WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.879 now it's my pleasure to welcome up to our pulpit Jonathan Clark. Welcome, brother. 00:00:04.879 --> 00:00:05.480 Pleasure. 00:00:12.679 --> 00:00:25.260 Good morning, friends. It's good to be back with you again. I was here in, I think it was March 00:00:25.260 --> 00:00:29.900 was the last time I was here. But for those of you who don't know me, my name is Jonathan Clark. 00:00:30.260 --> 00:00:35.500 I've actually, I grew up in Colorado Springs. I've been gone for a while now, but I keep 00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:39.519 coming back to Cheyenne Mountain. I actually worked here as a pastoral intern while I was 00:00:39.519 --> 00:00:45.840 in seminary. And if you don't like Matthew, you can blame me. Capone and I were roommates 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:50.340 in seminary, and I told him about this job out in southern Colorado Springs, and so he 00:00:50.340 --> 00:00:56.859 applied. And so a lot of why. Yeah, so Capone's an old friend. He's a faithful friend. Love 00:00:56.859 --> 00:01:02.100 him while we're praying for his quick recovery. Currently, I just moved back to Colorado Springs 00:01:02.100 --> 00:01:06.019 a couple of weeks ago, actually, about a month and a half ago with my wife, Caroline, and 00:01:06.019 --> 00:01:12.260 our daughter, Phoebe. And our hope and our plan is to plant a new campus ministry at UCCS 00:01:12.260 --> 00:01:17.060 and to college students in the Colorado Springs area. I work for an organization called Reformed 00:01:17.060 --> 00:01:23.960 University Fellowship. John Alpeter was talking briefly about the PCA. The PCA is the Presbyterian 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:29.100 denomination that Cheyenne Mountain is a part of, and RUF is the official campus ministry 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:35.879 of that denomination. And so we are going to attempt to start a new Reformed voice at UCCS, 00:01:35.939 --> 00:01:41.400 a new Reformed community for college students. So if you have friends or students who are in 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:45.840 that fit that age range, demographic, please, I would love to meet them and connect with 00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:49.700 them. We're going to start doing things even this summer, like fun events and Bible studies. 00:01:49.860 --> 00:01:54.980 So we'd love to connect with them. And so, but that's not why we're here today. We're here 00:01:54.980 --> 00:02:00.520 to see what God's Word teaches us and how to live and follow and obey God. And as I was, 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:06.680 turn with me in Deuteronomy chapter 4, Deuteronomy chapter 4, or it's printed in the bulletin around 00:02:06.680 --> 00:02:13.599 you. And as I've been thinking recently about starting something new in a new place, starting 00:02:13.599 --> 00:02:19.240 a new campus ministry, I've been reflecting on what are we doing as Christians? What is, you know, 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:23.819 what is, what's the foundation? What are the old things? And so I've been rereading some old books 00:02:23.819 --> 00:02:29.740 from books that have really made an impression on my life and thinking about ministry, going back to 00:02:29.740 --> 00:02:35.159 the basics. And even as we read in our catechism this morning, you know, there's this very simple, 00:02:35.159 --> 00:02:42.620 right at the beginning, confession that we say as Christians, that there is one God and only one 00:02:42.620 --> 00:02:48.180 God. And that is, like John said, something that's so common to our minds and our hearts that I think 00:02:48.180 --> 00:02:53.519 we can move past it. But truly, as I think through college students in a new place, and I think, my 00:02:53.519 --> 00:02:59.439 goodness, this is still so important, so applicable to our hearts and our minds today. And so what we are 00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:08.859 going to consider today is how does this reality of you shall have no other gods besides me still apply to our 00:03:08.859 --> 00:03:15.759 world, to our secular, to our Christian, to your family, to your marriage, to your work? How does that apply 00:03:15.759 --> 00:03:24.000 today? And I think it does. And so we're going to examine today this idea of worshiping God alone and the idea of the 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:30.259 contrary, which is idolatry, and examine that in our hearts. And the idea, the big thing that I want us to 00:03:30.259 --> 00:03:39.280 walk away from today is that God continues to call us every day, every week, to worship Him alone and to 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:45.020 reject the idols of our heart. That God calls us to worship Him alone and to reject the idols of our 00:03:45.020 --> 00:03:49.580 heart. And so if you are, and we'll see this as we look at our text today, we're going to look at 00:03:49.580 --> 00:03:55.720 Deuteronomy chapter 4, and we're going to start at verse 15. So this is God's Word. 00:03:55.840 --> 00:04:02.620 Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form in the day that the Lord spoke to 00:04:02.620 --> 00:04:08.920 you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Beware, lest you act corruptly and make a carved image for 00:04:08.920 --> 00:04:15.280 yourself in the form of any figner, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:20.500 the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:25.740 creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware, 00:04:25.860 --> 00:04:31.399 lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts 00:04:31.399 --> 00:04:38.000 of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:44.519 allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the 00:04:44.519 --> 00:04:51.779 iron furnace out of Egypt to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day. Furthermore, 00:04:52.019 --> 00:04:58.000 the Lord was angry with me because of you, and he swore that I should not cross the Jordan and that I 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:04.159 should not enter the good land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. For I must die 00:05:04.159 --> 00:05:10.620 in this land. I must not go over the Jordan, but you shall go over and take possession of that good land. 00:05:10.620 --> 00:05:17.840 Take care, lest you forget the covenant that the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make a 00:05:17.840 --> 00:05:23.579 carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you. For the Lord your God 00:05:23.579 --> 00:05:32.860 is a consuming fire, a jealous God. And now skipping down to verse 39. Know therefore today and lay it on 00:05:32.860 --> 00:05:40.060 your heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. There is no other. Therefore, 00:05:40.199 --> 00:05:44.900 you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with 00:05:44.900 --> 00:05:50.740 you and with your children after you, then that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord 00:05:50.740 --> 00:05:57.180 your God is giving you for all time. This is God's word. Would you pray with me? Father, Son, and Spirit, 00:05:57.180 --> 00:06:02.819 we pray now that as we have read your word, that you would now use your spirit to do what you have 00:06:02.819 --> 00:06:08.680 done for thousands of years for millions of people across time, that you would take words on a page 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:14.199 and write them on our hearts, that we would walk out of here changed men and women who are more able 00:06:14.199 --> 00:06:19.199 to know and love you and to know and love one another. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:25.379 Okay, so I want to try and set the scene a little bit for what's been going on in the life of the 00:06:25.379 --> 00:06:29.439 Israelites in the life of Deuteronomy, because if you're anything like me, it's been a while since 00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:36.019 you read Deuteronomy. And if you remember, this is a letter that Moses is writing to recount what he 00:06:36.019 --> 00:06:41.639 has told to the Israelites as they are getting ready to cross into the promised land, right? And so for 00:06:41.639 --> 00:06:49.300 45 years, it's been 45-ish years since they've been rescued out of their slavery to Egypt, and now 00:06:49.300 --> 00:06:53.920 they are standing again on the edge of Canaan. But this is not the first time they've been here. 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:59.020 They've been here one other time, and when they were supposed to go into Canaan and take the land 00:06:59.020 --> 00:07:06.560 that God had given them, they chickened out, they did not trust God, and they went back. And God 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:12.540 condemned that faithless, untrusting generation to die and wander in the desert. And now they come back 00:07:12.540 --> 00:07:19.879 at 40 years later, and God says, okay, enter into the land. And now Deuteronomy is, Moses is pretty 00:07:19.879 --> 00:07:27.040 much his giant pep talk of, don't be like your fathers. Don't be like that faithless generation. 00:07:27.159 --> 00:07:32.939 This is a new generation. And Moses, who is their spiritual and their political leader, is now 00:07:32.939 --> 00:07:39.019 speaking to them. Really, he's preaching to them to exhort them to do better than their fathers and 00:07:39.019 --> 00:07:47.180 their parents. And most of Deuteronomy is Moses recounting God's faithfulness to them and exhorting 00:07:47.180 --> 00:07:52.600 and encouraging them to improve on their fathers' faithlessness and to enter the land, right? 00:07:53.420 --> 00:07:59.460 And many of the themes of what he is exhorting them to center back into, you shall worship the 00:07:59.460 --> 00:08:05.120 Lord your God alone. We read just two chapters later earlier this morning, the core faith commitment 00:08:05.120 --> 00:08:11.800 of the Israelite people. The Lord our God, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, right? 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:18.560 And so the major theme that Moses is calling to here is monotheistic covenantal faithfulness, 00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:24.680 or to keep the promise packed that God had made with his people to worship him alone, 00:08:25.460 --> 00:08:31.500 contrary to the idols that are so much cropping up in their culture and in their hearts around them. 