Psalms 24:3,4 – "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false."
I see the word "idol" and my mind immediately conjures up an image of some wooden figurine, or maybe a big stone sculpture with a long nose and sullen face. It seems crazy to think about worshipping something like that, doesn't it?
The Israelites worshipped a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain with God (Exodus 32). They presented their request to Aaron as a good idea – and I'm paraphrasing here - "Moses is gone, and who knows if he's even coming back for us! We're stuck in the middle of the desert and we need some help. Let's make some gods who will get us out of here!" Aaron even designated the calf as something good. He gathered the people and dedicated the idol as "the Lord who delivered them from Egypt." I imagine they tried to justify this bizarre behavior with a healthy dose of good intentions. But these good intentions led to corruption and perversion by the very next day. And God saw the whole thing happening.
Isn't this the way it works with idols? Today we don't carry around sculpted images or bow to golden calves, but we do lift up our souls to worship things other than the Lord. We too have the best of intentions sometimes, but oh, how quickly those "good things" can turn into sin. And God sees the whole thing happening. We might try to fool ourselves into thinking we can raise one hand in worship to the Lord while we clutch onto our idols with the other. But God says in Psalm 24, (I'm paraphrasing again) "Not in here…you don't come in here with that. Only those with clean hands and a pure heart stand in the holy place before Me." It's time to lay the idols down.
I see the word "idol" and my mind immediately conjures up an image of some wooden figurine, or maybe a big stone sculpture with a long nose and sullen face. It seems crazy to think about worshipping something like that, doesn't it?
The Israelites worshipped a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain with God (Exodus 32). They presented their request to Aaron as a good idea – and I'm paraphrasing here - "Moses is gone, and who knows if he's even coming back for us! We're stuck in the middle of the desert and we need some help. Let's make some gods who will get us out of here!" Aaron even designated the calf as something good. He gathered the people and dedicated the idol as "the Lord who delivered them from Egypt." I imagine they tried to justify this bizarre behavior with a healthy dose of good intentions. But these good intentions led to corruption and perversion by the very next day. And God saw the whole thing happening.
Isn't this the way it works with idols? Today we don't carry around sculpted images or bow to golden calves, but we do lift up our souls to worship things other than the Lord. We too have the best of intentions sometimes, but oh, how quickly those "good things" can turn into sin. And God sees the whole thing happening. We might try to fool ourselves into thinking we can raise one hand in worship to the Lord while we clutch onto our idols with the other. But God says in Psalm 24, (I'm paraphrasing again) "Not in here…you don't come in here with that. Only those with clean hands and a pure heart stand in the holy place before Me." It's time to lay the idols down.
I've struggled this week. While meditating on this Scripture, the Lord spoke to me about the seriousness of idolatry. There are some "good things" in my life that, frankly, were on the verge of becoming idols. Let's be honest here. Good things, even gifts from the Lord, can become idols in our lives. Case in point, Abraham and Isaac. Isaac was the son of promise, Abraham's future, his blessing from the Lord. Still, God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. When God saw Abraham's obedience, when He saw that Abraham withheld nothing from the Lord, even his beloved son, God said, "Now I know your heart is Mine." God knows the human heart and He sees our tendency concerning idols – that's why, today, we also must lay those things on the altar of sacrifice. A child, a spouse, a friend, ourselves, money, a job, a house, a hobby, a ministry, a dream. All these are good things that can become idols if we do not first offer them to the Lord.
Who has your heart? I mean, who really has your heart? Who gets the best of you? What do your thoughts seem to settle on? Where do you channel your energy and your focus? In your most intimate moments with the Lord, does He know He has your heart, your whole heart? That's what He longs for, and honestly, how can we offer Him anything less?
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