1 John 5:21

21 Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

This morning I want to show you a picture of my granddaughter.  As I do, I want to ask you this question, “What’s wrong with this picture?”  I realize that the self-serving actions of an older pastor may not resonate with the young people in the church.  Some of you are so enamored with your own children or grandchildren that you don’t think as highly of my grandchild as your own.  But it’s a simple question, “What’s wrong with the picture?”

Before you give this too much thought, let me tell you what is wrong with the picture.  The problem with the picture is…it’s a picture!  It’s not the real thing.  Our granddaughter is three-dimensional, not two.  Her arms and legs move!  She smiles and opens and shuts her eyes.  The picture is nice, but it’s not complete.  This picture is old.  If she were here today, you would see her as she really is.  A picture is worth a thousand words, but when you are with the real thing, you don’t need words! 

John closes this book with the admonition, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”

The word “idol” is a Greek word, “idolon.”  It means a “picture” or a “copy.” It might be a picture of a man, an image of a God, a reflection from the water or a shadow.  All of these uses were found from this word “idol.” 

This command is clear, “keep yourselves from idols.”  But what does that mean?

If an idol is a picture, an image, a reflection of the real thing, we are to keep ourselves from the reflection and hang on to the real.  As one writer put it, “Reject the false, embrace the real”

What is wrong with the picture?  What is wrong with the picture is that the picture is not the real thing.  It resembles the real thing, but it is not the real thing.  Depending on the quality of the picture, you could either be on track or miss led.

Almost every idol you can imagine will show something of God.  However, what it shows of God will be incomplete.  Because it is incomplete, it is inaccurate.  Because it is inaccurate, it is wrong. 

Look at this second picture. 

Can we tell what it is?  It looks like a field somewhere.  It is obviously dirt.  The dirt is a fact, but the field part is a guess.  So what is the picture?  If we move back we can see even more of the picture. 

It is the road right outside the church.  The first picture gave us some information, but led us to the wrong conclusion. The second picture gave us the bigger view, but if you look at the road today, it is asphalt and there are many different houses.  The landscape has changed. It is not bad, but it is incomplete.

John warns us to keep ourselves from the picture of God and embrace a real God.

So many people are happy with a picture of God but never go on to find God. This is the problem John faces.  The false teachers spoke of Jesus and God, but their picture was incomplete at best and terribly inaccurate.  How can John say that?  He saw Jesus, ate with Jesus, talked with Jesus and he knew Jesus.  The false teachers could not claim to know Jesus, they only knew about Jesus.  And what they knew was wrong, it was a wrong picture.

Bible scholars differ on the meaning of “idol” in this verse.  Some believe that John is taking a hit at the worship of Diana or Artimas, the God of the Ephesians.  If so, he is telling them to guard against the false religions in the world around them.

This was hard for the early Christians as many of the labor unions and guilds of the day revolved around a token acknowledgement of  a false God. 

Other scholars say that the Greeks had other words for idols and that this reference to idolatry is to an idolatry of the heart.  For example, Ezekiel 14:4 (NIV84) 4 Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When any Israelite sets up idols in his heart and puts a wicked stumbling block before his face and then goes to a prophet, I the Lord will answer him myself in keeping with his great idolatry.

These scholars would say that idolatry is the worship of any God or Jesus that is false.

The whole book of 1 John is dealing with this issue.  False teachers had come into the church teaching that Jesus did not have a human body and that it was ok for people to use their own bodies for sinful purposes.  Immorality was ok.  Selfishness was ok.  Love was not the primary ethical standard.  You would come close to God by coming to the right teacher, the right guru, which, by the way, happened to be the false teachers.  The belief was that the intellectual knowledge of hidden things was what was important, not the way a person lived their lives. 

They had a picture, but the picture was wrong.  John has told us that we are to trust in the Jesus he knew, not the one invented by other people. 

Every religion in the world is based on partial truth.  But this partial truth is like a partial picture.  The bad picture leads people to go in the wrong direction.

For example, we hear about Hindu meditation.  Is meditation good?  Certainly.  Will it bring you closer to God?  No, the only way we get closer to God is to trust Jesus Christ.  Then our meditation is on truth, which is a good thing.

What happens is that people meditate in New Age or other religions and they feel good.  They say, “this must be real, this is doing me so much good.”  But our Bible warns us, “there is a way that seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.”  Meditation will not bring spiritual life, only Jesus can do that.

The Arabic expression, ”Allah Akbar” means “God is great.”  Is God great?  The great God is, the God of the Bible.  He is great.  The God who sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross, he is great.  But the God of Islam is not the God of the Bible.

Some will argue with me and say, “The Moslems believe in one God and so do Jews and Christians. The all worship one God.”  That statement is true and false at the same time.  All three religions worship one God, but the one God they worship is not the same.  The God Christians worship is the God whose Son is Jesus.  We come to God through Jesus, not through the law nor through the following of the Koran.  I have one job and you have one job.  Do we have the same job?  Absolutely not. 

