Don't Make Idols

There once was an elderly woman who lived alone. To keep from being lonely, she decided to get a pet. She went to the pet store, where she considered a number of animals. Finally, she decided to buy a parrot, because the pet store owner assured her that the parrot would talk to her.

The very next day, she was back at the pet store. “The parrot won’t say anything to me.” she said.. “Well,” said the owner, “do you have a mirror for him? Parrots love to look at themselves in the mirror, you know.” So the lady bought a little mirror for the parrot and she took it home.

The next morning, she was back at the pet store. “He still won’t talk to me.” she complained. “Well,” said the pet store owner, “do you have a little swing for him? Parrots like to sit on one of these little swings. I’m sure if you get him one, he’ll start talking.” So the lady bought a little parrot swing and took it home.

The next day she was back again. “He still won’t say anything.” she said. “Well,” said the pet store owner, “I think I know what the problem is. You probably don’t have one of these little ladders. Every parrot I’ve ever known loves to climb up and down one of these little ladders. You get him this ladder, and I guarantee he’ll start talking and you’ll never get him to shut up.” So she bought the ladder and home she went.

The next day, the lady was back again, and this time, she was extremely upset. “My parrot is dead!” she said. The pet store owner tried to console her. “I can’t understand it. You got him a mirror, you got him a swing, and you got him a ladder. Tell me, did your parrot ever say anything?” The lady replied, “Well, as a matter of fact, he did. Just before he died he said ‘Don’t they sell any food down at that pet store?’ ”

We can get so caught up with the mirrors and the swings and the ladders of life that we forget what’s really important. We fail to feed ourselves on the Word of God. Someone has said that the main thing in life is to keep the main thing the main thing. And that’s what the Ten Commandments are all about. They are about the most important things in life.

The first commandment that God gives us is to have no other gods before Him. He wants our relationship with Him to be exclusive. He wants us to love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. He wants all of us. There’s no room for competition or divided loyalties.

The second commandment is very closely related to the first. Let’s read it again…

Exodus 20:4-6 “You shall not make for yourself an idol 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; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The Bible tells us that man is a worshiping being. Every man, woman, and child who was ever born was born with a worship pace-maker in his heart. So the question about us human beings is not “Will we worship?” but “What will we worship?”

The Bible also tells us, in Eph.2, that man is “dead in his trespasses and sins.” In our natural state, we are separated from God. Our relationship with Him has been severed by sin. But we’ve still got that worship pace-maker within us. So we try to substitute other things - other gods - for the true God. And by worshiping those substitutes, we try to find meaning and satisfaction in life. But it never works. We always come up empty.

The great mathematician Blaise Pascal said “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man” and only God can fill it.

The Second Commandment is what this is all about. It’s about our tendency to try to find a substitute for the real God. But the Lord says “You shall not make for yourself an idol 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.”

When you see the word “idol”, you probably think of one of those little hand-carved images, such as you might see in the pages of National Geographic. You’ve gone to the museum and seen those little statues of Buddha, or Krishna, or some false god that a tribe in Africa worships. And you might say “Hey, I’ve got no problem there. I don’t worship those things. What’s the big deal with this Second Commandment?”

Let me tell you that if you don’t think you have a problem with idols, it probably means that you are already an idol-worshiper! Idol-worship is a lot more subtle and a lot more common than you would believe. You may not be dancing around a golden calf in your living room, or sacrificing gerbils on an altar in your front yard. But that doesn’t mean that you might not have a problem with this.

God’s people have fallen prey to worshiping idols all the way through their history right up to the present day. And some of the most religious, spiritually-minded people have been the biggest idolaters of all. Idol worship is alive and well in 1993, and the church in North America is full of idol-worshipers. That’s why the church is so weak. Because Christians have given up worshiping God and substituted something else in His place. That’s why we need to hear the Second Commandment today.

Now you might be sitting there saying “Well, what kind of idols have we substituted for God? I’m glad you asked! There are three major areas in which we can fall prey to idolatry.

