On nearly every hill or mountain around every city in this country are Buddhist prayer mounds.  Some are at the highest peaks and they look like faraway antennas.  Some are on small rises of the earth on the side of the road, seemingly inconsequential.  They are started when a person piles some rocks; maybe 7 or 10 of them.  Then it grows as people add to the pile as they walk around it praying.  The tradition is that you walk around the pile three times, praying as you go, and you add a rock each time around.  They’re often draped in the blue Buddhist prayer scarves and sometimes there are odd collections of clothes, bones, and even casts (like from broken arms or legs).  When I look at them I like to guess the number of rocks in the pile – like when you had to guess the number of M&Ms in a jar in grade school – and look at the worn path around the prayer mound and think about how many people have come to this particular one to pray.

Anyone familiar with the story of Israel in the Old Testament will remember that the major problem between them and God was that they would integrate with other cultures and worship their idols.  God specifically told them that they were to have no other gods before Him and not to intermingle with other cultures, and yet they repeatedly did just that.  One specific practice that God condemned, and that Israel struggled with, was what were called the high places.  The ancient religions in Canaan and that region would set up their altars to their gods on the hills around their cities.  When the Israelites adapted to the surrounding cultures they would inevitably sacrifice and worship the false gods at these high places.  (see Judges, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles)

If I didn’t live here I don’t think I could have such a vivid mental picture of what it may have looked like back then.  Every day I can see these high places that surround the city where we live and line the road on the way to the capital.  They’re easy idols to see.

The harder idols to see are our own; the idols in our own culture and in our own hearts.

The first two commandments are:

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

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20: 4-5)

Martin Luther said that if we would only keep the first two commandments, we’d have no need for the other eight.

If asked, I think it would be safe to say that most people would say that the Ten Commandments are instructions not to sin.  That’s a pretty safe answer but I think we need a better understanding of sin.

What is sin?  I think it’s also safe to say (and sad to say), that most people would say that sin is when you commit an offense against men.  Don’t steal.  Don’t murder.  Don’t commit adultery.  

In reality, sin is idol worship.  Sin is putting something ahead of God.  Sin may have an affect on men, but ultimately sin is an offense to God.  

If we lie, we’re saying that our agenda or what people think of us is more important than honoring God.
If we disobey our parents, we’re saying that our way is better than God’s.
If we are selfish, greedy, and covetous, we’re saying that material possessions are more important that God.
If we commit adultery we’re saying that our own fleeting desires are not only more important than our spouses, but more important than honoring God.

So it goes, on and on and on.  

Trickier still is when we make seemingly good things into idols.  We make work, school, a spouse, or a relationship into an idol – we can even make religion into an idol.  We turn a good thing into an ultimate thing.

Ultimately sin is about valuing something more than God, which is idolatry.  You may have heard it said that, as humans, its not a question of IF we will worship, it’s a question of WHAT we will worship.

The trick is seeing our own idols.  It’s easy to see idols in other cultures.  It’s easy to see idols in other peoples’ lives.  It’s much, much harder to see them in our own.

Mark Driscoll likes to tell the story about when he was in India and he experienced something similar to my experience.  He was walking around this little village and everywhere he went were altars to Hindu gods covered in blood and chicken feathers.  A little later he was talking to an Indian Christian, the wife of a pastor, and she said to him, “I’ve been to America once but I don’t think I can ever go back.”

“Why”, he asked her.

“Because I can’t stand the idolatry there.  Americans worship their sports teams, their bands, their sex life, their bodies, their stomachs, their incomes, their job, their house, their cars, their clothing.”

It’s a devastating critique that’s easy to overlook when it’s the air we breathe.

I did a quick word study on worship in the Bible.  The word worship, or variances of it (worships, worshipped, worshipping) appear 171 times.  Sacrifice, or variances of it are used 290 times.  Offer, or variances of it are mentioned 1131 times.

It’s not hard to see that God has a lot to say about our worship.

I also think it does us well to look at how He starts the Ten Commandments.  

God doesn’t just start the commandments by launching into them.  The first thing God says is, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)

Before He even begins to tell Israel what the best way to live is, before He lays out the commandments, He reminds them of what He had already done for them.  He points backward and says, “Look at what I have already done.  Look at how I have already provided for you, redeemed you, delivered you.”

It’s very important to see that God moved first and that He proved Himself faithful and good before asking anything of man.  He didn’t say, “If you do these things I will deliver you”.  No, instead, He brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery and oppression, and promised them their own land where they could live freely, then He gave them the law.

And Israel, of course, played the role of the Everyman every well.  Though God had taken them out of slavery with a terrifying display of miracles, parted the Red Sea, crushed the Egyptians, and was leading them to Canaan, what did they do while Moses was on Mt. Sinai with God?  They built an idol, the golden calf.  In view of all that God had done for them, at the very base of the mountain covered in smoke and fire that He was on top of, they decided that they still needed to worship something, even if it wasn’t Him.

That is very much how our hearts are; we tend to forget how infinitely great God is.  We turn our eyes from all that He is and all that He has done for us to idolize created things rather than the Creator Himself. (Rom. 1:25)

To correctly worship, we must see God for who He is.  Why did He bring Israel out of Egypt?  He says repeatedly in Exodus that He will perform the miracles so that the Egyptians will know that He is the Lord and that He will rescue Israel from slavery so that they may worship Him.  He displayed His power and goodness and was to get the glory for it.

Why did He deliver Israel back from the exile in Babylon and Persia?  In Ezekiel 36 He says that it was for the sake of His great name and so that the other nations would see His actions and know that He is the Lord.  

Why does He deliver us from our spiritual bondage?  In John 3:21 He says its so that when people see our good deeds they will know that they have been done through God.

He delivers nations and individuals for the same reasons; to show that He is good, that He is the Lord and the only one worthy of worship.

How often do we completely miss that though?  How often do we put any number of idols ahead of Him?  Again, it’s easy to see the idols in another country or in another person, but how do we see them in ourselves?

Here are some questions Tim Keller came up with to uncover idols in our own hearts.

What am I most afraid of?
What do you long for most passionately?
Where do you run for comfort?
What do you complain about the most?
What angers you the most?
What makes you happiest?
How do you define/explain yourself to other people?
What has caused you to be really angry with God?
What do sacrifice the most for in your life?
If you could change one thing in your life, what would that be?
Whose approval are you seeking?

If you answer those honestly, they should be very revealing.  

We need to see that we live in a culture that inundates us with idols.  We need to see that our sin stems from worshipping those idols and that though our sin may affect other people negatively, ultimately it is an offense to God.  We need to see that our idols are an offense to God because when we put anything ahead of Him, we are choosing to not remember all that He is and has done.  We need to see that we so easily choose to worship created things rather than the Creator Himself and that doing that is essentially unfulfilling.