CHASING AFTER IDOLS THEN AND NOW ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 19

Yahweh was Israel’s King, Redeemer, Lord of hosts, the Eternal One. Thus, says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.’ Isaiah 44:6

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:4-5

 

“God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” was a well-known saying by Christians several years ago. The fallacy of this statement is that it doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not. Because God said it, it is settled. Period. God’s divine revelation of Himself is sufficient for man to believe in Him (See Romans 1:18-20). The problem of all unbelief stems from man’s depraved sin nature. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible god for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Romans 1:21-23

 

Israel, God’s representative people in the Old Testament failed to honor God as God or to give Him thanks when they worshipped foreign gods and goddesses in the form of corruptible man-made idols. The Old Testament is full of foreign deities to which the Israelites gave their hearts such as Baal, Ashtoreth, Asherah, Chemosh, and Molech.

Today’s idolatry can be seen in subtle forms, and not so subtle forms (worshipping at the feet of images in many religions), but it is just as deeply rooted in man’s depravity as the sin of idolatry was in the Old Testament. I say ‘subtle and not so subtle forms’ because idolatry is always a heart issue stemming from the sin of unbelief.

I want to keep following this line of idolatry throughout the Old Testament, then look at its present day not so subtle and subtle forms for which we, in the church, need to watch out and fight against.

 

In Leviticus 18, the Lord spoke to Moses and told him to tell the people that because He was the Lord their God, they could no longer do what they had done in Egypt where they had lived, nor could they walk in the statutes of the people in the land of Canaan—the land where He was leading them. God’s promise was: So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them; I am the Lord.

 

The motive behind following after false gods and goddesses was to meet some perceived need of the people. Yahweh had promised them life and blessing if they followed Him alone. In essence, following after false gods and goddesses was to say, “God, I don’t believe You.” It was a moral issue, not one of ignorance or misunderstanding.

 

In Leviticus 18:21, Molech is mentioned. God told the people: You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the Lord. Shouldn’t we be shocked that God would ever need to say that to His people? We are not shocked realizing there are multitudes of children being offered on another altar of Molech every day in our own country. Human sacrifice—the act of killing a human as part of a ritual, usually intended to please a god or gods—no doubt happens on an exceedingly larger scale today than in ancient times. The sacrifice made to the god in the case of abortion is three in one—the god of me, myself, and I. That is one instance of the subtle idolatry that ties idolatry of ancient days to our own.

 

The penalty for offering children to Molech was death. Leviticus 20:2-5 says that person who gives any of his offspring to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land should stone him with stones. God would set His face against that man and would cut him off from among his people because he had defiled God’s sanctuary and had profaned His holy name. If the people of the land, however, should ever disregard that man when he gives any of his offspring to Molech, so as not to put him to death, then I Myself will set My face against that man and against his family, and I will cut off from among their people both him and all those who play the harlot after him, by playing the harlot after Molech. Molech or Moloch was the Ammonite god of the people surrounding Israel, the god that required human (especially child) sacrifice.

 

In the book of Judges, God told Israel: “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed Me; what is this thing that you have done? Therefore, I also said, ‘I will not drive them out from you; but they will become like thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you.” Their response was to raise their voices and weep; then they sacrificed to the Lord. (Judges 2:1-5)

 

In the day when Joshua, their leader, died, another generation was gathered to their fathers and a new generation rose up after them who did not know the Lord, nor even the work which He had done for Israel, and Israel turned to serve the Baals. Judges 2:11-15—Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed other gods from the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them; so they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He handed them over to plunderers, and they plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand against their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and just as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.

 

God had sworn to their fathers that He would never break His covenant with Israel. God would always be faithful to Israel, but the people would lose God’s blessing for their disobedience. How can we reconcile this unless we also see God’s future dealings with Israel once the fullness of the Gentiles comes in (Romans 11:25)? Israel was never to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, but to instead tear down their pagan altars. We, too, are not to enjoin ourselves to God’s enemies in spiritual enterprises, but to instead use the weapons of our warfare which are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are to be about the Lord’s business of destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God and to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. John MacArthur says in his commentary on this verse in 2 Corinthians 10 referenced above: “Thoughts, ideas, reasonings, philosophies, and false religions are the ideological forts in which men barricade themselves against God and the gospel. Taking every thought captive emphasizes the total destruction of the fortresses of human and satanic wisdom and the rescuing of those inside from the damning lies that had enslaved them.” We must ask: How am I doing this in light of the specific realm wherein God has placed me? God is our strength in this battle. However, when we abandon Him by joining in with the world around us adopting their practices and ideologies, He will allow their influence to become a snare to us!

