OK, welcome back, everyone. We are doing commandment.
Can anyone guess what number commandment we're doing?
Well done. That's good listening.
Oh, dear. I tried.
Michael, can you put it back on? Can you put this?
I think I turned it off. Oh, see, this is the question,
isn't it? Why does God ask us twice to
worship him? So I'm going to start with a
little quote that someone came across on Instagram, which was
shared through the Voxology podcast, which I cannot comment
on either way because I only listened to it about once, but
this is what it started with. So this is an anonymous quote by
someone, and I presume they're American because they're it's a
slightly different context to us.
None of us asked to be here, yet according to Christianity, we're
born into a test we never signed up for, one where the only
options are obedience or eternal torture.
A God supposedly full of love creates us without consent,
gives us flawed minds, drops us into a broken world, hides
himself, and then punishes us for not finding him convincing
enough. He creates people knowing most
will burn forever. He gives us quote free will, but
he rigs it with eternal consequence.
He makes temptation irresistible, then blames us for
being tempted. He creates hell and then claims
we choose it for not following him.
He gives children cancer and then feels, then tells us it's
our fault because of Adam and Eve.
Every command, every threat, every miracle, all of it is
theatre to make cruelty look like a choice.
He tells us we're broken, then demands we thank him for fixing
us. He calls us sinners, then shames
us for acting human. He floods the earth, killing
millions, and calls it justice. He demands perfection from
imperfect beings. He's designed to fail.
And when we finally start thinking for ourselves, he
labels it as pride, as if curiosity itself were rebellion.
If this God existed, he'd be the most insecure being imaginable,
demanding constant praise, testing loyalty, and dangling
heaven in front of our faces to make us submit.
If love needs worship to exist, it isn't love.
And if morality comes from the fear of punishment, it isn't
morality. All of this looks more like
divine blackmail than it ever did divine love.
Does anyone have like in your church experience?
Because we basically all speak out of our experience, don't we?
Our theology is formed by experience, whether we like it
or not. Does anyone resonate with that
as a formational kind of spectrum of of how we view God,
say naughty is? No, I literally have never heard
of that. I do not encounter God like
that. That is, I've never heard of
anything like that to 10, which is that is exactly my
formational experience. Just all like shout out at
number at the same time with like cool charismatics, aren't
we? That's lurking somewhere.
We're also most of us here are British and British people just
don't go there. We don't really talk about the
implications of some of the things we believe.
It's like that awkward uncle that we bring out every time
there's a funeral. We don't really know what to say
about hell. And then we put them back in the
in the cupboard again because they're really socially
inappropriate. So what we're trying to do here
at Hope is develop a language to explain the experience that
we've had of God, which couldn't be more different to that the
experience I have of God. And I've had it this morning at
home on my own. I've already experienced the God
of love and goodness and kindness and mercy that is
fundamentally opposite to that experience that that person
somehow received. And we're going on a journey to
be able to be a people that don't just experience it, but
they have the language to communicate it.
Because part of the problem is we've all experienced God's
love, haven't we? We all know His kindness.
We all know He intervened. We all know He showed us mercy.
We all know He provided for us in times of need.
And yet we struggle with the language to communicate that to
other people in about 30 seconds.
So I'm going to do a little example in my life.
Then I'm going to ask you in your groups, around your table,
just one of you, so no one has to speak if you never have to do
anything here if you don't want to.
But if you'd like to, if there's something you'd like to testify
to, a way you've seen God's goodness and love in your life
recently, I'd like, I'm going to give you some time because I'm
going to tell my little testimony to do that.
Because we want to also build in testimonies.
Testimony forms theology, and in fact, the entire Bible, but
particularly the New Testament are really an expression of
people's personal encounters with Jesus.
That's what it is. It's saying I encounter Jesus
and now I'm going to try and explain it to someone either
through eyewitnesses or written down.
So that's how we come to a place of theology.
