The Allure of Idols

Scripture: Judges 8: 22-28 and 1 Corinthians 10: 11-17

Sermon: The Allure of Idols

Topics: idolatry, temptation, backsliding

Preached: June 1, 2008

Rev. Mike Abma

Judges 8: 22-28

Then the Israelites said to Gideon, ‘Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also; for you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian.’ ²³Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.’ ²⁴Then Gideon said to them, ‘Let me make a request of you; each of you give me an ear-ring he has taken as booty.’ (For the enemy had golden ear-rings, because they were Ishmaelites.) ²⁵‘We will willingly give them,’ they answered. So they spread a garment, and each threw into it an ear-ring he had taken as booty. ²⁶The weight of the golden ear-rings that he requested was one thousand seven hundred shekels of gold (apart from the crescents and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian, and the collars that were on the necks of their camels). ²⁷Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his town, in Ophrah; and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.²⁸So Midian was subdued before the Israelites, and they lifted up their heads no more. So the land had rest for forty years in the days of Gideon.

1 Corinthians 10: 11-17

And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.¹¹These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.¹²So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. ¹³No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

14 Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols. ¹⁵I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. ¹⁶The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? ¹⁷Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

Gideon is one of the heroes of the book of Judges.

Reluctantly he answers God’s call to fight for what is right both inside and outside of Israel.

Inside Israel, he is a great destroyer of the altars to Baal.

As to the enemies outside Israel, Gideon goes against the hoards of Midianites with a tiny army of 300. Armed with jars, and torches and trumpets, they are able to rout the Midianites.

Gideon is a hero.

But that is only chapters 6 and 7 of Judges.

We rarely get to chapters 8 and 9.

If chapters 6 and 7 are about things going from worse to better,

chapters 8 and 9 are about things going from better to abysmal.

Read chapter 9 and you will be appalled.

Once Gideon dies, Israel lapses back into worshipping the Baals full-time.

Once Gideon dies, his son, Abimelech, murders almost all of his 70 brothers

and crowns himself king.

In fact, the last verse we read where it read the land had rest…in the days of Gideon is the last time that phrase appears in the book of Judges. After Gideon dies, there is no rest.

So what went wrong?

Well, the seeds of what went wrong are planted in the text we read.

Things start out well enough.

The crowds want to crown Gideon, the military hero, as their king.

Gideon resists this temptation.

He wisely replies, “I will not rule over you, my son will not rule over you;

The Lord will rule over you.”

So far, so good.

But as so often happens, once we sidestep one temptation,

we end up stepping right into another one.

Evil uses what I call the great snowball-lob-feint.

I know I should not be using snow as an illustration on the first of June,

but when I was a kid,

and snowball fights were almost a daily thing in the winter,

one of the oldest tricks in the book was the snowball-lob-feint.

That is when you lob in a snowball,

and while your opponent is watching that lob.

you fire one right at them.

They literally don’t see it coming.

That is basically what happens to Gideon.

He avoids the lobbed temptation to power,

but he gets nailed by the temptation to idolatry.

It all starts when he asks for a collection of jewelry – a part of the plunder from Midian.

If echoes of Aaron and the golden calf are coming to mind, let them.

That is exactly what is going on.

But Gideon does not make a golden calf – he makes a golden ephod.

And ephod was the vestment, the richly jeweled garment that the high priest wore.

An ephod had a pocket to hold the Urim and Thummim.

No one knows exactly what these were.

All we know is that they were used to cast lots, to discern divine advice.

So why was collecting the jewelry and making this ephod such a bad thing?

It was not so much a matter of greed.

It was a matter of idolatry.

Gideon and his family became ensnared by it.

Israel began to prostitute themselves to it.

In other words, they began consulting this ephod like an oracle,

trusting it to give them divine guidance,

honoring it with way too much respect, and attention, and awe.

The consequences….as we already have mentioned ….. were terrible.

CORINTHIANS

In the church of Corinth, they follow a similar pattern to Gideon:

they do one thing wisely,

but they also stumble into foolishness.

What they do wisely is avoid being legalistic.

They wisely celebrated their freedom in Christ.

But the problem is that they began taking that freedom too far.

They began foolishly stumbling into an “anything goes attitude.”

Sure, they knew all things were permissible.

But they had forgotten that not all things were beneficial.

Paul has to remind them that

if we have fellowship with Jesus Christ,

if we share in his body and blood,

then we simply cannot be in fellowship with idolatry of any kind.

No food sacrificed to idols.

Not even the whiff of idolatry.

IDOLATRY

Idolatry – it is such an old word, isn’t it?

It sounds so….outdated.

Idols sound older than 8 track tape players,

older than manual typewriters,

older than horse-drawn plows.

Who falls for idols nowadays?

Well, it is true that you won’t find too many people bowing down to statues made of gold or silver.

You won’t find too many people consulting jewelry encrusted ephods with urim and thummim

to guide their futures.

But there are quite a few people who

watch the stock market with bated breath,

uttering words of thanks when it goes up,

and curses when it goes down;

there are those who sleep better at night knowing

we have more weapons of mass destruction

than anyone else in the world;

there are those who simply have a need to control everything –

when it comes right down to it,

who only trust themselves to do it right.

Idols are those things or forces or ideologies we put our trust in – our ultimate trust in.

Of course, idols can also look religious, which is what Gideon’s ephod really teaches us and warns us about. We can think we are doing the right thing,

we can think we are standing firm,

and all the while be falling for an idol in pious garb.

So for all of us who focus too much on the family,

and believe that one’s biological family always comes first;

for all of us who pledge too deep an allegiance to a flag or a country,

as if it was the kingdom of God;

for all of us who attach ourselves so tightly to a particular church,

or a denomination that it becomes an obstacle in our love for others,

for all of us thinking we are standing firm,

we need to watch out that we are not falling for a hidden idol.

In his book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote very frankly about how hard it was for him after his wife passed away. He wrote that he was a broken man, but that brokenness clarified for him what was really important in life, what was essential.

He writes:

“You never know how much you believe in the strength of the rope,

until you are hanging by it over a cliff.”

For C.S. Lewis and all of us Christians, that rope is God,

that rope is the grace and faithfulness of God to get us through

whatever victory or crisis, whatever joy or sorrow comes our way.

If God’s love and grace is not the rope we are hanging on to,

then whatever we think is our rope getting us through

is in fact our idol.

CONCLUSION

In a moment we are going to be taking bread in our hands,

and raising a cup to our mouths.

Is not the cup of blessing for which we give thanks,

a sharing in the blood of Christ?

Is not the bread which we break

a sharing in the body of Christ?

People of God, take hold and hold on tightly,

for this bread of life,

this cup of salvation,

this fellowship with Jesus Christ alone,

is the rope, the only rope, that will pull us through to the promised land,

the land of eternal shalom.