 

In Judges 10:6-16, the sons of Israel again do evil in the sight of the Lord serving the Baals, the Ashtaroth, and the many gods of those they lived among. Serving these gods is equated to forsaking the Lord by not serving Him alone. God demands exclusive heart allegiance to Him. For their disobedience, God sold them into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the sons of Ammon who afflicted and crushed the sons of Israel for eighteen years; and Israel was greatly distressed. Once they cried out to the Lord acknowledging and confessing their sin, the Lord reminded them how He had delivered them from all their enemies in the past and told them that because they had forsaken Him and served other gods, He would not deliver them from the hands of His enemies. He tells them to go cry out to the gods they had chosen to deliver them. In response, the children confess their sin, adding the acknowledgement that it is right for Him to punish or chasten them as He sees fit, and again beg for deliverance. The next phrase is in keeping with genuinely repentant hearts: So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord. The result? He could bear the misery of Israel no longer.

 

Chemosh was the god of the Moabites. His name meant “destroyer” or “fish god”. According to Judges 11:24, he was also a god of the Ammonites. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Moab and Ammon were born to Lot as a result of the ploy his daughters devised to have offspring through incestuous relations with their father (Genesis 19:37-38). The Ammonites and the Moabites were enemies of God and His people.

 

1 Samuel 7:3-4—Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” So the sons of Israel removed the Baals and the Ashtaroth and served the Lord alone.

 

In 1 Kings, we see Solomon directly disobeying Yahweh in taking many foreign wives for himself. Along with the daughter of Pharaoh, he took Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations of which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you; they will certainly turn your heart away to follow their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. He had seven hundred wives, who were princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned his heart away. (1 Kings 11:1-3) According to 1 Kings, Solomon became a follower of Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom the abhorrent idol of the Ammonites. He built a high place for Chemosh, the abhorrent idol of Moab on the mountain that is east of Jerusalem and Molech, the idol of the sons of Ammon. This blatant idolatry by Solomon resulted in the Kingdom eventually being divided into the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah).

 

1 Kings 15 shows us good King Asa who did what was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father. He put away the male cult prostitutes from the land and removed all the idols which his fathers had made. He failed to remove the high places, “nevertheless the heart of Asa was wholly devoted to the Lord all his days.” (vss. 11-14) One chapter later in the book of 1 Kings, we meet wicked King Ahab who married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians. After marrying Jezebel, Scripture says that Ahab went to serve Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. Ahab also made the Asherah (wooden symbol of a female deity). “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” (1 Kings 16:31-33)

 

In 1 Kings 18, we see the showdown between Ahab and Elijah (really a showdown between Ahab’s god and Elijah’s God. Upon meeting Elijah, Ahab, the spin doctor, says: “Is this you, you troubler of Israel?” Elijah responds, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed the Baals. Now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.” (vss. 17-19)

 

I think the question posed by Elijah to the people who gathered together to witness the showdown is a question rightly asked of many in our own day. “How long will you hesitate (limp on two divided opinions) between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” I love that logical ultimatum! The response, I imagine to be like that of those today who seek to follow hard after syncretistic blending of a multitude of opposing ideologies. How can one honestly reply to this query? “The people did not answer him a word.”

 

What follows, if it weren’t so sad, could be used in any satirical comedy show. Elijah mocks the entire belief system of the Baal cult. After having prepared the ox and calling on the name of Baal from morning until noon, pleading to Baal to answer them, the prophets of Baal met complete silence. They began leaping (same word for hesitate, meaning to limp) about the altar which they made. Elijah taunts them to cry out a little louder offering the dig that, ‘perhaps Baal couldn’t hear them or was too busy doing something else’. They respond by crying out with a loud voice and cutting themselves. It was believed that self-laceration would cause a deity to respond in pity. This was something that was strictly forbidden by Old Testament Law. These religious antics continued until the time of the evening sacrifice. But alas, there was NO voice, NO ONE answered, and NO ONE paid attention, implying that there is no god but the One true God who had called Israel to worship Him alone.

Elijah built an altar in the name of the Lord with twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Around the altar, he built a trench and poured water in the trench and upon the offering, not once but a second and third time. Then Elijah prayed to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel asking Him to answer his request SO THAT this people may know that You, O Lord, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again.

 

1 Kings 18:38-40—Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God.” Then Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

 

Deuteronomy 13 called for the execution of false prophets. Further, those who embraced idolatry and urged others to join in practicing it were also worthy of death. This is a far cry from what is viewed today as “acceptable” and “not acceptable” in calling out false teachers or whole religious systems who attempt to seduce others from the way in which the Lord commands us to walk.