Our Rightful King
Dear Beloved,
Thank you for finding the time and patience to read today. For the first of our many reflections, my heart was drawn to a particularly pricking and personal inspiration. After much meditative thought, I realize that I’ve been led to it by the Holy Spirit and that it would not be wasteful to spend ample time examining it (meaning this first topic will be a part-by-part series). However, I will also be writing a couple of precursor reflections first for the next two blogs to prime and ease ourselves into this series.
So, join me prayerfully as we start off this journey with the first prelude to the series:
Our Rightful King
“Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all?”
The Treasures we hold dear
We as believers who live in the States can agree, for the most part, that we reside in a land of “more than enough’s,” and many times we could easily forget even ourselves as we live out our lives of abundance, feasting, trading, hoarding valuable possessions, and indulging in all things plentiful. All is well and good.
However, in all the hectic hoopla, could you stop for a moment…
…and count, among all those acquired possessions, how many idols you may have picked up over the years of endless striving? Yes, idols! You know, the weighty, intricately crafted metallic objects with a face, arms, and legs that symbolize an entity worthy of all your life’s dedication…
…Yes, those! I had a hunch you would have exactly what I was asking for. And, yours sure is a beautiful set!
So, which one of these was the first one you acquired? How easily can you recognize your most prized one? How big is he? Who was his crafter? What is he worth? How much have you given up obtaining them? How well do you guard them? How much would it affect your mental state if someone were to steal these from you? How much time do you dedicate tending to and pursuing them? Be honest: how much pride do you really allow yourself to indulge in if someone praises you about them?
Lastly, are the idols in your life overbearingly, giant statues that you can’t help but adapt your living space around them, always forcing upon you an awareness of the sheer brilliance, size and magnificence of their presence, like the statue of Nebuchadnezzar? Or, do you have more of the common, but delicately smaller, and discreetly impish trinkets to continually satiate your secretive greed?
OK, what am I really on about?... We are Christians! How can we even dare to think about idols, let alone own any? Sure the Israelites, during their history of religious unfaithfulness, might have been able to relate to these seemingly comical and irrelevant questions, but none of us can possibly possess a collection of abominable objects of worship with elaborately consecrated and dedicated chambers in our homes, right? (Although, I do wonder about our trophy displays.) But probe a bit deeper into the questions themselves, remove the word “idols” and insert the modern version of your own personally prized possessions, giving attention to the key words italicized, and you may have just exposed yourself to a whole new standard of what God means by the word “idols.”
Yes, it is indeed that one (or two or three) greatest treasure(s) in your life that you’re thinking about—the one that dominates your drive everyday and defines your years’ worth of effort, time, and dedication. Those things that you often think to yourself that it matters to you so much that you wouldn’t even know who “You” are anymore if you were to be acknowledged without it. Now, look carefully. Some of them, you may not have even realized you had them till now. Like, those sneaky little ones—mischievous and easily hidden—coming out only at opportune moments, but when they do, they hold greater, more frequent strongholds than you may have realized.
Defining Our Idols
So, which one of those treasures gleamed the brightest? Could it be a possession of some kind? The prospective career that we exhausted a meaningful life over? Wealth? Education? Is it our plans vs. God’s plans? A much-anticipated success? Talents? The ability to perform and meet high expectations? Maybe, our physique? An impressive reputation that we guard at all costs? Popularity? Relationships or even family? Is it more subtle, like an attitude or a character? Is our idol a habit or a blatant sin? Maybe sin has so gripped us that we have opted to adapt to living a double life, serving two masters. Maybe even our religiousness and spirituality have become our idols, stirring up in us pride (a prime symptom of idolatry) and self-justification (at that point, you really don’t even need Christ’s salvation).
Realizations
Have we realized yet that, contrary to what we might have believed before, nothing is immune from being an idol, regardless of how good or bad on the moral spectrum it may be? Things that are meant even to be great gifts from God can turn into your god, if Satan can deceive you into it. Whether it be your wealth, your hand’s work, your family, even your salvation! Allow anything to exercise undue authority over your heart, and you have successfully made it your master (idol), and you its slave (devotee).
