Good morning. My name is Austin Duncan and I'm the associate pastor here at New Hope. And if you're joining us for the first time today, I know Madison already said it, but I also just want to say it. Thanks for being here and just to all of you, thank you for being here. And if you're watching online, thanks for watching online as well.

So today marks the start of our new summer July series. Here are your idols. And when I was preparing for this series, like any message that I give or any connect group that I teach or anything along those lines, it's something that I've taken incredibly seriously. And so over the last couple of months, I've dedicated a substantial amount of time to thinking and praying and considering how these thoughts of how can I, in my role at New Hope, how can this series in July best serve and love the men and women of New Hope.

So as we gather together over the course of this series, and when the Word of God, the Bible, is opened, I just want you to know that I'm not just throwing something out there for the sake of just throwing something out there, but rather, I want to stress that these messages have been written with myself, and all of you, as well as the context and culture in which we live, all of that in mind. And so that this series has been written to serve you. Amen. So it's my desire that we as believers, over the next four weeks, that we can, together, grow closer into the fullness of what Christ desires for us. That's the aim of these messages in this series. With that being said, let's talk about idols.

Because nothing says summer in July like idols, today we're gonna start in Exodus chapter 20. So you may not know these verses. Word for word, but I'd be willing to bet that this passage is probably pretty familiar to most, if not all of you. So starting in chapter 1 of Exodus 20, And God spoke all these words, saying,

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.” – Exodus 20:1-20?

So whether you have a background in church or not, I bet that you know that passage or at least heard of it, the Ten Commandments. If you're around my age, I'm a little older than 31, but Now, there's a chance that you may even remember these being tacked up in a room while you went to school, in elementary school. I know I remember some classes I had that still had those up on the walls. I don't know if you knew this or not, but if you were to walk into the Supreme Court, like the big one in Washington, D. C., did you know that over the building as you're coming in is an engraving of Moses holding the Ten Commandments?

I brought an image if I think we have it to show. Yeah, so that, as you're walking into the Supreme Court, there's this arch that kind of goes over it, right in the middle of that, Moses holding the Ten Commandments. And then, as you walk up the steps and you walk in to the Supreme Court, before you get to the inner chamber where the Justices meet, there's these big oak doors, and on the bottom of them, on each side of these doors, the Ten Commandments are engraved there as well. And then, in the chamber, where the Justices sit, There's four in art what we call friezes, or these sculptures like on the wall. So above where the justices sit, that's the north wall, there's a frieze, and there's one on the west wall, one on the east wall, and on the south wall, again, we have, and you probably guessed it, Moses carrying the Ten Commandments.

So very important in this, the structure of our country, the Ten Commandments, clearly that we see at the highest level of law. But also, on a religious side, Martin Luther, one of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation, said about the Ten Commandments, and I thought this was really interesting. He said that because the first two commands deal with idolatry, number one, don't have any other gods before me, and number two, don't make carved images of other gods and worship and serve them, because those two deal with idolatry, The rest of the commands are only broken if we break one of the first two.

So what Luther's saying is that if you steal, if you've dishonored your parents, if you envied your neighbor and all they had and achieved, or if you had sex outside of the covenant relationship of marriage, he's saying that in the moments of breaking those commands, you're placing something else of greater importance on your heart than God. Something else in that moment is sitting on the throne. And so the Bible argues, and Luther argues, that the root issue to work on then is idolatry. And so that's why I want to talk about idolatry over these next few messages. I think it's so easy for us to, as a culture, just separate ourselves from idolatry. Many of us, I think, have this mindset of idolatry is almost reserved for these uncontacted or uneducated tribes that are foreign to us. That doesn't happen here in America. Or rather, it's something maybe that people used to do a long time ago. The Israelites did that, right? They gave Aaron their earrings to melt into a golden calf.