As John is writing, he believes in Jesus and the false teachers believed in Jesus.  But as we have seen, the Jesus they believed in was much different than the one John believed in.  So he warns us.  “Keep yourselves from idols.”

What are the idols in your life?  What might contribute to a picture of God that would keep you from embracing the real God?

First, if you don’t know Jesus, you will not know the real God.  Jesus is the Son of God.  He is God and has lived with the Father and the Holy Spirit even before he was born.  He is the world’s leading expert on God.  Trust Him.

Second, if you don’t know your Bible you will not have a clear picture of God.  Our relationship with God grows as we come to know him better.  We read our Bible and experience life.  Our life drives us back to the Bible to make sense of what it happening.   Through our exposure to life and the Bible, we learn to trust God.  We trust Him and see his character and his hand at work.  We trust his teachings, as we see how it works for God’s glory and our good.

Third, your reading habits can harm your walk with God.  If you continually expose yourself to teachings that are counter to the word of God, you are putting your mind in a place where it can be deceived.  Satan is an angel of light and he often gives us good things so we will not get the best.  Be careful of books about religion and philosophy.  Don’t let your pride ignore the warnings I am giving you today.  If you expose yourself to books by atheists, agnostics, false religious teachers without the foundation of a strong walk with God, you are opening yourself up to deception and being led astray.

Fourth, your past traditions and teachings can be a barrier to knowing God. 

No one comes to Christ in a vacuum.  You come to Christ out of a background of knowledge gained from many sources.  We learn from our earlier church experience, from our parents, from our schools, from our reading, from our televisions, from the internet and from our interaction with other people.   Before we became Christians we held certain convictions.

Now that we are Christians, some of our convictions, some of our traditions may actually hinder the new life God wants for us.  Christ came to save us and to change us.  We accept his work on the cross, but there are other areas where we resist change.  We resist change because the change threatens our long-held convictions or traditions, we do not resist change because we have a Biblical conviction about our position.

The result is that we hinder the life God has for us in the scripture because we put our past ahead of the word of God.  Paul writes many of the New Testament books in part because the Jewish people who came to Christ were missing out on the life of God because they wanted to keep Christ and all their past traditions.  Some of the traditions were worth keeping.  But many of them actually hindered their new life in Christ.

Paul gives one example in Galatians. Galatians 3:1–3 (NIV84) 3     You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

Their past life had been characterized by one principle, drummed into their heads from their youth:  Obey the law.  That is the path to righteousness with God.  The gospel gave a new principle:  Without faith it is impossible to please God.  The just shall live by their faith.

The Galatians had come to trust Jesus for their salvation, but were now trying to stay right by observing the Jewish law. 

What past traditions do you keep that are opposed to scripture.  We have had people leave this church because we don’t say the Lord’s prayer every week.  The Lord’s prayer is good.  It came from the Lord.  God never intended the Lord’s prayer to be a point of separation between believers.  He never commanded it to be said every week. Past traditions can keep us from experiencing the real life God has for us.  Beware of the pictures you have of God.  Don’t replace a real relationship with old pictures.

Which may be why John tells us to “keep ourselves” or “guard ourselves” from idols.

In the case of the Ephesians and those he wrote this book to, the temptation to try to mingle their Christianity with their old religious culture would be strong. 

It’s hard to break old ties.  You would have to fight your own soul to make that break.  Change is always hard.  But if that change is made on the basis of a new relationship with God, its not so difficult.

When some people get married, leaving their parents home can be difficult at first.  But the love they have for their husband or wife helps them overcome the old relationship with their parents.  They soon find, in the Lord, that the new is different but better than the old.  We never celebrate 50 years of childhood, but we will of marriage.

Guard yourself from idols.

1 John 5:18 (NIV84) 18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him.

God keeps us safe from the evil one, we are to keep ourselves from idols. Don’t settle for the picture when you can know the real God through Jesus Christ.  Don’t settle for a picture when you can have a relationship.

We are ending our study of 1 John.  He has told us that God wants us to fellowship with Him and have us fellowship with one another.  God wants us to break the sin problems in our lives through our faith in Jesus.  He wants us to walk away from the false teachers and embrace the truth.

I close with this question:  Is your relationship with God the most important relationship in your life?  Is your desire to know Him?  Do you want him to look at what you are doing give a nod of approval?  Do you want to be a carrier of his love to others?  Do you want to be on his team, to work with God to help other people?

If you can say “yes” to that question, you do understand the message of First John .  If you cannot say “yes” then I want to encourage you, “It’s time to change.  It’s time to seek the Lord.”  If you are a Christian and have fallen away, it’s time to turn back.  If you are not a Christian, but have been moved by God, it’s time to step forward.

Keep yourselves from idols.