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:37.860 And so what I want us to do is to consider today three things, three things. One, the reality of 00:08:37.860 --> 00:08:44.940 idolatrous hearts. Two, the only redeeming God. And three, how do we guard our hearts, right? So three 00:08:44.940 --> 00:08:50.379 things. One, the reality of idolatrous hearts. Two, the only redeeming God. And three, how do we guard 00:08:50.379 --> 00:08:55.879 our hearts? And so the first thing I want us to look at is the reality of idolatrous hearts. So notice 00:08:55.879 --> 00:09:02.320 here that in our text, we see here that there are four exhortations or commands that Moses gives his 00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:11.260 people to watch out, to look carefully. Verse 15, watch yourselves very carefully. Verse 16, beware lest 00:09:11.260 --> 00:09:19.080 you act corruptly. Verse 19, beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven. And verse 23, take care lest you 00:09:19.080 --> 00:09:26.180 forget the covenant. The language is different in each one of these, but the gist is the same, right? The 00:09:26.179 --> 00:09:33.899 warning is the same. Moses is warning and commanding and exhorting the Israelite people against slipping 00:09:33.899 --> 00:09:40.759 into any kind of idolatry, right? Or worship of anything other than him, worship of the other 00:09:40.759 --> 00:09:46.379 living God. And so, but in his cautions, I think we can see some distinguishing characteristics of sort 00:09:46.379 --> 00:09:53.539 of this deterioration, the fall into idolatry for the Israelite people, right? So first, notice here, 00:09:53.539 --> 00:10:00.159 verse 15, that idolatry starts with the desire for a tangible God. Verse 15, therefore, watch 00:10:00.159 --> 00:10:06.259 yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of 00:10:06.259 --> 00:10:12.480 the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly, right? Well, what does this mean? Well, he says, hey, 00:10:12.519 --> 00:10:18.459 do you remember when back at the mountain, when God spoke to Moses and all you saw was a fiery, 00:10:18.899 --> 00:10:23.439 a mountain on fire, but you never saw a God. Remember what they did? Well, they said, we can't see 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:27.220 this God. We're not sure. We don't know what's going on. We need something. What did they do? 00:10:28.180 --> 00:10:33.100 They made an image. They made an image. They took their gold and they constructed something that they 00:10:33.100 --> 00:10:39.660 could see, right? Something that they could touch to worship. And part of this is cultural because all 00:10:39.660 --> 00:10:44.960 other religions in the world had created physical idols, things that they could see, that they could 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:54.200 worship, right? But behind this, behind this very old 2,000 years before Christ cultural phenomena 00:10:54.200 --> 00:11:00.800 is something that happens and moves in each human heart and therefore continues for us today, right? 00:11:02.280 --> 00:11:08.680 There's a spiritual reality in this that each person, each culture, the Bible says, aspires 00:11:08.679 --> 00:11:15.259 to replace the invisible God with something physical, something that we can at least put our 00:11:15.259 --> 00:11:21.279 eyes on, maybe put our hands on and say, ah, this is something that I can actually begin to worship, 00:11:21.419 --> 00:11:31.000 right? And so this tells us that the major source of idolatry is the seeming, the apparent absence of 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:36.219 the living God. Not that he is absent. We know that he is here. We know that he is present. But we say, 00:11:36.220 --> 00:11:42.279 I can't see him. He seems so far off and I need something that I can look to for help and security, 00:11:42.519 --> 00:11:47.580 right? We look around and we wonder, where is God? So I'll find something that I can worship, 00:11:48.040 --> 00:11:53.259 something that will make me feel valuable and significant, right? So idolatry begins with our 00:11:53.259 --> 00:11:58.700 inability to see God and say, I need something in this. But then second, notice that idolatry progresses 00:11:58.700 --> 00:12:05.940 when we corruptly fashion an image out of something created, right? The next step for idolatry 00:12:05.940 --> 00:12:11.740 is to look into the world, see the vacuum for a visible God, and to create something tangible or 00:12:11.740 --> 00:12:17.520 accessible, something visible. And look what the text says. He says, verse 16, beware lest you act 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:26.700 corruptly. How? By making an image, a carved image for yourself in any form, in any form, right? That's saying 00:12:26.700 --> 00:12:33.180 that nothing, no physical form is sufficient to capture the beauty and the radiance and the uniqueness 00:12:33.179 --> 00:12:37.899 of the living God, the creating God of the Bible. But just to make sure that you understand how 00:12:37.899 --> 00:12:44.719 encompassing any is, O Israelites, let me tell you, it cannot be male. It cannot be fail. It cannot be on 00:12:44.719 --> 00:12:50.739 any animal. It cannot be a winged bird. It cannot look like anything that creeps. It cannot be in the 00:12:50.739 --> 00:12:54.939 fish in the air. So he says, you're going to look around you and you're going to see a bunch of things. 00:12:55.079 --> 00:13:01.500 And you're going to see things that you say, that's an option. And he says, it must not. Do not act 00:13:01.500 --> 00:13:06.840 corruptly by perverting something that is out there and saying, well, I could turn that into 00:13:06.840 --> 00:13:14.120 something that could feel significant in what feels invisible, right? So in short, Moses is saying 00:13:14.120 --> 00:13:22.179 idolatry is turning the most basic building blocks of the universe upside down, where we replace the 00:13:22.179 --> 00:13:30.879 creator for a created thing. Idolatry is when we, as Paul says in Romans 1, exchange the creator for the 00:13:30.879 --> 00:13:36.179 creature, right? And you can see this. You'll notice if you flip through your bulletin, there's a little, 00:13:36.419 --> 00:13:41.299 there's some quotes from a great theologian that I respect named Chris Wright, where he says, when this 00:13:41.299 --> 00:13:47.720 happens, we are turning the way that the universe works upside down. We are twisting the universe upside 00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:53.679 down and we are using, replacing things that God has given for our use for our God and we're rejecting God, 00:13:53.679 --> 00:14:00.799 right? And so this leads to the third and final step into idolatry, which is verse 19. 