Paraklesis [‘encouragement’, ‘exhortation’, for life and ministry]
February 2026 | Peter Adam
Dear friends,
Paul warns us to flee idolatry, as urgently as he warns us to flee sexual immorality!!! [1 Cor 6:18, 10:14].
Jesus took his own stand against idolatry, when tempted and tested by the devil.
‘It is written: “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only”’ [Luke 4:8]
Jesus warned us against idolatry,
No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other’ [Matt 6:24].
Then he added the particular example of idolatry he has in mind. ‘You cannot serve both God and money’ [Matt 6:24].
Money stands for worldly needs and worldly security. And worldly idols make strong demands.
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well [Matt 6: 31-33].
In the story of the rich young ruler, we see the danger and the tragedy of such polite, respectable, and highly-valued middle-class idolatry.
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth [Matt 19:21-22].
In Christ’s parable of the soils, he warned us of the everyday temptations which endanger our salvation.
This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop [Luke 8:11-15].
We find the issue even more starkly in these words of Jesus.
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me [Jn 12:24-6].
Yes, our life, lifestyle, plans, experiences and hopes can be an idol. Now we can creat our own personal, custom-made idols, they are even more difficult to detect and escape, except for God’s grace in insight, realization, and repentance.
A practical example of loving our life is loving to be praised by people rather than by God.
Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God [Jn 12:42-43].
You may think that you are quite free from the dangers of religious/animistic idolatry, but that does not mean you are free from the common idols of our age, especially in their religious/Christian garb.
If ‘popular and recognised success’ in fame and wealth is an idol of our age, it remains an idol when it attracts us to ministry success. If a life free of illness, worry, discouragement and failure is an attractive idol in our society, so therefore we can easily make an idol of a Christian life or gospel ministry free of illness, worry, discouragement and failure. Idols dressed in ‘Christian’ clothes are harder to identify, but none the less deadly. For the deadly heart of idolatry is worshipping and serving and loving anyone or anything other than God, anyone or anything instead of God, anyone or anything in place of God.
James describes the deep danger of ‘friendship with the world’, which is a form of idolatry.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
You adulterous people,don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble” [Jas 4:1-6].
Drastic diseases require drastic remedies!
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up [Jas 4:7-10].
We find as strong a warning as this in Paul’s words.
For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God [Ephes 5:5].
And equally challenging:
the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons … are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? [1 Cor 10:20,23, quoting Deut 32:17].
For our gracious God demands our all:
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength [Mark 12:30].
We can think of idolatry in simple terms of loving something, which then draws us away from loving God. We choose our idols, they choke us.
We may and should serve and love others, but they are not our masters or lords! ‘I serve you, but I am God’s servant’.
For the consequence of there being only one God, is that he alone deserves all our worship and service. Our gracious God also deserves all our worship and service because he created us, rescued us, saved us, and adopted us in Christ, and lives within us by his Spirit. We are his because he is the creator of all that exists. We are his by creation and by redemption, by his grace. For,
From him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever [Rom 11:36].
And, as God warns us in the Old Testament,
I am the LORD; that is my name!
I will not yield my glory to another
or my praise to idols [Is 42:8].
An idol is:
Any motivation,
Any source of meaning and identity,
Any source of comfort and compensation,
Any dream or hope,
… which we serve or use in the place of God, instead of God.
An idol is any fear which controls us, shapes us, haunts us.
We are idolators when we do ministry to please others, to please ourselves, and not God.
We are idolators when we do ministry to impress other, to impress ourselves, and not God.
We are idolators when we look for rewards for our life or ministry anywhere else than in God.
We are idolators when we love and serve ourselves or anyone else, more than God.
Often when we find ourselves grumbling against God, or resenting him, it is because God is not giving us what our idols are meant to provide! It is his mercy, of course, and his desire to draw us to trust in him alone.
The world naturally creates our idols. The ‘futile ways of life inherited from your ancestors’ [1 Pet 1:18], or absorbed from our society. Only ‘the precious blood of Jesus’ is powerful enough to provide an escape [1 Pet 1:19]. As my friend Josh Elkin says, ‘the internet is a supermarket of idols’.
It is worth asking the question ‘What idols are my friends worshipping?’ ‘What idols is my church worshipping?’ ‘What idols are worshipped by the Christians with whom I identify?’ For the sins and idols we share with people like us are especially invisible to us, and our friends are unlikely to challenge us about them, for they are also worshipping them!
Look for comfort, meaning, affirmation, hope, from God alone. This means `1. That we go to God first, instead of going to others first, and 2. That we recognise that any comfort, meaning, affirmation hope, love, that we receive from others comes ultimately from God. So we praise and thank him for it all!
