Trusting the Ten #2: No Idols

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”—Exodus 20:4

This is the second of the Ten Commandments, which can be summed up as “no idols.” Idolatry is serious business because idolatry tempts the heart to worship the creation rather than the Creator who made it. An idol is anything that attempts to elicit worship or allegiance that properly belongs to God alone. An idol need not only be an image of a false god that one bows down to in a religious ceremony. An idol can be anything that draws the heart of the individual into worship. This worship may not involve bowing down or praying to, but captures the heart in such a way that life is incomplete without it. We are created to worship our Creator God, not His creation. We know that we were created for worship, but we vainly attempt to fill that desire with all kinds of things that were never supposed to fill that void. In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes about the void we feel and what can be surmised from it,

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing."

The void that we feel is one that only God can fill, and He wants us to understand that no object can ever fill it. Idolatry is like a child who receives a Christmas present from his parents and goes away never acknowledging the parents who gave it. The present becomes the delight of the boy to the point that the parents are forgotten and marginalized. Idolatry is vaulting the creation over the Creator, and an attempt to place an inflated and perverted value upon it. It’s a perverted value because it was not meant for the creation, but for God Himself, which is why idols do not and cannot satisfy.

Idols do not have to be physical objects on which we confer deity; rather, idols can be behaviors, things, and even relationships that are trusted in as miniature gods. We worship them by placing an unnatural trust or a value upon them greater than they are worth. A child’s present is exactly that, a present that points back to the one who gave it, not an end result for its own sake. Idols are so serious because they lure the heart away from God.

Let’s ask God to root out any idol in our hearts. May He shine the spotlight of His Holy Spirit to the darkest corners of our lives so that we might forsake anything that is luring our heart from Him. May we repent of any idols that have taken our heart away from God—who is our truest heart’s desire. May the Lord grant us a greater knowledge of Himself and continually fill us with the knowledge of Himself so that we might overflow in joyous satisfaction to His glory, honor, and praise. Amen.