Thank you so much. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, you are the unending fountain of grace. We we come here this morning Because your grace paves the way for us. Oh God, thank you. Thank you. That though you owe us nothing and we owe you everything and yet we have wandered from you. You pursue us. Oh God, would you now open up your word, your love letter to us that we might no longer be controlled by the voices of our day but be shaped and indeed controlled and powered by your word. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. This morning we're going to talk about the problem of image and if you're new to our church we're in the midst of an ongoing series called modern problems, ancient solutions and we're really trying to zero in on some of the distinctive issues of our day that define us as individuals maybe to subconscious level and one of those one of the very powerful ones is the problem of image a euphemism for this is that we're image-conscious but really the idea is that we're obsessed about who we are and what people think about us and how we look and what the symbols of success we have as part of our life. This in so many other ways is the problem of image. Let me give you some examples of this. Ray Kurzweil is one of those techno futurists. He won something called the National Medal of Technology presented by the president so that must mean he's a big shot. He says in the future we will have the ability to be someone else in virtual reality. We can choose what our image will be in virtual reality environments and we're likely to choose different images for different situations. In some cases, this will be for the purpose of entertainment and in some cases it will be a way of exploring different kinds of relationships or different modalities of artistic expression. I don't know about you, but he He records this in such a cavalier fashion. This is pretty drastic. I mean, this is pretty serious and at least to me it's a little bit scary that we can actually pursue all these alternative images, personalities, if the word image doesn't communicate, personalities in virtual reality. Why? It's because we're a people running scared. Some of us more scared than others, but it's really that we're driven by what other people think of us. And it may be specific people for you. There may be a very strong voice, one that's been there for many years, that has shaped your life. But it doesn't have to be a particular person. It may just be the collective voice of culture through the instrumentality of the media. It says, hey, you American. This is what you're supposed to be like. This is what you're supposed to look like. This is how much you're supposed to way. This is the shape of your body. This is the type of person you're supposed to be, the level of success you're supposed to strive for, and all of these things begin to control us. Let's talk about some examples. I forget where this study came from. I apologize for that. 99% of American women say that if they had the opportunity, they would change the way that they look. And 94% of American men, there's a little bit of difference there, but not as drastic as some of you might think. It's a real big issue with men as well. MSNBC online on August 16 said by the age of 10, 80% of America's young girls are afraid of being fat. Do you hear that 80% of 10-year-old females are concerned about that? Newsweek reports this. One website allows us to measure ourselves by the opinions of others. You can find out how attractive you are, but sending your picture to am I hot or not.com. I have not tried this out. I found this out through Newsweek. The internet audience will rate you on a scale of 1 to 10. If this is too intimidating, you can simply choose to be one of those who rate other people. Since opening exactly a year ago, 163,000 people have submitted photos to it, and in terms of just hits, they get about 10 million per day. A radio station in Cleveland sponsored a contest called Body Like Brittany. The top prize is really sad. The top prize was plastic surgery to make the winner look like the pop singer-sensation Brittany Spears. Would-be Brittany's were asked to write a letter telling why they should be the one to undergo the knife. Photos of the 10 finalists were posted on the radio station's website, and listeners could vote on which one should get Brittany Spears' body. It's pretty sad. You get the picture. That particular last is a pretty extreme example of it, but it doesn't have to be so extreme. It can be very subtle the way that culture attempts to, and for many of us, is very successful. It's shaping the way that we think about who we are as individuals. And the net result is we are running scared. We fear what other people think of us. This is what the Bible calls the fear of man, and it's a central theme in the wisdom literature and the Old Testament. We're looking at several of the wisdom books in the studies, and today we're going to focus on a couple of verses from Proverbs, which was a book collection of pithy sayings, not all by the same author, though King Solomon evidently wrote a whole slew of them. And they're really saying that they give a snapshot of life and say, this is where reality lies. And here's where the path of destruction lies. Don't go this way, pursue this path. And I want to focus on two verses for you. Proverbs 29.25 is the first one. Let me just read that. Proverbs 29.25 says, the fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. And in Proverbs 9.10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So let's think about this a little bit first, talking a little bit about the problem, and then using these verses to think a little bit about a solution to this. And I'll say right up front, we don't want to be simplistic about this, overly