SYNOPSIS: Who is going to be God in your life? That’s a pertinent question for you today because you’re going to worship someone or something. Wherever you place your unmitigated dependence and spend your full-throttled energy or to whomever you give your singular devotion has become your god. Of course, we don’t worship literal images made of wood, stone, silver, or gold like the ancient Israelites did, but we are just as susceptible to the seduction of less visible but highly sophisticated idols like money, sex, and power, that is, earthly security, momentary pleasure, and misused control? Take it from the ancient Israelites—there is only one God who is worthy of your unalloyed zeal. They learned that the hard way so you don’t have to.
The Journey// Focus: Judges 10:15-16
But the Israelites pleaded with the Lord and said, “We have sinned. Punish us as you see fit, only rescue us today from our enemies.” Then the Israelites put aside their foreign gods and served the Lord. And he was grieved by their misery.
Same song, twenty-ninth verse: Israel abandons the worship of God only to chase after the local deities of the Canaanites. So God lifts his hand of blessing from them and allows them to have what they want—a visible, controllable, good luck charm god. But as before, the same sad results ensue: Israel is left defenseless against cruel enemies, their agrarian economy collapses, their families suffer undue hardship and their lives are miserable under the rule of foreign gods and foreign nations. Then, predictably, they come to themselves, cry out to God, repent, and God sends a rescuer—judge after judge who rises up to bail them out. That is the story repeated over and over in Judges.
Of course, we have the advantage of looking back at this four-hundred-year period of on-again, off-again religion and viewing it only as a relatively short snapshot of history. It wasn’t. There were long patterns of obedience and blessing on Israel’s part—ten, twenty, thirty years of faithfulness to God. But then Israel would cycle into spiritual lassitude and moral drift until finally, they were into full-on backsliding. And the oppressive consequences would follow—ten, twenty, thirty years of domination by godless and ruthless enemies.
So why didn’t the children of Israel learn their lesson after the first beating? Why did they drift into idol worship over and over again? What was their infatuation with other gods? Again, we look back upon their history without understanding the long periods of time that the nation cycled through, and in so doing we fail to realize that we are prone to the same kind of drift and wrong dependencies as they were—we are just a little more sophisticated with our worship of idols. The Quest Study Bible offers some reasons for their infatuation with local idols, and as you ponder these that follow, see if you can identify your own tendencies to drift from utter dependence and ruthless obedience to God:
- Idols were physical objects that could be seen (Lev 26:1). Israel’s God, on the other hand, was unseen.
- Idols could be carried, controlled, and confined. Israel’s God, however, was an awesome and mysterious God who could not be manipulated by his people. He “moved” whenever and wherever he wanted.
- Foreign gods were thought to have power over crops, a prime concern of the Israelites. The people were superstitious and didn’t want to risk their harvests by offending the pagan gods.
- Some foreign gods were believed to give fertility to the womb. The worship of these gods involved religious prostitution (1Ki 14:24) and other sexually immoral practices, which appealed to the sensual desires of the Israelites. The Israelites may have concluded that it was better to indulge in these pleasurable activities than to displease the gods of fertility.
- Idol worship was a cultural norm. The Israelites often found it easier to join in local customs than to go against them.
Who is going to be God in your life? That is a pertinent question for you today because you are going to worship someone or something. Your god is whatever you are putting your full-throttled dependence upon and giving your singular devotion to. Of course, we don’t worship literal images made of wood, stone, silver, or gold like the ancient Israelites did, but wouldn’t you agree that we are just as susceptible to the seduction of less visible but highly sophisticated idols like money, sex, and power, that is, earthly security, momentary pleasure and misused control?
If you are placing importance, expending energy, and make a personal investment in things that drown out your full-throttled devotion and singular devotion to God, you have made them into an idol. But here’s the deal: at the end of the day, those things will have amounted to nothing. In fact, they will have done real harm to the blessings that God would have poured out in your life had you waited upon him in devotion and dependence.
If reading through this is convicting you at all, I would suggest you quickly get on your knees and cry out to God in sincere repentance, as the Israelites did. Put aside your wrong dependencies and misplaced devotions and worship God only. Perhaps he will be grieved by your misery and reach out to you in love.
No, not perhaps—he really will reach out to you in love.
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