Why did Israel continue in idolatry?

Our theme for 2022 is “Begin Again”

Last two Sundays and today I am preaching on “Hot Topics”

I have been doing this for the last three years - giving you the opportunity to tell me what you would like to hear me preach on.

It can be a question, an issue or a passage of scripture that you have not understood.

This is the last one for this year, but if you have one, write it down. there is always next year.

I thought it was interesting that these three messages, even though unrelated questions have overlapped a bit.

First we talked about where was God during the holocaust?

He was there, in a dark time in world history, working through people who dared to be different.

Last week we talked about the flag and what is means for the people of God to be thankful for what God has done and is doing in our nation.

We referenced the holocaust as being a time when the church did not stand up against an evil government and became complicit in mass murder.

We want to be proud of who we are as Americans, but not get over into a pride that idolizes our flag or our nation.

Before that we talked about Abraham and what it means to be the people of God who are set apart to carry our God’s mission on earth.

Today’s question is about idolatry and a difficult passage of scripture.

Acts 7:42–43 ESV

42 But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: “ ‘Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices, during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43 You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship; and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’

This passage is from the sermon that Stephen gave right before he was stoned to death.

He is quoting Amos 5:25-27

Amos 5:25–27 ESV

25 “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 26 You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves, 27 and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

Are Stephen and Amos saying that Israel didn’t really offer sacrifices to God in the wilderness, but actually worshipped idols instead?

That is exactly what they are saying!

To one degree or another, Israel failed to follow God wholeheartedly, and truthfully, so do we!

Examining this text should cause us to assess and to bring our hearts into alignment with God.

What’s the big deal about idolatry?

When I was in my MDiv. program, a class on OT Prophets took a field trip to the Metropolitan museum in NYC.

We were to study subjects related to scripture and to the Ancient Near East and present our findings in groups.

My son Martin went with me on the trip. He was about fifteen at the time.

“ I never understood why in the Old Testament, God was so upset about the people bowing down to idols. Now I see that idols were more than just statues of wood or stone and worship was more than just bowing down to them. …You should really tell people about this. I don’t think they know.”

What Martin had not realized until that day was that idol worship offered an alternate view of life and reality.

Idol worship invoked the senses and was pleasurable.

It involved all of the temptations that we struggle against today.

Sex, drugs, music and entertainment were all used to entice worshippers into an experience that they would want to repeat over and over again.

Idolatry isn’t just about God being jealous… it’s about keeping people from going down a path of obsession, addiction and self-destruction.

What consumes your thoughts?

The first thing that you notice about ancient cultures when you go to the museum is that idols were everywhere.

The images of gods and goddesses are painted all over the walls and statues adorn the gardens.

I guess someone might conclude that “these people really love art!”

“Yes, that’s one way of putting it.

Or you could say that they are obsessed with their idols.

Like those posters you used to put in your room when you were a teenager.

These little statues are of the goddess Asherah.

They are in plentiful supply among biblical artifacts.

Those who do archaeological digs find these quite often, showing just how common they were in biblical times.

What do you notice about them?

Yes, her physical features are exaggerated.

She was a fertility goddess and whenever you look at her you think about …fertility!

Idolatry is a problem because it dominates our thinking.

Whatever you think about is what you become.

God would not allow his people to make images of Him?

Why? Because they would get it wrong?

We don’t know anything about what God looks like until Jesus came - and he was so ordinary!

How do we know what to think about God?

We have his Word.

Deuteronomy 11:18–20 ESV

18 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,

Idolatry is anything that distracts us from a mind and a heart that is set on knowing God.

If I am spending time with my wife, but I’m distracted, is she going to be OK with that?

What if she finds out I’m thinking about someone else?

If I tell her that I’m contemplating some problem at work.

Even if I’m just staring at my phone?

If my attention is not on her, and if I’m not thinking about her, I’m not loving her.

How does God feel when we say we love Him, but don’t pay any attention to Him?

What stimulates you?

One of the things that Martin realized about idolatry that most people don’t know is that it’s not just a mind thing …its all about the senses!

Idolatry involves the senses - if you ever visit a temple you will know what I mean.

The sights, sounds and smells are meant to draw you in.

Idolatry uses your senses to entice you.

What do people become addicted to?

Drugs, smoking, sex, pornography, gambling, TV, music, food, shopping.

All of these things are addicting because they produce a feeling.

People become addicted to a substance or behavior because they want the feeling that they get.

In that sense, all addictions are chemical addiction, just that sometimes the chemicals are in our own brain.

Idolatry is more than a momentary distraction, there is a whole lifestyle that goes with it.

Egyptians really know how to party!

This picture is from the Egypt exhibit showing a festive occasion.

This is not just art! This is an advertisement for a lifestyle.

It’s about cultivating a lifestyle that craves pleasure.

Make no mistake, idols are all about about gratification.

