"FLEE FROM IDOLATRY"
“FLEE FROM IDOLATRY”
The truth of fellowship involves the whole question of what our enjoyments consist in, and where we find them. God loves His people too well to allow them to have enjoyments apart from Himself.
The elder brother in Luke 15 did not care for the merriment and rejoicing which were going on in the father’s house; he had no communion with his father’s delights; he had a fellowship of his own. “To me hast thou never given a kid that I might make merry with my friends”. It was “I” and “my friends” without his father; he “would not go in” to take part in the communion of infinite grace. His fellowship was really an idolatrous one, for it was as much apart from his father as were the self-gratifications of the younger son in the far country.
It is against such selfish and idolatrous enjoyments that God warns us. Every ox, sheep, or goat slaughtered in Israel was to be brought to Jehovah, to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and sacrificed as a peace-offering to Jehovah. “And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices unto demons, after whom they go a whoring” (Leviticus 17: 7). Any enjoyments that cannot be taken up with God, and shared with His people as in relation to Him at the altar, may be suspected as likely to open the door to what is idolatrous.
“Neither be ye idolaters, as some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play” (1 Corinthians 10: 7). They gratified themselves in the absence of Moses, and without God. To do so is to forget that Christ has died here, and that He is absent as rejected by the world. In introducing the subject of fellowship the apostle says, “Wherefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to intelligent persons: do ye judge what I say. The cup of [p. 186] blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of the Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10: 14 - 16).
In a professedly christian country we have not idols of wood or stone, but there are a thousand things which practically rob God of His place in the hearts of His people, things which have no connection with His altar and no place in the spiritual fellowship to which He has called His people. All worldly amusements have this character, and much that is connected with religion is really idolatrous, because it tends to please and satisfy men at a distance from God.
God loves His people, and would have their happiness connected with Himself. He would have each one of His people to say truthfully, ‘My God, the spring of all my joys’.
Everything that truly belongs to the fellowship — all that is of Christ and that comes to us through His death, and the holy love of God revealed to us through death — can be shared by all who love God. If I have a source of gratification which is not the common portion of all saints, I might well ask, What is its character? What we can enjoy in common lies entirely outside of the world; it is the fellowship of the body and blood of Christ; and this puts our enjoyments on the resurrection side of death. We may enjoy together feeding upon Christ, with the happy consciousness that what we enjoy is the common portion of all who love God, and that we enjoy it as near to God and in communion with His altar.
The tent of meeting was the rallying-point for the whole congregation. It would remind us of our relations with one another. We stand committed to a holy partnership, and we have all to be true to it. Should I like to know that all saints are doing what I am doing? If not, can it be right for me to do it? If I do what is not according to the truth of christian fellowship, I misrepresent all my brethren, as well as failing to maintain what is due to the Lord. Each partner is to be a true representative of all the others. Everything that we do either ministers to the support of the fellowship or weakens it.
[p. 187] It is good to remember that each partner in the fellowship represents all the partners. Sometimes a believer may think he is of no account, and that it does not matter what he does, or where he goes, or how he spends his time. Each believer has been called to the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1: 9), and what he does is either true to that fellowship or is a misrepresentation of it; hence each should be very careful as to conduct, and should heed the injunction to “flee from idolatry”.