So many things in this world seem to turn out to be imposters. They promise so much, they look so good, but when you finally sacrifice everything to get that one thing – whatever it happens to be – it almost always disappoints. Have you ever wondered why that is?

After more than five decades living on planet Earth I’ve experienced here in Australia where I live, quite a few elections, after all Australia is a democracy and so we have regular elections. Every three years for our federal parliament, every four years for our state parliament and every few years for local government. So I have countless times heard politicians promising the Earth in order to get elected.

Aspiring Prime Ministers, aspiring State Premiers, aspiring local councillors adamantly proclaiming that this is what they will do and this is what they won’t do if only we’ll elect them. And each time I want to believe them, I do believe them, maybe the best way to put it is I put my hope and trust in them to lead our country, our state or our city in the right direction.

But no sooner do we elect them then all those rock solid promises seem to go out the window. Now there are often very good reasons for that, circumstances change, the economic outlook changes and so on but if I had a dollar for every time I felt deflated and disappointed through the breaking of the promises I heard before election day I think I’d be a pretty wealthy guy.

I know that it’s tough being a leader and a politician and I really feel for those people and respect them and all that but you get my drift. And yet it’s not just politicians and governments that so often disappoint us, let’s not pick on those mostly hard-working, mostly decent and honest people who step forward to lead in our society, so many other things disappoint as well even though they had promised so much.

I wonder in your life what have you been disappointed in. What was it that promised so much and then you tried it and it left you so terribly deflated when it failed to live up to the promise, hmm? Perhaps it was a relationship, a marriage perhaps. The courtship was so wonderful then ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years down the track – nothing.

Perhaps it was a child whom you brought into this world in great love and sacrificed for for so many years only for that son or daughter to go completely off the rails and desert you and reject you and the value’s you tried so hard to distil in them. Perhaps it was a job or a career choice; perhaps it was something that you’d saved hard for and bought only to discover that the sacrifice just wasn’t worth it.

I remember once, many years ago when I was earning lots of money, jetting around the globe, business class of course as a high-priced IT consultant, I bought myself a really expensive car, beautiful thing it was. Smooth curves, deep burgundy paint work, gorgeous soft creamy colour leather seats, that wonderful new car smell that you get, every electronic gadget you can imagine, four-wheel steering so you could turn the thing around on a pin head, really an amazing piece of luxury engineering.

I was so delighted when I picked it up from the showroom. It cost a huge amount of money and I went into debt to buy it because I just had to have it. And just a few years later I was on an overseas business trip and left it at the airport. When I came back I discovered that there had been a really big hailstorm. That beautiful sleek, shiny, deep burgundy skin had so many craters in it from where the hail had hit it that it looked a bit like, I imagine, the surface of the moon would look like.

I had it repaired of course but ever after that it had a leak in one of the rear passenger doors they could never find and fix so that when it rained I’d get a little swimming pool on the floor behind the driver’s seat that I had to empty with a cup. I ended up selling that car for a tiny fraction of what I paid for it.

Are you getting my drift here? So many things in this world disappoint and yet we chase after them with all that we are. We sacrifice our money, our energies, our time, our emotional strength to them over and over again trying to get them to work, trying to squeeze out of them that satisfaction that we’ve been looking for but over and over again they slap us in the face.

And when that happens to me I think to myself, ‘You dummy, haven’t you figured it out yet?’ Please don’t get me wrong, there are many good things in this world for us to enjoy and God does want us to enjoy them. Marriages are a good thing, a gift from God. Children, well yeah, they’re a good thing too, an amazing blessing from God and the things we can buy and do, they’re all great but when we get to sacrificing our money, our energies, our very lives on their altars that right there is wrong.

I want to share with you today what is probably a very familiar passage from Gods Word, the First and Second Commandments from Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 to 6, have a listen.

Then God spoke all of these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery and you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water or under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and who keep my commandments.

