Series: God and the Nations

The Idols of the Nations

Rom. 1.21-25; Acts 17.29-31

Introduction

In modern, Western culture it is taboo to be intolerant of other people’s beliefs or lifestyles. People today want to emphasize acceptance and diversity. And so Christians are often hesitant to speak in ways that make us seem intolerant or judgmental. This is unfortunate because we cannot understand or appreciate the good news about Jesus unless we first understand the tragedy of sin and the terrifying wrath of God.

The entire book of Romans is an exposition of the Gospel. But Paul first shows that there is a universal need for what God has done in Christ. Without understanding the need, the good news would perhaps not seem so good. The Gospel declares that there is a righteousness from God that comes through faith in Christ. But why do people need to be righteous? That is Paul’s first order of business. The Apostle will prove that the entire human race is unrighteous. The analysis of the unrighteousness of humanity is thorough and detailed so that there are no loopholes allowing any person to escape this conclusion. There is no one who is righteous. No, not even one. In other words, not even you!

Paul’s argument indicts both Jews and Gentiles. The Jews had special revelation from God and had received His Law. But they broke the Law and turned away from God. Even though God began to work with Abraham and his descendants and revealed Himself in special ways to the people of Israel, this did not mean that the rest of the nations were free from all responsibility. The Gentiles did not have special revelation from God, but they did have some knowledge of God through the natural world. Unfortunately, the Gentiles failed to acknowledge the true God and turned instead to idols. The Gentile nations are in Paul’s mind in the first part of the argument. And Paul wants to point out the cause for the unrighteousness of the Gentiles. There is a specific sin that marked the Gentiles nations: the sin of idolatry.

From the beginning of the world the entire human race knew there was one God who created everything. The created order stands as a witness to the existence and the power of God. Even though God did not speak directly to the Gentile nations, the Creation itself was speaking to them about God. But from a very early period in human history, the nations of the world turned their backs on the one true God and began to worship idols.

In the modern world there is a tendency to think of idolatry as something belonging to man’s ignorant past. We believe in science now and not all that ancient superstition about gods and goddesses. Modern man believes that what the ancient peoples attributed to the gods is really just the natural powers of the world operating according to scientific laws. But idolatry was more than man’s lack of scientific knowledge about the world. This is one of the great errors of evolutionary theory: the ancients were primitive fools and modern man is intellectually superior, which is something C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” We must understand is what idolatry really is; both the idolatry of the ancients and the idolatry of the modern world. The modern world is no less idolatrous than the ancient world, if we know how to identify idolatry. The Apostle Paul gives us a very clear definition of idolatry that can still apply to the modern world in which we live. Modern, scientific man is idolatrous but his idolatry is dressed up in different clothes. When we know what idolatry is we will be able to spot it everywhere, perhaps even in surprising places where we had not noticed it before. Many of the sins that we do notice on a daily basis in our society are actually manifestations of idolatry, which is the deeper transgression.

We need to understand the roots of idolatry so that we can see how it is practiced even in our modern world. Modern man is really not all that different from the Ancients, in spite of how we think about ourselves. Then we should also see the results of idolatry, or what it produces in people’s lives and in society. The things we see people doing can be traced to a deeper, spiritual problem. We should be getting down to the real issue. Christians may even find bits and pieces of idolatry lingering in their own lives! We will also then come to understand how God responds to idolatry or how He feels about it when He sees it happening in the world. It would be a mistake to think that God is neutral and unaffected by the idolatry of the nations. And then we must see how people might be redeemed from the clutches of idolatry. This whole discussion leads to despair unless there is a way out of this trap.

The Roots of Idolatry

Intentional Rejection

The roots of idolatry run deep beneath the human family tree. This particular sin is at the root of many other sins that have always plagued the human race. The ultimate sin is turning away from God: refusing to acknowledge Him as God, putting Him out of our thoughts, acting as if He does not even exist. This is the root of idolatry.

There is no explicit mentioning of idolatry at the building of the Tower of Babel. But there was no thought of God at Babel. The spirit of Babel endured and has infected all the nations. The nations originally knew there was one God who created everything, yet they intentionally rejected that knowledge and chose to worship idols. This was an intentional rejection, even suppression, not just an innocent ignorance. Think of what a serious crime it is in a court of law to suppress evidence so that the truth cannot be known. But this is what mankind has done with the truth about God! The truth has been suppressed, not merely forgotten.

