Resurrection and Return
Transcript
We are in our third week of our Jesus series, and so we've just set aside three weeks coming out of Easter to just talk about Jesus. We said we were going to look at some specific aspects of who He was and what He accomplished and what the Bible says about Him. And so the first week we kind of spent some time talking about who He was as a human, that He has had a disproportionate effect on the earth. So that Jesus lived in a rural hick town of the Roman Empire where there are things like Uncle Daddy's and that kind of stuff. He kind of grew up in this area, and He lived to be about 33. And when He died, He had about 120 people following Him, and it really didn't make a whole lot of sense.
He never did any of the things you're supposed to do to be famous. He talked a lot about a kingdom, but He didn't do what you're supposed to do to be a king. He didn't do what you're supposed to do to lead a rebellion against the Roman Empire. It didn't make sense, the impact that He's had in history. And so we just looked at the fact that not only is that true, but He also walked around claiming to be God. And so then we looked and said that He is God, that Jesus is God who became a human.
And then that last week we spent some time talking about the crucifixion, that Jesus' primary mission, the reason He came to earth was to die, to be crucified. And so we looked at what it means for us that God died, what the crucifixion was and what that accomplished on our behalf. And so tonight we're going to be looking at the resurrection. We're going to be talking about the fact that Jesus didn't stay dead. He came back to life. So resurrection, we're not saying that He came back as a life force.
We're not saying that His spirit came back. We're not saying that He was reincarnated into some other form. What we're saying is that Jesus resurrected, that He, Jesus the man who was God, was taken to a cross, was beaten brutally, was hung on a cross, was murdered, was executed, had a spear run through His side after He was dead, was laid in a tomb after being wrapped up in some cloths and put pounds and pounds of ointment and wrappings, grave clothes on Him. And that three days later that same Jesus, that same body was walking around talking to people, eating, letting people touch the holes in His hands and the holes in His side that He was resurrected, that He came back to life.
And so that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. We're going to be spending some time looking at the resurrection and Jesus' return. And we're going to be coming out of 1 Corinthians 15. And so the resurrection proves all the other stuff that Jesus said and did. It affirms it. It confirms it.
It proves it. So Jesus walks around saying that He's God, and that's awkward. Like, I would suggest to you, don't say that at work tomorrow. Just don't be like over at the coffee maker and be like, yes, you know, it's kind of hard for me to wake up in the morning because I'm God. Like, I just wouldn't suggest it. And so, you know, but Jesus walks around saying He's God.
He talks a lot about this kingdom, that He's going to set up a kingdom. And He keeps saying, I'm going to die. Like, He keeps telling His disciples He's going to die. So the point that He's talking about His kingdom and He's like, okay, this isn't how you set up a kingdom. This isn't how you lead a rebellion. So He's talking to His disciples.
He's like, all right, we're going to set up a kingdom. And they're like, all right, what's the plan? He's like, well, first, I'm going to die. I mean, to the point that Peter takes Him to the side and is like, I don't think you understand how this works. Like, a kingdom needs a king. I think you're doing it wrong.
Like, you shouldn't die. This isn't how this is going to work. Like, we agree that you're going to be king. Dying isn't a good process for that. It's going to be hard for you to lead this. So, like, if I was going to lead a rebellion, I wouldn't say, step one, murder me.
Like, that's just, you just don't do that because then what would happen to the rebellion? Like, it wouldn't work out well. And so Jesus says He's going to be king, and His purpose is to die. And so His disciples think that's weird. He doesn't do what you ought to do to set up an earthly kingdom. But Jesus was setting up an eternal kingdom, and He knew something His disciples didn't.
And so what we're going to do is we're going to hop into this text. And this is what Paul saw in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 12. And so we started in 1 Corinthians 15 on Easter, and we walked through the first bit where Paul basically says, that I delivered to you as of first importance that which I also received, that Jesus, that Christ, died in accordance with the Scriptures, died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. And then he goes through all these people that Jesus, after He rose, talked to and saw.
And then he goes to this part where we're picking up in 12. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. So what Paul's saying is that he's talking to this church, and he's proclaiming Christ is raised, but he's saying some of you are saying there is no resurrection, that Jesus didn't raise from the dead. And so he's going to unpack this, and basically what he's going to say is, let's look at, he's going to walk through and say, let's look at what it means for us if Christ was not raised.
So if the resurrection verifies and solidifies everything for us as Christians, Paul's going to unpack this as, okay, I just want to let you know, if there is no resurrection, this is what that means for us. And so that's what we're going to look at now. Verse 13, But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. So he's saying it's a waste of time.
So what Paul would say is, this right here is a waste of time if Jesus hasn't been raised. And I would agree with him. Paul says preaching is in vain. So he's like, I wouldn't be doing this. I went to school to play football, and I got a business degree. I wouldn't be doing this if Christ hadn't been raised.
Like, that's, I just, I wouldn't be here. And y'all wouldn't be here either. So he says our preaching is in vain, our faith is in vain. He says we are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testify about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised. And so what he's saying is, he's talking to a Jewish audience. So they believe in God, and he's saying, look, we're even lying about God.
Like, we're making stuff up about God, and that's not okay, because we're going to meet him one day, and we probably shouldn't have run around lying about it. He said this is a problem. So, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised, that's verse 16. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
So what he says there is, if Christ has been raised, your sins are still on you. Like, you haven't been forgiven of them, he hasn't taken them away. And those who have fallen asleep, and fall asleep just means, it means died. It's just a nice way of saying died. He doesn't mean falling asleep. He doesn't mean, like, if Christ hasn't been raised, and that guy fell asleep, well, then he's perished.
He means died. And what he's saying is that they've died in their sins, so they're in trouble. Like, they still have issues between them and God, and so it's a problem now. They've not only died, but they've perished, if Christ hasn't been raised. We're still in our sins. And then he says this, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
So what Paul's saying is, if Christ hasn't been raised, people shouldn't be mad at us. They should feel sorry for us if Christ hasn't been raised. What Paul's saying is that the Christian life should look so radical, should only make sense in light of the resurrection, that if Christ hasn't been raised, we've really made some bad decisions. If our hope is only here, so that we're told as Christians that Jesus is going to save us from our sins, that we're going to be taken to heaven and live in eternity with him, but our hope is only here, then we're in trouble. If when we die, Christ hasn't been raised, then we're in trouble, because we as Christians have lived our lives in a way that only makes sense.
We've banked on the resurrection. Now, I think that was true for Paul. We're going to look at a passage where he kind of lays out some of the stuff that's happened in his life. I don't know for American Christians how often that is true. I just don't know if my neighbors look at me and go, if the resurrection isn't true, if what Chet tells me about Jesus isn't true, I feel sorry for him because of the decisions he makes. It would be like if you had a friend who was trying to start a business, and they were banking everything.
They had cashed in everything they had to get this business going. They had leveraged all of their time, all of their effort, all of their money, all of their savings to get this business going. You'd be looking at them going, I hope this business works out for you. And if it does, it'll be a good thing. If people want this product, if this works out. But if it doesn't, I feel sorry for you because you don't have anywhere else to go.
Like all your eggs are in that basket. That's what Paul says it's supposed to look like for Christians. Now, my wife and I were watching the movie Walter Mitty. It's a recent movie with Ben Stiller in it, and I enjoyed it. It had a little bit of like independent film kind of qualities to it. So it was like slowly killing Anna the entire time that we watched it.
We got to the end of it, and she's going, oh, how long is this movie? And I'm like, shh, shh. Because they're in the end. It is the part where they're saying the things that connect everything, and you're finding out. It's all coming together. And she's going, oh.
And I said, shh. And she goes, you can't be serious. She's looking at the side of my face. You can't be serious. You're enjoying this right now? And I'm like, I'm trying to watch the movie.
No, seriously, say this movie is garbage. Just say the movie is garbage. I'm like, be quiet. She's like, this is garbage. You can't honestly be enjoying this. So I had to pause it and be like, look, I am enjoying this, and you need to be quiet because they're saying things.
But in the movie, maybe I just gave you a little bit too big of a picture of what it looks like when I'm watching this. But in the movie, Walter Mitty works at Time Magazine, and what he does is he develops films. So he's in this creepy-looking basement thing with one other dude, and they send in pictures. And Time Magazine has pictures of all over the world. So war-torn regions, the tops of mountains, like anywhere that seems, you know, they're on shipping decks and oil rigs, and they're sending him all these pictures.
And all he does is he shows up to work, and he develops the film. And so in the movie, Walter Mitty has all of these, like, people will be just talking to him, and then he just, like, zones out and is imagining that he's doing some kind of a great cliff dive thing or fighting people and saving stuff. Like, all of this kind of, the whole time he zones out. And I feel like sometimes we've all got a little bit of Walter Mitty in us. We've all got a little bit of times where we just, we dream of pouring our lives out for something. We dream of having our life mean more than what the American dream says it's supposed to mean.
We have these moments when we're like, I wish I was just a part of something bigger. And that my overall goal wasn't just to stack up comforts around myself. Like, is that my goal? I have these moments where I'm like, is my goal to have a certain Job so that I can retreat to my home in the evenings and have a screen and then hopefully get a bigger screen and a bigger screen and better sound system and a comfortable couch so I can just sink into comfort and escape from the world. There are these moments, certainly, we have dreams where we've thought about maximizing our comfort. We've had dreams where we've daydreamed about maximizing our vacations or our sex life or our toys or anything.
We've had dreams, but we're not particularly proud of those. I'm not even drawn to those, but I feel like there's something in all of us that says, God, I wish I could just be a part of something where I leveraged everything for something bigger, for something that mattered more. I just wish that I could have my life be the adrenaline rush of pushing my chips all in on something. And what Paul is saying is that is the Christian life and that if Christ hasn't been raised, we are most to be pitied. People should feel sorry for us. And Paul, when he says this, it's true for him.
I'm going to read you all part of 2 Corinthians. It's his second letter he wrote to the Corinthians. I'm just going to read through it really quick. It's in chapter 11 if you want to check it out later. But he's talking about his life with Christ and he says this, For with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea, on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship. Through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
And apart from these things, there's daily pressure on me for the anxiety for all the churches. What Paul's saying is I've leveraged everything. Banking on Jesus. I've leveraged everything on Christ. And he says, And if the resurrection isn't true, you should just feel sorry for me. Because I've put everything in on this.
It's the same thing we see with the disciples. We see the disciples after, the guys that hung out with Jesus were trained by him for three years. After he dies, they're hiding. They're like scared. They're inside locked doors in Jerusalem. It's like these huddled up.
They're fearing that somebody's going to try to come get them. All the time it says that they're locking their doors. And at one point, Peter's like, I guess I'm going to just go fishing. I'm going to go back to what I was doing. And so they're afraid and they're confused and they don't know what's happening. And then Jesus shows back up and starts talking to them.
He rose again and starts talking to them. And then we see in the book of Acts, all of the disciples are sold out for the gospel. There's one point where they're taken in front of the Sanhedrin, the same people that crucified Jesus. And the Sanhedrin says, we want you to shut up and quit talking about Jesus. And the disciples say, you do what you got to do. We're not going to stop talking about Jesus.
It ain't happening. And so they beat them. And it says, the disciples left rejoicing that they'd had the opportunity to be beaten for the name of Jesus. That's a different crew than the guys that were hiding. That's a whole different group of guys. Every single one of those 11 guys was martyred, murdered for their faith in Jesus.
And all of them were like, I'm not shutting up. I've gone all in on this. I saw him. I saw him face to face. I touched him. I watched him eat.
And I'm going all in. I'm going all in that there is a resurrection and that this thing that Jesus has started, his kingdom, is true and it's real and I'm all in. And so what Paul says is for Christians who've gone all in, if the resurrection isn't true, people should feel sorry for us. And then he says this in verse 20. So verse 19, If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied, but in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.
So he just turns everything back on his head and he says, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. This is what Paul's saying. Paul's saying, I may have pushed all my chips in, but I got a winning hand. Paul's saying, I may have invested everything I have. I haven't diversified at all, but I've got a guaranteed return on investment. My ROI is on lock.
That's what Paul's saying. And that's true for Christians. We can push everything in and in fact, Christ has been raised. Not a moment, not a breath, not a dollar, not an ounce of sweat or blood that's poured out for Jesus is going to return void because Christ has been raised. You know what that means? It means that Christians can live the life we've always dreamed about living.
It means that we actually have something bigger to pour ourselves into. Something that actually matters, that actually has worth, that actually has value. It means that Christians ought to be leveraging everything we have for the gospel because in fact, Christ has been raised. This little warm up, this prelude that we have on earth is just that. We've got a little while to pour everything we have out for Christ because he has been raised. We've got an eternity to come and we can live lives poured out for what is important, for what is true and what is right.
We get to. Verse 20, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. So what that means, first fruits is the first fruit you get from a harvest. So when you have a harvest and you get a little bit of fruit, that's your first fruits. And what it's saying is that Jesus is the first fruits from the dead, first fruits of those who are going to be raised. And what the first fruits mean is that there is a harvest.
So the first fruits are just the first to come of the rest of the harvest. And so all it's saying is that Jesus rose, but he's just the first one. Everyone else is going to be resurrected as well. We're going to be raised to life. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. the Bible's very clear. We were intended to live forever.
I don't know if y'all know that. I just want to make that clear. We were intended to live forever. Sin caused death to enter into the world, but we were designed, we have souls that are designed to live forever. And everyone in this room will die and will live forever. So everyone in this room will die and will continue on, our souls will continue on for eternity.
But he says, For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. Let me unpack that real quick. Adam. Of Adam and Eve fame. You may have seen pictures of him naked in a garden with some lady.
That's Adam, Adam and Eve. He was the first man ever created and he kept it together sinlessly for like a chapter in the Bible. And then he sinned, he messed it up, botched it up. And so Adam started off with a clean slate. He and God were in a right relationship and he had a clean slate so that he could choose to follow God, to live in the right relationship with God and thereby add righteousness to his slate or he could choose to rebel against God to worship himself as God and thereby mess up his slate, not have a clean slate anymore. He chose to rebel.
So Adam chose to bring sin into the world and when he did he ushered in death. All of us were born without a clean slate. Everyone in this room, we weren't born with a clean slate. We were born with the slate that Adam gave us which is a sinful, messed up, broken slate. Like our hearts didn't start off good and get turned bad. They started off bad.
Anybody who has little kids knows this. And I can just tell you we were all little kids at one point. Nobody, we talked about this some last week, we had to be taught how to be generous. We had to be taught how to share, how to love. We had to be taught that certain things are virtuous and good. Like we sing little songs to teach kids like honesty is the best and you shouldn't lie because then you'd be a jerk.
Like we teach them little songs to teach them about truth and honesty and generosity and sharing. Like we don't, nobody has to teach kids songs about how to be selfish and how to be mean to each other and when someone has something you want punch them in the face. Like we don't have to tell that to kids, they just do that on their own. And so none of us were born with a clean slate. We were all off. We're all twisted.
We're all broken. We're all pointing in the wrong direction. And so in Adam all die. In Adam we're all born. We're going to live and we're going to die. We're going to be sinful and broken and twisted and off and in Adam all die.
And then it says in Christ all shall be made alive. Now in Christ Jesus comes this is what we talked about. He came and he lived a perfect sinless life. That he lived in a right relationship with God and that his purpose was to die. The Bible says that our sin was placed on him and that Jesus was crushed. He bore our iniquities by his stripes were healed.
That Jesus died for our sin. He took our sin. The Bible says he became our sin and that in him we become righteous. That Jesus takes our sin and he dies for our sin and that when he rose again he conquered sin and death and hell on our behalf and that we can have life. Let me tell you this. Those of us who are in Christ you do not have a clean slate.
Jesus does not give you a clean slate. He gives you a slate that has his righteousness already applied to it. He doesn't just clean our slate and give it back to us. He takes our sin he cleans our slate off and then he applies his righteousness his account his goodness his humility his generosity his love it's applied to our account. Everything you've ever looked at in a human and thought man I like that about that guy. Man I wish I could be more like that girl. everything Jesus had and did and modeled for us perfectly and that has been applied to our account.
About that guy. Man I wish I could be more like that girl. everything Jesus had and did and modeled for us perfectly and that has been applied to our account. I'm so glad let me tell you something for those of us in Christ you don't want a clean slate you want Jesus' slate you want to sit behind him in class and Mark down his answers that's how you want to do that. That's how that works. Jesus doesn't
Hand us a clean slate I'm so glad because if Jesus had taken it and said alright I took your sin slate's clean now keep it together I'd have been like keep it together yes is up to me to do good from now on yes oh crap is it bad to say that in front of you and Jesus would be like and he'd give it back and he had to Mark it up and I would have kept it together for like
14 Seconds I don't even know depending on how much I breathed in between the time he handed it to me like that's not how that works though his slate is applied to our account we were made righteous in Jesus and so all of us are going to die in Adam but in Christ all will be made alive we'll all be brought back we'll all be given life for those of us who are in Christ who have placed our faith and our hope in the resurrection who have banked
On the resurrection not our good deeds not our hard work not on our ability to clean our slate and add good things to it but on the resurrection on the fact that Jesus died in our place for our sins so that we might have life in him so it says this 22 for as in Adam all die have you noticed that all die raise your hand in this room if you're going to die okay exactly now
There's a little bit of us that's like man that was kind of morbid why did he make us raise our hand for that like if I had said raise your hand if you get hungry everybody would be like oh I'll get hungry and he wouldn't have been too worried about it but it's like man I didn't want to raise my hand and say I was going to die like that was just kind of rude like why would you bring that up there's something about us that never sees death as normal or okay
It's as natural as breathing it's as natural as birth it's as natural as eating and sleeping but there's something about us that screams inside of us every time death is brought up or occurs this is wrong this is broken and this shouldn't happen because it shouldn't Adam had a clean slate and he messed it up we weren't supposed to die we're going to live for eternity
But Adam's ushered in death Jesus brings in life so for as in Adam all die so also in Christ shall all be made alive but each in his own order Christ the first fruits then at his coming those who belong to Christ okay so Jesus rose again over 2,000 years ago rose again wasn't reincarnated didn't come back as a spirit came back as Jesus the Jesus who was walking around talking to people talks and trains
His disciples for a little bit longer appears to a bunch of people talks to people and then he ascends into heaven bodily like he takes off into heaven I don't know what that looked like I think it was cool but he ascends into heaven and we're told that he rules and reigns as a king over all of creation and that he's coming back so he rose again and he's coming back and he's going to
Claim all of those who are in him so it says but each in his own order Christ the first fruits then at his coming those who belong to Christ you don't belong to Christ by being good if that was the test if Jesus came back to get moral good people he'd come back to the earth and be like oh okay there aren't any that's how that would work the Bible says we've all sinned
And fallen short and in Christ all are going Adam all are going to die Jesus comes back and gets those who are in him who've placed their faith and their hope in him not in their works not in their effort not in their good deeds or ability to think well in him in his death and resurrection on their behalf so he comes and gets all of those
Who belong to Christ then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and every power for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet so Jesus comes back he rescues his people and he destroys his enemies Jesus came humbly once Jesus suffered once Jesus died
Once he doesn't do it again when he returns he claims his people and he destroys his enemy every kingdom every power every authority everything that's ever stood up in opposition to the one true and right king of this world will be destroyed by Jesus and brought and put under his feet we often think of Jesus as a Galilean peasant and he was but he is no longer
He is a reigning king and the picture that the Bible brings up all the time is this king who returns to rescue his people and to crush his enemies the Bible talks about being led both his enemies and those who he set free being led in triumphal procession so that Jesus rides out he gets his people and he crushes his enemy and like a warrior king he leads them back into the city
To God those who he's taken captive and the captives that he set free that those of us in Christ will get to follow in that train celebrating the fact that we were slaves to sin we were given to death we were going to be destroyed by every rule and dominion and power and that Jesus showed up and destroyed them on our behalf and rescued us Jesus is king and he's God and he rules
And he reigns forever and his kingdom there is no end and so what he came to accomplish when he came to die he wasn't setting up a kingdom that could run from the time he was 33 to the time he was 80 his goal wasn't a 47 year kingdom his goal wasn't to own the little piece of the world that Rome had or to carve out a niche and own Jerusalem that's not the kingdom
That Jesus came to set up he came to destroy our ultimate enemies of sin and death and Satan and hell so that he might be king of all that he has created that he could be king over every breath and every atom and everything that exists in all of creation because he created it all it belongs to him and it is his and he is king over it it says this the last enemy to be destroyed is death for God has put all things in subjection
Under his feet we stop there Jesus Jesus destroys death I love that the grim reaper dresses up like Jesus for Halloween because Jesus is the only thing scarier than the grim reaper that's how that works the grim reaper checks under his bed for Jesus like that's Jesus it destroys death so I just want to let you know as a Christian when you go to die feel free to with your last breath say hey death
Jesus is coming for both of us I'm just not scared about it see those of us in Christ Jesus is going to return and he's going to take us to be his and he's going to destroy all of his enemies so that in heaven in his reign where he is king there is no sin and there is no pain and there is no death he comes to set it back right to the way it was at a great cost to himself a great cost to himself
That we might be his people and that the world might be back under his rule and his reign the band's going to come back up and play and I just want to wrap this series up I want us to talk for just a second Jesus is God who became a man who lived perfectly sinlessly on our behalf he's God who went to the cross to die because we had rebelled against him and we deserved wrath
And pain and punishment and destruction and that Jesus took that wrath and pain and punishment and destruction on our behalf that he put his sin put our sin on himself and was crushed for it as God's enemy all of God's enemies will be destroyed and Jesus was crushed as God's enemy so that we who were God's enemies
Could be made right with God and when it comes to the end the process is the same everyone will be made alive those who are in Christ who have had him be crushed on their behalf will be alive in him for eternity in his joy and his peace because his righteousness has been applied to our account and those who remain outside of Christ will be destroyed
As God's enemy will be crushed as Jesus was crushed on our behalf so Jesus is God who became a man he's God who died on our behalf and he's the God who rules and reigns who rose from the grave and who is returning to make his church his own to bring his people to himself and to rule over eternity and we
Who are Christians those of us in the room who say I follow Jesus he's died on my behalf let me tell you you don't have a clean slate you don't you have righteousness God looks at you the same way he looks at Jesus all of Jesus' grace and humility and generosity have been applied to us and we can go all in we get to
We get to leverage everything we have for the expanse of the gospel nothing is too much Jesus has already given us everything nothing is too much nothing he could ask of our time of our finances of our life of where we live and how we work and how we interact with our neighbors it can never be too much because he's already given us everything so if you're in here and you're a Jesus follower you say
Jesus' account has been applied to mine my sins have been put on him he's given me his righteousness I just want to invite you to go all in to live like Paul to leverage everything you have for the gospel that doesn't mean you move to Africa maybe maybe Jesus tells you to if he does pack your stuff that might just mean that you leverage everything you have in your neighborhood everything you have
At work that you walk in community and repentance and you pursue everyone around you with the gospel and here's the good news you don't have to be good at it because your account is not clean your slate is not white clean it's already righteous because of Jesus I'm not saying go earn it I'm saying hop in with a clean slate that already has all of Jesus' righteousness applied to it
And if you're in here today and you're not a Jesus follower in fact Christ has been raised we can have life and hope in him so I would just invite you to believe to repent and to to know that Jesus paid for your sin that in Adam you are going to die but in Christ you can be made alive real life
True life joy and hope for eternity in Jesus so if you're a Jesus follower go all in and if you don't follow Jesus if you haven't repented of your sin if you haven't placed your hope in him you're still working to prove your worth and your merit in life you're still working to be good enough I would invite you
To realize you never will be but in Jesus you can be so we're going to sing we're going to praise Jesus the God who came who lived perfectly on our behalf who died in our place who rose again and is coming back to rescue his church and crush his enemies Jesus we thank you for who you are we thank you for your grace thank you for the love that you've poured out
On us and we thank you that you are king and God I pray right now that as a warrior king you would advance your kingdom in the hearts and lives of the people in this room that God you would bring about repentance that you would conquer all of the areas in our souls and our hearts where we set up defenses against you that God as king
You would expand your kingdom of grace and of love and of mercy we thank you that in you we have life in Jesus name we pray amen
Crucifixion
Transcript
So we'll be in Mark chapter 14. We're in our second week of our Jesus series, and we're just looking at who Jesus was, why he came, what he accomplished as the most influential man in history. We wanted to just cut out some time to talk about him. And so that's what we're doing, just some three specific things we're going to be looking at. So last week we looked at kind of the historical Jesus and how he comes to us through history, how he has unquestionably altered human history.
And so he kind of comes to us as a force through history. And so what we looked at last week was we just kind of talked about that and what historians have to say about him. And then we talked about the fact that part of the problem we have with Jesus is that he walked around telling people he was God. And so that kind of makes it difficult for us to approach him in a neutral way. It'd be like if you had, I don't know, like a really good high school science teacher. And I mean, they were just the best teacher.
They won Teacher of the Year awards all the time. They were great at like teaching kids science things like, you know, Bunsen burners and other science terms. And and then and then they started telling people they were God, like they would tell their students, you know, towards the end of the semester, just so, you know, the reason I'm a great science teacher is because I'm actually God as a human. No, no, we can no longer treat you the same science teacher. You're done messed up now like we can't. There's nothing we can do at this point.
So then parents would have problems or you you could no longer be like, yeah, OK, so he's eccentric, but he's a really good science teacher like that wouldn't fly. We would have a problem now. And that's kind of the problem we have with Jesus is because he comes to us through history. And we can't just be like, well, he was a really good teacher. It's like, no, because he walked around saying he was God. So it makes it hard for us to approach him in a normal way.
And so what we looked at last week was kind of our options when it comes to Jesus because of this, so that he is either lying to us, knows he's not God and he's lying or is crazy, genuinely thinks he's God, but is not or that he is God. So those are kind of our options when it comes to Jesus. Just for you all who weren't here, we kind of landed on the he is God one. So that's kind of why we get together, because we believe that he is God. And so what we're looking at tonight is his death. All around the world, Christians gather together to study scripture and sing about the cross, sing about blood, sing about all kinds of.
I remember when we were going, we were going to a concert and a buddy of mine was going with us and I told him it was a Christian concert. I was like, hey, man, just so you know, there's going to be a bunch of people like singing about a cross and singing about a blood, singing about blood. And it's, you know, it may be a little weird for you. And he's like, no, the last concert I went to was Oz Fest. So shouldn't be too much different.
OK, but but we do and we get excited about that and we sing about that. And it's even on jewelry now. So people wear cross jewelry. Believers and unbelievers will have crosses or cross tattoos. And it'd be similar to like wearing an electric chair around your neck. That's an instrument of torture, an instrument used for execution.
So I'd be like, hey, check out this sweet lethal injection needle I got on my arm. So we kind of had in the church, we've gotten used to this symbol and we celebrate it and we sing about it. And so what we're going to look at is Jesus's death. We're going to take tonight to just kind of unpack it and we're going to look at it in two ways. So we'll be in the Gospels and then we'll jump to Romans.
And what we're looking at is how did Jesus's death work as Jesus was a man? So Jesus came and was a man. He was God who was a man. And so what were the aspects of his death? If you looked at it as a man hanging on a cross, what did he go through? And then we're going to look at the fact that since he was God who was a man, what did he accomplish for us in his death and the fact that he died for us and rose again.
And so we'll be spending some time in the Gospel of Mark. And just so you know, the Gospels, which are the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are not biographies of Jesus's life. They aren't. We have very little information about his birth. Matthew mentions it. Luke talks about it.
That's why every Christmas when we're going to celebrate Jesus's birth, you're going to read from Luke because Luke's the only guy who spends any significant amount talking about it. We know one story about Jesus when he was 12. That's it. The rest of it picks up when he's about 30, covers about three years of his life very quickly, and then all of them hone in on the last week of his life, his death, burial, and resurrection. And so some people have even called the Gospels passion narratives, which passion just means the suffering of Jesus, passion narratives with long introductions. So the Gospel writers, if you pay attention to how they wrote their Gospels, were, hey, I really want to tell you about the cross, but if I start there, it'll be confusing.
So let's talk a little bit about who Jesus was, what he did, why he went to the cross. Now let me unpack the cross so that Matthew, 33% of it is last week of his life to death, burial, and resurrection. Mark, 37%, Luke, 25%, and the Gospel of John is 42% the last week of Jesus's life. So he lived for about 33 years, was in ministry for about three, and all of them are going to spend a disproportionate amount talking about the last week of his life, his death, his burial, and his resurrection. And that's why Jesus comes to us as a force through history, because of this moment. And so that's what we're going to be unpacking tonight.
So we'll be picking up in Mark 14, starting in verse 53. I'm going to pray for us, and then we'll get started. God, we ask you to meet with us, to teach us. God, we need the cross. We need you to have died in our place. And so God, I pray that you would show us through your word and through your Holy Spirit what that meant, how that worked, and how that applies to us now.
So God, be with us tonight, lead us tonight. We love you, and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. We're going to pick up in chapter 14, verse 53. And they led Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priests, and the elders, and the scribes came together.
Okay. So what we have skipped, what has just happened, what has just preceded this, is Jesus was with his disciples. He washes their feet. They share the last supper together. And so that's where we actually get communion, or the Lord's table, or the Lord's supper, whatever different people call it. Can the Catholic church consider it a sacrament?
We consider it a sacrament, too. But anyway, that's where Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood. It has the wine and the bread, and says, it's broken for you, that's poured out for you. It's a covenant in my new, a new covenant in my blood. And he kind of walks through that. Then they go out into a garden, and he invites his disciples to be praying.
He goes off and is praying by himself. His disciples are exhausted, so they keep falling asleep. Jesus is praying. Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, was a physician. And he tells us that Jesus prayed with such intensity that he sweat drops of blood. This is called hematidrosis, which is actually where, because of intense stress levels, Jesus, understanding that he was going to the cross the next day, because of intense stress levels and increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, capillaries that feed our sweat glands burst.
And so Jesus' capillaries began to rupture, and he began to sweat drops of blood due to an increased level of stress. Not only was he going to be going to the cross the next day, enduring torture and persecution, he also was going to be facing the wrath of God and taking the wrath of God in our place. That's actually the term for that is propitiation, that Jesus took God's wrath on our behalf. And so he knew that he was going to be doing that and being separated from God. So Jesus is eternally God within the Trinity, and for the first time in ever, in all of eternity, and for the only time in all of eternity, Jesus would actually be separated from God and clothed in our sin.
That he would actually, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 5, 1 Corinthians 5, 21, that he became our sin. And so Jesus was going to, that actually might be 2 Corinthians, became our sin so that we could become righteous. And so Jesus, in this moment, is praying fervently and is stressed beyond, it's very rare that this would happen. And so I just wanted to point out in that, in the fact that Luke points that out for us, because we don't think about this often, Jesus had a heart that pumped blood through veins and arteries. He had capillaries. He had the ability to have an increased stress level.
He had the ability to have capillaries rupture. He sweats. Jesus was fully man. And so there are times when we would almost approach the cross as if Jesus, because he was God, somehow got out easily in it or was able to withstand it more because he was God. But he was fully man so that his blood pressure could increase to the point, with stress levels to the point that he would actually have hematidrosis.
And so Jesus stays up all night praying. And then Judas, who was one of his disciples, has betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver. And a band of men come with clubs and swords to take Jesus. And so they arrest him and take him to the scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests and the elders come together to put him on trial at night. And so Jesus has not slept. And that's where we pick up in verse 53.
And they led Jesus to the high priest and all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together. And Peter had followed him at a distance. Peter's one of his disciples right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. Now, the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death. But they found none for many bore false witness against him.
But their testimony did not agree. And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, we heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands. And in three days I will build another not made with hands. Yet even about this, their testimony did not agree. And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?
But he remained silent and made no answer. Jesus in John chapter 18 says that no one takes his life from me, but I lay my life down and I pick it up again. And so Jesus is going to the cross willfully, who is in control the whole time and laying his life down. He's not making a defense. He's not a victim, although he was victimized, but he's not a victim unwillingly. He is going to the cross willingly because he is in it going to accomplish something for us.
And so high priest stood in the midst of them and said, have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? 61. But he remained silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am.
And you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, what further witness do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, prophesy.
And the guards received him with blows. So Jesus standing before the high priest, they're accusing him of things. He's not saying anything. And the high priest stands up and says, you tell me, are you the son of the blessed? Are you the Christ? And Jesus says, I am.
And you'll see me coming at the you'll see me seated at the right hands of power and coming in the heavens. And so the high priest tears his clothes and says, you've heard his blasphemy, which he he says, you've heard him just declare that he is God. He's mocked God because he is a human has declared that he is God, that he's the son of God. And this is unacceptable. What do you what is your decree? And everybody says he deserves death.
So then they take him. They put a bag over his head after they've spit on him. They put a bag over his head and they begin to take it says they receive him with blows and they begin to hit him and tell him to prophesy. And the reason they put a bag over his head. Two reasons. One, so he can't see who's punching him.
So they can mock him and say, who prophesied to us. You know, you're a prophet. Tell us who punched you. But the other reason is so that he can't see where the punches are coming from so that he can't prepare. So that in having his head covered, there's no way for him to to to flinch or to be prepared for when they're going to hit him or how they're going to hit him.
And so they put a bag over his head after spitting on him, beat him and then hand him over to other guards who receive him with blows. So they take him, hit him as well. We're going to skip the next section. We're going to pick up in chapter 15. The next section is talking about Peter. So we're just following Jesus through the story.
15. And as soon as it was morning. So this has happened all night. Chief priest. The chief priest held a consultation and the elders and the scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.
Pilate is the governor over the Jewish territory of Jerusalem. He worked for the Roman government. So Jesus was just on trial with Jewish religious leaders and then is now being handed over to Roman officials. And the reason the Jewish people would have handed him over to the Romans was they weren't technically allowed to perform capital punishment. So they had to now take him to the Romans and convince the Romans you guys need to kill him.
The other reason that the Jews would rather do this is because they didn't want to offend the Jewish people that thought Jesus was a prophet or held him in high esteem. So there was a little bit of if the Romans kill him, we're a little bit less culpable. And so they take Jesus to Pilate. Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? And so when they accused Jesus, it's a blasphemy. It's of what we talked about last week where he claims to be God.
But in order to get the Romans to kill him, they didn't care about Jewish religious matters. They had to say, hey, he's saying he's the king of the Jews. And in being a king of the Jews, he's setting himself up in opposition to the Roman government. So they wanted him to be tried on treason. Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, you have said so.
And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you. But Jesus made no further answer. So that Pilate was amazed.
Now at the feast, so this is the feast of the Passover, he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them saying, do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews? For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have them release for them Barabbas instead.
And Pilate again said to them, what then shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him.
So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas. And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. The reason the gospel translations and the gospels are going to just kind of brush past scourging and just say having scourged Jesus is because they all knew what that meant. They understood what the process of scourging was, whereas it doesn't really connect with us. We don't know what scourging is and haven't seen it and it's not something normal. It would be the same as if we said, yeah, he's condemned to the electric chair.
