Initial post I read from CNN.

From John Lennox, professor at Oxford.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  (Gal 5:19-21 ESV)

Now, certainly one cannot commit sexual immorality to the glory of God, but Paul makes a point to separate idolatry in this passage from sexual immorality.  Apparently, sexual immorality is not idolatry.  In fact, idolatry is considered by Paul as a work of flesh along with many other sins.  So what is idolatry in the Scriptures?

The biblical story starts with Yhwh, who created the universe and prepared a hospitable (very good) place for mankind to dwell within.  In that place (the land, or garden of Eden), man is given the task to worship God and obey his commandments (Gen 2.15-16).  Thus, from the beginning, Yhwh establishes himself as the rightful object of mankind.  He is the rightful object of their worship because he is their creator, and they, as well as the entire universe, depends on him to sustain and uphold them.  Their worship, then, was all-encompassing.  God communicates with them, and they are to live and dwell before God, obeying his commands and enjoying their fellowship with him.

Idolatry is something entirely different than the worship of Yhwh seen even in the opening chapters of the Scriptures.  Idolatry is the worship of something simply for getting perceived benefits from that thing.  For example, one god mentioned throughout the Old Testament is Baal.  Baal was a god of fertility, and a god of the harvest.  Baal was not worshiped as The god of universe, but as a god who could get someone a good harvest.  Thus, people worshiped Baal during the crop season to get a good harvest, and then went on to worship some other god during another time of the year.  This is entirely different than the worship of Yhwh in the Scriptures.

The worship of Yhwh involved making him the supreme love of your heart and giving your whole life to him.  Idolatry was not all-encompassing, but the turning of one’s attention to a certain god for a certain perceived good that that god could get for you.  Thus, you only paid attention to idols in order to receive something in return.  It’s a different kind of worship.

An example might help.  In ancient times, Diana was the idol goddess of sexuality.  She had temples made for her, with temple prostitutes who worshiped her through sexual acts (sexual immorality).  Here, two sins were happening.  First, sexual immorality was happening.  Second, idol worship was happening.  Sexual immorality was not the idolatry, but was the means by which idolatry was committed.  It’s like saying money is idolatry because people want things and use money to buy them.    Money isn’t evil, and neither is sex.  But sex with a temple prostitute is immorality, and is used to get something from an idol (idolatry).

So, biblical worship is making Yhwh the supreme love of one’s heart and giving one’s entire life to him.  Biblical idolatry is the worship of an idol in order to receive something in return.  This idol is not the supreme love of one’s heart, but is something on the side to satisfy a certain want.

Now, some may argue that we can make anything an idol, and so the definition sticks.  Sex can be an idol, the gaining of money can be an idol, having a big house or a nice car can be an idol, having a beautiful, smart wife can be an idol, having an athletic, do-it-yourself husband can be an idol, that cup of coffee at the local shop can be an idol, etc.  The list is endless.  But I don’t think that this is what the Bible means by idol.  The Bible ALWAYS defines idols as physical objects, purposefully worshiped (doing something to bring it satisfaction) in order to receive something.  It never, ever, calls sex, money, coffee, etc. an idol.  Thus, it never extends idolatry to the common everyday needs and wants of life.

So, what if we have a desire to have sex outside of marriage, and go and do it.  We have not committed idolatry here, but sexual immorality.  It would do us well to call it that.

So, what if we are couch potatoes and watch too much of some show and start cussing all the time, or find ourselves thinking wrongful things about others.  We have not committed idolatry here, but impurity.  And it would do us well to recognize such impurity and remove it from our lives.

But what if I see everything going right for the guy next to me.  He gets everything he wants and God seems to be blessing him in all his pursuits.  I see my live and how I fail all the time, and how God seems distant.  I begin to wish I had his life, and I envy him.  I’m not committing idolatry, but am envious.  And I would do well to meditate on how the blessings of Christ are poured out on me as well.

See the difference?  Idolatry is but one of the sins we can commit.  The only time in the Bible idolatry refers to anything but the worship of statues and/or sacrificing to false gods, is in Col. 3:5, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”  Idolatry as covetousness is the very definition we used of it above: the worship of an idol in order to receive/get something in return.

This is important because it can reveal how idolatrous our worship of Yhwh can be: do we worship him to get something in return, or do we worship him because of what he has already given (life, breath, sustenance, salvation, etc.), and because he love him?

