Skip to content No Other gods Part 1 with Dusty Davis Jun 17 · 58 min ...more
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The Call to Serve and Worship 0:00 When Jesus left this earth, he told his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything he commanded. Well, here at Everyman0:12 Ministries, we take that charge. Seriously, we exist to teach and admonish every man according to Colossians 1 28 so that we might present every man perfect0:24 in Christ. And that mission is made possible by your generosity. God is doing incredible things through partnerships around the globe. Our content is now being0:36 seen in multiple languages. In a hundred and 70 countries, we just started partnering to minister to over a half a million prisoners in state prisons by0:47 providing our content. God is moving. And we want to invite you to jump in. For those of you who are already on the team, for those of you who are already all0:59 in, God bless you and thank you. To those of you who have been blessed by this teaching and by this ministry, we encourage you jump on in. Because the water is flowing quickly and1:11 God is on the move. Well, welcome brothers to the men's global live stream. Grab your Bible and make sure you download the notes and get ready for this week's1:22 session. Well, you may be the heavyweight champion of the world. You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.1:34 Yeah. You're gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil and it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. Bob Dylan, the great folk philosopher, put1:46 it so rightly, so spot on when it comes to our lives, when it comes to the direction and the aim and the intent of our lives, how we make decisions, what it is that we're gonna1:58 pursue. All of that really comes down to answering 1 question. Who is it that we serve? And it's not a question of if we're gonna serve somebody. It's just a question of who2:10 it is that we're gonna serve. And really, that's what this new series is all about. Who it is that we as God's men choose to serve practically daily with our2:22 lives. Who is it that we pursue? What is it that we pursue above all? That is what is it that we worship. And that's true of all men. It's not just the religious men that2:34 worship. Everybody worships. And for the follower of Jesus, we hear that question. Who is it that you worship? It seems like an obvious question with an obvious answer. Who do we serve?2:46 Christ. Who do we worship? Jesus. We sing to him and about him. We give towards the things that pull his heart. We read about him. We believe in him. But I wonder, do we2:58 worship Jesus with our thoughts, with our emotions, with our attitudes, with all of our life's efforts great and small? Do we serve the3:09 Lord with our time, with how we use our money? Scripture is full of people who saw god rightly, who even knew him or understood him3:21 from a theological, ideological standpoint, yet their lives weren't full of worship for him. Look at Romans. Romans chapter 1 tells us that,3:34 the truth about who God is has been made play it's just been made plain to all of us. It's been made obvious as we look around creation that we have no excuses, that we can see what what he's like. But3:46 it goes on in verse 21 to talk about the responses of some people. And it says this in the n I v, it says, for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God3:58 nor gave thanks to him. The NLT says that they didn't worship him or give him thanks. And it says that they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. Claiming to be wise,4:10 they became fools. It's 1 thing to say that we worship and serve Jesus and it's another thing to actually do it. When we start to look inside, it gets tricky. It gets muddier. It4:22 gets easier to explain things away when we go beyond our actions, into our intentions, into our thoughts and our emotions like we were talking about. And I wonder what story do they tell? Quick survey4:34 for our hearts. What are you really excited about right now? What are you most anticipating looking forward to? What is it that you worry about? I mean, what concerns you4:46 at a gut level? What what keeps you up at night? When you consider your most precious resources, time, money, how do you spend them? How do you allocate them? How4:58 do you make decisions around them? What is it that you value? And as we start to answer those questions, it goes back to that original question. Who is it that I practically5:10 serve with my life? As a follower of Jesus, I'm hit hard with the reality. Brother said, I can profess Christ is the Lord. But to all of those questions, I5:22 just answer prove that he's my Lord. Exodus chapter 20. God starts talking to his people. His special5:34 possession, he has just rescued them from bondage. He's just set them free. And in Exodus 20, he starts to lovingly talk to them about these topics. About how to live in this world, about5:46 what they should pursue, about who they should serve, and how they should serve, and how they are to worship him. In the famous Sinai discourse, God gives his people the law. Now, I don't want you to hear law and5:58 think rules, regulations, restrictions, that's the enemy's voice. I want you to hear that this is god's heart about truth. That god's6:09 revealing the way the stuff really works, about how this life is supposed to work. And so read with me Exodus chapter 20 starting in verse 2. Okay. God starts off by reminding his people6:21 in us who he is. He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And we have to start there whenever we read6:33 scripture. We have to remember who God is truly and then who God is to me personally. What he's done for me. How he's rescued me. Because without that context,6:45 without starting off with his love and what he's done for us, we can read scripture wrongly. We can doubt God's character and God's intent. We can read the word in question and what parts of it still6:57 apply today. Or we can decide to just omit whole portions together. But when we keep his love in front of us, who he is in front of us, it leads our hearts in the right direction. So let's keep reading7:09 verse 3 and 4. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness or anything that is in heaven above or the earth beneath or7:21 that's in the water under the earth. So as God starts to reveal all the truth and the wisdom and the guidance and the governance under the law, God gives Israel 2 commands to begin7:32 with. Both with regards to what it is that they will worship. God starts to address the lowercase g gods that the people would be tempted7:44 to submit to, that we will be tempted to pursue. And he gives them 2 simple instructions when it comes to lesser gods and they're just as true for you and me today. When it comes to lesser gods,7:56 don't allow any and don't create any. We don't allow them passively. We don't receive or tolerate or accept any fraudulent substitutions for the 1 true God. And8:08 then proactively, we don't create or produce or dream up. Don't create, don't allow. And just after that God says, don't have any other Gods before8:20 me. Now it's important to know, when God is using the word before here, he's not saying as long as I'm in the number 1 spot, I'm okay with what comes after me.8:32 He's not saying as long as I'm number 1 in the long list of your heart's passions and your life's pursuits, son, you can have a list of all the gods that you want to pursue as long as I get that top spot. That's not8:44 how he's using the word before. He's actually using it the way that you and I would to describe someone in the presence of. Right? As in you went before your peers,8:56 as in a man was standing before a judge, as in an artist was performing before an audience. It's not before as in in first place. It's before as in in the presence of.9:09 Think about that. God's saying, I will not tolerate any other gods in my presence. I'm not okay with you giving yourself9:20 fully and passionately to anyone or anything else besides me. See, when we wrongly think in terms of hierarchy of desires and passions,9:32 we can wrongly conclude that, hey, as long as Jesus is on the list of my life's pursuits, then I'm good. I can give myself fully completely to everything so long as God gets, you know, his fair share of my9:44 heart and my time. God's not okay with being in first place. As far as he's concerned, there are no other places. God isn't interested in competing against all of our passions or9:56 being the first of many things that direct and inform our lives. So let let's keep reading. After he says, have no other gods before me, he says, you shall not bow down to them or serve them.10:08 For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. So this is what we're tempted to do. When these lowercase g gods start to seduce our hearts, we're tempted to bow down and serve them. What does that look like? Well,10:20 practically bow down just means to revere, to hold in high esteem, to set in front of us as a goal. We're not supposed to do that with anything but Jesus. Now,10:32 we're not also supposed to serve these lesser gods. Serve as in make sacrifices in order to obtain them. Make decisions that consider them10:44 first. Allow our lives to be organized or directed in order to pursue these things to fully give ourselves to them. And why not? I mean, God10:56 says don't bow down or serve them, then what's the rationale? Does he say, because I'm the only true God? Because I'm very powerful? Because I might get very upset? No. He says, because I'm a jealous11:08 God. Jealousy? Like the petty emotion of middle school dating relationships is that I don't trust that person so I get jealous because I've got problems11:20 inside of me. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Jealous as in god does not want to share you or your affections.11:31 Jealous as in God desires all of you. As in he's unwilling to share you the way that a husband is unwilling to share the affections of his wife with another.11:43 Jealousy means a desire for the entirety of someone. Our good and loving God wants our whole heart and it's his perfect love for us11:55 that fuels this jealous heart for us. And it's important to note in scripture, the words jealous and zealous are used interchangeably. It's the same root word in Hebrew. It just12:07 captures the idea that God is so passionate for us, so possessive about us. He's got he's like a consuming fire of desire for us. And so12:19 if that's true, why are we even talking about a struggle to give ourselves to something less than God? I mean, why are we even going through12:31 this series looking at the other lowercase g gods that are gonna seduce our hearts? I mean, think back to the original context. I mean, these people are receiving this as Moses is talking to God face to face,12:43 as the cloud is surrounding the mountain. They've seen the fire. They've seen the ocean swallow an entire legion of soldiers. They have watched God show up mightily. They've been12:55 rescued. How could they ever or why would they ever then be tempted to take their eyes off of him? Simply put,13:07 they forgot. The same way that we forget. They got busy. They started to fill their lives with things at first that were good. They got used to the Lord,13:20 to his