No Other Gods

SERMON: 2014-03-23--ac14125--no-other-gods-part-3 SOURCE DURATION: 00:41:33.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided window consists of continuous theological exposition and pastoral application related to the sermon topic (idolatry). ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- So we've been looking the last couple of weeks at the subject of idolatry and we have seen that idolatry is looking to something or somebody other than the true and the living God to meet our needs and therefore we give our loyalty to that thing or to that person. It is worshipping the creature rather than the creator. It is confusing the bucket with the fountain. Idolatry we've seen was the besetting sin of Israel in the Old Testament. It was the besetting sin of Gentiles in the New Testament and of course it continues to be the besetting sin of people in the world today and that's tragic. Tragic not only because it robs God of his honor but also tragic because in the end every idol will eventually disappoint. Isaiah 42 17 puts it this way but those who trust in idols who say to images you are our gods will be turned back in utter shame. Those who trust in idols will be turned back in utter shame. So far then we've looked at two of three practical steps that you and I can take to wean ourselves from idols and to give ourselves with increased lack of reservation to the true and the living God. Number one we've looked at this in some detail we must identify our modern-day idols and we've looked at a number of those. The list has not been exhaustive, power, relationships, work, money, pleasure, wisdom, spirituality, immortality. All of those we must learn to identify and then having identified them we must repent of them and we must renounce them. To repent of them is to change your mind. To renounce them is to say I want nothing to do with this I want my heart to belong only to the true and the living God. That brings us this morning then to a third step that we can and must take if the power of idolatry is to be broken in our lives and that is we must cultivate and practice spiritual disciplines. We must cultivate and practice spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines are things you and I can do to keep us in the grace of God in Jesus Christ. John talks about it negatively here when he says in 1 John 5 verse 21, "Dear children keep yourselves from idols." Here is the negative of not letting idols get caught up into our lives but Jude puts it positively when he says in verse 21, "Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life." And Paul in Romans 12, "Never be lacking in zeal but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord." Notice the emphasis in each of those three verses on keep. It is an active verb. It is something you and I can do and must do if we are to avoid getting caught up in idolatry. Now here's the thing that's really important to understand. What we do will not earn us the grace of God and praying more or any of the spiritual disciplines some of which we'll be talking about this morning in and of themselves will not make you a better Christian because we're saved by grace through faith. It's very important to remember that and one of the ways that surfaces is sometimes God blesses us most when we least deserved it. You'll have noticed that in your life have you not? Sometimes when you've really been off the rails and you think boy I've gone too far and God's never gonna want me anymore like the prodigal son returning home you see the father is standing there waiting for you to come back. We're saved by grace through faith. That said we should never presume on the kindnesses of God and spiritual disciplines are tools to bring us to a place where we can be open to receiving God's grace. Think of it as gardening. You take a seed there is nothing you can do to make that seed grow and bear fruit. It has to come from within the seed if the seed were dead you could never bring it to life. That said you can create conditions that will help that seed prosper and so you prepare the soil. You plant it at the proper depth. You water it. You weed it. You fertilize it and the difference between a good gardener and a bad gardener is that a good gardener knows how to provide the conditions for that seed to germinate for that plant to grow and for that plant to bear fruit. The bad gardener misses one or two steps in the process and the plant will show the result. So spiritual disciplines are things you and I can do to keep us in the love of God. Can you prosper without them? Maybe. Will you become in Christ what you need to be without them? I doubt it very much and so in the time that we have this morning let's make a start. We'll look at three maybe four spiritual disciplines that are foundational to the Christian life. Nothing profound here. Nothing that you haven't heard a hundred times before but you know sometimes it's the simple things that we fail to do that rob us of our spiritual joy in our spiritual life. So first discipline I want to talk about with you this morning is the discipline of solitude. That is to be alone and to be quiet before the face of God. Psalm 46 verse 10, "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth." I will never forget this verse because it is the only verse on the basis of which I have ever preached a sermon in the Dutch language. I was a student in Bloomfield. It must have been in the summer I think of 1970 and I had just completed my first year of