Little Children, Keep Yourselves from Idols

From Gospel Translations

1 John 5:18-21

We know that any one born of God does not sin, but he who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, to know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

A Strange Way to End the Letter

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." What a strange and peculiar way for the apostle John to end his letter. It's strange at least for a couple of reasons.

Strange to End with a Command

First, of all it's strange to conclude with a command a letter which is aimed at building assurance. You would think he'd end with a juicy, encouraging promise, but instead he commands his readers to do something. This becomes more troubling when we realize that throughout this letter John insists on the necessity of obeying commandments as a prerequisite for assurance that we have eternal life. And now he ends his letter with one more command to add to the list.

Strange to End with This Particular Command

But it is not only strange that he ends the letter with a command, but the fact that he ends the letter with this particular command is especially bewildering. "Little children, guard yourselves from idols"! Why does he bring idols up all of a sudden? The command seems to come out of the blue. It seems to have landed from outer-space on the wrong page of our Bible. If 1 Corinthians ended this way, it wouldn't have been so strange because Paul devoted three chapters to issues related to idolatry. But in the five chapters and 104 verses of 1 John which took us 20 weeks to just begin to scratch the surface the word "idol" has not even come up once.

So our task this morning is to try to see why John concludes his letter in this startling way. Of all the things John could have left his readers with, why does he want to leave us with a warning against idolatry? And as we seek to answer this question, we will need to define what these idols are from which we are to keep ourselves. And how in the world this command can be relevant to twenty-first century America where idols are ancient history, or are they?

Idolatry in the Broader Biblical Context

Let's start by seeing idolatry in its broader biblical context. Turn with me to Exodus 20:3. The Ten Commandments which God gave to Moses for his covenant people begin and end with a command against idolatry. Verses 3–5, "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself and idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God." Then in verse 17 at the end of the Decalogue we are given this commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or his computer or his job or her looks or her brains or her vacation or his car or his bike or her ministry or his health or her boyfriend or his praise or anything that belongs to your neighbor or to Dayton's or to Iten Chevrolet."

The reason I say that the coveting mentioned in my amplified version of Exodus 20:17 is idolatry is because the New Testament clearly teaches that covetousness is idolatry. And Ephesians 5:5 says, "This you know with certainty, that no covetous person, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."

What Idolatry Is

What, then, is idolatry? Idolatry is valuing any thing or any person more than the one true God. An idol is any thing or any person that takes center stage in our affections. God is a jealous God. He deserves center stage in our lives. Anything that usurps that place becomes an idol, whether it be a spouse, a child, a humanitarian project, or pornography, or drugs, or power over the poor, or religion. An idol is a god-substitute. Archeology limits idols to stone statues; biblical theology teaches that idols are any things that take the place of God in our lives. When understood this way, we can realize that idolatry is not ancient history but is alive and flourishing in America as we rush toward the twenty-first century.

So John's closing command "Little children, keep yourselves from idols" has as much relevance for our day as for any generation since creation.

Why Conclude the Letter with This Warning?

But now we need to raise the question: "Okay, John, we realize that idolatry is a relevant topic, but why do you conclude your letter this way?"

John's response to us is: People of Bethlehem, I have been your instructor for 20 weeks. You have been an attentive congregation. It's only fair that I give you a final exam. So I concluded my letter with a riddle: "Little children keep yourselves from idols." My intention is that you be initially perplexed, so that you think and probe and discuss until the light bulb clicks on. And then you will see how it fits together. And when you see, you will want to obey.

Knowing That God Is True and Real

Well, as I thought and probed and discussed, I began to see things that I had never seen before. The first thing I saw was so obvious I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. Verse 21 is not a bolt out of the blue. It follows verse 20. The repetition of a key word in verse 20 leads naturally into the command of verse 21. "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, to know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols." The key word, of course, is "true." True in the sense of "real." The purpose of Jesus coming into the world according to verse 20 was to help us understand that God is real, that he really does exist, he really is light, he really is love. God is not a figment of our imagination. He is the ultimate reality of the world.

