Can We Be Guilty of Idolatry Without Even Realizing It?

One of the most amazing statements made right at the beginning of the Bible is that God created human beings in His own image. We are created in the image of God. The Bible goes on to explain how we became corrupted images, but we're still made in the image of God. And the whole point of the gospel is how God wants to recreate human beings back into their original purpose to be made into His image, to be His children. When we also look at the Bible, we see that there are great condemnations from God on the use of images, idols, in the worship of Him. Idolatry is one of the greatest sins in the entire Bible. Ancient Israel was condemned for idolatry many times. It's amazing how much idolatry is dealt with by the Apostle Paul, who had to go out into the pagan world. It's not dealt with by Jesus, that's not what he was dealing with. He was dealing with a Jewish community that already worshiped God, the God of the Bible. But as soon as Paul goes out into the pagan world, he's dealing with idolatry. We have given up things like Christmas and Easter because we understand that those are just forms of idolatry. They're not biblical in nature, and they've adopted certain paganism into those days. But here's what I want to explore today. Can we be guilty of a kind of idolatry and not even realize it? Can you and I be guilty of a kind of idolatry and not even realize it? I was working on a sermon to give today, and I realized I'd given this sermon in Murfreesboro a couple months ago, and I had it on my list to give eventually here. And I thought, wow, I've never gave that sermon, even though it's been a couple months. So I thought I would give this sermon, which I gave in Murfreesboro, because I think it's a very important subject. To explore that question, can we be guilty of a type of idolatry? I'm going to ask four other questions, and you're going to have to think about those questions, explore those questions, write them down, and pray about these questions in your life. The first one is, am I guilty of making God in my image? Remember, you were made in the image of God, but are we sometimes guilty of doing the opposite? Now, this is a fascinating set of verses in Psalm 50. Psalm chapter 50, where God is speaking. So we have the words of God here, as He's dealing with human beings. Psalm chapter 50.

We're going to pick this up in verse 16. He's talking about people who are living in rebellion against God, and yet they claim to worship God. And here's the problem that it leads to. Here's the core of the problem when you get through all these other things. Verse 16, verse 17, Now, He's talking here to Israel. He's talking about people who are under the old covenant. So these weren't, once again, He's not talking to pagans here. He's talking to people who had come under the covenant of God and were the people of God. He says, Seeing that you hate instruction and cast by words behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented with him and have been a partaker with an adulterer. So here's their dishonest people. They're people that are just sexually immoral. You have your mouth, you give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames the seat. So once again, you can't trust them, what they say, what they do. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. In other words, you slander your brother. He puts slander here in this category. Slander is a very, one of those sins that we don't talk about much, where we talk about and put down other people and slander them, destroying their character, destroying who they are by talking to others about them. These things you have done, and God says, but I have kept silent, and I have kept silent. You thought I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and set them in order before your eyes. God says, you're living this lifestyle, pretending to be my people. Talking in ancient Israel here, he says, and why are you doing this? You know, you're doing this wrong, and this wrong, and this wrong. So here's all the things you're doing wrong, but Denny gets down to why. It's because you think you and I are alike. What they were doing is they were looking at their lives instead of framing it in what God tells them to do. They were framing it in the fact that we are the people of God, we understand what we're supposed to do, and God will understand us, and in doing that, they were actually living in a way that God says, I will rebuke you. The Bible reveals the true God, and it's difficult for us to even understand. I mean, if you try to sit down and really contemplate the greatness of God, I just, just, you know, we had one of the bushes, the crepes there beside our back porch, some cardinals laid some eggs, and we watched them hatch, and they, you know, sat there and chirp, chirp, chirp, and they kept feeding them until they got so fat one day we looked out and they were gone. But we just watched those cardinals, went out and chased the cats away when the cats were looking up at the bush, you know. As we took and just watched that, and to think that God not only designed this, God is aware of it.

He said, the sparrow doesn't die, that he doesn't know it. God is aware of it. He started to think about the absolute greatness of God. He is aware of a bird in Indonesia. He's aware of animals in China. He's aware of his creation. He's aware of every human being. In fact, he sustains all things. In other words, if he wills it, nothing exists anymore. The entire universe he sustains. He created everything. He's the ultimate love. He's the ultimate intelligence. He's the ultimate in creativity. And he says over and over again, he hates evil. It's not a matter of, oh, I don't like that. He hates evil. That's an aspect of God that we should never forget. And he uses those words like hatred, abomination, to describe how he thinks about evil. But here we just read where people were following God but doing a lot of evil things. Why? Because they thought they were like God. The whole point is that we're not like God. He's totally different than us. And this isn't making God in our image. It's God making us in His image.

