A Forge of Idols - Isaiah 43:24

   
You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, nor have you satisfied Me with the fat of your sacrifices; but you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities. - Isaiah 43:24

“The human soul will find an object to worship, either on the shelf, on the altar, in the mirror, or in heaven. We are born idolaters.” - Dr. Albert  Mohler, “Words From The Fire.”

The 1st Commandment is terse in terms of its perspicuity -  “You shall have no other gods before Me.” - Exodus 20:3. A reasonably sane person should need no more than those eight concise words to understand his or her duty toward God. Yet we see a myriad of idols being created and worshiped daily throughout our cities, our nation, and the world. Sometimes the idols are even within our own Christian homes.
There are two things that every idol have in common: material and finitude. They are both made of some material common to all men and they all have a shelf life. From the notion of a common material we can extrapolate that the material may be as tangible as a new car or as fleeting as celebrity. In either case these idols are finite by their very being. Only God is infinite!
Most idols today require but three things to exist. First, they demand our minds, then our hearts, then our cash. As ignoble as that sounds the three are inextricably tied together.
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” - Matthew 6:21.
Calvin once remarked, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.” And so we are. “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God , boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God . . . .” - 2 Timothy 3:2-4. Whether it be our football team, our sports-car, our trophy wife, our favorite entertainers, our toys or what-have-you, we always seem to give our attention, or money, and in many cases that which is reserved for God to these idols of choice. But as I said - all these idols have a shelf-life. None of them live forever. There is no eternity in them as there is in our holy God.  After all, what is more fleeting than something that is here today and gone tomorrow? For the idolater, the ultimate source of power is their cash; it keeps his or her idol within reach. For the God-worshiping Christian our source of power is the Holy Spirit. And here’s the defining difference: idolater’s will eventually run out of cash but God is forever.
May we always praise God and glorify Him as we should . . . and keep the world at arms length, as we should.