simplistic, because it's not a simple thing. So the solution is not going to be okay, here's a quick formula, just apply this, and you will be freed from these voices that have shaped you for so long. Now this is going to be a lifelong pursuit for all of us, and yet we need to be very clear on what the problem is and what the solution is in order to begin to make success in it. The problem, as we're saying, is that there are these voices. Again, they can be powerful voices, maybe a family member that sent very strong signals about what kind of person you were to be, and it doesn't have to all be bad, but a lot of times it is. And even if the person sending it didn't intend it to be a negative shaping influence, a lot of times we twist it, and maybe with a perfectionist experience, we latch on to that, and all you hear is the negative side of it. But even if you don't have one of those strong voices that you can identify, what we're saying is really there's a cultural voice, and there has never been a time before in the history of the world where the culture has been able to speak with someone. We're able to speak with such a uniformed voice, with such clarity, why? Well, because of television and the media, so that wherever you go, almost in the world, you can get a very clear picture of Western values and what is the desired Western image. The problem with this is that we are then allowing human beings, man, I use that in the generic as does the author of Proverbs, to shape our life and control us instead of God who designed us. We grew up in the term we use for this is peer pressure, but when we become more sophisticated as adults, we don't call it peer pressure, right? However, it's the same concept that other people were concerned with what other people think and that allows us to be driven by that. Ed Welch has a fabulous book called When People Are Big and God Is Small, and he says this, he says when many people I've talked to had an awakening when they saw the controlling power of other people, they awoke to the epidemic of the soul, the fear of man. Though they were avowed worshippers of the true God, below the surface they feared other people. That is very profound what he said, because what he's saying here is look, this isn't talking about just someone who is irreligious, or this certainly applies to you if you come in here without much of a religious background, not very experienced in church. This is a great message for you, but he said it's also very much the case for the person who considers themselves to be a Christian and who is a worshiper of the God of the Bible, because though we have the external appearance throwing ourselves into worship at a subconscious level, our hearts are enslaved because of the epidemic of the soul, isn't that powerful language? We're enslaved to these voices as to what kind of person we're to be. While fear can know the idea of being scared, some of you are saying, well I'm not scared of anybody, well then throw away the word fear or scare and use the word control or defined by. In other words, who are you? Answer that question. What defines the way that you answer that instinctively? There's some shaping influences there, voices. And the result is, as the proverb says, this is Proverbs 29, 25, that the fear of man will prove to be a snare. A snare is not a drum, it's a trap. That was a joke, snare drum. It's a trap. You've been fooled that you're heading down this path and you think that life and fulfillment is going to be found here and it's a dead end street. In fact, it may not be a dead end street, it may be a cliff. You know, you're like one of those cartoon characters that runs off the cliff and realize I'm in midair. Right? And there's vanity and emptiness as the wisdom writers would say. Let's give a couple of illustrations of this. They are now laws forbidding tobacco companies from directly explicitly marketing to teens. And the reason is, of course, because in a court of law it was demonstrated that the advertising was successful. And we see this. I don't mean to pick on cigarette smoking. I'm not here to pound some cigarette smoking. This is just one example of the way that advertising and voices of our culture can create an image. The image is, hey kid, if you want to be cool, really cool, then go smoke cigarettes. People will love and accept you then. You'll be part of the end crowd. You'll have it together. And so they bought into this and oops, they didn't tell them that this leads to considerable physical consequences. Heart failure, cancer, you know the West. That's just one picture. The idea is, if you buy into these lies, then you're going to be really happy and successful, whatever it may be. Their false images and false voices. Another result in terms of the trap, the snare of this is an erosion of the true self. I want to read to you just a small section from a book called No Place For Truth by David Wells. And he does a brilliant analysis of the human self, the inner you, and shows how in our modern culture, the self has been sucked dry. And in what he talks about the empty or the vacuity of the self, he says the vacuity of the self is such that it disappears into a collage of shifting images. The individual thus becomes a part of it. If not an illustration of the new world that we are busy making, a world consisting of nothing but images, television images, self images, political images, add images. And then he quotes a 1924-25 poem by T.S. Eliot. We are hollow men, we are the stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw, a lass. Our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless, as wind and dry grass, or rat speech over broken glass in our dry cellar. So it's a pretty morbid picture, but that's when I want to reinforce to you, that it's a snare, it's a trap. And