Ben Zornes

Living and Dying to Show the Preciousness of Christ

Home » idolatry

idolatry

Worship Cows, Become Cattle

Worship Cows, Become Cattle

by ·

I want to draw your attention to the profound wittiness that is present in the narrative of the Golden Calf incident. The tale is familiar enough. The people grow restless as Moses meets with Yahweh atop Sinai. They insist on Aaron making them a god. He complies with their request, fashioning a Golden Calf out of the plunder which they’d gotten as they left Egypt.

But how the text (Ex. 32) describes these idolators is what I want to note. The people stoop down to eat and drink. They spring up to frolic. God calls them stiff-necked, we might say bullheaded. The language paints them as straying, running wild, quickly spooked, needing to be corralled. As one commentator, who first drew my attention to this, said, “[they are portrayed] as wild calves […] because they transformed into the very object of their worship.”

Here in vivid narrative is the truth of the proverbial saying: you become like what you worship. Worship isn’t an optional add on to the life of humans. It’s why we were made. It’s hardwired into our system. God made us to worship Him, and by worshipping Him we most truly bear His image. To be human is to imitate and image forth God our Creator.

If you determine to worship anything else, you are also bound to the imitation of that thing. If you serve a golden calf, you become like a wild ox. This is why the self-absorption of our age is so very destructive. If you become like what you worship, what happens when you worship a powerless and depraved creature in rebellion to his Creator? You get a human deteriorating into themselves. It’s moral radioactive decay. The only remedy for such a moral implosion is to repent and worship God alone according to His Word.

Prayer of Confession

Father God,

You are great and marvelous, and Your splendor is past finding out. You have made us for Yourself, and in our worship of You we find our soul’s true rest, our soul’s true purpose. Yet, mankind has rebelled against this duty of rendering worship to You alone. He has exalted himself, and thus been doomed to a fate of the inward spiral of self-referential worship and imitation. Forgive us, who profess to be Your people, for not rendering unto You the worship that is Your due, and have mercy upon us for where we have gone after other gods who are not true gods. Where we have exalted ourselves in vanity and self-absorption, pardon our iniquities. For we greatly desire to display Your glory to all the world, in and through our faithful worship of You alone. Grant us strength to cast down all idols, and bestow unto us the blessedness of bearing Your image which comes through right worship of You, the One True God.

You have called Your church to truth in the inward parts, so we now confess our individual sins to You. Selah.

We do this in Jesus’ mighty name, and Amen.

1 John 5:20-21 | We Know

1 John 5:20-21 | We Know

by ·

20 And we know that the Son of God is come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and life eternal. 21 Little children, guard yourself from idols. Amen.

1 John 5:20-21

Don’t let it escape your notice how this whole epistle wraps up with a steady drumbeat of: “we know, we know, we know.” This isn’t like a teenager rolling his eyes at their parents. Rather, this is the certainty of a child who jumps into the waiting arms of her father, confident he will catch her. This is the divine knowledge which God has brought to us, and which we must hold with the unswerving faith of a child. If you have heard the record of the Apostles––that Jesus Christ is the Son of God manifested in the flesh, who died to cleanse you from your sins, and be your Advocate before the Father––you know everything you need to know for salvation. There is no hidden knowledge left to find. You aren’t missing a piece.

These final words are the capstone on this epistle of assurance. The Son of God is come. Not came and left. Not the Cerinthian proposal that Christ came upon Jesus and then left Him. No, Jesus Christ, the Son of God has come and has given us, in His incarnation, the certainty that we are in God the Father by Him. To be in God, is to be in His Son Jesus Christ, and vice versa. This brings the whole letter full circle to the divine fellowship described in the opening remarks of this letter.

