Whac-An-Idol

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Now please take a moment of silence to prepare your heart for worship.

Call to Worship (Psalm 70:4-5)

Prayer of Praise (Audrey Hammond)

Rejoice

Praise to the Lord the Almighty

Prayer of Confession (Colter Nunn), Presumption

Assurance of Pardon (Psalm 103:17)

Come to Jesus (Rest in Him)

How Great Thou Art

Scripture Reading (Judges 10:6-16)

You can find it on page 249 in the black Bibles

Pastoral Prayer (Bubba)

Prayer for PBC—Biblical church discipline

Prayer for sister church—Mark Waite (Regions In Need)

Prayer for US—Military

Prayer for the world—Saudi Arabia

Pray for the sermon

SERMON

START TIMER!!!

If you’ve ever spent any time any time playing games at an arcade or a carnival, you’re probably familiar with the game Whac-A-Mole.

Show Whac-A-Mole image

The premise of the game is simple. There’s a number of holes filled with small, plastic moles that randomly pop up. Your job is to take the soft mallet and whack the moles on the head whenever they pop up.

But no matter how good you are at Whac-A-Mole, the moles keep popping back up.

So the game has become a bit of a cultural symbol. The term “Whac-A-Mole” is now used to refer to any task or situation where it seems like you can never get ahead. As soon as you think you’re finished you’ve got more work to do.

Like laundry, housework, yardwork, or email. Some problems, it seems, are never ending.

If you’ve been paying attention to the book of Judges, the problem of idolatry seems a lot like Whac-A-Mole.

Turn to Judges 10:6

By this point there have been seven judges that have rescued Israel: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, and Jair.

But after every judge, God’s people return to the same sin of idolatry.

But the Bible isn’t presenting this problem in an Eeyore sort of way: “God’s people committed idolatry again. Oh well!”

God actually wants His people to do battle against their idols, even if it seems like it’s a battle that never ends.

And so, as we once again examine the problem of idolatry in the book of Judges, I want us to consider how we can successfully fight against idolatry.

In a sense, whacking idols is a lot like parenting.

Parenting is hard, exhausting, and never completely done.

But only a fool would give up on parenting because he or she cannot do it perfectly.

In the same way, whacking idols is hard, exhausting, never-ending work. But we would be fools to give up because we’ll never do it perfectly.

The Big Idea I hope to communicate this morning is this: We will never completely destroy our idols in this life, but we can successfully battle them.

With God’s help I want to show you Three Steps for Successfully Battling Idolatry:

First, we must IDENTIFY our idols. You cannot battle an idol you cannot see.

Second, we must UPROOT our idols. You will not battle an idol without digging deep.

Third, we must REPLACE our idols. You will not battle idolatry by merely eliminating an idol. Your false worship needs to be replaced with genuine worship of the only One who can truly satisfy your heart.

Let’s begin by examining the first step to a successful battle against idols.

We must...

1) IDENTIFY Our Idols

We will never battle our idols until we identify our idols.

Which is exactly what happens in...

Judges 10:6—The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord and did not serve him.

After Tola and Jair judged Israel, God’s people did their best Brittney Spears impression: “Oops, we did it again!”

But this time, the situation is far worse.

Notice that there are seven different groups of idols being worshipped by the people.

This is a good reminder that the book of Judges isn’t a cycle of the same things happening over and over again, it’s a spiral where things are continually getting worse.

But verse 6 is also a good reminder that we cannot repent of idols we do not recognize.

You cannot overcome an idol you do not see.

So the first step to overcoming idolatry is identifying your idols.

But we need to remember that idolatry is much more subtle than bowing down to some statue.

Even in the Old Testament God confronted His people for having invisible idols...

Ezekiel 14:3b— “… these men have taken their idols into their hearts… ”

Like us, they might have responded, “Idols? What idols? I don’t see any idols?”

But when we say that it’s because we haven’t dug deep enough to understand how the heart can turn anything into an idol.

