I Need A God

Introduction

Everybody needs a God. Nothing can remove that innate desire to have a god. Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created think, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” Unless we are connected with God we will always feel that void. It doesn’t matter how much he does for us. It doesn’t matter how much we attain, or how many things he does for us. Unless we have seated God on the throne in our hearts we will feel the emptiness of his absence. A.W. Pink says, “Man must have an object, and when he turns from the true God, he at once craves a false one.” This is true. We are always craving something. Whether it be a new car, new hair, new shoes, new clothes, new partners, a new job. We are always craving something. We seem to have trouble trusting a God that we can’t see. So we make for us gods that we can see, touch, and feel. They supposedly give us comfort and help us cope with life.

(Think about inserting a more compelling argument that appeals to the human search for a god.)

The problem is we are prone to exchanging the God that made us for a god that we made. The hole that is within our hearts is the root of our desire to make for us a God. We move God from the center to the margins. It’s not that we don’t want a God, because we do. We want something we can put our trust in and someone we can call on. We all want to serve something. The problem is we ruin the relationship that we have with him when we attempt to replace him.

Think about the foolishness of that statement, “trying to replace him.” We are talking about replacing the God who had just a short time prior to this time had brought them out of Egypt. Their God had looked out for them, now they find themselves looking for a God. What caused them to go looking for a god after all that God had done for them?

I. We Desire Relationship

Number one, because we desire relationship. We desire to be in relationship with one another. We want to have fellowship with one another. We like to be around other people, to share our experiences and to feed off of one another. But we also desire to have fellowship with something above us. Some of us are struggling just to find that relationship with God. Some of us are struggling to strengthen that relationship with God. Even in Israel’s idolatry. They made for themselves a god as a way to be connected to God. The problem with their search for a god is that putting a created god between you and God, makes it harder to see God. If you are having trouble seeing God, make sure you haven’t made a God out of the things God has given you.

Moses was the only link to God that they had previously known. In the minds of the Israelites Moses made relationship with God possible. The perceived absence of Moses was in turn interpreted as the absence of God. They became angry and this anger exposed their lack of trust.

Exodus 32:1 ESV

1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Moses had been up on Mount Sinai with God for forty days. Forty days into his spiritual sabbatical the people of God became impatient and enraged at his absence. They felt abandoned by God because they could no longer see Moses. Moses had been the central figure in the Exodus. He was a hero and the people looked up to him. God had used Moses in such a way that the people had connected Moses presence with God’s favor, and Moses absence with God’s neglect. The problem with their relationship was the emphasis that they placed on Moses. God had used Moses as a mediator and a deliverer for his people, and the people had made Moses their God.

We must be careful not to make God’s out of the things that God gives us. They would have been right to appreciate Moses and to esteem Moses highly. But they were wrong to esteem Moses to the level of God, “the man who brought us out of Egypt.” God used Moses to bring them out of Egypt, but Moses alone didn’t bring them out of Egypt. Once they felt that Moses was taken from them, instead of looking to the God that gave them Moses, they wanted to make for themselves a god. Moses had become their god and when their relationship with him seem to be dissolved they needed to find a replacement so they approached Aaron about making them a calf. Israel’s idolatry didn’t begin with the calf. It began with Moses. Our relationship with God is affected when we focus all of our attention on the gifts instead of the giver. If we value those things that God places in our lives more than we value God, when those things disappear it will cause us to become bitter toward God. What the Israelites had done would not bring them closer to God, it would actually push them farther from God. By making for themselves a God, they disobeyed God. Disobedience, or sin, causes us to be separated from God. By fashioning for themselves a God they had violated the second commandment:

Exodus 20:4–5 ESV

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

Exodus

I need a God because I desire relationship, but I cannot let the earthly matter come between me and the God that created me.

II. We Desire To Give

Believing that he might be able to discourage the people from going through with their plans to make a God, Aaron asks them to do something he believed they would be reluctant to do, give.

Exodus 32:2–4 ESV

2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

Giving is an important part of religion because it shows God where your heart is.

Matthew 6:21 ESV

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

All of our hearts are set on something and we don’t mind surrendering our wallets so that it is known how much we cherish it. Whatever it may be. Giving is something that we do naturally. Even the most frugal or stingy person invests money into something. They may not spend money on material goods, but they may invest all of their money in their savings account. It is both wise and biblical to save and prepare for the future. But when all of your money goes toward you then it has become clear who your God is. But I can’t just pick on those who save excessively. There are those of us who spend excessively. We spend money on our stuff, on our hobbies, on our loved ones. Again, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the things that God blesses you with. But when all of what you have goes toward your stuff, it has become obvious what your god is. It is natural for us to give. We don’t have to be taught that. We do have to be taught to give to God, because giving is a heart issue. Our money follows our desires, and we desire to give, just not to God.

