Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Got An Idol Problem? | Torah | Deuteronomy 11

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

What one thing holds you back from living the life God intends for you? According to Deuteronomy 11, idols do. Tanya shares how to identify the idols in your life and how to fight against them. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages:Deuteronomy 11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. If you and I were to have a debate here in 2022 about the health risk of cigarettes, I doubt we'd have much disagreement. We've all seen, maybe even personally, what nicotine does to the body, right? But this wasn't always the case. Let's just flash back a few decades,

where cigarettes were a regular part of sitcoms and restaurants and living rooms, and your grandmother's ashtray collection revealed all the places she visited on our road trips. And then we got wiser. It started in 1965 when a public health law was passed that required cigarette cartons to carry the phrase, cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health. And then in 1967, they added, and may cause death.

But a 1981 survey revealed that the messaging had little impact on people's choices. So they added a stronger language. Smoking causes lung cancer. Smoking can cause birth defects. Still, we had to see. see it to believe it. Anyone raised in the 80s and 90s has a visual of that nicotine-infected lungs stamped in your memory. We went to school and heard the talk about saying no to cigarettes

and alcohol, and then we all went home and told our parents they had to quit smoking right away because they were going to die and they were also killing us with their secondhand smoke while we rode around in the station wagon. I was afraid of cancer as a child because my grandmother had cancer. And even though I didn't really know it was going on, I knew that it was not something I wanted to actively invite into my life if I could prevent it. Seeing that black in lung was all the warning I needed to stay far away from my first cigarette. For me, it just wasn't worth the risk. I kind of wish my adult life came with its own personal labeling system that outlined all

the risks, like Tanya, if you dip your toe in that water. What if my phone had a PSA I had to listen to every time. I turned it on about the relational and emotional risks associated with picking it up in a room full of people. What if social media was required to educate us about the mental health risks associated with using their apps? That would be pretty awesome, actually. I think TikTok just said, no thanks. So we're taking a walk through Deuteronomy, and this is a book of sermons Moses gave before the Israelites crossed the Jordan to go into the promised land. And it's a book full of law and love. but they're so intertwined you can't break one apart from the other.

God's law comes out of his love and so does our obedience. Love is the hinging point for everything that Israelites were going to do and experience in the new land. But the book of Deuteronomy also comes with a warning. Moses warned them that there would be other things that could distract them and completely turn them away from God's love. Even the good things God gave them could do this if they weren't careful. For example, the new land would be different.

Instead of being irrigated with the water from the Nile, this land was going to be watered with rain. But if the Israelites assimilated with the Canaanites, they could be tempted to believe the rain came from their fertility gods and began to worship those gods along with the Canaanites. They might also be tempted to love the things the Canaanites had and the things they plundered more than they loved God. They were going to be faced with a choice to love and serve the Lord

or love and serve idols. Does this sound ancient? Well, it shouldn't because when we orient our time and our attention around what people think of us, we're using idols to construct a way of life. And we're allowing them to define our thinking about the source of goodness. In this book about love and laws, Moses warned that the only thing that could hold them back from experiencing the life God intended for them was a heart that was divided in its love for God. We need to hear these words about idols because we have them too. and they hold us back from experiencing the life God has for us. The warning is clear in Deuteronomy 11.16.

It says, Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.

And the problem isn't with God or the land. it's with the hearts of the people. There's a trendy exercise program that 99% of the world has absolutely no problem with, but I'm the 1%. I dipped my toe in it twice, and I just didn't have the maturity to handle it. I was thinking about it, planning for it, worrying about it, feeling great or terrible about myself because of it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that exercise program, but there was a problem with me. God cares about us very much, and our idols don't care about us at all. How do we keep this in perspective? I saw this in action recently with a friend. She taught me something about fighting idols firsthand. So she'd asked me to pray for her over something she was struggling with and wanted to give up. We talked about boundaries and accountability and practical things she could do,

and we checked in with each other periodically. But one day when we got together, she told me she'd gone several days without doing what she didn't want to do, at least what her heart didn't want her to want to want to do. She was just really grateful. I asked how it started, and she said she took a pastor's advice to memorize a specific verse that reminded her who God was, what he wanted for her, and what he did not want for her. I smiled at the simplicity and the complexity. For most of us, God's word is always within our reach, but it's the last thing we think of.

Knowing scripture though, it's an ancient and very good plan. It's the same one Moses gave the Israelites after he warned them about their idols. In Deuteronomy 1118, he said, You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. I have no idea what frontlets between your eyes are, but it sounds like it's pretty important and it's something that's always with you.

Now, God's word has the power to take you on a detour away from idols and false gods. Sometimes in the New Testament, God's word is compared to a sword, like this verse in Hebrews 4. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints, and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. and we're limited in our ability to see into our lives and know what's really going on inside. There's even a limit to how much others can keep us accountable. The Word of God has the real power in our lives, because it has the ability to penetrate through our thoughts and motives and expose shallow beliefs and misguided expectations. These things can become part of us without us even realizing it sometimes.

But God's word brings them out of the shadows. It doesn't hide and coddle our idols, but helps us see the way God loves us and hates those things that we let come between us. Okay, here's what I'm thinking. You might be in the grocery store or cutting the grass right now. So let's just kick the can down the field a little. Let's talk through a few questions we can ask ourselves to get some perspective on where our idols might be lurking. First, what has the Lord given you? Think about that for a second and be specific.

Not only has it given us things like jobs, friends, and responsibilities, but he's included us in the spiritual blessings of the covenant, so we share in the promise that he will be our God and we will be His people. This doesn't mean God promises our kids are going to hit a home run when they walk up to the plate, or we're going to get raises at work to buy a new car. But it does mean something much greater. from Ephesians 1-3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Okay, so what is that blessing? Then it says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. When our feelings about how we're doing

and how well our lives are going are wrapped up more in performance and stuff than the identity of being chosen in God. We've let those things become idols. Okay, next question. What is the Lord not given you? This is where I got into the nitty gritty about the things I've wanted or wished for that haven't panned out. Maybe they're not mine to have now and maybe not ever. And some of those things I've idolized.

It's easy to see that when I look backward. Maybe there's something or an expectation that's weighing you down and keeping you from enjoying God. Maybe there's something that's keeping you from being okay with the way he made you. Last question. Finally, how do we prevent an idle problem? How do we take care of one? Well, Moses tells the Israelites to fight this by keeping God's commands close at heart and close at hand. When we're in crisis mode, we all know we reverse.

back to our lowest level of training, right? Well, I want to be ready when I'm struggling. And when I waver, I want to remember what I believe. And when you meditate on God's word, you're going to be building a framework of truth in your life. And you're going to draw from it. You're going to be able to draw from it when things pop up that could derail you. You're going to need that framework someday. You're going to need it today. And so will the people around you. We can take care to listen into what Moses taught the Israelites, and to make God's word a part of our lives and store it away for our journey ahead. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper

in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.