We understand what that process is, how that works. But when they say it was scourging, the reason they just kind of go past that is because they would have understood what that meant. So I'm going to just briefly take the time to explain what scourging was. So he was scourged at the hands of the Romans. Romans had perfected torture. They had existed for a while and they had taken the time to perfect torture so that they could rule and reign over this large area of territory with great fear in people's hearts.
And so scourging was usually 39 lashes because they found that at 40, people died. So they would refer to it as the 40 minus 1 because they were going to do 39 lashes, which is the most they felt like they could inflict on you before you died or just passed out and it was no longer able to keep scourging you effectively. So what they would have done is it would have been one man with a whip or two men with a whip known as a flagrum or a cat of nine tails. And it would either be one man who would rotate sides or two men who would take turns. And so they would take the person being scourged and they would put them on a post so that their hands were up or they would put them over a post just so that they were stretched out so they could get to this area, to the torso area.
And so they would have their back to them and they would take a cat of nine tails, which was leather straps. On the end of the leather straps, usually nine straps, would be metal balls, glass, bone, or hooks at the end of the straps. And the reason was the balls were used for tenderizing the flesh, much in the way that a butcher would tenderize meat. And so they then would have the glass bone and metal to catch into the skin so that when they pulled it out, it would catch here. And if they were good at it, they could bring it all the way around. And so for 39 lashes, they sat there and ripped Jesus's flesh off of his bones.
And so he would have been flayed open with flesh hanging and quivering and tender hanging open all the way around from his ribs to his back. That's why in Psalm 22 where David is prophesying about the cross, where Jesus hanging on the cross says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's the first line of Psalm 22. They didn't have Numbers that was added later for our benefit, but the Numbers aren't there in the original text. And so they would have used that to describe that Psalm. And so Jesus is referencing that Psalm, which was written hundreds of years earlier, to describe in prophetically what Jesus was going to go through.
And in that Psalm, it talks about, I can see my ribs. So it is very likely that Jesus was so ripped open that he could see his ribs. You could see bones sticking out. The other thing that they would do while they were in that process is they've excavated these torture chambers in Rome. There are pockets in the wall that held salt. And so periodically during this process, they would go get handfuls of salt and throw it into the wounds of the victim.
So that that did two things. It increased pain and scarring and it cauterized it so that it would quit bleeding so that they can continue to torture the person for a longer amount of time. So having scourged Jesus, flayed him open, he handed him over to be crucified. Verse 16. And the soldiers led him away inside the palace. That is the governor's headquarters.
And they called together the whole battalion and they clothed him in a purple cloak, twisted together a crown of thorns and they put it on him. So they took a crown of thorns to mock him and stuck it down into his head so that thorns jabbed into the tender flesh around the top of his head. So they put it on him and they began to salute him. Hail, king of the Jews. And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down to him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him and they led him out to crucify him.
Crucifixion was invented by the Persians in about 500 B.C. Most scholars believe it was perfected by the Romans. So it spread throughout the known world, but the Romans got really good at it. At one point, the Romans crucified 6,000 people at one time. They used crucifixion for Roman citizens were not crucified unless it was the most high treason because they considered it such a gruesome death. They only used it on those who were not Roman citizens.
Females were very rarely crucified. And on certain occasions when a female was crucified, they crucified them facing the cross so that people didn't have to see a woman suffer in such a see the face of a woman as she suffered in such a way. So what crucifixion was, Josephus, who was a Roman historian, referred to crucifixion as the most wretched of deaths. Ancient philosopher Roman Cicero asked that decent Roman citizens not even speak of the cross because it was too disgraceful for the subject of the ears of decent people. In Deuteronomy 21, the Jewish people refer to crucifixion or being hung on a tree as being cursed by God.
That in the law of God, it is a curse on those who are crucified. And so Jesus was crucified and cursed by God in our place. So it would have been in a public place. It would be similar to when we used to put people in the stocks in the center of a town. If we were going to crucify someone today, we'd probably do it over at Harvison in the way to the mall or something like that in the middle of Carolina's campus. That's kind of how they would do it.
So they took him out on a public place kind of outside of the city but on a place that entered into it so that many people saw him. And the Bible tells us that he carried his own crossbar and that a guy named Simon of Cyrene carried it. And so we understand that to mean that Jesus carried it for as long as he could because he had stayed up all night, because he had had the increased stress level, and because he had been scourged already. And so they would have taken a 50 to 100 pound crossbar and put that on him, on his shoulders and back that had already been torn open by the whipping that he had received.
And he would have carried it. It had been similar to a railroad tie. And he would have carried it as far as he could. Then Simon of Cyrene carries it the rest of the way. Then they would have placed it onto the top of the upright that was going to be used.
He would have been laid down, and they would have driven nails through. Scripture says his hands, most likely it was through here. The Greek word for hands includes anything from the elbow down. And so it was most likely through here in between these two bones in this nerve center, which is one of the most dense nerve centers in the human body. And so nails would have been driven through here and through the top of his feet. And then that crossbar would have been slid over into a pre-prepared hole.
And so Jesus would have slid and dropped into place. Because it was through these nerve centers, involuntary twitching most likely was associated with crucifix. And so Jesus would have hung on the cross. Twitching. They were usually naked or almost naked. Some were crucified at eye level.
We believe Jesus was crucified higher, which they also did so that you were more visible. And we know at one point when he goes to get something to drink, they put a sponge on a stick. So if they'd have been able to reach him, they might have not needed the stick. So Jesus then hung on the cross for six hours where in order to breathe, he would have had to have lifted up, twisted his arms, and pulled so that he could get enough air. Because the way you usually die on the cross is through exposure, starvation, or asphyxiation, suffocation. And so you have to lift yourself up in order to breathe.
So every time Jesus exhales or makes a statement, it was at great cost and great pain to him while he was on the cross. And so Jesus hangs on the cross for six hours while he's being mocked with his back that has been ripped open by scourging, rubbing against the cross every time he has to lift himself to speak. We know that it was a holy day. And the Jewish people, because of Deuteronomy 21, consider crucifixion a curse by God. So they would always take people who were crucified off of the cross at night.
That's actually in the law in Deuteronomy 21. So the Jewish leaders go and ask the Romans to break the legs of those who were crucified so that they wouldn't stay on it overnight, even though sometimes people who were crucified could stay on it for upward to a week, just depending. Jesus had been scourged. A lot of times crucified victims weren't necessarily scourged prior to hanging on the cross. And so when they go to Jesus six hours or so into it, he has already died. They break the legs of the other two men who were crucified with him.
Seeing Jesus has already died, they take a spear and they drive it through his side into his heart. We're told that none of his bones were broken, but when they did this, that blood and water came out, which in medical terms means he most likely died of asphyxiation, which means that basically due to suffocation, his heart exploded. And so that's where water and blood would have come from if the spear had pierced his heart sack. And so Jesus died. Gruesomely, horrifically, publicly, in the most shameful way that humans have invented to kill someone, Jesus died. And so the Bible is going to say that Jesus is God who became a man and that Jesus as God, fully capable of stopping this, fully capable of taking another route, fully capable of not going to the cross, lays his life down on the cross on our behalf.
So that Jesus as God died. And so what I want us to look at in the last part of tonight is why. What did Jesus accomplish in his death? Why would God see it important enough to become a man? And the way we see scripture playing out is he didn't become a man just to see how things were going, that God became a man with the express intentionality of dying. He continues to train his disciples.
I'm going to die. I'm going to be handed over into the hands of evil men. I'm going to be crucified. Three days later, I'm coming back. And he says that over and over again. Jesus came with the express purpose of dying.
And if he was God, and he was, why? Turn with me to Romans chapter three. Romans chapter three. It's just a flip to your right. Page six, 11. If you're holding one of the Bibles that we have, we're asking the question now.
So if that's how God died, why did God die? Did he have to? Romans three, verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Righteousness means rightness or justice or goodness. So the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.
And the law and the prophets is referring to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, and then the books of prophecy in the Old Testament. Bear witness to it. The righteousness of God. So the rightness or the justness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
So verse 23 says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of the God. Here's what the Bible is going to say. Why Jesus died. Why Jesus came and why Jesus as God died. God in the beginning created the world to exist in a relationship with himself and the world rebelled. That humans who he made to be image bearers of himself chose to rather worship themselves, love other things more than they love God.
And that they thought that we believed that we have our own best interests at heart. That God doesn't know what's best for us and that we can make wiser decisions than he can. So we as humans rebelled. That we are sinners. That's what rebellion against God is. That's what choosing to pursue the things other than God is.
And so we are sinners by nature and choice. Which just means that we're born sinful. And then after that we choose to be sinful. And here's how we know that. I'll give you some examples. Nobody ever had to teach you how to lie.
Ever. You just knew. Nobody sat with a three-year-old. Like you didn't have an uncle that sat you down and said, Alright, let me explain something to you. I know you're three and it's going to be a little complex. But let me help you out.
If you do something and then your mom kind of takes that tone with you. The one that makes you feel uncomfortable inside like you're about to get in trouble. Just whatever she's asking. Just say the opposite happened. Or say you don't know. Or that you weren't involved.
Like it's hard. Like you can't even really explain that to a three-year-old. It would be hard to explain the concept of lying. But three-year-olds know how to lie. And you can hear people running. Something crashed.
You run into the other room. There's a kid holding a lamp. He's holding the power cord. Runs over to a broken lamp. Did you break that lamp? It doesn't seem like something I do.
Nobody has to teach them that. You can have a little kid three years old have Cheeto powder all over their face in their hair. Have you been eating Cheetos? No. I don't even like Cheetos. Nobody explains that to them.
Do you have to sit down a child and explain to them how to be selfish? No. You've got to teach them how to share. You have to teach humans how to be generous. You have to teach us how to be honest. And even as we grow up and we know, everyone in this room knows that life and society would be better if we were all just honest with each other.
And life and society would be better if we were all just generous. And let me tell you something. We lie and we're greedy. All of us. Because even though we know it's wrong, we still choose to pursue it. I lock my doors at night and sleep with a Springfield 45 in the bedside table.
I don't do that because I'm afraid of raccoons. I do that because of humans. I don't think a possum is going to bust up in my house and pick the lock and break in in the middle of the night. I think that a human might. Because the reason that the earth has problems, the reason that we have struggle and strife and war and infanticide and murder is because of humans. Because we're sinful and we're all sinful.
And so the Bible says that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's what Romans 23 says. Romans 3.23. What we just read. So what that means is, and so we'll sit and say, well, yeah, okay.
But I'm not that bad. Like if you lined up all the humans, I mean I may be near the middle, but I'm going to be on the good side of the middle. And so we either believe, we'll either believe that we have to be mostly good. So I've got to be like 51% good. You know, if I'm just 51% good, I'm okay. I'm mostly good.
I'm a pretty good person. Here's the problem with that. That's not how justice works. My wife and I, my wife, Anna, loves murder shows. Loves them. Creeps me out.
She loves them. The other night we started to wash one. It was late at night. I don't like washing them late at night. I wash them with her during the day because I can get something else in my brain before I go to sleep at night. We were washing one the other night.
We cut it off. And she looks at me and goes, are you going to be okay? I was like, yep. And it got started. And I was like, no. And I cut it off.
Because I don't like them. I don't like having that in my head before I go to sleep at night. And the reason I think that is is because, first of all, they mess with me. I'll be laying in bed thinking. I always like the ones. If we're going to watch one, I like it when it was like someone they knew murdered them.
Like their spouse murdered them. I'm a little less worried about that. But the ones where it's like they were watching TV and men entered their house. And I'm like, we're watching TV. Messing my head. I'll be looking over my shoulder like.
And she just goes to sleep at night because in the division of labor at our home, if someone broke in our house, that's my job. Like it ain't going to be like, hey, you know the chart, honey. It's Tuesday. You got to handle it now. I'm a Monday, Wednesday, Friday guy. Like that's not how that works.
So she just goes to sleep. I lay in bed with my eyes wide open. And I'll be like. They'll be like, he was so normal. I'll be like, I wonder if I. If the person who works at my hardware store murders people.
Like I just mess with my head. And so we were watching one the other day and it was a doctor had killed his wife. And when he went to trial, this is how this worked. The prosecution was trying to prove that the doctor had killed his wife. And the defense was trying to prove that the doctor had not killed his wife. That was the point of contention.
The defense did not come in and say, hey, judge, okay. He killed her. Pretty obvious. But we have verified fact reported cases of 50 lives that he has saved as a doctor. Eyewitness accounts of all the lives he's saved. And the judge looked and said, oh, that means he's plus 49.
49 Humans he's saved. He's only killed one. He's plus 49. Innocent. That's not how justice works. If the doctor was some sort of a serial killer and he said, look, of course, okay.
I kill one person a month. But I save five lives a month. I'm plus four a month. I'm doing great. And we somehow think that our God, who is a just God. We can stand before him and say, yeah, I'm sinful, but I'm mostly good.
And I hate to break it to you, but the Bible is going to come out pretty hard on you're not even mostly good. That your heart is twisted and marred beyond belief. And the truth is none of us would like to sit down and have our thoughts and our actions displayed on screen for everyone else to watch. I know to the Lord I would not. Because we're messed up and we're broken. And the Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The other thing that we do is we'll say, well, okay, yeah, I'm messed up, but I'm better than other people. On the bell curve of humans, I'm on this side of it. That's not what it says, though. What it says is we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The test for us is not, are you better than other humans? So we in some ways think that sin works like running from a bear, which means you don't have to be faster than the bear.
You just got to be faster than the person with you. But that's not how it works. We all sin and we fall short of the glory of God. And we are all guilty. And our God, who is a just God, says that we're guilty. When we read through scriptures as Americans, as Westerners, we read through the Old Testament and you talk to people, the biggest issue we'll have is with God's justice.
We'll say, who does God think he is to destroy a city? Who does God think he is to flood the earth and kill all of those people? Who does God think he is to take a man who stole something and then take his whole family out and stone them? But see, the Bible doesn't have that problem. When you read through the Old Testament, when you read through the New Testament, scripture is saying, how does God forgive people? The Bible doesn't have a problem with his justice in the Old Testament.
It's God's mercy that's confusing. It's the fact that people who do rebel against God receive favor from him and are not destroyed. So you see, King David receives favor from God. He's on his roof one day while his army is out fighting. And he should have been with them, but he's on his roof and he sees a beautiful woman. He lusts after her.
He finds out who she is. They say, she's the wife of Uriah, one of your men, one of your soldiers who's out fighting. And he says, bring her to me. So they commit adultery and then she gets pregnant. After she gets pregnant, David decides the best way to handle this is to murder Uriah. So he has Uriah murdered.
Then a prophet comes to him and says, because you've done this, God says that that child's not going to live. But the Lord says, I have hidden away your sin and you won't die. And the Bible says, how does that happen? How is that justice? If you're Uriah's parents, is that justice? That he gets to stay king and he doesn't get punished for his sin?
Let's keep reading. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. Propitiation means that he diverted the wrath. He accepted God's wrath on our behalf, that God has wrath for sin and sinners. And Jesus received it on our behalf through his blood that he shed on the cross. To be received by faith.
This was to show God's righteousness, his rightness, his goodness, his justice. Because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. So Paul is telling us this is how this makes sense for him to give grace and mercy to people who deserve destruction. He overlooked it because Jesus was going to take wrath on our behalf. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So that God can be both good and the one that makes us good.
That he can be both righteous and the one who makes us righteous. That he can be both just and the one who justifies, makes us right with God. God propitiated, poured his wrath out on Jesus so that he can be both just and justifier. And so in the cross what we see is God's wrath and his mercy. In the cross what we see is God's justice and his ability to justify us. What we see is his hatred of sin and his great love for us.
And so there are three things that Jesus accomplishes and that he makes certain on the cross. The first one is that our sin is a big deal. It's a big deal. You cannot watch God hang from a cross after having his back ripped open and think that sin is somehow a light offense. Rebellion against the most high God is treason of the highest sort. We cannot downplay our sin.
The cross negates our ability to do that. Our sin is a big deal. With every lash, with every nail, with every hour that passes Jesus hung on that cross, God with an exclamation Mark declares that our sin is a big deal. Be not uncertain at all. And in no uncertain terms, our sin is a big deal. The second thing that is made certain for us is that God loves us.
He loves us. So that scripture is going to say that God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Gave him. It doesn't mean he just came. It means he gave him up. He died.
Gave his only son that whoever believes in him might not perish, might not be destroyed, might not have the wrath of God met out on them, but might have life. So people will say all the time, God loves you. Great. That sounds good. God loves you. He wants good things for you.
That sounds nice. How do you know? I've had people before say, we don't need to talk about the cross. We need to talk about God's love. Okay, but if God loves us, how do we know? The cross is how we know.
Jesus on the cross once and for all proves that God is good and that he is for our good. That he loves us beyond measure. And the third thing we see is that we can be made right with God. That God is both just and justifier. That he makes us right with himself. That we who are sinful and broken and rebellious can stand before God and be justified.
Can be free. Can have life and righteousness. Jesus, people will say that we don't need to talk about the cross. That we need to talk about God's love or his mercy or how he's a good father. But we don't need to talk about the cross.
We don't need to talk about atonement. We don't need to talk about propitiation. That God has wrath for sin and sinners. But when I look at my life. When I look at my sexual sin and my rebellion. When I look at my pride.
And all the times that I thought that by being good or doing moral things. I could present something to God and he would owe me. When I look at how sinful I have been. I don't want to get rid of the cross. I need it too badly. I don't want to downplay the cross.
I need it. I need Jesus to pay for my sin. Because without Jesus paying for my sin. I'm hopeless. A vague promise that God loves me does nothing for me. When I've rebelled against him actively since the day I was born.
We need the cross. Because our sin is a big deal. But our God loves us more than we could ever comprehend. That he was willing to come and die to rescue his people. To make us right with himself. The band is going to come back up.
And we're going to celebrate the cross. We're going to celebrate that God became a human. And that God died in our place so that we could have life. It says that. 24. Or 23.
For all have sinned. And fall short of the glory of God. And are justified by his grace as a gift. Meaning we don't earn it. He freely gives it to us. We're made right with God.
Freely. It's a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. To be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness.
Because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time. So that he might be just. And the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Jesus. We approach Jesus with faith.
Faith that our sin was met out. Our punishment was met out. Jesus took it all on the cross for us. And so what we're going to do is we're going to celebrate the cross. And if you're in here tonight and you're not a Christian. And you haven't placed faith in Jesus.
Place faith in Jesus. Because all have sinned. All have fallen short. And all can be justified by grace freely through faith in Jesus. So place your faith in Jesus that he has rescued and redeemed with his blood.
And that the cross, your punishment that we all deserved was met out on Jesus. That we who are rebellious and deserve destruction and wrath can have life and freedom and hope. Because of what Jesus has already accomplished. That he died for our sins and that he rose again. Came back to life fully conquering the grave. Place your faith in Jesus.
And we'll pray and then we'll sing. God we thank you that you are just and justifier. That we can receive grace as a gift. That we can be made right with you because of Jesus. Not anything we do. Not anything we earn.
Not how smart we are. Capable we are. How religious we can be. But that we can repent of our sins. That we can admit that we're broken and that we fall short. And that we can have life in your name.
Jesus. We have life in your name and your name only. And we praise you. We ask that through your Holy Spirit you would save people tonight. That God the just punishment for our sin would be met out on Jesus. And that we would be set free forever to walk behind you as those whom you've rescued through your blood.
We love you. We praise you in Jesus name. Amen. Y'all stand and let's sing.
Incarnation
Transcript
We're going to talk about who he was, why he came, what he accomplished. So we're just going to spend three weeks talking about Jesus and some specific aspects of his life, of his death, of his resurrection. So that's kind of what we'll be doing for the next three weeks, and I'm excited about it. I think it's going to be good. Tonight we'll be specifically talking about the Incarnation, and we'll talk more about what that means later. If you'll turn with me to Philippians chapter 2, it's going to take us a long, long time to get there tonight.
I want us to approach this a little bit differently. If you don't have a Bible, just raise your hand. We've got some guys that will be handing them out. If you don't own a Bible, take that one with you. That's our gift to you. But we do want you to, we're Bible people, so we'll always be in the Bible together when we get together.
So it will take us a while to get there tonight. Don't worry, we will get to Philippians 2. Just for the record, if we ever get together and we don't eventually get to Scripture, we did it wrong, and I shouldn't be allowed to talk anymore if we just get together and talk about things and never unpack Scripture. But the reason we're going to approach it a little bit differently tonight is I want us to not approach, we're talking about the life of Jesus and the impact that he's had, and I want us to just for a little while not approach it as Christians, not approach it as people who automatically believe that what the Bible says is true, not approach it as people who study the Bible to find truth.
I just want us to look a little bit at first at Jesus, the man from history. I just want us to investigate it more as skeptical Americans as we get started tonight. And so if you can do that, if you can kind of take yourself out of Christian, ready to just unpack Scripture mode for just a little while, and we're going to get there, but I want us to approach it more as skeptical Americans just looking at who Jesus was as he comes to us through history. And so that's kind of what we're going to be doing tonight. I'm going to pray, and then we'll get to talking. God, I thank you for this opportunity to get together.
I pray that your Spirit would be here, that you would lead us, and that you would teach us and draw us to yourself. Ultimately, Jesus is about you, so I pray we'd make much of your name. And may you reveal yourself to us every time we gather together with church family, whether that's in our homes or at a restaurant or here when we get together on Sundays. And so, God, we praise you, we thank you, and we ask you to be active and at work with us tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. My granddad, when he was somewhere between 5 and 10, was at a barbershop getting his hair cut.
As he was getting his hair cut, a man walked up on the street and kind of turned and started looking in the window and sat looking in the window at my granddad for just a minute or two. And then he just kind of turned and walked off. And my granddad had kind of made eye contact with him and noticed the guy was looking at him. And as he walked off, the bartender said, son, do you know who that was? Oh, sorry. The barber.
Yes, my granddad had a drinking problem from the age of five. Sorry. The barber, thank you. The barber said, son, do you know who that was? And my granddad said, no, sir. And he said, that was your daddy.
And so my granddad hopped out of the chair and ran over to the window, his hair half cut, and watched this guy walk down the street. And that was the only time he ever saw his actual father. He had an adoptive father, Papa Holloman, who ended up being a good dad and a good granddad. And it's funny, but the man who should have used his life to impact my granddad chose to peace out, chose to not be a part of it. And somebody who didn't have to be involved chose to step in and be a father to him when he didn't have to. And that's how life works.
Life affects life. So our lives have been the most radically impacted by other lives. That's just how living on the planet Earth works. So whether it was coaches or teachers or parents or grandparents or friends, the end of a life or the beginning of a life, life affects life. We bounce around into each other having massive impact on one another. And there are some lives that have an impact on the few lives around them, and then there are some lives that impact millions and billions of lives.
And so what we're going to do tonight is we're actually going to look at the life that has had the most lasting impact on the history of the world. We're going to take some time for the next three weeks, and specifically talking about his life tonight, to just look at Jesus who has had a massive impact on the history of the world. Just as humans, we owe it to ourselves to investigate the human who has impacted the world more than any other human. We have to just be logically coherent and intellectual beings. We've got to look at and investigate this life. And so that's what we're going to spend some time doing.
So I want to read some quotes to you. This is from H.G. Wells. He wrote A Short History of the World. He's a British author and historian. And this was in a conversation he was having about this book, A Short History of the World.
Because in the book he included Jesus. And so he says this. He says, I'm a historian. I am not a believer. But I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history.
Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history. So that's a British historian. He's saying, look, I'm not a Christian. I have no reason to puff Jesus up or to sell him to you. All I'm doing is looking at history. And he's the center of it.
He's easily, irrevocably the center of all history. In 1999, Time Magazine, which is not a Christian publication, was doing some stuff on the past centuries, past millennium. And it says this in Jesus. It refers to Jesus as man of the millennium in this article. And it said, It would require much exotic calculation, however, to deny that the single most powerful figure, not merely in these two millenniums, but all human history, has been Jesus of Nazareth. Not only is the prevalent system of denoting the years based on an erroneous 6th century calculation of his birth, but a serious argument can be made that no one else's life has proved remotely as powerful and enduring as that of Jesus.
It's an astonishing conclusion in light of the fact that Jesus was a man who lived a short life in a rural backwater of the Roman Empire and who died in agony as a convicted criminal. So Time Magazine said, It doesn't make sense. He shouldn't have had this impact. But Jesus is not only the man of the millennium, but all of history, Jesus. And I've got one more. This is from a Yale historian.
His name's Jaroslav Pelikan. He says, Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost 20 centuries. If it were possible with some sort of super magnet to pull out of history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left? So what he's saying is if we just had history and it was some sort of metal and you just took a magnet and sucked all the things that Jesus impacted out of it, history wouldn't look the same. That he's the most dominant figure in history.
Jesus broke history in half. That's what the Time Magazine article said. We based the date off of him. You can't sign a contract without making reference to Jesus. You can't do it. What you say is, Oh yeah, Chet Phillips, this is 2014 years since Jesus was born.
He was a carpenter and he lived in the middle of nowhere and eventually he was killed when he was about 30. Yep, that should about do it. I've signed my contract. Like that's what dates are. We're referencing Jesus' birth. He is the most influential man that has walked on the planet and that's crazy because his impact shouldn't be that.
It doesn't make sense from historically who he was. It doesn't make sense from where he lived, what he did, what he accomplished. He didn't live past the age of 33. He never did any of the things you're supposed to do to get famous. And he didn't have any of the things that we have that help us get famous. Like he didn't have the internet and the ability to film himself doing something funny with a cat.
Like he didn't have that. But there are some things, if you want to get famous, if you want to imprint your name on history, there are a few things you can do. You can write a book. Have you ever heard of Mark Twain or Tolkien or Hemingway or Shakespeare? You can paint. So he could have been an artist.
He could have painted pictures. You ever heard of Picasso or Monet or Rembrandt? If he wanted to make himself famous, he could have done that. He could have written songs or music like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Vanilla Ice. You know, all the major ones. But he didn't.
He didn't do any of the things that you're supposed to do to be famous, to imprint your name on history. He never led a rebellion. He wasn't a king of earthly kingdom. He never did any of the things that when you look at him in a historical perspective that would say, oh yeah, absolutely, this man should have marked history. Absolutely. Because he was born to an unwed mother in the middle of nowhere and then he was a carpenter for 30 years, which we all know is what you're supposed to do to get famous, be a carpenter.
And then he led a group of guys around for about three years, did some, you know, taught them some things and then he died and had about 120 people that were really bought into what was going on. Nailed it. Absolutely he's going to be famous. That's not how that works. And so he never did any of the things that you're supposed to do to impact history, to when you look at him from a historical perspective. And so it's as if you were walking along, skipping rocks at a pond and you picked up a rock and you threw it in and when it hit, it didn't skip, but it caused a tsunami wave that threw all of the water out of the pond.
And then you looked and the rock was just sitting there on the bare bottom of the pond by itself and you would go, that's weird, and keep on walking. No, you would want to investigate what was different about that rock. You would just assume that that rock wasn't the same as the other ones you had been throwing. And in some ways, when we look at history and say, yes, absolutely, Jesus is the most impactful man in history, but he was just a man who taught some things and died when he was 30. It's not logically coherent. And so as intellectual beings who investigate the world around us, we have to do something with Jesus.
He comes to us through history and we have to do something with him. We have to investigate this a little bit. And so I just want to let you know before we hop in, what we're going to do tonight is we're going to look at some eyewitness testimony about Jesus. But I want you to know that my skeptic's radar is fully functioning. I don't just believe things because people tell it to me. I never really have.
I got that honest because my dad's like that. He'd be like eight telling my dad a story and you'd be like, guess what happened? And you tell him, he'd go, that didn't happen. That's stupid. And you're like, what? But a guy at school told me.
This doesn't make any sense. How did they make the phone call? And it's like, I don't know how to make the phone call. Right. And then how would the people have known to show up? Tell your friend he's lying.
It's like, well, I don't know if we'll still be friends. Well, you shouldn't be friends with people that lie to you. And so he would do this and this is how I grew up and that's kind of how I am when people start telling me stories. I just automatically, if it doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense, I just, I'm not buying it. And I've gotten better with Anna's help. I don't immediately tell people anymore.
I haven't fixed my face yet. So if you're ever talking to me and I do this, that, I mean, okay, sure. Sure, you think I'm stupid. That's fine. But, but I won't cut you off to tell you all the reasons why what you're telling me doesn't make any sense. I might sometimes.
But, but anyway, I just wanted you to know, I don't, I don't just approach things blindly. And so as we go into looking at what scripture says, I want to, all of us to approach it like skeptics just for a little bit. So there's some of us in here that we believe the Bible because it's the Bible. And there may be some of us in here who we don't believe the Bible because it's the Bible. You're automatically, oh, that's the Bible so it can't be true. Or you're automatically, well, it is the Bible so it has to be true.
And I just want us to approach it with a little bit more investigation before we hop in and start looking at this eyewitness testimony. And so I want to give you some facts about scripture, about what we have when we study the Bible really quickly that helps me appreciate what it is. So the way old documents work, so I'm going to go into professor mode for a second and just track with me. The way old documents work is this. You want to get the original document that was handwritten. We don't have many of those for anything.
After about the Middle Ages, we don't have them for hardly anything at all. I don't think we have them for anything. So what you want to do is then get to a copy of the original document that was close to when it was originally written. So if something was written today or something was written, let's say something was written at 0 BC, we want to get as close to it as we possibly can of a copy of what was originally written. So we'd like to get to 200 or 300 or somewhere around in there.
Then you want to have multiple copies of the original so that you can match them together. So if you have 10 copies of something, you read this one and this one and this one and this one to kind of match them up. You may have heard the argument that scripture's not really reliable because what happened was it was written in Greek and Hebrew. That was translated into Latin and other languages, but that was translated into English. The next translation was off of that English translation and the next translation used that English translation and the next translation used that English translation.
And so it's like the elementary school whisper game. And so you whisper something and the next person whispers it and by the time it gets to this person it's a jumbled up bunch of garbage. That's not how scripture works. That's not how the Bibles that you're holding work. They always go back to the original manuscripts and we have more manuscripts now than we've ever had. So when a Bible translation comes out it's looking at the original extant copies of manuscripts that we have.
So to compare this the Bible to other things we have in antiquity. So we believe the history stuff we learned in class. Let's investigate the Bible the same way. Everything we learned about Caesar and his wars comes from a document called the Gallic Wars. We have about ten of those. The closest one to when it was originally written is 900 years.
So it was originally written on this date 900 years later we have a copy we have ten copies that we can compare and that's what you're taught in school about Caesar and a lot of the wars that took place and how they took place and what he did and Carthage and all of that. The copies of scripture we have 24,970 copies of scripture in 15 languages that are in 90 to 95% agreement with each other. Which means when you compare the 24,000 across the board they agree 90 to 95%. Now that is before the printing press. A lot of those were done in the middle ages when you had monks just sitting and writing out things.
If you went back to just 300 years and only looked at the Greek we have about 5,600 copies of Greek manuscripts that were handwritten copies of Greek manuscripts. This beats everything else we have in antiquity. Everything else prior to the middle ages the Bible beats it. As far as what copies we have of it. The next best thing is Homer's Iliad. The closest copy we have is about 400 and we have got about 650 copies of those.
So everything you read about Homer that really long poem that was kind of confusing. The Iliad and the Odyssey. We have a pretty good amount of copies of those. We're pretty sure that's what Homer said or wrote. The Bible is actually more trustworthy than that. It's the most trustworthy document in antiquity.
The most well-attested to event in history. Ancient history. Outside of something we have on video is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ because of the amount of copies that we have that we can compare to each other and the way we view history. So, one more thing that I think is helpful when I approach this and look at it and I'm automatically skeptical about things. if you just look at quotations from church fathers. So, Christians who were writing things to each other and to churches at the beginning of Christianity existing. If you took about the first 300 years you'd have about 36,000 quotations of the New Testament.
We don't recreate the entire New Testament but much of it can be recreated just from reading the original church fathers. So, the reason I say that is when we look at scripture we're looking at historical accounts of eyewitnesses that is what we know is that what was written is what we're reading. Now, if you want to say well, sure, they wrote wrong stuff. Fine. I'm fine with that. If you want to say that John made stuff up I disagree with you but I'm fine with you saying that that's at least logically coherent you can make that argument.
But, if you want to say that what we have is not what John wrote I disagree with you because that's not accurate when you when you compare the manuscripts. Does that make sense? Okay, so, when we look at this we're at least looking at what was written by them when we study this. So, what we're going to do is we're going to look at some eyewitness testimony about Jesus. So, what we have is a guy who was born in the middle of nowhere to an unwed mother who lived for about 30 years as a carpenter. We don't know much about his childhood.
We do know that he existed from all kinds of documents not only scripture but other historians and everything. We know that he existed. We know that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate and we know that he's had a more long lasting impact on the rest of history. So, we have a human who should not have had a major impact who did. Has had more impact than anyone else and didn't do any of the things he should have done to accomplish that. So, we've got to ask the question why?
We have to do something with Jesus when it comes to this. So, we're going to get to Philippians. I'm going to show three verses in the New Testament in the Gospels eyewitness accounts about Jesus that really mess up our ability to approach Jesus in a good way because Jesus walked around telling people he was God and that messes up our ability to approach him in a normal way. That really throws us off. When Jesus starts telling people he's God we can't just approach him the way we'd approach any other human. So, I'm going to give you a few examples of that.
John 5.18 says, But Jesus answered them, My father is working until now and I am working. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath which is why they were arguing but he was even calling God his own father making himself equal with God. Okay, so, we refer to God as father all the time. Jewish people did not do this. So, when Jesus says this it automatically they're like, whoa, because they understand how father-son relationships work. The son of a duck is a duck.
Son of a goat is a goat. Yeah. So, when Jesus says my father is God he's claiming to be God and the Jewish people immediately recognize this and that's why John writes that. So, when I say God is my father we're used to that language but Jewish people were not. Jesus is the one who introduced that language and invited us into the family. John 8.
So, it's another argument with religious people. He says, Your father Abraham, so Abraham the father of the Jewish nation rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So, the Jews said to him you are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham. Jesus said to them truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was, I am. So, they picked up stones to throw at him but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
Okay. Also, doesn't immediately register with us. I am is the name that God used when he showed up to Moses in the Old Testament. So, actually, the uppercase in your Bible, if you see uppercase letter Lord, all uppercase, that's actually the I am. It's the name that God, proper name God gave himself. So, they would have actually avoided using the I am statements like this.
Jesus says them a lot and the reason I like this one is because we would say, well, he doesn't really say he's God. The people there knew immediately what he had said because they picked up rocks to kill him. They understood what was happening. So, he says, before Abraham was, I am, and they were like, oh, no, he didn't. Get your rocks, he's going down. Like, they immediately reacted knowing that what he had said was blasphemous.