God would not hold people responsible for what cannot be known. But willful ignorance is another matter. A student who is not aware of an assignment would not be punished for not completing it. But a student who knows when the essay is due and then does not complete the assignment is going to be penalized. No excuses will be accepted. It would not matter if the student were simply careless and forgot when the assignment was due. Carelessness in this case would be just as bad as open rebellion.

There is no excuse for humanity’s rejection of God. Whatever else we do in life, how we respond to the knowledge of God is the central issue. We can turn to God or we can turn away from God. And we are doing one or the other every day of our lives. Each day we come to a fork in the road and we must make a decision. In each decision a destiny is being formed.

Insidious Rebellion

But this turning from God to idols was not simple carelessness. There was something more insidious behind humanity’s rejection of God. Idolatry is rebellion. Mankind is not like a well-meaning but absent-minded child who forgot to do his homework because he was busy playing ball. Mankind is more like a rebel who wants to make God go away. This explains a lot about the world today. In the heart of every person is a little Rebel who wants more than anything else to have his way. Mankind has declared war on God. God has seen this kind of rebellion before. The Devil and his angels once started a rebellion in Heaven itself. They were cast out of heaven but have continued to incite rebellion on the earth. And the human race has joined the Rebellion. Sin is cosmic rebellion.

We desire to have mastery, independence, and autonomy. We want to chart our own course, make our own decisions, and determine our own destiny without any interference from a demanding Deity. The world wants to be free from God and people are actually willing to die in order to have that freedom. That was the original choice made in Eden. Death is exactly what we got for our rebellion against God: “the wages of sin are death.”

The human race has always wanted all of the benefits of fellowship with God without actually having to deal with God. We want a perfect world in which no one gets hurt or dies. We want a world where there is love. God is love. But the world does not want God. How can we ever hope to have happiness or enjoy anything good when the Source of all happiness and goodness is rejected? We want the gifts without the Giver. The human race has been like a surly, ungrateful teenager who takes all his parent’s good gifts, rolls his eyes at their loving admonishment, and locks the door to his room to play video games. Ingratitude towards God and His good gifts, that He has given even to rebels, is a much more serious sin than we would like to admit.

Inadequate Religion

Man rejected God but did not cease to be religious. We must worship. Instead of worshiping the living God, man began to worship the creation. Idolatry is the worship of creation rather than the Creator. Mankind exchanged the worship of the Creator for the worship of the creation. The ancient pagans worshiped the creation quite literally and intentionally. They worshiped the sun, moon, and stars. They worshiped the earth itself. They deified the various forces of nature. Nearly all of the ancient gods and goddesses of the ancient world had some connection to nature. The ancient peoples also deified their own passions so that the various gods and goddesses seemed a lot like mortal men and women. All pagan religion was based on fear and alienation. The gods had to be propitiated. The worship of creation does not lead to peace and security for the worshipers. The idols do not care for men. The old pagan gods were takers, not givers.

The old paganism seems strange to modern men and women. Our science has taught us to control nature rather than to fear its power. Modern man has even rejected the very idea of a spiritual reality. The modern, scientific worldview is based on materialism. Modern people believe that the human race has outgrown religion. Some modern thinkers even predicted the end of all religion. But that never happened! Modern people have been very wrong about religion. We may not worship all the old pagan deities but modern man is still very religious. Most modern people do not consider themselves to be religious. But religion simply means “devotion” and worship is just “service.” For some people it is another person who is the object of their devotion. It may be a job and a career that is dutifully and faithfully served. Religion is whatever gives our life ultimate meaning and purpose. Worship is what we value and give ourselves to. Modern man is still very religious. He worships with as much energy and devotion as his ancient ancestors, though the names of our modern gods are different. But it is still idolatry because the things modern man worships are aspects of creation rather than the Creator.

The Results of Idolatry

Darkness of Mind

We should not think that God was indifferent about the idolatry of the nations. Sometimes we tend to think of God as less than a person. We think of Him as a Force or just a Mind. While we should not make God out to be like fallen man we should also remember that we are made in His image. God is not subject to passions like men are, but God does have a heart. God is not unaffected by what men do and He does respond to us and the decisions we make. God is not indifferent to men.