Your fellowship with God through His Incarnate Son means that you know that which is True (Cf. Jn. 14:6). The insecurity of the human search for truth is meant to bring you to the security of dwelling in Him that is True, by knowing Him that is true. Truth is not a logical problem on the chalkboard, it is a Person. Truth is relational. You can’t arrive at the truth through blind unbelief. You can only come to the truth by coming to God. To rebel against God, to search out for hidden mysteries outside of His revelation through Jesus Christ is to seek a shelter of lies. You either dwell in the truth, or you dwell in lies. No middle ground here. Falsehood–at any level–is an attempt to live in a world other than the one made by God the Father & redeemed by His Incarnate Son. 

This paternal letter wraps up with an ever needful exhortation to God’s children. Keep yourself from idols. This is anything but a last minute addition to the text, as if the scribe was about to seal the scroll, and John said, “Wait a minute, tell them not to worship idols.” No, the temptation which Cerinthus’ doctrine introduces is a temptation to erect a false Christ. A Christ which cannot save you. A Christ which is not a man like you. A Christ which cannot bring you assurance of your fellowship with God. The rival Christ of Cerinthus invites the worship of all variety of idols. Idols of fertility, wealth, dark power, carnal indulgence, and strength to crush the skull of your despised brother. 

Jesus, God’s Life in the flesh, overthrows all the idols. You can no longer perpetuate the scandal of endless bitter rivalries. You must love your brother. You must love God’s people. You must love even your enemy. The idols of pagan darkness have been overthrown. Christ is Lord.

The Begotten of God guards you (v18), now by His indwelling Spirit, you must guard yourself from idols. The idol of a Christ who isn’t fully man. The idol of a man who isn’t fully God. The idol of making Jesus into merely a moral teacher. The idol of making Jesus into a marketing ploy to line your pockets. The idol of turning the love of God in Christ into a hall pass for indulging sin.

This whole letter concludes with an admonition to worship rightly. Serving idols is living in the lies. Serving the Father, through Christ, by His Spirit is how your joy is made complete (1 Jn. 1:4). Worship of the True God is the only path to True Joy.

Papier-Mâché Idols

Papier-Mâché Idols

by ·

America is a land filled with idols. These idols have ancient, pagan counterparts: Zeus, Baal, Aphrodite, Molech, Loki, Vishnu. But the modern, American iterations of these gods are profoundly bland. America has left off faithful worship of the Triune God, opting to worship a pantheon of commercialized gods (which are the Great Value knock-offs of the ancient deities).

Culture is downstream from worship. The God you serve shapes the contours of your culture. American culture is increasingly boring, dull, and weak-sauce because our nation worships impotent gods. Impotent gods have given rise to an impotent culture. The virtues of courage, chastity, patience, duty to family & country are––as the prophet Isaiah might have put it––turned away backward, standing afar off, fallen in the street, and cannot enter (Cf. Is. 59:14).

A nation that worships these gods is a nation that won’t stand long. Our gods are feeble. The dollar isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. The sex is disembodied & fruitless. Our men voluntarily castrate themselves both literally & figuratively. We aren’t battle ready, nor do we have a keen sense of what we should even fight for.

A return to faithful and biblically ordered worship of the God of Abraham is our nation’s only hope. You’re here this morning not to render praise to paper deities. You’re assembled not to put a pinch of incense on the styrofoam altars of these feeble gods. 

As we come to the Living God, to sing these songs, to receive His Word, to observe His covenant signs, we’re fortified to romp through land knocking over these impotent idols. You serve the God who made the world, raised His Son from the dead, and has bound the prince of this world. Christ scattered & defeated the old gods. So remember, these idols in our land are papier-mâché gods.

Our nation has become a hollow shell of the former glories. We’ve traded the Calvinist work ethic, for a Marxist living wage. We’ve abandoned the fruitful union of man and wife in marriage, and chosen the barren wasteland of pornified hook-up culture. We’ve forgotten the old, rugged cross, and chosen the unforgiving matrix of trying to remedy power imbalances. All of this because we in the church first left our first love. The church capitulated to these idols first, and now the culture that’s emerged is impotent, shallow, and feeble for the fight of our hour. As one Puritan once said, “Our prayers can earn no pardon. But Your mercy says, ‘Your sins which are many—are all forgiven!’”

