The words, “idol” and “idolatry”, appeared in the Old Testament. But they didn’t disappear from our Bibles when we moved over to the New Testament. I take this to mean that idols and idolatry are still alive and well in our world today. Our God is a God who does not change. If what provoked God to anger, a lot, in the Old Testament was idol worship, then I want to believe that idol worship still provokes God to anger, a lot, today. We must clear out all the idols in our lives daily, and we must keep an eye on them so they never resurface.
In the Old Testament age, idol worship was carving physical images or icons out of metal or wood, and bowing down to them. We remember Israel’s worship of the idols of Baal and Asherah. And who will forget about the golden calf?
But what about in the New Testament age? What are our idols? To what idols do we bow down today? Many preachers say our idols that we worship today are our money, prestige, careers, power, success, or possessions. Tim Keller says, “An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything that you seek to give you what only God can give.” Defined in this way, even the good things in our lives, our spouse, children, friends, hobbies, sports, entertainment, goals, sex can be our idols. They are all good things, but because we made them more important to us than God, they became our idols.
But I think there is something else going on in here.
As I mentioned already, the words, “idols” and “idolatry” continue to appear in the New Testament, but they do not appear all that many times. One verse, however, caught my eye.
Colossians 3.5
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
In this verse, the phrase, “which amounts to idolatry” is appositional to the word, “greed”. This means that it modifies the word, “greed” only. Clearly, Paul intended to say that greed is idolatry. Why did Paul say that? I find it most interesting why he would say that greed, of all things, is idol worship. Similarly,
Ephesians 5.5
For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Whenever we see idolatry mentioned in the New Testament, why do we find the words, “greed” or “covetous” in close vicinity?
One dictionary says the meaning of greed is, “the desire to have more of something, such as food or money, than is necessary or fair.” We have enough of what we need. But we desire for more. We want to accumulate. We want to build up excess. Why do we feel the need to accumulate more of something than we need? What drives us to have excess? And I think the answer is so we can become self-sufficient, so we won’t have to trust God.
Trusting God is too unreliable. Trusting God is too scary. What if God doesn’t come through with his promise? What if God gives us less than what we want? It is much easier to get to work ourselves, get exactly what we want, and get the job done right. We accumulate more and more wealth because we hate that feeling of being in panic mode in the event of an economic downturn, a health emergency, or when we lose our job. We breathe easier this way. We sleep better at night, knowing that things have been done our way. We do things, sometimes subconsciously, so we won’t have to trust God. I am sorry to tell you but this act of doing things so we won’t have to trust God is idolatry and idol worship. If we build up excess of something, anything, we have everything we need, and more. Tell me again why would we still need God? We wouldn’t. Our need for God and our worship of God ends here.
We say we trust God, but what we are doing is really trusting in ourselves. We get the job done ourselves so that the job can be done right. We accumulate more, sometimes way more, than what we need. Some will go so far as to cheat, lie, steal, even kill another, in order to put more into our own pockets and fatten our bank accounts. We are greedy, and the Bible says that amounts to idolatry. When Jesus asked the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions and give to the poor if he wished to be complete, he went away grieving because he had excess wealth. If he were to give it all away, he would be forced to trust God for his needs from day to day, and he didn’t like that.
Matthew 6.24
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
Even though the Apostle Paul said greed was idolatry, I sense wealth is not the only thing we store up more than we need. We consciously and subconsciously accumulate also prestige, fame, reputation, or power to achieve higher and higher levels of security, so we won’t need to trust God. If we come to think of it, isn’t that what people of this world are already doing?
Humans are funny. We are drawn to idols. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were drawn to making, worshipping and serving idols because just in case, they worked. They refused to keep their eyes on Yahweh only for what they needed. They didn’t like to trust him. In the New Testament, we don’t like to trust God either. We create idols and worship idols not for the sake of making them more important to us than God. We create idols and worship idols so we won’t have to trust God. All of us provoke our God to anger, a lot.
Trusting God takes practice. Sometimes I think to myself our whole life is spent learning how to trust God. No one has or will do it perfectly the first time. We will all make mistakes. But don’t let that discourage us. We learn from them, and do better the next time. We put away the little idols we worship, one at a time. We ask the Holy Spirit to help us let them go. Let’s learn together how to live our lives with insufficiency, and trust the all-sufficient God daily to meet our needs, to his glory.
1 John 5:21
Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.