presence, and they got numb to his person. And then like simple minded fish, they got lured away by the next shiny13:32 object. They started to take him for granted. And instead, they settled like Romans told us for the gods that they could see and taste and touch, the gods that their13:43 culture worshiped. The gods that we've still sought to worship today, the things that we consider them to be fine and well and good, maybe even blessings from god. Today,13:55 we pursue experiences to fill us up and give us joy and meaning and purpose. We want comfort above everything. We'll sacrifice anything on the altar of comfort.14:07 We overvalue our looks, putting so much effort into how we appear. We live for the approval and opinion of others. We compete and exchange our time for things to try to buy14:19 peace and identity. And in all of this, we've allowed our hearts to pump out idols at an alarming rate. Yeah. That's right. I14:31 just said, idols. That verse we read in chapter 1 of Romans, if you keep reading, it finishes off by saying, claiming to be wise, they14:43 became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious ever living god, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people. And you're thinking, Dusty, idols.14:56 I mean, this is not something we're still talking about today. These are like small wooden figures from faraway lands and and pagan cultures that don't know about God, that don't know Jesus. Right? These are the15:08 half human mythical creatures with multiple heads and obviously nothing that I would ever struggle with here in the US in 20 25. But what if15:21 what if idolatry wasn't some sin of the past? What if there was a reason that it kicks off the list of how we're to live in relationship to God? What if it had nothing to do with figures or statues or pagan15:33 worship? What if it had nothing to do with things that felt overly spiritual? What if idolatry wasn't just an issue plaguing our hearts? What if it is the15:45 issue that gives birth to all issues? What if every sin was birthed out of idolatry? And if we started to scratch at our struggles, what if we could reveal the15:57 false gods and the idols that we're pursuing? What if we started to look at idolatry for what it truly is? Which is just anytime we look16:09 to anything or anyone other than Jesus to do for us what he promised to do. To be in our lives what he promised to be.16:21 You see, whenever we allow what we own to tell us what we're worth, or our experiences to fill us with our ultimate joy and purpose, or our accomplishments to tell us who we are, or money to give us peace or sex to16:33 make us feel loved and desired, we've made an idol for ourselves to worship. And it's less obvious. Right? I mean, the Israelites took all their gold and pounded it into a golden16:45 calf, but we do the same thing. Sure. It doesn't look like golden bovine statues in all of our yards and unfortunately and tragically, it's much more16:57 accepted in our culture. We're not building pagan statues. It might be the house that we spend every waking moment considering how to better every spare dollar17:09 upgrading and keeping, up to the current standard. Maybe it's the body that we slave at the gym in order to try to create. Maybe it's the job, the promotion, the title, the office17:21 that we're going to get, the paycheck that'll finally bring the satisfaction. Maybe it's the kids sports schedule that have slowly kinda squeezed God out of our worship schedules. And in hearing17:32 that list, you might start to think, come on, Dusty. You could literally say that about anything. You could say that we could take anything good and then it becomes an idol.17:45 Exactly.17:47 Anything in our lives can become an idol. If we substitute it for God in our lives, whether knowingly or not, remember making them or17:59 allowing them. And so if we're gonna dethrone these idols, if we're gonna have no other gods before the 1 true God, we need to know where they come from, how they're formed, and the source of18:10 many idols is the same. Oftentimes, idolatry is fueled by false beliefs. Period. Idols are birthed out of lies by living out false beliefs, by18:22 believing and pursuing things that are just not true, things about ourselves and what we're like, things about God and what he's like, has us taking our gold jewelry and18:34 hammering it into a calf to worship. We think God is holding out on us. And so we seek to fill that need ourselves. We believe the lie that scripture is outdated or restrictive,18:46 and so we think up new truths for ourselves. We believe the lie that God's not gonna show up, and so we better protect ourselves, build big bonds and store up lots of money. We we ignore18:58 who he says we are. And rather than living out of the identity of beloved son, we start to pursue a title to tell us who we are. And as the lies start to take root in our hearts, we19:10 start to live them out by creating places in our hearts to worship. Maybe we're just building places to help us worship ourselves and in doing so we sidestep God's19:22 good and perfect plans for us and exchange them for culturally derived or self serving plans. And so if we're gonna dethrone those lies, we have to19:33 enthrone the truth. It's not just about recognizing lies, it's about kicking them out and filling our hearts and our minds with God's truth. And in this series, we're just gonna take a look at19:45 4 of the most common lowercase g gods that you and I are gonna be tempted to give our hearts to. That we're gonna be drawn to try to pursue and worship and19:56 ultimately serve. We'll look at the god of sex. Worship through hedonism. The pursuit above of