Turning from your sin is just another way of saying, “turn away form idols.” Turning from these idols to the Living God, is the only way for our lives, nation, and culture to truly be robustly alive. Because as we worship the Living God, downstream from that worship is a living culture.

Look God in the Eyes

Look God in the Eyes

by ·

In Lewis’ Screwtape Letters he describes the temptation of praying to the “god” that is “up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling.” Our enemy wants us to worship anything other than the Triune God. He doesn’t mind if the god we’re worshipping closely resembles Jehovah, just so long as we aren’t worshipping Jehovah himself.

Man has the bad habit of thinking he can keep God in his pocket. Man wants a god he manage. One that fits with what he imagines a god should be. A god that coddles him, but strikes terror in his enemies. A god who sits only as high as the rafters.

But that isn’t the God we come to worship. We worship the God who made heaven and earth. The God who revealed Himself to our first parents and then to the patriarchs, prophets, and psalmists. The God who is not to be likened to another, and who has no equal. The God who came in human flesh, died in place of sinful man, and was raised by the Father’s power.

Have you been entertaining low thoughts of God? Have you been holding up a mirror and convincing yourself that that is what God must be like? Have you been settling for an Americanized god who is safe? Have you crafted idols so as to avoid making eye contact with God? 

The remedy for all these vain imaginations is to forsake the habit of trying to pass off our knock-off idols for being the Triune God, and come to God on His terms. His terms are these: cast away all your idols, and then meet with God as He revealed Himself. In short, turn from your idols by looking God in the eye. Which is to say: look to Christ.

A Polluted Land

A Polluted Land

by ·

During times of widespread apostasy, the prophets described the condition of the Promised Land in an intriguing way. They told God’s people that the land was polluted. This pollution was due to sexual fornication, the shedding of innocent blood, and the worship of idols (Cf. Ps. 106:38, Jer. 3:1-2, Eze. 36:18, Am. 7:17). 

The promise to Israel in Leviticus 26:3-6 is described in terms of the land yielding bountifully, of fertile families, fields, and flocks. But if they were draw off into various perversions the land would be polluted by these wicked acts. Until they repented in true humility the sky would be iron, the earth would be brass (Lev. 26:19). 

In our nation, fornication abounds, unborn infants are sacrificed to gods of corporate profits and career advancement, and the innocent are slain. Pornography consumes young men’s years of virility. Abortion accommodates young women’s years of fertility. We’ve polluted the land.

A polluted land must be cleansed. But, it can’t be scrubbed clean by laws, protests, or additional Supreme Court justices. The weeds of chaos in our nation are the fruits of polluting the land with seeds of sodomy, lust, envy, murder, infanticide, and insatiable greed. The stain is too dark for us to cleanse. 

The only remedy is found here, in this Gospel we proclaim here. Forsake your sins. Quit demeaning your husband. Quit neglecting your wife. Stop disobeying your parents. Don’t steal from your employer or your clients by slacking at your job. Stop snarking on social media.

Flee your sin. Come to the fountain of Jesus’ blood. The old Gospel songs were quite right when they sang about being washed in the blood. It’s only by His shed blood that our land might be cleansed of all our sins, both individual and corporate. The pollution of the land can only be purged by a new creation work, and only Christ has such regenerative power.

Identity Cult

Identity Cult

by ·

The priests of secularism admonish you to contort yourself into whatever image you so desire; become the embodiment of the meandering current of feelings inside of you; shape your own identity.

We’ve become an Identity-cult. One’s identity is a sacred altar to the god of self. There the treasures of self-adulation, self-admiration, and self-righteousness are laid. Self brings praise unto self. Fanciful notions of who you think you are are brought to flatter yourself.