seminary and I was there for ten weeks preaching and teaching and somebody thought I should try out my mother tongue and so with great effort and reasonable degree of success I might add I preached that verse in Dutch and I remembered well, "Lat af en weet dat ik goed ben." Be still and know that I am God. Bloomfield Church was full that night I want you to know when I preached that sermon because everybody was extremely curious to see how well I would do. Psalm 37 verse 7, "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret when men succeed in their ways and when they carry out their wicked schemes." Be still before the Lord. Now you know just as well as I do that we live in a time of extreme busyness and a time of extreme noise between the busyness of our lifestyles, the interconnectedness of technology, we're constantly deluged with information overload and the result I think is twofold. First of all we're seldom quiet long enough to know what really leaves on the inside. In fact I would argue that a lot of people want to keep themselves busy so they don't have to get in touch with what leaves inside. I often think of that when I'm driving along the streets and you run across pedestrians and how many of them are not wearing earbuds listening to music. It's amazing to me that more people don't get run over because they're just tuned out to the rest of the world and they are turned in to that music and there's nothing wrong with listening to music but there's a lot wrong with music if it's to be distracted from what lives inside you and a lot of people are in such chaos internally that they can't afford to stop long enough to listen to what's going on. But secondly the result of that is that we live in a day and age where we drown out the still small voice of the Holy Spirit and so the net result is that we are just plunging ahead into life often without serious self-reflection without asking where have I come from, where am I going, and how can I best get there. It was Carl Sandberg, the American writer and poet, not a Christian I believe, who captured something profound when he said it is necessary for a man to go away by himself to sit on a rock and ask who am I, where have I been, and where am I going. And one of the ways to do that is to cultivate the discipline of solitude. I believe there ought to be a regular time in each of our lives where we withdraw from the busyness of life, dial down, ask yourselves the question what am I feeling, what am I thinking, what am I happy about, what am I sad about, what troubles me, and God would you speak into my situation, would you help me to sort out what those feelings are, and would you give your perspective and your reflection on who I am, where I've been, and where I need to be going, lest I come to the end of my days and I have been so busy being a jack-of-all-trades that I have not ever become a master of the one thing that you truly called me to and truly equipped me for. And I say that because if you look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels, Jesus, the very Son of God who knew who he was and where he was going, that's the practice that he developed repeatedly. We read in Mark 135, very early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. There you have solitude on the part of Jesus. You've often heard me say we should not try to be holier than Jesus, and if he needed the solitude of being with the Father, probably you and I might want to cultivate that also. All the more so because a few chapters later on in Mark he challenged his disciples in a very similar fashion when he says in Mark 6 verse 31, or where the Bible says, "Because so many people were coming and going that they didn't even have a chance to eat, he that as Jesus said to them, his disciples, 'Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.'" Let me ask you this morning, in your schedule is there provision for solitude where you can seek the heart of God, dial down, and sort out what lives inside you so that when you step out into the busyness of the week that lies before you, you've got focus, you've got purpose, you know what you're doing, and you know where you're going. Second spiritual discipline I want to talk about closely related to solitude but somewhat separate from it, and that is the discipline of prayer. Philippians 4, 6, 7, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Prayer as we know is conversation with God. Dave in the evening services has been doing an excellent job just examining the varying elements of prayer, particularly conversational prayer. I would argue that prayer is one of the defining characteristics historically of God's people. I say that because when you go back to Genesis chapter 4 where you have the foundation laid for what St. Augustine called the city of man versus the city of God, that is to say the descendants of Cain who become the nations of the world and the descendants of, well, Abel got killed, so Seth, which becomes the foundation for God's people historically. The difference between those two groups of people in Genesis 4 is incredibly striking because Cain's descendants, the people of the world, are described as being the inventors of music and the inventors of technology. There's a huge emphasis there on sexuality, beautiful women, and power and lust and all of that sort of thing. But when you get to the genealogy on Seth's side, all we're told is that in the days of Enosh they began to call on the name of the Lord. They became worshippers of