Read: Exodus 20: 1-5

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God…

Reflect:

The Idol Factory of the Heart

In Ezekiel 14:3, God addresses the motives of the elders of Israel by saying, “These men have set up idols in their hearts.”

The leaders of Israel certainly knew they were not bow to a foreign god. They were not accused of bowing a knew to Baal or sacrificing to Molech. The reason for their distance from God originated from the “idols in their hearts.”

Like the elders of Israel, we don’t worship carved images, but is it possible that there are idols in our hearts? If so, what kind of idols are in our lives? Consider this definition of a counterfeit god from Thomas Oden –

“To be worshiped as a god, something must be sufficiently good to be plausibly regarded as the rightful of one’s valuing…. a god is a (good) finite thing that is loved and adored and viewed as that without which one cannot receive life joyfully.”

Respond:

Too much of a good thing?

Think about the good things in your life. How about naming just three things and then answering the question-  what happens if those three disappear today? Is it possibler that the good things become ultimate things?