We have to start telling our stories of our personal
encounter. This is a really small one as
everyone knows. I've been doing study and each
year I have to find 4 to 5000 lbs to fund my study.
I did 2 year graduate diploma and in the first year some
people came up to me who aren't family and who aren't from Hope
and they just said they'd like to underwrite my studies.
So I applied for three grant funders and I was received three
and a half 1000 lbs and they underwrote and covered the rest.
So I was covered fully for my study for two years of the
graduate diploma. So this year I am doing a
masters and but the kind of ante went up because I also stepped
down from a paid role and I needed to find 4 to 5000 lbs
last June, by last June, again, I applied to this and I knew
this this particular source. They said we want to support you
on the grad dip and we're just stopping.
So I knew that a long time ago. So I then applied for funding
for the masters and I had two of the funders came back to me and
I was given 1500 lbs, which is great and I needed 3000 and I
applied to some other ones. And anyway everyone came back
and said no. And it was after all the funding
deadlines are around June. And Chris suggested why don't I
communicate with the congregation federation.
So I phoned up Yvonne. I didn't phone up.
We don't phone up. I emailed just just went back
into what I would have done in the 90s then Nope.
I emailed Yvonne and said this is my situation and she was
like, you've missed the deadlines, but here's some
here's some possibilities and said try this one and I will
back you up 100%. So it was like midnight past the
deadline. I probably wasn't very bright in
my application, but I I didn't use AI either.
I just applied and anyway within a few days this particular grant
funder said we've got your application, you are past the
deadline but we'll give you the £3000 you need to get your full
amount for the Masters this year.
And it's so small and you could almost not notice it, but that's
the God I follow. He knows about my needs, he
cares about my needs. He said to a Masters and he's
provided he's intimate, he's concerned, he pays attention.
And so I know he's got my back when I'm having wrestling with
stuff, when I'm having to start again completely and humble
myself and learn from people a lot younger than me in midlife.
I I know he's got my back and he's training me like a that
person on Karate Kid where it says wash on wash off.
That's what I feel I'm doing, learning how to write a
sentence, a paragraph and an essay.
Wash on, wash off. But He's got my back because he
came through for me when I needed him to.
So in around tables, what would be great is if one person could
just share a story of God's kindness, provision, his
healing, his goodness. Something that that says
actually the God I know who's revealed himself to me is not
like that God that that person's heard about.
That's actually more like what we would call the enemy.
So have a few minutes and then we'll come back to this big
question. Why does God ask us twice to
worship him? OK, when we've shared those
stories, do we feel that those stories represent more of the
gods we know than that initial statement?
Does those stories seem to represent more of the God we
know than that kind of person? Yeah.
So it's it's really important then we have a lens through
which we read and interpret everything.
We may or may not realise it. When we go to the Bible and read
the 10 commandments, we go with the lens that that isn't our
lens. It we come with a lens and it's
already what we already think about God, whether he's real or
not, whether he's good or not. So, so that lens, the first
lens, why does God ask us to work twice to worship him?
What would the answer be? No.
What would the answer be to that first person who's incredibly
like, Yep, he's insecure, God is insecure.
What else do we know about the character of God from that first
statement I read out? Yeah, there's a kind of punitive
nature there. Anything else vindictive?
Yeah. Sounds like a dictator tyrant.
If you look at that through the 2nd lens of the stories we're
telling about what we know about God, what might we, how might we
interpret that question? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So there's kindness there, isn't
there? It's sort of a trust.
There's trust we actually trust him.
So we trust that what he says is better for us.
Anything else? Yeah.
So there is, there is a
repetition for emphasis. And that's a really important
thing to pay attention in reading the Bible.
And so there's something clearly he's saying this is important.
And it's a bit like when you repeat something to someone in
your care, maybe a child or someone who isn't responsive.
If something's important, you keep saying it again and again
and again until they're here. That's what the Scripture is
basically saying. But we need to have is to
understand that message he's telling us.
