What we're afraid of, we come up with a God to take care of. Israel created this image because the promises of an invisible God were not enough for them at this point. Not when there were real needs and real enemies to be met. Counterfeit gods always grow out of distrust. Those places where we feel like we need something beyond God and His promises.
Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with Pastor J.D. Greer. You know, we love hearing from listeners all around the world and we'd love to hear from you. Has this podcast impacted your life in any way? Has Summit Life become a trusted source of spiritual encouragement for you?
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Let's jump into the book of Exodus together. Here's Pastor JD. If you got your Bible this weekend, I want you to take it out and open it to the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 20, where we find a record of the Ten Commandments. Exodus chapter 20, this is the second week of our series called Not God Enough. The first week of our series, last weekend, I explained that most Americans prefer a God who is small and manageable, a God that we can understand, a God we can predict and control, a God that I said is basically just a slightly bigger, slightly smarter version of us.
But I showed you last weekend that this is just not the God that we encounter in the Bible.
Furthermore, such a God could never sustain our faith. Such a God could never answer our deepest questions or encompass life's mysteries. And that kind of God could never give us hope during the trials that we face.
Well, in the second week, I want to discuss another dimension of this, and that is, I would say, the particularly American idea that if we don't like something about God, that we are free to simply reshape. Shape him or edit him into a form that we do like. We like to see God as a salad bar where we can take the parts of him that appeal to us and leave the ones that we don't, or build a bear God where we are free to assemble the deity that makes us feel most warm and snugly at night. One of the stories that I tell in the book is of a talk show that I was watching several years ago where there were two people on this talk show. It wasn't a Christian talk show, but.
These two Christians on there that were debating some moral issue. And one of them, to her credit, was trying to show what the Bible said. And the other one, also claiming to be a Christian, he kept interrupting her and saying, oh, but my Jesus would never say that. My Jesus would never do this. My Jesus would never say this.
And finally, this first woman who was using the Bible, exasperated, looks back at this other guy and says, You don't get your own personal Jesus. That is the kind of the idea that we're talking about. You don't get your own personal Jesus. This tendency that we have to reimagine God in a form that is more appealing to us is not a uniquely American problem, of course. We Americans may have perfected it.
But that... tendency was so common that the second commandment of God's big 10, his big 10 commandments, was explicitly about this. Incidentally, we will also see this is the first commandment that Israel broke after receiving the commandments. Literally, while Moses is getting the commandments, before the concrete is even dry on the stones, Israel is breaking this commandment. The second commandment that I'm talking about, it reads like this: you shall not make for yourselves a carved image.
Why? Because I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. The key word in this commandment is the word image. It is talking about adding an image to God, a shape to God, a description to God that God has not given to himself. People sometimes read this commandment and they assume that it is just a restatement of the first commandment.
The first commandment, the previous verse, verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. And they think, well, okay, what he's saying is have no other gods and also don't make any graven images. It is true there is indeed some overlap between the two commandments, but there's also an important shade of difference. The first commandment focuses on worshiping the wrong gods. The second commandment is about worshiping the right God, but in the wrong ways.
We violate the second commandment when we add something to God, some image, some characteristic, some attribute, some description that goes beyond or contrary to what God tells us about Himself in His Word. You see, we might also be tempted when we read this command to think, well, I think I'm clear on this one. I don't really own any graven images. I don't have any gold statues at my house that I bow down to. My kids have some Superman figurines or some Barbie dolls, but I don't really worship them.
So I think that I'm clear on this one. But not so fast. We break this command, not by worshiping gold statues. We break this command whenever we assign to God a form or an attribute. That God did not give to himself.
If you're taking notes, you want to write stuff down, write this down. We break this commandment whenever we define God as we want him to be rather than as he actually is. We break this commandment whenever we define God in our hearts and minds as we want him to be rather than as he is, or when we elevate our preferences about God above God's statements about himself. And again, I would suggest to you that there is probably no command in scripture that we as Americans more consistently and routinely break than this one. It comes out in statements like this: the way that I see God is, dot, dot, dot, or, or I don't think God would really have a problem with you fill in the blank, or I prefer to think of God as, and, you know, dot, dot, dot, after that.
I mean, honestly, y'all, no offense, but what does that even mean? Who cares how you prefer to see God? I mean, ironically, one of the best mockeries of this is that scene in that great theological movie, Talladega Nights. Where Will Farrell and that other guy, whose name I can't remember, go on this rampage about how they like to see Jesus. You remember that scene?
I think Will Farrell starts it off by saying, I like Christmas baby Jesus best, so that's who I pray to. Eight pounds, six ounce, baby Jesus, all snugly there in your diapers in your crib, yet still omnipotent. And then the other guy breaks in. He's like, well, I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt because it says, I want to be formal, but I'm also here to party because I like to party. And so I like to think of my Jesus as liking the party too.