You're not allowed to say these things. We have to kill you. Like, that's not okay. And I'm going to give you another example. He hid from them there. So, it wasn't like they changed their mind.
It was just, he got away. Mark 14, 60 and 65. This is, 60 through 65, 64. This is the night before Jesus is going to be crucified. He's on trial. It says, the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make?
What is it that these men testify against you? So, a bunch of people were accusing Jesus of things, but he remained silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, what further witnesses do we need?
You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. So, he looks at him and says, are you the Christ? Are you the son of the blessed? Are you the son of God?
And Jesus says, I am. And you'll see me seated at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. Very clearly looks at him and says, I am. They tear their clothes and say, we don't need any more testimony. We just watched him say he was God. We just watched him blaspheme.
He must be destroyed. So, for everyone who would like to say, well, Jesus was a good guy and he was a good teacher, there's a problem with that. He walked around telling people he was God and that only gives you a few options. You only have a few choices when it comes to Jesus because he told people he was God. Like, you've got to make a decision on that. He's the most influential human in history and he told people he was God and so we've got to do something with that.
So, I'm going to help you out. I'm going to give you the four options that are logically coherent options that you can choose from but you've got to choose one of them. No choice is a choice, just for the record. You've got to do something when it comes to Jesus as he comes to us through history. So, I'm going to give you four. The first one is legend.
You can say that what we have in scripture was later made up. This is the least likely one and I don't think it's easy to argue if you study it for a while you'll realize that this can't be the case. But, what you could say is that people came, Jesus actually existed, he was a human, nobody argues with that at all anymore really because we've got so much historical fact pointing to Jesus. You could say he was a human but his followers made up all the stuff about him. All the mystical, all the miracles, the fact that he rose from the dead, his followers made it up, wrote it down, told people, or people made that up later is what people say.
Well, the problem with that is it was written, the documents about his life and the story about his life was written and spread with people who still existed when he was around. So, it's really easy to debunk a legend. That's not how legends work. Legends have to happen hundreds of years later because when you're making things up about some fantastic thing that took place, it's easy to discredit it and so it stops quickly. I can't be like, hey, y'all, remember when aliens took over Columbia in 1982? You'd be like, no, that never happened.
I'd have to wait hundreds of years before I could get that story going because I've got to have people around who weren't here, didn't know anything about it. If I started making up stories about a person that y'all knew, you'd just say, nah, he never did that and it would be easy to debunk it. It would be easy to get rid of it and so the problem is we have manuscripts that were written within 50 to 100 years after Jesus was around. Within about 150 years, they were on four continents in three languages. So whoever was making this up would have really had to have gotten to work spreading the story and people would have still been able to just say that that didn't happen.
But you can say he's a legend, he's legendary, he's made up. The next three are a little more options for you. You can say, and this is kind of C.S. Lewis lays this out, he calls it the trilemma, but you can say he was a liar. So you can just say Jesus knew he wasn't God and he tricked people and that's an option.
You would be saying that the most influential man in history was an epic con man who's conned billions of people, tricked billions of people. He was a liar. You could say that his followers were liars. The problem with that is that all 11 of his disciples were martyred, which means murdered for their faith, except for one who was boiled alive in oil, he just didn't die. And then he was exiled to an island where he died of old age with like a melted face. But all the other ones were murdered for faith in Jesus and so if it was an elaborate lie, I just got to feel like one of them would have been like, you know what, time out?
No, we made it up. Never mind. We made it up. Or you could argue that maybe they didn't know about it but then you'd have to do something with where the body went because the argument is that his disciples then stole his body and hid it and that's why it wasn't in the grave. They never produced a body and said here's Jesus, he didn't rise from the dead. But you could say he was a liar, that he tricked a bunch of people and that's actually logically coherent although he'd have to be pretty good at it.
You could say no, he wasn't a liar, he was crazy. He was a lunatic if you want him to all start with L's. I don't use that word, I say crazy. But he was a lunatic, he was crazy. And so the most influential man in history was akin to Charles Manson or Jim Jones. He was nuts.
And the truth is this is how we would treat you if you said the stuff Jesus said. So if I was like, dude, I heard people, you've been telling people you were God and you were like, I am. And you'll see me seated at the hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. I'd be like, okay. Did the unicorns tell you that? We would just assume, I got some people I need you to talk to.
Like, you need help. So if you want to say that, okay. What you're saying there is that he genuinely believed he was God but he was crazy. And so the most influential man in history who's had the most impact on our society and the way we view life was crazy. Or, your fourth option and what I would suggest you go with is that he was telling the truth and that he is Lord. Amen.
Those are our four options when it comes to Jesus. And this one to me actually makes the most sense because it explains the impact he's had in history. If somebody walks around and has this kind of an impact and changes the world the way that Jesus has and he walked around claiming he was God, we've got to do something with that. Philippians 2. Told you we'd get there. So this is what we're going to look at.
This is actually what scripture says. Scripture's going to say that yes, Jesus walked around over and over again saying he was God and the scripture's going to explain to us what that looks like because that's the position that scripture takes. That Jesus was God who became a human. Verse 5. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. What it's saying is that Jesus was in the form of God.
He was in the same substance of God that he was God. And he didn't account equality with God a thing to be grasped. He didn't hold on to that equality. He didn't say that this is where I rightfully need to be for all time but he actually it says he emptied himself so he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men. So that God our God became a human.
That's actually called the incarnation. That's what we're talking about tonight. That's what theologians would call the incarnation. What that means is like if you made chili con carne it just means chili with meat so that's the appropriate and correct type of chili to make for the record. Chili con carne and so when we talk about the incarnation what we're saying is that God took on flesh that he had meat. So if you ordered something at Taco Bell con carne it just means with meat so our God had flesh.
He became a human so he incarnated it says being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross and so here's what scripture is going to say very clearly that Jesus was God who became a man. He didn't cease to be God but it says he poured himself out so he basically took onto himself humanness and wrapped it around his divinity so he was God while he was a human but he released some of his divine attributes so divine attributes of God being that he's immutable which means he doesn't change Jesus changed he had to get haircuts he grew he got taller it says he grew in wisdom so he learned things like don't touch pots that are hot that kind of stuff he gave up his ability to be everywhere at all times he gave up his omnipotence he gave up all of his being all knowing all the time he actually we see him submitting himself to the Holy Spirit leading him and helping him understand people's thoughts but he poured himself out became a human was still God but wrapped humanity around that and that he lived a perfect sinless life on our behalf and that he submitted himself became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross so that Jesus died on a cross in our place for our sins it says therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father when it comes to Jesus we have four coherent options he's a legend he's a liar he's a lunatic or he's Lord and what scripture says is that everybody at some point is going to realize he was Lord the difference is are we going to realize it prior to dying or are we going to realize it when he comes back conquers his enemies and puts everything under his feet because every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and so we have the option and our goal as a church family is to see more and more people this side of eternity knowing that Jesus is Lord but you've got some options and you've got to if you're going to be an intellectual being who's coherent with history as it's presented to you you've got to figure out something to do with Jesus you've got to have a landing point somewhere you can't be neutral when it comes to Jesus because he doesn't give you that option and so I would encourage us to wrestle with that I would encourage us to ask those questions to investigate that and to walk that out in church family together as to where we land on that and what that looks like for us as he is as we would believe Lord of everything that he Jesus is God who became a man and who died in our place for our sins that's what we're going to talk about next week we're going to focus in on his death and what it looks like so we look like what it looks like when God becomes a man makes sense God becomes a man most influential man in history okay that's what it looks like when God becomes a human let's look at what it means when God dies and what that looks like band's going to come back up I'm going to pray and we're going to spend some more time worshiping God I thank you for your grace that you would be willing to become a man that you would humble yourself you would pour yourself out and become obedient to the point of death even death on a cross God I pray that your Holy Spirit would enlighten us and give us faith that we might draw near to you and that we might bend our knees and confess with our mouths that you are Lord that we might give you much glory in doing that God we love you and we praise you in Jesus name Amen
Easter Sunday
Transcript
Well, my name is Chet Phillips. I'm excited to be here. We're going to be looking in 1 Corinthians 15 tonight. We're going to spend most of our time there. We will jump at one point back to the Old Testament. We'll be in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
If you don't have a Bible, just hold your hand up and we'll get some to you. So just hold your hand up so we'll hand them out. We've got some guys that will be coming around. If you don't own a Bible, take that one home. That's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible.
If you do own a Bible, leave that one here. Bring yours with you next time or we'll let you borrow it again. So it will be 1 Corinthians chapter 15. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. And so this is what he says, verse 1. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you.
Gospel meaning good news. Of the good news I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. That he was buried.
That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Okay, we're going to stop for just a second. Paul says, I delivered you as of first importance. As primary, as foundational. I delivered you as of first importance that Christ died in accordance with the scriptures. That he was buried and that he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.
You may have heard a lot of things about what the Bible is about. You may have heard a lot of things about taught from the Bible. That it's some sort of a do's and don'ts list. So it's the do's and don'ts of the destined and damned. Or it's God's guidebook to life. It's God's road map to life.
You may have heard somebody open it up and teach you how to 10 steps to be a better whatever. To be a better father, a better wife, a better son. Paul says, I delivered to you as of first importance the gospel. That Jesus died, that he was buried and that he rose again. The Bible doesn't come out swinging against evolution. The Bible doesn't come out joining a political party.
Jesus doesn't vote straight ticket Republican. I'm sorry. He doesn't. He never rode an elephant. He did ride a donkey, but he wasn't a Democrat. He wasn't.
I hate to break it to you. He shatters all of our preconceived notions. He shatters all of our political parties. He doesn't come out chasing after some cause or or anything other. First importance is that Jesus Christ came to earth, that he died for sinners, that he was buried and that he rose again. That's what the Bible is going to come out swinging on.
It's going to come out fighting for pointing to Jesus. Paul says, according to the scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament, New Testament fighting for and pointing to Jesus. So if you're in here tonight and you'd say, I'm a believer, I'm a Christian, I follow Jesus. That's first importance for you. That's foundational. You grow in the gospel.
You don't grow away from it. You don't enter in by the gospel and then learn the deep things of God. You grow in the gospel. That's the foundation for us. And if you're here tonight and you're just checking out this whole Jesus thing, we're glad you're here. We think this is a very safe place to come check out Jesus.
We're not going to be pushy about things and we're all rough and messed up. And we just want you to invite you to hang out and be messed up with us. We all need Jesus. None of us are special or great, but we believe that Jesus is. We'd say, welcome. Come hang out.
And when you approach the Bible, this is of first importance. So you've got to answer and wrestle with the question, did Christ die for sinners? Was he buried? And did he rise again? That's it. That's the one you've got to wrestle with.
Then you can argue about study and dig into all the rest of it, but that's of first importance. And so that's what Paul comes out and says. And so that's what we're going to be digging into tonight. You see, Jesus was a good man, but that's not why people follow him. He was a moral man, but that's not why we're in this room tonight. He taught good things.
That's not why we're here. We're here because he was crucified. He died. He was put in a tomb. And then on Sunday this morning, he walked out. That's why we're here.
That's why people follow Jesus. That's why billions, with a B, people gathered today to celebrate Easter because of this. And so that's what we're going to talk about tonight. So we're going to look at. So we're just going to walk through this passage.
Verse 3. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with Scripture. Okay, so Christ is Jesus. You've heard Jesus Christ. Christ is not his last name. It's an office.
It means Messiah. So his last name would have been Son of Joseph is how they would have said his last name. So Christ isn't his last name. Christ is the office. So this is Jesus.
The Bible tells us that Jesus was God who lived a perfect life. He was the Son of God, came to earth, lived a perfect life in our place. He says, Christ died for our sins. I want to unpack that real quick. God created and designed the world to exist in relationship with himself, and we have done that very, very poorly. We have loved.
The Bible would say that sin is us loving anything else more than God. Us loving and pursuing and setting as our highest aim anything else more than God. And we know this is true, that when we love something over and against something else, it messes us up. We have disordered love. So that if I love success, or someone loves success more than anything, then they'll work really long hours and neglect their children.
Or if you love your status or approval more than the truth, then you'll lie and you'll bend the truth to make yourself look good. Because you love that more than you love honor and you love dignity. If someone loved wealth, if money was their highest aim, then they'd be willing to do whatever it took to get there. So they'll bend the rules as much as they have to to get to money. And so the Bible is going to say that when we come out loving anything else more than God, when he's not our highest aim, that we've rebelled against him and that we have sin. And so Jesus comes living a perfect, sinless life to die for sinners.
So Paul says that he delivered you as a first portents, that what I also receive, that Christ died for our sins. The Bible says in Romans 6.23 that the wages of sin is death, that what we earn when we sin is death. So we punch the clock and we earn at the end of the time to hand us a paycheck and that's death. That's all we can earn with our rebellion. That's all we can earn with our sin. Jesus never sinned, so he never earned death.
And then he died in our place, swapping places with us. So Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. That's verse 3. We're going to flip back to Isaiah 53. It's kind of in the middle of your Bible. This was written, what we're about to read was written 700 years before Jesus was born.
So we're going to come back to 1 Corinthians. We're flipping to Isaiah 53. So hold your finger where 1 Corinthians is because we're coming right back to it. Unless you like to live dangerously and then you can take your finger out. But you're going to have to find it again later.
So anyway, Isaiah 53. This was written by the prophet Isaiah 700 years before Jesus was born. So this is what Paul is saying when he died in accordance with the scriptures. It's over and over again in the Old Testament. We're just going to read this one chapter just for the sake of time. Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. This is talking about Jesus. There was nothing innately wonderful about him. He was a Galilean peasant.
He wasn't in a palace. He wasn't a king. He didn't strut around and people automatically bow to him. There was nothing, no beauty, no form of majesty that we should look at him. Verse 3. He was despised and rejected by men.
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. Old Testament law said that anyone who was hung on a tree was cursed by God.
And so Jesus was nailed to a cross on our behalf. He was stricken, smitten by God. Verse 5. But he was wounded for our transgressions. And he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
So he took our punishment so that we might have peace. And with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted.
Yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And like a sheep before it shears is silent. So he opened not his mouth. So Jesus when he was on trial. When he was being accused. When they were taking him and beating him.
When they were putting a bag over his head and punching him. So he couldn't see where the blows were coming from. So he couldn't flinch. He couldn't prepare. He never defended himself. He never stepped up and told him.
Wait I don't deserve this. He kept his mouth shut. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And as for his generation. Who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living. Stricken for the transgression of my people.
And they made his grave with the wicked. He was crucified in between two thieves. And with a rich man in his death. He used a borrowed tomb from a rich man. Named Joseph of Arimathea. He borrowed a tomb.
Which was okay. He wasn't planning on using it long. With a rich man in his death. Although he had done no violence. And there was no deceit in his mouth. So Jesus was sinless.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. So Jesus died for guilt.
And then those who believe are his offspring. Or those that come from that. They're set free from them. Out of the anguish of his soul. He shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one.
My servant make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities. That Jesus took our sin. Our iniquity. And he makes us be accounted righteous. That we aren't actually righteous.
That before God we are. Because he took our sin. And gave us his righteousness. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many. And he shall divide the spoil with the strong. Because he poured out his soul to death.
And was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many. And makes intercession for the transgressors. 1 Corinthians 15. So that's what Paul's talking about.
When he said Christ died in accordance with the scriptures. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. This was not a new idea. This had been being prophesied. Over and over and over again. That someone was going to come.
Someone was going to be stricken. Chastised so that we might have peace. That through his stripes we would be healed. That we would. As Zechariah said. We would look on the one whom they pierced.
That Jesus was going to die. So that we could have life. Okay. So. Verse 3. For I deliver to you as of first importance.
This is it. This is foundational. That what I also received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. That he was buried. Okay.
Okay. So far. Weird. But relatively normal. It's weird. But it's pretty normal.
Okay. So. Jesus. It says he died for our sins. So that's.
That's a little weird. People can die for a cause. Or they could be martyred for something. Or they could be. You know. Die for a country or something.
When it says he died for our sins though. It's talking about an actual trans. First action. Where our iniquity was laid on him. Our sin was laid on him. And he was crushed on behalf of us.
And he actually accomplished something in his death. Not just. You know. He died for his country. That kind of thing. So.
So that's a little weird. But he died and was buried. That's pretty normal. Pretty. Most people do that. I was reading a study the other day.
And I don't remember who. Put it out. But the death rate. On planet earth. Is hovering right around 100% right now. It stays up there for the most part.
From what I can tell. The mortality rates. Staying pretty high guys. So it's like. Something like 10 out of 10 people. Are going to die.
Yeah. I know. It's crazy. I'm thinking they should fix this at some point. So. That's pretty normal.
He died. That's what. That's what people do. He died and was buried. That's pretty normal. Okay.
Especially if you crucify someone. That's. That's what happens. He was executed. That's just a process. By which we speed up death.
And so he was. Dead and buried. Verse 4. That he was buried. That he was raised. On the third day.
In accordance with the scriptures. Okay. Now that got really weird. You see. The Bible is going to come out. And say that Jesus didn't.
Stay. Dead. That. On. Friday. He was crucified.
That he bled out. That after he died. Professional executioners. Said he was dead. And then. Just to be certain.
Took a spear. And ran it into his side. Piercing his heart. Then they took him down. Wrapped him in claws. And put him in a cave.
He was dead. Dead. Buried. And then on Sunday. He was walking. And talking.
That's weird. He was alive. Not. Not an apparition. He was alive. See.
This is why we get together. And celebrate. This is why Christians. Billions of Christians. Are all over the world. To celebrate.
Because Jesus. Didn't stay dead. He didn't come down here. Just to start some new form of religion. He didn't. Because he didn't do any of the things.
You're supposed to do. To start some new form of religion. He wrote down. Zero things. That we know of. Zero.
Like if I was going to start a new religion. First thing you do. Is you write out. How you get to be in the religion. So like.
Eating at Cracker Barrel. Makes you more holy. Like you know. I'd have a list of things. You know. I'd be up at the top somewhere.
Like biscuits. Equal sacrament. Like I don't know. It's like. It's important. He didn't do this.
The only time we ever know. That he wrote anything down. It was in the sand. If you want. Just. I'm going to help you all out.
If you want. What you're writing down. To last a while. Sand. Is a horrible medium. For that.
It really is. That's why. When you have like. Your beach girlfriend. You write that out in sand. Doug.
Hearts. Jess. Until the tide comes in. If you. Heart. Jess a little more.
Get a tree. And a knife. You know. Or do something classy. Like. A putt putt place.
You know. Just carve that in. At one of the little things. At a putt plus. Or. Or.
You know. Put it in stone. Write it down or something. But if you write it in sand. So he.
He didn't do. What it takes to. To start a religious movement. He got. A ragtag bunch of scrubs. That he.
Taught things to. That he built with. But he wasn't. Trying to push forward. Some religious agenda. Every time there.
A bunch of people got around. Jesus said. His hardest. Stuff. And ran people away. John chapter 6.
One of my favorite. Chapters in the bible. He tells people. To drink his blood. And to eat his flesh. And what he's talking about.
Is that they. You have to embrace. The cross. To be a Jesus follower. That Jesus following. Does not come.
Without the price of death. And they said. We think it's weird. That you said that. So he said it.
Six more. Times. And then they leave. And I think he was like. Good. I didn't think.
I didn't want to say it. Seven times. My goodness. And he looks at his disciples. And says. Y'all leaving too?
And they were like. No. And that's weird. But no. We're going to stick around. He didn't do.
What he was supposed to. To start a religion. But he didn't come. To start a religion. He came. To die.
Of first importance. Jesus Christ. Came to live. A perfect life. And to be crucified. On our behalf.
To be buried. As scripture said. He was going to be. And to on the third day. Rise again. That's what he came to do.
And that's exactly. What he did. That Jesus. Died. In our place. And he rose.
You see. If we just had Friday. We just had good Friday. And they said. That Jesus died. For our sin.
That would be nice. But we wouldn't know. We could say that. But we wouldn't know. We'd always be. Stuck.
Going. Did he really? Did he really accomplish it? But we don't just have Friday. We have Sunday. When Jesus rose.
And God put his seal. Of approval on him. And assured us. That our hope. Is not in vain. But that Jesus is alive.
And that the grave. Has been conquered. And that we can have life in him. And that our sin. Can be covered. All right.
Let's keep going. Four. That he was buried. That he was raised on the third day. In accordance with the scriptures. And then he appeared to Cephas.
Which Cephas is just. Peter. It's just in a different language. But both mean rock. Appeared to Cephas. Then to the twelve.
Then he appeared to more than. Five hundred brothers. At what time. Most of whom are still alive. Though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James.
Then to all the apostles. Okay. So. Jesus. Comes back to life. And starts walking around.
And talking to people. He appears to five hundred people. At one time. I love that Paul puts that in there. And he said. Some have fallen asleep.
But most of them are still alive. So what Paul is saying. Is I'm writing this. When there's a bunch of people. Who can. Verify what I'm saying.
At this time. When he wrote this. Cephas was still around. James was still around. All they had to do. Was be like.
Hey. I got this letter from Paul. Is that true? Yeah. That's true. Oh.
Okay. Like that was easy. Like. You could fact check this. It wasn't. Some kind of something.
Written hundreds of years later. He's writing it. He said. Most of these people are still alive. You can go ask them. But.
Jesus. All right. So Jesus. Dead. Alive. Eating.
Laughing. Walking. Talking. Alive. Still had scars. But alive.
He shows up. I love when. He shows up to his disciples at one point. And they freak out because they think he's a ghost. Which is appropriate. That's how death works.
You don't see those people again. Like. You don't talk to somebody and they're like. Yeah. I had to go to my grandmother's funeral. But it's okay.
I'll see her at vacation this summer. No. You won't. That's not how that works. So Jesus died.
And then he shows up and starts talking to him. And they all think he's a ghost. And I love this. So they're freaking out. They think he's a ghost. And Jesus says.
Do ghosts have flesh and blood? And then he takes some food and he eats it. To prove that he was actually alive. He was actually there. What I love about that was. Jesus doesn't say.
Hey fool. Ghosts aren't real. What he says is. Ghosts don't have feet. It's like. Wait a second.
I got to have a follow up question. Like. It's almost like he smacked one of them. Could a ghost do that? I don't know. I've never met one.
But Jesus shows up. And he was alive. He ate with him. He showed Thomas the scars in his hand and in his side. He was alive. He really rose.
Really had a body. Let people touch him alive. So Jesus died and he rose. And that's good news. And I'm about to show you. Give you an example of why that is good news.
So. Verse 7. Then he appeared to James. Then to all the apostles. Last of all. As to one untimely born.
He appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles. Unworthy to be called an apostle. Because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God.
I am what I am. And his grace. Grace just means unmerited favor. Unearned love. It's grace. It's just given to us.
And his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary. I worked harder than any of them. Though it was not I. But the grace of God that is with me.
So Paul says. I'm unworthy to be called an apostle. Because I persecuted the church of God. Let me tell you why this is such good news. Paul. Was the worst.
And that's great. Because that means I've got hope. Paul persecuted the church. Anybody who had the name of Christian. He hunted them down. Killed them.
Enjoyed it. He said he was zealous for it. He was looking for more opportunities. To go snatch people out of their homes. Have them arrested. Or murdered.
He was zealous for it. He had papers of people he could go arrest. And was on his way to do it. And Jesus showed up. And should have crushed him. But Jesus shows up.
And says. No I'm going to give you grace. You haven't earned it. And you don't deserve it. I'm going to give you grace. And that's great news.
Because you know who can get unearned grace. Everybody. You know who gets to be a Christian. Murderers. Liars. Perverts.
Addicts. Broken people. Thieves. Religious. Uptight. Snobby.
Prudes. People. Get to be Christians. None of us. Has anything. That we bring to God.
And say. Look at what I've earned. Look at what I've done. Look at what I've accomplished. None of us. We all get.
Grace. Which is. Unmerited. Unearned. Jesus's. Love on us.
For no other reason. Than. He's good. And he's loving. You see Paul. It had nothing to do with Paul's goodness.
Or badness. It had everything to do with Jesus's. Goodness. Your relationship to Jesus. Has nothing whatsoever to do with your goodness. Or your badness.
It has everything to do. With Jesus's. Goodness. And regardless of how messed up we are. Which I'm going to be honest with you. Very messed up.
Jesus is very. Very. Good. And his grace is sufficient. For all of us. And that's why that's.
Good. News. You see. Paul. When he met Jesus. He had a Friday problem.
Some of us in this room. We have a Friday problem. We just had. Good Friday. We just celebrated. Good Friday.
When Paul met Jesus. He had a Friday problem. Which meant that he. Did not know. That he deserved. To be crushed.
For his sin. Paul did not realize. That what happened to Jesus. On the cross. Was for Paul. That it was the punishment.
That Paul deserved. That Paul. Deserved to have met out on him. That it was met out on Jesus. In his place. Some of us are in here.
And that's. That's where we are. We've. Minimalized. We tried to act like. Our sin isn't a big deal.
That our rebellion. Our love of other things. Other than God. Our disordered love. Aren't a big deal. Aren't a problem.
That. That's some sort of social construct. That. That's not a real thing. We have. Sin.
And even for the people in the room. That would say. I don't believe in this whole concept of sin. I would ask this question. Why do you feel guilty? Why do you feel like you don't measure up?
Why do you often feel like you're falling short of some ideal that you don't believe exists? We have sin. And some of us need to realize that Jesus on Friday paid for our sin. That he was beaten. Brutally beaten. That he was hung on a cross.
Nailed through his hands and his feet. That he hung there for six hours. And that he died. Because we have sin. That deserves to be punished. So Paul when he realized his sin.
Then had a Sunday problem. Which was now that I see my sin. Now that I know how unworthy I am. I deserve to be crushed. And I'm not sure that you're capable of taking this away. But see Jesus rose on Sunday.
Conquering sin on our behalf. That our sin can be paid out on Friday. And taken away on Sunday. That Jesus in the gospel. Rescues us both from the penalty. And the power of our sin.
That he takes it away from us. So some of us in here are saying. I know I'm a sinner. I know I'm broken. I know I'm messed up. I know this isn't right.
But Jesus rose from the grave. He takes away all sin. There are no sins too big for Jesus to take away. There is no problem too big for Jesus to handle. You sin like a human. And he saves like a God.
You are not bigger and badder than Jesus is. And he is capable of rescuing all of us. And it's given freely to us. And this is very good news. That we can admit our sin. Admit that we're broken.
And be set free. And be rescued. And redeemed. I love naps. They're the best. It's an awkward transition.
But it was a really good statement. That's true. I love naps. I love them. They're the best. And so any chance I get.
I'll take a nap. I can take a nap. I can fall asleep inside of like five minutes. So I can take a nap for like seven. Like and I'll be fine. Like that's great.
Seven minute naps. Wonderful. So I remember one time when Anna and I first got married. We had. I don't know what we've been doing. We were worn out.
Or we had a day off or something. So we decided to take a nap. And it was one of those naps where I slept on my face. Like you know how good that is. And you just. You just.
You sleep flat out. Like that's how tired I was. Like I didn't even bother to get comfortable. I just like slumped over. And was sound asleep. And.
But we had to be somewhere. So I had set an alarm. And I had an old school alarm that I've had since. I was starting middle school. And that thing. Still have it.
It's one of those. Eh. Eh. Eh. Eh. Alarms.
Like the ones that are pure evil. It's like. I think it's made out of cats or something. It's awful. And so. It makes that.
Eh. Eh. And so I had set that alarm. It goes off. I mean I was out of it. But I start waking up.
And I'm like. Oh. Okay. So I sit up. My alarm's going. Eh.
Eh. Eh. And I reach for it. And I reach for it again. I had been sleeping like this. And both of my arms were sound asleep from here down.
I mean. Done. But. This was like the best I could do. And so the thing. And it's torture.
Because now I'm awake staring at this thing. I just woke up. Which. I'm grumpy. And this alarm's going. Eh.
Eh. Eh. And so I'm sitting there. And I look over at Anna. She's gone. Doesn't even notice it.
And so I'm looking at her like. I really wish she would help with this. But she. She's. She's asleep like this. Like every once in a while.
I swear she's sleeping. Knows I'm looking at her. And she's just faking it. She's sleeping like she's on the front of a Hallmark card or something. And so I'm staring at her. And it's not even.
She hadn't even flinched. And I'm going. Wake up. You know. And so I'm thinking like. What do I do?
Do I go back and forth. Get my arms going. And then I could. I could pop her. You know. I guess I could have talked loudly.
But I was half asleep. I'm not thinking through this right. To wake her up. So. But she looked so.
You know. Just. Like I just was like. Well. I can't. So.
I turned back around. My alarm's going off. Still. Eh. Eh. Can't do anything about it.
I was really glad. That it was just the alarm that had gone off. And it wasn't like a home invasion or something. I'd have been in trouble. Unless. I've thought about this.
Unless I could have convinced them. That I knew something they didn't know. Because what would have happened was. I would have jumped out of bed. And gone. And then tried to kick them.
And they'd have thought. I don't know what kind of kung fu stuff I'm getting into here. But you can take it down brother. Eh. So I'm sitting there.
Staring at this alarm. And there's nothing I can do about it. I look over at Anna. She's completely oblivious to the fact that we have a problem. And I know that we have a problem. And can't do anything about it.
And the truth is. Some of us are sitting in those two seats tonight. Some of you are sitting and saying. I know I have sin. I know I have brokenness. I've been trying to fix it.
And I can't. And some of you. Have been oblivious to it. But it's still a problem. And what we needed. Was for a third party to walk in.
And fix the situation. And what every single one of us in this room needed. Was for a third party to step in. And fix the situation. And his name was Jesus. And he lived a perfect sinless life.
On our behalf. And he was crushed. For our iniquities. He was. The chastisement of us. Was placed on him.
For our sins. He was beaten. He was bruised. By his stripes. We can be healed. That he would make many.
To be accounted righteous. Because he would take on. The iniquities of the world. Jesus stepped in. And he solved the problem. By going to the cross.
And he assured our hope of salvation. By rising from the dead. That in Jesus. We can have life. And hope. Everyone in this room.
Has sin. And the truth is. Your sin. Will be paid for. The question is. Will it be paid by you.
Or by Jesus. At some point. We will stand before the creator. Of the universe. Jesus has given us. The opportunity.
To have our sin. Paid for. Forever. Because sin has. Consequences. Grave.
Consequences. So much so. That the son of God. Had to come to earth. And be crushed for it. But we have the hope.
Of salvation. That we can place. Our faith. In Jesus. And that all of our sin. All of the worst.
Of all of us. Can be placed on him. And he can die for it. And that on Sunday. He can rise again. And take it away forever.
And that through him. We can be accounted. Righteous. That God can look at us. And say. That we're beloved.
That we're cared for. And that we're okay. Because when he looks at us. He sees Jesus. And that's grace. And that's good news.
And that's why billions of people. Have gotten together today. To celebrate that the grave. Is empty. And that Jesus. Is alive.
Man's going to come back up. We're going to sing. And we're going to celebrate. That Jesus has paid our debt. And set us free. That in him we have hope.
And life. Forever. That the grave. Is empty. That Jesus did die. But that he didn't.
Stay dead. Let's pray. God. I thank you. For your grace. I thank you.
That someone like Paul. Who actively. Worked to destroy your church. Can be rescued. Because that gives hope. For all of us.
That we don't earn grace. So that we're all. Able to receive it. God. I pray that you would help us. See our sin.
Very clearly. Feel the weight. Of our sin. Our rebellion. Our love for other things. Other than you.
Very clearly. So that we can know. And love the cross more. So that we can grow. In our love. For the gospel.
More. You said that those. Who are forgiven more. Love more. And God. We pray that you would help us.
See the weight. Of our rebellion. So that we can see. The greatness. Of our God and Savior. We love you.
In Jesus name. Amen.
John 2: The Wedding at Cana
Transcript
All right, if y'all turn with me to John chapter 2, that's where we're going to spend some time tonight. We kind of have a week right here in the middle of, we just finished up our Idol series. We had the opportunity to share a meal with First Baptist West Columbia last week. And we'll be doing baptism gathering and then Easter. And so we just want to take tonight to kind of camp out in this one story, spend a little bit of time talking about it. So let's, if you don't have a Bible, Quentin and Isaac will help hand them out.
If anybody will just lift up your hand, we'll just hand you one real quick so everybody does have one. So we can all be on the same page. So it's John chapter 2. It'll be page, I don't know what page it'll be. It's on there if we, at some point you'll see what page, yeah, page 556, there we go. All right, I'm going to pray and we'll help him.
God, we pray that you would move in us to make us more like you. God, I pray that through your Holy Spirit you would show us more of your character, more of what you came to accomplish tonight as we study in John chapter 2. We thank you for your grace and that you do invite us to celebrate, that you do invite us to be a part of the celebration that you have begun through your grace. And so we praise you and we thank you. We love you in Jesus' name. Amen.
It costs, on average, $25,000 to get married or to have a wedding in the United States. The average wedding in the United States is $25,000. In Lexington County, weddings run usually between $18,000 and $31,000. That's crazy. I've had the opportunity recently to be a part and get to see a bunch of different weddings. And weddings are interesting.
So you're getting together to celebrate. Two people are getting married. You're celebrating love. You're celebrating, depending on if some of them are celebrating the covenant of grace that is Jesus and the church if it's a Christian wedding. Some of them are just celebrating this couple. But you're getting together to celebrate.
And there's a lot of different random traditions and things. I know I've been to weddings where people braid a cord or weddings where they set things on fire. They light candles and then those candles light other candles. And then they fall down and set plants on fire and stuff. So you set different things on fire at weddings.
But as far as traditions go, people pour sand. I performed a wedding. The first wedding I ever performed, they said, we don't want to do anything fancy. They were like, we want to get this over with. Because they were real uncomfortable in front of people. I said, that sounds great.
From the time they walked in to the time they walked out was 12 minutes. It was the best wedding ever. And it's really awkward to do a wedding. Because I have to stand still. Because usually I move around. So I have to stand still the whole time.
My leg got to shake and I couldn't make it stop. I have to read what I've written out. Because if I just say something stupid tonight, let me just be real with y'all. I can just stop and be like, take that back. Or I can just move on. And the only person I embarrassed basically was me.
Unless I said something theologically incorrect. If I say something really bad at a wedding, people remember that stuff. You can break friendships over it. But weddings, so I was at a wedding with all these different traditions. I was at a wedding where, it was my cousin. It was a Greek Orthodox.
He was marrying a Greek Orthodox girl. They put crowns on their heads. And had a stream that connected them. And then they walked laps around the table. I don't know what that was to symbolize. And I'm not sure my cousin did either.
Because on the third lap, he walked around like... Like he had no clue what he was getting himself into. I was at one where it was a Jewish wedding. So they did Mazel Tov. And they broke the thing. They have different ceremonies.
