back to index2015-09-13 Giving Worship Where Worship is Due
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Romans chapter 1, we'll be reading from verse 18-23. 00:00:14.000 |
"The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, 00:00:22.000 |
who by their unrighteousness oppress the truth. 00:00:25.000 |
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 00:00:29.000 |
For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, 00:00:32.000 |
have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, 00:00:36.000 |
in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. 00:00:39.000 |
For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, 00:00:43.000 |
but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 00:00:47.000 |
Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God 00:00:51.000 |
for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." 00:00:57.000 |
Heavenly Father, we thank You again for this morning. 00:01:00.000 |
We thank You, Lord God, for the Chung family. 00:01:03.000 |
We thank You for the many families, Lord, who are having children. 00:01:07.000 |
We thank You, Lord God, for blessing our church, Lord, with many graces. 00:01:12.000 |
We ask, Lord, that with all the blessings that You give us, 00:01:16.000 |
that it would return to You in praise and adoration, 00:01:24.000 |
Help us, Lord God, to recognize who You are in the midst of all that You've given. 00:01:28.000 |
So for that end, we pray that You would open our ears, 00:01:31.000 |
that You would soften our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. 00:01:35.000 |
You know, as we've been talking about in the book of Romans, 00:01:38.000 |
that Paul has been introducing the Gospel to the Romans here, 00:01:43.000 |
and we talked about how in chapter 1 and all the way up to chapter 3, verse 20, 00:01:49.000 |
his main point is that we recognize why we need Christ. 00:01:55.000 |
And without recognizing what it is that we have received, 00:02:00.000 |
we can say it's grace, but we don't recognize it as amazing grace. 00:02:05.000 |
You know, we worship a God, we worship Him, but it's not coming out from an over, 00:02:09.000 |
an abundance of thankfulness, what God has given. 00:02:13.000 |
You know, I remember, I know Jeremy is sitting here, 00:02:17.000 |
but I remember when Jeremy was a little kid, you know, 00:02:20.000 |
when he was about 2 1/2 to 3 years old, back when we used to live in Corona, 00:02:24.000 |
we used to have a swimming pool in our backyard, 00:02:26.000 |
and his two older cousins, they already knew how to swim, 00:02:29.000 |
so they would jump in the water and go back and forth, 00:02:31.000 |
and Jeremy didn't know how to swim at that time. 00:02:34.000 |
Well, right around that time, you know, this one particular day, 00:02:38.000 |
and I forget which day it was, but this one particular day, 00:02:41.000 |
my father had a heart attack a week before, so he was in the hospital for a period, 00:02:46.000 |
and then we actually picked him up, and on the way back home, 00:02:51.000 |
And so my dad was resting in our backyard, you know, 00:02:54.000 |
like just resting before we sent him back home. 00:02:57.000 |
And so we were all inside, and all of a sudden, we hear this splash in the swimming pool, 00:03:02.000 |
so we run out to see our dad, you know, we're all kind of freaking out, 00:03:06.000 |
because he just had a heart attack, and we see our dad in the pool, 00:03:12.000 |
And so basically what happened was, you know, his cousins were swimming, 00:03:15.000 |
and they went inside, and Jeremy wanted to imitate them, 00:03:18.000 |
so he got on the slide, and he slid into the pool, and he was face down. 00:03:22.000 |
So the only adult that was outside was my dad, so he just jumped into the pool. 00:03:26.000 |
And again, you know, he just had a heart attack. 00:03:31.000 |
So he was soaking wet, and he came out, and I remember when my dad pulled him out of the water, 00:03:35.000 |
that we were expecting Jeremy to be like, you know, choking and crying, 00:03:39.000 |
and pulled him out of the water, and he just walked out, and said, 00:03:42.000 |
"Thanks, Grandpa," and then he just walked in. 00:03:46.000 |
So obviously, we were watching that, and we were like, 00:03:52.000 |
You know, this grandfather, I mean, after five days of being in the hospital, 00:03:57.000 |
he ran in, he sprained his legs, you know, sprained his ankle, 00:04:01.000 |
fetching him out of the water, basically saved his life. 00:04:04.000 |
You know, but he's just like, "Oh, thanks, Grandpa," and then he just walked in, 00:04:07.000 |
tiled off, and went out and played with his cousins. 00:04:10.000 |
Again, you know why I share this story, because sometimes we receive salvation 00:04:15.000 |
in a flippant way, and we just kind of, "Thanks, God, thanks for saving me," 00:04:20.000 |
you know, "We praise you," and then we go home like nothing happened. 00:04:24.000 |
If we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ, 00:04:28.000 |
what it is that we have been saved from, our response would be just as flippant. 00:04:31.000 |
"Thanks, God," and you say, "Oh, we talk about His grace, 00:04:34.000 |
we talk about salvation and going to Heaven, but it doesn't make any effect on us 00:04:38.000 |
because we don't recognize exactly what it is that we have been saved from." 00:04:44.000 |
And again, you know, when my children are younger, 00:04:48.000 |