He goes on, or I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He comes out wearing a little white outfit and he does interpretive ice dances that somehow represent my life's journey. Y'all, even Hollywood seems to recognize that picking out one angle on Jesus and saying that is how you like to see him is ridiculous. And folks, I'll just tell you: when Will Farrell mocks the inconsistencies in your theology, that's a problem. The bottom line, the bottom line is this: it does not matter how you and I like to see God.
God is who He is. And when God appeared to Moses, Moses asked him, What is your name? God did not say, Moses, I will be whoever you need me to be. He said to Moses, I am who I am. Notice in verses 4 and 5 in this command.
That God equates adding an image to him, adding a description to him that he doesn't give to himself. He equates that with hating him, hating him. It's hating him because you're basically saying, God, I don't like the real you. God, I need you to be this other thing in order for me to really love you and desire you. That's not hard to get your mind around, right?
I mean, ladies, imagine if your husband found out that routinely you told your set of girlfriends something like: I like to see my husband as a six-foot-four jack from This Is Us. He loves to lift weights and he has a passion for Victorian-era romance novels. And his perfect idea of a date night is perusing the aisles at Target with me. You keep repeating that to your girlfriends, your real husband, who is probably more like 5'6 Terry, who works in IT, wears penny loafers, and likes fantasy football. That guy might get upset.
And he probably has a right to ask you why you have to reimagine him as somebody else in order for you to love him. It is an insult to God when we have to reshape God into something else in order to love him or desire him. I've got a litmus test that can help you determine whether or not you're actually doing this. One question you can ask yourself that'll help you see if you are guilty of this. Here's a question: How often does your God contradict you, confuse you?
or make you mad. I mean, currently, how often, how routinely does your God confuse you, contradict you, and make you mad? Because here's the thing: if your God is not routinely contradicting you, making you mad, and confusing you, chances are you're not really letting God be God. You're just reimagining him as you would want him to be. Because, see, anytime you're in a relationship with a real person, they are going to confuse and contradict you.
It is why our first years of marriage are often so difficult. Amen? Right? That's why when people ask me, it's why when people ask me how long I've been married, I always tell them I've been married for 16 wonderful years. and two other ones for a grand total of 18.
Because when you start to date somebody, psychologists tell us that you get to know a part of them, a part of them you like, a part of them you're attracted to, and so you keep dating them. But what happens in the dating stage is you fill in all the gaps of what you don't know about them with what you want them to be. And that all gets shattered in the first six months of marriage, right? Which is why I've heard it said, and you've probably heard this too, that love is a dream and marriage is the alarm clock. Because suddenly you're awakened to a real relationship with a real person.
And real people and real relationships do things that surprise us and contradict us. Y'all, if it's that way with another human being, how much more so would it be with an almighty, all-holy, all-wise God? Do we really suppose that God is just a bigger reflection of ourselves who is just here to like what we like and affirm what we affirm? Who every time we post something on Facebook just hits the like button and says, Oh, I like that too? Karl Barth, the German theologian, he used to say, If God never, if your God never contradicts us or makes you mad, then you're likely not worshiping Him, you're just worshiping a reflection of yourself.
As I mentioned, we Americans might be the worst at this because we Americans assume that we are at such an advanced moral stage that if there is a God, well, of course, he's going to see things like we do, and of course he's going to like what we like, us in our enlightened state. Y'all, but why would we assume we're at a place where we don't need correction? and that everything in us that feels right actually is right. I mean, we know that wasn't true of previous generations, right? We know, for example, that it felt right to some of our grandparents that the races be kept separate.
I mean, you may have heard them say something like that.
Well, it just doesn't feel right that we're all together. And we say, well, it doesn't matter how you feel, that wasn't right. It feels right in certain cultures for women to not get educated and to be kept in the home. And we say to them, that may feel right to you, but that is wrong. In the Viking days, we know that they conducted honor killings because it felt like the only way to even the score if somebody insulted you.
And today we say, well, yeah, you felt like that was right, but it wasn't right, it was wrong. Why then do we assume that we're the first generation in history whose instincts are 100% reliable? Honestly, y'all, do you think that 100 years from now, our great-grandchildren are going to be looking back at us and just admiring what an advanced moral stage that we had gotten to in our era? I mean, think about how you talk about your great-grandparents. I'm sure you feel some sense of kinship and love to them, but you also say things like: man, I can't believe that they thought that.
I can't believe they did that. How'd they go along with that? How did they not see that blind spot?