the true God. And the significance of that is very easy to miss unless you look up the meaning of the name Enosh. Because Enosh means weak. And the picture here of God's people is the awareness of the frailty of human life, our inability to overcome the downward pull of sin and the curse and the need for God's salvation and God's redemption. And that is why throughout history God's people have been men and women of prayer. Men and women who know what their needs are and who in drawing near to God are able to pour out their hearts and their souls in the confident expectation that God not only is, but that he cares, that he has ears to hear, and that he will act in response to the desperate pleas of his people. I love that old hymn, "My God is any hour so sweet from blush of morn to evening star as that which calls me to thy feet the hour of prayer. Then is my strength by thee renewed, then are my sins by thee forgiven, then thou dost cheer my solitude," there you have that word again, "with hopes of heaven. No words can tell what sweet relief there for my every want I find. What strength for warfare, balm for grief, would peace of mind, hushed, is each doubt. Gone every fear. My spirit seems in heaven to stay and even the penitential tear is wiped away. Nor till I reach yon blissful shore no privilege so dear shall be as thus my inmost soul to pour in prayer to thee." Prayer helps us to refocus our lives in ways that solitude alone can seldom do. Now that's not to say that prayer is always easy. In fact, I don't mind confessing to you this morning that over the last few years, with a lot of the stuff that we've gone through around here, for me personally, personal prayer has by times been extremely difficult. And many of you might find yourself in similar situations where you don't know how to grab hold of, you don't even know what you're feeling, let alone finding God in the midst of those feelings. And that's of course one of the reasons God puts us in community, which is a discipline that we'll talk about later on. But we need to understand the devil, the world, and the flesh are all profoundly interested in keeping us from making a significant connection with God. And so you make up your mind that you're going to be a man or a woman of prayer, and you discover distractions galore. And if it isn't a distraction, it is an interruption. And if it isn't an interruption, it's an irritation. And I can tell you from personal experience that unless you make up your mind that prayer is going to be a discipline that you commit yourself to, all your prayer will remain is a little prayer, breathe here, and a little prayer, breathe there, and it will not take the form of any significant discipline in your life. Now a breathed prayer here is better than no prayer at all. But remember that Satan has a vested interest in keeping God's people individually and corporately as prayerless as possible because it is prayer that lays hold of God and brings heaven down to earth to accomplish the purposes of God. And that takes discipline. And so allow me to just speak very frankly, if you don't already pray regularly before you eat, would you at least make it a discipline to thank God for the food that's on your plate? And if you don't already pray before you go to bed, would you at least take a moment and thank God for getting you through the day and for blessing you in the way that he has? And if you don't already make it a discipline in the morning to commit your new day to God, would you take the discipline? If nothing else for a moment to say, "God, here I am, I'm yours, help me to be sensitive to who you are, to what it is that you're doing, help me to see the opportunities that you're presenting before my face, and help me more than anything to be obedient." And if you don't already schedule in, in a regular way, what some people call a quiet time, 10, 15 minutes, half an hour, where you get alone with God, to do the kind of reflecting that we've been talking about, would you consider seriously developing the discipline to say, "God, you deserve the best of me, the best of my time." Not the leftovers when you sit there falling asleep, the best of your time, "God, help me to tune into you, to love you, and to hear from you." And it will make a difference, it will make a huge difference, and if your objection is that your mind gets distracted when you start trying to pray, welcome to the club, because that happens to most of us, but you know the answer to that. You can beat the devil at his own game, just for the record. You pray whatever it is that your mind drifts towards, because your mind drifts towards the things that are important in your life, the struggles that you have, the challenges that you face, and the difficulties that you encounter. So beat the devil at his own game. And if that doesn't work, there's a little acronym that a lot of us over the years have found to be extremely helpful. It's called ACTS. A stands for? C stands for? T stands for? Thanksgiving. And S stands for? Supplication. Nothing profound, but for those of us whose minds wander as they are typically inclined to do, it can help focus wonderfully. Adoration is to confess that God is worthy of praise. How does Jesus start the Lord's Prayer? "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." God deserves adoration whether or not we feel like it or like it. So it's a very good place to start exercising discipline. Confession gets rid of the distance between God and myself, because part