Learning From the ShadowsSample

Idolatry

1 Corinthians 10:7–8 says, “Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died.”

The Book of Exodus says that while Moses was receiving the tablets of the law, the Israelites built a golden calf and sat down to eat and drink. Egypt had a calf as one of its gods. That is why the people of Israel took the calf as a god for them as well. That god was lodged in their minds, thoughts, experiences, and culture.

Idolatry does not consist only of building an idol and worshipping it, it can also be a form of doctrine that we worship and idolize. 

Water baptism is often a cause of division, as there are so many different ways of doing it. There is no ritual that can submerge you in Christ. When He illuminates you in the same way He did the people of Israel with the cloud, you are baptized in Him and submerged in the reality of His Kingdom. There are different concepts that human beings have invented which they later idolize. We give divine value to something that has no worth. The only thing that is divine is God.

1 Corinthians 10:8 says, “We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died.” This verse makes reference to when the women of Moab practiced idolatry. They began to have sex and idolize their gods in their rituals because it was part of their religion. The people of Israel then began to offer their worship to those gods. The same idolatry happened with the meat and the manna. The reality of the invisible God, who has nothing to do with what you can see or feel, had nothing to do with what the Israelites had become—idolaters.

The people of Israel were using a sensual form of worship, using the physical for something that was spiritual, and this focus led them to deviate and worship other gods. We live in times where sensuality has become something normal in spiritual events. It has become so important for us to put on a high–quality show that we care more about the quality of our musicians than we care about their lives. It has become more important that they hit the right notes than that they have been illuminated by Christ.