Waist Deep 2018 - February 23


II Kings 17: 15 They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. (NIV)


What a man devotes himself to, he becomes.*


They became worthless? These are harsh words! We like to believe that everyone has value. After all, we are all children of God, aren’t we? The Israelites, God’s chosen people, are the specific targets of this severe criticism, as well as the perpetrators of the list of offenses preceding this pronouncement. Before they arrived in Canaan, it is probable that the Jews had never met anyone else who worshipped only one God. Perhaps they found that they didn’t like being so different from their neighbors. Were they guilty of thinking that all religions had a little bit of truth in them? That the more religion you got, the better?* Is that so different from the philosophies of the modern church-goer? 

“I don’t worship idols!” you say in your defense. Even if you don’t pray to an image of a god, you could still be guilty of idolatry. If your version of God is less than the perfect God of the Bible, you are worshipping a false god. Man was created in God’s image; when we create a god in our own image, we become less than what God intended for us to be.


The worshipper can rise no higher than the god he worships.*


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