[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry, please visit CitizensChurch.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be in first John and the passage is that Catherine just read for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what Catherine just prayed is.
[SPEAKER_00]: really the heartbeat of our church and the hope behind this morning would make us a people who are willing to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think this will come as a surprise to my name's Jaman, if you're new, welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in the power of the gospel of Jesus to deeply transform a life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe with all my heart that the risen Christ by His Spirit changes people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing that I can do or we can do to manufacture this, but it is possible that this morning change could happen in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Spirit of God could change you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Change could continue in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of why I believe in this is, it's part of our family's story, both my mom and dad are first generation Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least, when they started following Jesus as teenagers, they were not being raised in Christ's centered homes.
[SPEAKER_00]: In each of their family histories, we're just marked by different degrees of Christlessness and brokenness and dysfunction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord saved them in their teen age years.
[SPEAKER_00]: They met at a concert, actually, then my dad's concert, my dad was in a Christian rock band called Salt.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son told me the other day that he and his buddies want to start a Christian band called The Beat of Dudes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're joking, but I really hope that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's in the genes.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was in a Christian rock band also named after Matthew five in salt and they met and they met as teenagers and they married a really young and coming from these lineages in a lot of ways that were marked by brokenness.
[SPEAKER_00]: They tried to create a home that was centered on Christ, and what ended up happening is they imperfectly, but faithfully sought Christ, and he broke that lineage of brokenness and created a home full of love of Jesus, and that's what I was born into.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hanging on the wall of our living room was that first, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, that was not perfect, that was not perfect, but my parents were not who they would have been of Jesus had not saved them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our home is not what it would have been if they had not trusted Christ and been changed by Christ and sanctified by Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not just that their life change was for them, but their life change flowed as grace downstream to me and has profoundly changed my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I believe in the power of the gospel to bring deep change in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the resurrected Christ by his spirit is actively making us look more like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That story is in this room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was talking to one of our staff members a few weeks ago and they said I was sitting in service on a Sunday and while you were preaching, I was just looking around.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was looking around my eyes, just kept falling on stories of people in the room that I know, people who, the Lord freed from addiction, people whose marriage is just on the brink of disaster and the Lord brought healing.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who are praying for healing and the Lord hasn't answered yet, but they're learning to trust God and delayed answers.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who are brand new Christians and the people around them have prayed for their salvation for years and years and years and years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I can look out in real time at this room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know for so many of us, we're not who we will be, but you're not who you were before Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe in the power of the gospel to deeply change your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something though to the anatomy of that that I wanna lay in front of us this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deep change happens at the level of deep repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shallow repentance leads to superficial change, but the kind of change that makes it into a testimony, the kind of change that shapes a family lineage, that deep change happens at the level of deep repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder if you're open to that this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you open to seeing an area of your life where deep change is needed in turning to Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten years ago, I went through steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of our ministries here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael Snitzer was my mentor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael leads our recovery ministry or steps ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: He created it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So having him as your mentors, like getting Yoda as your mentor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're going through my assessment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're talking about past and struggles and anger and resentment and all this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just kind of went on and on and on.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gets quiet, he's looking at me, and he says this, you are impatient with the weaknesses of others because you despise weakness in yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, you relate to this meeting, so checkmate.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're impatient with the weakness of others because you despise weakness in yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those words might not sound like a big deal to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something unlocked when he said that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't explain it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those words were like an MRI helping me see something I couldn't see with just my own eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was our group's pastor at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had been in ministry for a long time at a four year Bible degree, meaning I've been following Jesus for a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you had asked me, Jamie, do you believe the gospel that I said yes with all my heart?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you had asked me, Jamie, and has the gospel reached every part of your life, I would have said, yeah, I'm pretty sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like if you lived in a house a long time and you cared for that house and you worked on that house and you kept it clean and then all of a sudden somebody tore up the floor and showed you that there's a basement you didn't know was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that conversation it was that kind of moment it was as if and then the things that we talked about after that it was as if God was pulling up the floor of my heart to show me a basement I didn't know was there and then saying the gospel needs to go there too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what was needed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of things, one of the things that was needed was a deep repentance of my idolatry of myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's changed me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not completely, not fully, not the way it will be when Jesus comes back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still a mess, but I'm not who I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought about that often, like, what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loves me this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know for the Bible, tells me so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't that I didn't know the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that there is an area of my life untouched by the gospel that I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once it had words, once a friend helped me see it, once the floor was ripped up and the basement was exposed, deep repentance that leads to deep change could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just wanna lay that before you as a hope this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're spending another week on love like Jesus and to love like Jesus means to order our worship and to order our worship means dealing with our idolatry and its categories and language and all have more slides this morning and more questions for our for us to consider in all of that, in all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: My prayer is that the Lord would use it to pull up some floors in our life so that deep repentance could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you open to that?