pleasure above all things. We're gonna expose the God of me that we worship through narcissism.20:09 Right? That our culture loves to promote. We're gonna look at the God of my truth. The God we worship through relativism and the idea that truth is somehow subjective. And today, we're20:21 gonna expose the God of more, the God we worship in the house of materialism. Now if the first word that every kid learns is20:32 no, the second word that every kid might learn is more. And it really doesn't matter what it is that they're talking about. As humans, with our sinful flesh and our fallen nature, we20:44 just want more. We're dissatisfied by nature. It's 1 of the most core and carnal realities of this flesh. Right? It's the forward motion in life that's just fueled20:56 by dissatisfaction with what I currently have or don't have. It's this desire for more. Doctor Seuss put it so perfectly. I'm figuring on bickering and bickering and bickering and21:08 all of this bickering is triggering more bickering. Right? We're each running after something. And so we have to ask ourselves before we get into21:20 this in your life, as you look at your daily pursuit, what more am I pursuing? What more are you pursuing in your life? What is it that you feel like you just21:32 don't have enough of? If I was to say, if you ask me for anything, I have the ability to give you whatever you want more of. You just have to ask, what is it that immediately comes21:43 into your mind? What is it that you believe if you had more of life would be better? And here's the question to follow-up. Not only what more am I pursuing, but21:55 what do I think would happen if I finally attained that more that I'm desiring? Now we're getting in it. Right? Now we're on our way behind22:07 the facade. We wanna answer the deep questions about what moves us in life. What we're actually giving ourselves to. It's like looking at the screen time on your phone. You might think, I don't use my phone that much.22:19 Screen time gives you reality. You wanna look at your spending at the end of the month? I don't think we're spending that much money on dinners out. The bank statements give you reality. When we start to look at what's22:28 actually moving us forward, how we're making decisions, spending our time, using our talents, and deploying the treasure that God's entrusted to us. Right? We have to expose motivators.22:41 What is it that's calling the shots in my life? What's moving me forward every day? We gotta consider this stuff. What do I pursue with my whole heart? What's getting my energy?22:53 Motivation reveals the object of our worship because we effort towards our hearts affection. Jesus said it point blank. Right? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Where you put the things he's given23:04 you reveals the heart that you have within you. So what is the practical daily direction of our life look like? And we have to hit the pause button here.23:17 Because if we don't intentionally sit before the Lord every day and let him tell us who we are, if we don't sit in front of God's word every day for it to tell us who God is and who we are and how we're to23:29 live, then our culture will. Then this world will. If we don't hear first from the Lord, sitting before him in listening prayer in23:41 the morning, I challenge you. Before you pick up your phone, before you look at an email or a text, before you let the days current pull you away, sit before the Lord and just ask him,23:53 what do you wanna say to me? Then read scripture and say, Lord, what are you teaching me out of this passage of scripture? Take small pieces of scripture. Sit with the truth because if we don't let the purposes of God24:03 direct our steps daily, then our flesh will. And the only more that can ever satisfy us is more Jesus, more of his holy spirit,24:15 more time in his presence. Experience more of his love, his truth, his word, but in our culture, we run after such lesser mores.24:27 I mean, we built our entire economy on the worship of more, on the pursuit of more. And I love that we've camouflage the name. Right? We we don't like to say greed or materialism24:39 or I'm just pursuing stuff or things or I just wanna buy happiness. We would never openly celebrate those things. So we've merely begun to applaud success.24:52 We've taken success away from its original definition, which just means to have attained a goal, to have completed something properly. And now it strictly has a25:04 financial and material definition. And in all of our efforts, we wanna be successful and that's not a bad thing. Scripture is filled with God giving his people success. They win wars. They take25:16 new lands. He gives them success in a myriad of ways. The problem is not with things working out. The problem is when culture redefines success. And today, culture has25:27 defined success as excess, especially Western culture. We've not just defined success as accomplishing something as much as we25:39 have success as accomplishing more than your peers, amassing more usually around money. We've made money this competition. But I mean just the idea that success is25:51 completely synonymous with money. If I told you, got this friend, his name's Bill, incredibly successful. What do you think? Bill's loaded. Bill's got money. The natural response would be Bill's successful26:03 at at what? He's a successful writer? He's he's a successful triathlete? He's a successful husband? Dad? No. No. No. No. We have26:15 taken success and it now strictly means financial. And if we say Bill's successful, I'm insinuating that he might be more successful than me because here's another problem of equating26:27 success with