How Idols Get into my Heart

Good morning, everyone! Whether you're here with us in the room or joining online—listening live or later—we’re truly glad you're here. You're part of our extended spiritual family, and we're thankful for you.

Hey, if you’ve got kids with you this morning—now’s a great time for them to head to class. We’ve got an amazing team ready to welcome them and help them know Jesus in a way that makes sense to them

For the rest of us, grab your Bible, get comfortable, and get ready for what God has for you today. We are continuing today on our journey through our new series called—Treason & Triumph: Exposing Idols and Embracing Christ…So let’s dig in together…

Have you ever noticed how weeds seem to grow without effort? You don’t plant them, but they just show up. The weeds are feeding on the very ground that you intended for something else. The weeds are stealing the resources that you intended to use to grow. The soil, water, even the sunlight that you planned out for your plants, are being used by these ridiculous weeds. WEll that how the idols in our hearts work. They are not planted there by you, but they appear and they grow within us. And unless we recognize how they got in, they will choke out the life of Christ in us.Maybe that’s already happened to you…

So today, we’re going to see from Ezekiel 14 not just that idols exist in our hearts, but how they actually get there, and what God wants us to do about them.

Ezekiel 14:1–5 ESV

Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.

Ezekiel doesn’t say idols are all around us. No, he says they are in our hearts. In other words, the problem is not just out there in the world — it’s in here, inside of us. That’s our first truth we are going to look at today.

Idols Are Rooted in the Heart (Ezekiel 14:3a)

Ezekiel tells the Israelites that they have “set up idols in their hearts.” The Hebrew phrase literally means they “raised idols upon their hearts.” That language shows more than just a passing thought — it’s a deliberate act of devotion. Even if it wasn’t always visible, it was still very real.

Now, many times in Scripture idol worship was public and obvious. You could walk into a town and see people bowing before statues. But here in Babylon, Ezekiel is exposing something deeper: the idolatry of the exiles was hidden. It wasn’t displayed outwardly, but it lived in their heart convictions. Ezekiel is pulling back the exposing them and saying, “The real issue is not what you’re doing with your hands; it’s what you’re loving in your heart.”

So if idols live in our hearts, then we need to ask: what kind of place is the heart? According to Scripture, the heart is not neutral ground. It is constantly producing something. And John Calvin was right when he said, “The heart is an idol factory.”

The heart is an idol factory.

God designed us to be worshippers. That’s not optional. The question is never, “Am I worshipping?” The question is, “Who or what am I worshipping?” Because sin twists that God-given instinct to worship, and instead of turning us toward Him, it pulls us toward idols.

This is why phrases like “Follow your heart” are so dangerous. When you tell someone to “follow their heart,” you’re not telling them to follow God’s Word — you’re telling them to follow their idols. And it shows. In a culture where everyone is told to do whatever feels right, it’s no surprise that roughly 80% of our county doesn’t attend a Bible-preaching church.

Brad Bigney helps us define idolatry well: “Idolatry is not just about little statues or foreign religions. It’s about anything or anyone that begins to capture our hearts and affections more than God.”

And Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us just how dangerous that is: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Whatever comes out of the factory of your heart will shape your life. What you allow to take root inside will steer your decisions, your emotions, and your affections. Let me put it simply:

What fills the heart shapes the life.

Here’s an example. Many of you remember the early days of GPS systems in cars. Before phones took over, Apple Maps especially had a problem. The software would give you directions with absolute confidence — but it wasn’t always right. People ended up driving into lakes, down one-way streets, even onto freeways. Why? Because if the GPS was even slightly off in its starting point, you would always end up in the wrong place, no matter how confidently that little voice told you to “turn right.”

That’s what idols do in your heart. When something other than God takes the central place, it becomes the reference point your life recalculates around. Every decision, every response, every emotion starts orbiting around that idol. And you may not even notice — until one day you wake up far from where God wants you to be.

As Tim Keller put it: “The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things.”

That’s what idolatry does. It takes something good and makes it into a god. And Ezekiel makes it clear: these idols don’t just sneak in. They don’t get there by accident.

You Put the Idols There (Ezekiel 14:3b)

It’s tempting to think idols just sneak into our lives without us noticing. But Ezekiel doesn’t say that. He says the people of Israel had “set up” their idols. That’s intentional language. These idols didn’t just creep in by accident — they were placed there. Maybe not with full awareness, but with real choices.

Now, remember who Ezekiel is speaking to here. These weren’t pagans on the street corner. These were leaders of Israel. Men who came to God’s prophet looking for instruction, who prayed publicly for deliverance from Babylon. Outwardly, they looked like faithful worshipers of Yahweh. But inwardly? They had already adopted Babylon’s values, Babylon’s goals, Babylon’s standards. They wanted God’s blessings without giving God His rightful place in their hearts.