And that's a struggle that all of us are going through. And it's difficult. I'm going to make a couple of statements here, and I want you to think about these statements. Human beings have a limited understanding of God, right? Because He's beyond our comprehension, really. We only get little glimpses in really who God is. His great God. His greatness. How does God read every thought of every one of us in this room right now? I mean, there's one of you thinking, oh, how much longer does He have? And He knows that.

He knows everything we're doing right now. Every one of us, but every one of us human beings are out here driving down the road. God is aware of that. It's beyond our comprehension when we begin to try to understand the greatness of God. Because of our limitations, we will try to make God in our image. We try to make Him have the limitations that we have. And when we do, we actually participate in a subtle form of idolatry. We haven't made God into a golden image. We've made Him look like us. When we are supposed to be looking like Him, now there's a huge difference. There's a huge difference in that.

The more we begin to understand God the best we can. The more we begin to know God as He really exists, the more we can love Him, the more you can trust Him. You can't love God and trust God unless you begin to understand a little bit about who He is.

And the more that we see God as an extension of ourselves, the more we see God as an extension of our own weak, corrupted human nature, the harder it is to respond to Him. We see God as doing failures. We see God as being mean. We see God as being limited. We see God in all these negative ways. But why? Because we see Him like us, and we don't see Him as He is. And I have a thousand questions, all the time, every day. God, why do you allow this? Why do you allow this suffering? Why do you allow this to happen to this person? Why is this going on? Why is that going on? And if we see God through the idol of ourselves, we make Him into somebody who's quite, who's failing at what He does.

It's like the atheist that, what was his name? Christopher Hitchens, who said when he was dying, I saw an interview with him, and they asked him, if you wake up, you die, and you wake up, and there is a God, what are you going to say? And he says, I'm going to tell him, you made a mess of it so bad. You hurt so many people. You tortured so many people that you are unworthy of worship, and I will never worship you. That's one of the last things he said. Because he made God in his own image, and didn't understand who God really is. So that's the first thing we have to do. We have to think about, am I guilty of making God in my own image? Because if God did everything the way I think it should be done, my life would be a whole lot easier. Nothing bad would ever happen to me. But then, God, I have to accept, like all of us have to, that God is much bigger than I am. Much greater than I am. Much more intelligent than I am. And loves me more than I can imagine. We have that, we talked about, Mr. Conger talked about is humility. Every time I hear somebody defending their honor, that usually means they're defending their pride. People with honor seldom have to defend it. When you're defending your honor all the time, it's usually you're defending pride. And by the way, you said those people asked if you were an angel. I talked to Lisa and she said, you're not. Just to pass it on. So that brings us to a second question. Do I really have any deep understanding of God? Do I really know Him as much as I can? This is a lifetime of learning to know God. That's what this is. It's a lifetime of learning to know God. And in our darkest moments, many times they're dark because we aren't centering on knowing God. We're centering on the darkness of the time.

Do I really know God? His being, who He is, how He thinks, as much as we can. And that's hard in the hustle and bustle of things. You know, about a year ago, I gave a sermon and I read this description. I'm going to read it again. Psalm 27.

The sermon was on a little different subject, but I did get into the sermon I was talking about, the personal relationship God wants with us. And there, David is crying out to God. And he says, verse 7 of Psalm 27, Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, Have mercy upon me and answer me. I need help. I am lost. You're the great God. I'm this little human being, and nothing's working out the way I thought it would. And this is happening to me, and this is happening, and this is bad, and I don't know what to do. Why aren't you with me? What is it I'm supposed to do? What are the answers? And here's what God tells him. When you said, seek my face. That's about as personal a statement you can ever make. I want you to look at me, God says. They say, No, no, I need answers to my problems. And God says, I want you to look at me. When I gave that sermon, I gave the example how I hit one of my daughters when she thought I wasn't paying her attention when she was little. She'd reach up and grab my face and turn it right towards her, and just keep on talking. So I had to make eye contact. Seek my face. Daddy, I need you to look at me face to face.

Many times, we're lost in our relationship with God. His answer isn't what we want. We've made him in our image, and he's supposed to give us an answer that we want. And his answer is, Look at me. Very personal. Very personal. But no, no, no, that doesn't solve the problem with my boss. That doesn't solve my financial problem. That doesn't solve the fact that this is the third time I've had COVID. Right? Because I know people had it three times. It doesn't solve the problem with my wife or my husband or whatever. It doesn't solve my problem. God says, No, look at me. Look at me. Get a glimpse into who I am.

