Deuteronomy 12; Psalms 97–98; Isaiah 40; Revelation 9
This morning my little prayer book gave me a request that God would enable me to see this world as He sees it. I prayed this, not really expecting any great vision. However, the Scripture readings for today did offer a thought that deeply saddens my heart. This thought is connected to a promise the Lord made to Abraham.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3)
In the plan of God, this promise extended to all who believe God as Abraham believed, including the Christian church. In other words, God blesses those who bless His people but those who dishonor God’s people put themselves in harm’s way.
However, we are also responsible to listen to God and obey Him, not defy Him by doing whatever we think is right:
“You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 12:8–9, italics mine)
Doing whatever we think is right is the human problem the Bible calls sin. As the prophet Isaiah says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” and it is for this that Christ died and “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)
Today this “turning our own way” usually does not involve making wood or metal idols, but back then it did. God condemned this, even ridiculed it. How can a man-made figure do anything? It cannot see or hear or understand as He can. Idols are nothing, yet the New Testament says there is a real danger in idolatry because demonic powers are involved in it.
Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (1 Corinthians 10:18–21)
The connection is this: idol worship makes people vulnerable to evil powers. The connection is obvious to me, not only by connecting the dots in the Bible but by my experience. When I insist on going my own thing, I’ve opened my mind to the suggestions of evil and will do things that God hates. Some of such sin is subtle yet not always. Consider what it did to the nations in the OT:
“When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. (Deuteronomy 12:29–31)
The bottom line in this passage? Idol worshipers were killing their children because demonic forces were controlling their lives. Before I protest that this does not happen today, what about those who sell their children into the sex trade or those who abort them because having a child would interfere with doing their own thing?
Connecting these thoughts puts the people who honor God and God’s people into a line of blessing, but those who dishonor God and what is right have the power of evil on their side, a power that can lead to death and destruction. This is a profound vision of today’s world and gets Christians persecuted because no one wants to think that their choices to go their own way will result in a slide toward evil and destruction. This is not God’s wrath (yet) as much as the consequences of disobedience. It goes takes us into bad stuff.
APPLY: Weep. Ask God to show His people the danger of doing our own thing, both to ourselves and our nation. Also, seek His face and determine to go His way, not my own, in every area of life. Not only that, how can I show His great mercy and grace to those caught in this destructive trap?
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