And that depends on our lens. OK, so this is what he says in
Commandment 2. If you want to listen to
Commandment one, it's on the Hope Podcast.
And then I did an introduction one as well.
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything
in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
For I the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the
children for the sin of the parents to the third and 4th
generation of those who hate me, but showing love to 1000
generations of those who love me and keep my commands.
I think this this command is particularly contingent on our
lens. So some of the translations
actually say punishing the children for the sin of the
parents to the third and 4th generation.
We're reading this in English. It wasn't originally written in
English. And that's the word that some
translators use. Others use visiting.
There's words like jealous, which other people might say
passionate. And these words are really,
really dependent on our interpretive lens as to how we
understand them. So what we're doing is we're not
just looking at the second commandment.
We're training our we're training our reading to be in in
alignment with the reality of the God we've encountered.
Encounter comes first and then language comes after that.
So do you see there was a phrase in the heavens above, on on the
earth, and in the waters below. So I want us to immediately
remember this isn't someone that wrote this down to me since
English language was developed. It it wasn't something that was
written down 2 or 300 years ago. This was written in an ancient
time in an ancient place with an ancient people who had a
cosmology that had the heavens above that saw the earth as a
flat disc being held up by pillars and there was a shale
and the watery like afterlife below.
And God was above the the heavens.
We live on the earth. And then and then if you go, if
you die, you go into the deep. And so people would create
literally images, idle statues of beings either in the heavens
above. What would they have been?
What did people worship in the in the sky, sun, moon, stars?
Yep. So they were seen as spiritual
beings. What might you worship on the
earth that and that literally make a thing of and bow down and
worship animals. Yep, statues.
So anything beautiful, impressive, compelling, but it
may be kind of a combination. So images of gods or goddesses
and then of the of the earth below.
What might you make? It's harder for us to understand
that because we've seen whatever that guys he's just become 100
David Attenborough. We've seen his his version of
the earth. This the land below the the
floating disc. Yeah.
So you might the the images there are chaos, monsters and
creatures. The deep is where destruction
happens and chaos happens. And so you might, out of awe or
fear or to placate, make gods and worship them.
So I think it's just good to do that.
We're not going to go down that route today.
I just want to remind us that this is a cross cultural
experience. When we go and reread an ancient
text, we're not reading something that someone wrote to
me in an e-mail. That is exactly what we are not
doing. We're doing something so utterly
foreign. We need to come with the
humility or curiosity of a learner, someone, someone's
talking about. I went to a conference and there
were some Americans there, so I'm quoting them.
I'm sure they'll be OK with this saying, you know, they can come
to London and just try and find the McDonald's.
How would we feel about that? That's just, that is like London
is just one of the most epic cities in the world.
It's got incredible places. No one else.
There aren't anywhere else in the world.
You don't go to London to go to McDonald's.
We don't go to the Hebrew Bible to try and get a nice e-mail
that will make me feel better about myself.
We've got to be respectful travellers and one of the things
you've got to understand is the ancient cosmology of their
worldview and then draw out the point he's trying to make.
The Holy Spirit's trying to make through that.
Author for us today. Now this what he did do though
in Genesis 1 is make a radical claim.
So everyone had this sort of cosmology, but he made a radical
claim going back into Genesis 1. And I suggest as part of the
kind of follow up I'm going to give some group questions for
this is to read Genesis 1. I actually was going to read it
all out, but we don't have enough time.
So if you look at Genesis 1, he makes 2 radical claims that were
different from all the other ancient Near Eastern accounts
which would have had that cosmology.
The first one is there's only one God.
This God is complex. It's a God who creates he, the
God is plural and creates in the singular, but it's one God.
And one God is supreme over all created beings, seen and unseen.
And we worship one God. That was the big claim of the
the writers of Genesis 1. And the second one is humans are
made in the image of God. Now in in the ancient world the
only person made in the image of God.
