The human heart is a perpetual idol factory – John Calvin

I’m a fun-fact kind of person. Nothing gets me more excited than learning and passing along, oftentimes pointless information. I consider sharing fun facts my love language, so let me love you in my quirky way by laying on a fun fact I just learned: anthropologists have determined that since the dawn of human existence, there have been roughly 18,000 different gods, goddesses, animals and objects that people have worshipped through the expanse of human history. Some of these gods have come and gone, like the Ra, the sun god. Some animals, like cows, were worshipped in ancient Egypt and are still worshipped within Hinduism to this day. Crazy, huh? Maybe this sounds more like a sad, daunting fact rather than a fun fact. Here is the best news, though: there is one, true God, who is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. While other gods have come and gone, the living God, Creator of the universe, Yahweh is still on the throne being God. While many have sacrificed themselves or their children for the sake of appeasing their little g god, Yahweh was the only God who would come in human flesh and sacrifice Himself for His people. Buddha and Muhammad died but never came back. Jesus Christ, God is the flesh, rose from the grave…a feat no other god accomplished.

I say all that to address a serious matter that has been a problem with God’s people since the very beginning. This is the issue of idolatry. Idolatry is when anything, person, or ideas that take room on the throne of your heart, which should belong to God alone. It is when you worship or prioritize anything or anyone above the one true God. We see in Exodus 20:2-3 that this was the first command that God gave His people when He said “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before (besides) me. ” If you know much about Israel’s history, then you know that they would, of course, break this command and would break it often in their story. Idolatry would drag God’s people away from Him, and every time they ran to other gods, they would find themselves captives to other nations as a consequence of turning away from God.

If you are in the West, like me, then you may be thinking that idolatry can’t be that big of a problem, considering we don’t have shrines to cows or statues we make sacrifices to. I would kindly beg to differ with you, though friend, and if anything, idolatry is still probably the biggest sin we struggle with. We may not have little statues in our homes, but there are so many other things that have captivated our hearts and attention. Today’s gods don’t look like statues, but rather they look like our phones, our television, our social media, our money, our trips….you get the point. There are so many things that we can put before God, and they are all good things. Our careers, our families, our traditions, our comfort, ministry, food, theology, politics, 5 fitness… all these things and more have the potential to be idols in our lives. So many things can clutter the throne of our hearts, and God alone deserves that throne.

Romans 1:25 tells us “because they exchanged the truth about God for a alike and worshipped and the creature, rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” We believe the lie that God cannot be truly fulfilling, so we use our careers or our children to give us identity. We believe the lie that God cannot truly comfort us completely, so we turn to the god of food to comfort us and social media to validate/ fill a void.

Jeremiah 2:12-13 says, “Be appalled, O heavens at this: be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water”.

We have a God who is like living waters, meaning He is a refreshing and cool drink that sustains us. Only He can truly satisfy our longing hearts. Yet, like His people He was speaking to at the time of Jeremiah, we will make cisterns to try to sustain us. Cisterns were underground tanks to store water in. The water in these tanks would normally get stagnant, and in this verse in Jeremiah, the cistern referred to here has a crack in it that can not hold water. This is what idols are like in our lives. We entrust so many other things to satisfy us, and in the end, they still leave us empty and dry.

As you are reading this, you may be wondering if you have fallen into idolatry in your own life. You may be wondering where that line between enjoying something and idolizing something is drawn. Think about the thing that could have idol potential in your life and ask yourself these things:

Are you willing to compromise your beliefs for this thing? (Like by telling a white lie to make something happen for the kid you love?)

How would you handle it if you lost or did get that thing? (Would it traumatize you if your vacation got canceled or if you lost your job, would you lose your sense of identity and spiral?)

Do you value that thing over people? (How would you react if your kid made a big mess of your house or if your spouse interrupted your me time?)

Does this thing bring you closer to God or pull you further away from Him?

Idols will have us compromise. When our idols are threatened, it could potentially bring out the worst in us. Idols get in between us and God. Upon examining your life, did you find anything? I truly believe if we were honest, we all have at least one thing are treads on the line of idolatry or is flat-out idolatry in our lives.

Let me reassure you of this, you are not alone if the Lord revealed an area of your life that He wants to address. His conviction is evidence of His love for us because He wants to bring to light anything that comes between us and Him. When we come face to face with our idols, the first thing we should do is run to Jesus. He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we confess our sins to Him (1 John 1:9). We need to repent, change our mind and direction, and come to Him. Then, we need to demolish those idols in our lives. I mean it… we need to get aggressive about the sins and idolatry that are in our lives!

King Josiah serves as a beautiful illustration of what it looks like to get aggressive with the idols in our lives. His story is found in 2 Chronicles 34:3-7:

In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still a youth, Josiah began to seek the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year, he began to cleanse Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherah poles, the carved images, and the cast images.  Then in his presence, the altars of the Baals were torn down, and he chopped down the shrines that were above them. He shattered the Asherah poles, the carved images, and the cast images, crushed them to dust, and scattered them over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.  He burned the bones of the priests on their altars. So he cleansed Judah and Jerusalem. He did the same in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali and on their surrounding mountain shrines.  He tore down the altars, and he smashed the Asherah poles and the carved images to powder. He chopped down all the shrines throughout the land of Israel and returned to Jerusalem.

We can learn a couple of things from young King Josiah: 1) We need to be thorough when searching our hearts for the idols in our lives. 2) We need to destroy all idols and tear down the high places that may tempt us to go back to worshipping those idols again.

This step is super practical. Start by asking the Lord to reveal any idols in your life and believe me, if you ask, He will show you. Ask for the wisdom and heart change that only He can do in you. Then, you do your part in making no provision for your flesh (Romans 13:14). It may look like setting time limits on your devices or maybe just not buying that comfort food that tempts you. If it’s bad enough, you may feel inclined to get a flip phone or to remove the TV from your bedroom. It could be you need to create boundaries around relationships or your work schedule. Whatever it is, do what puts that thing in its right place in your life so that God is the only God on the throne of your heart.

God alone is worthy to receive glory, honor, and power (Revelation 4:11). He is worthy to be loved with all of our heart, mind, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5). He is worthy of this undivided worship and complete due to WHO He is. He is good and all He does is good (Psalm 119:68). His mercies are new every morning….great is His faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22-23). He is worthy! And those idols…they are worthless, and they are terrible taskmasters! The little g gods of the Old Testament required the sacrifice of children. The idols of today still cause us to sacrifice the things that truly matter (Ex, a career can take us away from our families, and our phones can take us away from the people right in front of us). 

My prayer for you, dear reader, is that you would love God with your whole self and desire Him above all else. I pray God would move greatly in your heart and draw you closer to Himself. I want that badly for you. So that leaves me with one question for you: are you ready, friend, to roll up your sleeves and do some holy demolition in your life?