The
last words a person speaks are often remembered. When someone is lying on their
deathbed and they call you over and whisper in your ear, those words are
important. It is wonderful when those words are clear, easy to understand. It
can be rather difficult when the words are cryptic and enigmatic. It, then
becomes like a spy movie as we try to put the pieces of this clue together. And
if it seems as if the sentence wasn’t finished filling in the blank space can
last another lifetime.
In
our text today, with the final words of this short letter, John leaves me with
more questions than answers. He has been writing about the centrality of Jesus
and the importance of loving fellow Jesus-followers. And now his final words
seem to drop out of nowhere. Keep yourselves from idols. Why did you write this
John? Where did this come from?
It
seems pretty straight forward in meaning. Idols in his context were physical objects
which represented a god of one type or another. They were often copies of
living things from our physical world. People then, through their belief in the
god behind the object, used the object in their religious practices, often
worship or prayer. The idol became the focal point of their religious life. The
idol gained power through their belief in it.
Now
most of us don’t have a stone carving of a goat sitting in a prominent place in
our homes serving as a focal point for our worship. But many of us do have
other things that serve as focal points for our energy and attentions. They may
not be idols in the strictest sense of the word, but they do refocus us away
from the LORD.
John
commands his readers to stay away from these objects that could shift focus
away from Jesus and mutual love. So when we think about it this way, that idols
are things that cause us to shift focus, we can see many things in our lives
that do just that. Time and energy that could be spent in eternal pursuits get
spent wasted on nothingness. But even worse than this, our hopes can get
misplaced. We focus on global warming, saving the whales, political
correctness, or our particular hobby horse, and off we go to the races. We are
involved with an idol of our own making.
“Run,
Forest, Run!” We have the responsibility to keep ourselves from getting caught
up in wasting our lives on fruitless journeys.