Does anyone know this? Who was made in the image of God
yet? So Pharaoh is a what category is
that king? The king, The only person made
in the image of God was the king.
So to write. I still find this probably the
most mind blowing thing in the whole of scripture.
Someone 3000 years ago had this thought, this inspiration to
write that all humans are made in the image of gold, male and
female. He made them in the image of
God. He created them to rule.
I mean, it's, it's utterly revolutionary that idea.
There's not one person, a God king that we worship and follow,
but it that all humanity somehow represents the image of God.
So this is the, the, the climax of that Genesis passage.
Then God said, let us make humanity in our image, in our
likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the
birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild
animals and over all the creatures that move along the
ground. So God created humanity in his
own image, in the image of God. He created them, male and
female. He created them.
God blessed them and said to them Be fruitful and increase in
number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in
the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature
that moves on the ground. So looking at Genesis 1, is God
a narcissist? Does he command?
In the very first revelation of himself in Genesis 1, does he
command humans to worship him? No, what does he say to humans?
He actually does the opposite. He delegates full power and
authority for them to rule. He is the complete opposite of a
narcissist. He he never says anywhere in
Genesis one that the the reason humans exist is to worship him.
He says the reason humans exist is to represent him in ruling.
It couldn't be more opposite. So is he insecure?
He's completely secure. He speaks 10 royal words of
creation, of which this is the 10th.
And and life happens because he he is so secure in his authority
that that life just flows out of his words.
And is he out to harm us? I think that's the big thing we
need to have a mindset change of repentance on.
Is God out to harm us? No, the very first thing he says
about what he wants of humanity is our flourishing and our
repentance is to get back there. Because the lie we all
fundamentally believe is he's a narcissist, he's insecure, and
at some level he's just against us.
We kind of have this existential angst that God somehow against
us. Everyone you meet, everywhere
you meet, they're just like, I can't feel God's fullness for
me. That's the problem.
That's the for the failure, whatever you want to call it,
whatever language you put around it.
And our repentance, our mindset change, or as Paul would say, an
upgrade in our thinking is, is to kind of agree with reality
that he shares power. He's delegated power to us and
he, he is fully for our flourishing, every single one of
us, every human we will ever meet, the person in front of us.
That is exactly what he says about them and anything else is
a lie of the enemy. So what's really interesting
about this the word is the same word image is used in Exodus in
the 10 commandments is used here in another words, what the
writer, what Exodus God is saying through Moses in Exodus
is that don't. Do not worship or bow down or
make another image and sorry, make an image and bow down and
worship it because you are the image of God.
You are the image of God. We are already images.
He doesn't need another image. He made an image and that's us.
We are the full representation of God in human form.
That, that, that human we can come across.
And so when we make an image and we bow down and worship it, we
violate ourselves and other people.
We dehumanise ourselves because our humanity is image bearers.
And that that is the point that the that Genesis is making about
us, that Exodus is making about us, but really lands with with
Jesus and Paul. So Jesus says something really
interesting. We are not to worship other
images because we are the image of God.
So Jesus says something, if you've seen me, you've seen the
Father. What he's saying is somewhere
along the line, that image bearing, because of the lie we
believe, we've dehumanised ourselves.
We've sort of marred that image. That image isn't full.
We can't really see who God is in looking at one another.
But Jesus, that Jesus came in the flesh to show us what God is
like, that's the gift of incarnation is we can now fully
see our humanity again and we can fully see God again in the
person of Jesus. And Paul really captures up on
this language. The only image language in the
New Testament is from Paul. Jesus is the image of the
invisible God, the first born over all creation.