Verse 8 says, When you said, here's what David's response, When you said, Seek my face, my heart said to you, Your face, Lord, I will seek.

David didn't say, But that doesn't answer my problem. He said, Yes, you are my answer. See, we have to understand. We look for all the answers when many times God says, Look at me. I'm the only answer you have. I'm it. I am God, and I am your answer.

And sometimes it's like, No, no, I'd rather have a thousand dollars. No, no, look at me. I am your answer. But I'd rather have you make my neighbor move because they're just obnoxious. No, look at me, not your neighbor.

And he says, and David then starts praying, it's like, Okay, then I need help here. Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger. You have been my help. Do not leave me nor forsake me. Oh, God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me. It was almost like a child. If I can look at you, I'll be okay. I'll be okay if I can just look at you. Do I really know God? Am I seeking God? How can you seek God? One thing is we ask God to reveal himself to us. Now, how does God reveal himself to us? Through the Scripture, we know there's very specific ways he does. One is through the Bible itself. It's through the Bible itself. But we have to be very careful. We can read the Bible, and if we interpret the Bible through our own image, we'll come up with answers that aren't actually from God. Knowing the Bible takes a great humility before God to actually know what God is saying. I think of the Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees did not. We look at the Sadducees and say, how could those people not know? The Sadducees were the Levitical priests. How could they not know about the resurrection? They had the entire Old Testament. If you read the entire Old Testament, you know what 90% of it says? You die, you go to Sheol, or you have no consciousness, you can't praise God, you have no love, you have no laughter, you have nothing. It's an empty, meaningless place. That's what 90% of it says. Then there's about 10% that says, and there's going to be a resurrection. So the Sadducees actually were looking at the overwhelming amount of information they had from the Old Testament and came to that conclusion. It wasn't because of a lack of studying the Bible. They were taking this huge chunk and saying, that's what it says. Then there's this other little part they missed that the Pharisees did not miss. So they believed in the resurrection. So they studied and they studied, and they missed the point that this time in Sheol was a temporary state until a resurrection. They thought it was a permanent state. I remember reading one scholar that said, if you look at it, the Sadducees were the most conservative, biblically-based group in the early New Testament. They just took everything so literal that they came to conclusions. They missed whole things, whole sections of things, and they missed the resurrection.

You know, Satan tried to tempt Jesus by what? Using the Bible to appeal to... See, Satan's good at this. He sees how we make God in our own image, and he appeals to that. He tried that with Jesus. Who was God? So guess what? It didn't work. Luke, chapter 2. Luke, chapter 2. We know the story here.

Luke 2.

Let's see, where did I want to go? Well, I'll just tell you.

Jesus fasts, right, about 40 days, and Satan appears. And what does Satan do three times? He reads to him or quotes to him Scripture. The Scripture says this, so why don't you do this? And, you know, if you are the Son of God, you can turn these rocks into bread, which was what I was going to read. You can turn these rocks into bread. And you know what? As the Son of God, he could. But he's tempting him to be manipulated by Satan. And he refuses to do it. No matter... He's starving to death at this point as a human being. He refuses to do what he has the power to do. Why? Because he knows he's being manipulated. He knows he's being manipulated.

If we're not careful, if we see everything through our own image, then Satan will use the Bible to manipulate what we think. He says, well, how could that be? Well, God will bless me.

If it says that, he's going to bless us. Therefore, people who aren't being blessed, they must be evil. Or if I'm not being blessed, God isn't upholding his part of the bargain. I've actually heard people say that. You know, it's like a bargain with God. He's not doing his part of his deal. I served him. He didn't bless me. But part of it, too, will God bless his people who are good. So if someone isn't being blessed, they must be bad.

How about this one? This is actually from Hebrews. This is actually from Hebrews. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. God sympathizes with my weaknesses. God loves me, therefore. You hear this all the time. God loves me, therefore. God accepts me just the way I am. You hear that a lot in the LGBTQ community, right? God loves me so he accepts me the way I am. Well, God's love isn't the issue. The issue is we have to be turned into the image of God. We can't make God in our image. We can't impose on God what we think he wants. We actually have to do what he wants. So we impose on God a definition of love that is not God's definition of love.

It's done all the time. The Bible is used all the time to manipulate, to make it what we want it to say. You and I have to be very careful. We have to be humble before the Word of God. We have to pray about the Word of God, and we have to submit to the Word of God when it is shown to us.

