Is God Bugging You?

Picture This!

Back in the day someone came up with a modern version to help explain the character of God.

It included things like

• God is like Tide – he gets out the stains others leave behind.
• God is like Coke – He’s the real thing!
• God is like Hallmark Cards – He only sends the very best
• God is like Bayer Aspirin – He works wonders
• God is like State Farm Insurance – Like a good neighbor He is there
• God is like Scotch Tape – You can’t see Him but you know He’s there

There are so many symbols and concepts that help us understand more of who God is but we know none of them are complete and we will spend forever and never come to the full reality that is God.

The High School ministry is learning about God’s character in a series titled “Picture This”, where symbols including bread, fire and light help understand better who God is. So, in Hosea 5:12 God describes Himself as a moth.

God says, “I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah” Hosea 5:12

 That is really startling, because we do not think about things that are negative or destructive to describe anyone, let alone a good God.

Moths serve as a powerful and personal symbol of decay and impermanence throughout the Bible. Moths slowly eat away at clothes.

Right along with this image is the image that Paul gives to the Galatians (Gal. 3) that once a person is a Christian they are clothed with Christ; they are literally wearing the Almighty One. Other verses talk about how believers are clothed in righteousness. We are bought with a price, and we belong to Him. It is all his – you are His and so am I – there is not 1 square inch anywhere in the universe that Jesus does not say “MINE”. Sanctification is the process that happens after we are saved where Jesus is redeeming us or buying us back until we look fully like him and He alone owns all of us.

We don’t instantly look like Him so, like a moth, He eats away slowly at the things that are not good for us. Our desires need to change away from earthly things and into eternal, everlasting, never-perishing treasure. In Colossins 3:2 it says,

“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

As we look to Christ and trust in the Holy Spirit for our transformation, we will desire the things that are of His kingdom for His glory, rather than for ourselves on earth

God makes us his treasure In the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ himself speaks of moths in His teachings on the futility of earthly treasures. In the Gospel of Matthew, (Matthew 6:19) Jesus warns in verse 19: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” Moths ruined clothes or rugs. Moths eat that stuff. Rust referred to metal coins, or a similar word (Bible scholars are not sure which one Jesus was using) dealing with worms eating farmers’ grain when they’d store it in their barns. And thieves break in and steal all of our stuff. The point is, all of this stuff in this life is temporary. Don’t let it be our treasure. Lay not up for ourselves treasures. Jesus was saying: Don’t make this our main interest.

God loves us too much to let us rot. He slowly eats away at the things that will destroy us – aka treasures on earth. This is the real point here: the end of this life is not the end of our life. We are going to live forever. But the issue in Matt. 6  is, ”

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust do corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.”

I love the example of Eustace Scrubb in the Narnian tale of The Voyage of the Dawntreader. On an island where Eustace is supposed to be helping the task at hand, he instead sneaks off and finds a dragon’s lair. There, fed by his greed for the horde of treasure Eustace is transformed into a dragon. At first he relishes the power, but soon isolation and shame make him realize the truth: he is an a terrible dragon. Once Eustace begins to want change and to become human again, he realizes that he cannot do it on his own; he cannot cure himself. Aslan the lion comes to “undress” or “undragon” him. Like us, God has to take care of it. He alone can change us – we can’t do it alone and he wants us to treasure what He treasures – US. That is what sanctification is!

Have you ever seen someone after a long time and you barely recognize them? You see your friends and family every day but the changes in them often are unnoticed – moths eat away slowly – they are different than locusts which attack everyone. A moth infestation is a personal thing; It took awhile for the other members of the Dawntreader to see and believe Eustace was truly changed. It took awhile for the apostles to trust in the changes Christ made in Paul too! Jesus saw Simon transformed long before he was and renamed him Peter, knowing what a treasure waited inside.

When my brother was 3 or 4 and was learning to dress himself, we went to the mall. He kept complaining of a stomachache, doubling over in pain. My mom took him into the bathroom thinking he needed to blow chunks or have a blowout. She pulled down his pants where she discovered 6 pairs of underwear! He was cutting off his circulation! When she asked him why he had on so much underwear, he looked at her with all innocence and integrity and said, “You told me to put on a new pair every day!”

My brother was putting on new underwear but, of course it was not helping! In order to be healthy, he would not only need to put on clean underpants but he would need to remove the dirty underwear first! What we wear reveals our heart but it also shapes our identity. The Bible talks about this in Colossians. Paul tells believers:

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

It does no good to put on Christ without removing the old self. Just like my brother, we need to remove the old before putting on the new. Just like Eustace, we need to allow Christ to restore us to who we were meant to be! Let God keep bugging you until you are fully His

My  Only Treasure’s in Heaven

Making One & All Totally His