Don’t Mess with Idols

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You’ve probably seen them at Walmart and other stores, those little license plates that kids can put on their bicycles with their names on them. Nowadays, you can order your own, you can make your own, but when I was a kid, they had things with your name on it, and there were only so many names. I think I had one of those that had my name on it and had Oklahoma, but not everybody could find their names.

And on different things that, you know, say for instance, my grandparents might want to get us something, get all the grandkids something with their names on it. You know, it might not have all of our names. It might have some of them and they’d have to hunt and they’d have to look around.

Because you were limited on what was available. And heaven help you if you had an unusual name. Even more unusual than mine.

Now, there was always Billy and Bobby and Jimmy, but there wasn’t always Jared. but if you had a name that your parents just made up, it was really hard to find. Nowadays, you can customize whatever you want.

You can order those license plates if you want. You can get cups with your name on it. You can get them in any design you want.

You can have blankets. All kinds of stuff. And I’m thankful for that because there are some things I like designing and customizing.

I don’t know why this is probably a me problem why this is doing this. I like coffee mugs. I had some custom made with the church logo on them.

Now, you probably could have done that 20 or 30 years ago, but it would have cost a lot of money. You’d have to buy 50 of them to do that. Recently, I had this made.

I had some made for me and for Charla. You probably can’t see that, but it has a little logo with a chicken because that’s all our time is devoted to nowadays, children and chicken and church. the three ch’s I guess and it says Byrns Farms lot in Oklahoma and if you saw the the photo online you may not have noticed the o in Oklahoma is an egg so anyway I had those made for me and Charlotte you can customize anything and and I love it I mean if I wanted to go and and special order a ring made I could do that online you can get just about anything custom made on Amazon on.

And it’s a great thing for us as consumers. It’s not as great when we begin to apply that same desire for customization to spiritual matters, when we begin to try to tailor make theology to our tastes, when in fact we try to customize God to suit our tastes. It’s one thing to customize a coffee mug.

It’s one thing to have things custom made for your car or your house. It’s an entirely different thing to custom make God. And yet that has been a human tendency for millennia, to try to make gods to fit our own desires.

I heard a preacher say years ago that God created man in his own image, and man has been trying to return the favor ever since, of human beings trying to make God in their own image. And that was something that the church at Corinth struggled with, was this idea of gods and idols that could suit their own desires and their own tendencies and their own will. We are back in the book of 1 Corinthians this morning.

We’re going to continue our study that we put on hold back during the month of December. And we’re going to take a look at what the church at Corinth was struggling with and what Paul said to them. Because even though the way that they dealt with this problem of idolatry and customizing God, even though the way that they engaged with idols is different from the way our society engages with idols, the principles there are still the same.

And so there’s something for us to learn from it. And so this morning we’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, if you’d join me there. And once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find 1 Corinthians 10, it’s all right, it’ll be on the screen for you here. 1 Corinthians 10, and we’re going to pick up we left off in November at verse 14. It says, therefore, my beloved brethren, flee from idolatry.

I speak as to wise men, you judge what I say. Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?

Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Look at the nation of Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar. What do I mean then?

That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No. But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.

And I do not want you to become sharers in demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons?

Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we not stronger? We are not stronger than he, are we?

And you may be seated. So Paul deals with this idea of idolatry. And that’s really where what I brought up about customization is really where idols have come from.

Because the Bible tells us in Romans chapter 1 that even though God has revealed aspects of His nature through creation, we can look around us at the creation, at what He’s made, and we can infer from it some things about God, not only His existence, but His power, His creativity. We can learn some things about God by looking at creation around us. The Bible talks about the light of conscience.

We have the law of God engraved on our hearts, and so we can know some things about God’s character based on some universal principles of right and wrong that every society throughout human history has embraced up until the last 20 minutes ago. We know some things about God and yet Romans chapter 1 tells us that in spite of what can be known about God, in spite of what God has revealed about himself, mankind has rejected what God has made plain and chosen to worship a God of its own design. And the Bible talks in Romans chapter 1 about four-footed beasts and creeping things and building images that would help them worship the creature rather than the creator.

And so the Bible says that we’ve taken the truth of God and we’ve twisted it and we’ve contorted it and we’ve reworked it into something that we’re more comfortable with. And that’s where mankind has come up with all these gods that have been worshiped throughout history. Unless we think it’s just something that’s common to other people.

Even God’s people can get caught up in idolatry if we are not careful. That’s why Paul is writing to a group of Christians and saying flee from idolatry because he knew that this was something that the Corinthians in particular struggled with. But even the nation of Israel got in trouble constantly throughout the Old Testament.