As John Piper says...

Anything in the world that successfully competes with our love for God is an idol. [1]

Or, as Tim Keller writes...

The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them. [2]

For example...

Image idolatry – Life has meaning if I look a certain way.

Is it wrong to care about how you look? No!

Is it wrong to exercise or have nice clothing? Certainly not!

But if your worth is measured by how you look, than you have turned a good thing into an ultimate thing.

Work idolatry – Life has meaning because I am able to get things done.

You feel excited and satisfied when things are going well, but you’re devastated when you’re not productive.

Once again, is it wrong to be productive? Is work bad? No!

But a good thing—work—becomes an ultimate thing when you self-worth and your joy is connected to it.

Entertainment idolatry—Life has meaning as long as there’s quality entertainment to distract me.

Videos, movies, concerts, and video games aren’t necessarily wrong. But they’re a cheap and unsatisfying substitute for the Living God.

Materialism idolatry – I have meaning when I attain a certain level of wealth, financial freedom, and/or nice possessions.

You don’t have to have a lot of stuff to struggle with this idol. Both the rich and the poor can be materialists. The question is not necessarily how much do you have but how much do you want.

Family idolatry – Life has meaning when my family is happy and healthy.

Maybe you’re happy because your children behave a certain way, or look like they behave a certain way around other people.

Maybe you're depressed or unhappy because you don’t have children, or your children aren’t healthy, or your children don’t appreciate you the way you think they should.

Person Idolatry—Life has meaning and purpose when a certain person is happy, or happy with me.

Psychologists call this codependency, but it’s really just another form of heart idolatry.

Relationship idolatry—I have meaning a certain person is in love with me.

If you have that special someone, you’re probably suffocating to him or her, since that person is your idol.

If you don’t have that special someone, you may come across as desperate.

Religious idolatry—I have meaning if I appear religious or am faithfully exercising religious duties.

This can be a subtle form of image idolatry, where you are more interested in looking holy than being holy.

Now obviously being holy is good! But if you’re more concerned with looking holy than being holy, you’re worshipping an idol. But it’s much more dangerous because it looks so good!!!

Tim Keller—We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life. [3]

If you’re still struggling to identify your idols, ask yourself Three Diagnostic Questions:

1) Am I willing to sin in order to get this thing?

Why does a good Christian girl forsake her purity to get a guy? It’s probably not because she’s addicted to pleasure, but because she’s turned that relationship into an idol. And she’ll sacrifice her purity—she’ll sin against God—in order to get her idol.

2) Am I willing to sin in order to keep this thing?

Why do people cheat on their taxes? It’s probably not that they hate the IRS or they get pleasure out lying. It’s probably because they've made an idol out of money and they’re willing to sin in order to keep more of it.

3) Am I frequently running to this thing for refuge?

Where do you turn for comfort when you’re afraid, hurt, discouraged or anxious? Is it alcohol? Video games? Pills? Binge-watching TV? Romance? Sports? A relationship?

Again, none of those things are necessarily bad. Idols typically aren’t bad things. They’re good things turned into ultimate things.

Think of your heart like the wheel on a bicycle. The hub is the idol that’s controlling you, and the spokes are the specific sins you’re struggling with. Often we sin in order to secure or protect our idols. [4]

Are you beginning to see why it’s important to identify our idols?

We will never battle idols that we cannot see.

So if we want to successfully battle our idols, we must begin by doing the hard work of identifying our idols.

But we can’t stop there. We must move on to step two. We must...

2) UPROOT Our Idols

We will never successfully battle our idols unless we dig deep.

So we must do the hard work of uprooting our idols.

Which is extremely hard work, as we’ll soon see...

Judges 10:7–9—So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites, and they crushed and oppressed the people of Israel that year. For eighteen years they oppressed all the people of Israel who were beyond the Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. And the Ammonites crossed the Jordan to fight also against Judah and against Benjamin and against the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was severely distressed.