of the difficulty in drawing near to God, who is brilliant light and who is holiness personified, is the fact that he uncovers the dark places in our lives, the things we don't particularly want to look at, the things that that we're ashamed of, the things that we don't even want to admit to ourselves. Confession says, "Lord I really messed up and I'm not worthy to be here." And when we confess, don't just confess, "Lord forgive me all my many sins in Jesus' name, amen." Because you see that avoids the responsibility for the fact that when we sin, we sin specifically. I didn't treat my kid right, I didn't treat my spouse right, I cheated at the cash register, I swore on the job because, you know, somebody got under my skin and I was inappropriately angry in that particular situation. "Lord I'm reviewing my life, I'm reviewing my day with you, and I know that I can afford to do this because you're not gonna throw me out just because I've blown it, because my relationship with you is not determined by the fact that I'm doing everything right. Now my relationship with you is determined by the fact that I'm in Christ. I've already been forgiven, I'm already declared righteous. Confession means to agree with God, but God's view of my life and my behavior is appropriate. If we confess our sins to Scripture, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving means thank you God for the incredible blessings that you pour out. And one of the best ways to cultivate a heart of Thanksgiving is to thank God for the multitude of things that you and I so readily take for granted. A son that rises every morning, food that we have on the table, a job to go to, loved ones to invest their lives in, a world that abounds with the blessings of God so that civilization can flourish and prosper and and do all of the things that we're able to do. Supplication of course, Lord I have needs, my child is sick, my spouse and I we don't get along, my job is going down the tubes, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my bill tomorrow, I am fearful and I am afraid and Lord you've told me that you care about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, I am your child and so I lay my needs before you and as I lay my needs before you I know that you who care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field you certainly will care for me. And if you haven't made that a discipline in your life you will be amazed at how many times prayer makes a difference. I like the guy who was told that prayer, getting prayers answered is that it's just coincidence and he said it might be coincidence but I find that I have a lot more coincidences when I pray and I think that was a pretty profound insight and somebody else has said praying is like working for the power company. Sometimes you dig holes, sometimes you plant poles, sometimes you string wires, but every so often the power gets turned on and when you get that surge of power it'll change everything that you are and everything that you have. Let me ask you again, are you making time in your life for a time of prayer and will you push through even if it doesn't seem like it's getting anywhere or God isn't answering you? Perseverance is huge and God's people need to be a praying people. All right one more this morning and that is again a very familiar one, the discipline of Bible reading. 2nd Timothy 3, 16 and 17, all scripture is God breathe, the word is often translated inspired but inspired means God breathe and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man or the woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. The Bible as you know is one of the most unique books or the most unique book in all of the world in that it declares itself to have been inspired by God. Peter in 2nd Peter chapter 1 puts it this way he says for prophecy never had its origin in the will of man but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The very interesting thing about the Bible of course is that you can take the writings of the different writers lay them side by side and they are the reflection of their human personality. Peter sounds different from Paul who sounds different from Mark who sounds different from John. Yet each of them were inspired by God's Holy Spirit who gave them the thoughts and the ideas to put down on paper in a way that reflects the true heart and the character of God and the purpose of scripture is never just to make you feel better the purpose of scripture is to make you be better but the man and the woman of God may be equipped for every good work. The psalmist put it this way your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. There is no doubt in my mind that the degree to which you and I are able to stand against the spirit of the age identify idols and reject them is in proportion to the degree to which we have laid up God's Word in our hearts. One of the tragedies of Western Christianity today is that by and large God's people are not discernibly different from the peoples of the world. Let me read you a couple of quotes here if I can find them fast because we live in a society that is colored by unbelief and by an ignorance of scripture. Here's a national study of youth and religion lead researcher Christian Smith and his point is this and he's talking about a study from conservative Protestant churches so we'd fall in that category a little bit. About half of the teens say that many religions may be true more than one-third say it is okay to practice multiple