We Become Like What We Worship

Welcome to another Sunday conversation from Journey Church in Brentwood, Tennessee. We're a community of people with different backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints. Together, we're co-learners, curious to explore who Jesus really is and to help each other move closer to Him in our understanding and in our lives.

Everyone is welcome at our table, so we hope you'll enjoy this discussion. And if you're ever nearby, please join us in person. Go ahead and grab a seat. Good morning, everybody. My name's Mike. Welcome to our community. Thank you, Kevin. If you are new or new-ish to our community, there's a QR code that you can scan. Let us know that you're here this morning. And there's a free mug and an email that will highlight a lot.

of the things that are happening in our community. Thank you so much, my friend. Welcome. We are taking some choice cuts through and from the book of Jeremiah. Just by way of review, Jeremiah for 40 years is announcing to the southern kingdom of Judah that doom is coming. The northern kingdom had been exiled 100 or so years before this. And according to the covenant agreement that Israel made with Yahweh in Deuteronomy 28,

Exile was the result of sustained sin, idolatry, and injustice. And so Jeremiah is just announcing in increasingly desperate and creative ways to the... the southern kingdom, that they were in trouble. And Jeremiah 10 is a sustained reflection on the problem of idolatry. So we're going to start there. But because you and I don't worship statues, we'll go into some other texts to reflect on how much more sophisticated or not we are when it comes to our idols. So...

Jeremiah chapter 10. Jeremiah is going to make four contrasts between the helplessness of the idols and the powerful nature of Yahweh. So the first one is that... That idols are helpless. Yahweh is powerful. Jeremiah 10 verse 1. Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. This is what the Lord says. Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens though the nations are terrified by them.

for the worship practices of the peoples are worthless. Now, this word is hevel, and it's a mist. Margaret, I love your hair today. The word is...

The word is worthless, but it's translated in Ecclesiastes, it's translated 38 times as meaningless or vanity. It's something that appears substantial but isn't. It's a cloud of vapor. It's just... empty nothingness for the practices the worship practices of the people are worthless and they cut a tree out of the forest and a craftsman a craftsman shapes it with his chisel they adorn it with silver and gold they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not

They must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them. They can do no harm, nor can they do any good. Unlike Yahweh. No one is like you, Yahweh. You are great. Your name is mighty in power. Who should not fear you, king of the nations? This is your due. Among all the wise leaders of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you. So we're just, these are basic contrasts. We all go, yeah, but they're creative. And in the ancient world,

So much of idolatry was driven by fear, right? We need water. for our crops and we need crops to survive and so we have a water or storm god that we now sacrifice to to appease to make sure we get water for our crops driven by fear And so the announcement that you don't have to be terrified by these empty false deities is kind of a big deal. In fact, this phrase, do not fear them,

means two things. Do not revere them or worship them, but also don't be afraid of them. They can't do anything. Which raises the question that the Bible kind of wrestles with all throughout its text. Are the idols that these little wooden statues, are they real? Like are the gods that are sitting behind them, are they real?

When you're in the ancient world, if you just have a wooden statue adorned with gold and silver, is that pointing to something that's real? And the Bible's answer on that is, well, yes and no. Is the human... Capacity to give religious devotion and power in idolatry to things real? You bet it's real.

Are there powers and principalities that exist that seek to exploit human frailty, weakness, and sin? Yep, those are real. But do they manifest in the form of all of these pretender gods and goddesses? No, they're not real. They're nothing in the Old Testament's language. They might rhetorically be used as a foil where you're giving your allegiance to something else, but ontologically, they don't exist.

And so what you get over and over is this wonderment of the biblical prophets going, you've seen how these things are made. Why would you give allegiance to this?

Verse 8, it's the contrast between something that's manufactured versus something that's eternal. They are, the people that worship these, they are senseless and foolish. The word senseless here means having the IQ of cattle. So those who worship idols are as dumb as cows is kind of the ancient insult. They are all senseless and foolish. They are taught by worthless or empty or vacuous wooden idols. Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from that nation.

