No Cultural Idols – The Kingdom Curriculum VI (6)

No Cultural Idols

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image…” Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8

“When My angel goes before you and brings to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces…You shall make no covenant with them and their gods…They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.” Exodus 23:23, 24, 32, 33

The sure snare of paganism.

That idea of paganism being a snare is important, and brings us back to where we began this section of the Kingdom curriculum.

An animal caught in a snare is restrained in its movement. It can’t go where it might like or flee to where it should be because, having taken the alluring bait, it’s now caught. All that remains is for the hunter to return and finish the grisly job.

The gods of our materialistic culture, and the practices and protocols they demand of us, are like that. Money, success, happiness, popularity – these all seem really attractive. Not as our ultimate goal in life, of course; that’s what God is for, right? But in addition to God, or as means of serving Him, that’s all. Thus we take the bait of paganism, thinking that we can cling to the false gods of our materialist, sensualist society while we continue to insist that we really only worship the God of the Bible.

Soon we find that we are restricted in how much time or strength we have for church. We are restrained from growing in the freedom of the Lord because we’re snared in the life of getting and spending. And once we’re snared, it can be very difficult to extricate ourselves. More sins will follow, and, while we may regret them, and trust in the Lord to forgive them, escaping from them – and from whatever comes next – can be very difficult.

Then, instead of “having” the Lord as our one true God, we find we’ve been had by the false gods and vain religions of the day, and are drifting dangerously far from the freedom and fullness God intends for us.

The way to begin to love God’s Law is to spend time reading and meditating on it. Order your copy of The Law of God today by going to www.MyParuchia.com, clicking on Publications, then clicking Waxed Tablet.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.