If men and women are made to worship, but we focus that worship on false gods rather than our Creator, we can expect to see and experience some bad consequences. The consequences or the results of idolatry are a large part of Paul’s argument in this section of Romans. The ancient peoples rejected the knowledge of God and began to worship the creation instead. What happened as a result? How did God manage the rest of the nations, even when they departed from Him and fell deeper and deeper into idolatry? God obviously did not destroy them. But God did not speak to them directly like He did to the nation of Israel. So what happened to these idolatrous nations?

Because they did not keep God in their minds, their minds became darkened. They did not know God. The Bible speaks about a spiritual kind of darkness that is the result of being alienated from God. Darkness is ignorance of God. God is light. There is no darkness with God. When we walk with God everything else is illuminated by His light. But what happens if we do not walk with God? We are then walking in the darkness. The nations became like a person who is stumbling around in the darkness. A secular historian might object to this characterization of the ancient world. What about all of the great civilizations? What about the glories of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome? It is interesting that a little Jewish man like Paul, who was the leader of a pitifully small sect called the Christians, should summarize the histories and accomplishments of all the great civilizations of the ancient world by saying that they were all in the dark! But Paul was talking about man’s relationship with God, not all of the earthly things that man can accomplish. Because we are made in the image of God we are capable of doing some great things, even when alienated from God. Monkeys don’t build pyramids or towers or produce works of art. But these accomplishments were still done in the darkness because they were done without God. All of the accomplishments of men that are done without God are done in vain. Even the very best of the works men do in darkness are ultimately just dust in the wind. Today there are millions of people who are devoting their lives to all kinds of pursuits, some of which are noble, but are vain things apart from God and cannot bring satisfaction or eternal life. What if we have the whole world and lose our souls?

The Departure of God

The darkness of the mind was perhaps a natural and logical result of turning from God. If man refuses to keep God in his mind, then it makes sense that man will not know God and will be in the dark in that respect. Man turned away from God. How did God respond? God expressed His wrath against the idolatry of the nations. But the expression of that wrath is not what we might expect. We think of wrath as fire and brimstone. But there is another way that God expresses wrath and this is what Paul alludes to here in Romans. In His wrath against the idolatry of the nations, God simply let them go their own way and departed from them just as they had already departed from Him. In other words, this wrath was expressed as Divine abandonment. God did not intervene but left them to their own decision and to their own devices. God did not destroy the nations. He simply let them go.

There is a sense in which none of us can literally escape from God’s presence completely. And God did not abandon the nations for all time. But when people turn away from Him God may just give them what they want and let them go. Remember the story of the Prodigal Son? When the son wanted to leave the father gave him his inheritance and let him go. This is an aspect of God’s nature we need to know. This does not make God unloving or uncaring. God does not reject people who are earnestly seeking Him. But those who reject Him may get exactly what they want: God will leave them alone. In the end this is what Hell will be. There will be some people God will abandon forever.

The Degeneration of Society

But even in this world there may be times when God abandons people and lets them go their own way. We should be clear about this: God does not abandon people who are seeking Him! The people who are abandoned are those who have rejected the knowledge of God and turned from Him. What happens to people who have been abandoned by God? When people turn away from God there is no longer anything restraining them from pursuing their passions. In other words, when people turn away from God and His authority the only thing that rules their lives is their desire. The whole point of life then becomes the gratification of desires, whatever those cravings might be. Apart from God there is no way to determine if a certain desire is good or not. With God as the object of our desire, everything else is good. But without God nothing is good. When God’s hands are on the reigns of our desires we enjoy some protection and guidance. But if God were to take His hands away and let us run like wild horses we are in danger. Our desires can consume us and drive us to the point of destruction.

I am not here referring to eternal destruction in Hell, although that is also a reality, but to the destruction of our earthly lives as well. Picture being dragged helplessly behind a team of wild horses who are running directly for a cliff. Or, picture a powerful locomotive that is running at top speed and then goes off the track. This is what happened to human society apart from God. Anyone who has studied history can easily see a pattern of degeneration and self-destruction in every society and civilization that has come into existence. Eventually every nation, kingdom, society, or civilization burns itself out and implodes through greed, corruption, oppression, violence, and death. Idolatry is destructive to human life and community.

