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But, the Bible tells us, without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, that object will never be God himself.
Did Abraham have the peace, humility, boldness, and unmovable poise that come to those who trust in God rather than in circumstances, public opinion, or their own competence?
owed a debt to eternal justice—the
“He knows what he is doing with me, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold” (Job 23:10).
“the fear of God” is increased by an experience of God’s grace and forgiveness. What it describes is a loving, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of God. The
If we are not willing to hurt our career in order to do God’s will, our job will become a counterfeit god.
As the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, anyone God loves experiences hardship (Hebrews 12:1-8).
But how much more can we look at his sacrifice on the Cross, and say to God, “Now, we know that you love us. For you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from us.”
The only way that God can be both “just” (demanding payment of our debt of sin) and “justifier”24 (providing salvation and grace) is because years later another Father went up another “mount” called Calvary with his firstborn and offered him there for us all.
As many have learned and later taught, you don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
To practice idolatry is to be a slave.
love can become a form of slavery.
Jacob and Laban had stolen
Leah’s life, but when she gave her heart finally to the Lord, she got her life back.
The text says that when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he loved her.
He loves the unwanted, the weak and unloved.
“You may turn out to be a great guy, and maybe even my husband, but you cannot ever be my life. Only Christ is my life.” When she began to do this, like Leah, she got her life back. This spiritual discipline gave her the ability to set boundaries and make good choices, and eventually to love a man for himself, and not simply to use men to bolster her self-image.
For Jesus, greed is not only love of money, but excessive anxiety about it. He lays out the reason our emotions are so powerfully controlled by our bank account—“a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
God’s salvation does not come in response to a changed life. A changed life comes in response to the salvation, offered as a free gift.
He realized that while being financially rich, he had been spiritually bankrupt,
Each deep idol—power, approval, comfort, or control—generates a different set of fears and a different set of hopes.
The false sense of security comes from deifying our achievement and expecting it to keep us safe from the troubles of life in a way that only God can.
Naaman’s leprosy represents the reality that success can’t deliver the satisfaction we are looking for. Many of the most successful people testify to still feeling like “outsiders” and having doubts about themselves.
Whatever he gives us is a gift of grace.
No one can control the true God because no one can earn, merit, or achieve their own blessing and salvation.
you want God’s grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing. But that kind of spiritual humility is hard to muster.
But when you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.
Jesus’s salvation is received not through strength but through the admission of weakness and need.
This is one of the great messages of the Bible: God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong, the foolish and despised things to shame the wise, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are (1 Corinthians 1:29-31). That’s how God does it.
A society can also develop a sense of inferiority and become aggressive and belligerent.
To be your own God and live for your own glory and power leads to the most bestial and cruel kind of behavior. Pride makes you a predator, not a person.92 That is what happened to the king.
But if you let it humble you rather than embitter you, and turn to God instead of living for your own glory, then the death of your pride can lead to a resurrection. You can emerge, finally, fully human, with a tender heart instead of a hard heart.
Though we may give lip service to Jesus as our example and inspiration, we are still looking to ourselves and our own moral striving for salvation.
idols that drive our actions on many levels and pull us farther from God even when we think we are doing his will.
Finally, Jonah had a religious idol, simple moral self-righteousness. He felt superior to the wicked, pagan Ninevites.
Salvation was by grace, and therefore it was available to anyone at all.
For example, all Christians say and believe that Christ is their Savior, not their career or their wealth. What Christ thinks of us is what matters, not human approval. That is what we say. But while Jesus is our Savior in principle, other things still maintain functional title to our hearts.
Idolatry distorts our feelings. Just as idols are good things turned into ultimate things, so the desires they generate become paralyzing and overwhelming. Idols generate false beliefs such as “if I cannot achieve X, then my life won’t be valid” or “since I have lost or failed Y, now I can never be happy or forgiven again.” These beliefs magnify ordinary disappointments and failures into life-shattering experiences.
There is legitimate guilt that is removed through repentance and restitution, and then there is irremediable guilt. When people say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important to them than God’s.
We all need assurance of our unique value from some outside source. The love and admiration of those you most love and admire is above all rewards. We are all looking for this deep admiration, looking for it from our parents, our spouse, and our peers.
“looking for blessing in all the wrong places.”
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator.
idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong.
Why do we fail to love or keep promises or live unselfishly? Of course, the general answer is “because we are weak and sinful,” but the specific answer in any actual circumstance is that there is something you feel you must have to be happy, something that is more important to your heart than God himself.
If you are overworking, driving yourself into the ground with frantic activity, ask yourself, “Do I feel that I must have this thing to be fulfilled and significant?”
Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God.
You cannot get relief simply by figuring out your idols intellectually. You have to actually get the peace that Jesus gives, and that only comes as you worship. Analysis can help you discover truths, but then you need to “pray them in” to your heart. That takes time. It is a process about which there is much to say, but we cannot take it up in this book.
