The Truth About Idolatry

The liberty that I enjoy as a Christian is not to permit me to run up to the edge, that's only to expose me needlessly to temptation and sin, but to turn around and run the other way. I've always said that Christian liberty is the freedom to do right for the first time in your life, not to run up against wrong.

If you're an American, you know that you are entitled to certain rights—freedom of speech, freedom to petition the government, the right to trial by jury. These are helpful and even precious freedoms, not the sort of blessings you would want to give up. But can the same be said of your freedom in Christ? Should you hold on to those blessings with a tight fist?

Or if not, when should you and why should you ever lay them down? John MacArthur gives you practical answers today as he continues his look at the pitfalls of Christian liberty. So turn to the book of 1 Corinthians, that's 1 Corinthians 10 to be exact, and here is John MacArthur with a lesson. The truth about idolatry.

The truth about idolatry. Now we know in the section that we're in, in 1 Corinthians, that the Apostle Paul is dealing with a particular subject. This book deals with problems that face the Corinthian assembly and that face really all believers. Some of the problems are the ones which Paul himself recognized, others are the ones which the Corinthians themselves recognized and inquired about. One of the questions that the Corinthians asked was in reference to meat offered to idols.

Was it right for them to eat meat that had been offered to an idol? And that introduced the whole area of the Christian's liberty in non-moral things. What does the Christian have the right to do in the area where the Bible doesn't speak? What does our liberty allow us to be free to do? We're talking here then in chapter 8 verse 1 through chapter 11 verse 1 of the liberty of a believer. We've been set free in Christ. We're no longer bound by ceremonies or traditions or ritual or forms or routines or holy days or new moons or feasts or Sabbaths or whatever. Trappings like that, religious trappings.

We are now free. We are free to be guided internally by the ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Now there are many things in the Bible that are forbidden.

There are many things in the Bible that are encouraged. There are some things that aren't even mentioned. And the decisions that we have to make in life really boil down to what do we do about the things that aren't mentioned. How do we know what is right and what is not?

What is a guideline? How does our liberty operate? And the Corinthians have brought this whole question to our attention by asking one question. Can we eat meat offered to an idol? Now in that day pagans would offer meat to an idol. Some would go to the priest.

Some they would take and consume themselves, take back to their home. And some would go out the back door and be sold in a butcher shop by the priest who would make some money on it. So the chances were that if you went to somebody's home you might be eating a portion of meat that had been offered to an idol and they had taken it home. You might be eating meat that was purchased in a butcher shop that had been offered to an idol. Or you might even buy such meat when you went shopping.

Now is it all right to eat that meat? The mature Corinthians had decided it was fine to do that because an idol isn't anything anyway, right? An idol is nothing. In addition to that, God doesn't really care about what we eat. And since an idol is nothing and food isn't the issue, go ahead, thought these Corinthians.

But there were some young Christians in the Corinthian assembly, some weaker Christians who were saying, Man, we've just been saved out of idolatry. That stuff is too fresh in our minds, all that hated part of it. We just can't touch that kind of thing. And it seems to me to be a defilement to do that, they were saying. And so there was a conflict in the assembly and they were saying, Hey, what's right to do?

And we introduced to ourselves a very important point. We may have the liberty to do something technically, but it may be restricted by some other consideration. Namely, how it will affect somebody else. It may be all right in terms of morality. It may be all right in terms of biblical ethics. It may be all right in terms of technicality in scripture to do a certain thing, but how is it going to affect somebody else if I do it if he doesn't understand that it's right?

If he hasn't yet matured to comprehend that? I always remember the illustration of a guy who was saved as a rock musician who had absolutely nothing but hatred for that whole thing because he saw in it the whole interweaving of drugs and immorality and the whole thing. And consequently, his whole attitude toward that was such that he said to me one time, A Christian could never listen to any kind of music that even sounds like that. It's all wrong. And I said, Why do you think it's wrong?

Because I have such a hate for it. Well, that's very subjective. But you see where he's coming from. There's no way that he can accept that kind of thing.