[SPEAKER_00]: First John 215.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not love the world or the things in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life, is not from the Father, but it is from the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: John is saying there are two things that can exist in the same heart at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two things that are incompatible with one another, the love of the world and the love of the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he's saying, John is the same one who wrote the most famous verse in the Bible for God's will of the world, so he's using the word world in a specific way here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He defines it, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eye, the pride of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his final sentence of the letter, he says it like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: First John 521, little children, selves from idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the love of the world is the kind of love that treats as God, things in the world that are not God, which is idolatry.
[SPEAKER_00]: All sin, you'll see this throughout the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: All sin at its root is the sin of idolatry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Colossians 35 says, put to death, therefore what is earthly in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Paul writing to a church, and he's naming the sins that Mark their life before they became followers of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he names those sins, he also ties those sins to the root problem and says all of those sins are idolatry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the root of sexual morality and evil desire
[SPEAKER_00]: Martin Luther, the reformer, he says the fundamental motivation behind breaking any of God's commands is idolatry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first commandment is you shall have no other God before me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Martin Luther says this, we never break the other commandments without breaking the first one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So before we murder or steal or lie or have an affair or want something that belongs to someone else, before that sin comes out of our life, idolatry has happened in our heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have replaced God with something that's not God in our heart and sin grows out of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tim Keller says that this way, idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's a deeper level of heart examination.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just up here considering, okay, what are my behaviors and what should I start doing and what should I stop doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Trace is all the way down to say, what am I worshiping?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the climate of my worship?
[SPEAKER_00]: What has the affection of my heart?
[SPEAKER_00]: The verb that John uses in verse 21, keep yourselves from idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means guard against, be watchful, pay protective attention to what your heart loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the question that's deeper than what do I do wrong, the question that's deeper than what sins have I committed, and have I not committed, the deeper question is what do I worship?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if I put in God's place in my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do we guard against that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So last week we set it this way, name your idols, expose them, repent, and rejoice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're just going to stay there this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Name, expose, repent, and rejoice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Idols are hard to see in our life, because so often they are good things that we give God status to.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the good thing we look to and we say life is only worth living if I have this in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that can be confusing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because how do I know if I am loving a good thing, like an idol, or if I'm just loving a good thing, the right amount, I love my kids, I love my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was talking to a friend, a pastor friend the other day, we haven't talked in months, and he asked me, hey, how are your kids doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just went through each one and talked about what we'll grade their in and what they're into, and then just joyfully talked about what I love about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And shared prayer requests and shared wins and all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just don't think God heard that conversation and was like, whoa, be careful.
[SPEAKER_00]: don't be too excited about your kids and that same conversation he asked about citizens and I was just excited to talk about what God is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in a season as a church where there are a lot of potential futures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's true is, if citizens is only ever what she is right now, praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what she is is just so worth celebrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so proud of our church and who you are and what God has done here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just shared all that with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The students in our Abel Ministry served on our welcome team last Sunday, our Abel Ministry is a ministry to students with disabilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wore shirts that said, image bear on it, and they welcomed, at least our 9 a.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: service at our 9 a.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: service walked in, and Michael, one of our students, when he was welcoming people, he did not say, welcome to citizen's church.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, welcome to Jesus's church.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like pray to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like every thing that we pray for, just cond instant to that one moment, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we celebrated that as a staff this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when shared that and we thank God for it, and I don't think as we did that, God's like, hold on.
