Christian-ish: Part 3
Exodus 34:14, 20:5, DeutERONOMY 4:24
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
I've got another easy question for you, if you are a follower of Jesus, what should or who should come first in your life? Don't overthink it. Say it out loud, who is it? Yeah, God, Jesus, great, perfect, good job. Sunday School answer for the win. Yes, who should come first in our lives? It should be God. Jesus says in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God." He also says in Matthew 22, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” In that verse, he's actually quoting from the Old Testament, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.” And so we know that as believers, as people who have a relationship with God, God should come first. The sad reality is he often doesn't. We make the claim that he is, but the way we live our lives does not reflect that Jesus is number one. What are some other categories in our lives that are important? You guys can see the shout it out. What are some other things in life? Family, yes, good job. Yeah, anything else? Health, yeah, money we need. Yes, good. These are all good things. Yeah, very important.
I have a demonstration to help us with seeing this behind the magical door are things that, thank you, perfect. Alrighty then. I don't know if you can all see this. I'm bringing out chairs. If you cannot see, I'm bringing the thank you, sir. All right. We have here all sorts of different chairs. Maybe you know where I'm going with this. Let's imagine your life full of all your different priorities, all the aspects that you have are different chairs in your life. In real life, you probably have 10, 15, 20 different things that you're balancing, that you're prioritizing. I don't have room for 10 or 15, 20 different chairs. We're going to go with the four that I have right here. You have to prioritize your chairs with the importance. Chair number one, obviously, be the most important above everything else. Chair number two, very important, just not as important, and so on and so forth. If you're a father of Jesus, you guys don't fail me now. You guys are good. Who should go in chair number one? Yes, Jesus. Okay, it was a little weaker. Don't lose conviction now. We're only five minutes in. Like, God, Jesus. Okay, yes, God should be number one. And then if you're a believer, if you're a Christian... Oh, yeah, there we go. Yes, more chairs, five chairs. If you're a follower of Jesus, what should go in chair number two? Yeah, I think good. I think family is a good number two. And we could keep going, but you guys get the point. We'll stop there, and let's process together. If this is... I picked the biggest, nicest chair, right? This is the God, number one God chair. Is this a reflection of most... Okay, don't answer this one out loud. Self-reflection time, answer inside your head. Is this a reflection of most of your lives, that God is number one? And when I ask that, I mean not with what you intend, not with where your heart would be, but if you were to take an honest look at your life in the 24-hour day, day after day, week after week, is this a reflection of your life, that God is number one?
I can't speak for you, but I see in a lot of people, even in my own life, there is often something else that takes the number one seat in my life. One of the common things that I think takes the first chair is your job. Using just time alone, how much you have to work, it's a majority of your life. Your career takes up a lot of time. You come home, and with whatever energy you have left, you then try to be with family or do whatever else it is you're doing. But if you have kids, maybe you're interacting with your kids, and maybe, if we're honest, we're a little bit short because we're just exhausted and tired. Hopefully you have a healthy marriage, but maybe there's stress there and it's under duress. Do you have to pay bills? You got all these other things, projects that you have to do? You have to work hard to have a nice life, however you define that. You got to have money to, someone said that earlier, you got to have money to survive, but on top of that, to do anything casual at all, you still have to have money to do that. Maybe you have hobbies that are important, that you're passionate about, that you enjoy. You got to have money to do those. So maybe that's something like CrossFit or video games or watercoloring or competitive speed puzzling. That's a thing. And it's real, and I'm interested, so I'm looking for a partner and would love... Talk to me afterwards. And if we were to go in order, maybe it's job, and then it's family, and then it's hobbies, and then at the end is maybe God. Maybe. I think some weeks he's left out of the priority list altogether. What happens in our lives is we say God is first, but our actions say something different.
