Do we worship other gods today? Could we be unknowingly guilty of idolatry? You bet! As Martin Luther said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior.”
The Journey// Focus: Leviticus 17:7
The people must no longer be unfaithful to the Lord by offering sacrifices to the goat idols. This is a permanent law for them, to be observed from generation to generation.
Goat demons—weird, huh! The translation I have used calls them “goat idols”, but in some versions you will see a footnote that says an alternative reading is “demons.” There is a possibility that this refers to the satyrs—an creepy mythical creature found in several ancient cultures that was half goat and half human. Every time I see a photo of a satyr I sense something demonic about it. You probably do, too.
It is more likely that what God had in mind here, and I say that reverently, because who can truly know the mind of the Lord, was an idol in the shape of a goat. The surrounding nations likely had such man-made idols, much like the bull and calf idols that the Egyptians famously worshiped. We are told that later on in the Israelite’s history, when the nation spit between Judah and Israel, the split-off king Jeroboam, “appointed his own priests to serve at the pagan shrines, where they worshiped the goat and calf idols he had made.”
You might be thinking, who would ever abandon their worship of the Lord to worship goat idols? Apparently, God’s people did! Notice the first part of that verse: The people must no longer be unfaithful to the Lord by offering sacrifices to goat idols.” (Italics mine) It is quite likely that when the Israelites were in Egypt, living in the land of Goshen, they adopted some of the worship practices of their neighbors who sacrificed to goat, bull, calf or satyr idols. The New King James version renders it in an even more serious, accusatory way:
“They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot.”
Unfaithfulness in any form is a sin, repugnant to God. Adultery is a serious sin, a blow to the marriage covenant between God, husband and wife, and destructive to the human family. Spiritual adultery, pardon my French—whoring around—is certain to invite the wrath of God. That is why, in no uncertain terms, he is laying down the prohibition to offer sacrifices only in the central location that he chooses in the land they will soon possess—first in the tabernacle; later in the permanent temple that was built in Jerusalem.
Spiritual harlotry was a deadly serious sin. So a statute forever instituted here is not merely a regulation about slaughtering animals for sacrifice, it was a built-in guard rail that would keep them from being lured to idolatry. You see, once they arrive in Canaan, they would be scattered through the land, some living a hundred miles or more away from the central place of worship. Rather than making the arduous trip to the tabernacle/temple, they might be tempted to slaughter their animal and offer it to God in their own backyard. But the temptation would always become to offer that sacrifice to a local idol, since that is usual the drift. To keep their worship pure and monotheistic, God therefore built in a prohibition against offering sacrifices anywhere other than in the central place of worship and only offering it through the mediation of the priests.
Now what does that have to do with you? A lot! You drift, too. So do I. That is the gravitational pull of our sinful nature. Yes, we have been redeemed, but we are also in the process of being redeemed. That means our sin nature, while being diminished by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, won’t be completely annihilated until we are finally and fully in the Lord’s presence. So that sin nature will find ways to cooperate with the devil in order to distract us from our unadulterated worship of the one true God—perhaps not with goat idols and satyrs, but with attractions, dependencies and loyalties to things that complete with God for throne space in our lives.
Have you allowed that in your past? Of course you have. And that is why you will drift in the present, if you are not careful (“you must no longer be unfaithful to the Lord”). And that is why you must realize that God alone must call the shots as to how we are to worship him (“a statute permanent law”). Maybe that is why, in spite of the current trend otherwise, the New Testament church was committed to coming together for regular worship in a central place (Hebrews 10:24-25) and following certain procedures in their corporate worship (see various teachings in the New Testament—1 Corinthians 12, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, etc.) Divine rules, contrary to popular belief, are not restrictive, they are protective.
“Playing the harlot” in our worship is a clear and harsh accusation, and perhaps it is even offensive that I would suggest that of you (which I am not, by the way. I’m simply calling for self-evaluation). But I think playing the harlot is more often than not a very subtle slide into worship that is more about our convenience and preferences than it is about maintaining a deliberate and faithful effort to offer worship to God in the way he has prescribed.
Who, or what, is your functional savior? Listen, there is only one God, and he has demanded that we have no other gods before him. All I am saying is, let’s make sure we don’t!
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