As a result of their idolatry, God raises up two enemies against His people.

The Ammonites will oppress God’s people until Jephthah delivers them.

And the Philistines will oppress God’s people during the days of Samson, but they’re oppression would continue long after Samson’s death.

Remember, it was a Philistine giant that David killed before he became king.

But this particular round of slavery will last for eighteen years.

Now it’s easy to think of this slavery as something that is tacked on as a punishment for their sin. And that’s true.

But it’s also true that idolatry in itself is a form of slavery.

Paul puts it this way in...

Galatians 4:8—Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.

So yes, God disciplines His people by selling them into slavery all over the book of Judges.

But that physical slavery is only a picture of a much more serious spiritual slavery that oppresses everyone who worships anything other than God.

But why is it that idols are enslaving?

Because idols are rooted much deeper than we think.

We’ve all heard stories of people who overcome an addiction to drugs and alcohol only to become addicted to fame or money or bodybuilding or something else.

This happens because we don’t dig deep enough to uproot our idols. We think we’re removing an idol, but in reality we’re often just trading one idol for another.

Bible teachers like Tim Keller and David Powlison explain this by distinguishing between two types of idols...

Surface idols and Source idols

Surface idols are all the things we’ve talked about—things like money, image, work, possessions, family, relationships, and more. We call them “surface idols” because they’re relatively easy to see.

Source Idols are much harder to spot. These are the idols underneath the idols.

To find a source idol, you need to ask yourself “WHY is this thing so important to me?”

Consider, for example, someone whose surface idol is money. [5]

Some people want lots of money so they can CONTROL their world and their life. For them, money is a tool that is saved and invested so they can feel safe and secure and in control. These people think they won’t have as many problems as long as they have enough money to deal with them.

Other people use money to gain access to certain social circles and receive APPROVAL from the people they feel are important. These are the people who spend money on themselves to keep up with the Jones’s. Or, perhaps, they spend money on others to buy their approval. Money is a tool to gain approval.

Some people want money so they can have POWER over other people. Money isn’t used for appearances or for security. It’s used as a tool to buy power and influence over other people.

Others still want money for COMFORT. They will spend money, not to impress or dominate other people, but to make life more comfortable and easy.

These four different reasons why one person might worship money represent the four main source idols that drive all our idolatry.

SHOW IDOLATRY CHART [6]

If you serve the source idol of COMFORT you probably seem laidback and easygoing. But because you’re focused primarily on your comfort, you probably aren’t very productive. Your worst nightmare is stress and demands, and you regularly wrestle with boredom. Because you’re often focused on your own comfort, the people around you often feel hurt and neglected.

If you serve the source idol of APPROVAL you probably seem likable and friendly. But because you’re focused primarily on pleasing other people, you probably aren’t very independent. Your worst nightmare is rejection, and you regularly wrestle with cowardice. Because you’re so focused on not disappointing others, the people around you often feel smothered.

If you serve the source idol of CONTROL you probably seem very competent. You know what you’re doing. But because you’re focused primarily on remaining in control, you probably aren’t very spontaneous and you may often feel lonely. Your worst nightmare is uncertainty, and because of that you regularly wrestle with anxiety. Because you’re so focused on things being done a certain way, the people around you often feel condemned, judged, or offended.

If you serve the source idol of POWER you probably seem highly confident. But because you’re focused primarily on gaining or retaining power, you probably feel heavily burdened by the weight of responsibility. Your worst nightmare is being humiliated, and you regularly wrestle with anger. Because you’re often focused on power, the people around you often feel used, manipulated, and handled.

You won’t find a Bible verse that outlines four source idols the way Keller and Powlison do here.

Perhaps there’s more than four source idols. Maybe there’s less.

But when you understand the concept of idols underneath our idols, all of a sudden Israel’s problems make sense.

Finally you begin to understand why they continue turning to these idols over and over again. Because you and I do the same thing.

