“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry”.
Colossians 3:5
”’You shall have no other gods before me. “Thou 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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.’”
Exodus 20:3-6
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
1 John 5:21
Idolatry is alive and well in the modern age, despite what you hear in Sunday school. You might think it was hundreds of years ago when men would worship and serve idols. We have idols today, just in different forms. Ever heard of American Idol? The name itself gives away the purpose of the show.
On a large scale, men worship money or materials and dedicate their entire lives to their acquisition. Others worship knowledge and science, and elevate man to the same level as God by believing that there is nothing we do not know. Men worship pleasure and enjoyment, or work and accomplishment. The instant we place anything above God in importance, it has become an idol. It has become a god, and we have placed it ahead of the one true God.
Most likely your idolatry is hidden.
It does not even seem like idolatry to you. Sports are one of these idols. Men devote hours and days of their lives to watching men run around chasing a leather sack of air. They build shrines in their homes with all the paraphernalia that a good idol worshiper would possess. They clock in to worship service every Saturday with extreme reverence and faithfulness to the game of games, more than they ever bring to any service of the Lord.
These men faithfully consume every minute of the game, because unlike church, watching sports is actually enjoyable to them. They never complain if the game goes into overtime, in fact, they get excited and even more into the game. But heaven forbid the worship service to the God of the universe go one minute past schedule. They know countless facts about the history of their team. They know all the statistics and are up to date on every bit of information a devoted worshiper needs to know about his sport. But when it comes to bible knowledge, these men may not even know all the books, much less actually know what the Word has to say.
This is idolatry; it is fundamentally unmasculine.
These idolatrous men have pathetic marriages. The energy they should be investing into their marriage relationship is now being spent on sports. The marriage is completely sexless and the male could fix that if he would conduct himself like a man and make himself attractive to his wife by being masculine.
Men like this are a big reason why no young men wait for marriage. Why spend your entire life waiting for a marriage that costs you everything (career/freedom.other women) and gives you no sex in return? This is the question of the young man overpowered by his hormones.
Idolatry is a disease that doesn’t always have apparent symptoms.
It does not show itself all at once, instead it slowly eats away at the idolater. It starts with a little resentment about having to go to church, because that is when all the big sports games are on television, or when you can binge your favorite show. You begin to look for ways to avoid church functions, citing “business” or some other effeminate absurdity. You justify skipping Wednesday night Bible study, because “mid week church is not really in the Bible! Why should I go?” It progresses very slowly, but in the end it has consumed your entire faith.
Maybe the idolatry disease won’t do that for you. Maybe you will be fine. It could be that you are not really idolizing those things you enjoy. Perhaps you are not taking your enjoyable activities to an extreme and worshiping them. It is possible that you are completely in control of your desires and emotions and would never worship the idols of this world. Or it could be that the virus of idolatry has already taken over, and it speaks those excuses for you. Be aware. Be vigilant. Cast down the idols.
Mantra
Idols must be cast down, they are for the weak.
Application
Destroy all idols. Gideon entered the temple of his local town and tore down the Baals (Judges 6). It is difficult to worship idols if you actually destroy them.
As human beings, we all idolize something, or we at least come close to idolizing it. This natural tendency must be mitigated and controlled. Idolatry is nothing more than our natural desire to worship something being misplaced.
We can enjoy our hobbies and the things we do to relax, all we need to do is avoid placing them above God in their importance. This is not an extreme stance.
Football is not the problem, worshiping football at the expense of your faith is the problem. We used sports as the example in this section, but people worship many other things as well:
- Business
- Career
- Relationships
- Games
- Hobbies
- Food
- Recreation (TV)
Reject idols. Keep God first in your actions. Reject modern weakness. Be a man.
Conduct Yourselves Like Men.
