You Become What You Worship

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

All right. So, Shabbat shalom everybody. Thank you for being here today. I'm going to dive back in the word and hopefully it's been a good series for everyone. It's one of my favorite topics and themes in the Bible is being an image bearer. But I want to start with kind of a setup a story I suppose and I want to start with a guy and there was a guy and this man was let's say the most powerful man in the world at the time he had money he had influence he had people beneath him people underneath those people he had cabinet members and agency heads state officials he definitely had the judges in his pockets financial people he had military leaders This guy had the people, right?

And apparently one day he decides. You guys know what we need? I know what we need. We need a spectacle. Not a dinner, not just a little event where everybody gets to come over and we have a barbecue and we have a nice afternoon. No, we need to build something. And not something small because when you're the most powerful man on earth, small is a bit insulting, right? Big needs to be huge. And so they find this piece of land right outside the center of the government and they start putting this thing together, building this spectacle up, and it takes months to construct. And it's it's a monstrosity, the peak of ego.

And when it's done, it's almost 100 feet tall. And so what do you do with it? You cover it with gold, of course. So they cover it with gold. And then the guest list for the event begins to grow and start going out. And anybody who's anybody in the government is expected to be there. Again, the cabinet heads, the agency heads, the state officials, judges. Well, thank you. Advisors, military leadership, even the top soldiers are invited. And when I like all the pawns of the king, right? And when I say invited, you know, because that's that's the nice way of saying an invitation to this event to this event.

Like you get an invitation from a guy like this, you don't really say no to it, right? Like he's the guy. You don't say, "Oh man, thanks for inviting me. I don't think I can make it." No, it's no. The most powerful man in the world is throwing the biggest event anyone's ever seen. He built this 100 foot gold thing for it and your name is on the list. So you're going right. You're going to go and then apparently you get there and this giant gold structure is not enough. Now we need entertainment. So the top music artists are invited, musicians, all of them. They play all kinds of instruments, the whole thing, right?

And so just picture for a second. You got this huge open field right outside the cap. This massive spectacle that's gold, something of a 100 ft tall sitting in the middle of it. There's entertainment. There's apparently zero budget at all. And nobody anywhere in his administration has raised the hand and said, "Hey, sir, do you do you think this is a little much? Like, can we tone it back just a No. Everybody loved it. It's huge. It's big. It's awesome. This is great. This is it's going to be wonderful. And everyone's excited to be there because it's an honor. And then this guy has one more detail planned.

The Most Powerful Man in the World Throws an Event

When the music starts, I want everybody to stop what they're doing and say the same thing or do the same thing. Okay? And you need to do it together and you need to be prompt about it. And if you refuse to do it, it's going to be embarrassing and there's going to be a problem. So, just don't do that. If this story is starting to sound strangely familiar, you may have heard of it. This man's name was Nebuchadnezzar. And this is a story that took place in Babylon some 2600 years ago on a flat piece of ground right outside of the city called the plane of Dra. And that's in Daniel chapter 3. You're familiar with the story because this is the story of Rach, Meshach, and Abedneo, right?

The guys who refused to bow down to the image. But just imagine the imagery here and I hope you go home and read through the whole chapter. U the plane of Dra flat, nothing to see for long way out except for in the middle of it this what the Bible calls a Salem, an image that is covered in gold and it's it's farther than you even want to walk. It's Oh, wait. Do I have a way out there just have this gold thing. Scripture says that it was built around 90 ft tall and 9 ft wide. Doesn't say anything about the details. Some scholars think it was just a pillar, just a big gold pillar sticking out of the ground.

Others believe it may have been structured, maybe looked like a human or something, but even at that scale, it's it's it's grotesque. It's grotesque. But it is a Salem, an image like we've been talking about. And Nebuchadnezzar sends out his invitations. And again, it's all the people we've listed. Everybody who's anyone in the kingdom needs to be there. All the state officials, all of the people. Every person whose paycheck runs through the palace needs to show up. This is not a religious service that people happen to wander into. This is an all hands-on deck meeting and attendance is a function of employment.

