A Fresh View of God

“Giving God all He is worth”

Definition of Worship: to accord worth, true value, to something, to recognize and respect it for the true worth it has.

Romans 12:1-2 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

God’s will - there is only one category of the people of God - there are only followers of Christ - aka - disciples - living lives of worship.

To be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, means that my entire worldview must be submitted to Him. What I believe regarding right and wrong up and down, no matter how difficult, no matter if I like it or not must be submitted to Him - as a follower.

When we talk about God’s will - of course there is the implication of what God has for you where and when and all that but most importantly it is God’s revealed will regarding reality. What I mean is, His thoughts regarding life, sexuality, money, family, business, etc. God has a will regarding it all.

And it will most likely end up being different and contrary to what culture says meaning - persecution.

Presuppositions -

- Everyone is a worshipper

- Everyone worships something

- Everyone sacrifices at an altar

- Romans 1:20-25

Created things are good things but become bad things when they become ultimate things.

Romans 1 tells us: Idolatry is always the reason we do anything wrong

When most people think of “idols” they have in mind literal statues—or the next pop star anointed by Simon Cowell. Yet while traditional idol worship still occurs in many places of the world, internal idol worship, within the heart, is universal.

Ezekiel 14:3, God says about elders of Israel, “These men have set up their idols in their hearts.”

The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them.

What is your ultimate thing of your heart?

Every human being must live for something - the ultimate thing.

Tim Keller says:

Something must capture our imaginations, our heart’s most fundamental allegiance and hope. But, the Bible tells us, without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, that object will never be God himself. If we look to some created thing to give us the meaning, hope, and happiness that only God himself can give, it will eventually fail to deliver and break our hearts.

What can you not live without?

What is something you feel you must have to be happy, something that is more important to your heart than God himself? That is called an idol.

Angela’s experience with a home - I told her, if you never got it, would you be ok?

It’s not that God is witholding to tease us or hurt us its to protect us. If he gave it to you while it was an ultimate thing it would break you.

What about you? did you sacrifice everything for that successful business?

The Ring-

The central plot device of The Lord of the Rings is the Dark Lord Sauron’s Ring of Power, which corrupts anyone who tries to use it, however good his or her intentions. The Ring is what Professor Tom Shippey calls “a psychic amplifier,” which takes the heart’s fondest desires and magnifies them to idolatrous proportions. Some good characters in the book want to liberate slaves, or preserve their people’s land, or visit wrongdoers with just punishment. These are all good objectives. But the Ring makes them willing to do anything to achieve them, anything at all. It turns the good thing into an absolute that overturns every other allegiance or value. The wearer of the Ring becomes increasingly enslaved and addicted to it, for an idol is something we cannot live without. We must have it, and therefore it drives us to break rules we once honored, to harm others and even ourselves in order to get it. Idols are spiritual addictions that lead to terrible evil, in Tolkien’s novel and real life.

The rings power is that it turns good things into ultimate things.

“Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. Thus while Sauron multiplied evil, he left 'good' clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil.” -J.R.R. Tolkien

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters The Inevitability of Idolatry

Two Jewish philosophers who knew the Scriptures intimately concluded: “The central … principle of the Bible [is] the rejection of idolatry.”

Paul instructs us to do 3 things for Worship (Avoiding idolatry)

1. View God’s Mercy

And then after viewing God’s mercy - do these 2 things.

2. Don’t Be Irrational

3. Be Transformed Not Conformed

1. View God’s Mercy

Our conduct and lifestyles are to reflect what God has done. There is a new world. A new reality. And I ought to live in that reality while I live in this world.

We are not to think of God’s mercy in general, but his specific acts and deeds—supremely, to look back at the cross.

Colossians 3:1-5 “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above (on the creator, not creation), where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”

Tim Keller - God must be more beautiful than your idol

What we need is a fresh view of God to capture your heart.

For that, we are visiting a chapter in the book of Isaiah, where the people of Israel needed a fresh view of God because:

The people Isaiah is addressing have scaled down their god to fit their own stunted imagination. The people of Israel have just had it revealed in chapters 38-39 that Judah and Jerusalem will be exiled to Babylon but that will not be the end of the story. There will be another Exodus and greater than the first one.

So as we will see he starts with their world - geography, politics, religion, astronomy and sketches God on the same scale… You can’t measure God.

God isn’t simply just bigger or the most important being in a sequence of beings.

But rather, He is the creator and Lord of all.

Isaiah 40:12-18 “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord, or instruct the Lord as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge, or showed him the path of understanding? Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings. Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. With whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you liken him?”

He writes them not just to correct but to lift their hopes. To comfort them

We can conclude that God is greater than our stunted imagination.

God’s greatness does not mean he is detached from them.

The chapter is written not just to correct their limited view but also to lift their hopes. This chapter is sandwiched with comfort and strength

Isaiah 40:1-2 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

Isaiah 40:11 “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.”

Isaiah 40:29-31 “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

He is close enough to comfort

Gentle enough to be their shepherd

Strong enough to give them strength

In view of God’s mercy...

2. Don’t Be Irrational - Living Sacrifice

In light of who the Triune God is and what He has done in/through Jesus, worship is the only acceptable and logical response.

This is the logical response to God’s mercy

Once you have a view of God’s mercy, anything less than a total and complete sacrificial giving of yourself to him is irrational.

Romans 8–16 for You Living Sacrifices

Another way Paul communicates the idea of totality or entirety is by urging his readers to offer their “bodies.” This was probably startling to Greco-Roman readers, who were brought up to believe that the body was negative and bad, and that spirituality involved cultivating the mind and soul. Paul is saying that God does not want a purely inward and abstract worship, but a practical and total one. He wants us to give him everything we do. We are not to give God the leftovers!

3. Be Transformed Not Conformed

Worship that pleases God and that truly leaves its mark on a believer always engages the mind.

Renewing the mind is a process. It does not automatically happen.

A secular life is from a secular mind.

Renewing the mind is also an internal process. The NT teaching goes beyond just what is right and wrong and goes into creating a worldview for people. Teaching them how to think.

We are transformed from the inside out.

The good news of Jesus Christ is intended to transform a person’s life. Until individual Christians own and live out the theology, the gospel has not accomplished its purpose.