00:14:01.219 --> 00:14:06.819 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars and all the 00:14:06.819 --> 00:14:13.399 hosts in the heaven. You are drawn away and you bow down to them and you serve them, right? And so this 00:14:13.399 --> 00:14:21.819 third and final decline into idolatry is when we finally look to created things and we say, ah, this is 00:14:21.820 --> 00:14:29.060 divine. Ah, this is the source of hope and meaning that I have in my life, right? So idolatry starts 00:14:29.060 --> 00:14:34.700 when we feel the absence of God. We say, where is he? We know that scripture tells us he's there, 00:14:34.760 --> 00:14:40.060 but we don't always sense it. And we say, I need something. Oh, this will work. And we start to look 00:14:40.060 --> 00:14:46.960 to that as an image of hope and peace and security. And then we worship it, right? And we give it divine 00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:54.360 power and capacity, right? Idolatry is taking a good created thing and inscribing ultimate creator 00:14:54.360 --> 00:15:01.700 status, right? Now, this is speaking to a group of Israelites who are living in a, you know, 00:15:02.860 --> 00:15:09.320 agrarian culture and 2,000 years before Christ, a long time ago. Does this still apply to us? Perhaps 00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:16.720 some of you are here today and saying, Jonathan, we live in a very secular, very enlightened world, 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:22.120 there's no pagans running around necessarily. I don't see people worshiping cows in Colorado Springs. 00:15:22.639 --> 00:15:27.600 How in the world does this possibly apply to my life, to my heart, right? 00:15:29.080 --> 00:15:34.360 Well, I think it's frankly the height of folly, it seems to me, for both the Christian and the 00:15:34.360 --> 00:15:39.960 non-Christian. And I think it's frankly one of the evil ones' best tricks to say, oh, that was then. 00:15:40.040 --> 00:15:44.879 We've moved past that. That's not where our hearts are today. I don't worship a wooden stone. I don't 00:15:44.879 --> 00:15:50.519 need to worry about this. John Calvin, who's one of the great theologians of the Christian faith, 00:15:50.600 --> 00:15:57.659 says this. He says that the human heart is an idol factory. The human heart is an idol factory, 00:15:57.659 --> 00:16:06.120 that each of us is constantly generating new things to replace the creator with the creation, 00:16:06.279 --> 00:16:11.399 with that he, that in the absence of God, that our heart's eyes is constantly roving through your 00:16:11.399 --> 00:16:17.000 world and through your life to say, find something that says this can give me significance. Some of 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:21.399 you, you know, perhaps Christians, you're saying, well, I don't think I'm doing this, Jonathan. I've 00:16:21.399 --> 00:16:27.740 come to church. I worship Jesus. Some of you who are non-Christians, you say, I am not idolatrous. In 00:16:27.740 --> 00:16:33.799 fact, I'm not religious at all. This does not describe me in the least. I don't, I reject the whole premise 00:16:33.799 --> 00:16:41.099 of superstitious spirituality. I'm a modern, enlightened secular. And I want to try and peel 00:16:41.099 --> 00:16:47.159 back and say that just as true as this was for the Israelites 4,000 years ago, it is still as true 00:16:47.159 --> 00:16:53.500 for us today. And I read a book a few months ago. It's a book called Seculosity. Seculosity by a guy 00:16:53.500 --> 00:17:00.319 named David Zahl, Z-A-H-L. Highly recommend this book. Great book. The subtitle of the book is How Career, 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:06.259 Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance became Our New Religion. So if you're looking for 00:17:06.259 --> 00:17:09.720 something to make your brain work a little bit, I highly recommend this book. But this author, 00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:15.440 what he's basically trying to do is trying to explain how in our modern world, each of us, 00:17:15.860 --> 00:17:20.920 in our little subcultures, in our little family units, in our own hearts, have basically repeated 00:17:20.920 --> 00:17:27.600 the golden calf idolatry in an own unique way for each one of us, right? And he writes, 00:17:27.599 --> 00:17:33.219 contrary to what we may think, religion is not on the decline in America. It's just rebranding 00:17:33.219 --> 00:17:39.079 itself, right? It's just changing its form, right? Because through each one of us is this desire 00:17:39.079 --> 00:17:43.859 to worship something and this sinful desire to replace the creator for the creation. So we are 00:17:43.859 --> 00:17:50.500 all just doing this as much as the Israelites, right? And this aligns so well with the words of a 00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:55.699 great philosopher he wrote, actually a while ago, a guy named David Foster Wallace, who wrote this 00:17:55.700 --> 00:18:00.620 commencement speech at Kenyon College. He's not a Christian, but listen to what he says. 00:18:01.279 --> 00:18:03.340 He's writing to college graduates. He says, 00:18:03.700 --> 00:18:08.240 in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there's actually no such thing as atheism. 00:18:09.019 --> 00:18:12.460 There's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. 