Reading Psalm 106 this week, a psalm accounting the history of Israel, I came to verses 19-20:
19 They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image. 20 Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.
Man was made in the image of God. Since he is made in God’s image, God is to be his glory. Let’s go through it.
First, they made a molten calf. Second, they worshiped it. Third, by doing those first two things, they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox. It wasn’t even an ox, something God made. It was an image that they made to look like an ox. Instead of being in the image of God, they took on the glory of the ox, which is significantly less. It eats grass. It doesn’t self-exist. It needs grass that God makes.
This activity lessens the man. It reminds me of the young man loitering around the “whorish woman” in Proverbs 6:26, who is “brought to a piece of bread.” The relationship of the young man to the woman is similar to the people of Israel related to their molten calf. The woman has power over him through her seduction, leading him, and his acquiescing to her diminishes him to something akin to a slice of bread. I often like to say that she turns him to carp bait.
Their glory, which is the summation or aggregation of their attributes, who they are, is changed by what they worship. I want to take it a step further. The God or god you imagine is what or who you become. When the true God is imagined in a lesser way, a way not according to his attributes, that is who you become.
You take on the image of who you worship. You are made in the image of God, but perversion is that the person becomes what he worships. This is seen in the use of the term, “holy” (qadosh קָדוֹשׁ) in the Old Testament. The masculine noun קדש (qadesh) denoted a male temple prostitute (Job 36:14, 1 Kings 14:24) and the feminine קדשה (qadesha) described a female religious prostitute (Deuteronomy 23:17). They became what they worshiped. They were separated unto the nature of their god, taking on their god’s image, its attributes.
These evangelical churches using the world’s music aren’t worshiping the true God. The lust with and by which they worship indicates they are becoming who they worship. It is sacred in the sense that it is separated unto the god of their imagination, which would be pleased by lust. The ecstatic worship of Babylonian mysticism carried with it sexual prostitution in Corinth and in Ephesus. True worship is not ecstatic. It worships God in truth, which is to worship God according to the revelation of scripture.
Your children very likely will become the worship of your church. When they turn into that worship, don’t be surprised. Even if it is true worship of the true God, that doesn’t mean that they will still turn out as the glory of God. They will still need to choose that for themselves. It is very tempting to change into the glory of the creature and not the Creator.
What or who someone worships designates his highest value. If the value is diminished, his values are too, and so he is. He is reduced. Worshiping the one and true God in the beauty of His holiness brings glory from the One he worships. The glory of God is the glory of man.
Hello Everyone,
The one person we don’t allow to comment says that my post is heresy because I say that unsaved people are also in the image of God. I don’t think I say that in this piece, but it could be implied. He says only saved people are in the image of God, because sin left man no longer in God’s image. I can understand someone speculating that man lost God’s image with the fall, except that scripture doesn’t teach it.
An important passage on the image of God in scripture, classic location, is Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” When someone murders another person, he strikes at the image of God. How could he do that if the person was not in the image of God anymore? The alternative is that murder is justified against unbelievers.
There’s the answer.