Sermon Notes 6-25-22

Can church be an idol?                                                                     6-25-22

 

Jesus said that all The law of God could be summed up into two commandments,

1.     Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

2.     Love your neighbor as yourself.

 

Traditionally we see the 10 commandments as dividing into the same two ideas with the 1^st 4 explaining the Love of God and the last 6 explaining how to love your neighbor.

 

Time before last, I spoke about the nature of God, and made a case for God being progressive. That is, He is the Creator, or the one who make ‘what is’ out of ‘what doesn’t exist’.

In a way, it’s another perspective of the 1^st commandment, the one that starts with “I AM”.

 

Last time I spoke, we explored another perspective of the 3^rd commandment. The one the curious addendum ‘The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain’.

 

Today, I want to take a closer look at the 2^nd commandment. I don’t think this one gets the press it should. Perhaps the fact that we don’t have pagan temples, and Ashura on every street corner makes us think this was only an ancient problem.

 

So, we’re going to look at the 2^nd commandment and then use it to shine some light on the 4^th.

 

Exodus 20:4

 

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

 

There’s a concept in this command that I struggled with for a long time, because It just didn’t seem to fit in my mind. That is the idea that God punishes children and grand-children for the sins of their parents. That is something that happens in North Korea, it really bothered me that God would do that…

Because, in Deuteronomy 24:16, at least in terms of capital punishment, guilt of the fathers does not belong to the children.

Is that what it means though, does this commandment mean that God regularly punishes children for the sins of their parents? Or is there something else at work here. We’ll come back to that in a little bit.

 

What we CAN accept , at face value from this text is that Idolatry hurts FUTURE generations. Today I want to explore HOW Idolatry hurts future generations.

In doing so, I also want to shed some light in a very dark place. A place that, at least for me, was dark not because I’d turned the lights off and covered the windows… but because I just never thought about turning the light on. In many ways you could say it was a dark place because who thinks about turning on the lights in a chandelier factory?

 

 

 

 

There’s a well-known proverb in business, it’s worded in various ways, but it’s called the 3^rd Generation Rule.

 

The Idea comes from an old Scottish proverb that goes, “A man Buys, his son builds, his son sells, and his son begs.”

The proverb is about family money, or family business. It turns out that VERY few wealthy and or productive families and businesses stay that way for more than 3 or 4 generations.

It’s been studied at length too, because people with money and power are always looking for ways to KEEP money and power as long as possible.

 

What the evidence suggests, is that the first Generation builds the business out of the dirt. They contend with the issues of their time, with blood, sweat and tears and address a current gap in the market. They see, make or find and opening and develop a plan to harness it. The first generation contends with society, they perceive and then act.

 

The second generation usually inherits the reins over time. Often, they witness the battle, they see the blood and the sweat and the tears. They watch as the solution their parents developed gain traction in the market. So often, out of something like respect, the second generation does something different than their fathers, they protect what their father built. They MAINTAIN. They hire lawyers to keep patents, they hire designers to design a recognizable logo, they make advertising campaigns to associate the brand with their target market, but they don’t regularly contend with society, they maintain their parent’s work. As such, they only modify existing products as little as possible to maintain the status quo.

 

The third generation is where things make a drastic turn for the worst, because, they have no information. In most cases, they did not see the business begin, they did not see the blood and sweat and tears. They did not see the gap in the market, they did not see the R&D trials their grand-parents did in search of a solution. All they see is a business, and businesses are there to make money, so they take the products and make them cheaper to produce, then streamline the process because it’s just a money-making machine. Fewer coats of paint, less polish, thinner material, less features, shorter warranty, etc. Should they get the opportunity, they sell the old business.

 

Then the fourth generation, growing up in a desirable zip code with a famous name, wake up one day hung-over from the excessive partying the night before and realize they have no money, no business, no skill-set and no ideas.

That’s the 3^rd generation rule.

 

 

 

Does that ring any bells about the Second Commandment? Does God really have to bend down and CURSE future generations for the parent’s sins?

