Although God is rightly jealous of false gods, he is also merciful
We have seen in previous posts in this series that God is rightly jealous when people worship idols and make created things their ultimate priority, rather than making God their chief concern in life. Nevertheless, we see in the life of Abraham that God will forgive those who have lived in such idolatry.
Abraham grew up in idolatry
Scripture says that before God intervened in Abraham’s life, he, his father Terah, and his brother Nahor served other gods (see Joshua 24:2).
Fathers teach their children to worship their idols. Scripture says Terah raised his family in Ur, a large, prosperous city on the banks of the Euphrates that archeologists have found had a temple to the moon god. So Abraham grew up in an idolatrous environment, with statues of idols enshrined in his home, with regular visits with his father to the temples of false gods, eating meals and performing sacrifices in home and temple dedicated to these gods. This was his life from the cradle and through his formative years as a toddler, boy, and teen. Abraham grew up worshiping idols.
But God had designs on him. Sometime after Abraham reached manhood, God first revealed himself to him when he lived in Ur, before he and his family moved to Haran and Abraham later moved to Canaan. In Acts 7:2–4 the martyr Stephen says of this event:
“The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran.”
This meeting in Ur must have turned Abraham from idols to the one true God.
Repentance is not automatic
But as Israel showed above, even after extraordinary encounters with God, turning from idols to God is not automatic, as we might suppose. Millions of Israelites saw how God judged the Egyptians and their idols with ten plagues, saw the Red Sea part and walked through it on dry ground, saw the pillar of cloud and fire leading in their journey, saw how God provided water and manna in the wilderness, saw God’s stormy glory on Mount Sinai, and heard God’s voice announcing the Ten Commandments. Yet after a lull in the action they quickly made a golden calf and held an idolatrous party.
Just because people receive objective evidence of the one true God does not mean they follow him.
But Abraham did. He repented of idolatry, and God forgave him.
If we repent of loving anything more than God, he will also forgive us.