Take the Israelites for example. They desired to have a god before them so they did what Aaron least expected them to do. Not only did they give, but they gave sacrificially. The took off the rings of gold that they had acquired from Egypt so that they could have a god. They didn’t scrape up the gold that they weren’t using at the time, they took the gold that they were wearing and put it in the offering pot. God had taken care of all of their needs. He had led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He had given them manna from heaven to eat. All of their needs were taken care of and although they liked wearing the gold they understood that sacrificing the gold was the least they could do for their god. However, they gave it to the wrong god. They could never repay the God of heaven for what he had done for them, and during this time they wanted a god they could see so they gave their gold. Brothers and sisters, we may not be able to see God, but we can see all that he’s done for us. This should make us cheerful givers. People who are not reluctant to take what we have and give it back to God, because although we can’t see his face we have seen his hand. We have seen God make ways. We have seen God fix hearts. We have seen God wipe away tears. We have seen God move trouble out of our way. Our hearts desire to give, we just need to fix our hearts on God.

They also viewed their giving as an honor to the god that they were making. They took the gold they had gotten from Egypt and gave it to their god.

III. We Desire Worship

Lastly, we need a God because we desire to worship. We have these natural tendencies and these innate desires. We do things naturally becauseGod has placed it within us to do these things and his desire is that we fulfill all of them in him. All of us desire to worship. The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible defines worship as paying homage to God, and expressing our adoration and gratefulness to him because of his glory. Worship is expressed through singing, praying, giving, and living. We don’t just worship while we are here. We worship everyday. Worship to God happens when we honor God, or pay homage to God with our singing, praying, giving, and living. We worship naturally, but we don’t engage in true worship naturally. We pay homage to the people we look up to and the people we have great respect for, as we should. But just like giving, when our worship to our idols exceeds our worship to our God, that is idolatry. We worship our little gods with our time, our money, our minds, our lips, and our talents. That is idol worship. Take our favorite artists, we enjoy the art of music but when we spend more time memorizing and being mesmerized by the lyrics of our favorite artists and musicians than we do the God that gave them the lyrics and the lips in which they sing, we’ve become idol worshippers. Anything that causes us to invest more into our idols than we do our God is idol worship. Idol worship is an insult to God. God deserves all of our praises and he deserves all of the glory. I also want to tell you as a footnote, that just because you sing God music, and you pray and you show up at church that does not necessarily mean you are worshipping God. True Worship requires that your heart is pointed toward Heaven. All your singing and praying and praising has to be done with your heart in the right place. Oh Lord, let the words of my mouth AND the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. If we worship without our hearts pointed in the right direction we make a mockery of worship and we make a mockery of God. We shouldn’t enter the sanctuary with our hearts not fixed to worship the Lord. You can’t enter worship with your hearts sour toward your brother or your sister, because how can you sing songs about loving the Lord whom you can’t see and you can’t love your brother whom you see every day? How can you sing songs about trusting the Lord when you sit paralyzed in the pew worried about how he will work it out. Worship requires you to have your heart fixed toward heaven. We can come in here and have a good time, singing and shouting all day long, turning back flips over the pews. But if our hearts aren’t in the right place our worship is a mockery and it is not pleasing in God’s sight.

The Israelites had their heart fixed toward the god that they had made and it was evident in their attitude toward worship. They were excited about gathering together and making offerings to their calf. The attitude of their heart was evident. The text says,

Exodus 32:6 ESV

6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

They got up early in the morning preparing to worship their god. How insulted do you think God must have been to see the people so enthused about worshipping this made up god after all that he had done for them. Worship that does not make God the center is an insult to God, no matter how good it makes us feel.

True Worship can’t be done without the one true God.

Exodus 32:5–6 ESV

5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

True Worship can’t be done without the one true God.

Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Worship

After attending church with his father one Sunday morning, before getting into bed that evening a little boy kneeled at his bedside and prayed, “Dear God, we had a good time at church today, but I wish you had been there.”

Conclusion

God has given us a God that we could see. We saw his birth. We witnessed his life. We were witnesses of his life and his death. We can all attest to his resurrection and his power. He came to be our link to God. Jesus was the visible expression of God.