I wouldn't do that. I'm not giving anybody jewelry to melt into an idol to bow down to. It's not really an issue for us now. Or if you're like me and you just have impeccable taste in movies, maybe your mind goes to this image. The Golden Idol in the Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you're a real fan, it's the Chachapoyan fertility idol. So now you all know. It's a fantastic movie, but those are places that our minds often go to, right? This mindset of I don't worship idols is, and our culture is just portrayed almost as. It's fantasy, but in reality, and this is the crazy thing and the dangerous thing is that we're not faced with bowing down to a literal golden statue, but rather it's the subtlety of our idols that makes it possible for them to infiltrate into our lives often before we even realize it.

So before we continue, let's define it, idolatry, I've used it a lot already this sermon, but in its simplest definition. Idolatry is valuing something more than you value God. Idolatry is valuing something more than you value God. In fact, there's a quote from John Calvin that's pretty famous in theological circles. He said in his Institutes of the Christian Religion that the human heart is a perpetual idol factory. In other words, we just keep on cranking out idol after idol. And what makes them so harmful and sly and cunning and deceitful is that oftentimes they're good things. But we elevate them to a place of almost this ultimate desire in our hearts. We elevate them to where our identity is found in these good things. And see that's when they take the place of God, when they dethrone him in our hearts, It happens often without us even realizing it. Without us even knowing that it's happening, then one day, boom, there they are.

And so Timothy Keller in his book, Counterfeit Gods, said it like this, and I love this. He said,

We think that idols are bad things, but that's almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit God, especially the very best things in life. And I think it's a real shame when we worship the gifts rather than the giver.

Good things that Satan uses to slither onto the throne when God should be seated there in our hearts. So throughout this series, when we talk about idols, we're going to talk about them in two different ways. We're going to introduce these this morning. We're going to go through them. The two different ways we're going to talk about these idols are surface idols and root idols. And so before, I just want to be clear before we get through this whole message and then as you leave you're thinking, man our associate pastor is one insanely insightful and smart guy. I wouldn't blame you. But, I just want to take a second to say that I didn't put this framework of thinking about these together.

People like Tim Keller, David Pallison, Dick Keys, and Eric Geiger, they've written and talked about. This framework quite a bit. So that's where I'm bringing it to you now and applying it. So in addition to being insanely insightful and smart, I can also read really well. So see surface idols, they're idols that are on the surface of our lives. They're the outward expression of a root idol. We'll get to those, but makes sense, right? Surface idols on the surface that we can see. For example, there's these phrases that we're going to go through a series of these. You could identify a surface idol with these sentences of life only has meaning or I only have worth if I have a particular kind of look or body image.

It's what's known as image idolatry. And I also want to stress that, again, these can be good things that get elevated into a place of this ultimate stature in our heart. And so it's not bad to care about your body. It's not bad to want to be healthy. Verses like 1 Corinthians 6:19-21 and 1 Timothy 4:8. They all talk about the value of taking care of ourselves. So there's nothing, again, wrong with wanting to be in shape and to be healthy, but it makes a lousy God. Second one, life only has meaning, I only have worth if I'm highly productive and I'm getting a lot done. Work idolatry. And again, there's a ton of verses in Scripture that discuss the value and importance of being productive and working hard. Verses like Colossians 3:23, Proverbs 14:23, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Ephesians 5:15-17, Matthew 6:34. I could go on and on, but Scripture clearly isn't against being productive or getting things done. But when that becomes the ultimate part of your life you're showing up to the wrong altar. Life only has meaning or I only have worth if people are dependent on me and need me.

Or if I have a certain level of wealth and financial freedom and very nice possessions, or my children or my parents are happy and happy with me. Family idolatry. My life only has meaning and only have worth if Mr. or Mrs. Right is in love with me. Or I'm being recognized for my accomplishments and I'm excelling in my work Achievement, idolatry. Our last one and then we'll talk for a bit. My life only has meaning or I only have worth if I'm hurting or if I'm in a problem because only then do I feel worthy of love and only then do I feel like I'm able to deal with guilt. Suffering, idolatry. See, I could sit here all day. I could just list things and that could have just been the entire time of the sermon but then you would leave and I just would have spent.

