Made for God, Not a god (Nov 1, 09)
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CREATION M3 SERMON NOTES NOVEMBER 1, 2009
TITLE : Made for God--not a god
TEXT: Genesis 2: 8-9; 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7
Ken Shigematsu
BIG IDEA: The essence of sin is to trust something or someone, other than God.
How many of you have rappelled down the side of a cliff?
If you rappel for the first time, your guide will encourage you to walk backwards off a cliff (use a rope as prop), as you step off to throw yourself back almost as if you were doing a “trust fall,” and someone was going to catch you. Your guide will say trust the ropes and your equipment and (show PowerPoint image now) lean back…
But, it doesn’t feel safe to throw yourself backwards over a cliff (even with ropes) and then lean back. So what many first time rappellers will do is hug the cliff (like the cliff is their new best friend), but when a person does that they slide down the cliff and often end up scrapping a knee or their nose.
They key to rappelling is to trust your equipment.
We’ve been in series in the book of Genesis on what it means to be a human being (we’ve seen how part of what it means to be a human being is to be in relationship--it’s in our nature, it’s in our DNA. Last week we considered how part of what it means to be a human being is to represent God by care for a creation that God takes pleasure and delight in) and today we’re going look at how human beings will flourish--or not--based on whether they trust their maker.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Genesis 2:8
Genesis 2: 8-9:
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2: 15-17:
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die."
Genesis 3: 1-7:
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
In Genesis 2: 8-9 we read:
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In Genesis 1 and 2 we see that God has given Adam extraordinary gifts. He has given Adam a friendship with himself that is open and transparent. He has given Adam great work--great blue-collar work as a farmer working with very fertile soil; great white-collar work as a zoologist, naming all the animals. Adam is surrounded by a gorgeous paradise, and he has exquisite food. Then, finally, God also gives Adam the gift of Eve, a human companion who also becomes his wife.
So God has given Adam and Eve wonderful gifts… In Genesis 2:9 we see that God has also given them, contrary to popular assumption, access to the fruit of the tree of life. The tree of life symbolized that God’s intention for Adam and Eve was good… life in all its abundance…a life of joy…a life of wholeness… a life everlasting.
Then in Genesis 3 vs. 1 we read how Satan, who is also called “the great deceiver,” approaches them in the form of a serpent. Jesus said in John 10:10, while God’s purpose for us is that we might experience life in all its fullness, Satan comes to us to kill, steal, and destroy us. We read in vs. 1 that the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
When we read how Satan approached Adam and Eve in the form of a serpent perhaps we envision a coiled snake with a slithering tongue crawling on its belly. When we read about the serpent here in the early part of Genesis 3, the serpent has not yet been cursed by God (Genesis 3:14) to crawl on its belly all the days of its life because the serpent had enticed Adam and Eve to sin.
Commentators on Genesis have pointed out that the serpent, before it was cursed, was likely a creature of extraordinary beauty. Later in the Bible, we are told that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. When Satan comes to us, he will not come to us in the form of a crawling snake with a slithering tongue. He will glide into our lives in a form that is so attractive and so alluring, and so seemingly attuned to our self-interest, that we may have no idea that the “evil one” is tempting us. (In the movie, The Usual Suspects, Verbal (Kevin Spacey) says, “The greatest trick of the devil is convincing people he doesn’t exist.”)
Notice the way that the serpent comes to Eve because the way he comes to Eve is the way he will come to us. The serpent Satan comes to Eve and begins to ask her in Genesis 1, “Did God really say ‘You cannot eat of any tree in the garden?’ In the original, the Hebrew word translated “really” has a skeptical tone to it. One of the ways Satan will tempt us is through the use of this skeptical and sarcastic “really?” “You’ve got to be kidding?!”
Satan smears God by making him seem so unreasonable.
Satan also smears God by saying, “Did God really say you cannot eat from any tree of the garden?” But, is that what God said? No. God did not say that Adam could not eat of any tree of the Garden of Eden. He said in Genesis 2: 16 that Adam (and later Eve) was free to eat all any trees in the garden, including the tree of life, but the one tree they could not eat of was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Satan takes something positive that God has said, “You can eat of all the trees, except one,” and twists that singular prohibition into something really negative: “God has said that you cannot eat of any tree.” Satan shifts the focus from God’s abundant provision to a prohibition, from the positive to the negative. You can see in the text that Satan has already had a negative impact on Eve’s thinking because she says, “We cannot eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden.” But, did God say this? No. God tells us that tree of life is in the middle of the garden and they were free to eat from this tree. The one tree that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat from was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (God said if effect this one tree belongs exclusively to me, trust me).
