The Sin of Humanizing God
"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." -Psalm 91:1
Today my pastor brought a great message on the awesomeness of God. One of his first points was that we no longer hold God in awe. Rather, we have humanized Him. Many would think it flippant, and try to justify and think that these thought are way to critical and Jesus was human...etc. But the truth is that humanizing God is a sin.
In the book The Knowledge of the Holy, Dr. A. W. Tozer makes a profound statement: "The gravest question facing the Church today is God Himself. It is my opinion that the Christian concept of God that is current in the middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent that it is utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God, and it actually consists, for professed believers, in something amounting to a moral calamity." If that’s what Dr. Tozer thought in the middle of the twentieth century, how much worse is it at the end of the twentieth century!
There is a lack of fear of the Lord today. Serving the Lord with fear represents a high and lofty view of God. Those who fear God are going to rejoice. They will have joy because they have that lofty view of God. The fear of God underlies and undergirds the spirit of rejoicing. What a truth! If you fear God, you don’t need to be afraid of Him. But if you don't fear God, you need to be frightened of Him! If you fear Him, then you can rejoice that He is the God He is. He loves to have you come to Him, and you love to have Him search you and make you clean and pure with a desire to walk holy in the light of His very character. We want God to be preparing us for the day we walk on Heaven's streets and hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
The tragedy today is that the sinfulness that permeates society has been able to creep into the Church. What is the sin of society? It relates to what we have done to God: we have humanized Him. We have brought Him down from His throne to our human level. We act as if God is a human being like the neighbor next door. We think He acts and reacts as men do. The first thing we then feel is that He's not trustworthy. We are tempted to have human reactions toward Him. The sin of society is the sin of humanizing God. Once we humanize God we start to deify man. Why? Because man is idolatrous by nature and has to worship something. If we dethrone and bring the God Who should be worshipped down to human level, we have to enthrone something or somebody else. Who do we enthrone? Man, who then becomes his own god.
The term "secular humanism" basically relates to bringing God down to a human level and making a god out of man or lifting man up to a god state. Man is the ultimate end of all. "If it feels good do it." "Do whatever you feel is good for you." We've brought God down; we’ve lifted man up and made a god out of him. This is the deifying of man after the humanizing of God. We become our own gods. That’s the philosophy in the world today. The world says, "Let’s bring God down to a human level and man up to a god level. Man is the end of all." Once you do that you minimize sin. There are no more absolutes. Everybody is his own god and therefore each has his own standards. Everything then is "relative," with nothing black and white but all a neutral gray. We don't call sin, sin. We now give sin different terms than God gives it, getting away from the terms of the Bible in relation to what sin is all about. This is the tragedy of our present society. Why did the Jews crucify Jesus? They said, "We will not have this man to rule over us." Every man wanted to do what was right in his own eyes. Who then is the boss? Who calls the shots? Man. So, you in your own world do what's right in your own eyes.
We're living in a day when we're trying to give our teenagers a nonoffensive kind of Christianity. We're trying to make it so palatable that when they’re in school they won't be persecuted. We ought to be teaching the glory of persecution, to rejoice when persecuted for righteousness’ sake because great is your reward in heaven (see Matthew 5:11-12). We ought to be raising a generation that is different from the world, with young people being glad and rejoicing that they can suffer for Jesus. We read so many times throughout the Bible times where God had to stop His children and remind them, "Don't you remember when I did this for you? Do you remember my awesomeness?" I love the passage over in Deuteronomy 8, where God was reminding the children of Israel of how He sustained and took care of them in the desert, in the middle of their disobedience, He still took care of them. That is amazing!!
We are at risk for humanizing God when we do not know God. When we are not actively seeking Him through His Word, and ways He communicates to us. It is absolutely important that a Christian study theology, and the philosophies concerning Christ. It is an avenue to understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. "Rarely do we think about God, and when we do, so often what we think about God is so unworthy of Him. Although there are many misconceptions about God, the greatest problem we have with our thoughts about God is that they are so few." We don't really study the character of God.
Humanizing God blocks out revival. The need today is not for a transitory revival. The need today is for the Eternal One to dwell with us forever. A revival that begins in the character of God will be as a river ever increasing and widening until lost in the sea of God's great eternity. Knowing God and His character must become our amazement, enjoyment, and rejoicing.
Repent if you are humanizing God. Then get on the right track, and ask Him to give you a right perspective of Him, and His glory. He is the God of the ages, He is the God who Created with just one word, He is the God who has always been, and always will be. He is everything...my very next breath. There is no God like our God, no other name worthy of all the praise in the World! Jesus, the Rock of Ages.
