There is One God

 1 Corinthians 8:5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"-- ⁶ yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

5 καὶ γὰρ εἴπερ εἰσὶν λεγόμενοι θεοὶ εἴτε ἐν οὐρανῷ εἴτε ἐπὶ γῆς, ὥσπερ εἰσὶν θεοὶ πολλοὶ καὶ κύριοι πολλοί, ⁶  ἀλλ᾽ ἡμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατὴρ ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν, καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς δι᾽ αὐτοῦ.

Paul writes this short interlude in the middle of an argument about food. Food was a big deal to the Jews and consequently this became a big deal to the early Christians. What difference did it make if food was offered to an idol? It mattered for the conscience of the person who knew about this. It didn't matter to the Christian, but to the idolater it would be considered some form of validation.


Paul referred to the objects of this idol worship as λεγόμενοι θεοὶ. Because λεγόμενοι is a passive participle it can be understood as "those who are being called Gods." The ESV flows better, but that would be the unpacking of "so-called." The point is that someone can call Baal, Molech, Allah, or anything else a god, but they are that in name only.


This is incredibly important for us in our society today. Because we don't want to offend anyone we as a society preach a message of supposed tolerance and pluralism. We say that everyone is free to believe whatever he wants, but that we should not impose that belief system on others. A quick glance at the news shows the impossibility of this stance.


This is fine for a Hindu with a pantheon of gods who sees Jesus as just one more. This is fine for the liberal in any faith tradition who does not consider the sacred material to be binding. However, this is unacceptable to a true Muslim, for example. If the Koran is correct and it is true that "there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," then everyone should become a Muslim. Why? Because if they are right then the Christian understands the fundamental of reality incorrectly. If we have the Creator wrong then everything else is going to be wrong.


Conversely, a Christian cannot stand for true pluralism. Certainly he can tolerate anyone believing whatever he   wants to believe. But it is incumbent upon the Christian to explain reality to everyone. That reality starts with the God of Scripture. If the Bible is correct then the natural consequence is evangelism about Jesus. It has to be. There is no alternative.


There is a corollary to this as well. If the God of the Bible is the one true God then where does that leave everyone else? They are worshiping demons. They are fundamentally no different than the priests Elijah battled on Mount Carmel. And, if the Bible is true, they will have an eternity of suffering in the presence of demons. There is no middle ground here. On which side do you stand?

The Big Summary

1 John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

21 Τεκνία, φυλάξατε ἑαυτὰ ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων.

This is the last verse in 1 John and, frankly, it feels a tad tacked-on. You've read all this amazing stuff about Christ and what it means to live in Christ and then you hit this. Why is this here? John gives the imperative φυλάξατε. He is telling them to guard themselves. "Keep" is a smoother translation, but I think that the force of the word "guard" is better for understanding this.


Why does John add this? I would maintain that idolatry is at the root of all sin. We sin because we have idols apart from God. Let's take an easy one like pornography. This is born out of lust. We have decided that sex is more important than Jesus, so we run to pornography. That's an example of idolatry. Money is another easy example. When we make money more important to us than Jesus we are committing idolatry.


John adds this short verse because this is the key to everything. If we keep ourselves from idols then we will be able to live in such a way as John described throughout the rest of the book. That's sanctification in a nutshell, I think. 


Of course, this is very easy to throw out in a blog post, but impossible to live apart from the Holy Spirit. I know this all too well. My prayer is that we all would keep ourselves from idols and run to Christ.

A Great Command

1 John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

21 Τεκνία, φυλάξατε ἑαυτὰ ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων.

This verse seems sort of tacked-on to the end of 1 John.  John has spent five chapters talking about what it means to be a Christian.  Basically, if we know Christ we will obey Him.  If we don't then we won't.  Or perhaps it is better to say if we won't then we don't.  Either way, John spends a lot of time talking about how the Christian life should look.  But then he ends with this verse.

I think that this verse sums up the whole book.  The word φυλάξατε is an imperative.  You could also think of it as a command to guard yourself from idols.  But why make this point about idols?  We aren't making golden calves, are we?