So do we think that 100 years from now our great grandchildren are not going to be doing the same thing to us, that we're the first generation in awe in history where all future generations will look back and admire us for our moral foresight? I've told you before, the Bible offends every culture. in every generation, usually in different ways. I think I've told you before that one of the most fascinating things or interesting things to me was when I lived overseas in a Muslim culture. observing where the Bible offended them.
I mean, the Bible really offended them, but in totally different places, it offended the American culture I grew up in. I'd read to them the story in John 8, where Jesus forgives the woman that has been caught in adultery. And I'm telling y'all, they were legitimately scandalized by that story. They were like, you can't do that. I mean, maybe not kill her, but you got to do some kind of punishment because if adultery doesn't have consequences, then the whole fabric of society will unravel.
They were genuinely offended by that.
Now, when I tell that story to Americans, I don't know if nobody ever gets offended. We kind of shake our heads and say, Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. A God of forgiveness. But we get offended by the Bible's sexual ethics.
So, why do we assume that everybody else's instincts need to be corrected, but not ours? The Bible is an equal opportunity offender, and that is what you would expect from a Bible that really is the Word of God if we are a fallen people. You see, as Americans, the Bible confronts both sides of our cultural divide. On the one side, it confronts our nationalism and our pride, and on the other side, it confronts our craving for moral and sexual autonomy. In other words, the Bible offends both the conservative and the liberal just in different places.
And in order for you to really know God, regardless of your background, you've got to be willing for God to say some things to you that you don't want to hear. And if your God is not saying things to you that you don't want to hear, you're not worshiping God, you're worshiping a figment of your imagination. Only then, when you are open to a God saying things to you that you don't want to hear, only then will you be able to hear from Him the things you desperately do want to hear. And I'll explain to you what I mean by that toward the end.
Well, like I mentioned, this was the first commandment that the children of Israel broke.
So, I want to walk you through that story of where they broke this commandment because it will give you insight into where the temptation to distort God comes from. And then it'll also show you the spiritual damage that distorting God causes in you and then also in your children, as the commandment says, and your children's children. Exodus 32.
So, leave you there at Exodus 20, go 12 chapters to the right there in your Bible to Exodus 32. As you're turning there, I will tell you: this is, you may recognize this, a passage that we went through just a few weeks ago. But a few weeks ago, we looked at Moses' prayer in this passage as a demonstration. Of how we should pray. This week we're going to go through the same passage, but take a totally different angle on it.
And we're going to focus not on Moses' prayer, but on the nature of the sin of the people. Chapter 32, verse 1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and they said to Aaron, Up, make us gods who shall go before us. Because as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.
Now, if you weren't here a few weeks ago, here's the Cliff Notes version of the story. Moses had gone up into Mount Sinai to be with God and to receive the Ten Commandments.
Well, Moses ends up being gone a little bit longer than he had planned on. He's a few days tardy on his return, and so everybody freaks out. thinking that God and Moses had abandoned them. Which I told you a few weeks ago was totally insane when you consider all that God had done literally in the previous month to bring them to this point. God had delivered them miraculously from the most powerful empire in the world through 10 supernatural plagues.
And then just as a little finishing touch, as they're marching out, he moves inexplicably in the hearts of the Egyptians to take off all their jewelry and to go out and hand it to the Israelites so that they can leave flesh with gold. Then God leads Israel every day with a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night.
Sometimes you're like, well, how do I know the presence of God is with me? They literally could see it, a pillar of cloud and pillar of fire. Then he splits the Red Sea in half so they can walk through on dry ground and then closes it behind them so that the Egyptian army can't follow. And then he miraculously supplies them day by day in the desert with meat and with food and with drink. This all happened in the month leading up to Exodus 32.
But now, They think that God has abandoned them because Moses is a few days tardy. Verse 2.
So Aaron. Who was Moses' brother, the associate pastor, a campus pastor of Israel, you might say, said to them. Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives. Where did they get those rings of gold? That was the gift from the Egyptians.
And out of your sons' ears, which evidently they were wearing earrings too, and your daughters, and bring them to me. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made proclamation and said, Tomorrow, Shall be a feast to To who? To the Lord.
That's a very important thing to see. Because what you see in him saying that is it's not like they'd switch teams altogether. They were still trying to worship the Lord. In fact, the bull was something God had told them to use to sacrifice and worship to Him. The bull represented the part of God that they felt like they needed most right then.
You see, the ancient peoples, the bull represented strength, and that's what the Israelites most wanted right then in that moment.
So they were attempting to reshape God into a form that guaranteed to them that sense of power and protection that they craved. You see, that's what graven images, or that's what counterfeit gods almost always do. They elevate one attribute of God that we're attracted to above all the other attributes of God.
So, verse 5: Aaron makes the calf and he declares a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. Those are the very offerings that God had instructed them to give to him.