They got in trouble because of idolatry. If you read back some of the things that happened to them up to and including the Babylonian captivity, which was probably the greatest catastrophe to befall the nation of Israel in ancient times, that happened because they kept embracing idolatry over and over and over again. And it was God saying, I’m going to spank you and make it hurt to get your attention because you’re not learning any other way.

Even when we look at the book of Exodus, which we’ll come back to later on, Exodus chapter 32, I believe it is, the story where Moses is on Mount Sinai and receives the Ten Commandments from God. Meanwhile, Israel is down at the base of the mountain building a golden calf. Now, I’ve always, for years, I heard that taught, and I taught it myself, that they were building an idol.

They were building a false god. The more I’ve studied that on my own, though, it appears to me, you check this out and see what you think, it appears to me their intent was to worship the God of Israel, but they wanted this calf to worship a version of the God of Israel that they were comfortable with, that was familiar to them, that suited their tastes, having come out of Egypt where all these gods were worshipped with visible, tangible statues. And so they wanted something that they could see and feel and touch.

And so they took what they knew of the God of Israel and said, we’re just going to twist what we know to be right here a little bit, and we’re going to make a version of the God of Israel that we’re comfortable with. But as they began to customize God, it became an idol. You take God and you change him into anything that he’s not, and it becomes an idol of our own design.

And so he writes to them. I just realized I’ve got the wrong notes here. That’s all right.

Give me just a second. It’s a good thing I knew where I was going with the beginning of it, because those were last week’s notes. He tells them for this reason, because it is something that is so hardwired into our sinful nature.

He tells them, you need to run away from that. And the message is the same thing to us today. Don’t flirt with idolatry, flee from it.

And if you don’t know what I mean by flirting with idolatry, it’s not quite the same thing as a boy and a girl flirting, but we’ll flirt with things. We don’t want to dive in all the way, but we’ll just kind of keep it over here on the back burner. We might even call it dabbling.

There are a lot of things that I dabble in that I don’t invest a whole lot of time in. And you may be the same way. There may be some things that you kind of have an interest in.

Maybe it’s a hobby, and so you’ve collected a few of the tools of that hobby, and you keep it around. You pull it out once or twice a year. Maybe it clutters up space, but you don’t want to get rid of it because you want to keep it over here.

You want to keep it around in case you want to do something with it again. We flirt with those hobbies. The Corinthians were flirting with idolatry.

No, I don’t think the Corinthian Christians were going to the temple of Zeus or the temple of Artemis and that they were bowing down and that they were offering sacrifices, but they were going to some of the parties, they were going to some of the rituals. And in their minds, they’re thinking, I’m not worshiping these gods. I’m not participating in it.

I’m not really doing anything. It’s just a social thing. And yet having come out of that, that having been their way of life, their way of seeing the world was through these gods and these rituals, there was always going to be a pull to them in that direction.

And so Paul tells them, stop, flee from this. Don’t just try to keep it on the back burner. Don’t just try to keep it over here where you can participate a little bit, but keep your distance.

He says, get away from that. many times the Bible tells us to flee temptation we emphasize the resisting temptation now the Bible does tell us to resist if we have to but I think the Bible also tells us to flee if we can plan a should be get out of there plan b is if you can’t get out of there resist it but if there’s something that pulls your heart away from Jesus plan a is to get out of dodge so he tells him to flee from idolatry verses 14 and 15 therefore my beloved flee from idolatry I speak as to wise men, you judge what I say. He says, you’re wise enough to get this.

Even in all the places that up to now Paul has told the Corinthians, you’re not as wise as you think you are, he acknowledges they’re wise enough to understand this. This is basic stuff, Sunday School 101. These pagan idols, get away from them, flee.

He says, you know better than this, you know this is going to hurt you. And he spends the next few verses explaining why he gives this warning, providing a few different reasons why he gives this warning. Why does Paul warn them so strongly against flirting with idolatry?

Because again, they’re not going and worshiping statues. They’re just going to the feasts. They’re just showing up at the parties just for social reasons.

But look at verse 16. It says, is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?

Now, I’ll frequently hear this passage taught, and I’ve even taught it as it relates to the Lord’s Supper. And there may be a few things that we can take out of this and learn about the Lord’s Supper, but really we make a mistake, and I’ve made the mistake in the past, if we think this is about the Lord’s Supper. This passage is about idolatry, and he’s using the Lord’s Supper to make a point.

Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Now, Christians throughout the centuries and across denominational lines agree, agree that there is something about the Lord’s Supper that draws us closer to Jesus.

Now, we disagree about how that is and why that is and to the extent that there’s power in these elements, but we all agree whether people think Jesus’ body, that the bread and wine actually becomes the body of Jesus, or that it spiritually becomes the body of Jesus, or that he’s just spiritually present in there, or you think it’s a memorial as what we teach, we all acknowledge that there’s something in that ceremony, there’s something in that practice, there’s something in what we’re doing that is bringing us closer in fellowship with Jesus Christ. Now, I believe even if we look at it as a memorial, do this in remembrance of me, and we don’t think there’s any kind of change that happens in the bread and the cup as we place them out there, there’s still something spiritually taking place.

When you and I as believers eat that bread and drink from that cup, that we’re being drawn into a closer fellowship with our Savior as we remember what He did for us. And He uses this as an example to say, hey, if you participate in this, are you not being drawn closer to Jesus? And He tells them that to remind them that participation and idolatry unites you with idols.

He’s saying if you go and celebrate those things, if you’re going and being part of the feasts, just like you’re part of the feast here, because in the early church I think they did it differently. I think it was a bigger deal. I think it was a more drawn-out thing that would have something in common with the pagan feasts. Maybe not wild, rambunctious parties, unless you were doing it wrong like the Corinthians were.

He gets to that in a few chapters. but he says you go to the the feast remembering the sacrifice of christ and it draws you closer to christ why would you not think that going to a feast celebrating the sacrifice made to zeus would draw your heart closer to zeus and so in verse 16 he’s saying if you participate in idolatry it unites you with those idols now in just a moment the question is going to come up what does that matter because the idols aren’t anything they’re not real well he explains that in just a moment But in verse 17, we see that not only does it unite us with the idols, participation in idolatry on any level builds fellowship with idolaters. Since there’s one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread.

He’s talking about here the dimension in which we as believers, we take the Lord’s Supper together, and it not only draws us into a closer fellowship with Christ, but it’s designed to draw us into a closer fellowship with one another. That’s one of the reasons why I prefer, I mean, there’s not a lot of scriptural instructions about how to take the Lord’s Supper, but for this reason, it’s my preference that we all take it together, not one at a time as we come forward, but we’re doing this together. And it’s drawing us closer to Him, and it’s drawing us closer to one another as we partake of the bread and the cup together.

He says, if that’s the case for us, when you come into the church and participate in this feast remembering the sacrifice of Christ and it draws you closer to those around you? Why would you think that going to the pagan feast isn’t drawing you closer to the pagans? Now, aren’t we supposed to be close with our pagan friends and neighbors?

Aren’t we supposed to interact with them? Aren’t we supposed to love them? We are.

But we’re not supposed to share in their practices. We’re not supposed to be united with them in a spiritual sense. If you have friends and neighbors and family members who are not Christians, absolutely, you should love them the same as you would anybody else.

Your love for them should be genuine. Your friendship for them should be genuine. But that doesn’t mean that we are going to be united on spiritual matters in any way, shape, or form.

Because as they began to build these spiritual fellowships with the pagans around them, it was going to influence them. And we’re designed as Christians to be influenced spiritually by other Christians, to be strengthened by other Christians, to grow closer to Christ. And then in verse 18, he shows us that participation in idolatry invites divine judgment. He says, look at the nation of Israel, are not those who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar?

He’s not talking, I think I’ve taught this wrong in the past, so erase what I’ve said to you before, if you even remember. I don’t think here he’s talking about the sacrifices in the temple, because he points to this as a a negative thing. I think this refers back to instances like Exodus chapter 32.

Because when they built that golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai, they made sacrifices to the golden calf. And there were people who made those sacrifices. There were people who sang songs and danced around the altar.

There were some that just ate the meat that was sacrificed to the altar, to the calf. All of them shared in the same judgment. It didn’t matter if you were the one who built it.

It didn’t matter if you were one of the ones who sacrificed to it. It didn’t matter if you were one of the ones involved in the blasphemous chants. It didn’t matter if you’re just saying, yeah, this is fine.

I’ll sit down and eat the sacrificed meat. It didn’t matter. They all were subject to the judgment of God for this.

And it’s a reminder to the folks at Corinth. Yes, you think I’m just going to the party. It’s just for social aspects.

I recognize that’s not a real God. It doesn’t matter. You’re inviting divine judgment.

And at this point, you might be wondering, what does this have to do with us? Because nobody in here, I assume nobody in here is tempted to go bow down to golden statues. I mean, that’s not a common thing.