 

Before I get into this,

Have any of you ever shopped for a house? Have you ever seen a house in pictures, and the driven to the house to find that all the pictures were taken form a very specific perspective that perfectly left out all the parts that you were not supposed to see?

 

Lest anyone should get the wrong idea, I’m not going to try to sell you a different house, I’m not offering you a different gospel… What I intend to do is show you the same house from a different angle.

 

I want to ask a question in a very dark place… You will have to turn the lights on, so-to-speak in the storage closets of your beliefs to answer it for yourself.

 

Can church be an idol? Yes. Very much Yes they can.

Church becomes an Idol when the Worship of God becomes Tradition.

 

Let’s define some terms first.

The first word Church in some ways is the most important, the biblical definition of church is “ekklesia” or ‘called out ones’. However, I will be not using that definition. For the entirety of this message, when I say Church, I mean the modern term for your
Religious Organization.

Tradition – an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought or behavior.

Idolatry – an immoderate attachment or devotion to something as a God.

Worship – to show honor and devotion with religious rites.

 

Just by definition we can see some overlaps in concepts there. When worship becomes tradition, the church becomes and idol.

Put another way, when you Devote Your time and Religious Rites to ‘the pattern you inherited’ you are worshiping the pattern, NOT God.

 

Paul mentions this concept of worshiping at the wrong level here in Romans 1:18-25, Paul talking about unrighteousness in general here. He says ‘worshiping and serving the creation rather than the creator’.

The birds and animals and creeping things actually give testimony to God’s greatness according to verse 20. God made them, yet, even though those things give glory to God, devoting yourself to THEM is improper. I think we can see the idea clearly in that scenario..

 

Go back to Exodus 20 for a moment. You shall not BOW down to them, nor shall you SERVE them.

The command includes the injunction to Serve, that is to facilitate. I’ll get to this in a moment in example, but it’s not just don’t make Idols, it’s don’t worship them.

 

 

 

That first generation in business had no traditions per-se. They were only contending with a contemporary market gap. There was a need, and they came up with a way to fill it.

You can make a similar case for Christians, or for 1^st generation Christians today. This is MY experience.

This has happened countless times throughout human history, but I was born into a particular cycle.

 

In the early 1930’s there was a big need for a savior. The world, but more specifically the US was in a bad way. So a few enterprising men, set about a search for a savior.  With a fair amount of divine interference, one of these men stumbled upon something. A path. The way to travel the path was to question the suppositions and assumptions of the day and to see if they lined up with the words of God. As this man went down that path he discovered a lot of things, some true, some not so much, but there was a lot of learning. He and his close group of companions did a LOT of reading and a lot of searching.  They considered nearly every aspect of natural life and tried to see what God had to say about it.  They acted as pioneers of sorts and attempted to chart uncharted territory. This generation took the contemporary issues and addressed them with contemporary technologies. Radio, Print, and Private Education, etc. For better or for worse that generation contended with the NOW. They used what they had and acted in their time.

 

Then the next generation, as in business, who more-or-less watched the church get off the ground slowly began to take the reins. These pent the majority of their energy maintaining the church. They did a little bit of contending with society, they added TV to the list of tools for instance, but mostly, they solidified doctrines. The research and study of this generation was more-or-less to support the concepts they already had. They hired consultants of various types to come up with ways to spread the doctrines. They named the doctrines, and gave them booklets with memorable covers.  These doctrines became standalone items, The Sabbath™ , The Holy Days™, Prophecy™, Tithing™, The Key of David™, etc. During this generation the church became referred to as The Church®.  There was more emphasis on maintaining the ideas than contending with the world. They built buildings, and added TV stations but they were only furthering the THINGS their fathers had done.

 

Then came the third generation. In my story, this is my parent’s generation. This generation was not there at the beginning of the church. They did not witness WW1, or the Depression or WW2. They did not see the world of the 30s and 40s and the ideas that the original generation was answering.