No, we aren't putting our jewelry into a fire and making a calf.  But we are making idols out of everything.  I went to a university where 100,000 people make an idol out of watching 22 men fight over some pigskin filled with air.  We live in a country where millions do that on Sundays instead of Saturdays.  We live in a country where we have elevated the dollar to god status.  Not to mention the way we look for the praise of men.

We have no shortage of idols.  John Calvin said that "The human heart is a factory of idols."  If we are honest with ourselves we will agree with this statement.  That is why John ends this book with what appears to be a disconnected verse.  If we do this then we can obey the rest of the commands in the book.


So how are you doing with this?  Are you guarding your heart from idols?

Turn or Burn

1 Thessalonians 1:9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,

9 αὐτοὶ γὰρ περὶ ἡμῶν ἀπαγγέλλουσιν ὁποίαν εἴσοδον ἔσχομεν πρὸς ὑμᾶς, καὶ πῶς ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων δουλεύειν θεῷ ζῶντι καὶ ἀληθινῷ

I've always wanted to say that, but I haven't been in a church setting quite country enough for it.  Yet that is basically what Paul is getting at here.  He's still greeting the Thessalonians and his greetings are usually pretty upbeat.  Here he tells of how the Thessalonians became Christians.  They ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων.  The word ἐπεστρέψατε is 2nd person plural aorist active indicative.  I don't want to make too big of a deal about the aorist tense, but basically it means that there was some time in the past where they were serving idols, but they turned from them δουλεύειν θεῷ ζῶντι καὶ ἀληθινῷ.

We can find a myriad of applications to this and I write from experience.  I can remember my idolatry to sexual sin when I was enslaved to pornography and self-gratification.  I remember my idolatry to food and ease when I was mired in gluttony and laziness.  There were dead idols.

This is not to imply that I have no idols.  I am continually reminded of how I can make an idol out of my schoolwork.  I still have leanings toward making sex into an idol.  The heart is a factory for idols.

The good news is that there is a living and true God out there.  Serving Him is always better than serving idols.  Before we can do that we need to turn from our idols.  Another word for that is to repent.  It has to be a 180 degree turn.  You can't turn 179 degrees.  Basically, there are 359 degrees of idolatry and 1 degree that points to God.  Any sailor can tell you that a minor course deviation makes a huge difference over a long voyage.

I pray that we all run straight to God.  Why serve idols when we can serve the living and true God?

Wartime Conversions

Jonah 1:14-16

(14) Therefore they called out to the LORD, "O LORD, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you."

(15) So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

(16) Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.

We diagrammed Jonah 1 in Hebrew class on Thursday and this happened to come up in my slow walk through the prophets, so I thought I'd comment on something. Earlier in the chapter we see that each man was calling out to his own god. By the time the storm really got going and they learned more about Jonah and the God that he supposedly serves, they were convinced that their own gods could do nothing to save them.

This is bolstered by the language used. Earlier in the chapter each man was calling out to elohim, or gods in general (though this is sometimes used for YHWH). But by this point in the chapter they are calling out to YHWH. In other words, they realized the futility of their own gods and saw their need for the One True God.

As professing American Christians we tend to look down our collective noses at the ignorance of these sailors and are glad that they came to see the light as we have. I would submit that these sailors had a deeper and truer faith than most in the pews this Sunday morning. We may not have the same names for our gods that these men did, but we tend to be just as guilty.

Take away someone's job and see how he reacts. Does he trust God or does he get upset because you've removed his idol? Downgrade his car. Replace his wardrobe with one from the thrift store or from Wal-Mart. See what he thinks.

Take away someone's coffee. Take away the fine food that they enjoy, or at least reduce the quantity significantly. See how that goes over.

Take away the NFL. What would our nation do on Sunday afternoons in the fall? Take away Division I football or basketball and see how it goes over.

And so on. We all have to fight idolatry at some level. Let's not look down at these formerly pagan sailors, but let's emulate the deep faith that they developed in YHWH.

Learn from Others

Ezekiel 23:11

(11) "Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister.

This is a very graphic chapter. In fact, I would have a hard time with Lily reading this now because of some of the stuff I would have to explain. The overall theme is that Samaria was unfaithful to her covenant promise and then Judah was even worse. Not only did Judah behave more badly than her sister Samaria, but she had a chance to see Samaria in action and the consequences of her actions.