excess, with success, with financial means is that comparison becomes the yardstick to see how well we're doing. It's no longer the pursuit of26:39 a goal. It's how am I in relation to my peers. It's keeping up with the Joneses. Here's the problem. Comparison at some point is going26:50 to inhibit our ability to love people the way that Jesus called us to. To pursue people the way that God desires us to. When when comparison becomes the measuring stick of success, people are no27:02 longer with us on this journey through this life. They're now competitors. They're now my adversaries that I'm trying to beat to the finish line. And comparison can never move us27:14 forward. It's a hamster wheel that only breeds dissatisfaction. Because here's the truth, we can never compare ourselves into27:26 contentment. I can't compare my way into a heart that's fulfilled or at peace or at rest. Think about it. Because I have more than you27:38 and I become proud or I have less than the person I compare myself to and I become envious. Because comparison takes my eyes off of what God is up to in my life, and frustrates27:50 my ability to be grateful, at peace, or even open to be led by the spirit. The antidote? Galatians 6 4 says, pay careful attention to your own work.28:02 For then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done and you won't need to compare yourself to anyone else. Scripture says, you wanna avoid the trap of comparison.28:14 You wanna get off the hamster wheel just trying to get more than those around you have. He says spit out the lure of comparison. And we don't stop comparing by just trying to stop comparing.28:27 The antidote for comparison is focusing on the life that's in front of us. God wants our eyes focused on him.28:39 God wants us aware to what he is up to in our life. Taking seriously where he's placed me using the resources that he's28:51 entrusted me with, influencing the people that I get the chance to. Living as Christ would have me right where I am and none of that is possible when my eyes are on those around me. In the29:03 end, God's not gonna compare us to, anyone other than who he created us to be. You have a different calling than I do. You've been entrusted with different things, different resources, different relationships,29:14 different abilities than I have. And the only thing that I could do in my life foolishly is to try to be someone other than who Christ created me to be, who he's calling me to be. But idols tell you and I29:26 that we should be someone else. Idols tell us that who we are isn't enough, that God hasn't provided enough, and we just need a little bit more of fill in the blank. But this pursuit of more,29:38 especially more things is fed to us by our culture all day long because culture in the form of advertisements is always telling us that what we have and29:50 who we are is just not enough. And how do we get enough? Usually in this culture, what's the more that most often we will be tempted to pursue? Easy.30:02 More money. Money opens the doors. Money is perhaps the most seductive idol when it comes to taking our eyes off of Jesus, when it comes to pursuing30:14 more. And what makes life even more confusing is that many Christian authors and preachers have promised wealth and prosperity as proof of God's blessing in our30:26 lives. People have promised that God wants you to receive the promotion, expand your ownings in your territory. Just name it and claim it. Step into the blessings that are yours. We've wrongfully perpetuated the lie that30:38 God's love, that God's blessings always equate to dollar signs. As if we could measure the provision or the love of almighty God by looking at ones30:50 and zeros. But I wanna pause before we get into a conversation about money because we can get off track and we can demonize money. Because money isn't31:02 really the issue. It really is. Issues of money are really issues of the heart. Remember we said the heart is the idol factory. We're told in31:13 scripture to keep watch over our heart for it's the wellspring of life. It comes from in here. Look at what Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says in first Timothy, chapter 6 verses31:25 9 and 10. He says, but people who long to be rich, fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and31:37 destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people craving money have wandered from the true faith and pierce themselves with many sorrows.31:49 Now this passage certainly addresses money and the problems that seem to associate themselves with it. But if you notice all the language, it's heart language. People32:01 who long to be rich, they fall into temptation, they're trapped. People who desire money, that's hard talk. It says that they're trapped by foolish and harmful desires and it's those32:13 desires that plunge them into all these evil. It's the love of money that leads people to pierce themselves, it says, with all sorts of trouble even walking away from their faith. This32:24 passage just so perfectly demonstrates the heart is always what's really the issue. Whenever we're talking about money, it's the heart that produces idols.32:37 It's the heart then that must be transformed. See, it's not enough to simply remove idols. We must replace that vacant spot in our heart with32:48 Jesus. In this passage in first Timothy, Paul never says, money is bad. Money is evil. Money is arbitrary. Money is like a hammer that can be used to build a33:00 home or tear it down. What matters is the intent. Again, motivation. Paul's just talking about positions of the heart. He says, when money33:12 sits as your heart's greatest desire, whether you admit