Romans 1:25 – Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

What does it mean to worship the creature more than the Creator? In this blog, we will look at something that we are all guilty of. It is something so deceitful. God is the Creator, and his creation is the creature. We have a tendency to worship and serve the creature more than the Creator. We tend to worship the gift more than the giver. We tend to worship the food rather than the hand that feeds us. We like to worship anything, anyone but God. John 5:43 – I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. We are prone to idolatry. Idolatry can be so deceitful. So well hidden. Idolatry is when we worship anything other than God. We can make idols so easily. We can make idols out of people, heroes, religious figures. We can make idols out of what we do. Things we do. Things that make us feel separate, special, and above everyone else. Idolatry is expressly forbidden in the Bible. It is exposed, condemned, warned against in the ten commandments. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. We can make graven images in our head, in our mind. Our imaginations create idols, imaginations which we should be casting down, but which so quickly and easily exalt us against and above God. We can even make an idol Jesus. The Bible speaks of the idol shepherd. There is the true Shepherd and the idol Shepherd. This is why it is important to worship the Jesus of the Bible. This is why we have the Bible, the word of God which is available to all, it is God’s gift to us so that we have no excuse for being deceived. We can so very, very easily create a Jesus in our head that does not exist. Many people profess to be saved, many people confess the name of Jesus. But what Jesus are they confessing? This is why Jesus said Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is about the spirit. God tries the spirits. We have to try the spirits, and we do this with the spiritual book, the Word of God. The woman with the spirit of divination in Acts 16 said all the right things. She followed Paul and said, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. But Paul rebuked the spirit, and commanded the spirit to come out of her. The spirit of divination was a deceitful, lying spirit, the spirit had brought a lot of financial gain to the woman’s masters. Money is the root of all evil. What spirit do you have, what spirit are you of?

I was thinking last night, and thanking God for his blessings in my life. But then I thought, am I really only just thanking God because he has blessed me? When evil comes upon me, do I then curse God? What kind of relationship is that? We can worship the blessings, rather than God that gave the blessings. It is so subtle. Satan is the king of subtlety, he was subtil in the beginning. This is why Job was such a great man of faith. All the evil came upon him, and yet he rose up and worshipped God. His wife said, Curse God and die. Job said, What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? The real litmus test of our worship and love for God is what we do with him when things aren’t going so great. Joseph was horribly betrayed by his brothers. He was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. He was chucked in a prison in Egypt, left to rot. And he had done no wrong at all. Was he bitter? No. Did he curse God? No. The life of Joseph is so much higher than our lives may ever reach. Paul and Silas sang in jail after they had been beaten. Job was covered head to toe with boils. Satan had thrown absolutely everything at him, the only thing left to take was his life, but God had not allowed Satan to take his life. In the same position, what would we do, what do we do? I think perhaps I am more thankful for the blessings than the God that they come from. Do you worship the blessings or do you worship the God they come from? Because if your worship is based on your blessings, and what God can do for you, then you will fall away when things get tough. What is our faith really made of, does it even really exist at all?

We can so easily turn to idolatry. Worshipping blessings over the God that gives the blessings is worshipping the creature more than the Creator. Gideon made a golden ephod and the Bible says it was a snare to Israel. The started worshipping the golden ephod instead of God who can delivered them from the Midianites. We can be a believer for a long time, and turn aside. The Bible calls it turning to the right or the left. Are you a reed shaken with the wind? When Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, the people looked and lived. Later on, we read that that started to worship the brazen serpent, rather than God who had saved them. We can fall into idolatry so easily. We can become self righteous. We can live pretty well, or so we think, or so we have convinced ourselves and the people around us. We can get confident in our righteousness. We can worship what we are doing, rather than God, whose righteousness which he freely gives is the only true righteousness. We can make a religion out of the smallest things. We can change the truth of God into a lie. That’s what we do when we alter God’s words. We modify God’s word. We don’t think he knows what is he talking about, we don’t think he can communicate clearly to us, so we try helping him as Uzzah tried assisting the ark of the covenant. The nerve to think that God really needs something from us. That’s what we do when we create a Jesus in our mind. A Jesus that excuses our sin. A Jesus that doesn’t condemn our sin. A Jesus amenable to what we want to do. We want to do what’s right in our own eyes, and we carve out a Jesus that lets us do that. And then we feel holy, justified, spiritual.

Worshipping anything other than God himself will result in you worshipping the creature over the Creator. We can do it innocently. We can do it easily. Satan has a million ways to make us fall. There is one truth. There is one God. One Spirit. One Word. Ask God to search your heart. The Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword. Read his Word. It sheds light on our souls. It shines in the darkness. But it exposes. It won’t be comfortable. Your Bible is not just ink on paper, it is the sword of the Spirit. It will cut right through you. Have you started worshipping your religion, your denomination, your whatever over God? Have you started worshipping what you are doing over God? Do you put your children before God? Your wife? Your husband? Is God number one in your life? Do you believe in the Jesus of the Bible, or the Jesus your mind has created? The true Jesus of the Bible is God, the Son of God, virgin born, the way, the truth, the life, the Shepherd, the Creator, the Ruler, the Judge, the king, the Light, sinless, undefiled, holy, from above, supreme, authority, whose blood and his blood alone has justified us, who has died once and no more, who is at the right hand of the Father in heaven today, the High Priest, the sole Mediator between God and Man, the only one who can forgive sins, the only one who can give life, the only one who rose from the dead. You may live your whole life worshipping a false Jesus, but you will end up facing the real Jesus. The God of the Bible. The Word of God. You are only fooling yourself, cheating yourself, deceiving yourself. The truth is not amenable to us. Truth is absolute, and God’s word is truth and stands sure, eternal, and will still be standing sure, true, strong, and with power, long after we have gone to our eternity in heaven or hell. Worship God.

Blog Believer Blessing Blog Christian God Idolatry Idols Imagination Jesus Scripture Spirit Truth Word Worship