Maybe you're raised in a very pristine environment and you've never seen what's behind the picture and it doesn't hit you like that. But that's just one sample of a gray area issue. And there are multiples of that in every culture, in every society, in every period in man's history. Now, in terms of the Corinthians, this is the question they're asking. And Paul says there are two answers to your question.

Number one, technically you may have the right to do things, but you ask yourself this. How will it affect others? Is it going to make my Christian brother stumble who is still weak?

Is it going to be offensive to unbelievers? Number two, how's it going to affect me? How's it going to affect others?

How's it going to affect me? I may be free to do it, but if I start stringing myself out and start doing these things that I'm free to do and indulge myself too far and get over to the edge of where it becomes sin, living on the thin edge might end in a disaster for me. In the Corinthian situation they were saying, wow, it's all right to eat meat offered to idols. We buy it in the butcher shop, take it home and eat it, big deal. Well, an idol is nothing, so if we go over to our friend's house and he serves us meat offered to an idol, it doesn't matter. We'll just go ahead and eat it.

In fact, we ought to probably get involved in our society and since our whole society is idolatrous and every facet of our society is connected to one god or another, we have no problem with going to temples and having the festivals that are there and indulging. And what they were really doing was pushing their liberty right out to the limit, right out to the edge. When Paul introduces this in chapter eight, nine, and ten, he says, on the contrary, rather than running your liberty to the edge, you ought to limit your liberty on two considerations. One, how will it affect others?

Two, how will it affect me? Paul illustrated number one in chapter nine. He illustrates number two in chapter ten.

Chapter ten and the end of chapter nine also discusses how the abuse of liberty can affect me. If I flirt too long on the edge of sin, I might fall in. Chapter ten, verse twelve, look at it. Wherefore, let him that thinks he stands take heed, what? Lest he fall.

You can think you're all right, you can run your liberty out to the end, but you could be in trouble. So Paul exhorts the Corinthians to make sure that they don't do anything that offends somebody else, as he did not do in his own ministry and illustrated it in chapter nine, and do not do anything that can have a negative effect on ourselves. Now look at verse fourteen and let's see how he introduces this passage.

Wherefore, and that particular particle translated wherefore is a very intense particle in it. It's simply to intensify the logical connection between what he has just said about temptation and what he's going to say now. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.

Now that's a very clear thing. By going right out to the edge of the allowable, you can fall into the sinful is what he's saying. By saying my liberty frees me to run out all the way to the very edge, I may fall into the sinful. And the Corinthians, who were already convinced that an idol was nothing, and they were right, and that the issue wasn't what you ate, and they were right, were being induced to go to the sacrificial feasts in the temple, and apparently they had already begun to do it. Because if you go back to chapter five, you find indication in verse eleven that some of the brothers were not only fornicators and covetous, but idolaters. Some of them were actually doing this.

Some of them were attending pagan festivals and saying, hey, I'm free. And I don't have to worship. I don't have to be a part of the thing.

I'm just going to go and eat the meal, and all my friends are there, and I want to maintain my business contacts. I don't have to do what they do. And so here comes the ringing point, and this is the thesis of everything I'm going to say. This is the point of it all. The point is not how near does my liberty let me go, but how far can I fly away?

That's the point. Paul doesn't say get over to the edge of idolatry, but make sure you don't fall in. He says what? Flee from it. Go the opposite direction. The liberty that I enjoy as a Christian is not to permit me to run up to the edge. That's only to expose me needlessly to temptation and sin, but to turn around and run the other way.

I've always said that Christian liberty is the freedom to do right for the first time in your life, not to run up against wrong. Now he uses the term my dearly beloved. An uncommon phrase in the Greek is used here, and it expresses the deep, deep sentiment of his heart. He is concerned about them. This is not just academic.

This is very, very emotional. He says flee, and that's habitual, present imperative. Continually be fleeing from idolatry.

You've got it all in your society. Turn your back and get out of there. Run from it. Now notice verse 15, I speak as to intelligent, phronomos in the Greek, should be translated intelligent men. You judge what I say. In other words, the thing that I'm saying here is not an obscure argument. This is not something that you're going to have to be a genius to figure out. You're intelligent enough. You figure this out. Use your own mind, and you must come to the conclusion that the force and logic of what I say is true. You're men capable of seeing clear argument. You're able to judge, so judge. I'm telling you to run from idolatry. Now you think it through, and you'll do the same thing.

