Idol Worship

The Heidelberg Catechism divides the Ten Commandments into two tables. The first table includes the first four commandments; the second table contains the last six. The first four teach us how to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The second six teach us how to love our neighbours.

The first four commandments give us specific knowledge about God. God is the one who saves his people. With his mighty arm, he delivered people from slavery in Egypt. Through Christ, God delivers everyone who believes in him, from slavery to sin.

What Is Idolatry?

This evening we are looking at God’s commandment to never make an idol. According to the second commandment, there is nothing else worthy of worship. And, honestly, there is nothing we can describe, make, or image that can come close to what God really is like.

The Father is spirit, how do you make an image of a spirit? The Son took on human flesh, but have you ever noticed that there is not one single physical description of Jesus in the Bible? Not a single picture is given. The Holy Spirit is a person, the Bible describes him as taking the form of a dove, but that wasn’t a physical description of what the Holy Spirit looks like.

God warned the people of Israel, with good reason, not to try to make an image of him. He knew they were tempted to do so. He knew that the pagan religions around them made images and worshipped them. He knew that they would do as the other nations would do. That’s the thing that plagued Israel throughout her history.

Even after God mightily rescued them from Egypt, after watching Pharaoh’s army drown, while Moses talked with God on the mountain, they grew restless. They demanded that Joshua give them something to worship. “Come,” they said, “make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (Ex. 32:1b).

We see how quickly their hearts turned to something else. They couldn’t remain content with simple faith. They couldn’t trust the God they couldn’t see, even though the cloud remained on the mountain where Moses was.

They willingly exchanged the true God, their Saviour, for an idol.

Now, can we understand why God would be offended by this? Well, for one, it is an outright lie. That calf did not lead the people out of Egypt. Moreover, it in no way came close to even representing God.

Any attempt to worship God that involves making something out of metal or wood, or even crafting a picture through words, is idolatry. Why? Because there is nothing on earth, nothing in the universe that can possibly represent God. No created thing can come close to describing or representing the creator.

The True Image of God

Nor do we need to make anything. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. If we desire a picture of God, we look to the scriptures, we look to the Word of God. Bible tells us everything we need to know about God.

But as I’ve already mentioned, there’s no physical description of God at all. There is no physical description of Jesus, at all. God knows our hearts. He knows that if the Bible told us that Jesus was 5’7”, had dark hair, brown eyes, weighed 150lbs, every guy who had the same stats would brag about looking like Jesus!

They say that beauty is only skin deep. Actually, true beauty is not contained in the physical. True beauty shows up in who the person is, not what they look like. If all a person appreciates is what they can behold with their eyes, then they’ll miss out on truly getting to know people.

More important than the physical description is the accounts of a person. Tell me this, what would endear you to a person more? Suppose I said I knew this really great guy. He’s 5’9” has a full beard, greying hair and he wears Khakis and dress shirts.

You’d be like, okay, neat. But if I told you that this guy was a deep thinking, fantastic student, a loving father, a caring husband and a really great friend, what would you think of him then?

So is it surprising then, that God chose to reveal himself as to his character, not as to his description? In God’s actions, his mighty acts, creating, judging, loving, saving we see who God is. What God looks like is not important.

And yet, the Israelites were determined to find something they could make to worship.

Control

Do you know why they did that? It was so that they could be in control. By having an image, they reduced God to a thing. They made God, they fashioned him, so therefore they thought they could control him.

But what about us today? Are we guilty of idolatry? Do Christians fall into this temptation that plagued the Israelites for so many years? Or are we beyond all that?

Well, there are still all kinds of dangers, some of which I mentioned the last time we were together.

But there is a form of idolatry that I think many Christians are not even aware that it is idolatry. It is the Christian novel. There are authors, perhaps not intending to do harm or wrong, but who describe God in ways that God has not described himself. One exceedingly popular book is The Shack.

One of the most interesting reasons that people give for appreciating a book like The Shack is that it has taught them more about God than they ever knew. Now think about that statement. A fictional novel taught them more about God than the Bible? Is the author of the book inspired? The book is true because it describes a vision the author had of God?

Is a book like The Shack true? Is it any more or less true than the book of Mormon? Or how about the Qur’an? Do those books teach us about God too? They claim to, don’t they? Don’t Muslims claim to be descendants of Abraham, don’t they claim to worship the God of Abraham? Doesn’t the book of Mormon claim to teach about Jesus? They are, after all, the church of Jesus Christ, the latter Day Saints.

But we wouldn’t look to them for knowledge about God, would we? So why are Christians so quick to accept the teaching from a book called The Shack?

Again, it comes from a lack of Bible knowledge. Are we able to separate truth from fiction? And when challenged, why are God’s people so quick to defend the novel?

One of the main criticisms against The Shack is that it recreates God in the image of humans. Those who defend the shack say that it helps them understand God better. But it does not.

The Shack presents the Trinity. God the Father is represented as a large African American woman who goes by the name Papa. Jesus looks just like a Middle Eastern guy. And the Spirit looks Asian.

But what the author has done is to go way beyond scripture. He has given an image to something spiritual.

This is blasphemy. It is idolatry. It totally breaks the third commandment. Instead of portraying the truth, The Shack presents a lie. African-American woman, golden calf, it is the same thing. It is wrong; it is evil.

It is an attempt, just as with the Israelites, to control God. Christians pick and choose what they want to know about God, and ignore the rest. They come up with their own ideas. They overemphasise one thing and ignore others.

Sometimes it is hard to reconcile the revelation of God. Critics say, “how can God be a God of love, when there’s so much suffering in the world? How can God say he is love, when he ordered the Israelites to slaughter entire nations, what we’d call genocide, or ethnic cleansing now?”

Accepting God As He Is

Part of our problem is that we do tend to view everyone as innocent, and generally good. But, the reality is that all people are born into sin and are not at all innocent. So, while we’d be quick to punish a murderer, we wouldn’t apply the same kind of justice to children and infants, even though they are born guilty of sin.

But just because it is difficult to reconcile these two seemingly opposite characteristics of God, his righteous justice and his amazing love, we have to try. But we must not try to come up with a different picture of God, which really, is no picture of God at all, it is a lie.

We must be deeply knowledgeable about God. We must study and meditate on His Word. That way, when we come across a book like The Shack, we’ll be able to discern the truth from the fiction. But let us not pretend that just because a book is written by a Christian that it is therefore worth reading. Even when you listen to sermons, you have to be discerning, is what the preacher saying true?

The best way to find out is to dive into God’s Word yourself. Allow the Holy Spirit to show you the truth, not through the whisperings or feelings or leadings. The Holy Spirit will never contradict the Bible.

The revelation of God contained in the Scriptures is all we need to know. That’s why the Reformers insisted on Sola Scriptura, scripture alone. Aware of the human tendency to wander away from God, to create idols and worship them, they cautioned against giving too much prominence to other writings. That’s why the Bereans, when they listened to the apostle Paul, examined the scriptures to find out if what he said was true.

Will I read The Shack? I think not. I’d rather read my Bible in order to get to know God. I will not recommend it, nor will I vilify anyone who has read it. It is, after all, just a book. And God, being a jealous God, is perfectly capable of looking after himself.

However, as a lover of truth, I will press upon the need to saturate ourselves in the truth, that way, when people ask us to give a reason for the hope that we have inside us, we will have the true answer! Amen.