What the craftsmen and goldsmith have made is then dressed in purple and blue and is made by skilled workers. So it's just created. But the Lord is the true God. He is the living God. So whenever you hear living God, it's always in contrast to dead idols. He is the eternal king. When he is angry, the earth trembles. The nations cannot endure his wrath.

Now the third contrast is that these idols are destined to perish because they're created things versus the all-powerful and all-wise creator. Tell, verse 11, tell the nations this. These gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens. Now, it's interesting, not for you, a few of you Bible nerds, this is not written in Hebrew, but Aramaic, which was the language of Babylon.

So it's almost like through the prophet, Yahweh is saying, hey, tell the gods of the other nations in their own language they're nothing and will perish. It's just kind of an interesting little rhetorical thing. But God made the earth by his power. He founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens. by his understanding, his power, his wisdom, his understanding, leave no comparison to these empty scarecrows in melon fields. When Yahweh thunders,

The waters in the heavens roar. He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. All this storm language is in reference to Baal, the storm god that the Israelites were worshiping at the same time. Baal has nothing. He's not in control of any of the weather. It's Yahweh who is. And again, all of this is pretty obvious to us. Nothing new or revolutionary here. There's one last...

contrast that is made in verse 14. The idols of the nations are deceptive. They promise something they can't deliver. Versus Yahweh, who's actually real. So verse 14, everyone is senseless. Again, everyone who worships them has the IQ of cattle and without knowledge. Every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. The images he makes are a fraud. They're a lie. They're a deception. They have no breath in them. They are worthless. There's that word again. The objects of mockery.

When their judgment comes, they will perish. Unlike he who is the portion of Jacob is not like these. For he is the maker of all things, including Israel, the people of his inheritance. The Lord Almighty is his name. So... For those of you bowing down to wooden statues covered with gold and silver, stop it. All right? And typically we'd read this and we'd go, okay, that's great. Those ancient primitive folks, how silly of them.

But sitting behind this is a very sophisticated understanding of what it means to idolize something. that I do think has relevance to us. So I want to explore some of what's assumed here in Jeremiah 10 and kind of push that.

that assumption through the rest of the New Testament text and see kind of where we land. So let's start in Genesis because, you know, we do. And in Genesis chapter 1... we read this very, very well-traveled section of text. God said, let us make humanity in our image and in our likeness. And remember, we did a whole series in Genesis, and image and likeness are temple words. They're words for statues that you would find in the temples of ancient deities.

So let's say there was a God of a certain region and you went to that temple, you would walk into the temple and you would find statues. Those statues were called images or likenesses of the invisible God. So humanity in this context, we are the living image of the God Yahweh. All of humanity.

we function as the visible representation of what Yahweh is like. So let us make humanity in our image and our likeness so they may rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created humanity in his own image and the image of God he created. God blessed them and said, be fruitful and increase in number. And our children's ministry affirms your obedience to that command. Fill the earth and subdue it.

All right, now there are a couple of concepts I just want to review. A lot of you will remember these. The first is image and likeness. The idea is that all of creation is Yahweh's temple. And when you enter into creation and you're wondering, hey, where are the statues? Well, just look for the humans. The humans are the visible representations of Yahweh.

They are to their image bearers in their humanness. In other words, they don't have to be religious in order to bear God's image. In their humanness, they bear God's image. in their freedom, in their morality, in their justice, in their culture-making, in their interpersonal relationships. All of this is image-bearing. And so the idea...

is that we are the physical representations of the invisible God. And because God made the male and female, we need both male and female to fully image this God. And it's not just that when male and female are together, but it's in the communal life of humanity that Yahweh is modeled because Yahweh himself is a communal entity, right? This whole three-in-one-ness.

The invitation of this image-bearing community was to rule and subdue. That just meant take God's order of flourishing and expand it wherever you go throughout the created order. And image here, when we talk about image bearing, it's both a verb and a noun. We are image bearers, but the way we are image bearers is that we image Yahweh. So think of a mirror that's kind of angled.