You'll obey what I say. Now I want you to look at the term idolatry. The very term to me is repulsive. It doesn't take me very long to even turn my stomach a little bit when I begin to think about the term, let alone talk about it. It's a repulsive term. It fits somewhere in the category of my vocabulary with words like blasphemy, damned, hell, and Judas. It's one of those kind of words, one of those kind of words that I'm not too particularly excited about. It conjures up a great anxiety in my heart concerning myself with the holiness and the purity and the character of God. Now let me say something that I think is very basic. This I believe, and by this I mean idolatry, is the most serious and contaminating sin there is.

Now I hope you get that. Idolatry is the most serious and contaminating sin there is. And the reason is because it strikes directly at the character of God. And once you have adulterated the character of God, you have lost the guidelines for any other moral judgment. And so Pandora's box is open and everything is going to be chaos unless there is the right perspective of God. I think there's no question but that idolatry is the most serious and contaminating of all the sins because it strikes directly at the character of God. That's why out of the Ten Commandments the first three of them are directly related to idolatry. Because that's the beginning of everything. If you don't have the true perspective on God, then everything is lost. Now we need a close look at idolatry because if it's that important, if it's the worst sin of all, and if the Bible has so much to say about it, and believe me I couldn't even begin to go through all the scriptures that talk about idolatry. If that's true then we really ought to understand what this thing is. Now listen, I'm going to give you several major points and a whole lot of sub points. Don't worry about numbers and letters and things.

Just get the point and we'll be alright. First of all, and I'm just going to give you a broad definition and then a particularized look at idolatry. First of all, idolatry is libel on the character of God.

L-I-B-E-L. It is libel, it is slander on the character of God. Idolatry slanders God's character and that, beloved, is the most fearful sin. You are striking at the heart of Satan.

You are striking at the heart of the system. You are striking at the heart of sin when you libel God. The idolatrous heart, and here's the point, assumes that God is other than he is and that is a terrible sin. Tozer says, and well says, a God begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God.

End quote. You see, idolatry is not just wearing a loincloth and bowing down to a rock. Idolatry is not just kneeling before an image.

Civilized people in our society don't do that very much. But idolatry, and this is important, is assuming God to be something he is not. It is to have either unworthy or erroneous views of God. That's idolatry. Perversions about who God is, is idolatry. In Romans chapter 1 we have basically the pattern of this. When they knew God, Romans 1 21 says, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful but became vain or proud in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. Man has always wanted to make God in his own image. Man always wants to drag God down, to force God to be like he is.

And I see this so many times. We want to turn God into what we are. Any unworthy thought about God is idolatry. And one of the things that we do, I think, most frequently is this particular idolatrous act of reducing God to us.

I can give you just a simple illustration of it. Have you noticed that the most popular name for the Son of God, for the second person of the Trinity, is Jesus? All you ever hear is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And what they have done, so very much in the minds and the hearts of the people, is they have made Jesus into sort of a buddy-buddy, sort of a pal, very humanistic.

The name of the second person of the Trinity is the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think it's important that we, it's not that using the term Jesus is wrong, but it's important that we don't, in our effort to make Jesus into a sort of a palsy-walsy type of a person, drag him down to humanize him. It may be that we have reduced Jesus to the point where we no longer conceive of him as he ought to be conceived of, and that is idolatry.

I'll give you another illustration of it. Whenever you in your own life fail to trust God, that's idolatry. You say, what do you mean? Well, John said, He that believes not makes God a what?

A liar. Let's say as a Christian, you have a problem, and instead of praying about it and trusting God for it, you panic over it, start doubting God in your mind. You know what you've done? You've just doubted God, right? You've said in your mind, God, I'm not sure you can do what you claim, and that is blasphemy, right? That's idolatry because you've made God less than he is, you've thought unworthily about God, erroneously about God. Anything that you do that is less than true about the character and person and work of God in the manifestation of the Trinity is idolatry. A wrong view of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, a wrong view of the essence of the doctrine of Christ, a wrong view of the doctrine of the Father is tantamount to idolatry for it is making God into something other than he is.

