Sermon for the 15 th Sunday after Trinity, September 20, 2009
“ No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. ”
WHAT IS worship? What does worship actually do? When we worship God, is there anything that happens to God? What happens to us? In praising and worshiping God, do we add anything to God? To worship means to give or attribute worth or value to something or someone. When we pay tribute to God, it is already His due and our rightful employment of the powers of worship that He gives us. It fulfills us. It connects us with the Divine in a way that empowers us, heals us, and makes us whole. It also pleases Him and brings Him closer to us. Psalm 22 calls God the One who inhabits the praises of His people . When we praise Him, He draws near, for we draw near to Him.
Is it possible to worship something or someone who is not God , and yet do so in a right and unsinful way? Ideally a wife values her husband, a husband adores his wife, and they give themselves to each other in pure marital love. This too is worship, and when it doesn't set God aside as the Creator and Lord of us all, such worship in its order is still quite right. In similar proportion, I may value my car, enjoy my home, enjoy my guitars, embrace my family and still not sin.
But what if we worship the wrong thing altogether, or we value something in total disproportion to its real worth? An Old Testament prophet named Hosea lived when the northern kingdom of Israel was about to be destroyed. The Assyrians were to come and take them away, all ten tribes. But first came this remarkable book of God's displeasure, and a promise of restoration sometime in the future. Hosea first tells of his strange marriage. God had instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute and to have children. This he does, marrying a woman named Gomer, who gives him three children. After this, Gomer returns to her old trade, leaves the family behind and degrades herself to the point of actually selling herself into slavery. Hosea, at God's command, buys her from her masters, returns her to his house with disciplines to cure her of the mad lust that led her out before. God said to him, “Love your wife again, even though she is loved by others and has committed adultery. Love her as I, the Lord , love the Israelites, even though they have turned to other gods.” Hosea 3:1
Prostitution at that time was a cultic ritual of pagan worship. As a religious act a man would “worship” the pagan god through a prostitute to gain favor with it. Gomer came out of this pagan lifestyle, and returned to it, just as the Israelites repeatedly did who turned their backs on their One true and holy God for the sensuous gods of the Sidonians. They returned to these alluring practices so often that after many prophets, from Elijah to Hosea, God finally said, “ Enough. You are no longer My people.”
Unfaithfulness and worship of the wrong thing: these are all of a kind. Through Hosea's eyes we see God's great heart, even in His judgment of the sinful Israelites. God doesn't enjoy sentencing anyone to harsh punishment. He is the loving creator, and He knows best what we were created to be for our best and highest good and that we ruin ourselves by betraying Him, by worshipping what isn't worthy.
Marrying a harlot is a strange proposition. And yet God married a prostitute, for He married humankind. Prostitution, in the wider sense, is simply marketing sin, degrading our passions to a mere commercial exchange, and worshipping that which is not worthy—it's a religious act. When you worship something that isn't God it is called idolatry and it's very bad for you. Is it any wonder that on a billboard for a casino it was written: “Seven deadly sins, one convenient location.” The wise guy who coined the phrase, “What happens here, stays here,” wasn't referring to Mastercard bills or communicable diseases.
Now we may laugh at the foolishness of Old Testament idol worshipers falling for such preposterous religions. How could they be so stupid? But do we have idols today? Does idolatry have to be toward a person or a thing? What about an idea ? Isn't an idol just a falsehood, a lie ? When the serpent tricked Eve in the Garden, wasn't it through a lie about God, about herself and the fruit— and the lie she believed in was her idol. Every idol tells you, “You can be like God.” In fact, it's my own maxim that idolatry always begins with a capital letter “I”. I am the source of the god I worship. My greatest value is me. This concept comes home, doesn't it? Self-worship, valuing inappropriate objects and ideas are behaviors rampant in the 21 st century. How many are those of our own day who willingly sell themselves to the lies and deceptions in this fallen world? What is socialism but an idol that says mankind is like a god?