They saw The Church®. The church was a thing by that point. It was no longer known for questioning the assumptions of the day… those questions had already been answered, it was just THE church. It was their parents church, They had the doctrines of the church and the Feasts of the church. This generation started to say things like, “Mr. Armstrong said…”. There was very little if any exploration of Truth there was now just THE TRUTH™. The Brand… and the brand sold but it was expensive… so it was streamlined. The product line was then cheapened. Now instead of 1 church, there were 400+ with matching literature tables to fit you doctrinal preferences. Do you like social gatherings? Here’s your church. Do you like government? Here’s your church. The Doctrines became thinner. Not only did they start with “Mr. Armstrong said”, now they were divided into little pieces that you could sell individually but still with that old and trusted label, THE TRUTH™

 

I was born as a rightful heir to this Church, that had THE TRUTH™. I was very well versed in the products. I could quote to you all the literature about THE TRUTH™ and it’s easier to sell components of THE FEAST™ and CHURCH GOVERNMENT™ and THE WEDDING SUPPER™.

What I DIDN’T know is the business had been made public and sold to stock holders long before I was to inherit it.

 

I woke up one day, planning for THE FEAST™ , but there was a massive social collapse outside. The world was world was literally shutting down, and MY church closed it’s doors. Not only did it close it’s doors to the world, it closed the doors to ME and I was on the street, not knowing where I was, no Discernment Skills, No training in how to contend with the world… just the brand THE TRUTH™… But despite me being the rightful heir, I didn’t even own it.

 

After 30 years in the family business, I had to beg on the street. I had to start, quite Literally with “I believe in 1 God”.

 

I know my practices aren’t the same as most of yours, I don’t do some things and I do others, and that’s why.

John Reedy mentioned pruning back his fig trees after a freeze to just trunks… That’s me. I had EVERYTHING pruned off, because there was no fruit.

I had leaves, oh boy I had leaves if I do say so myself. I was a good-looking tree, but I had no fruit. I had all the literature and no answers.

 

 

 

Churches can be idols when the reasons for tradition are not easily and readily explainable. When activities become traditions it’s because they are no longer in existence to serve the original function. It’s just like the concept of Branding. If you’re a Gun guy, or guitar guy, or a truck guy, or anything like that you know you’re paying for the brand when you buy Colt, or Gibson or Ford… You’re not buying Samuels Machining skills, you’re not buying Les’ search for a specific tone, and you’re not buying Henry’s Ingenuity. You’re just buying the Brand. Churches today all have their brands too… They’re called denominations. We have one too, we don’t like to think of ourselves as having a denomination, but we do. We are Armstrongian if you’re being critical or COG when your being supportive. We may be critical of some points as we should, but we still have a LOT of traditions, so much so that as many of us have, you can visit nearly all the ‘COGs’ and quickly and easily Identify what brand they are associated with.

 

Doing things, 'religiously' without knowing exactly why and why not something else is literally 'worshiping' the tradition, we are serving the creature rather than the creator.

 

That problem is manifest in business all the way back in the second generation. When WHAT the parents did is perceived as ‘the product’ rather than the ‘production of product’.

 

 

 

Do you know Kodak, the film company had the original patent for the digital camera in 1975… Kodak was the biggest film producer in the world with only one real competitor, and they said in meetings from time to time that a world without a need for film was unimaginable. Kodak had the patent for the digital camera in 1975, but the top brass rejected the idea of retooling and didn’t pursue the new technology. In a lot of ways, they only saw George Eastman (the founder of Kodak) as the man who gave them film. They failed to see that Eastman was a Pioneer, an Inventor, an Innovator… He wasn’t in actuality producing things… just like his contemporary great American pioneers they were participating in creation. In contrast, The “Eastman Kodak Company” was only concerned with making film. Kodak Filed for bankruptcy in 2012, despite their shock at the very idea, there was no more need in the world for a film company, and they had not pursued the digital market early on, so they had no way of making up lost time.

 

It’s interesting to me that we’ve done this for so long. We consider ourselves Israelites, right? I’ve gone over this before, Israel was given the national covenant at Sinai, and it was supposed to reveal God in some sense to them. That didn’t work though… See, they got good at the law.. so good in fact that they didn’t even think about what it meant it became ‘tradition’.

