God's Gifts: From Blessing to Idolatry.

Numbers 21:4-9. Blaise Pascal once said: "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus". He got it right because God created us to worship Him in order to fill that "vacuum", this is our calling, and because of that we will either worship the Lord God, our creator, or someone or something else. There is no human being alive right now that is not fulfilling his (her) calling, that is worshiping. Conscious or unconsciously we are all worshiping, even the angels and demons are worshiping. Lucifer was created to worship God, but he wanted to be worshiped instead and deceived one third of the angels to worship him instead of God and they fell. God created mankind to worship Him, but satan (ex-lucifer) deceived humanity and told Eve who told Adam that they could be "like" (divinity instead of character) God (when the Bible says that God created man in His likeness it doesn't mean that He created other gods), knowing good and evil, and they fell. Satan even tried to deceive Jesus Christ into worshiping him: Matthew 4:8-10. Idolatry is worshiping the wrong person! When someone worships an image (idol), he (she) is worshiping a demon: 1 Corinthians 10:20. Sacrifice was part of the worship. Idolatry is as old as humanity, from the beginning man is trying to find something other then his Creator to worship: Romans 1:22-25. When God told Moses to make a fiery serpent, it was a foreshadow of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. If anyone looked at Moses' bronze serpent would be physically healed, if anyone believes and confess Jesus Christ as his (her) Lord and Savior is spiritually healed (have eternal life): Romans 10:9. Jesus Himself spoke about it: John 3:14-15. The church today is contaminated by idolatry, there are many "visible and invisible" idols being worshiped in our churches today: Leaders, traditions, denominations, spiritual gifts, buildings, ministries, to name a few. The reason we are not seeing the Glory of God in our churches as they saw in the Early Church is because the Glory that is due to Him is being diverted to someone or something else. This is very serious but we don't pay much attention, because we are satisfied with what we have (whatever it is). The reason that the "prosperity theology" is so popular here in America is because its followers are worshiping the "blessing" instead of the "Blesser", as Jesus said: Matthew 6:21. Their treasure is "money" (mammon in Matthew 6:24) so their hearts are devoted to mammon (false god). Paul makes it clear that we can become idolaters: 1 Corinthians 10:14. The only way that we would keep ourselves from idolatry is by doing what Jesus told us to do: Matthew 22:37-40. Who or what do you love the most? Who or what are you worshiping right now? Where is your treasure?