Different things you do at receptions. My cousin is a first generation Nigerian American. At Nigerian weddings, they do a thing where there's a dance. And everybody goes and puts money on them while they're dancing. And so they're dancing. And you're walking out and just like sticking money on their head and stuff.
There's that. At my brother's wedding, he's married to Elise who's Polish. And has a Polish background. And so he had to wear a necklace with like little babies on it. Little plastic babies. And they had to do this thing where you like had to pay to dance with them.
And then at some point, he could come back in and pay to dance. It was really... It's just that we have all these random traditions. And all these different things that we do to celebrate weddings. And what we're actually going to look at tonight in John chapter 2. Jesus is at a wedding.
He's come to take part in the celebration that people have celebrated forever. God oversaw the first wedding between Adam and Eve. And so we see Jesus in the very beginning of his ministry. Kind of what he's getting started in John chapter 2. John's written by one of his disciples. Close friend to his.
John chapter 1. John's basically explaining that God became a human. So he says God became a human. He came and dwelt among us. And then Jesus recruits a couple of disciples. He starts getting people to follow him.
He actually gets two from his cousin, John the Baptist. Two or three from his cousin, John the Baptist. And then they kind of recruit some friends. So at this point Jesus has had disciples for all of about five days. Week tops. And he's got about five of them.
So he's got five guys following him around and starting to begin this journey of following Jesus and seeing what this looks like. So that's where we are. John chapter 2 verse 1. On the third day, they don't really know the third day of what. I think it's the third day from the last thing that happened. So he's had disciples for about three days.
But it could be the third day of the wedding. It could be the third day of the week or the month. It just says the third day. So on the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. And the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.
Okay. So Jesus' mother was there. We find out later that she's pretty intimately related to the goings-on at this wedding. So we don't know if she's related to someone in the wedding party or if she's just a close family friend. But she kind of knows behind-the-scenes things.
So it seems like she's somehow related. But it also says that Jesus and his disciples were invited. So it wasn't just like the, hey, mother of Jesus, you're invited and anybody else you want to come. It actually says specifically that Jesus and his disciples were invited. Now weddings at this point were a big deal.
So they, I mean, it was like a week-long celebration. And so it was a big deal. You would invite, basically the whole town was invited. You'd invite all your friends, all your relatives. But it's kind of funny.
Scholars and different people who write commentaries and stuff on this, some of them I've actually heard, they try to figure out why Jesus was invited. I've heard the theory that it would have been good to invite a prominent local teacher to your wedding. Maybe that's true. But Jesus wouldn't have been a prominent local teacher at this point. He had five disciples he'd recruited the past week. And some of them he stole from his cousin.
So he wouldn't have been a prominent local teacher. But it is kind of funny that people, we genuinely, people have a hard time kind of figuring out why Jesus would have been invited. People say maybe he was related or whatever. But I, bear with me, just want to put this out there and don't get mad at me. Maybe, maybe Jesus was fun to be around. It's crazy talk.
Walk with me here though. Maybe Jesus was fun to be around. Maybe he was enjoyable. I know, for some reason, it's crazy, we don't ever think about that. We just don't. The Bible doesn't really have a whole lot of jokes that Jesus makes.
Although, if you want to talk, I think there are some that I think are quite funny. Usually when he's fussing at religious people, he pops off with some pretty funny stuff. But it's not like him just telling knock-knock jokes to people and those kind of things. And we just really don't think about it. But I think he was enjoyable.
There's something in our brains, and I don't know why this is. We think that God would become a human and that as a human, God would be boring. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The God who invented galaxies and molecules, who thought and spoke into existence everything that we know. Monkeys, giraffes, zebras, the duck-billed platypus. He invented these things.
Steak, bacon, the idea to wrap one of those around the other one. He came up with this. The God who invented these things, who came up with laughter. The concept of laughter, which is basically where things don't fit together in our brains, and our brain kind of trips over itself, and then we just exhale a bunch of air, and that process releases chemicals in our brain. Like we just blow air out of our mouths. And some of us throw our nose, and you probably should stop it.
Just open your mouth. You're going to snort. It's going to be awkward. But he came up with this process, but he would become a human, and he'd be boring. Like his disciples would walk over to each other and be like, oh my goodness. All right, now I'm following Jesus because he's the Messiah.
But if you ever had him corner you and just talk and talk and talk, it's a good thing he invented sleep. Otherwise, I'd feel real bad for falling asleep while he was talking to me. Like, it doesn't make any sense. So I just wanted to put that out there. Jesus is at a celebration with friends who he ends up giving nicknames to. Just put it in your brain.
Maybe he was enjoyable to be around. Not a party animal, but we see him at parties and celebrations all the time. We see him engaging in celebrations, and going to parties, eating with people. He gets accused of being a drunk and a glutton. Not because he was, but because he was hanging out with people who were. And because he wasn't yelling at them and fussing at them.
He was gracious and kind and hospitable and enjoyable. So he's at a party, being humble and gracious and kind and hospitable. And he's got his disciples with him. So, verse 2. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples when the wine ran out. Okay, that's a problem.
Some of you just throw little parties, and you know that's a problem. It's a bigger problem here. Weddings in this day most likely lasted a week, and you invited all kinds of people. So when the wine ran out, which was the predominant drink that people would drink, you would drink water, but the water wasn't always sanitary. So a lot of times, most people just, you would drink wine.
It was a very common drink to have. But when the wine ran out, it basically meant send everybody home, party's over. Celebration has ended. We're not having this feast anymore. The feast has ended. Everyone has to go home.
And they're in an honor culture, which we don't understand. We do not have an honor culture. The most honor culture stuff we have is southern, like, hospitality. Like, you don't talk back to your parents. You say, yes, sir, no, ma'am. You hold open doors.
You give up your chair for ladies. Like, those kind of things. That's about as close as we get, but we don't really have this notion of being cursed or being dishonored. I mean, like, I crack jokes on my dad when I'm hanging out with him. I don't go over the line because he's big and can get intense. But we have that kind of a relationship.
But that wouldn't have happened here because of the way they treated patriarchs, the way they treated. And so the closest thing I know of when I think about an honor culture is Japan. Japan has an honor society. Maybe less now as they've had more Western influences. But I remember watching 2010 when they had the earthquake and the tsunami.
And everybody was just, it was bad over there. And they would bring in water trucks. And I remember watching a water truck and then seeing a picture of Japanese people in a single file line that just went, looked like miles. And everybody would think, that's absolutely crazy that they would just get in a single file line. That's just what they just do because it would be dishonorable to do anything else, to form a mob around it and assault each other. So they just lined up.
And my wife and I, we like documentaries, especially stuff about war. I was watching something about World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the United States rounded up Japanese people, put them into camps. Because really, the U.S. was like, we don't know if this is going to be a problem. Like if they're going to side with Japan and just start causing problems on the U.S. So they didn't.
And it ended up, wasn't a good plan and was kind of a bad way to handle it. But they would go to those camps and recruit people, recruit soldiers to join the U.S. And they did. They'd show up and say, who wants to join? And they'd say, I do. And the Japanese soldiers ended up being some of our best troops.
They didn't send them to the Pacific. They sent them into, but the generals used to fight over who got the Japanese because they were such good soldiers. I watched one where a guy volunteered, wasn't in one of those camps, volunteered. His dad was dropping him off at the train station. He looked at his son and he said, this country has let us live here. They've let us have a job.
They've defended and protected us. They've given us a life. Do not dishonor this country. He said, you don't come home before you dishonor this country. And that was what he told his son when he dropped him off. That's more akin to the culture that we have here.
So to run out of wine ended the celebration. But more than that, it began your marriage in dishonor. That's how you started off was taking a step forward in your relationship in dishonor. So it was a big problem. So when the wine ran out, feel some weight to that.
It wasn't just, oh, the party's over. And it wasn't just, well, the party that was going to last till midnight has to end at 10. It was the celebration that would have lasted a week. It's cut in half. It's stopped days early. We have to announce to our guilt, to our shame, that we've messed this up, that we didn't prepare well, and that we're going to have to end the celebration.
You can all go home. So that's kind of what's going on. So it says, So this is the mother of Jesus talking to Jesus. She said to him, They have no wine. And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
His mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you. I love this. Our God became a human who had a mama. That's crazy. He didn't just zap down here. God decided to give honor to infants, to give honor to the whole system that he had designed.
And our God became a human who lived as a child and who had a mother. And we get this instant. There's only like two or three in the Gospels where we get to see him kind of interact with her. And I love this. So she shows up.
He's got his disciples there. Because we find out later they're there. And she says, They're out of wine. And he says, Woman, what does this have to do with me? Now, just for the record, That's not disrespectful. You could say woman.
Like if I said that at my house, That's a good way to get slapped. Like my mom telling me to do something. Woman? No, that's not how that works. But in their culture, This wasn't like a disrespectful term.
It'd be kind of like when you say, Yes, ma'am. But he says, What does that have to do with me? And he says, My hour has not yet come. Basically meaning, It's not time for me to show everybody that I'm the Messiah. It's not time for me to just step in and do these kind of things in front of people. This wedding that you're part of is not my public proclamation that I'm God.
That's kind of how he responds. So his mom comes. And you know his disciples are watching this. Because it's always interesting. Like you ever go hang out with your friends, And you see them kind of interacting with their parents. And you just like, It makes you kind of uncomfortable.
But you're always like watching to see how they interact. And so sometimes it's just weird. Like I remember being at my friend's house sometimes, And they would talk back to their parents. I would just get like, Oh, like so uncomfortable. Because like, You talk back to my mom, My dad might just appear. I don't know what would happen.
He'd just jump out from behind something. But some people would talk back to their mom, And I'd be like, Dude, that's your mama. Shut up. Just do what she told you to do. Like I will leave if I need to leave. Or when people get fussed out by their parents in front of you.
And they're like, Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. And you're just like, Like you're behind her. So his disciples are watching him as he interacts with his mom. And so she says, They're out of wine. He says, What does this have to do with me?
And then, I love this. So this is the interaction. They have no wine. Jesus said to her, Woman, What does this have to do with me? It's so great. He's 30.
It's just the way moms act. Like my mom could come to my house and be like, You need to clean your room. And I'd be like, Yes ma'am. That's just how it works. So he says, They have no wine.
Jesus says, What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you. She didn't even respond to him. He says, What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
And she looks at him. She looks at the servants. And she says, Y'all do whatever he tells you. And she walks away. And you know, The disciples were like, And they've got to be thinking, How on earth is he going to supply wine? They heard this news.
They're like, Well, party's over. The celebration has ended. This is a bad deal for them. But she's asking him to supply wine. And you know, They're thinking, How is he going to do this? Like, But she's just put it on him.
They're out of wine. Do your thing. And she walks out. So Jesus is just standing there. I can just kind of imagine him just looking at her. She walks away and being like, I don't even know.
Looks at his disciples. They try to act like they weren't laughing. Like, so. Alright, so. So, Then Jesus, So his mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you. Now there were six stone water jars there For the Jewish rites of purification.
Each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, Fill the jars with water. Okay. So, Now I'm making this up. But this is just how I see it in my head.
She's walking off. Jesus is sitting there. And he's going to do this, But it's not a big public thing. And he looks over and he sees these six stone water jars For the Jewish rites of purification. These stone water jars were designed for them to wash their hands And do some ceremonial washing. To, What they were trying to do was uphold the law Of the clean laws, Clean and unclean laws, Which were given by God in the Old Testament To show the Jewish, The Israelite people, That they were not clean.
To teach them that sin defiles us. That sin separates us from God. That we cannot, In our sinful state, Just approach him. So it was to teach us how often we make ourselves defiled. And even if you were living up to the clean laws, When you came to the temple, You still had to have a sacrifice on your behalf. You still, In the tabernacle, Had to have a sacrifice on your behalf.
And so what it meant was, You can be as clean as you want to be. You still need a sacrifice. So these laws were designed to point to Christ. That in our religion, We will never clean ourselves up enough. And our sin does defile us. Well what they had done, What the Jewish people had done, Was they had added layer upon layer upon layer, Lump upon layer, On top of this.
And so, These ceremonial washings, Jesus didn't do. His disciples didn't do. And he didn't do. He did the ones that were prescribed in the law. He lived under the law. But he didn't do these, Because we see in Luke, At one point he goes to a party, A dinner party at a Pharisee's house.
And they're all washing their hands, Doing the ceremonial stuff. And he just goes and sits at the table. And it's like, They're all looking at him like, How on earth is he going to eat, If he doesn't wash his hands? And then they get in a big argument. And it's great. And it doesn't say he leaves.
So I assume he just started touching things, With his unwashed hands. It's like, Give me some of those potatoes. I don't know. I'm making that up. But it doesn't say he leaves.
I assume he stayed and ate with them. So he doesn't do this. He doesn't do this. This was added on top to prove How good and how religious they were. So it would be similar to when someone's like, I've never watched an R-rated movie.
It's like, Well, that's good. That doesn't earn you points or anything. And Gladiator was great. So Terminator 2 is pretty good. Like, I don't know. You may want to bend that one a little bit For some of them.
It's okay if people feel convicted To do some of that. That's fine. But it doesn't add points. And it doesn't, You don't pile up your religious duties To prove to God that you have worth. That doesn't happen. And so that's what this was.
It was for them to ceremonially walk under. Look at how blameless I am. So I imagine, He's thinking, How am I going to supply this wine? He sees these jars And he gets this look on his face. And he cracks the smile. And the disciples don't know What that smile means yet.
They've only been around for about a week. The smile is, I'm about to tick off religious people. I think he cracked that smile a lot. I think he had this look in his eye like, Okay, now this could work. And so he tells them to fill it up. They fill it up.
And it says that there are Six stone water jars there For the Jewish rites of purification. Each holding 20 or 30 gallons. So they fill these up to the top. He says, Take that out And take it to the master of the feast. And it says that that water turned into wine. So Jesus Took six stone water jars, Filled them up to the top, And turned them into wine.
This teaches us a few things. One is, Jesus just made 120 gallons of wine. That's 619 bottles. I did the math. That may not connect well with us. That's 150 boxes.
Is that better? Y'all received that a little better? 150 boxes of wine. He didn't do this. This wasn't like a one night kegger thing. What this shows us is They had way underestimated How much wine they were going to need For this celebration to last an entire week.
So that's what it's telling us. He supplies what they needed. And maybe even above what they needed. But it wasn't like, Let me do some ridiculous thing For this one night. It wasn't that. So he supplies what was needed.
He makes all of this into wine. Steps in. And continues the celebration for him. Now, I've had the opportunity Because I like this story. To be able to talk about this With other groups before. And other churches.
And I used to get invited To go speak at churches On some Sundays and stuff. I would always at this point Kind of point out that What I would say is this. I would say, We're not going to get into Whether or not That wine was alcohol Or not alcohol. Or whether it was capable Of making somebody drunk. We're not going to get into How that plays out. Because that's not the point of the story.
And it isn't the point of the story. But, This is the first time I've had the opportunity To talk about this With my church family. That was actual wine Capable of making somebody drunk. It was actual alcohol. Still not the point of the story. And it is not to Highlight or key in On alcohol at all.
And I know that alcohol Can be destructive And cause problems. I know that In a very real way. But, It was actual alcohol. And so that shows us That God doesn't tempt us To sin. We know that from James. He's not tempting us to sin.
I love what Martin Luther said. Martin Luther said, Men can go wrong With wine and with women. Are we going to outlaw women? That's kind of a helpful way To think about that. Because that's true. God designs these things That are good And for our joy.
And we know from scripture That getting drunk is not okay. Very clear about that. But wine is actually a gift And it's made for joy And all these other things. And so he does make wine. I just wanted to point that out. If you want to talk more about that Would be happy to have that conversation.
That is not the point Of what's happening here. So he makes this wine. And so he sends it out. He says, Fill the jars with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, Now draw some out And take it to the master of the feast.
Nobody knows what a master of the feast is. And all the stuff I read, It's like, Your guess is as good as ours Is basically what commentaries say about it. There's no real parallel To anything else in history That they know of. So what we do know Is that he was in charge of something But he didn't know That they were running out of wine apparently. Or that they were out. He may have known they were running out.
He didn't know they were out. But he was in charge of Basically like overseeing this ceremony. So, Now draw some out And take it to the master of the feast. So they took it. When the master of the feast Tasted the water Now become wine And did not know where it came from Though the servants Who had drawn the water knew The master of the feast Called the bridegroom And said to him So, Okay. Getting married He calls the bridegroom Which is just the groom.
This guy, The bridegroom Is having a rough time. I want you all to feel this with me. Getting married Is rough. It's hard. It's basically the worst. Being married is great.
Getting married is the worst. Like the process, The two day process That you go through Where you're dressed up In an outfit You would never wear ever And stuck up in front of people And you have to recite things And you mess it up And you're going to pass out And you don't feel good. Like that whole process, I assume it's good for females. I hope so. I hope my wife enjoyed our wedding day And our reception and all that stuff. It was, I was glad when it was over.
It wore me out. She's in Kid City Helping take care of people. So I told her I was going to tell her That getting married was the worst. And she said, I know, You've told me before. So, But it is. I remember the, We had our rehearsal dinner Which is the night before you like Practice getting married.
And we ate. And the groom's family Usually kind of puts that on. So we were at a barbecue place. That's right. Because we're, But I couldn't even eat it. It was the worst.
You know it's bad If I can't eat barbecue. Like I'm sitting there looking at it. And I just, My stomach was just like, I don't know how I feel about this. It's just like, Tying itself in a knot. And so, This guy has to go through this for a week. I only had like two days.
I had, You know, Rehearsal dinner. Rehearsal, Rehearsal dinner. Wedding. Reception. And then we were done. This guy's in the middle of like, A week long thing.
With family. And people coming in out of town. And all these friends you hadn't seen. Everybody wants to talk to you. And these people are arguing about decorations. And they don't even know each other.
And this grandmother keeps setting something up. And the other grandmother keeps taking it down. And like, It just becomes this big thing. And so he's in the middle of this week of this. And he's running out of wine. So he's about to start his entire marriage off.
This celebration. It should be this joyous occasion. He's about to start it off in dishonor. And that's a problem. He knows that at some point, So he's having these conversations. Because he was apparently related to how the wine was working out as well.
Because the master of the feast calls the bridegroom to talk to him about how he had planned out the wine. That's what he's about to have that conversation. So he calls the bridegroom. So the bridegroom knows this is coming. He's been having probably argumentative type conversations with his bride. We're running out of wine.
I know. I know we're running out of wine. We're really running out of wine. We're getting low. I know. I realize that.
We're about to be out of wine. What do you want me to do about it? Like, How do you want me to? Well, I want you to not have invited all your guzzly friends over. They're doing the fight and smile. You know, Because people are around.
So it's like, They got that going on. It's not a pleasant situation. And they're fighting and smiling. She's asking him to do things in the past. And that's how you know it's gone really bad. Like, When the only way to fix it is to have a time machine.
Like, It's like, I want you to have done this. I want you to have gotten more wine. It's like, That's not going to happen. Do we have anything constructive? Like, I can't go back in the past and have those conversations. It's like, You realize that's impossible, right?
Like, This isn't even helpful in this conversation. But anyway, So they're doing that. He knows at some point they're out. At some point he has to stand up and say, Hey everybody, Thank you for coming out for this joyous occasion. We didn't plan ahead well. We didn't prepare well.
I was not able to supply what was needed. I was not able to take care of this. And you all need to go home now. I'm going to begin my relationship with my bride in public shame, guilt, and dishonor. Thank you for being here. Party's over.
He knows that's coming. It's on the way. I don't know if they tried to water things down. I don't know what happened, but it's on the way. And then he sees Master the Feast holding a glass of wine. Let's do this thing.
It's over. So he comes walking up to the Master of the Feast. He's got a smile on his face, really ticking him off. Master of the Feast called the bridegroom, said to him, Everyone serves the good wine first. And he's thinking, Yeah, we did. And they drank it.
And when people have drunk freely, Too freely, some might say, Then the poor wine. Mm-hmm. Busted that out two days ago. It's gone too. But you have kept the good wine until now.
I did what now? I wonder if he tried to play it off. Yeah, that was a thing I wanted to do to kind of mix it up. I've been to these before, And they always serve the good stuff first, But I was saving it. It's got a good year. Like, I don't know.
I don't know if he just smiled and walked away. Like, I don't know if he's ever talked. So the Master of the Feast calls him over and says, This is the best wine we've served. Like, you did this wrong. You're supposed to serve the best wine first, Then the poor wine. And you busted out the best wine now.
This is the first of his signs. Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, And manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. Okay. So John calls this a sign.
He doesn't call it a miracle. It's a different word. So he, It's a different word in Greek and in English. But he uses the word sign. And what he's saying is, This shows us, He says this is the first of his signs, That he accomplished, That he did. And he manifested his glory.
What Jesus does in this, Is he teaches us something about his nature, And his character. And, He shows us ultimately, What he came to accomplish. So Jesus teaches us, Because it's a sign, He teaches us something about his nature, And his character, And ultimately what he came to accomplish. And whenever we learn, As believers, As people who follow Christ, When we learn something about the nature, And the character of God, It applies in both ways. It applies to what he came to accomplish. It also applies to how we follow him.
He is our example, And those who have the spirit of Christ, Dwelling in us, We are to follow him by his example. We're to grow to be more like Christ. That's what Christian means. It means little Christ. So when we see this, When we learn about the nature, The nature and the character of God, We learn how we ought to be.
So, Jesus steps in, Into the party, Into the celebration, And he brings the better one. That's who we're supposed to be as a people. We're supposed to take part in the regular rhythms of celebrations of our culture. To be a part of them, And to supply what's lacking. That's what he did. They were running out, And he supplied what was lacking.
So for us, That means we show up, We bring the better one. That's who we are, When it comes to celebrations and parties. That's Jesus' people. That means that, That doesn't mean necessarily alcohol. It means that maybe you show up, And you're, Hey, I'm hanging out. I'm going to be here with y'all.
I'm going to be gracious. I'm going to be humble. I'm going to be helpful. And when the night's over, I'm giving people a ride home. Because y'all are going to be here doing this anyway. I'm just going to supply what's lacking.
Someone who's capable of driving. Maybe it means, Hey, I'm going to show up. I'm going to be the guy who stays late and cleans up. I'm going to be the guy that helps make this mess go away. Maybe it means you show up with plates and plates of carbs. Maybe that's, Maybe that's what we do.
Like, I don't know. But we, We're Jesus' people. We show up hospitable, Humble, Generous, And we supply what's lacking. That's what he does. He steps into the situation, And he supplies what's lacking. He doesn't, In all religious cultures, The way people think about it is, The most religious people have climbed up on a mountain.
They've separated themselves. They, They don't even wear normal clothes. They, They, You know, Some of them don't even speak, And they, They sit and they just think about things. Or they, They, They kind of separated themselves from culture. The most holy, Perfect being that has ever walked on the face of the earth, Did not separate himself from culture. He stepped into it.
He stepped into the normal rhythms of everyday life. Jesus walked in celebrations. He shared meals with people. He walked through normal life. He didn't just float around. He didn't go up on a mountain, And make people come up to just hear his teaching.
He, He stepped into culture. And that's who we get to be as his people. We get to walk in the normal rhythms of everyday life, Making things better. We don't just do this at celebrations, Although we do this at celebrations. But we do this in normal life.
That's what we do in this city. Our community groups should be praying, And looking, And walking with each other, And trying to figure out, How do we supply what's lacking in our city? Is this school having a hard time making its grades? Well then we show up, And we help do tutoring programs. Is this area of our city never taken care of? Are these people not loved?
Well then we step in. Is this area, Do these people need to just know how to have a generic budget? Know how to pay their bills? Well we step in. We coach them up. We love.
We serve. We clean. That's us. That's Jesus' people. We just step into normal life, And try to figure out how to supply what's lacking. So he shows us something about his nature and his character.
That he's humble. That he's gracious. And that genuinely he just steps in and helps them. This was going to be bad for them. And just in his grace he just makes it okay. He saves them from dishonor.
But not only that, It shows us ultimately what he came to do. It's one of the reasons I love this story so much. See Jesus when he came to earth, He came to do exactly what he did here. He came in and we're lacking. We're not capable of solving this problem on our own. In this story, We're the bridegroom.
We're running on empty. Headed for shame. Headed for guilt. Headed for destruction. That's us. And Jesus steps in and he does two things.
He removes our pretense of religion. So he takes away their ability to ceremonially wash. You cannot wash your hands in wine, But you can continue a wedding celebration. You see Jesus steps in. He removes our ability to posture ourselves up in front of him. To justify ourselves through our own works.
He takes that away from us. And he invites us through grace. His freely offered grace into the celebration. He invites us into the feast. What he did in this story is what he came to do for us on the cross. The night before Jesus died, He took a cup full of wine and he says, This is the wine in the new covenant, My blood which is poured out for you.
And so Jesus went to the cross And he poured out his blood To supply what was lacking on our behalf So that we might have life. So that we might have joy. So that the pretense of our religion. So that all the things that we think we can put in front of him To say that we're worthy. That we're good. That we can do this on our own.
To be taken away forever. And to be freely offered to us Through grace. To enter into his celebration. The Bible begins. After God creates everything. He has the first wedding celebration With Adam and Eve.
Jesus, his first miracle is at a wedding ceremony. And the end of the Bible, It ends with the wedding supper of the Lamb. Where Jesus, our groom, Takes his bride, his church, To himself. He makes us his. He tells him in the night before he's going to die, He says, I'm not going to taste of this again Until I taste it new with you in the kingdom. Jesus hasn't drunk anything, Any fruit from the vine Until he celebrates with us At the wedding ceremony, The wedding supper of the Lamb.
At one point, Jesus is going to crack the sky open. He's going to call us home. And that's when the celebration really begins. That's when the joy And the life really begins. And we, as his people, Are to be a foretaste of the kingdom, Which is a never-ending celebration With Jesus, our King. We're to be a foretaste of that.
We're to be the best partiers. If there's one thing that Christians are known for, It's for their ability to party. Am I right? Can I get an amen? Somebody. That is not true.
That is not what we're known for. But it should be. That's us. We have Jesus who stepped in And brings the better wine. Who steps in and supplies what's lacking. And ultimately, We'll have a celebration feast With him in heaven.
We're to be a foretaste of that kingdom. And we're the only people Who have something to celebrate. Jesus is alive. Our sin is gone. We are free. We have hope and life in him forever.
I don't have to prove my worth. I don't have to show the world that I'm good. I don't have to justify my existence. Jesus already has. We have something to celebrate. We should be the most partying people on the planet.
Because we actually have something to celebrate. We're not running from something. We shouldn't be caught up in debauchery. But we should be joyous, celebratory people Who walk in the normal rhythms of everyday life Celebrating because that's who we are. Because we've been freed up to do that. And we don't have to seek joy out of it.
We have joy given to us by Christ That we get to walk in. That's us. Now, There may be somebody in here tonight. You don't know Jesus. And you're saying, I feel way more like the bridegroom. I'm empty.
And I'm trying to fix a problem I can't fix. And it's just progressively gotten worse. I'm headed towards shame. Towards guilt and destruction. And all I want to let you know is that Jesus, on your behalf, Has already fixed the problem. I just want to be the master of the feast.
Just to call you over and say, Hey bro, I don't know if you know this. Here's what's already happened. Jesus had died on our behalf. He took our sin onto himself So that we might be free. So that we might have life and joy forever.
That our sin could be taken away. That he could be crushed for. And that we could be given life in him. When he rose from the dead, He conquered sin and guilt and shame forever for us. And he's invited us into, By grace, Not to clean ourselves up, But by grace to join him in the celebration. Next week, We're not going to meet here.
We're going to meet at 3pm at Willow Ridge Church. To celebrate the baptism of 8 people Who are part of our church family. 8 people who want to go public With the fact that Jesus has stepped in on their behalf. And supplied what was lacking. That he has taken care of the problem they couldn't fix. And to proclaim to everyone who is present.
That Jesus is God. And Jesus is King. And he has rescued and redeemed them. And made them his own. And we're going to lose our minds. We're going to clap.
And we're going to scream. And we're going to yell. And then we're going to have a party. We're going to eat popcorn and snow cones. And we're going to play games and celebrate. Because we have something to celebrate.
That Jesus is alive. That he does rescue. That he does redeem. And that he has made us his. And that we don't have to prove it. We don't have to earn it.
We are just caught up in the celebration through grace. That's what he's supplied for us in the cross. So that's us. Can that be us as a church? Can that be us as a church family? Can we be the best partying church in West Columbia?
Can that be us? Can we celebrate more? Can we infectiously invite other churches to take part in that? Can we infectiously invite other people who don't know Jesus to celebrate with people who do? Because we're the best at it. Let's do that.
Let's let that be us. Let's celebrate and lose our minds next week. And let's continue to keep doing that. Following Jesus in grace. Clapping, singing, dancing. And having a party until he calls us home to the real one.
God, we thank you. That through grace. You have invited us into the celebration. We didn't work it out on our own. We didn't earn it. We didn't achieve it.
We didn't knock it out. We didn't fix the problem. But you did. God, we thank you. And we praise you. And God, I pray that you would make us more like Jesus.
That we would celebrate well. That we'd be humble. Gracious. Enjoyable. That we would supply what's lacking. When it comes to our streets.
Our neighbors. Our jobs. Our city. We love you. We ask for more and more of your grace. And your Holy Spirit.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
Jesus is Better than our Idols
Transcript
If you have your Bibles, turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. It's going to take us a minute to get there tonight. We're actually going to be in two separate chunks of Scripture because we're going to be unpacking two separate ideas. But we'll be in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. If you don't have a Bible, just throw your hand up, Mitchell, and be able to grab and hand these out. So we've got some back there for you.
My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here, and it's just good to see everybody. Decided to get all our groups together. So we are in the fifth week of our Idol series. Thank you, Isaac. We're in our fifth week of our Idol series.
We've been unpacking for the past four weeks that sin for us does not primarily look like us breaking rules. So for most of us, we grew up with an understanding or our understanding of religion or Christianity is that God has rules, and you don't want to break His rules. And it's bad when we break His rules. But for the most part, sin is actually, we don't break God's rules until we have first placed something else as primary, as more supreme, as more important to us than God. So even when God sets up the Ten Commandments, He sets it up as, you will have no other gods before me, and you will make no idols, no graven images for yourself.
And then He gives the rest of them. So we actually don't break the other Ten Commandments until we've first broken the first one. We've first said that something else is functionally more important to us than God. And so that's what we've been talking about. We've been unpacking this idea of idolatry. St.
Augustine Okat from the 4th century, he was a pastor in Africa, wrote the book Confessions, wrote a lot. He's considered a church father. He said that sin is a disorder of love. And that's kind of how we've been looking at this, that when we love anything more than we love God, it leads us into sin. And we see this in other areas. So if you love success more than your family, then you'll work too much and not spend time with your children.
If you love the way people view you more than you love the truth, then you'll lie about yourself so that you can look good. And so the truth is for us that it's actually when we love something too much, when we place too much value on something, that we begin to turn away from God and we begin to chase after other things. And what we unpacked was basically we actually want God to be God. That was what we spent the first week talking about and how idolatry is us worshiping something other than God. The second week we looked at how we can turn anything into a God. So we take good things, turn them into God things, and that actually becomes a very bad thing.
The third week we spent some time talking about what that actually does to our object of worship and to us when we do that, how we ultimately begin to destroy. So if it's a relationship, we'll slowly destroy that relationship because we have to take from it to validate ourselves, to give ourselves worth, and ultimately idolatry destroys us. Last week we spent some time unpacking that really we have heart-level idolatry. That it's not always just the object of what we're chasing after like money, but most of the time it is actually something deeper. That we're actually seeking power or control or approval or comfort and we're just money is the best way to get it.
And so we actually have heart-level issue and so God actually has to change our hearts for that to work out, for us to grow in that. So what we're actually going to look at tonight is we're finishing up the series and we're just going to spend some time talking about Jesus. And we're going to do it by looking at some lies that our idols tell us. Jeremiah 17.9, we read this the other day, but I think it bears repeating. It says this, this is prophet Jeremiah talking, he says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?
So the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. This makes like most animated movies really scary. Because there's always like a cricket or a bird or something that shows up and it's like, follow your heart wherever it will lead you. Like whenever you see that, stand up and yell, don't do it kid! It's a trick! Your heart is going to destroy you.
It's a bad idea. Don't listen to the cricket. Do that next time. It will be very helpful. But that's the truth, that our hearts are desperately sick.
No one has lied to you more than you have. No one has more often worked to deceive you more than you have. No one has stolen more joy from you than you have. It's just no one has. I remember the first time I heard that, someone was like, unpacking that idea. And they were like, no one has lied to you more than you have.
And I was like, that's not true. Wait a second. That's exactly what I would say to me if I did lie to me. This is getting really fishy. But it's true.
And so what we're going to spend some time is looking at the fact that our hearts and our idols lie to us. And we actually have to, we're going to just spend some time unpacking that and replacing those lies with what Jesus actually accomplishes for us. And so we said early on that most of the time our idolatry is not just something bad. That most of the time it's actually a good thing. It's a gift that God gave us to enjoy and to appreciate and to take part in that we've turned into something ultimate. So it's marriage, it's relationships, it's success, it's approval, it's comfort.
All these things given to us by a good God who wants us to enjoy life. And then we make it as ultimate. We begin to define our life around it. And then it becomes a very big problem. I remember when I was, I don't know, I was a little kid. But this story is not about me.
It's about my younger brother. So he's a couple years younger than me. He was like four or five. So that makes me seven or eight or something. We went to the Universal Studios and they had the Jaws ride. I don't know if they still do, but that ride was great.
And my younger brother, really, four or five, I don't think he was even, like, hadn't even made it to kindergarten yet. And one of his favorite movies was Jaws. That cat watched Jaws, Aliens, and Terminator on repeat. Like when I was growing up watching like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Aladdin, this cat was watching Jaws. You can question my parents' parenting ability later. If you would like.
But he was like five. And so we're at Universal and they're like, we're going to do this Jaws ride. And he was amped because he loved the movie Jaws. So he gets on the ride and you're in water and you're going along and he's just eating it up. And then over the radio, the person's like talking to somebody, you know, in an earlier vessel. And they're like, we've got problems here.
There's a giant shark. And you hear like water gurgling into the mic. And my little brother was like, he's seen the movies. He knows what's going to happen. He looks at my mom and he's like, this is not okay. And my mom's like, no, it's fine, it's fine.
He goes, it is not fine. He said, I heard him go glo-go-go-go-go-go. Which meant, you know, they drowned. So we're going along. She's telling me, it's okay, it's okay. And then he just sat in the absolute perfect spot.
And I think it's because we have a good God who wants to give us good gifts. And he was being gracious to the rest of my family and everyone else on the boat. Not so much to Vince. So Vince is sitting and the animatronic Jaws pops out of the water and bites the side of the boat right where he is. He stands up in his seat and goes, we're all going to die. He is just streaming down his face.
