Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.09UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.06UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.65LIKELY
Sadness
0.46UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.76LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.42UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.78LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.75LIKELY
Extraversion
0.1UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.64LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.6LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Idolatry: The Enemy of Stewardship
Introduction
Good morning and once again welcome to those gathered here and to those watching online.
Today is the final message in our series that we have called: God and Money.
I’ve said this has been challenging for me because typically I preach through books of the Bible but for this series we are looking at a specific topic: stewardship.
It’s been really good.
If you have missed any of the sermons I would invite you to listen to the audio and catch up.
Again, I am indebted to the work of the writers of the Core Seminar Stewardship study from Capitol Hill Baptist Church for their outline and research.
If you’ll think back with me, in the first week we learned that you don’t own what you own.
It all belongs to God.
And God, as a good and generous master has trusted us with the management of whatever amount we have each been blessed with.
We are responsible to use that amount for the purposes of our master.
In the second week we looked at what our giving should look like in relation to the the local church.
Last week we looked at how our faithfulness proclaims the goodness and worth of God.
We went back to the parable of the talents and discovered that unfaithfulness tells a lie about God.
Have you ever thought that you don’t really want to try to be a better steward or that you would like to be a better steward and you’ve tried but it just never works?
Today we come to the final message which is about the enemy of stewardship, namely idolatry that lives deep down in our hearts.
I want to put something before you to consider this morning.
When we are looking at our stewardship we often think that we need to change our behavior but I want to suggest to you that we don’t need a behavior modification but to modify who our God is.
Somewhere deep in our hearts we are serving other gods rather than the one true God and that right there is the root of our difficulties in stewardship.
For an example, let’s turn to Abraham.
But before we do, let’s pray.
PRAY
In Genesis chapter 12 God makes a big promise.
It’s a promise that echoes and reverberates throughout every page of the Bible.
God appears to a guy named Abram, whose name He would change to Abraham.
He promises to make Abraham into a great nation.
Later on, God takes Abraham outside at night.
Now, at this point in the story, a lot of time passes… years… other stuff happens and when he is one hundred, Abraham becomes a father through a miracle of God.
He and his wife Sarah are filled with joy and name this son Isaac.
This boy was the object of their parental affection but also the object of a divine promise, and miraculous intervention.
To them this was probably the most precious gift in the world or at least would have seemed this way.
But when we come to chapter 22 in Genesis this kind of wild thing happens.
Abraham obeys and takes Isaac to sacrifice him.
But just as he is about to kill his son, God stops Abraham and instead provides a substitute sacrifice, a ram in the thicket.
God retells the promise.
Why does God call Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac?
A test - but not in a sense that you test an unknown substance, not knowing what you’ve got...
God knows everything.
He sees our hearts.
Tim Keller quote from “Counterfeit Gods.”
“God’s extremely rough treatment of Abraham was actually merciful.
Isaac was a wonderful gift to Abraham, but he was not safe to have and hold until Abraham was willing to put God first.
As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous.”
The enemies of stewardship: various forms of idolatry
God was protecting Abraham of idolatry.
Isaac, just like everything you have, was a gift from God.
But he was not safe to “have and to hold,” as Keller puts it, until Abraham’s heart was willing to put God before even his own son.
God must be first in our hearts.
When we get to loving the gifts more than the giver of the the gifts, we destroy those gifts, ourselves, and we defame the glory of God.
Today I’m going to attempt to show you why God hates idolatry, then help you identify when gifts are becoming idols, and then look at how to uproot that idolatry in our lives.
So let’s begin by looking at how these good gifts God gives us can become idols in our hearts.
I. How Gifts Become Idols in our Hearts
When most of us think about idolatry, we probably think about a primitive culture worshipping a physical idol or statue.
But that is not all that the Bible has in mind when it talks about idolatry.
In the book of Ezekiel we find a startling statement about the elders of Old Testament Israel.
They had taken their idols into their hearts.
The heart is what the Bible’s images as what, deep down, you love most and desire most.
That place is the battleground of idolatry.
An idol is described as,
An idol “is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give” – Tim Keller
What this means is that every gift of God in your life is a candidate for idolatry.
Everything you have is in danger of becoming something you worship.
I’ve quoted Tim Keller already this morning but in his book Counterfeit Gods, Keller talks about three ways that the Bible talks about idolatry.
I want us to sort of use that template as we look at the three Biblical metaphors for Idolatry.
Three Ways the Bible Images Idolatry
In scripture we see people give into idolatry in these ways.
We love idols, we trust idols, and we obey idols.
These three are useful in seeing how the good gifts we have been given can become idols in our hearts.
Mariage Image
Sometimes the Bible talks about idolatry when we love something more than God and it becomes spiritual adultery.
We love our idols because they promise to give us significance, value, worth, or beauty.
We can see these idols if we ask ourselves, “what do I want most in life?”
A lot of times we find that we have made an idol of our abilities in this way.
We let our abilities define our worth or significance.
We love them and make them our false lover.
So that’s what I mean by a marital metaphor.
Religious Image
Another analogy that the bible uses is what Keller refers to as a “religious metaphor.”
He means that it uses the language of salvation.
Let me show you what he means.
If you ask yourself, “what alleviates my fear,” you will expose these idols in your life.
They promise salvation.
They promise control and security.
They are a false savior.
Political Image
The final imagery that Keller mentions is the “political metaphor.”
This is a battle for allegiance.
A false master.
This one is quite often a symptom of the first two.
Sometimes you’ll find that an idol fits more than one of these categories.
When we believe that an idol is the way to get what is promised by the false lover or false savior, then that idol becomes a controlling false master.
These people talked about in Romans 1 were serving their idols.
How can these get out of whack?
Imagine a guy that wants to steward his time really well.
So he lives by a schedule.
But he starts to take it to the extreme.
He starts to do the most productive thing with his time no matter the cost to those around him.
He becomes controlled by and mastered by his schedule rather than the other way around.
A whole lot of times this will result in uncontrollable anger, anxiety, despondency, or guilt.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9