Seeds of Doubt in The Wizard of Oz

The movie The Wizard of Oz almost destroyed my faith when I was a little child. Or at least it opened the door to doubting the existence of God for the first time in my life. Dorothy and Toto are carried by a tornado into a far away land called Oz. They are told their only hope of going back home to Kansas was to meet face to face with the great Wizard of Oz. So spurred on by hope, Dorothy journeyed on the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, evangelizing along the way. The Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man are converted and accompany her to the Wizard's palace. As I watched the movie, I was converted, too. My hopes soared. I could hardly wait to see the Wizard. I had grand expectations. And sure enough once they got there the Wizard was more awesome than we could have imagined. His face was bigger than life, his booming voice reverberated off the palace walls. But then do you remember what happened toward the end of the movie?

Toto wanders behind the curtain, pulls the curtain open, and reveals the truth behind the great Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz was a hoax. He was a kindly but pathetic old man without any special powers. He merely projected his face on to a giant screen and amplified his voice. What Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man, and I had hoped in turned out not to be real.

As a result of this movie I can specifically remember wondering for the first time in my life if God was a hoax. Maybe my priest, Father Winzerling, was a fraud, or perhaps he too was deceived. Maybe there was some mastermind who thought up religion and who created the Bible to fool naïve, desperate people. Maybe God wasn't real. Maybe there really wasn't a God at all, except the ones we could dream up in our imagination. What a frightening thought for a religious boy like me to have. Have you ever had those thoughts? Do you even wonder now sometimes if God exists—I mean really exists? Is God real, or is he a concoction of our wishful thinking. Are we just playing games here Sunday after Sunday? Sometimes, even since I have become a Christian, those thoughts enter my mind.

Jesus Is the Evidence That God Is Real

What is the solution to this doubt? The apostle John's response is "Jesus." Jesus is the evidence that God is real. According to verse 20 Jesus, the Son of God, "came and has given us understanding in order that we might know him who is true." In 4:7, 10 we are told that God, by sending Jesus to die for our sins, manifested his love for us, that is, he made his love real, concrete, tangible, unmistakable for those who had eyes to see.

The realness of Jesus guarantees for us the realness of God. That's why John is so concerned throughout this letter that his readers remain true to the real Jesus. Some false teachers were saying, "Jesus isn't the Christ" (2:22), or, "Jesus didn't really come in the flesh" (4:2). But John insisted that Jesus really did come in the flesh, that he really is the the Christ.

Why Should We Believe John?

Well, John, why should we believe you? His response to us would be the first four verses of the letter. "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the word of life—and the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also." John saw, heard, touched Jesus before he died and after he arose. He was an eyewitness.

Jesus' reality demonstrates the Father's reality, and he is our link to the Father. Verse 20 tells us that we are in God who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. Verse 21 follows "Little children, guard yourselves from idols."

The Point of the Letter in Negative Terms

I think there's another reason why John wants his readers to go away from his letter with a verse 21 ringing in their ears. Remember the problem we raised at the outset? Time and time again we have said that the thrust of John's letter is assurance of eternal life. The perplexing thing about the letter is that we can have assurance only if we are obeying God's commands. For example, 3:14, "We know that we have passed out of death into life (assurance), because we love the brethren (condition)." Now John closes his letter with a command—not to love one another, which we might have expected—but to keep ourselves from idols.

But in mulling over this command it became clear to me how it all fits together. I asked myself, "What is the positive counterpart to keeping yourselves from idols?" Well the preceding verse hints at the answer—"being in the one who is true." Or to use the phrase which occurs again and again—at least 11 times throughout the letter—namely, "Abiding in God/abiding in Jesus." Which is virtually synonymous with another often repeated concept, "love for God."

So in other words, what John is doing when he says, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," is putting in startling negative terms the fundamental thing he has been asserting throughout the letter, namely, "love God," "abide in God," "be in him who is true," "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," "Little children, love the one true God, abide in him."

The Perfect Way to End the Letter

This is a perfect way to end a letter where the main thrust is assurance of eternal life conditioned upon obedience. For the power undergirding obedience is love for God. In 5:2 we read, "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome."

