Pastor Brock Peters
Joshua 24:14-15 (NLT), “So fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”
LIFEPOINT: We need to recognize, remove, and replace the idols in our lives.
Is idol worship just a thing of the past? No! Over the next four weeks, we will be looking at how prevalent idol worship still is today. It may not look the same as it did in the Old Testament, but any time you and I put something other than God #1 in our lives, we are practicing idolatry. It is crucial that we be alert to idolatry creeping into our lives. Once we recognize any idols that may be entering our lives, we will use God’s Word to figure out how to remove those idols and then replace them with things that we should be truly worshiping.
In His Service,
Pastor Brock
“We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.” - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Russian author and Soviet dissident
Joshua 24:14-15 (NLT), “So fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”
Jeremiah 10:3, 5-6, 8-11, 14-16 (NLT), “Their ways are futile and foolish. They cut down a tree, and a craftsman carves an idol. Their gods are like helpless scarecrows in a cucumber field! They cannot speak, and they need to be carried because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of such gods, for they can neither harm you nor do any good. Lord, there is no one like you! For you are great, and your name is full of power. People who worship idols are stupid and foolish. The things they worship are made of wood! They bring beaten sheets of silver from Tarshish and gold from Uphaz, and they give these materials to skillful craftsmen who make their idols. Then they dress these gods in royal blue and purple robes made by expert tailors. But the Lord is the only true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King! Say this to those who worship other gods: ‘Your so-called gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will vanish from the earth and from under the heavens. The whole human race is foolish and has no knowledge! The craftsmen are disgraced by the idols they make, for their carefully shaped works are a fraud. These idols have no breath or power. Idols are worthless; they are ridiculous lies! On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed. But the God of Israel is no idol! He is the Creator of everything that exists.”
Romans 1:23, 25 (NLT), “And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise!”
Why worry about false gods?
1. The One True God is a Jealous God
Exodus 20:3-5 (NLT), “You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods.”
“We never break the other commandments without breaking the first one.” -Martin Luther
Deuteronomy 6:14-15 (NLT), “You must not worship any of the gods of neighboring nations, for the Lord your God, who lives among you, is a jealous God. His anger will flare up against you, and he will wipe you from the face of the earth.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (ESV), “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all your might.”
2. Idolatry is a major theme of the Bible as a whole
Jonah 2:8 (NIV), “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.”
1 Corinthians 10:14 (NLT), “So, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols.”
1 John 5:21 (NLT), “Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.”
1 Kings 21:26 (NLT), “No one else so completely sold himself to what was evil in the Lord’s sight as Ahab did under the influence of his wife Jezebel. His worst outrage was worshiping idols…”
“The central principle of the Bible is the rejection of idolatry.” - Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry
3. We are more susceptible to idolatry than we think
Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV), “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
“The idols that drive us are complex, multi-layered, and largely hidden from us.” - Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods
“Though few would own it, nothing is more common than idolatry. If we think of our soul as a house, idols are set up in every room, in every faculty.” - David Clarkson, Soul Idolatry
4. True Worship can only Exist when False Worship is Removed
Romans 1:20-23 (NLT), “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuses for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.”
2 Kings 17:15 (NLT), “They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they despised all his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. They followed the example of the nations around them disobeying the Lord’s command not to imitate them.”
2 Kings 17:41 (NIV), “Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.”
“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your god, your functional savior.” - Martin Luther
LifePoint: We need to recognize, remove, and replace the idols in our lives.
How Do I Recognize My Idols?
1. Through the Word of God - Hebrews 4:12 (NLT), “For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes the innermost thoughts and desires.”
2. Through the people of God - Hebrews 3:13 (NLT), “You must warn each other every day, while it is still ‘today,’ so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.”
3. Through the Spirit of God - Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT), “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”