The idea is that human beings would reflect and embody and point to the transcendent reality and goodness and intelligence of Yahweh. so that creation would flourish and humanity would flourish. Are you with me on this? This is review. Hello. Perfect. In Genesis 2, we get a slightly different take on image bearing. The Lord God took the human and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Now, before work it meant dance moves, that was for this crew over here.

Work it and take care of it. Those two Hebrew terms are used in the book of Numbers to describe the work of priests in the temple. In other words, simply in virtue of living human life in community. These image bearers were doing priestly work in God's temple, which is all of creation. So human beings were to exist in a mode of life called worship.

We've reduced, as we've talked about before, we've reduced the idea of worship to singing songs to God. Worship is what the name that is given to human life properly lived as image bearers and bearing image to Yahweh. Are you with me on this? This is a big deal. the whole conduct of human life and they're resting and they're playing and they're weeping and they're in their whole just the whole vast array of being a human being that is what it is to bear god's image

It's not just the religious part. And so the picture we get is of human beings, not only who represent Yahweh as visible images, but their humanness and their culture making, that's all priestly work.

Now that lasts, as we joke often, all of two chapters. And so we meet a talking serpent, we can talk about another time, who entices the woman. And then entices the man. When the woman saw 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. Now what's the tragedy here?

The tragedy exists on multiple fronts, but one of the most significant is that at that moment, the human beings, instead of imaging the wisdom of Yahweh into the world, did what? They image the serpent into the world. Their disobedience was obedience to the serpent. And so the serpent's questing for power, the serpent's deception about God's holding out on you, all of that got imaged now into creation. And so there was an exchange that happened.

that image bearers are meant to image the beauty and majesty and creativity and intelligence of Yahweh into the world. Now they've imaged the wisdom of the serpent and the power questing of the serpent. And this, of course, has... devastating consequences. Sin and death enter the world. All creation now exists in some sort of state that Paul calls groaning, all because we forfeit our vocation.

Now, Paul reflects exactly on this verse in the book of Romans. He's talking about the Gentiles, the nations generally. And he says, although they claim to be wise, they became fools. And they exchanged the glory. That's an image word. They exchanged bearing image to the immortal God. Instead, they bear image to things that are created. Mortal human beings, birds, animals, and reptiles. And so this isn't, Paul's not talking about like, oh, now human beings bow down to these.

weird statues. He's talking about, no, no, no. Humanity, instead of filling God's temple with the beauty and intelligence of Yahweh, now we're reflecting to each other bits of creation that can't hold the weight of our devotion. Are you with me? Are you guys following this? You're very quiet this morning and maybe because I'm talking a lot, but I just want to make sure we're tracking.

Because this is an incredibly, this is incredibly sophisticated. Instead of humanity pointing beyond itself to some transcendent reality, now we just image created things, right? We image... It can be anything from my parents' expectations. I image those into the world as I try to live up to them. The American dream and success. I image that in the world because all my time is now spent working to achieve and find meaning and significance in my vocation.

Right? I can image political allegiance. I can image all sorts of things. And instead of being vessels for God's goodness, now we're vessels of emptiness, vanity, and wrath. And that's the picture. It's not just that God's up there saying, dang it, you guys, I told you not to do this and you did this and now I'm ticked. It's far more gnarly than that.

That's the spiritual word. It is that human beings are now enslaved to the powers and principalities in a web of corruption that Paul just calls wrath, that is destined to consume itself. So this take, this exchange of imaging Yahweh and pointing to Yahweh and now imaging other things, this has devastating consequences.

Three times Paul will say this, therefore God gave them over. Now we've talked about this before. Idolatry never has to be punished. Idolatry is its own reward or punishment. Idolatry is self-destructive. And I mean, the best and most powerful cultural example, this is Gollum, right? From Lord of the Rings. I mean, truly, you talk about someone given over to something. Like that is a very sophisticated understanding of what Paul's point is.

So therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their heart to sexual impurity. Now, sexual impurity sounds like, you know, guys, we had the talk in seventh grade and don't. The word impurity, the word impurity is a temple word. And it refers to temple pollution. So remember, in Genesis, the whole world was Yahweh's temple. And image bearers were the statues, the visible representations that would represent Yahweh.

to creation. But now because the human beings are imaging other things, the temple space is now polluted. That's the idea. And so later on in Romans, Jesus comes... And he cleans the atonement seat of the universe and he creates unpolluted space for the church to find their new humanity. Like it's this really powerful image. So God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity.

for the degrading of their bodies. One of the points Paul's going to make over and over again is idolatry always manifests itself in our bodies. Always. Because that's how we image God. We image God with our bodies, correct? How else would you image God? You don't image God in your heart. You don't image God in your thoughts. You image God by what you do in the world.

And so idolatry always damages human bodies. Now, in the Old Testament, that meant like Molech. You would sacrifice to Molech. Or Baal. We have an instance in... In the Old Testament, where the priests of Baal are like whipping themselves in a frenzy to get Baal's attention. Or more recently, you have our awful exploitation. of African bodies for the sake of growth as a nation and culture. Idolatry always manifests itself bodily. Now, Paul's going to say the same thing two more times.

They exchanged, verse 25, the truth about God for a lie. And then they what? Worshiped and served created things. Those are the Genesis words. So now... human life, all of human life, instead of being a like priestly work, now is given to something else.

And they worship and serve created things rather than the creator who is forever praised. So the human being now, instead of representing Yahweh or embodying Yahweh or depicting Yahweh in the world, now we're just vessels of sin, death, and wrath. Two more times, Paul says, because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. The word shameful here means dehumanizing. One of the things that's true when you're given over...

is that you dehumanize, you become less than fully human. And for those who have ever been like in the brutal cycle of addiction, we know exactly what that feels like. Verse 28, so God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they did what ought not to be done. So the idea Paul is painting isn't that human beings just sin randomly. It's a no, the human race as an entire race has thrown off its commissioned role.

to point to the goodness and reflect the goodness of Yahweh. And instead, we become channels of lesser things to each other. And as a result, we all exist now in cosmic enslavement. And the God giving them over, Paul talks about this earlier in Romans 1, the mode of life where we're imaging God is called worship. The mode of life where we're not imaging God is called wrath. So it's not God actively punishing. It's just God letting idolatry take its toll.

Now, notice what happens when the humans dehumanize themselves. What naturally is going to happen next? They're going to dehumanize others, correct? So we get this list. They've become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity.

And notice, these are all social sins. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slanders, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. Seth, Eerie, are you listening to this right now? They have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. So idolatry always manifested in justice. Always. You cannot be dehumanized yourself without dehumanizing others.

So can you see this is far bigger than just bowing down to statues. This is something that strikes at the heart of human identity. So later Paul will say this, I so agree with you. I so agree with that. In Romans 3, when we read this very famous passage, there is no difference between Jew and Gentile for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, that verb makes it sound like fall short.

Like God has a thousand righteousness points and I have two. And so I fall short. But the verb is better translated lack. I lack the glory of God. And remember, glory is an image word. So I lack, human beings lack the image of God. We fall short and lack the image of God. And so what Jesus is doing when he saves us,

And this is what Paul gets into. It's why Romans is so complicated, because he's dealing with two problems in Romans. One is that we are cosmically enslaved, and so Jesus comes defeating the powers and principalities on the cross. But he also comes because human beings no longer image their creator. And so Jesus comes as the one true image, creating new temple, unpolluted space for humanity to regain their capacity to image God.

fully human again. Are you with me? So all that New Testament instruction about loving each other and encouraging each other and confessing to each other, that's the relearning of our humanity in our corporate life together. That's why simply souls going to heaven when we die is not even close to what it is that's being recovered in Christ. Are you with me? Okay, I thought that was a bigger point.

