Apostles Church

Idolatry and Relationships. James 4:1-10.
Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5 covetousness = idolatry. Idolatry is to be ruled by a desire for something, something that you have deemed more fundamental than God for fullness of life. Idolatry happens when desires that are legitimate and natural become ruling desires and controlling cravings. They are legitimate desires – like desires to be loved, to have security, to be significant or successful, to have a spouse or have children. But these good goals or wishes or longings or drives can become idolatrous when they are given ruling status in our lives. We have seen in this series that that is the natural tendency of our hearts: to take legitimate desires, natural affections and normal longings and turn away from God to these things so that we want, crave, desire, long for, and pursue these things more than or rather than God. They take first place in our affections. It is what Augustine called disordered loves. They are legitimate loves that are out of order in our lives. Calvin said it like this, “we teach that all human desires are evil, and charge them with sin – not in that they are natural but because they are inordinate (excessive). The evil in our desires so often lies not in what we want, but that we want it too much.” Nothing wrong with wanting to be loved, having security, wanting to be successful, etc., but when we want these things too much, excessively, we exalt those things to be functional gods, functional lords and saviors in our lives that we serve. We want them too much because we expect from them what only we are designed to find in God. We are saying to those things, I want you and must have you because you can save me – from insecurity, insignificance, vanity, fears, loneliness, etc. We want those things and feel we must have those things because we hold them as fundamental, more fundamental than God, for our lives and consequently want them more than we want God and his love and his will. Good goods but bad gods. That is the essence of idolatry – what is it that we want, crave, long for, and hold fundamental in our lives. Leads to a great question:

How do we know when a desire has become inordinate or an idolatrous ruling desire? Desire determines deed; affections fuel actions. Desire is root; behavior is fruit; to understand the nature of the root, examine the quality of the fruit.
Deepening alienation in our relationship with others. James 4:1-2 quarrels and fights the fruit of idolatrous desires, coveting. When a desire has become a ruling desires, an excessive craving for an object that you hold as fundamental for life  gets frustrated, it adversely affects how you treat others, even when the desire is good. Illustration: man on airplane wanting respect; Super Bowl Shooting; Kids Lying in the New York magazine; wanting success and wronging others to secure it; Powlison page 149-150; marriage – when desire for affection or affirmation goes unmet; Desire for comfort, ease, or personal pleasure is ruling desire and leads to neglect of children who require sacrifice, selflessness, from parents. Idolatrous desires are at the heart of every relational conflict. We want something we are not getting; something or someone is in the way. We want it more than we want to be trusting in and submitted to God and his will. Our will replaces God’s will. Jesus shows us a better way: in the garden – not my will but yours. A ruling desire for comfort or a ruling desire to love, trust and submit to God.

Deepening alienation between us and God. Jms 4:4-5 Notice we have been saying we want these things more than or rather than God and his desires. All of life is God-relational; all motivation is God relational. We are always responding to God – either loving him or despising him and giving our affections to something else; submitting to him or resisting him to serve something else; trusting in him or turning from him to something else; seeking him or neglecting him for other preferences and pursuits. This is the evil of idolatry – you are preferring and pursuing a functional god rather than the true God.  God calls this adultery. When a desire becomes a ruling desire, an excessive desire that controls our lives and becomes a functional god in our life, we are trusting and treasuring something more than God – we are cheating on him giving something other than him the love and loyalty that he is due. It is not simply that I want something; I want something rather than God; something other than God has captured my affections and attention. I have befriended a functional god, something in the world that I have inflated to god-like status and am at odds with the true God. It is not that we are deprived and have needs that need to be filled; we are depraved and crave things rather than God. This is the very essence of sin. This is why we said that every sin is the breaking of the first commandment – we have made something else our god, trusting and treasuring something else.
    This deepening alienation we feel will do one of two things. First: it will drive us deeper into idolatry – never eliminating the reality of God, but trying to fill the vacuum by exchanging God for more idols. The pain of this isolation will make us look to our functional gods even more and more – so we work harder, seek greater wealth, seek greater status to save us. OR it will drive us to GRACE (4:6). The saving help of God. Grace comes to us in Repentance and Replacement.
Repentance. Cleanse… Grace leads us to humble ourselves and acknowledge that we have sinned against the one true God by preferring our functional gods over Him. Grace leads us to turn from those idols to Christ and find in him forgiveness and freedom from our idols. He has died for our idolatry, adultery and alienation and in him we can be forgiven and free -good goods/bad gods.
Replacement. Grace brings a reordering of our loves. Chalmers: disordered affections are not driven or replaced from our hearts simply by reason or effort. They are driven from or reordered in our hearts when they are supplanted by another affection that is stronger. “It is seldom that any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. It is almost never done by mental determination. But what cannot be thus destroyed, may be dispossessed – and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind.” When you see the God of the Gospel – a loyal and loving God who sends his son to die for adulterous and idolatrous people. A God who comes to us in Christ to save us the false saviors that demand so much from us but cannot save us; who require so much from us but cannot rescue us. When you see this God giving you something better than the very things you have desired – giving you himself a new affection is born in you. You draw near to this God and in a very real way you sense him draw near to you and love for this God becomes the ruling affection of your heart. Repent and Replace - Moment and Movement.