WEATHER ALERT:

Wednesday, February 5, Childcare at Leawood, West, Overland Park will not be open during morning due to local public school systems announcing late arrival schedules.  All church buildings will operate on regular schedule. However, at Leawood, West and Overland Park, programs requiring childcare will not be held prior to noon Wednesday.

IMPORTANT:

On Sunday, February 9, we’re moving our regular 5 pm worship service to 4 pm so everyone can get home in time to watch the Chiefs play in the Super Bowl.

Love the stars—but don’t worship them

June 27, 2024
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Daily Scripture

Deuteronomy 4:19, 2 Kings 21:2-5, Acts 7:37-43

Deuteronomy 4
19 Don’t look to the skies, to the sun or the moon or the stars, all the heavenly bodies, and be led astray, worshipping and serving them. The Lord your God has granted these things to all the nations who live under heaven.

2 Kings 21
2 He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars for Baal, and made a sacred pole [Hebrew asherah, perhaps a pole devoted to the goddess Asherah] just as Israel’s King Ahab had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshipped them. 4 He even built altars in the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple—the very place the Lord was speaking of when he said: “I will put my name in Jerusalem.” 5 Manasseh built altars for all the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the Lord’s temple.

Acts 7
37 This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people’ [Deuteronomy 18:15]. 38 This is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness with our ancestors and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai. He is the one who received life-giving words to give to us. 39 He’s also the one whom our ancestors refused to obey. Instead, they pushed him aside and, in their thoughts and desires, returned to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods that will lead us. As for this Moses who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him!’ [Exodus 32:1] 41 That’s when they made an idol in the shape of a calf, offered a sacrifice to it, and began to celebrate what they had made with their own hands. 42 So God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the stars in the sky, just as it is written in the scroll of the Prophets:
‘Did you bring sacrifices and offerings to me
    for forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel?
43 No! Instead, you took the tent of Moloch with you,
    and the star of your god Rephan,
    the images that you made in order to worship them.
        Therefore, I will send you far away, farther than Babylon [Amos 5:25-27].’

Daily Reflection & Prayer

The people around Israel in the ancient Middle East didn’t have telescopes, or ideas like “light years” or “galaxies.” But they looked at the skies at night and tried to understand the patterns and rhythms they saw there. Often, they thought that those heavenly lights (which they believed all rotated around the Earth) must be divine beings, worthy of worship. And that was where God’s people always drew the line—all the sun, moon and stars could do was point to the power of the God who made them.

  • 2 Kings 21 described a king named Manasseh, showing how he violated the divine direction given in Deuteronomy 4. We can easily miss this subtlety in English: “Another common expression, ‘LORD of heavenly forces’ (cf. 2 Samuel 7:26; 2 Kings 19:31), uses the same word as ‘stars’ to indicate that Israel’s God alone is God, without rivals.” * How can you love the beauty of the stars, sun and moon as inanimate objects while worshiping the very animate God who made them?
  • Acts 7 told how Stephen, one of the first Christian deacons, answered charges of blaspheming Moses and the Temple when called before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem (cf. Acts 6:13-14). Stephen boldly quoted the prophet Amos to say those religious leaders (who had demanded Jesus’ death) had lost their way. “The primal sin, in all major Jewish writing, is idolatry, worshipping something as if it was God when it wasn’t.” * How can you always worship God rather than anything human?
Prayer

Lord Jesus, so many things (and sometimes people) try to persuade me to make them my top priority, to “worship” them. Guide me to always keep you and only you in that highest priority space in my life. Amen.

GPS Insights

Picture of Anna Herholz

Anna Herholz

Anna Herholz is serving as an intern this summer at Resurrection, working in Student Ministry. She grew up going to Resurrection since she was little and has gone on multiple service trips as a student which inspired her to be an intern for Student Ministry. She is now a sophomore at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, studying Psychology on the Physician's Assistant track. In her free time, she loves working out, going on walks, and going out to eat!

Right now, I am on a service trip in Bentonville, Arkansas with a group of 7th and 8th graders. We are helping with tornado disaster relief and are working with a few neighbors on what they need for their homes. We read in 2 Kings 21 how humans have a tendency to worship Earthly desires and forget to worship God.

Throughout this week, we have been pushing the idea of the common good, and using our spiritual gifts in our everyday life to create harmony and a beautiful community together. While we have been learning to enjoy the beauty in other peoples’ gifts, we have also been learning to enjoy the beauty in our own gifts.

When connecting these, I think of Ephesians 4:12-13, which says that we all use our own gifts to ‘attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’ As humans, we often glorify human values such as wealth, status, material things, or even other humans and their own gifts. Especially at the age that our 7th and 8th grade students are, their life is filled with comparison and glorifying their peers or what their peers have, rather than what they are gifted by God.

What we are trying to teach our students is that it is important to understand the beauty in spiritual gifts, while still worshiping the God who gave us these gifts. As we are having a blast doing lip sync competitions, games, dances, and jokes, it is important we don’t lose the whole point of the service trip, and who we are worshiping. While we will always have fun together, we are here to bring a little bit more of heaven down here on Earth, and we worship the Lord who was generous to hand-pick our own spiritual gifts that fit us.

© 2024 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References

* Gordon Matties, study note on 2 Kings 21:1-6 in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 607 OT.
** Wright, N. T., Acts for Everyone, Part One: Chapters 1-12 (The New Testament for Everyone) (p. 116). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, Kindle Edition.