"Little Children, Keep Yourselves from Idols." 1 John 5:21 Part 2

This is the second segment of my sermon on 1 John 5:21, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," delivered to Friendship Baptist Church in Mondovi, WI, on 8/9/09.

B. Warning us against Idols is really a timely word and not a strange word at all.

1. The issue of devotion to the one true God is everywhere in 1 John

-1 John 2:15-17, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." When John says "do not love the world or the things in the world" he is saying, "don't make idols". What do you make idols from, except for things in the world.

-Warnings about Antichrists and false teachers in ch's 2 and 4 who are teaching people essentially to worship another god, not the God of the Bible, not the God who most fully revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Just like in Exodus Moses said you would know a false prophet by if they told you to go after another God, John is saying that you can know a false teacher, or an antichrist, by if they tell you to go after another Jesus.

-1 John really is all about idolatry of the heart. John doesn't have literal idols in view. But he is trying to wean the Christians off of their heart idolatry.

2. The NT is everywhere addressing the issue of heart idolatry

-The Pharisees were so smug about this very issue. They didn't have actual idols, just like we don't, and they thought that that fact vindicated them. They kept the law. And so they thought that they were worshiping the one true God.

-Ultimately, however, Jesus comes on the scene and he confronts them as worshiping their own reputation, worshiping their own "acts of righteousness", worshiping their honored seats in the synagogues. The fact that they didn't have literal idols didn't mean they worshiped God.

3. American Christians in 2009 are committing heart idolatry in a hundred different ways

-The root of all idolatry is heart idolatry. Heart idolatry puts my own wants/dreams/aspirations above God's glory. True worshipers worship God in spirit and in truth, and the truth part of that points to the fact that it is possible for us to think we're worshiping God, but actually be worshiping a god of our own making that we've put in his place. When we don't believe the truth about God, but believe the lies that our culture tells us about him, we do just that.

-The writer of Ecclesiastes discovered in his day something that I am convinced will help us understand why the idols that the pagans had long ago have not left us. The book of Ecclesiastes starts out this way:

"What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said,

"See, this is new"?

It has been already

in the ages before us." (Ecc 1:9-10)

So I'm convinced that for all the changes of our society, we are essentially the same in the gods that we worship. Even if we don't have literal idols and temples to offer sacrifices in, we have the same issues of heart idolatry as all people have had at all times everywhere.