Then Eve says, “God said do not touch the fruit.” But, did God say, “Do not touch the fruit?” No, God never said anything about not touching it. God said they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Satan will try to smear God by twisting God’s words. He will not emphasize God’s provision, but his prohibition. He will try to take something positive and twist it so it becomes negative. Satan not only smears God by twisting his words, but he also smears God by attacking God’s character. He suggests to Eve that God is trying to keep her and Adam from a truly free and fulfilling life. He says, “God doesn’t want you to eat of the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he knows that when you eat it, your eyes will become open and you will become like God.” Satan says, “God wants to keep you from really living, from really reaching your potential.”
What Satan does is to try to convince us that God is not worthy of our trust… that we are better off living independently from God… that we are better off if we served as our own god. In verse 4 Satan says, “If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely not die.” This is a clear, blatant contradiction of what God said in Genesis 2:17. In Genesis 2:17 God says if they eat the fruit of that tree they would surely die. But, Satan says, “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.”
Satan is whispering in Adam and Eve’s ear that if they eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will have the knowledge of good and evil that will make them like God… so that they won’t need God’s guidance anymore; that they can live independently, separate from God--and become more fully human—free…
This is how Satan continues to tempt us today. Satan tempts us by whispering to us that God does not have our best interests in mind; that if we follow God’s way, we will miss out; that we are better off living independently from God; that we will be better off and more fully human if we are our own god. As a teenager, I believed in the existence of God, but I had a suspicion in the back of mind that if I really gave my life over to God, I would miss out on all the excitement of life.
For some of you, what holds you back from giving your life fully to God is the feeling that if you do—you will miss out on in some way.
What Satan tries to do is to smear God’s character. He tries to make us believe that if we give ourselves fully to God, we will miss out on life, and that we are better off living as our own god.
The Book of Genesis and the scriptures show us we were made to trust God… that we were made to trust something bigger that ourselves.
Throughout Genesis and the scriptures we see how human beings were made to live in relationship with God. Because we were built to trust God, because we were designed to place our security, identity and meaning in God, if we don’t, it is not like we will be truly autonomous, as Satan suggests, but we will build our life on something or someone other than God… a substitute god…a pseudo saviour…
In Romans 1 we read:
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him…. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…
Because we were made to worship God, when we do not, we will find ourselves placing our security, identity in meaning in something or someone other than God.
According to Romans 1, the essence of sin is idolatry, turning to something or someone other than God for our LIFE. The very first sin of the human race was not adultery or murder or theft, but Adam and Eve choosing to trust something other than God for their LIFE.
The church father Tertullian said that the primary sin of the human race is idolatry--turning to something other than God for our security, identity, and meaning in life.
An idol is whatever we put our primary trust and security in. For some people, their idol is work. There is nothing wrong intrinsically with work. Work is a gift from God. We were made to work. But when we turn work into the thing that defines us, it becomes an idol.
When I was working for a corporation in Tokyo, Japan, when a Japanese salary-man (corporate soldier) would find out that I was a Christian, he would typically respond by saying, “Oh, I am not religious. Japanese people are really not religious.” I would say, “Oh, Japanese people are very religious… (pause)… the religion for many Japanese men is the company. It is what you devote your life to. It is where you get your meaning. Where you find your community. It’s where you make sacrifices.” For many men (and an increasing number of women) in Japan, their religion is their company, their work, their career. Many people in large urban areas like Tokyo (and to some extent even in place like Vancouver) are defined by their work, that’s where they are seeking meaning in life, that’s what they are willing to sacrifice for.
Work can be a very demanding idol. As long we are serving this idol well, things may seem fine for us, but if we are failing at work, if we find that we are out of work, the work idol will make us feel like we are nothing. If we serve the lord of our career well, things may seem like they are going fine. But if we fail the god of work, this god can punish us with a vengeance. The idol can make us feel like our life is meaningless. It can fill us with a sense of despair, and can make us even make us feel life there is no more point to our life.
