Idolatry

Esther 3

2. And all the king’s servants that were in the king’s gate, bowed and reverenced Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai bowed not nor did him reverence.

Why is Mordecai not ready to bow and pay reverence to Haman? Just the same reason that a saint of God is not ready to bow and reverence the values of this world: worship! What’s worship? It’s reverencing or paying respect to a superior being than one’s life. God has His own life that is called eternal life. For our purpose here we see it as a type of life that is beginning-less and endless, a life that just IS and NOW, a life uncreated. There’s the life of angel and there’s the life of spirits. A man, caught in the numinous of any of this life, stands or falls or bows in awe to worship. An elevated man like Haman can command respect and awe from lesser men like those at the gates of the king as seen in this passage. All said, this amount to worship. When God once said to Israel that He wouldn’t share His glory with anyone, He meant that He wouldn’t share the worship of His own with anyone. Other created beings not in the sphere of cognizance of man – apart from God’s angels, the holy angels – command worship from man when they come into the orbit of frequencies within his visible perception

God is the life or aught to be the life of man. He’s not supposed to worship anyone but his Creator. Man is therefore exclusively God’s own. Worship of any life other than the life of God is idolatry; this life is death. It’s death when man leaves the pursuit of the type of life of the true God for any other life.

What is worship? In the bible, worship is associated with the heart-position of man. For example, man worships, each time he is overwhelmed or awed by falling down or bowing or, out of fear, unable to lift himself up in the presence of an out-of-ordinary being – the resurrected Christ, flashing angels and heavenly scenes or staging heaven atmosphere on earth. Worship as the outcome of the position of the heart is different from rendering praises, though it’s the other side of the coin of worship. A man can worship without uttering word. When John saw the resurrected Christ, he said he fell down as one dead. This was worship. After the angel of Christ had revealed certain things to him, he, so he wrote, fell down to worship the angel. But the angel wouldn’t allow it and told him that it shouldn’t be done. “…..worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

God cannot afford to share His redeemed one with anyone; He offers to be their lives, their thrills and their desires.  This is far from being so today. In the so-called houses of God, there’s high tech idolatry going on. In these houses, so much cry is made to attract God to satisfy the longing of the heart for what the earthlings yearn for. This is idolatry! This is the sharing of self with other things. Anything that exacts worship from man is an idolatry. Satisfying the longing of God is. The longing of God is oneness with Him. However, we’re in another territory of worship today; we’ve been brought up to see the possession of certain scarce commodities like gold, silver, diamond, money, positions of authority, special grace uncommon among mankind like talent, dazzling cerebral attainment, wealth of children and material things including, in modern times, manufacture coming from human intelligence like cars, private jets….as the heart of life. And we give hot pursuit to get this kind of life. Which is why a saint with a mission to sanitize our polity finds it difficult to be himself sanitized in politics. Many of us have been caught screaming jeeeesus when we spot a state of art car. Of course, this is worship towards the car; it’s standing in awe of such human device. This goes for all things that come from human ingenuity – his inventions. And when we come in contact with a man of exceptional grace, a man of authority and power, of amazing intellectual prowess or spiritual gifts, we are wont to worship or envy him. And when it’s us that are in the eye of the world like this man, we tend to expect others to stand in awe in our presence. A friend made a confession to me. He’d become a successful minister of God, then on television and radio. When any member of his church spoke with him, he knelt down (this was called respecting the anointing on the man of God). His heart would go to them and would ask them to stand up. He’s this humble. But, he said, when someone came and didn’t kneel down before him, he always felt a revolt in his heart against the sheer “disrespect” of such individual. It took, he told me further, extra grace of God not to shout at the disrespectful person. So much for worship

Haman is the classic man who craves worship and also knows how to worship for human advantage and advancement. Perhaps, he’d have been perfectly alright if he’d not met ‘disrespectful’ Mordecai. Perhaps, it would have been good if he’d confronted Mordecai alone. He went beyond his script however when he decided on genocide against a people God had given His preservation.

The above is not written with the view to cast an albatross on the neck of anyone but to show that idolatry is more subtle and pervading than we think.

O, Lord, that You’ll teach me this and make me know the subtle moves of the crowding desires that will want to take my worship from You! It’s even dawning on me these days to be careful not to begin to worship my favourite preachers; they must not take Your place in me. I can admire them and worship You for the depth of You sounding out from them.

I know that there’s nothing evil in being elevated, even in all areas of life including academic excellence and intellectual pursuits. But I desire to be tamed, disdaining my worldly upbringing, and be under the complete control of the Holy Spirit as You give me a rise in this life. And as one of low estate, may I know to turn this to superior advantage; may I know to glorify You even if I feel helmed in by mediocrity. “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it by life or death.” And may I know that I need to live here as one who’s full of You, dwelling as a stranger that must from here depart, as it were, from this tabernacle. The tabernacle – if it dissolves will put on the heavenly, the fullness of Christ.

Lord, may this be the testimony the enemy cannot rubbish