January 18, 2009 Sermon

The Idolatry Trap
I Corinthians 10:1-11

Sermons must exegete a Bible passage. That is, sermons must start with what a Bible passage honestly means and draw out its implications for life as we now live it. Preachers must draw a line from the Bible to now. (We ought not, as we preachers so often do, start with now and read it back into the Bible.) Today we study a Bible passage that in turn draws a line from a Bible passage. In I Corinthians 10 the Apostle Paul dug back into the Old Testament and drew a line into his “now”. In order to preach (and hear) this correctly, we need to draw one connected line from events that happened, in the first case, almost four thousand years ago; and in the second case, two thousand years ago. We had better get started!

Long ago the Lord freed the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. They passed through the waters of the sea. Then the Lord led them with pillars of cloud and fire. Exodus 13:22 tells us, “Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.” The Lord led hundreds of thousands them out into one of the harshest deserts on the face of the earth, the Sinai. Yet they did not have to worry about finding food or water. Exodus 16:4 tells us that the Lord gave them manna every day. For those who wonder whether they can believe in an unseen God whose miracles all seem to have happened in ancient times, consider manna. As detailed in Bruce Feiler's excellent book, Walking the Bible, manna still exists. That is, an edible substance that matches the biblical description of manna still appears in the mornings on the tamarisk, a shrub that grows throughout the Sinai desert.

As for finding water in the desert, Exodus 17 tells us that the Lord instructed Moses, leader of the Israelites, to strike a rock in a certain place and water would pour forth. We do not know where or how this happened; we do know, however, that from pre-historic times a very few tracks through the Sinai have crossed the desert from one oasis to another. Feiler visited one of these wells; he called it pathetic to our eyes but a miracle to the Israelites’. We turn on the tap and let it run until it reaches the desired temperature.  But how must those few scraggly palm trees standing guard over a pool of tepid water have looked to Moses?

Which of us has faced dehydration without the power to do anything about it? Which of us has had to trudge across rock and sand with the sun remorselessly beating down upon us? These mortal threats confronted the Israelites, who by the way had also to worry about whether they were lost, and would the Egyptians come after them? In the movies the Exodus is a miraculous triumph. Certainly the moment of escape was all that and more. But that moment marked the start of a forty year ordeal.  Without the Lord, the Israelites would have perished in mere days.

Though we can explain parts of the Exodus by citing everyday facts like oases and tamarisk trees, parts of the experience were supernatural, miraculous. The sea parted to let the Israelites through. Pillars of cloud and fire led them. God protected and led those people. As the Apostle Paul put it, they were baptized by the cloud and the sea. They ate spiritual food. Paul even wrote that Christ was there with them. This is an important theological truth. Though Jesus was not born into a human body until Paul's day, as God he has always been. Jesus was God in the flesh, the eternal God living as one of us temporarily. We have no problem saying that the Lord God Almighty led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Well, Jesus is the Lord God Almighty. He led the Israelites. He led Paul and the earliest Christians. He leads us.

Yet the Israelites did not all follow God. Note that Paul framed his retelling of this story, fore and aft, with the statement that, “These things happened as an example for us.” Remember that line we need to draw from the older Bible passage to the newer Bible passage to now? Well, here it is: these things happened as an example for us. The ancient Israelites turned aside from the leading of the Lord God Almighty. They worshiped idols of their own making in the desert. The early Christians to whom Paul wrote often backslid into the idolatrous pursuit of whatever gods and desires they had formerly worshiped. Do we do any better?

We have the biblical examples of the Exodus and of the Apostle Paul to guide us like pillars of cloud and of fire, yet we choose not to follow them. Last week we mentioned that we pursue the false gods of victory, celebrity, power and wealth. Look at it this way. In its heyday, the television series E.R. boasted a great cast. The first names to come to mind for most of us would be George Clooney and Noah Wyle or Julianna Margulies and Maura Tierney. My wife Linda and I used to watch E.R. every Thursday night. It was an excellent show with good actors. Each character had believable strengths and flaws. But the most popular were Clooney and Wyle, Margulies and Tierney. Why? Could it be because they were hunks and beauties?