That image bearer in Genesis 1, the male and female partnering
together to rule over all creation is Christ and the
church. It's a it's a prophetic
messianic text that we fulfil and he invites us in to
recovering the full, our full humanity, recovering that full
image bearing status. When Jesus talks about being
with the Father, we've learnt from John 1, he talks about
being face to face with God. And what's really interesting, I
didn't I didn't pull this out, but the kind of the the Hebrew
sense in the first commandment says you have ought to have no
other gods before my face. That's the kind of the word that
she used there in the commandment we've just been to.
So what what Jesus is is fulfilling is the image of this
incredible intimacy with God that we're designed to have.
No other thing, person, object is supposed to have our gaze,
our insight, our attention, our attraction.
It it is, it is Jesus is face to face with the Father and we're
invited into that place where he is.
We are face to face with him with the Father that that's the
place of clarity of humanity. And that's what he's inviting us
into when he says don't make any other image, you are the image
in me. You come back to that place of
intimacy with God, of being face to face with the Father.
So we don't worship God to make him feel good because he needs
our help. He's a bit threatened, He's a
bit insecure. We worship him to become
ourselves, to become fully human, to be the image bearers
we were designed to be. A helpful kind of Jewish scholar
reading these texts talks about the explicit meaning of the 10
commandments and the implicit meaning.
So the explicit meaning of Commandment 1 and 2 is worship
God only. That's what it's explicitly
saying. But the implicit meaning is, and
this is my attempt to communicate the implicit
meaning. Reality is God.
He creates and sustains all things.
To worship Him is to agree with reality.
When we do not worship Him, we will worship created things that
He has made. This worship will involve
practises that deform, dehumanise and ultimately
destroy both ourselves and others.
When we worship God, we become fully human.
I get there because I've had a personal encounter with a God
who is good and loves me and wants my humanity.
That's how I can get there. I don't have that.
And then I have an experience of God.
We need to experience God and then have language to
communicate it. Otherwise we end up having a
mindset like that. That anonymous person that put
that quote out on Instagram that I imagine came out of
unbelievable wounding because he knew too much.
He knew too much about what could go wrong.
So in in in the second commandment talks about serving
God. So what does it actually mean to
worship God? We don't ever I've, I've only
seen one person who I think does this and I've never seen anyone
in the West prostate themselves on the floor and worship
something like a statue, an image of being.
Obviously I've seen it, you know, in, in visual media and
I've seen it in other cultures, but I've never seen that.
So what does that mean to us? That we do not prostate
ourselves in front of any person or statue.
We just don't do that. What does it actually mean to
worship? Well, the word is the same,
serve is the same as work or cultivate.
So I think what it's saying is not about prostrating yourself
in front of something or someone or God, as it's an invisible
entity, but it's about cultivation, caring, tending,
like you're being called to look after a fruit tree.
And Jesus modelled this perfectly everywhere he went.
He healed for people, he provided for people, he taught
them, he built relationships, he pruned people where they weren't
in in reality. And he, he was just gently
tending and restoring our humanity in the, in the Bible,
often humans and trees are interchangeable.
So how you look at trees is, is a way of, of psychologically
understanding what humans are like.
And so how we treat each other is with the care and
attentiveness of a very good, kind gardener.
That's how God has designed us to love each other.
Well, because that's how he loves us.
And that's what it looks like to worship him, to care for each
other and tend for each other, for one another's human
flourishing. That is an act of worship
because that's recovering the image of God.
That's what Jesus is like. Now there's that complex.
I'll go back to that you shall not make for yourself an image.
So we're the images in the form of anything in heaven or on
earth or beneath the earth. You shall bow, not bow down to
them or worship. So I was trying to explain that
word worship them for there I the Lord your God am a jealous
God visiting the children for the sin of the parents to the
third and 4th generation of those who hate me, but showing
love to 1000 generations of those who love me.
I would love to do AQ and a bit on how we would then interpret
this through the two lenses, but I'm going to ask people maybe to
do that in your groups, if you're going to process this,
what are the two ways you would interpret that if if you had a
very negative experience of God versus a positive experience?
