Carving a God for Yourself

A missionary said that there's a certain cliff in Mexico where you can stand and gaze down at a certain village of Mexican workers. These people work down in the riverbed in their corn patch and there they grow their corn. When the corn is ready to harvest they shuck it and after it dries out they'll take it and grind it.

They'll grind it into cornmeal and make tortillas and then take these tortillas down to the open market and sell the tortillas for a few pesos. They put the pesos away, come back out to their houses and there they will live off of lizards. They'll go out among the rocks and catch these huge long lizards and delete those lizards.

They save that money for a special day. A special day when they will start a pilgrimage to a wooden statue of Jesus up in the mountains. The terrain to that statue is so bad that most of the people have to crawl on their hands and knees a couple of miles and by the time they get to that statue they are bleeding all over.

Standing beside the statue is a priest and that priest is saying, now if you love God give to him because you show your love to God by giving. And these people will reach into their little bags and purses and pull those pesos out stained in their own blood and drop that money into a slit in the top of the head of that wooden Jesus. Then the priest prays a prayer and when he's finished the priest will yell, you have not given enough.

Look, Jesus is sad. He is crying and all the time there is a another priest hidden in that hollow statue with a little hand pump. He will pump water to where it comes out of human-made tear ducts so that that statue is crying.

And there those people will give all they have. Crawl back down that mountain and go back to eating lizards, growing their corn, to make more tortillas, to get more pesos, to go and give to a dead God that cannot move or hear. I believe the most dangerous thing in the world, friends, is for a man or a woman to serve the wrong God.

There is only one true God and that is the living God of the Bible. But few serve him today. We listen to that story of the Mexican workers and we pity their ignorance in serving a wooden Jesus.

But I submit to you, friends, that there are multitudes of educated men and women in our Baptist and Presbyterian churches today who are no different than those Mexicans in our story. For there are pastors and elders and deacons and Sunday school teachers who have gotten out their pocket knives and have whittled out a little God they can serve. They have carved out for themselves a God who won't get in the way of their daily living.

Their God lets them live as they please. Their God is tolerant to their sin. Their God wouldn't send anybody to hell.

Their God won't punish sin. But the God of the Bible will. I knew a church member who believed God gave everyone a chance to be saved after they died.

This person believed Michael Jackson went to heaven because after Michael Jackson died, God approached him and offered him another chance at salvation. Some people think that God won't send anybody to hell. I was talking to a Baptist preacher who told me he believed Elvis was in heaven, and I reckon he was right in his beliefs because the gospel he preached omitted repentance and holiness and the God he served let him live as he pleased.

But Jesus never preached a sin and religion. I don't believe you can live like the devil here on earth and stay out of his company in eternity. Yes, friends, it's the time of year where there'll be plenty of people carving up their Thanksgiving turkey, and at the same time they'll take a knife and carve out for themselves a God they are comfortable with and a God they can serve, whether it's a wooden Jesus, like that statue up in the hills that those Mexican workers served, or a God carved out of a religious doctrine, or a God carved out of a tradition, or a God carved out of one's imagination.

Listen, friend, you better put your knife away and go get out your Bible and open it to Romans chapter 1 to see if you fall into this company of idle carvers, because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Carving out a God for yourself, friend, will only numb you like a sedative and keep you a captive in Satan's kingdom while you whittle away on that block of wood of yours and bow to it and call it God while you walk a religious road to hell.