Killing Idolatry by Fixating on Jesus

Intro

Isn’t it interesting that Paul connects the Lord’s Table here with the issue of idolatry? Last week we said that an idol is anything or anyone in our lives which we elevate to level ground with God or above him.

John Calvin understood, like Paul, that idol worship is actually at the heart of the fallen human condition.

“The human heart is a perpetual idol factory” (Calvin, Institutes I.11.8).

I am reminded of one of my favorite movies, The NeverEnding Story. In it, the heroes fight to save their world from a devouring force called “The Nothing.” Throughout the story we discover that the world of Fantasia represents the full scope of human hopes and dreams, and The Nothing is the result of fading hopes and dreams. The day is saved by a human child, the reader, daring to dream again, being willing to believe and join the story himself.

The real world isn’t all that different from this except what we have lost isn’t our hopes and dreams but God. Without God we have no hope and our dreams are corroded. Like the fictitious world of Fantasia, our world is being devoured by a sort of nothing and we are in trouble without outside intervention.

Tension

The very best of us are still children of Adam and Eve and thus we naturally trend in the same direction they went. We too, prefer false gods to the real one often when given the option and that is the core of our spiritual demise.

As a branch withers apart from the vine, so we wither apart from God. Humanity has been rotting from the day Adam and Eve severed themselves from God and the fact that we get old and die is only a microcosm of that overarching truth.

We are all a part of the death which is overtaking everything and there is no man-made or man-forged way out of the problem. We can’t start down the road to recovery until we own this truth and helping others get there starts with being honest about what is broken in all of us.

Truth

1 Corinthians 10:14-22

I. We flee from what comes most natural rather than embracing it (14-15)

What does idolatry look like in our lives?

“So it goes. Man's mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God. To these evils a new wickedness joins itself, that man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. Therefore the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth. The example of the Israelites shows the origin of idolatry to be that men do not believe God is with them unless he shows himself physically present” (Calvin, Institutes).

Humanity has a liturgy designed around keeping God at a distance. It changes over time and gets more “progressive” as a society plunges deeper into sin.

Liturgy- “a customary repertoire of ideas, phrases, or observances” (Merriam-Webster’s).

The culture has a liturgy, and the church has a liturgy. Each is designed to teach us to practice a particular worldview. The world wants us to go against Christ but we are calling one another to run towards Christ.

Paul appeals to the church as a sensible people because we have the Holy Spirit and the word to instruct us against the destructive patterns of the world.

II. As we flee from sin, we run towards Christ (16-18)

When we come to the Lord’s table it is an act of acknowledgment that apart from Christ we are dead. It is a repenting of the world’s liturgy of attempting to forge a life for ourselves apart from God. It is the embracing of a life fully immersed in his power, his grace, his ways, and his truth.

We aspire to be participants in Christ rather than in pop culture which is being consumed by the nothing that is sin. We want to live in Christ rather than rot in sin.

III. Being in Christ, we check carefully what we involve ourselves in (19-22)

The reality is that pop culture is nothing but a vapor just like every culture that was popular before ours. There is no real substance to it and it would be ac shame for us to hinge our everything on something so thin and fragile, destined to be destroyed.

We are called by Christ to embrace true substance in him rather than attaching our lives to sin and ultimate death.

Application

Beth told me a story this week about a church interviewing for a perspective new staff member. Many of the candidates were very vague when asked hard questions.

It is so easy for even Christians to compromise, to participate in the world’s liturgy rather than Christ’s. We must flee from that temptation or we might find ourselves being devoured by the nothing that is all around us.

Church, we don’t just take the liturgical elements of baptism and the Lord’s supper. We are called by Christ to participate in the Lord. These sacraments are present with us to remind us of our commitment to the Lord, that life is only in Him, and that when we stray from the course the Lord has us on we must return quickly.

Remember Christ.

Remember that true life is in Him alone.

Remember the way home.

Repent often.