Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Idols engage the deepest emotions in our heart, and if I'm doing my job right as your pastor, I'm going to be challenging your idols like Paul did, and it's going to make you mad. If I'm not making you mad when I'm preaching, then I'm either, I'm not preaching or you're not listening. Well, it's Friday on Summit Life, and I'm glad that you've been with us this week. I'm your host, Molly Vitovich.
I think it's safe to say that we all have things that we're not willing to give up, things that are just too important or too valuable to even consider giving away or behaviors that, quite frankly, we just don't want to stop. Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer, we're learning that when we're holding too tight to something, it might be an idol. Pastor J.D. is helping us to examine our hearts and to identify those idols in our lives. So if you've missed any of the previous messages in our current series in the book of Acts, you can listen to every broadcast online at jdgreer.com.
Let's join Pastor J.D. now for his message titled The Gospel versus Idolatry in Acts chapter 19. Every heart in here has its own Parthenon. Parthenon's that place where they kept all the statues of the gods. Every heart has its own Parthenon, and to become a Christian means you tear down the Parthenon and you put Jesus in its place. And when it's idols, when your idols, your Parthenon is challenged, we react just as violently as the people at Acts 19.
So that's why the story that we're going to get into is really applicable to you. Acts 19, Paul enters Ephesus with the Gospel. By the way, Paul is not the first one into Ephesus with the Gospel. The first guy into Ephesus with the Gospel is a guy, as far as we can tell, named Apollos. I cannot make this point too often or too strongly. Just about every time the Gospel goes into a new area in the book of Acts, it doesn't do so through an apostle.
It does so through a regular guy or a regular woman. When Paul finally shows up, verse 11, God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. This is Paul's sanctified hanky ministry. Verse 13, some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists saw all of this, and they undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits too, saying, I adjure you by the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches. Verse 15, one of the demons responds to them, Jesus, I know, and Paul, I recognize, but who are you?
I mean, talk about the ultimate diss. A demon says to you, bro, I don't even know who you are. When they said this, when they said this, the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. Verse 17, and this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks and fear fell upon them all. And the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.
By the way, that's a description of what an awakening in a city looks like is when there's great fear of who God is, but then also Jesus becomes more glorious and his name is high and lifted up and people are drawn to him. So I want to show you five things that you need to understand about idols in your life that you can learn from this passage. Five things about idols in your life as the gospel comes into your life that you can learn from this passage. And then what I want to do is show you how the gospel that Paul preached would confront these idols.
That's what we'll do right toward the end. Hey, idols are anything that promises to us a life of security and joy apart from God. That's what Artemis did. She was the protector and prosper of the city with her.
They believed they were guaranteed to have security and joy without her. They could not have those things. So here's my question for you. What is that in your life? Idols, as I often explain to you all, is our idols are not usually bad things. They're just good things that we've turned into God things.
Things that we believe will give us security and joy and without which we can't have security and joy even if we have God. Because see, if you lose a good thing from your life, then you're sad. But if you lose a God thing from your life, an ultimate thing, then you're devastated.
And there's a difference between sad and devastated. You might have a preference for a lot of things. You might want certain things to happen to you. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're like, there's no way I can be secure.
There's no way I can really have a good life. There's no way that I can have joy apart from that thing. Then it has become an idol because whatever it is, is your Artemis and is probably the primary God in your Parthenon.
Let her be. Idols engage the deepest emotions in our hearts. I've told you before that many of my deepest emotions are connected to my idols, like many guys and girls. As kind of an overachiever, one of the gods that I worship or at least worship throughout my life is the God of success. So when I look at the deepest emotions in my heart, the deepest angst, it's always tied around the loss of that God. It's triggered by the fact that I worship a false God.
Here's another way of coming at the same question. Who were you unable to forgive? Who are you unable to forgive? Because if you're unable to forgive somebody, it's because it's tied to a deep resentment that you have toward that person. And that deep resentment is probably triggered by the fact that they attacked something, that they damaged something that you felt like you can't be happy and joyful without. In other words, they got to your idol. I'm not saying what they did was right.
I'm not saying what they did was not that bad. I'm just saying the reason you can't forgive, the reason you can't get over the bitterness is because it goes down to the deepest part of who you are and threatens your very being. I heard a pastor telling a story about two women in his church, one of whom was a brand new Christian, the other of whom was a very mature Christian. She'd been a Christian for over 25 years. Both of them were in marriages that were headed toward divorce. Both of them had one son and the divorce was negatively affecting that son.