religions more than one-third believe people should not try to evangelize others more than one-third say it is okay to pick and choose one's religious beliefs and not accept the teachings of one's faith as a whole and nearly two-thirds say a person can be truly religious and spiritual without being involved in a church and then there are others who say and I'm just trying to find my other piece of paper here which I can't find. George Barna, famous researcher who does hard work in terms of identifying where God's people are really at makes the blatant observation that in most areas of life Christians lifestyles in North America at least are not significantly or discernibly different from that of the world. That's a damning condemnation in my humble opinion and when I think about it I can identify two reasons why that is. Let me run this pasture real quick. One is we live in a world where we are inundated with messages that are focused on a worldly perspective. I mean listen to your advertising, watch your television shows, watch your movies. Most of them are permeated with values that are idolatrous to the true gospel and unless you really have your armor on, that mindset gets absorbed into our lifestyle in ways that are are destructive and in ways that we're not even aware of. I remember years ago a young woman in her church raised in a fine Christian home asking her mother what's wrong with abortion anyway and if that was a question 10, 20, 30 years ago the question today among our youth and among many churchgoers is what's wrong with homosexuality? What's wrong with gay marriage? We have so been influenced by our culture that our mindset leads in the same direction. George Gallup, famous researcher as you know, he says Americans revere the Bible but by and large they don't read it and because they don't read it they have become a nation of biblical illiterates and there you have the second reason why the influence of the world finds its way into so many of our lives. We don't know the scriptures. Listen to this, fewer than half of all adults can name the four Gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples. 60% of Americans have never can't name five of the Ten Commandments. 82% of Americans think the phrase God helps themselves, God helps those who help themselves is in the Bible. Benjamin Franklin is the dude who penned that but you understand God helps them, God helps those who help themselves is the opposite of God helps those who cannot help themselves. If you think that's in the Bible then you haven't really clued in to salvation by grace. Born-again Christians did much better than the average run-of-the-mill people by 1%. 1%! That means 81% of born-again evangelical Christians think the phrase God helps those that help themselves is in the Bible. 12% of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife or like that. And 50% of graduating high school students thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. And many respondents to one poll believe that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. The guy who writes this article says this generation must get deadly serious about the problem of biblical illiteracy or a frighteningly large number of Americans, Christians included, will go on thinking that Sodom and Gomorrah lived happily ever after. What's the antidote? The antidote is reading scripture and by reading scripture I don't mean just a little verse here and a little verse there the way that we sort of do smorgasbord with scripture you know I like this dish but I don't like that I like this is my favorite verse but that one really annoys me particularly when it's Paul writing about whatever and and so we pick and we choose but the result is we don't get the flavor of all of scripture and many of us here of my generation at least grew up living in homes where the Bible was read regularly at mealtimes. How many of you here grew up in that kind of a home where the Bible was read at mealtimes at my house at least at the family meal my father would take out the Bible and he would read and I've said before he would include the genealogies and you better believe that a thousand and one times I rolled my eyes and looked at the ceiling and counted tiles but you know what by the time I got to seminary and we had to take a Bible knowledge test in seminary to get our degree I rated if not the highest than one of the highest of all students in my knowledge of scripture without ever having sat down to try to learn the Bible. Don't ever underestimate how much your kids are picking out when their eyes are rolling and their minds are elsewhere and if you don't already have a family altar time if you don't already make provisions to lead yourself and your family through scripture from one end to the other do yourself and the church a favor and fortify your internal being and your family so that you have the wherewithal to recognize the spirits of the age and you can resist them firmly because you know the heart and the mind of God and it's not going to happen by chance it's only going to happen if you make it a priority and if you say I'm too busy to make it a priority then you are too busy because at the end of the day all that really matters is that we love God above all that we have known him and that we have [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:41:31.970; remove through 00:41:33.000] walked in his ways [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:41:33.000; resume after this marked segment]