July 20 - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: Who Do You Worship

July 20, 2025 Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Exodus 32:1-14      Romans 1:16-23
“Who Do You Worship?”
Melissa K. Smith

What or who do you spend the most time thinking about, focusing on, or giving your energy to?
 
I would imagine many of us are thinking “family, work, the Cardinals”. Maybe some of us are thinking “when is school back in session?” or we are thinking about our health, the health of our family, the health of our friends. On a day-to-day basis, I’d imagine many of us spend our day thinking about our budget, thinking about the daily stress of work, thinking about how to balance volunteer activities with retirement, thinking about all the things we are frustrated with.

Many of us give our energy to all the various activities we are involved in. We give our energy to our family and friends. We give or have given our energy to our work. We give our energy to our frustrations, letting it consume us and affect our daily lives.

How we spend our time, our talent, and our treasure is a sign of who or what we worship. Our priorities are reflections of how we direct our worship.

So, what is worship? I checked four different dictionaries in my library to define the word worship. I even checked the dictionary of worship. I could not find a definition. It was in my “Bible Dictionary for Kids” that I had growing up that finally defined worship for me. I believe this is because worship is so engrained into who we are as humans that to define worship is like asking a fish if it sees the water it lives in. We were made to worship – it’s what we do…so why need to define it?

Well, I wanted to define it. My children’s dictionary defines the worship as: “to serve; to revere, honor, or praise as master; to be devoted to. Worshiping God is a very important part of the Christian life, because it motivates us to obey him. See also: glorify; idolatry.”

Paul’s letter to the Romans begins with his resounding praise of the Gospel – and with the declaration of who he worships. Just before our passage Paul says, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness…” (Romans 1:8-9). He says, for God whom I serve – in other words, “for God whom I worship.” He continues into our passage this morning, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel” (Romans 1:16). Paul’s passion, love, and devotion to the Triune God through God’s revelation of Godself through the Gospel is displayed in the very first topic of the meat of the gospel: Paul wants to talk about idolatry. My children’s dictionary and Paul agree – when talking about worship, see also: idolatry.

What is idolatry? The Heidelberg Catechism, the first Reformed confession in the North American Colonies, defines idolatry. It says, “Idolatry is having or inventing something in which one trusts in place of or alongside the only true God, who has revealed himself in the Word.” Idolatry is worship – it is just worshiping something, anything, over God.

Our Old Testament passage this morning is a major example of idolatry in the Bible. The Israelites are in the desert – they have escaped Egypt, and now the Israelites are waiting for Moses to descend Mount Sinai. But they had to wait longer than anticipated. He was up there for forty days and forty nights – and in the time he was gone, the Israelites demanded that Aaron, Moses’ brother and first priest of Israel, make them an idol to worship.

Exodus 32 says, “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” But they did know what happened to Moses – they knew he was called to the mountain by God and they were asked to wait for him. They did not see God’s work. They did not understand that God was conversing with Moses, gifting him his own word and revealing himself to Israel in a new way. They gave up. They easily turned to other gods.

If we don’t see God actively working and moving in our midst, if we grow weary or impatient, we too fall prey to turning to other gods. The blame isn’t on God – it’s on us. We see this happening in the book of Romans. Paul writes, “20 Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made. So they are without excuse, 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles” (Romans 1:20-23).

God has made himself known to us, and yet we fall short, turning away from God and toward other things. They may not be as obvious as a golden calf, birds, or four-footed animals or reptiles. But they may be subtle – our idols are anything that is taking our worship, our devotion and service, away from God.

Neil Gaiman, in his fantasy novel “American Gods” writes of a battle between the old gods and the new gods. He writes a new mythology playing off of old mythologies. The old gods are the gods we are familiar with in various Norse, Egyptian, Germanic, and other mythologies. The new gods are rivaling the gods that, according to Gaiman’s fantasy, have always been. Who are the new gods? They are the subtle gods we are prone to worship over the one true God. They are “technology, media, pop-culture, modern day leisure, the stock market, conspiracy theories, globalization.” And we can add to this list… politics, self-perception, family, work, productivity, wealth, success…the list goes on.

I started this sermon with a question: What or who do you spend the most time thinking about, focusing on, or giving your energy to? How we spend our time, our talent, and our treasure is a sign of who or what we worship. Our priorities are reflections of how we direct our worship. When we do not worship God with our time, our talent, and our treasure, it isn’t as though we stop worshiping. When you stop worshiping God you open yourself to worship other things and pervert the order of creation, creating gods of our own making and exalting them before God.

Sunday worship is only one hour out of 168 in a week – and yet for so many that seems to still be an inconvenience, to still not be a priority, to still be one hour too much. But even for those of us who make time for the one hour…that isn’t sufficient. We are to worship God with all of who we are – and yes, family and work and volunteer opportunities matter. But we need to ensure we do them for the right reasons and in the right order. In scripture we read of Joshua’s declaration of faith, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). Families can and should glorify God together.

We all need to work at some point in our lives – but we work to liberate ourselves to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. We work to take care of ourselves and our community, to be able to have the ability to glorify God with all of who we are. We volunteer as a fruit of our faith – not for self-accolades, not to exercise a level of control we wouldn’t otherwise have, not to judge ourselves above others. We do so to love others, to care for God’s creation, and to live out our faith in new ways.

Who or what we worship is evident by our priorities. If we prioritize God, everything else will fall in an appropriate order. You will still care for and love your family, you will still work or volunteer, you will still do the things you want to do. But as you prioritize God, as you devote your time, talent, and treasure to God as you discover how to worship God with your life, you may be surprised to find that you have a new order.

We have to be honest with ourselves. Have we been worshiping God? If the answer is no, then accept the invitation to worship God. It is never too late to turn back toward the God who loves you.

Thanks be to God. Amen.