you know, one of the things that I used to do to discipline them 00:04:52.000 |
is that if they did something, I would ask them, 00:04:54.000 |
"What do you think you deserve for this, for what you just did?" 00:04:58.000 |
You know, every once in a while, they'll say something, you know, horrendous, 00:05:02.000 |
and I'll say, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't eat for three days," or something like that, 00:05:05.000 |
and I'll say, "You know, that's too harsh." You know? 00:05:08.000 |
But when they say something like that, I know that they understand the gravity of what they did. 00:05:12.000 |
Maybe they hit their sister, or they lied about something, 00:05:15.000 |
and so they are broken for what they did, so they know they deserve the punishment. 00:05:19.000 |
And so that's all I wanted to hear, is that I wanted to hear that they know the gravity of what they did. 00:05:24.000 |
So again, every once in a while, they'll say something, and then I would kind of have to show grace, 00:05:29.000 |
and say, "No, no, no, we're not going to go that far, but you understand what you did." 00:05:32.000 |
But then every once in a while, they'll do something, and then I'll say, "What do you think you deserve?" 00:05:37.000 |
And then they'll give me something flippant, like, you know, instead of having two candy, let me just have one, 00:05:41.000 |
or something like that, or, "Oh, I won't eat ice cream after dinner." You know, that would be the punishment. 00:05:47.000 |
And then I know that they don't fully recognize what they did. 00:05:51.000 |
Then I have to sit down and explain to them, "Do you know why that is so hurtful? 00:05:56.000 |
Do you know what happens? Do you know the consequence of this behavior?" 00:05:59.000 |
And then they would adjust, "Okay, then maybe I won't eat for two days," or something. 00:06:03.000 |
You know, then they would adjust their punishment, right? 00:06:05.000 |
But that's how I know that they recognize exactly what they did. 00:06:10.000 |
So whatever punishment is coming their way, to make sure that it's not just punishment, 00:06:14.000 |
they're kind of like, they don't really fully get it, you know? 00:06:17.000 |
But, so that whatever punishment it is that comes their way, that they fully understand why that was coming. 00:06:25.000 |
See, in our Christian faith, when we talk about the judgment of God, 00:06:30.000 |
the scripture says the reason why the righteousness of God is being revealed, 00:06:36.000 |
is because the wrath of God is being revealed. 00:06:39.000 |
And when we don't recognize the wrath of God, and why we are deserving of this wrath, 00:06:44.000 |
then even the righteousness of God that is revealed, we're not going to fully comprehend it. 00:06:49.000 |
In order to be able to recognize His righteousness being revealed, 00:06:54.000 |
and I'm not talking about mentally, I'm talking about spiritually, emotionally. 00:06:58.000 |
To truly be able to recognize and see that, we need to first recognize that you and I, 00:07:04.000 |
every single one of us, we're deserving of this wrath that is being revealed. 00:07:08.000 |
Again, we talked about how when we think about wrath, we normally think of thunder. 00:07:14.000 |
We think of some sort of a mass, you know, war going on, a mass death or shooting. 00:07:20.000 |
So, it's only when we see things like 9/11, I know, you know, just a few days ago, 00:07:25.000 |
we commemorated the, what is it, 14th year of 9/11, 00:07:30.000 |
and some of you guys may have been old enough to recognize and be able to fully be impacted 00:07:38.000 |
Watching videos of people screaming in horror, and watching again the buildings falling down, 00:07:43.000 |
it just kind of reminded me of all the emotions that were going on that day. 00:07:47.000 |
But when we think of the wrath of God, typically we think of that kind of stuff. 00:07:51.000 |
But on a day-to-day basis, we don't really think about that. 00:07:55.000 |
We think of, you know, it's a great day, and we don't want to ruin it by thinking about the wrath of God. 00:08:01.000 |
But the scripture says that the righteousness of God is being revealed 00:08:07.000 |
And we talked about that last week, how the most tangible evidence of the wrath of God 00:08:12.000 |
is the death, the universal death of mankind, which God did not intend. 00:08:17.000 |
And every single day, I know it's a morbid way to think about life, 00:08:20.000 |
every single day we're getting closer and closer to what is inevitable. 00:08:25.000 |
And we try so hard to hold on to our youth, but only for a while. 00:08:29.000 |
You know, some of you young guys are boasting about your energy on the court, 00:08:33.000 |
and you make fun of these older guys, you know, saying, "I can't keep up." 00:08:36.000 |
Sooner or later, you're going to be there too, you know. 00:08:39.000 |
Sooner than later, you know, you're going to be there too, you know. 00:08:43.000 |
That's inevitable. We said that the wrath of God is being revealed. 00:08:47.000 |
The wrath of God is being revealed in the futility of life. 00:08:50.000 |
You know, no matter how hard we try, we think like, if we do this, then everything is going to go our way. 00:08:54.000 |
And you'll see, in life, ask anybody who's lived 30, 40 plus years, 00:09:00.000 |
if life turned out exactly the way they wanted. 00:09:02.000 |
