When we think of Hebrew idolatry, we tend to think of worshipping another god. However, another form of idolatry is making a version of the Lord and then substituting that image for the true Lord. We do this when we form an image of the Lord in our minds, a god who winks at our sin, or isn’t jealous, or fits into our box. We do this with bad theology, making God into something he’s not. 

I’ve been thinking about idolatry lately. The question that prompted this was, “What is the difference between idolatry and mere distraction.”  I know my cell phone is a distraction, but when John Mark Comer or Darren Whitehead makes me feel like I might be worshipping an idol, my discernment hackles get raised, and I start being skeptical. So, I decided to settle this for myself by doing some deep thinking about idolatry and just what it amounts to. For me, the best way to do that was to do a sermon series on Idolatry to figure out what the scripture says it means to worship an idol. I won’t talk about the difference between idols and distractions in this post. I still haven’t quite worked it out, but I discovered two ways to engage in idolatry.

I was helped in this by G.K. Beale’s book We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (IVP). It is a great book that traces the concept of idolatry from Genesis to Revelation. It’s one of those books that gives you a bird’ s-eye view of the scholarship while providing invaluable footnotes if you want to get into the weeds.

So, let’s look at one of the most important scenes in the long, long history of Israel’s foray into idol worship. Exodus 32

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.

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