…worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…(Romans 1:25 – ESV)
It is part of the sinful nature to love ourselves more than we love God (2 Timothy 3:1-5 / Romans 1:30). Just as in Paul’s time, it continues today, but to love self more than God is to hate God, and ourselves. When we value what God has made more than we value God, we devalue God and we will inevitably devalue man. It backfires on us; we don’t even love ourselves.
We may not be doing some of those things the pagans are doing, but we have exchanged our heritage as God’s special creation and traded the value of God for less so often that in Christian circles we have bought into the secular/spiritual divide. In so doing we think we can pick and choose things out of the world such as gothic fashion or “Christian yoga” and say that it is harmless, without examining what the roots of these practices are.
The root is Mother Nature or our own nature, but we don’t recognize the source of the idolatry and so we don’t realize the scope of the sin. Why do we feel the need to do these new things? Perhaps it is because we are not comfortable with how God really is, and we must invent a god who is like us, instead of becoming like Him.
We want to worship a god who worships us. We think things have no spiritual significance because we have limited our spirituality to our quiet time in the morning and once a week at church. Of course that also goes for the thinking that we can “do” church any old way we want to, or not at all, and still call ourselves Christians.
We have made an idol of God, and often we rationalize our behavior in light of what we think are good intentions, but we are actually trying to carry out our own will without truly knowing the big picture. We might do some small good, in order to bring about our own desired end, we help others because of what they can or will do for us. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit (Proverbs 16:2 – ESV).
We must yield to God, and know His Word in order to have true judgment. The key is to know “I the Lord search the heart” (Jeremiah 17:10). Then we can pray, like David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
Are you making the right exchanges in your life? Is Christ being formed in you (Galatians 4:19) or are you making an image for/of yourself?
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This was taken from a previous post from 3-1-07, and reposted on 7-1-09, but now includes the audio in our SermonAudio files, which has additional material in it...we will be doing this with many of our older posts, so that they can have the audio attached to them and be archived at SermonAudio...hope these are edifying and enjoyable for you...God bless...
We will also be doing many brand new posts with new audio as we did last week, mixing it up as we do new posts but also adding some of our older posts for the SermonAudio audience who may not visit this site...stay tuned!
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