By the way, how can you tell whether we have an idol, versus something we really value in our lives? If we value something and lose it, we will feel sad, perhaps really sad… But if we idolize something and then lose it, then we will feel like our life is now meaningless, and that there is no point to our life. We don’t know how we’re going to go on.
Do you have something like that in your life? Might you have an idol?
For other people, their idol might be their education. Again, like work, education, in and of itself is a very good thing.
But, if we make education our idol it can crush us. If we serve the education idol well, we’re getting good grades; we’re being admitted to the right programs; it may seem like things are fine. But if we don’t serve this idol well, this idol can be ruthless, as well.
If we don’t get into the right school, the right program, if we don’t distinguish ourself in our program in some way, and if education is our idol… we will feel despair, like our life is meaningless, like we are not sure how we are going to be able to go on… If our education is a we value and we fail in it, we will be sad. But if our education is what defines us, and if we fail it, it will punish us. It will make us feel like our life is worthless, that there is no point to it.
Beauty can become an idol, too. Beauty is a gift from God. As we talked about last week, God made a beautiful earth; he made beautiful people. When my wife was studying painting at Emily Carr she said, if you really look at people, you’ll see that every human being is beautiful. But if we make beauty and idol it can crush us.
Frederick Buechner, the author and pastor writes sadly of his own mother: “Being beautiful was her business, her art, her delight, and it took her a long way and earned her many dividends, but when as she saw it, she lost her beauty… she was like a millionaire who runs out of money. She took her name out of the phone book and got an unlisted number. With her looks gone, she felt she had nothing left to offer the world… So what she did was simply check out of the world, my mother holed herself up in her apartment… then in one room of that apartment, then in just one chair in that room, and finally in the bed where one morning a few summers ago… she died at last.”
If your beauty or youth or health is an idol, and you lose it like Buechner’s mother, once you lose it, you feel you have nothing left to offer the world and there’s a part of you that checks out.
Another idol can be a romantic relationship. If we fall in love with someone, that will sweep us off your feet. That can be a wonderful experience and a gift from God.
But if that person’s love is the one thing that makes us feel worthy as a human being, or valuable, if we feel like I am nobody unless this person loves me, or my life is meaningless unless this person loves me, then we have an idol. And if we fail the idol of romance, we can feel despair, like our life is meaningless, that there is no point in going on in life… (I’ve been there. I’ve been so invested in a romantic relationship that when we broke up, for a while it felt like there no point to life. Looking back that how I know that a good thing, had become an ultimate thing for me—an idol.).
Marriage can be a wonderful gift. But, it’s possible, particularly if you are happily married, to make an idol out of your spouse. If we love our spouse and something compromises the marriage in some way, or if our spouse dies, we will naturally experience great mourning and despair…. But, if our spouse is our god, and we lost our spouse we will feel like there is just is no point to life any more…
Family and children are great gifts, but they can become idols well. In the Christian world, as a pastor mentor of mine says, we tend not to think of family or children as idols, but there are parents who look at their children and in their hearts they are saying “if my children are happy and healthy, if they love me, if they are successful, if they are walking with God, then I know that I am worth something. I am not loser.”
We can even make an idol out of our religious practices.
Praying, going to church, seeking to learn about God, seeking to live a life in alignment with God’s plan for us are good things. But as Tim Keller says in his book, Prodigal God, if we make our religious and spiritual practices, which are good things, ultimate things instead of God, then when we fail at these things, we will again experience despair and feel that life is meaningless. We can feel there is no point to our life.
The essence of sin is putting our security, identity, and meaning in something other than the living God.
The other “god” can be harsh if we fail it, but can also wedge us from the real God, source of all life.
Many people choose not to fully devote themselves to God because they feel they will miss out on life if they do. The irony is that when they do so, they turn to something or someone other than God for their identity, security and meaning, and they find that something is missing in their life because we were made for the living God.
Each of us has a hole in our lives that can only be filled by God.
There is nothing wrong with most idols in and of themselves: there’s nothing wrong with work, education, beauty, or family. In and of themselves these are good things. But if we make them the most important thing in our life, they will occupy our hearts to place in our hearts that only God can fill… and if we fail them they will punish us… EVEN IF we serve them well--they will leave us feeling less than wholly satisfied because there’s a part of our soul that only God can satisfy.
