The Folly of Idolizing Power KID FRIENDLY (New Beginnings UMC)

Before I get into preaching today, I want to ask for your

prayers. And just so you know, I don't

know if I've ever said this to her, but I really covet and

value your prayers for me as I'm preparing sermons each week.

My prayer is, and I invite you to always join me in this, is

that as I'm preparing the message and delivering the

message that I'm speaking what God wants us all to hear, not my

own opinion or my own perspective or my own ideas.

And I mean, my stuff is always mixed up in there.

And that's why I often pray, you know, whatever is from God, let

it take root and grow and whatever is just for me, let it

be quickly forgotten. But if you could pray that for

me, especially this week, and I'm glad I, that Paula

mentioned, I think it was you, Paula, I wasn't looking

backwards. I thought it was your voice the,

the situation in the Middle East.

And I have been following that whole thing fairly closely since

October 7th of a couple years ago.

And, you know, I don't get partisan from the pulpit and I

don't want to ever get partisan from the pulpit.

But sometimes events that are are divisive and controversial

events I, I feel I need to address from the pulpit.

And I am feeling right now the need that I might need to

address what's happening there, particularly now that the United

States is directly involved, from the pulpit next Sunday.

And I don't know what that will look like, which is why I would

like you to be praying about it with me.

And I'm not even for certain I'm going to do that, but I think I

probably will. I think that's where God's

leading me. But I would love you to be

praying that. So first of all, that that if

it's not God that I'm hearing, but but a bad burrito or

something like that, that that God will make it clear.

Scott, keep your mouth shut about that.

You don't need to talk about that from the pulpit.

If it is God that's leading me that I would speak with God

would have us all here, not just my own opinion.

So I don't know what it would look like.

I know what it would not look like.

It will for sure not be a partisan political rant and and

which I I, you know, Rage Against one particular political

party or position or another. It won't be a nationalistic rant

in which I Rage Against one particular country or another.

It won't be a religious or ideological rant in which I Rage

Against one particular religion or another.

I don't think those things ever have a place in the pulpit.

I think that as we as a nation are now involved in a war and as

many people, including my son, who's in the Air Force right

now, might have more or less direct contact with that.

But even, you know, we're a nation of a great mixture of

folks. We've got Christians, we've got

Muslims, we got Jews, we got Israelis, we've got Iranians

living in this country, along with a lot of other different

folks in this country. And, and I think it is important

for us to ask where is God in all of this and how can we

respond in faith to what's going on?

And I would like to be able to talk about those things without,

again, without drifting into partisan politics or rants and,

and, and those kinds of things. Is that, is that fair enough?

If you could just be in prayer with me for this week so that if

I do speak about that next Sunday, I do it a way that

honors God and builds us all up and rather than making someone

feel like they're being attacked.

So. OK, thank you for that.

I appreciate that. All of that said, now we can get

to this week's OOP. I got to get my notes out

because this is one of those days where I'm going to need my

notes. We are talking today about the

folly of idolizing power, the danger, the foolishness of, of

making power seeking and wealth seeking the goal or even part of

the goal of our lives. God has some very serious things

to say about that. And John read the beginning of

Genesis chapter 6 a little earlier.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

I will tell you up front that I have never read Genesis chapter

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

6 verses one through 8, well, particularly one through 5 and

said to myself, boy, I can't wait to preach on that.

I think it's one of the strangest passages in the entire

Bible. There's lots of weird stuff in

there. We're going to get to that

because I want to address some of that because some of it is

just truly bizarre. I think though, there is within

these, and I believe there is within these first 8 verses in

Genesis 6, a message that is deeply relevant for our

situation today. And the the core of that message

is the foolishness of idolizing power rather than trusting and

turning to and seeking God. And so let's get into that.

And I want to get into it and I'm going to this is, this is a

tough passage to preach in a kid friendly way.

I'm going to do my darndest to preach this in a kid friendly

way because there's a lot of strangeness and, and and

difficult words going on here and concepts.

But so first I want to explain some of the challenging words in

there. We hear the phrase twice sons of

God in those first 8 verses, in the 1st 5 verses really.

And the sons part of that is easy.

It just it's sons. It really is sons.