But also realize that idolatry can go even beyond that. Is it possible we could even make the very idea of God to be an abominable idol if we aren’t careful? It’s true! As “followers of God,” if we aren’t following the God who is specifically detailed in the Bible and revealed only through the Holy Spirit, we are by all definition of the word, idolaters, because we have erected in our self-righteous spirituality a god in our own religious image—a god that is convenient for us to follow. Ask ourselves, does our “god” say yes to our yes, and no to our no? Is his sense of justice eerily similar to our own? In other words, has he ever conveniently reinforced our justifications and excuses to our many sins in order to save our faces? Because we “worship” Him, is he expected to make our lives as comfortable as he can make it?
In fact, this shaping of God into man’s convenient imaginations of Him might explain what led to the origin of the biblically understood “graven images” and the lost gentiles that served them. Consider this possibility: instead of partnering with God to restore the broken relationship we once had with Him, and instead of taking the time to spiritually seek and learn from the truly infinite wisdom of God according to His standard, it became easier to force Him into our lowly, fallen estate, squeezing Him down into our physical world and finite imaginations. Consequently, men would then substitute visibly valuable natural elements to understand and define His identity, glory, and worth (such as gold and silver) giving Him humanly traits to better relate to Him so that we can “patch up” the once perfect relationship we had with him. Starting to sound familiar? This is the physical form of idolatry that we are familiar with in the bible; but we have now understood that we can easily become idolaters without the need for gold or silver.
God’s Response to Idolatry
So, in light of the properly defined parameters of the term “idolatry,” consider the passage from Ezekiel which we have selected for our thought today:
“Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all?” - Ezekiel 14:3
Here, we meet a people who have erected idols in their hearts by establishing unwise priorities and misusing God’s presence, taking it for granted when it was readily available. Understandably, God uses a dour, almost indignant tone as he voices the offense that He feels at the indifferent questions of men who have been unapologetically serving idols behind His back. In fact, we understand that God would have us so at war with idolatry that He classifies it as blatant adultery in many portions of the Bible, so that our human mind may grasp and take seriously the betrayal he feels at it.
Before completely abandoning deceitful Israel as he ought, however, as a last resort to salvaging them from their unfaithfulness, God rebukes them with a dire warning that eventually because of their idolatry, even the discernment of the road back to Him will become obscured or roadblocked. In other words, scripture establishes that a continuous dethroning of God and His authority in our lives and the accumulation of enough idols can lead to an eventual self-endorsed spiritual blindness—the very blindness Satan has inflicted on the gentiles, causing an absolute inability to seek out their way back to God.
Furthermore, we understand from parallel scripture portions on this subject that God has given such idolaters over to their strong delusions, lustful priorities, and the pleasures of their worldly idols, that they will inevitably become partners with their own Enemy to destroy their God-given road toward salvation, eventually becoming too indignant to listen to wisdom and too tolerant of their pride, like the pharaoh of Exodus and Judas. At that point, Jesus testifies that it will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for those enjoying the riches of the world to find eternity.
Consider Saul’s fall, for example, who went from first being God’s chosen/anointed to eventually seeking wisdom from a witch. After finally being rejected by God, toward the end of his rebellious reign, a spiritually depressed Saul started to yearn again for the divine presence and counsel of God that he once had access to. However, he had become so blind and spiritually callous to true godliness, that even in his deepest desire to seek righteous counsel, he went looking for it in the very lap of Satan. It is not difficult to imagine that, shortly afterwards, he perished. God forbid that we ever be that trapped in our idolatry! As scripture warns us, “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, and call ye upon Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6)…
Meditate on this sobering thought: to what extends, is it possible, that we may have let ourselves loose from God’s strict mandate, even for a fraction of a moment, in order to guard the idolatrous strongholds in our lives? Because of them, is it possible that we may have slipped to a point of disregard for wise counsel, like Saul? Maybe, we have fled from the will of God, like Jonah? Self-inflicted destruction, like Gomer? Disobeyed God, like Eve? Even expressed blatant arrogance against our Maker, like Pharaoh? What kind of domino damages have our fleshly idols been resposbile for regarding our walk with God over the years? Have we forced ourselves into a state of oblivion many times, justifying everything we do as the Pharisees used to? Maybe now we just abuse Christ’s name to justify it all, while the Pharisees used the law to hide behind. Terrible, isn't it, that we may not be much different, after all, from even some of the worst adversaries of God from the bible?
