When I “googled” the word Idolatry, my first hit was “extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone” and that it “is at the root of all sin because sin seeks to steal glory from God, to whom alone it is due, and take it for the sinner”. Let’s run with this as far as this article goes.

Another example of Google search wisdom that backs up the notion that idolatry is too important a subject to ignore was: “Today idol worship is still a powerful tool that the devil uses to turn us away from God. And idols can come in many different forms, like “pleasures of life”, money, education, everything that people esteem as very high or that can draw our attention away from God”.

Practising idolatry is tantamount to breaking the first two of the Ten Commandments:

1. You shall have no gods before me.
2. You shall not make any idols to worship.

Having got that off my chest, why make “Today’s Idolatry” the subject of my latest blog, especially in our modern world we don’t actually bow to and pay homage to inanimate objects, or do we?

On the Sunday just past, an old friend, Ray Birch, preached at my church Harvest Festival service (see here). His subject was “the harvest has passed” and if there was a text it might have been: “The harvest is past, the summer has ended and the gathering of fruit is over, but we are not saved” Jeremiah 8:20. In his sermon, and not for the first time, he brought up the subject of idolatry.

When he brought up the subject in a previous sermon, the backdrop was an account of a famous, elderly preacher who, soon after having entered the pulpit, forgot what he was going to say, but as the man further reflected, he recognised that one of the last idols that had to go was the need to be wanted and being made to feel useful. This time, the idol my friend had in mind was “the Internet”.

This hit home given I regularly spend time searching the Internet, principally because it is the most efficient way to find out about “stuff” that interests me and what people think or are up to. Also, my second career as a computer engineer coincided with the beginning of the digital revolution and the emergence of the Internet, which was something my work fed into. As for the part the Internet plays today, we only need to step outside of our homes and see people fixed to their smart devices that are linked to the Internet.

The word “idol” turns up 192 times in the Old Testament and 31 times in the New. We find in the Old that its propensity of turning to other gods and idols was largely instrumental in God’s displeasure and Israel’s demise. But it was also a concern of New Testament writers. For example, John ends his first letter: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” 1 John 5:21. The truth is that idolatry, even though we may not admit to it, is what keeps us back from enjoying God’s best and why we need to take heed of these words.