All Things Seen & Unseen

To introduce this topic I mention again that idolatry is part of every person's life, every community's life and every nation's life. In fact, the whole human race is involved in a struggle between worship of the living God and worship of dead idols. Worship is natural to the human condition. In the beginning man turned his worship away from God to a god-substitute by changing the truth about God into a lie and resorting to the worship of the creaturely.  Christians cannot imagine that they are exempt from the ravages of idolatry (see 1 Cor 7.14; Col 3.5; 1 John 5.21).  Idolatry involves putting our TRUST in something that is created which can never bear the load of our full trust.  Only the Creator of all things seen and unseen is worthy of our trust.

The Lord challenged me recently about my idolatry with regard to money. A word about Martin Luther (see The Melbourne Anglican ) about money and how we so easily make it an idol was the stimulus for this challenge. What stabbed me in the heart was a reference in the article to the issue of trust. Why do we find it hard to trust our Lord Jesus? The answer to that question is easy but the remedy is not. The answer is that our hearts are conflicted by the competition among good things that have become our IDOLS. If you ever want to know what God thinks about idols read the devastating attack on God's people found in the first 35 chapters of the prophet Ezekiel . No one can come from that book with anything but a clear picture of why God was angry and ashamed of his people who had forsaken him for idols and detestable practices that went with idol worship.