United Church of God

Overcoming Idolatry

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Overcoming Idolatry

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Overcoming Idolatry

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Idolatry is more than just the concept of fabricating objects for worship. Aspects of idolatry are revealed with advice on how to overcome the draw toward idolatry.

Sermon Notes

Presenter's NOTES

To begin, let’s turn in our Bibles to Exodus chapter 2…

Exo 2:23 Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. 24 So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.

NOTE: This does not indicate turning to God or praying to God, but God could see their misery and went on to tell Moses to report to Israel that the true God would free them.

Israel knew they were slaves to the Egyptians. They suffered hard labor under their taskmasters and knew they wanted freedom. They were miserable.

So, God did something about it. Though this nation, Israel did not know the true God, He remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He performed great miracles before the people of Egypt ending with the destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea.

But no sooner had Israel escaped bondage in Egypt having crossed the Red Sea than did they reveal they were still slaves.

How?

In the wilderness of Sin, the Sabbath had already been revealed to them. When they came to Mount Sinai, God gave the people His law and commandments and confirmed the Covenant. And, somewhere around the time of Pentecost God had Moses go up to the Mountain where he was with God for forty days to receive more instructions and be given the tablets of stone.

So, during those 40 days, Israel waited at the foot of the mountain for Moses to return.

Though they had been freed from their taskmasters after seeing the many wonderful powers of God, and though they had received the law and agreed to all of it, they were still slaves to the sins of those same taskmasters, for when Moses being gone for 40 days had not returned, they, imagining Moses to be dead, resorted to making a golden calf to represent God.

Israel knew without any doubt they had been slaves in Egypt, but they didn’t understand all of the ways in which they were enslaved. They may have escaped the nation and the army of the nation, but they brought with them through the Red Sea all of the attitude and practices of their former masters…

…one of those pervading practices being IDOLATRY.

As God led Israel out of Egypt, so God has led you and me to come out of this world, called to be free from the slavery imposed by this world, so it is up to us, having knowledge of God’s law, to break free from sin. It’s one thing to be enlightened by the word of God, to confess it is true, to believe in Christ and acknowledge Him as Savior. But it’s another thing entirely to actually change.

So, how do we discover idolatry in our lives, and how do we overcome it?

Go from shallow to deep to discover…

The following scripture will reveal a deeper understanding of idolatry to raise our awareness to the depth of its meaning. This scripture will also reveal one of the tools for overcoming. Paul, writing to Christians in Colossae…

Col 3:5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Talk about walking AàB, and building a treehouse; living behavior of our members.

Col 3:5 (NAS) Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

Fornication (porneia) – adultery, figuratively, idolatry

The following scripture provides valuable information for dealing with idolatry…

1Co 10:14  Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. (1 Cor 6:18 – flee fornication).

The key here, besides the interchangeable use of porneia for idolatry and fornication is that when confronted with temptation, we don’t dwell on it or reason with it; WE RUN AWAY; WE PUT IT OUT OF OUR MIND.

Let’s go to First Samuel, now to discover an attitude of idolatry…

1Sa 15:23  For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He also has rejected you from being king."

God had commanded through Samuel that Saul go and utterly destroy the Amalekites, including all of their livestock. He was to destroy everything and keep nothing. Saul did not completely fulfill this command, sparing King Agag and the choicest of the livestock.

And, when Samuel confronted Saul about this, he DEFENDED (made excuses for) his actions. Unlike King David, who, when he was confronted about a major sin, immediately saw what he had done and repented, Saul justified his behavior and declared he DID DO GOD’S WILL.

So, in verse 23, Saul’s actions are revealed to have been rebellion (willful disobedience or defiance) and stubbornness (justifying his actions), which is idolatry. The cure for stubbornness is to yield in repentance as King David later proved to do.

We as followers of Christ need to understand the pervasive nature of idolatry, realizing it is more than the simple idea of worshipping manufactured images. It is a condition that desires/craves/worships something as higher than the living God. In Colossians 3:5, we are shown clearly that addictive behaviors related to deviant sexuality and any kinds of greed or craving are forms of idolatry (could include eating obsession, drug & alcohol abuse, pursuing wealth at all costs).

In conclusion, having this deeper understanding in mind, we can practice an approach to overcoming idolatry. We can…

 

  1. Our Attitude Must be Yielded to God IN Repentance; be like David, not like Saul
  2. Our Mindset or Strategy Must be to Flee From IT; don’t reason with or dwell on (mindset)
  3. And Our Actions Must Be to Put IT to Death; refuse to take the journey from true worship to idolatry.