Do Not Worship What is Created
WARNING! As we spend time in His created world, delighting in its beauty, design, provision, taste and many benefits, there springs up a fine line, almost invisible at times, that we must never, ever cross.
God alone is to be worshiped, glorified and thanked, for by Him all things were made and have their being. All creation is subject to His will and by His sovereign will they obey his commands, even in their falleness, yet they wait for their own redemption, with the sons and daughters of God.
The Word of God says that while God has spoken from things created such as the burning bush or the pillar of cloud, He is not within the created thing. No created thing could ever contain Him. Instead, what we can see are his fingerprints because all things created bear the mark of His workmanship. We know that He holds all things together and all things have their ‘being’ in Him. But he is not them, and they are never,ever Him. Insead, they represent his invisible qualities and divine nature and when we become students of them we are able to see him more clearly.
We could study the works of a great master, such as Michelangelo to more deeply understand him as an artist. What do his sculptures portray? How do his paintings demonstrate his thinking? His personality? Even his circumstances at the time? What was he trying to communicate with the final product? We learn of the human artist by what he made. So we can learn about our Creator by what he has created. Let’s always remember the difference.
| Deuteronomy 4:15-19 NIV | You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under under heaven. | https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+4%3A15-19&version=NIV |
| Deuteronomy 17:3 | and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars in the sky | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W0Y8UyDQRhi7Vme-3yHIdapBNuaO5Tdr6mUjf8tOLjQ/edit#gid=0 |
| Job 31:26-28 NIV | if I have regarded the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage, then these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high. | https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+31%3A26-28&version=NIV |