It's the God part of that. That's a real challenge because

the word that is translated God is the word Elohim.

And that word is translated in three different ways, distinct

ways in the Old Testament and that are all accurate in their

own context. Most of the time it's just

translated as God and, and most of the time that's what it

means. However, the word itself is

plural and sometimes it's translated as gods, gods.

So this could you could arguably say the sons of gods rather than

the sons of God. Other places like in Psalm

Psalms 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8, you hear that where the psalmist is talking about

what are humans that you are mindful of us and yet the

psalmist writes, you have made us a little less than God's and

it's the same word Elohim. Some translations translate

they're they're as angels as well.

And and the third way that that word is translated in the Old

Testament is in Exodus chapter 20 and then again in chapter 22,

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

where it means judges humans of significant power and authority

in their society. And the people that analyze this

are split into two big categories.

There's a lot, maybe some smaller ones, but the two main

categories see that this sons of God means angels, angelic

spiritual beings that look down on earth, are attracted by

women, join with women, and together they produce hybrid

babies, hybrid Angel human babies called the Nephilim,

which are identified as mighty or heroes, depending on the

translation you read in the land.

That's one large group, and there's a lot of very credible

people that say it's, that's what it means.

There's another large group of people that also has some

heavyweights behind it, people like Augustine, John Calvin, and

John Wesley, among many others who say that that doesn't make

sense. Angels are spiritual beings.

There's no way that they can coupled with human beings and

produce babies. It's just not possible.

But what these sons of God are are sons of judges, sons of

powerful and influential people in the land that looked out and

said we get our pick of the women.

I'm going to talk about that in more detail later.

Now, either translation is legitimate.

Either understanding is, is, is you can argue for and there's no

conclusive way to say one or the other, but I think that that

leaves us some freedom as we look at this and, and here's the

reality in terms of relevance for our lives.

I cannot remember ever having had to deal with the problem of

Angel human hybrids living among us.

Never once have I had to deal with that problem.

However, the problem in our culture and in the world of how

do we respond to powerful people who take what they want and

exploit who they want? That's a real problem.

So I think it's far more helpful for us to look at it from that

perspective rather than now. The Angel human hybrids would

make a really cool Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, to be

sure. But I think in terms of

relevance and meaning for our Christian walk and our Christian

faith, how do we respond and how does God respond to powerful

humans who take what they want and exploit who they want is a

much more relevant question. So that's one of them.

The other one is that word heroes translation.

I used to use heroes. Other translations say mighty

people, mighty men. That's mighty is a little

better. Heroes have a positive

connotation. The word that's translated there

in Hebrew has is morally neutral.

It's used of mighty people who are doing good things, mighty

people who are doing bad things. And sometimes it's used, it's

often used of God when God is doing mighty things.

And and I think these Nephilim should are definitely mighty

highly questionable given the context whether they were heroes

in our sense of the world word in which heroes are typically

considered good guys. And you've got your heroes and

your villains. You got your superheroes and

your super villains. Heroes are usually good guys,

right? Am I right about that, AJ?

Yeah. OK, I'm going to take that as an

agreement. Heroes are usually good guys.

These Nephilim, I think we'll see, are not good guys.

They're not good. They're mighty, but they're not

good guys. They're not heroes.

All right. So then the third one is a

little less significant, abide and contend.

There's a place where, and I'll just back it up, where then the

Lord said my spirit will not contend with humans forever.

The word contend, the Hebrew word can also mean abide.

So God is saying here, either God is saying the Lord said my

spirit will not abide with humans forever or contend with

humans forever. The practical impact is the

same. God is starting a timer and

saying there are problems in the world and I am not going to

spend forever either wrestling with humans to try to get them

back on the right way or staying with humans while they're

continuing to go the wrong way. The effect is the same.

God says there is a limit to my patients with y'all.

And what is that limit? That's the other question here,

which is 120 years. Shortly after this God says I

would have said 120 years shall be the length of humans life,

something like that. I'm not getting the quote exact

there and there are two different schools of thought on

that. Some folks say that 120 years

means God has set that as the maximum lifespan for humans from

this point on. If you look at Genesis chapter

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

5, you see people living 400 years, 600 years, even 900

years. And so God is saying that's too

long, these people are doing too much evil, we're going to cut

their lives short. Nothing past 120 years.

