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Judges – The Seduction of Idolatry – Safety
When reading the period of the Judges and Kings, one sad fact overwhelmingly – and even numbingly – is present: the draw of idolatry. How could God’s people, a nation dedicated to monotheism, not only falter and fall into idolatry, but repeatedly falter and fall?
Before we answer that question, let us remember, we are God’s people today, a spiritual nation dedicated to our one God.
1 Peter 2:5 NASB you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Before we answer that question, let us acknowledge that it is easy for us to isolate the sensualism involved within fertility cults and wholly blame that as the sole cause. After all, we are good Christians who are not overtly affected by sexual sin (right?). We live good moral lives (don’t we?). We don’t get pulled down in the gutter of immorality (do we?). Our clothing style and computer files are pure (yes?). So it is easy – because sinful sensualism doesn’t apply to us – to isolate the sexual draw of idolatry. It is safe for us to point that pure finger of ours. Hopefully…most of the time…but reread the above questions with a tinge of sad sarcasm. Yes it is easy to isolate the sensualism, too easy.
Yes, I think that the overt sensual draw is part of idolatry’s power, but short sighted. That answer is too easy, too non-personal, too “worldly.” But look deeper into idolatry. In some pagan religions there was human sacrifice, even of one’s own offspring – hardly an act of sensual pleasure. What was the impetus for that? Could there have been another attraction to idolatry? Listen to the following quote – listen and apply:
Israel believed in a God who had intervened in her history: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God-who-brought-us-out-of-slavery. This God guided the people when they were wandering in the desert and he brought them into the land of Canaan.
Now, however, Israel had settled down: the people have fields and towns. What concerns them is how to make sure that the soil and their flocks are fertile. To whom should they pray to have rain in due season? They found an established religion which was well equipped to answer these needs: the Baals, divinized forms of the storm and the rain, and the Astartes, divinized forms of sexuality and fertility….
A God who intervened in history – that was all very well. But one had to make a living, and it was safer to rely on the Baals.
We should not imagine too quickly that this problem is an obsolete one: the Baals have simply changed their name. The Christian may easily experience the same conflict: he believes in a God who has intervened in history and in his son Jesus, but what does this faith have to do with economic necessities? Is it not safer to rely on the ‘powers’ of nature (one’s bank balance, one’s own skills and power)? (How To Read the Bible, Charpentier, p.47)
Ouch! But, “We’ve got to make a living, right?” Hopefully, if we are honest, that finger is no longer pointing out only at others. It is poking us in the eye! Could Israel’s sacrificing of their children be economically stimulated to some degree? Could it be simple greed?
Colossians 3:5 NASB – Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Has any Christian ever “sacrificed” his children, his family, to the god of prosperity? Believe it or not, there was a “god of prosperity – Abundantia – goddess of good fortune, abundance, and prosperity. Yes, greed can be part of the attraction in neglecting our family. But could there be a “purer” reason for neglecting our family? Can a Christian “sacrifice” his family in the name of providing for their economic safety, fearful that if he doesn’t provide then who will?
Matthew 6:24-25 NASB – “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (25) “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Israel worshipped others gods because it was safe. These gods, in their minds, provided their daily bread. Let us with Jesus remember,
Matthew 6:9-11 NASB “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. (10) ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. (11) ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
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