[SPEAKER_00]: like you're getting really close to crossing a line here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't love the church too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I say, oh, that's to say this, it's possible to love good things the right way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's possible to love good things in an ordered way, and so that the response can't be, we need to tone down our enjoyment of and care for the good gifts God has given us, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, I know the propensity of my heart is to love good things as if they're God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, my children in this church and my wife and nice things and food and Dallas sports, I can crown all those things in my life, I can deify all those things in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what can happen is, is if we just stay above the surface, we can be hyper vigilant, we can be introspective to a harmful degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we could do as we could make an idol out of not making an idol.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we need to do,
[SPEAKER_00]: is not get rid of everything in our life that could turn into a disordered love.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's needed is to get underneath those things that we crown, to see the deeper motivation of the heart that leads to the disordered love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adulatory, even, and especially of good things, it driven by the worship of deeper things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So see this again, it'll be on the slide behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Surface idols and source idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: thing that we've given God status to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it can be any number of good things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are my lists, but I'm sure you could add to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, image idolatry, life is only worth living if I have a particular kind of look or body image.
[SPEAKER_00]: or we can worship religion, life is only worth living, if I'm satisfying my religions, moral codes, and accomplished in its activities.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can make a God out of any good thing, but here's what won't do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It won't do to say, okay, I'm gonna stop worshiping religion by not going to church anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I can just stop worshiping my image by never getting my haircut.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also not great.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I worship my, here's why, because if I worship my image,
[SPEAKER_00]: because I actually worship the social power that comes with being beautiful, then maybe I can stop caring about what I look like, but my idol of power will find another area of my life to deify.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought about this in my life, as God has lifted some of the floors in my life around these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my loves get disordered around them, it is almost always an idol of control driving that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost always.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way I can worry about them, the way I can try to prepare the path for the child instead of the child for the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: the way I can treat parenting like it's an equation.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I can just control the variables, it's going to equal a certain kind of kid, the way I can try to appear stronger than I am to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because if they know the dad fails and how can I hold them to a standard I myself can't meet, you ever done something you told your kids not to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop yelling, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: When control,
[SPEAKER_00]: is enthroned in my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to be God instead of entrusting them to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's needed?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to care less about my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to repent of the below-the-surface idol.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you following me?
[SPEAKER_00]: God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing, nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exposes my idol of approval, like the way I can believe about myself that I am only as good as the last sermon I preached.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a funny thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have idolized approval my whole life, and God's like, okay, I want you to be a preacher.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here is a job, it's very public.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will essentially get weekly performance reviews, and in one way or another, people will tell you whether they like you or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most of the sermons you preach will be things you're good at talking about, but not great at living out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of faking it, I want you to just be honest about that in front of a room full of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish it wasn't true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I was growing in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I think I'll have grown, and then I'll get one critical email, and that thing will live in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the approval idol is threatened by the critical email.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: When approval is enthroned in my heart, I make this all about me, and it's not about me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Jesus' church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what's needed?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to quit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no other marketable skills, so that's not an option.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to run from God's call on my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to repent of the below the surface idol.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's needed?
[SPEAKER_00]: is to see that those above the surface idols are driven by the deeper motivations of the heart, and it's only when we name and expose and repent of idols at the source that God is worshiped and the things above the surface find their righteous place in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you open to that?
