Bow Down

Psalm 95:1-6

Topic- Bow Down

There was this rap group called the Westside Connection that was based out of Southern California. The Westside Connection had a popular rap song that was entitled, “Bow Down.” In this particular song(Bow Down), the Westside Connection raps about when they were to come to your town, you ought to bow down. They say that you ought to bow down to them as rappers because they said they were the hardest rappers around. They said that you ought to bow down to them because they said all the ladies loved them, that they made the most money in the rap game, and because they had what you called a superstar status. The Westside Connection also said in their song that if anyone did not bow down to them, they would be crushed and defeated.

Also there was another rap artist that went by the name of KRS-ONE. KRS-ONE made a statement on a show on BET called the “Teen Summit”, and the statement that KRS-ONE made was very disturbing. KRS-ONE told the young people on “Teen Summit” that it did not make sense to him to worship a god outside of himself. He felt that if he was going to worship God, it made sense to him to become what he was going to worship. That is, KRS-ONE said that if he is going to worship God, then he is going to become a god himself. That is, if he is going to worsip God, then he is going to worship himself because KRS-ONE said that he himself is a god.

Now in the light of what the Westside Connection raps about in their song, “Bow Down”, and what KRS-ONE had said about worshipping himself as a god, the question is, “What does the bible says about bowing to man, and bowing to oneself as a god?

Well, in Exodus 20:1-6, this is what God told Moses to tell the nation of Israel as he is telling us the same thing today. In Exodus 20:1-6, God says, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I , the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.”

And also the Lord says in Leviticus 26:1- “Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear ye up standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it; for I am the Lord your God.”

You see, when a person bow down to another person such as to another man or another woman, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, children, relatives, neighbors, celebrities, famous athletes, famous rap stars, or when a person bow down to anything such as a stature, picture, poster, cars, house, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, job, or whatever…………

When a person bow down to another person, or bow down to anything, but yet does not bow down to the Lord God Almight, that person has committed the sin of “idolatry.” Idolatry is a sin when you bow down and worship a person or anything beside the Lord God Almighty himself. And idolatry is a sin that God hates because when you worship someone or something more you worship God himself, not only do you make God angry, but you make God jealous because God is a jealous God, and He will not share His glory as God with anyone else. That means, not only shouldn’t we bow down or worship anybody or anything beside the Lord God Almighty, but we shouldn’t worship ourselves as God because it is God who made us, and created us, and it is God who deserves all of our worship and praise.

Psalm 100:3 says, “Know ye that the Lord he is God; it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

And the Lord says in Isaiah 42:8 that “I am the Lord; that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”

You see, God is not going to share his glory with anything or with anyone else, including ourselves, because God is God all by himself and there is no other God beside him. In Isaiah 40:18, there is question that is being asked and the question that is being asked goes like this: “To whom then will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto him?”