1. We tend to focus our lives around the blessings we get from God instead of on the God who blesses us.

James tells us that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights…” But when good things start coming your way, you can easily focus your attention onto those good things and take your eyes off God.

This is exactly what happened to the Israelites when they entered the Promised Land. Moses warned them about it in Deuteronomy 6:10…

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Fear the Lord your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods.”

But they didn’t listen. As soon as they got in there, they began to build their lives around those good things, those material blessings from God. And pretty soon, the good things in life had crowded out the best thing - their relationship with the living God. They became idol worshipers. What was true then is just as true now…

Today, we worship prosperity: having a nice home and a nice car and nice clothes and nice things. And we put our desire for those things at the center of our lives instead of our desire for God. We begin to live our lives so as to acquire those things. We begin to build our hopes and dreams around getting that better house or that better car or that special dining room set or that latest electronic gadget. Prosperity and success and things become the idols in our lives.

Seeking after comfort and pleasure is another way we may become idol-worshipers. There’s nothing wrong with comfort and pleasure - those are good gifts from God. But if we begin to focus our lives on having a good time, on recreation, on leisure, on living the life of Reilly, instead of building our lives on God, we become idol worshipers.

The president of Washington Bible College is an avid fisherman. Someone once asked him when was the last time he had gone fishing. “Oh about five years ago.” he answered. “Wait a minute,” they said, “How can you be an avid fisherman and yet you haven’t gone fishing in five years?” He answered, “I haven’t been fishing in five years because the Lord got hold of me and challenged me to think about whether it was more important that I catch fish with scales, or fish with souls.”

Bill Hybels tells the story of how, as a young man, he had an opportunity to visit Brazil. As he was sitting in a fancy restaurant in Rio de Janiero, he happened to overhear the conversation of a retired American couple at the next table. The husband said to the wife, “Well, honey, here we are. This is what we worked and saved all those years for.” Bill Hybels thought to himself “Man, if you have lived your life just so that you could eat dinner in a fancy restaurant in Rio de Janiero, then you have wasted your life.”

But many of us are living our lives on the same principle. We’re scrimping and saving for the day we can retire and go play golf, or go travel. We are putting things and pleasure and having the good life at the center instead of God. And at the end of it all, we will be utterly empty inside.

How about your family? Family is a great blessing from God. But if your life revolves around your family instead of around God, then you will be an idol worshiper.

That’s exactly what Genesis 22 is about. God told Abraham to take Isaac and place him on the altar of sacrifice and raise a knife and plunge it through that boy’s heart. He was testing Abraham. He wanted to see if his son was at the center of his life, or God was. How would you do if God gave you a test like that?

Remember: an idol is anything that displaces God in your life. Even a family member. Even a spouse. Even your own child.

2. The second area where we are in danger of idolatry is that we tend to substitute our service to God for our worship of God.

Luke 10:38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Many Christians open their lives up to the Lord, just like Martha opened her house to Him. But then they leave Jesus sitting all alone in the living room, while they’re frantically rushing around in the kitchen doing things, supposedly for Him.

Listen, what God really wants from you is not your service, he wants you. He wants to get to know you. He wants to spend time with you. He wants you to be like Mary, not like Martha. It’s more important that you love God than that you serve Him.

But a lot of us are like Martha. We’re back in the kitchen, slaving over a hot stove, grumbling and grouching over all the work we have to do for Jesus, and how nobody else is helping, when what we should be doing is sitting at the feet of the Master and getting to know Him better.

You say, “Yeah, but if Martha hadn’t been back in the kitchen, dinner wouldn’t have got made. Oh? If Martha had sat down at the Master’s feet with Mary, Jesus probably would have gotten dinner for them himself. He was good at that, you know. He had had some experience in the catering business; he fed 5,000, and then 4,000. I think he could have managed to come up with dinner for three on the spur of the moment.

Martha missed out because she placed a higher priority on serving Jesus than on loving Him. And you can do that too. And if you do, you’ll be an idol-worshiper.