[SPEAKER_00]: You could stand here, you could stand here and you could talk about your idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I just said about my life is not unique to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just have the mic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe your idols are different, but your need for below the surface repentance is the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you open to that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And hear me, deep repentance, deep repentance leads to deep change.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to consider source idols again, and I just want to flesh out some things that we didn't get to flesh out last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot will be repeated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Power is going to be on the screen behind me, power is a source idle, life is only worth living if I have power.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is success and influence I have to win, the price and willing to pay is I will burden myself with responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will push past my limits if it means I can be successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: My greatest nightmare is humiliation, I don't want to fail, I can't fail, fail your humiliation.
[SPEAKER_00]: People around me feel used, people become things that serve my idol, and so instead of them being people to love, they are people that I just try to use to serve my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Problem emotion is anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unrighteous anger in response to anything that challenges my God of power.
[SPEAKER_00]: When confronted, this is new from last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week I said that this would take two weeks and in one of the things that I've come to appreciate about doing that is when you know that something's going to be two weeks, sometimes I will hear from you what wasn't clear or what needs more attention or what was helpful and then I do my best to try to address it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week we talked about this scene in First Samuel 5, the Philistines, capture the arc of the covenant and they put the arc of the covenant in the temple with their God daygone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Philistines come back the next morning and they saw that day gone had fallen on his face in front of the Ark of the Covenant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they pick him back up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the next day, day gone had fallen again.
[SPEAKER_00]: His head and his hands were severed from his body because he did not have the wisdom or power to actually be a God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they get rid of the Ark.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that Israel's God would leave their God alone, the idol fell, but instead of turning from the idol to God, they put the idol back up and ask God to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we experience our idols not working, when they fall instead of leaving them there, where they belong, we just prop them back up in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We give them back their crown.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to stop worshiping power.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to stop worshiping control.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to stop worshiping comfort or approval.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we just keep picking them back up and giving them back their crowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the rich young ruler, he leaves Jesus and he's grieving and it's real.
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead of following Jesus, he goes home, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he didn't want to give up his God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So someone asked a great question last Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Jim, what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what does that look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see it when it's like a real idol and a temple and they put them back up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That a literal idol in a literal temple that literally fell, and they literally picked it back up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what does that look like when I worship control?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what does it look like when I worship something that's in material, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it look like to pick that up off the ground?
[SPEAKER_00]: Pay attention to how we respond when the idol is confronted.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the idols threaten what comes out of us, what do we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought of the many Proverbs we've considered about correction and reproved, Proverbs 9 and 7 through 8.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the difference between whether you stay foolish or whether you become wise, whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he who reproves a wicked man in curse injury, do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reprove a wise man and he will love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever loves discipline, Proverbs 121.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know that word was in the Bible, so I read that verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's true about wisdom is true about our worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: How we respond to correction is the difference between whether we become wise or remain foolish.
[SPEAKER_00]: How we respond when our idols are confronted is the difference between repenting of them or propping them back up in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very few people will say out loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: I refuse to repent of my idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we do instead is convince ourselves we don't need to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the response is different depending on the idol.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my idol of power is confronted,
[SPEAKER_00]: I protected by being defensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to succeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what my idol of power is all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when my idol is confronted, that just feels like another fight, and I have to win the fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so usually this is accompanied by anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a defensiveness that is infused with an unrighteous anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: A power idol is one of the scariest to confront, because people don't matter to me as much as my power does.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm willing to hurt others if it means protecting my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll intimidate, I'll gaslight, I'll use all my angry strength to pick my power God up off the floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meeting with a couple years ago, campus days, marriage issues, his cordial kind, he knows how to talk church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she starts talking about what things are really like at home in a switch flips.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he feels humiliated because as soon as being exposed, he gets angry and defensive and starts attacking her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I speak up, he starts attacking the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I observed in our 90 minutes together was nothing compared to the car right home.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's he doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's protecting his God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Defending his God, even if it means hurting everyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Approval, life is only worth living if I have approval.
[SPEAKER_00]: This would be unslied by me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pricemaling to pay is independence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy to let others make me who they want me to be if it means I get their acceptance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greatest nightmare is rejection.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will end up all alone and unloved.
