FIRST THINGS FIRST
It must first be said that the greatest central truth about God is that God is good. God is love. All of his works on humankind’s behalf, at least before the Great White Throne judgment, are redemptive. The Great White Throne will be a day of reckoning and recompense. Redemptions will either have been received or rejected by that point, and the die will have been cast for every person who ever lived. Nothing will be left to redeem. All those who would have responded, will have responded. It will be the utter end of the matter. But, until then, God offers redemption. God continually throws us life-lines. Today, redemption is his offer at every turn. This is the “acceptable day of salvation,” this is his “year of favor;” what theologians call “the age of grace.” Until this age is over, all punishments are deferred. This is when we are to “seek the Lord while he can be found and to call upon the Lord while he is near,” for his Spirit will not always strive with man. There is an end in sight. This is why we should respond to him today. “So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts … ”(Heb 6:7-8)
God is willing to take us as we are, and he is calling each of us to himself. Now is the time to believe him and to respond to his every overture.
This is the best grid through which we can understand God’s commands and interactions with people everywhere.
Even when God interposes with hard reproofs or microcosmic judgments, they are not final pronouncements, but are designed and intended to bring people closer to God rather than drive them away. God’s motives, it must ever be presumed, are pure, and infinitely so. This is why it is blasphemy and sin to attribute evil motivation, or unrighteous action to God. John tells us that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all (1Jn 1:5), and James tells us “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17 )
WARNINGS ARE FOR OUR BENEFIT
So, when God says what seem to be harsh things about idolatry, he is speaking passionately about a particular evil for our own benefit, not for his. Idols are things people set up. It is not possible for God to have an idol. Idols are false. Idols are lies, and God cannot lie. He always tells it like it is. He never tells half truths, but we do.
Idolatry therefore is far more common than any might think. Idolatry is something we humans do very well. We practice it every day, and in a thousand ways every day, because we both turn away from facing the truth about what "is," and we set up for ourselves false images, false ideas, false notions, which we seek to protect and to which we pay homage.
Idols are lies because they are not consistent with reality – not consistent with what truly "is." Idols represent picture of things that could never "be" as they are portrayed. This is why revelation is such an important matter. If Jesus Christ did not exist. If the teachings of the Bible did not exist. If morality was merely a human construct (as many assert), then the idea that "everything is relative" would be true. It is Divine Revelation, as has come to us through the Jewish faith - resulting in Jesus the Messiah, that we understand that there really is a Truth to embrace. John the Apostle says that "grace and truth" came by Jesus Christ. This is an enormous claim, and it is precisely this view that aligns the Christian mind with what really "is," and liberates one from the tyranny of idolatry.
Take for instance pornography; it presents sex in a way that sex never ever was, and can never ever be. It paints extreme pictures of unbridled sexual appetites as nothing more than casual and natural, when such attitudes about sex have never been something casual, merely natural and never without consequence. Such practices have never been acceptable in any sustainable society on this planet, and never can be - not without ripping apart lives, let alone the entire fabric of that society. Pornography, is, simply put, a destructive idolatry.
Without a doubt, sex is natural to human life, this is the truth. Nothing could be more natural. Nothing could be more holy. We are sexual beings, we all know this. We would never want to deny it. But there is no culture on earth that regards sex as an area that should be unfettered from deeper issues of societal appropriateness and human morality. All societies have norms and mores about sex, and how sex is to be conducted and enjoyed, even if one society is more libertine than another. The fact of variations in mores does not disprove the point I am making, it establishes it. The "distinctions" between cultures do not demonstrate a "difference" between them. Rather, it proves the fact that all cultures have rules about sex.
MODERN IDOLATRIES
This is why pornography is idolatrous. It lies about sex. There never were people who enjoyed sex the way pornography portrays it, and there never will be. The beautiful people shown having sex have never existed. The people being portrayed do not, have not, and never will exist. All they appear to be, and all they represent is pure fantasy, but it is not the fantasy that is the worst part of it, it is that this particular fantasy is a complete lie.