The Road Back To Our Father
Ok. God, we admit we have raised up worldly delusions in our lives, but now we are calling on you! What do we now do with our exposed idols—the things that separate us from Your leadership and counsel; Surely, we can repent—but how do we overcome?
Good news is that, biblically, once we understand the extend of our corruption, there is always hope! To get to the root of any spiritual depravity, the Bible encourages us to always trace back to the beginning stages—teaching us to learn from the past. And in our inability to always keep God on his rightful throne, we have to ask ourselves, what made us pick up our first idol? Chances are that, at that time, we didn’t appreciate and cherish God’s authority in our lives the way we do now, therefore, our subtle idolatry followed us into our Christian walk as a selectively dormant habit of the “old, buried man.”
Now even as we are walking with Christ and he has opened our eyes to identify these as idols, the simple recognition of our chains alone obviously isn’t going to grant us our freedom. Freedom from this cyclic spiritual trap of constantly dethroning our God starts as we dig deeper with earnest hearts and answer two simple, but defining questions:
Who are we programmed (or purposed, or made, or called) to be?
More importantly, who is Jesus meant to be?
Who are we? The bible calls us temples in which the Holy God resides, (There are great implications for this fact as we will explore on our journey) …However next time, we will be primarily focusing on who exactly is Jesus meant to be. As a glimpse into our next reading, in Acts chapter 4, Peter starts us off on the journey to reveal the great Masked Face of Salvation, who was hidden to the world throughout all of the known history, until then. In fact, the crucial realization of the exact identity of Jesus causes Peter and the church fathers to scorn the very existence of humankind and the historical vanity it stood on. The church was born when mankind realized just how unclean and utterly pointless centuries of existence had really been—eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, idolizing every cheap idea around them except the one that gives them their very purpose. And as Peter continues his plead for even the Sanhedrin’s repentance, we realize that no one is excluded—not even self-righteous Israel; In fact, he rebukes the entire nation for their religious guises and hypocrisy throughout its existence.
But, what exactly was this hidden fact of history that Peter unveils to the Sanhedrin? In Acts 4:11-12, he reveals: “Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
Well, it sounds amazing enough to read through, but can you catch the zeal as he accusingly exclaimed this now-overused verse from Scripture? What made him so passionate about identifying Jesus as the rejected cornerstone, even to the point of death?
This is why. Through the lens of the Holy Spirit, Peter and the church fathers were taking a step back and envisioning the greater picture of human existence; it goes something like this:
In all of the previous 4,000 years of man’s history—of human toil for pleasure, gluttony,
fame, wealth, power and prestige—one individual, one family, one community, one
kingdom after another were collectively striving to build up an empire on this
planet, establishing mankind’s reign and posterity for generations. Unfortunately,
over the course of time, they made the grave mistake of forgetting and
remaining ignorant of the knowledge of Jesus, who just so happened to be the CORNERSTONE of Humanity.
Yes, there was a cornerstone missing in our human infrastructure for 4,000 years of building, and that is precisely why humanity’s walls are crooked, disjointed and headed for destruction…What irony, right? More importantly, what wastage of oxygen and energy!
Conclusion
Now, in order to fully unravel this great mystery, we will have to truly and further consider the following: What exactly is a cornerstone, what is its importance to a building, and why was it rejected for so long? What is its real function and significance? And, spiritually speaking, how does it remedy our idolatrous living even in our present-day lives in the land of opportunity, distractions and personal idols?
In our next reading, “A Rejected Stone,” we will explore what exactly Peter meant as he identified this most fascinating, but ironically overlooked essence of what Jesus means to the core of humanity.
Meanwhile, with God’s help as we end today’s thought, and in our individual walk toward the promised land, let us take our first step toward restoration from our fleshly idolatries and toward steadily paving a faithful pathway back to intimacy with our Maker by yielding to His wise counsel. Because, remember: the very reason that we have been “called out” for this Exodus, just like for the Israelites, is to forget the former idols of Egypt and to worship the one true God, until His kingdom comes.
See you next month!
Until then, stay blessed, stay prayerful, stay tuned…