The Redemption of Idolaters

Declare the Glory of God

This entire first section of Romans is designed by the Apostle Paul to get us to a point where we are asking ourselves “is there any hope at all?” Now we are right where we need to be! Now we can be ready to hear the good news about salvation through Christ. But we could not hear the Gospel until we were at a point where we saw the need. And we saw that we ourselves could not find the solution. It was man’s actions that caused all the trouble. Are we to put our hope in man to reverse everything? The solution must come from God, not from man. God has a plan to redeem the nations from their slavery to idolatry. Paul’s letter to the Romans is an exposition of that plan of redemption and the message that declares that Divine plan.

But it might be better to see the Apostle Paul in action as he actually preaches that Gospel to some idolaters. We have an account of Paul doing exactly that in the book of Acts. While on one of his missionary journeys Paul found himself in the city of Athens. Athens was the cultural center of the ancient Greco-Roman world and it was filled with idolatry. Paul could not let this go without doing some preaching. He preached in the marketplace and was then invited to Mars Hill, which was a gathering of intellectuals. Luke records Paul’s sermon to these Athenian philosophers. How does the great Apostle speak to them? How do you speak to people who worship idols?

Paul declares the glory of God. In order for idolaters to be redeemed they must hear about the one, true God. This is the God who created the world. He is not some aspect of creation but is the source of everything. This God cannot be contained in a temple and He does not need anything from us. Rather, He gives everything to us and we depend on Him for our very lives. Idolaters need to know that they are fundamentally wrong about God, even if this message is unpopular. The truth about who God is has to be declared. This is what the Church has been called by God to do in the world: declare the glory of the one, true God.

 

Clarify the Duty of Man

This is the God who created mankind. And He cares for us and is involved in human history. God has so arranged the world and all its people in such a way that every nation has the opportunity to know about the one, true God. In fact, God put man on this earth so that we can seek after God and find Him. Life is about knowing God. Anyone who wants this knowledge can have it, if he seeks after God. God is not playing some kind of cruel game with humanity. God is not hiding from us and then waiting to strike us down. God is not hard to find or far away. God is everywhere! He is right here under our noses, if we care to see Him.

Paul even quotes some of the pagan poets who knew that God surrounds us and upholds us. Some of the old pagans knew that human beings are the offspring of Deity. In other words, some of the wise pagans knew that idolatry was wrong and illogical. Why should we worship inanimate things when we ourselves obviously came from something beyond nature? It is beneath human dignity to worship creation rather than the Creator. In this respect some of the old pagan thinkers were closer to the truth than modern thinkers. Modern thinkers say that mankind simply evolved from the natural world. Some of the old pagans knew better. The Bible says we are made in the image of God. So why should we worship that which is inferior to us? Should we not seek to worship something that is higher than we are?

Our one duty in life is to seek God. That is the fact that Paul was declaring to the Athenians. But here we must merge Paul’s sermon with Paul’s doctrine in Romans. The reality is that no nation has ever done its duty to God. No nation has ever sought after God. So here is the great tragedy of sin: God made us to seek Him and no one has been doing what he or she was made to do! We have all turned away from God. That fact may not be surprising. What might be surprising is the patience, kindness, and grace of God. In ancient times God was merciful to the nations that turned away from Him. He overlooked their idolatry because He was preparing a way of salvation and blessing for the nations.

 

Anticipate the Day of Judgement

But God no longer overlooks the idolatry of the nations. The plan of God has reached a point of fulfillment. All the centuries of preparation, in which God let the nations go their way and worked exclusively with the nation of Israel, have reached a point of fulfillment. The true God has appeared and revealed Himself to the whole world. This message is going to be preached to every nation before the End comes. Every nation will hear the Gospel of Christ and will be given an opportunity to repent of their idolatry and turn to the true and living God. Paul’s message in Athens to the idolaters on Mars Hill was concluded by a call to repentance. Repentance simply means to turn to God. Turning to God means turning away from every false god. A day of judgment is coming when God will hold all men accountable. This Judgment will be executed through a man whom God raised from the dead. Paul preaches the resurrection of Jesus because he wants to anchor his message in historical fact. The Christian message is not some mythology or philosophy. God has entered into human history and has acted decisively, which is a fact that calls for a decision.

The Gospel contradicted the Athenian’s worldview. They had no place for a resurrection. The Gospel will always dismantle the cultural idols that men worship. In every culture there are idols, usually in the form of ideas, that must be broken down. Men are called by the Gospel to forsake all of their false ideas and embrace the truth as it has been revealed in Jesus. When we preach Jesus we are not just preaching another idea. We are not saying that our philosophy or religion is better than other philosophies and religions. We are telling men to turn from all of their philosophies and religions, none of which can save, forgive sin, or give eternal life.

