You Can't See Me

July 01, 2007

Opening Text:   Colossians 1:15-20

Title:  You Can’t See Me (10 Commandments Series)

Text:  Exodus 20:4-6

2 Officer decide to pull over the next car – “When your this drunk you better drive careful”

How careful do we attempt to be with idolatry?

Idolatry is not allowed because

1.        Who God is (Exodus 3:14)

a.       He is a transcendent supreme being

b.      God can not be fully captured in anyone statue, painting or representation

                                                                           i.      Well, maybe one (Col. 1:15)

2.        Who God is not

a.       Idols often have no relationship with God at all

                                                                           i.      Isaiah 41:21-24

                                                                         ii.      Acts 17:22

3.        God’s nature

a.       Jealousy – Rightful desire to have his creation worship Him and Him alone.

What is an idol?

                Augustine – Worshipping that which we are to use, and using that we are to worship.

Money, possessions, sexuality, others

What about religious idols?

                What do we worship that is for use?

                                We struggle often with allowing the things for ministry to become what we worship.

                We redefine church, no longer as the called out body of Christ, but as the building, the routine and the tradition from which we have became too comfortable.  It becomes a danger when it replaces it’s purpose – fulfillment of a global plan to reintroduce a world trapped worshipping the idols of this world to the Creator and Savior – and become entrenched in the trappings themselves.

                Is there hope?  Paul thought so.  In Romans,  he points out the problems of both the following of the ignorance of the pagan and the religious trappings of the legalist, Paul says our hope is in Christ and him alone.