City of Idols

Worship Robbers

Acts 17:16 ESV

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

We are rolling into our new series this month: looking at Tim Kellers Counterfeit Gods. This is a touchy topic because idolatry is hard to talk about. We have idols literally everywhere; we must do the hard work of identifying them, so that we can get rid of them, before our lives are destroyed by them.

This should be a fun ride, a hard one but fulfilling. Once we start the practice of recognizing idols, we will see how we have robbed God of the worship He deserves.

from the book:

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters A Strange Melancholy

After the global economic crisis began in mid-2008, there followed a tragic string of suicides of formerly wealthy and well-connected individuals. The acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, hanged himself in his basement. The chief executive of Sheldon Good, a leading U.S. real estate auction firm, shot himself in the head behind the wheel of his red Jaguar. A French money manager who invested the wealth of many of Europe’s royal and leading families, and who had lost $1.4 billion of his clients’ money in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, slit his wrists and died in his Madison Avenue office. A Danish senior executive with HSBC Bank hanged himself in the wardrobe of his £500-a-night suite in Knightsbridge, London. When a Bear Stearns executive learned that he would not be hired by JPMorgan Chase, which had bought his collapsed firm, he took a drug overdose and leapt from the twenty-ninth floor of his office building. A friend said, “This Bear Stearns thing … broke his spirit.” It was grimly reminiscent of the suicides in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash.

In the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville recorded his famous observations on America, he noted a “strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants … in the midst of abundance.” Americans believed that prosperity could quench their yearning for happiness, but such a hope was illusory, because, de Tocqueville added, “the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy [the human] heart.”3 This strange melancholy manifests itself in many ways, but always leads

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters A Culture Filled with Idols

A Culture Filled with Idols

To contemporary people the word idolatry conjures up pictures of primitive people bowing down before statues. The biblical book of Acts in the New Testament contains vivid descriptions of the cultures of the ancient Greco-Roman world.

Idols are all around:

Before the pandemic i enjoyed taking my kids to the movies; prior to having kids it was my wife. But the kids took over the movie area. . . and the kids must get their on time to empty my pockets at the concession stand and get to their seats.

There are a lot of things that happen before the feature film comes on: previews of other movies, phone instructions, and my favorite the Dolby presentation. The Dolby presentation allows you to hear the dynamic sound of the speaker, the power, the clarity. . . then the loud whisper “its all around.”

it serves as a reminder that the wonderful sound is all around you.

Likewise, Idols are all around! Our world has a way of reminding us that idols are all around.

Keller talks of some:

Theological idols – Doctrinal errors that produce such distorted views of God that we end up worshipping a false god.

Sexual idols – Addictions such as pornography and fetishisms that promise but don’t deliver a sense of intimacy and acceptance; ideals of physical beauty in yourself and/or your partner; romantic idealism.

Magic/ritual idols – Witchcraft and the occult.  All idolatry is in the end a form of magic that seeks to rebel against the order of transcendent reality rather than submitting to it in love and wisdom.

Political/economic idols – Ideologies of the left, right, and libertarian that absolutize some aspect of political order and make it the solution.  Deifying or demonizing free markets, for example.

Racial/national idols – Racism, militarism, nationalism, or ethnic pride that turns bitter or oppressive.

Relational idols – Dysfunctional family systems of codependency; “fatal attraction”; living your life through your children.

Religious idols – Moralism and legalism; idolatry of success and gifts; religion as a pretext for abuse of power.

Philosophical idols – Systems of thought that make some created thing the problem with life (instead of sin) and some human product or enterprise the solution to our problems (instead of God’s grace).

Cultural idols – Radical individualism, as in the West, that makes an idol out of individual happiness at the expense of community; shame cultures that make an idol out of family and clan at the expense of individual rights.

Deep idols – Motivational drives and temperaments made into absolutes: a. Power idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if – I have power and influence over others.”  b. Approval idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if – I am loved and respected by __________.”  c. Comfort idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if – I have this kind of pleasure experience, a particular quality of life.”  d. Control idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if – I am able to get mastery over my life in the area of __________.”

The Bible says put idols to death

col 3:5 “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Everyone worships

God starts the 10 commandments in exodus with what is most important : worship. we have to get worship right .

exodus 20;3 ““You shall have no other gods before me.”

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters Anything Can Be an Idol

That leads to the natural question—“What do you mean, ‘other gods’?” An answer comes immediately. “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. You shall not bow down to them or worship them

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters How to Make a God

How to Make a God

What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.