And so we're continuing our Christian-ish series, and today we're talking about a faith that puts God second. Or you could fill in third, fourth, fifth, just anything but where he should be. I want you guys to go ahead and pray with me one more time. God, thank you again for our chance to be together today. And I pray that through the preaching of your word, God, that you would, through your spirit, speak to each of us where we need to be realigned, where our hearts need to be brought to the right place. And God, I pray that we would be willing, that we'd be open, that we would not be defensive of how we're living our life, but we would allow for your spirit to work in us, to transform us, to make us more like you. God, I pray that you'd give us clear eyes to see how we are living our lives right now. And if there is room to improve, to grow closer to you, to shed some things that are not good, God, I pray that you would give us the strength to do that. So be with us right now, and again, speak through your word, God. We pray this in your name. Amen. So we have, we're in our Christian-ish, and Christian-ish is having a half-hearted faith, wearing the label of Christianity, without truly following Jesus. And one of the most common qualities of someone who is Christian-ish is that they have a faith that puts God second. Pastor Craig Groeschel says that a faith that puts God second reflects a divided heart, where God is first in your words, but not in your life. We have the heart, we have the intention, we have the desire to honor God, to live for God, to please God with everything that we have. And you might know that, you might say to yourself, "I know that Jesus gave his life for me, I want to live for him.”
But then you start to live your life, you go about your day, your job, your school, your family, and so quickly, Jesus gets dropped down the priority list. Did you know that the Bible has a term for when this happens? The Bible calls putting anything ahead of God "idolatry." It's a heavy word. It's an old school word, we don't use idolatry a lot, but it's idolatry. And I believe that idolatry is a common struggle that all Christians face. If you look at the Old Testament, it is like as soon as Adam and Eve fall in the garden, and through Israel, all the way till Jesus comes, idolatry is just a reoccurring thing. They just continue to struggle with it over and over and over again. And it has not gone away. We don't necessarily use it in our everyday language amongst each other, even as Christians, but it's still prevalent today. Let me show you some verses where God addresses idolatry. Exodus 23 says, "You shall have no other gods before me." This is the first commandment, if you know your 10 commandments. And so he's saying that there shouldn't be anything higher than him. Nothing. He's not just talking about other gods, it says other gods, but in that, if we were to unpack that, that would just mean anything that is in the place of God. Nothing should be higher than God in your life. We also see in the New Testament, 1 John 5:21 says, "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." So this is thousands of years later of people having a relationship with God, and they're still struggling, and the need is still there for it to be said, "Keep yourselves away from idols. Do not put anything in the place of God.”
Now we hear idol today, and what do we think of? Maybe you think of a little wooden trinket, or like a statue of some sort, of something. Maybe you think of the biblical examples of like the golden calf. And to be sure, those are definitely idols. Maybe you think of idols in relation to other gods, and you think, "Well, we don't really have other gods here. That's a third world country thing. We don't have other gods here." Quick story, there was a missionary from another country that came to do the tours of America to speak to different churches, and someone brought that up of like, "What is it like to live with other gods? We don't have that here." And he said, "Oh, you do. You have other gods here. Consumerism, you have money." And he named all these things that we struggle with. We just don't view them as they're not embodied in some little thing that someone bows down to. But they are incensed in the place of God, and we worship them with our lives. Idolatry, according to God's word, isn't just bowing down to an idol. Idolatry is putting anything before God. Anything. Even good things. God is clear in his word. He wants to be first in our lives. If we look at it from his perspective, this makes sense. He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator, the Sustainer of all. And if he is who he says he is, then he deserves to be first, right? If we look at it from our perspective, that's a big ask from God to be number one. We could say, "God, don't you know how much I have going on? All the good things that I'm trying to do?" Like we already covered, we have a lot going on in our lives. We have a lot of priorities to balance. We have a routine. We have work. We have dreams and passions, things that we have to pay for. And that's why it's so common that many Christians agree in word and in theory, and I believe that they're genuine, that they want to put God first, but their lives just don't reflect it.
