Faith and Idolatry: Trusting God's Provision

We are to see him in a position unique to everyone else. He is the Lord, the ruler of heaven and earth. How do you treat God? Most of us never will see him in purpose, in person, in this world. Some people have had visions of God. But this is a unique area, an unusual capacity for us. So God is asserting to them that he wants them to treat him as he should be treated. The first commandment is the beginning to this. I want you to place your trust in me to say that I believe that you are the ruler of the universe, the Lord over all. Now the people who he was speaking to had been in Egypt and they had seen many different gods worshipped. It had been years and years since any kind of information about the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was available to them. They had been in places where pagan gods were worshipped, many of them. Now this God comes to them and delivers them from Egypt. They have no Bible. They have only stories about him. And he says I want you to realize who I am. I created the heavens and the earth, all that there is, and I want you to trust only me. You're not to have a God for every little purpose in your life. There's only one. I am the Lord, your God. I want you to confess and trust that this is true. Then he begins to define for us about how our relationship with God ought to be. What does it mean that we are to take God for his at face value and to trust him? In Exodus chapter 20, the Ten Commandments, the second one of these is a way of defining, the second and the third, are ways of defining how we are to treat God correctly and properly. What does it mean to serve and follow God? Exodus chapter 20, verse 4, you shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. It's showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments. Now when we use the word jealous in our own language, it generally means someone who is sort of self-centered and you have a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife and you are jealous when they pay attention to anyone else, that is you feel angry because they are looking at someone else or treating other persons better than you. God is not insecure in the sense that he says he is jealous. He means I want what is proper for me. I demand from you what is appropriate for a person to give to God. These next two commandments define for us what God sees as the initial, as the essential qualities by which we recognize his position, his place, and who he is. You are to make no idols, he says. Now they knew what it meant to have idols, all the Egyptians had idols, all the gods around them had idols. He was asking them to do something that no one else did. I want you to treat me as other people do not treat their gods. I do not want any representation of me in this world. Now this is not a big issue for us. It is not a big issue for us because we do not have idols in our country and you probably do not know of any family who has an idol where they bow down before that idol, offer incense to it. So it seems as if it is past, but it is not the thing that God is trying to direct his people away from. It is the principle behind idols. The story that we find that kind of defines what he is talking about is also found in Exodus. Chapter 32, while Moses was on the mountain with God and God was giving him the commandments that would be a part of the essential rules by which the people of Israel lived, the people of Israel were down at the foot of Mount Sinai. They were waiting for Moses to come back with the instructions from God. We do not know how long Moses was up there. We do not know the time frame, but when the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, Come, let us make gods who will go before us. Because for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him. Aaron answered them, Take off gold earrings that your wives and your sons and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol, cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then he said, These are your gods. O Israel who brought you up out of Egypt. In this story, the principle behind idolatry is clearly displayed for us. The people of Israel did not mind Moses going to talk to God. They were in favor of it. They didn't want to do it themselves because they were afraid of God. The demonstration of his power with lightning and thunder and all this demonstration of power frightened them. They were afraid they would die. Moses, they said, you go to the top of the mountain and you talk with God and then you come back and tell us what he wants us to hear. But they had expectations of how long it would take Moses and God to finish this conversation. It was much longer than they anticipated. It was so long, as a matter of fact, that they began to think that Moses was not going to come back and he was not reliable and they would be left there without any divine guidance for their lives, for their people. So they complained. God has not met our requirements. God is not doing what we expected or anticipated that he would do. And so because he has not done that, we are going to take matters into our own hands. We are going to find a way by which we can have a God who will lead us. They went to Aaron and he told them to give the gold. He made the calf, set it up. This now is your God who is going to lead you. On the surface of this, it's rather ridiculous, really. I mean, do you think the bull that they made could part the water of the Red Sea? Do you think the bull could make water gush out of a rock? Do you think the bull could make manna flow down from heaven, bread to feed