this is a real problem in no other day because of the ability for certain individuals, maybe called the media elite, to be able to pump a particular desired image at us over and over and over and over. So that it begins to shape who we think we need to be, and of course for much of that the desired purpose is to be gotten by products. And then we'll be happy and successful. Now, what is the solution? That's a little bit of the problem. The solution is really, in some sense, very simple, it's that what has happened over time, there's been a cumulative effect in our life where the voice of people has become very big. The influence of people or culture has become very, very big, and there's always an indirect relationship between how large the influence of people is and how big our God is. As the book title says, when people are big, God is small. That's the real problem. It's an epidemic problem throughout our culture. I really could have called this sermon instead of the problem of image, the problem of a small God. That's really the issue there because God, for many of us who go to church, God's voice is speaking. We hear the voice of God, but it's like a distant whisper. The voices that are shouting at us are other voices, whatever they may be. And so there's a three-step process. You don't need 12 steps for this. There's a three-step process. The first is to expose the false images. Now let me just use that one, and we'll go to the other two. The first one is to expose the false images and the lies for what they are, that they're a trap. Now this sounds so elementary probably, but the reality is we don't allow ourselves to admit that we're being shaped by culture. That when we see a television commercial of the successful man driving in his successful car in his successful business suit, leading his successful life, we don't want to admit that I've really bought into that at a very subtle level. That I have bought into a lifestyle of greed, right? That's real problem. I have someone share with me in the church not too long ago. They never thought of themselves as a greedy person because in comparison to so many, lived a fairly moderate lifestyle. But it wasn't until the stock market went blue and the eyes opened up and reality began to come to bear on that person's financial situation. I realized, you know, I have been consumed with greed. The idol of greed, the god of greed has become big and the god of the Bible has become small at that particular point. And so we need to be able to articulate it, to expose it, take that trap out of the closet and pull it out into open air and articulate it. Maybe for you that's writing it down in a journal, actually writing down a specific lie that you are being influenced by and ask God, pray, God show me the lies that are shaping me that I might see them. This, of course, is exactly where sin started, isn't it? Adam and Eve were in the garden, God said, you are free to eat from any of the trees in this farm. And he's like, go party. You can do anything you want. Just this one tree. Leave it alone. And so what does the evil one do? He begins to send lies to Adam and Eve. Ask Eve, did God really say that you can't eat from any of the trees? Except that one. See, twist it. You say you can't even touch it. You can't say that. But he twists things. He sends lies. God is keeping something from you. You're not getting the full orbed package of life abundant. This is back in the Garden of Eden and this has been the game plan of the deceiver ever since. And we need to expose the lie for what it is. Secondly, admit that you have actually believed the lie. That you trusted in it. Proverbs 29, 25 says, whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. Right? Whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. The point is, you're going to be trusting in something. There's no such thing as a true atheist. Everyone, in order to be able to function as a human being, has to have a belief system and put their faith into something that they give their heart to. It may not be a religion per se, but it is a particular image oftentimes of the kind of person that they're supposed to be. And they placed a trust in it. So the second step after you've exposed this lie is to say, you know, I've really believed it. And it's hideous, Lord, in your sight. It is a snare. It is a trap. This is what the Bible calls repentance. It's coming to terms with the things in our life that are just pleasing to the Lord. We call sin sin. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, it does not say that they were spiritually challenged that day. It says that they died. We need to have the courage to admit the lies that we bought into them, given ourselves to them, and call it sin and turn away from it. And then thirdly, replace in your heart a holy fear of the Lord. What this really is is replacement therapy, right? You and I were designed to give our lives to God. We were designed to fear the Lord, to be controlled and shaped by Him. And yet everything is backwards in life, naturally, because of the fact that we live in a fallen world. And so the therapy here is replacement therapy, exposing the false voice, admitting that I've bought into it, that I've trusted it instead of the Lord, and then replacing it with the holy fear of the Lord. Now, when we talk about the fear of the Lord, it doesn't mean being scared to death of the Lord. When I first came across this terminology, the picture in my mind was from the Wizard of Oz, do you remember when Dorothy and her proof finally gets into the hallway of the great and powerful laws? And the smoke comes out, and he scares them, and they willow back, and fear, and that's not the idea here, all right? There's actually a different word in the Hebrew between what's used for fear of man and