Another form of idolatry is worshipping, trusting in, finding comfort or directions from God’s good gifts, rather than from God, the giver of every good gift. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, not his gifts: the creator, not his creation.
A popular idol today is our feelings. it is so easy to sacrifice everything to serve them, and to hate others who do not serve them! Another idol is our image: we create it, we serve it, and want others to honour it.
We should also run for our lives from idolatry, because idols can become heavy burdens for us to carry. Serving false gods is hard work! Hence the LORD’s compassionate words to his people in Isaiah 46.
Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low;
their idols are borne by beasts of burden.
The images that are carried about are burdensome,
a burden for the weary.
They stoop and bow down together;
unable to rescue the burden,
they themselves go off into captivity.
“Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,
all the remnant of the people of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since your birth,
and have carried since you were born.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you” [1-4].
We might think that idolatry is on the way out, because educated and scientific people would not be so easily fooled. Yet what better description of our world could you find than these words of Paul:
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen [Rom1:25 ].
We live in a world replete with idols: they are part of the air we breathe. As John Calvin observed, the human mind is currently a ‘perpetual factory of idols’ [Calvin, The Institutes, 1.11.8].
As the world produces idols, and our hearts and minds produce idols, so Satan, the murderous ‘Father of lies’ [Jn 8:44], and who is adept at deceiving the nations [Rev 20:8,10], is inventive in producing idols which are plausible, promising, and powerful, to entangle and trap us.
The New Testament teaches us that the power and pressure of idolatry will increase in the last days. ‘For false Messiahs and false prophets will appear and oerform miracles, great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect’ [Matt 24:24]. The ‘man of lawlessness’ will proclaim himself to be God [2 Thess 2:4]. The ‘spirit of antichrist… is coming and even now is already in the world’ [1 Jn 4:3]. The ‘beast out of the earth’ will set up an image of ‘the beast out of the sea, do miraculous works, and enable the image to ‘speak and cause all who refuse to worship the image to be killed’ [Rev 13:14-15]. Finally, false religion, not atheism or agnosticism, is the great danger for humanity.
The best preparation for resisting these powerful cosmic idols in the last days is to renounce our petty idols, our false ‘godlets’ now.
Well may we echo the prayer of William Cowper,
The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.
[William Cowper, Olney Hymns, ‘O for a closer walk with God’].
In God’s words to his people through the prophet Jeremiah,
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
for worthless idols.
Be appalled at this, you heavens,
and shudder with great horror,
declares the LORD.
My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water [Jer 2:11-13].
Exchanging our glorious God for worthless idols is stupidity. Digging permanently empty cisterns and forsaking God, the spring of living water is futility.
We must tear down our idols from God’s throne!
God loves us so much that he feels idolatry as adultery.
We read in Ezekiel 6:9,
I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols.
And in Ezekiel 16:32, God accuses his people of idolatry/adultery in these words,
You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband!
In the last two months I have come to see my 10 common sins, which I commit every day, not just as sins which displease God, but as idolatry in which I turn to something in place of God. So I must not only repent of these sins, but also tear these idols down from God’s throne. I must renounce my idols, so that I can serve and honour our glorious and gracious God alone.
Trying to find deep affirmation from other people is idolatry. Trying to find deep comfort and deep consolation from other people is idolatry. Self-pity and envy are dangerous idols. Doing ministry to serve myself is idolatry. Doing ministry to serve others rather than God is idolatry. Selfishness and self-centredness are idols.
‘Dear children, keep yourselves from idols’ [1 Jn 5:21].
Please join me, as together we flee idolatry, to serve God alone, by his grace, mercy and kindness in the Lord Jesus, our mighty Saviour.
How could we do it?
I adapt Cowper’s prayer to cover all my current idols,
The dearest idols I have known,
Whate’er those idols be,
Help me to tear them from thy throne,
And worship only thee.
Then I name my idols one by one, repent of them, turn away from them, and turn instead to our gracious God for forgiveness, deliverance, and freedom and strength to look to him and serve him alone.
Then we are set free to love and serve others appropriately and safely.
And a good antidote to idolatry is to declare to God our absolute and undivided allegiance to him, trust in him, and hope in him.
Gracious and all-glorious God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:
I love you alone.
I look for comfort from you alone.
I live for you alone.
I offer myself to you alone.
I serve you alone.
I surrender to you alone.
I worship you alone.
In your grace, love, and power. Amen.
With warmest greetings,
Yours,
Peter Adam