Acts 12:21-23 states:
21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Here's some excellent advice--if, in the course of the day, someone walks up to you and says "You're a god":
Incorrect response--"Well, it's about time you noticed..."
Correct response--"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
All humor aside, I don't think we need to worry too much about others calling us gods when we are more than capable of doing it ourselves. For those that recall, a couple Sundays back (November 6th, I believe), we discussed the 7 Deadly Sins, with my contention that pride was the sin that, in addition to being one of the seven, was also present in the other six. Pride is when we give credit to ourselves for our accomplishments instead of thanking God for the ability to do them in the first place.
A year ago, I taught a Bible Study on Acts, and we had a good time when we got this part, but the underlying message is one of the most important ones we'll ever learn as Christians. The opposite of pride is humility, and for me personally, humility is something I simply don't possess. However, as Christians, it's the one part of our personality that we need more than anything else, because without humility, we're completely incapable of seeing our total inability to do anything to obtain our salvation. If we can't humble ourselves before the Lord, if we claim to be a god and give salvation to ourselves, we're destined to fail on a massive scale. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging a job well done--modesty doesn't require false modesty, which is just a passive-aggressive version of pride anyway. We're not gods and never will be--and because of Jesus and his sacrifice for us, we'll never have to be.
Scott
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