Idols of the Heart

I would like to begin this post with a series of questions that are not meant to be judgmental, but diagnostic.

# 1 – What is it or who is it that gives your life meaning and purpose, value and significance?

# 2 – In what or whom do you pursue and find your greatest joy and fulfillment, your significance and security in life?

#3 – To what or whom do you turn to when your life gets hard, when things don’t go the way you plan, when people mistreat you, when your dreams and desires have been crushed, when you are angry or despairing, disappointed/disillusioned with your life?

 #4 –  To what or whom do you give heartfelt thanks when things do  go well, when your needs are met, when your plans do work out, when your desires are being fulfilled and when you are, at least for the moment, satisfied with life.

If our answer to any of these questions is anything or anyone other than God, the God of the Bible, then we are guilty of the sin of idolatry; idolatry defined as the pursuit of our ultimate joy, pleasure and fulfillment, our identity, significance and security in anyone or anything other than the one true God.

Idolatry is the overarching sin of mankind, the sin from which all other sins and transgressions against God proceed. All thoughts, attitudes and actions that oppose or contradict the glorious person and purposes of God can be traced back to our desiring and passionately pursuing someone, some thing or some activity as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy other than the God of the Bible.  We see this truth revealed in Ezekiel 14:1-3, wherein the prophet tells us,

“Now some of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me.  And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,  “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts, and put before them that which causes them to stumble into sin.”

Idolatry is any tendency in the human heart to dethrone God for the sake of something else, whether that be money, sex, drugs, fame and success, power, pride, or something seemingly as respectable as a hobby, family or friends. To the extent that we give our affections to anything or anyone other than God on the assumption that it can do for our souls what He can’t, we are guilty of idolatry.

Christian pastor and author Martin Lloyd Jones describes an idol in two ways; as anything in our lives that occupies a place in our heart, in our affections that should be occupied by God alone, and, anything that holds a controlling position in our life other than God.

Now when the Bible speaks of the heart, it is referring not to the organ that pumps blood, but the core of our being from which proceed our thoughts, imaginations, desires, motivations and affections that determine our will and actions.

In Jeremiah 17:9 we are told that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked – so filled with idols that we can’t know how wicked we are.

In Genesis 6:5 we are told that the imaginations of men’s hearts are only evil continually, evil that brought the first worldwide judgement on mankind, the flood of Noah’s day.

Puritan writer David Clarkston in his treatise titled “Soul Idolatry Excludes Men out of Heaven” describes idolatry as occurring when anything is more valued in our hearts and affections than God, more desired than God, more sought after than God, more loved than God.  It should greatly concern us that the exclusion from Heaven of idolaters is emphasized in 1 Corinthians 6:9, Galatians 5:19-21 and Ephesians 5:5.

John Calvin, the great Christian reformer of the 16th century, picks up on this theme when he calls the human heart an idol factory in that it continually produces in us longing and desires and affections for anything and anyone but God.

The final authority on our heart idolatry however is Jesus Christ, God the Son, who tells us that out of the human heart proceeds all of our idolatrous sins. (Mark 7:21).

However, it is also Jesus who came into this world as a man to save us from God’s just judgement on those sins and to transform our hearts so that out of them proceed love obedience to God and trust and delight in God (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

When we turn from our idolatries and put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, He becomes the one in whom we will find our meaning and purpose, our value and significance; He becomes the one in whom we find our greatest joy and fulfillment, our significance and security in life; He becomes the one we turn to when life gets hard, when things don’t go the way we plan, when people mistreat us, when our dreams and desires have been crushed, when we are disappointed/disillusioned with life; and He is the one to whom we give heartfelt thanks when things do go well, when our needs are met, when our plans do work out, when our desires are being fulfilled and when we are, at least for the moment, satisfied with life in this world (James 1:16-17).

Turn your heart to Jesus – delight in Him, and He will, in the ages to come, (Ephesians 2:4-7), purify, satisfy, and  fulfill every need, every desire, every longing you will ever have in this life, in ways you cannot begin to conceive of or imagine while in this world (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Grace and Peace ×