It has been well said that whatever you rely on and look to for support and help is your god. It may be the true God, or it may be some other. And we may add, that to whatsoever you show that homage and obedience which is due to God alone, that thing is your idol.

If this is true—and it is beyond contradiction—then most men are idolaters; and not those outside the church alone, but many who are in the church. For there are those in the very assemblies of the saints “whose god is the belly”—who render to their own perishable body that homage and service and that submission to every demand, which is due to God exclusively, and that is in plain disregard of God’s will.

And there is the covetous man, of whom the Word plainly says he is an idolater: the man who is fired by the love of getting, and the man who hoards what he can gather—both of them alike worshippers and servants of Mammon. For to money they look for food and sustenance, for prestige and protection. It is their god. In it rests their confidence and their hope. Take money away from them and they are stripped of all their confidence and strength, of all men most miserable. “If I have made gold my hope,” said Job, “and have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; if I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gotten much… This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges; for (in doing this) I should have denied the God that is above.” (Job 31:24-28).

In what, my reader, is your confidence and reliance? On what do you trust? On what does your present hope and happiness depend? And to what do you look for your comfort, and your safety, and your protection? Is it the creature or the Creator? Is it the Giver, or someone, or several, of His gifts? Think on it carefully and honestly; and if you find that a false god sits in the sanctuary of your heart, cast out the idol, and set your faith upon the true Rock on which alone all your interests are safe.

 

From Word and Work August 1917: “Words In Season”