00:18:13.319 --> 00:18:19.539 The only choice we get is what to worship. If you worship money and things, then they are where you find 00:18:19.539 --> 00:18:24.660 your real meaning in life. And you will never have enough and never feel you have enough. It's the truth. 00:18:24.660 --> 00:18:31.360 Worship your body or beauty or sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age 00:18:31.360 --> 00:18:35.700 and grief start, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before 00:18:35.700 --> 00:18:41.160 they finally grieve you. So what's David Foster Wallace saying? He's saying that atheism is just a, 00:18:41.259 --> 00:18:45.500 it's an imagination of a philosopher that everybody is worshiping something, right? 00:18:46.440 --> 00:18:52.000 Tim Keller, a great pastor, says, anything in life can serve as an idol, a God alternative, 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:59.200 a counterfeit God. And we live in a culture which allows you, which empowers, which compels you in 00:18:59.200 --> 00:19:06.740 many ways to curate your own individual idol life, right? To find the individual things, idol sources 00:19:06.740 --> 00:19:12.539 of life that will say, hey, this, turn to this, and you will find meaning and hope and security, 00:19:12.700 --> 00:19:17.460 right? And that's what makes it so deceptive, is that we each get to kind of do this on our own, 00:19:17.460 --> 00:19:23.480 curate and create our own idolatry, right? So what are the things that I think we turn to 00:19:23.480 --> 00:19:31.160 in our culture today, right? Well, of course, you know, the easy one is money, right? All of us do 00:19:31.160 --> 00:19:37.920 this regularly. I do it, you do it, right? Recall what Paul says in Colossians 3. He says that greed 00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:44.779 or covetousness is idolatry. Doesn't get any more obvious than that, right? But there's this, 00:19:45.039 --> 00:19:50.160 this, this, this, I think this is a particularly an American problem. Alexei de Tocqueville, who was a 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:56.460 French political philosopher in the, in the, in the early 1700s, toured America as it was beginning 00:19:56.460 --> 00:20:01.620 to form, and he's studying American culture. And he looks into American culture, and he says, hey, 00:20:01.619 --> 00:20:10.239 you know what the besetting sin of the American society is? Greed. This country loves money, 00:20:11.019 --> 00:20:15.500 and it will be the great downfall of this culture, country. He's watching this country as it's 00:20:15.500 --> 00:20:20.000 beginning to form. It seems at its best, and he says, the idol of this time, of this country, 00:20:20.119 --> 00:20:25.519 is how much it loves money. It's willing to enslave human beings to make money. It's willing to subject 00:20:25.519 --> 00:20:31.599 human beings to horrible work conditions because of money. This is an American problem. You ask 00:20:31.599 --> 00:20:35.819 an international person, hey, what, when you think about America, oh, they're so greedy. 00:20:36.179 --> 00:20:40.799 They just want money, money, money, money, right? And so that is, I mean, this is just the air we breathe. 00:20:41.359 --> 00:20:47.599 Each one of us in our work, in our stock portfolios are thinking, how can I get a, just a marginal more, 00:20:47.679 --> 00:20:54.179 you know, marginal gains, just a little bit more, right? But closely linked to this is the idolatry of 00:20:54.179 --> 00:20:59.819 my people. Think of it this way. Think of another one. We all know that our country is becoming more and 00:20:59.819 --> 00:21:05.519 more polarized politically, more and more right and left, right? And identity politics is what we're 00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:12.500 calling this. And identity politics is turning my group, my people, my color, my socioeconomic class, 00:21:12.619 --> 00:21:19.619 my religious affiliation into the ultimate people. We are the ones who have the solutions to our 00:21:19.619 --> 00:21:24.939 country's problems, whatever they are, right? And so as our nation polarizes right and left, 00:21:24.940 --> 00:21:33.500 it's becoming increasingly easy to say, my ideas, my people, my group, this is what will save our world, 00:21:33.860 --> 00:21:41.000 save our country, right? And friends, the hard reality, the hard reality is that Christians are 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:47.940 probably as much participants on both the right and the left as anyone. I'm probably participating in 00:21:47.940 --> 00:21:53.039 this as much as anyone. It's in the air we breathe. We can't not do it. We turn on the news and we're 00:21:53.039 --> 00:22:01.119 pulled one way or we're pushed another way to say my group is the right group. And that becomes idolatry. 00:22:01.639 --> 00:22:08.720 And so I know that I have to be constantly doing hard work of when have I replaced my group, my values 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:14.559 for what God tells us in his word, right? When have my principles become perverted, right? 00:22:16.259 --> 00:22:22.839 Another idol that I struggle with, and I think many Coloradans struggle with, exercise, right? We live in 00:22:22.839 --> 00:22:26.759 the fittest state in the country. We're proud of that. We live in a state where we have a bunch of 00:22:26.759 --> 00:22:33.859 military colonels and, I mean, enlisted officers and people who are enlisted in officers who are in 00:22:33.859 --> 00:22:38.599 great condition. We live in a place where there's amazing Olympic, I mean, Olympians, amazing outdoor 00:22:38.599 --> 00:22:44.839 opportunities. It's a really great place in Colorado Springs to let your physical fitness become an idol, 00:22:45.579 --> 00:22:51.039 become something where you say, hey, and I am strong enough. I am strong enough to be able to be 00:22:51.039 --> 00:22:58.559 the athlete that I want to be, right? Another one is romance. Listen to this. A marriage counselor that 00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:04.000 I respect to write named Esther Perel wrote this. She says, when we come to another person in romance, 00:23:04.220 --> 00:23:10.819 we are basically asking them to give us what an entire village used to provide. Give me belonging, 00:23:11.079 --> 00:23:16.920 give me identity, give me continuity, give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. 