Sermon Recap
Little G Gods
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November 2, 2025
“Come, make us gods who will go before us… These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
Scripture Referenced
Recap
With Brian away, Connor, who leads the young adult ministry at Tribe, taught through the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32. While Moses is on the mountain, an impatient Israel pressures Aaron into melting down their jewelry to form an idol, then credits it with the exodus from Egypt. Connor dug into the Hebrew word used for these “gods,” Elohim: a broad, catchall term used well over two thousand times for the one true God, and only rarely for lowercase-g gods, with the difference determined by context rather than the word itself.
Rather than treating the golden calf as a strange ancient failure, Connor pushed the room to see the same impulse alive today: building a version of God shaped to match personal preference rather than submitting to who God actually is. He quoted Timothy Keller’s line that if your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself, and walked through examples of popular “wrong pictures of God”, ones that conveniently excuse sin or avoid discomfort rather than reflecting Scripture’s full and sometimes challenging picture of who he is.
The application landed on self-examination: rather than assuming idolatry is something ancient Israelites did and modern believers don’t, Connor invited the room to honestly ask where their own picture of God has been shaped more by convenience than by truth.
Touch Points
- Israel built a god out of what was familiar and convenient. Where might you be tempted to shape God into something more comfortable than who he actually is?
- Timothy Keller said if your God never disagrees with you, you might be worshiping yourself. Has God ever genuinely disagreed with you, and how did you respond?
- What’s one area where your picture of God might be more shaped by what’s convenient than by Scripture?
- How can you actively pursue a fuller, truer picture of who God is this week?