them? They knew better than that. But with this solid piece of metal beside them, they could look at it and see it. And they could make sure that it did what they wanted it to do, the way they wanted it to be done, when they wanted it to be done. They had no control over Yahweh God. You see, idolatry is really not a matter of wood or of stone or of metal. It's a matter of faith. God is really saying to the people of Israel, I don't want you to ever lose faith in me. I am a God who's proven that I can do what I want to do. This is the God who created the heavens and earth and all that's on the earth. This is the God who's guided the world since the very foundations of the world. He'd already proven to them in his journey at the Red Sea, where they came to that place with the sea in front of them and Egyptian army behind them, no way to go. He parted the water. No one had ever done that in the history of the universe. And God did it. They traveled a little farther and they ran out of water. And you know, when they ran out of water and when they were at the Red Sea, some of the people said, we shouldn't be doing this. Look at the trouble we've gotten into following God. We need to go back to Egypt. In Egypt we had lots of water. Now here we are out here starving to death for water. God had Moses take his stick and hit the rock and enough water gushed out to feed thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people and all their cattle. They got to the place where their supplies ran out. You can't carry enough supplies for years and years at a time. They had no bread. They came to God and said, we've been following you and you've got us in this terrible mess. Why did you bring us out here to kill us? Only thing they could think of, we need food. We don't have food. We're going to die. They lost faith in God. They said, if we could go back to Egypt, at least we had a crust of bread even though we were slaves. God made bread rain from the skies. They went on a little further with eating the bread and they said, all we have to eat is bread. Why can't we have some meat? They looked around them in the desert, there was no source of meat, no source. They lost faith in God. He brought quail till it was almost knee deep as far as they could see. Now he's got them at the mountain. He's saying to them, if you're going to follow me, you're going to have to believe that I'm the ruler of the universe and you must never lose faith in me. That's what it means to follow God. I bet all of you know somebody that's mad at God. And when they're mad at God, they're mad at God because God did not meet their expectations. That's idolatry. It's a loss of trust that God is reliable. His contract with us is, if you will listen to me and do what I tell you to do, I will give you life in its fullness. Whenever you need something, I will provide it. Whenever you're in danger, I will protect you. And I will make sure that your life achieves its purpose on earth. What more could you ask for? You see, what happens to us is we get in circumstances where God does not guide us as we thought he should. We get in situations where God does not provide for us in the moment that we want it. God does not lead us in places where we're never in danger. And so when we face the circumstance that we see there's danger around us, and we think I've been following God, but here I am, and terrible things could happen to me, and we lose confidence in God. Why? Because he does not give us the kind of protection that we wanted to have. We don't want to have any danger, but now I'm in danger. So because I'm in danger, I lose confidence in God. Why has God put me in this place? Why have I had to go through these things I'm going through? That's what the people of Israel said to themselves. Why do we have to be out here in the desert when we're thirsty and there's no water? God said, so I can show you my power to make everything you need. No one ever grows in their faith in God until they come to times when there's danger, until they come to times when there's no provision, when they come to times when following him looks like it's leading us in the wrong direction. Because in every one of those situations, God wants to show us firsthand, personally, his power to guide, provide, protect, and ensure our lives. God has his authority and his plan and his power. What he asks us to do as his followers is never to second-guess him. That's what idolatry is. Idolatry really, for us, in our culture, is placing ourselves a notch above God. I'm living my life trying to do what I think God wants me to do, and all of a sudden I wake up and find myself in circumstances that are not what I wanted. Most of those times when we're in those circumstances, it's because we haven't been doing what God told us. We still get mad at God. I should be able to live any way I want to, and you should provide everything I'm supposed to have. That's not the way it works. If you follow God and you're living in obedience to him and taking his direction, you'll still come to times when life is not the way you wanted it to be. You'll find yourself in places where there seems to be danger. You'll find yourself in places where there seems to be things you're going to need that you do not have. And you can't figure out how to make that work. What God asks as you sit down and begin with the first thing, have I been doing what I know God wants me to do? Have I been obeying him as I know he wants me to obey him? And if that's true for you, whatever circumstances you find yourself in, now God's promise to you comes true. You're here beside this ocean with an army behind