Every single person will say, "Only if I did this, only if I did that." 00:09:06.000 |
Futility of life, no matter how hard we work. 00:09:09.000 |
And every single person thinks that it's them. It's not just them. 00:09:12.000 |
Every human being in this world thinks the same thing. 00:09:16.000 |
And then third, and finally, we talked about, which we're going to get into next week, 00:09:20.000 |
about what the ultimate judgment of God is when He finally just lets you go. 00:09:25.000 |
And you know, the sad thing is, a lot of times when God lets you go, 00:09:28.000 |
a lot of times, they don't even recognize it. 00:09:31.000 |
Because you resist God, you kind of like, picked and chose, like, 00:09:34.000 |
"This I'm going to follow, this I don't agree with, this I'm going to do, this I'm not going to do." 00:09:38.000 |
And you don't realize that you don't have 30% of God or 80% of God. 00:09:44.000 |
You don't pick 70% of God and 30% choose to not. 00:09:48.000 |
He said, "Either you will follow me, either you are with me, or you are against me." 00:09:55.000 |
And so when God chooses to turn you over during this life, 00:09:58.000 |
you know, we talked about that last week, where your heart gets hardened to the point 00:10:01.000 |
where the grace of God is no longer affecting you at all. 00:10:04.000 |
And you kind of, just kind of coast along in the Christian culture, and that's about it. 00:10:09.000 |
And then the final result of this handing over happens after we die, 00:10:14.000 |
where God's grace is withdrawn, and His presence is no longer active, 00:10:22.000 |
And the reason why it's being revealed in that way is what he's getting to in verse 9, or 19. 00:10:29.000 |
He says, "Because the truth of God is being suppressed by unrighteousness." 00:10:37.000 |
And he says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them." 00:10:43.000 |
"For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, 00:10:47.000 |
have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, and the things that have been made, 00:10:55.000 |
You know, most of you who went to secular universities, 00:11:01.000 |
you probably read that the secular universities tend to lean left. 00:11:09.000 |
And so if you've gone to secular university, you almost kind of come out thinking 00:11:15.000 |
that science and Christianity somehow doesn't mix. 00:11:19.000 |
That if you pursue science, if you have questions and you pursue it too hard, 00:11:23.000 |
somehow you're going to end up questioning, "Do I really believe this?" 00:11:28.000 |
So you kind of keep the scientific aspect of it very vague. 00:11:37.000 |
Scripture actually says, "He left His imprint on His creation." 00:11:41.000 |
So according to scripture, the more you study science without bias, 00:11:47.000 |
the more you take a deep look at His creation, 00:11:51.000 |
that you're going to see a greater imprint of God, not the opposite. 00:12:02.000 |
How many of you have ever seen the show "This Old House"? 00:12:10.000 |
And you guys are all a little bit older than other people. 00:12:13.000 |
All right, so "This Old House" is a show basically-- 00:12:20.000 |
And at the end of the show, the host would come out, 00:12:23.000 |
and they would bring a little product from 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 00:12:28.000 |
and they'd say, "What do you think this is used for?" 00:12:31.000 |
And every single one of them would take a guess. 00:12:35.000 |
So I brought something from my house to get you to take a guess. 00:12:49.000 |
Somebody in the first service said CD holder. 00:13:21.000 |
Anyway, basically what this is, if you've ever had a flat tire, 00:13:25.000 |
you know how you put it under the car and then you raise the car up, 00:13:28.000 |
but they don't use this anymore because so many cars would fall out, 00:13:34.000 |
If it's not on solid ground, if you don't hook it on the right thing, 00:13:38.000 |
So it's kind of dangerous, so they stopped making this. 00:13:40.000 |
So those of you who've only been driving for the last 10 years, 00:13:42.000 |
you probably haven't seen this in your car, right? 00:13:45.000 |
So basically what this is, you put it under the car and they would jack it up, 00:13:48.000 |
and then one by one, you would raise your car. 00:13:55.000 |
but I looked for something that I thought maybe you would have a hard time figuring out. 00:13:58.000 |
But the point of my story is that when they have that, 00:14:02.000 |
and they bring these products out, they would guess. 00:14:09.000 |
I've never seen, in all the years that I've been watching this show, 00:14:12.000 |
I've never seen somebody come out and say, "I think it's just part of nature." 00:14:17.000 |
I think in billions of years, the metal particles just kind of flew together and created this. 00:14:23.000 |
So nobody actually made this, it just happened. 00:14:26.000 |
Now if I told you that that's what this was, there's no purpose, 00:14:29.000 |
I just found this, I went digging, I just found it, 00:14:31.000 |
and it's just part of nature. It just happened. 00:14:34.000 |
And after billions of years, it just kind of somehow figured out, got together. 00:14:39.000 |
Now this is just a piece of metal. This is just a piece of metal. 00:14:43.000 |
It doesn't think, there's less complicated thing to bring this together 00:14:50.000 |
than a little tip of your finger has more details and more complex than this. 00:14:56.000 |
