#65. The Mutability and Fear of Idolaters

Published by Ben Stahl on June 25, 2020June 25, 2020

And the king of Israel said, “Alas! For the LORD has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.

II Kings 3:10 NKJV

Paul and Barnabas were in Lystra one day when they met a man who was crippled from birth. Paul, seeing the man had faith to be healed, told him to stand up on his feet. He did so and leaped and walked. When the people of Lystra heard this they believed their idols to have come down to them in the likeness of men. They praised Paul as Hermès and Barnabas as Zeus. They were ready to make sacrifices to them and would have but for the pleading of Paul and Barnabas to worship God. Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came and persuaded the multitude to stone Paul. Suddenly the man they thought was Hermès incarnate was deemed worthy of death and stoning.*

When Jesus was beginning His earthly ministry He preached to the people the word of God from the prophecy of Isaiah. The people marveled at Jesus when He told them the Scripture was fulfilled on that very day. But when Jesus warned them about rejecting Him and not inheriting the promise of Abraham, the people were filled with wrath and set about to throw Jesus off a cliff. The one whom they marveled at one minute they sought to kill the next minute, but Jesus passed safely through the midst of them.**

When the food and water were low and hope was all but lost for the armies of Judah, Israel, and Edom, the idol worshipping king of Israel gave up his hope of a week earlier and decided that rather than destroy Moab, they would all certainly die. This is the mutability of idolaters and all those apart from the Lord. They can praise a man one moment and be ready to stone him the next. They have no secure foundation so they drift in every which direction and in great fear.

Jehoram would not worship the true and the living God. He served the golden calves of Jeroboam. Now in his hour of need, he confessed the LORD, not as Savior, protector, or King, but as the one who will rightly judge the world for its sin. Jehoram expressed something in this one verse that the world often does today but does not recognize. Jehoram acknowledged the God he desired only to suppress and deny as he thought he saw his end drawing near. What a terrible state for a soul. No foundation, given always to changing beliefs, and in the end still confessing the Lord but only as the dreadful judge and not as Savior.

Think about the way the world uses the name of “God” or “Jesus Christ” so often in a blasphemous and vain way. But even as they do that, they are acknowledging the truth that there is indeed a God and He will rightly judge them for their sin because while they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, but suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness.***

If you are reading this devotional today and have neither received Christ nor rested and trusted in Him alone for salvation as He is freely offered in the gospel, this fate of Jehoram is inevitably your fate. When fear comes upon you, none will help you. When the end is near, none will be with you. The Lord God you have denied will still be there but only to pronounce a just sentence of eternal death and hell fire upon you for your sin. All the idols and lies you pursued in your life will be nowhere to be found. Bodily Autonomy, Critical Race Theory, the LGBTQ+ community, Allah, the Book of Mormon, the Watchtower Society, the Pope, Mary, your money – none of it will help you in the hour of death and all of it only deceives you in the few years of your life.

Will you persist in holding on to that which is quickly abandoning you or will you repent of your sins and believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jehoshaphat, even Jesus Christ who came into the world to save sinners?

*Acts 14

**Luke 4:14-30

***See Romans 1 especially verses 18-32

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