In Bronzino’s painting, Cupid, Venus, Folly & Time, we see the artist’s commentary on this kind of sex. Father time will reveal such sexual behaviors as harmful folly produced by giving way to deceptive appetites, that results in oblivion, agony, remorse and death. Complete sexual freedom is a complete fiction, and to pursue it is a destructive form of idolatry. Such sexual folly always ends in despair and can end in no other way. Even if the human participants have not reached that conclusion in their own assessment of such behavior, they will understand the complete folly of it when they stand in front of that burning light who invented sexuality and the humans who participate in it. (See this work at the link at the bottom of this article.)
It is not we humans who can decide what sex is or is not to be, it is the God who invented it who has that singular right, and that verdict has been know for the entire history of humankind, so it is not as if the demand for sexual purity is a well guarded secret. God demands sexual purity for our protection - not just from STDs and unplanned pregnancies, but from many forms of brokenness, degradation and pain. When it comes to sex, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Sex outside of its divinely ordained protective boundaries creates victims on many sides. There are few sins more damaging to the human heart and psyche than sexual sins. Sexual sins cause bafflement of mind and agony of heart.
The mere fact that God invented sex itself demonstrates quite profoundly that he is neither against it, nor against the pleasures it provides us. But, because it is such a powerful aspect of human life, God, in his kindness, wisdom, goodness and love for us, has placed restrictions, limitation and considerations about sex which are intended to prevent us from doing harm to ourselves and to others. Because God loves all people, he desires to protect all from harm, hence, limitations and considerations are required, more than that, these things are demanded. Love will have it no other way. Morality, when God (not man) is at its source, is one of the most profound proofs and manifestations of divine love. God loves us. He made us. He knows what makes us happy, therefore, he shows us the way to be fulfilled. Goodness is a benefit to us. Selfishness is always a formula for pain.
BELIEVING A LIE CAN NEVER BE HELPFUL
Back to idolatry. Idolatry is “wrong,” if we can call it that, because it invents what is not true for purposes that shift human benefit into tragic consequences. The Bible speaks about “the deceptiveness of sin.” Sin is deceptive because it promises to deliver what it neither has the power nor the inclination to deliver. It is, simply put, a deception. Sin lies. Idolatry lies. Idolatry is destructive to individual human beings and to society. “Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.” “By righteousness is a nation exalted, but sin is a reproach to any nation.” “When the righteous rule, the land is at rest, but there is turmoil when the wicked are in power.” These are well-known ancient Jewish sayings from the Proverbs of the Old Testament. Idolatry is always harmful because it presents a picture of the world which is incorrect (or worse), and its ends are diminishment, death and destruction.
This is why God is on a campaign to stamp out idolatry in our world, and in our lives. The gods of the nations are idols, and there will come a day – not as a result of human religious effort, but as a result of God’s own appearing and direct action – that people will burn and destroy every idol in every nation, and the deceptive imaginings of the nations, the religions of the earth (including the Judeo-Christian variety) will not only forge their weapons into plows blades and spears into pruning hooks, but they will smash their idols into dust and beat their false gods into objects of worship for the true God who is. Idolatry will not last forever. One day it will be removed from our lives, minds and habits. One day we will be made well, and whole, and happy. One day all idolatries will come to an end. On that day, the world will finally receive its complete emancipation into the liberty of blazing truth, and we will accurately know reality, truth and life in ways that are unimaginable to us now.
Until then, we can begin to know something of these things as we divest ourselves of our idols. As we do so, whether they be national, personal, sexual, material, spiritual, philosophical, or anything else, we will become free women and men. John the Apostle pleads with all believers in the most tender of tones, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 Jn 5:21)
If these words have moved you in a positive way, then reach out to God in prayer, or find someone who can pray with you. Invite Jesus Christ into your life and begin agreeing with him - begin seeing things from his point of view. If you embrace him, he will embrace you. Don't let another moment go by without calling out to him. He will respond to you.