They still brag about it to this day.

Then there was this Guy who came along… and he said “why do you forsake the law of God for the sake of your traditions?” The Jews of Christ’s day worshipped the LAW not GOD. They lived in SERVICE OF THE LAW. Because they worshipped the law and not God, God Visited them and they DID NOT KNOW HIM. This is really interesting to me that the group of people with the 2^nd commandment, BRAG about tradition!

 

And yet, WE DO TOO. A lot of us, without thinking about it, think that our keeping of the Sabbath and Holy Days for instance, makes us special people to God, and we divide the world as Righteous or unrighteous based on whether or not those things are kept. Is it just The Sabbath and the Holy days that save us?

Isaiah 1. We’ll read a good bit here, this is TO Judah and Jerusalem… not to some group of pagans. This is to the people of the Temple. They DID keep the law, but God was less than impressed.

Just keeping the law doesn’t fulfill it. Just because you have the Truth™ doesn’t make you righteous.

Yet, do we not claim that as our brand?

Too much acceptance without a proper amount of questions and contemplation causes religious activities and beliefs to separate from the worship of God and turn into individual entities of worship and admiration. What does that look like?

 

I grew up in a church where the Feast of Tabernacles was a THING that we served. We made a path for the Feast. We worked all year to facilitate the Feast. Yet, people would leave in between services on the last great day to drive home. The Feast was not in REMBERANCE OF COMING OUT OF EGYPT as the scripture tells us it is for it was about THIS IS WHAT WE DO. You can call this a superficial problem, but is it really?

Think about it like math for a minute. Is there a difference between long division, and a calculator? They do have the same answers of course, but the calculator is about the answer, the long form is about HOW to answer. That too could be a superficial difference, but what happens when the battery dies? What happens when you know all the different types of inputs for complex problems on your calculator, but the battery is dead?  It’s great to have the Feast, but where is there value in the Feast if you don’t know the reason for the Feast?

 

Singing at church for me was similar. Last year we were at the Feast with CFN and I stood through the first song service and was VERY uncomfortable. There were people waving their arms in the air, looking up towards the ceiling, etc.. I was not having it. I told Tabi, I HAVE to go back to what I know, this is chaos. I drove a couple miles across town and walked in to a service with a church I was used to and much to my chagrin, I was not at all happy. I looked around with new eyes.

What I saw, was disturbing.

I was standing still, in a group of still people. Facing the same direction. No one reading the lyrics because we knew them by memory. There was no emotion, all the songs were in the same key more or less, they all had standardized music with 3-4 verses and simple melodies… we were chanting.

That disturbed me deeply. Because I was doing it.. I was worshiping an Idol. I was worshipping the Tradition. I dressed up, and drove across town to SERVE my traditions.

 

So, How do we fix it?

 

 

The counter to falling into this trap in business is the concept of optimal privation... that is to not raise spoiled brats, but require them to have skills. You don’t give them everything, you make the next generation have to contend with their contemporary world. It’s also teaching innovation, the process of developing new ideas for new problems.

In a religious sense, that is going toe-to-toe with the obstacles of your OWN generation, problems and question that your parents cannot answer. I’ve said this several times now, the world of our religious ancestors IS NOT the world we live in. Just because our ancestors made good radio programs doesn’t AT ALL mean that the proper way to worship God is to make a good radio program. Just because our ancestors had a college doesn’t mean that the proper way to worship God is with a college. Just because our ancestors had 3 songs, a prayer, a sermonette, announcements, a song, a sermon, a song, a prayer, doesn’t make the proper way to worship God. The GOAL should be to worship GOD.

 

Now, I told you we would use the 2^nd commandment to explore the 4^th.

 

 

Lets take a quick glance at the 4^th commandment but remember I’m not trying to sell you a different house than your used to..

 

The Sabbath. Why do you Keep the Sabbath?

If your answer is, ‘because God said so’, I’m sorry that is not a good answer. It is very shallow and if you are deeply questioned about it, you will not be able to defend that position.

