Finally, they cried out to the LORD for help, saying, “We have sinned against you because we have abandoned you as our God and have served the images of Baal.” [Judges 10.10]
This is the repeated plight of the people of Israel: they repeatedly abandoned God and turned to idolatry.
Many Bible readers have recognized "Israel's repeated rebellion." Many have subsequently concluded (or struggle not to conclude) that the Bible is outdated and irrelevant to modern man. In this perceived irrelevancy, the strongest possible documented warning for man today is blindly overlooked.
God is still God and man is still man. And, according to the Bible, the prevailing problem of sin against God, idolatry, is still idolatry!
Jesus, God in the flesh, did not come to earth to deal with idols. Jesus came to earth to deal with man whose gross idolatry rendered him lost and condemned.
“There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.” [John 3.18-21]
The God-nature, in which man was created, was in fact, man's vulnerability. The very creative nature of God within man, when deceptively provoked to abandon God through self awareness, immediately set out to create. This started in the Garden of Eden. Satan's deceptive provocation, "Has God really said...?" resulted in man's disobedience that led to his first creative act: sewing figs leaves together to cover themselves. This self-focused creative act set in irreversible motion all the "making of idols" that would be man's and Israel's repeated and growing sin.
The creative God-nature in man has exponentially grown. The God-nature-creativity of man is at levels of unprecedented advancement in the earth today. And, Jesus did not stop or change it simply because the creative God-nature in man is not sin. But, when that creative God-nature in man abandons God and becomes self-focused, it is the epitome of condemning sin and judgment in which the unbeliever lives by default (John 3.18-21 above).
Jesus came to offer man the opportunity to repent of abandoning God by giving up self-focused God-nature-creativity (the way of man) and instead, believe the way of God - the Way of Jesus - the way of other-focused God-nature-creativity - the way of the cross. Jesus said it like this:
If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. [Matthew 16.24 (also, Mark 8.34 & Luke 9.23)]
Why did Jesus not specifically mention idols? Because, as God in the flesh, He would never do so. Instead, He would remain only God-focused saying things like:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. [John 14.6]
Idols therefore are not the problem. Idols are the collective symptom of man's abandonment of God that causes him to use his creative God-nature for his own self-focused reasons. This would explain why religion today bears so little resemblance to Jesus... Man has used his God-nature-creativity to make an institution for himself (to futilely cover himself) because he has not obeyed God - he has not obeyed Jesus in giving up his own way, taking up his cross, and following Him. It should not be surprising then that the Church today is, for all practical Jesus-like purposes, powerless.
With the Old Testament's documentation of man's God-nature-creativity-turned-selfish (the way of man - and therefore, the way of idolatry) and Jesus in the New Testament demanding man must give up his own way (the way of man - and therefore, the way of idolatry), how can we ignore man's timeless sin of idolatry? How can we not see in the creations of man his abandonment of God?
If God is indeed still God, then we must also understand that Satan, the liar and deceiver, is still Satan. He was fallen in the Garden of Eden, he was fallen in Jesus' day, and he is still fallen today. Satan is still lying and still deceiving. And, man is still falling for Satan's lies insatiably using his God-nature-creativity for himself ...and therefore the Church, compared to Jesus, lies in an unremarkable state of powerlessness.
A true believer's active response to idolatry is daunting because of the unprecedented complexity of idolatry today. However, the simplicity of Jesus' solution, to give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow Me, is not about what we do, but what He has done. In contrast to Adam and Eve believing Satan's lie and abandoning God, we can believe Jesus' Truth and return to God.
Father in heaven, never has man's sin problem (idolatry) been more to clear to me than it is right now. May Your people be encouraged by these words here to make giving up their own way, taking up their cross, and following Jesus not only a daily endeavor, but a moment-by-moment endeavor. May Your power return to Your people as they return to You. So be it.
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