Idolatry Spelled Out, The Heart

[HKHaugan]

Idolatry Spelled Out---The Heart

       We’ve started with a general overview of idolatry.  It needs a bit more detail.  Why not follow the path Jesus takes when He explains His way to live?  Given that we are images of God with a mind, heart and spirit, the Lord Jesus gives us this path to take, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength (Deut.6:5, Mt.22:37).”  Heart, mind, soul and strength are the specific parts of us with which the Lord calls us to love Him.  He has defined the image of God in us.  It is the heart, mind and soul or spirit that are to be expressed with strength, the physical body.  Our whole being, the image of God, the heart, mind, spirit in a body, that’s us.  And each of us is unique in how we live out that experience.  Because we are created by God, we are spiritual beings living in a physical body in a physical universe. Summed up, we say simply, we are not human beings having spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience, images of God living in a physical body,--- heart, mind, soul and strength.  But…

       But the problem is that we have been separated from God by sin, the devil’s handywork, and sin has thrown the heart, mind and spirit out of balance.  This has put us first and God out of the picture.  Thus, we have been infected by the devil’s nature, sinful aloneness.  We are spiritually alone (dead) and it is the spirit of fear that dominates how we use our mind, sense with our heart and are motivated to act with our spirit.  In essence we are dead people walking because we have been trapped spiritually.  Because He starts with the heart let us start there.

       “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person (Mk.7:20-23).”  These are our personal ‘fig leaves (Gen.3:7),’ sin’s self-asserting strategies.  They are the attitudes we use to cover our spiritual nakedness, its aloneness and fear. 

       What does that spiritual condition look like?  Our first reaction may be, “I’m not afraid of anything!”  “I’m in control and I can deal with whatever comes!”  Sounds like the volcanic eruption of pride.  Even the bravest of the brave admits to being scared as they approached life-threatening circumstances.  Fear can be helpful in cases of careless behavior of course, but that’s not the kind of fear we’re talking about. 

       There is a more insidious kind of fear.  It’s deeper, more of the relational and social variety, the real fears that are daily motivating how we react and respond in the presence of others and how we feel inside, when we look in the mirror of our heart, “that beating and most secret heart.”  We all know it don’t we?  It’s where we feel fear of failure, feeling of failure, fear of success, fear of not being right, fear of exposure, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of not being accepted, disrespected, seen as a nobody, insignificant, rejected, ridiculed and left alone with the guilt and despair that proceed from all those.  Idolatry is what we manufacture to cover our fears.  Sin starts it in the heart, uses the mind to justify it and then motivates our spirit to act on it.

        Into this human maelstrom of spiritual disarray Jesus came to rescue and restore the hearts of individuals to their proper standing with God, others and their environment.  From aloneness and fear to being loved by God and living with relational confidence, Jesus brought that rejuvenating relationship for each of us to grow in.  Not just for this world but beginning in this world and continuing eternally in His Kingdom, “I have come to give you life and give it to you more abundantly (Jn.10:10).”

       This is how He tells us to love God, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him (14:23).”  That tells us four things. 

       First, loving God is different than how humans love each other without God.  It’s opening ourselves to Him by faith as He shows us through His Word how we can be like Him from one moment to the next.  Anything called love which is not from God is idolatrous.                           

       Second, His love will come to us, enter our hearts, cover us, and motivate us along the way as we take His counsel seriously.

       Third, He and His Son will make their home with us by the Spirit.  Home is not a house with a mortgage.  Home means loving permanence.  They are with us go stay.  It’s more like we are driving an RV with the Trinity directing us as we go from one place to another, one person to another and one circumstance to another.  We are carrying precious personal and relational cargo in our bodies.

       Fourth, in that mobile process we become more personally conscious of God’s presence and the vastness of His love.  This is especially true when it is experienced through the fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit given to help us minister to others in every encounter we have.  His Word through the Holy Spirit neutralizes the world atmosphere which is just more of the ‘same old same old, routine and ‘rat-racy,’ laced with fear, compromise and possible rejection (‘atmosfear’).  With the Lord leading us, we shift from attitudes to Spiritude, from fear to faith, from pride to being humble before Him in the presence of others.  I want to please Him and let Him get the glory, the praise and the recognition He deserves.  That’s the message of Jesus on the Cross for our heart.