Holy Scriptures an Idol?

I love the Holy Scriptures. I beg the Lord to speak to me from His Word. Words I have read hundreds of times in the past will teach me something I missed those 99 times before.

This why I am confused that people will accuse me of making the scriptures an 'Idol'. How can that be?

Do I worship the leather, the ink or the onion paper? No, of course not. But I do worship the Lord who guided the instrument that wrote the Words.

The Divinely Inspired Words were left to us for a reason. It is the 'Sword of Truth'. And many do not like what it really says so they try to interpret it in a way that is more pleasing to the flesh.

So when you refer to scriptures too much, they say, "Oh, you are making an idol of scripture". But if I love my Lord, I will love His Word to me.

I will not add to it. I will not take away from it. I will not say, Oh, this is what I think that verse means. I will say, what is our Lord saying to us?

What is scripture for? Here is what our Lord said:

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. "

2 Timothy 3: 15-17

Idolizing Hollywood at Church

This poor pastor http://yckg.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/children-in-church/ is upset because some parents complained about the movie clips he showed in Sunday Worship. Seems they were too graphic for children. Read his article, it is quite amazing to hear a pastor say about church. But look at the paragraph below from this article.

See anything wrong?

Update: The particular clip illustrated “honor” and showed all the Japanese soldiers bowing to honor the fallen Samauri. I thought it was a powerful illustration. In the end, I think we should have done a little better job setting up the clip, and giving a warning to parents like we did during the series on Biblical sex. We’ll definitely do that next time.

Idolizing Vulgarity

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/

Idolatry In Post Modern Culture

Excerpt from an article at monergism by Tim Keller.

The biblical teaching about idolatry is particularly helpful for evangelism in a postmodern context. The typical way that Christians define sin is to say that it is breaking God’s law. Properly explained, of course, that is a good and sufficient definition. But the law of God includes both sins of omission and of commission, and it includes the attitudes of the heart as well as behavior. Those wrong attitudes and motivations are usually inordinate desires—forms of idolatry. However, when most listeners hear us define sin as “breaking God’s law” all the emphasis in their minds falls on the negative (sins of commission) and on the external (behaviors rather than attitudes.) There are significant reasons, then, that “law-breaking” isn’t the best way to first describe sin to postmodern listeners.

I ordinarily begin speaking about sin to a young, urban, non-Christian like this:

Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God.

Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.

Why is this a good path to take?

First, this definition of sin includes a group of people that postmodern people are acutely aware of. Postmodern people rightly believe that much harm has been done by self-righteous religious people. If we say “sin is breaking God’s law” without a great deal of further explanation, it appears that the Pharisaical people they have known are ‘in’ and most other people are ‘out.’ Pharisees, of course, are quite fastidious in their keeping of the moral law, and therefore (to the hearer) they seem to be the very essence of what a Christian should be. An emphasis on idolatry avoids this problem. As Luther points out, Pharisees, while not bowing to literal idols, were looking to themselves and their moral goodness for their justification, and therefore they were actually breaking the first commandment. Their morality was self-justifying motivation and therefore spiritually pathological. At the bottom of all their law-keeping they were actually breaking the most fundamental law of all. When we give definitions and descriptions of sin to postmodern people, we must do so in a way that not only challenges prostitutes to change but also Pharisees.

There is another reason we need a different definition of sin for postmodern people. They are relativists, and the moment you say, “Sin is breaking God’s moral standards,” they will retort, “Well, who is to say whose moral standards are right? Everyone has different ones! What makes Christians think that theirs are the only right set of moral standards?” The usual way to respond to this is to become sidetracked from your presentation of sin and grace into an apologetic discussion about relativism. Of course, postmodern people must be strongly challenged about their mushy view of truth, but I think there is a way to move forward and actually make a credible and convicting gospel presentation before you get into the apologetic issues. I do it this way, I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and I define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God.

Instead of telling them they are sinning because they are sleeping with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them that they are sinning because they are looking to their careers and romances to save them, to give them everything that they should be looking for in God. This idolatry leads to drivenness, addictions, severe anxiety, obsessiveness, envy of others, and resentment.

I have found that when you describe their lives in terms of idolatry, postmodern people do not offer much resistance. They doubt there is any real alternative, but they admit sheepishly that this is what they are doing. I have also found that this makes sin more personal. Making an idol out of something means giving it the love you should be giving your Creator and Sustainer. To depict sin as not only a violation of law but also of love is more compelling. Of course a complete description of sin and grace includes recognition of our rebellion against God’s authority. But I’ve found that if people become convicted about their sin as idolatry and mis-directed love, it is easier to show them that one of the effects of sin is to put them into denial about their hostility to God. In some ways, idolatry is like addiction writ large. We are ensnared by our spiritual idols just like people are ensnared by drink and drugs. We live in denial of how much we are rebelling against God’s rule just like addicts live in denial of how much they are trampling on their families and loved ones.