Many blessings in him (Ps 2.12),

Andy

In any case, if you’ve ever lost a cell phone, or spent 3 months starting at a seminary and did not hang out with any girls outside of church, then you might appreciate this work of art.

Andy

PS…You might want to zoom in to 200% or make it fullscreen. (right-click video, highlight zoom, and choose)

So, I became excited.  Maybe McClaren would do the unexpected and surprise me with a view the Bible’s larger narrative from a Hebrew mindset that made sense of the whole of description.  I mean, he was asking the right questions and began in the right place.  BUT, I shouldn’t have let my heart go.  When I began to read what McClaren suggested to replace the typical biblical storyline, I was let down, but not completely.

The first part of the story McClaren addressed was creation.  Here, I thought he presented a good view of the difference between Jewish “goodness” and the Greco-Roman idea of “perfection”.  Building off of this, he placed the right emphasis on the Fall, that is was not a fall from perfection, but from goodness.  After this point, however, my reading became more scattered and I became less interested.  (Again, I’m not doing a book review, but an account of my perusing at Barnes and Noble.)

In somewhat typical fashion for the more moderate-liberal Christians these days, McClaren began to attack the view of depravity that the Bible teaches throughout, the view of divine justice that the Bible teaches throughout, etc.  In his version of the story, God is not the judge who punishes sin, but the dad who keeps forgiving despite our rebellion.  Now, certainly God did have great compassion and mercy with the patriarchs, and certainly lived up to the epitaph of being “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” but McClaren’s version of the story *conveniently* makes little of the Flood and of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Again, certainly God is merciful, but God DID wipe out nearly every animal and every human being with the Flood.  Note: McClaren takes these stories as that, stories – not true, and certainly not believable in any literal sense.  So, maybe its easier to conveniently skip over parts of the story that don’t fit into one’s larger picture.  But even so, judgment is part of the narrative, regardless if *you* think it’s true or not — the author certainly thought it was true!

Anyways, I was let down.  The substitute story, while maybe being more Jewish than Greco-Roman, certainly wasn’t biblical.  I, as some of you know, am fully open to a more Jewish story.  But I don’t think a story that makes what Jesus and Paul believed about the Hebrew story look idiotic and naive is ever going to captivate the hearts and minds of the Church.  If it does, we’re certainly in a lot of trouble. Rather, Jesus and Paul rightly understood the story, told it from a Jewish mindset, and celebrated it as part of their true identity.

Jesus read about the Son of God, the Holy Seed, Immanuel, the Mashiach, the Suffering Servant, the Root of Jesse, the lion of the tribe of Judah, and understood his mission as fulfilling those roles for the salvation of many.  He wasn’t naive about divine justice either.  It was manifestly made known to him at his crucifixion, and was manifestly conquered at his resurrection and ascension. McClaren’s story (at least the beginning of it!) will, in my best guess, not make any sufficient theological sense of the cross.  If God’s divine justice for sin was not met in Jesus’ sacrifice, then why did Jesus have to die?  If we’re not all “dead in our sin” and if Jesus was wrong about the separation of the sheep and goats, then I suspect we’re the most pitiable of all people, aren’t we?

Andy

PS. I’m still a fan of B&N, and also recommend reading books you don’t agree with.  They sharpen your mind.  The end.

Copyright 2010, Andrew C. Witt. You may use any of these articles for personal use, but do not publish them in full on your own blog or any other medium. Please contact me at andy@andywittonline.com for use of any quotations in a published work. If you wish to quote anything from my blog on your own, I only ask that you provide a link back to my site in either your blogroll or from within the post itself. Thank you for your interest!

Andy

Brevard Childs offers great words of caution from his Isaiah commentary (2001):

“Some of these critical observations may well be right.  The style of the passage appears expansive and there are striking parallels with late biblical literature.  Yet I would argue that the interpretation of these factors has been badly misconstrued, largely because of the assumption that a reconstructed historical context provides the only access to the passage’s meaning.  [His] analysis not only historicizes the the passage, but then alters the text’s eschatological orientation into an etiological commentary on the past.” (35)

He then goes on to note:

“The chief exegetical issue at stake again turns on the question of context.  Crucial to correct interpretation is the recognition of the element of intertextuality.  The passage has chosen words and themes from Israel’s tradition that provide a resonance for the informed reader.” (35)

Food for thought.