you, and I have promised to protect you. They looked around and said, we don't have any weapons, we're not soldiers, this army's bigger than we are, we can't swim across this. Every single fear that they looked at was true. What they didn't know is that God was not counting on their ability to fight nor their swimming skills to rescue them. He was counting on his power. When they came to be without water, they looked around and they said, we can only have water if there are wells or streams of water flowing. And I'll tell you the truth, that's right. But they didn't understand that God can make water in any way, in any place that he chooses to. See, when you lose that confidence in God, then the events of life can become overwhelming to you. You can look at the things around you and say, I don't have any idea how I'm going to make it through this. I don't have the wisdom to know, I don't have the money to do, I don't have the ability to do, and all of those can be right. But what you've found if you've walked with God very long is if you keep on doing what you're supposed to do, somehow or other, God makes it work. This is the miracle that God wants from us. How do you have no other gods beside him? You never lose faith in his guidance in your life, his ability to provide for you, or his ability to protect you. When you begin to lose either confidence in his guidance, so you're making decisions that are on your own and not his, or you lose confidence in the fact he's going to provide for you, you're going to do something that gets you in trouble. Or if you lose confidence in his ability to protect you, you're going to do something that makes your life worse. What God said is, if you're going to accept me as the God of your life, I want you to promise me you're never going to lose confidence in me. You're going to say, whatever the Bible says I should do, I'm going to do it. No matter how difficult it might be, or how damaging it might appear to be, I'm going to do what God tells me. And every time I get in a situation where it looks disastrous, I'm going to say, God made me a promise. I know he'll keep it. And when you do that, you will discover the power of God in your life. If you waffle, and you quit doing what he tells you, and get mad, I'm not going to read the Bible anymore, I'm not going to talk to God because he's not doing what I want, the things are not working the way I want them to work, I'm going to quit going to church, I'm not going to serve him anymore. When you start that, all of a sudden, you see, you've made yourself God. I am going to do what I think is right, not what God says is right. So the second commandment is necessary to be able to keep the first. And then he gave this third commandment that again defines what it means to be a follower of God. What is it like? He said, you must not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Now when we talk about misusing the name of God, I think sometimes the translations are we're not to cuss, use his name in vain. And so we sort of put that aside to saying nasty words. Well that's a part of it. For example, God is the ruler of the world, okay? He's in charge of everything, he has all power and all authority. And we are his servants. It's kind of like being in the military, where you have a commanding officer above you. You always respect that officer's position. You may not like him, you may not even want to be around him, and you may not trust him, but he's an officer. And so you salute that office, that person's position of power. God is saying, I am the Lord. There is no other God in the world but me. I want you to respect who I am, my standing. And so one day, someone does something to you, you don't like, and you say to God in a very harsh, strong, and powerful voice, God, I want you to damn that man to hell. You don't use that language. God damn him. It's like a private giving the general an order. How far would you get in the military if that occurred? I'm ordering you, general, to do this thing right now. Well, you'd find yourself in deep, deep trouble, because you've offended the structure. The general's in charge, you are under him. He has authority over you. You don't have any right to damn your hammer because you hit your own finger. You don't have any right to damn your car because you forgot to put gas in it or fixed the battery when it should have been. You can't order this to God. He requires you to submit to him. He has the position of power and authority over your life. You're to not do anything that disparages me. When you order me around, it's like saying, you are God and I am your servant. Don't ever do that. Now, the real issue for us in this, not necessarily cussing words that we use, that's not the whole story here. The story is, Israel said to God, we will be your servants. We will do everything you tell us to do. That's the way they became followers of God. In the New Testament era, we come and say, I give my life to Jesus Christ. And we're buried in the water to show that our old self-controlled life is gone and raised up out of the water to declare, I'm going to live now a new kind of life. I'm going to live exactly as God tells me I should live. And we're not going to be able to keep this every single day all the rest of our lives. But that's our promise. And so when we stumble in this and we do something we shouldn't do, we stop immediately and say, wow, God, excuse me, I'm sorry I did that. I realize it was wrong. Would you forgive me? I was out of place. From now on, help me be able to do what I should do, when I should do it, the way I should do it. We're showing respect for