Thankfully the Lord is gracious to pursue our hearts. For as Martin Luther wrote in his Larger Catechism, “Whatever your heart clings to and relies on, that is your God.” John Calvin added to this and said that the human heart is a perpetual idol factory; we all invent idols in infinite number. So the heart is where God goes to work.
Because the root problem in idolatry is not the thing itself, whether that be money, sex, entertainment, electronics, respect, comfort, etc. The problem is love. It is love for all these things and more that pushes out our love for God as the chief motivator of our heart. When the pleasures of this life exercise more control over your heart than the will of God does, your heart has already transgressed God’s boundaries, and your body will soon follow. But you will never have enough.
This passage then has a difficult call: break down the idols of your hearts. John Owen famously said, Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
25 That night the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it