Paul's critique, and this totally aligns with Jeremiah, is that idolatry destroys our bodies. Idolatry results in the dehumanization of self and others. And ultimately...

Idolatry results in our self-destruction if left unchecked. And it results in our self-destruction for four reasons. Reason number one, we surrender our vocation. What was our vocation? to image Yahweh into the world. And we surrender that because we image other things. And again, those things can be the most insidious of all things. I image a need for comfort and security. I image a need for power over. I image lust into the world. I mean, it's just endless. We also surrender our identity.

So imagine if you give yourself over to like the American definition of success, which means position, status, notoriety, and money, and your allegiance goes to that, and that's what you're imaging into the world. then how do you know if you're successful? It's not because you're an image bearer or beloved of Christ. It's rather because you either meet the arbitrary criteria or not. You've literally given the power of your identity over to something.

That will never fulfill. We also surrender our worship and devotion. Idols always demand sacrifice. Always. The American dream demands sacrifice. The expectation of my parents demands sacrifice. Instead of being and fulfilling a priestly role, now we become vessels of other things. And then one of the biggest points I want to make this morning, are you cold, Tabor? Guys, it feels really perfect in here.

I mean, I can be up here toweling myself off if you'd like, but I just want to say thank you for your sacrifice to the idol I have of comfort. Maybe the biggest point we want to make this morning is simply this.

When we reflect and image other things, we surrender our formation. In other words, the scripture is super clear on this. We become like whatever we worship. We take on its attributes. So earlier in Jeremiah, I'm sure many of you remember Jeremiah 3, where through the prophet, this is what the Lord says. What fault did your ancestors find in me that they strayed so far from me?

They followed worthless idols. Remember that word worthless is the word hevel, which Ecclesiastes translate as meaninglessness or vanity, but it means a vapor, a puff of air. It's trivial. It's empty. They followed worthless idols and then notice the next sentence. They became what? Worthless themselves. Literally, it's they worthless-ized. And so... Empty, vacuous gods create empty, vacuous people. Psalm 115 puts it more directly. Why do the nations say, where is their God?

Our God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases him. But their idols are made of silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear, noses but cannot smell. They have hands but cannot feel. And then this line. So if you worship money... You become greedy. If you worship sex, pleasure, indulgence, you become lustful. You worship Christ, you become more like Christ. That's the idea. Whatever...

orients us. And whatever we're embodying and reflecting into the world, we take on the attributes of that greater thing. And so literally, literally we become what it is we worship. And that has nothing to do with our singing. Amen? What did you say, Kev? Thank God. Yes. Kevin sings with gusto. So, idolatry is so roundly condemned in the Bible, not just because God's up there going, hey guys, you have your choice of God, so I'd really appreciate it if you would choose me, you know?

Like he's some consumer product. I mean, like we paint him like that, right? Jesus didn't come in to a world lacking worship. Even the rocks would cry out for him for crying out loud. The reason God condemns idolatry is because it destroys us and it dehumanizes everybody else. He hates idolatry because of what it leads to.

And so, of course, he roundly condemns it. And the invitation all throughout Jeremiah is this word, turn, shuv. You're going this way, turn. Turn. Come back. And so for us, our idols need to be named and dethroned because they're much more sophisticated than wooden statues. Would you agree? So I want to give us just a few moments. to reflect on four questions. And the goal, guys, we're in Christ. We're in the new temple creation space. There isn't condemnation here.

But there is awareness. Because I think all of us, if we truly got a glimpse of what it is when we dehumanize ourselves and others, we would be horrified at where those roads lead. So this has nothing to do with our being part of the kingdom or not, but this has everything to do with recovering our full humanity in the name of Jesus. And so for me, I don't naturally keep a list of idols in my pocket, you know?

