FALSE gODS

FALSE gODS

There is one true God, and there are many kinds of false gods; traditional false gods, contemporary false gods, living false gods...but all the false gods have one thing in common; they are not the one true God!
Let's start with the first biblical example of false gods; the desire to be one! "'For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." (Gen. 3:5 - 6) I want you to focus on what the devil is telling her; "...ye shall be as gods..." We have a lot more going on here besides rebellion and disobedience - we have the creation of self-worship; the desire to be like God. when we want to be like Him on the same level that He is, He just became competition in our mind, and now we have graduated to...idolatry. but you know, self-idolatry was practiced BEFORE Adam and Eve were even made! Wanna see what I'm talking about?

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.' Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." (Isa. 14:12 - 15) Lucifer's sinful five sentences that began with "I" made him the first to sin the sin of self-idolatry. He planned to usurp God, and found himself shot to the earth like lightning the moment his sin was created.

Then there are other gods; "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments." (Exod. 20:2 - 6)

So let us put this in more contemporary terms; when a wrestler on TV calls himself "a wrestling god", he makes himself out to be as god, and he is not. If someone says of another person that they are their idol, then they make the person of their admiration a false god. If a person says something of themselves is the most, such as they are the most beautiful woman a man could have, for example, they not only self-worship, but they make themselves out to be a false god or goddess which they are not. But we have not yet identified the root of the problem of making self as a replacement for God. That root is...pride. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." (Prov. 16:18) "These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren." (Prov. 6:16 - 19) A proud look is abomination to God; they who are puffed up with pride goeth before destruction, and greater the fall for greater the pride. Pride is selfish and self-serving, and a false god to self. "And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, 'It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.' And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost." (Acts 12:21 - 23) Wow, how's that for immediate consequence to self-glorification?!

I don't know about you, but I can't imagine a more simple people than those who create an idol with human hands and then worship that which they created. We who are Christian do not worship a cross that is around our neck, nor do we worship a cross in the front of our church, that would be foolishness and temptation of God to wrath, but we have crosses in our lives to remind us of our Savior, and what He did for us, and how we are saved by His grace, His power, and His unsearchable love, so deep that He died in our place. But we do not worship the cross itself. Yet, people in biblical history did worship false idols. Like the Philistines, for example: "Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, 'Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.'" (Judg. 16:23) Now here's a piece of Scripture to give you and idea how, as it is written in the first Commandment, our God is a jealous God; "When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon's house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day." (1 Sam. 5:2 - 5)

Even the Israelites themselves committed this error and sin. "And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." (Exod. 32:3 - 4) And they received consequence for their iniquity, don't you know? "Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, Mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made." (Exod. 32:34 - 35)

How sad that the wisest of all men, even he put false gods before the true God in his latter days, because he made the mistake of failing to heed the commandment not to marry outside the tribes of Israel: "And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods." (1 Kings 11:6 - 8) And Solomon, he too paid a consequence! "Wherefore the LORD said unto Solomon, 'Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David My servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake which I have chosen." (1 Kings 11:11 - 13) See how it would have gone even worse for Solomon, save that God remembered His servant David. And there was more consequence for Solomon; "And the LORD stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite: he was of the king's seed in Edom." (1 Kings 11:14)

Paul also spoke against idolatry, even getting too close to idolaters, because then we get caught up in their beliefs and celebrations: "Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What say I then? That the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?" (1 Cor. 10:14 - 22) Paul is saying here that we become guilty of their idolatry by association. We get involved with them to the point that we deserve the consequences that they deserve. This is one of the great mistakes of any country, including America today, because they let idolaters infest the country and bring it down to the consequences that it deserves.

Is a Christian country doomed for its iniquities involving idolatry?   Not necessarily, nor immediately.   God offered a remedy in Solomon's day, and so it is available to any country, but they must strongly repent and seek Him that gave them their land and lifestyle! "If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14)

Even for the individual idolater there is hope, as Paul told the Colossians; "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:" (Col. 3:5 - 6) God's wrath is for those who practice idolatry, and look at the newly identified idols. Fornication is sex with anyone who is not married to the other involved, uncleanness covers a wide range of iniquitous behaviors, inordinate affection is homosexuality and bestiality, evil concupiscence is any ungodly strong desire, and covetousness is a strong desire to obtain that which does not belong to you, in essence, anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Now here I would like to focus on evil concupiscence, because that needs more clarification. You see, we all know when we are supposed to go to church. Each time we go to church, we put God first, because we are not so drastically ill or impeded by an unforeseen situation that suddenly arises to stop us from going. There was this one friend who told his friend that didn't go to church on Saturday like he did that he was right in God's eyes and his Sunday friend was not because he saw the bible different.  Then that Saturday church friend was betrayed by another Saturday church sister that he was failing to go to his Saturday church because he was going camping in a local park on that day to the Sunday church friend. This is an example of evil concupiscence, because he put the strong desire to go camping before his obligation to God to go to church. Thus, camping became an idol. It could easily be an important football game...anything you put in front of your obligation to worship God, that is idolatry. Besides that, Jesus had something to say about this interaction between the two friends: "For with what judgment ye judge, so ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, 'Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye'; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." (Matt. 7:2 - 5) Don't you just love how Jesus didn't mince words when it came to dealing with hypocrites and hypocrisy?

So here we have it how false gods, which is idolatry, can not only be self worship, and worship of created idols, but a false god can even be anything found of a person that is made to be more important than the one true God. When God is put behind something else in the appointed place or time that He should be first, THIS is idolatry! Lord Jesus, please guide us all, including me, from making the mistake of even one idolatrous moment!