Exodus 20:3-4, Colossians 3:5, Psalm 115:4-8
The Problem God Takes Most Seriously
The first two of the Ten Commandments are about worship: "You shall have no other gods before me" and "You shall not make for yourself a carved image." (Exodus 20:3-4). Before any commandment about murder, theft, or false witness — the commandments about whom to worship and how to worship come first.
This tells us something about God's priorities: right worship is foundational to right living. Wrong worship — idolatry — corrupts everything else.
What Idolatry Is
In the ancient world, idolatry was literal: physical statues, carved images, and shrines to gods of wood, stone, and metal. The prophets mocked it with devastating irony — a man cuts down a tree, uses half of it for firewood and the other half to carve a god, and then bows down to the wood he carved and asks it to save him (Isaiah 44:14-17).
But idolatry is not merely a primitive religious error that modern people have outgrown. The New Testament expands the definition significantly. Paul calls greed "idolatry" (Colossians 3:5). John closes his first letter with the simple warning: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." (1 John 5:21) — written to people who lived in a largely idol-free Jewish and early Christian context.
Idolatry, at its heart, is giving to anything other than God the devotion, trust, and worship that belong to God alone.
Modern Idols
Tim Keller has described an idol as anything that becomes more important to us than God — anything we look to as our primary source of identity, security, meaning, or happiness. By this definition, idols are everywhere:
- **Success and achievement** — when your sense of worth rises and falls with your performance
- **Relationships** — when another person's approval becomes more important than God's
- **Money and possessions** — when financial security becomes the foundation of your peace
- **Comfort** — when avoiding pain and inconvenience governs your decisions more than obedience to God
- **Reputation** — when what others think of you drives you more than what God thinks
Why God Takes Idolatry So Seriously
God takes idolatry seriously for two reasons: it dishonours Him and it destroys us. It dishonours Him because He alone is worthy of worship — giving that worship to something less is a profound injustice. It destroys us because idols always disappoint. They promise what only God can give and deliver nothing that lasts.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands... Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. — Psalm 115:4, 8
We become like what we worship. Those who worship the living God are transformed into His likeness. Those who worship created things are diminished to the level of those things.