You may go into a restaurant here in town and you may see a statue in that restaurant, but by and large, most people engaged in idolatry in our country are not bowing down to statues. But idols are not just the things we can see and touch and feel. Idols are the things that we create in our own hearts that are not the one true God.

They’re customizations of God. And it doesn’t matter if the way we customize God looks like a golden statue that we put fruit in front of, or if the customization of God that we make is just a version of God who’s okay with everything we want to do. I know of a church in Oklahoma City that right now, in the month of January, is in the middle of a sermon series about how you can follow Christ and do all of these things that they’re going through a different one each week, that I’m telling you are diametrically opposed to what Jesus said in the Gospels and what his apostles taught.

And yet you can follow Jesus and do all these things and Jesus is okay with it. And I know because I listened to some of the sermon last night and got about three minutes into it, and I said, I’ve got to turn this heresy off. Charles was like, I wondered how far you were going to get into it.

That is a customization of Jesus. I don’t want to worship a God that just does what I think is okay. Because at that point, I’m greater than He is.

If He’s looking at me and saying whatever you want, that’s backwards. I will tell you that there are things that God’s Word says that my flesh thinks it would be easier if He didn’t say. And if we’re honest, we’re probably all in that same boat.

Oh, you’re supposed to love everything God says. Yes, spiritually, we’re supposed to be on board with what God says. But in our flesh, there are things that God tells us to do that we don’t want to do.

And there are things that God tells us not to do that we want to do. That’s one of the ways we know that it’s the true God and not just our version of Him if there are things about His Word that makes our flesh a little bit uncomfortable. And so we don’t want to customize God, and yet our society tells us that’s what we’re supposed to do.

We’re supposed to worship a God who’s okay with whatever you want to do and whatever you want to believe. If that were true, you know, what a fun time it would be for everybody. Maybe.

The Bible says sin is fun for a season, and yet I don’t get to design God. God is not subject to what I want and what I think. God is who He is and who He says He is.

And this really gets down to the crux of the matter, the heart of the matter, that idol worship is dangerous even if the idols themselves aren’t real. Even if there are no statues that we’re worshiping, the idols are still dangerous. Even if the statues, even if they’re just hunks of metal or wood and they’re not real at all, the idols are still dangerous. And participation in idolatry is dangerous.

It doesn’t matter if we’re worshiping something we can see or we’re just worshiping a false idea of God that we have dreamed up in our minds. Idolatry is dangerous. And Paul addresses this in verse 19.

what do I mean? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? He’s asking a question because he knows the Corinthians are going to say this.

Wait a minute, Paul, hang on. We were saved out of this pagan idolatry, and I thought you said there’s only one true God. So if these idols can’t do anything, what’s it going to hurt?

And if these idols can’t do anything, what, you’re telling me there’s some kind of power in the meat that’s sacrificed to the idols? He’s answering this objection ahead of time because he knows what they’re going to be thinking. It was a logical question from them.

If the idols aren’t real anyway, what’s the harm in participating? If our culture’s idols aren’t real and aren’t powerful anyway, what’s the harm in participating? For one thing, our hearts are drawn, if we participate in idolatry, our hearts are being drawn toward things that are powerless to help us.

Because he answers verse 19, that question at the beginning of verse 20. What do I mean? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything or that an idol is anything?

No. Is Paul saying there’s power in those idols? He says those gods aren’t real. They can’t hear you.

Think of Elijah at Mount Carmel. The prophets of Baal jumped up and down on that altar for hours while Elijah kind of made fun of them a little bit. Maybe Baal’s asleep.

Maybe he’s out. Maybe he’s on the phone. They didn’t have phones then, but he would have said that if it was today.

His point was, Baal can’t hear you because he’s not real. But folks, Paul admits they are nothing. Why would you and I spend our time looking to a statue for help or a false God that we’ve invented in our minds? Why would we look to him for help instead of the one true God who reveals himself in scripture?

Any time that we’re spending participating in idolatry is time we’re taking away from where we could be calling out for the help of the one true God who loves us, who changes us who gave his own son that we might be forgiven. Just because the idols aren’t real too doesn’t mean that there’s not some power involved. Because he says in verse 20, but I say the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.

I do not want you to become sharers in demons. There were some times that little miraculous things might happen in these temples and around these statues and people would say, oh, that’s real. Folks, the devil is real and the devil is powerful. I know that in 2024, we’re supposed to be more evolved than that.

We’re supposed to be too smart to believe there’s literally a devil. Now, I don’t want to be, I don’t want to, I don’t want to say, hey, look for the, it’s the devil behind every bush. Oh, no. My car won’t start.

