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Plainly Speaking
with Karl J. Forehand
Who’s
in the Center?
By Karl J. Forehand
The interview was with a Cleveland Brown’s fan, just after the team moved
out of Cleveland. Sitting in the
parking lot of the stadium with his head in his hand he said, “What is my
family going to do now on Sundays.”
You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any
likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water
under the earth. "You shall not
worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the
fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me
and keep My commandments. (Exodus
20:4-6)
The second commandment is very
clear. Don’t make them and don’t
worship them. The Bible has some
interesting things to say about idols, but mostly about their
foolishness. Listen to the words of
Isaiah:
(The person who worships an idol of wood says), "I have burned half
of it in the fire, and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and
eat it. Then I make the rest of it
into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood!" He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has
turned him aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, "Is there not
a lie in my right hand?"
Earlier in chapter 44, it talks
about how someone uses part of a piece of wood to keep warm, part of it to
cook food and the other part to carve an idol. Most of us don’t worship statues, but we do have idols: We worship
Football teams – Our state only has one major college and no professional
football teams; so we have, what I call, Husker mania. My home state, Oklahoma, just won the
national title. I used to live in the
Dallas / Fort Worth area where the Dallas Cowboys are proclaimed as “God’s
Team” (that’s why they have the hole in the roof – so God can watch His
team.)
Money – Sometimes we will do almost anything for money. We start out with an honorable endeavor to
provide; yet many times it grows into obsessions and failed marriages –
trying to provide things we really don’t need.
Work / Status – Many times we are working to achieve the mystical
accumulation of status. We fail to
realize that status is really a façade.
It is an empty dream.
Hobbies – Our past times can begin to consume us. We need a little diversion and relaxation;
but some times we exist to fulfill our hobby – we earn money for it, we
obsessively pursue it and worse, we forget about God while doing it.
Egos – We spent endless hours worrying about our position and how others
feel about us, instead of worrying what God thinks
Rituals – This may be the most abused by Christians. We fall in love with the “way we do
things” and we serve that. When our
society changes or God wants to do something new, we can’t adjust because we
are in love with the method.
For the customs of the peoples are delusion; because it is wood cut from
the forest, The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. 4
"They decorate it with silver
and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers So that it will not
totter. "Like a scarecrow in a
cucumber field are they, And they cannot speak; They must be carried, Because
they cannot walk! Do not fear them, for they can do no harm, Nor can they do
any good." (Jer. 10:3-5)
Our idols are like
“scarecrows.” We have to move them
around, polish them, fill them up with gasoline. Why do we spend so much time worshipping things that will pass
away (our cars, our homes, our money, our hobbies). Last week, we said, God wants to be # 1. Inherent in that is that He must be at the
center (no other gods or idols).
How Things Become Idols
1. We create activities
to bring us closer to God and people.
We might gather together to
watch a popular sports team because it provides good fellowship. These activities help promote community. We can relax, laugh and enjoy the time spent together. We start a hobby to free our mind to think
more about God. We hang a cross
around our neck to remind us to pray.
These things begin as reminders of the eternal. But sometimes…
2.
The means become an end
We say things like, “I live
for football season.” Some people get
physically ill when their team loses.
People of old would begin to bow to the statues. We hear people say, “Don’t mess with the
liturgy or the order of service.” We
create an order of service to focus our attention on the right things, but we
fall in love with the ritual. We see
people kiss rings and crosses and bow to statues and we wonder, “Where did we
get off track.”
3.
We begin
to substitute things for God
Without realizing it, the thing becomes the central focus
instead of God.
4.
We place
ourselves in control
Idols give us the delusion of control. One of mine is golf. I started it to relax and get closer to
God, but sometimes I find myself so interested in lowering my score that I
don’t think about God at all while I’m playing. The things that was supposed to facilitate closeness with God
sometimes becomes the idol that we worship.
Listen to Barclay:
Idolatry
began because men found it difficult to worship a god they could not
see. So they said to themselves, “We
will make something that will represent the god and that will make it easier
to think of the god.” In the first
instance the idol was never meant to be the god; it was meant only to stand
for the god.
The trouble was that man
began to worship the idol instead of the god it stood for; men began to
worship the symbol instead of the reality it was supposed to represent. It is not really difficult to see how
idolatry began, and it is not really so silly as it looks. For all that, we may be saying, “I am not
likely to do a thing like that.” But
perhaps we are more likely to do it than we think.
Think about the things that
began as symbols or methods and have become more like idols to you.
What is wrong with
idols/images/substitutes
To begin with, idols are inadequate. God said, through Isaiah, “To whom will you liken me?” No idol ever compares with the real thing. God is the “real deal.” Any substitute or image of Him doesn’t
compare.
We like idols because they give us delusions of control. I sometimes think, “If I could just lower
my golf score one more point, then everything would be great.” Because we can somewhat control the
things we idolize, we feel a sense of control. Deep down we know that nothing will ultimately satisfy – we
know we’ll always want more – we know that only God can completely fulfill
His promises – yet we are drawn to idols because they give us the false
impression that we are in control
Idols, however are not the original and can never take the
place of God. God is jealous (for
what is right). We might say that He
is zealous for us worshipping correctly. He doesn’t accept substitutes.
Remember when we talked about how we substitute things for God
– we begin thinking they will remind us of God. Consider this: Ladies,
imagine you find your husband in the embrace of another woman. If you don’t kill him, you might ask “What
do you think you are doing?” Imagine
him saying to you, “Hey, she’s a beautiful woman – she reminded me of
you.” Would you accept that
excuse? God doesn’t accept it
either. He is jealous/zealous for
what is right.
So many things can become like that. Our career, our family, our hobbies can all take the place of
God. We have to move God back to the
center. He has to be the center of
our worship. Thing like career and
hobbies are fine, but they can’t be allowed to take the place of God.
What is at the center of you
life?
Moving God Back to the
Center
For many
walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are
enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their
appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly
things. (Philippians 3:18-19)
Moving God back to the center involves developing an eternal
appetite. This passage says,
“their god is their stomach” or “their god is their appetite.” We have various appetites that sometimes
consume us. For some people is
actually food that they crave. For
me, it is Mexican food and golf. If
they put a Taco Bell at the clubhouse; you might have a hard time getting me
to leave. Appetites come in many
forms: pleasure, hobbies, leisure,
work, relationship, control. In many
ways, we are like the drug dealer who just hopes for one more “score” of the
thing we crave – one more round of golf, one more pizza, one more hour at
work, one more toy, etc. The Bible
says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” To move God back to the center, we have to
redirect our appetites and let God teach us to hunger and thirst for Him.
Moving God back to the center involves receiving an eternal
reward. The passage says, “Their
glory is their shame.” The Bible
tells us to “lay up treasure in heaven.”
Very soon after starting college, I realized I could receive glory for
things that I should have been ashamed of.
When we do things only to receive glory for ourselves, then we are the
center and God is not. If everything
revolves around how people feel about me, then God is not the center. We wait for our recognition in eternity.
Moving God back to the center involves keeping the earthy in
perspective. Remember, it is all
wood, hay and stubble that burns up some day. Colossians 3:2 says, “Set you minds on things above, not on the
things that are on earth.” We have to
have a healthy perspective on the material things. We must learn to care more for the eternal.
What are you idols? God has to be #1 and to be #1, He must be
at the center of our lives. What does
you life revolve around? I don’t mean
how much do you go to church? What do
you crave? What do you hope to get
recognized for? What is out of
perspective in your life?
Karl J.
Forehand
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