A Convertible Idol

From Isaiah 2 – 7 Their land is also full of silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; their land is also full of horses, and there is no end to their chariots. 8 Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.

Years ago, my computer was running slowly. I got the assistance of a friend who told me that the machine's memory was overburdened, clogged up by items on the desktop and programs running in the background. Remember, he said, even if you don't see it, it is using up resources.

The Holy Spirit speaking through Isaiah in verses seven and eight of the prophet's second chapter would agree. He has dealt with the hot and exotic sins which are impeding the nation's sanctification process toward perfect communion with God in the preceding verses. Even if the people listening to him excise soothsayers and the temptations that come with foreign cultures, they aren't well before God yet. The forces which pull away from dependence on Him are far more pervasive, respectable, and ordinary. Check your wallet, Isaiah says, or his contemporary equivalent.

As with the items using up my computer's RAM, we don't always see how much of our hearts and minds are occupied with silver and gold, or more convenient electronic currency. As a store of value, money can be a convenient blessing, or a sop to our unbelief that our value is eternally secure as a reflection of the image of God. As a measure of value, money can be a blessed means of efficiency as we talk with one another or even, obediently, count the cost of ministry efforts. Or, this capacity of money can remediate where we would rather talk to one another in numbers and balance sheets than in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs which extol the value of our immeasurable God. Money can bless us as a format in which we can show humble thankfulness for today's blessings by saving some of them obediently for tomorrow's needs and opportunities, or it can become a bulwark in place of dependence upon God Who will be just as able tomorrow.

Which is a moment-to-moment, issue-to-issue diagnosis for which we need regular time in God's Word and in community with the people through whom He often speaks in order to discern. Left unchecked, our tendency to turn present provision into monetized valuation can impact subsequent decisions. Isaiah says so. Trust that money? Presto! Nations can turn it into horses and chariots, just as people can turn it into alternative means of self-defense which save us the trouble of trusting in God. Trust that money? Presto! We can start to see work not yet done not as a future opportunity for which we are grateful to God, but as dollars and since presumption we make up on tomorrow. Readily, we look upon the fallow field, and we assume the harvest without acknowledging God Who alone gives the rain and the strength to bring in the crops.

As the enemy would readily distract us from this transmutation, this sapping of joy in the Lord, he would draw our overwrought attention to other people's idolatry. He would stoke our outrage at foreigners, either people from other countries, outside the community of faith, or outside our particular group. The Lord's alternative, however, is grace toward others, however they might be defined. These are finding consolation where they can, and we might pray and invite that they would find lasting consolation in Him. Meanwhile, judgment begins in the house of God, and in our hearts, toward a tendency we have too long abided to allow a moneyed prospective to overtake that most crucial land, the land between our ears and in our hearts. It is this love of money, it seems, which most greedily moves the ancient boundary lines of reverence for the Lord.