And so it takes me a while to reflect on what they are. So here are four questions that were helpful to me that I thought maybe we could take a few moments to just reflect on. What am I afraid of? And then trace that back. What's being threatened? So I'm afraid of where our country's going. Okay, what's being threatened there? I'm afraid of the economy going sideways. What's being threatened there? I'm afraid of somebody disapproving. What's being threatened?

Where am I tempted to dehumanize and demonize other image bearers? Because as far as I know, that only happens when I'm afraid. When I'm sober and centered and sitting safely with Jesus. I'm much more gracious, but when I'm afraid and I'm in my primal brain and I'm under threat, where do I start looking for enemies? Trace that back and what's being threatened there?

And then when I am afraid, what do I turn to for comfort and security? What do I rehearse when I'm in those places of anxiousness? We've got a big bank enough account to handle if anything happens. And then what is it that we sacrifice in order to have the comfort and security that keeps us from feeling under threat? So...

What I'd love for you to do, you don't need to close your eyes, but we all know God does some of his best work here. I'd love to take two or three minutes just to reflect on that. And if something comes to mind, Don't just confess it. God, I'm so sorry. I'll never do this again. But just hold it there with Jesus saying, yes, I'm seeing how my life is oriented towards this.

Holy Spirit, show me the ways that this dominates my thinking and my living and my engaging with people. And just sit there with him. There's no condemnation here. So just let the honesty of it permeate. And then in a moment, we want to name those and we want to work to actively dethrone them. And dethroning them just means being aware of them. So one of mine, I have many, but one of mine is comfort and security. I want to take the worry out of life.

And so I plan a lot and I save a lot and I strategize a lot. And so one of the ways I have to dethrone that idol, and I know I'm... This sounds like such a pastor thing to say, but like I have to learn to be generous. It doesn't come naturally. I have to force myself to be generous. That's, for me, isn't a spiritual discipline. I mean, it is, but it's an act of dethroning. Make sense? Okay, so three minutes of quiet will start now.

So Father, we believe that you love us enough and know us enough that we can just be really honest. It's no shock to you that our lives are... scattered and filtered and given over all manner of things. But we do pray for the awareness to see the truth. And we pray for courage to take steps to dethrone. the things that come to mind. And so Father, I just, I pray that your Holy Spirit would turn over the soil of our hearts in ways.

that in your kindness lead us to the turning, the turning away, the turning of repentance. And that, God, we would, in increasing measure, reflect the beauty and the image of the Lord Jesus into the world. We do want that. And we ask for that in the name of our Christ. Amen. As we turn into communion, which is the proof, the evidence of our freedom, our salvation, God's grace and love, why we were sinners, he died for us.

I just thought of a couple other examples of dethroning for those of us who are trapped by the approval of others, not having to have the last word, or always being impressive. Maybe that's a dethronement practice. Or for some of us who are just in the throes of addiction, coming out of hiding and going to a group and saying, hey, my name's Mike and I'm an alcoholic. Regardless.

We want to turn into communion with just a posture of confession. And so we're going to read this communal confession together. And because, you know. I don't think any one of us sits and goes, yeah, I'm good. And so we can read these words even if we don't have something specific in mind. Let's read this together. Most merciful God.

We confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry, and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in your will.

Walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen and amen. Now, brothers and sisters, we are going to celebrate the table of the Lord together. And though it might look like... a bit of bread and a bit of juice, it's far more than that. It points to a reality that is supposed to be the defining reality and identity marker of our lives, that we come as brothers and sisters to the Lord's table.

And we come as people who are just receiving gifts. There's no earning, there's no striving, there's no deserving here. And so I want to read this invitation. For those of you who might be hesitant, thinking you have to have it together before you can take the bread and the cup, I'll just read this over us. This is the table of the Lord Jesus, not of the church.

It is made ready for those who love him and for those who want to love him more. So come, you who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often and you who have not been here long. You who have tried to follow and you who have failed. Come to the table because it is the Lord Jesus who invites you. It is his will that those who want him should meet him here. And so, Father, receive us now in the name of Jesus, our Christ. Amen and amen.