Counterfeit Gods

Idolatry
Taking some "incomplete joy of this world" and building your entire life on it

In Ezekiel 14:3, God says about elders of Israel, "These men have set up their idols in their hearts." God was saying that the human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and then turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the centre of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfilment, if we attain them.

The very things upon which these people were building all their happiness turned to dust in their hands because they had built all their happiness upon them. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.

We can locate idols by looking at our most unyielding emotions. What makes us uncontrollably angry, anxious, or despondent? What racks us with a guilt we can't shake? Idols control us, since we feel we must have them or life is meaningless.



Abraham
When Abraham listened to God and brought Isaac up to the mountain, he was not just exercising "blind faith." He was not saying, "This is crazy, this is murder, but I'm going to do it anyway." Instead he was saying, "I know God is both holy and gracious. I don't know how he is going to be both -- but I know he will."

In Psalm 130:4, we see that "the fear of God" is increased by an experience of God's grace and forgiveness. What it describes is a loving, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of God. The Lord is saying, "Now I know that you love me more than anything in the world." That's what "the fear of God" means. This doesn't mean that God was trying to find out if Abraham loved him. The All-seeing God knows the state of every heart. Rather, God was putting Abraham through the furnace, so his love for God could finally "come forth as pure gold."

Abraham's agonising walk into the mountains was therefore the final stage of a long journey in which God was turning him from an average man into one of the greatest figures in history.

Like Abraham, you could take a walk up into the mountains. You could say, "I see that you may be calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without. But if I have you, I have the only wealth, health, love, honour, and security I really need and cannot lose." As many have learned and later taught, you don't realise Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.

Like Abraham, Jesus struggled mightily with God's call. In the garden of Gethsemane, he asked the Father if there was any other way, but in the end, he obediently walked up Mount Calvary to the cross. We can't know all the reasons that our Father is allowing bad things to happen to us, but like Jesus did, we can trust him in those difficult times. As we look at him and rejoice in what he did for us, we will have the joy and hope necessary - and the freedom from counterfeit gods - to follow the call of God when times seem at their darkest and most difficult.



Replacing idols
In Paul's letter to the Colossians he exhorted them to "put to death" the evil desires of the heart, including "greed, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5). But how? Paul lead out the way in the preceding verses: Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, se your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthy nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 
Colossians 3:1-5

Replacing idols entails joyful worship, a sense of God's reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to "plant" the love of Christ in it's place, the idol will grow back.

Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change. Indeed, it is when we rejoice over Jesus's sacrificial love for us most full that, paradoxically, we are most truly convicted of our sins.

Paul directed that we should "rejoice in the Lord always" (Philippians 4:4), but this cannot mean "always feel happy," since no one can command someone to always have a particular emotion. To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it. "Rejoicing" is a way of praising God until the heart is sweetened and rested, and until it relaxes its grip on anything else it thinks it needs.

The great pastor and hymn-writer John Newton once wrote about this struggle: If I may speak my own experience, I find that to keep my eye simply on Christ, as my peace and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling... It is easier to deny self in a thousand instances of outward conduct, than in its ceaseless endeavours to act as a principle of righteousness and power.