00:23:16.920 --> 00:23:23.140 Give me comfort, give me edgy, give me novelty, give me familiarity, give me predictability, give me 00:23:23.140 --> 00:23:30.860 surprise. She says, we want a savior. Under the auspices of a secular world, you could hardly formulate 00:23:30.860 --> 00:23:38.480 a more religious definition of marriage or romance than this one, right? So each one of us, married or 00:23:38.480 --> 00:23:43.740 single, is looking to our spouse in many ways or looking to where our hope our spouse would be and say, 00:23:43.740 --> 00:23:50.099 ah, if only I could have this, then I would be satisfied. If only I can have this, then I will 00:23:50.099 --> 00:24:01.759 be content. We idolize marriage or romance. We wrap our satisfaction, our intimacy, our status up in 00:24:01.759 --> 00:24:09.759 these things, right? So what's my point in all of this, in money, in identity, in money, in exercise? And I 00:24:09.759 --> 00:24:14.720 could go on and on my point is that we don't live in time that that's far away from the Israelites, 00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:20.980 that our hearts are no different from the Israelites, longing to rove around our world and find something 00:24:20.980 --> 00:24:29.200 that we can say, this will give me security, right? And the Bible tells us that this is futile. 00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:36.200 Whenever we create an idol, it cannot bear the pressure that we're putting under it. When we turn to a 00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:41.799 person and say, be my everything, a human being could never do that. When we turn to our stock 00:24:41.799 --> 00:24:47.940 portfolio and say, be my hope, it could never do that, right? All of these things we say, I will 00:24:47.940 --> 00:24:55.819 forever be an athlete. That's not true. So I hear when you turn 40. None of these things can give us 00:24:55.819 --> 00:25:01.620 the final satisfaction that our hearts crave for and need when we are created to worship the living God. 00:25:01.619 --> 00:25:07.799 And so Moses hears warning the Israelites and the warning that he gives them, do not forsake the 00:25:07.799 --> 00:25:12.859 worship of the living God, still rings true to our hearts today. And so that's just, if this is the 00:25:12.859 --> 00:25:17.339 warning, where is there hope in here? Where is the God, a good God in this? Well, this is our second 00:25:17.339 --> 00:25:23.859 point that only, that we must see the only God's redemption. And so Moses, if he's telling them the 00:25:23.859 --> 00:25:29.239 threat of idolatry, which was for their hearts and our hearts, where does the Christian gospel meet and 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:36.140 counter and overpower this threat, right? How does Christianity speak to that? Well, Moses gives us 00:25:36.140 --> 00:25:42.819 two answers, two answers here that are applied to this. And he says, first, look to God's redemptive 00:25:42.819 --> 00:25:49.700 acts. Look to the redemptive acts that God has done. Look at verse 20. But the Lord has taken you and 00:25:49.700 --> 00:25:57.859 brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance as you are this 00:25:57.859 --> 00:26:02.599 day. So what are you saying? He's saying, hey, when you feel the tug towards worshiping something else, 00:26:02.879 --> 00:26:09.679 remember what God has done in your life. Remember who you were. You were enslaved in the iron furnace. 00:26:09.899 --> 00:26:15.579 What a description of their slavery in Egypt, right? A horrible place of forced servitude that he says 00:26:15.579 --> 00:26:21.659 iron was the strongest metal that they knew of back then, right? A place of incredible intense heat that 00:26:21.659 --> 00:26:26.619 no one could survive. This was your, this is where you were living. And what has God done to you, 00:26:26.619 --> 00:26:33.759 O Israel? He has brought you out of that by his great redemptive power and grace. And he has made 00:26:33.759 --> 00:26:39.299 you a people of his own inheritance. It says when he thinks about what are the things that he looks 00:26:39.299 --> 00:26:47.659 forward to in life, you, you are his inheritance, right? Exodus 4, he says that he loves Israel as a son. 00:26:48.919 --> 00:26:56.059 Exodus 19, he says, I see Israel as my treasured possession, right? He loves Israel greatly. 00:26:56.059 --> 00:27:02.460 And so he redeems them powerfully, right? And so the question, there's a rhetorical question in here, 00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:08.159 which is why would you turn to a powerless idol which can never satisfy or provide for you? Why would 00:27:08.159 --> 00:27:14.480 you turn to that from the living God who tenderly cares for you and loves you? And the answer is you 00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:22.440 wouldn't. You would never do that. You would never exchange this creating loving father for a powerless 00:27:22.440 --> 00:27:29.559 idol. So he says, remember what redemptive things God has done in your life, O Israel. But then he says, 00:27:29.980 --> 00:27:37.400 remember God's superiority. Look at there and look down further at verse 39. Know therefore today and lay 00:27:37.400 --> 00:27:43.480 it on your heart that the Lord is God of heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no other. 