Today we’re kicking off a new series of messages that I’ve called God’s Very Best For You. It’s a really important series because this idolatry thing is something that you and I want to do over and over again. We want to take the good things of this world many of them perfectly good things and then place them above God in our lives.

And as we’ll see we often do that by rationalising that these are after all blessings from God. He wants me to be happy, He wants me to enjoy the good things of this world and of course He does but do you notice that there are two parts to this transgression of, if I can call it this, idolatry.

There is the making of the false image, “You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in the heaven above, that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.”

And then there’s the worshipping of it, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing the children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Now this is something that we’re going to chat quite a bit about over the next few weeks on the program but right now let me ask you, what is it in your life that has become a false image? That idol, that thing that you’ve made for yourself be it a career, a reputation, a relationship, a possession, whatever it is that you have placed above God by worshipping it.

By sacrificing your life and your resources in order to have it by pouring all your energies and all your time into it to try and squeeze that satisfaction out of it that it’s meant to give you that the world promised you it should give you. What is it in your life? Come on what is it?

Do you see how easily you’ve rationalised that behaviour away by telling yourself that it is after all God’s blessing and God does, after all, want you to be happy and to enjoy your life. Yeah, I know this is confronting. I know it’s uncomfortable but here’s the thing, God loves you so much that He wants the best for you, the very best for you.

And He knows how He’s made you and He made you so very deliberately in a way that the things of this earth, however good they are, will never ever ever bring you the joy and the peace and the contentment that can only be found in Him. It’s never going to happen. Your Father in heaven loves you so much that He only wants the best, the very best for you and that best, that very best is Jesus.

Idolatry is alive and well among God’s people today. Don’t believe me? Have a good look around the church. Have a good look at how God’s people, put the things of this world above the Word of God, above the love of God, above God Himself – when all the time, God is aching to give them, to give us, His best. His very best.

It’s funny how easy it is for you and me to go chasing after the things of this world when all along the very best thing of all, God Himself, is ready and waiting to be our very best. And we don’t just go chasing after those things, we sacrifice our lives to them.

I used to be a workaholic and just quietly if I don’t keep an eye on that that’s a habit that I can very quickly slip back into. Now back when I was an IT consultant, I had my own IT consulting firm, I was being a workaholic in order to make money in order to further my career and the company’s reputation. I did it because it made me feel good in so many ways and yet it caused me to lose the things that were in fact the most important things in my life.

These days, since I became a Christian and since I went into full-time ministry doing what I’m doing right now with you, I could so easily slip back into being a workaholic and rationalise that behaviour by telling myself that after all I’m in God’s business now, I’m doing His work, I’m sharing His love with all these people through these radio programs and on the internet.

Can I tell you just how easy it is for me to start believing that lie? It is the easiest thing in the world for me to work like an idiot, live out that lie, lose the balance and the rest that I need in my life and the time with my wife and my family and start to worship the works of my own hands and that, if you’ve spent any time reading the Bible, is called over and over and over again, it’s called idolatry which is the first thing that God tells us not to do in the Ten Commandments right?

And it’s something you see happening in the nation of Israel over and over again too. Moses is up on Mount Sinai getting the Ten Commandments from God and what are God’s people doing down in the valley? Here it is, Exodus chapter 32 verses 1 to 8.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, ‘come make gods for us. Who shall go before us? As for Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

And Aaron said to them, ‘take off your gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters and bring them to me’. So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it into a mould and cast an image of a calf and said, ‘these are your gods O Israel who brought you up from the land of Egypt.

When Aaron saw this he built an altar before it and Aaron made proclamation and said, ‘tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.’ They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being then the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.

The Lord said to Moses, ‘go down at once, your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have acted perversely. They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them, they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it and said ‘these are your gods O Israel who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them and of you I will make a great nation’.

Ha and because that worked so well for them they kept on doing it over and over again, you read about it right through the Old Testament. Eventually God has had enough and He pronounces judgement on them through the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 2 verses 8 to 10. He says;

Their land is filled with idols, they bow down to the work of their own hands, to what their own fingers have made and so people are humbled and everyone brought low, do not forgive them. Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his majesty.