How do we break the power of something good that has become an idol to us?
In the Greek mythology, Homer tells us of the enchanting Isle of Sirens, where there are beautiful creatures that are part human and part bird. The Sirens could sing so beautifully that they enchanted all those who heard them. Sailors who would pass by and heard their singing would hurl themselves overboard and swim to them, but would die on the jagged rocks surrounding the island.
When Odysseus was about to pass the Isle of the Sirens by ship he ordered his men to plug their ears with beeswax so they could not hear the siren’s songs. Then he had them tie him to the mast of the ship.
But, when the great adventurer Jason needed to sail past the Isle of the Sirens, Jason brought the along the incomparable musician Orpheus. When they passed the Isle of the Sirens, Jason had Orpheus play more beautiful music than the Sirens, and they were able to pass by unharmed.
Thomas Chalmers has said the only way to break the power of a beautiful object on the soul is to show it something more beautiful.
It as we gaze on the beauty and the magnificence and the goodness of God, whether through Scripture, silence, nature, art, music, people--the power of an idol can be broken in our lives.
If we gaze on God’s love for us in the face of Christ, we can trust God without reserve.
In the Garden of Eden see how God gave Adam and Eve access to the tree of life, a sign that God’s intention for us is to experience life in all its fullness, joy and peace.
In another garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, we see that God became a human being in Jesus Christ and died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven, so that our shame could be washed away, so that we could be restored to him. As we look at God’s face in Christ, we see don’t see a god who not punish when we fail him, but a God who forgives us. We see the face of the only God who can fulfill us. We see the face of the one who alone is worthy of our entire trust and worship.
Prayer:
Is there something too important to you? Has a good thing that’s become an ultimate thing?
Name it.
Talk to God about this…
(Sometimes I have prayed, “Teach me to care and not care.
Help me to be passionate and dispassionate…”)
Pray you would be swept up in the beauty, the adventure, and the mystery of discovering how great and awesome and loving and good God is, and ask that you would be able to trust him.
Perhaps you’d like to pray John Donne’s prayer
Batter my heart, three-personed God…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
CREATION M3 SERMON NOTES NOVEMBER 1, 2009
TITLE : Made for God--not a god
TEXT: Genesis 2: 8-9; 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7
Ken Shigematsu
BIG IDEA: The essence of sin is to trust something or someone, other than God.
How many of you have rappelled down the side of a cliff?
If you rappel for the first time, your guide will encourage you to walk backwards off a cliff (use a rope as prop), as you step off to throw yourself back almost as if you were doing a “trust fall,” and someone was going to catch you. Your guide will say trust the ropes and your equipment and (show PowerPoint image now) lean back…
But, it doesn’t feel safe to throw yourself backwards over a cliff (even with ropes) and then lean back. So what many first time rappellers will do is hug the cliff (like the cliff is their new best friend), but when a person does that they slide down the cliff and often end up scrapping a knee or their nose.
They key to rappelling is to trust your equipment.
We’ve been in series in the book of Genesis on what it means to be a human being (we’ve seen how part of what it means to be a human being is to be in relationship--it’s in our nature, it’s in our DNA. Last week we considered how part of what it means to be a human being is to represent God by care for a creation that God takes pleasure and delight in) and today we’re going look at how human beings will flourish--or not--based on whether they trust their maker.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Genesis 2:8
Genesis 2: 8-9:
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2: 15-17:
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die."
Genesis 3: 1-7:
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
In Genesis 2: 8-9 we read:
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In Genesis 1 and 2 we see that God has given Adam extraordinary gifts. He has given Adam a friendship with himself that is open and transparent. He has given Adam great work--great blue-collar work as a farmer working with very fertile soil; great white-collar work as a zoologist, naming all the animals. Adam is surrounded by a gorgeous paradise, and he has exquisite food. Then, finally, God also gives Adam the gift of Eve, a human companion who also becomes his wife.
So God has given Adam and Eve wonderful gifts… In Genesis 2:9 we see that God has also given them, contrary to popular assumption, access to the fruit of the tree of life. The tree of life symbolized that God’s intention for Adam and Eve was good… life in all its abundance…a life of joy…a life of wholeness… a life everlasting.
