Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters

by Timothy J. Keller

Idolatry is so pervasive that it dominates this area as well.

An idol is something that we look to for things that only God can give.

Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to the position of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtle but deadly mistake.

Scoffers always show contempt and disdain for opponents rather than graciousness. This is a sign that they do not see themselves as sinners saved by grace.

Spiritual gifts (talent, ability, performance, growth) are often mistaken for what the Bible calls spiritual “fruit” (love, joy, patience, humility, courage, gentleness).

Another kind of religious idolatry has to do with moral living itself.

Why did our culture largely abandon God as its Hope? I believe it was because our religious communities have been and continue to be filled with these false gods.

Making an idol out of doctrinal accuracy, ministry success, or moral rectitude leads to constant internal conflict, arrogance and self-righteousness, and oppression of those whose views differ. These toxic effects of religious idolatry have led to widespread disaffection with religion in general and Christianity in particular.

The idols that drive us are complex, many-layered, and largely hidden from us.

God was reaching out in mercy to the great enemy of his people—no more counterintuitive mission could have been imagined. God was sending a patriotic Jewish prophet to do this—no more unlikely emissary could have been chosen. God was asking him to do what he must have considered unconscionable. But that was the mission, and he was the missionary.

Jonah would have been afraid of failure.

He would have been just as afraid, however, of the possibility of the mission’s success, small as that might have been.

So why did he run? The answer is, again, idolatry, but of a very complex kind.

Jonah had a personal idol. He wanted ministry success more than he wanted to obey God. Also, Jonah was shaped by a cultural idol. He put the national interests of Israel over obedience to God and the spiritual good of the Ninevites. Finally, Jonah had a religious idol, simple moral self-righteousness. He felt superior to the wicked, pagan Ninevites.

The fish was God’s provision for Jonah. It gave Jonah a chance to recover and repent.

that idolaters “forsake their own chesedh.” Chesedh is the Hebrew word for God’s covenantal love, his redeeming, unconditional grace.

This term had been used to describe God’s relationship with Israel, his people. Now Jonah says that idol worshippers forsake “their own grace.”

grace is grace. If it is truly grace, then no one was worthy of it at all, and that made all equal.

What, according to Jonah, blocks the coming of grace into one’s life? It is clinging to idols.

His fear of personal failure, his pride in his religion, and his fierce love of his country had coalesced into a deadly idolatrous compound that spiritually blinded him to the grace of God.

Racial pride and cultural narrowness cannot coexist with the gospel of grace.

Peter was “not acting in line with the gospel”

“Peter, if we are all saved by grace alone—how can you feel superior to anyone? How can you continue to be racially and nationally exclusive? Use the gospel on your heart!”

he hadn’t understood that grace himself.

he began to realize the truth. Salvation was by grace, and therefore it was available to anyone at all.

Finally Jonah’s idol was laid bare, revealing his abhorrence of this race and nation.

Jonah stands as a warning that human hearts never change quickly or easily, even when a person is being mentored directly by God.

And so it is under stress, in real life experience, that the true nature of our hearts is revealed.

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. Jonah shows us that it is one thing to believe the gospel with our minds, and another to work it deep into our hearts so it affects everything we think, feel, and do. He is still being largely controlled by idolatry.

When an idol gets a grip on your heart, it spins out a whole set of false definitions of success and failure and happiness and sadness. It redefines reality in terms of itself.

In the end idols can make it possible to call evil good and good evil.

Idols distort not only our thinking, but also our feelings.

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.

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.

You don’t lose your desire to live unless you have lost your meaning in life. His meaning in life was the freedom of his nation. That is a good thing to want, but it had become a supreme thing.

God responded: “You did not have compassion on this city, but I will.”

God implied that he would love the wicked, violent city in a way Jonah had refused to do.

What did that mean? How did God do what ...

Jesus actually died and rose again. It was what Jesus called the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:31).

When I struggle with my idols, I think of Jesus, voluntarily bowing his head into that ultimate storm, taking it on frontally, for me.

He sank in that storm of terror so I would not fear any other storm in my life.

If he did that for me, then I know my value, confidence, and mission in life all rest in him. Storms here on earth can take away many things,...

God hinted to Jonah that he would love the great, lost cities of the earth in a way that Jonah would not. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, the tr...

The question is coming right at us, because you are Jonah and I am Jonah. We are so enslaved to our idols that we don’t care about people who are Different, who live in the big cities, or who are just in our own families but very hard to love. Are we, like Jonah, willing to change? If we are, then we must look to the Ultimate Jonah, and to his sign, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

About idolatry he said, “Though few will own it, nothing is more common.”

Is there any hope? Yes, if we begin to realize that idols cannot simply be removed. They must be replaced.

By what?

What we need is a living encounter with God.

Jacob walked away as the very picture of one who has believed the gospel, for he had been permanently lamed, yet permanently fulfilled. He had been humbled, yet emboldened—all at the same time.

He didn’t seem to deserve any blessing from God at all. Why, if God is holy and just, was he so gracious to Jacob? Why would God feign weakness to keep from killing him, then give him clues as to who he was, then bless him for no better reason than that he held on desperately?