Very vital. And that's why I say that even as Christians, we can be idolatrous. In having either inadequate theology where we don't know enough about God, we sort of go along ignorantly thinking God is something that he's not, or where we have decided to make God into something that he is not.

This is a very dangerous thing, and I think it's something that we need to be aware of, that it isn't just the people over in Bula Bula land who are kneeling down out in the boondocks, worshiping a rock. It's everybody and anybody who has thoughts of God that are less than true and unworthy of his character. That's idolatry. It constitutes slander.

It constitutes libel. And consequently, we have made a God who isn't God, and that's idolatry. God doesn't want to have to compete with somebody else who isn't him but has his name.

Alright, a second thought. Idolatry is also worshiping the true God in the wrong way. Idolatry is worshiping the true God in the wrong way.

To give you an illustration of this, we need to only remind you of our study. When we were earlier in the 10th chapter of 1 Corinthians and discussed Israel, we discussed the fact of making the golden calf, remember, in Exodus 32. And we said that in the first six verses of Exodus 32, when they made the golden calf, it was a calf that was made, believe it or not, to be a representation of the true God. They were representing the God who brought them out of Egypt. They were worshiping the right God but in the wrong way, you see. There was a lot of that going on.

Believe me, there's a lot of it. There are people today who are worshiping the true God in the wrong way. One way to do that is to worship the God of truth with emotion void of truth.

You know what I mean by that? To worship the God of truth, you must worship him in spirit and in truth. But there are many people who just let their emotions go bananas and they call it worship and it has no orientation toward truth. To worship the true God in the wrong way would be to create around the worship of God so much spiritual mogus and father all and hocus pocus and stand up, sit down, and light this and bend over and do this that you've lost the reality of it. And instead of worshiping the God, you have substituted the form and you have a mindless kind of worship.

There are all different ways to worship the true God in the wrong way. And they did it there by making a molten image to represent the true God. It says, Aaron said to them, Now that the thing is made, let us declare a feast unto Jehovah, he says. In Psalm 106 19, yes, they made a calf in Horeb and worshiped the melted image.

Now listen to this verse. Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eats grass. Now who is the glory of Israel?

Who is it? Who is their glory? Well, it's God. Jehovah God. They changed God into an ox.

Now God is not an ox. If you want to think thoughts less than true of God, less than worthy of God, in any of the manifestations of his Trinity, you have missed the point and you have constituted idolatry. And throughout Israel's history there was this strange intermingling of idolatry with the worship of God. And I see it so much today in the kind of worship of God that is mindless, that has no truth to it, where they're just supposedly worshiping God with sensual desire. It's sensual worship. When you do not worship God out of truth because you have no truth, then you tend only to worship God out of your senses and you have a sensual worship. And that translates easily into the kind of pagan worship we know in the history of the world, right? Invariably, the false religious systems of ancient days were wed to sexual sin, weren't they? Because it was sensual worship.

It was pure experience without basis or foundation. So you have that. On the other hand, you can have that cold, dead, formal creed kind of thing that really constituted Judaism in the time of Christ that was nothing other than idolatry as well. Because they were worshiping the form rather than the God who was behind the form. All right.

So I've given you two thoughts to begin with. Idolatry is liable on the character of God. Secondly, idolatry is worshiping God in the wrong way. Thirdly, now I'll give you some specifics on idolatry to help you to define it. Idolatry is worshiping any image. It is worship of any image. And there are so many scriptures that we wouldn't even attempt to cover them all to define this.

But I'll give you one. Isaiah 44, 17 will just help you to understand what we mean by this. And he's discussing here idolatry. And the stupidity of idolatry.

And he's got a whole section on it here. They make a carved image, verse 9 and all of this. And they form a God, verse 10. And he goes on and on. He describes how they do it, how they build it, how they put it in the fire and so forth. Verse 15, he makes a carved image. He falls down to it. He burns part of it in the fire. With part of it he eats flesh. He roasts a roast and is satisfied.

He warms himself and so forth. Verse 17, and the residue of it, he makes a God, even his carved image. He falls down onto it and worships it and prays to it and says, deliver me for you are my God.