fear of the Lord. And so the flip side of the fear of the Lord is the love of the Lord. God is not out there to shake his finger at his people and scare us, but it is talking about a holy reverence and awe. And in our day, what have we done? We tend to trivialize God, right? You've seen him before, the bumper stickers. God is dog spelled backwards, man's best friend. God is my co-pilot, that kind of thinking. He has God as our friend. Yes, he's come near in the person of Jesus Christ, but he is holy other. And it's very helpful to meditate on passages in the Bible, like some of the ones that have been read today in the service that emphasized the greatness and majesty of God. Fearing the Lord, we're still talking about replacement here, what does it mean? So you want to increase in your heart where the particular lie lies, you want to increase in your heart at that point the size of God in your estimation, because God has become small. And so I throw away the lie behind you and meditating on how grand and glorious and immense and incomprehensible God is, then you begin to shift and fear the Lord. But fearing the Lord, the greatest impetus to fearing the Lord is what I was talking about, the flip side of that, which is the love of the Lord. They go together. They're inseparable. Because when we're talking about this concept of image, it all gets back to the question of who do I think I am? And what things, what voices are going to shape me? What opinions are going to define who I am? The Bible talks about the gospel. The gospel, that just means good news. It's good news in light of the bad news. The bad news is that God should look at me and turn away. He should look at me and be so discouraged and frustrated. But when I trust in the Lord, when I trust in him alone, as the Bible presents him, then he looks upon me in favor. Why? Because God, the Father, sent his explicit image, human image, Jesus Christ, to the earth, and that beautiful passage that was read earlier. And God said on several occasions, this is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased. He is the image of God, the book of Colossians says, the perfect image of God. He never failed God and yet he went to the cross. He died for those of us who are imperfect, who God should turn away from. And the result is that God looks at us, if you place your faith in Christ, and he looks at us with pleasure, with love, and that redefines the way you think of yourself. Let me give you one example of this. Dale Wasserman in 1959 wrote a musical version of the 1605 Classic Donkey Hote. And it's called Man of Lamontia. Many of you have seen it, or listened to music. It's a story of Alonzo Chihanna, a wealthy and aristocratic Spanish Lord who lived in Madrid and became what everyone thought was a little bit crazy. You remember maybe that he thought of himself as a knight, he thought of himself as Alonzo Chihanna, not as Alonzo Chihanna, but Donkey Hote, a knight Aaron, he wore a barber's dish on his head and salad off through Spain in order to conquer dragons, which is what he called windmills, and to say fair ladies, which is what he called prostitutes. He was to be accompanied by squires, which is what he called street urgence, like his buddy Sancho Pongza. And in this musical, there is a song that he sings to a woman of the street, a woman named Alonzo, which is a very derogatory term. And he calls her instead Dulcinea, which is a very beautiful and gracious word. And she responds back, who was spawned in a ditch by my mother, who left me there, naked and cold and too hungry to cry. But he sings to her, Dulcinea, I won't sing to you. He calls her one thing, here's the point. He calls her one thing, though she sees herself as something antithetical to that. And yet he keeps on, and keeps on. So what begins to happen at the beginning of the play, or the book, you think that this guy is nuts, and everyone else is saying, but by the end of the play, you're very convinced that everyone else is crazy, and he's the only one that's saying. And see, that's what the Christian life is like. That's what I'm talking about with this replacement therapy, because we wake up every morning, and we have already, before we realize, bought into the world view of who we are supposed to be around us. And we are redefined, without even realizing it, by all those voices, but God comes to us in that gentler, quieter, but more powerful voice, and says, no, you are mine. I made you, and though you ran away from me, I have redeemed you because of my image, Jesus Christ, my son, so that now I look at you, and don't shake my head, I look at you, and don't see Algonza, I see Dulcinea, I see beauty, a beauty that this world will never know. The fear of the Lord is combined with the love of the Lord, and the net result is the worship of the Lord. That's really what it is. The knowledge of the Holy One is understanding, and the more these truths begin to resonate in our souls, the more they begin to compel us to give our lives in holy worship and adoration of God. That's the end, isn't it? It's worshiping, the one that we were made to worship, and when we do that, as the proverb says, we are kept safe, we recognize that the fear of the Lord is a fountain of life that we lack no good thing, and that the lies of whoever, powerful they may be, are only a vicious and wicked snare, but the fear of the Lord is a refuge. Let's pray. Father, how we need to hear the one that you said that we should listen to, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom you are well pleased, and the one through whom you are pleased with us if we place our faith in Him, or help us to be real at such a practical level today. I pray that we may increasingly not fear the voices of our day, but in holy love and adoration, worship the One through God.