That’s what makes idolatry so deceptive. Most of the time, we don’t see it clearly. What we do see are the symptoms — the frustration, the anger, the despair, the broken relationships. But Ezekiel’s message is clear:

We set them up.

We’re quick to blame stress, busyness, or circumstances. But at the root, it’s our idols. And we miss them because we think idolatry only belongs to the ancient world — bowing to statues of wood and stone. But idols are alive and well today. They may not sit on your mantle, but they sit on your heart.

Remember: “Idols are anything we love, trust, or obey more than God.”

And here’s where it gets even more sobering:

Our temptations are built around our idols.

Listen to James 1:14–15: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

That’s exactly how it works. We’re not just wandering around the world bumping into random temptations. No — the enemy is studying us. He knows what we crave. He knows what we’re running to. And he tailors the bait to fit the idol already in our hearts.

If your idol is approval, he’ll dangle compliments. If your idol is wealth, he’ll whisper promises of financial security. If your idol is leisure, he’ll tempt you with endless comfort and escape.

That’s what makes this so dangerous:

Idols blind us, so we don’t see what’s really happening.

Idols bind us, so we don’t feel free to break away.

And Satan’s strategies would never work if our hearts weren’t already cluttered with idols.

Here’s the truth: Idols are not innocent. Once they’re in place, they won’t sit quietly. They will begin to distort everything in your life.

And that brings us to the next reality Ezekiel points out:

Idols Distort Your Life and Lead to Sin (Ezekiel 14:3c)

Once an idol takes root in your heart, it doesn’t just sit there quietly. It’s not passive. It begins to twist the way you see everything — your emotions, your relationships, even your view of the past, present, and future.

Think of it like putting on glasses with cracked lenses. Everything you look at is bent, blurry, and distorted. That’s what idols do. They distort your whole perspective on life.

Idols distort your past, present, and future.

They will take your past and make it feel irredeemable. They stir up a guilt you can’t seem to shake. Even the best moments are overshadowed because you didn’t live up to what your idol demanded.

They attack your present by demanding your attention. When your idols are blocked, you don’t just feel frustration — you erupt in anger or collapse into despair. You go from 0 to 100. That’s because the idol you depend on for relief has failed you, and you don’t know how to live without it.

Then your future begins to look hopeless. You see, your idols fill your tomorrow with paralyzing anxiety, because they always demand more than you can give. And deep down you know you’ll never be able to satisfy them.

And when one idol fails, what do we do? We run to another. We chase the next promise of relief. But it’s a vicious cycle, because idols never deliver what they promise.

Idols promise life but deliver destruction.

They offer peace, joy, and security, but in the end they rob your soul and break your heart. That’s why idolatry doesn’t just make us sinful — it makes us foolish. It blinds us to reality and leaves us stumbling into even greater sin.

The prophet Jeremiah confronted this same issue, we talked about it a couple weeks ago. Let’s reread it again together:

Jeremiah 2:13 ESV

for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Do you hear what God is saying? His people turned away from Him — the living fountain — and tried to drink from cracked buckets that could never hold water. They traded the valuable for the worthless. And that’s exactly what idolatry is: an attempt to satisfy ourselves apart from God.

John Piper captures it well: “Sin is what you do when you’re not satisfied in God.”

Or we could say it this way: Idolatry is what you do when you feel God is not enough.

And folks, we’ve all been there. Every one of us knows what it feels like to look to something or someone other than God to carry the weight only He can carry.

But here’s the frightening reality: idols don’t come alone. They bring friends…

Which brings us to the next truth Ezekiel shows us:

Idols Run in Herds (Ezekiel 14:4)

Let’s go back to the leaders Ezekiel is addressing. They came to him pretending to seek God’s answers, but in reality, they weren’t ready for what God was saying. Why? Because they had already been worshiping the idols of their own minds.

They were thinking like pagans. They were open to worship practices that went directly against God’s law. And yet, they convinced themselves they were still doing the right thing. That’s how deceptive idolatry can be — it blinds us while we pat ourselves on the back.

These idols had taken up residence in their hearts, and they didn’t come alone.

One idol brings others.

You bow to success, and before long, success brings its friends — approval, control, and comfort. Idols rarely travel solo. They mob your heart. They surround you. And if left unchecked, they tear you down.

But here’s the good news: God loves you too much to leave you mobbed by your idols.

God pursues us, even through discipline.

Yes, it can hurt when He comes after us. It hurts because we’re clinging to idols He’s trying to remove. But even when it stings, it’s for our good.

Romans 8:28 reminds us that God is working all things together for the good of His people. We may not always see what He’s doing, but we can always trust that it is good — even if it doesn’t feel good in the moment.

