C148 9/21/58
© Project Winsome Publishers, 2000

"TO WHITTLE OR WORSHIP"
Dr. John Allan Lavender
Ex. 20:1-6

It must be obvious to all of us that mankind is engaged in a massive, all-consuming struggle for the domination of our world. It is equally clear, that the outcome of this struggle will unalterably affect the shape of things for a long time to come. What is not clear or obvious, is the basic nature of this struggle.

The nervous rattling of sabers, the specter of Soviet satellites beeping their ways through the sky, the shadow of autonomic clouds rising omnisciently against the horizon, the bombastic boasts of those (both here and abroad), who threaten to rain down destruction on anyone who upsets the precarious balance of things, all of these have created the illusion that our major struggle is in the arena of international affairs.

This is too superficial a view of our problem. The real roots go much deeper. Actually, the clashing conflict in which we are all caught up is a war within the human heart. It is a struggle for our allegiance and mind. The external strife and unrest which are rampant, are merely symptomatic of the internal warfare which is raging on within each of us. For ultimately and conclusively, the problems of the world are just your problems and my problems multiplied ten-thousandfold.

Now, this struggle within us, is not a struggle between God and no God. Theism and atheism, religion and irreligion. Oh, the devil would like us to think that. Then, the issue would seem clear. Yet that too, is too superficial and shallow a view of things.

What we seem to forget is that people are inescapably and incurably religious. As I said last week in the first of these ten sermons, it is psychologically impossible for us to exist without some object of worship. We must have a God to which we yield our heart and give our life. We cannot go on without one.

If we do not have the one true God, we will hasten to fashion a substitute, and we mentioned some of these last week. If we do not have a good religion we will quickly devise a bad one, and we shall discuss that more fully this morning.

It's the old story of a vacuum. Nature not only abhors it, but literally will not permit it! The empty space must and will be filled. So, when the Lord God omnipotent goes, a host of lesser gods inevitably arrive.

Which brings us to the vortex, the swirling center of our struggle. For basically, it is not a war between religion and irreligion. It is a war between religion and false religion. Between the one true God and many gods. It is essentially a struggle with idolatry. It is a continuation of the age-old conflict between the God who made us, and the gods whom we have made.

The fallacy of idolatry, as practiced by the pagans, is self-evident. None of us has any inclination to bow down before objects of metal, wood or stone. It is obvious to us that such lame and lifeless deities are no more God than the people who created them. So the idolatry of objects has no lure for us.

Still, I wonder if we are as conscious of the insidious appeal of the idolatry of ideas. For, if it is wrong to worship a false metal image of God, it is equally wrong to worship a false mental image of God! Yet, that is the peculiar temptation of our time. Not to elevate some miserable little piece of clay embossed with gold and endowed with magical powers, but to whittle down the God that is, to a comfortable size so we no longer need to stand in awe of him.

From the time when we were tiny tots, we were told that we were made in the image of God. That we were created in his likeness. That our duty is to conform to His will. But such teachings are not pleasant. They focus our attention upon the annoying fact that we have sinned and come short of God's glory. They confront us with the urgent necessity of utterly altering the way we live, and this we have no intention of doing.

Yet, if we can make God in our image, can fashion him after our likeness, if we can conform him to our will, the demands will be lessened. Our sin will not seem so sinful. The difference between us will not seem so great. It will not be so difficult to stand in his presence. The crux of the matter lies in the fact that it is easier for us to whittle God down to our size than it is to repent of our sins, reorder our way of living and remold our lives according to his.

Thus the pertinency of this particular passage,
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image."
For us to experience true happiness -- here and now, we must avoid the temptation to whittle and not worship. To create a god who is little more than a replica of our frail and feeble selves. A god who does not care what we say or do, and therefore a god who does not place any unpleasant demands upon us.

I believe that's why the Bible says more about this second commandment than any of the others. I believe God wants us to know we inevitably become like the god (small g) or God (uppercase G) we worship. As the Bible says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

Now, it's impossible for us to think without the assistance of mental images or pictures. When we think about an orange, we automatically sketch the image of an orange on the magic slate of our mind. When we mention the name of a prominent personality, we immediately see the face of that personality on the screen of our imagination.

Likewise, when we think about God, we see a picture of God. If the picture is true, the effect will be good. If the picture is false, the result can be disastrous. For, we become like the god we worship! If our notion about him is false, we become false. If our idea of him is small, we become small. If we pay homage to a god who does not care what we think or do, we will not care what we think or do. If we bow down before a god of our own creation limp, lifeless and devoid of any spiritual power, we will become limp, lifeless and devoid of any spiritual power. We become like the god we worship!

Look at history for repeated evidence of this. The ancient Greeks and Romans concocted gods according to their liking. They erected idols to the deities of revelry and pleasure. Then, hurling themselves into feverish rounds of sensual activity designed to appease these gods, they became like the gods they worshiped. Historians record that like the gods they worshiped, they rotted from within. They simply withered and wasted away.

A little later, the Catholic Church attempted to whittle God down to size. It tried to confine him to a particular creed. For the simple summons of our Savior,
"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest . . ."
It substituted an involved system of sacraments and indulgences, rituals and liturgies, as the means of salvation.

For the living Christ, who conquered sin and death by rising victoriously from the empty tomb, the church substituted a dead Christ on an iron cross. In the niches along its walls, the church placed a Christ of clay with eyes that could not see, ears that could not hear and a mouth that could not speak. The Dark Ages were the outcome. Historians record that the church became as deaf, dumb and blind as the Christ of clay it worshiped.

The same danger confronts us. We are still tempted to whittle and not to worship. To make God as we want him to be rather than worship him as he is.

We have the god of white supremacy. A god of our own particular color, who conveniently arranged for all people of other colors to be inferior to us.