So, again, they haven't gotten into a brand new religion. This is just a new and improved version of their religion. When the people sat down to eat and drink, and then they rose up to play. The word play there in Hebrew has clear sexual connotations. After this new and improved worship approach, in other words, they all got hammered and then got jiggy with it, I guess you would say.
And that is not typically how God prefers for his worship services to end. I mean, anytime a service here at the worship at the summit church ends with a bunch of people with their clothes off, I can assure you things did not go according to plan.
So it's not going well.
So God tells Moses, verse 7: Moses, you better get down there. You better get down there. The people have corrupted themselves. Verse 19, we'll skip Moses' prayer that he prays there. Verse 19: As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses' anger burned hot.
One of my friends pointed out last night that this is like Veronica. When she sees me dancing, her anger burns hot, but for different reasons. I'm just embarrassing her, and so she tells me to stop. But Moses gets mad because he knows what they're doing, and he throws the tablets out of his hands and breaks them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire, and then he put it in his Vitamix and ground it to powder, and he scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
It was a false God's smoothie. Then, Then, y'all, in one of truly my favorite scenes in the Old Testament, Moses then turns to Aaron and says, Aaron, what have you done? And Aaron said, Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Let not the anger of my Lord burn high. You know the people.
You know the people. Moses is like, Yep, I know the people. And Aaron's like, Yeah, we know the people. that they are set on evil. And they said to me, And what could I do?
Make us gods who shall go up before us. There's a lot of them, not many of me. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what's become of him. By the way, that's what they call passive aggressiveness right there. You see what he's doing?
He's blaming Moses.
Well, you weren't here. You know, you were supposed to be back here and you weren't here. And so you relate.
So, what was I supposed to do, Moses? Not my fault. Keep going.
So I said to them, Let any who have gold take it off.
So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire. This is the best part. I threw it into the fire. How came this calf? I mean seriously y'all, is Aaron in middle school?
I just threw it into the fire and boom. What could I do, Moses? I had to worship it, and we had to worship it. There was no other alternative. You see the difficult situation I was in, Moses.
You were late, threw the gold in, out came the cap. What else could I do? I've heard some really dumb excuses for bad behavior in my life. Y'all remember a few years ago when Winona Ryder got caught shoplifting? You remember that debacle?
And you remember how she was like, Well, my producer of my next movie told me I needed to get some practice shoplifting so I'd act it out more naturally in the part I'm going to play. That's why I did it. And you're like, that's a dumb excuse. I read this week about one Canadian woman. I kid you not, this is legit.
One Canadian woman who got pulled over for drunk driving, and the officer pointed out that she was so drunk that she was seeing double. And she said, well, it's okay because I was driving with one eye shut, so I would only be seeing single. Uh I kid you not. That's a dumb excuse, but I'm telling you, this excuse by Aaron ranks among the dumbest. Anyway, this whole terrible story, this whole debacle, what it reveals to us, the reason that it's in Scripture, is it reveals to us three genuine truths, I believe, about counterfeit gods.
Three genuine truths about graven images. Number one. All we see from this story is that counterfeit gods. almost always correspond to our fears. What we're afraid of, we come up with a God to take care of.
Israel created this image because the promises of an invisible God were not enough for them at this point. Not when there were real needs and real enemies to be met, and they felt like they needed something more than an invisible God and his promises to protect them. Counterfeit gods always grow out of distrust, those places where we feel like we need something beyond God and His promises.
So what we do is we reconstruct God in a way that guarantees he will give to us those very things. You get that? I feel like it's a tad bit deep. But what happens is you feel like you feel like, God, I'm not sure, I need this thing. And I'm not sure you're going to give it to me, or you're not giving it to me.
So instead of walking away from you altogether, I'm just going to reshape you so that you guarantee to give me the thing that I want in the first place. By the way, this is how the first and second commandment are interrelated. The first commandment, you should have no other gods. When you break that one, when you say, Well, God, I've got to have this also. You and your promises are not enough.
I don't trust you enough. I've also got to have this.
So rather than just walking away from God altogether, you don't wanna leave him behind. You say, well, I don't wanna leave you behind.
So what I'll do is I'll just reshape you into a form that guarantees you'll give me the thing that I need or want. For example, We feel like we have to have money and prosperity to be happy.
So we invent a God that will guarantee those things to us. This is literally called the prosperity gospel, and it leads to books like Your Best Life Now. Or we like to see ourselves as good people, better than other people.
So what do we do? We invent a God who is angrier at the kinds of sins that other people struggle with more than he is the kinds of sin that we struggle with. This is the counterfeit God of a lot of conservative cultural Christians. Or, for example, we really need family stability to be happy.
