Counterfeit Gods - Ch 2

Intro

Group intro -

Scripture

Hear God speak, not self help or opinions

Scripture transforms us

It is the foundation for the other two

Prayer

Us speaking back to God

Acknowledging the truth of scripture

Community

The context that scripture and prayer are effective

Not just socializing - ministering the gospel to each other

Review

Studying Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller

The topic is identifying and dealing with idols

It is good, but not required to read through the chapter and make notes and questions

But not required - I am not quizzing anyone and it will all be covered

Starting applications - but Keller is layering in lessons that apply to all idols

Last lesson

Dream come true can be the worst thing that can ever happen to us -

Abraham was the example studied Go had promised and then given him a son. But he was called to sacrifice him.

First meaning - Abraham needed a trial to refine his heart from idolizing his son

Second meaning - a substitute is needed - Isaac points to the death of Jesus

This Lesson

Is it weird that the first example is love?

We tend to think of scandalous things as idols - wealth, power, etc - see the front of the book

Remember sometimes the worst idols are the better things

Without a romantic relationship of some kind, even the wrong kind, their lives feel meaningless.

Story of Sally

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 23). New York: Riverhead Books.

At first she used her beauty to manipulate others, but eventually others used it to manipulate her. She came to feel that she was powerless and invisible unless some man was in love with her. She could not bear to be alone. As a result, she was willing to remain in relationships with men who were abusive.

Why did she endure such treatment? She had come to look to men for the kind of deep affirmation and acceptance that only God can provide. As a result, she became a slave to love.

Does this seem like a familiar story? Why would subject herself to this abuse?

She had come to look to men for the kind of deep affirmation and acceptance that only God can provide. As a result, she became a slave to love.

Why did she endure such treatment? She had come to look to men for the kind of deep affirmation and acceptance that only God can provide. As a result, she became a slave to love.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 23). New York: Riverhead Books.

Read ,

Jacob & His Idol

Back story

Promise to Abraham is carried through Issac. Isaac marries and his wife Rebekah has twins.

God tells the family that the promise would unexpectedly go through the younger son - Jacob

Issac favors the older Esau, but Rebekah loves Jacob. Esau grew up proud, spoiled, willful, and impulsive, while Jacob grew up cynical and bitter.

Jacob steals the blessing by pretending to be Esau to his blind father Isaac, but everyone finds out and the family begins to implode. Jacob ends up running away to his mother’s family to keep from being killed by Esau.

Jacob & Laban’s family

Difference between the daughters

Rachel was lit. “beautiful in her figure and beautiful in her appearance” - the total package

Leah had “weak eyes”

Perhaps cross eyed

Or maybe a figure of speech saying she was not pleasant to look at.

Jacob was lovesick - Rachel became the only important thing to him

He is willing to work for seven years for Rachel, which was 4 times the going rate

But they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.

He was very blunt in his eagerness to get married to her

Give me my wife that I may go in to her

Even today that would be extremely forward

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 27). New York: Riverhead Books.

Why? Jacob’s life was empty. He never had his father’s love, he had lost his beloved mother’s love, and he certainly had no sense of God’s love and care. Then he beheld the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he must have said to himself, “If I had her, finally, something would be right in my miserable life. If I had her, it would fix things.” All the longings of his heart for meaning and affirmation were fixed on Rachel.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 27). New York: Riverhead Books.

Making love an idol

Traditional idols

We idolize someone as the most important person in our life. We go beyond romance and seek a sense of meaning that used to come from faith in God

It is easy for us to hope that boyfriend or a wife will make us valuable or complete

Our culture teaches this idolatry in our music, movies, in how we talk about it to each other

But that expectation crushes the other person and leaves you empty

hookup idols

There is growing peer pressure to engage in sex and not get too emotionally involved... Once we get over our lingering Puritanism, the argument goes, sex will be no big deal.

But that is a different twist on another idol

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (pp. 29–30). New York: Riverhead Books.

We may be worshipping beauty or pleasure

Or we may be idolizing ourselves by proving ourselves with each encounter

Or maybe we are bitter and afraid from past experiences

Even people who completely avoid romantic love out of bitterness or fear are actually being controlled by its power… if you are so afraid of love that you cannot have it, you are just as enslaved as if you must have it. The person who can’t have it will avoid people who would be wonderful partners. The person who must have it will choose partners who are ill-fitting to them or abusive. If you are too afraid of love or too enamored by it, it has assumed godlike power, distorting your perceptions and your life.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 31). New York: Riverhead Books.

How does that strike you?

Important lesson - defining our life in opposition to an idol can be just as damaging

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 31). New York: Riverhead Books.

The person

The aftermath

Laban’s trick

Laban throughout the story is a little slick, a little manipulative

In this case he dodges giving Jacob a straight answer on marrying Rachel

He brings out his daughter as a bride - she is veiled

Jacob celebrates and drinks at the wedding reception

He sleeps with her and wakes up the next morning

Behold! - Twist!

It was Leah! The wrong daughter

Do not underestimate the shock of this

Jacob confronts his uncle, but by this point he is trapped

Laban gives him a flimsy excuse

Jacob has to work 7 more years for Rachel

Long term consequences

Broken family life

Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah

Favoritism in the family (wife and kids)

Rivalry between everyone

Mandrake story

Dont let anyone tell you that the Bible endorses patriarchal family structures - it clearly shows the problems that come from not following God’s design for the family

Jacob ends up continuing the broken family life he grew up in

Leah

She was inconvenient - she had to be married first, but no one wanted to marry her. This blocked Laban from profiting off of Rachel’s attractiveness.