And so they come and they stand in rows and the sun is coming off this 90 foot piece of gold. And then there is a herald that makes the announcement. It says, "King Nebuchadnezzar sent word and invited everybody." He was everybody. And in verse four, it states, "A herald loudly proclaimed, people of every nation and language, you are commanded when you hear the sound of the horn and the flute and the zither and the liar and the harp and the drum and every kind of music. You are to fall face down and worship the gold thing, the statue, the Salem that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. But whoever does not fall down in worship will immediately be thrown in prison, get 20 lashes, will immediately be written up.

No, we're going to throw you in the furnace. I thought it was kind of excessive, but maybe not. There's an orchestra out there, right? And it's it stays just like this huge festival, but if you make the wrong move, we're just going to burn you alive real quick and keep moving. And the music starts and every person on the field begins to kneel down and fall flat in the ground. And you know what comes next? There are three men from Judea that stay standing. And so this is during the exile. The people of Judah have been captured by the Babylonians. The temple was destroyed. The whole city was wrecked and they all the survivors they carried to Babylon to reestablish them there.

It's exile from the land and the three Jewish men were Ratchack, Meshach, and Abedneo. And if you remember, I have a little image here. If you remember what they said when they did this, it says when they did this, they stood in defiance of this decree. But even if God does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up. That's so much boldness. So good. Even if he doesn't, our God might save us, but even if he does not, that's so powerful. And so usually when we read this, the question we ask is, "Wow, what made the men stand?

The Question Nobody Asks

Why did they keep standing?" And we have lessons and teachings on, you know, the boldness and the faithfulness of God and staying true and loyal even in the face of death. I want to ask a different question today. I want to ask why everyone else bowed. Cuz these were not idiots. These were not fools out in the field. They are the most educated administrators in the ancient world. And the guest list, I mean, it's people from every nation and every language. There are men there who grew up in other nations that worshiped different gods when they were kids. There were other Judeans there.

All the rest of the Judans that were employed by the government were there. So what happened to the rest of them? Nobody on the field this day woke up and decided to become a Babylonian worshipper. It's not how it works. They showed up to work. They showed up for a meeting and then to the next thing and then to the next thing and then to the ne Oh, and now we have a ceremony. Let's go to the ceremony. And everybody went and cuz it was awkward not to go and the man standing next to you went to go bow down and you bow down with him because it's part of the job, right? Nobody in the field chose the intentionality of some type of idol worship that day.

An Autopsy of an Idol

And that's the thing is you get close to something and when you stay close to something and you look at it and it becomes so common that one day someone plays music and you just kind of go down and do a bow and it's no big deal. And so we're, like I said, we're continuing our image bearer series. And today again, the question is, if we are living images of God, why do we keep bowing down to dead ones? And the Bible has an answer for that. And it answers in the Psalms. In Psalm 115, it opens by giving glory to God and then it turns and it looks at, I guess you could say, the competition, the idols, everything that would distract us from giving our worship to God and giving our worship to something else.

Our attention to something else. And here's what it's a neat image. I want to put it in there. I was proud of it. Their idols are silver and gold made by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see. They have ears but they cannot hear. And they have noses but they can't smell. They have hands but cannot feel, feet but they cannot walk. They can't make any sounds with their throats at all. And so what the psalmist is doing here is unlike something you would see a prophet having a different tone and attitude. He's not trying to point out the obvious that okay the idols are evil and dangerous.

You don't stay away from them bad. I mean duh. His focus is not to tell you that. Instead he performs an autopsy of an idol. He's walking around the statue and he's inventorying all of the attributes of this thing that was created by man. And he goes down the parts one at a time. Mouth, that's dead. Doesn't work. Eyes dead. Doesn't work. Ears, nose, hands, dead. Yep. Feet, throat, dead. It has everything a person has and not one part of it works. And then he says he says the sentence that was kind of the inspiration for kind of the message if you will. In verse in verse 8 he says those who make them are just like them as are all who trust in them.

