Baseball Trades and the Gospel
Baseballs trading deadline came and went this week with the typical shuffle of overhyped and overpaid players all attempting to make a run for the World Series. Outside of Stuart Scott and Colin Cowherd, I am not sure anyone really noticed or cared. Except me. Yes, I am that sports geek that analyzes ESPN2, listens to The Herd in my truck, and secretly fantasizes about being a basketball commentator after Dicky V moves on.
While I love sports, professional sports trades make me angry. As soon as I begin to pull for one team, the star player is shipped out to the West coast to play for a team that I hate, and now I am left with a goofy looking, lanky, overpaid scrub. And the trades don’t make any sense. A great player is traded for four players I have never heard of, the proverbial “player to be named later” and some money. What?
In spite of the stupidity of many trades in American professional sports, trades don’t get any better than one made by a soccer team in Romania. The Romanian second division soccer club UT Arad sold a player to another team in exchange for 15 kilograms of meat. And to make matters worse, the player who was traded resigned before ever playing a game for his new team. The coach is quoted as saying: “We are upset because we lost twice – firstly because we lost a good player and secondly because we lost our team’s food for a whole week.”
Stupid trades are commonplace today: both in the sporting arena and in a place you would not think to look – your life. It seems that this concept of a trade forms the central metaphor Paul uses to explain what humanity has done to God. In the first chapter of his treatise on the gospel to the church at Rome he writes:
21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Romans 1:18-25
A proper understanding of Romans 1 hinges on the word “exchange”, or in a more common English vernacular “trade”. If Paul were to write this passage in the terms of a modern day sports trade these would be the terms of the agreement.
I GIVE UP I GET BACK
The glory of the immortal God Tarnished image of false idols
The truth about God Lies about God
The worship of the Creator Worship of Created Things
The service of the one true God The service of things made by God
At his point, one need not be a Sportscenter anchor to analyze this trade. A simple glance at the terms of the trade reveals the stupidity of this move. On the one hand, you have the glory and truth of the God of the Universe revealed clearly to me so that I could worship and serve Him. And this is given up for tarnished images and lies about false gods that I now worship and serve.
GOSPEL SUBSTITUTES CONSIST OF A TRADE IN WHO OR WHAT WE WORSHIP.
The humbling reality of life is that, while the stupidity of this trade is clear, you and I make it on a regular basis. You may believe that you are not worshipping a creature at the moment, but before you excuse yourself too quickly we need to take a look at this concept of worship. What exactly does it mean to worship?
Worship is a word that has been cheapened by the modern American church and has come to denote little more than singing a few songs to an acoustic guitar. However, the word carries a much great meaning. The Greek word for worship, proskuneo, meant to express by words or the posture of your body, profound, supreme, and submissive respect or adoration to someone or something. So it might be that you would worship something by saying that it was great or talking about its greatness to others. Or you may reveal the object of your worship’s greatness by the way you act when you were around it, in that you might bow down or even kneel. Each of these - words and actions - reveal that something or someone is the thing or person that we supremely value, treasure, and serve.
WE ALL WORSHIP ALL OF THE TIME.
And as a result of the trade Paul describes in Romans 1, we often worship the wrong things in the wrong ways. We must pause and analyze the potential gospel substitutes that you and I spend our time worshipping.
1) Exchanging God for Sinful Things
Typically when we think of false worship, we think of these things. Anything that rebels from the created nature of God falls into this category. We trade God for sinful things anytime we choose to disobey God’s moral standards in any fashion. These trades are common all around us. However, we must be careful to appreciate their severity. We are not “just sinning.” Instead, we are choosing to trade God in for a little lust, anger, jealousy, gossip, etc.
2) Exchanging God for Good Things
Now this is where it gets a little tricky. It is also entirely possible to trade God for good things in life. The gospel opens up a Pandora’s Box of good gifts from God, but none of those gifts should be mistaken for the essence of the gospel, which is God himself. We can exchange God for health, marriage, hobbies, jobs, etc. These things, which are not sinful in and of themselves, can still be used as a God substitute and can undermine a true and unadulterated love for God. Anytime good things become ultimate things, God is traded for a gospel substitute.
3) Exchanging God for Religious Things
It is here that we must put pressure on those of us within the Body of Christ to analyze whether our religious activity consists of true worship of Jesus or whether it is a gospel substitute. All too often, when I read pastors writings, hear them speak, or talk with them, I am left with a critical question: Where is God?
Great things like music, missions, ministry, church planting, and preaching dominate the landscape of the church world such that God is often exchanged for religious practice. Religious leaders are worshipped in a god-like way and the church is esteemed such that you cannot tell whether people are worshipping God or some religious hero or church philosophy. Is that the point of the gospel? Is the point of the gospel so that you can have a church, preach the Word, be on mission? Clearly each of these critical dimensions of church life are implications of the Gospel, but they are not it. As John Piper says, “The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God” (God is the Gospel, p. 47).
That is the point: that people would know Jesus Christ and be drawn to worship Him. Anything else is a God substitute. The great church father Augustine says “He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with thee which he loves not for Thy sake” (St. Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, X, 40).
In each of these cases, whether bad, good, or religious, the gospel substitutes that we make reveal our depravity before God and the cause of his just wrath. Every day, in a multitude of ways, people miss worship of the one true God because they worship lesser, God substitutes. Remember that you express your worship, both through your words and your lives. So we must ask:
What do your words say that you worship?
What does your life say that you worship?
An illustration might be helpful at this point. Suppose a musician sat down and composed a beautiful song, which he played for you one evening. The acoustic guitar resonated with the beautiful tones while the musician belted out the lyrics. Upon completion of the song, you are mesmerized by the beauty of the song. Following the final note of the song who would you praise? Would you go to the guitar and say: “My you are amazing. I cannot believe how beautiful you play. How can I be like you?” No, you would not praise the guitar, but you would instead praise the one who created the music in the first place.
I see many guitar worshippers in the ranks of evangelical Christianity today. They think that by worshipping the guitar they are in some way worshipping the one who created the music. But unfortunately, through their neglect and folly they are missing God altogether and teaching other people to do the same.
David writes:
“You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Ps. 73:24-26
Nothing – not a good job, happy marriage, big church, cool band, purpose in life, godly kids – Nothing. You should desire nothing but God himself. Can you say that? There is nothing on earth I desire but you, God. Anything less and I’ve got some interesting news for you:
YOU ARE A FERRET BREEDER!