Laban was able to solve his problem by his ruse, but it left Leah alone

The daughter whom her father did not want was now a wife whom her husband did not want.

She had grown up in her sisters shadow - and now had to live there for the rest of her life

the daughter whom her father did not want was now a wife whom her husband did not want.

So she turns to a relationship idol for hope

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 35). New York: Riverhead Books.

Leah’s relationship idol

Isaac and Jacob are not the only ones looking meaning in relationships

Searched for hope in love from Jacob

Name of first three sons

Reuben - “Look, a son” - Because the LORD has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.

Simeon - “heard” - Because the LORD has heard than I am hated, he has given me this son also.

Levi - “attached” - Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have have borne him three sons.

What was she doing? She was trying to find happiness and an identity through traditional family values. Having sons, especially in those days, was the best way to do that; but it was not working. She had set all of her hopes and dreams on her husband. “If I have babies and sons, then my husband will come to love me, and then finally my unhappy life will be fixed,” she thought. But instead, every birth pushed her down deeper into a hell of loneliness. Every single day she was condemned to see the man she most longed for in the arms of the one in whose shadow she had lived all of her life. Every day was like another knife in the heart.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 36). New York: Riverhead Books.

Meaning

At this point the story is pretty depressing for us

Everyone is screwing up and everyone is in pain - What’s the point?

Where are the spiritual heroes? What’s the moral?

The reason for our confusion is that we usually read the Bible as a series of disconnected stories, each with a “moral” for how we should live our lives. It is not. Rather, it comprises a single story, telling us how the human race got into its present condition, and how God through Jesus Christ has come and will come to put things right. In other words, the Bible doesn’t give us a god at the top of a moral ladder saying, “If you try hard to summon up your strength and live right, you can make it up!” Instead, the Bible repeatedly shows us weak people who don’t deserve God’s grace, don’t seek it, and don’t appreciate it even after they have received it.

So what can we learn from it?

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (pp. 36–37). New York: Riverhead Books.

2.5 things

Recognize idols where they exist

Realize idols are destructive and dont hold out hope

But recognizing and realizing is not enough to break free - that is the last thing to learn

Disillusionment

We put our hope in idols because we expect it to fulfill our deepest longings

We go to bed assuming it is Rachel, but we wake up with Leah

In fact it is always Leah, never Rachel

We hope that some job, spouse, house, or truck will be the thing that does the trick and satisfies us. But when we get that truck - we become disappointed

Four reactions to disappointment

Blame the thing and move on to a “better” option hoping that it will meet your need.

Blame yourself, you beat yourself up, and think something is wrong with you and feel shame

Blame the world and become cynical and hard

Lastly reorient your hope into something else

Breakthrough

4th son’s name

Judah - “Praise” - This time, I will praise the LORD

There was a defiance in that claim. It was a different declaration from the ones she had made after the other births. There was no mention of husband or child. It appears that finally, she had taken her heart’s deepest hopes off of her husband and her children, and had put them on the Lord. Jacob and Laban had stolen Leah’s life, but when she gave her heart finally to the Lord, she got her life back.

Instead of continuing her futile hope to make herself meaningful through her family, she centered her life on God, and it changed her life

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 43). New York: Riverhead Books.

The true bridegroom - the true lover

The true bridegroom - the true lover

God was saying, “I am the real bridegroom. I am the husband of the husbandless. I am the father of the fatherless.” ... The gods of moralistic religions favor the successful and the overachievers. They are the ones who climb the moral ladder up to heaven. But the God of the Bible is the one who comes down into this world to accomplish a salvation and give us a grace we could never attain ourselves. He loves the unwanted, the weak and unloved. He is not just a king and we are the subjects; … He is a husband and we are his spouse. He is ravished with us—even those of us whom no one else notices.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 44). New York: Riverhead Books.

Important for singles or childless or lonely

You are not alone - you are loved

Jacob had a God who was waiting for him and would meet his heart’s desire

Important for married or parents or any other relationship

and those married

Your spouse or whoever cannot support the crushing weight of your divine expectations

Leah had a God who was waiting for him and would meet his heart’s desire

Not to love your relationship less, but know and love God more

How do we know God’s love this deeply?

The seed promise - The messiah

This child Judah will carry on the promise of the Messiah from Isaac and Jacob

Note that salvation does not come through popular Rachel, but unwanted Leah

This Messiah - Jesus - will be the full confirmation of God’s love

The unwanted man

Isaiah says He had no beauty that we should desire him.

John says He came into his own and his own did not receive him.

Why suffer this rejection? So we could be accepted

He paid for all of our sins when our lives look like Isaac’s and Jacob’s and Leah’s so that we are no longer separated by your sin

We are brought to our true Husband, Father, and family

Here is the secret - we must replace our “divine” loves

More than showing the faults of idols and hopeless

We must find a greater love, which detaches our hearts from idols, and respond in worship

We stop looking for saviors because we are already saved

Instead finding a greater love

Sarah

A counselor rightly identified that she had been looking to men for salvation, so she should get a career and become financially independent

“I was being advised to give up a common female idolatry and take on a common male idolatry, but I didn’t want to have my self-worth dependent on career success any more than on men. I wanted to be free.”

Your life is hidden with Christ in God … and when Christ who is your life appears, you will appear with him in glory

You may turn out to be a great guy, and maybe even my husband, but you cannot ever be my life. Only Christ is my life.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 46). New York: Riverhead Books.

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 46). New York: Riverhead Books.

May we be able to say that to all the good things in our lives

Keller, T. (2011). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (p. 47). New York: Riverhead Books.