Misplaced Worship Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Misplaced Worship ----------------------- Date: 9/13/1999 Keywords: "worship" "sex" Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: Acts 14:8-13* 8. In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. 9. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed 10. and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. 11. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 12. Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. 13. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them. Questions 1. Why did the crowd call Paul and Barnabas gods?   2. How do we make the same mistake with sex?   Practical help It can be easy for us to dismiss biblical stories of idolatry as outmoded views of ignorant people; worshiping human beings -- really! But as C.S. Lewis reminds us in "Mere Christianity," admonitions about idolatry hit closer to home when we swap out, say, the apostle Paul for a much-revered god of the late 20th century, namely sex. This is what happens with pornography. We take something glorious -- sex -- and train floodlights on it. We even worship it at the temples of our TVs and 21-inch monitors. Like the ancient crowd, we misplace our worship when we exalt the created rather than the Creator. Paul and Barnabas' response is even hard for moderns to dismiss: "Men, why are you doing this?" (Acts 14:15). eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 1999 by eXXit *Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version, © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.