So what is it with God’s people? What’s the matter with us? You see it’s not just the Israelites way back then two and a half thousand years ago, it’s us, Gods people here and now. We get things so badly out of whack, we start worshipping the works of our own hands. You see I could easily worship this ministry of Christianityworks above and beyond the God whom I’m serving, it would be so easy to do, it’s a temptation that I’m constantly guarding against.

You see I so enjoy doing what I do, I so enjoy seeing people’s lives changed, I so enjoy seeing new radio stations in far off lands starting to air these programs to a whole new audience, it’s an absolute delight and somewhere there is a line that I daren’t cross. A line where I start to worship the works of my own hands above and before God. A line where the ministry becomes more important to me than my relationship with Jesus.

I’ll be honest with you here there have been times where I’ve been guilty of that and God has had to slap me around and deal with me on it. In a sense this idolatry thing becomes so incredibly natural to us and it’s not just me it’s you too, it comes so easily to you too because idolatry isn’t just the making of physical idols like the golden calf or other statues and so on, it’s putting things in our lives that we place above God.

And there are so many things in that category in our lives. Have a listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the Colossians in the New Testament, chapter 3 verses 5 to 10. Paul says;

Put to death therefore whatever in you that’s earthly. Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desires and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these things the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways that you once followed when you were living that life but now you must get rid of all such thing, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language from your mouth.

Don’t lie to one another seeing that you’ve stripped off your old self and it’s practices and you’ve clothed yourselves with the new self which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

Do you see how long that list of things is that God calls idolatry? And it’s a whole bunch of things people do all the time that we place above Gods Word. He’s saying it’s wrong and we decide to ourselves ‘tough, it’s fine in my life, it’s okay, I’ll worship God, I’ll go to Church on Sunday’s but I’ll continue on with my anger or wrath or malice or slander or greed or abusive language or sexual immorality or evil desires’ all of which are idolatry.

Whenever we set something up above or against God we’re making an idol of it. We are worshipping it instead of God. Idolatry lies at the heart of our sinful nature and here’s the thing that you and I need to know about the things that are idols in our lives. Those idols are imposters, they’re not the real thing.

Pornography is a good example. Sex is something that God invented with the intention of blessing a man and a woman in a lifelong relationship of love and intimacy and when a man and a woman choose to live that out the blessing is enormous. Pornography on the other hand diverts the natural desires that we have into something that falls so far short of Gods ideal. It presents itself as being something attractive but it’s nothing more than the devil himself dressed up as the angel of light.

You see idols are imposters and they fall short of the real thing. Idols divert our natural desire and urge to worship God and plunge us into a world of hurt and pain. That’s the bad news but here’s the good news. God loves you so much that He wants the very best for you and His best is Jesus, His best for you is a lifelong, eternal, intimate, personal, powerful, dynamic, exciting relationship with Jesus.

He wants that so much that He sends Jesus to die for you. He wants that so much that He pours His Holy Spirit out on you. So which one are you going to go for, the imposter or Gods best?

Today on the program, I want to introduce you to two people who, perhaps more than any other Bible characters, show us how easily you and I can fall into idolatry. How easily you and I can turn our backs on God, and then tell ourselves that what we’re doing is just fine. These two people are like mirrors of who we are, and how stupidly we sometimes behave.

As I said I want to introduce you to a couple of Bible characters from the Old Testament Book of Judges who in a single chapter, Judges chapter 17, show us how easily we can fall into idolatry. Now these aren’t any of the A list players like Abraham or Moses or Isaiah, these are just two people who only appear this one time whose story in the context and in the whole sweep of Israel’s story told across the Old Testament is frankly pretty insignificant.

And yet God chooses to have their story included in the Bible in a Book that frankly not many of us go to all that often, in fact when I shared a message about these two people at our Church recently my Pastor came up to me afterwards and commented ‘that’s great, it’s good for us to go to Books in the Bible that we don’t go to all too often’.