Yet, the world tells us that everything around us, the universe, the human being, 00:15:02.000 |
the eyeball, the fingertips, all of this happened by chance. 00:15:05.000 |
You would never accept if I said this was just by chance. 00:15:08.000 |
It just showed up. It had no purpose. Nobody made it. It just happened. 00:15:12.000 |
And yet, all the great supposed great minds have concluded that that's the case. 00:15:19.000 |
And so many Christians hear this and it's like, "Can I be a Christian and believe this and not believe this?" 00:15:28.000 |
Well, the scripture makes it very clear that God left his imprint on creation. 00:15:36.000 |
There's a man named William Dembski. He wrote a book called "Design Inference" 00:15:42.000 |
and was published by Cambridge University Press. 00:15:45.000 |
And in it, he describes this and how supposedly these great minds of the world in our generation, 00:15:51.000 |
how they are suppressing the truth that many other scientists claim. 00:15:56.000 |
Richard Dawkins, I know many of you probably heard his name before. 00:16:00.000 |
He's an atheist who goes around and debates other Christians. 00:16:04.000 |
And basically says, "If you're a Christian, you're stupid." Basically, that's what he says. 00:16:10.000 |
He says, Richard Dawkins claims that, "Biology is the study of complicated things 00:16:15.000 |
that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." 00:16:19.000 |
And the reason why he quotes it and says there's an appearance of design 00:16:23.000 |
is because you may naturally look at, and the more you study it, 00:16:27.000 |
it seems like there has to be some kind of design. 00:16:29.000 |
But what he's arguing is, you've got to throw that away. 00:16:32.000 |
You may naturally think that way, but you've got to suppress that because God doesn't exist. 00:16:37.000 |
He quotes another man, Francis Crick, who is a co-discoverer of DNA. 00:16:41.000 |
And he says this, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind 00:16:45.000 |
that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." 00:16:49.000 |
In other words, you may study in biology and how the body works and all that stuff 00:16:55.000 |
and naturally conclude there must be a design, but you must suppress this. 00:17:02.000 |
Because he already concluded God doesn't exist. 00:17:04.000 |
So even though all these things must point to some kind of intelligent design, 00:17:13.000 |
In fact, many, many scholars, many physicists, engineers, scientists, 00:17:21.000 |
and I'm going to read you some of the quotes that he quotes. 00:17:27.000 |
"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe 00:17:32.000 |
it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. 00:17:36.000 |
I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." 00:17:46.000 |
"The laws of physics seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. 00:17:54.000 |
Vera Kistiakowsky, and I'm butchering his name, he's an MIT physicist, 00:18:00.000 |
he says, "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding 00:18:08.000 |
Arthur Shalau, professor of physicist at Stanford University, 00:18:13.000 |
he was a Nobel Prize winner of physics in 1981, and he says this, 00:18:18.000 |
"It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, 00:18:29.000 |
I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." 00:18:34.000 |
And then finally, Werner Von Braun, pioneer of rocket engineering, says, 00:18:40.000 |
"I find it as difficult to understand scientists who does not acknowledge 00:18:44.000 |
the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe 00:18:48.000 |
as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." 00:18:53.000 |
In other words, he's saying that these two things are not in contradiction. 00:19:00.000 |
That God deliberately left His imprint on His creation. 00:19:05.000 |
Just like if we were to look at this and we wanted to find out what this is. 00:19:12.000 |
And if we wanted to find the creator of this, we can find something. 00:19:18.000 |
He may have been hired by an automobile industry. 00:19:23.000 |
Maybe he has some kind of engineering background because in order to know 00:19:27.000 |
if this is going to work, obviously plastic is not going to do. 00:19:31.000 |
So he needs to have some knowledge of material science." 00:19:34.000 |
So based upon just this one little thing, we can deduce certain things about the creator. 00:19:40.000 |
Looking at the complexities of the universe, the scripture says 00:19:44.000 |
that what may be known about God, His invisible attributes, 00:19:48.000 |
His power, His divine nature, have been clearly seen 00:19:53.000 |
because God deliberately left an imprint of Himself in creation. 00:19:57.000 |
Psalm 119, 1-6, it says, "The heaven declares the glory of God, 00:20:04.000 |
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 00:20:08.000 |
There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard. 00:20:12.000 |
Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, 00:20:19.000 |
Again and again, scripture declares that God left His imprint. 00:20:26.000 |
Now obviously, you can't be saved by looking at the world and say, 00:20:29.000 |
"Oh, you know, it seems like God does exist." 00:20:35.000 |
But Paul describes in Acts 17 what the purpose of this general revelation is. 00:20:42.000 |
Acts 17, 24-28, it says, "The God who made the world and everything in it, 00:20:47.000 |