It must first be said that the greatest central truth about God is that God is good. God is love. All of his works on humankind’s behalf, at least before the Great White Throne judgment, are redemptive. The Great White Throne will be a day of reckoning and recompense. Redemptions will either have been received or rejected by that point, and the die will have been cast for every person who ever lived. Nothing will be left to redeem. All those who would have responded, will have responded. It will be the utter end of the matter. But, until then, God offers redemption. God continually throws us life-lines. Today, redemption is his offer at every turn. This is the “acceptable day of salvation,” this is his “year of favor;” what theologians call “the age of grace.” Until this age is over, all punishments are deferred. This is when we are to “seek the Lord while he can be found and to call upon the Lord while he is near,” for his Spirit will not always strive with man. There is an end in sight. This is why we should respond to him today. “So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts … ”(Heb 6:7-8)
God is willing to take us as we are, and he is calling each of us to himself. Now is the time to believe him and to respond to his every overture.
This is the best grid through which we can understand God’s commands and interactions with people everywhere.
Even when God interposes with hard reproofs or microcosmic judgments, they are not final pronouncements, but are designed and intended to bring people closer to God rather than drive them away. God’s motives, it must ever be presumed, are pure, and infinitely so. This is why it is blasphemy and sin to attribute evil motivation, or unrighteous action to God. John tells us that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all (1Jn 1:5), and James tells us “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17 )
WARNINGS ARE FOR OUR BENEFIT
So, when God says what seem to be harsh things about idolatry, he is speaking passionately about a particular evil for our own benefit, not for his. Idols are things people set up. It is not possible for God to have an idol. Idols are false. Idols are lies, and God cannot lie. He always tells it like it is. He never tells half truths, but we do.
Idolatry therefore is far more common than any might think. Idolatry is something we humans do very well. We practice it every day, and in a thousand ways every day, because we both turn away from facing the truth about what "is," and we set up for ourselves false images, false ideas, false notions, which we seek to protect and to which we pay homage.
Idols are lies because they are not consistent with reality – not consistent with what truly "is." Idols represent picture of things that could never "be" as they are portrayed. This is why revelation is such an important matter. If Jesus Christ did not exist. If the teachings of the Bible did not exist. If morality was merely a human construct (as many assert), then the idea that "everything is relative" would be true. It is Divine Revelation, as has come to us through the Jewish faith - resulting in Jesus the Messiah, that we understand that there really is a Truth to embrace. John the Apostle says that "grace and truth" came by Jesus Christ. This is an enormous claim, and it is precisely this view that aligns the Christian mind with what really "is," and liberates one from the tyranny of idolatry.
Take for instance pornography; it presents sex in a way that sex never ever was, and can never ever be. It paints extreme pictures of unbridled sexual appetites as nothing more than casual and natural, when such attitudes about sex have never been something casual, merely natural and never without consequence. Such practices have never been acceptable in any sustainable society on this planet, and never can be - not without ripping apart lives, let alone the entire fabric of that society. Pornography, is, simply put, a destructive idolatry.
Without a doubt, sex is natural to human life, this is the truth. Nothing could be more natural. Nothing could be more holy. We are sexual beings, we all know this. We would never want to deny it. But there is no culture on earth that regards sex as an area that should be unfettered from deeper issues of societal appropriateness and human morality. All societies have norms and mores about sex, and how sex is to be conducted and enjoyed, even if one society is more libertine than another. The fact of variations in mores does not disprove the point I am making, it establishes it. The "distinctions" between cultures do not demonstrate a "difference" between them. Rather, it proves the fact that all cultures have rules about sex.
MODERN IDOLATRIES
This is why pornography is idolatrous. It lies about sex. There never were people who enjoyed sex the way pornography portrays it, and there never will be. The beautiful people shown having sex have never existed. The people being portrayed do not, have not, and never will exist. All they appear to be, and all they represent is pure fantasy, but it is not the fantasy that is the worst part of it, it is that this particular fantasy is a complete lie.