Kind of like them. Just like them. Again, he's not trying to give some type of big strict punishment on behalf of God. The psalmist here, he's not trying to tell, oh, you're going to be punished because it's really bad. Oh, God's really upset with you. No, he's he's pointing out that you're already you're just like him. The judgment for worshiping a thing with dead eyes is that your eyes are going to become dead like it. Greg Beiel wrote an entire book based off the same name of the message you become what you worship. He's a New Testament scholar and he's awesome. He had a he had a quote. He says what people revere they resemble.

Even Yeah. People revere what people rever they resemble either for ruin or restoration. It can go both ways. What you give your attention to, your loyalty to, you could call it your worship. It's usually a Bible term that doesn't really extend into the reality of what attention is when you give it to that level. Whatever you give your worship to, you're going to become like it. It might be a good thing if you're worshiping the right thing for restoration or ruin. And then there's an old comment about this psalm in old Jewish source called Deuteronomy Rabbah and there's a rabbi Levy. He turns the verse and he kind of flips it over and he says, "If a person who worships an idol becomes like an idol, I guess that makes sense.

Should then not one who worships God all the more become like unto him?" And the answer is yes. That's the point. Yes. That's what an image is supposed to be. The image of God is the Salem, the representation of God, manifested throughout the world, in the world. You become what you worship. And almost everybody on the field was worshiping something dead. When the music plays and everyone falls down, who's left standing, right? And the psalm hands us a bit of a test to navigate this topic. Gives two questions. One is what are the eyes pointed at in the story? And two, what did the person turn into?

The Calf, the Chart, and the Grass Eating Ox

And so we're going to take this concept of Psalm 115 and just the concept of you become what you worship and we're going to go through scripture a little bit like I do as the narrative and the story of scripture. And we're going to keep an eye out for the same situation, the same pattern happening over and over again. And we're going to try to ask the question when we meet groups of people or people in several different stories. What's with their eyes? We got to check their eyes. Where are their eyes pointing at? And what are they turning into because of it? One of the first times it happens early on is Israel at the bottom of Mount Si.

There are people who watched the plagues happen in Egypt and they walked through a sea of dry ground and they ate bread that just FedExed over and ended up ended up on the ground every morning. Just amazing. And they stood at a mountain that was on fire, so terrified that they begged for a mediator. And Moses goes up and inside of 40 days, they've built something. How many days? It's good. We'll come back to that later. They built something. And of course, we're talking about the what? The golden calf, right? He took gold from them. Speaking about Aaron, took gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image, a sim of a calf.

Then they said, "Israel, these are your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt." They went to the mountain. The Lord spoke. They said, "That was way too loud. We're going to send someone else to go up and talk to you face to face so we don't have to endure the loudness of God." Moses goes up the mountain and while he's up there, the images of God established in covenant are now making a beast to worship. And what's it covered in? Gold. Of course, she'd cover in everything, right? Gold. Gold at Sinai, gold on the plains of Dra. Gold in Psalm 115. Idols are silver and gold, the best material we've ever found.

And we keep using it to make things that can't see or hear or do anything. And notice how God describes this as a direction of travel rather than just like a one-time violation. He says, "They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them. They have made for themselves an image of a calf. To this day after the plagues, after the sea, after 40 years of bread falling out, right? Or the years, Moses looks at them at the end of Deuteronomy and he tells them that they're not going to make it. Skipped a verse there. Forgive me. After the calf incident, Moses is standing in the land, as Heather was saying, and it's the end of the time in the wilderness and Moses is about to see the people go back into the land.

And then he says, Deuteronomy 29:4, "Yet to this day, the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear." That same language. After everything they've went through, Moses reads their medical chart when they're about to go into the land, and he's reading the same language the psalmist used in Psalm 115 over the covenant people. You guys have failed. You're going into the land, but you still you still don't have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. Why? What are they focused on? What are they constantly looking for? The wilderness tells us. Centuries later, somebody writes a psalm about that incident and does something that's pretty interesting.