Well there is a reason I’ve gone to this chapter. We’re told in the New Testament:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everybody who belongs to God maybe proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16)

Now this particular one is one of those sorts of Scriptures. It’s the story about a woman, we don’t find out her name and her son Micah. Now this is not the Micah who wrote the Old Testament Book of Micah, different guy altogether. So let’s dive in and have a bit of a look at their story. We’re going to Judges chapter 17 beginning at verse 1.

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, ‘The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing, that silver is in my possession, I took it but now I will return it to you,’ and his mother said, ‘May my son be blessed by the Lord’.

Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said, ‘I consecrate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal.’ So when he returned the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith who made it into an idol of cast metal and it was in the house of Micah.

This man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and a teraphim and installed one of his sons who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel, all the people did what’s right in their own eyes.

Now it starts off as quite a bizarre story, mum has lost eleven hundred pieces of silver, that was a huge amount of money for them back then, no doubt this was her life savings. There were, of course, no banks with high interest accounts or even with safety deposit boxes for her to secure her fortune in. So she did what everyone else did back then had to do, she hid it.

Nevertheless it was stolen. Imagine having your life savings stolen, all of your financial security, any sense of a happy retirement is gone. And then all of a sudden it emerges that her son, young Micah, was the thief, her own flesh and blood. He nicked all her money and now, obviously, his conscience gets the better of him and he returns the money.

Now mum should have been outraged, she should have been angry at this terrible act of theft and deceit. Instead she says ‘may my son be blessed by the Lord’. Well of course it’s good to forgive someone quickly but only Freud would have a field day with that one.

And then to celebrate she does what? She goes and makes an idol cast of metal using two hundred pieces of silver which in itself was a huge amount of money. And she consecrates the silver idol to the Lord our God, have you heard of anything as crazy as that? I mean the first of the Ten Commandments:

You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)

The second of the Ten Commandments:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing children for the inequity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. (Exodus 20:4)

How could they have taken something good, the silver and turn into something bad, the idol? The answer comes in the last verse of the passage that we read earlier;

“Because in those days there was no king of Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”

And that right there is exactly what we do, we reject authority, we reject the authority of Gods Word and we do what’s right in our eyes. I had an elder in a Church tell me recently that he doesn’t read the Bible because he finds in boring. Really? That same elder has come to the conclusion that he thinks that sex outside marriage is fine.

Well of course he would because he’s rejected Gods Word and that’s exactly what we do when we take something good and we turn it into an object of sacrifice and worship which displaces our worship of God and the rule of God’s Word in our lives. It removes Jesus as the Lord of our lives. We ignore Gods Word and replace it with what seems to be right in our own eyes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, idols are imposters. They rob us of Gods best. If Micah’s mother had truly wanted to bless God to celebrate the return of her life savings there’s a whole bunch of other things she could have done with two hundred pieces of silver. She could have given it to the poor, she could have taken it to the Levite’s to use in the service of God, hey she could have even thrown a party in honour of God and his goodness.

The one thing she couldn’t do to honour God was to build an idol which by the way then took up residence in Micah’s house to further lead him astray. And just as easy as it was for Micah and his mother to pervert the Word of God, that’s how easy it is for you and me when we reject His Word because we think we’re smarter, we think we’re wiser, we think that our ways are better than His ways.

I see it happen in people’s lives time and time again and I have to guard against it in my own life over and over again. Idolatry is singularly one of the most natural sins that we can commit and we do it at our peril.

So back to your life, back to your submission or your rejection of God’s Word, back to how you choose to live, humbly under the Word of God or doing what seems right in your own eyes. And the reason I’m being so blunt here, so direct here is that idolatry is deadly, idolatry saps the faith out of you, idolatry causes you to wander off and to reject God and I believe that God speaking to you and me today calling us back to Him.

I believe that of the millions of people listening to this message around the world today there are many, many, many who need to hear this call back to God’s very best for them. Are you one of them? If so then listen up, listen to what Gods Word is saying to you today. Jonah chapter 2, verse 8.

