Strange Gods

by G. Jarvie, Insein, Burma | Category: General | Sept 1964

"Put away... the strange gods which are among you,

and incline your heart unto the LORD" (Joshua 24.23).

It is amazing how the people of Israel clung to strange gods, even while they were worshipping the LORD. They had them while they were in the land of Egypt, and they brought them with them into the wilderness (Ezekiel 20.6-9). They still had them in the days of Joshua's leadership. No wonder they turned aside so easily in the wilderness! In Ezekiel's day they had their idols in their hearts (Ezekiel 14.3). Even the years of misery and sadness had not wholly rooted this evil from their lives. When they could no longer carry the idols with them, they had the thought of them in their hearts. What a fearful thing idolatry is! As we read the history of Israel we feel sad for them. They might have been wonderfully blest and been a blessing in the earth, but with most of them God was not well pleased. Paul wrote of them in his day, that they "please not God, and are contrary to all men" (1 Thessalonians 2.15).

The tendency in the human heart to idolatry is very strong indeed. Men want to see their gods. Even among intelligent, educated people we find many bowing to idols, as in Roman Catholicism. They worship and serve the creature, rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever (Romans 1.25). The apostle John urged the disciples to guard themselves from idols.

No true disciple of the Lord Jesus is likely to turn aside to crude idolatry, but there is another phase of idolatry into which the disciple may be drawn, and thus blast his testimony and lose his life. We read that "covetousness... is idolatry" (Colossians 3.5). This is pre-eminently an age of "things". Crude idolatry is giving way in our age to covetousness, the wish to have more and more. The effect is the same as idolatry. The Christian becomes like them that go down to the pit, for upon the sin of covetousness and other sins of the flesh comes the wrath of God on the sons of disobedience.

What is the corrective for covetousness? It is to be content with such things as we have (Hebrews 13.5). We should guard against covetousness, the love of money and the love of things. Paul wrote that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Timothy 6. 10). Not money, mark you! but the love of it. Covetousness is like the strange gods which sapped Israel's faith, and caused so many of them to perish in the wilderness.

It is also possible to covet a position or a place, and this is perhaps the more subtle form of covetousness. Paul spoke to the elders of the church at Ephesus, and warned them that some among them would speak perverse things to draw away the disciples after them (Acts 20.30). Yet, at the time Paul spoke to them these men had no such thoughts. But slowly covetousness grew in their hearts, until the church was torn asunder through them. It was that form of covetousness, the love of pre-eminence. It was seen in Diotrephes, who refused to receive the apostle John and other servants of the Lord (3 John 9). What shame will cover such believers at the judgement-seat of Christ.

When covetousness comes into the heart, the love of God ceases to find expression in our lives. Formality takes the place of freedom of the Spirit, and the joy of the Lord departs. Some make shipwreck of the faith through this, while others lead formal and fruitless lives. So then let us shun every form of idolatry, and incline our hearts to the Lord, so that we may know the freedom, fruitfulness and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and service.

G. Jarvie, Insein, Burma | Sept 1964
General