It's in Psalm 106 and it says, "At Horeb, they made a calf and worshiped the cast metal image. They exchanged their glory for the image of a grass-eeding ox." It's interesting language. They exchanged their glory. Glory. That thing that fades when the image loses its proximity to God. And they didn't just lose their glory. What's it say they did? They traded it. They said, "Here, take this." Right. It was another story like that. Here, take this. I'll take the Yeah. Take this and I'll take this metal image of a of a cow. Last time we spoke, we spoke about the king on a roof of his palace and how Daniel 4 says that he was driven out to live with the animals and ate grass like the cattle and Israel worshiped a grass eater and traded their glory for it.

It's just a interesting pattern. Isaiah, one of the strongest prophets with his message. He gets this great calling in the Old Testament and he has this vision, one that very few people have. He sees the throne room, right? And he sees the robe filling the temple and he sees the seraraphim and the smoke and he gets the coal on the lips and he says, "Here I am. Send me." And then God gives him an assignment. And here's what it says. Here's the assignment that he's supposed to go out and preach. Go say to these people, "Keep listening, but do not understand. Keep looking, but do not perceive. Make the minds of these people dull.

Deafen their ears and blind their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their minds, and turn back and be healed. Go preach and make them blind. And much as we could dive in the theology behind that, the point being is look at the language. Eyes that look and don't see, ears that hear and don't understand, minds gone dull. It's the Psalm 115 track. It's the same words, same attributes. That's the idol list. Except for the ones being described here are not the idols. They're the people who want so badly to continue worshiping them. Again, God's wrath in the Bible is less manifested as lightning bolts out of heaven and more so seen as God simply stepping back and allowing us to drink the cup that we want to drink.

Psalms describes it as this bubbling highgravity goblet that we just can't wait to run after to get drunk. And it speaks about how we just drink it down because it tastes so good and then we are confused and dazed and stumbling and fall not even putting two and two together. Isaiah, go do it. Because they're already doing it. They're becoming these things. This is who they are because of what they're focused on. It's as if God is ratifying their choice in the blind and deaf image of God's they have chosen. Paul reaches the same territory in Romans 1 with a phrase that does the same works. God delivered them over.

Right? That's God stepping back and letting the thing you've been staring at finish the job. Where are the eyes pointed? Where are your eyes pointed? What do you give your attention to? It's a very rare thing you have here in this short time. Your attention. Who do you give it to? And when it happens, it's usually not something that is abrupt when we begin to sink into giving our attention and our worship to other things, is it? Sometimes it's very subtle. Sometimes we don't even notice it. It's kind of like when you go to the ocean. Anyone ever been to the beach, right? And you put your little towel down, your umbrella, and you make your make your plot.

A Coroner's Report on the Northern Tribes

This is my home, my colonized version square of the beach. U and then you go in the water, right? And you stay in the water for a few minutes and what happens? You look up and your home on the beach is gone. It's it's 300 yards away. Why is it way up there? You never felt yourself move. You were just kind of swimming around. You never felt yourself move because you were moving at the exact same thing of the thing that was carrying you, that you were floating in, that you surrounded yourself in. And it floats your way. In 2 Kings 17, there's a coroner's report. Same type of thing that the Psalmist does, but he does it about the 10 northern tribes of Israel, before God hands them over and the Assyrians come in and make them disappear, complete exile.

And here's what it says in 2 Kings 17. It says, "They rejected his statutes and his covenant he had made with their ancestors and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. Following the surrounding nations, the Lord had commanded them not to imitate. They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They become like what they worshiped." And the word behind he has actually David Wilbur's one of his favorite words. He the same word that Ecclesiastes uses over and over and over again. It's vanity. It's vanity. It's all vanity. It's all he.

