1 We Become What We Worship 2 Peter 1: 3-4 and Psalm 115: 8 Lifepath Church November 6, 2016 Sometime in the former millennium, I attended middle school. We rode mammoths to school. Played with rocks because toys weren t invented yet. I don t remember if it was seventh grade or eighth grade, but we studied the Greek gods. Do middle schoolers still do that? I m not entirely sure what the purpose was. I guess it was because the ancient Greeks heavily influenced western civilization and the authorities-who-always-know-best thought we should have a working knowledge of ancient Greek culture. We learned about Zeus the sky god, and Apollo the sun god. There was Venus the goddess of romance and sex and Hera the goddess of family. They didn t always get along. For some reason. I remember that Ares the war god and Venus the sex god had an affair, showing that the human appetite for entertainment based on sex and violence isn t anything new. There was Athena the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. Pluto the god of the underworld who was also the god of money and riches, which seems like a weird pairing until you remember that money used to mean gold and gold has to be dug up from underground. I guess it makes sense. Each city or nation had its patron god or goddess whose job was to protect the tribe of people who lived there. So many Greek pagan gods to memorize. At the time, I remember studying all that and thinking, what does any of that have to do with my life? But the Bible says that that the worship of false little gods is still common. The Bible calls this idolatry. We ve been studying this for a month now. This is our last in a series of
2 four sermons on idolatry. And we have learned that whatever we put at the center of our life, what we make our top priority becomes our god. And we are tempted to put all kinds of things there. And lo and behold, it s the same list I studied in seventh grade sex and violence, family, money, wisdom and knowledge, nation and ethnic group. I suppose Hera and Zeus would be proud that people still worship their children. A couple of weeks ago we looked at a verse from Paul s letter to the Romans. Romans 1: 25 says, (People) traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen (Romans 1: 25 NLT). When God the Creator is not at the center of our life then something else is some aspect of God s creation. It might be our family, or our nation. It might be money or our job. It might be sex or romance. It might be our own appetites. In another letter Paul warns Christians about people who claim to be Christians but, in his words, They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth (Philippians 3: 19 NLT). Our our appetites - our own selfish hungers for more - more money, more physical pleasure, more entertainment, more fame, more ego boosting, more food, more power and control, more drama, more whatever any and all of those can become the center of our life and become our god. Their god is their appetite. Because most of the things we are tempted to put in the center of life are good things in God s creation family, work, romance, money sometimes it s hard to see when they have pushed God out of the top spot in our priorities and become an idol. Last week s sermon we saw that in Matthew 6 Jesus points to worry as being a warning sign. When something takes that top spot then it becomes what defines us and we worry that it will somehow fail us. We won t
3 have enough money. We worry about our relationships. We worry about presidential elections. We worry and Jesus says, Trust your heavenly Father. Put him at the center and know that it s going to be ok. Worrying is a sign that we might have an idol on the throne of our hearts. But maybe we re making too big a deal of this. I mean, come on! Four sermons in a row on idolatry? God is important, sure, but so are lots of other things. After all, family is important; our country is important; having some money to pay the rent is important. What does it really matter if God is our number one priority? As long as God is somewhere up there in the top five, isn t that enough? After all, that s better than the people who don t care about God at all, isn t it? Why does God insist that he take the top place in our lives? One of the things the Bible says about God is that he is love. 1 John 4: 8 says, Anyone who does not love, does not know God, for God is love (1 John 4: 8 NLT). I don t know about you, but when someone asks me to do something I don t understand the biggest factor in whether I do it or not is if I know the person loves me. Somebody I don t know walks up to me on the street and says, Hey buddy, come around the corner. I have something to show you. I say, Um, no thanks. But my friend who I know cares about me says the same thing and I say, Sure! Why? Even though I don t understand, I trust them because I know they care about me. Whenever we ask why God would want us to do something, the first step in figuring out why is to remember that it is out of his love for us. And even if we can t figure out why we ll still do it. He has our best interest at heart. But this time we can, I think, figure it out. Why does God ask us to put him first? Here it is: we become what we worship. Let me say that again. We become what we worship. Let s look at a passage or two, starting with 2 Peter 3: 3-4. Listen to the Word of God By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all
4 of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world s corruption causes by human desires (2 Peter 1: 3-4 NLT). God is offering to share with us his divine nature? That sounds heretical, doesn t it? Except that it s God saying it. Are there any other passages in the Bible in which God says he wants us to become like him? Yes, here is 1 John 3: 2. Dear friends, we are already God s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is (1 John 3: 2 NLT). And then there is Romans 8: 29. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Romans 8: 29 NLT). Because God loves us, he calls us to share in his divine nature and become like him. How does God do that? You already know this part. He shares with us his Holy Spirit to dwell in us and begin to change us so that we begin to resemble him. Remember what the Holy Spirit produces in us? Galatians 5: 22-23 says, But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and selfcontrol (Galatians 5: 22-23). These are all qualities that God has and he shares his nature with us. So that, in the end, God will also share his power to rule and reign over his creation. Speaking of us, the very last chapter of Revelation says this And there will be no night there no need for lamps or sun for the Lord God will shine on them. And they will reign forever and ever (Revelation 22: 5 NLT). So the picture the Bible paints is that in worshiping God and putting him first in our lives he shares three things with us. He shares his presence with us by