being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 00:20:51.000 |
nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, 00:20:54.000 |
since He Himself gives to all mankind like the breath and everything. 00:20:57.000 |
And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, 00:21:03.000 |
having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling." 00:21:06.000 |
And here, this is the point, verse 27, after he says all of this, 00:21:10.000 |
"God is the creator of all of this, of mankind, of nations," verse 27, 00:21:14.000 |
"that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him. 00:21:21.000 |
Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being." 00:21:28.000 |
He said the reason why He left His imprint upon His creation 00:21:31.000 |
is so that they may recognize, that you and I would recognize, 00:21:34.000 |
there must be a designer. And this designer must be a powerful designer. 00:21:39.000 |
That maybe He's a creative designer. And He left all of this so that we may find ourselves. 00:21:46.000 |
Again, the general revelation is not the gospel. 00:21:49.000 |
But He said the general revelation would lead us to look for Him. 00:21:54.000 |
If there is a designer, who is He? Can I have a relationship with Him? 00:22:00.000 |
And I remember when I was saved, when I made the sinner's prayer, 00:22:04.000 |
that was a thought that I had. I always said that I believed because I was raised in a Christian home. 00:22:09.000 |
But He was not a personal God. Until I saw a group of Christians who were praying like God really listened. 00:22:16.000 |
And then I started asking myself, "Does that God really listen? 00:22:19.000 |
Is He somebody I can personally know?" And that's when I made, first time I prayed, 00:22:24.000 |
I mean I prayed all my life, before meals, at Sunday school. 00:22:27.000 |
The first time in my life I prayed, "God, if You're really there, I want to know You." 00:22:33.000 |
And that's what caused my eyes to be opened. And the scripture says, 00:22:36.000 |
God left His imprint for that purpose. So that we would recognize that there is this powerful being, 00:22:43.000 |
this divine being, that we would search our way with Him. 00:22:46.000 |
And then He concludes by saying, "Yet He actually is not far from you. 00:22:52.000 |
For in Him we live and move and have our being." 00:22:57.000 |
If you are genuinely interested in God, you don't have to go far to see. 00:23:02.000 |
We can give credit to the scientists and say, "You know what? The reason why we woke up this morning 00:23:07.000 |
is because the scientists figured out how to keep this earth rotating at the exact same speed 00:23:14.000 |
for thousands and thousands of years. And the reason why we didn't burn out in the night 00:23:19.000 |
is because they somehow figured out how to keep the earth at the exact distance. 00:23:24.000 |
Not too far, not too close. And constant all the time. 00:23:29.000 |
So either we can wake up and say, "I woke up because human beings figured out how to live. 00:23:35.000 |
We figured out how to keep the oxygen here. We figured out how to eat. We figured out how to live. 00:23:41.000 |
And that's why we were produced. We figured out how to make babies. 00:23:45.000 |
And that's why we have babies." Or you can recognize that the only reason why you and I 00:23:52.000 |
live and breathe and wake up and go to sleep is because there is a God who created all of this. 00:24:00.000 |
And so that's what Paul says, that if you are willing, He is not far. He is near. 00:24:06.000 |
And God deliberately made it that way. But here's the punchline. 00:24:11.000 |
Even though he left all of this in print, the scripture says, "For although they knew God, 00:24:17.000 |
they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking." 00:24:24.000 |
And because they became futile in their thinking, they became darkened in their heart, 00:24:29.000 |
claiming to be wise. Sounds a lot like today, doesn't it? Claiming to be wise. 00:24:34.000 |
You know, they say, "Ah, you Christians, you don't know anything." And then when you sit down 00:24:37.000 |
and actually try to have an intelligent conversation, they can't go beyond the prejudice. 00:24:42.000 |
They claim to be wise, but they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God 00:24:49.000 |
for images resembling mortal man. Before we say, "Oh, okay, that's why the Gentiles are judged. 00:24:58.000 |
That's why they were judged." We may look at that and say, "Well, thank God we're not like them." 00:25:05.000 |
Let's take a step back and look into what they struggled with. He said, "They exchanged the glory of God 00:25:11.000 |
for foolishness of idols." Idolatry. You know, I always question, 00:25:17.000 |
why did the nation of Israel struggle with idolatry? Did you ever see pictures of the idols 00:25:23.000 |
that Israel struggled with? They are ugly. You know what I mean? If it was a Lamborghini, 00:25:29.000 |
I was like, "Okay, I can see. I see why." You know what I mean? 00:25:33.000 |
It was something, but they're ugly. It seems like some third grade art project 00:25:39.000 |
that failed some contest, and that's the thing that they chose to be the idol. 00:25:45.000 |
And Israel constantly walking by, "Oh, maybe I'll worship that." 00:25:49.000 |
When I first started reading, it didn't make any sense to me, because here are these people 00:25:54.000 |