Then in Genesis 3 vs. 1 we read how Satan, who is also called “the great deceiver,” approaches them in the form of a serpent. Jesus said in John 10:10, while God’s purpose for us is that we might experience life in all its fullness, Satan comes to us to kill, steal, and destroy us. We read in vs. 1 that the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
When we read how Satan approached Adam and Eve in the form of a serpent perhaps we envision a coiled snake with a slithering tongue crawling on its belly. When we read about the serpent here in the early part of Genesis 3, the serpent has not yet been cursed by God (Genesis 3:14) to crawl on its belly all the days of its life because the serpent had enticed Adam and Eve to sin.
Commentators on Genesis have pointed out that the serpent, before it was cursed, was likely a creature of extraordinary beauty. Later in the Bible, we are told that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. When Satan comes to us, he will not come to us in the form of a crawling snake with a slithering tongue. He will glide into our lives in a form that is so attractive and so alluring, and so seemingly attuned to our self-interest, that we may have no idea that the “evil one” is tempting us. (In the movie, The Usual Suspects, Verbal (Kevin Spacey) says, “The greatest trick of the devil is convincing people he doesn’t exist.”)
Notice the way that the serpent comes to Eve because the way he comes to Eve is the way he will come to us. The serpent Satan comes to Eve and begins to ask her in Genesis 1, “Did God really say ‘You cannot eat of any tree in the garden?’ In the original, the Hebrew word translated “really” has a skeptical tone to it. One of the ways Satan will tempt us is through the use of this skeptical and sarcastic “really?” “You’ve got to be kidding?!”
Satan smears God by making him seem so unreasonable.
Satan also smears God by saying, “Did God really say you cannot eat from any tree of the garden?” But, is that what God said? No. God did not say that Adam could not eat of any tree of the Garden of Eden. He said in Genesis 2: 16 that Adam (and later Eve) was free to eat all any trees in the garden, including the tree of life, but the one tree they could not eat of was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Satan takes something positive that God has said, “You can eat of all the trees, except one,” and twists that singular prohibition into something really negative: “God has said that you cannot eat of any tree.” Satan shifts the focus from God’s abundant provision to a prohibition, from the positive to the negative. You can see in the text that Satan has already had a negative impact on Eve’s thinking because she says, “We cannot eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden.” But, did God say this? No. God tells us that tree of life is in the middle of the garden and they were free to eat from this tree. The one tree that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat from was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (God said if effect this one tree belongs exclusively to me, trust me).
Then Eve says, “God said do not touch the fruit.” But, did God say, “Do not touch the fruit?” No, God never said anything about not touching it. God said they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Satan will try to smear God by twisting God’s words. He will not emphasize God’s provision, but his prohibition. He will try to take something positive and twist it so it becomes negative. Satan not only smears God by twisting his words, but he also smears God by attacking God’s character. He suggests to Eve that God is trying to keep her and Adam from a truly free and fulfilling life. He says, “God doesn’t want you to eat of the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he knows that when you eat it, your eyes will become open and you will become like God.” Satan says, “God wants to keep you from really living, from really reaching your potential.”
What Satan does is to try to convince us that God is not worthy of our trust… that we are better off living independently from God… that we are better off if we served as our own god. In verse 4 Satan says, “If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely not die.” This is a clear, blatant contradiction of what God said in Genesis 2:17. In Genesis 2:17 God says if they eat the fruit of that tree they would surely die. But, Satan says, “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.”
Satan is whispering in Adam and Eve’s ear that if they eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will have the knowledge of good and evil that will make them like God… so that they won’t need God’s guidance anymore; that they can live independently, separate from God--and become more fully human—free…
This is how Satan continues to tempt us today. Satan tempts us by whispering to us that God does not have our best interests in mind; that if we follow God’s way, we will miss out; that we are better off living independently from God; that we will be better off and more fully human if we are our own god. As a teenager, I believed in the existence of God, but I had a suspicion in the back of mind that if I really gave my life over to God, I would miss out on all the excitement of life.
For some of you, what holds you back from giving your life fully to God is the feeling that if you do—you will miss out on in some way.
What Satan tries to do is to smear God’s character. He tries to make us believe that if we give ourselves fully to God, we will miss out on life, and that we are better off living as our own god.