He has lost it. He hasn't fully grasped the idea of what a ride was at this point. I guess he was questioning my parents' idea of, we're actually going to go see this Shark Jaws and this will be fun. Like, what on earth is wrong with these people? My mom was able to calm him down. And then after the ride, I mean, still, they had to explain to him, this is just a ride, this is how this works.
Once it clicked, once he got what it was intended for, it was his favorite ride. He ended up riding it like three or four times. And he loved it. But he was believing something that was wrong about it, which just ultimately ruined the ride for him. Once he realized how it was intended to be used, how it was intended to be operated, then it was actually something he could enjoy. Anyway, that's what we're doing tonight.
We've been believing incorrect things about our idols. They've been lying to us and we've been believing it. And we're going to replace that with the truth that is ours in Christ. And once Jesus is in the right place, everything else just gets to be what it is. So money can just be money if Jesus is God.
Your marriage can just be your marriage if Jesus is God. Then we actually can take all the good things that we've been treating as ultimate things and it's been destroying us. We can put them in their rightful place and actually enjoy them as Jesus trains us in how to do that. And so all we're doing is taking some lies, replacing them with truth so that we can operate and follow Jesus the way we were designed to. So here are the two lies we're going to walk through and then we'll jump into the first one.
So idolatry is a heart issue. It's us taking and chasing after something that we think is going to do these two things. This is the primary lies that our idols tell us. I can give you worth. I can give you life. So whatever it is that we're chasing after that we've put in the place of God, those are the two things that our idols and our hearts lie to us and tell us.
I can give you worth. I can give you life. First lie, I can give you worth. So we use our idols to justify our existence. They tell us that they can give us worth and value in the world. Basically, our idols come to us and say, I can make it okay for you to live on an overpopulated planet and suck up air.
I can make it okay. I can make it to where each day you have a reason to wake up, you have a reason to walk in life, and when you die, you weren't a waste of space. That's what our idols tell us. So whatever it is we're pursuing, and this is why you'll see men a lot of times will work and work and work and work and work and retire and die. Because what they had been using to define that the reason they had value in the world no longer existed for them. Because they had believed that work gave them worth, and when they weren't working anymore, they didn't really have a reason to wake up in the morning.
Because our idols tell us that they can give us worth. They tell us they can justify our existence. The movie Rocky, which is a great movie, and it's old. It's like, I don't know, it's old. But it's a very good movie.
It's one of the two good movies that Sylvester Stallone ever did. So there's the first Rocky, and then there's, Rocky II is okay. And then there's Rambo First Blood. And the greatest arm wrestling movie of all time, Over the Top. But that's a really narrow category.
So it wins that category, but I'm pretty sure it's the only one. Because everyone else is like, no, we're not making a movie about arm wrestling. Anyway, I get distracted. In Rocky, he's going to fight Apollo Creed, and he tells Adrian, who's his girlfriend, he says, I don't even want to win. I just want to go the distance. I don't even have to win.
I just want to go the distance, because then I'll know I'm not just some street bum. All of us have something that we're looking at and saying, if I can just do that, then I'll know I'm not a bum. If I can just have that, if I can just accomplish this, if this would just work out, then I'll know I'm not a bum. Then I'll know I haven't failed. Then I'll know I haven't fallen short.
Then I'll know I've had worth. I'll know I'm not a bum. That's what our idols are telling us, that they can give us worth, that they can justify our existence. But they can't. They ultimately let us down. They ultimately fail us.
That's what we spent the past four weeks talking about. That when we achieve them, we feel the need to achieve something else, to chase after something else. I remember in high school I played football. The best thing you can do in high school football is win state. I remember telling my mom when I was a freshman in high school, I think our team will be good enough by the time we're seniors to win state. She was like, okay.
I remember when they were doing class rings my sophomore year. I was like, nah, that's okay. I'll just get a state ring and wear that. My mom was like, you may not win state. Do you want a class ring? And I was like, no, I don't.
We won state my senior year. And that was cool. I did not wear that ring to college or my Letterman jacket because I appreciate not being made fun of. I didn't cease to exist after winning state in high school. It was nice. It was fun.
It was cool. Everything that we look at and say, this will prove my existence. This will give me value. This will show that we get it. And then it's like, ah, I probably should pick something bigger next time so it takes a little longer to get there. I probably should have something else that I find value and worth in so that I can pretend longer that this will fulfill me.
2 Corinthians chapter 5. I have some good news for us. Verse 21, one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture. 5.21. For our sake, he made him. So he, the first he is God, made him.
The second, the him is Jesus. So for our sake, God made Jesus to be sin. We're going to come back to that. Who knew no sin. So sinless Jesus became sin on our behalf.
So that in him, in Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin. So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. Our idols promise us that they can justify our existence and they cannot. The word justify when the Bible uses it is talking about a legal transaction. So it's as if you were acquitted in court.
So that you were tried and you were declared not guilty. They can never try you on that again. So when the Bible speaks of justification, what it's saying is that we've been acquitted in God's court. But not only that, the great exchange has happened. Where Jesus actually became our sin. So that in him, we could become God's righteousness.
Did y'all bring your idol with you? I got mine with me. I carry it around with me all the time. I just happen to have a representation of it this week. Y'all catch that? Okay.
Jesus became everything I wrote on this. So last week, we took the time to sit down and write out what it is that we think will give us value. That we think will give us life. That we think will bring ultimate joy and fulfillment. And Jesus became it. He became everything you wrote down on that disc.
Everything that he's begun to reveal to you over these past few weeks. He became it. He became our posturing for power. He became our lying for approval. He became our incessant need to have others validate us. He became the darkest, most broken parts of our souls.
He became sin. And he was crushed for it. So that in him, we can become the righteousness of God. We stand in God's court and he declares over us the same thing that he would declare over Jesus. That we're approved. That we're valued.
That we're loved. God is not indifferent towards Jesus. He prefers him. He loves him. He lavishes on him. And we are in Christ.
We are the righteousness of God for those of us who have placed faith in Christ. And God prefers us. And he loves us. And he lavishes on us because of Jesus. Once you go to the Supreme Court in the U.S., you don't go anywhere else. Once the Supreme Court's made a decision on something.
They don't appeal down to a lesser court. When the God of the universe speaks that we're the righteousness of God because of Christ, we don't appeal down to a lesser court. We don't say, yeah, but popular opinion at work. Like, that's an appeals process, God. And I've got to run this by my wife. That's not how that works.
We are the righteousness of God because of Christ. I don't even fully know what that means, but I know it's great. That means that we don't need the approval of people because the God of the universe approves of us because we're in Christ. The most powerful being in the universe lavishes on us, cares for us, loves us, so we don't need to seek to have power on earth. The God of all comfort declares that we are in him forever, that we have always been made right, so we don't have to spend our days chasing after some piddly form of comfort that is soon fleeting. The God who orders the universe has already secured the end for us.
Our need to pretend like we have control fades away. Jesus gives us worth. Our idols do not. Jesus gives us never-ending, everlasting worth, and our idols cannot. The second law. I can give you life.
So the first one is that they can justify our existence. They can give us a reason to live. They can prove that we're worth being around. And the second one is that they can give us fulfillment and validation and satisfaction and joy. They can give us life. And it's really kind of squishy.
But we think this. Life was the best term I could come up with to describe what it is our idols are telling us. Because it's not like I can give you the ability to suck oxygen into your lungs and to keep your heart beating. That's not what your idol tells you. But it's this.
Okay, so you were in elementary school. And you were like, ah, elementary school is okay. But middle school is where it's at. And then you got to middle school and you were like, I was really dumb in elementary school. Because middle school is the worst. This is horrible.
Like that's the closest to purgatory I think I've ever been. Middle school. So you're in middle school and you're like, this is the worst. High school. High school is where it's at. When I get to high school, I'll have life.
That's where joy will be found. High school people, that's it. High school is the promised land. You get to high school and you're like, I'm going to need a driver's license for this to work out right. Like, high school is good, but driver's license. What if I have a driver's license?
I get that taste of freedom. Then I'll be okay. And then you get your driver's license. And after a while, you're like, ah, I just want to get out of high school. I just want to be done with this place. I want to have some freedom.
I want to be away from my parents or whatever. And then you start saying, if I could just go to this school or if I could just get this job. And then it's, if I could just get this promotion or if I could just graduate with this degree or if I could just get married. And if we could, oh, if we could just get married. If we could just have children, you have children. Maybe we should have gotten a dog.
Like, it's always around the corner that we keep telling ourselves that's where life will be. Because you're doing that now. We're all looking and saying, ah, if we could just, hmm, get into that type of house. If we could just get to where we didn't have to worry about our bills. If we could just get to this next stage. Always around the corner we're saying, life will be here.
Life will be here. Life will be here. And the reason that we do that is because we haven't found it yet. None of us have reached the point where we are like, that's it. Even when we get a taste of it, it's soon fading and we realize we need something else. Colossians 3.
Just a few flips to the right. Verse 1. If then you have been raised with Christ. So this is those who are in Christ. Those who are believers that place their faith in Christ. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is.
Some versions say set your heart on. So if then you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on the things that are above. See, our idols are where we set our hearts. And the reason we know that is because when they're up, we're up. And when they're down, we're down. So if it's relationships, I'm in a relationship.
I'm good. All of life is good. This relationship isn't good. Or I'm out of a relationship. I'm bad. All of life is bad.
My worth comes from having finances, having money. That's why when the stock market crashed. When all of that happened with the housing market and with Madoff. There were so many CEOs that hanged themselves or jumped out of windows. Because where their heart was set had just dropped off. And where they had their life centered was gone.
And so whatever it is that we're riding the wave of and then crashing back down with, it's where our hearts are set. But it says to set our hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth. So this is basically what we were talking about where God says, you cannot make an idol out of anything that has been created. Which leaves us one option. God can be our God.
Because he's the only thing that's not created. So that's what that's saying. Don't set your mind on anything that's on earth. Don't chase after anything that's been created. Set it on Christ. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. For you have died. We have died to our old selves with Christ, and our life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is our life, appears, then we will appear with him in glory. Our lives are not going to be found for those of us who are in Christ anywhere other than him. They're not just around the corner.
They're not going to be found in the next promotion. They're not going to be found in the next relationship. They're not going to be found if we can just make this work, this scenario play out. They aren't anywhere but in Christ. That's amazing. That our lives are in him.
We don't have to search for them. We don't have to chase for them. We don't have to try to find them. He has it. Our life is hidden with Christ. I heard a pastor talking one time, and he was working with a lady who had some serious relationship idolatry.
That she consistently was seeking approval from men. And the only way she kind of knew that her life was okay was when she had a man. That they validated her. So she was talking with a counselor, and the counselor told her, it was a lady. The counselor told her, you need to get off of this man habit you're on. And you need to get a job.
You need to get your own career. You need to pursue that. And then you'll be self-sufficient, and you won't need a man all the time. You'll have your own thing going. And this pastor said he was talking to her, and he's like, well, what did you think of that advice? And the lady said, I agreed that I didn't need to have a man for approval.
But I did not want to just swap out a typical female idol, relationships, for a typical male idol, career. She was like, I didn't think that was a good trait, to just swap idols. And he said, okay, well, what has helped you in this? What has grown you in this? And she said Colossians 3. She said, I memorized Colossians 3, and every time I enter into a conversation, start getting to know a man, I say to myself, my life is hidden with Christ in God.
My life is not hidden in you. So she'd say, I'd start a relationship. I'd be like, you might be a great man. You might even one day be my husband, and you may be a great husband and a great father. But my life is not hidden in you.
I don't need you to complete my life. And that is true for us in Christ, and that is great news. That our next job promotion, our next career, our next good grade, our ability to graduate, our ability to get this situation to work out, our ability to enter into a relationship, our ability to have our children grow up and be happy and healthy and fine, our life is not hidden there. It's in Christ. So practically, do you know how free this makes us as Christians?
Do you know how good that news is? That nothing outside of Jesus is going to bring us worth. And because our worth is centered in Jesus, nothing outside of Jesus can take it from us. And nothing outside of Jesus is going to give us life, and because our life is centered in Jesus, nothing can take it from us. I was recently reading Justin Martyr, where we get the term martyred from. He was writing a letter to the Roman government to tell them basically they shouldn't kill Christians because Christians were great.
That was basically his argument. He was like, look, Jesus told us to pay taxes and to not cause problems. You want all your citizens to be Christians. Killing us is dumb. His letter didn't go so well because we got the term martyr from his name, just for the record. He said, spoiler alert, I don't think it was well received.
But in that letter, he said this. He said, I want to make something clear to you. You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us. That's the freedom that we have in Christ. I can lose my job. That doesn't harm me because my worth and my life don't come from it.
I probably should get another Job because paying bills is nice and eating is fun. But my life and my worth don't come from it. This relationship that I'm in with Anna, my marriage, is great. And it can be going really well, and it can be going really poorly, and it doesn't destroy me. She's my wife. She's a sinner I'm married to.
I'm a sinner she's married to. I got the better end of that deal, for the record. And we just get to walk through life together. Because worth and value in life don't come from it. So we actually just get to be teammates who walk through life together.
You can graduate or not graduate. You can be in a relationship or not in a relationship. Your kids can turn out wonderfully or be the worst children the world has ever seen. And your worth and your life are always forever sealed in Christ. Now that's freedom.
People can like you or not like you. Life and worth are in Christ. So what this means for us is that as we wrote down our idols, and as the Holy Spirit in His grace began to reveal to us where we had inordinate love, where we had begun to worship something more than God, what we get to do is approach Jesus in faith. That He is capable. That He has accomplished what He says He'll accomplish. That He has taken our sin and given us His righteousness by His grace and His grace alone.
And that we have died with Him when He was brutally murdered on a cross. That our sin was nailed to it with Him. And that we died. And our life is hidden in Him. When He rose again, we rose again. And one day when He cracks the sky open, we'll appear with Him in glory.
When He does that, when we see the Creator of the universe snatch heaven open to reclaim His children, it says our life will appear with Him. We'll finally say, there's my life. There's that quiet nagging I've had my entire life. That's where it's hidden. It's hidden with Christ in God. And we'll be forever with Him.
Forever free. Forever loved and approved and comforted and given grace. Because He is good. And only He is good. And we are not. So we get to approach Jesus in faith and faith alone.
We don't have to be good at getting rid of the things we wrote down on these discs. We don't have to be good at crushing all the things that God began to reveal to us that we pursue. Because Jesus is great at it. Now that's good news. My value and my worth and my life are found in Jesus forever. And I get to approach Him in faith that He is big enough and He is capable of destroying all the would-be gods that would take His place.
So the band's going to come back up. And we're going to do things a little bit differently tonight. We're going to sing one song. I'm going to come back up and talk to us just for a few more minutes to kind of give us some instruction about how we're going to end this. Now we are a church family.
We exist as God's church. This isn't a show. So we respond. And so we sing one song on the front end and we're going to celebrate and sing a lot on the back end. We're going to take some time to respond to who Jesus is and what He's done. So we're going to sing one song.
I'm going to come back up and talk to us a little bit. But we get to approach God in faith. We get to come to Jesus knowing that these things have a hold of our hearts, but that He is the one who can grab our hearts and make it His through His grace and not anything that we do, no work that we bring to the table, no awesomeness that we have. We come empty handed to a God of grace who rescues and lavishes and loves and redeems. I'm going to pray and we're going to sing. Jesus, we thank You that in You, because You were willing to become our sin, because You were willing to take our wrath, we have become the righteousness of God.
That our worth and our value is forever sealed in You. And Jesus, we praise You and thank You that our life is in You and You alone, and that we will forever, never be able to find it on earth. That in all the things we seek, it will come up wanting because it is in You. So God, I pray right now that You would stir our hearts to love You more, that Your Holy Spirit would draw us to Yourself. And for those of us who are walking through life, seeking our worth and our life somewhere other than You, that You would capture us and make us Yours in Jesus' name. Grace is open freely for everyone.
Life is only in Jesus. The worth and the validation and the life that we're seeking, that we're constantly chasing after, all the things that our idols represent are given to us fully, and freely and forever in Jesus. And we get to approach Him in faith. Not our own ability, not our own ability to run from our idols, not our own ability to fix our heart, but faith that He is gracious and that He is capable. And that He is good. That on the cross, when He died in our place, when He took our sin, He proved once and for all that He is good, and that He is for our good.
And we get to approach Him in grace. So what we're going to do, because He is gracious, because we get to approach Him in faith and faith alone, we're going to sing a few more songs, and we're going to spend some time just talking to Jesus, praising Jesus for who He is, and you get to, if you would like, if you want to approach Jesus in faith, we've got a trash can set up over here and a trash can set up over here, and you can go throw your idol away. Not because you are able to get rid of it, but because Jesus is. All you have to do is want to get rid of it. All you have to do is surrender to the fact that He is capable of destroying all would-be gods.
You don't have to be good at it. You don't have to even get to the point where your heart isn't still going to chase after it some, but you're going to go say to Jesus, I don't want to chase after this. I don't want to seek my worth and validation from this. I don't want to try to find life in this. Life and worth and value are in you and you alone forever. And I want you as God, who are capable to step in on my behalf, just as you did in the cross, where you stepped in on my behalf to rescue and redeem.
I want you to step in and rescue and redeem. I heard this the other day, you're never too weak for a redeemer. You're never too small to come to someone who can rescue and redeem. And so we just approach Jesus in faith. Faith that He's capable. So we're going to sing a few more songs.
We're going to celebrate that Jesus is God, that He is good, that He is capable, that He does destroy idols. And we're going to approach Jesus in faith that He can. It may be a daily process of you continuing to approach Jesus in faith to get rid of your idols. But He's capable and He's faithful.
Deep Idols
Transcript
We'll be in Ezekiel chapter 14. We are in the fourth week of our series looking at and studying idolatry and kind of what the Bible has to say about that and how that plays out in our lives. Ezekiel is kind of in the middle. Maybe to the right, page 454 if you've got one of our Bibles. If you don't have a Bible with you, we actually just hold your hand up. We'll grab one for you.
Aubrey will hand you one real quick. So if anybody need one, we've got some right back there. Okay, so we're in the fourth week. We've been doing this for three weeks now. How are we doing? We've been talking for the past four weeks about idolatry, kind of looking at what Scripture says about idolatry.
Are we beginning to see that in our own lives? Are we changing? Are we walking that out with community? Are we just hearing things, learning things, and not allowing it to affect us? So we got together on our first week of this series, and we talked through that God is the only God, and that we actually would want Him to be God, that it's actually best for us if He is God.
The next week we talked about how we'll take good things and turn them into God things, and then that becomes a very bad thing when we actually put that weight on something that is not God and how we'll take things that He gave us to enjoy, meant to be enjoyed, and we'll treat them as if they are God. We spent last week talking about broken cisterns. Basically what happens when we do that, how we have to work really hard to prop up our made-up God, and then ultimately we either crush it or it destroys us, and that God is the fountain of living water that brings us life. So my question is, are we seeing areas in our lives that we've placed too much weight on, that we've begun to take something good and care too much about it?
Are we looking at, are we walking that out in community? Are we doing that, or are we just hearing things, learning things, talking about things? So hopefully we are in relationships kind of walking this out and growing in the gospel. That would be the hope. That's why we do this. That's why we walk things out in church families.
So what we've been addressing, though, is that idolatry is the worship of anything other than God. So we've talked about how we often think of sin as breaking God's rules, but that we don't first break rules until we have first decided to worship something, to give more importance, more value to something other than God. So when we talk about Adam and Eve in the garden, God created them in a perfect relationship with himself. They kept it together for really like half a chapter because part of that they weren't even made yet. So it kind of tells the story twice.
So maybe if you add up both half chapters, they got a whole chapter of the Bible where humans had it together. So just so you know, if your life looks like that, lots and lots of chapters. If you're messing it up and half a chapter of it is good, that's how humans look in the Bible. So you're on pace with the rest of us. But they ate from the tree they were not supposed to eat from.
And so they certainly broke a rule. But first, their value system changed. Prior to breaking the rule that God had given them, they first decided that they wanted to elevate themselves, that they were more important. And so they swapped God out for themselves, and then they broke a rule. And so that's what we've been talking about. The sin is not primarily us breaking rules.
That when you look at the Ten Commandments, we don't break any of the other ones until we've broken the first one, which says, you will have no other gods before me. So that's what we've been talking about. What we're going to talk about tonight is heart-level idolatry. And that's what we're going to be looking at in Ezekiel. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to hop in.
God, we thank you for your grace. We ask you to show up in a very real way tonight. We love you, and you are good. Speak to us through your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Some of what we're going to be talking about tonight, I think, has previously been said better, or as my English 4 teacher would say in high school, more better.
She told us one time, y'all got to start doing more better on these tests. And I was like, I don't think we've got much of a chance. But there's a guy named Tim Keller that we've stolen some of these ideas from. He unpacks idolatry very well as it applies to us in American culture. And so I would recommend the book Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller. If you're interested, if you've been kind of growing and understanding this, idolatry as we walk through it, Tim Keller says things really well.
Some of what we'll talk about tonight is stuff that, like I said, I think Tim Keller has said previously, more articulately and smarter-y. That's one thing Presbyterians have going for them. They're usually pretty smart. They have a lot they have to go through to be a Presbyterian minister. Other denominations and that sort of thing, they're like, can you read? Kind of.
All right, go at it, boy. You want to yell at people about Jesus? Yes. All right, you're in. So Ezekiel chapter 14, verse 1.
Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. Okay, so Ezekiel is a prophet. He's writing this down. This is stuff that happened. So when he says they came before me, that's Ezekiel.
He's a prophet. They are in Babylon at this time. So they are in the Babylonian captivity, which means that they had been in Israel and the Babylonians had come down and snatched up a bunch of them, the king and other high-ranking people, and took them back to Babylon. And the reason that happened was because in the Old Testament, God set up the nation of Israel as his people, and as long as they were worshiping him as God, he defended them. He protected them. And so people would show up and be like, we're going to conquer you.
And they'd be like, no, because you don't know who God is, and that's going to go really poorly for you, so you might want to go home. And they would be like, yeah, right, and then God would just crush people. And then whenever they would begin to make alliances with other countries, begin to trust more in Egypt than in God, begin to trust more in other gods than in God, God would basically just say, okay, sure, if you want to pray to gods that don't exist, pray to them when people show up to capture you. And so God would lead the Israelites into captivity basically to train them, basically to show them that the gods they were trusting in, the alliances they were making, the things they were letting their heart chase after were really bad for them.
And ultimately weren't going to bring them joy and satisfaction, so he would allow them to go into captivity so that he could bring them back to himself. He actually may be doing that with some of us right now. In his grace, he may be identifying in our hearts areas of idolatry and sin that we've begun to place too much importance on something that is not him and that ultimately will not satisfy, and it's actually very loving and good for him to do that. It's the worst. Don't get me wrong. It's horrible and not enjoyable at all, but it's very, very good for us.
He's been doing that with me. It's not fun going behind the woodshed of grace, but it's very, very good for us. And so as he identifies idolatry and areas in our heart that we kind of get off, that we begin to drift, it's actually him being good to us. And that's kind of the situation they're in right now. So it says, Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me.
Elders of Israel would have been the chief leaders of the Israelite people in Babylon at this point. So chief leaders come and sit before Ezekiel, came and sat before me, and the word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? Stop right there. All right.
Leaders of Israel come and sit before God, come and sit before Ezekiel to have Ezekiel ask God something for him. Basically like, what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to lead? What do we need to do? And what God says is, their idols are not visible. They've set them up in their hearts.
So these were Israelite leaders. They were not bowing down to other gods. They were not worshiping and chasing after other gods. If they were, it would have been obvious. When they showed up, Ezekiel would have just been like, hey, why don't y'all get rid of the idols you have in your house? Why don't you get rid of the totem poles and the asherahs?
And why don't you get rid of your Baal idol worshiping things? But they don't. They show up, seem like they've got it all together, and God says, their idols have been set up in their hearts. That's very scary for us. What that means is, that we can be walking through life, functionally looking like Jesus is our God, functionally being a part of church family, functionally looking like God is our God, but actually, at a heart level, be in love with and chasing after and worshiping something else. And so he says, the idols that they have have been set up in their hearts.
Therefore, speak to them, verse 4, Therefore, speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Anyone of the house of Israel, who takes his idols into his heart, and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I, the Lord, will answer him, as he comes with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, Repent, and turn away from your idols. Repent means confess and change. It means actually turn away from.
So don't just say, Oh, this is an idol I have in my life, but actually turn away from it. Repent, and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations, for any one of the house of Israel, or the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who separates himself from me, taking his idols into his heart, and putting the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to a prophet to consult me through him, I, the Lord, will answer him myself. What he says is, they come to talk to you, I'm going to talk to them. I'm not going to speak to you and let you talk to them.
I'm going to speak to each one of them individually, as it comes to the idols that they've set up in their heart. What we're going to do, is we're going to pray, and ask this same God, to do the same thing for us tonight. He promised to do it for the people of Israel, we're going to ask him to do it for us tonight. So, all of us in here who are believers, I would like for you, because it is his grace and his goodness towards us, to show this to us, I would like for you to ask God to show you areas in your heart, that you've begun to place too much weight, too much value, that you've begun to put some hope in, put some worth in, get validation from, that is inordinate and not appropriate, areas that you've taken idols into your heart.
So, I want you to ask him, and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal that to us. If you're in here tonight, and you're not a believer, and you're just hanging out, and checking out this whole Jesus thing, I would ask you to do the same thing, to ask God to reveal to you, where there may be areas in your life, that you're pursuing something, that's not going to satisfy you, because he says that he's going to do this, so that he may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel. That's what we want. And if you're in here tonight, and you don't know Jesus, ask him to do that. Here's the thing, this is the trade off, if you don't know Jesus.
If he's real, it's on him to show that to you. Like, if Shakespeare is going to meet Romeo, Shakespeare's got to do that. Okay? Think about it a little while, that makes sense. Okay? So, that's on God to reveal himself.
So, if he's real, then cool, you're talking to the creator of the universe, and it's actually very good for you to meet him, because if he's real, this is true, and you need to know it. If he's not real, you just fired off some chemicals in your brain, for no reason whatsoever, and that's not a huge waste. So, think some thoughts. If he's not real, no harm, no foul, if he is real, you might actually get to encounter the living God, and that would be really cool. So, everybody though, we're going to pray this together, that God would reveal this to us, that he would speak to us. So, I'm going to pray, but let's, we'll be quiet for a second, y'all can pray, and then I'll pray.
God, you promised your people many years ago, that you would reveal their idols to them, and we as your church, ask you to do the same for us. That you show us in areas in our hearts, where we've begun to seek validation, where we've begun to console ourselves, where we've begun to seek worth, and God, we ask that through your Holy Spirit, you would lay hold of our hearts, that they might be solely yours, because in that, there's freedom, and there's life, and there's joy. So, speak directly to us tonight. God, I pray that there's some people in here, who don't hear a word of anything else I say, because you are dealing with them.
That's far better. And we love you in Jesus' name, and ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, so, what God is saying here, is that we can functionally, at a heart level, have something that we pursue, and it alters, how we walk through life. So that these men, looked like they had everything together, but they had, at a heart level, at a deep level, idolatry, set up.
What that means for us, is that, idolatry is always, the sin beneath the sin. So that it's always, idolatry, prior to us, sinning in any other way. So when we think about, our sin, a lot of times, it's not, that we have a problem with lying, or that we have an issue with money, or that we have an issue with, with relationships. It's actually something deeper, something at a heart level, that's driving that. So that a lot of times, money and relationships, and all of the manipulation, and stuff that we do, is actually the object, not the operator.
The operator is what's driving, that. So that's what we're trying, to unpack tonight, and I'm going to try, to give us some different ways, to think about that, so that we can begin, to see that in ourselves. The other thing, that that means, is that if it's at a heart level, that means that, behavioral change, will not solve the issue. It means that, adjusting how you look, how you act, how you behave, is not going to fix the problem, if it's a heart level issue. I'll give you an example, of how this plays out, and how this can be the operator, not the object. Matt and I, have been friends for a long time, we roomed together in college, which some of that was cool, and some of that was not.
I like my roommate better now, her name is Anna, she's way better, of a roommate. I think Matt, likes his roommate better now, as well. But we roomed together in college, we got to know each other, and then there was a while, where we weren't around each other, and then we moved back down, and moved to this area about, I don't know, a year and a half, two years ago, something like that, and started working on, on being a part of this church plant together, and what's cool is, we've gotten to kind of, be friends again, in a different way, and you get, you get around each other, you work for a while together, and you start realizing, man, you're kind of messed up. Like that's kind of what you realize, the more you're around people.
That's actually why we, walk out, church family, in community groups, because the truth is, you can't help somebody, walk closer to Jesus, unless you're around them. You just can't do it. Like how am I going to know, whether you're pursuing Jesus, if I'm never around you, and your spouse? How am I going to know, if you're pursuing Jesus, if I never see you, with your roommates? If I never see how you handle stress? I mean how am I going to know?
I'm going to tell you something. I can fake being really, really good for an hour on Sunday. That's easy. But you hang out with me, for a long period of time, you're going to realize, man this guy is sinful, and he needs Jesus. And that's why we walk out, community, in life, in normal everyday life, doing normal everyday things together, as Jesus' people. But as Matt and I have gotten to do that, what we realize is that we both lie, periodically, and we shouldn't, but we do.
And it happens in quick, kind of circumstances. And so what will happen is, let me tell you how, this is how Matt lies. I was talking to him about it the other day. I'm going to confess his sin first, and then we'll focus more on me. Matt will do this. Matt loves being early to places.
It's his favorite. It's the worst, but he loves it. So he loves being really early to places. It makes him way more comfortable, in just life in general. He wants to be early, kind of allows him to, take a deep breath, know everything's going to be okay. I do not operate that way, but we go to the same places a lot, to meet with people, and do different things.
And so it doesn't make any sense, for both of us to drive our trucks, which get like, 12 miles to the gallon, or something. And so we end up riding together a lot, and so what Matt will do, is he tricks me, and I just recently discovered, this took like a year and a half, so you can see how quick I am on things. What he does is this, he wants to be there like an hour and a half early, but he knows there's no way, I'm going to sit in a parking lot with him, for an hour and a half, before we have to meet with somebody. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's early guys, so he really wants to leave way early, to like change two tires on the way, I don't know what he's wanting to do.
So what he'll do, is he will tell me about 15 minutes earlier, than he knows I am willing, like would want to be. So like if we wanted to leave at 3, he'll tell me 2.45, if I wanted to leave at 3, because he actually wants to leave at like 2.30. And then what he does, is he shows up early to leave. He knows the entire time, that he's going to show up 10 minutes early, to my house to pick me up. And he's like, I'm just early, oops. So he'll tell me he's going to be somewhere, sometime, and it's intentionally 15 minutes later, then he knows he's coming.
And I recently was like, man, you're kind of lying to me, aren't you? And he's like, yeah, that's not right. He didn't realize he was doing it. And then I, he's called me out on this, I didn't realize I would do this, but I forget things, all the time. I'm the worst at it. So what I do, is somebody asks me, hey man, did you do that?
Or Matt will ask me, hey, did you do this? Because Matt remembers everything. Hey man, have you gotten this done yet? And I'll go, oh, I'm going to do that tomorrow. All that means is, I have completely forgotten about this. And if I remember, I'll do that tomorrow.
So I just act like I scheduled it for the next day. Oh yeah, I was going to get up early and do that tomorrow. Now I'm going to have to get up earlier than I had planned, because I've got to do that tomorrow. That's how that works. So what I should say is, I completely forgot, and I will now get that done.
But I don't want to say that, because the truth is, I want people to think I'm awesome. That's really one of my major goals in life. See, Matt and I are both lying, but we're lying for completely different reasons. Matt is just pursuing some comfort, some level of ease in life. And so, since I would never do that, I feel really superior to him when he does that. I'm like, how on earth could you lie like that?
What a jerk. And then when I lie, Matt remembers everything, so he feels superior to me in two ways. One, he would remember, and second of all, he wouldn't lie about it. And so he gets to feel really superior too, but the truth is, we're just lying for different reasons, and we're defending different things. I just want people to think I have my stuff together. I just want people to think I'm awesome.
I could care less whether they like me. So somebody's like, man, that guy's a total jerk. Well, whatever. That guy's really stupid. What? No, I'm not.
I'm smart. Like, I will defend you thinking I'm great. I don't care whether or not you actually like me. We are lying, and we can go after lying. We can go after the behavior, and we can say, we need to stop lying. We shouldn't lie.
But the truth is, until we change what's underneath that, we won't actually fix the problem. We won't actually root out what is there, because we have heart level issues, things that our actions are pursuing, that are a bigger deal. So what we're about to do, is we're going to walk through four, kind of broad, major categories, to just help us get a lens for this. To help us get a lens for, sin beneath the sin, what actually might be driving us, to get a look at the operator, not the object. Then I'll try to unpack it some, with some, we'll talk about money, and I'll give us some other examples, to kind of show how this plays out in life.
Here's what I want though. Don't argue with the categories, when we go through these four things. Don't get derailed, in trying to blend them together, or be like, I feel like these are the same, like just don't do that. The reason is, they're made up. So it's really not worth it.
Like I'm as willing to argue with you, about these categories, as I am about breeds of unicorns. I'm just not going to do it. Like you want to talk about, Irish stompers and palominos, because it's like, they don't exist. So you can argue all you want to about them. So this is just to give us a helpful lens.
Okay? So just track with me, walk with me through this. It's just to help us see this. So the first one we're going to talk about, is power. So if you had power, as you're operating idolatry, as something to sin beneath the sin, what that would mean, is you would say something, along the lines of, life has meaning and purpose, if I have success, if I have influence, if I win.
If I'm on top, that's how life has meaning and purpose. Your worst nightmare would be humiliation. Because your ultimate goal, is to have people think you're great. To be powerful in life, however you define that. And so, your worst nightmare would be, to have people look at you and think, man, this person doesn't have their life together. They are the worst at this.
They are terrible. They have blown this. They've failed. People around you feel used, because they're just objects, in your ability to have power. And your problem of motion is anger. I will also let you know, as we walk through this, just to be helpful to you, if it's not one you deal with, you will think, man, that's the worst.
Just so you know, you'll be like, oh my goodness, how could anybody be like that, until we get to the one that you deal with, and then you're like, well, that one seems reasonable. Just so you are aware, when I interact with some of the other ones, I'm like, that's really stupid for you to care about that. And then we get into my area, and I'm like, no, this is smart. This is what you should pursue. This is why everyone wants to win. So, okay, power, approval is the next one, just kind of a broad category, to help us have, life has meaning and purpose.
If I have affirmation, if I have relationships, if I feel loved. That's how I know that life is okay. Okay, worst nightmare is rejection. To have people not want you around, not care about you, to think very little of you. People around you feel smothered, because you need them to love you. And your problem with emotion is cowardice.
