Idol – Eyes, Part 1

God, being a jealous God, demands exclusivity over your life and my life. Dr. Tony Evans says anything or anyone that competes for your ultimate loyalty is an idol.

Because your ultimate well-being is locked up in them and not in God. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas and president of The Urban Alternative. From a golden idol in a pagan temple to a Hollywood celebrity, Dr. Evans says idols come in all shapes and sizes.

He'll give us some surprising examples today as he begins a brand new series called American Idols. Let's join him. Perhaps you remember the story of the mouse. He went to the barn and told the chicken and the pig and the cow, come over here, I need to talk to y'all. So the mouse told the chicken, the pig and the cow, I just want to tell y'all that Farmer Brown just bought a mouse trap. Just thought you need to know, Farmer Brown just bought a mouse trap. The chicken, the pig and the cow said, I don't know why you told us that, a mouse trap is your problem.

You the mouse. So I don't know why you telling us about Farmer Brown buying a mouse trap. The mouse said, I just want to tell you, Farmer Brown just bought a mouse trap.

Just letting you know. Farmer Brown bought the mouse trap. A few days later, a poisonous snake got caught in the mouse trap.

Poisonous snake slithered across the mouse trap, the mouse trap flipped, caught the snake. A few minutes after the snake had been caught by the mouse trap, Mrs. Brown was walking by the mouse trap and the snake who hadn't died yet, bitter. So now Mrs. Brown has been poisoned by the poisonous snake that's been caught in the mouse trap. The poison is going through Mrs. Brown's body and she goes to lay down because she's beginning to feel sick. Her husband comes in and says, I see you're sick, what can I do for you?

She says, I think I need me some chicken soup. Farmer Brown goes to the barn, gets the chicken, cuts the chicken's head off, plucks the chicken, puts the chicken in the pot with the water and makes some chicken soup for his wife who's been poisoned by the snake that's been caught in the mouse trap. But Farmer Brown's got to work.

He's got to go out and tend to the farm. So he gets some of the ladies in the neighborhood to come over in the morning to check on his wife, but he got to feed them breakfast. So he goes to the barn and he gets the pig so they can have some bacon and sausage along with the eggs that had come from the chicken. But unfortunately, Farmer Brown's wife dies.

The poison got through her body and she dies. So they have a funeral, but they come over to the house after the funeral and Farmer Brown got to feed all these people. So he goes to the barn and he gets the cow.

He kills the cow so he can have the meat to serve to all the folks who come to the funeral of his wife. The mouse said, I tried to tell him Farmer Brown bought a mouse trap, but they didn't get the message. I'd like to submit to you as we begin our series, Satan has a mouse trap. But because we don't think it relates to us, we don't pay attention to it. We think this mouse trap is for everybody else, but it's not for us until we see the repercussions of something we thought didn't relate to us.

We find ourselves caught up in it down the line. Such is the case of idolatry in the Bible. There is no other sin spoken of as much as this one sin in all of the Bible. In all of the Bible, the dominant thing that is addressed over everything else is the sin of idolatry. Idolatry, the worship of false gods, other gods, non-gods, is the dominant theme of Scripture, commonly spoken of and always condemned.

We want to westernize the subject because many in the West don't think it applies. That's why we're going to talk about American idols, because I want you to see how relevant this subject is to us today. Now the first thing we've got to do is define our terms. What do we mean by idol or idolatry? We said an idol is any unauthorized noun, person, place, thing, or thought that you look to as your ultimate source.

Let me repeat that again. An idol is any unauthorized noun. A noun is a person, place, thing, or thought. Any unauthorized noun, person, place, thing, or thought that you look to as your source.

So that can be anything that becomes the subject of your ultimate focus. When God gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 verses 1 to 6, the first two commandments dealt with this thing about idolatry. Thou shalt have no other god before me. Thou shalt not make any graven image of me, for I am a jealous God. One of the reasons that God despises idolatry is because of his jealousy. You see, he has an exclusivity clause on you, no competition allowed, no competing deities up in here, up in here. God says, I don't want anybody sitting beside me thinking they're equal to me, because then that is a false God and an illegitimate competitor to me. Idolatry is anything in the creation that competes with our loyalty to the Creator.

Say that again. Anything in the creation that competes with our loyalty to the Creator is called a fatal attraction. It is being attracted to an illegitimate competitor. Exodus 34, 14, God says, my name is jealous. Jealous is my name. That's how you call me by my name, because my name is jealous. That is, I am jealous for you, and I am jealous about you, and therefore I don't want any competition from you.

