Gods at War - What Are You Worshipping?, Part 1

Let me ask you a question. What in your life are you really passionate about, maybe even a little obsessed over? Is it sports, current events, politics, maybe even an athlete or celebrity?

What is it that just gets you up in the morning and gets you so excited? Let me tell you that may say something about your inner life that you want to find out about. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the daily Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

I'm Dave Druey. We're so grateful you've joined us as we continue in our series Gods at War, taught by our guest teacher Kyle Eidelman. Now in these difficult times, Living on the Edge has made a commitment to turn to new teachers like Kyle for a fresh biblical perspective on the issues we're all facing. Our mission for Christians to live like Christians remains the same, whether it's through Chip's teaching or the occasional new voice. Now for those who don't know, Kyle Eidelman is a best-selling author, a notable speaker and a senior pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

And as Chip just teased over the next several programs, Kyle will be talking about the idea of idolatry and how it's impacting our everyday lives. So if you're ready, let's join Kyle for his message, What Are You Worshipping? A few months ago, my middle daughter Morgan memorized the Ten Commandments. She wanted to say them to me and so I laid down next to her in bed and she began to make her way through that list in Exodus chapter 20.

You still have no other gods before you. You shall not make yourself an idol in the form of anything and on down the list she went. And when she was finished telling me the Ten Commandments, I thought this is a pretty good teachable moment for me as a father to talk to her about sin because really this is why we have the law and the Ten Commandments is to reveal that we are sinners in need of a savior. And so I said to Morgan, I said, honey, have you ever broken one of the Ten Commandments? She kind of gave me her shy smile, reluctant to answer that question.

I kept probing. I said, honey, I've told some lies before. Have you ever told a lie?

She nodded. I said, have you ever not honored your mom and dad? We both knew the answer to that question. It's really more of a rhetorical question actually.

And we just kind of made our way through the list. I said, Morgan, have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever been jealous of what someone else had?

You coveted that? And she could see that this was not going well for her, right? I said, Morgan, I know you never murdered anyone, but have you ever hated someone because you were so angry with them?

And she was ready to put this trial to a stop. And so she said to me, dad, I know one commandment. I've never broken.

I've never made for myself an idol in the form of anything. I resisted the temptation to explain to her that this is the one commandment that all of us have broken more than any of the others. I chose not to quote the words of Martin Luther who said you can't break, you cannot break into the other commandments without first breaking this one.

Instead I smiled and kissed her goodnight, deciding to save that conversation for another time. Though as I walked down the steps, I began to wonder how many Christians, how many Christians would make the same assumption as my eight year old daughter? That if the Ten Commandments are a checklist for us, we tend to breathe a sigh of relief when we get to the one on idols.

At least we don't have to worry about that one. After all, we don't worship idols in our modern day civilization, do we? And as a result, this is a topic you rarely hear talked about in church. I mean, think back, when's the last time you heard a sermon on idolatry?

I don't know that I've ever really heard more than one or two, maybe around the Ten Commandments, but that's about it. Maybe now and then you'll hear that language when we talk about money, but it just doesn't seem to be that relevant of an issue, not for us today. I mean, after all, we don't worship images of stone and of wood. That was a primitive culture, not in our modern day civilization do we struggle with this. And yet here's what I want you to see today and in this series, that for most of us, idolatry is the issue.

It is the issue. It is the one thing that is keeping us from living the life God really wants us to live. We have these gods at war within us, and they are battling for who will sit on the throne of our hearts.

Oz Guinness explains it this way. He says idolatry is the most discussed problem in the Bible, and it's one of the most powerful spiritual and intellectual concepts in a believer's arsenal. Yet for Christians today, it's one of the least meaningful notions. There's more than a thousand references to idolatry in the Bible, but we kind of skip over it. But let me tell you something, in these last few months as I've studied this from Scripture, it has changed my faith. As I've begun to see my life and look at my things through the lens of idolatry, God has been, he's been changing my heart. And I hope that happens for some of you in this series, that as you become aware of the gods at war within you, that it will lead you to a deeper and fuller commitment in your relationship with Christ. My concern is that you will hear this and quickly dismiss it. I'm just somewhat amazed that I could be a Christian for several decades and never understand the significance of this.

So I want to spend a few minutes on it. There's many ways in which idolatry affects who we are. It affects our personalities.

It determines whether or not we live a joyful life. But certainly one of the areas it has the greatest impact on us is in our struggle with sin. And as a pastor, as you might guess, I oftentimes have people talk to me about the sin they're struggling with, and I'm struggling with my own sins. And here's the temptation. The temptation is to see the sin in someone's life and just kind of see it for what it is and say, you shouldn't do that, so stop sinning. But rarely do I talk to anyone who wants to be that person, who wants to sin. In fact, it's the opposite. They tend to be quite frustrated over the fact that they're doing this.

They don't even want to do it, so why are they doing it? Well, you scratch at that sin, and you keep scratching and you will find that underneath the sin is a false god. Behind every sin in your life and my life is a god that is winning the war.

And we see the sin as the fruit, but understand that the tree from which the fruit grows is always idolatry. And so a man is caught cheating on his income taxes. He faces a number of charges. Ironically, he doesn't even need the money.

He's a millionaire many times over. As I talk to him about it, he's confessional. He's broken. He knows it's a sin. He doesn't even understand why he did it.

He doesn't need the money. Why is he doing that? Why did he make that choice? Why did he sin in that way? It's because of idolatry. He worships money. He worships status. He worships possessions. Now he might not say that, but his actions give him away. We become what we worship.

It's an issue of idolatry. Until he gets that, until he understands that this is a god that's winning the war in his life, he's going to continue to struggle with this issue in one way or another. A man catches me, a young man catches me after the service, pulls me over to the side and for the first time he confesses to another person out loud his addiction to pornography. And he explains that he saw these images for the first time when he was 13 years old and he takes me on his downward spiral as now he spends countless hours and thousands of dollars to fulfill this desire. And as he talks to me, it's clear he doesn't want to do these things. It's not the person he wants to be. He's tried again and again to find victory in this area. He can't find victory in this area.

That's what he would say. And then he kind of tries to justify it and say, well, you know, here's the thing. I'm following Jesus in every other area. I'm doing okay with every other issue. It's just this one, it's just this one issue. What he has to understand is that this is the issue. Not the sexual sin per se, but it is the issue of who is really God in his life. And right now he's choosing. Will I worship God or will I worship sex?

A physical feeling. Will I worship the creator or will I worship the body he created? And at this point, almost every day, God the creator is being flicked off the throne of his heart so he can look at pictures of people without their clothes on. That's the choice he's making. I'm choosing to look at these images instead of choosing God.

I want this more than I want that. And until he understands it's idolatry, he will continue to struggle. Until he replaces the false God with the true God, he will not have victory in this area. I talked to a young man on the phone, getting ready to move in with a girlfriend. She's not a Christian. He is. I talked to him about this. He said, oh, it's not that big of a deal. God understands.

He knows I'm going to marry her. It's not that big of a deal. And I tried to explain to him it is a big deal. And it's not just because you're breaking a rule.

Please understand it's not the rule we're most concerned about. It's that you're choosing to worship something other than God. It's that you're saying she is my God instead of Yahweh is my God.

It's saying I'm going to worship this relationship instead of worship this relationship. It's an issue of idolatry. Do you see why this is such a life-changing truth? The Bible says the truth will set you free.

And I believe that for many people in their sin struggle, this is the truth that will free them. They have tried and tried and tried to be something and they haven't found victory. They don't like who they are. They don't want to do what they're doing. But until God alone sits on the throne of their heart, they will continue to struggle.

I will continue to struggle. Idolatry is the issue. It impacts not only who we are as sinners, but it impacts who we are as Christians who are joyful.

If you meet someone who's in the depths of despair on a continual basis, it's because they've allowed something to become more important to them than they should. People say that money is the number one problem in marriage. No, it's not. It's idolatry. Idolatry is the number one problem in marriage.

And so we're going to be talking about that. Idolatry is the issue and it was the issue in Joshua 24. Let me kind of paint a picture of what's happening in this chapter. Joshua at this point is 110 years old.

Okay, you got the picture? He's an elderly fellow and he has lived a pretty full and adventurous life. I mean, he was with Moses when they freed the people out of Egypt. He went through the Red Sea. He picked up the manna from heaven and he ate it. He watched the walls of Jericho fall as the general for the nation of Israel. He had led that nation into countless battles and now as this 110 year old man, he bears the scars. He stands in front of the nation of Israel, calls them together for what he assumes will be his final address to them.

And he stands in front of them. He clears his throat and here's what he says in Joshua 24 verses 14, 15. Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness and throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, well then you choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Joshua gives them basically four choices. You can worship the gods of your fathers from Mesopotamia. You can worship the gods of the Egyptians where you've been in slavery for 400 years. You can worship the gods of those whose land you are now living or option number four, you can worship the one true God. Here's the first thing I want you to see from our study and that is we are all worshipers. And as we talk about idolatry, this is a foundational truth that we have to understand that all of us are worshipers. Joshua doesn't give a fifth option. He doesn't say well, another choice would be that you don't worship anything at all.

It's not on the table. We are all worshipers. God hard wired it into our DNA and it's the one thing that's true of every culture and every civilization throughout all of history. If you were to visit, you would find that they worship a god or many gods. If you were to parachute into the deepest jungles of Africa, you would find that a tribe that's never been exposed to outside civilization or influence worships a god or many gods.

And you could jet into New York or into Paris among the world's elite and you would find that they worship a god. It might be the god of intellect or success or the god of power, but they worship. And some of you are like well, I'm not a Christian so I'm not a worshiper.

Yeah, you are. Everybody worships a god of some kind. And should you choose not to worship the one true God, then you by default, by default will worship what Tim Keller calls a god substitute.

You will put in your life some substitute for God and that is what you will worship. And that's what will have control over you. That's what will rule over you. That's what will have power over you.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft explains it this way. He says the opposite of theism or the opposite of belief and faith in God is not atheism. It is idolatry.

There's only two choices. You either worship God or you worship a god, a false god. And understand this and it's important as we study this is that a false god doesn't have to be something wrong or evil. In fact, oftentimes we turn God's good gifts to us into idols. But when a good thing becomes a God thing, then it's idolatry.

And so Joshua points this out. All of us are worshippers. The second thing that you notice in this is he gives them choices. And I want you to think through this for yourself. He says your choices are to worship essentially the gods of the Egyptians or the Amorites, the gods of the culture.

Here's what society values. That's one choice for your worship. The second choice he says you can worship the gods of your fathers.

And that's what many of us do. We worship the gods, the idols that our parents have handed down to us, right? I mean that's why you worship what you worship. You worship work, success, or power because your dad worshiped work, success, and power. You worship sports because your dad worshiped sports. You worshiped alcohol because your dad worshiped alcohol. You worship what other people think of you because your mom worshiped what other people thought of her. You worship your kids because your mom worshiped you when you were a kid. I mean this is what we do.

How about this one? You worship spiritual rules, religious rules, and traditions which can definitely be a false god because your parents worshiped religious rules and traditions. So this is what many of us choose to do. We just accept the idols that have been handed down to us from previous generations. And what I want to do is just spend a few minutes and together identify what are the gods at war within us.

Because most of us do a pretty poor job of diagnosing this. We tend to think and say what we know we should think and say. That God is the one true God. But I want us to identify just some gods that are warring within us, wanting to have the seed of glory in our lives.

And understand this. I'm going to ask you some questions. And these questions I think will reveal some things that will surprise you. But it doesn't necessarily mean you've made them idols.

But these gods certainly have the most potential in your life to become an idol. And I'm going to ask you some questions, some personal questions. You think through these. I've adapted these questions from Dr. David Paulson's work on the motivations of human behavior. So these questions I think will help reveal some of the gods in our lives.

Question number one. What are you disappointed with? What are you disappointed with?

Whenever we experience ongoing and overwhelming disappointment, it reveals that there's something in our life that's more important to us than it should be. And what are you disappointed with right now? Are you disappointed with your financial status?

Is that what it is? Are you disappointed with your marriage? Are you disappointed with your sex life? Are you disappointed with the home you live in? Are you disappointed with your children? Are you disappointed with your career? What are you disappointed with? Because that often reveals something that's become too important to us.

Let me ask you this way. What do you complain about? If I were to ask your spouse, your siblings, your parents, whatever, what does this person complain about? Whatever answer they give back to me tells me something about a god that is at war within you.

Question number two. What do you sacrifice your time and money for? In our text here, the word serve is used seven times in two verses. And in Joshua's day, the word serve carried with it the idea of sacrifice, of sacrificing time and sacrificing money or for them, you know, farm products and animal sacrifices. What is your day calendar and what does your checkbook say you worship?

Because it's often very revealing. That's why we consider offering here at church an act of worship. In some ways, it's the most tangible worship that we have in the service is when we say, God, I've got this value. I have this money that's a value to me.

I'd like to do this with it and this with it and this with it and I could do this with it, but instead I give it to you because you are what matters most. Question number three. What do you worry about?

Let me put it this way. What are you most afraid of? Psychologist Alfred Adler, who is not a Christian, he says, if you want to understand what someone is living for, don't ask them because people don't give you the straight answer because oftentimes they don't even realize it. He said if you want to know what someone is living for, ask them, ask them what is your nightmare? What's your nightmare?

What are you most afraid of? I will show you something that has the potential to be a God in your life. You've been listening to the first part of our guest teacher, Kyle Eidelman's message. What are you worshiping from his series, Gods at War?

Chip will join us shortly to share some additional thoughts and application to what we've heard. When you hear the word idol, you probably picture those big stone figures that people worshiped centuries ago, but did you know that while most people don't bow down to man-made statues anymore, we all worship something? In this series, our guest teacher, Kyle Eidelman, reveals the subtle nature of idolatry and just how rampant it is in our lives, oftentimes without us even realizing it. He unpacks the ways we've put money, pleasure, achievements, careers, even our families in place of God, and how we've allowed those false gods to satisfy, control, and define us. Well, stay with us as Kyle exposes the idols we're holding onto and challenges us to take radical steps to get back to worshiping the one true God. To learn more about this series, Gods at War, feeding the idols that battle for your heart, go to livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003.

App listeners, tap special offers. Chip, I'm really excited for our listeners to hear this series from Kyle Eidelman. It really hits a nerve in an area we don't hear a lot about. Now, in our last program, you sat down with Kyle to hear his story and help us get to know him better. So right now, would you talk about why you wanted to share this series? What do you want our listeners to walk away with? Well, I have to tell you that I'm always on the lookout for men and women of God that the Lord has his hands on and is speaking something into where we are as a culture. And I actually read the book Gods at War a number of years ago. And I remember thinking I had never read anything that struck a chord in my heart that revealed some things that had insights, things that I never even thought about, that idolatry was at the root of so many of the issues where we tend to focus on, you know, how do I overcome this sin or that sin? And I just thought with all that's happening in the world and spending some time with Kyle, I thought I longed for people to stop sort of aiming at the negative fruit and the struggles in their life and get to the root to realize there's some idols that need to be dethroned so Jesus can give us the joy and the peace and the freedom that he longs for us to have. As I have listened to this teaching, it has deeply impacted me.

And I think you're in for a real treat and also in for some real great encouragement from God. Thanks for that, Chip. Well, we hope you'll make plans to be with us for the remainder of this series.

And if you happen to miss a program, you can always listen on the Chip Engram app or at livingontheedge.org. Chip, before we hear your application for this message, I can see you're wanting to jump back in here and talk a little bit more about the resource we have for this series. So share with us, if you will, what it's meant to you. You know, every year I think about what does God want for me? So now it's 2022. And as I think about what I want God to do in my life, there's a book that has had a huge impact in my life in the past.

And as I've done a little review, I realize that I think it needs to have impact in 2022. And the book is called Gods at War by Kyle Eidelman, Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart. And with all the junk that has happened in the last 18 to 24 months, I just kind of want to get right spiritually. I want to go back to the baseline. I just want to say, okay, Lord, if there's idols in my life and I know they just creep up, this is what I want to do. And so I would encourage you, if you're thinking about, you know, how do I get on track for 2022?

How do I set a new baseline? What's a book that I could read with my wife or with a friend or accountability partner? Or maybe just privately to sort of say, Lord, I want to be your man.

I want to be your woman. I really want to do a deep dive with you, God, Holy Spirit. Let me recommend Gods at War by Kyle Eidelman. I think it would be a great investment of your time and set your course for 2022 exactly where the Lord would have it. Well, if you've been moved by what Kyle's been teaching in this series, let me encourage you to get this book. It'll take you deeper into the subtle dangers of idolatry and push you to consider what needs to change in your life. To order your copy of Gods at War, Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart, visit livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or go to livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap special offers. As we wrap up today's message, I'd like you to pause and let me ask you to really think with what Kyle was talking about today. You are a worshiper. I am a worshiper. We're going to worship something or someone. It's in our DNA.

God made us to be worshipers. And I loved how he ended today's message. You know, what deeply disappoints you? What really makes you angry? What is it that you just feel so passionate about? What is it that controls you? What do you worry about?

Or that last one, he says, what would be your worst nightmare? And what I think he's done is help all of us realize that even good things, that was another line I liked, even good things when they get in the wrong place, when they become more important, when they become an end instead of a means, can become an idol in our lives. And let me ask you, just as you listen today, just to be open. I'm not asking for a knee-jerk reaction or, you know, we're starting a new year and I want my life to be better and greater.

And you know what? Just let's ease into this. Let God speak to you. Sit quietly after today's program if at all possible and pray a very simple prayer. Lord, if there's any idols in my life, maybe a better prayer is, would you show me the idols creeping into my life?

Idols are just things that happen to all of us as followers of Jesus. And we just have to do an inventory. You know, it's kind of like your closet. You know, you clean it out and over time it just gets cluttered.

It's what happens to all of us. So as we start this series, I want you just to have an openness to say, Lord, speak to me. Show me. And let me encourage you, stay with us on this series. Just before we close, I want to thank each of you who's making this program possible through your generous giving. 100% of your gifts are going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians. Now, if you found this teaching helpful but you're not yet on the team, would you consider doing that today? To donate, just go to LivingOnTheEdge.org tap donate on the app or give us a call at 888-333-6003. And let me thank you in advance for whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, until next time, for everyone here, this is Dave Drouy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.