You would rather lie to someone's face, than hurt their feelings, and say some true things they probably need to hear. So, you will, people ask you questions, and you'll bend the truth, and you'll do some different things, because you really just don't ever want to get into a conflict. You'll let people walk all over you, when they shouldn't be, when it's actually appropriate for you to, to engage them in that. But, that's because you want their approval. Comfort. Life has meaning and purpose, if I have freedom, and privacy, and no stress.
Like, I just don't have to worry about things. So, your worst nightmare is stress and demands. Some of the other areas of idolatry, actually feed off of stress and demands, and appreciate it, and enjoy it. It destroys you. Stress stresses you out. It's like you get multiply, overly stressful, because something's stressing you.
People around you feel neglected, because you really just kind of want to be to yourself. So, you're not checking up on people, you don't care too much about how things are going on with them. The majority of the time, you're kind of withdrawn. And, your problem of emotion is apathy. It's just really hard to get you to care about things. The last one is control.
Life has meaning and purpose, if I have discipline, self-discipline, if I have certainty, and if I have standards, if I know how things are going to operate. Your worst nightmare is uncertainty. So, having a situation that's not going to work out, that's all you can think about. You don't know how this is going to end up, at the end of the month. You don't know how this is going to work out, at the end of the week. You don't know how this conversation is going to go.
You have no control over how you're going to pay this bill, and it drives you crazy. People around you can feel unloved, because you don't care so much about them, as much as you care about how they're fitting into your system. And your problem of emotion is worry. You just, you worry about a lot of things, because anything that brings uncertainty, brings worry. Okay, that's just to give us a lens. Let me, let me explain how that operates.
We would look at certain people in life, and we would say, man, they're idle. What they chase after, what they love, is money. They love money. Maybe. Most likely, they love what money gives them. And the reason I say that is, because if money was just green and folded, people wouldn't care about it.
It's actually what money does, that we appreciate. Nobody, gets amped up about monopoly money. None of you have a bank account, that just has monopoly money in it. None of you keep that at your house, hidden somewhere. Because monopoly money, doesn't do anything for you. The only time you care about monopoly money, is the seven hours you're playing that game.
I don't even know how you win monopoly. I always, it just ends when someone flips over the board, and yells at their grandmother. I'm pretty sure that's how monopoly ends. And then you're not allowed to play it again, for like three years or something. And it's a good three years spent. Like it was enjoyable, to not have to play that game again, for three years.
But nobody cares about monopoly money. If money was just green paper that folded, we wouldn't care about it. So what we would say is, man, this person's idol is money. But the truth is, it's probably more likely, one of those four things, or something else, that money gives them. Let me explain how this works. Since your operator may be power, or comfort, the object becomes money.
Because money is a really good way, to get your idol. So if, if power, we're going to go through all of them. So power is the one we started off with. If your idol is power, money, does that really well. It gives you influence. Political candidates listen to you.
You get to be in the important rooms, because you have wealth. It goes before you, as little soldiers, that conquer the world for you. There's actually a guy on Shark Tank, that says that, every one of his dollars, is a soldier, that goes out, and recruits more soldiers for him. But see, it is, it's just a great way, to get power. So it's not that you love money, it's that you love power, but money is a really good way, to get it.
To have influence, and to win. It's also a tangible reminder, of your winning. If you're in business, and you're making more money, you're winning. And that money, is the scoreboard for you. If it is approval, money is a great way, to get approval. You buy me a pizza, I approve of you.
That's how that works. You give me things, I like this guy. This guy, with the wallet, this is great. But it really is, it's a great way, to have friends, to be able to, to feel loved, by pouring that out, on other people. So, it's even, you know, the grandmother, who always gives the best gifts. That may be, because she's very generous, and she loves her grandkids.
It also may be, because it's a great way, to get approval from. To have them over, to have them be a part of things. Comfort, money, is a pad, to life. Comfort, you don't want stress, you don't want people bothering you. Buy a lot of land, and put a fence around it. It's great.
You want privacy? Privacy fence. It's wonderful. You can pay people, to stand there, and keep other people out, if you have enough money. But, for us, it's more like, buying a really nice couch, and getting to go on vacation. It just buys us comfort.
We don't have to worry, about stress and demands, if we have enough money. But ultimately, money is just serving, our need for comfort. And, the last one, control. There's not a whole lot, of uncertainty, if you have enough Numbers, in your bank account. What's going to happen next year? I don't know.
I got cash. What's going to happen, if you lose your job? Cash. How are you going to handle this, if your car breaks down? Cash monies. There's not a lot of uncertainty, and so, some people, they look like, they're really good with money.
Serving their God of control. You can actually have, a marriage relationship, where they argue, all the time about money, and the wife, let's say, is always, so you sit down with these people, and he's like, look, all she wants to do, is spend money. She wants to buy things for herself, she wants to go on vacation, she wants to eat out all the time, we never cook at home, she just, all the time. And it's wasteful, and it's ridiculous, and I need, we need to save money, and we need to have enough money, in our bank account. Truth is, that may be a wise decision, but he may be, being just as selfish, with every dollar, he puts in a bank account, because it's serving his idol, of control, as she is, every time she spends it, on her idol, of comfort or approval.
Now, biblically, does it make more sense, to save money, than to spend it on everything? Yes. But it may be, just as idolatrous. So, a lot of times, the object, the surface level thing, we can see, is just that. It's an object, but it's not the operator. It's not the heart level issue, we have.
So we can step in, and change the behavior, and never root out, the heart issue. Never have, our holy God, step in, and lay hold, of our heart. Which is what he says, he's going to do, in Ezekiel. So you can have someone, that has a power idolatry, and in high school, the best way to do that, is to play sports, and be really good at them. So in high school, pour themselves into sports.
Very good athlete. And you would look and say, oh, that is idol of sports. Then he gets to college, and he's not as good, an athlete in college. But he's really good, at chasing women. And that's a good way, to exert power. And so he quits, playing sports.
And he starts chasing women. And you say, hmm, his idol is women. It's just the best way, to chase after power. Then maybe he, enters into politics. He gets into, to realm of thought, and he ends up, chasing power that way. So he quits chasing women, because that will get you, in trouble in politics, for the most part.
And he starts, going into politics. At some point, this guy, chasing after his power idol, could enter into the church, and become a, quote unquote, Christian. And it'd actually, just be a really, really good way, to serve his power idolatry. Because Christians, are the only ones, who have truth. And now he's one of the, owners of truth. And in Bible studies, when you get around, in your community group, he's the guy, who has all the answers.
He's the one, who knows all the best theology. He's the one, who can shout anybody down, when it comes to, Bible vocabulary, and where to find things, the best. And the truth is, it's just because, it's a great way, to exert power. And he's never let Jesus, take hold of his heart. You could have a female, she's growing up through school, best way to get approval, make good grades, and obey her parents. Very obedient, very good student.
Gets to college, grades are still important, but man, getting guys to like you, is a great way, to get approval. So she starts having, she has to have a boyfriend, at all times. Because she has to have, someone there. Her parents are further away. She has to have someone there, who shows that she has worth. So that other people, can see that she has worth, because her value, comes from approval.
Then she eventually, gets married, and the best way, to get approval, is to be the best wife, and mother, and best soccer mom, and have the most, well kept house, and kids. And throughout life, things actually look, fairly normal for her. But the whole time, she's bending her life, and walking out her days, pursuing her idol, of approval. It's very important, that we dig down deep, and find our heart level issues, and allow Jesus, to replace them, and to take them away. So, let me explain, how we do this. How do we fix that?
If that's true, if we have heart level idolatry, if we can take idols, into our heart, how do we fix that? Okay, let's go back to lying. Let's go back to, mostly Matt, but sometimes me. when it comes to lying, I'm just kidding. What we could say is, so when I lie, I could say, I shouldn't lie. Bad Christian. Bad, bad pastor.
Like, you should not lie. Pastors shouldn't lie. I'm pretty sure, that's in the handbook, somewhere. And I'm not supposed, to do that. And what I could do, is say, what if someone found out? That's really horrible, for me to do.
What if someone found out? And all I'd be doing, is pressing on my own fear, and my own pride, to adjust my behavior. So fear is, what if someone found out? And pride is, I should be better than this. And so all I'm really doing, is increasing, idolatry in my heart, to adjust my behavior. And that actually, in the long run, is going to be a very big problem.
So all I'm doing is saying, prolonging, so I'm just, adding into my idolatry, which has to do with, power and approval. And I'm just prolonging that, and saying, on the long run, it's actually better not to lie, for your ultimate goal, of power and approval. So I'm building into fear and pride, to change my heart. This is actually how we train children a lot. You don't want to be like, those bad people do you? Pride.
You don't want to go to jail, like they do. Fear. And all we're doing, is increasing idolatry, in their heart, which eventually, will be a very big problem. Because we're taking the operator, to adjust the object, we're increasing this. And that's an issue for us. That's how that plays out.
Y'all remember, a couple years ago, when, Siegfried and Roy, one of them, we'll just say Siegfried, because his name's more fun to say. Which, Roy, that's great, that that matches with Siegfried. That's just, that's a great coupling of names there. Siegfried, and Roy. One of them got attacked, by their tiger. Y'all remember this?
Their big, white tiger, or whatever. And they were all surprised. And it's like, bro, that's a tiger. That's what they do. That's like, he's never attacked me before. Well, he's a tiger.
Like, that doesn't, he's a trained tiger. Yeah, but he's still a tiger. And what happens for us, when we build into our idolatry, to adjust our behavior. Yeah, we're just a trained tiger. We're just training ourselves, training ourselves, to have a bigger issue later. Tigers are always going to be a problem, because they're tigers.
If you want to own a pet, own a pet you can take. That's pretty much how that works. Like, maybe you need a stick, but, have y'all heard the, I saw a thing, a dude called 911, a cat had pinned him into it. Have y'all heard this? Oh, it's the best. A cat had pinned him, and his whole family into it.
He called 911, and was like, we got a cat. He said, it's a big, Malaysian, or I don't know cat names. Himalayan. It's a big Himalayan cat. The lady on the phone was like, okay, and he said, it's a big cat. How big is it?
He's like, I don't know, like 22 pounds. She beeps over and goes, because she's a 911 operator, she gets a hold of the police officer, and she's like, guy, I want y'all to come help him with a cat. Is that a thing you do? Like, because I could just tell him to deal with it, if you want me to. And the cops are like, no, I will do that. They ended up sending an animal controller, whatever.
But, but, so if you, if whatever level you can take, you know, that's the level you need to own, just for the record. This is just a helpful tip. This has nothing to do with what we're talking about. If you can't take a 22 pound cat, don't own one. Get like a hamster. All right.
But what happens for us, when we build into ourselves, that's all we're doing, we're training a tiger. And that's why people will say, I can't believe I did that horrible, horrible thing. I wasn't raised like that. I know better than that. And it's like, yeah, but you've been just feeding the tiger, and then when something came along that seemed worth it, you went for it. Because all you've been doing is feeding into your heart, your heart level idolatry to adjust your behavior.
And let me tell you something, when it comes along, and suddenly your heart level idolatry sees something big enough, your behavior is going to change. Okay. So why do we lie? Why do we constantly seek approval? Why are we greedy? The truth is, our hearts are off.
As we've been walking through this series, and we begin to see areas in our lives that it's like, I've placed too much weight there, our hearts are off. We have heart level issues. We said early on that the biggest issue is not that we sin, or not that we break rules, but that we first chase after something other than God is God. When the Old Testament says, you will have no other gods before me, Martin Luther actually says that that's the same as when the New Testament says, you shall trust in Jesus through faith for salvation alone. Do the exact same thing, that your justification will come by faith in Jesus alone.
Justification just means how you have worth before God. Faith in Jesus alone, and you will have no other gods before me, are actually the same thing. When we sin, yes, it's idolatry, it's also a failure to trust in and believe in the gospel. For Christians, when we sin, we are actually functionally at that point failing to believe the gospel. So sin is, first and foremost, idolatry, and for Christians, it's a failure to believe the gospel.
What that means is, we have to replace our heart level issues with the truth of the gospel, and that actually changes us. We have to replace what is real for us because of Jesus, to change our heart level problems. So, what happens is, idols don't rarely just disappear on their own. They're always replaced by something. So someone who, as we walk through life, is really just lazy, may suddenly cease to be lazy if they start placing a lot of value on sports.
And they may quit placing a lot of value on sports if they place a lot of value on making money. But the idol is just being swapped out. It's never just gone. That's what we've talked about. You will have something that you worship as God. All it means is that something has taken ascendancy, has risen to a greater place in our hearts every time we change from one aisle to the other.
Thomas Chalmers, born in 1780, he's a Scottish calf. He says it this way, the heart's desire for an ultimate object, which just means something as supreme, something to be worshipped. The heart's desire for an ultimate object may be conquered, but its desire to have some object is unconquerable. The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is through the expulsive power of a new one. And as Christians, the expulsive power of the gospel is what rids us of all heart-level idolatry. When the gospel becomes so true to us, that we don't need any of these other things, when the fact that Jesus Christ, who was God, lived on earth a perfect life on our behalf, and died in our place, took the nails, the lashes, was hung from a cross, bled out the death that we deserved, so that we might be reconnected to God.
Jesus, when he's praying, calls God Father every single time, except for one time. When he's on the cross, he calls him God. Now the Bible doesn't say this, but it would seem that the relationship that Jesus had with God, as his Father, was broken, so that we might actually have one with the Father. That we might actually be adopted, because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. That when he rose again three days later, he rose on our behalf to give us life. New life, real life, not pursuing smaller things, not chasing after stuff that won't satisfy, but life in him, that ultimately fulfills and gives us everything.
Only when that becomes real to us, are we able to replace the idols that we've set up in our hearts. Only when Jesus regains and reclaims his throne, are we able to dethrone everything else. All the would-be gods that have shuffled in, and taken up a residency in our hearts. Only through Jesus. Always through Jesus. What cannot be dispossessed, what cannot be gotten rid of, may be dispossessed, if we are able to have a new affection, and so the truth is, we'll walk through life chasing after new affection, after new affection, after new affection, until the one thing, Jesus, the one true God, replaces it forever, and takes up home where he ought to be.
So here's what we're going to do. We've been talking for four weeks. Next week is our last week, that we'll be talking through this. We're going to play some music now. We're not going to, the band's not going to come back up. We're just going to play some music, because we as a church family are going to respond to this.
We've set up over here, we've got clay discs and Sharpies. And as God, through the Holy Spirit, has begun to reveal to us tonight, and through the past four weeks, areas that we have placed too much hope, too much life, too much joy, too much faith, too much worth, begin to get our validation from. The things that we've set up as idols in our heart, what we're going to do is, we're going to grab a clay disc, and we're going to write it down on it. Because the truth is, if we have idols set up in our heart, we carry them with us everywhere. I just want us as a church family to be honest about it.
So we're going to write down, I'm going to grab one, I'm going to write down the things that God's begun to reveal to me, that I have placed too much value in, too much worth in, that I've begun to seek validation from, and place my hope in. And I'm going to prayerfully write that down, asking God the Holy Spirit to reveal to me what that is, and then I'm taking my disc with me. And I want us as a church family to carry these with us, so that we can see the weight of our idolatry. Because most of us don't have something set up at home, that we go back home and worship. But we do have something set up in our hearts, that we carry with us all the time.
And so I just want us to be honest about it. I want you to put them in your purses, I want you to put them in your pockets, I want us to sit them on our dashboards, I want us to make ourselves very aware, that this little thing that we've written down, affects how we live. I want to bring them with you, when you meet with your community group. You've brought it with you every time you've come so far, you might as well just have a representation in your pocket. And I want us to be very honest and open with Jesus, and with church family, about what it is we've been pursuing, what we've been hoping would give us life and joy and satisfaction.
And then, when Jesus lets us, we're going to break home. So I don't know what that's going to look like for us. We're going to, next week, we're just going to spend some time talking about Jesus. We're going to spend some time talking about how He fulfills the promises that our idols make to us. So we'll have an opportunity next Sunday to break them.
If Jesus meets you on Tuesday and tells you to break it, break it. But don't just break it because it's convenient. Don't just break it because it's getting on your nerves. Because we actually, by God's grace, want these gone from our hearts, not just from our dashboard. We actually, by God's grace, want Jesus at the throne of our lives, because that's where joy is found, and that's where hope is found, and that's where life is found. And we don't want to walk through life chasing after things that will not satisfy anyone.
We don't want a little God. We want a big God. A holy God. A righteous God. That actually brings life. So we're going to play some music.
As you pray, and as God reveals you, and if He leads you, go grab one. We've got plenty of Sharpies. Move around the room, and in a minute I'll call us back. Pray over us. And we'll be done for that. I'm going to pray now.
God, I pray that through Your Spirit, You would reveal to us the idols in our hearts, so that You, God, as You say in Ezekiel 14, 5, that You may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from You through their idols. God, may You lay hold of our hearts. May our hearts belong to You and You alone. Because God, in You is life and hope and freedom. We don't have to work really hard to prove our value because Jesus proved our value when He died for us and He gave us value. He assigned it to us.
I don't have to be successful. I don't have to prove my worth. I don't have to walk through life trying really hard to show the world that I deserve to be here. Jesus Christ gives us value and hope. So God, through Your Holy Spirit, work in us now.
Call Your people to repentance as You called Your people here. And may we change and may we draw closer to You and may we draw closer to each other as we grow in replacing the lies that we believe with the gospel. We love You, Lord. Amen. outros, amen.
Amen. on our behalf.
God, we thank You that You change us by Your grace and may Jesus get all the glory. Amen.
Broken Cisterns
Transcript
Alright, if you've got your Bible tonight, turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 2. We'll be spending some time in Jeremiah chapter 2 tonight. My name is Chet Phillips. I get to be one of the pastors here. I'm very excited about being here tonight. We are in the third week of our Idol series, which is where we're taking some time to walk through and see what the Bible has to say about idolatry.
And specifically how idolatry is not just something that people used to deal with or that is something that only takes place in other countries, but that is actually a heart level issue for us. And so what we talked about the first week was that we were looking in Exodus chapter 20 and we talked about how God starts off by saying, You shall have no other gods before me. And so we just talked about what that looks like for us to have always have an object of worship and that we as humans will always have an object of worship. If you don't have a Bible, we actually have some. I forgot to say that.
So Jack and Mitch can help hand those out. If anybody doesn't have a Bible, if you want to raise your hand, we'll get one to you. So and if you don't own a Bible, just take that one home with you. That's our gift to you. So anyway, we've talked about how we always will have an object of worship.
We will always have something that is supreme in our lives. And so we just kind of discussed in week one why we would actually want that to be God. And we talked about how Jesus is the only God who was crushed in our place, who was crushed for us and that all other gods will eventually crush us. Last week, we talked about how we just kind of turned and looked at all of the things we can worship, how God basically says not to take anything and make it into a God and how we are as humans capable of turning anything into a God. And so one of the things we've said is that sin is not primarily us breaking rules.
So that God hasn't laid it out as I am God. Here are my rules. If you follow my rules, then we'll be good. If you break my rules, then you'll be in trouble. That's not how he lays it out. First of all, he rescues before he gives the law to his people.
So he chooses and rescues and redeems and brings them out of slavery before he ever says this is how we're going to relate to one another. And the way he sets up the law is I am God. There are no other gods. And so for most of us, we feel like sin is primarily me just breaking God's rules. But actually, the way he designs it, the way he lays it out is object of worship is first before rule breaking is.
And so Martin Luther actually said that we don't break any of the other commandments until we first broken the first one, until we've taken God and decided that something else is more important to us, something else is more supreme. That's when we'll lie. That's when we'll hate. That's when we'll do all the things that we're not supposed to do because we've actually decided that in this moment something is functionally greater to me than God. And it actually makes sense because our primary way to relate to God is not based off of works. It's not based off of rules.
It's not based off of following rules. I'll give you an example. Let's say that I ran an underground gambling casino out of my backyard in one of my sheds or something, which would be pretty amazing because I have pretty small sheds. It would be hard to get a lot of people in. Let's say I did that.
And let's say that I did not report this on my taxes and I did not tell Anna about it. Let's just say I had some form of income that wasn't illegal because I realize that in my story that's probably illegal and I can't do that. So it wasn't illegal, but I didn't tell the IRS and I didn't tell Anna about it. If I got caught, if the IRS audited me, the way that the auditor would relate to me would be completely different from the way that Anna would relate to me on the same issue. So the auditor would basically be like, all right, you owe us this much money, pay it plus interest or you're going to jail.
That's it. Anna, who I did the same thing, same situation, still money, still didn't tell her about it, she's going to approach me in a completely different way. She's going to be like, why didn't I know about this? Why on earth would you have hidden this from me? The auditor is never going to look at me and be like, an entire year? You kept this a secret for an entire year?
Like the auditor is not going to cry. He's not. He's going to be like, pay up or go to jail. That's something to you. Because the way I relate to the IRS is based off my ability to follow their regulations. And the problem between my relationship with the IRS and my relationship with Anna would actually be much different.
Because Anna and I have a whole lot of other issues that we need to talk about. Trust. We've got to talk about our communication. We've got to talk about all of the times that I told her things that weren't true. Why I wasn't willing to share this with her. And so it actually makes sense that when we feel like sin is just breaking God's rules, that he's going to say, no, it's deeper than that.
And the issue is bigger than that. Because God does not primarily relate to us on our ability to follow his rules. It's not that if we behave, then we're in. And if we don't behave, we're out. God's actually going to look at us and it's going to be that, no, if we're sinning, it's actually indicative of something deeper, something bigger, something greater. And so that's what we're talking about.
That's what we're trying to dig into a little bit. It's trying to understand how not only does our sin indicate where we are a little bit off, but actually how we might have set up idols in our own lives. And so we'll be in Jeremiah chapter 2. I'm going to pray and then we're going to hop in. God, we thank you that you're good. We ask you to speak to us tonight, that you would reveal your truth and yourself to us through your word.
God, I pray that we would grow closer to you and that your Holy Spirit would have free reign in here tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So the prophet Jeremiah, he's going to speak. God's going to be speaking through him. And so basically what God's going to do in this passage, this section of text, is he's talking to the nation of Israel and he's going to lay out two symptoms that they have.
And then he's going to give them their diagnosis. So he's basically going to say, you're doing this and you're doing this, but here's the main problem. So we're going to talk about the two symptoms and then we're going to talk about the diagnosis. I'm going to go ahead, spoiler alert, the diagnosis is idolatry. For those of you who are type A people, you now want to kill me because you know point three before we get to talk about the first two. So you're welcome.
And we're going to go ahead and move forward. So he lays this out this way. He says, The word of the Lord came to me saying, go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord. So this is Jeremiah speaking on behalf of God.
God says, I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest. All who ate of it incurred guilt. Disaster came upon them, declares the Lord. So God starts off by saying, I remember how we used to relate to one another.
I remember your love for me as a bride. And so God over and over in the Old Testament is going to say that he relates to the nation of Israel as a husband to a bride. In the New Testament, we're going to be told that the church is the bride of Christ. And so the relationship stays the same. Jesus is our groom, which I'm a man that's a little weird for me, but OK. It's that there's a real, genuine, intimate relationship there.
And that's why in the Old Testament, it's such a big deal when Israel runs away from God. It's as if a bride had left her husband. And so there's when we talked about in the first week about God being jealous for us, not of us. So God doesn't look down from heaven and go, man, this hipster thing is pretty cool. I wish I could get in on that. And I mean, when, you know, moon shoes came out, he wasn't like, oh, I love a pair of those.
Like that wasn't a thing. He's not jealous of us. He's jealous for us the same way that a husband would be for a bride. And so he fights for that relationship. And it's actually fitting. And he ought to.
So it says that I remember your devotion of your youth, your love as a bride. So then we're going to move down to verse four. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, what wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and went after worthlessness and became worthless? Some other texts are going to translate worthlessness a little different. Some will say worthless idols.
The word there is the Hebrew word, Abel. I don't read Hebrew, but I have a computer program that does for me. It's H-E-B-E-L. I don't know how to pronounce it, Abel. So that's how it's spelled out in English.
If you spell it out in Hebrew, it's some squiggly lines that don't mean anything. But the word worthlessness there is used in the Old Testament for nothing, for vanity, for worthlessness. And it's also used for idolatry. So it will be idols. And so some will translate that as worthless idols. But here's what he's saying.
This is the first symptom he lays out for him. He says, you went after worthlessness and you became worthless. We become like what we worship. So whatever we set up as supreme, we will over time become like that. And we spent some time talking about it the past couple of weeks. So here's my question.
Are we becoming more like Jesus? If he is who we worship, over time, we'll become more like Jesus. That's just how that works. If you look out, if you've been a Christian for a while and you look out over the past three years. I'm not talking about last week. I'm talking about the past, or as long as you've been a Christian.
Some of you haven't been a Christian for three years. But if you've been a Christian, are you becoming more like Jesus? When you look out over the past three years, you've grown in some areas. So we might say, well, I'm in better shape than I was three years ago. Some of us will be like, well, my waistline grew over the past three years. And I now can breathe heavier at the top of a flight of stairs than I used to.
That's kind of where I am. It's like, man, I remember when this didn't make me tired. So I've got to get back in shape. But there's certain things. Maybe we've grown. You could say, ah, my portfolio.
It's better. My net worth is. I've grown in that. And so the question is, what are we growing in? Because we become more like what we worship. So are we becoming more like Jesus?
Do we hate sin more? Are we quicker to repent? More open in confession? Do we care about our neighbors more? Do you care about your neighbors more now than you did two years ago? Do you care about your coworkers more now than you did three years ago?
Because the Bible says that we're predestined to be conformed into the image of his son. And that's a slow, messy process. That's what we say when we talk about being in community groups. We say, hey, come be a sinful jerk with us. Like, come be messed up with us. That's what we're going to do.
You're going to spend your life annoying somebody. Come annoy us. Like, let's annoy each other together in community groups. That's what it is. But over time, we grow to be more like Jesus.
So he says, you went after worthlessness and you became worthless. So I would just have us ask and begin to look at what are we becoming more like. Verse 6. They did not say, where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in the land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that none passes through where no man dwells. And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.
The priests did not say, where is the Lord? Those who handled the law did not know me. The shepherds transgressed against me. The prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit. So here's what he says.
He says, I rescued you out of Egypt. And that's where we've been the past two weeks where we've been looking at the Exodus. He says, I rescued you out of Egypt. So I took you out of the house of slavery. I made you my people. And then I walked you through a desert of deep darkness, pits and destruction and despair where no one goes.
And I kept you safe. It's basically like, I walked you down dark alleys in New York and nobody messed with you. That's kind of what he's saying. He's like, I took you into the wilderness where nobody goes. Everyone who goes there just kind of dies. And I took care of you all for years.
And then I brought you into a good place. A place that's plentiful. I brought you things to enjoy. So we talked about last week, we said that God doesn't tell us not to enjoy things, not to love things. He doesn't say, I have created bacon. Now stay far away from it.
He did for a while, actually. But then there's grace and there's some stuff that happened in the book of Acts. And so you should read it. It's amazing. We get to eat bacon now because we're Christians. And so, but he doesn't say, he doesn't not want us to enjoy things.
He just doesn't want us to worship them. So he said, I actually brought you and gave you good things. And then you quit following me. The people who taught from the law didn't even know me. Your prophets prophesied by other gods and you went after things that don't profit. Not only did you chase after other gods, but you went after things that have no life in them, have no fulfillment in them, that will give you no abundance.
You went after things that don't even bring profit. And so what he says here in this section is basically, I rescued you, I made you my people, I brought you into a good land, and then you acted like all the other nations around you. You worshipped their gods and you looked like them. So the second symptom is, he says, you chased after worthless things and you became worthless. And then he says, you went into other nations and you went into, I brought you and made you a people and then you looked like all the nations around you. And so the second question I have for him, I think Jeremiah is pointing it out to the nation of Israel is, do we look like the rest of the Americans we know?
What I mean by that is, we would say, if we're Christian, I would say that I was in slavery to sin. That I could not get out of it, I could not save myself, I could not rescue myself, I was in trouble. And that Jesus rescued me, and that he brought me through my mess, and he's still doing that. And that he's actually blessed me with good things. With life and joy and peace in him. The Bible says that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing.
And so I would say, I know that Jesus is God and that I have an eternity to come that I'll spend with him. But if I view the world the same as everyone else, it doesn't seem like that's true. So what he's saying is, I made you into my people, I brought you through this, and then you started looking like everyone else. So what I'm not talking about is what beverages you partake in or abstain from. What we're not talking about is what rating of movie you're willing to watch. We're talking about some deeper stuff than words you may use or don't use.
What I'm asking is, we're not talking about like culottes. You all know what culottes are? You know what culottes are? Okay. Culottes are great. Because there's certain Christian groups that, I say culottes are great.
I've never really been around culottes. I just, I think the concept is funny. There's certain Christian groups that females aren't allowed to wear pants. So they believe in that. And that's okay. That's fine.
You believe females shouldn't wear pants. But then there's certain things that are hard to do, like run around and play games and do stuff in dresses. So they invented culottes, which are pants that look like a dress. Which is really confusing to me because it's like, what's the goal? To just look like we're doing stuff right as long as it's a secret that we're actually, like, it has more to do with appearances than, and a buddy of mine became a Christian. I met him up at Liberty.
He became a Christian and got a job at a Christian camp. And one of the first nights they were like, they were giving out the rules to all the counselors. And they were like, no, we don't believe in mixed bathing. And that's just a Christian terminology for guys and girls shouldn't swim together. But he'd only been a Christian for a couple of months.
And he was like, uh, yeah. No, I don't believe in that either. He said he was sitting in the meeting being like, I don't know if they know. I'm not sure a whole lot of people think that's okay. That's not like a big problem in society. Now, I know in other camps all the children just get to bathe together.
And so he's like, no, yeah. And he said he found out like a week later they meant swimming. And he was like, oh, I see why that was important to cover now. But he thought it. So that's not what I'm talking about.
What I want to know, and what I think he's pointing out here when it comes to our idolatry, when it comes to how we view the world, do we treat money the same as people who don't know Jesus? Are you thinking about your tax return the same way as your neighbors are? Do you treat relationships the same way? So that you think about marriage or you think about dating the same way that our culture does. Do you think about work? When you get in a conversation with a co-worker, do you talk about work and your boss the same way they do?
Is work just this thing you go to to get a paycheck and your boss is the worst because all bosses are the worst, but this one is specifically the worst because he's a moron. Is that how that works? Because we're supposed to fundamentally be different. Our hearts are supposed to be resting in a different place. Our hope is supposed to be grounded somewhere else. And if everything we do is just the same as our culture, I'm not talking about small stuff, I'm talking about fundamentally, like if we looked at your bank account next to your neighbors, do you all spend the money the same way?
Does your money just terminate on you? Or do we as Christians have places that we want our money to go because we know it's not ours? Places that we know that I've only got a short time here and then I've got an eternity of good things. My good things aren't here. Do we act like that? Do we treat relationships like the goal is for me to find some happiness in it, and once that stops, this doesn't need to exist anymore?
Or do we fundamentally view them differently? So those are the symptoms. He's saying, basically, your hearts are far from me. You're chasing after worthless things. You're becoming more worthless. And you look like all the other nations around you.
You're chasing after that which does not profit. Verse 9. Therefore I still contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your children's children I will contend. For cross to the coast of Cyprus and see, or send to Kadar and examine with care. See if there has ever been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. So God looks at him and says, He says, look, go to the countries around you. No, no, no, go. Go check them out. Nobody does this. No country does the stupid stuff you're doing.
They have gods that don't even exist, and they keep them. I'm real, and you swapped me out for stupid stuff. No, no, go. Go to Kadar. Same God they've had. And they carve that cat into rocks.
Go check him out. It's the same one. I'm real, and you swapped me out for stupid stuff. He says they exchanged their glory. They changed their glory for that which does not profit. I think we get this on small scale.
So let's take it away from thinking about God and other things. Movies where a dad only cares about work, and he has a family, so he neglects his kids all the time. So Hook was like that. The old Robin Williams movie where he was Peter Pan. Elf is like that. The dad doesn't care about his kids.
It's any other movie ever, pretty much. That's how that plays out. If a dad has a job, he loves it and hates his children. And we'll watch it and be like, don't you realize your family is important? And then he finally gets it at the end, and we're like, yeah, tell your boss he can shove his job and go hang out with your kids and figure out how to buy food later. We get that.
We get that on a small scale. I hung out with a guy named Jeffrey at Sears in Lynchburg. He was great. I was a fan of Jeffrey. He was a bigger guy. He had grown up in California and knew Spanish, so he kind of had a Spanish-y sounding voice.
I think his dad was African-American. His mom was Samoan. And apparently having an African-American dad and a Samoan mom makes you look all Hispanic because everybody just thought he was from Mexico or some Hispanic country, and he wasn't. So it was a lot of fun because people would say racist things to him, and I got to discuss it with him, and he was like, what the heck was that? But he was talking to me about it.
Basically, he did three things. He worked at Sears, sold drugs, and played video games. That was all Jeffrey did, pretty much. I assume he slept and ate, but that's pretty much what he did. And when he would play video games, he would come in sometimes and be like, dude, I was playing video games with this guy at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, in the evening, and I could hear this cat talking to his daughter and telling her to go away because Daddy's playing video games. He was like, I almost lost it.
He's like, I can't play with that guy anymore. And so here's a guy who understands that it's dumb to trade out things that have value for things that don't. And so what God's saying is, hey, you've swapped out your glory for something that doesn't profit, for something that at the end of life will have had zero meaning, and we have a real and genuine relationship, and I exist. So that's what he's laying out here. And so he says, I'll keep reading, he says this, Verse 11, Has a nation changed their gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked. Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have honed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. He looks at the heavens and he says, Be shocked.
Be appalled. Be utterly desolate. And I think he says it to the heavens because I think he may be speaking to the angels that actually know him, that are in his presence. And he's like, Do you see? The angels in his presence, first of all, are superior to us in look and power and that kind of thing. Every time they show up in the Old Testament, they have to say, Don't be afraid.
There's one lady who goes and tells her husband, I met this awesome man, and I bet that made him feel great. He's like, Really, honey? You've got to call him awesome to my face? And then he walked up and was like, No, that was a good assessment. This guy's pretty awesome. I'm paraphrasing.
I'm just kind of helping you all. That's how I read it. So they, in God's presence, praise him continuously because he's worth it. And so he looks at the heavens and says, Be crushed by this. My people have swapped me out. Be appalled.
Be shocked. Be utterly desolate. Be crushed by this. There's some weight behind what we take lightly. He says, My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and honed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
So, okay, what we know is that swapping out a fountain of living water for a cistern is immensely stupid. That's what we know from context. So he says, Be utterly desolate. Here's what they've done. But here's the thing.
When he's bringing the hammer down with this living water cistern analogy that he's explaining this, that everybody in their culture would have been like, They did. What? That hits home with none of us. None of us are like, Oh man, cisterns are the worst. Nobody says that. We don't even know what that is.
