3,000 Dead: When Idolatry Turns Fatal (19 June 2025)
“When men will be wise above what is written, or dare to offer in the worship of God what He has not commanded, they set up their own reason in place of God’s authority—and so erect a golden calf of their own invention.” - John Owen
Today’s Reading: Exodus 32
Perhaps you know someone who appears to be living the dream life; the perfect wife, beautiful children, a high-paying career, and a house in the nicest neighborhood in the best suburb. Whether it’s generational wealth, influential contacts in Corporate America, a lucky streak in the stock market, or winning the genetic lottery, life just seems so easy for some people. Their day-to-day looks more like vacationing than drudging.
And while poverty and misfortune come with their own set of challenges, it’s also true that success, prosperity, wealth, and ease of life tend to lead to particularly potent forms of dysfunction. Certain names come to mind; Tiger Woods, Bernie Madoff, Lance Armstrong, Bill Cosby, and others, men seemingly at the top of their game, who gave it all away for mere momentary pleasure via one-night-stand or fraudulent quarterly earnings report.
We tell ourselves: “He had it all!” How could he do such a thing?
And the truth is, while there are certainly exceptions, there’s often no good or logical reason for why a successful man in a happy, seemingly healthy marriage of 20+ years gets involved in a prolonged affair while on his work trips, or why a revered mother of four in her fifties runs away with her 26-year-old yoga instructor.
There is a sense in which, apart from God’s strengthening and sustaining grace, the human heart becomes restless, impatient, weary, or downright bored, and is increasingly drawn to idols like a moth to the flame. Like the middle-aged man who yearns for the Porsche 911, or the beach house, or the younger woman, we say to ourselves, “if I just had that thing, I would finally be truly happy.” That thing could be anything; drugs, alcohol, money, sex.
In other words, in lieu of external guidance and wisdom, we are quick to invent our own gods, and are then drawn away to worship them. Eve had everything, and yet was enticed by the only fruit which was forbidden.
Like the Israelites, we even will attempt to hide our idolatry by saying, “it’s all for God.” We do this in a number of ways. It could be justifying our lack of integrity in business because God expects us to leave an inheritance for our children. It could be cutting corners during training for a sporting competition because we are called to do all to the glory of God, and we think nothing glorifies God quite like us winning, because after all, “if I win, then I’ll have a platform to tell others about Him!”
Not only are our hearts prone to idolatry, but they’re prone to cover up that idolatry with virtuous, righteous-sounding excuses, like the 21-year-old college student who courageously volunteers to do ministry at the strip clubs. “It’s all for Him!”
The natural man’s heart only works to draw him further and further from the one true God, even as he tells himself otherwise. We might be able to say, “well I’ve never physically bowed down to Muhammad or Vishnu” (which is good), but idolatry is about more than our actions. It’s about the disposition of the heart.
Zacharius Ursinus points out that,
Idolatry consists not only in the external bowing to images but in the heart’s departure from the true God… The Israelites thought they were still worshiping Jehovah.
The Israelites claimed to be worshipping God even as they actively disobeyed Him, revealing the distant and rebellious nature of their hearts. This bring us to Exodus 32, the account of the Impatient Israelites and the Golden Calf they made.
Up to this point, though they had certainly endured great suffering in Egypt and uncertainty in the wilderness, you could say that Israel “had it all,” from a spiritual perspective. God’s presence currently overshadowed the mountain where they camped; His prophet, Moses, was among them, relaying His words to the people; and God had given them His laws, to guide them as they sought to live decent, moral, well-ordered, obedient lives as His covenant people. Time and time again, God delivered them from hunger, thirst, slavery, and suffering, and turned their doubt into rejoicing.
What more could God’s people want or need, apart from His presence, His special love, and His continuing, faithful provision?
But it was through Israel’s impatience that it started down the road to idolatry. Moses took too long on the mountain with God, and the people grew restless. Saint John Chrysostom says,
They did not have patience, and so they turned from God. The delay of Moses was a test. In haste, they made an image from gold—but the true God is not made by hands.
Such is the power of God’s restraining grace; when it is removed, even for a short time, the human heart is prone to wander. This is why we can say with great confidence that every man and woman created by God will worship something. In other words, everyone has a God (or god). It’s not whether, but which. There are only two options; the one, true God, or an idol.
The Israelites, who sang, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!", stole the glory due to God alone and transferred it to a worthless thing created by human hands.
We look back on this great act of dishonor and blasphemy and we feel Moses’ anger, cheering as we see him burn the calf with fire, grind it into powder, and force the Israelites to drink down the idol they loved so much. Good. Make them swallow the fruit of their depravity. Or play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as the saying goes.
But we mustn’t be so quick to gloat; unless we repent, we, too, will be made to drink down the bitter fruit of our misguided affections and corrupted worship, in this life or the next. Idols only degrade; they tear apart families, wreck marriages, destroy careers and reputations, and conform us to their image. As the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 knew full well, the idols of earth are worthless, and powerless to save.
An idol is anything that we look to instead of God as our god. Most of us would never admit it, but we have countless things that vie for our allegiance and seek to make us question and doubt God’s Word, from finances and professional success, to health and longevity.
Calvin says that “man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." Left to ourselves, we will always manufacture new gods to worship. It is for this reason that idleness is one of our great enemies. There is no such thing as neutrality in the Christian life; we will either move forward, closer to God, growing in obedience, or we will backslide, deviate from the path of life, and gravitate toward false gods which threaten to destroy us.
Take inventory of your own life. What threatens to pull you away from God? What are you living for? What are the things that, if you got them, you’d finally be truly happy, truly able to believe God is good, truly able to rest? To what, or whom, are you giving the glory that belongs to God alone? What is your golden calf?
I’ll give you a few examples from my own life: through the years, I’ve idolized work, job titles, financial success, physical fitness, and other things. In every instance, God has graciously intervened; injuries, job losses, you name it. He loves His people too much to let us be led astray by idols. It hurts; but all tough love does.
Moses gives us a picture of Christ in that He intercedes for His people with selfless love, appealing to God’s promises and character so that He would spare the people from full divine judgment. But we must not overlook the undeniable truth that the sin of idolatry still has great consequences (v. 28). And that day about three thousand men of the people fell.
Apart from Christ, this same punishment would fall on us. But He has “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53).
May we all “tear down the altars, dash in pieces the pillars, and chop down the carved images of all [false] gods, and destroy their name out of these places,” starting with our own hearts. He is worthy of our utmost effort on this front.
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” - 1 John 5:21
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” - Colossians 3:5
In our own strength, all is hopeless. But with Christ; victory is sure!
Prayer: “Heavenly Father, strengthen us in obedience, and keep us from vain novelty, manmade inventions, and false worship! Bring to our minds any idols which have stolen our hearts, that we might turn our eyes back to You. Purify our worship and cultivate in us patience, steadfastness, and endurance, so that we would not be led astray by temptation. Thank You Father for loving us enough to correct us when we wander. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.”
May God bless you,
T