5 indwelling in us with his Holy Spirit. He shares his character with us, shaping us to be people who are loving and kind and self-controlled and all the rest so that we begin to look like Jesus. And then when we are ready, he shares his power and authority with us so that we can share his rule and reign over his creation. Wow! That is truly undeserved love on God s part. That is grace. We become what we worship. When we worship God he shares himself with us in such a way that we become like him. But what happens if we replace God with other things? The same concept holds true! We become what we worship. Look at Psalm 115: 8. And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them (Psalm 115: 8 NLT). How do we become like the idols we worship? Well just as when we worship God he shapes our character, so the idols we worship shape us. If you worship money, you become greedy. If you worship power, you become manipulative. If you worship pleasure, you become selfish. And as our character is shaped, it changes how we relate to others. If we are truly worshiping God he shapes us so that we become kinder, more loving, more patient with others. Worshiping God leads us see people as valuable. On the other hand, if we worship idols, the idol warps how we view others and we see them as less valuable. Money is the easy example. If money has the top spot in our heart, people become a way to get money. People can be squeezed for money, oversold, cheated out of their money. The salesperson who doesn t care about you but only cares about his commission is not going to have any problem selling you more than you need. He doesn t value you. Someone who worships pleasure is going to value you only if you increase his pleasure. He won t value you at all if you subtract from it. Get out of the way, I m watching TV.
6 Those are easy examples. What about a tougher one? What about family? That s a tempting idol for most of us putting our devotion to family above all else. We even hear people say with pride, My family comes first. How might that warp our character and warp how we treat others? Well, in order to protect or advance our family, we might be tempted to cheat, to lie, to hurt others. We see people outside our family as less valuable than those inside our family. Here is a goofy little example. With five kids you can imagine that I watched my fair share of soccer games. I sat on a lot of sidelines with parents watching kids run back and forth after a ball. And very quickly becomes apparent that your child is always wronged by the others, by the coach, by the referee. Everyone else s child is getting an unfair advantage. When your child gets knocked down it s a horrible crime against humanity a blatant foul which must be avenged. The referee is an idiot for not calling a foul and throwing the other person s child out of the game. And maybe send them to prison. But if your child knocks down the other kid s in exactly the same way? It was a clean hit. It was a good no-call, Ref, because soccer does have some contact and my kid barely touched him anyway. Let them play. Our child is valuable. The other is not. This is a small little example but you can see how it works. When family becomes an idol then some people are more valuable than others. This is true when we turn our nation into an idol. People from our nation are valuable and worthy of every consideration. Those other people from foreign places? They are always in the wrong. If something happens to them, they probably deserve it. And who cares what happens to them as long as no Americans were harmed? Again, some people are more valuable than others. Or religion. You realize that religion can become an idol and replace God? How do we know? Same way. We value people of one religion more than we value others. Christians are
7 being hurt! Let s go to God and pray! And maybe bomb the people who are doing the hurting. But Muslims are being hurt? There are too many of them anyway. They probably just got what was coming to them. We treat some people as more valuable than others. Idols always take us there. Idolatry always leads to us as treating people as less than human whether our idol is money or country, or race, or our own appetite. God takes us in the opposite direction. When Jesus wanted to describe how to love our neighbor the example he uses is the Good Samaritan someone from a different family, from a different race, from a different nation, from a different religion. If idols warp us and cause us to see other people as less than human. But worshiping God always expands the circle of love outward. Which is why Jesus says, if you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5: 46-48). Whoah, hey! But I can t be perfect! I can t be like our Father! The word for perfect there in the original Greek is telos. It means complete. It means finished. In Greece at the end of a race the banner over the finish line says telos. Jesus is saying be finished and complete. It s the goal line toward which God is moving us. No, on our own we can t do it. But that s why God shares not only forgiveness for the ways that we have treated others as if they have no value, he also shares what? He shares his presence with us by filling us with his Holy Spirit. He shares his character with us by having his Spirit produce in us love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and all the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. He moves us forward toward the finish line
8 until more and more we, as Romans 8: 29 says, become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Romans 8: 29 NLT). We become what we worship. We are either moving towards the telos that God has for us sharing in his divine nature looking more and more like Jesus. Or we are looking more and more like the false little idols that we see around us. Which direction are you moving in? Amen