So they're nearly identical situations. He said the woman who had just become a Christian, was very immature in her faith, was able to forgive her husband, go to counseling and reconcile and save their marriage. The woman who had been a Christian for a long time was not able to forgive her husband and ended up in divorce. The pastor said, as I began to talk with this woman who was a mature Christian, he said the reason became very obvious. She had become emotionally dependent on her son. Not in a weird way, but she kind of emotionally married her son.
Her son had become an idol. So when her relationship with her husband got to the point that it was negatively affecting her son, she was not able to forgive her husband because what he was doing was affecting the thing that she depended on for life and substance. Where are the areas that you are unable to forgive? Where's the resentment that you cannot shake?
Again, I'm not saying that what they did was okay and I'm not saying it wasn't bad. I'm just saying that resentment is always a sign that they've gotten a hold of something that you believe is more essential for security and joy than God himself is. You know, ironically, when you idolize something good, it ultimately keeps you from being able to enjoy it at all because you start obsessing over the things and you can't enjoy them because your life depends on them. They become like life preservers that you cling to. You don't enjoy a life preserver, right?
It saves you. So if romance, good romance is your life preserver, then you become a terrible codependent spouse in marriage because you need that person in order to validate you, in order to give you joy and security. If you're single and marriage is going to be your life saver and give you like, oh, when I get married, it's going to be awesome. Don't get married.
Listen, here's the phrase we use around here. You're not ready to date until you're ready not to date. When you're ready not to date, then you're not looking for security and joy in a human being that will never be able to give it to you. The worst thing for you to do is get married because you are going to destroy that relationship by putting them in the place of God. They were not intended to be God.
They were a good thing, not a God thing. A marriage that is enjoyed is a marriage where you're not looking at that person to give you security and joy because those things come from God. So I tell you, lonely, insecure, single people become lonely, insecure, married people. And then they end up in our counseling offices because they've turned somebody else into a God that has never been able to to satisfy or deliver them. If you depend on family as your life preserver, then you become really controlling of your family. And so you go from sweet loving mother to dominating, obsessive, controlling mom. You're like, am I like that?
Ask your kids, all right? Idols engage the deepest emotions in our heart. And if I'm doing my job right, as your pastor, I'm going to be challenging your idols like Paul did, and it's going to make you mad. If I'm not making you mad when I'm preaching, then I'm either, I'm not preaching or you're not listening. Why is it that the sermons I get the most criticism on, you know what subject they're on?
It's not hard to figure out. What sermons do I get the most criticism on? Money. Is it because on that subject, I just switch to a different guy and start preaching really dumb sermons? Is that the reason? Do you think that's the reason? Is it because on that subject and that subject alone, I'm just an inferior preacher?
No. I'm an inferior preacher. I'm an inferior preacher on multiple subjects. The reason that subject, I get all the hate mail from it.
It has nothing to do with the quality of the sermon. It's that it starts messing with somebody's idol and they don't like it. They don't like it. They're like, don't you touch Artemis? Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
Don't you preach on that because that's my lifeblood. And I got to protect that, which leads me to number three. Idols need to be protected. Idols need to be protected. Demetrius says we need to protect Artemis. We cannot let her be deposed of her meteorite magnificence.
Now here's the irony. Wasn't she supposed to be the protector of them? She's supposed to be the protector of them.
Now they're the protector of her. What do you feel obsessive to protect in your life? If you feel like life without a good marriage is empty and hardly worth living, then you obsess about your marriage. So if you're single, you're like, oh, well, what if I miss my chance? I mean, I'll just tell you, when I was single, I went through seasons of my life where I obsessed about it. And I asked these ridiculous questions like, well, what if, you know, what if she misses the will of God?
Like what if the girl that I'm supposed to marry goes, you know, and makes a bad decision and I got to suffer for the rest of my life single because she made a wrong decision? If reputation is that protector of your city, if that's what means a good life, then you're the kind of person that always protects your reputation, right? Which is why you can't handle criticism.
You want to know why some of you can't handle criticism? It's because you can't handle anybody, even somebody you don't know, thinking bad things about you because that reputation is a protector of your city. That's why you always make sure that you get the credit for whatever it is that you did. You can't handle the credit going to somebody else because you need the credit. You need the affirmation.
That's what makes for a good life is other people recognizing your worth and your awesomeness, and you can't handle criticism or missing the credit. Letter D, idols demand sacrifices to keep them happy. Idols demand sacrifices to keep them happy.
This whole system in Ephesus was built on appeasing Artemis, making sure that she was not displeased. See, idols are always like that. Idols always say, hey, if you want more me, if you want me, you got to sacrifice for me. So when a guy cheats at his business, you realize that when a guy cheats at his business, it's not that he's just a compulsive liar. It's that there's something right on the other side of that cheating that he is willing to compromise his integrity to get. And he's like, it'd just be this once. It'd just be a little thing.