So we invent a God who guarantees family stability, and we get angry at God if he lets something go wrong. Or we want to have unchallenged sexual freedom.
so that we can do anything and everything that we want so long as it doesn't hurt anybody.
So we invent a permissive God who is okay with that, and then we write angry blogs about how evangelical Christianity wronged us when God wouldn't let us have those things. This is the God of liberalism. Or I've known people who really wanted, for example, to be out of their marriage. And so they invented a God who was okay with that. Even though it went against what God's word says.
Y'all, yes, I understand. There are places and times that the Bible indicates divorce is an acceptable choice, and I know it's a complex question. But I'll tell you, in my experience, a lot of people aren't concerned about what the Bible actually says at all. All they're looking for is a God who will justify what they've already made up their mind to do in the first place. At Summit Life, our mission is simple but profound, to take people deeper into the gospel and to advance it wider across the world.
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So this week, just for fun, I made a list of all the ways over the years that I have reshaped God to guarantee that he will give me something that I wanted. I call this list who God should be according to JD. And this list reads something like this. If I obey God, nothing bad will ever happen to my family, and my church will always prosper and succeed. That's kind of God's reward for me doing the right thing.
If I tithe, if I tithe, God will always reward me by making me so flush with cash that I can still afford all the nice things I wanted to have anyway. Or, how about this one? If I'm a good pastor, God will make it so that people will always respect me and like me. That's just part of the package. I'm a good pastor, people will love me and respect me.
I'll never get slandered or falsely accused of anything. Even though that happened to Jesus, it's not going to happen to me. If I pray for my kids, God guarantees they will grow up and love Jesus and marry great spouses who love Jesus and make lots of money. That's just part of the package, right, God? Or how about this one?
God will make sure that every person who's invented a computer virus that affected my computer will catch a real virus and die a slow, painful death, right? This is God according to JD. The tragedy with these counterfeit gods, y'all, is that when God doesn't do one of those things. When he doesn't do one of those things, we complain that God isn't keeping up his end of the bargain. And maybe we even begin to suppose that he doesn't exist.
The irony of this is that we've lost faith in a God who never existed in the first place. We've lost faith in a God that was a figment of our imagination. Or maybe we just lose confidence in God. Because we evaluate his love according to these made-up terms rather than receiving the love that he's given to us on his terms. Y'all, you realize that with an infinitely wise and infinitely powerful God, just because He doesn't do things the way you think He should do them, that doesn't mean that His love and control is not real.
It just means that you have redefined His love and control in a way that you prefer rather than receiving it on the terms that He has offered it to you. Number one, counterfeit gods. Counterfeit gods correspond to our fears. Number two, counterfeit gods. are going to corrupt us spiritually.
You can see that in the story, right? The worship, their worship of this distorted God lasts less than a day before they're involved in a full-scale orgy. That is a picture. It's given to us as a picture of what happens to us, to our souls, when we worship a false God. You see, Jeremiah 2.5 tells us that we will become like whatever we worship.
Jeremiah 2.5, probably Jeremiah reflecting on this story. Israel strayed far from me. They worship worthless idols. And so they became worthless. You see the parallelism.
They worship something worthless, and that made them worthless. Graven images distort the real God, which in turn distort us. The Israelites tried to reduce God down to a single attribute, in this case, his strength. That was the one they felt like they needed at the moment. But y'all, God cannot be reduced to a single attribute.
God's perfection is found in the totality and the harmony of all of his attributes. God is infinite in love and strength, and he's infinite in wisdom. And that means that just because he doesn't do things on our timetable, that means that doesn't mean he's not working out a good plan. It just means that he's wiser than us, and we may not be able to understand it at this point. God is infinitely compassionate and the most accepting God of the universe, but he's also infinitely holy.
Which means that he takes sin seriously. Even when he gave his son to make a way of escape from sin, he takes sin seriously and says, You've got to repent. And so when we say, well, I'm representing God and I accept all people, but I call acceptable what he calls abominable, we are not worshiping the real God. Y'all, genuine, healthy spiritual growth comes only from seeing and knowing God as He really is. All of Him, the real Him, not part of Him.
And when you focus on only one dimension of God, when you isolate your favorite part of God and worship only that, then you will grow spiritually in a deformed way. For example. If your God is holy and just. But he's not compassionate and gracious. then you're going to end up being a judgmental.
mean religious person who's a jerk and gives us all a bad name. But if your God is gracious. But he's not righteous and holy, then you're going to find yourself always just going along with whatever culture says is okay. And you're going to say, oh, this is acceptable, and this is acceptable, and this is alternative when God says it's not. If your God is not fully sovereign, then when something goes wrong, you're going to find yourself panicked.
And you're going to be like, what's happening? Why isn't God doing something? Is something wrong with me? Have I forgotten to pray enough? Or if your God is the judge of sin, but He's not the faithful, redeeming Father of the cross.
