My wife pointed me to The Purple Cellar for an excerpt from Iain Duguid’s commentary on Numbers:
Why is it that we give in to sin and disobedience so often, even though we know what are doing is wrong? . . . The underlying dynamic that drives our sin is unbelief. . . . We have false beliefs about God that we persist in doggedly in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary. Until these deep-rooted core beliefs are challenged, little real change is possible in our lives. This is why even when we recognize that our sinful patterns lead to painful consequences, we often find that we cannot change them.
Unbelief is the opposite of faith not in being the absence of faith, but in being faith in the opposite set of propositions about God. Unbelief is the firm faith that, for all practical purposes, God does not exist, God does not care, God is not involved actively in my life. [This] drives our own patterns of sin. . . . The motivating power of all sin lies in failing to believe God’s good purpose for us, which is for us to glorify him and enjoy him forever. Temptation always offers us something: Satan never goes fishing with a bare hook. . . . Yet whatever temptation offers us, it cannot offer us the opportunity to glorify or to enjoy God. Whatever we are pursuing when we sin, it is always something less than God’s good purpose for us. It is a functional idolatry of something other than the Lord. In practice, we are believing that something else is better than experiencing joyous fellowship with him forever.
Something else has become our chief purpose in life, the desire that is driving us. Perhaps it is comfort or pleasure or pleasing people or succeeding in our career or having the perfect home. Idols come in all shapes and sizes, but until we . . .reorient our thinking at the most basic level, sin will always seem more attractive to us than righteousness as a means to satisfy our idolatry. As long as something other than fellowship with God is our chief purpose in life, we will easily be seduced away from obedience.
This commentary on Numbers 15 is an apt reminder that I am not “frustrated”, “annoyed”, or “chapped”. I am holding an idol in my heart and putting a manageable name on it. Praise God that the Gospel is the functional antidote for this functional idolatry!
What do it take for someone to see the idols in their heart and reorient thier thinking?? And how do you personally use the bible as the antidote for idolatry?
Mike
April 6th, 2007