[00:12:41] half an hour just accusing everybody of a bunch of things. That's not really that effective of a sermon. So I want to illustrate again how these things slip into our lives. I would think that the chances are pretty good that you may have been able to at least relate to one of those things in that list.

[00:12:59] I know I can, but see, none of us, I don't, that first part of that sentence, I don't know that any of us in our lives actually sit here and think the phrase, my life only has meaning and I only have worth or value if blank. I've never thought that exact phrase, I don't think, and filled it in with something.

[00:13:19] But instead, the focus is on the way that we live. See, it's the way that we live our lives that reveal what's on the throne in our heart. Again, we don't think my life only has meaning and value if I have that new car or that new phone or dress like so and instead, we'll just drive ourselves into debt over unnecessary things that don't ultimately matter, and in doing so we reveal what's on the throne in our heart.

[00:13:44] But here's the thing, everything that I listed, like I said, that Could have just been the sermon this morning, just listing idols, and thank God it's not. But everything I listed is a surface idol. And what's important this morning is that they're not really the problem. They're a problem, yes, but they're not the problem.

[00:14:08] We're in a time in middle Tennessee here in July where normally if we have the rain that we normally have, our yards are looking really good, right? This year is a different story, so don't look at my yard if you come by. So anyway, the first years that I moved here, my yard was like, it was on point.

[00:14:28] I would double cut my grass. I would go diagonal one week, and then the same week, I'd double cut. I would go diagonal, then I'd go diagonal the other way, make this like kind of diagonal checkerboard pattern. It was awesome. And then in the backyard, I would cut my backyard in these opposing semi circles.

[00:14:42] So from my back porch, I would do these circles, like this, all the way to the other fence. It's my house, so I can do that. And then from the other way, we have a fire pit at the back of our house, That I would start like these circles and eventually become half circles that were just the exact opposite of those.

[00:14:57] And so when they crossed, it looked awesome and I loved it. I would get finished mowing, go grab like water or tea and sit on my back porch and I would look out at the earth that, and it's good to do this, by the way, because I'd look out at the earth that I subdued, like God says to do in Genesis 1 and 2.

[00:15:13] And I just feel like the man that I am.

[00:15:20] Go to work, come home, look at my yard, looks great, go to work, next day come home, and then I'd see something in my yard as I'm looking out across the back, and it's is that the patch of dandelions? And then over here it's it's this vile, wicked thing called crabgrass that looks like grass but it's not grass.

[00:15:40] And then over here would be like, nutsedge, this kind of weed that would grow tall with three things at the top, and then. And the root system, I looked it up for this sermon, the root system can go as deep as four feet. Crazy. And these weeds, they would, I see them because they're growing three or four times faster than the grass.

[00:16:00] So while you can just mow it over, just pops right back up. So when we deal with our idols, when we deal with our sin in the manner of eliminating surface idols, like the ones that I listed. It's like just simply mowing over the weeds without pulling them out at the root to get at the heart of the issue.

[00:16:23] And so to deal with surface idles, truly we need to deal with root idles. See how the metaphor comes around now. We have surface idles now root idles. So these surface idles, the layout, this framework that we're going to look at in this series, they come from four root idles. We're going to look at these root idles that the surface idle stem from.

[00:16:45] And as we look at these four maybe some of you are going to find yourselves in a particular one, or maybe some of us will find ourselves in two or three, or God help you, all four of them. We'll talk about that later. But, with that said, let's dive in. The first root idol, comfort idolatry. It's this phrase again.

[00:17:05] My life only has meaning or value. if I have a certain kind of pleasure experience or particular quality of life. Now, if you're someone who has a comfort idol, here's what you want. Comfort. But more specifically, they want privacy or a lack of stress. They want freedom. And at times this just comes across as, Oh, I'm just laid back or I'm just easygoing.

