Is Jesus Your First Love ? (Idols In Today's World)
God's View Of Idols
Deuteronomy 5:7 (God zealously loves us with all His being & wants us to love Him this same way)
"I will pronounce my judgements on my people because of their wickedness in forsaking me, in burning incense to other gods and in worshipping what their hands have made. ... I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert... Has a nation ever changed its gods ? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged my Glory for worthless idols. ... My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. ... Have you not brought this on yourselves by forsaking the Lord your God when he led you in the way ? ... Your wickedness will punish you; your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me. ... They have turned their backs to me and not their faces; yet when they are in trouble they say, 'Come and save us !' Where then are the gods you made for yourselves ? Let them come if they can save you when you are in trouble ! ... But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers - would you now return to me ? ... their immorality mattered so little to them, they defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood (idols). ... Only acknowledge your guilt- you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree and have not obeyed me; Return, faithless people, declares the Lord, for I am your husband. ... How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation. I thought you would call me Father, and not turn away from following me. But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me." (excerpts from Jeremiah 1:16 to 3:20)
(God views our idols as acts of adultery in our relationship with Him)
- "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world." - I John 2:15-16
Examples Of Today's Idols
- Money - Religion - Tradition
- Pleasure - Career - Success
- Accomplishment - Material Things - Status
- Power - Influence - Position
- Our own goals - Our own purposes - Control
- Our own ideas - Our own opinions
- Self (Living to please self instead of pleasing God; 2 Cor. 5:9,14)
(It's not wrong to have these things; It becomes wrong when we begin to love these things and turn to them to satisfy and fulfill ourself, and when we love these things more than we love God)
Idols Part 2: Are you sure that you don't have any idols ?