Worship transforms us. What’s particularly amazing about how worship transforms us, however, is that we become like what we worship. That is to say, we take on the likeness and the spiritual realities of whatever we are worshiping. The Bible paints this truth in two ways: (1) it shows how idolatry, the worship of false gods, makes us like idols (deaf, dumb, and blind); (2) it shows us how the worship of Jesus conforms us to his image. I will deal with the first part of this reality today and the second in my next post. If you are what you eat, then what does that mean about what you worship?
Theologian G.K. Beale has done a masterful job of presenting this point in his work We Become What We Worship. What Beale argues, from numerous Old Testament and New Testament texts (most notably Isaiah 6 and Deuteronomy 29) that God uses the language of sensory-organ malfunction to describe the spiritual blindness associated with the sin of idolatry (see Isa.42:17-20; 43:8-10; 44; Psalm 115:4-8*). What he argues is that just as idols have eyes carved on them and ears carved on them but do not actually have working senses so those who worship such idols lose their spiritual senses. A carved idol has eyes but can’t see, so those who worship such an idol lose their spiritual sight. Beale then turns to the Golden Calf incident (Exodus 32) as a paradigmatic illustration of this kind of sensory-organ malfunction. He suggests that the language of Exodus 32 could be interpreted very plausibly to reflect the language of cattle metaphors. So Beale writes, “Sinful Israel seems to be depicted metaphorically as rebellious cows running wild and need to be gathered.” So we can make several observations: (1) They are “stiff-necked” (2) They were “let loose” (3) They “quickly turned aside from the way” (4) They needed to be “gathered together” “in the gate” (5) Moses would “lead the people”. Hosea 4:16 makes similar comparisons between Israel and cattle. Verse 17 of Hosea connects this behavior with idol worship, which Beale points out in the book of Hosea is often calf worship. This all gives clear understanding to Paul’s words that “the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ…”(2 Cor. 4:4). The faithful, too, are easily led astray by their idolatry, for it is the nature of worship to make us like that which we revere.
So Israel became like stupid cows because that’s what they worshipped. How this plays out in our lives is both different and similiar. We too become like what we worship, but we don’t usually worship our cattle. Instead we worship things like money, sex, physical apperance, possessions, etc. and in doing so we become like them. Think about your own life and what you often make an idol. How does your worship of that thing or that person affect you? Each idol has its own affects. So we associate greed with the worship of money. We associate perversion with the worship of sex. We associate frivolousness with the worship of possessions. The list could grow and grow, but the point being that the more you worship these things the more like them you will become. And the reality is that if we are not careful we will wake up one day and be so deep in our worship that we find we have been utterly transformed by it.
The worship of sex is the best known case study. Those who worship sex grow and grow in their sexual perversion until they find themselves, years down the road so deep in it that they are committing sins that they always knew as vile, disgusting, and swore they would never do. Their worship of sex has transformed them, which is why a little dabbling with this sin or that sin is a big deal (not a small mistake). Worship transforms us until we become what we worship! Idolatry is worship that leads to our ruin!
Pastor Dave Online 