Category: Idolatry

What God Hates

On By BrianIn Idolatry, PASSION Collections

Tim Challies recently finished an excellent series on eight things God hates.  In Challies’ words:

The God who loves must also hate. The God who loves all that is good and pure and holy must hate all that is evil and defiled and perverse. 

If we are going to love God, we must hate what he hates.  If we are going to love people, we must hate what God hates since these things that he hates are also hurtful to people.

So below are links to the first four.  I encourage you to take the time to read them, and examine your life.  Where do you see these tendencies in your life?  For which of these might you need to repent and find forgiveness in the sacrifice of our Savior?

God Hates Idolatry

God Hates Sexual Immorality

God Hates Injustice

God Hates Hypocrisy

Passion Points

On By BrianIn Idolatry, PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Practical Suggestions for Cultivating Communion with God – Kelly Kapic (Crossway)
But interpersonal relationships are not “things” to be accomplished. They are more about “being” than “doing,” and they need attentiveness, mutual exchange, and care to flourish. Relationships cannot be life-giving sources of strength if we are not present in and to them. Communion with God is a deep need for every human, whether we acknowledge the need or not. Communion with God is how we were made to function, and it is ultimately about a loving and very present relationship with the triune Creator.

The Hidden Power in Every Idol – Tim Challies
If we worship the idol of the perfect body, the sweeping curves or the chiseled abs, we will become as vain and self-focused as the models in the magazines. If we worship the idol of money, we will become as greedy, selfish, and cut-throat as the worst wolf on Wall Street. If we worship athleticism, we will imitate superstar athletes in their arrogance, their moral depravity, their self-obsession. If we worship the idol of power we will mimic the flip-flopping, anything-goes, popularity-obsessed politician. On and on it goes.

5 Reasons Not to Waste Your Leisure Time– Jeff Robinson (TGC)
In today’s work force, some researchers have found the average work week for an American man is creeping beyond 50 hours. Thus, after a long and laborious work week, our finite bodies and minds often stand in need of refreshment. God set a pattern in the created order (evening/morning/end of the day) for six days, and then established a day of rest on the seventh.

Why the Local Church Really Matters – Tim Challies
As we prepare to worship God tomorrow, it may do us good to pause for just a few moments to consider the local church. What is the church? Why has God called us into these little communities? Does the local church really matter? It does! The local church is foundational to God’s plan for his people.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your local church!

The Triumph of Personal Perception

On By BrianIn Idolatry

The Bible teaches that God created the world.  As the Creator, God defines what is real.  God alone determines reality.

But of course our culture has rejected God as Creator, and so rejects his claim to define what is real.  And so now we will define reality based on our own personal perceptions.  We will become mini-gods and define reality as we see fit.  Objective created reality doesn’t matter.  All that matters is what I perceive to be real.

And so as a recent video shows us, a short white man can think he is a tall Chinese woman, and we will accept him as such because his personal perception defines his reality regardless of what is really real.  If this same adult claims to be a seven-year-old, we will affirm him in his personal perception of himself, and even allow him to attend first grade. Personal perception determines reality – even if we must throw out mathematics (the man’s height), biology (the man’s gender), and history (the man’s ancestry).

If I think I am a penguin, then I am, and I should be able to swim with the penguins at the zoo.  Because personal perception determines reality.  That is the teaching of our culture.

And so our president’s recent directive, that every public school must allow their students to define their gender regardless of their biological sex, should not surprise us.  That each school must allow boys claiming to be girls to shower in the girls’ locker room should not surprise us.  That so many people are willing to go along with this should not surprise us.  This is merely one symptom of this false way of thinking – that my personal perception defines reality.

I recently attended one of my daughter’s soccer games, and the school hosting the game provided programs with the names and numbers of all the players.  And at the bottom of the program was this little gem: “If you believe it, you can do it.”  In other words, your perception determines reality.  So if I believe I can fly, I can jump off a cliff and fly away.  But will my personal perception really determine my reality?

The fact is that the hard rocks of real reality lie at bottom of the cliff.  Reality often won’t bend to my perception.  And this attempt to redefine reality based on our own perceptions will leave many bloody and hurting at the bottom of the cliff.  And as people grow weary of the carnage and wreckage that their own perceptions of reality will ultimately bring, the church needs to be ready to lovingly point them back to Jesus. We need to be ready to point them to the real Savior who died on a real cross to pay for their real sin of trying to become gods who determine reality for themselves.

God alone defines reality.  Instead of trying to bend reality to our own perceptions, we must bend our perceptions to reality as God has defined it, reality as God has created it, reality as it really is.

 

Who Carries Who?

On By BrianIn Book of Isaiah, Idolatry

In Isaiah 46, the Babylonians must carry their gods around. And still today people carry their gods around. It might be money. It might be a technological gadget. It might be anything that we live for, that we trust in, that we center our lives around, that we look to for significance and satisfaction and security. And we carry it.

In contrast, the one true God carries us. He carried us in the womb. He has carried us through life through the good and the bad. He will carry us in old age. At death, he will carry our souls to Himself. And at the resurrection, he will carry us to the new earth.

