That’s why so many people have come to see Christianity as a projection of human thought. We hammer out our own ideas of who we think God is and what we want him to be like in our own mind. But idols in our times are more sophisticated. The Bible has a word for our own ideas about God-it is “idolatry.” In ancient times, idols were made from wood, stone or metal. Such a god cannot help you, because he or she has no existence apart from you. Just as a god who is shaped by me will die with me. But such a god is only a projection of you.Īt the end of the day, what use is a god who was designed by you? A god who is shaped by you will die with you. You could spend your whole life shaping a god to your own liking-a god who loves what you love, a god who says what you want to hear and a god who calls you to live as you are already living. And I need to hear what God has to say, especially when it makes me feel uncomfortable. I am helped by people who “tell it like it is.” I am helped by those who are willing to confront what I may be hiding from without even knowing it. But I am not helped by people who only say what I want to hear. It’s often tempting for a preacher to fit the message to what he guesses people will want to hear. Last summer, long before we knew the date of this public launch, we planned to listen to God through 2 Thessalonians, and the verses that were read were set for today. That is why we use the discipline of working through a book of the Bible, so that we can listen to what God is saying, without us deciding what the topic will be. We would always be comforted, but we would never actually be changed. We would always be affirmed, but never challenged. But if we did that then we would only hear a reflection of our own preferences. It would be very easy to come to the Bible, picking the bits that we like, and ignoring anything that makes us feel uncomfortable.
We want to listen to the Bible in such a way that our thinking, feeling, choosing, believing and behaving are shaped by the Word of God. We don’t come to the Bible to evaluate it. What we do here week-by-week is take a passage of the Bible and place ourselves under it. We can do something different because it is special, or we can do what we normally do and say, “This is who we are.” On an occasion like this you have to make a choice. I have to tell you, I had the same question. When the Scripture was read, you may have thought, “This is a strange message for a weekend when we are welcoming large numbers of first- time visitors at the public launch of a new campus.” You may have wondered, “Is he really going to speak on these verses from the Bible?” This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. (2 Thessalonians 1:6-7) God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well.
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