So we might ask, "Why is God being so demanding? Why does God want to be first? Couldn't he just be happy with simply being in my life?" Now, again, when we say that out loud, we start to feel some of the conviction of like, "Oh, that's not great. God shouldn't just be satisfied with being a part of my life." So why does God want to be first? Well, simply put, God is a jealous God. Now how many of you have heard that or when you read that in Scripture, it just doesn't settle well with you. God is a jealous God. That was me growing up. I grew up in the church. I grew up reading the Bible, and I was always taught, "I cannot be jealous. Jealousy is not good." And so I didn't get, "Why can God be jealous and I can't be jealous?" And I was jealous of God being like, "Oh, you can be jealous." When we look at Scripture, it's very clear. God is a jealous God. Exodus 34:14 says, "Do not worship any other God." We know that. God wants to be first. "For the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God." Oh, okay. That's referencing Exodus 20, again, the Ten Commandments, and he says, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them," talking about other gods, "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." This is where God is introducing himself to the Israelites. He's rescued them, but he hasn't had a lot of interaction with them. He's just rescued them. He sustained them. But then on the mountain, when Moses goes up, he gets to explain himself, and he gives himself to the nation by giving them these commandments and says, "This is who I am. This is how I want you to be in light of who I am." And he's saying, "I am a jealous God." Deuteronomy 4:24 says, "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." That adds a little bit more to the picture of God, consuming fire. That kind of gives us the idea that he's never satisfied. He wants more and more of us.
Scripture is very clear. God is a jealous God. So why does God get to be jealous? I'm going to nerd out for a second. I'm going to show you some Hebrew. Are you guys okay with that? Pastor, again, Pastor Craig Groeschel helps put this together. I think it's really helpful. I'm going to put up a Hebrew word here. It's called "kna." That's how you would say it. That's the Hebrew up top. You see that middle letter with the little dot in there? That is what the ends are. That's called a "nun." That's a Hebrew "nun." Usually when we found it, and it's regular, keep that up there for a long time. Okay. Usually when we see this word, "nun," there's no dot in the middle. Okay? Does that make sense? There's only one "n." So it would be Q-A-N-A. "Kna." In our passages that we're talking about... Let me back up. That "kna" is the word for jealous. We talk about human jealousy or the sin to be jealous. You're going to see it in that fancy thing, another fancy thing with no dot, and then another fancy thing. You're going to see "kna." Now... I'd be a terrible Hebrew teacher. This is not... Just realizing this now. Any dreams I had of being a Hebrew... They're out the window. Fancy thing, fancy thing. "Kna." So the dot in the middle represents the fact that there has been two ends. There's an extra end that's been added to "kna." And it's called an intensifier. It's meant to communicate to the reader that this is an exaggerated amount of jealousy. This is an even greater amount of jealousy. This is the most amount of jealousy possible by someone. So if you were to see it with the no dot, you're like, "All right, jealousy." You see it with the dot, you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is the most jealous that someone can be." Now what's cool is the Hebrew language, the language that God's people spoke, that "kna" that we see right here with the little dot with the two "nuns" is only used to describe God's jealousy. You will never see it in the Bible used to describe a human jealousy. It's only used for God's jealousy. So if you were to read that, you'd pick up like, "Oh my goodness, we're talking about God's jealousy right here." And it is a holy jealousy. Unlike our human jealousy, which is flawed and self-serving and speaks to insecurities, you think about the times that you're jealous. It reflects something of your heart that at the root is sinful.
When we talk about God's jealousy, it is a righteous consuming, covenant keeping jealousy that relentlessly pursues and protects his relationship with his people. It's a jealousy that is holy and pure and passionate and protective. And it comes from a place where God, who gave all of himself to you, wants you to give all of yourself back to him. Why? Because he loves you. And he wants what's best for you. And what's best for you is more of him. This gets back to living with God as the number one priority. We think of, again, Adam and Eve in the garden. And as soon as they flip that script and they put something else in the place of God, and all of sin entered the world, we realize that God intended humanity to live with him as number one. And anything else is a life that comes up short. It's a life that leads to problems and more sin and struggle. Anytime you put something, anything before him, it ends up hurting you. And it may not mean like an actual hurt that you're feeling, but you're just not living life the way that God intended. He knows this, and he wants better for you. Psalm 16:4 says, "Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more." Psalm puts it very plainly. If you continue to put something else in front of God, it will only lead to more and more pain, more and more brokenness. So if you are struggling, hurting, dissatisfied, maybe it's because something is out of place in your chairs, in your life, in your priorities. Something else is in the place of God. And maybe it's because idolatry is taking its toll on your life.