I'd just compromise a little integrity because this promotion or this acquisition, this is what will make the good life. I referred to that show Breaking Bad a few weeks ago. Many of you have seen it. This is kind of really the whole point of it is you've got a guy who makes disastrously bad decisions in his life. And the whole time he keeps telling his wife, I'm doing this for our family. I'm doing this out of love. I'm doing it for you.
And finally, he gets to the end of the series. He's like, I did it for me. I did it because I wanted the power and I wanted the security and I wanted the joy that I thought the money from making these decisions would bring. And so I compromised my integrity to grab a hold of that, which I thought would make our lives good. You know, the Bible says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
You wonder what that means? It means it's the love of money that ends up triggering all the compromises. It is the love of money that is the root sin that's behind the other sins. Why do you lie? Why do you cheat? Why do you disobey God?
It all goes back to the fact that money equals the good life for you. Me, I'm generally a truthful person. I tell the truth in most situations. The one time I don't tell the truth, you want to know what it is? It's when I got a lie to protect my success. Protect the illusion of success. So that's why I exaggerate my accomplishments and minimize my failures over here. Why? Because I want people to think of me as more successful than I actually am.
It goes back to the root. Those Christians in our church who will not obey God and their finances. Do you realize that it's not just that they're really stingy people. It's just that right now they got something they want to obtain, an idol of comfort. It might take the form of a beach house. It might take the form of a certain amount of money in their bank.
It might take the form of a new car. And in order to get that thing, they're going to have to compromise a little bit the commands of God. And so they're willing to do that for a season, they think, so that they can get this God that they really want, which is the God of comfort. We've got a lot of people in our church who worship the God of an ideal family, which is why they refuse to entertain the idea that God might send one of their children overseas when they grow up.
Why? Because that's not the vision of the ideal family they've always had. And that's what I'm going to have. And so, no, you can't obey God. I'm going to stand in your way. For some of you, it's why you will not entertain the idea of adoption or fostering, because it messes up the ideal you've always had for your family. And so you sacrifice obedience to God in the altar of an ideal family, because that's the security and joy that you've always wanted in life. Many people worship the God of personal comfort.
So anything that makes them uncomfortable, they're just not going to do, whether that's going on a mission trip or even serving here on the weekend. I got to be comfortable. And that's my top priority.
So no, I can't do that, even though I know that's what I probably should do. And when a guy really has this idol bad, if his wife starts getting on his nerves, well, I got to be comfortable. So she annoys me, I'll get rid of her. And I'm willing to sacrifice my family, my integrity, the vows that I made before God, because ultimately the love of comfort was the root of that evil in his life. It is the love of idols that is the root of all evils you sacrifice for the idol. And here's the this tragic part. The idol's never satisfied. He's just like more and more.
William James, who is not a Christian, he's a postmodern philosopher. William James said that success for him, I can't quote him directly, was a B-I-T-C-H goddess, a B goddess. He said the reason he said that, he said, because no matter what I give to her, she always demands more. I gave her, he said, my family. And she said, I want your health. I gave her my health, he said. And then she said, I want your integrity. He said, there is nothing she has not taken from me.
And she still shows up saying, if you really want me, give me more. Ancient gods required child sacrifice. And we look at that and we say, how could they, how could you do something so barbaric that they would lay their children on the altar?
And then you think for two seconds about it. Many of us sacrifice our children to the gods of success. We're not there for our kids. You're not there for kids because you have to be successful.
You just couldn't imagine life being good without being successful. So if your kids get in the way of that, well, you'll pursue your idol and let your kids pay the price. Letter E, idols are not just psychological forces. They are demonic ones as well.
Can't we see that fully on display in Ephesus? Whenever idolatry is rampant, you'll find demons very active. And probably the tragedy is that we fail to recognize that in our culture because Satan has figured out he can do more damage to us by keeping himself cloaked than he can in outright terror and demon possession the way he did in these days.
Satan preaches, however, listen, the same lie in every idol, in every age that he preached in the first idol that he presented to our first parents in the forbidden fruit. If you eat this, you will be like God and you will not surely die. About what is he right now holding this out to you and saying, you want security and joy?
This is where it is. Why don't you prioritize this more than God? Why don't you seek this more than God? Why don't you condition your obedience to God on this?
Because if you have this, you'll be like God, you'll never really die. It is the same demonic lie. It is every bit as powerful.
It is every bit as demonic, even if he's not making the eyes roll in the back of your head and making you float six feet above your bed. That's his least impressive work. His most impressive work, his main work is the lie of Genesis 3.
So here we go. How does the gospel confront that idolatry? How does the gospel confront that? Paul preached a message with basically one point. You want to know what it is? Admittedly, it's not spelled out in Acts 19, but you get it from the letter to the Ephesians, which is the letter he wrote to the people in Acts 19.