You might think, as some of us once did, that God doesn’t want us to have any fun.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

God doesn’t want to see us satisfying our senses with things that can never fulfill us.

Addiction is a terrible master.

What’s worse is that all the while, you think you are the one in control, until you find that you are not.

Where does your power come from?

The other ting about idols that most people don’t know is that the idol is attached to a deity.

The first step is to make you want what the idol has to offer.

The second step is to make you need the idol.

Just as addictions are really a trap, so is idol worship.

When I travelled through Asia with my seminary group we visited many temples in Asia.

Sure, there are people who come to the temple to celebrate a festival or to receive a blessing.

But often people come because something bad has happened to them and they want to appease the god to take the curse away.

Or perhaps they are just afraid that something bad may happen if they don’t visit the temple.

These aren’t just objects of worship they have the power to affect peoples lives and to bring them into bondage.

Deuteronomy 32:17 ESV

17 They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.

The Bible says in some places that idols are simply inanimate objects.

And other places they are clearly associated with demonic entities.

The idols have no power unless we give it to them.

By worshipping an idol we are giving it power by invoking the demon behind the idol.

We are consciously or unconsciously opening up to the influence of a spiritual being.

People come to temples to worship idols thinking that the idol has power affect their life, and to some degree it does.

But by worshipping the idol they are also giving power to the idol.

That’s true of idol’s, addictions, bad relationships and almost anything that we can become obsessed with.

They convince you that you need them and that you are powerless, but you are the one with the power to change.

Idolatry? Who? ...me?

The real question about these two scriptures is that it seems to imply that Israel didn’t really offer sacrifices to God in the desert.

A couple possibilities come to mind:

We know that when Moses was on the mountain, they made a golden calf - didn’t God accept Moses’ apology?

We know that they made a tabernacle and offered sacrifices at the dedication - was the tabernacle and the sacrificial system not used very much after that?

Or was there a tabernacle and then a temple, with regular sacrifices, but God is essentially saying that it meant nothing because the people continued to worship idols along with their worship of God.

To some extent, it may have been all three, but especially the third one.

Failure to acknowledge God.

When Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, they were to worship God at Sinai.

It was Israel’s wedding day when they entered into covenant with God.

It had an exchange of vows, and exchange of symbols and a covenant meal.

Exodus 24:3–8 ESV

3 Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8 And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Perhaps the mention of sacrifices in the wilderness was to remind Israel of their vows.

After this ceremony there was a feast with Moses and the Elders of Israel eating and drinking in the presence of God.

Exodus 24:9–11 ESV

9 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.

After the wedding and the reception, Moses goes back up the mountain to get the Ten Commandments.

God and Moses are just finishing up the “paperwork”

But it takes him forty days and forty nights.

And during that time the people persuade Aaron to make the golden calf.

That’s like cheating on your spouse while your supposed to still be on your honeymoon.

The vows meant nothing when Moses wasn’t around.

The ceremony was just a performance.

Being in the presence of God didn’t stop them from making an idol.

Acts 7:38–41 NLT

38 Moses was with our ancestors, the assembly of God’s people in the wilderness, when the angel spoke to him at Mount Sinai. And there Moses received life-giving words to pass on to us. 39 “But our ancestors refused to listen to Moses. They rejected him and wanted to return to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us some gods who can lead us, for we don’t know what has become of this Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’ 41 So they made an idol shaped like a calf, and they sacrificed to it and celebrated over this thing they had made.

Worship, in this context, is not about God, its about them!

They didn’t see God as anything more than an accessory to their own happiness.

As soon as God and Moses is out of sight, He’s out of mind.

They have to make something that they can see to worship.

Because its all about them and their senses.

Just give us a great experience which may or may not have anything to do with God.

We don’t ever do that! Or do we?

Casually worshipping God.

So God did not abandon His people, mostly because Moses pleaded for them.

They constructed a tabernacle which would represent God’s visible presence among his people.

And there was a system of animal sacrifice to deal with the problem of ritual impurity and moral failure.

The people could have a relationship with God through priestly mediators and sacrifice.

One problem though, the sacrificial system is much better at reminding people of their sin than it is at cleansing the conscience.

Hebrews 10:1–4 CSB

1 Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the reality itself of those things, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. 2 Otherwise, wouldn’t they have stopped being offered, since the worshipers, purified once and for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year after year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

The writer to the Hebrew may be referring to the fact that the sacrificial system was mostly discontinued after the exile, and may have become less frequent even before that time.

We know that during the time of Josiah and again at the time of Ezra the Torah was rediscovered and the feasts were reinstituted.

2 Kings 22:11–13 NLT

11 When the king heard what was written in the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes in despair. 12 Then he gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the court secretary, and Asaiah the king’s personal adviser: 13 “Go to the Temple and speak to the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah. Inquire about the words written in this scroll that has been found. For the Lord’s great anger is burning against us because our ancestors have not obeyed the words in this scroll. We have not been doing everything it says we must do.”