The biblical theme of idolatry has far more implications for ministry in a postmodern society than what we have discussed. Not only is it a key for evangelism, it is also crucial for discipling and counseling, as David Powlison has shown in his many writings on the subject. (See his easily accessible essay “Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair,” available at a number of places online.)*

The Dutch Calvinists have also shown that the best way to analyze cultures is by identifying their corporate idols. Indeed, each field of vocation and study has its reigning idols, as do political parties and ideologies. While secular societies have made an idol of human reason and human autonomy, other more traditional societies make idols of the family or racial purity.

In her recent memoir, Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City she entered a life of club hopping and sexual obsession. She wrote several novels. She continued, however, to be extremely restless and unfulfilled. In the middle of the book she quotes from Simone Weill as summarizing the main issue in her life. “One has only the choice between God and idolatry,”Weil wrote.“If one denies God ... one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.”* Stephen Metcalf, writing a review of the memoir in the New York Times calls Weill’s quote “‘extraordinary.’” This is testimony to how penetrating the concept of idolatry is to postmodern people.

Do We Take Idolatry As Seriously as God?

Picture of 62 foot high foam statue of Jesus erected by the 3,400-member Solid Rock Church in MONROE, Ohio

Eze 6:4-6 "... I will slay your people in front of your idols. I will lay the dead bodies of the Israelites in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars... your idols smashed and ruined, your incense altars broken down, and what you have made wiped out."

1 Cor 6:9-10 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy... (Rom 1:23-25)

Eph 5:5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

What is Idolatry 2

When Anything or Anybody Gets What God Alone Deserves

Ex 20:3-4 "You shall have no other gods before me. 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."

• God destroys idols; He is the great iconoclast. Even good things can become idols, and while reveling and boasting seem good at the time, it is a grave disservice to idolize anything or anybody. The result is God's wrath, on you and the idol. God will not be eclipsed.

2 Ki 18:3-4 Hezekiah did right in the sight of the Lord... He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until then the Israelites had burned incense to it; but he called it Nehushtan [a brazen trifle].

James 4:5 Surely you don't think the Scripture is wrong when it says: the spirit which He sent to live in us wants us for himself alone?

The Lust For Idols--A Matter of The Heart

James 4:3-4 You don't get what you want because you don't ask God for it. And when you do ask he doesn't give it to you, for you ask in quite the wrong spirit--you only want to satisfy your own desires. You are like unfaithful wives, never realizing that to be the world's lover means becoming the enemy of God! Anyone who chooses to be the world's friend is thereby making himself God's enemy.

Col 3:5-6 That is why you must kill everything in you that belongs only to earthly life: fornication, impurity, guilty passion, evil desires and especially greed, which is the same thing as worshipping a false god. All this sort of behavior makes God angry. (Eph 5:5)

Eze 6:8-9 "...How I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices."

Deut 29:18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison. (See also through verse 29.)

But Everyone Else Is Doing It...
2 Ki 17:15 They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations around them although the Lord had ordered them, "Do not do as they do," and they did the things the Lord had forbidden them to do.

2 Ki 17:40-41 They would not listen, however, but persisted in their former practices. Even while these people were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.

1 Cor 10:7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry."

Public Image--Making Idols Of Men

1 Sam 15:23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Acts 8:9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great...

• A.W. Tozer: "Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords. He calls them to self-abnegation and death; we call them to spread out like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate religious zodiac."

Eze 8:12 He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol?"

2 Pet 2:18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.

1 Cor 12:1-2 ...I do not wish you to be ignorant... somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to dumb idols.

Isa 41:29 "See, they are all false! Their deeds amount to nothing; their images are but wind and confusion."

Jer 2:5 This is what the Lord says: "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves."

Ps 97:7 All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols...

1 Sam 12:21 Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless.

Isa 57:12-13 "I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not benefit you. When you cry out for help, let your collection [of idols] save you! The wind will carry all of them off, a mere breath will blow them away. But the man who makes me his refuge will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain."

Isa 42:8 "I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols."

Idolatry Quiz 2

Watch this video and see if you can spot the idolatry.

It IS in there.

If you spot it, you are one of the few professing Christians with real discernment.