[SPEAKER_00]: People around me feel smothered.
[SPEAKER_00]: My approval need is a need for God's approval.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it can't be met outside of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I look for that approval in a human, whatever they give is never enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Common problem emotion is fear, fear of man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm afraid of rejection, which is my nightmare.
[SPEAKER_00]: When confronted, how does an approval worship or protect their God?
[SPEAKER_00]: How does an approval worship or pick their approval back up and crown it in their life, worldly sorrow?
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul uses language in second Corinthians 70.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, there's a godly grief that leads to repentance, and then there is a worldly sorrow, and worldly sorrow is temporary sadness with no lasting change.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the approval worship or may show signs of remorse and may show signs of a desire to act, but it's hard to know if it's real, or if it's just because they know that's what people around them want.
[SPEAKER_00]: The approval worshiper is not sad about their sin, the approval worshiper is sad because confrontation feels like rejection, and that's my nightmare.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will learn the language of change so that they can sound mature.
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm just fighting my source idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: Needin' lots of grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will obey in public and sin and secret.
[SPEAKER_00]: and keep this in secret because making it public might cost me approval.
[SPEAKER_00]: What will happen if the confrontation doesn't let up, like if someone in love demands change, eventually the approval worshiper will self-destruct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone hates me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one loves me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would be better off without me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's happening is they're creating a crisis of worthlessness that only your approval can rescue them from, which is a way to manipulate you and to giving them back their God, comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Life is only worth living if I've comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Priced and willing to pay is I'm happy to put things off and happy to make life all about leisure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greatest nightmare of stress.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to feel overwhelmed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like the demands of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: People around me often feel neglected, lots of unkept promises.
[SPEAKER_00]: Common problem emotion is restlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may want.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may desire a sedentary life, but I don't have a sedentary soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, no matter how much leisure I feel my life with, my soul will still demand more than that, which leads to restlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: We in confronted, how does a comfort worship
[SPEAKER_00]: want to keep everything light.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, you're overreacting.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're kind of stressing me out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't worship comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just need a self-care year.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question people around are asking is, how this is actually really sad?
[SPEAKER_00]: The question people around them are asking is, how do I get them to care?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I get them to see that they're missing out on their life for frivolous things?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why do I care about that more than they do?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard because the sins of the comfort idol hurt people passively, they're not violent, they don't yell.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not their presence that hurts, it's their absence that hurts.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when that's confronted, they're passive about their passivity, they minimize, they dismiss, and one day looking back on the whole of life, someone in love will ask the comfort worshipper, where were you?
[SPEAKER_00]: When we needed you to enter in, like, especially into the hard stuff, where were you?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only honest answer on that day is I was with my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because every time I, Idle was confronted, I just shrug and said, it's not a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're overreacting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Control, life is only worth living if I have control.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like mastery over a certain part of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mind being lonely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the only one who can do it the right way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the price I'm willing to pay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I have to do it by myself, I'll do it by myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greatest nightmares on certainty, not being in control.
[SPEAKER_00]: People around you often feel condemned.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hold myself to the standard of should.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should do this, life should be this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I apply that standard outwards to those around me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should, and you don't measure up.
[SPEAKER_00]: common problem motion is worry, life is out of my control.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I experience the gap between what I can control and what I can't control, instead of filling that space with trust and a mighty God, I fill that space with worry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when confronted, the control worshiper protects their God by blame shifting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: People just don't listen to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they did, I wouldn't feel this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you worship comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to do everything, because you don't pull your way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm a good person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is God not doing more for me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is God not rewarding my behavior by blessing my plans?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're just saying that because the sermon and those things aren't even in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, show me a verse that says, this is a source idol of control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're all pent up with worry all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so it's wrong to care.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I just care more than you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, but remember, that thing you did wrong a few years ago?
