When we think of the past of our people, the ancient Israelites, their idolatry is one of the first things that come to mind. Our comments about them in Bible classes usually pertain to how foolish they were for abandoning their God who made them and who rescued them out of Egypt. Instead, they worshiped these pieces of wood and stone, rather than the almighty, living God. We often stand in a place of judgment, having the privilege of being able to see their mistakes with the advantage of having hindsight. However, we ought to be thinking more about our similarities with our ancient brethren. First, they rarely, if ever, abandoned the worship of Yahweh. Their sin was in worshiping other gods alongside Yahweh. How often are we guilty of doing the same? We may go to church every Sunday, read our Bibles, and pray to Yahweh, but we also may worship other gods alongside him. Our political parties, our entertainment, our jobs, even our families may be exalted too highly to where they become an object of our worship. How do we know if they have reached the status of “god” in our hearts? One way to know is by examining if we could completely give these things up if God told us to do so.

In conclusion, I leave you with the last line of 1 John, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (5:21; ESV). We need to do this by any means necessary.