Like, What's a cistern? Because we're really spoiled when it comes to water. Like, immensely spoiled. Like, we, even in our society now, so not even just then, but in the world now, we are spoiled when it comes to water because we can get it anywhere. It's free. Like, we complain that water has no flavor.
We'll complain when it's like, What? They're going to charge me 50 cents for the cup? This is ridiculous. I'm getting water. This should just be free. You should be able to get it anywhere you want it.
The only time I've ever had to go without water, Anna and I both grew up in the middle of nowhere on wells. And so when your power goes out and you have a well, you have no water. That's how that works, which is actually kind of funny because now that we've moved here to the big city, when the power goes out, Anna will remind me that we no longer have water. And I've had to explain to her, I think twice now, that we still have water. Like, she'll be like, Power's out, so, you know, no water. Basically, which is like, be careful with how much we use and you can only flush a certain amount of times.
I'm just coaching you up. I just want to remind you. And it's like, no, no, no. We have water. And she's like, no, the power's out. And I'm like, yeah, but like water towers and we don't have a well that runs off of electricity.
But when you grow up nowhere, you only have limited amounts of water. I remember when the power would go out, we would have to, we had a swimming pool so we would take buckets to fill up the back of the toilets. And one time it was really cold but I took a bucket and dumped it on my head on my back porch to try to rinse off because if you go without water, that's the most I've ever gone without water. It was like two days in an ice storm with no water. That's it. And I was really whiny about it.
Like, I've learned that I like water. It's very useful for things. When he says this, what he's saying is, so here's how societies work then. You want to build a city? You need flowing water. Like, you need a river.
That's why all large cities built up around rivers. That's why Columbia is here. We built up around a river. Columbia, West Columbia was built on the fall line to power mills. West Columbia started as all the mill villages that ran. That's why Gervais Street Bridge was built to get all the people who worked in the mills across the river.
But, Rome was on the Tiber. You've got Egypt on the Nile. You've got Babylon and Assyria on the Tigris-Euphrates. You've got, Israel was built on the Jordan. You want a big city, you have to have a river. And that's what living water is.
Living is either flowing, it means living, or running. So it's like moving water. Then you had wells. So you weren't near a river, you dug a well, that's groundwater, that actually wasn't that bad, although those could run dry. And then third, also here, worst, was a cistern. And a cistern was, you dug a hole and it caught rainwater.
And that's, and they were difficult to keep up, like you had to keep plastering them. They didn't have good plaster then, they would cave in, you'd dig them again, and then the water would get really gross. If you had water in it, depending on when it rained. And so what he says is, they traded out a river and built their life on a cistern. And this cistern doesn't even work. And everybody went, whoa, that's dumb.
That's ridiculous. So nobody would be like, I have dug this cistern. And upon this cistern, we will found our city. And we will become a great people. And we will water a plant. And, yes, just one.
And if, and we will have one person gets to drink water every day, if it's rained recently. And soon, as we multiply, we will all die of dehydration or dysentery. Who's with me? Like, you don't, you don't build a cistern, you don't build a city on a cistern. It just doesn't happen. It doesn't support life.
And what he's saying is, they've swapped me out who gives life for things that they have to work on and manage and that will ultimately kill them. That's idolatry. Taking God who gives life, who brings life, and swapping him out for something else that ultimately destroys. I got some pictures because we don't, it doesn't bring anything to mind. This is Caesarea Philippi. That is a, a freshwater spring in Caesarea Philippi.
That's what you can build a city on. That's flowing fresh water that naturally just pops out and turns into that. This is a cistern, a modern cistern, so it's about as nice as they look. This is also, that's in Mount Arad or Arad or however you want to say that or however they say it. And then, the next one is in southern Israel and that's a cistern as well. I work for, my dad owned a swimming pool company, so I worked for that one for a long time.
The best I can picture is a cistern, is a swimming pool that the pump doesn't work and it's just filled up with water. And let me tell you, you don't want to drink that. And that's what we're doing when we swap God out for something else. And here's what he says. He says, they've swapped me out for that which does not profit. He says, broken cisterns that can't even hold water.
What happens when we do that, two things. It crushes us or it crushes the cistern. And ultimately, it'll do both. But what I mean by that, how that plays out is this. If I make money a God, that's a problem. But if I make Anna a God, that's worse.
If you make your job a God, that's a problem. But if you make your children a God, that's worse. Because they cannot provide satisfaction and fulfillment, you will crush them. What will happen is, you ever had expectations for something and then it just didn't work out the way you had kind of painted it up in your brain? So like you just expected this date was going to be great and then it could have been a decent date, but because it wasn't what you had painted up in your brain, it wasn't any good.
I did this some when I have gifts like at Christmas and stuff. I did this past Christmas. Somebody handed me a gift and I was holding it and it just seemed like the right shape and weight to me for some reason. I wasn't really squeezing it or doing a whole lot with it because I didn't want to be like, you know, like a six-year-old. So I was just kind of behaving myself but I had kind of just decided that it was a bag of coffee.
And that means a lot to me because I really love coffee. And so I just decided, I was like, sweet, I think this is a bag of coffee. And then when I opened it up, it was socks. Well, here's the thing. I needed socks and actually have worn the socks. I was very appreciative of the socks.
But when I thought it was coffee and then it was socks, the best I could come out with was like, oh, yeah. Like that was all I could do because it was immediately like, no, this is great. Yes. Like, you know, you just kind of stick your eyebrows up and nod your head a lot. Like, you've given people gifts before and they've done that. They're like, and you're just like, well, I missed on that one.
Like, I don't know what I was shooting for, but I didn't hit it. If you walk through life expecting a relationship to provide fulfillment and satisfaction, if you walk through life expecting your spouse to be that for you, you will live your life going, ah, because they could be a great spouse, but they'll be a terrible God. And you'll slowly steal from them. You'll have to take from them to make yourself feel valued and loved and validated and over time, you'll slowly just be looking at them going, ah, and stealing from them and crushing them. Same thing with your children. Your children will have to be perfect.
They'll have to make great grades. They'll have to always work everything out because your validation depends on it. Your worth depends on it. And when they don't, it'll crush you or you'll crush them. We build our lives around broken cisterns that cannot support life. That cannot bring joy.
That cannot ultimately satisfy and fulfill. This happens prior to being married. This happens prior to entering into relationships. There's a lady at Sears who, I didn't work with her, but they told me about her. That's why she was infamous. She had a list of 50 things that her future spouse was going to have.
The only thing I know is one of them on there was a hairy chest, which, great. Like, not even like character qualifications. It was like random stuff, left-handed. Like, I don't know, like a mole on his forehead. I don't know what she had put on this list. She had 50 things.
They said that she had shown it to them. Spoiler alert, she was still single last I heard. She might as well have been looking for a golden unicorn. She'd have the same chance of finding it. To expect a person to validate and fulfill, she's never going to find that guy and if she ever marries somebody, she's going to destroy them. There's only a few options when that happens.
We can, we can blame the idol. So you can get married and just assume, well, it's this, this spouse. You can just assume my kids are terrible. If I had those kids, this would work out great. You can blame the category. So you can just be like, all spouses are the worst.
Or you can blame, marriage is the worst. Things were great until we got married and that destroyed this. You can blame the whole system. You can blame, you begin to, you can blame yourself. I'm the one that messed this up. But ultimately, as we enter into this expecting anything to validate us outside of God, anything to bring us ultimate fulfillment and joy, it'll be broken and we'll be slowly killing ourselves because it cannot, will not, sustain life.
Your entire life will be Indiana Jones 4. You'll just be slowly disappointed over and over again until it's over. And you'll be glad it's over. If you've seen Indiana Jones 4, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well done. My favorite part about Indiana Jones 4 was right before it began when I could have not watched it.
So when we build up these expectations, everything will fail because we'll functionally be walking into a relationship and not just looking for a good spouse that we can walk through life together with, but looking for something to be God. Looking for something to give us what only God can give to bring us life and joy and hope and satisfaction. That's how it works with jobs. That's how it works with everything that we can say that, no, this would sustain my life. I can build my life around this. Body image, self-esteem, whatever.
It'll fail. Pleasing your parents, making good grades, being the smartest of your siblings, being the most successful. successful. All of it. What will happen is it will control you because you have to have it. Anything you have to have controls you. And if you get it, it won't satisfy.
And if you fail it, it will curse you forever. I love the quote that C.S. Lewis has on this because a right view of God changes this for us. And C.S. Lewis says this in his book The Weight of Glory. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. See, so often we think that we just have our passions are too strong. What C.S. Lewis is saying is like, no, we are just too easily pleased with stupid stuff.
We just too quickly run to a cistern and say, this will do it. When we are passing up living, flowing, life-giving, water, when we are passing up a God who brings joy and life always, here is what happens. When God becomes God, everything else can just be itself. When God's God, my marriage can just be my marriage, which is really nice. If Anna expects me to be perfect, she's going to be very disappointed. Extremely disappointed.
But if she knows that I'm just a sinful guy that she happens to live with and we're married and we're going to go through life together, then we just get to be friends who are married. We're just a team attacking life together. We get to repent and move forward. And it's really nice. If our marriage isn't going well, that doesn't destroy us. We get to work on it.
Because our marriage is ultimately about Jesus, not about us. If it's not the happiest moments we've ever had, that's fine. If we don't have a whole lot of money, okay. Because it's not about us. Your kids get to just be your kids, which means they can mess up. Your parents get to just be your parents.
They don't have to be perfect all the time. Your grades can just be your grades. Your money is just money. And you can have a lot of it or a little of it and it can... It's just money. Your value, your worth, your life isn't wrapped up in it.
When God is God, everything else gets to be what it is and then it's actually there's a lot of joy there. There's a lot of life there. There's a lot of hope there. Jesus died to rescue us from slavery and to make us his people. He died in our behalf for our idolatry. For the fact that we have rebelled and run from him.
And he's made us into his own. And we get to worship him and have everything else just be what it is. To actually build our life on something that will sustain, will fulfill, will bring joy. Because when we fail him, he forgives. Always. Because our merit and our worth isn't based off of us.
We entered into the relationship with him based off of his merit, his worth. So he always forgives. And when we're doing really well, we don't have to get prideful. We just get to enjoy it. Be a part of it. Because it's always about him.
And then everything else just gets to be what it is. everything else will be destroyed by the weight of glory except for Jesus. He actually was designed to stand under it. He's worth it. The weight of glory does not crush him. It'll crush your spouse. It'll crush your kids.
It'll destroy your job. If you base it off of your success, you'll crush yourself. because you aren't designed to bear the weight of glory. But Jesus is. And he's able to handle it. And he doesn't disappoint. He doesn't fail our expectations.
He exceeds them. So, the band's going to come back up to play. Here's verse 12 and 13. Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked. Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord.
For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. And honed out cisterns for themselves. Broken cisterns that can hold no water. Some of us are worn out. We're stressed out.
We don't really know where to turn. Some of us have been building our life around a cistern. And we're dying. We've been basing our existence off of something that cannot satisfy us, that does not bring life and never will. The invitation is open and free to come to the fountain of living water where joy and fulfillment and refreshment refreshment and satisfaction and life are found always. There's peace and rest with Jesus.
So we're going to celebrate that that is open to us, that was open to us at God's expense. He paid for it on the cross. We deserve destruction for our rebellion, but He suffered in our place so that we might be able to come to Him freely based not off of our merit but off of His. Jesus died on a cross and three days later He rose again and we are invited to base our life off of a life-giving, running, fulfilling, satisfying, validating God. some of us are exhausted and it's because we've been trying to maintain a pit that was never designed to build our lives around. We've been trying to drink from dry dirt and it's killing us.
But we can come to Jesus and we can have freedom and we can have hope and we can have joy and we can have life forever. God, we thank You for Your grace and I pray that Your Holy Spirit would draw us ever deeper into the life that is in You, that You would fulfill us and You would satisfy us and You would help us see where we have begun to trust in something that will not fill us up, will not make us complete, will never be able to satisfy. God, I pray that You would show us where we've begun to build our lives around something that ultimately we will have to prop up and that ultimately will destroy. We love You and we praise You.
In Jesus' name.
All Gods but God
Transcript
So how we doing? They always give me a hard time for asking how everybody's doing. I think we've moved beyond that point, so I'm going to start asking questions like, How was your week? How are your finances? How's your mom doing? Those kind of questions.
To kind of move it on beyond just how you're doing. But last week we began our Idol series, and so we started the first week. We were looking at Exodus chapter 20, and that's actually where we'll be again tonight. And we'll be on page 40 in the Bibles we have. If anybody needs a Bible, we've got some right here. They'll hand to you if you just raise your hand so we can all be on the same page.
But what we talked about last week was that we are designed as humans, created by God, to live in existence in relationship with God. And so that all humans are designed to live in a worshipful relationship with God. And that when that relationship was broken, it wasn't that we ceased to worship. It wasn't that we ceased to have a God. It just we began to worship other things. And so something else began to have supremacy in our lives.
And so what we talked about was if we are designed to worship and by default are going to be worshiping something, why would we want it to be God? And so what we discussed was that Jesus, we looked at Romans 5, Jesus rescues and redeems while we're weak, while we're broken, while we're sinful, that he buys us for himself through his death to save us when we had no merit of our own. So that we were made his prior to any amount of value or worth or goodness that we have. And that he's the only God that does that. That all other gods base our relationship with them and our existence in the world off of how well we're doing.
And Jesus bases it only, always, forever off of himself. And so there's actually a lot of freedom and joy and life in having Jesus be our God. And so that's what we talked about last week. So we're going to be in the same passage this week and we're going to kind of turn our focus. And I think for us in our culture, we don't think about idolatry very often, if at all. And so you may think about it as kind of something that people used to do or people in other cultures do.
I know that if you walked around in New Testament Rome, in the Greco-Roman world, they had gods for everything. I'm not kidding. They had gods for like everything. They basically just went through and if it was something that people appreciated, they were like, well, let's just give it a God. Let's just assign that a name.
Let's build a temple for it. Let's have a shrine for it. Cities had gods that, so there was like the big gods that most everybody knew about. And then there were a lot of smaller gods. And so they were like, all right, well, the sun and stars and storms, that'll be a God. And we'll have a God for beauty and sex.
And that'll be a God. And we'll have a God for – they had them for different cities. They had them for different vocations would have gods. I was reading Poseidon was the God of the ocean and horses. And I just don't know how that went in the God draft, like who was representing Poseidon. It was like, all right, we'll take the ocean.
And they came back around and they were like, all right, we also – we want horses. They were like, you already got the ocean. Yeah, but there's like not a lot going on there all the time. And he only has a few people to mess with, you know, and boats and stuff. So we want horses and we want fire.
You can't have fire and horses. You've got to pick one. Horses. We want horses. So I don't know how that worked out.
I guess that made seahorses really cocky because they were like the only thing that was both, in the ocean and a horse. And so – but that's – they had gods for everything. And the truth is we think about like, well, we don't really do that. Honestly, I think they just had a little bit more social integrity to go ahead and admit what they were up to. Whereas we would be like, ah, we don't do that. But if you're going to say that we don't, as a culture, worship power and wealth, if you're going to say as a culture we don't worship beauty and sex, we're kidding ourselves.
They just said, well, we're going to do that. We're going to care that much about it. Let's go ahead and just deify it, give it a name, and have a house we can go to, make it a little bit easier. And so really we culturally still have idolatry all the time. We'd say, well, we're not – but not like them. Like we wouldn't worship some sort of inanimate object that had some kind of image engraved on it, unless of course it was like green and folded and had an old dead guy's face on it.
Then maybe. Maybe we'd work for that. We wouldn't have big statues that represented things. Like they had Baal and he had a giant bull statue that you would worship a bull that would represent fertility and wealth. And we wouldn't do that unless, of course, we're talking about bull markets and we build one in front of the New York Stock Exchange to represent wealth and power. We wouldn't practice child sacrifice unless it was to the God of choice and personal freedom.
So to act as if our culture does not have idolatry, we just don't have names for it. The truth is it's all around us all the time and as individuals, idolatry isn't just something that other people deal with. It's a human problem. John Calvin said that the human heart is an idol factory, that from the womb, from birth, we are adept, we are great at making idols. And so what we're going to shoot for tonight is we just wanted to develop a lens for seeing idolatry in our culture and idolatry, more importantly, idolatry in our own hearts and our own lives. And so we want to just get a framework for how do we even begin to investigate this?
I remember growing up in school, it was just, and I don't remember exactly what year it was, but there was a year when I went back to school and like I showed up and I was like, there are girls here. And that had never really dawned on me before. Like they'd always been there, but I'd never really noticed them. And in some ways our goal tonight is let's pull back a little bit and start to look at where idolatry crops up in our lives. They're there. Let's just get a lens to see them.
That's what we're shooting for. And that's what we're going to be in Exodus chapter 20. So I'm going to pray and we're going to hop in. God, we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you are alive and you are real and you are active. We pray that through your Holy Spirit you would lead us tonight.
That this would not be just a good get together of friends and a good talk and some good singing. But that God, it would be worship. It would be a gathering of your church where you, through your Holy Spirit, instruct and teach and admonish and use your word to enact your will. So we love you and we praise you and we pray this in faith that you will work among us. In Jesus' name, amen. Exodus chapter 20.
We're starting verse 1. And God spoke all these words. So this is God talking to the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai after he's rescued them out of Egypt. God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And so we see how God rescues a nation for himself. That he makes a people for himself and he rescues them out of slavery.
And we actually, this is just a small picture of when Jesus is going to rescue the world out of slavery. So the Egyptians were, the Israelites were in slavery to the Egyptians. But the Bible tells us that ultimately as humans we're enslaved to sin, to our own desires. And that Jesus would come to earth, be the son of God, that he would live perfectly on our behalf. He would die in our place so that we might have freedom in him. That we might have life in him.
So he would be killed on our behalf. That he would shed his blood on our account. Be buried, rise again to life and live forever. And that in him we can have life. And so we just see here a small picture of what ultimately God's going to do for all of creation, all of humanity. And so it says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above. Or that is in the earth beneath. Or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am a jealous God.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. But showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. We talked about last week that God doesn't set it up as here are my rules, follow my rules. Those who follow my rules are good. Those who follow my rules are bad. Breaking rules is bad.
He sets it up as object of worship. He says I am God and there are no other gods. And do not worship any other gods. And so we don't break rules. We don't break any of the other ten commandments until we've broken the first one. That it's only after we have taken something and put it in the place of God.
And said that at this moment you are more supreme to me. You are more real to me. You are more powerful to me than God is. And so I'm willing to turn from him because I see you as more supreme. And so the example I gave was if I was willing to lie to Anna or unwilling to confess sin to Anna or to my community group. What I'm saying is God I know that you don't like lying.
I know that you say that confession is actually good. That repentance is actually good. But approval of my community group of my wife is more important to me. Their opinion of me is more important to me than yours. And so we actually swap God out. Put something else in his place.
And that's what leads us into all other Acts of rebellion. So the first one is to actually break rule number one. Which is to place something else in supremacy. To remove God from where he is and put something else there. But he starts off.
He says you have no other gods before me. And then he. So what we did last week is we kind of turned towards God. And just said let's look at why we would want him to be God. What we're going to do this week is turn and take a look at all the other things that we can worship. So what does he say is idolatry?
What does he say we can worship? You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above. Okay. That is in the earth beneath. Alright. Or that is in the water under the earth.
Oh, okay. What he's saying is that humans are able to make an idol out of anything. The category he included is all of creation, everything. So his options are you can worship things that aren't created. Wouldn't that just be you, God? Yep, you got it.
You nailed it. The only uncreated thing is God. So he says nothing that's created are you allowed to worship. You're not allowed to make anything into a God. You're not allowed to take anything that I've made and turn it into a God. Just don't do that.
Now, notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say don't enjoy. He doesn't say don't you dare appreciate anything that's been created. He doesn't say how dare you love something that I made. He doesn't say any of those. He says don't worship.
Don't bow down to and serve. So what we often think about when we think about idolatry is we think about the pursuit of the overwhelming desire for something bad. That idolatry is us turning from God to chase after something bad. But the truth is far more often we idolize good things. That God gave us for joy and pleasure and appreciation in life. To things that he gave us to enrich life.
Things that the Bible says are good gifts from God. The reason we do that is because it's actually a lot easier for us to believe that they will bring joy and satisfaction and fulfillment. Much easier. And that's why they'll begin to drift and take a place of supremacy. So most of us aren't like pet rocks.
Pet rocks are great. And they're going to bring the ultimate joy and satisfaction and value in life. I've got to have pet rocks. Like nobody like it's like dude that's just dumb. Like you can't even make that argument. Like I just like I don't even like we're not even going to debate.
I'm not even going to like we're not even going to go scripture there. I'm just going to tell you you're stupid. You go away. Like that's how that works. But we get into a relationship.
Like I'm far more likely to believe that Anna who's my wife can bring me ultimate joy and satisfaction and validation. That she can supply everything I need in life. I'm far more likely to let my heart begin to drift there. Because it's actually a good gift that God gave for me to have a wife. And there is joy there. And there is hope there.
There is satisfaction there. But it's not ultimate joy, satisfaction and fulfillment. There's not ultimate validation there. And so far more often we'll take something good like work. God designed work. Adam had a job in the Garden of Eden.
We're not going to get to heaven and sit around all the time. We got stuff to do. I don't know what it's going to be. I know it's not going to be as bad as the stuff we're doing right now. We're not going to be as annoyed with our bosses. But he had a job prior to the fall.
So God gives work. It's actually good for us. It's designed for us. And so as we get into it, there starts to be a little bit of, no, this actually can validate me. This actually can bring me joy and satisfaction and hope and fulfillment. And we take a good thing, we turn it into a God thing, and it becomes a very bad thing.
That is how idolatry plays out most often. Taking a good thing. So like I really want to make good grades and please my parents. Like I really just want to fit into it. I want my parents to be proud of me. God actually designed it to work that way.
You should want to honor your parents. But then when it becomes an inordinate desire, we take something that's good, base our life off of it, and it begins to destroy us. So we take a good thing, make it a God thing, and it becomes a very bad thing. Okay? So he lays out, not don't enjoy, not don't appreciate, not don't have fun with.
He doesn't say, hey, hey, I made steaks, but you better not eat them. No. God designed good things. Because there's meat in heaven, just so you all know. The Bible says there's meat in heaven. It says zero things about vegetables.
There's meat in heaven. There's no death in heaven, so I don't know how that works. Like, is the meat still talking to you? I'm not sure how this works. How do I taste? Delicious.
Now stop talking and trying to eat. I don't know. Y'all, we'll figure that one out. So anyway, what he says though, you shall not make for yourself carved image or anything, likeness of anything that is in heaven above or earth below. He says don't take anything and make it into a God. And he includes all categories because the truth is we are able to take anything and make it into a God.
Okay. But what's he say? He says don't, you shall not, this is verse 5, you shall not bow down to them or serve them. Don't bow down to them or serve them. So when you bow down, you're paying homage to, you're giving honor to something.
You're bending to something. And then when you serve, the word he actually uses there is slave. So don't be a slave to. Don't let your life be guided by in service to anything other than me. We talked about last week that that's actually for our joy that he says that because he's good and he's for our good. And so when he calls us to worship him, it's not begrudging submission, but it's actually for our joy.
When I was growing up, my dad, he explained this to me later and I've seen how it played out in the rest of life as well. But he was like when y'all were kids, I made like 90% of all the decisions that faced you. I just made them for you. You got to make about 10% of the decisions. As you got a little older, maybe I bumped that back to 80%. He said you weren't like a 12-year-old trying to decide what time you were going to sleep.
I had already decided for you. 9 o'clock. My older brother will tell you that you didn't necessarily go to sleep at that time, but you were at least in a bed with the lights off. You may stare at the ceiling if you would like, but you're going to be in the bed. He was like you're not 14 trying to decide whether or not you're going to get your ears pierced. I've already decided that for you.
Your options are don't get your ear pierced or have me assault you. Those are your options. We knew our options. None of us have our ears pierced because we valued our face more than our ears. But he was like I've made decisions for you.
And the truth is as you go through life, you have things over top of you that make decisions for you. Like when you get a job, when I go to Sears, which I won't be doing much more because they don't exist anymore. At least the one I was working at. We shut that thing down. I guess my sales weren't that good. But I knew I was going to wear clothes, but I had a certain like I could wear.
I knew I was going to be wearing khakis and some form of a blue shirt. Like I could wear black pants if I really got crazy. But I had decisions made for me. When I went to college and was playing football, I was on the team. I had a lot of decisions made for me. I was like where are you going to be most of the time running and getting yelled at.
Like that decision has already been made. Like that's when we place something over us, we serve it. And it does not work for us. It begins to make decisions for us. And so when God says don't worship anything, don't place something in supremacy over your life, don't serve it, what happens is if we place money as the pinnacle of what we're chasing, we think that I can control this. But the truth is it begins to make decisions for us.
Because if you're going to serve money, certain things are going to have to happen and certain things are not going to happen. When we place health there, when we place physical beauty there, decisions already begin to be made for us. And so when God says serve me only, the decisions he makes are actually like good ones that are healthy for us and enjoyable and there's life in them. And so he says don't bow down to and don't serve or slave for anything other than me. So I want us to take a second and to begin to unpack what it looks like for us to begin to identify these things in our hearts.
And again, predominantly, as we walk through this and as you begin to pray through this and walk through this with the Holy Spirit, this most often will not be bad things. Most often will not be things that are in and of themselves. You can immediately identify and be like, that's sinful. Most often in idolatry it will be something good that we've given an inordinate amount of power to, that we've begun to place in a place of supremacy. And so there's going to be automatic pushback and automatic defense for some of these things. But what we're not saying is all of these things are automatically bad.
We're just saying they should not take the place of God in our lives. I remember Anna and I were dating in high school and she was – we were pumping gas one time. Well, she had a Explorer. I couldn't remember what it was. She had a Ford Explorer. It was really big.
And she ran it into things. And after she ran it into a ditch, she got bumped down to smaller vehicles. She's gotten smaller and smaller with her vehicle, but she has not ceased to run into things. I was – you know, so at some point we may have to expand it back up just so that if she gets in an accident, she wins. But not worried about conserving gas, more like just winning an accident.
But she took her Explorer and she was on empty and she was with her tennis team and she decided she was going to go ahead and fill it. It was the first time. She had only been driving for a little while. First time she's ever going to get a full tank of gas. She was real excited because she was going from like E light all the way full. So she fills it all the way up.
She goes to pull out of the gas station, stalls out. Her car runs over across the road, gets stuck in the middle of everything. Then she has to get the whole team to come help her and like push it into a ditch. Really, really confused as to why her car no longer works. Because the one way she knows how to work on cars, which is similar to the one way I know how to work on cars, she doesn't have gas. Yes, I don't know what the problem is.
The problem was it was diesel fuel that she filled her car up with. Now, nobody would argue that diesel fuel is a bad thing. It just doesn't work well in a car that runs on gas. As we walk through this, there's a lot of things we're not going to argue are bad. They're not going to work well in the place of God. A marriage can be a really good thing, but it makes a horrible God.
Approval and relationships with people and being loved can make a very good thing, but it makes a horrible God. Good grades, hard work, wealth, money, possessions, all good things given to us by God, but they make horrible gods. So as we walk through this, be willing to sit with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to begin to train us to look for areas in our life that we are pursuing a good thing as if it is a God thing. So these are just some questions, and they may not, not all of them are going to apply to everybody. Some things may be helpful, may not be helpful. Take the ones that are helpful, use them, begin to sit with the Holy Spirit on that throughout this week.
This is actually why it's really important that we walk through life in community, that we actually get to walk through this process together. We get to begin to discuss, hey, I started thinking about this. How am I doing here? Have you all noticed this in my life, that we actually get to walk this out in this process? And so I'm just going to start giving some questions. The first one, though, area that we, since our hearts get tied to our idols, we see, we can begin to question our motives and our attitudes and our emotions when it comes to idolatry.
And the first one we're going to look at is guilt. So again, I'm just, we're asking some questions to help us begin to have a lens to identify. What is it in your life when you think back on it you feel most guilty about? You feel most ashamed of or you feel just heavy every time you think about it. You feel as if you failed in that area. Now that does not necessarily define idolatry, but it might.
It might be that you failed a God that you worship. And so you just can't get over this mistake that you made or this choice that you made because of what it was that you were trying to live up to but never did. So sometimes when we go to identify our idols, we can look towards guilt, anger. What do you get most frustrated about? When are you most likely to go off? And this will be different for different people.
So having someone interrupt your schedule or throw your schedule out of whack, probably always frustrating. But if you lose it, it's possible that you have an inordinate amount of hope and life and joy tied up in control and being able to be in control. If someone disrespects you and you fly off the handle, it's quite possible that we've got a little bit too much wrapped up in how other people view us and how much self-worth we have. Do they not know who I am? How dare they? So what do you get most frustrated about?
A lot of times we get really angry with... If there's someone that you're really angry with, a specific person, it's possible we're really angry with them because they're blocking us or denying us access to our idol. What do you fear most? What's your biggest nightmare? What do you automatically run to defend if it's addressed? Someone in your community group is like, Hey man, I just want to talk to you a little bit about this because I kind of see this in how you handle this area of your life and you automatically...
You've got like Bible verses loaded into a pistol to shoot back at them. This is why it's okay. What do you automatically run to defend? The last one's pride. What do you feel shows, validates you as a human? What do you feel you can always kind of rest in?
Yeah, everything else is going bad, but I've got this. What do you run to when life is crazy to show you that everything's still going to work out? You get on the internet, check your bank account? Anna and I do that if we either would like to cry or have a good laugh. I mean, what do you run to? What do you try to steer conversations to?
When you're in just a normal conversation, what are you trying to hope that it gets to? I was in a science class in college. And you had your class and you had a lab and we had a lab and in that lab, a teacher would be talking about stuff and there was a dude who would start so many sentences. And I don't remember his name, but I remember his nickname. He would raise his hand and be like, now this summer when I was in space camp, we used to be like, dude, I don't think that sounds the way to everyone else the way you think it sounds. But he'd try to bring it up all the time.
It wouldn't even really apply. He'd be like, now this summer when I was in space camp and we were learning about space rocks, photosynthesis. He was like, I don't even know. Have you ever seen people do this? I've done this. You turn the conversation in a really weird way.
That was a great story about your grandmother. Want to know how many push-ups I can do? It's like, dude, I don't even know. I don't know how you got there. But what is it that you're likely to try to show to people so that they can know, hey, I just want to let you know I deserve to be on earth.
What is it that when it gets attacked or affronted or assaulted a little bit that you just can't handle it? What is it that you're so proud of? The other way this shows up is what are you most annoyed by? What are you most likely to talk bad about? Because the truth is if you don't find much pride in something, you're very unlikely to talk bad about. So I'm never going to get in an argument about LeBron James and Michael Jordan because I could care less and I have no affiliation with either of those cats.
When you say King James, I'm more likely to think about the version of the Bible than the dude who dunks on people. Okay? That's just the way I am. You want to get an argument about Clemson and Carolina football? High five. Let's do this.
Up top. Matt, up top. Get in here, buddy. I have some association with one. I care a little bit about one. And so what are you most likely to talk bad about?
Will you go off on how somebody raises their children? I can't believe that they would have kids that acted like that because my value and worth is wrapped up in how good mine are. Okay. That's to begin to frame up in our brains how do we ask questions? How do we look at what it is that we seek to validate us to find life in, to find joy in? What have we begun to shift out and put in the place of God?
Now here's what happens. We talked last week and we went to Romans 5 and we talked about how Jesus rescues us while we're weak. How he rescues us while we're his enemies. How he does not base our standing with him off of us, which is really good news. That Jesus saves us outside of any merit or worth that we could ever bring to the table. But let me tell you what happens a little bit when you start talking about idolatry.
There's a little bit of come to Jesus and he'll fix all of this. Come to Jesus and he'll make all of this good. And a lot of times what we do is we just bring our idolatry with us and we slap a Jesus fish on top of it. We just kind of spray paint a cross over top of it. I, I, um, there's a whole segment of people that went through the true love waits thing. It didn't reach Australia, so Raz was really confused about it as we were talking about things.
But true love waits didn't make it across the pond. But, uh, what that was, was there was youth groups where they'd come through and they would do basically abstinence training for youth. And, uh, it was basically, you, you, you don't need to, the Bible says, not to, to fornicate, not to have sex outside of marriage. That, that that is not the way we're designed to act. That monogamous married relationships are the best ways to, to live life. And so you would, you would get like a promise ring or whatever.
And so the ideal behind it is actually really good and healthy and fine. But there were times that it was sold as put in purity work and Jesus will bring you perfect spouse. You do the work of behaving yourself and in comes great marriage. And there is a group of people, 20 to 30, 35, that are really mad at God because they put in the purity work. Mr. Prince Charming hadn't shown up.
Mrs. Perfect hasn't shown up. Hadn't worked out. And God owes them. Truth is quite often we come to Jesus with, okay, you're right. I shouldn't serve money.
I should give my money to the church. And if you give your money to the church, if you give your money to the church, he will open up the gates of heaven and he will flood you with possessions and things and wealth and power. So we come to God and say, all right, God, I'll give you my money as long as you're going to pay me back. So, Jesus, I will worship and serve you as long as you worship and serve money. Some of us come and get involved with church because it's the best way to have a good family. Jesus, I will be here.
I will serve and I will work. But my children better not rebel. And the truth is, God does bless. And it is a great way to raise a family that knows and loves the gospel. And it is a great way to have a good marriage. But God does not promise us all those things.
And Jesus is not interested in serving our idols. So the truth is, there are Christian versions of all of those things we just talked about. Guilt? What is it that we still think Jesus is unable to save us from? What is it that we still think he's mad at us about? What is it that you think Jesus can't forgive you of?
Because the truth is, Jesus says he forgives and he redeems and he takes away all our sin. And it's never based off of us. And if we look at God and say that my sin, I know you forgive, I know you redeem, but there's no way you can forgive this. What we're actually saying is, Jesus, I didn't fail you. I failed something more important than you. If he's unable to forgive it, we're taking it as if there is a higher court.
Anger? What are you mad at Jesus about? What are you frustrated with God about? What hasn't he given you that he was supposed to? What hasn't he blessed you with that you thought he was going to by now? That doesn't mean you don't wrestle with God.
That doesn't mean you don't pray about things. But if there's a constant source of frustration and anger when it comes to God, it's possible that he's just not giving you your idol. Fear? Fear? What are you afraid God will ask you to do? What are you afraid he'll take away from you?
What are you hoping we don't talk about in the Idol series? Gotcha. What have you already been thinking? Well, I just kind of hope we don't cover that. And if we do, he's got a couple of verses here. And maybe I just won't be a part of my community group that week.
