Shun
(keep clear away from, avoid by flight if need be) any sort of idolatry
(of loving or venerating anything more than God). 1 Corinthians 10:14 AMP
There
are many things which are not only harmless but good in themselves,
which have, nevertheless, been allowed to take the place of the Lord
Himself, and good things can therefore embody the principle of idolatry
in the one in whom the devotion is found.
Touch some Christians, or
Christian institutions, and let the touch be even in relation to
something more of the Lord Himself, and you will find an uprising of
jealous regard for the institution which utterly blinds to that
possibility of an extra measure of the Lord Himself.
You can be so
devoted to a denomination, a missionary society, a piece of Christian
work, that there is no room for any extra measure of the Lord.
The thing
itself has become the end, the object for which you live, and when the
Lord wants to get you moved on into something more of Himself, the
obstacle is that good Christian work, association, institution,
tradition, connection.
Yes, and that is idolatry in principle, and we
see from
history how the Lord again and again has had to smite with smashing
blows things which in themselves were good, in order to save His people
unto Himself personally....
What is He after? It is Himself which He is seeking
to establish as the object of man's life, and not the things that have
relation to Himself: and I say again, you meet something intensely
fierce if you touch a thing, even though you are touching it maybe with a
view to getting people to move on with the Lord Himself.
To put that in
the other way, if your appeal for moving on with the Lord seems to
people to involve their having to move away from this or that or some
other thing, then there is warfare; which shows that Satan in his
eternal campaign of idolatry, has got a footing amongst Christians in
relation to things which take the place of the Lord Himself, good things
though they be in themselves; and you find, if you are spiritually
sensitive, that you are not just encountering the established
institutions, but you are encountering a terrific spiritual force.
Is
that true? It is true. Had I never come up against it, never would I
have believed the terrific force there is lying behind Christian institutions if your
ministry touches them.
You meet something which turns upon you, and it
is not just the thing or the people.
It is something that threatens your
very life, to slay, and this in principle and essence, beloved, is
idolatry; because its ultimate effect is that even the Lord cannot have
what His heart is set upon and get His people spiritually where He wants
them, because they are so bound up with His things.
They are not able
to discriminate between His things and Himself.
~T. Austin Sparks~
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