1 John 5:21 Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
The apostle John ends his first epistle with a simple warning – dear children, keep yourselves from idols. The NASB translates it “guard yourselves from idols”. The early New Testament church was surrounded by idolatry in many forms. Indeed, many of them were converts from the worship of idols. The apostle Paul, when he wrote to the church in Thessalonica, commended the Christians there and said:
1 Thessalonians 1:9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,
Idolatry has been man’s folly since time in memorial. It’s human nature actually. It is hard to worship a God that we cannot see, without form. And so we make up forms of God, and in return begin to worship a false God. God warned the Israelites not to make any idol of Him, for they did not see any form of God at all:
Deuteronomy 4:15-18 NIV84 15 You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, 17 or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, 18 or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below.
Even the Israelites had the tendency to make an idol to represent Jehovah their God, a practice being done today in Christianity. Though the Son of God did become man, when He rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven He ceased to have His human form, and is now the God without any human form. We should not misrepresent God by thinking that up to now He still is in human form.
There are, of course, the idols of other gods. It is interesting how almost all religions have idols of their God to worship. As I mentioned earlier it is the folly of man to replace God with a form. Look what Paul says:
Romans 1:21-23 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
And so, throughout the world, we have gods in human form, animal form, in the form of heavenly bodies, etc.
But the more dangerous idols, that many Christians are guilty of, are those that we cannot see, those that are not connected to any religion. They are the “gods” in our hearts that take the place of the Lord. There are two passages of Scripture that warn us of this kind of idolatry:
Colossians 3:5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.
Greed is idolatry. Material things, money, and whatever else our greed focuses on, are idols of our hearts. They take the place of God. When material things, money and others become the source of joy, peace, security and identity of a Christian, then these have become our idols, and we are guilty of idolatry. We have set them up in the throne of our hearts, and without realizing it we begin to worship them. When this happens we usually focus on what God gives, rather than on God Himself. God becomes a means to an end, an instrument we use to worship the real gods in us. No wonder our Lord taught us this:
Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
But there is another idol that many of us don’t realize we still keep and worship in our hearts.
1Samuel 15:23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD , he has rejected you as king."
The NASB bible translates it – “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.”
Divination is seeking guidance from another spiritual source, and not from God. When a person is rebellious, against God or man, it is as if he is seeking guidance from another source – our self. Instead of seeking wisdom from God and following His ways, we follow our own ways. This is why rebellion is like the sin of divination.
Why is arrogance, or insubordination, like idolatry? Because when a person is arrogant, when he is insubordinate, he sets himself above others, above God even. That’s why it is idolatry – it’s a worship of self. Submission is an attitude that God expects, that God works, in the heart of every believer. When we are arrogant or insubordinate, we go against what God is working in our hearts. We don’t realize we have set up an idol in our hearts that we worship – our SELF.
Our SELF. Many Christians don’t realize that the throne we have set up for our self needs to be destroyed, and the throne of God must stand uncontested. And yet how many of us rebel against God when we commit sin, or live without submission to authority, or to the teachings of our Lord? When we willingly do not follow the ways of God, we are arrogant and rebellious. Is this the state of heart that is worthy of our holy and righteous God?
When we are rebellious and unsubmissive to human authority, or authority in the church, this is also idolatry, for we have set our self higher than others, and even higher than our Lord. Submission and humility are attitudes of heart that God purposely works in us. To go against His working is both disobedience and idolatry.
No wonder dying to our self is a pre-requisite for being a disciple of Christ. No wonder He asks us to carry our cross daily, and hate even our own lives, to follow Him. No wonder our Lord stood as our ultimate example of humility, that we too, by His grace, may walk in humility before Him and with other men.
Dear children, guard yourselves from idols. We are to guard ourselves from greed. We are to guard ourselves from our self. All by His grace.
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