00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:49.100 What is he saying here? Yes, there may be many things that are distracting, but there is one 00:27:49.099 --> 00:27:57.639 only who is the true and living God. Yahweh alone is God. He is superior to all the other things that 00:27:57.639 --> 00:28:04.539 your mind and heart can cultivate and create, right? He is the creator. A few weeks ago, I bought some 00:28:04.539 --> 00:28:09.579 stamps, right? So I went to the post office to buy some stamps and she said, hey, what kind of stamps do 00:28:09.579 --> 00:28:15.399 you want? And one of the selections was some Mona Lisa stamps, right? We all know what the Mona Lisa looks 00:28:15.400 --> 00:28:21.860 like. 20 stamps of the Mona Lisa. And I was like, eh, I'll take the Mona Lisa ones, right? How silly 00:28:21.860 --> 00:28:31.000 would it be to treat the stamps of the Mona Lisa with the same reverence as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:36.759 in Paris, right? If I was to be like, oh man, I need to put it layers of security and put it behind 00:28:36.759 --> 00:28:42.060 six inches of glass, a stamp, right? That would be utterly foolish. People would be like, Jonathan, 00:28:42.059 --> 00:28:48.980 this is crazy, right? It's only a small picture. It's a copy of the thing that is infinitely more 00:28:48.980 --> 00:28:57.700 valuable than a stamp, right? Moses is saying here, God is like the Mona Lisa. He's the only one. 00:28:57.940 --> 00:29:05.500 He's the original. He's the valuable, beautiful one. Everything else is just a worthless copy. 00:29:05.500 --> 00:29:12.920 Nothing else can measure up and compare to him, right? Now, if this is true that he calls the 00:29:12.920 --> 00:29:19.259 Israelites to remember God's redemptive acts and to see his superiority, well, how do we do that, 00:29:19.319 --> 00:29:24.859 right? How do we in the New Testament, in the New Covenant, see this? Well, turn with me to Colossians 00:29:24.859 --> 00:29:31.420 chapter one. Colossians chapter one. If the Israelites had a sign of God's redemptive acts and his 00:29:31.420 --> 00:29:39.400 superiority, we who are after Jesus have so much more. And Paul shows us that Jesus is the pinnacle, 00:29:39.560 --> 00:29:44.860 is the climax of God's redemptive acts and of God's superiority. Listen to what Paul says, 00:29:45.300 --> 00:29:53.120 Colossians one, verse 19 through 20. For in Jesus Christ, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell 00:29:53.120 --> 00:30:01.039 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the 00:30:01.039 --> 00:30:07.440 blood of his cross. So what this is, what Paul is saying here is that God's redemptive acts and God's 00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:13.839 superiority don't get duller with time. They get sharper with the arrival of Jesus. Do you want to see the 00:30:13.839 --> 00:30:21.420 climax of God's redemptive work in the lives of his people? Look at Jesus. Yes, he's the one who brought 00:30:21.420 --> 00:30:28.859 us out of the iron furnace of sin, not of slavery to Egypt, but of our iron furnace of our captivity 00:30:28.859 --> 00:30:34.419 to the evil one who wanted nothing less than our destruction. Jesus rescues us from the burning 00:30:34.419 --> 00:30:42.619 heat of our own sin. Jesus delivers us from the eternal slavery of sin. Jesus is the pinnacle, 00:30:42.759 --> 00:30:50.619 the high point of God's redemptive acts, right? Jesus is the high point of God's redemption. But not 00:30:50.619 --> 00:30:57.179 only that, Jesus is the high point of God's superiority. God's superiority gets sharper with 00:30:57.179 --> 00:31:03.739 Jesus. Jesus is God present among us. Remember how I said idolatry starts when we want something we can 00:31:03.739 --> 00:31:13.319 see. What is Jesus? God made flesh. The word, God himself, became flesh and dwelt among us. What does the 00:31:13.319 --> 00:31:20.919 hymn we sing at Christmas say? Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see? Hail, the incarnate deity. 00:31:23.279 --> 00:31:27.460 What does this mean? It means that if you are looking for something that you can put all of your 00:31:27.460 --> 00:31:34.139 hope in, the ultimate superior God that you need to worship, look no further than Jesus Christ. 00:31:35.059 --> 00:31:39.859 He performed the greatest redemptive act with all the power of God himself. 00:31:39.859 --> 00:31:49.759 He is the most superior God that your heart could need. What does this mean, friends? It means that 00:31:49.759 --> 00:32:00.639 Jesus is the antidote to idolatry in my heart and in your heart. He alone can give us what we long for, 00:32:00.639 --> 00:32:08.959 a visible, caring, tender God who redeems us. And if that is true, 00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:14.579 then all of the ways that your heart is looking for other things begin to unravel. And you can see 00:32:14.579 --> 00:32:21.019 and worship a God who loves you, who dies for you, right? Behind the idol, we are looking for salvation 00:32:21.019 --> 00:32:26.100 and deliverance. And Jesus shows us that most clearly, more than any idol we can create. 