So we have to seek the Scripture, but we have to be careful how we use the Scripture. How else do we seek God? Creation is one way that we seek God, and we don't get in creation enough. I'm making myself stop and watch the Cardinals. I'm making myself stop. I was mowing the grass the other day, and this little baby rabbit decided he didn't know what I was doing, so he was following me while I mowed the grass. I finally ran him off because I was afraid I was going to throw out a rock or something and kill him. Then I could explain that to him. Oh, look, I killed a rabbit with my lawnmower. But I just, I said, stop and just look at this. Just enjoy this moment because God made this. This is sort of funny. God made this.

And then God shows himself through blessings. But a lot of times it's the blessings we don't see. It's the rabbit following you while you're mowing the grass.

Well, God blessed me. I gotta, you know, and we look at these big things, these big items. A lot of times God's just saying, look, look, I do really good work here. If you just look at it, just look at the little blessings I give you every day. But we only count the big ones. We don't count the little ones. And they're just so obvious. They're just little things. You know, just little things that make us laugh or to make us look how God does things. When you begin to see God's face, certain things happen. Why did you begin to trust God more? Because you understand a little bit more about His greatness and how little we are. You begin to trust God to guide your everyday decisions through what? Through the Scripture. Through seeking help from others that you can gain wisdom from. You begin to look at the inconsistencies of living a Christian, because living a Christian life doesn't mean you're always blessed. It sometimes means you suffer. You lose a job because you keep the Sabbath, because you refuse to work on the Sabbath. You lose friends over an issue like abortion, maybe friends at work or whatever. You suffer because you refuse to divorce a spouse who doesn't understand you. They haven't committed a sin in which divorce is allowed. They just don't understand you, and you're unhappy. But you know, the Bible doesn't give us that as a right to divorce. You stay single because you want to marry somebody in the faith. You pay tithes even though money is tight. Because why? Because the church says to. If you pay tithes because the church tells you to, you're doing it for the wrong reason. This is all between you and God. All between us and God. We have to know who He is and the greatness of who He is. We have to see Him as much as we can in that way. Which brings us to our third issue, our third question. Am I guilty of judging God? Am I guilty of judging God? Where we look at our situations in our lives and we say, God has failed me. God has failed me.

Because God doesn't seem to know what He's doing. This, by the way, is a very common viewpoint now of the Scripture. That God fails people all the time. In fact, the Bible shows can't be taken literally because it's a very evil God. As I recently had a person tell me, you can't believe in Genesis 1 and 2. I say, yeah, I do. And the person said, well, you can't. I refuse to believe it because it's illogical and it shows God as some kind of monster. I said, well, why? Well, it says that God made a woman out of Adam's rib. He made him first and then took some kind of molecules from him and made it the second, this woman. She said, that means women are nothing more than clones of men and second-rate citizens and second-rate before God, and it can't be true. You're missing the point, entirely. Missing the point of what is being said there, entirely. But that's so common. That's just the way people think today. That can't be true. Because why? We're making God in our image. We're not trying to find God as He is, who He really is. We're making Him in our image. And as we do so, God is a billion different gods, because we all have different viewpoints. Now, all of us do to a certain degree, and our uniqueness won't let us all think. We don't have groupthink, where we all see God exactly the same. But we all have to be moving towards God in trying to understand who He is, and we'll have more and more general concepts of God that are the same. And we'll experience Him interacting with us in the ways that He says He will.

Let's go to Isaiah 45. Isaiah 45. And let's go to verse 9. This is a well-known Scripture. Here's what God says to us. Woe to Him who strives with His Maker. Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth. He says, you know, if you want to have strife with somebody, just think of yourself as a broken piece of pottery. And let's go. You go have a fight with all the other broken pieces of pottery laying around, because that's all we all are, is broken pieces of pottery. That's all we are without God. Shall the clay say to Him who turns it, what are you making? Or shall the handiwork say, He has no hands? The guy making me doesn't know what He's doing. We have to believe God is actively involved in shaping our lives every day. Woe to Him who says to His Father, what are you beginning? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm going to be six foot four. Dad, if you're going to, you know, make a baby, I've got to be six foot four. Or to the woman, what have you brought forth?

We are striving with our Maker all the time. You know who struggled with this Maker? It was Job. And didn't even know it. You know, Job's argument is, what have I done wrong? I'm honest. I take care of widows. I praise God. I do sacrifices. I do all the worship things I'm supposed to do. Everything I'm supposed to do, I have never even talked about. I don't even look at another woman except my wife. Pretty graphic detail. My wife is the only woman I've ever been with, and that's who I'm going to be with. He argues that. It's amazing what these chapter after chapter of God, this is all I've done.

