Focal Passage: Deuteronomy 6:10-15; Matthew 4:8-11
We love people, places and things. We rightly love people, we cherish places, and we rightly enjoy the good things of life. Yet, when we love people, places, and things more than we love God we have committed a form of idolatry that is dangerous and deadly. We are prone to idolatry.
Sixteenth century theologian John Calvin fought the battle of idolatry when he wrote in his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols … Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.” (Institutes, 1:108) [Read more…]