So I'm going to say the framing lens for me is that to the third
and 4th generation was a typical multi multi generational
household in an ancient Israelite family.
Like that's basically saying everyone if, if there's idolatry
in one person, if you're dehumanising and destroying,
having practises which, which are sabotaging you, it will
sabotage everyone in your community.
I see this as simply like, this is the way life is.
We see addictions, we see practises, we see strongholds.
They do play out generationally in families.
It's incredibly hard to understand that for the children
and grandchildren, great transchildren, but it is the
reality. And one of the ways the biblical
authors talk about they don't actually have there isn't really
a notion of punishment. It's a notion of consequences to
call people to repentance through their own free will, so
that if you see the consequences of your actions enough and you
keep paying attention to the patterns that are destroying
you, at some point you come to a clarity where you don't want to
live like that anymore and you want to come back and follow
Jesus. And then you want that for your
children and grandchildren. And if you are the child or
grandchild or great grandchild of people in addiction and
you've had that kind of passed down, we all will have had some
are more socially acceptable than others, but we'll all have
patterns passed down. We can be the ones to say and we
will, we can process this. I just break that generational
pattern in my life of idolatry and addiction and sabotage.
And I'm going to walk in the opposite spirit of, of being
fully human and of worshipping God in the way he's, he's called
me to. So I think it's not saying
anything other than this is the way life is.
If you worship idols, there will be consequences not just for
you, but for your children, grandchildren and great
grandchildren. And for us, it's 50% of us live
in, in single households. It's not saying that kind of
generation. It's just saying it will, it
will pollute and, and bring toxicity to your community.
It just will like a like a fruit tree brings rotten fruit or good
fruit. But the word 1000 is the idea of
eternal, everlasting complete fulfilment.
The comparison between those consequences which he gives us
for a season to bring us to repentance compared to the
overwhelming eternal substantial has said faithful love for us is
is incomparable. There is nothing like the the
the the larger narrative of unbelievable grace and mercy
towards every human, even those of us who are carrying the 3rd
and the 4th generation. We're all scooped up in this
incredible love for us and love for humanity because Jesus took
on the fullness of our humanity, because he took on the sins of
the 3rd and 4th generation. He took it all on him in
himself. He was born into it and he broke
the power of it. And now we all get to experience
what he experiences, which is the he has a love for the
Father. We enter into the love that
Jesus has for the Father and we receive the love for 1000
generations for those who love him.
That's the incarnation. That's the gift of incarnation
is we, we've moved our status. We are now in Christ who did
fulfil everything. He did everything blamelessly
and righteously, and so he showed love.
Jesus. God shows love to 1000
generations of Jesus and those who love Him and keep its
commands and in him. All of humanity is invited into
that eternal love. So when you have the lens of
knowing God's good, everything changes and how you understand
that and then you then what's exciting is there's an
invitation to get free of those generational patterns that feels
a compelling and exciting idea. We suddenly do not think God's
wanting to take from us, but he's wanting to heal us and give
to us because we see his goodness.
So my repentance, because I'm working through this myself as
well, is remember how I talked about the beginning, a little
detail in my own life where God really cared about this, The
fact I started some studies and I needed provision and after the
kind of last minute, he provided everything I needed and really
showed me his love. Through doing that, I'm now an
image bearer of him to those around me and he's my repentance
is is kind of stepping into the reality of how he's made me to
be. So one of the ways that I I
fail, I'd fall short of bearing the image is paying attention to
the details of people's lives. And so I struggle with that's
always a bit cringy when you bring it into light, noticing
the plants in our garden. I am married to someone who's
the most incredible gardener, and it takes me so many years to
just clock the plants in front of me and what he's done and how
amazing that is. So my repentance, becoming more
of an image bearer looks like paying attention to the detail
of that, getting the right size clothes for our children.
I'm a bit vague. I'm like, you look a bit like
Harry Potter, but I don't worry you.