Listen, we don’t want you to serve God here at FBC if you are doing that instead of loving Him. We want your service to be an outgrowth of your love for Him, not a substitute for it.

3. The third area where we break the Second Commandment is that we worship our ideas about God instead of worshiping God himself.

Art Linkletter once saw a little boy drawing a picture. He asked the boy, “What are you drawing?” The little boy answered “A picture of God.” Linkletter said “But nobody knows what God looks like.” The boy said “They will when I get through!”

Down through the years, many preachers and theologians have tried to explain what God is like, but in doing so, they have fallen into the sin of idolatry. They have made God into something that he’s not. And they have encouraged their people to worship that image.

Take the Roman Catholic church for example. Over the years, the church began to believe that God the Father and Jesus Christ were so holy, so transcendent, so far above us, that we needed somebody a little more approachable to serve as a go-between.

So they put Mary between God and the people. She was more approachable. She became the Mediatrix, the go between. Gradually, the people began to transfer many of God’s attributes over to Mary. She was kind, she was loving, she was compassionate, she was even a little more patient with us than God himself was.

So the people began to look to her as their heavenly mother. They began to pray to her rather than to God. Thousands of Catholics every year go on pilgrimages to seek her face rather than God’s.

Then the church came up with the idea of sacred relics. I heard of a church in Mexico that has a holy tortilla. One of the peasants in the village was cooking a tortilla, and something that looked like the face of Christ appeared on it. So now the tortilla is in the church, and the villagers pray to the Christ of the holy tortilla.

Images and icons and saints and holy relics and medallions and sacraments are just an attempt to get God down to a size that we can grasp. But in the process, we break the Second Commandment.

Now you may be saying “Wait a minute. I’m not a Catholic, I’m a Baptist.” Listen: just because you don’t have St. Christopher on your dashboard doesn’t mean you might not have a problem with this.

We all, in some way, try to reduce God to terms we can understand. Have you ever heard someone refer to God as the Man Upstairs? Some of you, if you’re really honest with yourselves may have to admit that you picture God as a crabby parent who’s nagging you all the time. Others may think of God as though he were a jolly old man with a white beard, who looks a lot like Santa Claus, with a temperament to match. Others think of God as a policeman who’s just waiting to write you a ticket.

We all have these mental images of God. We try to get God down to a size where we can understand him. We project onto Him our own ideas about what He must be like. The French skeptic Voltaire said, “God made man in his own image, and now man has returned the favor.”

We all want to make God less than who He really is. And when we do that, we become idol-worshipers. A.W. Tozer has said, “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”

How can we keep ourselves from breaking the Second Commandment this way? Well, like everything else, the answer is found in the person of Jesus Christ. God knew that we would never really grasp who he is unless he revealed himself to us in terms that we could understand. And the only way for him to do that was to become a man, which is exactly what he did.

As we have seen, our images of God are all inadequate. They are like those weird mirrors in the fun house at the Allentown Fair. They bend and distort the true image into a ridiculous false image.

But God gave us an image of Himself, an image that depicts him as he really is. It doesn’t distort his character in any way. It’s a true likeness. Jesus Christ is that image.

Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God.

John 1:18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

Hebrews 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being

John 14:9 Jesus: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

So what does this mean? It means that if you want to get to know God, you have to get to know Jesus. There’s no other way to come to grips with God. When you’ve met Jesus Christ, you’ve met God.

The essence of the Gospel is getting to know a person: Jesus Christ. It is not becoming committed to a set of Christian values. It is not adhering to the doctrines of a particular church. It is not adopting a particular lifestyle. Being a Christian means entering into a relationship with Jesus Christ, and having that relationship totally dominate your life. Anything less than that is idolatry.

Do you know Jesus? Maybe it’s been a long time since He has been at the center of your life. Perhaps as the Spirit of God has spoken to you today, you’ve realized that you have allowed other gods to creep up onto the throne of your life. But you want Jesus to be at the center once more.

Let’s tell God right now that we love Him. Let’s tell Him that we’re not satisfied with anything less than Him at the center of our lives. Let’s pray.