God in our image...

When Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments Aaron was gathering the gold jewelery from the people of Israel in order to make a golden calf. "And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” (Ex 32:4-5) What's interesting is that when he said "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord" the word Lord in the Hebrew is Yahweh. He was calling the golden calf Yahweh.

God makes us in His image and then we try and make God into our image. Man, in his rebellion, wants to make God into his own image. God form's us and then we, in idolatrous worship, form Him. Idolatry is so dangerous because once you create a god in your mind that you like and that you’re comfortable with, you will also create a moral standard to go along with him. What we do is create a god that likes the things we like and permits the things we want to do. A golden calf doesn't say, "Thou shall not commit adultery" or "Thou shall not bear false witness." So we create a god in our image and then create a moral code that we like.

One way to tell if someone is doing this form of idolatry is this... they will begin their sentence with “To me…” They will say stuff like, “To me God is like __________” (Fill in the blank with whatever you want.) Watch the following video clip from Way Of The Master ministry for an example of this: