How Does God’s Forgiveness Free Us from Idols?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We are joined one last time by Dr. Richard Lentz,
00:00:08.420 | who serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs
00:00:11.100 | and the Dean of the main campus
00:00:12.520 | of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary,
00:00:15.000 | which is just north of Boston.
00:00:16.340 | Dr. Lentz is also the author of a fascinating book
00:00:18.820 | that releases this winter.
00:00:19.940 | It's titled Identity and Idolatry,
00:00:22.200 | the Image of God and Its Inversion.
00:00:24.420 | I want to turn and close this week,
00:00:27.080 | this fruitful week, with the gospel.
00:00:29.060 | But you mentioned busyness earlier in the week,
00:00:31.480 | and I want to go back to that.
00:00:32.520 | How does idolatry breed busyness?
00:00:36.560 | - I think busyness is a contemporary idol.
00:00:39.320 | I'm not sure it was an idol in an earlier time.
00:00:42.020 | You might say sloth was an idol of an earlier age,
00:00:47.000 | although I don't want to deny that there are,
00:00:50.700 | there's this curious contradiction in modern life
00:00:53.600 | between busyness and sloth called entertainment.
00:00:57.400 | And yet the circumstances of our lives in the West,
00:01:02.240 | outside of some smaller community,
00:01:04.880 | so I don't want to, again, overgeneralize
00:01:07.560 | that all communities and all cultural contexts of our time
00:01:11.600 | are saturated with busyness.
00:01:14.140 | But I would say it is the dominant motif for most people,
00:01:19.140 | that we have a sense of too many things
00:01:24.560 | taking place in our lives,
00:01:25.800 | and if we could just slow down one sign of this
00:01:30.240 | in religious circles of all theological traditions
00:01:34.080 | is the move towards what we might call spiritual formation,
00:01:38.040 | towards remembering Sabbath, the rest,
00:01:42.280 | slowing down, becoming a spiritual discipline.
00:01:45.480 | That kind of movement, if you will,
00:01:49.240 | is, it seems to me, just a response,
00:01:51.840 | sometimes a good one, sometimes not,
00:01:54.360 | a response to being overwhelmingly busy.
00:01:57.920 | Now, busyness, again, is both a blessing and a curse.
00:02:02.480 | Sometimes when you're busy, you actually accomplish much,
00:02:05.000 | and we are called to do, we are called to be creatures
00:02:08.760 | who accomplish tasks.
00:02:11.100 | We are not simply called to navel gaze in creation.
00:02:16.100 | We are given mandates to be stewards of the created order.
00:02:22.760 | So we are called to do, called to be active in that sense.
00:02:26.960 | But there's a sense in which busyness
00:02:28.680 | is different than accomplishment,
00:02:31.320 | and busyness is living, I think, on the surface of life,
00:02:35.680 | feeling like we are so far into the weeds of minutiae
00:02:40.680 | and small details that we never really tackle
00:02:46.960 | the big issues of life.
00:02:49.800 | Sometimes we experience, I shouldn't say,
00:02:52.560 | sometimes mostly we experience our schedule
00:02:56.520 | as our master rather than vice versa.
00:02:59.880 | That itself is just that indicator.
00:03:02.660 | A parent of young children has so many things to do in life
00:03:07.660 | that probably aren't that important,
00:03:09.240 | but they end up feeling like they have to do them.
00:03:11.600 | They have to get them to the sports,
00:03:14.480 | they have to get them to the music lessons,
00:03:17.080 | they have to get them to,
00:03:18.360 | and they're living constantly in the car,
00:03:20.280 | they're constantly going from activity A to activity B,
00:03:23.840 | and they feel overwhelmed,
00:03:25.960 | and yet they can't get out of it.
00:03:27.560 | Again, I wanna be careful to suppose
00:03:29.880 | that there's something fundamentally evil
00:03:32.360 | about playing sports or engaging in music lessons.
00:03:37.360 | But it's that desire to have everything for one's child
00:03:43.640 | that leads to this sense of never really having
00:03:48.040 | anything of significance.
00:03:49.680 | And so we're so busy we can't get
00:03:52.560 | under the surface of our lives.
00:03:55.040 | - Yeah, well, our time has been rich,
00:03:56.760 | but it comes to a close.
00:03:58.620 | As we go out, how does the gospel of the glory
00:04:01.400 | of Jesus Christ combat the work of idolatry in our souls
00:04:04.880 | and reshape our identity and truly satisfy our souls?
00:04:08.680 | How does that work?
00:04:10.200 | - Yeah, so the two parts to it.
00:04:12.440 | So we're going from Genesis to Pentecost, if you will,
00:04:18.280 | having spent most of our time in the golden calf narrative
00:04:23.280 | here in the conversation that is on idolatry,
00:04:26.800 | we need to be reminded that we are created
00:04:30.320 | by a God who grants significance and safety,
00:04:35.320 | that we are created to yearn for it,
00:04:38.120 | to look for it, to desire it,
00:04:41.460 | and that it's found in our Creator,
00:04:44.720 | a God who is deeply good, generous, gracious, just,
00:04:49.720 | all that which satisfies us is found in him.
00:04:56.000 | Brokenness, then, is simply the story of looking
00:04:59.460 | for that significance and safety somewhere else.
00:05:03.160 | The gospel, if you will, then is God's response
00:05:08.160 | to our brokenness and our yearning
00:05:12.280 | for significance and safety.
00:05:14.160 | So the gospel is the storyline that takes us
00:05:19.160 | into this, not simply a return to Genesis,
00:05:25.080 | not simply a return to the original state,
00:05:28.840 | but now runs us through the narrative
00:05:33.080 | of forgiveness, of grace,
00:05:35.720 | and therein lies the deeply satisfying character
00:05:40.720 | of the gospel.
00:05:42.000 | That is to say, it's not simply saying,
00:05:44.360 | this is the way to find safety and security,
00:05:48.440 | but actually that safety and security
00:05:51.560 | are now matters of grace,
00:05:54.320 | matters of God's generosity in a broken world.
00:05:58.920 | And so it is deeper, it is richer
00:06:02.520 | than it was even in Genesis,
00:06:05.060 | by virtue of the fact that it overcomes our idolatries.
00:06:10.040 | It doesn't simply break the power of our idols,
00:06:13.240 | it does, in part, but the dynamic of forgiveness
00:06:18.000 | is itself an experience richer than we would have known
00:06:23.000 | had we not been broken and idolatrous.
00:06:27.160 | There's something deeply satisfying
00:06:30.520 | about forgiveness in the human soul.
00:06:33.840 | Most of us know the experience of being forgiven,
00:06:39.200 | it being a strange experience
00:06:41.520 | that's somehow deeply satisfying.
00:06:43.880 | We don't want to seek it,
00:06:47.080 | we're afraid of being ashamed to admitting something wrong.
00:06:52.080 | So when we've had a argument with a co-worker
00:06:56.640 | or with our spouse,
00:06:59.120 | our first intuition is never to admit fault,
00:07:03.040 | but somehow, some way, when by God's grace,
00:07:07.200 | we ask for forgiveness, and it's actually granted,
00:07:11.560 | there is nothing like that experience that satisfies us.
00:07:16.240 | It is just deeply, emotionally healthy.
00:07:21.240 | And so here is the gospel, if you will,
00:07:24.720 | that God's forgiveness is made known
00:07:27.880 | in the midst of our idols,
00:07:30.080 | and therefore, out of His grace,
00:07:32.700 | the idols become less and less powerful in our lives.
00:07:37.180 | - Amen, beautiful.
00:07:38.340 | Thank you, Dr. Lentz, our guest on the podcast this week,
00:07:41.660 | and the author of a forthcoming book
00:07:43.140 | titled "Identity and Idolatry."
00:07:45.460 | This has been a wonderful week,
00:07:46.660 | and this is the hope that we have in the digital age,
00:07:50.300 | that our eyes are so easily lured to idols, yes,
00:07:54.340 | but the glory of Jesus Christ is power
00:07:56.500 | to transform our hearts and to loosen our hearts
00:07:58.700 | from the idol-proneness that we see inside of us.
00:08:02.380 | We've talked a lot about how, as followers of Christ,
00:08:05.300 | it is the glory of Jesus that shapes our identity,
00:08:08.180 | and we've seen that in passages
00:08:09.500 | like 2 Corinthians 3:18, 2 Corinthians 4, verse four,
00:08:14.500 | and for more on how this works,
00:08:16.220 | see the following episodes in the APJ series.
00:08:19.140 | See our episode with Paul Tripp titled
00:08:21.100 | "Life is One Big Glory War," episode number 619.
00:08:25.140 | See also "The Transforming Power of Christ's Glory,"
00:08:29.060 | an episode we recorded with Michael Reeves.
00:08:31.420 | It's episode number 379.
00:08:34.180 | And maybe right now you feel stuck in sin,
00:08:36.760 | and you feel like the idols of your life
00:08:38.660 | are looming large right now.
00:08:40.780 | See episode number 477 with Pastor John.
00:08:43.700 | It's titled "A Prayer for Those Who Are Stuck in Sin."
00:08:47.060 | This has been a rich, rich week with Dr. Lentz,
00:08:49.540 | and if you missed any of our five episodes with him,
00:08:51.740 | you can catch up on our mobile apps
00:08:53.480 | or by going to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:58.480 | I'm your host Tony Ranke.
00:09:00.300 | I'll see you on Monday.
00:09:02.240 | (upbeat music)
00:09:04.820 | (upbeat music)
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