[00:17:38] But it also comes at the cost of being productive because people with a comfort idol, their greatest nightmare is encountering stress or demands. So maybe you're thinking that's good. That's not me. I'm not that one because I strive under pressure. And I gotcha. We're gonna get to you here in a second.

[00:17:53] So for the person who worships comfort, that's the worst stress and demands. Greatest nightmare. But here's the thing. And now listen closely here is that Others often feel hurt or neglected. Why? It's because when we're lazy above all else, when we pay the price of productivity for comfort, someone always gets hurt.

[00:18:22] And that's because others feel like they don't matter. I'll get that done sometime. When? Sometime. Feels like they don't matter. And then the biggest problem emotion that someone with a comfort idol experiences is boredom. Because we're not designed to just sit around and do nothing all day, every day.

[00:18:42] Satan loves idle hands. Colossians 3, 23 through 24 says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. So as believers. We glorify God by living our lives for Him, not allowing the enemy to take a foothold through boredom.

[00:19:05] What's more is that when comfort is an idol, is that relationships suffer. Like I mentioned, people feel offended or hurt. And why? Because relationships take work. They take getting in conversations, they take being exposed and being vulnerable, sharing your weaknesses with someone. So when comfort's an idol, usually you end up bouncing from person to person, never getting into a relationship deeper than just the surface.

[00:19:34] That's ironic, because the comfort idol, it never delivers what it promises. For all the comfort that you seek by neglecting relationships and being bored, you just become more uncomfortable by the same amount. And again, while comfort's, in and of itself, while comfort's not a bad thing, It's certainly okay from time to time.

[00:19:53] It's okay to want to feel comfortable. To worship comfort at the heart of it is to counterfeit the peace that we find in Christ. Except the peace that we find in Christ fulfills what's promised. So comfort makes a terrible God. Next we have power idolatry. This phrase of my life only has meaning or value if I have power and influence over others.

[00:20:21] Or in other words, success, worshiping success or winning or gaining influence over others. And more often than not, people that worship success, that success is on the throne in their heart, they're willing to pay a burden of responsibility. This thought of, Oh, I'll bear it. I'll go through the trenches.

[00:20:38] I'll handle it. If I can get more successful than I'll just handle it. So you're willing to pay the price of bearing the weight of that responsibility to the point that a major fear in life is humiliation.

[00:20:50] I don't think that really any of us in this room aren't fearful of humiliation. I think that's probably pretty well said for everybody in existence. When someone worships success, it's more than that. It's not just about winning, it's about not losing. And this more times than not results in others feeling used or manipulated.

[00:21:14] It's making others feel like their relationship is just, they're just in your life so that they can just help you get to where you need to go, just a stepping stone on your journey to success. And so needless to say, the power worshiper is awfully competitive. And again, here's the thing, competitiveness isn't wrong.

[00:21:32] The desire in and of itself to win isn't wrong. When I was in high school as a sophomore learning how to play guitar, I was taught my first chords. Actually, I think it goes back before that. I was taught my first chords by my mom back when I was a kid, but later I I wouldn't say tricked, convinced my granddad to get me an electric guitar and amp and distortion pedal, which was awesome.

[00:21:53] So I was in a band in high school and one of my friends, he taught me the first three chords that I ever learned, G, C, and D, and then I started to learn some songs. It turns out you can play like every song in existence with G, C, D maybe E minor and A minor too. Then I realized at band practice, he was way better than me, like by a lot.

[00:22:11] Cause he could play the Hotel California solo just like exactly. So I practiced more because I wanted to be better. And this is going to sound like I'm bragging here. I don't mean it that way, but I didn't necessarily want to be better than him. I just wanted to be better because he was really good.

[00:22:32] And so as I improved, this led him to practice more. Because he wanted to get better. And so we had this mutual goal of success, but, and it's so easy looking back now, and I was preparing for today, I was thinking of this, it's so easy to look back and see, I'm very thankful for God that desire for success and that mutual goal didn't come at the cost of our friendship because it's so easy, again, thinking back how quickly that could have resulted in anger and a type of competitiveness that wasn't healthy.