“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.”

Psalm 16, verse 4.

“The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply. Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.”

Leviticus chapter 19, verse 4.

“Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal for I am the Lord your God.”

1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 14.

“Therefore my beloved flee from idolatry.”

1 John chapter 5, verse 21.

“Little children keep yourself from idols.”

Are you hearing God’s call to you today? Those were just a small fraction of the Scriptures that call us away from the idols we set up in our lives and in our homes. They’re just a fraction of what God has to say about the imposters that we would fill our lives with. They’re just a tiny smidgeon of the Scriptures through which God cries out to us to call us back to his best, to Jesus His Son.

Please, please, please hear God cry to you today, please hear His call, please turn away from your idols and back to Jesus for Christ’s sake.

The single easiest thing that you and I can ever do, is to turn something good into something bad. God gives us something good, some blessing, and we respond by taking that blessing and doing something with it, that in effect, is our slap in the face to God. Scary, but true.

Okay so yesterday on the program we met Micah and his mother who took something really good and turned it into something really bad. They took what was, in effect, a blessing from God and turned it into a curse. Something you and I, if the truth be known, are incredibly adept at doing. Let’s just remind ourselves of their story.

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said to his mother, ‘the eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and even spoke it in my hearing, that silver is in my possession, I took it but now I’m going to return it to you’. And his mother said, ‘may my son be blessed by the Lord.

Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother and his mother said, ‘I consecrate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make an idol of cast metal’. So when he returned the money to his mother his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith who made it into an idol cast of metal and it was in the house of Micah.

This man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and a teraphim and installed one of his sons who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes.  (Judges chapter 17 verses 1 to 6)

The bizarre twist as we saw in this story is the woman is so overjoyed at getting her life savings back that she decides to take that which is good, the silver or at least part of it and turned it into something which is bad, an idol which then went on to live in her son’s house to lead him further astray.

In fact there’s not a single worse thing that she could have done than build an idol because that’s right at the top of God’s rather small list of things that we shouldn’t do. Why? Because God wants the very best for us and idols fall a long, long way short of that.

God is God, God deserves our honour and our worship and when instead we worship the works of our own hands as it seems we so readily do it’s like slapping God in the face with a wet fish. But right now we’re going to take this idolatry thing a step further because there are those leaders in our Church who not only fail to address the idolatry that’s happening amongst their flock, they not only fail to preach the sort of messages that need to be preached and hold people to account to God’s Word but they actually support and promote idolatry themselves.

‘Impossible’ I hear you say. Hmm not at all, in fact the very next verses in this story of terrible idolatry that is such a salutary lesson to us, that’s exactly what happens. Let’s take a look, Judges chapter 17 verses 7 to 13.

Now there was a young man of Bethlehem in Judah of the clan of Judah. He was a Levite residing there. This man left the town of Bethlehem in Judah to live wherever he could find a place. He came to the house of Micah in the hill country of Ephraim to carry on his work.

Micah said to him, ‘where do you come from?’ and he replied, ‘I’m a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah and I’m going to live wherever I can find a place to stay’. Then Micah said to him, ‘stay with me and be a father and a priest and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, a set of clothes and your living.

The Levite agreed to stay with the man and the young man became to him like one of his sons so Micah installed the Levite and the young man became his priest and was in the house of Micah. Then Micah said, ‘now I know that the Lord will prosper me because the Levite has become my priest.

So along comes this Levite, this priest, who should have known better, he was a Levite after all from the tribe who was meant to be, in effect, the priests who served the one true God and minister to God’s people. And this Levite, instead of showing Micah the error of his ways in this idolatry that he was doing, the priest instead joins him in this terrible act of idolatry and becomes an accessory to this crime against God.

And in his failure to correct Micah in his complicity that is idolatry he further leads Micah astray as Micah concludes ‘all must be good, now I know that the Lord will prosper me because the Levite has become my priest’. In other words given now that he has the Levite’s stamp of approval in effect Micah is now further convinced that what he’s doing is fine by God and that God will indeed bless him and prosper him.

