Weekly Devotional 5-5-25 Be Sincere – Not Idolatrous
During Samuel’s early years (1st Samuel, chapters 1-7) Eli was the high priest of Israel and he had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who desecrated Israel’s ceremonial sacrifices by taking the best of the meat of the animals set apart for those sacrifices. Rather than punishing his sons, Eli looked the other way and may have taken part in this desecration. Because of this sin 30,000 men of Israel were killed in a battle against the Philistines, including Hophni and Phinehas. The ark of God was also taken by the Philistines in that battle. Eli, when hearing that the ark had been taken, had a seizure and fell backward off the cart he was sitting upon, broke his neck, and died. The Philistines held the ark captive for seven months and during this time the Israelites lamented that they had not, previous to its taking, been faithful to Jehovah God.
At the end of seven months the Philistines were caused to return the ark to Israel because God visited upon them a very painful disease resulting in the death of many and continued distress to many others. When they realized that the cause of this death and distress was their possession of the ark they returned it to Israel.
From chapter seven of First Samuel we learn that the ark was returned to the family of Abinadab and held by them on behalf of Israel for approximately twenty years. Israel repented of their sin of insincerity and idolatry and returned to worshipping God. Consider Samuel’s admonishment toward them, “If you return to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines” (1st Samuel 7:3).
Question, is anything less expected of us who claim to be followers of the Lord? God is a jealous God and will not share His glory with anyone or anything else. He said,
“4You shall not make for yourself a carved image—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; 5you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Exodus 20:4-6).
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). And the apostle Paul was led to write, “5For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (1 Timothy 2:5-6).
If we bow before, pray to, or pay homage in any way to anyone or anything other than our triune God are we not equally idolatrous as those Israelites to whom Samuel proffered his address?
Steve
Transforming Power; The Work of God on Behalf of Man