Some may have taken COMFORT in worshipping a god they could see.

Some sought APPROVAL from the nations around them.

Others liked the fact that these were gods they could CONTROL, unlike the true and living God.

Still others may have believed these counterfeit gods would give them POWER over the people around them.

And here’s what happens over and over again in the book of Judges: the people begin to look to their human rescuer to provide the same comfort, approval, control, or power that they were looking for in their false gods. They keep returning to idolatry because they never really left it. They never really uprooted their source idols.

I would encourage you to spend some time over the next few weeks examining your heart and asking others to help you uncover your source idols.

Perhaps you can walk through that chart with someone in this church and ask them to help you identify the source idol that typically captures your heart.

Just like you wouldn’t take a pair of scissors to trim the weeds in your flowerbeds, you need to pull them up by the roots.

The same is true for the idols in your heart.

So if we want to successfully battle our idols, we must do the painful work of uprooting them.

But we can’t stop there. We must move on to step three. We must...

3) REPLACE Our Idols

We will never successfully battle our idols unless we replace them.

Otherwise, like a game of Whac-A-Mole, the moment we eliminate one idol another will take its place.

But how do we replace our idols?

We can learn a lot by looking at the people of God in...

Judges 10:10–14—And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, saying, “We have sinned against you, because we have forsaken our God and have served the Baals.” And the Lord said to the people of Israel, “Did I not save you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites, from the Ammonites and from the Philistines? The Sidonians also, and the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you, and you cried out to me, and I saved you out of their hand. Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more. Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress.

These are some of the scariest verses in the book of Judges.

After rebuking His people for their sevenfold idolatry, God reminds them of His sevenfold rescue. Time and time again He has rescued His people.

But then He says something that’s downright shocking: If you love those idols so much, why don’t you ask them to save you!

Brother, sister, friend: one of the worst things that can ever happen to you is for God to give you what you want.

We see something similar in the New Testament in...

Romans 1:22–25—Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Few things are more scary then God giving you up to chase after your idols.

But perhaps you’re a bit confused. Why is God giving His people up in Judges? After all, they’re asking for His help!!!

It’s one thing to “yelp for help”—that’s basically what that term “cried out” means in verse 10 and throughout the book of Judges.

It’s quite another thing to truly cry out to God in repentance and faith.

When you put a coin in a vending machine, you expect your candy or soda to be dispensed immediately. In the same way, God’s people are expecting God to immediately deliver them because they asked. But that’s not how it works.

Once again, Tim Keller is helpful here:

Idols cannot simply be removed. They must be replaced. If you only try to uproot them, they grow back; but they can be supplanted. By what? By God himself, of course. But by God we do not mean a general belief in his existence. Most people have that, yet their souls are riddled with idols. What we need is a living encounter with God. [7]

So God resists the prayers of His people. Not because He’s playing hard to get, but because He knows they’re half-hearted. He’s pushing them to give Him their hearts!

When He says “I will save you no more!” it’s kind of like when a parent says “I’m not going to tell you again!” Now everybody knows that mom and dad are going to tell that child again. Eventually. But not in that moment. The words function as a warning to help the child see the seriousness of his condition. So too God is warning His people.

And perhaps God is doing the same thing in your life, friend. He is not responding to your prayers for deliverance, not because He doesn’t love you. But because He loves you too much to support you in your idolatry. He wants your heart!

Will you give Him your heart? Truly? Completely? Will you replace your idols with the true and living God?

What the people of Israel do next only happens once in the entire book of Judges.

Although not everybody agrees, I think this is the one and only time in the entire book when we something that looks like repentance.

Here, and here alone, we see an example of what it means to successfully battle idolatry.

Judges 10:15–16a—And the people of Israel said to the Lord, “We have sinned; do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day.” So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord…

Notice four evidences of genuine repentance in these verses...

First, they confess.

