When you explain it the way Isaiah does, it seems ludicrous
to think there could ever be anything such as an idol. A block of wood, some clay fired in an oven,
all created by human hands cannot surely become an object of worship or
something in which we put our trust. I
know that some worry themselves over fetishes and objects in places like other
people’s homes and in restaurants, but at the end of the day it is nothing more
than something someone has made from some material they didn’t create. We could never be as silly as to invest our
hopes and dreams in something as ridiculous as wood, brick, clay or even less tangible
could we? We certainly could and we
certainly do. Church planters count on
money and people more than they count on the Lord. If we don’t have those resources we don’t
plant or we despair of ever being viable.
Every one of us puts our faith in something or someone that is unworthy
of it and unable to fulfill whatever we want from it. Money can’t buy love or happiness. A new car, a better job, a bigger house,
stuff of any sort has become our fetish and idol. All these things will pass away but we feel
like we can’t do without them or that if we have them we will have security or
we’ll be the person we want to be or at least other people will think we’re
that person. Idols are idols, one way or
another.
After perhaps thirty years of being a carpenter it would
surely surprise even Jesus’ family to now see their brother followed by
thousands of people from throughout the region who hung on His every word, whom
He was healing, who were being delivered from demonic spirits, and who were so
enamored of Him they wouldn’t allow Him to even eat! His family thought He was out of His mind,
which doesn’t explain the healings or the deliverance ministry. The scribes from Jerusalem took those things
into account and concluded that He wasn’t a charlatan, those things were real,
but that the power to do them came from satan himself, whom they referred to as
Beelzebul, the lord of the flies. This
one was a step too far. The power of the
Holy Spirit was not to be ascribed to demonic entities. His logical response was unassailable, but
the larger point was His defense of the Holy Spirit. There is a little Trinitarian edginess here
where Jesus won’t allow the Spirit to be blasphemed, a word ordinarily reserved
for God. Jesus redefines family here as
those who know and do the will of God.
Our relationships include all humanity in that definition.
Paul suggests that the futility of our minds, darkened
understanding, is traceable to the hardness of our hearts. We know that don’t we? There are many things we know we don’t judge
properly in our minds because our hearts are otherwise invested. Paul says that the Gentiles, those who don’t
know Jesus, have their hearts hardened against the work of the Holy Spirit to
convict them of sin. We tend to have
similar blind spots regarding sin in our own lives. They may not be notorious sins, they may be
things like gossip or simply being negative all the time, but they are sins
nonetheless. I have had people tell me
not to be upset with someone because “that’s how he is.” If you are a Christian you need to put on the
new self, put away the old self. So long
as we make allowances for how someone is, even if it is us, we deny the work of
the Spirit to change. That’s the reason
Paul can do more than recommend that they be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving
and expect them to be that way. Where
are we frustrating the work of the Spirit in our lives?
No comments:
Post a Comment