It's a Cape. You'll grow into it in five
years time. And they're just like, yeah, but
I've left home in five years time.
So can I not have an oversized outfit or just like making more
of an effort with cooking family meals?
Just it's, it's extra mild stuff.
It's paying attention to the details.
And that's what I'm breaking generational patterns in my
family's life, which is much more like macro and big thinking
and like moving into how God is he's, he's kind and caring for
the details. And I'd break that generational
pattern off. So this can be really small and
really subtle. And it's just what God's putting
his finger off finger on in my, in our lives.
But I don't want this to just be information.
Like at the end of two years, we've kind of know all the 10
commandments of my heart. I want this to be transformation
that by the end of this, you'll see that every command is
basically the same, the same thing.
Just be fully human. Just be fully human.
But it's coming at it from multiple angles.
And by the end of it, I would love us all to be full more in
the in the humanity of Christ, in God.
So our response, Oh, let's just say that again, because that's
the main point, isn't it? We are not to worship other
images because we are the image of God.
How do we recognise the ways we're not?
We're resisting bearing the image of God in our life.
This is where we have community and we ask God to speak and to
show us patterns in our life. And it's always patterns.
One offs are one offs. But if we, if we continually,
perpetually are acting in a certain way, that pattern is not
freedom. And that's what we want is to
have freedom from that pattern and a pattern that represents
the pattern of Jesus who would walk in the opposite spirit.
So firstly, we ask him to show us where we resist bearing his
image. We have a real value on
curiosity here, a really high value on saying why?
Why do I do that? Like why have I got this pattern
in my life? And asking God to just surely
heal us, it will be a lie we believe about the nature of his
love for us or sin comes out of not believing his love for us,
whether it's generational, personal.
And so we're curious about that and we ask God for healing.
That's a repentance. It's a mindset change out of not
knowing we're loved to knowing we're loved.
Then we receive God's forgiveness.
And it's really important we do the sometimes the biggest
forgiveness issue we have is forgiving ourselves.
It's just I, I just let myself go and I move on into the new
life God has for me. We rebuke because we believe
there's two realms and and we're a post in this that that image
is right there in the garden narratives.
There's an enemy out to lie to us about the nature of God.
And so we have to be vigilant and take authority over any
spirits that that lie to us about who God is and what he's
like and, and bring any shame and condemnation and none of
that has any territory or legal top offs in our life.
So we just, we rebuke those spirits in the name of Jesus.
And then we ask of what a replacement looks like.
And I gave a really practical example in my life.
It is really practical. It's practical enough for you to
say to someone that you're doing life with and walking with.
This is how I'm walking out my repentance.
So for me, it's I'm paying attention to details in these
ways. I'm looking at plants in the
garden. I'm getting the right size
uniform and I'm making more of an effort with putting spices in
to our family meals because no one's three anymore.
They're all teenagers and they want a lot of spices.
So that's what I'm doing. That's my repentance, to be more
in the image of God and move out of a kind of inattention to
detail and to be a person of love who has paid attention to
detail. So worshipping God is not for
his benefit. He doesn't need any.
He's full and complete within the self giving love of the
Trinity. He doesn't need us to worship
him. It is for our benefit.
It allows us to flourish, love others, and live fully human
lives. So we I'm going to end now in
prayer and I'm going to e-mail out some questions people can do
in groups that they're people they're walking with and we can
keep kind of processing what it looks like to bear God's image.
So we don't worship other images because we are the image of God.
Lord, I thank you so much that you dignify us so much by saying
we are we are the image of God on earth and your ways are make
us fully human. We when we follow you, we become
who we're truly designed to be. And so I bless us as a community
to be formed into your image. I bless us as a community to
represent you well. I bless us as a community to
come to that place of intimacy, of being face to face with you
as you are with the Father. And there's nothing else in
front of our face but you. You, you have our our gaze and
our attention. And I, I bless us as a community
to be formed in that, in the name of Jesus, Amen.