Listen to me, just because the Church doesn’t stand up and speak against the idolatry of our times it doesn’t make it right. Just because some preacher far from speaking against the idolatry of wealth and deceit and sexual immorality and disunity, they even endorse those things, it doesn’t make them right.

Now please don’t get me wrong most Churches are good Churches but there are also many out there who will lead you astray into idolatry and away from God’s Word. See it’s precisely what Jesus predicted would happen, Matthew chapter 24 beginning at verse 9.

Then they will hand you over to be tortured and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. Then many will fall away and they will betray one another and hate one another and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray and because of the increase in lawlessness the love of many will grow cold but the one who endures to the end will be saved and this good news of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all the nations and then the end will come.

In other words, they’re the ones who will tell you that you’re not meant to suffer, you’re not meant to sacrifice, God wants to bless you and make you rich and make your life comfortable. Or others will come along and tell you Jesus isn’t the only way, in fact other faiths and belief systems equally get you into heaven, plenty of those guys out there, there are plenty of those Churches out there.

Just as the Levite, through his complicity, led Micah astray so there are those preachers, teachers, leaders and Churches who will do the same. Be warned. The Churches seal of approval to something doesn’t always mean that it’s right, the only authority for right and wrong, good and bad, blessing and curse is the Word of God and that’s why it’s so vitally important that each one of us should be men and women of God’s Word.

If Micah had been a man of God’s Word then when his mother suggested the idol he would have drawn back in horror and corrected her because he would have known that the first and the second Commandment of God from Exodus chapter 20 from the Law of Moses said ‘no’. That’s exactly what this passage of Scripture, 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 to 7 talks about.

You must understand this that in the last days distressing times will come for people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of Godliness but denying it’s power.

Avoid them for among them are those who will make their way into households and captivate silly women overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires who are always being instructed and yet can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

That’s what was going on with Micah and his mother and the Levite, that is going on in many a Church today, too many and God has a very simple command when it comes to people like that who deny Gods power but on the outside are all Godly and sweet. AVOID THEM. Please do not be led astray by false doctrine, by false prophets, by false teachers no matter how smooth, how slippery their words may appear.

God will not be mocked, you and I will reap what we sow and it’s up to each one of us to throw out our idols, whatever form they may take and turn our lives back to Jesus, the one who loves you so much that He died for your sins. Jesus, right here you have God’s very best for you, nothing else even comes close.

Idolatry, displacing God as your Lord and King, and then worshipping someone or something else, is just about as easy to do as falling off a bike. It takes absolutely no effort at all. The question is, how do you avoid it? How do you finally lay down your idols and put God back in the number one spot that He deserves in your life?

Right, so you’ve decided to deal with the idols in your life. Something or someone has set itself up in your heart above God, ahead of God. It might be a person or a possession or a position, it might be a loved one, it might be that new car you’ve been dreaming of and you’re prepared to go way into debt and compromise your giving to God’s work in order to get it. Or it might be a career or what other people think of you.

You know in your heart of hearts that this one thing has gone from being something good in your life to overtaking your life, from something that was good for you to something that has enslaved you, from a servant to a master, from a thing to an idol, a little god of some sort that you sacrifice your whole life to.

You’ve realised that and now you want to do something about it but it’s just not easy because you are so used to having that idol in your life. Now what? Where do you turn? What do you do? Are you relating to this? Are you feeling God tugging at the tender part of your heart that’s wrapped around your idol calling you to let it go? You know you should but it’s kind of like, like being addicted to chocolate. You know it’s bad for you but man, I just want one more piece, right? It tastes so good, right?

So where do you turn? To God of course, to God’s Word. And that’s why we’re going to spend a few minutes with a man who had exactly this same problem, not just any man but one of the Bible’s A list, his name of course was Abraham. Called out of his comfortable wealthy existence by God to head off on a hair-brain twenty-five year journey.