And you probably will never be able to shake that feeling that you're condemned and that you need to prove yourself. If your God is the ruler, if He's the ruler, but He's not beautiful and all-satisfying, then you're going to find yourself always yearning after sin, even when you're surrendered to Him. You're going to be like, I want to obey God because I don't want to get judged and thrown in hell. But man, I wish I could live like those people outside of the faith live. I bet they have so much fun.
It looks so enjoyable. You are what, to use an Old Testament metaphor, you're yearning back after Egypt, even after God has delivered you to the promised land. You got a promised land situation, but an Egypt heart because you are still enraptured by sin, because God hasn't changed you. And when you see the true God, see, it changes you. A distorted view of God leads to a distorted spiritual life, which is why I said last week, this is like the whole main point of the book: all our spiritual problems, all of them go back to a view of God.
that is distorted or too small. In fact, St. Augustine. St. Augustine, 1500 years ago.
He said, you can identify your wrong views of God. Just by tracing the worry and the stress and the dissatisfaction in your life, he said, trace them back like smoke from a fire that will lead you back to whatever fire you built at the altar of the false God you're worshiping at.
So that's my challenge for you this week. Why don't you identify the areas of stress, worry, dissatisfaction, bitterness, unrest? the places you're most tempted to sin. Trace them back to their source, and I guarantee what you'll find. is that they come from a distorted view of God.
Are you worried? Embrace God's sovereignty. Do you feel insecure? Then embrace the promises of Christ that he has chosen you and promised to make you sufficient for whatever task he has assigned you. Do you find yourself being judgmental a lot?
Then embrace what the cross teaches you about how sinful you were when God saved you. Are you not naturally generous? Then think about the generosity God poured out on you when he saved you. Are you materialistic? Then think about how much richer a treasure you possess in him and how little life's treasures matter in light of that treasure.
Incidentally, by the way, this is why we encourage you to start your prayer time with adoration. We don't say start with adoration because it's some kind of like you know liturgy you need to work your way through. We say start with adoration because as you adore God, listen, you are literally breaking the power of sin in your life. and you are releasing in yourself a power for holiness. When you begin to adore God, you are putting into your soul the ability to snap the attraction to sin and to get over all this captivity and worry because out of adjuration comes a maturation, maturation in the faith.
You know, we often say around here, Paul David Tripp, who's been here before, says: if you worship your way into sin, then you got to worship your way out. It is right worship of God that releases us from the power of sin because, again, Summit, you become like what you worship. You'll become like what you're worshiped. Psalm 115:8. Those who make these worthless idols become like them.
You begin to resemble what you worship. Number three. Counterfeit gods number two was they Corrupt us fiercely. Number three, counterfeit God's disappoint us bitterly. Maybe the most pathetic part of this whole deal is After Israel creates their own God, is that now they've got the burden of caring for this God?
I mean, this golden calf that was made up of bracelets and navel rings. This golden calf, he couldn't speak to them. He couldn't take care of them. He didn't comfort them. In fact, they had to dance for him.
He couldn't even move himself from place to place. That might be the most pathetic thing. Here, God, Exodus 19, had promised to carry his people to the promised land, as it were, on eagle's wings. And now they've got the burden of carrying this big old golden calf from place to place. You know, what a terrible trade.
The true God had promised to supply all their needs. The true God had promised to protect them when they were afraid, to satisfy them when they were hungry. The true God promised never to leave them. One day, the true God would even give his life to redeem them. They traded all of that.
for a golden calf that they fashioned from their leftover jewelry. The really interesting picture is that as a punishment, Moses Melts down this golden calf, grinds it up, makes them drink it. And of course, that's not good for your diet. I've never seen a diet that said drink gold. And it makes them all sick.
But see, that's given to us as a picture of what worship of a false God ends up doing to us. our new God, which looks so shiny and amazing and so awesome. ends up disappointing us. Ends up being bad for our souls, ends up corrupting us, ends up making us sick. Because our new gods can't satisfy us.
Our new gods aren't big enough. Our new gods aren't beautiful enough. Our new gods aren't God enough. For a while, they felt easier to believe in. For a while, they were exactly what we needed.
But a God that we create is never a God that is big enough to satisfy the desires of our soul. And he's not a God that is big enough to deliver us from our trials and our sin.
So see, some of the church, you got to choose. You've got to choose between a God that you can understand and control, a God who automatically likes whatever you like and affirms what you affirm, or a God who sometimes confuses and contradicts you, but in the end lacks the power to save and satisfy you. Which one are you going to choose? As for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord because we need to be saved and satisfied. And we were created for the real thing, not a fake thing.