The letter has one point. God is better than your idols. God's better than your idols. He's better because, A, the true God alone gives life. The true God is a God, Paul says, who's not made with hands. The true God is the creator of all, which means that his love is more faithful and more tender than romance.
The arms that you were aching for in romance were really his arms. His promises are more secure and more reliable than money because God is a market that never crashes, never dips below 10,000, never changes in value. It's constant and never changes. Jesus Christ, the same today, yesterday, yesterday, today, and forever. His presence is more life-sustaining than creature comforts on 1611 because in his presence is the fullness of joy and it is right-handed pleasures forevermore. His future is more fulfilling than a fertile family.
His attention and his affections are better than the praise of people. Jonah 2, 8, those who forsake idols, those who, excuse me, those who pursue idols forsake the mercy that could be theirs. Jeremiah 2, 13, I love this verse.
My people, says God, have committed two evils. Number one, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. Number two, they have hewn for themselves cisterns that can hold no water. A fountain was a spring. It has had all water that was always rushing.
It never ran dry. He says, he says, sin, number one, was a sin against God. They thought there was something besides God that was more trustworthy, more joy giving, more valuable, and they blaspheme God's name by turning their back on the almighty God and believing something else in the place of God. That's sin number one. Sin number two, was not a sin against God, it was a sin against themselves. They hewed for themselves a cistern that couldn't really hold water. They dug this hole in the ground which was used to gather rain and he says the holes they dug couldn't hold water so one of those holes was called marriage.
And one of those cisterns was called success and they kept putting water in it and it would never hold the water but they kept going back to it and it always ran dry. Two sins, one against God, one against you. Those who pursue idols forsake the mercy that could be theirs because there's a living water fountain that overflows. His presence is yours, you take it.
Paul says it's better. What are you doing? You're seeking something that can never sustain the way to your soul. Let her be. The true God didn't need you to protect him. Oh, the true God protects you. That's why King David would say, I love you.
I will love you. Oh Lord, my strength, my rock, my refuge, my fortress. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? I do not need to obsess about romance.
I don't need to obsess about money. I don't need to obsess about success because I trust you. I rest in you. Those who wait upon the Lord will have their strength renewed. They'll mount up with wings like eagles.
They'll run and not be weary. If I seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness, all these things will be added to me. Isaiah 26 3, those who have their mind fixed upon you, you will keep in perfect peace. I know that if God is my God, then all this other stuff he's going to provide when he wants, God plus nothing equals everything. And all that stuff without God equals nothing. So I'll take God, you can have the rest and I'll let God put it into my life when he needs it. I don't need to protect him. He protects me, which leads me to let her see the true God offered his own sacrifice.
Right? Every other God says, Hey, if you don't sacrifice enough for me, I'll destroy you. If you fail me, I'll make you miserable. The true God said, you did fail me and I saved you. The true God said, you did something that earned my curse. And instead of cursing you, I curse myself. That's the God that you ought to give your life to.
God offered his own sacrifice and it was his only son. He doesn't need you to protect him. He protects you. He sustains you and gives you life. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.
Greer. Here at our home church, the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, we're firmly committed to the Great Commission. And as a part of our work towards that mission, we've set a goal to plant 1000 new churches in this generation. We're equipping and providing resources for other churches to plant and grow.
Because in the end, we're all one body. And we want you, our Summit Life listeners, to be a part of that mission too, wherever you are. So we have three new churches just beginning in St. Louis, Missouri, Orlando, Florida, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. If you are in one of those areas or have family or friends in these cities who need a local church community, listen up and write these church names down. Check out Storyline Church in St. Louis, One Family Church in Orlando, in Coastway Church in Myrtle Beach. If you go to jdgreer.com, there's a link in the bottom footer of every page that lists all of our Summit collaborative churches. And while you're on the website, don't miss our new featured resource this month. The Bible explains so much about the mission of God through the church. And to help you apply these principles to your own life, we'd like to get you a copy of a book that we created just for our Summit Life family.
It's titled Scent, the Book of Acts Volume Two, and it covers chapters nine through 28. This study comes with our thanks when you give a gift of $25 or more. When you support Summit Life today, you're supporting your fellow listener by providing them access to resources that will help them dive deep into the message of the gospel. So call us today at 866-335-5220 or request the book when you give online at jdgreer.com. You can also sign up for our e-newsletter to get ministry updates, information about new resources, and Pastor JD's latest blog post delivered straight to your email inbox. It's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life and it's completely free to subscribe.
Sign up when you go to jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. Thanks so much for joining us this week. We'll see you again here Monday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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