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept a record of it, and that's why I am the way I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I think you might worship control, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you think that's the way you should start a conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not how you're supposed to correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me teach you how to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The God is threatened, and I protect the God by changing the subject.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if I can change the subject, I can stay in control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what happens if I say you're right, then I have to let go of control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Control is the one that to acknowledge it is to start to surrender it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is you, or if you think this might be you, ask people, consider asking people that you love and trust in your home and your community, people you love and trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask them, do you ever feel condemned by me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever feel like you just can't meet my expectations ever?
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like I'm critical of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever feel condemned by me?
[SPEAKER_00]: and if at the thought, if at the thought of asking that question and hearing an honest answer, you're already preparing the argument, you're already shifting the blame, then you need to repent of the idol.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you just keep changing the subject, you just keep crowning the God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how we stay stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how we stay stuck in our false worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how we stay, and remember, idols in slave, they in slave, they do not bring freedom, they in slave.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is how we stay in slave, being defensive, worldly sorrow, minimizing, blame-shifting, so that we can keep worshiping power, approval, comfort, and control.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of all this?
[SPEAKER_00]: These categories are not in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's informed by Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: These slides are not inspired by the Word of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are imperfect tools to help us see ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope we are seeing ourselves, but why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I believe in the power of the gospel to deeply change the life.
[SPEAKER_00]: and deep change happens at the level of deep repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hear me, my humble pastoral hope is not guilt with no place to go, but that God and His kindness could use any of this to pull up some floors in our life, that the good news of the grace of Jesus would flood the deepest places of our heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're open to that, an open,
[SPEAKER_00]: and worldly sorrow, and minimizing, and blame-shifting, if you're open to leaving that behind, stay with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, John, too, do not love the world or the things in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a pastor named Thomas Chalmers, and he passed through the 1800s, and he preached what became a very famous sermon on this verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: an assurments called the expulsive power of a new affection.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can only be freed from my Dollar Tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can only be freed from the love of the world by replacing it with a love that is more worthy of our affection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how he says it in assurment.
[SPEAKER_00]: The love of God and the love of the world are two affections, not merely in a state of rival ship, but in a state of innity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So irreconcilable that they can't dwell together in the same heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's impossible for the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: by any power of its own to cast the world away from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The heart's not so constituted.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's through faith that is in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The spirit of adoption is poured upon us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is then that the heart brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the only way deliverance is possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness, but may it not be supplanted by the love which is more worthy than itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of words, it's a profound and helpful truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can try and rid your heart of the worship of wrong things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot rid your heart of its need to worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the way to stop worshiping idols is not to just simply look at them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And say, oh, this is worthless.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is hurting me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is hurting others that only gets us so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to worship something that's greater than our idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the Lord and His kindness reveals to us, these deeper places of sin and false worship, when He rips up the floor and we're seeing the deep idolatry of our own heart, it's not, okay, I won't do that anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Jesus, you have to go down there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and only you, Jesus, have the power to get underneath my idols at the source and expel them from my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to crown Jesus as supremely worthy of our affection.
[SPEAKER_00]: False worship is only removed when true worship takes its place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved to repent of power, approval, comfort, and control is to love Jesus more than we love those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't just snap our fingers in all of a sudden, Jesus is that new affection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that, oh, that it were that easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what we can do, two things in the will pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: confess and how do we not just turn from our idols but turn towards Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we not just grow tired of the old affection but expel the old affection with a new one, the stronger one, confess in community?
[SPEAKER_00]: idols want to stay nameless and hidden when you confess in
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever those people are who you love and trust, have this conversation with them, have this conversation with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's where I see myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or hey, I don't want to be defensive like that anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to keep propping up my power, God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to worship approval anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to protect my control, I don't want to blame shifting anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have that conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Invite people you love and trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you see me?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you experience me?