We have the god of joviality. A god who playfully winks at our devious ways and with a sympathetic cluck of the tongue says condescendingly, "There, there. You really didn't mean it, and after all, it doesn't matter what you do anyway, I will forgive you. That's what I'm for!"

We have the jack-in-a-box god who is perfectly cut according to our theological or political pattern and who jumps out of his box of proof-text to say "yea" and "amen" to our pet point of view.

We have the bell-hop god who sits nervously on the edge of his seat, tapping his feet, twiddling his thumbs and anxiously waiting to leap at our beck and call. A god who serves us, but who says little about our serving him.

We have the Santa Claus god who, complete with white whiskers, ruddy cheeks and all cheerfully doles out salvation to the good, the bad and the indifferent.

We have the grey-haired grandfather god who sits comfortably in his rocking chair, smiling down benignly on the frantic antics of people to survive, but unfortunately, is too frail and feeble to be of any real assistance.

Or on the other extreme, we have the god who is not too weak, but too strong. Not too small, but too big. The god who is so busy controlling the clock-like movement of the stars, so deeply engrossed in the vast affairs of the universe, he has no time left for the petty problems of people like us. And on ad infinitum, as we worship not the God who made us, but the gods whom we have made.

Now the tragedy of all this is that our little man-made gods cannot begin to meet our real need. And, in the hours of crisis which inevitably come upon us, we are left destitute and devoid of any solace and strength.

Arthur J. Morris, the well-known banker and founder of the Morris Plan, tells the fable of a miser who buried his gold in a field on his farm. Every night he would go out to the field, dig up the money, count it and gloat over it.

One night a dishonest servant saw him and early the next morning stole the gold and ran away. When the miser discovered the theft, he began to rant and rave like a maniac. A neighbor came running and when he learned what had happened said, "You haven't really lost anything. The money wasn't doing you any good. But you have the hole left. Why don't you pretend the gold is still there and come out and worship the hole every evening?"

I wonder if we are like that. I wonder if we have denuded God, stripped him of his essential being, fashioned him according to our whims and wishes so that even without knowing it, like the miser, we have nothing left that is really worthy of our worship. Is it possible a crisis could come like a thief in the night and steal away our god, leaving us nothing but the empty hole of our folly?

That is the haunting concern of my heart. I greatly fear that during the religious renaissance which is sweeping our country, some will come into the church, share in its worship, observe its ordinances, perhaps put their name on its roll, and yet never really meet Christ. Instead of Christianity, they will have churchianity. That presents a god which is too small. A god which cannot help but fail them when the crisis comes.

The hope and hunger of my heart is that you will have such a sin-shattering, soul-saving, life- transforming encounter with God you will be able to say,
"I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep me against that day." "I know the Lord has laid his hand on me."

Such a transforming experience can be yours if you learn to make your worship true. For, while we are warned not to whittle in the commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," we are challenged to worship, being assured God will bestow his mercy on those who keep his commandments. We have his promise for that, for the Bible says,
"They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint."

There are unlimited reservoirs of power and strength available to you if you link your life to the one true God.
"Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in thy presence doth avail to make.
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take.
What parched grounds refreshed as with a shower.
We kneel, how weak! We rise, how full of power!"

What is the nature of true worship? Certainly it does not consist of singing Psalms and hearing sermons. Jesus made that clear when, in his conversation with the woman at the well he said true worship is not a matter of temples, rituals, liturgies or creeds, but of the heart.
"God is a Spirit," he said, " and they that worship him, must worship
him in spirit and in truth."

It's hard for us to worship a spirit. As someone has said, "Often, we need a God with skin on." I enjoy the story of the little boy who awakened one night from a dream, was frightened and ran downstairs to be with his mother. After she had comforted him she said, "Now go up to bed. There is nothing to be afraid of. God is with you." The little boy climbed the stairs to the second floor and cautiously began to inch his way down the hallway toward his room. As he did so, his mom overheard him say, "God, if you're up here, don't move or you'll scare me half to death!"

Indeed, it is hard for us to worship a spirit. Tha's why God gave us his Son. When we look at Jesus, we do not need to wonder what God is like. We know! We know that whatever else God is, he is nothing less than Jesus. He is not less loving. He is not less kind. He is not less good. He is not less understanding. He is not less forgiving.

It's true, of course, that we can catch fleeting glimpses of God in the beauty of his creation, the majesty of his mountains, the fragrance of his flowers and the fierceness of his seas. But having seen all of these, our picture of him is still incomplete. It is only when we come face-to-face with Christ and hear him say, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father" that we know with certainty that our understanding of God is complete.

Does that mean we should ignore the wonders of nature or the works of art which often serve as aids to worship? No. Nature and art are gifts of God, and approached openly and sensibly can help direct our thoughts toward him. But more than the wonders of nature, the works of arts, the fragrance of flowers or the fierceness of seas, is the promise of One who said,
"Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in
the midst . . . for lo, I am with you always."

If by faith we claim that promise we will have no need for an external stimuli to aid our worship. For if Christ, our living Lord, is with us, that's all we need. There are many lovely paintings of our Lord. My favorite portrait of Christ is not any of those which hang in the great art galleries of the world. Rather, it is one which is kept in a small chapel in a city of Jerusalem. I have never seen it, but it need not be seen to be appreciated. Those who have seen it tell me that across the front of a small chapel hangs a magnificent tapestry, rich in color and royal in weave. Against this backdrop hangs a picture frame. In the frame are these words, "Whom having not seen we love."

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." God grant that we may achieve the high and hard ideal of worshiping God in spirit and in truth. For wonder of wonder, the more we worship him, the more we will be like him. Then, and only then, will we have happiness -- here and now.