When we worship an object, person, idea—anything—we give that thing power. We were built in the image and likeness of God, not to be gods but with certain godlike powers and authorities. When we attribute great value, worship, or adoration to any object, that object takes on what we give to it. Such power may draw other spirits to the thing, and the idol may even become inhabited by demons. Anybody ever play with a Ouija Board ? Please don't. Nothing will ever take the place of God, but many things are empowered by human beings who worship them nonetheless, and these things are tremendously powerful – aren't they? Sex. Money. Drugs. Drunkenness. Movie stars. Science. Career. Politicians. Even religion, love of country, pastimes, retirement, possessions, and always oneself . Not all of these things are bad. Most are actually good, in their place. Sex within the bounds of marriage was created by God and declared good by Him. Entertainment, dancing, celebration, national pride and even ourselves are not inherently evil in themselves, so long as we humbly note how far beneath Almighty God these things belong. When one of these things wants to climb, wants to be master, look out. And it need not be an object: a lie that we believe in is like the famous Trojan horse, the enemy within the gates. It weakens us, and will kill us if we continue in the lie.
God is married to you. He took you for His bride. What did Jesus call Himself? The bridegroom , and His church is His bride . We have been unfaithful to Him in the past, and perhaps unfaithful since we were first His. Yet He is still rightly your Master. And He is a Jealous God. We have ruined the word Jealousy by using it when we mean Envy . Envy is sin every time. It means you hate someone for who they are or what they have. But jealousy is a claim to possession, and if you have the right to possess something, it's no sin to claim that it's yours. God rightfully claims us as His . When we act unfaithfully toward Him, His jealousy over us is expressed in outrage. He knows we ruin ourselves with the idols of today, be they pornography, or beer, or fashion, or pride, and He wants us back for the sake of our eternal souls. Bought back from death and hell, we are redeemed from this world where we've prostituted ourselves, back into His house, and have to submit to His urgency to keep us safe, away from the allures of the flesh, of that world out there, and Satan who only wants to ruin us.
Jesus preached that “no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” He goes on with the Lilies of the Field passage, assuring us not to live in anxiety about our daily needs. We Christians may indeed try to have two masters, the God we worship in Church, and the almighty dollar we chase all the rest of the time. It may not be money, but the idea that our security requires us to behave in certain ways, work too much, be stingy about giving, pour everything into our retirement, have ten kinds of insurance. Or we may just do what most Americans do, and completely blow it. We overspend , acquire too many toys , buy more expensive houses than we can afford, more luxurious cars, high priced vacations, time shares in Colorado, single malt scotch, living la vida loca .
A great measure of what is meant by worship may be what we spend the most of our disposable time or money on . We have to work and sleep: those are set times and we responsibly allot enough for those. We need a home, and our money allotted to that is appropriate. But how much of the rest of our time or funds do we give to God vs. some other pursuit? If you want to know if you have two masters, stack your entertainment expenses up against your giving to God. Money spent on fun may be what Christ refers to as mammon . We commonly object that such a comparison is unrealistic in our economy. All right, how long is eternity , and how long is a movie? If God is truly real, and heaven is our actual goal, our measure of time well spent or money well spent might be different than it is. We can't serve two masters. Is this object our master? Better to find out than pretend it isn't.
Hosea and his wayward wife gives us an object lesson in what God feels when we build our lives away from Him. Such a waste! It hurts God's heart to see His children give themselves over and over to unworthy objects, to value and worship what is not their Creator. Idolatry today is camouflaged, that is we don't call it idolatry and we don't admit that it's a religion. But one look at the tabloids at the checkout stand will tell us what our fellow Americans spend their time and money and souls thinking about. One hour watching TV is enough to find out where our values are placed. One look at the headlines and we know what everyone is worried about. If I might interject on healthcare: what if every American just took better care of him or herself? Ate better, exercised, stopped smoking, drank only moderately, gave up unnecessary pharmaceuticals, and only used medical treatment as necessary for life? What's our responsibility for our own health? The government can never make us healthy, no matter how much we need medical reform. There is so much anger in this debate, it's obvious that it's touching somebody's idol.
What did Christ say? “Don't be anxious about your life, what you'll eat, or drink or wear… Don't be anxious about tomorrow: for tomorrow's problems will take care of themselves. There is enough in every day to concern ourselves, and not borrow trouble.” We have One God who is more than able to take care of us, and to Whom is due our greatest worship and trust. Let us worship Him now, here in His house, and in our heart of hearts, may we never leave.
PFH+