The Book of Genesis and the scriptures show us we were made to trust God… that we were made to trust something bigger that ourselves.
Throughout Genesis and the scriptures we see how human beings were made to live in relationship with God. Because we were built to trust God, because we were designed to place our security, identity and meaning in God, if we don’t, it is not like we will be truly autonomous, as Satan suggests, but we will build our life on something or someone other than God… a substitute god…a pseudo saviour…
In Romans 1 we read:
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him…. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…
Because we were made to worship God, when we do not, we will find ourselves placing our security, identity in meaning in something or someone other than God.
According to Romans 1, the essence of sin is idolatry, turning to something or someone other than God for our LIFE. The very first sin of the human race was not adultery or murder or theft, but Adam and Eve choosing to trust something other than God for their LIFE.
The church father Tertullian said that the primary sin of the human race is idolatry--turning to something other than God for our security, identity, and meaning in life.
An idol is whatever we put our primary trust and security in. For some people, their idol is work. There is nothing wrong intrinsically with work. Work is a gift from God. We were made to work. But when we turn work into the thing that defines us, it becomes an idol.
When I was working for a corporation in Tokyo, Japan, when a Japanese salary-man (corporate soldier) would find out that I was a Christian, he would typically respond by saying, “Oh, I am not religious. Japanese people are really not religious.” I would say, “Oh, Japanese people are very religious… (pause)… the religion for many Japanese men is the company. It is what you devote your life to. It is where you get your meaning. Where you find your community. It’s where you make sacrifices.” For many men (and an increasing number of women) in Japan, their religion is their company, their work, their career. Many people in large urban areas like Tokyo (and to some extent even in place like Vancouver) are defined by their work, that’s where they are seeking meaning in life, that’s what they are willing to sacrifice for.
Work can be a very demanding idol. As long we are serving this idol well, things may seem fine for us, but if we are failing at work, if we find that we are out of work, the work idol will make us feel like we are nothing. If we serve the lord of our career well, things may seem like they are going fine. But if we fail the god of work, this god can punish us with a vengeance. The idol can make us feel like our life is meaningless. It can fill us with a sense of despair, and can make us even make us feel life there is no more point to our life.
By the way, how can you tell whether we have an idol, versus something we really value in our lives? If we value something and lose it, we will feel sad, perhaps really sad… But if we idolize something and then lose it, then we will feel like our life is now meaningless, and that there is no point to our life. We don’t know how we’re going to go on.
Do you have something like that in your life? Might you have an idol?
For other people, their idol might be their education. Again, like work, education, in and of itself is a very good thing.
But, if we make education our idol it can crush us. If we serve the education idol well, we’re getting good grades; we’re being admitted to the right programs; it may seem like things are fine. But if we don’t serve this idol well, this idol can be ruthless, as well.
If we don’t get into the right school, the right program, if we don’t distinguish ourself in our program in some way, and if education is our idol… we will feel despair, like our life is meaningless, like we are not sure how we are going to be able to go on… If our education is a we value and we fail in it, we will be sad. But if our education is what defines us, and if we fail it, it will punish us. It will make us feel like our life is worthless, that there is no point to it.
Beauty can become an idol, too. Beauty is a gift from God. As we talked about last week, God made a beautiful earth; he made beautiful people. When my wife was studying painting at Emily Carr she said, if you really look at people, you’ll see that every human being is beautiful. But if we make beauty and idol it can crush us.
Frederick Buechner, the author and pastor writes sadly of his own mother: “Being beautiful was her business, her art, her delight, and it took her a long way and earned her many dividends, but when as she saw it, she lost her beauty… she was like a millionaire who runs out of money. She took her name out of the phone book and got an unlisted number. With her looks gone, she felt she had nothing left to offer the world… So what she did was simply check out of the world, my mother holed herself up in her apartment… then in one room of that apartment, then in just one chair in that room, and finally in the bed where one morning a few summers ago… she died at last.”
If your beauty or youth or health is an idol, and you lose it like Buechner’s mother, once you lose it, you feel you have nothing left to offer the world and there’s a part of you that checks out.
Another idol can be a romantic relationship. If we fall in love with someone, that will sweep us off your feet. That can be a wonderful experience and a gift from God.