There is no doubt that examples are important to us. Kids want to emulate their parents. When we're in a new situation we need someone to show us what to do. I think of the buddy system that Lily's school uses for the new kindergartners. It works well because the fifth graders show the kindergartners what to do. We all need someone like that sometimes.

But what happens when it is a bad example? Basically, Judah should have known better. However, she was so corrupt that she not only followed after her sister's bad example, but she intensified it.

1 Corinthians 15:33

(33) Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals."

How could Judah have known better? Obeying this key text from Deuteronomy would have helped:

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

(4) "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

(5) You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

(6) And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

(7) You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

(8) You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

(9) You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Or reading Psalm 1 might have helped too. Judah shows us why we must know the Word of God and delight in it. We must delight in the Lord more than in sin. Otherwise we are going to be chasing after men in turbans, in some way or another.

Hiding from God

Ezekiel 8:10-12
(10) So I went in and saw. And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel.
(11) And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up.
(12) Then he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.'"

This is part of a vision that Ezekiel had. I don't think he was necessarily seeing actual events real-time, nor do I think that matters. The point is that there were elders of the house of Israel committing idolatry in secret. This was considered to be a grave abomination, as we would expect.

There are so many things that come to my mind as I read this, but I'll limit myself to two. First, I am reminded of how I lived when I was enslaved to sexual sin. I was capable of reading the Bible, closing it, and then surfing porn. That's how bad it became for me. That's how far I had taken my idolatry. Of course it was impossible to do it if I had any sense at all of the presence of God. Who would surf porn with Jesus in the room?

How did I manage this then? I pretended that God wasn't watching. I was always painfully aware of His presence afterward, but while I was feeding my lust I would just ignore Him. I was like the hideous bugblatter beast of Traal in the Hitchiker's Guide series. This beast was so stupid that it figured that if you couldn't see it, then it couldn't see you. That's how I treated God. I treated Him like he was that beast and that if I ignored Him I could do what I wanted. Of course, this is patently ridiculous but you need to do those kinds of mental gymnastics if you are going to consistently feed your flesh.

The other thing I think of is how rampant idolatry is within the church today. We may not worship images of animals, but I there are plenty of other idols for us to worship. Gluttony is an easy one to point out. The love of self and fame are pretty easy to spot as well. There are more subtle ones like the love of money. Family can be an idol as well. How about comfort? How about sports teams?

Idolatry is everywhere and certainly not limited to the church and its leaders. However, the leaders should know better. As someone training to be a leader of some sort, what am I doing to ferret out the idols in my heart? I know that there are still plenty in there.

A God With Power

Isaiah 44:19-22
(19) No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, "Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?"
(20) He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?"
(21) Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
(22) I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.

This is a repeated theme in the prophets. Men make gods from their own hands out of wood, and yet they use other parts of the same tree to cook dinner. Why should we fall down before something that we have made?

On the other hand, God made us. He also made the wood that these men worship. He made everything and then He went to all the trouble of redeeming us. Man cannot deliver himself, but he needs God to do it.

Don't get too literal with this passage either. We all have idols even if we're not necessarily carving them from a tree. The point here is not to worship created things that have no real lasting power. Personally, I'd really like an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I don't need one, but it would be cool to have one. It can easily become an idol to me. I have a friend who recently acquired a van for his family. They desperately needed one. It's fun to get a new vehicle. But he is wisely on guard against making it into an idol.

I am not advocating asceticism here. I just want to make sure that we are all steering clear of idols. There's a reason why 1 John ends the way it does. Idolatry is the root of all our troubles.

Saved from Death

Ezekiel 16:6
(6) "And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'

This is part of God's judgment on Israel for her disobedience. He starts by explaining how Israel had no birthright. He made Israel from an Amorite and a Hittite. Yet as she metaphorically lay there like a helpless infant He took her and made her prosper.

I find it's easy to read this passage and shake my head at Israel's foolishness. However, if I back up a step I realize that this applies to me just as much. I was dead in my trespasses and sins, yet God made me alive together with Christ. By grace I have been saved.

What am I doing with that salvation? How am I living? Am I turning to idols as Israel did? Or am I living faithfully for the Lord? Frankly, I'm somewhere in between, but I hope that I'm living for the Lord more than I'm chasing idols. How about you?