This is God's call to be the only God in your life. He says, I don't want you even to try to duplicate me by creating an image of me. I don't allow pictures of me, because any picture you take of me will be a distortion of me. You can't take a good-colored picture of me, because it'll all be wrong. No images of me.

You don't carve anything of me. You can't photograph me. When I want to show me, I took a selfie.

Click, click, Jesus Christ. That's my image, for He is the image of the invisible God. But you don't get to make images of me, because any image, you remember those old photograph booths that used to be in the mall?

And you go and you close the curtain, and you get behind the curtain, and they take these pictures, and it comes out after you pay your money? You don't show nobody them pictures. Those are some ugly pictures. Those pictures don't do you justice. God says, anything you make of me doesn't do me justice.

So no images are to be made of me. I am a jealous God. Anything or anyone that competes for your ultimate loyalty is an idol. Anything or anyone that competes with your ultimate loyalty is your idol. Bad things that you depend on is idolatry.

You depend on drugs. That drug is an idol, because it's become the source of your ultimate well-being. People can become an idol, because your ultimate well-being is locked up in them and not in God.

So people can have people addictions. An idol, however, doesn't have to be something bad. It can be something good that you make God.

So in its right place, it's good. Money is good, but you can make it materialism God. Success is good, but you can make success God.

We live in a day, taken from the show American Idol, of celebrity worship, appreciating people, valuing them for their skills, their abilities. But the moment they become the source of how well you are doing, that's become a God. The education can be a God. You can put so much weight on your degree that it is competing with God. That's why the Bible says they are ever learning, but never coming into the knowledge of the truth. So they got degrees, they got information, but they done made more out of this stuff than they ought to make. When he continues our message in just a moment, Dr. Evans will tell us about a group of people who claim to be searching for truth while doing everything they can to deny it.

But first, this. The only constant in life is change. And currently, we live in a nation where change is shifting for the worse, morally, culturally, economically, and politically. So how do you find balance and peace through all the chaos? Dr. Tony Evans' brand new message series called American Idols and his book America, Turning a Nation to God, will give you solid answers to what is really happening to our nation. God is calling you to return to Him.

How will you respond? Get both resources at TonyEvans.org. And if we hear from you right away, they're both yours as our thank-you gift for your contribution to make this listener-supported ministry possible.

Tony's current American Idols series contains eight full-length messages, and you'll get them to review on both CD and digital download, along with his popular book, America, Turning a Nation to God. Just visit TonyEvans.org to get the details and make the arrangements. Again, that's TonyEvans.org. Or call us at 1-800-800-3222 and speak with one of our friendly resource team members. They're ready to help you around the clock. Again, that's at 1-800-800-3222.

I'll have that contact information for you again after part two of today's message and this. If you're like most Christians, there are people in your life who know you but may not know Jesus. You really want to do something about that, but don't feel equipped to share your faith effectively. In other words, maybe if you knew more, you could do more.

Well, that's where the Tony Evans Training Center comes in. It's an online Bible school with classes that will take you deep into the most important core concepts of the faith. You can start with our free introductory course on evangelism, then move on to subjects like spiritual warfare, marriage building, maturing in the faith, and many more. The content is challenging, but you can move through it at your own pace any time you're online.

There's also lots of custom content from Tony and an online forum where you can get your specific questions answered. Go to TonyEvansTraining.org and start your free intro course today, the Tony Evans Training Center, where you can explore the kingdom anytime, anywhere. See, science has become a god. I don't know if you knew that or not, because science has grown to the place where it wants to prove by science God does not exist. So they come up with a theory of evolution that nothing produced something. Evolution is basically fairy tales for adults.

But because the educators say it, think it, and now teaching generations not an evolutionary theory, but the evolutionary fact, and has all this data and all these various tests and the carbon testing and all of that, and they're training a generation to be educated fools, because you've got to be a fool to dismiss God in the name of science. So education in the West has become an idol. Your job can be an idol. Your career can be an idol. Career is a good thing. We're commanded to work. But if that has become your source of identity, that's an idol.

Let's see. The idol of your politics, because you can make being a Democrat your god. You can make being a Republican your god.

So that you think your answers are going to land on Air Force One. So what we've done is we've divided our society, even among Christians, because they've begun to worship their political identity or racial identity or gender identity. And thus, we're walking idolaters who have been Westernized, because they're sophisticated. It's been painted over.

It looks good, smells good. You can wear a suit and be an idolater. You can drive a fancy car and be an idolater. Idolatry is any noun that has not been authorized by the Creator.