And God doesn't say, no, you didn't. Do that. Yes, you did that. Yes, you did that. And after that, God shows up and says, I have a question for you. Are you there when I made all this? And then he spends a couple chapters just asking Job questions that he has no way to answer.

Yeah, you're a good guy, Job. Here's what I want you to see. I don't want you to see me in your image. I want you to see me as I am. And when he's done, all Job can say is, wow, I thought I knew you, but now that I see you, I just repent. Repenting of not because he was living a sinful life, but because he really had no idea who God really was. All of us struggle with that. I mean, if you really are serious about your Christianity, you're going to struggle with, I don't get God.

I don't understand God. He's bigger. And then every once in a while when you get that glimpse, you're sort of like Job. Oh my. This is so big. And I'm so little. I'm so small here. I'm so small. The last question, how can I know I'm seeking God? How do I know that? You know you are seeking God, really seeking God, when something happens. And that is, Paul tells us to look into the spiritual mirror. When you look in the spiritual mirror and you're not looking at it just to say, oh look how all the good things I've done.

Or you're not looking into the spiritual mirror just to say, oh look at all the bad things I've done. I mean, we tend to do one or the other. Oh, look at me. In the spiritual mirror, I'm really good. I don't worship idols. I don't commit adultery. I don't lie. I don't steal. I keep the Sabbath. Whoa, I've got all this stuff. Or we look in the spiritual mirror and say, I'm rotten. I'm filthy. I'm meaningless. Why even try? And that's not what we're supposed to do. Let's end by going to 2 Corinthians 3. This becomes our focal point. Our focal point is that humility before God and His Word, okay?

We're humble before God and His Word. We realize that we are nothing without Him. We realize that we must seek His face. But there's another face we're supposed to seek. We seek the face of Almighty God, our Father. We seek Him. We want Him involved. We need Him. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge our own... Even Jesus said, I can do nothing except by God. You and I can do nothing except through God. Once you realize that and you start to live that way, life actually gets easier.

You have to submit. And submitting to God is hard. But our focal point now is, I'm looking at you, God. God says, God, all those other problems don't seem as bad all of a sudden, do they? All the problems don't seem quite as bad because you're looking at me, the Creator, the one who knows everything, the one who can fix anything, the one who's going to save the earth and save humanity.

That's me! Here I am. You're looking at me. Oh, okay. This thing that was, you know, had you just so upset and so worried about, okay, maybe that's not as important right now. Right now because it's me. And then we look in the spiritual mirror, and this has to happen. 2 Corinthians 3, 17. So we're zeroed in on God, and we're zeroed in on seeking His face. He says, now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. You talk about Jesus Christ here. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

When we look and see the face of God, and we look in our spiritual mirror, what we should see is that we're not in the image of the human being anymore. It's like we're changing. You can see it. There's the image of Jesus Christ. There's sort of me. I am changing. I am being changed into what God called me to be. His image.

Jesus Christ is the expressed image of God. And that's what you and I are supposed to do. Seek the face of the Almighty God, and then look in the spiritual mirror. And instead of just making a list of do's and don'ts, which there are do's and don'ts. We have to have those. But what are we looking at? Why are we doing it?

What's changing in our hearts and our minds? What's changing in our hearts and minds is that we are being changed into the image of God. You and I spend way too much energy, way too much failure in life, because we keep trying to make God in our image. And it never works out. In fact, the more you try to make God in your image, the more meaningless and unhappy your life becomes, because you can't make God in your image, and you really don't want to anyways.

You sure what God in my image? Right? You want God that we want all of us to be changed into His image. The expressed image of God is Jesus Christ.

We seek the face of God, and we look into that mirror. And what we do is we ask God, help me to see my brother Jesus Christ. Help me to conform to that image and what I do every day, every moment, how I live my life, all the other stuff doesn't matter. All the other stuff doesn't matter.

It's how you conform in that image. Once again, this is an intimate concept. You look in the mirror and you see sort of somebody else. It's like I solve my problems by looking for the face of God. This is the personal level in which God wants to interact with us. This is what we have to be growing into. This is what we have been called to. Seek the face of God, and you will find it. Oh, little bits and pieces.

The little bits that we can understand as we grow. Seek the real person of Jesus Christ, and seek to follow him and be like him and imitate him, and let the Spirit of God create you into that image. As I asked at the very beginning, am I guilty of making God in my own image? Are we guilty of that? Yes, all of us are at times. But let's remember our original purpose. Let's remember to seek the face of God. And then when we look into that spiritual mirror, seek to see the face of Jesus Christ.