Mapperley Monday Mail, 10th Feb 2014
Greetings!
Yesterday we continued in our series on the 10 Commandments, and we looked in particular at the second commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol...”
The main point I drew out from the passage was that the essence of idolatry is us deciding for ourselves what God is like. We do that all the time in 21st century Nottingham, don't we? We come up with our ideas about what God should be like, and act like they are true. We pick and choose which bits of God we like, we love DIY religion, and God tells us not to.
We saw that DIY religion is stupid. There's no reason at all why our ideas about God should be true, unless they come from the Bible which is how God has told us about himself. Sometimes we need to read the Bible carefully to see what it says – like when we read Exodus 20:5 which talks about God punishing children for the sins of their parents. When we read that, we need to bear in mind Ezekiel 18, where God is very clear that he only punished people for what they have done, and we see that the commandment is actually telling us that God holds us all responsible, even when we're following what our parents taught us to do. Ideas that we've got about God from our society and our parents need to be tested against the Bible as well.
We saw that DIY religion is offensive too. Deciding for ourselves what God is like is like me carrying round a picture of someone else entirely, and telling people it's my wife. It's offensive when we pretend that God is different to how he has shown us to be.
We don't get to decide who God is – we get to see who he is through his word, and supremely through the person of Jesus. Our decision is whether we follow him or not, whether we worship him or not. And because God is God, he will win in the end – we need to put away our comfortable idols and follow the God who loves us so much he gave his Son to die in our place, so that we can be adopted into his family, not because we deserve it, but because he loves us.
Yesterday we continued in our series on the 10 Commandments, and we looked in particular at the second commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol...”
The main point I drew out from the passage was that the essence of idolatry is us deciding for ourselves what God is like. We do that all the time in 21st century Nottingham, don't we? We come up with our ideas about what God should be like, and act like they are true. We pick and choose which bits of God we like, we love DIY religion, and God tells us not to.
We saw that DIY religion is stupid. There's no reason at all why our ideas about God should be true, unless they come from the Bible which is how God has told us about himself. Sometimes we need to read the Bible carefully to see what it says – like when we read Exodus 20:5 which talks about God punishing children for the sins of their parents. When we read that, we need to bear in mind Ezekiel 18, where God is very clear that he only punished people for what they have done, and we see that the commandment is actually telling us that God holds us all responsible, even when we're following what our parents taught us to do. Ideas that we've got about God from our society and our parents need to be tested against the Bible as well.
We saw that DIY religion is offensive too. Deciding for ourselves what God is like is like me carrying round a picture of someone else entirely, and telling people it's my wife. It's offensive when we pretend that God is different to how he has shown us to be.
We don't get to decide who God is – we get to see who he is through his word, and supremely through the person of Jesus. Our decision is whether we follow him or not, whether we worship him or not. And because God is God, he will win in the end – we need to put away our comfortable idols and follow the God who loves us so much he gave his Son to die in our place, so that we can be adopted into his family, not because we deserve it, but because he loves us.
God bless,
John
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