Heart Idolatry

Intro

If you have your copy of God’s Word with you tonight, please join me by turning to John 6 and we will be looking at verses 25-29.

Over the past few weeks, we have been talking about what the continual, consistent pattern of the Christian life should be.

Remember that recycling symbol we established when we were talking about believing the gospel?

Repentance leads to faith leads to repentance leads to faith leads to repentance (in a never-ending cycle).

Well, last week Pastor Michael led us to examine the nature of repentance.

How it has to be motivated by godly sorrow, not just selfish regret.

How it has to be our daily habit, not just the practice we pull out when we’ve messed up royally.

Tonight, we take a closer look at the belief, the faith side of that cycle.

And as we do, we are going to identify 4 things.

The Question

The Answer

The Problem and

The Solution

First...

The Question

Think for a minute. If you were asked, “What one thing should I do to grow more as a Christian?” how would you respond?

The knee jerk reactions might be spiritual disciplines like...

Daily Bible reading

Prayer

Cultivating Christian friendship

Worshiping with the church

Repenting of sin

or learning theology.

And these answers are not necessarily wrong.

They aren’t necessarily bad answers.

But let’s look at how Jesus answered this question!

Let’s read John 6 together.

John 6:25–29 ESV

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

A little bit of context to our passage.

This conversation is held the day after Jesus feeds five thousand men (not counting women and children).

The crowd had flocked to Him for teaching and healing, only to be in immediate need of eating.

It still boggles my mind that apparently only one boy planned ahead for lunch.

But the Lord in His sovereignty used their need to display His power!

Still proceeding this conversation, Jesus had His disciples cross the sea while He spent time in prayer.

He walks on the water and meets them in the midst of a storm that He calms with His simple presence.

The crowd wakes up the next morning and begins to look for Him.

They get into boats to follow after Him, and the conversation we read is the product of their locating Him.

They ask when Jesus made the journey.

In affect they asked, “Why did you leave us behind?”

How does Jesus respond to them?

He calls them out.

He knows why they are there.

They’ve been healed.

They’ve been taught.

They’ve been fed.

And now they are showing up on His doorstep, following Him around in order to continue reaping the benefits of being with Him.

They aren’t there out of faith.

They are there out of convenience.

But they look to redirect the attention away from their unbelief by asking what they can do to make sure they are about the work of God.

“What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

This is the question we asked ourselves to being.

Now that we’ve identified the question, let’s identify...

The Answer

How does Jesus answer them?

How does Jesus answer our question, “What should I do to grow more as a Christian?”

One word.

Believe!

The work of God is to believe.

Understanding this is crucial to our sanctification!

Most of us are naturally “doers”.

We pride ourselves in all the things that we do for God and His church and His kingdom.

We readily embrace the next project, the next challenge, the next assignment.

But what does this “doing” accomplish for our pursuit of Christian maturity?

It produces a lot of busy effort, but little lasing change.

Why?

Because we are doing too much and believing too little.

Just like repentance needs to be concerned with the heart and not just the actions, our belief has to be oriented in our hearts.

Yes, it needs to be lived out.

But our “doing” often shows what we really believe.

If we rely solely on action, our faith cannot be strengthened by resting in what we know and believe about God.

What do we believe in?

It is not just a belief in any old person, thing, or concept.

Jesus says that the work of God is “that you would believe in Him whom He sent.”

Believe in the Son whose gospel clarified the sin-distorted path to reconciliation with God.

But you might ask, what is the alternative to belief in Jesus?

What is the opposition?

This brings us to...

The Problem

Our problem is that our belief, our faith, is often placed elsewhere.

A brief examination of history will yield ancient cultures, or even some that are thriving today, that prominently emphasize worshiping idols.

It wasn’t raining?

Worship Baal or any other rain god.

You’re trying to grow your family?

Worship Asherah or any other fertility god.

The worship of these so-called “gods” was associated with images.

Things that could be touched.

Things that could be seen.

Tangible things attempting to fill a void and accomplish specific ends.

The Lord gave 2 clear commands to open up the 10 Commandments (found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5).

1 - Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me.” And...

2 - Exodus 20:4–6 ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

But the Word of God doesn’t stop at the 10 Commandments in talking about these images.

We find that they are denounced again and again.

In Psalm 115:4-8...

Psalm 115:4–8 ESV

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.

These same sentiments are echoed in Psalm 135:15-18.

There is no substance to idolatry.

You may be able to see, smell, and feel them.

But they have no power.

They don’t even possess the faculties that are represented by their form.

They can’t speak, they can’t hear, they can’t smell, they can’t feel, they can’t walk.

And all it does for those who bow the knee is make them as stupid, deaf, dumb, and unfeeling as the wood or stone that they are worshiping.

Placing hope in materials that do not last, in a lie!

Isaiah 44:17-20 tells us of this foolishness as well.

Isaiah 44:17–20 ESV

And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

The Lord is saying through Isaiah, “This doesn’t even make sense!”

“You’ve abandoned reason for madness!”

“By falling down and worshiping this thing you have shut your eyes, your ears, and your hearts to me!.”

[Plug ears] “lalalalala”!

But, use your reason.

Half of the wood used to make that idol fueled your cooking fire.

What is the other half that you fashioned going to do for you?

You feed your soul with ashes and let your heart lead you astray.

