Little children keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21)*
If the heart of man is, as John Calvin
described it, “an idol making factor,” then the way in which those idols
are destroyed should be of utmost importance to us. The Bible is
replete with references to idolatry because it was written with the
purpose of confronting and providing the remedy for it. The idolatry of
Israel is evident on the pages of the Old Testament revelation no less
than the idolatry of the Gentile nations. No sooner did God deliver His
people from the bondage of the idolatrous Egyptians that they made an
idol at the foot of the mountain to which He had brought them to
worship. The New Testament writers also bear witness to the pervasive
sin of idolatry. In his letter to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul
taught that men, by nature, exchange the truth of God for a lie, and
worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. He reminded the
church in Thessalonica that they had turned to God from idols to serving
the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven; and he
exhorted the Colossians to put off covetousness, which is idolatry. In
similar fashion, the Apostle John closed his first epistle with the
admonition: Little children keep yourselves from idols.
Throughout Israel’s history, a recurring
act symbolized the means by which God would remove the idolatry of His
people. When Moses found the people worshiping the golden calf at the
foot of the mountain He took the calf which they had made, burned it in
the fire, and ground it to powder. He then scattered it on the water.
(Exodus 32:20). When he recounted the act, he explained that he threw
the dust of the idol into a nearby brook (Deut. 9:21). The burning,
crushing and grinding of the idol represented the judgment of God
against sin. The act of throwing the dust of the idol into the brook
almost certainly represented the removal of it from the people, as well
as from the presence of God. Like the goat being sent into the
wilderness, this act prefigured God’s promise to put the sins of His
people away from His presence.
Moses’ symbolic act became a paradigm for
the subsequent acts of the righteous kings of Israel. Each of these
kings removed idols from the land in a manner similar to that of Moses.
King Asa cut down the idol that his grandmother set up and burned it by the Brook Kidron. (1 Kings 15:11-13). King Josiah
brought out the wooden image from the house of the LORD, to the Brook
Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it at the Brook Kidron and ground it to ashes. He “broke them down and pulverized there, and threw their dust into the Brook Kidron” (2 Kings 23:4-6, 12). Under the reign of King Hezekiah the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD to cleanse it, and brought out all the debris that they found in the temple of the LORD and carried it to the Brook Kidron and they took away all the incense altars and cast them into the Brook Kidron. (2 Chronicles 29:16; 30:13).
While these kings are remembered for
destroying idols from the land of Israel, none of them could purge the
hearts of the people. The righteous kings of Israel may have temporarily
purged the land of idols, but King Jesus removes them from our hearts
forever. As He made His way to Calvary, Jesus crossed over the Brook
Kidron (John 18:1) to symbolize everything He had come to do. He was
burnt, crushed and ground by the wrath of God on the cross. Matthew
Henry observed:
The godly kings of Judah had burnt and destroyed the idols they found at the brook Cedron. Into that brook the abominable things were cast. Christ, being now made sin for us, that he might abolish it and take it away, began his passion by the same brook.
Jesus Christ is the solution to our
idolatry. God the Son took to Himself flesh and blood, so that He might
bear the penalty for our idolatry in His own body on the tree. Then He
rose bodily from the dead. God the Father now commands us to worship the
God-Man, Jesus Christ. By opening his first epistle with a defense of
the Person and work of Christ (I John 1:1-2:1) and closing it with the
warning, Little children, keep yourselves from idols (5:21), the apostle
John taught that Jesus is the cure for our idolatry. Adolphe Monod
explained the mystery of this truth in a most profound way:
I strive to live in
the communion of Jesus Christ praying to Him, waiting for Him, speaking
to Him, hearing Him, and, in a word, constantly bearing witness to Him
day and night; all which would be idolatry if He were not God, and God
in the highest sense of the word, the highest that the human mind is
capable of giving to that sublime name.
What idols are you harboring in your
heart? Are you giving affections and labors to created things? How are
we to keep ourselves from idols? The remedy is only to be found in the
Person and finished work of Christ. He has destroyed the idols of His
people, once and for all, by His death on the cross. Our sins have been
washed away in His blood. He has cast them into the depths of the sea,
even as the righteous Kings casts the crushed idols into the Brook
Kindron. Praise God for His righteous King and His righteous rule in our
hearts!
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