It means a puff of smoke. Like if you ever see someone smoke a pipe and they do a little puff, it just vapors away. It's vapor. It's nothingness. He a mist. They followed nothing and therefore they became nothing. What they had revered they had come to resemble and that resemblance was destroying them. Now look at the last clause. Following the surrounding nations, the Lord had commanded them not to imitate. Imitate. That's the current in the ocean. Nobody in Samaria in northern Israel stood up one morning and voted to stop being the kingdom of Israel. They lived surrounded by other nations and they watched how their neighbors worshiped and they watched what their neighbors trusted, what they valued, how they lived.

And little by little by little, Israel began to look like what they gave their what they worshiped, what they admired. And I imagine every generation would have sworn they hadn't moved very far in the current. I can still see the umbrella on the beach until the day the Assyrian army came through. This is this is the end of a kingdom that's taking place. The 10 tribes disappear and they don't come back until you read in the New Testament and it's it's it's the spiritual awakening of what happened to Israel. But no, in history they're gone, taken out of the land. And the reason given is not politics.

Back to the Field Outside Babylon

It's not military. It's that they looked at nothing long enough and they became it. Where are our eyes looking? And so we go back to the flat field outside of Babylon. And now you know how they got there. Now you know the f the field was full of men whose grandparents had a covenant, but not one of them. And everybody there didn't choose Babylon. There was no meeting. There was no vote. We're going to do this. There was just a job. And then there was a promotion. And then an invitation that you can't decline from somebody. And then hey, there was an orchestra. And every single person out there had a reason ready to justify bowing down real quick to this idol, this image.

I mean, the guy signs your checks, right? Your paycheck. It's a pretty good reason. I don't know. It stacks up there. That's a hard one. My kids are being fed because of this man. That's a tough one. That's a tough one, too. I don't have to agree with him. I just have to be seen at the ceremony. Nobody had to believe in the statue. All you had to do was be standing in the right place when the music started. And after enough ceremonies, you stop noticing that you already are. You're there. And that's what makes these three men from Judea so violent to the environment. They were part of the same deportation as all the other people from Judah, the same foreign education, the same Babylonian names.

They had they integrated same jobs too. Daniel 3:12 says that the king appointed them to manage the province of Babylon. They were high-ups everything. They had fully assimilated to that point and they still had eyes to see. They still were looking at something other than what they weren't supposed to be. Which means that the story is not simply about three brave men. U it's about three men who were looking at something else. That's what it was. Outside of that, they were identical to everyone else. The exile ends and everyone in Judea gets to come home if they want to. Some of them do. Ezra, Nehemiah, the exiles returning home.

They build the temple kind of rebuild it. They rebuild the city, the walls. They're going to establish everything back. They're finally home. And Israel, from what we know, never worships a carved statue again. Which is great. You know, they broke they broke the habit, right? They broke the habit. So, the diagnosis is cured until we roll forward 500 years to Paul writing to a congregation in the new capital of the world, Rome. And he's trying to make a point. And what does he reach for again to make a point for his this congregation? He says, "For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude.

Instead, their thinking became worthless and their senseless hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise. They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, and for-footed beasts and reptiles. Still happening after Babylon. Their thinking became worthless. That's second kings. They exchanged the glory. That's Psalm 106. Images resembling mortal men and for-footed creatures. That's the calf and the ox and every statue in the plane or the field or at Mount Si. Paul is pulling the same pattern down and he's confronting everybody with it. Nobody says a thief becomes a theft or a lie.

A liar turns into a lie. But a person who worships an idol becomes the idol themselves every time. Every time everyone worships. It's a very human thing to do. Everybody worships. The issue is that not everyone worships truly. You are a statue with a face built to look at something and carry what you see forward. That's why idolatry is so detrimental as a sin because it's the one thing that affects the aim of your eyes away from what you were made to be. And then you get to the last book of the Bible. John is watching this apocalyptic vision unfold. U the world is coming apart and he stops and he tells you what he sees the survivors doing.