We can be so blinded that we refuse to see the lie right in front of our face.

And this will sadly continue to the very end of this world...

The book of Revelation tells us, after the 7 Trumpets, after catastrophic judgment is rained down upon the world...

Revelation 9:20 ESV

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk,

While we may not set up a little image in our homes...

and cook for it

and pray to it

and put stock in the influence of its whims over the outcome of our lives,

We very much practice idolatry to this day.

It’s part of the human condition.

There is the constant and consistent breaking of the first commandment.

We have to realize that idols in the hand and idols of the heart and mind may seem different.

But they are simply different manifestations of the same attitudes.

This is because God created us to worship.

Early on in the life of my children, Meg’s dad (affectionately known as “Pop”) introduced a perfect gem into mealtimes.

The idea of shelves in the stomach.

If my girls were wanting to get past the main course and on to dessert, that meant that there dinner shelf was full.

But don’t worry, their dessert shelf had plenty of room!

We do this with God!

That which is meant to nourish and strengthen can easily be misplaced by what excites our tastes or satisfies our cravings.

If our God is not big enough to fill the shelf of our soul, then we will always be clamoring to fill that space with something else.

We saw that at the conclusion of our Isaiah passage.

Isaiah 44:20 “He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself.”

The root of idolatry is in the heart.

John Calvin famously said...

The human heart is a perpetual idol factory.

- John Calvin

But while that soundbite may have been made famous a pithy, reformed tweet, he didn’t stop there!

A few sentences later, he says...

Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.

- John Calvin

The root of so much of our sin is pride.

The root of idolatry is pride

Pride that we know best.

Pride that we can fill our shelves.

Pride that tells us that we are the masters of our own fate and should be on the throne of our own hearts.

We fill the space that God created to be reserved for Him alone.

So the problem comes down to exactly what that great theologian, Taylor Swift, once sang...

It’s me, it’s me, I’m the problem, it’s me.

This leads us to...

The Solution

We have to learn to identify these idols in our hearts if we are going to jump back into the cycle of repentance and belief.

Idols of the heart can raise their ugly heads in many different ways.

Sinful actions can be traced back to the root of heart idolatry.

And, sometimes to be truly free from living in sin, we have to repent of the sin beneath the sin.

Let’s do a case study using the sin of gossip as an example...

Underneath the outward sin of gossip can be any number of idols.

And a lot of them are interconnected!

The idol of approval

I want the people I’m talking to to like me.

Even if I don’t initiate, I’m going to participate as not to make them uncomfortable.

The idol of control

Using gossip as a way to manipulate or control other.

This can be straight up blackmail.

“I’ve got dirt on you, so you better stay in line.”

Or it could be a controlling of the narrative with your friends.

The idol of reputation

I want to feel important, so I cut someone else down verbally.

The idol of success

Someone is succeeding - and I’m not - so I gossip about him.

They can’t rise above me.

I can’t stand in their shadow.

So you spill a little secret.

You tell a little lie.

You knock them down a notch.

The idol of security

Talking about others masks my own insecurity.

Maybe your self-esteem is at an all time low and you’re drowning in it.

Maybe you’ve done damage to your reputation.

So you trip someone else with your words.

All so you can be seen.

The idol of pleasure

Someone else is enjoying life - and I’m not - so I attack her.

This is the idea that I deserve happiness and I cannot be happy for someone else when things are going their way while I’m in a slump.

The idea that I deserve happiness is a whole other sermon...

The idol of knowledge

Talking about people is a way of showing I know more.

Inserting sensitive information into a conversation to show that you are actually closer to the source and more knowledgeable of the situation.

Once again, building yourself up at someone else’s expense.

The idol of recognition

Talking about others gets people to notice me.

We’ve all experienced the need to be seen.

We’ve all seen people, or maybe we are that person, who acts out because even negative attention is at least attention.

See me! Acknowledge me!

Again… the “me, me, me” of pride...

The idol of respect

That person disrespected me, so I’m going to disrespect him.

Get them back.

Show them how it feels.

The idol of ______________

Fill in the blank.

Ask yourself, “what do I love, trust, or fear?”

While all of these come back to pride, they are all different angles and perspectives.

Application

It is possible to repent of the surface sins for a lifetime yet never address the deeper heart issues behind them!

We have to root out these sins.

There is a 4 step process to doing this...

1) Identify

What are your common surface sins?

Be honest!

2) Prayerfully consider

What heart idol lies behind these?

Again, be honest!

Maybe even ask a trusted friend or family member to help.

3) Worship

Jesus already has victory.

The battle is won and this can be rooted out of your life.

Praise Him for this!

4) Cling to promises

Find specific gospel promises in Scripture that you can rely on to help defeat the power of this idol in your life.

Commit these to memory!

This is how Jesus handled Satan when He was tempted in the wilderness.

If this tool, this weapon, was good enough for Christ, who are we to think that it will be less effective in our own lives?

The bottom line is, when we are not living in light of the gospel, we turn to these idols to give us what only Jesus can truly offer.

So, faith/belief involves learning how to set the affections of our mind and heart on Christ. Faith requires a continual rehearsing and delighting in the many privileges that are now our in Christ.

Live in the daily, moment by moment, cycle of repentance and belief.

And the Gospel will be central in your life.