You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exo 20:3-6)
So this awesome being speaks and a people quakes at the voice of the One who has demonstrated without doubt how He is Lord and that the pretenders to the throne even in the superpower of the day must submit to who the real God is. Among His commands is a specific one to not make idols. No sooner has Moses gone up a mountain to get some more instructions than the people get restless and what do you know they go ahead and make a golden calf. What’s of interest though is what is stated to the people about this calf.
And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exo. 32:4)
It would be easy to criticise the people for being so slow to remember all that had happened to them. Yet this is not unusual to the human or indeed Christian experience. After all, just like the people, it’s all well and good having someone up front tell us about this great figure who has done these marvellous things, but we are practical and material people. As Madonna put it – we’re living in a material world.
The supernatural and the spiritual is all well and good when we’re talking about ghosts and how our beloved mother who has passed on is looking out for us, but God? You know your mother, but you’ve never seen God – He is invisible and intangible. For all the stories you’ve heard and read about Him and the testimonies of others about Him, that personal experience with the invisible and intangible are a bit of a stretch. Whereas investing in something that’s tangible, that is in your hands, that you can experience with your senses, surely that’s more reliable.
That even works in the Christian realm as it’s easy to fall into idolatry. The way we go about putting objects and traditions before the reality of God as Spirit in our worship experience. Whether it’s the preference for sterile and ritualistic liturgy, or the buzz and emotional thrill of certain corporate occasions without any real substantial touch of the Divine we make idols in Christianity over almost anything. Preachers and church leaders become idols in themselves and just like the church in Corinth we find ourselves claiming allegiance to the magical mystery tour of the latest super apostle who has thousands attending the conferences and healing services.
We make idols of these and consciously or more often sub-consciously we’re saying the same thing as the Golden Calf party encouraged their people – these are the gods that have taken us out of misery, out of slavery, out of a life too ordinary – these are they that give our lives meaning.
Ensuring clarity in the vertical relationship is not easy because of the natural disposition to look for that which soothes the self first. If we can create an illusion of that through other things then that can relieve the pressure from doing that with Someone very real even if it is just a spiritual reality that is beyond the material. As mentioned in the prelude, those who worship God do so in spirit and truth. That is a brave commitment to a faith walk that does not compute with all that the material world answers. That is a step of faith into the reality of the spiritual that underwrites all else and in making that commitment makes us wary of idolatry in any form it chooses to manifest itself.
What can start off as a crutch to help faith at first can soon became the object of faith itself. Seeing God in everything does not mean that God is everything or even some things or even a particular thing to which we give our devotion. Seeing God in life is only possible through that commitment to the spiritual renewal offered to us by God Himself to a very true relationship with Him for who He is. That is why the order that God’s Word brings to all life and the spiritual intent it places in our hearts is there for us to accept no substitute.
As we get to know God for who He is then this in itself gets us away from materialism and idolatry in anyway to enjoy the truth for what it is and who He is. This will have significant bearings for the next word …
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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