Andy

Andy

• How do we get from the prophet’s original sermon to the book of the prophet’s sermons? And, what are the implications?
• What are some foundations for reading the Bible?
• What are some questions we can ask as we read a Bible passage?

As in the last post, this one will not go back through this week’s lesson, but will highlight something that I personally took away from it.  We talked about several crucial elements of biblical prophecy this week.  The biggest thing we need to remember is that there is a critical difference between the biblical prophets’ original sermon (e.g. Isaiah’s sermon to Judah in the 8th century BC) and the prophetic authors’ sermon (e.g. the author of the book of Isaiah).  The first half of the lesson focused on this distinction, and the implications which arise from making it.  What we’re after is not Isaiah’s original sermon, but the one presented to us as the book.  In other words, we need to treat the book of Isaiah like the original historical audience treated the prophet Isaiah.  The text “stands before us,” just like a man would, and invites us to dialogue with it and ask it questions.  So, just like Isaiah used Moses’ words in his original sermon to his 8th century audience, the author of the book of Isaiah uses Isaiah’s words to in his book to deliver a message to anyone willing to and able to read his book.  I invite you to be a reader of the book, not a historian trying to reach back to the prophet Isaiah.

Blessings,

Andy

• What is prophecy?
• Who are the prophets?
• What did they prophesy about?
• Do we need to adjust our views of the Old Testament to better understand prophecy?

It was a great study to put together and really helped focus me in again on what to expect over the next ten weeks.  A few ideas struck me as I prepared the lesson, and would like to share them with you.

First, the idea that what sets biblical prophecy apart from other kinds of cultural prophecy (e.g. fortune telling, tarot cards, astrology, etc.) is its moral and theological purpose.  Whether we have a prophet like Nathan, who was given insight into the secret things of David’s life, or like Moses, who was given a privileged perspective on early history of the world, or like Isaiah, who’s vision painted grand strokes across the last days, all wrote to communicate something about God’s ways, purposes, and/or plans for the purpose of encouraging our faith.  No text of Nostradamus or ancient Mayan prophecy about 2012 is going to do that.  They are not concerned with us in the least.  Scripture, on the other hand, is for us – for our benefit – for our good.

Earlier this evening I was reading a weblog post of one of my friends, Pete Link, who shared some of his own insights on Isaiah just about a year ago.  He commented about the opening chapter of Isaiah that we’re immediately faced with a question about what is going to happen with the sons of Israel.  It reads,

“Sons I have reared and brought up,
But they have revolted against Me.
“An ox knows its owner,
And a donkey its master’s manger,
But Israel does not know,
My people do not understand.” Isaiah 1:2b-3 (NASB)

Pete is right.  The book which follows this opening passage is written to answer that question – and others that are bound up in it.  What is God going to do with his sons?  What does this mean for the covenants?  What does this mean for the people? The temple?  The promised land?  Jerusalem?  Will God abandon them forever, or is there yet a future for Israel?

Notice, the book is about the future —- but not the future as we’re used to thinking about it.  The book is really about answering a crucial question about mankind, and in that answer we will find some statements about the future.  God isn’t interesting in us reading Isaiah so that we can make a timeline of future – He wants us to read this book to understand His actions in this world better, and also to understand who we are and how we fit into his plans.  In other words, he wants us to participate.  He wants us to be involved and to learn to trust him.  This book, then, has moral and theological resolve.

A second thing I learned from the introduction to prophecy is that we need to be careful, careful readers.  We do this by asking questions to the text.  And we get answers by continuing to read, and continuing to meditate on things of Scripture.  We have been invited into a great dialogue with biblical prophecy.  We’re dealing with figures, with images, and rarely do we read any straight, literal passages.  We wrestle with unfamiliar images, but are intrigued to see how the artwork all comes together.  We expect the text to reveal to us something profound – and we do our best to patiently pay attention to it.  And we will be rewarded.  There’s more going on here than God telling us about the end times.  Those events will pan out, and I do think there is an element of our discussion with text where we begin to see and understand how the last things will unfold.  But let’s allow our careful reading to lead us there.

I’m looking forward to sharing more in the weeks to come.  If you cannot make it out to PCBC, I invite you to check out the class resources found on the “Book of Isaiah” page above.

Andy