But if that person’s love is the one thing that makes us feel worthy as a human being, or valuable, if we feel like I am nobody unless this person loves me, or my life is meaningless unless this person loves me, then we have an idol. And if we fail the idol of romance, we can feel despair, like our life is meaningless, that there is no point in going on in life… (I’ve been there. I’ve been so invested in a romantic relationship that when we broke up, for a while it felt like there no point to life. Looking back that how I know that a good thing, had become an ultimate thing for me—an idol.).
Marriage can be a wonderful gift. But, it’s possible, particularly if you are happily married, to make an idol out of your spouse. If we love our spouse and something compromises the marriage in some way, or if our spouse dies, we will naturally experience great mourning and despair…. But, if our spouse is our god, and we lost our spouse we will feel like there is just is no point to life any more…
Family and children are great gifts, but they can become idols well. In the Christian world, as a pastor mentor of mine says, we tend not to think of family or children as idols, but there are parents who look at their children and in their hearts they are saying “if my children are happy and healthy, if they love me, if they are successful, if they are walking with God, then I know that I am worth something. I am not loser.”
We can even make an idol out of our religious practices.
Praying, going to church, seeking to learn about God, seeking to live a life in alignment with God’s plan for us are good things. But as Tim Keller says in his book, Prodigal God, if we make our religious and spiritual practices, which are good things, ultimate things instead of God, then when we fail at these things, we will again experience despair and feel that life is meaningless. We can feel there is no point to our life.
The essence of sin is putting our security, identity, and meaning in something other than the living God.
The other “god” can be harsh if we fail it, but can also wedge us from the real God, source of all life.
Many people choose not to fully devote themselves to God because they feel they will miss out on life if they do. The irony is that when they do so, they turn to something or someone other than God for their identity, security and meaning, and they find that something is missing in their life because we were made for the living God.
Each of us has a hole in our lives that can only be filled by God.
There is nothing wrong with most idols in and of themselves: there’s nothing wrong with work, education, beauty, or family. In and of themselves these are good things. But if we make them the most important thing in our life, they will occupy our hearts to place in our hearts that only God can fill… and if we fail them they will punish us… EVEN IF we serve them well--they will leave us feeling less than wholly satisfied because there’s a part of our soul that only God can satisfy.
How do we break the power of something good that has become an idol to us?
In the Greek mythology, Homer tells us of the enchanting Isle of Sirens, where there are beautiful creatures that are part human and part bird. The Sirens could sing so beautifully that they enchanted all those who heard them. Sailors who would pass by and heard their singing would hurl themselves overboard and swim to them, but would die on the jagged rocks surrounding the island.
When Odysseus was about to pass the Isle of the Sirens by ship he ordered his men to plug their ears with beeswax so they could not hear the siren’s songs. Then he had them tie him to the mast of the ship.
But, when the great adventurer Jason needed to sail past the Isle of the Sirens, Jason brought the along the incomparable musician Orpheus. When they passed the Isle of the Sirens, Jason had Orpheus play more beautiful music than the Sirens, and they were able to pass by unharmed.
Thomas Chalmers has said the only way to break the power of a beautiful object on the soul is to show it something more beautiful.
It as we gaze on the beauty and the magnificence and the goodness of God, whether through Scripture, silence, nature, art, music, people--the power of an idol can be broken in our lives.
If we gaze on God’s love for us in the face of Christ, we can trust God without reserve.
In the Garden of Eden see how God gave Adam and Eve access to the tree of life, a sign that God’s intention for us is to experience life in all its fullness, joy and peace.
In another garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, we see that God became a human being in Jesus Christ and died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven, so that our shame could be washed away, so that we could be restored to him. As we look at God’s face in Christ, we see don’t see a god who not punish when we fail him, but a God who forgives us. We see the face of the only God who can fulfill us. We see the face of the one who alone is worthy of our entire trust and worship.
Prayer:
Is there something too important to you? Has a good thing that’s become an ultimate thing?
Name it.
Talk to God about this…
(Sometimes I have prayed, “Teach me to care and not care.
Help me to be passionate and dispassionate…”)
Pray you would be swept up in the beauty, the adventure, and the mystery of discovering how great and awesome and loving and good God is, and ask that you would be able to trust him.
Perhaps you’d like to pray John Donne’s prayer
Batter my heart, three-personed God…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:18 AM
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