Worship Christ // Become Like Christ
“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”
Psalm 115:1-8 ESV
We become like what we worship.
Psalm 115 offers us a vivid, somewhat terrifying picture of this reality. The idols of ancient times were made of silver and gold, crafted by human hands. They claimed to give life. They even resembled life. But they were in fact lifeless.
The cultural idols of our day are not too different. We make idols out of success, fame, comfort, money, the list goes on. We put these idols on pedestals, propping them up as our saviors. We bow down before them, hoping that they might give us life. But instead, they take life from us. We are left resembling the spiritual lifelessness of our idols, with eyes that cannot see, ears that cannon hear, mouths that cannot speak, feet that cannot walk. As Psalm 115 says, “those who make them become like them, and so do all who trust in them”.
We become like what we worship.
But, when we worship Christ, we become like Christ.
Christ Jesus is the ultimate source of life. And unlike our idols, he is not made by human hands. He is alive, active, breathing, pouring out life by the power of his spirit.
This is why the worship of Jesus is absolutely vital to our spiritual health.
In Christian worship, we declare the worth-ship of Christ, and the worthlessness of our idols. Worship is about giving glory to Jesus, declaring that he is better, more valuable, more worthy than anyone or anything. In a sense, worship is about saying “Jesus is better”. Jesus is better than success. Jesus is better than any comfort. Jesus is better than any of my life goals. He alone deserves my worship.
You may notice in our Sunday worship gatherings we often take a moment to confess our sins before the Lord. We do this intentionally as a way casting down our idols. Confession of sin is our way of saying “Jesus, your are better than anything else I could possibly worship”.
The more we exult Jesus over our idols, the less power our idols have over us. As C.S Lewis said “Idols always break the hearts of their worshipers.”
So let’s worship the source of life together. Let’s bring our idols to the feet of Jesus, trusting that he alone can give us life.
Note: Special thanks to my friend and mentor Dr. Mathew Westerholm for providing me these insights from Psalm 115.