The problem is in the Purpose.

The Sabbath is not a thing to worship and to serve.

The Sabbath is HOLY TIME to WORSHIP GOD.

 

During Jesus’ human years He was of course Jewish and ‘as His custom was’ regularly went into the Temple on the Holy days and synagogues on the Sabbath. He lived in a culture that worshiped the law, and by extension, the Sabbath. So, they made ‘laws’ protecting the Sabbath, things like how far you could walk, what you could eat, how much you could carry, etc. He did not follow the traditions.

 

 

As far as the biblical narratives go a typical Sabbath to Jesus consisted of a LOT of hiking, boating, serving meals to strangers, healing people, participating in religious discussions with non-religious people, and exploration of the social and political issues of the day.

When cornered about that He said;

Mark 2:27 ‘The Sabbath is made FOR man, not man for the Sabbath.’

 

If you recall some explicit statements about the Sabbath.

Exodus 20:8

The Sabbath is TO the lord, It’s for Rest, and God Rested and It’s Holy.

Isaiah 58:13

The Sabbath should not be for YOUR work, the Sabbath should be a Delight and it should honor God.

 

Do YOU worship GOD on the Sabbath? Early on I said we would have to answer some questions in some very dark places. I really mean that. The Sabbath as we observe it, is a tradition for us. We ARE sabbath-keepers. For most of us the REASONS we keep the Sabbath are stashed in the closets of our minds. We don’t even think about WHY we keep the Sabbath; we argue about HOW to keep the Sabbath. We argue about whether or not we should eat out or go to graduation.

 

Is that not uncomfortably similar to what the Jews were arguing about while Jesus was out hiking long distances to heal people and feed them? Do you see where that could go bad?

 

Later today, dig way back in your mind, turn the lights on and examine your reasons.

Perhaps you can start with something like;

Science confirms that a 7 day work week will kill you, it will take a long time, but it will exhaust you and you will run out of life.

God says the Sabbath is a rest for man, so Saying “I keep the Sabbath because I need rest and God gave me the opportunity” is a MUCH more legitimate answer than “because God said so”. I think it goes without saying you should have more mature reasons than “I’m tired’, but at least you’re starting from a personal point. A point where YOU listen to and follow CHRIST.

 

 

 

Don’t let your belief be FOUNDED on tradition. Tradition is not a solid foundation, CHRIST is a solid foundation. I also don’t mean just about how to keep the Sabbath correctly. I mean that in ALL things, Tradition is an unstable foundation.

 

I have lived with Tradition as my foundation. I have lived with my beliefs being built on Tradition… I never want to live there again.

I Didn’t worship God, I worshipped The Church®. The Church® was my religion. I had THE TRUTH™, but one day the winds blew and the rains came, and it washed away everything I ever knew, including the guy I had seen for 30 years in my mirror. By the Grace of God I was allowed to survive that crash and He explained to me what had happened, and I intend that everyone I meet hears my warning.

 

The progression of the Christian walk has to stay within the bounds of an individual life span. It’s YOUR walk with God. While Community and Tradition are comforting, and helpful at times they cannot save you.

Your father’s religion cannot save you because your father didn’t live in your context.

 

Your religion, that is the practices of your life, has to stay YOURS, and has to be in Service of GOD, otherwise, it’s an idol.

 

It used to bother me that God would remember the sins of people for a couple generations and then punish their unsuspecting grandchildren, but that’s not what the second commandment is about.

 

The reason He says to not set up idols is that HE isn’t the one to carries out the punishment of Idolatry, YOU are.

God does not have to punish the 3^rd and 4^th generations of idolators, all He has to do is watch. The word translated ‘visit’ can also be translated ‘commit’ or ‘watch’.  It’s not HIS Curse… it’s THE COURSE. It’s what happens.

 

You are free to worship who or whatever you like, we even have a law protecting that right in this country. You can worship your church if you so desire, but remember this warning. I’m telling you this not just from experience but on the authority of the God who inspired the bible, If you make an Idol, your grand-children will get the bill.