[00:23:03] So the Bible doesn't forbid competition, but it's when we find that our competitiveness or our drive for success, more times than not, when that starts resulting in anger, when we find our identity in the success that we gain, there's an issue. A desire to be successful is great, but it's a terrible God.

[00:23:22] So next is what is known as approval idolatry. My life only has worth or value If I'm loved and respected by fill in the blank. So for those who worship approval, they're seeking, we've done this enough times, they're seeking approval. You want love, affirmation, relationships, but at the cost of your independence, you end up depending on others for their approval and you end up depending on them to find your worth in life.

[00:24:02] So much so that maybe your greatest fear is rejection. And as such, you end up making others feel smothered because they can't humanly love you like God can. And here's the tough thing. The biggest problem emotion for these that worship approval is cowardice. Dealing with the lack of a spine. Or in our culture today, it's also known as people pleasing.

[00:24:32] Maybe with a group at work you say something like, Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, I think that we should do that. And then you go to another group and you're like, I don't know what they were thinking. We should do your idea. You have a good idea. And the issue is that you have to sleep with that at night.

[00:24:45] Thoughts like, I disagreed with so and but if I voice that opinion, then what if that group doesn't like me anymore? What if that person doesn't like me? There's going to be an argument. See, I've been focusing on this. I'm going to continue to do it's not a bad thing to want people It's not a bad thing to want others to approve.

[00:25:01] But some people, almost by nature, are just more prone to people pleasing than others. Those who tend to gauge their words and choices to avoid negative feedback. And I think, here's the irony in this idol, when it becomes an idol, is that ultimately at the end of the day, when the desire for approval is so great and so ultimate, that it results in this chronic people pleasing.

[00:25:26] You don't end up pleasing anyone. When we see in the Gospels, Jesus loved and gave to and served people. He also wasn't afraid to say what needed to be said, even when people got angry. He spoke exactly what needed to be said, even when it led to his death in Mark 15, 1 and 2 and John 18, 37. But it was that death that led to our hope for salvation.

[00:25:50] The desire to feel love, the desire to feel affirmed is normal. It's not in and of itself sinful. The problem comes when that fulfillment comes from the world rather than from God's love for each and every one of us. Now the last one, we made it through three of them. The fourth one, control idolatry.

[00:26:10] My life only has worth or value if I'm able to get mastery over my life in the area of blank. You fill in the blank. Those who worship control seek control. Or more specifically, maybe you find yourself seeking self discipline, certainty, or standards, but this comes at the price of loneliness and spontaneity.

[00:26:35] These thoughts of, Oh, I've prepared everything for this trip. I know the weather for every day of the week down to the hour and nothing's going to shock me as far as the weather goes. I'll have everything that I need. Or, oh no, I see, I've read all the articles that I could find about going to this beach and someone died at this same beach where we're going to so I'm not getting in the water and neither is anybody else.

[00:26:55] Or helicopter parenting of no one is ever going to be in danger in my family and danger is not going to exist in this household. So what I'm talking about is this all consuming desire, thinking that you can control everything. And the greatest nightmare for someone worshiping control is uncertainty.

[00:27:15] See, others often feel, they feel condemned or judged or offended, which ultimately results in your loneliness. People not spending time with you because of the way that they're made to feel. A phrase that's so commonly found in the mouth of a control worshiper is this, if you would only just blink.

[00:27:38] If you'd only just get your act together, then you would have been more prepared. Or if you would only just be better prepared, then that wouldn't have happened. But at the heart of the matter, it stems from worry. And not just worry, it's a, it's really, it's a vicious cycle. It's worry, which leads to wanting to control things.