And pride. Oh, this is a good one. And I don't want to talk about it because I'm like all of these categories. What do you bring to God that you think somehow shows value and worth of why you are worth rescuing? See, we know that we're supposed to come to God with empty hands to receive grace. Far too often we're like, yeah, my hands are empty except for this really awesome thing I did.
It shows up in a couple of different ways. There's truth idolatry. Which is where we think we have the better truth when it comes to Christian truth. So we're the group that's got it together. We know the right things. We know how to study this.
We've got good hermeneutics. We get into a debate with an Arminian. We can crush them. Those Calvinists are morons. Whatever. We know where to go.
We know what version of baptism is the best. I would argue that we do. But I set them on this category. And what happens is you begin to take pride in having the best version of truth. We're the Christians who have it together. We begin to gain this air of superiority.
And the truth is we're not in Christ because we were redeemed when we were broken and weak and enemies. We're in Christ because we know the good stuff. There's gift idolatry. I really put in a lot of great work for Jesus. There are nights he goes to sleep just glad I'm on his team. That's what we begin to think.
That there's somehow because he uses us or because there's work being done. That we somehow have the good gifts. And that we're not rescued and redeemed because we're broken and weak. But we're rescued and redeemed because we can do good things. And then there's morality idolatry. I obey really well.
I am so obedient. You tell me a rule. I'll tell you how I haven't broken it. And we begin to think that we, our place in Christ is not based off of our weakness. Not based off of the fact that we were enemies and he rescued us. But based off of the fact that we can behave very, very well.
And God's disappointed in those who can't. Those who fall short. Those who are constantly gathering with my community group and confessing sin. They need to get it together. Those who gather in my community group and they confess the same thing. Two weeks in a row.
Three weeks in a row. Seriously bro? You can't get it together yet? You know Jesus loves me because I've got it together right? Don't think. Because we're a part of church family.
And because we say that Jesus is God. That this hasn't creeped in. That idolatry doesn't creep up in our hearts consistently. And so here's the truth. We'll come to Jesus with all kinds of things that we want him to serve and work for. And we'll get really frustrated when he doesn't.
But he says, I am God. And there are no gods before me. And Jesus is not interested in serving our idols. He'll have no part of it. And so the truth is, some of us are very frustrated with Jesus for not giving us something that we really want. That we know that if we just had this, we'd be happy.
Why is he punishing me? I've been really good. If I could just have this, I'd have joy. I'd have life. I was just hanging out with my brother and his seven-month-old daughter. And the way she interacts with the world, she's really cute.
She looks just like my brother did when he was that age. And he was a really cute baby. I'm just hoping that at some point, her face doesn't keep looking like his. Because that's not going to be a good look. But the way she interacts with the world is, ooh, what's this?
That's what she does. Like, I really want this. Let me put it in my mouth. That's how she interacts with the world. Anything. Electrical cord.
Shard of glass. This is shiny. Let me stick it in my throat. There are times when he's sitting with her, when they're doing something. She's crawling around playing. And she picks up something.
And he didn't even know it was there in the carpet or whatever. They have to dive and, like, wrestle things out of her hand. Because the only thing she wants to do is really just stuff it in her mouth. And she'll cry and fight and fuss because he just stole joy from her. She was about to discover how amazing needles were in one's mouth. And he took it away.
And there are some of us fighting and fussing and yelling at Jesus because he refuses to give us something that will ultimately destroy us. Jesus is willing to let you be unhappy for your joy. And he's not interested in serving your idols and giving you things that are going to destroy you. And the truth is the Bible would tell us that that is actually part of God's wrath. For him to let us have the things that we want that will destroy us. And it's his grace on us when he identifies our idols and when he blocks us from things that we would be able to tell ourselves and lie to ourselves that I will find joy and significance and value and validation and hope and life in this.
And the truth is if we walk through life always wealthy, always healthy, always being approved of, always in power, always having what it was that we thought would give us life and we never realize that it can't, it is God's wrath on us because we will die and realize that we were in rebellion against a holy God and we will face the God that we never realized we needed. All of our gods will fail us and it's God's grace on us when he keeps us from them. When Jesus demands that I am God alone and there are no other gods before me, it's for our joy, it's for our life, it's for our hope, and he is not interested in serving our idols. Let's read it.
And some of us have found this out. Some of us have gotten the thing we thought would bring us hope and joy and life. And we said, ah, it didn't. My heart lied to me. When Jesus died on the cross, he proved once and for all that he is good and that he is for our good. He shed his own blood, gave his own life so that we might actually have one.
He is good and he is for our good and he is to be trusted with everything. And so the Bible says, the prophet Ezekiel says that God is going to give us a new heart through his spirit. And so here's what I want us to do. As we walk this out in church family, as we gather with our community groups this week, I want us to begin to question our heart and begin to ask the Holy Spirit to show in us areas that we have been chasing after something where we have been deceiving ourselves and ask the Holy Spirit to begin to renew our heart and give us a new heart so that we might actually chase after the things of God.
So that we might actually chase after things that bring joy and life and real fulfillment and real value and real satisfaction and quit chasing after cheap substitutes. The band is going to come back up and play. And I just want us to take some time to question our hearts. Don't trust your heart. Trust the Holy Spirit that gives you a new heart. And here's the thing.
Some of us will begin to be faced with areas that we have begun to trust and love and pursue something else and will feel guilty or ashamed of it. Don't. Be excited that God in his grace revealed to you something that was ultimately going to destroy you. Be excited that he loves you enough to step into your process and pursue you. That he is good and that he's for our good. And that he wants life and joy for us.
So as we wrestle with our idolatry, as we gather with our community groups to walk this out in normal life, be very excited that God has you in the place he has you. And that he loves you in his grace enough to pursue you through it. Jesus, we thank you that you are gracious. That you are good and that you are for our good. I pray, God, that you would wreck us with your grace. That for those of us who have come to you claiming faith but really pursuing something else.
Being willing to serve you as long as you serve our other God. I pray that you would reveal that to us. I pray, God, as we've pursued other things, good things, good gifts that you gave us that we've tried to turn into God things. I pray, God, that you would begin to reveal that, lay that bare through your Holy Spirit. Draw us closer to you where real life and real joy is found. We praise you for your grace.
We love you in Jesus' name. Amen.
No God but God
Transcript
For most of us, our understanding of idolatry is you go to maybe a foreign country and – or like it's a worship of like a totem pole or something carved out of gold or it's in the Old Testament when they worshiped a golden calf. Like our concept of idolatry is worship of some sort of inanimate object. Or you think about like if you went to India and you walked into someone's home and they had set up their entire house. They had designed their whole home in the way they sit facing this little box that had an image in it. And so we would think, well, we don't have any kind of idolatry here. Like we wouldn't design our house facing a box.
And it's ridiculous to think that in India they would face all the couches and the whole home would point to this little box and there would be an image in that box. And that image wouldn't even tell jokes or solve major life problems in 30 minutes. Like they can't even change that image quickly by pressing a button. And so it's ridiculous that they would do that. The Bible is going to be pretty clear though that idolatry is not just a problem they had in the Old Testament, not just an issue that has to do with certain groups of people or certain nationalities or anything, but that it's categorically a human problem.
That if we are humans, we struggle with and deal with idolatry. And so we thought we would take five weeks to talk about idolatry. And idolatry is simply this. It is worshiping anything other than God. So placing anything other than God in a place of supremacy in our lives.
And so we're going to be taking five weeks. Tonight we're going to basically be just talking about why we would actually want God to be God. So if we're going to talk about all the other things we worship, let's actually talk a little bit about why we would worship God. Why would we do that? If God's God, why would we want Him to be God? Next week we're going to talk more about the things we actually do worship other than God.
Third week we're going to talk about what happens to us and to those objects that we worship when we place the weight of glory on them. So we take what should be placed on God and we place it on those objects. And then week four we'll spend some time unpacking more internal ways that we idolize things. And week five we'll talk about how Jesus actually is better than all that we idolize. So they'll kind of blend together and we're going to talk about Jesus every week because that's pretty much all we do, which is good.
That's what we're supposed to do. And so we'll do that. But that's kind of how we've laid it out and how we plan on walking through it. And hopefully the Holy Spirit will lead us in that. And it'll be helpful for us to see where we are. So the Bible opens with God making everything.
So he just creates everything that exists. And so it basically lays it out this way. There's God and then he creates all of creation and he puts humans in dominion over the rest of creation. So humans are kind of in to manage and take care of all other things that exist. And so it's God, humans, rest of creation. And so that's why humans are allowed to eat cows and hunt and farm and do all the things that humans are able to build buildings and pave roads.
That's okay. But it's also why it's not okay for us to just destroy everything and mow down every tree because we want paper for things and we just cut down and kill all the animals. That's not okay either because we're supposed to have dominion and care for. So that's why it's okay to have a car, but it's not okay to throw your bottle out the window. That all fits in biblical. And so we start mixing this up some.
So like you'll have people that take created things like tadpoles and elephants and dogs and they'll kind of raise them up to human level. So they have like rights the same that humans do or maybe they pull humans down. And so it's like my dog should have the same rights as my children. And biblically the answer would be no and we should make fun of you. So like does that make sense?
Okay. But then we also do the thing where we'll take animals and we'll move them to the position of God, which is even weirder. So it's like cows are gods or this animal is a God. And so we've actually let them not even just like move them to our level or pulled us down. We've let them jump over us, which was a major fail. Sometimes we pull ourselves up to God or we pull God down to us, but we're designed to exist with God, us, creation.
And that's how God designed it and he made it. And we crushed it. We were great at, crushed in the good way, great at existing in that relationship for fully two chapters of the Bible. And so, I mean, we did great. And then in the third chapter we were like, you know what? Because we exist, we'd like to worship ourselves as God as opposed to you.
And so Adam and Eve begin, they swap, they work to swap places with God and they want to be like God. And so that's what happens in the Garden of Eden. And so we're going to be looking in Exodus chapter 20 tonight. And so I'm going to take a second to get us there. But we'll be in Exodus chapter 20.
It's going to be on page 40 if you have one of the Bibles that we have. I believe 40 is right. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand. These guys are going to hand some out so that we can all kind of be in the same spot. So if you'd like a Bible and if you don't own a Bible, feel free to take that home with you.
That would be our gift to you. So we'll be at Exodus chapter 20. Here's what happens. So we swap ourselves out for God in Genesis 3. And then from that point on, basically the Bible says that humans used their good brains, because we have the best brains of all of creation. You've never met like a horse that does math better than you.
If you have, I'm sorry. You're really bad at math. But we used the best brains that God had created to come up with all of the evil things we could possibly come up with. So it said that the man's heart was intended on evil all the time. So it was like woke up and was like, I figure I'll do something evil, and then maybe I'll take a nap or eat lunch and then do something horrible.
That'd be great. And so that's basically what happened. And so humans categorically just rebel against God. And so in Exodus 20, where we pick up, God has taken a people and he said basically this. I created the world to exist in relationship with me, but humans didn't want to. So I'm picking you as a nation, you as a people, to exist in a relationship with me.
So we're going to model to the world what this is supposed to look like. And so they had been, as the Israelite people, they had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. And God had shown up. He had taken Moses and said, go tell Pharaoh, who's the king of Egypt, that I want my people, let my people go. I think God wrote a song about it. But if you don't get that joke, it's probably good because it was kind of dumb.
I don't plan these things. Sometimes they just pop out of my mouth. I wish I could catch them and put them back in. But anyway, so God takes Abraham to go talk to Pharaoh and say, let my people go. And I want to take them and they're going to be my people. And Pharaoh says no.
And God, just across the board, picks Egyptian gods and shows that he's more powerful than them. So he does the plagues of Egypt and it's basically God showing that I'm more powerful than your gods. Like you think this is a God? Cool. Watch me smush him. Okay.
Is this one of your gods? Watch this. I schooled him. Is this one of your gods? And so he does that. And then eventually Pharaoh lets the people go.
God separates the Red Sea so that the Israelites can cross through. The Egyptians chase them. God closes that back up and they drown. And this is where we pick up where God is on Mount Sinai talking to Moses and he's giving them the Ten Commandments. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to hop in into Exodus chapter 20.
God, I thank you for your grace and I pray that you would lead us and teach us tonight to understand more about who you are and how we are designed to follow you in worship and what it looks like a little bit for us when we choose not to. And so God, I pray that you would just give us wisdom and clarity and that your Holy Spirit would speak. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Exodus chapter 20. This is the Ten Commandments.
So where we pick up, it says, And God spoke all these words. This is God talking to Moses, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is under the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Okay. That's the first two commandments of what we call the Ten Commandments. What you understand is the Ten Commandments, what they argue about in front of courthouses and in schools is the Ten Commandments. And primarily, our understanding of how we relate to God is that God shows up and says, I've got rules and you must follow them or you're going to be in trouble. And so that sin is us breaking rules. That God has rules and sin is when we break God's rules.
And that's most often our primary understanding of how we relate to God. But that's actually not how he sets it up. He sets it up as object of worship. His first two commands aren't rules to follow. They are who you worship. And so that's a big deal.
God's not saying I've got rules that you need to follow. That's what Matt talked about last week, where we kind of understand those who follow the rules, who lace up their shoes and who are good little boys and girls, God loves them. And those who disobey the rules, God smites them. That's kind of how we understand it. Or in the story of the two sons where the older brother was like, I've obeyed. I've served.
I've been good. I'm the hero in this story. I'm the good guy. But it's not about following rules. It's about object of worship. And as Matt unpacked that last week, we saw that the son's heart was actually very far from the father's heart.
That he didn't care that his father was hurt. That he didn't care that his father was excited. He just wanted to obey rules and get stuff. So, that's not how God sets it up. He doesn't set it up as rules to follow. God sets it up with this.
I am God. Nothing else is. Nothing. Nothing in heaven. Underwater. On earth.
Pretty much covers everything. He says, don't carve anything. And don't make any kind of likeness of anything anywhere ever. It's me. I'm God. Nothing else is.
He doesn't set it up as commands, but as object of worship. And here's what. Sin is not primarily us breaking rules. Sin is us swapping gods. Sin is us. So that in the moment when we choose to sin, what we have functionally said is that something, someone, is more important, more supreme, bigger to me than God is.
So God says, I am God. And nothing else is. And that's how he sets up how he's going to relate to his people. And when we think of sin as breaking rules, the problem is we don't break any of the other Ten Commandments. We don't break any of the other commandments at all until we've chosen to place something else in our life as more supreme than God. And that is idolatry.
So that when Anna asks me a question and I want to lie to her, when somebody asks me a question and I just met and I want to lie to them about it, lying is one of the Ten Commandments. Like, I shouldn't lie. I'm not supposed to bear a false witness. I'm not supposed to say things that aren't true. And that's a rule. But the problem is, the problem isn't that I break a rule of lying.
The problem is the first thing I say is, hey, you know, Jesus, at this point, I value Anna's opinion more than you. I know you don't want me to do this, but she's bigger right now. I know that this isn't something that honors you, but I really, really need the likes on Facebook. It's a big deal. Does that make sense? Are you tracking?
So we don't break any other commandments until we've first broken the first one, which is we have swapped something out as functionally greater for us. That's what we saw on that slide there. It's where Romans says that we swapped out worshiping the creator for the creature, that we believe the truth, believe the lie rather than the truth. And we swapped out and worshiped creature rather than creator. Okay, I saw a comedian one time and he said that he's not a Christian, but he was talking about God and stuff. Because, you know, things to make fun about and jokes about or whatever.
But he said, he goes, I imagine after God created everything, that at some point he was a little surprised that humans just ate everything. That in heaven at some point an angel was like, oh God, you're going to want to come see this. You know those animals you made? They're eating all of them. And he said it's kind of funny because we were like, oh, oh cows, I'm going to go. Just went around eating everything and then got to dogs and cats and we're like, no, no, no.
This one lives in my house. It's my friend. I've named him Friskers. But the truth is we did humans domesticated dogs. So we own dogs.
You have friends that own dogs. You most likely don't have a friend who owns a tiger because they're harder to domesticate. But we've got people own dogs. And when we first domesticated dogs, we domesticated them for like an actual useful purpose. So like they help us herd cattle or they help hunt or chase people down who've escaped from prison.
So they're like really good at smelling. So what we would do is we'd take a dog and go, all right, I'm going to own a dog and I want it to be helpful to me. So I'm going to breed it for this purpose. And so we'd say, well, this one's good at this. This one's good at this. Let's breed them together.
Hey, this one's better at that. Oh, this one's good. Let's breed them together. And finally we have breeds of dogs that are designed for a purpose, for work or for hunting or for protection. Basically this dog, hey, this dog is going to really like you and really hate everyone else. It's a great dog.
You just put it near your house. It'll like you and it'll bite strangers and you won't have to worry about things. And so we bred dogs. But now what happens is humans' life changed. And so now we started breeding dogs and their sole purpose is to watch TV with me in my one-bedroom apartment. Like that's why this dog exists.
It has nothing else that it's good at other than sitting on a couch. Like that's the goal of this dog. So like I work at Sears. People walk through with like a work dog that's there for a certain purpose to help certain elderly people need a dog to like alert people. Some people come through and they have a seeing eye dog. And then you'll see like a woman with a dog in her purse.
That dog serves zero purpose other than to, I guess, get in the way of her finding things and leave stuff in her purse that she doesn't want there. Like I don't know. Like I've seen them pushing like a baby carriage with a dog in it. And I just want to be like, please just get out. This is ridiculous. But it's like, oh, you have a child.
Oh, my goodness. So I looked up things on the Internet. We now have a Bugs, which is a Boston Terrier and a Pug. We have a Golden Doodle, which is a Golden Retriever and a Poodle. We have a Labradoodle, which is a Labrador and a Poodle. We have a Poma Poo, which is a Pomeranian and a Poodle.
We have a Yorkie Poo, which is a Yorkie and a Poodle. I think it's fun just to breed them with a Poodle because then you get to say Doodle or Poo at the end of their name. So I think people are just like, half of it's got to be a Poodle. It's just so I can say Poo all the time. We have a Bascotti, which is a Basset Hound and a Scottish Terrier, which I'm pretty sure Bascotti, it was bred to be eaten with coffee. I think that's the point of that dog.
These dogs, sole purpose, designed to live in a relationship with a human. That's it. They are designed to live in a relationship with a human. You've never been flipping through National Geographic and seen the sheep-oos of the Serengeti. That's not a show. You've never heard a news report of campers being attacked by a wild pack of Labradoodles.
It just doesn't happen. You can't go into Appalachian Mountains because of those roaming Labradoodles. You've got to hide all your food. They love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They'll come get you. It's not a thing.
It's not a thing you worry about. But these designer dogs, if they're not with a human, they do this funny thing called they die. That's it. They don't hunt. They yip. They basically run around in the wild and say, I'm defenseless.
Come eat me. That's all they do. They don't have opposable thumbs, so they can't work a can opener, so they'll never get food. Like, they just can't. They were designed, they were created to live in a relationship with a human. And what I want us to understand is, in a very similar way, humans were created to exist in a relationship with God.
We were created by a good God who made us and designed us to exist in a relationship with Him. And outside of that, we do not ever exist without something as supreme in our lives. It is a design flaw in humans. It worked great for the first two chapters of the Bible. And after chapter 3, when we chose to place something else in a point of supremacy in our lives that was not God, it became a very big problem for us. We were created by God to exist with Him in the place of supremacy.
And what that means is, because we're designed that way, humans do not have the choice of, I will worship God, I'll worship the God of the Bible, or I'll have no God. No God is not a choice for a human. We always have to have something in that place. So the question for us is, do I want to have a good God or a bad one? Because no God isn't an option. We were designed to have something in the place of supremacy.
And so you'd say, well, what about like atheists? Okay, they've just put something else there. Science. That's what they base life off of. That's how they know whether they're in or whether they're out. That's how they know whether their life has meaning.
It may just be their brain. And you'll meet a lot of people who would never say, my God is popular opinion. But you can watch their life and see that it is. That that takes the place of supremacy in their heart. We tracking? Does that make sense?
Okay. So, the question I want to ask tonight is this. I want all of us to ask this. If our options are good God or bad God. If our options are God, the God of the Bible, or something else. What I want us to ask is why would we want it to be God, the God of the Bible?
We exist as a church plant because we think it should be God, the God of the Bible. We gather in homes throughout the week and walk through life together because we think it should be God, the God of the Bible. I pray for the people I work with because I want them to know God, the God of the Bible. But I want us to ask the question, why? If I'm going to worship something. Let's just assume I was designed to worship something.
I'm going to worship something. Why would I want it to be God rather than any of the other something else's? And I want you to ask that question. If you're in here tonight, I want us to try to answer this question. So, if you're a believer, if you say, I worship God. I worship God in Christ.
I worship Jesus. He's my God. Then I want, hopefully, to encourage us into why that's a good thing. Why you should be very, very excited that Jesus is your God. And if you're in tonight and you say, I don't worship God. And you may be even arguing, I don't have something I worship.
Okay. Okay. I'd like to submit that you do. And I just want you to help ask the question. If I'm going to spend my life worshiping something, is comfort a good one? Is partying a good thing to worship?
Is that a good God or should I pick something else? I'll just at least ask that question. And hopefully you'll see why we think Jesus would be the best thing to worship. So, that's what we're asking. If we've got options, why God? So, I think I need to address something here.
I think I need to address two quick things. One is, for some of us, the answer will be, and mostly for people who grew up in church or grew up in the south and are kind of used to this, the answer will be this. The reason we worship God is because God's God. Checkmate. Can't fight logic. Like, you know, but legitimately, that's kind of an answer.
And in some ways, that's fair. But most often, if you get that answer, it's because there's this vague belief that God is somehow like a cosmic mob boss. Like, he shows up and is like, I offer you my protection. If you follow my rules. If not, things can go very, very poorly for you. Like, that's kind of how we treat God.
It's like, alright, if I obey him, things will be good. That's why a lot of times, and the Bible doesn't say that, a lot of times people get really frustrated with God for promises he never made. For not keeping promises he never made. And we think, if I'm bad, then he'll come, you know, knock me to the ground and smite me. Like, God's waiting in heaven going, mess up. Just mess up, just one time.
I'm just looking for something. Like, he's got his laptop open, he has a smite button, and he just puts his cursor over someone and just presses smite, and it just like blows up or whatever. Like, he's a cosmic mob boss. And some of us have that understanding. And what, biblically, the Bible would say, actually, that's not the God of the Bible. So, if you believe in a cosmic mob boss, I don't know where you got that from.
It's not here. He's not waiting to crush you. And we'll get into that in a little while. He is God. And so, some people, when you have that, well, God is God. And so, some people on the other side will say, well, God shows up and says, I'm God, worship me.
Isn't that a little narcissistic? Who does God think he is? He does think he's God, just for the record. Like, that's why he shows up and says, worship me. He's kind of allowed to say that. The other thing is, when we argue that God is narcissistic, we're assuming that he should point us to something else.
That God should show up and be like, I'm God. And I created everything. And I just wanted to let y'all know, money, that's a really good one to chase after. I'll give you my top five things that y'all should pursue outside of the good God who created all of this. And so, the truth is, first of all, he is God, so it's not narcissistic for him to claim to be God, just for the record. That's how that works.
And he does deserve worship. And here's why. It's actually good for him. And so, in this passage, he says, I'm a jealous God. He says, you shall not bow down to them or serve them. That's verse five.
For I, the Lord, am a jealous God. I heard Oprah one time say that she was hearing this taught at one point. And she was like, wait, wait. God's jealous of me? And that it kind of messed up the whole Christianity thing for her because she was like, wait. If God's jealous of me, like, first of all, she had the right conclusion.
If God's jealous of you, you probably shouldn't worship him. That's not a very powerful, mighty God. Like, if he's in heaven going, oh, that's it. Man, if I could just be Chet. My brain would be smaller. I'd make bad decisions.
That would be great. I would have bad knees. Weird breath in the morning. Like, I just wish. Like, if that was true, then I wouldn't worship God because that's really sad. Like, if y'all were like, I want to be like you, I'd try to talk you out of it.
But if God did it, I'd be like, okay, this is enough. When he says he's jealous, he's not jealous of. He's jealous for. However, so, like, if I watched Anna talking to a guy and I felt jealous. Anna's my wife. If I saw her, like, after we got done here, she's hanging out talking to somebody.
Or I'm out at a store and I see her just talking away with some guy or in high school, whatever. And I feel jealous. I'm not jealous of her. I'm not going, I want to talk to that guy. I wish he'd look at me like that. Like, I'm not, that's not what's, that's not what's happening.
I'm not going with his cool, gelled hair and his sparkly, sparkly brown eyes. Like, I'm not jealous of her. I'm jealous for her. I want to physically destroy him with my bare hands. Because I care about her. And the truth is, that's actually appropriate.
She's my wife. If she was talking to some guy and they were holding hands and you're like, dude, I was holding that guy's hand. I was like, yeah, whatever. You'd be like, bro, you're the worst husband I've ever seen. Like, what are you doing? Like, you'd coach me up.
It's appropriate for me to want to physically assault someone who's messing with my wife. That's the right response. That's how that should work. And so when God says he's jealous for us, he's jealous for the relationship he designed to exist. So for me to go to Anna and say, I want you to love me.
I want us to have time together. I want us to connect. I want there to be joy in our relationship. That's appropriate. And as a husband, I should work to pursue that. And so when God says I'm jealous, he's meaning he's jealous for us, meaning he wants the relationship.
He doesn't want us chasing after other gods. He wants us to have the one that we're supposed to have. He wants us in the appropriate relationship. It's the same thing with a good father. The Bible talks about God as father. A good father wants a relationship with his children.
None of us argue, you know what? Those kids would be way better off if they didn't have that good dad. Nobody's making that argument. A good father is healthy for children. Statistics back that up. Kids are designed to have a father and have a father that protects and that leads and that defends and that cares for them and that trains them.
And so when a father fights for the right to be around his children and doesn't want to be replaced by a video game, doesn't want to be replaced by a coach, doesn't want to be replaced by any other person at all, but wants that relationship. It's appropriate and it's fitting and it's good. And when God declares, I want this relationship, it's not odd, it's right. It's appropriate, it's fitting, and it's the way it's designed to be. And the truth is, it's actually, not only is it good and fitting, it's actually for our joy. Because we become like what we worship.
In Jeremiah 3, God says that they chased after worthless things and became worthless. We become like what we worship. That's just how that works. So you meet somebody and they care about physical fitness. They worship physical fitness in a way. Or they wouldn't put it that way, but they just care about it.
They just, I like paying attention to diet and to exercise and those kind of things. Those people slowly over time become more physically fit. That's just how that works. If you worship basketball, over time you learn more about it. You grow to be better at it. Or you realize you're not good at it and you find something else to care about.
Or you learn all the stats and everybody's names. Like you've got a few options there. But that's kind of, that's how that plays out. So someone who's like, I don't worship things. I just like, I don't want rules and I just want like, I just want people to stay out of my business. And I just, I just want to be left alone and I have structure and I have all these things I've got to do.
And it's like, okay, well eventually you won't have a job. And it's a good thing you don't like structure because you're going to be wearing sweatpants. Because you won't fit into your other pants anymore because you had no structure on anything. And all you ate was cheeseburgers and Oreos and played video games. So well done.
And we slowly become more like what we chase after, what we pursue. And so when God says that he's jealous for us, when he wants that relationship, God is joyful. And he's merciful. And he's good. And so it's actually for our good to have God as the object of supremacy in our life because he draws us into himself. And we become more like what we worship.
So we have more grace for each other. We have more joy in our lives. It's good for us. But I want to point something else out to you. Verse 1. God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me. God does not start off by handing out rules. He doesn't even start off by addressing this object of worship. He starts off by rescuing. He says, I'm the God who sets you free from slavery. He didn't say, alright Moses, we're going to go get them out.
I need you to pass out these regulation sheets and once everybody's following them, I'm going to come rescue you. He didn't show up and say, get it right. That guy just lied. Ten more years. He didn't do that. He shows up and rescues and then says, I'm the God who rescued you.
Now here's how this relationship is designed to work. So, we see this actually playing out in the New Testament. And so in Romans 5, and flip there with me because that's where we're going to spend most of the rest of our time. I'll refer back to some of that other stuff, but we're going to unpack Romans 5. So we see this playing out because God shows up and rescues before he ever says, this is how this relationship is going to work.
This is what you have to do to follow me. This is what this looks like. So, functionally in life, we will say, this situation, and we'll define for ourselves like a functional hell. We'll spend more time unpacking some of this next week, but this is a functional hell for me. Like being single is a functional hell. That would be the worst.
But being married and being in this relationship, that would be heaven. That's where you graduate to married life. And so for us, we have a functional savior that bridges the gap between our functional hell and our functional heaven. So we have something that, so getting married, finding a significant other is going to rescue us from hell and put us into heaven. Does that make sense? And so when we pursue those things, when we place our hope in those things, when we chase after anything else, we swap God out and make something else supreme.
The problem with that is that none of those functional saviors are a savior like Jesus is. Or a God like God is. And biblically, Jesus is God who came to earth. So, let's look at Romans 5, and we're going to unpack this. Verse 1. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith.
Justified just means made right. We've been made right before God by faith. Faith just means that we place our hope, our faith in God. So it is not, faith isn't working. It's not me doing something really well. It's actually me realizing that I can't and just being like, God, I just trust that you've got this.
Like, this is on you. So we've been justified. We've been made right by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, we've been made right by His death, so justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
Paul says that Jesus died for us while we were weak, while we were sinners. And he says, look, somebody might die for a good person. They might. They might dare even to die for a good person, but nobody does what Jesus did. Nobody. Like, none of us are going to go knock on the door of a prison and be like, who's your worst death row inmate?
Who's the guy who did some really heinous, horrible stuff? I want to die for that guy. I want to swap my life out for him. I'd really love for him to get extra years because I took his place. Paul says, no one does that. But that Jesus died for us while we were weak, meaning we had no value of our own.
We had nothing to show Him that we had merited salvation. Nothing to show Him that said, we deserve to be died for. We deserve for you to be killed in our place. While we were weak, while we were ungodly, the opposite of pursuing Him. We were pursuing everything else while we were sinners. And it says, while we were His enemies, Christ died for us. no other God does that.
Work does not do that. Work does not die for you. Work does not forgive you. Work does not offer you grace. Work bases your salvation, your life, your hope, off of how well you stand in it. So when you're getting promotions, when you're getting the attaboys, when you're getting bumped to a better office, when you're making the sales, it's going really well.
But when that stops playing out for you, when that stops working out for you, it does not forgive you. It does not offer grace. It does not die for you in your weakness. It does not rescue you when you are at its enemy. Approval? The approval of other people.
Basing your life and your hope off of how other people feel about you. They do not ever die for you. They do not ever base their caring for you off of anything other than how well you fit up in their structure. Money doesn't love you. None of our gods do anything for us like Jesus does. Jesus rescues us while we're weak, while we're broken, while we're his enemies.
And he makes us right with him, not based off of us, but based solely, always, only, off of him. So that we stand forever right with God because we are in Christ. So we will only be right with money when we're in money, functioning appropriately. We will only be right with approval when we're walking through that well and gaining the approvals of others. And when that falls off, because it's always only based off of us and how things are working out, and Jesus only, always, is based off of him forever. Because at no point did we ever merit anything that gave us worth or value.
We were weak, we were ungodly, we were sinners, and we were enemies. And he died to give us life. The reason we want God to be our God is because he's the only God who does that. He's the only God that rescues us based off of himself and not off of anything else. Only, always, based in Christ and never given back over to us. And that is good news.
That Jesus rescues us on his own merit, on his own back, with his own blood, through his own death, so that we might actually have hope and life. All other gods that we worship will eventually fail us, will eventually crush us. There is no freedom in chasing after approval. There is no freedom in it. Having to check status updates, having to see how people care about you, there is no freedom in it. It enslaves us.
And God shows up and says, I'm the God who sets you free from slavery. If we base our life off of money, that does not free us, it enslaves us. And Jesus shows up and says, I'm the God who sets you free from slavery. All other gods will crush us. Jesus was crushed for us. Our life is only, always based in him.
And that makes him a good God. And a good savior. And the reason we want to proclaim it to others, and the reason that we care about other people, is because every other God will eventually destroy you. You will eventually fail it. Your health will fail. Your physique will fail.
Your money will fail. Your family will fail. If you base your life off of your children, and you're happy while they're happy, and things are good while they're good, and whether or not they're enjoying themselves, eventually that will fail, and it won't forgive, and it won't offer grace. It doesn't die for us when we're weak, and when we're its enemies, but Jesus does. All other gods will crush us. Jesus is the only God that was crushed for us.
And it offers us freedom, and life, and hope in him. It says that, verse 10, For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Jesus died on a cross in our place. Adam and Eve stepped out and swapped themselves for God. They wanted to be God, and we consistently throughout our lives have looked at God and said, something else is more important to me than you.
And Jesus stepped down, and he swapped himself, who was God, for us. So he stepped in and took the place of man, so that he might die in our place, and he was brutally murdered, placed in a grave, and three days later, he rose again to life. Jesus is not dead. He is alive, and we have hope in his life. He gives us life in his life. And there's joy, and there's freedom in that.
Having God be your God is captivating, but it never places us in captivity. It sets us free. So that in Christ, if my worth is always in Christ, you know what that means? It means I don't have to be good at everything. It means I can do really stupid stuff, and it doesn't crush me, because my value doesn't come from it. It also means that I can be successful, and it won't destroy me, because my value doesn't come from it.
My hope's not wrapped up in it. All my joy isn't based in it. It sets us free. Worshiping Jesus, having Jesus in the place of supremacy, does not crush us, because he was crushed for us, and it gives us life and freedom and hope forever. So the band's going to come back up.
I want us to do a few things. We're going to take the next four weeks, and we're going to unpack what it looks like for us, as we swap out other things as functionally greater in our lives than Jesus, that we would rather worship and love than Jesus. And so as we gather together in our community groups this week, we're going to begin to unpack that idea. But here's what I want to happen tonight. If we're in here tonight, and you say, I am a Jesus follower. I am a Christian.
My hope is in Him. Then I want us to celebrate. I want us to celebrate that only, always, and forever is our life based in Him, is our salvation based in Him, is our joy based in Him. And if you're in here tonight, and you would say, Jesus isn't my God, I want you to know that He was crushed for you. That whatever it is you're pursuing will eventually crush you. And some of you are aware of that, because it's happening now.
Because you are failing your God, and your God is not forgiving. And I want you to know that you can have life, and joy, and hope forever in Jesus, through faith, and faith alone. Which is where you go to Jesus and say, all my faith is placed in you. That you died in my place. That my hope is in you, and nothing else. God, I pray that you would speak to us, that your Holy Spirit would move in this place tonight.
That we would, you would, through your Holy Spirit, enlighten us to what it is that we have functionally placed us greater in our lives than you. That we might repent. That we might turn from that. That we might run to you. That we might quit serving false things, God. That we might serve you and you alone.
In Jesus' name.