You may not have thought about it in that way before, but if you start to look at your life now with this context and with this conversation, maybe you do have an idol. You do have something in your number one chair that isn't God. If you often feel overwhelmed or anxious, if you feel a lot of tension in life, maybe you feel tension or disconnected from God. You just can't see his presence or feel his presence, or maybe from other people. Maybe there's just a distance that you can't ever seem to close with people, that you can't trust them. You can't bear your soul to them because you don't know if they're going to love you or support you. Maybe if you're lacking purpose or meaning in life right now, you might look at your chairs and say, "What's my order right now? What are my priorities?" Maybe if you find yourself spending a lot of money to fill a void in your life, or you look to different vices to avoid a numb pain, maybe you often get angry and lose your temper. Maybe you get bored and lonely, so you look at things that you shouldn't. Whatever it is you do, maybe it's an idolatry problem. I'm not saying that those things aren't bad. Those are problems that you should give to God and have God address in your life. But maybe the real problem, maybe that's just a symptom of a deeper problem, and maybe the deeper problem is idolatry. I want to reframe our minds right now to think of what is the biggest issue that we have going on in our life. Maybe the symptoms come to the surface really quick, and you're like, "Yeah, I got to work on that stuff." But I want you to push deeper and say, "Maybe below even that is something is just not where it should be." Maybe you're sitting there trying to justify whatever your thing is, whatever is in your number one chair, because it's not bad. Maybe it's not drinking or smoking or whatever that is. Maybe it's a pastime that is nice and good in theory. Maybe it's something like gaming, and you have an online community, and you're like, "I get to talk with people. I'm social. I even get to share the gospel with people." I don't know. Maybe it's your house. Maybe you put a lot of time into creating a home that is welcoming, and you want your family to enjoy it. You want other people to be there, and so you just put a lot of energy and focus into your living space. Maybe it's your image. You want to be presentable or fashionable or attractive, and so a lot of your time and life and thought and heart go into how you look. Maybe it's your kids and your family, and you give so much of your heart, your time, and mind revolving around your kids' schedules and their activities and their schoolwork and their development. And you're sitting there thinking, "I know I got some stuff, but those are good things. It's a good thing that's in the first chair." And I would agree.
Those are some of those are good things, but we have to remember anything in the place of God is an idol. It's idolatry. Even good things become idols when they take the place of God. Anything in this first chair that is not God is not where it should be. It has become more important in your life than God has, and I think we need to hear that. We need to slow down and hear that and really dwell on if that's true and what needs to happen. If anything is more important than God in your life, automatically we should say, "That's not okay, and I need to address that." So how do we know? How do you discern if things in your life have crossed that boundary into becoming an idol? Because again, maybe it's something you're good at. Maybe you have natural God-given skills, and you're exercising that. You're like, "Well, God gave me these things, God gave me this passion or this interest, so shouldn't I exercise that or use it and involve myself in it?" Or maybe it's something that you get joy from, you're passionate about. Maybe it's something good like your career. You're like, "I can't just stop working. I got to provide for my family." How do we know if something has become an idol? Well, instead of leaving it up to us to just say, "No, it's not," because again, we will. We'll just kind of like slough it off and be like, "Eh, we'll work on getting more Bible time in the morning, 10 minutes." God, you get 10 more minutes. Let's let the Holy Spirit assess our hearts and our lives and convict where necessary.
And I want to ask three questions, three idol identifier questions. And again, don't be slow to answer these. Let the Spirit answer these for you, reveal the truth for you. So first one, does this thing, whatever is in your first chair, maybe your first couple chairs, does this lead me closer to God or does it distract me from God? Again, think to yourself, whatever that is, is this activity, is this thing, is this whatever I'm giving myself to, my time, my energy, my thought life, is this bringing me closer to God or is it distracting me from God?
Number two, do I rely on this more than God for my comfort, my identity, and my worth? These are starting to get a little heavier now, a little more serious. Do I go to this thing in times when I'm hurting before I go to God? Is this something that I crave way more than I crave God? Do I find that when I am connecting with people, I cannot wait to share about this thing or should I talk endlessly about whatever that is more than my identity with God?
