Idolatry, allegiance, and the call to place God on the throne

Last week we discussed the need to embrace God’s standards of morality rather than settle for anything less. However, choosing the Lord’s ways over the ways of the world is a constant battle. At the end of the day, the only way to make that choice consistently is to embrace the notion that our obedience is in service to something greater than ourselves.

If all we’re after is the Lord’s blessings or the chance to avoid his discipline, then we’ll never fully live up to the standards Scripture provides because the focus is still on us. It gets easier, though, when we shift that focus from ourselves to God. And the only way to do that consistently is to recognize that we are not the lords of our lives.

Unfortunately, making God our king rather than ourselves or some other idol has been a struggle since the beginning.

God’s warnings against idolatry

The Bible consistently warns against idolatry, beginning with the Ten Commandments. Nonetheless, while living in Shittim, their final encampment before crossing the Jordan into the promised land, “the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to the Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel” (Numbers 25:1–3). In the divine judgment that followed, twenty-four thousand “died by the plague” (v. 9).

The Canaanites occupying the promised land similarly followed “abominable practices” such as sacrificing their children to their gods, practicing divination, and sorcery (Deuteronomy 18:10–11). The Israelites were told that “because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you” (v. 12).

Consequently, the Lord instructed Israel to “drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places” (Numbers 33:52). Otherwise, “those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell” (v. 55).

Moses further warned them:

[If] you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. (Deuteronomy 4:25–26)

He later restated his warning and exhorted the people to “devote [the Canaanites] to complete destruction” so that “they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 20:17–18).

After the conquest, Joshua similarly warned them: “If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good” (Joshua 24:20). Nonetheless, when they “went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them . . . the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them” (Judges 2:12, 15).

Such idolatry eventually led to the fall of the Northern Kingdom at the hands of Assyria (2 Kings 17:6). The writer explains:

This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practices. (2 Kings 17:7–8)

Tragically, the Southern Kingdom failed to learn from their example. Centuries later, during the reign of King Josiah, the Lord warned the nation again:

I will stretch out my hand against Judah
and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem;

and I will cut off from this place the remnant of Baal
and the name of the idolatrous priests along with the priests,

those who bow down on the roofs
to the host of the heavens,

those who bow down and swear to the Lord
and yet swear by Milcom,

those who have turned back from following the Lord,
who do not seek the Lord or inquire of him. (Zephaniah 1:4–6)

And the southern kingdom of Judah fell as a result (2 Kings 24:10–25:30; 2 Chronicles 36:1–21).

So, how can America avoid the same fate?

God’s answer to idolatry

We need to start by recognizing that idolatry can take any form by which we elevate some person, thing, or practice over the Lord.

In this sense, John warned us: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). And Paul admonished us: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5, my emphasis).

However, the positive side of idolatry is the veneration and service of the one true God as King.

All through Scripture, God is identified as the monarch of the universe:

• “The Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation” (Jeremiah 10:10).
• One day, “The Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one” (Zechariah 14:9).
• When Jesus returns, he will appear as described in Revelation 19:16: “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”
• We should therefore proclaim, “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Timothy 1:17).

Jesus began his public ministry with the proclamation “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He taught us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) and to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

From this model prayer we learn that God’s kingdom comes whenever and wherever God’s will is done. In the biblical era, a king was monarch of the entire realm, every moment of every day. If you were living in such a kingdom, you would be wearing the king’s clothes and using the king’s technology. He would be king on Monday, not just Sunday. He would be sovereign over the money you keep, not just what you give and spend. He would be ruler over what you do in private, not just what you do in public.

In light of this, let’s take these practical steps to make God our king and lead our nation to do the same.

1. Begin every day by submitting our lives and day to him as king (Ephesians 5:18).
2. Surrender every dimension of our lives to his rule (Romans 12:1).
3. Ask his Spirit to help us live holistically for his glory and the advancement of his kingdom.
4. Use our influence to encourage others to join us.

The Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper famously proclaimed, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Is every square inch of your existence submitted to him today?

Faith of the Founders

Roger Sherman and the Power of Personal Integrity

Roger Sherman (1721–93) was the only person to sign all three of the most important documents of the Revolutionary era: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution.

Because his father was a small-town farmer, he grew up with food and shelter but little else. He learned to read, write, and do basic math in a local school that ran sessions only in the winter. However, through skill and hard work, Sherman began to prosper. He took up surveying, became a half-owner of a general store, began buying land, and took up the study of law. By 1754, he set up a successful legal practice in Connecticut.

He became active in political life as well, serving in the Connecticut General Assembly and then as a judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut. In 1772, he placed his son in charge of his successful store so he could devote himself completely to public life.

Sherman rose to national prominence, representing his state in the First and Second Continental Congresses. In June 1776, he joined four fellow congressmen, including Thomas Jefferson, on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. He later represented Connecticut on the drafting committee for the Articles of Confederation.

He went on to participate in the convention that replaced the Articles with what became the US Constitution. Sherman’s most significant contribution was the proposal for what came to be called the Connecticut, or the Great, Compromise, which established the means of representation in both houses of Congress. He later served in both houses before dying of typhoid fever in 1793.

Across his many years of legislative work, he reportedly started his day at 5 a.m., began working two hours later, and continued until around 10 p.m.

Sherman was especially known for his personal integrity. His good friend John Adams described him as “one of the most sensible men in the world,” possessing the “clearest head and steadiest heart.” Thomas Jefferson said he was “a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” Yale President Ezra Stiles called him an “extraordinary man, a venerable uncorrupted Patriot.” A fellow congressman said he “always felt safe in voting as Mr. Sherman did, for he always voted right.”

The source of his personal integrity was his personal faith in Christ. One biographer said of him:

He was long a professor of religion, and one of its brightest ornaments. Nor was his religion that which appeared only on occasions. It was with him a principle and a habit. It appeared in the closet, in the family, on the bench, and in senate house. Few men had a higher reverence for the Bible; few men studied it with deeper attention; few were more intimately acquainted with the doctrines of the gospel.

Roger Sherman knew that the source of Christian character is the power of Christ, testifying: “True Christians are assured that no temptation (or trial) shall happen to them but what they shall be enabled to bear; and that the grace of Christ shall be sufficient for them.” Accordingly, he urged us: “Let us live no more to ourselves, but to Him who loved us, and gave Himself to die for us.”

Will you accept his invitation today?

 

http://www.denisonforum.org/