Psalm 115, Hebrews 1:1-3a
August 23, 2026
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”

“Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.”

“To these evils a new wickedness joins itself, that man tries to express in his work the sort of God he has inwardly conceived. Therefore the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth.”

“Daily experience teaches that flesh is always uneasy until it has obtained some figment like itself in which it may fondly find solace as in an image of God.”

~ The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin (1509-1564),
French-Swiss reformer and theologian

“I have known cases where what the patient called his ‘God’ was actually located-up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it-to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him. You may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of his composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his imagination during the whole prayer. For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if ever he consciously directs his prayers ‘Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be’, our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it-why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation-this real nakedness of the soul in prayer-you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There’s such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!”

~ Letters from the senior demon Screwtape to junior tempter Wormwood
in The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

“We belong to God. He may do with us as He wishes. There is something deep within us that rebels at being reminded of that elemental truth, but truth it is. Indeed, our rebellion in the face of it is a reminder of how much we still want to be at the center of the universe with God serving us. That is the heart of all idolatry.”

~ For the Love of God, Volume 2, by D.A. Carson (1946-present), Canadian-born theologian
and research professor of the New Testament

Sermon Passage

Psalm 115, Hebrews 1:1-3a (ESV)

Psalm 115

¹ Not to us, O LORD, not to us,
but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love
and your faithfulness!

² Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
³ Our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases.

⁴ Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
⁵ They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
⁶ They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
⁷ They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
⁸ Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.

⁹ O Israel, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.
¹⁰ O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.
¹¹ You who fear the LORD, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.

¹² The LORD has remembered us; he will bless us;
he will bless the house of Israel;
he will bless the house of Aaron;
¹³ he will bless those who fear the LORD,
both the small and the great.

¹⁴ May the LORD give you increase,
you and your children!
¹⁵ May you be blessed by the LORD,
who made heaven and earth!

¹⁶ The heavens are the LORD’s heavens,
but the earth he has given to the children of man.
¹⁷ The dead do not praise the LORD,
nor do any who go down into silence.
¹⁸ But we will bless the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.
Praise the LORD!

Hebrews 1

¹ Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…