Chapter 10 is the only place in the book of Judges where God’s people confess their sin.

They don’t make excuses. They don’t blame anybody else. They simply confess: “We have sinned.”

If you want to replace your idolatry with genuine worship you have to begin by confessing your sin.

Second, they surrender.

They tell God, “Do whatever seems good to you.”

Granted, they still ask to be delivered. But for the first time they seem surrendered to the plan of God.

If you want to replace your idolatry with genuine worship you have to surrender to God. That includes a willingness to accept whatever consequences He places in your life.

Third, they put away their idols.

This is the only time this language is used in the entire book.

It’s almost as if they’ve been keeping these idols in their back pockets the entire time. Here and only here do they get rid of them.

If you want to replace your idolatry with genuine worship you have to actually put away your idols. You can’t keep holding onto them. You have to give them to the Lord.

Finally, they serve the Lord.

The word “serve” is used all over the book of Judges. They serve the Baals, the Ashtaroth, Cushan-Rishathaim, Eglon, Abimelech, and a host of other gods.

But only one other time is the word “serve” used in relationship to God.

All the way back in Judges 2:7 where we learn that “the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua.”

Other than that one verse, this is the only time in the entire book when God’s people actually serve God.

If you want to replace your idolatry with genuine worship you have to serve and follow God. You have to trust and obey Him!

But even if God’s people are genuinely repentant in these verses, their repentance does not last.

Their game of spiritual Whac-A-Mole will continue to get worse and worse as the story progresses.

No wonder our passage ends with this words...

Judges 10:16b—and [The Lord] became impatient over the misery of Israel.

This is a reminder that the battle against idolatry cannot be won by human effort.

We will not successfully battle idolatry by serving God, but by allowing God to serve us!

In other words, we have to look to the Gospel!

Simply put the Gospel is the Good News about how God has rescued His people through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

It’s been said that the Gospel is an ocean that is shallow enough for a child to wade, but deep enough for an elephant to swim.

Unbeliever: repent and believe!

Christian: You and I can learn to swim as we look to the Gospel to battle our deepest idols.

Our longing for COMFORT can only be satisfied in the Gospel.

We can die to the idol of comfort because Christ left the glories of heaven and endured supreme discomfort for us, by dying on a cross.

And He promises that one day we will enjoy eternal comfort in His presence, in a world without sin and suffering.

Our longing for APPROVAL can only be satisfied in the Gospel.

We can die to the idol of approval because Christ endured the most severe disapproval when He suffered the Father’s wrath in our place.

And if our faith is in Christ, we have been adopted into the family of God. We don’t need to work for His approval, because we already have it!

Our longing for CONTROL can only be satisfied in the Gospel.

We can die to the idol of control because Christ gave up His control to the will of His Father.

And if Jesus was able to trust the Father’s control all the way to the cross, we can trust that the Father is in control today and whatever He plans for us is good.

Our longing for POWER can only be satisfied in the Gospel.

We can die to the idol of power because Christ defeated the powers of this world through the weakness of the cross.

And if we trust Him, we don’t need to exert power over others. We can humbly serve because we have been humbly served by the greatest Being in the universe.

I suppose there is one way to beat Whac-A-Mole, although I don’t recommend it. If you hit the mole hard enough, you’ll forever break it so that it cannot pop up any longer. The machine might whir and groan as the mole attempts to reach the surface one more time, before smoke starts rising out of the machine.

That’s what Christ has done on the cross. Christ has dealt the final blow to our idols when He died for our idolatry on the cross. Now the idol factory of your heart is groaning and whirring as your idols attempt to resurface. But the day is coming when Christ returns and that idol factory will be done forever. Until that day, let’s labor to successfully battle our idols.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

The Power of the Cross

Special Announcement: Memorial Day Lunch

If you don’t have plans for lunch today, please stay and fellowship with us. We’d love to have you!

Pray and bless the food

Benediction (Jude 24-25)