A few years ago I read the book “Counterfeit God’s” By Timothy Keller, and instantly re-read it. It was an eye-opener for me and brought light to an incredibly important passage in the Bible. I am going to reference the book quite a bit in this post, and I can’t recommend reading it enough. It is packed full of wisdom, that I believe our culture needs to hear. For more encouragement as you read this post, be sure to click each green link. It will lead you to a passage or resource to amplify the message.
Whether you learned them in Sunday school, or flipped through them in the pages of your Bible, the Ten Commandments tend to be those verses that stand out in your mind. I’ve heard them referred to as “The Big 10”, the list of regulations the Lord gave the Israelites when He brought them out of Egypt to prepare them to enter the promised land. To help them learn to live a pure and holy life as people chosen and set apart by God. While we are now under the New Covenant of Christ (<- click to read more about that) these commandments are still a training ground for us. Following them (without faith) is not what saves us, but rather is a way the Lord teaches us to live abundantly. One of these commands is about idolatry and I think (if you are anything like me) it has a huge place in our conversation about work.
“You shall have no other gods before me. 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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them” Exodus 20:3-5
I think that we often write off this commandment and say we follow it, because our idols today don’t always look like the idols of the Old Testament. When we think of idols we paint a picture in our head of an obviously bad or evil thing that we physically (with our bodies) bow down to. However, we, as fallen humans have the ability and tendency to make almost anything an idol Even good things. The word idol is defined as a representation or symbol of an object of worship; broadly: a false god. I believe that this means an idol can be anything we worship or put our hope in. In the words of Timothy Keller an idol is “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give…If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, and identity than it is an idol.”
Yikes.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we are all fallen and we all feel it. We all feel the effects of sin weighing on us, telling us we aren’t good enough. We see pain all around us and know we alone will never be able to fix it all. The natural response is to throw ourselves into something that gives us hope, a feeling of control, or purpose. There is only One who provides real hope, has the control, and gives us a sense of purpose, but often we look everywhere else other than God to fill this void. When we make something or someone other than God our hope, control, or purpose we make it an idol. Each time I have read Counterfeit Gods I have been convicted of a different idol, but the one that remains consistent for me is work.
Whether it is caring for children, running a business, or working in a retail store, it may be worth evaluating if you work is an idol to you. Maybe you love your work so much that it consumes your thoughts. That is an idol. Maybe you hate your job so much that all you think about is finding a different job, or creating some type of “out” for yourself. That is also an idol. These two things when placed under the Lord’s hand can be great and how the Lord designed them to be, but when placed as head of your life, over your love for the Lord, it becomes an all consuming idol.
By making work an idol we remove our hope from the Lord. Jonah warns us that by turning ourselves towards idols we forsake our hope in steadfast love. We can’t place all our hope in both at the same time. We take our hope off of the One who is sovereign and omnipotent, and put it into something created by human hands. When we take a step back and look at it like this, it seems obvious that we need to reinstate our trust in God, but when you are in the middle of the daily grind it is hard to remind ourselves of this.
When we make work an idol we put an insurmountable amount of pressure on the outcome of our work. The fact of the matter is that as long as we put the pressure of self worth on our work, our work will always crack under the pressure. We will forever be left feeling disappointed, let down, or like a failure. The Lord can satisfy us through our work if we learn to put our work in His hands.
By making work an idol we take out God’s ability to bless us through this medium. When we make work the main focus in our life, we will be consumed by it, and consumption by anything but God will never end with us feeling blessed. But when we make God sovereign over our work and work out of worship to Him, He is able to bless us abundantly more than we ask or imagine because we will see it as the work of His hands, rather than the work of our own hands.
So how do we “dethrone” work once it has become an idol in our life? When it comes to idols that stem from good things, the answer obviously isn’t to rid your life of it completely. It’s not about removing the idol, it is about putting God back in His proper place as Lord over our lives, as the only thing we worship. Timothy Keller points out that good things don’t become idols because we love them too much, but rather because we love God too little.
Once we recognize this, we must turn to repentance. Repentance is what opens the door back up for God’s grace through Christ’s sacrifice to flow back into us, breathing life into what was once dead in sin.
Then, we must set our hearts on the beauty of Christ until our hearts are attuned back towards Him. In the words of Timothy Keller “Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to ‘plant’ the love of Christ in it’s place, the idol will grow back.”
Then we rejoice. We rejoice that He is good, and greater than anything of this world. That His home is our home, and that He loves us so much that He claimed us as His children and made us holy heirs of His kingdom. We praise God in our hearts until we are too busy worshiping, to let anything else share the stage with our Savior.
When work is dethroned we then get to turn back to it as a means of worship, then He can use this platform to bless us and others through our work.
All Timothy Keller quotes in this post come from his book “Counterfeit Gods”.
Leave a Reply