Today my pastor brought a great message on the awesomeness of God. One of his first points was that we no longer hold God in awe. Rather, we have humanized Him. Many would think it flippant, and try to justify and think that these thought are way to critical and Jesus was human...etc. But the truth is that humanizing God is a sin.
In the book The Knowledge of the Holy, Dr. A. W. Tozer makes a profound statement: "The gravest question facing the Church today is God Himself. It is my opinion that the Christian concept of God that is current in the middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent that it is utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God, and it actually consists, for professed believers, in something amounting to a moral calamity." If that’s what Dr. Tozer thought in the middle of the twentieth century, how much worse is it at the end of the twentieth century!
There is a lack of fear of the Lord today. Serving the Lord with fear represents a high and lofty view of God. Those who fear God are going to rejoice. They will have joy because they have that lofty view of God. The fear of God underlies and undergirds the spirit of rejoicing. What a truth! If you fear God, you don’t need to be afraid of Him. But if you don't fear God, you need to be frightened of Him! If you fear Him, then you can rejoice that He is the God He is. He loves to have you come to Him, and you love to have Him search you and make you clean and pure with a desire to walk holy in the light of His very character. We want God to be preparing us for the day we walk on Heaven's streets and hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
The tragedy today is that the sinfulness that permeates society has been able to creep into the Church. What is the sin of society? It relates to what we have done to God: we have humanized Him. We have brought Him down from His throne to our human level. We act as if God is a human being like the neighbor next door. We think He acts and reacts as men do. The first thing we then feel is that He's not trustworthy. We are tempted to have human reactions toward Him. The sin of society is the sin of humanizing God. Once we humanize God we start to deify man. Why? Because man is idolatrous by nature and has to worship something. If we dethrone and bring the God Who should be worshipped down to human level, we have to enthrone something or somebody else. Who do we enthrone? Man, who then becomes his own god.
The term "secular humanism" basically relates to bringing God down to a human level and making a god out of man or lifting man up to a god state. Man is the ultimate end of all. "If it feels good do it." "Do whatever you feel is good for you." We've brought God down; we’ve lifted man up and made a god out of him. This is the deifying of man after the humanizing of God. We become our own gods. That’s the philosophy in the world today. The world says, "Let’s bring God down to a human level and man up to a god level. Man is the end of all." Once you do that you minimize sin. There are no more absolutes. Everybody is his own god and therefore each has his own standards. Everything then is "relative," with nothing black and white but all a neutral gray. We don't call sin, sin. We now give sin different terms than God gives it, getting away from the terms of the Bible in relation to what sin is all about. This is the tragedy of our present society. Why did the Jews crucify Jesus? They said, "We will not have this man to rule over us." Every man wanted to do what was right in his own eyes. Who then is the boss? Who calls the shots? Man. So, you in your own world do what's right in your own eyes.
We're living in a day when we're trying to give our teenagers a nonoffensive kind of Christianity. We're trying to make it so palatable that when they’re in school they won't be persecuted. We ought to be teaching the glory of persecution, to rejoice when persecuted for righteousness’ sake because great is your reward in heaven (see Matthew 5:11-12). We ought to be raising a generation that is different from the world, with young people being glad and rejoicing that they can suffer for Jesus. We read so many times throughout the Bible times where God had to stop His children and remind them, "Don't you remember when I did this for you? Do you remember my awesomeness?" I love the passage over in Deuteronomy 8, where God was reminding the children of Israel of how He sustained and took care of them in the desert, in the middle of their disobedience, He still took care of them. That is amazing!!
We are at risk for humanizing God when we do not know God. When we are not actively seeking Him through His Word, and ways He communicates to us. It is absolutely important that a Christian study theology, and the philosophies concerning Christ. It is an avenue to understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. "Rarely do we think about God, and when we do, so often what we think about God is so unworthy of Him. Although there are many misconceptions about God, the greatest problem we have with our thoughts about God is that they are so few." We don't really study the character of God.
Humanizing God blocks out revival. The need today is not for a transitory revival. The need today is for the Eternal One to dwell with us forever. A revival that begins in the character of God will be as a river ever increasing and widening until lost in the sea of God's great eternity. Knowing God and His character must become our amazement, enjoyment, and rejoicing.
Repent if you are humanizing God. Then get on the right track, and ask Him to give you a right perspective of Him, and His glory. He is the God of the ages, He is the God who Created with just one word, He is the God who has always been, and always will be. He is everything...my very next breath. There is no God like our God, no other name worthy of all the praise in the World! Jesus, the Rock of Ages.
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