And yeah, I know sometimes that little fake God that I come up with feels easier to believe in and he's not embarrassing and he doesn't make me mad. But in the end, I need to be saved and satisfied. And only an eternal God can do that for me.
So I will take my posture humbly before the real God and say, confuse me, make me mad. But what I need is you. Y'all in the mood for a classic summit story here? Anyway, for that, by classic summit story, I mean classic JD story that I tell from time to time, but it just illustrates it so perfectly that I have to bring it in here. And I use it in the book.
So I'll tell it for the sake of you that haven't been here in three months. I'll tell it to you. A few years ago, several years ago, I was in an airport, which seems like most of my stories start this way. I was in an airport getting ready to come back home, and the flight out of Atlanta was delayed, which evidently is par for the course. And so I'm sitting there in the waiting room.
It is packed, the gate area, everybody's in a bad mood. They're trying to shove more people on our plane. Everybody's in a bad mood. But we got about an hour. And so I pull out my book and I'm like, I'll use this time to catch up on some reading.
So I'm reading, and I look up after reading for a few minutes, and I noticed this woman right across the row from me is just looking right at me. And I tried to just sort of like look down and just ignore it, but I looked up two or three times and she's just still looking at me.
So finally, I was like, Hi. And she said, she said, what are you reading? And so I told her it was a book about Charles Spurgeon, told her who Charles Spurgeon was, and led to me talking about who Jesus was and all that. And she goes, oh, are you religious? And I said, well, in a manner of speaking, I guess you could say that.
And so that led to this wonderful conversation I thought about who Jesus was and what he'd done for me and how he'd changed my life. And She was just listening and seemed to be so interested. And after I talked for four or five minutes, she said, Well, she goes, I just think that's wonderful. She said, I'm kind of a religious expert, too. And I said, You don't say?
And she said, Yeah. She said, I actually own a shop down in Miami. And down in Miami, I sell all these religious artifacts from all over the world. She said, in fact, what I'm doing now, I'm on this, I travel around all over the world to collect the best parts of every religion and that appeal to me. And she says, and I put together this kind of this big religion that's sort of like the best reflection of me because I think religions all over the world have great things to offer.
And so it's just like a smorgasbord. I get to choose and put together the religion. And then I offer it to people and say, let you assemble your religion. And I was like, kind of like Burger King, you know, have it my way. And she's like, yeah, exactly.
And I was like, I didn't really mean that as a compliment.
So. She's like, so anyway, it's great to meet you because, you know, and so we're, I'm trying to figure out what to do with this conversation. Like, you know, like, where do you go with this? And so, as I'm, you know, processing this person sitting right next to her, which was an older couple, two husband and wife, they're both reading the newspaper. And the wife turns to the husband and says in a voice that I think she intended for just her husband.
But I think she was at the age where they talk loud enough for people within a 300-meter radius to hear them. She was like, oh, honey. And she starts putting to the newspaper. She's like, look at the horoscope. And she calls out whatever sign he was.
It says that if you're this sign, you'll be safe and prosperous today.
So that guarantees we'll have a safe flight. I didn't even know they still had horoscopes in newspapers, but evidently in some of them they do.
So he was like, and they're looking at it.
Well, I'm thinking, this is kind of weird. But the woman, my conversation partner right there, she just lit up. She's like, really? She goes, let me see it. And she goes over and she looks at it and she goes, oh, that's wonderful.
She says it's a horoscope. And because you're the son, we're going to be there safe. She said, I carry, and she pulls out of her pocket, she had this little thing. She said, This is a rosary ring. I get this from the Catholics.
It's got these 10 rosary beads on it, and it's got Jesus crucified on the top. And I hold this whenever I'm afraid, when I take off, and when we land this plane, and it guarantees that I stay safe.
Well, okay, so as I'm listening to this, all of a sudden, this other guy who I didn't even know was listening to the conversation, he suddenly leans forward and he goes, Yeah, and I got St. Christopher right here in the bag. And I'm like, what bag? Like, can St. Christopher ride along as a carry-on?
He's like, yeah.
So he opens up his bag and pulls out a two-foot-tall statue of St. Christopher, the patron saint of traveling.
Well, my little conversation partner is now over the moon. She's like, this is awesome. She says, we've got a horoscope, we've got a rosary ring, we've got St. Christopher in the bag, and we've got a Baptist pastor. There is no chance that any of this is going to go bad today.
Now y'all, you know, usually I just I'm not like Okay. Seminary did not prepare me for this conversation, okay? A lot of conversations, yes, not this one. And I was like, I mean, I don't get shell-shocked a lot, but I was just like, I got nothing to say, I got nothing, I don't know what to do. And I'm just sitting there, and they call our flight.