Self-worship is like plugging a power strip into itself, then awarding yourself a Nobel prize for discovering the source of limitless electricity. All you’ve brought yourself is the mangled image of your fallen self, and you’ve been deceived into thinking it’s something worthy of worship.

Self-worship makes us skittish. We don’t want to be told that all of our Identity contortions are actually further mangling the Image in which God made us. All this Identity preening and primping leaves us fearful that we’re becoming more hideous than we began. 

So, like a magnet collecting metal shavings, we form fraternities of other humans to soothe those fears. We clump together in various “like-minded” huddles––fad diet groups, fitness trends, sexual perversion clubs, political parties, etc. These Identity groupings are an attempt to seek shelter from our guilt of presuming to be God.

Our nation has deceived itself into thinking it can discard the Imago Dei, and create from nothing our own glory. We have looked in the shattered mirror of self, and delighted in the dead corpse we beheld there. We have elected leaders who reflect our self-adoration, and our nation has partaken in the horrors of abortion, debt, antidepressants, and pornography which prop up all this selfishness. 

But along comes the Gospel. It damns us all. Then offers to save us all. It mocks our Identity idol. Then offers to restore the Image of God. It promises that those who are in Christ are offered a new Identity. That new Identity is that we are clothed in Christ, and when God looks at us He sees Christ. Jesus not only restores in us the Image of God, He also gives us a new reference point for fellowship with our brother. He gives us true Identity, and true Fellowship.

A Famine of the Word

A Famine of the Word

by ·

Click Here for the Sermon Audio

Introduction 

Thirst without water to quench it is a painful experience. Hunger without a meal in sight is a torture. Think of how miserable that dryness of mouth is, or how the gnawing stomach-ache makes you feel. Now, imagine that right in front of you is water that you refuse to drink, and a feast you refuse to eat. What should we call someone like that? An insufferable fool.

The Text

Amos 8:4-14

Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

Summary of the Text

The Israelites have come to view the festivals and Sabbath feasts as a burden (8:5); they wanted to get back to exploiting the poor and trampling the needy (8:4, 6). The judgement for this injustice and indifferent impiety? Lights out for Israel (vs. 7-9). The jubilant feasts which God had blessed them with––which they begrudged––were going to turn from joyful blessings to bitter curses, from gladness to sorrow, from feasts to funerals (8:10).

Moreover, the feasts and Sabbaths which they begrudged were to be replaced by a famine of not hearing the Word of the Lord (8:11). The Word they had been made to hear through the covenant––i.e. “Hear, O Israel (Deut. 6:4),”––would no longer be heard. Though it would be sought for, it wouldn’t be found (8:12). This is a weighty implication. God is annulling the covenant promise of Deuteronomy 4:29: “But if from thence (the exile/scattering of Deut. 4:26-27) thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” Amos is saying that because Israel has broken the covenant, God is no longer obliged to fulfill the promises of the covenant.

A further result is that young men and fair virgins would be weak and faint (8:13), which is precisely the opposite of the attendant blessings which were to be poured out upon a faithful Israel (cf. Psa. 144:12-13). In other words, the blessings of God’s feast––which Israel had grown indifferent to––were going to be turned “inside out”, and quite the opposite would take place. Scattering. Deafness. Frail offspring. Spiritual famine.

The final verse of the chapter is telling: idolatry is really at the root of their indifference and injustice (8:14). God swore (in Deut. 4:31) to not forget the covenant he had made with Israel’s fathers. But Israel has now sworn by the gods of the nations, and worshipped the two golden calves in Dan and Bethel––which Jeroboam had set up at the founding of the northern kingdom (1 Kings 12:28-29). God’s message to His people through Amos was that the people of God would soon enter into a famine of hearing the words of the Lord, and as a result they would fall never to rise!

Unbelieving Israel

Amos was a shepherd and his prophecies are full of agricultural, rustic language. This passage is no different. For a herdsman, a famine is bad news. Your very livelihood is built around your herds having plenty to eat. If your crops die, your flocks will eventually die, which means in due course you will die too. Amos uses this rustic picture of a famine to depict the horrendous judgement that was looming. 

