Day 30 Tuesday
Read Psalm 115
One of the great truths of the Bible is that we become like what we worship. There is something about worship that is formational. We are being formed, whether we realize it or not, to be like the things we care the most about.
Psalm 115 describes this process. In verse 4, the Psalmist describes the idols of the other nations, “But their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats.” Then in verse 8 he says this, “Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”
The description of the idols is that they appear to have the things needed for life – eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. – but they don’t really have life. They can’t use all of those things. They are dead. Those who trust in them, who worship them, become like them. They have eyes but they can’t really see God’s beautiful world. They have ears but can’t really hear.
If we take this principle and look at life in the twenty-first century we see a similar reality. In a nation that worships money we eventually lose sight of anything else but the bottom line and we become willing to do horrific things (sweatshops, exploitative manufacturing practices, predatory interest rates, workaholics absent from home etc.). If we worship power we eventually find ourselves becoming more and more ruthless. If we worship sex we eventually find ourselves using women as objects to advertise and sell anything and everything. We become like that which we worship. It is kind of scary.
This is why remembering verse 1 becomes so crucial. “Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to Your name be the glory.” Because our tendency is to always worship ourselves, we diligently attempt to make our worship services God-centered and Christ-centered. It is also why the New Testament speaks of the Christian life not simply in terms of following more and more rules, but rather in terms of becoming more and more Christ-like. The more we worship Christ the more like Christ we become. Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to Your name be the glory.
Prayer
Pray today that God would help release us from our worship of life-less things. Pray that He would help our communities see the idols we so often turn to.