You can carry around a man-made god or you can rest in the God who carries you.

Passion Points

On By BrianIn Idolatry, PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

God’s School of Waiting – Jeff Robinson (TGC)

You Might Be An Idolater If… – Stephen Altrogge (Crossway)

7 Marks of a Deeply Deadly Sin – Tim Challies (from John Owen)

20 Ways to be Refreshing in the Local Church – Jason Helopoulos

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your local church!

Six Reasons to Have No Other Gods

On By BrianIn Idolatry, Ten Commandments

In the First Commandment (Exodus 20:3), God commands us to have no other gods before Him. Why? Here are six reasons not to have other gods:

First, God spoke this command (v1). God Himself commands it – and that should really be enough for us.

Second, God is our God (v2). He has entered into a relationship with us, and we are his people. We ought to show the same allegiance to God that he shows to us.

Third, God saved us (v3). As God saved Israel from slavery to Egypt, so God has saved us from slavery to sin. And we ought to respond with grateful allegiance.

Fourth, God is our Creator (Genesis 1-2). As such we owe our very existence to Him. And so he should be first in our lives.

Fifth, God is the only true God (Psalm 86:10). How foolish for us to exchange fake gods for the one true God. What a horrible slight to God to follow fake gods.

Sixth, God is greater than all the fake gods. He showed Himself greater than the Egyptian gods through the ten plagues. He showed Himself greater than Baal on the mountain in the contest between Elijah and Baal’s prophets. As the one true God he is greater than all fake gods. He can truly help us. He can truly satisfy us. He is greater.

Can you think of other reasons to have no other gods?

Not Enough?

On By BrianIn Idolatry, Ten Commandments

HisLovingLawAnything that comes between God and us that compromises our walk with him is a god to us. We are saying, “You’re not really enough for this situation, Lord. You are not providing for me or protecting me or fulfilling me in the ways that I need, so I am bringing this other god into my life to close the gap between your inadequacy and my needs.”

– Jani Ortlund in His Loving Law, Our Lasting Legacy

Ouch!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn Idolatry, PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Gospel Ripples – Jeremy Walker (Reformation 21)
Here are reasons why the saints need to go on hearing the gospel. It brings back to our hearts and minds the truths of our salvation, stirring us up to love and prompting us to serve. It emphasizes spiritual realities, the enduring facts of man’s sin and God’s grace, of heaven and hell and the sacrificial Lamb who stands between them. It reminds us of life and of death. It reinforces and freshly adorns our convictions. It prepares us to make Christ known.

Preaching the Gospel To Yourself – Tim Challies
Why don’t you make it part of your practice, and see the difference it makes to begin each day reminding yourself of who you were, and who you now are in Christ.

Three Questions To Help Diagnose Possible Football Idolatry – Kevin DeYoung
Wherever there is a consuming passion for anything that is not God there is the danger of idolatry. And football is certainly a consuming passion for many in this country. So what are some of the signs that football has grown to idolatrous proportions in the heart of the Christian?

Becoming Christ-like: The Goal of the Christian Life? – Daniel Wallace
If my goal is for me to become Christ-like, then my goal is inevitably and necessarily self-centered. How well am I doing at this goal? What do I look like as a Christian? My goal had become my role, and the focus had become too inward.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day celebrating our glorious and gracious God with your local church!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn Idolatry, PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Don’t Waste Your Beach Vacation – Steve Dewitt (Via Trevin Wax)

Three Tips for Better Bible Reading – Andy Naselli (DG)

5 Insights Into Idolatry – J. D. Greear

8 Ways to Beat Temptation – Mark Altrogge

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day worshiping our glorious and gracious God with your local church!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn Idolatry, PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

How to Grow Spiritually – William Boekestein (Ligonier)
Participating in preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and prayer must regulate the routine of any healthy Christian.

When We Best Learn the Bible – Jen Wilkin (DG)
But sound Bible study is rooted in a celebration of delayed gratification. Gaining Bible literacy requires allowing our study to have a cumulative effect — across weeks, months, years — so that the interrelation of one part of Scripture to another reveals itself slowly and gracefully, like a dust cloth slipping inch by inch from the face of a masterpiece.

What Is Your Mud Pie? – Tim Challies
It is one of C.S. Lewis’ most powerful and most enduring illustrations: An ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. It is a vivid illustration and one that is simple enough to see in the lives of other people—those people who settle for lesser pleasures when the greatest of all pleasures awaits. But I, at least, find it far more difficult to see in my own life. You may find it just as difficult.  It is worth asking: What is your mud pie?

Success is Dangerous – Jared Wilson
We all prefer success to failure but, really, success is more dangerous. In failure, we know we rely totally on God’s approval and sustaining arm. In success, it is easy to begin looking around, surveying all the territories claimed, all the peoples gathered, all the ministry renown redounding, and we think, “Well, lookee here. Look what has been built with my talents, my gifts, my skills, my strategies, my visions, my sweat, my sacrifice.”

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your local church worshiping our great God!