The people in the time of Josiah has become casual about their worship of God.

Sure they had a temple and priests, but the instructions as to how to worship and why had been lost.

Worship was just elaborate rituals and buildings and money.

God was represented in various forms, but nobody knew what it all meant.

Their idolatry was not that they were worshipping foreign gods, but that they were worshipping a god that they didn’t even know.

We do that when we make church about things that are good, but God is relegated to the sidelines.

we want a church that serves great coffee, where they don’t care if you come late.

We want great worship - if the worship band is good, they will make you feel something - that’s how we define worship.

Church is supposed to meet my needs - the preacher needs to be relevant, but not so relevant that he makes me feel bad - just a touch of conviction, that’s all!

I’m not against feeling good about church. I’m saying that if that is all there is, we have a problem!

What about encountering God in a way that leaves us speechless?

What about holiness and supernatural transformation.

What about the power of the Holy Spirit moving in ways that we can’t explain?

What about a church that looks like the one in the Bible, where God is the one leading and we are just trying to keep up?

Forgetting to obey God.

I don’t think that Stephen or Amos are saying that Israel did not offer sacrifices to God, although arguably, they did not do what they should have.

The context suggests that even what they did do missed the point.

Stephen was preaching about Israel and the patriarchs, highlighting God’s faithfulness and Israel’s disobedience.

Amos is talking about God’s judgement beginning with the people of God who think they haven’t done anything wrong.

They are apparently holding feasts and offering sacrifices, but they are in no way pleasing to God.

Amos 5:21–23 ESV

21 “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. 23 Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

How could God say such things?! They were doing what God commanded. Or were they?

If you are attending church, but your heart and your thoughts are elsewhere, have you obeyed God?

If you are giving an offering, but you’re not thankful. You’re just doing it to not feel guilty.

Is that pleasing God or appeasing God?

If you are singing the songs, maybe even raising your hands, but expecting a certain feeling and blaming everyone else its not there, have you worshipped?

We can be Christians and still practice idolatry if we make it about us.

What is our appropriate response?

Why did Israel continue in Idolatry?

Why do any of us continue in Idolatry?

Even in our worship of God, we are making Him in our own image instead of being conformed to his image.

Amos 5:24 ESV

24 But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Turn your focus upward.

Knowing God mean knowing someone who is so far beyond us that he can only be known because He wants to be.

You have to set your sights higher.

God has revealed Himself to us - he wants to be known.

You can only have a relationship with God on his terms.

Don’t stop short of full surrender.

Religious institutions are just a container for the reality of God’s presence.

They can either be an empty container or an overflowing container.

Is not about positions, building and programs.

Its about the life that flows through them.

They can either be empty or they can be overflowing.

Form, rituals and traditions are not wrong, just so they do not become the goal.

The goal is the life of God flowing through the church and especially through the people in the church who each have a connection to God as well as corporately.

In this verse, God is the source - everything flows from Him.

Turn your attention inward.

When the river is flowing from God, it brings righteousness.

Righteousness is right-standing with God.

As opposed to self-righteousness which is being right in my own eyes.

As we are beholding God and his Spirit is flowing through us, there are going to be some things that we see in ourselves that are not in agreement with who God is and who he says we are.

Idolatry centers around outward expressions - looking good.

You are bowing to something outside of yourself that you think you can control, but which inadvertently controls you.

But all that matters is that you are appearing to do what is right.

True worship is about ordering your inner life.

it is about submitting to the truth as God reveals it.

It is about letting go, repenting and surrendering anew as God peels back the layers of our humanity in search of His image.

The key is that is should never become a work.

Philippians 2:13 ESV

13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Your focus should be first and foremost on God, but then pay attention to what God is doing in you.

Turn your obedience outward.

Amos says that true worship leads to justice.

That means paying attention, not only to your relationship with God, but to your relationships with others.

We sometimes think that worship is all about being close to God.

We say, “I just want to know your heart, God!”

God’s heart is for the world.

The closer we get to God’s heart the more our heart breaks for the things that break His heart.

There is a time just to be in God’s presence.

If we don’t spend time in His presence, how will we receive what we need from our source?

But eventually, in our time with God, we need to get to the question, “what do you want me to do?”

Obedience to God leads us beyond ourselves.

It takes us outside the walls of the church.

It takes us outside of our comfort zone.

It may even take you outside the region or the country!

Idolatry say, “I have this thing that makes me feel good that I keep going back to for comfort.”

True worship says, “I have the living presence of God in me, its moving through me and I am going to take it with me wherever God tells me to go!”

Questions for reflection:

What is an idol to you? Can you think of any idols in your life? Pray and ask God if there is anything that is taking your focus away from Him.

What is worship to you? What makes worship good or rewarding? Is our worship for us or is it for Him?

If we are God’s people, what does that mean? How much and in what ways are we God’s? What does God want from us? How can we give Him what He deserves?