Elijah had prayed and the heavens had dried up for three-and-a-half years (cf. 1 Ki. 17; Jas. 5:17). So the average Israelite might be tempted to yawn at Amos’ prophecy of a coming famine as “been there, done that.” However, Amos puts a twist on the impending famine. This famine would not affect their crops or herds. Rather, it would devastate the flock of Israel. The spiritual not the physical condition of the people would be impacted by this famine. They were about to find that the covenant they had broken was now a barren covenant. 

Whereas being without bread and water would be a dreadful thing for any nation, being without the word of the Lord is a thousand times worse. By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and now, God’s chosen people, who were called out by His very voice, would no longer hear that life-giving Voice. They would no longer rejoice in His word “as one that findeth great spoil (Ps. 119:162).” Job once said: “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food (Job 23:12b).” So this judgement of never hearing the words of the Lord, for the Israelite, was far worse than a famine of mere bread and water. God’s Word was life-giving food, and now it was going to be forever withheld from Israel. No wonder the young men and fair virgins would faint and fall.

At Christ’s trial, after Jesus declares Himself to be the divine Son of God (sitting in judgement over the Jews), the High Priest tore his robes (Mk. 14:63), which was expressly forbidden for him to do (Lev. 21:10). At the trial of Stephen (the first martyr), the Jews “stopped their ears (Acts 7:57).” In these two examples we see that when the Messiah (the Word made flesh) came, the Jews not only rejected Him, but they did so in such a way as to make it clear that their ears had indeed become deaf to the voice of their Lord. They spurned to hear the Word of God made flesh, and so for the last two-and-a-half millennia they have had a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

As one insightful commentary put its, “The fulfillment of these threats commenced with the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, and the carrying away of the ten tribes into exile in Assyria, and continues to this day in the case of that portion of the Israelitish nation which is still looking for the Messiah, the prophet promised by Moses, and looking in vain, because they will not hearken to the preaching of the gospel concerning the Messiah, who appeared as Jesus.”

Indifference, Injustice, Idolatry

Why? Why such a severe judgment?All because of their indifference towards God’s covenant blessings and curses, their injustice towards the poor and needy, and their idolatry. These three sins––indifference, injustice, and idolatry––are seen in Amos’ prophetic warning, and they are inextricably linked. If we grow indifferent to the covenant obligations of God’s Word, it is because idols have captured our attention, and the practical effect of this will be injustice towards the poor.

When you treat God’s promised blessings with indifference it is the fruit of covenant unfaithfulness. You’ve been ogling false gods. You’ve been trusting idols to be there for you. You’ve been singing their praise, thinking that in them is life. But idols always fail. They always betray you. Notice that out of the root of idolatry grows the fruit of lovelessness towards God and neighbor. You begin to take God’s mercies for granted, and you begin to abuse Your neighbor.

God’s Word to You

Our nation has fallen into idolatry. We worship money, sex, power. And it shows up in our indifference to the blessings which God has given, and in the way in which we treat the poorest amongst us. This culture-wide backsliding shows up at every level. So, look in the mirror. Is there an idolater there? If so, it is likely that you’ve grown indifferent to God’s commanded blessings, and you’re beginning to abuse your neighbors.

God’s blessings are a two-edged sword. For those who receive them by faith, they lift you up to heaven with exceeding joy. For those who receive it with unbelieving indifference, eager to get back to using and abusing their neighbor, the blessing of God’s Word is an anvil which will sink you into the depths of damnation. The food of God’s Word is a feast to the faithful, but it is a famine to the unfaithful.

Today, God’s Word is being proclaimed to you in sermon and in sacrament. Christ is held up as a refuge for wayward sinners. So, as the Gospel writers might put it, if you have ears, hear. God is speaking His Word to you, and His Word is now a Man, Jesus the Christ.

Ben Zornes