And it's in Revelation 9. And it says, 'The rest of the people who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of their works of their hands to stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, wood, which cannot see, hear, or walk. Psalm 115. Again, the standard compressed at the end of the Bible, they did not repent. Not could not, they did not. The world was falling in and they looked at the thing that cannot see and stayed with it. So total it up. We ran this pattern on the generation that saw the sea open and walked through it and they failed. We saw this pattern with the generation that u Moses buried failed.

The One Man Still Standing

And the generation that went forward on the on the officials of Dura and Babylon, they failed. All but three on the whole human race in Romans chapter 1 failed on the survivors of Revelation 9 failed. Every scan comes back with this pattern. So on the evidence hardly anyone is left standing. If only we could find one person whose eyes were pointed somewhere else, likened under Rach, Meshach, and Abedneo. Someone who had their eyes focused on where they should be. And spoiler alert, one man did come. He was a handyman from Nazareth. And he was walking out in the wilderness in the desert for how many days? 40 days. The last time we went to 40 days, that's a hyperlink that connects us back to the Mount Si golden calf incident, right?

Just checking. 40 days. And somebody comes to him and begins speaking to him while he's in the wilderness. And it's the devil. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all of the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to him, "Listen, I will give you everything. All if you want an empire, you want a Christian empire, oh boy, I got the recipe for you. I can set you up. I will give you all of these things. All you have to do is fall down and worship me. All you got to do, it's the plane of Dra all over again. All of this was built for one guy, one high place, a display, the splendor, the same currency as that 90 foot gold thing had.

Everything the empire has to give. There's just one required posture you must assume. Just fall down and worship and look like look what he's offering like because sure it's a sin but what he's asking the currency is authority. It's the same thing that happened in the garden. We were meant to rule over the animals but all of a sudden now we're giving the wild beast authority to speak to us and guide us theologically. It's the same thing. The devil wants you to give up your God-given authority every time. That's the plan. That's the play throughout the entire Bible. And now the devil asked Yeshua, "Hey, give up give up your authority and worship me and I'll I'll have you set every nation on earth under one good king," which is what the prophets promised, right?

I mean, this could have been a fulfillment of scripture under a certain context or framing. If he wanted to justify it, he could have fed every hungry person, right? But it would have been the wrong ending, the wrong path. But all he had to do was bow in a place where no one else would ever see him. Just like on the plains of Dura, just real quick, one bow. A calf is obviously stupid. A throne is more useful. And that's why this offer has taken so many of God's people than a golden calf ever does. The devil showed him and Yeshua saw it. Where were his eyes though? Where were his eyes? A few weeks ago, we saw we spoke about in the garden how Eve saw and took.

And of course this is the inversion of that the fruit is presented in Yeshua does not take. What does he stay in say instead? He says the following because his eyes are pointed in the right direction. Right? Go away Satan for it is written worship the Lord thy God and serve him only. That's what they should have said at Si. Shoefly, don't bother me. He didn't take it. He didn't take it. Why? John 5 speaks of this. Says, "I truly tell you, the son of man is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, the son likewise does these things.

Only what he sees the father doing. That's the pattern. So those questions, remember the audit that we have. What are Yeshua's eyes pointed at? The father. Never off of it. Not for one second in the desert with the whole world to offer. He never takes his eyes off the father. In question two, what did Yeshua turn into? Well, he's the image of the invisible God. Hebrews says he's the exact representation of the father's nature and glory. The exact representation. Can't tell him apart. Yeah. That's that's the point. That's the example. That's the calling. That's the calling. Should not the one who worships God all more become like him?

Application

Yeshua is the proof of that. And so with this message, the temptation is to go home and probably make a list of things to do that you need probably need to stop looking at. And you should probably do that and you should probably stop looking at the things you write in the list. But the list is not the point. If you just go home and make a list and you have this conviction and you're going to forget everything. It'll it'll be washed away in a couple days. It's no big whatever. I did the list. I'll do my best. No, the mechan the what is actually happening is not about a list. It's about proximity.