00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:32.940 So for the Christian who sees themselves falling into some sort of idolatry, and for the non-Christian 00:32:32.940 --> 00:32:40.900 who sees that their life is permeated by this and it's futile, Moses, God's word would say, turn once 00:32:40.900 --> 00:32:47.500 again to Jesus. And that's good news for all of us. So what do we do with this? Well, last point, 00:32:47.500 --> 00:32:53.000 we guard our hearts. We guard our hearts. How do we respond? Verse 39, 00:32:53.000 --> 00:33:02.839 Know therefore today and lay it on your heart that the Lord is God. Knowing in Hebrew, for the Hebrew people, 00:33:02.839 --> 00:33:07.279 was more than just intellectual knowledge. It was driving head knowledge into their heart 00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:13.759 so that the deepest part of who they were was shaped by it and be assured by it. Tim Keller says 00:33:13.759 --> 00:33:18.960 you can't remove idols from your heart. It's just like a vacuum. Something will fill the space. The only thing 00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:24.039 you can do is have something that will worship that will actually satisfy you, right? Knowing in your 00:33:24.039 --> 00:33:32.559 heart means replacing the vacuum of idolatry with the superiority and love of Jesus, right? Experiencing 00:33:32.559 --> 00:33:41.079 Jesus' redemption in his power, right? So first, we have to discern our idols. How do we do that? Well, it takes 00:33:41.079 --> 00:33:48.220 time. It takes community. But ask yourselves these questions. What do you spend your money on? Do you spend 00:33:48.220 --> 00:33:56.559 your money? What do you daydream about? What are the things that you get a spare moment, you get on 00:33:56.559 --> 00:34:02.539 your phone? What do you daydream about? Where are the places in your life that you feel great embarrassment? 00:34:04.019 --> 00:34:08.420 Perhaps there's something there. What are the things or that one thing that if it was taken away, 00:34:08.519 --> 00:34:13.340 this one thing, you would be undone and you would say life wouldn't be worth living or I would never 00:34:13.340 --> 00:34:19.480 quit binging TV if this was taken away. What is the thing or the things in your life that you were 00:34:19.480 --> 00:34:27.600 looking for to say you were cared for, you were loved, you were vindicated? As you begin to look into 00:34:27.600 --> 00:34:33.079 your heart and answer those questions, that's probably where your heart is looking for something, 00:34:33.800 --> 00:34:43.019 right? And to you, I would say, look to Jesus. Tim Keller writes, Jesus must become more beautiful to your 00:34:43.019 --> 00:34:49.559 imagination, more attractive to your heart than your idol. If you uproot an idol and fail to plant 00:34:49.559 --> 00:34:55.059 the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow black, will grow, will replace it, right? And 00:34:55.059 --> 00:34:59.840 friends, this has to be done in community. This has to be done with brothers and mothers and sisters 00:34:59.840 --> 00:35:05.599 and fathers of the faith, right? We often get so entangled in our own idol webs that we are trapped and we 00:35:05.599 --> 00:35:09.920 need people who will come into our lives and help us, pray with us, discern with us, right? 00:35:09.920 --> 00:35:16.059 To show us the subtlety of our own idols and the beauty of Christ, right? And killing idols together. 00:35:17.680 --> 00:35:22.599 I'll end with this. You know, I was reading the other day 1 John, 1 John's epistle, right? 00:35:23.180 --> 00:35:30.280 And in 1 John, if you've read 1 John, the ending is fascinating. So 1 John is a book all about God's 00:35:30.280 --> 00:35:36.519 love, right? God shows us his love, God is love, all this stuff, right? God loves us by sending Jesus 00:35:36.519 --> 00:35:41.739 to die for us. And then he says, okay, if this is how God loves us, then you must go one another and 00:35:41.739 --> 00:35:47.639 love each other, right? But the last line of 1 John does not end with, greet the brothers in faith, 00:35:47.719 --> 00:35:53.619 does not end with, peace be with you. You know what the last line of 1 John is? Little children, 00:35:54.099 --> 00:36:02.860 keep yourselves from idols. Now, that is either a giant non-sequitur that does not follow or fit with 00:36:02.860 --> 00:36:08.480 the rest of the book, or John knows something that we don't know or that we forget. That love, 00:36:08.900 --> 00:36:16.660 namely God's love for us in Jesus' redemptive works, and our love for one another, our mutual love for 00:36:16.660 --> 00:36:26.200 each other, is the antidote to idolatry, right? That as we sit in God's love for us, and as we sit in our 00:36:26.199 --> 00:36:32.279 love for each other, as we challenge one another, as we exhort one another, as Moses does the 00:36:32.279 --> 00:36:40.599 Israelites, we will keep each other from idols, right? So my exhortation to you is to make Cheyenne 00:36:40.599 --> 00:36:48.179 Mountain Presbyterian a community that puts in the time and the trust and the effort to root out idols 00:36:48.179 --> 00:36:54.439 in your own heart, in your friend's heart, as hard as that can be, and to replace them with the 00:36:54.440 --> 00:37:02.800 steadfast love of Jesus. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, we pray that you would indeed 00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:07.880 root out idols in our heart. Lord, we know they're there. Your word shows us there are. Our own 00:37:07.880 --> 00:37:13.320 consciences show us that they're there, and we need your power. We need the Holy Spirit to do what you 00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:20.579 have always done to make us more like Jesus through the power and love of Jesus. May Jesus' love 00:37:20.579 --> 00:37:29.079 outshine the things that distract us, create communities where his love triumphs over idols, 00:37:29.819 --> 00:37:34.759 and we will give you the glory and the praise that you deserve alone. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.