But as we watched over the years, I found myself drawn to Dr. Mark Greene, played by the actor Anthony Edwards. I did not think about it. Perhaps I was not even aware of it. But when he died (on the show) in his final episode, I cried like a baby. I did not expect to respond so emotionally. It came out of nowhere. Why did the death of a fictional character hurt me so deeply? I rarely cry at the movies or while watching TV. But something about that Mark Greene character got to me. He was no hunk—and if he were that would not have mattered to me. He was this tall, kind of funny looking guy who tried hard, liked to play pickup basketball, lost his temper, made mistakes, sometimes hurt the feelings of his loved ones, but kept showing up—for work, for relationships, for all his many responsibilities—and kept trying to do the right thing. Oh. He reminded me, well, of me.

For once I think I might have gotten it right. Instead of watching a show because it had a beautiful actress, or a game because I wanted vicariously to share in my team's victory, or a financial program so I could try to increase my wealth, I had unconsciously identified with an everyday guy who was trying to be a good man. For once I was not worshiping celebrity or wealth.

The Apostle Paul admonished the Corinthians not to become idolaters. He urged them not to “test Christ”. He wrote to people surrounded by temples built to honor gods fashioned after bulls or the Roman pantheon. He wrote to people tempted to worship power, fertility and beauty. Where do we find the temples of our day? Maybe we cannot go downtown and find a columned building with a marble statue of Mithras the bull inside. But we do find ourselves surrounded by images of the gods our culture worships. Try the mall. Try the stock exchange. When we check out at the grocery store these images stare at us from the covers of magazines. Most celebrities are impossibly good looking. They have been surgically and chemically altered to project provocative images. We all know their names. We know far more about them than they deserve to have known. We spend our time and money “consuming” their “product”. Is this not a form of worship? And this is only one of the more obvious forms of image (or idol) worship that trap us.

The ancient Israelites experienced the miraculous power of the Lord God Almighty at work in their very midst. It did not matter. Only a few weeks into their desert wanderings they melted their own gold jewelry, formed it into the image of a golden calf, and “worshiped” it with a drunken feast complete with all the worst forms of misbehavior we can imagine. The Corinthian Christians lived only decades after Jesus walked the earth. In Paul, they knew a man who knew men who had been members of Jesus' band of twelve disciples. Jesus had visited Paul in a vision. It did not matter. The early Christians struggled to leave behind their former, pagan ways. We, too, must take care to follow Jesus only.

For us to follow Jesus only we must identify Him and identify the idols we worship instead of Him. Work on your relationship with Jesus. Commit to a regular prayer life. My friend and fellow pastor Keith Huffman sent me an email that suggested that we try praying instead of using the cell phone while driving. That is not a bad idea, as far as it goes. But mono-tasking prayer is a better idea. Pray when you rise and when you go to bed. Take a 30 second prayer break in the middle of the day. In your prayers, listen. Address the Lord Jesus by name, share your needs and your confessions and your concerns for others, and listen. Give Him your time, your attention. You will come to know Him better. Then, when He seeks to lead you, you will have a much better chance of following Him alone.

Attend a Bible study. In a couple of weeks we will move our Sunday School over into the new building. That might give you the chance to start attending. I would like to publicize one sort of hidden adult Sunday School class we already offer: the Chic Group. This class for women currently meets in my office. Unless you know they’re there you must work to find them. But it is worth the work. Soon it will not take so much effort to find them. Attend the other adult class taught by Matt Hanna, or the Wednesday evening women’s Bible study, or the Tuesday morning Bible study, or a Bible study at another Presbyterian or related church if these do not fit your schedule.

Come to know Jesus through prayer and study, and through worship, of course! Just make sure that, knowing Him, you worship Him alone. Do not get trapped by the idols of wealth, power, celebrity, beauty. Worship Jesus, and Jesus alone.