It's about what is floating you. What ocean are you in? What have you surrounded yourself in? What have you surrounded yourself with? What is your environment? What do you constantly look at all the time? Because that's what's carrying you. That's what is forming you. Whether you signed up for it or not, it's it is what it is. It doesn't care if you approve or not of what you're look it impacts you. That's what Psalm 158 is all about. You look at something, you give it your attention, you give it admiration, you give it worship, and you are being transformed. And the gospels offer is that you can change what you're looking at.

That's that's why the scripture invites us to gaze to look at Christ at Yeshua. To do what? What Heather? To learn how to be ourselves, to learn how to be you. During worship, Christie did something phenomenal when giving the word to have us close our eyes and have the spirit speak to us. If you were impacted that by that, if you were impacted by it, can you raise your hand? Yeah. Because you yourself are who God created you to be. This image bearer, this light, this place of love, this place of grace, this place of community, this seat of where God's proximity would dwell. It's the whole point of man being a human being.

In the moment that we begin putting our eyes at other places. And this could be gold, this could be silver, this could be let's see, self-medication, alcohol, porn, drugs, whatever. We could do all that. But it could also be chasing other things of admiration. Maybe that one authority figure in your life that you always just wanted them to be proud of you and they just never gave you that feeling or sense, the approval. Man, chasing someone's approval for so long changes you, doesn't it? It changes how you interact with every single human being, doesn't it? You guys know how people pleasers are made.

They're not made in their 20s and 30s. Sometimes we surround ourselves with stuff or sometimes we're surrounded by stuff that molds us. And the whole point of this entire message is that in the name Yeshua, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of the power of the Ruach, this we can gaze on something else and we can be free from what we're trying, what we're being transformed by. And so, I don't know where you're at today, but where are your eyes focused? What do your eyes constantly look at? Where is your passion? Where is your zeal? Where's your admiration? What are you giving your attention to in a way that is consuming it away from where it needs to be and where it needs to be focused on?

What God have you created that tells you what you're looking at is what you need to give the attention to? What are you consumed by? What opinions have shaped your entire identity? And how far have you come from the true image of Christ that you were created to resemble with everything that you hear and you speak and you touch and you see. Guys, there's freedom in Christ. There's freedom in Yeshua. We wouldn't be here if we didn't believe that. But if you're here today and you've realized that maybe you've been looking at something else or maybe something else has been consuming you in a way that is changing you into something that you were never meant to be.

You can gaze away today. You can make that choice today. You can start that process of saying, "God, I want my eyes on you." And so we're about to conclude with worship as we do every week. And if you need prayer today, we'll have a prayer warrior, prayer partner on either side of the stage. Invite you. If you need prayer for anything, go to them. If maybe you've been carrying something around for a long time. Things get heavy, don't they? Maybe you've been carrying something around for a long time and maybe you've realized you've been carrying it so long and you don't want to carry it anymore.

Guys, we have this symbolic altar down here where you can come and just make a symbolic gesture of kneeling down and a point of worshiping God and you can symbolically place that thing right here and you can get up and you can walk away as a statement that says, "God, I know your power exists for me to leave this behind." And maybe the chain is not as thick as I thought it was all these years because it just broke. So I invite you spend this time and meditate. You can worship with us prayer. Where are your eyes moano our father and our king. Father God we thank you for your word and we thank you for how it challenges us.

And father, you scripture says that the same spirit that raised Yeshua from the dead resides in us. That power, that manifestation of everything who you are is within us even now as your images. Father, I ask that we would have the ears to hear the words the spirit speaks to us right now. And that if we are looking somewhere we're not supposed to be looking, if we are in a current we're not supposed to be in and didn't even mean to be in, that you would call our attention to it. That we would decide where we want to face, what our eyes want to be looking at, and what type of proximity we really want with you so that we can be transformed in the likeness of everything you are in the likeness of Christ.