And so me and this woman start walking down the jetway together. And we, right before we get on the plane, she reaches up, she touches my shoulder, and she says, She says, You know what? You are such a nice young man. She goes, I want you to have this. And she said, I have two of them with me.
And she handed me a rosary ring. And she said, I want you to just hold onto this real tight. And I promise you that when you're afraid, when you're afraid, it'll make you feel better. And if you'll hold on to it when we take off and when we land, it'll guarantee that you'll get there safely. I was like, oh, Lord Jesus.
Like, you can't let a conversation in this way. You know, to give me something to say. I don't know what to say. And then all of a sudden, it kind of popped in my heart. And I was like, I was like, ma'am, I was like, first of all, that is incredibly gracious.
Thank you for this gift. I will take it. I will put it in my pocket. I will hold on to it when we take off and when we land, and I will think about you. I said, but if you just let me be really bold with you here for a minute, I said, You notice this little rosary ring, you got this guy crucified on the top.
She said, Yeah. I said, I'm assuming you know who that is. It's Jesus. Right, and see what the Bible teaches us is that Jesus created the heavens and the earth, and that Jesus loved me and you so much that he came to earth and he died for us. And ma'am, John 10, he promised me in John 10 that he holds me tightly in his hand.
And see, what that means is that when we take off here in a few minutes, I'm going to be in his hand. And when we land in Raleigh-Durham, I'm still going to be in his hand. And ma'am, if we blow up in midair. I'm still going to be in his hand, right? I said, no offense to you at all, but you understand that if the almighty, eternal, all-loving God is clutching me tightly in his hand.
I don't feel that much need to cling so tightly to him with mine anymore. You see, that's the choice that you get to make. You get a God that you get to fashion, a God that feels easy to believe in, a God that you can throw in your pocket and take out when you need. But that is not a God who can save you, it is not a God who can satisfy you, it is not a God that you can hope in and trust in. It is a figment of your imagination.
I love how Tim Keller says this: He says, Look at this: only the faith that believes God regarding things it doesn't want to hear. Can believe God about the things it desperately does want to hear. What you want to hear, what you are created to hear, is the voice of an eternal heavenly Father who says, You are my beloved son or daughter, and you I'm well pleased. You need to hear the voice of the Heavenly Father that says, Well done, good and faithful servant. Nothing can separate you from my love.
I'll never leave you or forsake you. You need to hear the voice of the heavenly Father that has said, As far as the east is from the west, that's how far I have removed your transgressions from you. You were created to be satisfied in an eternal God whose power is above the heavens, who is outside of time, who spoke everything into existence, and then says to you, As high as the heavens are above the earth, my love for you is even higher. That's what you're searching for. It's what you long for.
And until you humble yourself before the real God, which means that he will say things to you that contradict you and confuse you and make you mad, until you do that, you're never going to be able to have that thing that your soul thirsts for.
So that's your choice. You want a God that you can create, a God that won't make you mad, a God you can understand, or a God that is worthy of worship. That God that's small enough to be understood, it's not big enough to be worshipped. Why don't you bow your heads, if you would, at all of our campuses? Tell me church and friends.
A God small enough to be understood or big enough to be worshipped, are you in a posture of surrender to God right now? Thank God. If you say things that confuse me and contradict me and make me mad, that's okay. That's okay. Because I know what I need is you.
And I'll surrender to you, and I'll listen to you, and I'll follow you. Maybe you've never done that before. Maybe you've always insisted that God. Relate to you in your terms. And right now, God is bringing you to a point of surrender.
My friend, the gospel is this. God loved you so much more than you could even love yourself that He gave His Son to die on a cross for you to save you. And you just have to receive him, but in order to receive him, you got to surrender. to let him be who he is. To let him be the God that he really is, to describe himself, and you've got to surrender to follow him.
wherever he leads you. If you've never done that, I'm going to invite you to do it right now, in this very moment. If you've already done that, I would invite you to re-embrace. and rest safely in the arms of a Heavenly Father. Who may confuse you, but it's better.
than anything else your heart has ever conceived. Father, I pray. I pray for the faith and the humility. that believes Isaiah 66, 1 and 2. On this one, God says, I will look on him who is poor.
On him who is broken on him who is humble and who trembles at my word. God, make that true with a summit church. I pray, turn our eyes upon Jesus so that we are full and satisfied in Him. In Jesus' name. In Jesus' name.
Amen. As you think about today's teaching, we pray it continues to shape your week. We're praying for God to use Summit Life in even greater ways to reach new listeners, strengthen believers, and point people to Christ. And we'd love for you to be a part of that story. When you become a gospel partner, you're not just giving financially, you're investing in eternal impact.
If today is the day that you'd like to join us, you can start with a one-time gift or become a monthly gospel partner by visiting jdgreer.com. Until next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
