Defiling Your Idols

The pages of the bible fluttered as I opened it. The open book rested on my lap when my eyes went to a familiar passage in Isaiah 30:21. It reads in the NIV version, "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

I mediated on this verse for a couple of minutes when my eyes went to the next verse.

"Then you will desecrate your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, "Away with you!"

Suddenly the Holy Spirit open my understanding to a profound truth. "Then you will..." Do what? Defile the images you covered in a thin veneer of silver and gold. The word defiled in the original means "to be regarded as unclean, defiled, to pollute".

At the sound of God's voice, a voice that penetrates to the very heart can cause us to turn and defile the idols in our lives. Idols we covered over in a thin veneer of fool's gold of excuses, rationalizations, and justifications. Idols we have emotionally, spiritually and perhaps even physically bowed down in worship. Suddenly at the voice of God, we awake from a deceptive stupor to something that is really destroying us from the inside out.

I'm reminded of King Josiah who burned the bones of priests on the very altar they had sacrificed to pagan gods (2 Kings 23:16). Here these priests not only sinned by breaking God's commandments, but influenced others to join them. By spreading the bones on the altar, Josiah defiled it so anyone who came near would be considered ceremonially unclean. Numbers 19:11 says, "Whoever touches a human corpse will be unclean for seven days. (NIV). Likewise, Jesus says in Matthew 23:27 regarding the religious rulers, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean." (NIV).

Nothing defiles a heart like religion. Religion is outside a true relationship of the presence and person of Christ. By choosing to go past rituals,traditions and rules and enter into a deeper, more intimate relationship with Christ means openly exposing the dry bones of those who practice religion. These individuals had all but spiritually died at the altar of their own self-made god! Remember God's call to Ezekiel to speak to the dry bones, to prophecy and life would enter into the slain (Ezekiel 37:4-5).

Lastly, Isaiah 30:22 say you will "...throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, "Away with you!". The one idol that needs to be thrown out of our lives is self-righteousness. Isaiah 64:6 calls it "filthy rags". The Lord reminded me of the woman who was bleeding for several years until she crawled her way through the crowd to touch the hem of the Lord's garment. She was considered unclean by the law.

The woman had seen many physicians but it only made her worse. Mark 5:26 says, "She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.' (NIV).

Beloved, many of us are internally bleeding from giving our best years, our strength and hearts to something covered over in gold leaf, but it's decaying and rotting inside. It's time to defile the idolatry in our lives but hearing His voice of truth to lead us away from false worship. Bring it out in the open in confession and repentance the sin you have covered over with silver and gold. And toss it away from you so you can stop the bleeding!