[00:27:56] Which leads to realizing you're not going to be able to control everything. And so because of that, you worry. And you want to control it, but you know that you can't. So when you can't, you worry about it. See how that goes? Anxiety, worry, and fear, they all well up inside, which it can lead to clamping down, to control and to mitigate those kinds of feelings.

[00:28:18] And that comes across as almost condemnation of others, or making others feel condemnation. It's a vicious cycle. It's, really, it's an enslaving cycle. This thought of, if I want something done right, I'm just going to have to do it myself. And that's control. So as we've walked through these, maybe you're thinking, maybe one of those came across and you're thinking, Oh, that's me.

[00:28:40] You nailed it. Or maybe you're thinking like, I'm not really so sure. I'm worried that I might be all four of those. All I know is that I'm really angry about being bored because I'm lonely.

[00:28:57] Here's the good news. When it comes to these idols, we've done a lot of trucking through surface and root idols this morning through a lot of messy stuff because. Sin is messy. We've gone through a lot of kind of complicated concepts and things because sin's complicated. The good news is that the solution isn't.

[00:29:17] It's one word. You ready? Repentance. A lot of the reason that I've laid out this language for us this morning, the way that I did is so that as we move into the next weeks, we can see these issues clearly together. And so that you can help identify, hopefully not just surface idols going on, but the cause and the root of it.

[00:29:38] Maybe these thoughts of, Oh, I'm a comfort worshiper when I should be a God worshiper. And see, what so few tend to do in our culture these days is to own up to it. Repenting of our sins, repenting of our idols, and looking to Christ, that's the gateway to joy. When we own up to all that we do, when we can see so much better, I'm going to rephrase that, when we take in and we own our sins, when we acknowledge them and the weight of those sins.

[00:30:13] When we look at these idols at the root, we can then so much, we can see so much better and fuller what Christ did for us. Jesus tells a beautiful story in Luke chapter seven. I'm going to paraphrase the story here, but I encourage you to read it. He tells the story of a prostitute who comes in and falls at his feet and she's weeping and she's washing his feet with her tears and with her hair.

[00:30:40] And Simon the Pharisee, he thinks to himself, if only Jesus knew what kind of woman this was, he wouldn't let her be doing what she's doing right now. He wouldn't let her touch his feet. And so Jesus answered Simon's thought. Let's say that again. He answered Simon's thought, which is awesome and freaky, but he says back to him, owed a debt to a lender.

[00:31:05] One man owed a whole bunch and the other just a little. Both were forgiven of their debts. So who was more grateful? Simon knows he's busted and says I guess it's the one who owed a lot. Jesus says, you've answered correctly. Since I came into your home, you didn't greet me. You didn't give me water.

[00:31:26] You didn't show me hospitality. You didn't show me that I was wanted or desired here, But this woman, from the second she walked in the door, washed my feet with her tears. And although her sins are many, they're forgiven fully. I was holding a mic, that'd be like, drop it, mic drop moment. What Jesus was pointing to, what his point was to that room, and to us in this room today, right now, is that when we own our sin and realize the sheer weight of it, when we dig down beyond the surface.

[00:32:01] to the root and we grasp the weight of it all. It magnifies what Christ did for us that much more. I'm materialistic, not violent. I'm violent and angry. I'm a liar. I'm a manipulator. I'm lazy. I'm a comfort worshiper, power worshiper, control worshiper. I'm an approval worshiper. I'm broken, rebellious. So I just thank God that there's a three letter word that Paul uses all throughout the New Testament after pointing out our sins, it's a wonderful three letter word, But thank God that we're fully accepted But thank God that there's a savior that's rich in mercy and abounding in steadfast love That can bring us back from all of that.

[00:32:55] So how magnificent, splendid, glorious, and beautiful. I thank God that no matter our sins, we have a Savior with which we can walk in joy. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for your word today. Thank you for everyone here and for everyone joining us online. I just pray that as we go throughout this week that we're mindful of the idol.

[00:33:22] But we're also mindful of your sacrifice in which that we can still have joy. It's in your son's precious holy name we pray. Amen.