[SPEAKER_00]: We need one another if change and freedom are going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, this is hard to say out loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't actually think sermons are the things that drive this home in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Relationships are the things that drive this home in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't start the sermon with a story about a sermon I heard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started the sermon with a story about a friend who loved me enough to be honest with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is how we replace false worship with true worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: We confess in community, and then we invite that community together to see the superiority of Jesus over our idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need one another to remind us, God is way better at being God than anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is way better at being God than power, approval, comfort, and control.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in community, it's where we can sort out which of this is idolatry and which of this is maybe something else not everything in our life is sin Sometimes what we think needs to be repented of is actually a wound that needs healing and how do we figure all that out and sort through all that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not alone Not alone But with one another What would you The question I'm asking this morning is are you open to this?
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the ways to determine if you're open to this, are you willing to talk about this with someone else?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to talk about this in community?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to fight for, of course, if this a few weeks ago, you can either be impressive or you can be known, but you can't be both.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're willing to be known.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what happens for so many of us is we see something like all this, we experience this language, it's all diagnostic and some of its punchy and it's hard pill to swallow it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it connects, if we've paid attention and if we don't get defensive or minimize or worldly sorrow or blame shift, sometimes we can run to the opposite and just think, I'm the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm unsavable, I'm irredeemable.
[SPEAKER_00]: God regrets this relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm even worse than I thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: John says it's either love of the world or love of the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: The options are not love of the world or hatred of self.
[SPEAKER_00]: The options not love of the world or this crushing self condemnation where I think I'm the worst Christian there's ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's love of the world or love of the Father, love of the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: through Christ will expel the old affection and replace it with a fresh sense of the love of God for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this last week, Jesus loves you so much, he'll meet you and care for you, even if your nightmare happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also loves you so much that he lived your nightmare for you on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: as a punishment for our sin and idolatry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this deep repentance makes a way for even deeper love to flood into our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the cross and his death, everything we look to our idols to protect us from came crashing down on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was humiliated.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was cut off from all comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: He laid down all of his control.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was rejected in a loan, a man of sorrow and suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to pay the price for his own idolatry, but to pay the price for yours.
[SPEAKER_00]: The failure of all of our false gods fell on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lived the nightmare because he loves you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do you think is intention is behind a morning like this?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think is great hope for your life is with inscriptions like this?
[SPEAKER_00]: In confidence you and I can know that whatever is exposed when he looks with you at the deep places of sin and idolatry in your life, those are the very places he's so eager
[SPEAKER_00]: When I discover, oh, no, I'm worse than I thought, it's this loving invitation from God to see, oh, I am way more love than I could have ever imagined.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you open for in, to seeing an area in your life where deep changes needed and turning to Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are, he will meet you there, not with condemnation, not with disappointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not with cold apathy and nowhere to go, he will meet you there with his love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we need you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, beloved, would you decide in your heart right now, how you're going to respond?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe the Lord's using His word and by His Spirit to just keep us going on a path that we've already been on, praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the Lord, I spirit through His word is given us the language that will make its way into our prayers and into our conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't assume that everyone needs some sort of seismic response of repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many in the room are faithfully warring against disordered loves and following after Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Praise God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the reminder, this morning is its worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe for others it's, oh, please, Lord, please, that for others it could be a kind of life-changing freedom that comes on the other side of deeper pentens.
[SPEAKER_00]: I refuse to pick my false God off the ground and I choose the explosive power of love for you Jesus, because you loved us first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, maybe it's another one of those stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a marriage on the brink of disaster and what's needed or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few tips on how to communicate what's needed is deep repentance of idolatry that is ruining the relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's a view of self that is just so cruel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's needed is the weight of my view of my own life to be replaced with the weight of a God who sees all and loves me still.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I repent of being the one to decide who I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm turning and trusting that to you, Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you move God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you move in power?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you have your way among us, Lord?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you?
[SPEAKER_00]: help us to be faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, to not ignore, would you, would you rid all of our future conversations, sort of defensiveness, and minimizing, and blame shifting, and worldly sorrow?
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe, Lord Jesus, that you deeply change our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're open to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.