It’s the devil. I don’t think we ought to go that far, but the devil is real. Jesus and his apostles taught that the devil is real. And the devil has been at work trying to convince mankind to question God and his authority from day one. And he was saying behind these idols, behind these idols, there’s demonic power, there’s demonic influence.

Satan himself would love nothing more than for us to worship a counterfeit of God. Satan’s okay with people worshiping. Satan’s okay with people being religious, as long as it’s not the true God.

And Satan would love nothing more than to get us distracted, focused on a counterfeit of God. And as we move on to verse 21, another danger here of idolatry is that idolatry puts distance between us and Christ. It says, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

It says you’re going to be worshiping something. And Jesus said you can’t serve two masters. You’ll either love one and hate the other or vice versa.

I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but you can’t worship both. And Paul says you can’t eat from the Lord’s table and eat from the table of demons. You can try, but if you’re participating, you’re fellowshipping in the table of demons, you can’t really participate in the table of the Lord.

And that tells us that idolatry puts distance between us and our Lord. If you’ve really trusted in Christ as your Savior, it doesn’t mean that you’ve lost your salvation. If you struggle with an attachment to something, but the more you stay attached to something that draws your heart away from Jesus, the longer you worship something that’s not Jesus, the further it’s going to pull your heart away from Him.

And then we come to the last verse here, verse 22, or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than He, are we? God is jealous because flirtation with idolatry dishonors Him by dividing our loyalty.

It was said this morning at the prayer time after our praise team rehearsal that God doesn’t ask for much. That’s true. If you want to look at it in terms of our performance, in terms of what we can accomplish, in terms of great things that we can do and build, God doesn’t ask for much.

God just wants your whole heart. 99% of our hearts is not enough for God. He wants to be our one and only.

You know what? The world looks at that and says, isn’t jealousy a bad thing? Jealousy is a bad thing if you don’t deserve what you’re jealous of.

I’m jealous about my wife. Now, she’s not giving me reason to be. It’s not like, when I say jealous, I don’t mean like I’m checking her phone calls and all that.

But if some other man started sniffing around, wouldn’t I have every right to be jealous? Wouldn’t I have every right to tell him to step off? She’s mine.

We made a commitment to each other. Yes, I know you’re not doing that. It’s an example.

I’m sure she’s watching at home. But jealousy is not always wrong. And guess what?

God deserves our full devotion. If anybody does, it’s God. It’s not wrong for him to be jealous.

All he wants is your whole heart. And when we have an attachment to idols, again, whether it’s a statue, whether it’s a false god that we’ve made up, I haven’t even really talked about the other idols of our society like money and status and jobs. We can take anything that is not God and put it in God’s place in our lives and it becomes an idol.

Any of those things, if we try to divide our loyalty between that and God, we’re giving God less than he deserves. And he has every right to be jealous about that. And so I would sum up Paul’s message to the church at Corinth in this way.

Don’t see how close you can inch toward idolatry, but how quickly you can run toward Jesus. It’s a matter of perspective, because sometimes we’ll look at sin and say, well, how close can I get to that? I remember being a teenager in the youth group and working with teenagers later in the youth group, and the question would come up sometimes, well, How far is too far in terms of dating?

And that’s as much information as I’m going to give on that topic. How far is too far? And it was the wrong question.

We don’t want to see how close we can get to sin before we step over the line. And the Corinthians were many times trying to see how close they could get to participating in the idolatry of the world around them without crossing that line. Well, how much can I do?

How often can I go to the temple? How many of the pagan festivities can I do? Like, give me a number here.

You’re asking the wrong question. The question is not, as a believer, how close can I get to this line without stepping over? The question is, how far away from that line can I get and pursue Jesus?

How quickly can I do that? And so he tells them to flee from idolatry. As Christians, our goal anyway, our goal in all of these things, is to be more like Jesus.

Jesus suffered, bled, and died to pay for our sins in full so that we could be forgiven. And he rose again to prove it. He paid the ultimate price for us so that we didn’t have to earn or deserve our way into heaven because we never could to begin with.

Jesus paid for it in full. And now our desire should be to be nowhere near the line, nowhere near the idols. Our prayer should be every day, if there’s something in my heart that is dividing my devotion between you and it, show it to me so I can get rid of it.

and help me get rid of it because I’m probably not going to get it all out by myself. But our prayer should be every day to be more like Jesus, to walk with Him more closely, to give Him the glory that He deserves for what He’s done for our salvation.