we interfere with them, we just let them run their course until our attention is finally diverted to something else. This is why idolatry is so persistent! We don’t think about what we are thinking about. Then to make it worse, we store up our favorite wrong thoughts for some later time to be conjured up again and again.
Paul says:
“Put to death your earthward inclinations — fornication, impurity, sensual passion, unholy desire, and all greed, for that is a form of idolatry… and you also were once addicted to them, while you were living under their power. But now you must rid yourselves of every kind of sin” (Col 3:5,7-8 Weymouth).
Idolatry results when we don’t control our wrong thoughts and desires! The cost of idolatry is turmoil. We will not experience inner peace unless our thoughts are directed towards our Father. Isaiah confirms this: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee” (Isa 26:3).
The word “mind” that Isaiah uses means “Imaginations,” i.e. the desires of our heart! What do you imagine? What do you replay in your mind over and over? This simple question is a good spiritual barometer of our health.
What’s especially evil about idolatry is more than just evil desires. The most insidious effect of idolatry is that it causes us to suspend our belief in the Father.
Think about this; if we believe in God, and believe that he sees us, cares for us, walks with us, and knows our thoughts, then when we sin we push all these beliefs out of our mind. And while we are sinning God is nowhere to be found! While sinning, we don’t believe God is with us or sees us. We don’t think of God until our sins are complete. We have displaced God out of our Heart!
We see an example of this in the record of the Kings. King Ahaz journeyed to Damascus where he saw an altar. He commanded it be copied and built in Jerusalem. The context of this passage in Kings indicates that this new altar was placed in the temple courtyard displacing the real altar of God made by Solomon.
“The bronze altar that stood before the LORD he brought from the front of the temple — from between the new altar and the temple of the LORD — and put it on the north side of the new altar” (2Kgs 16:14 NIV).
In the center of God’s house, this evil king displaced God’s own altar with another one of his own design.
Are we any different? “Ye are the temple of the living God?” (2 Cor 6:16). When we were baptized, we became God’s house, and when we sin, we not only displace God from his house within us, we also momentarily suspend our belief in him, pushing him out of our consciousness.
Stagnant in spirit
The Prophet Zephaniah lived at the same time as Ezekiel and saw the same problems. He witnessed Josiah searching through Jerusalem for idols to destroy. But Josiah missed the real source of idolatry, the hearts.
“It will come about at that time that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, I will punish the men who are stagnant in spirit, who say in their hearts the Lord will not do good or evil” (Zeph 1:12 NASB).
These were men who did not think God saw or cared what they thought about.
Solomon, standing in front of God’s temple refers to this stagnation as “the plague of the heart”. When we find the wrong things in our hearts Solomon says the cure begins with prayer.
“any prayer, any supplication from any man of all Your people Israel, who shall each know the plague of his own heart, and shall spread forth his hands toward this house, then hear in Heaven Your dwelling-place, and forgive,.” (1Kgs 8:38-39 NKJV).
When we find a desire that doesn’t belong, removal begins with prayer to a faithful God who will forgive. In proverbs, Solomon gives another clue:
“More than all else keep a watch over your heart since here are the well springs of life” (Prov 4:23 Jerusalem Bible).
In Proverbs 4 you will see that what flows from the “well springs of life” are God’s words. If the living waters of God’s word are flowing in our heart, how could it become stagnant?
Solomon continues in vs. 25: “Let thine eyes look right on and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” This is echoed in Heb 12:2: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” The word “looking” in Greek only occurs here. It means to stare, to have your eyes fixed fully on it, to have your eyes locked on to something. In this case our focus is completely on our Lord Jesus. And the reason our gaze must be fixed on Jesus is because “the sin which doth so easily beset us” (Heb 12:1).
Think on these things
We really can control what we think about. There are thoughts and ideas we can NEVER think about. If they were to enter our minds, we would be repulsed and crush them! We all have done this. Now we need to train ourselves to be repulsed by sinful thoughts. One strategy is shared with the Philippians when Paul stresses the need to think Godly thoughts.
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil 4:8).
And when you think of the verse in the opposite it isn’t so hard to follow. i.e. don’t think of false, dishonest things. Don’t think of unjust, impure, ugly things. If we think about what we are thinking about, these thoughts are easy to spot and crush. We can easily replace them with something better. Even if it’s just a verse we repeat by rote until the thought has passed. “It is written…” was Jesus’ reaction to wrong thoughts entering his own mind. We should have similar verses in our arsenal ready for our trials.
When we allow wrong thinking in our hearts, we’re hardening it. We’re taking a living, moving, beating soft tissue organ and we’re making it hard because we’re engraving in it, scarring it with things that shouldn’t be there. The Psalmist comments on idolatry:
“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat” (Psa 115:4-7).
And the key to this passage is verse 8, “They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.” In the end, we become just as dead and lifeless as the Idol in our heart.
The prophet Isaiah said:
“Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not” (Isa 8:2-9).
The Apostle John summarizes all this with the simple words, “Little children keep your selves from Idols” (1 John 5:21).
Commenting on this verse, Brother Dennis Gillett writes:
“Faithful Bible readers will know that when the conflict between good and evil is distilled to its very essence, it is the conflict between the true God and idols. John says that the problem is ‘the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’. It is a perpetual contest for the disciple in this period of probation.”1
This special issue of The Tidings was written to help all of us during our period of probation. It is the prayer of everyone contributing to this issue that all the various idols of the flesh that pull us from God might be destroyed, one by one. Until that day, let us have hearts fixed upon our Lord and do our best to “keep yourselves from idols”.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One