that God called "apple of my eye." He delivered them. They saw the miracle 00:26:01.000 |
of the 10 plagues. They saw God open up the Red Sea and swallowing up their enemies, 00:26:07.000 |
gave them supernatural food and water, protected them from their enemies, 00:26:13.000 |
walked into Jericho without a single man being lost. They saw all the miracles of God. 00:26:19.000 |
God coming in His Shekinah glory. And yet, every time they were presented by these idols, 00:26:24.000 |
they said, "Oh, maybe we'll worship that." What was it about these idols that was so attractive 00:26:30.000 |
that they would do something so foolish? It is foolish, and that's exactly what the Scripture says. 00:26:37.000 |
They became darkened in their heart and futile, dumb in their thinking. 00:26:43.000 |
But why was it so attractive? What was the first idol that Israel wrestled with? 00:26:48.000 |
Do you remember? Golden calf, right? The golden calf. 00:26:57.000 |
As soon as they come out, Moses goes up to the mountain and he receives the 10 commandments, 00:27:02.000 |
and the people start stirring up, saying, "Why is he taking so long?" Right? 00:27:06.000 |
So they became antsy, like, "He left us out in the desert. Oh no, who's going to protect us?" 00:27:11.000 |
And so Aaron has a great idea, so let's get all the gold and melt it and make it into a golden calf. 00:27:17.000 |
And then he presents it to them, and then when he presents it to them, he says, 00:27:21.000 |
"Here's your Yahweh that you've been waiting from the sky. Here He is." 00:27:25.000 |
So it wasn't straight up idolatry, it was kind of syncretism. 00:27:28.000 |
They were kind of mixing some of the Egyptian background. 00:27:32.000 |
But the reason why, why this golden calf? Right? 00:27:36.000 |
All of a sudden this golden calf appears. Not only appears at that time, 00:27:39.000 |
do you remember that golden calf? All throughout Israel's history it became a stumbling block. 00:27:44.000 |
Do you remember when the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom splits in half after Solomon? 00:27:49.000 |
Because of David's sin, the kingdom splits in two. 00:27:52.000 |
So Rohoboam takes the south, and Jeroboam goes up north, and he takes ten of the tribes with him. 00:27:58.000 |
But he doesn't want the Israelites in that side to come to Jerusalem to worship, 00:28:04.000 |
because he's afraid if they come to Jerusalem that he's going to lose his people. 00:28:08.000 |
So he sets up this golden calf worship in Dan and Bethel, and he said, 00:28:12.000 |
"You don't have to go there, you can worship this calf here." 00:28:15.000 |
And he presents it again, "Here's your Yahweh, worship it." 00:28:19.000 |
And all throughout Israel's history they were stumbling over this worship of this golden calf. 00:28:24.000 |
Now, I know a calf is not the ugliest of the animals, you know what I mean? 00:28:29.000 |
Maybe they chose the best looking animal, I don't know. Right? 00:28:33.000 |
But when you look back in history, the worship of a bull or a calf in Egypt was one of their popular idols. 00:28:42.000 |
And the reason why is because it represented fertility. 00:28:48.000 |
Now you have to think, at that time, calves and animals represented riches. 00:28:56.000 |
So it's like today, it's basically worshiping money. 00:29:00.000 |
So if they worshiped this idol, they were thinking that somehow the blessing of whatever is going to come through this animal. 00:29:07.000 |
So if you were to think of it today, it's kind of like chasing after money. Right? 00:29:15.000 |
Because in their mind, if they worship Yahweh, and then He leads us out to the desert, 00:29:20.000 |
and we're not seeing the milk and honey flowing, maybe if He's not going to do it, maybe this calf is going to do it. 00:29:26.000 |
And we'll worship it. And they never fully, completely got rid of it. 00:29:32.000 |
Even in times of revival, they would do this and they would kind of keep that. 00:29:36.000 |
So we can kind of see, you know, we talk about idols, "Oh, we don't do that. 00:29:39.000 |
We don't have any golden calves or anything set up in our backyard. We're too sophisticated." Right? 00:29:45.000 |
You don't have any ashtray. I mean, if you are, you're in big trouble. Right? 00:29:49.000 |
You know, Christians, non-Christians will make fun of you. 00:29:52.000 |
But you know what an idol, idol basically is replacing God with something else. 00:29:56.000 |
Just like he says, instead of worshiping the Creator, you worship the creation in the image of us. 00:30:06.000 |
So you don't have to have an idol. You don't have to have a physical product. 00:30:10.000 |
Whatever is in your heart that you worship becomes your idol. 00:30:18.000 |
You have the calf worship and then the two other worship when they go into the promised land that they struggle with. 00:30:23.000 |
You have the ball worship, and you know that. Right? 00:30:26.000 |
The ball worship keeps coming up. And you know what ball worship was? 00:30:29.000 |
It was a god of, you can guess, fertility. Right? 00:30:37.000 |
And so they were easily, if they came and then God didn't provide for them what they wanted, 00:30:42.000 |
they basically dropped him and went to ball worship. 00:30:44.000 |
Look at the Canaanites. Look how well they're doing. 00:30:47.000 |
