How does Hezekiah's son get so far from the Lord that he
puts up idol worship centers in the land?
We think here that if a president isn't a Christian that the nation is
going to pieces but there, in one generation, they are willing to completely walk
away from the Lord who not only delivered them from Egypt but also has just
delivered them from the Assyrians. One generation
after Israel disappeared from the earth as a kingdom. Not only did Manasseh set up idol worship
elsewhere, he also set them up right in the temple. Why did the Lord allow this man to reign as
king of Judah for fifty-five years? Why did
the people not revolt? The prophets did
come against him and declare that the Lord would judge and destroy the nation,
it would be done with as the wiping of a dish and turning it over. What a
wonderfully powerful image. How difficult
must these years have been for the faithful to see such abominations in the land
and the place where the glory of the Lord resided.
Matthew alone records two demon-possessed men here in the country
of the Gadarenes. The other synoptic
Gospels tell us of only one man. Perhaps
the reason is that one of the men was exceedingly violent and his deliverance
was the more powerfully memorable. At any
rate, it always impresses me that Jesus seems to have had only one reason in
mind for going to this country across the Sea of Galilee, to help these
men. We don't know anything about them,
their past, their religious beliefs, their futures, their names, nothing. We have no idea if they were Jews but it
seems doubtful, this was the Decapolis, a Greek settlement that most Jewish
people never visited, believing that this was a place where the gates of Hell
were located. Jesus, however, makes a
bee-line for the place and does a remarkable work that causes fear among the
populace, He has proven Himself to have power no one in the region had and
their response is to beg him to leave.
We don't really live in a society like that of Corinth,
where idol worship is the dominant religion.
We do, however, live in a culture where it is practiced. We have to be careful about what we do and
why we do it. I know people who use yoga
as a form of exercise and I personally don't think there is a problem with a
particular pose or stretch, no body position could belong to an idolatrous
god. Where we do have to be careful is
how we do this exercise. If we are in a
class where it is clear that the leader is doing these things as a form of
worship and encouraging us to join in that worship or asking us to do guided
meditation then we need to excuse ourselves from that class. If we keep in mind that all we do is done for
the glory of the Lord then it seems clear to me that we can't participate in
other worship in any capacity, even if our hearts are right in being
there. Paul is plain that participation
in any form in the worship of other gods pollutes us and is a betrayal of the
Lord. It is all a slippery slope.
No comments:
Post a Comment