👉 Ezekiel 14:4 (ESV): “Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols.”

Do you hear that? God says He will personally step in to deal with the mob of idols in our hearts. Now…

Here’s the good news: God is coming after you. Here’s the bad news: God is coming after you.

And when He does, it doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes His discipline is painful. But that’s because He loves you too much to let you stay enslaved.

I remember when I was a kid, and I crossed a line my dad had clearly set. He’d come after me with that paddle, and let me tell you — it got my attention. Did it hurt? Oh, yeah. But you know what I learned? Don’t do that again. My father loved me enough to correct me.

That’s exactly what our heavenly Father does. Hebrews 12:6 says, “The Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives.” His discipline is proof that you belong to Him.

God’s answer and judgment against idolatry in Ezekiel’s day was not to destroy His people but to rescue their hearts, so they would not continue estranged from Him.

But here’s the key: It is your responsibility to respond when God pursues us.

Because if we resist Him — if we cling to our idols — they will do something tragic.

Our idols will make us feel estranged from God himself. Actually…it’s more than a feeling…

Idols Estrange Us from God (Ezek. 14:5)

Ezekiel 14:5 ESV

that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.

This is a real separation that idols drive between us and the living God.

Listen, let’s be honest for a moment. How many of us have ever said something like this: “I’m just not as close to God as I used to be.” Or maybe you’ve felt, “My relationship with God is a little off lately.” Why do we say that? We say it because, deep down, we know that our hearts have been pulled away. We’ve been giving our affections to something—or someone—other than God.

That’s exactly what Ezekiel is describing here. He says the idols of Israel caused them to turn away from God. Do you see the language? Idols don’t just sit harmlessly in a corner of your life. Idols are thieves. But they don’t just steal your attention—they steal your affection. They estrange your heart from the very God who made you and redeemed you.

But here’s the good news of this verse: God will not sit back and watch His people drift away. He says He confronts our idols “in order to take hold of the hearts of the house of Israel.” In other words, God comes after us. His discipline, His judgment, even His exposing of our idols—it’s not to push us farther away, but to draw us back. He wants our hearts again.

This is the jealous love of God. He doesn’t share His glory with another (Exod. 34:14) tells us that we shall worship no other god, He doesn’t share His people with idols. The Lord is jealous of you because he loves you. When you feel far from Him, it’s not because He left. It’s because your heart wandered. But here’s the really cool mercy of God—He loves you too much to let your heart stay stolen away.

Think about how Jeremiah says it:

Jeremiah 3:22 ESV

“Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness.” “Behold, we come to you, for you are the Lord our God.

God isn’t out to destroy His people; He’s out to heal them. Hebrews 12:6 says: “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”” That’s what’s happening here in Ezekiel 14. God is lovingly confronting His people so they will not continue to be alienated from Him.

So if today you feel far from God, the call of this text is clear: don’t ignore that distance. Don’t settle for a relationship that feels “a little off.” Instead, ask: What idol has been stealing my heart? Because the same God who confronted Israel through Ezekiel is the God who, right now, confronts you in His Word—not to drive you away, but to capture your heart again.

Christians pay attention to this, it’s important, idols estrange us from God. But God, in His mercy, refuses to let His people remain estranged. He says: “I want your heart back.”

What idol is God putting His finger on in your life today? Don’t ignore His voice. Don’t shrug it off. God is not exposing this to destroy you, but to draw you near. Brad Bigney puts it this way: “Ask God to show you your heart and to give you the grace to go under the scalpel and let Him do surgery. You’ll never be the same.”

So, will you let Him? Will you lay down that idol — whether it’s success, approval, comfort, control, or something else — will you turn again to the One who is the fountain of living waters?

Idols will always take from you. But Christ gave Himself for you. Idols will curse you when you fail them. But Christ blesses you even when you fail Him. Idols leave you empty. But Christ fills you to overflowing.

The question is simple: Will you keep letting idols choke out your life, or will you give your heart back to the One who died to have it? Don’t leave here today without turning from your idols and turning back to Christ.

Christ came and lived the life you could never live. Perfect. Sinless. Always faithful to His Father. And then He died the death you deserved, taking on Himself the punishment for your idolatry, your sin, your rebellion. He died so that you might truly live.

The idols you’ve been chasing will never save you. They will never satisfy you. They will always take from you, drain you, and condemn you when you fail them. But Jesus does the opposite. He gives. He restores. He forgives. He saves.

So today, God’s call is clear: turn from your idols and turn to Christ. Lay down whatever you’ve been clinging to, and cling instead to the One who clung to the cross for you. He alone is worthy of your worship. He alone is your strength, your portion, your joy forever.

Don’t leave here today holding tighter to an idol than to Christ. Give Him your heart — He gave you his life.

Prayer