it or not. When money is what you seek with your being, whether you're aware of it or not. When we're looking to33:24 money to give us peace or identity or security, now money has become an idol, an idol that our culture has no problem worshiping.33:35 And then we watch as we start to serve and worship it. And the things that we own start to own us and we have to go to our things when it's time for us to make decisions and see if they're33:47 alright. If they have enough resources for I can do anything else that I'd like to or that I feel called to do. Matthew 6 24 comes at the end of a wonderful discussion about money. And just like the passage we33:59 just read in first Timothy, it puts money in the context of a heart issue. It says, no 1 can serve 2 masters. You'll hate 1, heart issue. You'll love the other. You'll be devoted34:11 to 1. You'll despise the other point blank. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. 2 things cannot control your passion no more than34:23 a ship can have 2 captains, or a company have 2 CEOs, no more than a kingdom can have 2 kings calling the shots. But I wanna hit the pause button again34:35 because I want to encourage you. You can have money and have Christ. I know plenty of wealthy men who love Jesus. I know plenty of men who34:46 have tons of resources that they use to build his kingdom. They are not attached to it. It does not tell them who they are. You can have money, but you cannot love,34:58 serve, pursue, draw identity from, or value both money and Jesus most of all. 1 of those things sits atop your heart's priority list. 135:10 of those things is your highest aim, your greatest goal, your deepest affection. The problem is not in having money. The problem is when money has us. When money35:22 has wrongly become the aim, when it gives us our identity, security, and joy, when good things have become great things. Now we've made a God to love and trust and worship.35:34 And we have to remember guys in all of this, the antidote for not worshiping money is not to try really hard not to worship money. No. Our goal should not be trying to love money35:46 less. It's always to pursue and love Jesus more as we pursue him. He changes who we are. He transforms our desires. We set before us above all35:57 things, the kingdom according to Matthew 6 33. Then everything else falls in a place. I'm not saying that then money will follow. That's just bad theology. What I'm saying is as we pursue36:09 Jesus, he rightly orders our desires and our pursuits. We protect our hearts from pursuing money by pursuing Jesus with everything that we are. Listen to Matthew 6 19 and36:21 20. Don't store up treasures on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them, where thieves break in and steal. Store up treasures in heaven where moss can't destroy, where thieves can't steal,36:33 wherever your treasure is there, the desires of your heart will be. Let's reject the false idea in all of this that our best life is found in this life. More specifically in the things that I can36:44 acquire in this life. It is untrue to believe that stuff brings lasting happiness or satisfaction. Our flesh believes that lie. So our faith has to inform36:57 our flesh. And when we pursue things to give us peace, we literally have our life upside down from God's intention for us. And we just pursue more and more and more and we relegate the kingdom of37:08 God to the bottom of our list of efforts. And that verse is so good. Right? When it tells us that our treasure reveals where our heart is because whatever we pursue, we will37:20 become like. So pursue the things of God, his truth, his kingdom with our best efforts. And it leaves us in kind of this balancing act because we have to navigate money.37:32 It's necessary to live. So we ask questions like how much is okay? Is there is there a dollar amount at which point I'm realizing now I'm slipping off into idolatry? We37:44 just want a simple equation, right? That's like, how much money would make my problems go away? What's the dollar amount at which I stop worrying?37:57 What's the monthly cost of peace or happiness? How much more do I need versus how much I want? As a Christian, we might even want it to break down like, Hey, at what point does it become sinful?38:10 So let's expose a lie of the enemy that we've been hinting at this entire time with regards to our peace, with regards to our joy. No matter how much we have,38:22 our flesh wants a little bit more. And it doesn't even matter when it comes to the things I want. My flesh always want more. The flesh by nature is38:34 not satisfied with things found on this earth. No matter how much the enemy lies that you're almost there, that it's just over the next horizon. This is just a season and once you secure the the home or the car38:46 or the job, things are gonna be better. And so because of that, in light of that, 1 of the greatest weapons against the enemy, 1 of the greatest life rhythms that becomes a bullet38:57 that we shoot at the heart of Satan's lies is to choose contentment. Remember we said earlier, I can't find contentment through comparison. I39:09 can only find contentment by looking to Christ. Contentment is not found at a dollar amount. Contentment is not found at a job title. You know that verse we read in first Timothy about the problems of falling in love39:21 with money and what happens when it controls our heart is actually a bigger conversation and the context is all about contentment. If you go back to first Timothy 6, but jumpShow more In this video 0:00 The Call to Serve and Worship53:22 The Journey to Spiritual Breakthrough
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