The problem with that is immediately after the flood, we

still see people living well over 120 years.

The other school of thought, and I think is a stronger position

on this, is that God is setting the timer.

From this point of pronouncement, God is saying 120

years until I wipe out humankind by a flood.

And that's how long Noah had to build the boat.

It was a big boat. He had no chainsaws, no

bandsaws, no reciprocating saws, no table saws.

He had to do all that work by hand with the help of his sons.

Took a long time to build a big boat, 120 years that that's the

time limit. So God started a timer.

Things are so bad that within 120 years I'm going to wipe out

all humankind except Noah and his family.

How could things have gotten so bad?

Could it really have been so bad?

Let's hear what God says about what was so bad in the world

before the flood. God has some strong things to

say. The Lord saw how great the

wickedness of the saw how great the wickedness of the human race

had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the

thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

That's bad. Every human being, their

thoughts of their heart are only evil all the time.

I've known some bad people. I've known some people who

acknowledge that they're bad people.

I have never met even a single person whose thoughts were only

evil all the time. I'm sure there's some out there.

I have not personally met them. There's a lot.

There's 6 billion people. There's a lot of people I

haven't met. But God saying this is true of

everyone except Noah and his family, Everyone else in the

world, their thoughts are only evil all the time, which means

their actions are only evil all the time.

This is very general though. It's a general indictment,

nothing specific. There are two specific types of

evil that God mentions here in the 1st 8 verses of Genesis.

Let's look at one of them, the Lord.

I thought I hit the button, apparently I didn't.

Here we go now. The earth was corrupt in God's

sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupted the earth

had become, for the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

So God said to Noah, I'm going to put an end to all the people,

for the earth is filled with violence because of them.

The first evil, well, one of the evils that God identifies in the

earth at this time is violence. It's a lot of different ways to

be evil, but the thing that God highlights here that is leading

him to wipe out all humanity except for one family is

violence. This is the legacy of Cain.

This is what happens when that legacy goes unchecked and

unchanged in generation after generation.

Embraces Cain's way of living, which is Cain's way of living.

Was saying I lost honor. My brother took honor from me

when his offering was accepted and mine wasn't.

I'm going to get my honor back by defeating my brother and

killing my brother. That attitude.

I'm going to get my honor my way.

I'm going to get my glory my way.

I'm going to establish and secure my status and my position

my way, no matter what it costs anybody else.

That that is what led Cain to kill his brother Abel, and he

passed that on to his great, great, great, great grandson

Lamac, who killed a man for offending him.

And now many generations later, and thousands and thousands and

thousands of people later, maybe millions, we've got an earth

that's filled with violence of people saying I'm going to take

care of me and my own. I'm going to get what I want for

me and my own. I don't care who I have to step

on or what I have to do or what the cost is to other people.

I will get for me what I deserve and what I need and what I want.

And that leads us to the second evil that's specifically named,

which is in reality another form of violence, but it's a very

specific form of violence. The sons of God saw that the

daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any

of them they chose. This is not romance.

This is not suddenly there was freedom to marry whoever you

want to marry. This was powerful men saying, I

get to pick whatever woman or women I want and I will marry

them and make them my wife and the mother of my children if I

choose. What you have is these Nephilim,

these mighty men who are backed by powerful families saying I

will take what I want, I will take who I want, and nobody can

stop me. And particularly vulnerable here

were women in that context and in that place.

And these mighty men backed by powerful families were

exploiting women and using them as they saw fit, without concern

with what anyone thought or wanted, not including the women.

And So what do we have here? What's the condition that led

God to wipe out humanity? Powerful people were bullying

and abusing people weaker than them.

Powerful people we're bullying and abusing people weaker than

them. And that may be the simplest way

we can put it. The powerful exploiting the weak

and the vulnerable, the powerful bullying and dating what they

want, from whom they want, when they want it.

And God said, this is not what I intended.

It's incredible the language that you use.

God regretted. Some translations say God

repented that he had made human beings.

God felt sorry that he had made human beings because it wasn't

what he intended. This is what wasn't God's plan.

God created human beings and put them in a garden where they were

living in perfect harmony with each other and with the natural

world, plants and animals alike, where they had all they needed.