In Bronzino’s painting, Cupid, Venus, Folly & Time, we see the artist’s commentary on this kind of sex. Father time will reveal such sexual behaviors as harmful folly produced by giving way to deceptive appetites, that results in oblivion, agony, remorse and death. Complete sexual freedom is a complete fiction, and to pursue it is a destructive form of idolatry. Such sexual folly always ends in despair and can end in no other way. Even if the human participants have not reached that conclusion in their own assessment of such behavior, they will understand the complete folly of it when they stand in front of that burning light who invented sexuality and the humans who participate in it. (See this work at the link at the bottom of this article.)
It is not we humans who can decide what sex is or is not to be, it is the God who invented it who has that singular right, and that verdict has been know for the entire history of humankind, so it is not as if the demand for sexual purity is a well guarded secret. God demands sexual purity for our protection - not just from STDs and unplanned pregnancies, but from many forms of brokenness, degradation and pain. When it comes to sex, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Sex outside of its divinely ordained protective boundaries creates victims on many sides. There are few sins more damaging to the human heart and psyche than sexual sins. Sexual sins cause bafflement of mind and agony of heart.
The mere fact that God invented sex itself demonstrates quite profoundly that he is neither against it, nor against the pleasures it provides us. But, because it is such a powerful aspect of human life, God, in his kindness, wisdom, goodness and love for us, has placed restrictions, limitation and considerations about sex which are intended to prevent us from doing harm to ourselves and to others. Because God loves all people, he desires to protect all from harm, hence, limitations and considerations are required, more than that, these things are demanded. Love will have it no other way. Morality, when God (not man) is at its source, is one of the most profound proofs and manifestations of divine love. God loves us. He made us. He knows what makes us happy, therefore, he shows us the way to be fulfilled. Goodness is a benefit to us. Selfishness is always a formula for pain.
BELIEVING A LIE CAN NEVER BE HELPFUL
Back to idolatry. Idolatry is “wrong,” if we can call it that, because it invents what is not true for purposes that shift human benefit into tragic consequences. The Bible speaks about “the deceptiveness of sin.” Sin is deceptive because it promises to deliver what it neither has the power nor the inclination to deliver. It is, simply put, a deception. Sin lies. Idolatry lies. Idolatry is destructive to individual human beings and to society. “Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.” “By righteousness is a nation exalted, but sin is a reproach to any nation.” “When the righteous rule, the land is at rest, but there is turmoil when the wicked are in power.” These are well-known ancient Jewish sayings from the Proverbs of the Old Testament. Idolatry is always harmful because it presents a picture of the world which is incorrect (or worse), and its ends are diminishment, death and destruction.
This is why God is on a campaign to stamp out idolatry in our world, and in our lives. The gods of the nations are idols, and there will come a day – not as a result of human religious effort, but as a result of God’s own appearing and direct action – that people will burn and destroy every idol in every nation, and the deceptive imaginings of the nations, the religions of the earth (including the Judeo-Christian variety) will not only forge their weapons into plows blades and spears into pruning hooks, but they will smash their idols into dust and beat their false gods into objects of worship for the true God who is. Idolatry will not last forever. One day it will be removed from our lives, minds and habits. One day we will be made well, and whole, and happy. One day all idolatries will come to an end. On that day, the world will finally receive its complete emancipation into the liberty of blazing truth, and we will accurately know reality, truth and life in ways that are unimaginable to us now.
Until then, we can begin to know something of these things as we divest ourselves of our idols. As we do so, whether they be national, personal, sexual, material, spiritual, philosophical, or anything else, we will become free women and men. John the Apostle pleads with all believers in the most tender of tones, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 Jn 5:21)
If these words have moved you in a positive way, then reach out to God in prayer, or find someone who can pray with you. Invite Jesus Christ into your life and begin agreeing with him - begin seeing things from his point of view. If you embrace him, he will embrace you. Don't let another moment go by without calling out to him. He will respond to you.
* LINK to Angelo Bronzino's "Venus, Cupid, Folly & Time" - http://www.danielriceart.net/ARTMASTERS/venus.jpg
1 comment:
This is such a great sermon/thought! Thanks Dan for your faithfulness to post and reflect and share with us on these matter. You are TRULY a blessing among men and testimony to faithfulness and diligence in the Lord's work. Thank you for your example!
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