God's commandments are not burdensome to obey if you love him. If you delight in his promises to do you good and trust that he is real, genuine, then doing what he commands will be the very thing you want to do. Because we trust him that he will never command us to do anything that will be for our ruin. He only commands us to do what is best for us. A recurring theme that weaves its way throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation goes like this, "You shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it maybe well with you" (Deuteronomy 5:33). If you love God, if you trust that it will be well with you, obeying God's commandments will not be burdensome, but the very thing you want to do.

The Threefold Thrust of 1 John

So the threefold thrust of 1 John can be summed up like this: Assurance of eternal life—based on obedience—empowered by love for God. "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life" (5:13). "We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren" (3:14). "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe his commandments; for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome" (5:2, 3). John's threefold thrust is assurance of eternal life, conditioned upon obedience, empowered by love for God.

Love for God, allegiance to God, trust in God is the heartbeat of this great letter. So it is no surprise after all that John would leave these words ringing in his readers ears: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols . . . Little children, keep yourselves from idols . . . Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

How Do We Keep Ourselves from Idols?

How are we doing here at Bethlehem when it comes to obeying this foundational commandment? How are you and I doing in the privacy of our own hearts, when no other human being is watching? Are we keeping ourselves from idols? Are we keeping ourselves from God-substitutes? Is there anything or anyone that is taking God's place at center stage in our lives?

Periodically we need to take inventory and put away the foreign gods that have crept into our hearts. So now as we draw our 20 week study of 1 John to a close, we need to ask, How do we keep ourselves from idols, how do we banish the foreign gods that have snuck in unawares? The biblical way is to focus on the all-sufficiency of the one true God to meet our every need and the utter deficiency of all competing gods.

God Is Himself Eternal Life

In verses 18–20 of chapter 5 John gives us three incentives to keep ourselves from idols. According to verse 20 the one true God, made known to us by Jesus, not only gives eternal life, but is himself eternal life. The eternal life which Jesus has promised us is nothing less than intimate personal fellowship with the living God forever—a fellowship that begins in and transforms the here and now, and then extends forever and ever with out end, uninterrupted by death.

Only Those of God Are Freed from the Evil One's Grip

The incentive in verse 19 is that only those who are of the one true God are freed from the power of the evil one. There is an evil one, brothers and sisters. His name is Satan. He too is real. He is quite content to be ignored by sophisticated America because in their ignorance Satan holds them in his power. But those who are of God have been "delivered from the domain of darkness, and transferred . . . to the kingdom of God's beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13).

Jesus Keeps Those Born of God

The incentive of verse 18, as we learned last week, is that Jesus keeps all those who have been born of God from mortal sin, from persistent unconfessed disobedience. Jesus protects us from the evil one. Satan may tempt us, but he cannot touch us. He cannot inflict ultimate harm on those who are born of the one true God.

Positive and Negative Incentives

In 2:15–17 John tells us to keep ourselves from idols, using different words. Listen to the incentives both positive and negative "Do not love the world nor the things in the world," i.e., keep yourselves from idols. "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of possessions, is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides for ever."

Blessings or Pangs

Running through the whole Bible is a declaration of the blessings of worshiping the one true God and a declaration of the pangs that inevitably come from substituting any things or any one for God.

Listen to the contrast in Psalm 115:3–8: "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths but cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears but they cannot hear; they have hands but they cannot feel; they have feet, but they cannot walk . . . O Israel, trust in the Lord. He is [your] help and [your] shield."

The Satisfaction of Our Thirst

And if you are feeling tempted to say no to God and yes to some fleeting pleasure—some idol—or if you have already fallen, let this litany of Scriptures woo you back to the one true God as revealed in Jesus:

Cross to the coast of Cyprus and see, and send to Kedar and observe closely, and see if there has been such a thing as this! Has a nation changed gods, when they were not gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this, and shudder, be very desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to have for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:10–13)

Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me. Listen that you may live. (Isaiah 55:1–3)

And finally Jesus said,

Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. (John 4:13, 14)

Little children, let us keep ourselves from idols!