They had all the glory and all of the protection and all the

resources they needed from God. They were in peace and

prosperity with each other and with the world around them.

And human beings said, we want to do this on our own.

And it led to violence and exploitation of the weak by the

strong. And God said, this is not my

design and there's no chance of turning the boat.

The Titanic's going to hit the iceberg.

Because when all the thoughts of everyone's heart are always evil

all the time, that just means every child they raise from that

point on is going to share those same broken, dysfunctional,

violent, bullying, exploitative thoughts and actions.

And one man and his family isn't going to turn the tide.

So I'll save them and wipe out the rest.

Here's the thing. The world is not now what it was

before the flood, right? I think, I hope we can agree

that that we all know some people whose thoughts are not

always evil all the time and whose actions are not always

evil all the time. However, there's a lot of

problems in this world, but it's not as bad as it was then.

The church is growing. The church is spreading.

The church is is moving further and further into every tongue,

every tribe, and every nation. The Kingdom, which means the

Kingdom of God, is growing and it's spreading.

But we still have powerful people who use their strength

and their position to bully and exploit the weak and the

vulnerable. And the question is, how do we

live like Noah among them? What does that look like for us?

So that God looks with favor upon us as God looked with favor

upon Noah. How do we do that?

What do we do? And what can we do?

Particularly when sometimes it's the most powerful and

influential, it's the people that are backed by the greatest

legal and financial and sometimes military might that

there is, and often the greatest wealth that there is.

What can we do? What can we do?

That's what that's what this passage is here I believe for,

is to tell us what can we do and our cultures and our communities

and our nation and our world when we are confronted with

powerful people bullying and exploiting the weak and the

vulnerable, What can we do? Well, the first thing we can do

is we cannot idolize power, power or powerful people.

We can stop turning the power people in the world into the

idols, the great icons that that we and our children look up to

and celebrate, whether it's people that are that are rich,

whether it's businessmen or athletes or musicians and

singers or movie stars or politicians or whoever.

That doesn't mean we can't admire.

I, I there, I've got musicians, I've got, I've got actors that I

admire that I Keanu Reeves I think is great.

I like Jennifer Lawrence too. They're not perfect people, but

I don't, I don't want to idolize them.

What, what does it mean to idolize them?

Idolize means when we start saying, I want that and I want

it so bad, I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to get it.

Idolizing happens when we look at those powerful people and we

say, you know what? If I could just have their money

and their wealth and their fame and their social media

following, then I could do good things in this world.

Then I can make a difference in this world.

If I could just have their power, then I could make an

impact too. Then I could that's idolizing

power and powerful people. Idolizing someone is not about

just I'm going to bow down. Idolizing this means we put them

up on the pedestal and say they have the right of it.

Their way is the best way. When God says don't look to

wealth as your path to glory, Don't look to politics as your

path to power. Don't look to, don't look to

fame as your path to honor. Look to me for those things.

I will give you all the power, all the honor, all the glory

that you need just from being my children and being in my family

and having my Holy Spirit. So we can't idolize power or

powerful people. We can be like Jesus and help

care for and protect people that are weaker than us.

That's how we can use the power and the honor and the glory and

the position and the status that God gives us that if instead of

exploiting, we protect instead of using, we care instead of

stepping on, we lift up. These are the things.

These are the things. Be like Jesus in that way.

I've got a couple just examples and I, I wanted some real life

examples of people that were in situations maybe as close as we

could get to in today's world to the situation that Noah was in

and the world in which he was living.

And, and I the lowest hanging fruit there is always Nazi

Germany when you're looking for a culture and, and a

civilization that was corrupt and evil and, and full of

violence and exploitation. And I got just a couple of

examples, some you've heard before, Corey Tenboom, Oscar

Schindler and, and, and others. But I got a couple of folks that

I want to meet geese who protected Anne Frank and her

family. I want to give you 2 kids, two

kids because we got kids here and these kids, the 1st is older

than you guys, but still still worth listening to. 16 years old

Stefania who was from Poland. The Nazis rolled into Poland and

started hurting up Jewish folks and putting them into

concentration camps. 16 year old Stefania and her younger sister

hid 13 Jews in their house. 13 These two girls, teenagers hid

13 Jews in their house for two years, with German soldiers

living on the floor below them for two years.

