Idols Or Altars?
You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
––Exodus 20: 4-5, NJKV
Idolatry isn’t a word you hear often these days. Which is crazy because we live in an idolatrous age, surrounding by things and people who are worshipped and idolized. But here’s an opposing question God’s man needs to be asking: What’s the opposite of living with idols in your life?
When the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land, they’d commemorate their gains by erecting altars of stones. Not idols, altars. The devil waves idols in front of your eyes, but what we idolize we end up hating. That’s what counterfeits do—like spiritual pyrite, they entice us away from everlasting gold, and eventually, once the shine has worn off, we realize we’ve been played.
When we erect altars to God, it goes like this: We see God’s work in our life, and to recognize that, we stack stones to mark the event. Rather than actual rocks, the stones we stack are God’s acts in our lives. Our conversion to Christ. A stone. God’s grace on us in a tough time. Another stone. Our marriage. Our friends. Our children. Stone upon stone upon stone. Like rocks collected in the desert and placed one atop another, we honor God with who we are, how we live—these are the altars we erect amidst the deserts of our idolatrous culture. And when you are in a desert—cultural or otherwise—you can see an altar of stones from a long way off.
When the children of Reuben secured their tribe’s land, they “called the altar, Witness, ‘For it is a witness between us that the Lord is God’” (Numbers 22:34). When we stack stones of obedience and faith in our lives, we ourselves become living witnesses for Christ. Each day, with every tough decision you make to follow Jesus’ example rather than world’s, you stack a stone. One act at a time, one stone at a time, your altar—your life—becomes commemoration. Don’t forge and follow idols—erect altars.
Father, help me gather stones of faith as a witness to the world of Your greatness.