This in the second week in the season of Advent. This season is one of anticipation and thus one of preparation.

When you have special guests soon arriving, you get busy preparing you home for their arrival. Maybe there is special food preparation, rooms are refreshed with clean linens and flowers, and of course there is cleaning, vacuuming, dusting; even the baseboards and cabinet tops. You want everything prepared to say, “We’ve been waiting for you…we’ve been expecting you!”

Jesus Christ is coming again. He will return to judge the whole world. The basis of His judgement will rest in whether we have accepted His gift of forgiveness, trusting in what His death and resurrection did to rescue us from the slavery of sin and death.

We either put our trust in Him, the Creator and eternal life that is offered as a gift, or we put our trust in created things to try and give our lives meaning and purpose. That, by the way is basic idolatry.

Anyone can look at the world and know that things aren’t right. When we feel yucky, we go to the doctor for them to give our feelings of sickness a name (diagnosis) so that what ails us can be addressed and dealt with.

There is a name for what is wrong with the world. There can be no healing, no redemption, no salvation until the root cause has been identified and named. Simply put, it is sin; idolatry.

An idol can be anything, even good things. It is grounding my hope, my security, my identity and meaning in life in anything or anyone other than God.

Whatever is more important to you than the Source of Life and wholeness; whatever captures your imagination and heart so that you think or say, “If I can only have THAT, my life will have meaning and purpose, security and hope.” That is your idol. You adore and worship it, even sacrifice time, effort and resources to acquire it…whatever “IT” is.

The Prophet Habakkuk writes (Hab. 1:18-19), “What good is an idol carved by man, or a cast image that deceives you? How foolish to trust in your own creation— a god that can’t even talk! 19 What sorrow awaits you who say to wooden idols, ‘Wake up and save us!’ To speechless stone images you say, ‘Rise up and teach us!’ Can an idol tell you what to do? They may be overlaid with gold and silver, but they are lifeless inside.”

You cannot derive ultimate meaning and purpose from any created thing. People, things, substances, experiences, power, control, money and what it can buy…none of these things have the permanence and power to give your life definition and meaning.

Good things taking the place of God as your hope are the essence of idolatry. Idols promise the world, but deliver ashes and an even deeper craving for meaning and purpose. 

We are created for worship. Bob Dylan saw that when he sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Now, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Psalm 115:8 states that those who worship idols, become like them. Outward “shine” but inward deadness. The Hebrew translates the word “idol” as demon…the seducing power behind all idolatry.

The cure, the preparation for the return of the King is the reordering of the affections and love of our hearts. The idols can’t save, can’t teach, can’t give life meaning and purpose…but...

Habakkuk 1:20 tells us, “But the Lord is in his holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.”

He can be relied on fully to reorder the affection & love of our hearts. He is returning soon. I hope you are making preparation to greet Him on that Day. Believe and receive.