They hid them. They could have gained favor

with the Nazis. They could have curried favor.

They could have used those Jews, turning them in, sending them

over as a way to gain status and authority and position with the

new regime. And the power was that was

there. But instead they risked their

own lives to care for them. Interestingly enough, Stefania

married one of those folks she protected years later, using

their position, as precarious as it was, to protect rather than

harm, to care for rather than exploit.

Francine Christophe is another. She lived in France while she

was from France, and she was actually Jewish, and she was

actually sent to an internment camp, Bergen Belsen.

And what did she do as a child? She shared her food rations with

other folks who were sicker and weaker than she was.

She took the little bit that she had and she gave a portion of it

to others to care for them and protect them and shield them as

best she could. And God being God, did one of

those things that God does sometimes.

And one of the people that that that Francine saved ended up

saving her life later on. But it's not just Nazi Germany

where we can find those kind of examples.

Here's another name that you might not know.

I, I didn't know this one. Nargis Mohammadi.

Ever heard of Nargis Mohammadi? She's alive today.

She's a journalist. She's a winner of the Nobel

Peace Prize. She was not able to receive the

Peace Prize. That was in 2023.

She wasn't able to receive it because she was then and is now

in prison in Iran. And she was imprisoned and has

been tortured and abused because she stood up for and wrote about

and exposed and protested against the treatment of women

and the torture of prisoners under the Islamic Republic in

Iran. And so she spent much of her

adult life in jail and isolation, solitary confinement,

being tortured, even though she's got health problems of her

own. She suffers from partial

paralysis and lung problems. And yet, even while she was in

the prison, she was organizing fellow prisoners to protest

against not only the treatment of prisoners, but also the

treatment of women outside the prison.

Using her position and the little power that she still had

to do what she could do to protect and care for the weak

and the vulnerable, rather than trying to Curry favor and

improve her status by turning her back on them and getting

yourself out of jail. This is what we can do.

We can be like Nargis. We can be like Francine.

We can be like Stefania. We can be like Jesus and use the

resources and the position and the power and the privileges

that God has given us, however great or small those might be,

to protect and guard and care for the weak and the vulnerable

around us. We might not change the world.

We that's Jesus's job. That's not our job.

Our job is to love and care for to the best that we can, when we

can and where we can. Not worrying about the pursuit

of power and wealth and glory. To protect and elevate

ourselves, but using the power of the Holy Spirit that God has

given us. Living in the glory, God's own

glory that he shares with us to lift others up and protect,

protect them and care for them and defend them.

This is what we can do. We won't do it perfectly.

And so the final thing that we can do is that we can say yes to

God's call to stop bullying people and start loving people.

It's easy. It's easy in our culture to slip

into it even without thinking about it, even without realizing

it. It's easy to slip into idolizing

power and people in power. It's easy to slip into the, the

subtle kinds of bullying, which are I'm going to use what I have

to take care of me and my own. And, and, and, and I realized

that might step on some other people's backs and some other

people's shoulders, but what can you do?

Or maybe we didn't even know we were doing it.

But none of us is perfect. None of us is complete yet.

That's why we need Jesus in the blood of Jesus.

And so when we see ways in our own lives, when we're

participating in the bullying, when we're participating in the

exploitation that we repent of that we turn away from that and

instead do what Jesus said. Love God with all our heart,

soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

These are the things that we can do.

These are the things we can do. Idolizing power.

Idolizing power is folly. Seeking power for the sake of

making the world better. Seeking power for the sake of

making our position in the world better always, always, always in

the end leads to violence and destruction and exploitation and

bullying at its most basic level.

That's why Jesus said, don't seek power, seek me.

Seek the Kingdom of God first, and God will give you everything

that you need. Jesus said.

When the Holy Spirit comes on you, then you'll have power.

We don't need the power of wealth.

We don't need the power of politics.

We don't need the power of, of violence.

We have the power of the Holy Spirit and we don't need the

honor and the glory that the world can give us on social

media or on stages or platforms or television.

We we get all the glory and the honor that we need from Jesus

Christ himself. He shares his own glory and

honor with us in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.