January 2019 – Idolatry, satan’s Lie You Find God in Freedom
It’s been a while since I presented a chapter from Pastor Jonathan Fisk’s book Broken so let’s give it a go this month. In this one he deals with satan’s lie (BTW – if you’ve wondered why I always write satan with a small “s”, it is not because I lack spell check, but it is a purposeful slight and insult to this prideful and defeated enemy who would want to be God) that you can find God in freedom, freedom to do, be, have what YOU want, which is really nothing more than the worship of self and lawlessness. This chapter is particularly difficult to condense into a small article, but I would like to at least focus on one thing this month.
The following extensive quote is one of the best descriptions I’ve read in a while of our sinful natures:
Sin is a disease. It is the universal tendency of humans to prefer self-serving actions and speak self-serving words because we are constantly thinking self-serving thoughts so that we can get the most we can for ourselves in any given moment or circumstance of life. The result is that we end up harming other people, at the very least on a daily basis, and often while being entirely ignorant of it. You know: war, famine, and poverty. No one person makes those things happen. We make those things happen. We do it with our habit of creating "hurt" in the process of working with all our might to benefit ourselves. …sin is the Bible’s way of describing the inbred human need to do evil because we believe it will help us get more good for ourselves. God made countless good things when He created the world, but almost all of them can be twisted into foundations on which to build little chapels of self-trust, self-hope, or self-love. These are personalized idols, “stuff” in which the semblance of self-sufficiency, safety, and control can be worshiped in the form of whatever we feel we need most at the moment. Rather than receiving God’s gifts with thanks, we misuse them in the worst possible manner: to replace Him!
Fisk later adds:
Idolatry is a far more dangerous enemy because it is a need we have inside of us. We are addicted to it. The dictionary definition of an addict is a person who can't stop doing something. Drug addicts can't stop using illicit (and harmful) chemicals to generate feelings of escape. Along with the physical addiction a body develops to the use of certain drugs, the mind relies on these feelings as coping mechanisms for dealing with the countless pains of life on a fallen planet. While the human condition of sin is a little more subtle than illicit drug use, the way it works is not very different. In fact, doing evil in the pursuit of my own good is by far the most potent of all addictions.
Most of us only do a little evil at a time, something on the side, only when we feel we really have to. But just like the drug addict, we also do it to get a feeling—the feeling of escape, the feeling of being in control. In order to flee from the in-breaking of helplessness or dependency that so often comes with
life, we start using the things we come into contact with for our own benefit. In a hungering lurch from one moment of frustration to the next, by thought, word, and deed, with countless personal little battles going on all day, every day, day after day, we wage a war against everything and everyone in order to gain and keep a personal impression of stability and control. We call it independence, freedom, self-sufficiency. But it is much more than that. It is rebellion, mutiny, and anarchy.
Well said! From the very first effort Adam and Eve made to be “free” from God by trying “to be like God”, we instead enslaved ourselves into perpetual self- serving efforts to try and fill the God-shaped hole we made in our hearts. That is not freedom, it is a trap.
That is what is in you. That is your Old Adam. Child of God, that is part of you, and it’s not going away as long as you live in this fallen world. That is why I speak so often of drowning the Old Adam. It can’t be negotiated with. It can’t be fixed or cured. It must be drowned and killed each day. It would have you constantly looking to yourself, and there is nothing there but sin and death. True Freedom is what the true Living God has given us in His dear Son. True Freedom comes in recognizing and admitting who and what we are, sinners in need of forgiveness and grace. True Freedom comes in looking away from ourselves and only to Christ. True Freedom from this cycle of self-absorbed, selfish living-death is to repent of our idolatry and look to trust in the forgiveness of our sinfulness won for us by Jesus alone. True Freedom comes when our Lord crucifies us (our Old Adam) with Him in our baptism and raises us up with Him unto True Life and True Living. It is:
Gal 2:20 ESV I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Pastor