God has given the nations an opportunity for repentance. The Church is supposed to preach this message, even it is unpopular. Preaching repentance is a part of preaching the Gospel. The good news is that God has made a way for us to be saved from His wrath. God is both Judge and Savior. His wrath is being revealed against all of man’s suppression of the truth. But God’s grace has also been revealed in providing a way to escape His wrath.

Conclusion

Identifying Modern Idols

When we talk about idolatry most people think we are just giving a history lesson in ancient culture. We don’t worship the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome. You probably won’t see many people bowing down to graven images. So it is easy to think that idolatry is a thing of the past. Modern man has outgrown idolatry, right? We have advanced beyond those ancient superstitions.

It is true that modern man is not as outwardly religious as the old pagans were. But this does not mean that modern people are not religious and that they don’t still worship. Modern man still worships creation rather than the Creator. Idolatry means to be devoted and to serve anything, or anyone, other than the Creator. If we accept this definition of idolatry, it is clear that modern men and women still worship idols. The ancient Romans worshiped Mars, the god of strength and power. Do modern people still worship strength and power? Of course. The old pagans worshiped Venus, the goddess of beauty and pleasure. Do modern people worship beauty and pleasure? Religiously!

Modern people worship not only power and pleasure but also money, success, fame, and knowledge. People today have in some cases religiously devoted themselves to saving the planet, perhaps a noble cause, but without any thoughts of the God who created the planet in the first place. There are hundreds of pursuits that people devote themselves to rather than to the God who created them and all of these pursuits are modern idols.

These modern idols are perhaps even more insidious than their ancient counterparts. The modern idols disguise themselves and sneak into our lives through the relentless barrage of cultural values. Every day we are told by our culture what we must do and what we must accomplish in order to be happy and to feel fulfilled. And if we are not able to obtain the things that culture tells us we must have, then we feel miserable and consider life meaningless. Whatever gives us ultimate meaning and happiness is our god. For some people this is money and all the things money can buy. For some people it is physical strength and beauty. For other people it is the love and adoration of other people. But if anything other than the Creator gives us meaning and happiness, we are also guilty of idolatry. Our modern idols are idols of the heart and of the mind. But these idols are just as powerless, impersonal, and merciless as the ancient pantheon of gods and goddesses once were.

 

Staying Free from Idols

Our modern, Western culture is still a lot like the city of Athens that the Apostle Paul visited. There are idols everywhere, though perhaps not so obviously. Christians need to be able to spot the idols underneath nearly everything in our culture and society. Almost everything people do, the things that motivate them, are idols. But because Christians are still in the world we must be aware of the fact that we are still vulnerable to the seduction of the idols. This is why we are warned not to love the world (1 John 2.15-17). Christians are also warned not to believe the doctrines of false teachers who cause people to devote themselves to intellectual idols, or ideas about God or Christ that are false. Any false god is an idol, even false ideas about God. It is crucial that Christians take their knowledge about God directly from Scripture so that we believe in and worship the one, true, living God and not some false god that has been invented by men or even by the doctrines of demons.

Christians are tempted by modern idols because culture is constantly trying to make us conform. It is natural to want to be accepted by other men and even praised by them. This is itself an idol. Christians are supposed to be different and separate from the world. This creates otherness and potential ridicule and rejection. And many so-called Christians modify and compromise their beliefs and their teachings to fit the spirit of the Age and so avoid being cultural outcasts. The Church has always felt the pressure of the world to conform and this will continue until the world passes away.

But in an even deeper and more personal way, the idols seduce Christians to seek their meaning, purpose, and security in something other than the living God. Christians are tempted to seek meaning in the praise of other people rather than the praise of God. We are tempted to seek purpose in a career rather than in serving God. And we are tempted to seek security in worldly wealth rather than trusting in God to provide. It is even possible for a Christian to be tempted to put his or her confidence in a particular Church, theological system, or denominational tradition and heritage rather than in personal faith in the living God. This is also a form of idolatry, even if the idol wears the name of “Christian.” But all of the idols will disappoint us and leave us with broken hearts. Our faith and hope are in the living God, the maker of heaven and earth.