Number three, if God asked me to give this up, would I give it up without hesitation? Oh, that one kills. That one's hard. It's the last part, without hesitation, right? Some of us would always be like, yes, I would get there, God would help me, I would eventually give it up. But without hesitation is like, could I just do it right now and realize that God should be first and I'm just done with that thing?
So I'll share mine. And this may seem silly, and it kind of is, but my idol, one of the things that I've had in my past life, you've heard me share about some of my hobbies. It's a hobby for me, and that would be disc golf, okay? I'm already fearing the judgment. You guys can judge me, it's fine. I brought this up before, but I found it during COVID, right? I was like, oh, I want to get outside, my friend and I connected, and it was like, oh, let's get outside, let's play something in it. Just checked a lot of boxes for me. I grew up playing sports and I love competing and I could play by myself and just compete against myself. I'm just going to try to better my score next time. So I was like, oh, this is really fun. I just got hooked and I love being outside and I did the whole justification thing. I'm in God's nature. I'm spending time with God in the trees and walking around. This is so great. And there was truth to that. There were times where that was legit, but there were other times where I found myself trying to excuse why I was going out so often to be like, well, it's just more time with God. Obviously, God loves that for me and I love it for me. So God and I are both happy right now. And I played a lot. And when hard things, when I was going through challenges, I would notice that I was like, man, I just cannot wait to get out there. I want to escape. I want to go do my own thing. And before my desire was to talk to God or to pray with God to release, whatever that is, I found my identity and my worth in trying to be a good disc golf player. I was like, oh man, this is really fun when I'm good. So let's just try to be good. And I found a lot of pride. I'm like, man, I'm halfway decent. That's pretty cool. And so there were moments where I recognized in different stages where I had to give it up and it was that without hesitation that like it was not without, it was a lot of hesitation. And I realized like, man, this is a thing and it's not a good thing. Like disc golf is not evil, but this, what it has become in my life is not good. That's a more lighthearted one.
Another one that I'll share is maybe church. And I, as a pastor, I think it can be a thing. Church is obviously amazing. It's good, but church is not God. Right? And so I can, in my desires, I can find my worth. I can be putting God's second in place of church and what I do and how I care. Like all these things of the pastoral role should be second in my life compared to my relationship with God and even church, something so good as this, you guys can become first. And as great as you are, you can't be first in my life. So there's been times where we have idols and we have to, I've had to lay them down before Jesus and honestly have Jesus take them and so that he can, I can live more fully with Christ. Giving that thing up or that priority up. I haven't, I still play disc golf occasionally now, but I'm giving that up so that Christ can live more fully in me. And so in this time that I've been sharing, hopefully you have been thinking about your own life and what is God trying to reveal to you?
If God is showing you, revealing something, there's something out of place that there's an idol in your life. I want to encourage you to listen to him. Listen to the spirit and where he's trying to convict, where he's trying to show you where to change. Don't get defensive with God. It's just between you and God. You don't have to share with me or anyone else. In fact, our defensiveness is often a clue as to something that has a really strong hold in our hearts and lives. So that might be a place where you want to dig some more in your life. Say, okay, I'm getting really, I keep avoiding this one thing in my life when I think of my priorities. Why is that? Maybe it's in a place where it shouldn't be. When you realize and acknowledge and begin to understand that you're putting something before God, don't just fight the symptoms. Don't just say, all right, let's do a rearrangement of things. Also, you can't just take this thing out and just be done with it. That doesn't really work because more often than not, it'll just come back. It's like a weed. It'll just grow back in time. You have to fill that void with something else. So I would say, don't just remove the idol. Replace it with God. Put God first. Now let me ask you this question. Why haven't you done that already? If it's so easy, like let's just put God first. Just do that guys. End of sermon. Just go home. Do it. Now why haven't we put God first? Maybe because we naturally, as humans, we pursue what we want most. That's just in our nature. We want something. We will go do whatever it is to get that, involve ourselves with it. We want something. We pursue it.