And maybe the reason why they're flowing with milk and honey is because they're worshiping this ball. 00:30:55.000 |
We'll go worship that. Now again, today we're a lot more sophisticated than that. 00:30:59.000 |
We don't go and say, "I'm going to worship a ball. We're going to set up a shrine for money." 00:31:06.000 |
And then every time we walk in, we rub the belly. 00:31:08.000 |
And maybe some people do, but we don't do it that way. Right? 00:31:11.000 |
All that idolatry happens in our heart. Right? 00:31:14.000 |
Where that becomes our priority and that's what we're pursuing. 00:31:17.000 |
And that becomes our idol. So we can easily see why ball worship was so tempting to them. 00:31:22.000 |
There's another idol that was very prominent. 00:31:32.000 |
Again, hideous. If you ever type in Asherah Pole in Google, it is a hideous, hideous looking thing. 00:31:40.000 |
Why was that so popular? Why did Israel keep falling into that temptation? 00:31:45.000 |
Well, Asherah was a female version of ball and it was known as a goddess of love and war. 00:31:54.000 |
And so whenever they had political conflict or they felt like maybe one family to another 00:32:00.000 |
in order to be a conqueror, to dominate, they would worship this goddess. 00:32:05.000 |
And another added benefit for the pagan worship was because she was a goddess of love, 00:32:12.000 |
and again equated with fertility, they would have mandatory prostitution at Asherah's temple. 00:32:19.000 |
So oftentimes, whatever worship that they have for Asherah would end in some kind of orgy, 00:32:26.000 |
And you see that all throughout Israel's history. 00:32:29.000 |
And then by the time you get to the time of Christ, that was one of the primary things that Paul had to deal with 00:32:35.000 |
when the gospel began to go out to the Gentile world. 00:32:38.000 |
Sexual immorality because they kept on going back to the temple. 00:32:41.000 |
Even though they were worshiping Yahweh, they would keep going back to the sexual immoral behavior 00:32:47.000 |
through whatever idol that they were worshiping. 00:32:51.000 |
Now every single, I don't think there's a single person in this room, I don't think, 00:32:54.000 |
and I can pretty much bet that you don't have Asherah poles and you don't have Baal, 00:33:02.000 |
But I would be equally confident that that idolatry, what they represented, is prevalent in our hearts. 00:33:17.000 |
I know that may be difficult for some of you to swallow. 00:33:21.000 |
We naturally give credit to the creation rather than the creator. 00:33:26.000 |
So we feel more confident. We celebrate when we get a little raise and we say, "Thank God for His blessing." 00:33:32.000 |
And we feel more confident at peace over that, over our own salvation. 00:33:45.000 |
And thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people come to celebrate this wall. 00:33:52.000 |
And it's a big joke because I've been to the wall so many times and that's not Great Wall, it's just a wall. 00:33:56.000 |
You know? Because we've been there so many times. 00:33:58.000 |
But you know, people come and say, "It's this Great Wall. It spans over 5,000 miles. 00:34:03.000 |
You know, it took 500 years, three or four dynasties. 00:34:05.000 |
It's the only structure you can see from space. 00:34:07.000 |
And basically it's just a tiny line. That's the only structure." 00:34:13.000 |
And then to completely miss the mountains that it is built on. 00:34:18.000 |
And you celebrate this tiny piece of line. It's the stone that the people put together. 00:34:24.000 |
And you climb up the mountain to see this and then completely miss the mountain. 00:34:35.000 |
You know, you go to New York and at one point Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world. 00:34:40.000 |
And people pay hundreds of dollars just to go on the elevator and go on the top and say, "This is tall." 00:34:47.000 |
And they celebrate. People pay hundreds of dollars. 00:34:51.000 |
And yet when they're up there, they look up at the sky and there's no end in God's creation. 00:35:00.000 |
You go to the Hoover Dam and you celebrate this Great Wall 00:35:04.000 |
to prevent this tons and tons of water that it holds back. 00:35:11.000 |
And instead of celebrating this creation, this magnitude of water that just sits behind this tiny little wall, 00:35:18.000 |
we come back amazed by the wall that the men created. 00:35:24.000 |
We naturally give credit to creation rather than the Creator. 00:35:35.000 |
We naturally, even when we talk about church growth, we can say, "God bless us, God bless us." 00:35:41.000 |
But then when you see the books being written, it's all about what men did and who did it. 00:35:46.000 |
What strategies did they use? How is the church organized? 00:35:52.000 |
And we give credit to man instead of the Creator. 00:35:56.000 |
So our confidence comes from man-made things. 00:36:00.000 |
If we're not careful, we're guilty of the exact same thing. 00:36:04.000 |
That we are overjoyed by the promises of men, but when we read the promises of God, it does nothing. 00:36:13.000 |
See, the Scripture says, "This is why the wrath of God is coming." 00:36:18.000 |
Why is God so offended by this? And why is this such a great sin? 00:36:27.000 |
What if somebody just came and, you know, like Picasso drew this painting, it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, 00:36:33.000 |
and somebody comes and says, "Nah, it's not Picasso." 00:36:39.000 |