He and his wife were childless and they were already in their mid seventies but God promised them a son and called them onto a journey to the so-called Promised Land that Abraham’s multitude of descendants would inherit. Huh, like I said a pretty hare-brained idea.

Cut a long story short, Abraham and Sarah went on this tortuously long journey, they honoured God, believed in God and eventually having even laughed at God over this stupid, ridiculous promise of becoming parents, father and mother to a multitude of descendants at the age of a hundred, God gives them a son and tells them to call him Isaac which means in Hebrew ‘he laughs’. In other words God’s great sense of humour, God got the last laugh and of course he who laughs last laughs best.

But as times go on this wonderful son Isaac, you can imagine how Abraham doted on him after all that had happened, Isaac starts to displace God in Abrahams heart. So God decides to put Abraham to a test, Genesis chapter 2 verses 1 to 8.

After these things God tested Abraham. He said, ‘Abraham’, he said, ‘here I am Lord’, he said, ‘take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you.’ So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. He cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance where God had shown him.

On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘stay here with the donkey, the boy and I will go over there, we will worship and then we will come back to you’. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.

Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘father’ and he said ‘here I am my son’, he said ‘the fire and the wood is here but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God Himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering my son.’ So the two of them walked on together.

Hey it’s pretty scary stuff isn’t it? But there’s more, it goes on, Genesis chapter 22 verses 9 to 14.

When they had come to the place that God had shown them Abraham built an altar and there he laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached his hand out and took his knife to kill his son. The angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham’ and he said, ‘here I am’, he said ‘do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.

And Abraham looked up and he saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son so Abraham called that place ‘the Lord will provide’, as it is said today ‘on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.

Listen to me, God loves you too much to let you continue in your idolatry. If He sees your heart straying away from Him He will put you to the test, He will bring you to a binary decision point, in other words a place where there are only two options, either to lay down your idol or hang onto it and keep worshipping it. To keep heading on into the wrong direction or to give up your idol as much as it may hurt and turn your life back to Him.

The whole point of today’s message is to tell you this one thing, God loves you and if an idol has seduced your heart He will test your heart and give you the opportunity to turn back to Him. He won’t force you but He’ll test you and He wants you to know that and be ready so that when the test comes you’ll know what’s going on.

Oh by the way, would you like to hear how Abraham’s test ended, what God said to him? Here it is, Genesis chapter 22 verses 15 to 18.

The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, ‘by myself I have sworn’ says the Lord, ‘because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will bless you and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and of the sand that is on the seashore and your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessings for themselves because you have obeyed my voice.

It kind of makes you want to pass the test right? Of course it does because the whole point of letting go of your idols, that person, that possession, that position, whichever it is is so that God can give you His very best for your life. God does want to bless you but like any good Father that’s something He can’t do when His child is haring off in the wrong direction away from Him and towards destruction.

He will pull you back, He will bring you to that decision point and with all my heart I want you to be ready for when that happens because passing that test, making the right decision is how we get hold of God’s promises and blessings for our lives.

It of course sounds so simple as I explain it to you doesn’t it? But let me warn you I know it’s much harder to do than it sounds and because it is, I’ve made a decision in my life, I hold onto God’s blessings loosely, I want to be ready, if God wants to take something away from me to give it up to Him willingly because if that’s how I look at my blessings, if that’s how I treat my blessings they’re far less likely to wrap their tendrils around my heart and become my idols.

An idol is something that you won’t let go of for God’s sake, it’s something that displaces God as your Lord and King and invariably it’s something that leads to a world of pain and hurt no matter how much of a blessing it may have seemed to you. You can’t argue that Isaac was a huge blessing from God to Abraham but even God’s blessings have to be put in the right place in our lives.

Lest they become idols, lest they lead us astray, lest we turn our backs on God and make gods out of our blessings. When that test comes you’ll know it and I pray that you will have the courage to lay down your idols and discover God’s very best for you.