So then the question becomes, why don't we want God as much as other things? If we were to want God the most, then he would be first in our lives. Why don't we? And I think, I reason that it's because we don't know how good God is. We don't know, we don't truly understand how amazing, how wonderful, how fulfilling, how incredible and loving and compassionate and kind and all the good things. We don't fully know how good God is. If we did, we'd be much more likely to keep him in our number one chair. Even then, just knowing isn't enough, knowing more information or an awareness of God's goodness isn't enough because information does not equal transformation. Just because you are informed does not mean that you will be transformed. It's helpful, it's good, but it's not everything. Just because you hear God on a Sunday does not mean that all of you are living perfectly the rest of the days of the week. You have to practice putting God first and living with him in the number one seat. When we do that, then we'll know and experience the goodness of God. Or as the psalmist says in Psalm 34, "Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." It's not just knowing, it's living accordingly and living in God's goodness. It's when we live by faith with our trust in God, not because of what he can do for us, we don't do it as a transaction saying, "God, I'll live for you because I know that you're going to better my life." No, we live giving ourselves to him, again, because he gave all of who he is to us. That because without him, there is nothing good. And we are more likely to fight to keep him as the number one in our lives if we know and live in his goodness.
And that means that we have to submit to him. We have to yield to his will. That means going about every day intentionally with a heart that is aligned with his heart. And we enter every conversation, every work situation, whatever it is, you walk in and you're saying, "God, I want, help me right now. I want to live for you. I want to, as I talk with this person, help me to speak in a way that is honoring you, that is loving, that is kind. As I parent right now, as I just do something by myself, help me to do it in a way that is glorifying to you. Be with me. Invite him in to that situation." If something is distracting you from God, replace it with Jesus. And understand this, God's not trying to take something away from you as much as he's trying to give you something better himself. I think sometimes we get a little defensive, we get a little nervous because you're like, "God, I really like this thing. And I think ultimately it was from you, but I, yeah, sure, I messed it up a little bit, so don't take it away." And we get scared and then we kind of avoid it. We're like, "God, I'd just rather not. I'd rather keep my life the way it is." But if we understand it in a way that actually it's something better, again, then we're more likely to engage and say, "Yes, God, I do want that. I do want more of you." He's trying to give himself to us. Again, because he loves you, he cares about you. He's trying to give you the best thing that there is, himself. And again, this goes back to the garden in the Old Testament when Adam and Eve thought, "You know what? I think there's something better other than God, and right there is the mistake." And we would think, "Oh, guys, why'd you do that?" But we do it every day. We think this other thing is better than God. And so we need to put God first and understand and live and believe and know God is the best. He is the best. There is nothing better. He hasn't called you to be Christian-ish just by name, following Jesus when you feel like it, when it's convenient. And he isn't content to be just any one of your chairs. And we should love him for that. We should thank him that he is not content to just be in our lives. He wants to be in the right spot where he created himself to be. This chair is where God made for himself to sit in our lives. That's right relationship. That is living with God is when he is in that number one seat. We don't want to love him partially or halfway. God is a jealous God who wants all of us. And he's called us to love him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. And he wants us to seek first his kingdom. So the question for you this week is, will you live each day with God first? First and foremost on your heart, your mind, your soul, will you live with all of who you are before him as a sacrifice to him? It says in Romans, live with your whole life for him. Are you ready to put God first?
Let's pray. God, we come before you Lord and we first want to just come before you with an apologetic heart. And God, we are sorry. We apologize for living a life where something else is in your place. For living and worshiping idols. Maybe they're good. Maybe they are things that are not good inherently. But God, we just acknowledge that, that we are living in a way that is not how you intended. And we also know that we can only live the way that you intended through your help, by your spirit. And so we pray that this week, today, now, as you reveal things to us that are out of place, that you would also provide the steps to take to then live with you in the number one seat. God, help us to see and know how good you are. God, I pray that for those of us who have been walking with God, I pray that you would bring those memories fresh to our mind of how good you are. That it would anchor us as we go forward. And for those who are newly following you, God, I pray that you would bring about experiences, that you would show your goodness to people. And so we both know with our head and our heart, your goodness, and we want to keep you as a priority in our life, that we would be Christians who live with you first and foremost. We need you, God. We depend on you. We want to love you with everything that we have. We pray this in your name. Amen.