That's His. He created that. And if you don't give Him the credit, you're robbing Him of His glory. 00:36:45.000 |
If we don't recognize that our very breath is from Him. 00:36:49.000 |
You know, we wake up, and again, even as Christians, we think, "God's shown me some kind of miracle." 00:36:54.000 |
We're waiting for God to walk on waters. We're waiting for God to stop the rain. 00:36:58.000 |
And we're waiting for some miraculous things to happen. 00:37:04.000 |
When he was resurrected, He said, "I'm not going to believe it until I see Him." 00:37:08.000 |
So Jesus shows up, allows Thomas to touch his scars, and He recognizes this is Jesus. 00:37:14.000 |
He falls to the ground, and He worships Him, "My Lord and my God." 00:37:17.000 |
Remember what Jesus says? Jesus doesn't say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." 00:37:22.000 |
"You believe because you saw. Blessed are those who do not see, and yet they believe." 00:37:29.000 |
For years, I had no idea what He was talking about. 00:37:35.000 |
Of course we would believe if we saw. If you would just reveal yourself. 00:37:39.000 |
If you would just show yourself. If you would just speak, and let me know. Make it clear. 00:37:46.000 |
And yet, the Scripture says that God has made it plain. 00:37:50.000 |
That it is not because God is playing hide and seek with us. 00:37:53.000 |
That He is hidden somewhere, and He's waiting for us to come out, figure it out, and then, "Oh, there He is!" 00:37:58.000 |
He said He has made it plain, but we have become so saturated with the thinking of this world, 00:38:10.000 |
We're standing at the Great Wall, looking at the vast mountain, and saying, "God, where are You?" 00:38:15.000 |
Wake up in the morning with breath in our nostrils again. 00:38:23.000 |
We're able to sleep. You see little children being born. 00:38:26.000 |
It's amazing. Anybody who's seen their child being born, it's amazing that they don't die. 00:38:31.000 |
I don't know about you, those of you parents, especially the young parents, 00:38:34.000 |
when they hand you your child for the first time, and you bring that child home, 00:38:38.000 |
it's amazing. Like, they're going to, you know what I mean? 00:38:41.000 |
I can't even handle a little puppy. You know what I mean? 00:38:45.000 |
I'm afraid that I'm not going to feed it. You know, I'm going to forget to feed it. 00:38:49.000 |
I'm going to forget to bring it. I mean, you bring a baby alive, and God gives me this life? 00:38:53.000 |
And we experience all of that, and we say, "Where are You, God?" 00:39:01.000 |
Because we completely miss it. We have a tendency to miss God. 00:39:06.000 |
And that's why the Scripture says, because mankind refused to give credit where credit is due. 00:39:13.000 |
And instead of worshiping Him and giving Him glory, we exchanged the glory of God for mankind. 00:39:18.000 |
We chose to celebrate idols. We choose to celebrate money. We choose to celebrate safety. 00:39:25.000 |
We choose to celebrate the promises given to us by this world, 00:39:29.000 |
and trivialize the things that God has given. 00:39:33.000 |
We celebrate the trivial things while trivializing our mighty God. 00:39:38.000 |
And that's why the Scripture says, "The wrath of God is being revealed." 00:39:43.000 |
Until we recognize that we are these people, there will be no repentance. 00:39:50.000 |
That it is a danger for us to read these Scriptures and say, "Oh, I'm glad. That's why they needed Jesus." 00:39:58.000 |
And then we're going to talk about the Jews, and that's why they needed Jesus. 00:40:04.000 |
The moment that we forget what it is that we have been saved from, we are also in danger to drift away. 00:40:12.000 |
I want to invite you guys this morning to take some time again to pray, and to ask yourself, 00:40:21.000 |
Do you celebrate the promises that your boss gives you, or your friends give you? 00:40:26.000 |
And you're so filled with thankfulness of somebody remembering your birthday. 00:40:32.000 |
And yet when it comes to the gift of salvation of Jesus Christ, it's kind of like, "Thank you. Thank you." 00:40:39.000 |
We say, "Thank you," but we don't worship Him. 00:40:43.000 |
We're bored with Him, because we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ. 00:40:49.000 |
We don't recognize who He is, and we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ. 00:40:55.000 |
Let's take some time to come before the Lord in prayer, that God would truly open our eyes. 00:41:01.000 |
That He would open our eyes and soften our hearts. 00:41:08.000 |
That we may worship Him in spirit and in truth. 00:41:11.000 |
As we ask our worship team to come up, take some time to, again, to pray. 00:41:16.000 |
And to see if you've climbed big hills to completely miss Him. 00:41:21.000 |
That you've been coming to church every single Sunday. 00:41:25.000 |
And you've been looking for human comfort, rather than God's. 00:41:29.000 |
You've been looking for human connection, human organization, human talent, human energy. 00:41:38.000 |
Let's take this time to come before the Lord. 00:41:40.000 |
And if we've been missing the point, to come before God and say, "Lord, open my eyes." 00:41:44.000 |
"That I may see the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ." 00:41:47.000 |
"That I may worship You in spirit and in truth." 00:41:49.000 |
So let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.