Now there's a perfect definition of an idol. The guy makes it in a fire. He sticks it on the ground. He bows down. He worships. He makes sacrifices. He says, you are my God.

Do this, do this. That's idolatry. To worship any kind of image. We are not to worship an image of any kind.

Don't ever substitute an image for the reality. The Bible is clear that we are not to bow down to images. I've heard people tell me many times that they have a picture of Jesus Christ over a little place where they always pray. And while they're praying, they always kneel before the picture of Christ. Now idolatry isn't necessarily kneeling before the picture of Christ as long as you have the proper perspective.

And it sure puts you in a position to confuse the issue. But it isn't necessarily idolatry if what's in your mind is the right thing. But still we are not to worship images of any kind. To assume that there is some power behind some image is wrong.

Now let me give you another idea. Number four, I'm just listing these thoughts. Idolatry is worshiping angels. Don't ever worship angels.

Fortunately we don't know enough of them so that we could get too involved in it. We only know the names of three and one of them is Satan and the other two are Gabriel and Michael. And we have a good illustration in the book of Revelation where John tried to worship an angel and what did the angel tell him to do? He told him to get up and cut it out. He says, I'm only a creature like you.

What are you doing down there, John? Worship God. So you have Revelation clear on that. And also in Colossians 2.18 it says, Watch out for this false doctrine about worshipping angels. Colossians 2.18. There's no place for the veneration and the worship of angels. That's idolatry. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John has been a pastor for over 53 years. He's also chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary. Today he showed you how you can glorify God by avoiding the pitfalls of Christian liberty.

That's the title of his current series. Now, John, I know that when you're preparing to preach a sermon like the one we just heard, you spend more time interpreting the passage, understanding what it meant when it was written, than you do figuring out how the passage applies to Christians today. So talk about that philosophy. Why is the interpretation of a passage a priority over even its application? Well, obviously you can't apply something until you've interpreted it. It does amaze me, however, how many preachers read a passage and then apply it without ever interpreting it. The power is in the interpretation because the interpretation unleashes the divine truth. The meaning of the scripture is the scripture.

It is the revelation. You can have a Bible, but if you don't really know what God means by what he says, then you do not have the divine revelation. You can't apply it until you know precisely what scripture is saying. It's not enough to read a verse and make some sentimental comments about it, try to find a way to apply it. The power, and we've seen this through the years, the power is digging down into that verse to see the profound depths of its doctrinal theological meaning.

That is where the power lies. And then you unleash it on people as to its truthfulness alone, and the Spirit of God takes it and makes those applications. I would love to remind you that I've written commentary on the New Testament on all 27 books, the MacArthur New Testament commentary. This is how you get to know the meaning of every verse in the New Testament. Every verse in the New Testament is covered in the commentaries. You could pick your favorite book and start that way and then begin to order them on a regular basis. Maybe you'd like to start with 1 Corinthians, learn about speaking in tongues, spiritual gifts, Christ's resurrection, the importance of love, 500 pages of clear exposition of just 1 Corinthians, individual commentaries available, or you can get the whole set. Contact us today. Start thinking deeply about the Word of God.

That's right. The MacArthur New Testament commentary is for anyone who wants to understand God's Word deeply. It's ideal for personal study or sermon preparation or even for family devotions.

To order yours, get in touch today. The volume on 1 Corinthians is available for a reasonable price, and shipping is free. To order it or another commentary that you need to complete your set or the entire 34-volume MacArthur New Testament commentary series, call us toll-free at 855-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. And while you're at gty.org, I would encourage you to listen to all of the messages from our recent Truth Matters Conference. John and other well-known teachers went to the Answers in Genesis Conference Center. That's right next to the Ark Encounter, to speak on the theme of recovering a biblical worldview. You will hear teaching on critical race theory, social justice, gender and sexuality, and other timely topics for you and your church. To listen to those messages or any of John's sermons from his decades of pulpit ministry, go to our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to join us tomorrow when John looks at why Christian liberty has less to do with what you can or can't do and more to do with what you desire most. John explains when another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time comes your way on Wednesday's Grace To You.