It is a man-made representation of a true God. God complained in 1 Kings chapter 17, verses 33 and verse 41. He says, they worship me while they serve their idols, which means they went to church. They came to church. They worshiped me. But when they left church, they went right back to their idols. They went right back to worshiping people or places or money or prestige or career or education or knowledge or whatever they worshiped. They came to the church on Saturday, Saturday in the Old Testament, Sunday in the New Testament. They came to worship. But when they left worship, they served their idols. So let's be clear on what idolatry is.

It is intimacy with a false image. God, being a jealous God, demands exclusivity over your life and my life. Now, I know we like to say, well, God is first in my life. And that sounds good.

That sounds good. But there's only one way that you really know if God is first in your life, and that is by the decisions you make. Now, is he first in my decision, not is he first in my feelings? Because you get whipped up with the right song.

See, I saw the choir was singing and they were swearing and people were going on, going on and on and on. You can get whipped up to feel he's first. But when it comes to making your choice, if he's not influencing the dominant influencer of your decision, he's not first and therefore he's not God. Because remember, there's some things God can do. God can't lie. God can't sin. Oh, and by the way, God can't be second.

He can't be second. So if he's not first in our decisions and then our affections, then he's not God in our lives. Still God, but not God in our lives. Now, one of the reasons that we are drawn to idols, although we don't recognize them as idols until this series is over, is because we have a dumbed down view of God. We have shrunk God and made him so small that idols look pretty big. We have reduced him. We have made him a sophisticated man.

So let me set this, because God says at the end of verse 8, I want you to know that I am the Lord. Whenever he talks about idolatry or his jealousy, he says, the reason I'm going to tell you all about this, because I want you to know there's nobody like me. I am one of a kind.

I'm in a class by myself. I demand an exclusivity clause because you can't find nobody who can compete with me. If you have a small God, you're going to come up with a bunch of idols because you're going to look to all these idols to be your ultimate source. But if you can grow the size of your God, then you will find out you can keep those so-called idols in their place. Another idol, the idol of luck. Luck. Luck is the most non-Christian word a Christian could ever use because, and I'm not talking about when you casually use it and you're just using it as a phrase, but I'm talking about believing in luck. And the reason why it's the most non-Christian word is you can't have a sovereign God and have luck. You can't have a God who controls the world and have luck.

No, the biblical concept is providence, that he orchestrates things. So the next time you tempted to say, I was lucky. No, I was providentially cared for. No such thing as luck. I was in the car with a guy a little bit ago and he had his lucky rabbit foot hanging from his rear view mirror.

Lucky. I said, tell me about that rabbit foot. He said, oh, that's my lucky rabbit foot. I looked at that rabbit foot. I said, well, that rabbit foot wasn't lucky.

He couldn't keep his foot. So let's talk for a minute about God, because if I can grow the size of our God, then we will be less needy for idols. He says, I want you to know I am the Lord God. He says, thus saith the Lord God, verse four, that they may know that I am the Lord, verse eight. So who is this Lord? Because a lot of us are mixed up on the definition of God.

So let's start with a definition. The true God is the triune creator, sustainer, and sovereign ruler of all things. Just using the name God, we need to know who you're talking about. Because the word God can be very generic, because the God of the Bible is Trinitarian in nature.

He's three in one. He's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So you just can't say God and we all happy.

No, there's only one true God, and that is the God of the Bible. So we got to know who we're talking about. So we've got to define him. The God of the Bible is transcendent. That is, he is separate from what he made.

Now, why is that important? Because all idols are determined by what has been made. So whatever an idol is, it was created. You and I cannot craft God in the image of our preferences.

How you think and how you were raised and what your friends think and what the TV says is secondary. The question is, did God say amen? Not did you say amen. And if God didn't say amen, then it is not legitimate no matter how positive you feel about it. Because we whip up these things in our minds and that's when we make ourselves our own idols, because we will overrule God.

Say, well, I know God said this, but I think this. Then what you've done is you've made yourself your own idol. Dr. Tony Evans, helping us to recognize the idols that seek to push God out of our lives.

As I mentioned earlier, today's lesson is the first in Tony's brand new series, American Idols. And right now, for a limited time, you can get all eight messages in this powerful collection as our gift, along with his popular book, America, Turning a Nation to God, all in appreciation for your contribution to help us keep this program coming your way. Call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222 to make the arrangements.

It's open around the clock. Again, dial 1-800-800-3222. Or visit us at TonyEvans.org to make your donation and instantly download all the messages in this series. Admiration is one thing. Idolatry is another. But where do we draw the line between the two and how can we tell if we've crossed it? Those are the questions Dr. Evans will answer tomorrow. Be sure to join us for that. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.