Being on the alert and guarding ourselves from all vain replacements for our genuine and true God!

As we have seen in previous sharings on this blog, Christ is the One pleasing to God, and He replaces everything and everyone in God’s economy. We really are nothing and can do nothing apart from Him – we just come to Him day by day to be replaced with Christ in this organic union…

Also, just as Cyrus, the people of Israel, and Isaiah the prophet were types of Christ, so we also, the believers in Christ as the members of Christ, are types of Christ today! What do we do as types of Christ?

• On the positive side, we believers are types of Christ for the purpose of carrying out Jehovah’s kind word of comfort (Isa. 41:8-20), which is the gospel as His testimony. On the one hand, we testify that Christ is our everything – He is our reality, centrality, and universality – and we as believers are part of Christ, members of Christ! This is our gospel – Christ is everything to us, and we are nothing; it is no longer us that lives but Christ lives in us!
• On the negative side, we believers are types of Christ for the purpose of exposing the falsehood and vanity of the idols (Isa. 41:21-29). Christ is our reality and He is our everything – and anything else apart from Christ is vanity, everything else is false, vain, and an idol. Through our living and our testimony we expose the falsehood and vanity of the idols – the head of which is Satan!

What is an idol? According to the Bible, an idol is anything or anyone that replaces or is a substitute for the subjective God, the God whom we have experienced and whom we are still experiencing. Anything that comes between us and the Lord in our organic union with Him, anything that takes our time and our energy more than the Lord, can become an idol! It is very interesting that the apostle John concludes his first epistle with this word saying,

1 John 5:20-21, And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might 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.

Anything that replaces God or occupies the position of God is an idol – and it is actually a burden to those who worship it! In the society today everyone is encouraged to make idols, to have something to be occupied with and immersed into. Education, career, a high position in the company you work, fame, money, properties, etc – these all can become idols to us, something that substitutes the Lord Jesus as the living and true God in our being.

They are all false and vanity, coming to us today and being gone tomorrow, but the enemy can use them to usurp the Lord’s preeminence in our being. They can bring about some amount of satisfaction momentarily or for a very short period of time, but in the end all these things become a burden for us to bear, something that occupies our time and wears us out!

This is why the apostle John advised us to guard ourselves from idols – we need to garrison ourselves against attacks from the enemy who tries to replace the Lord in our being! As genuine children of the genuine and true God, we need to be on alert to guard ourselves from any heretical substitutes and all vain replacements of our genuine and real God, with whom we are organically one and who is eternal life to us!

How much we need to enjoy and remain in this organic union with our real and genuine God so that we may be saved and even safeguarded against any false and vain thing that tends to replace God as the First and Preeminent One in our being! [sharing inspired from the Life-Study of 1 John, LS of Isaiah, and the Crystallization-study of Isaiah(2)]

Lord, thank You for Your Word! Continue to infuse us and expose us of our real situation! Lord, we don’t want to “drift away from You” by being lured and charmed by other things…. Rather, we want to be on the alert to guard ourselves from idols! May nothing replace You in our heart, Lord! May nothing take Your place in our being! Anything else is vanity and is false – only You are real! Keep us abiding in this organic union with our genuine and real God! We love You, Lord, and we give You the first place, the preeminence, in all our being!