God. This commandment is, never disrespect me. I am in charge and you are not. I am the Lord and you are not. And to act in some way that would bring a dishonor to me is insulting. Now, whenever you say to God, I give my life to you, you're buried in the water to show that your old self-directed and self-controlled life is gone and raised up to say, now I walk with Jesus Christ as my guide and my ruler. You have declared to the world that your behavior is God-controlled. Now if that's not true, the people who see you make this declaration and now see you living contrary to what is the way of God, you bring insult to Him. Have you heard people say when someone in the church does something or some preacher does something that's terribly insulting, they'll say, if that's the way Christians are, I don't want any part of it. Ever hear that? If that's the way the church is, I don't want to be any part of that. See what happens is, when our behavior is contrary to what the Bible says we should be, we bring dishonor to God. It was famously said about Gandhi in India that he would be a follower of Jesus except for the followers of Jesus. That's why Paul wrote in the book of Ephesians instructions to those who were followers of Christ. The Imitators of God, chapter 5 of Ephesians, and I want to begin reading at the first verse. The Ephesian people lived in a community where idolatry was prominent. Everyone in the community worshipped the pagan gods. And here were a small group of people who claim now to be followers of Jesus Christ. Their witness was dependent on them being what he called children of light, leaving behind the old life and living the new life. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people, nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather there should be thanksgiving. For this you can be sure, no immoral, impure, or greedy person, such a man as an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Sexually immoral person is an idolater. See what he's saying? A person who's impure is an idolater. A person who's greedy for money or food or anything, any possessions, is an idolater. They're not proper for God's people because he never leads them to do those things. A person who fills their mouth with obscenity is not being guided by Christ. Instead, they're being controlled by the world around them. They hear the way the world says obscenities, and they adopt that to fit in. Foolish talk, he's really talking about sexual jokes, sexual innuendos, double entendres, things that we say that are not really what we say, but imply something else. And coarse joking, he's talking about telling sexual jokes. The context of this is simply that if Christ is in control of your life, you will not do these things. I don't mean that you never will at one time do them, but they will not become a characteristic of your lifestyle. Because if God is controlling your mind and your heart and your will, when you turn on the pornography, you're going to feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit saying, this is not for you. And you have a choice to obey the Holy Spirit or to follow your lustful feelings and thoughts. Whenever you start cussing or getting mad, you have a choice. The conviction of the Holy Spirit comes, and God will say, this is my way, and you'll have to choose. If you consistently, day by day, hour by hour, choose to refuse to follow God, then you don't belong to him. You may be a member of a church, and you may profess your faith in Christ, but he is not the Lord and ruler of your life. He's not. That's why he says that no one who's controlled by these forces, which are opposite of God, will enter heaven. God looks at our lives, and he judges whether or not he's in control of us by our behavior. Idolatry, you see, is letting yourself or your culture control you instead of God. And the real faith, the real evidence of our faith, is how we speak and how we act. I wish I could guarantee every one of you who've been baptized in water that you're going to heaven. I can't. I can guarantee you that if Jesus Christ is guiding and controlling your life, that you will be with him now and forever. For when we dishonor God by saying we are his follower, and we act as Satan controls our lives, we dishonor him, his tradition, his church, and his faith. And we do that because we are serving, not God, but our own desires, passions, and interests. How do you have God as the only God of your life? You always trust him, and you never dishonor him. That's what it means to have God as the ruler of your life. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? The most important question you'll ever ask yourself is whether you've yielded your life to Christ. Now, I'm not asking you if you've come to the front of the church, if you've prayed the sinner's prayer, or if you've been baptized. Those are all good and valuable things. But have you said to God, I'm going to live the way you want me to live, no matter how difficult it is? And do you read the Bible to find out what you should do? And when you read what you should do, do you try to put it in practice? Are you talking to God about your behavior, acknowledging when you fail to live up to his requirements? Asking for forgiveness, and asking for his ability to reject the influence of the world around you, so that he alone could control your mind, your will, and your actions. That's what a follower of Christ does. An idolater pushes Jesus Christ and his words aside, and does what he wants to do, when he wants to do it. When you get in those bad spots because of that, God won't help you, I promise. You'll have one bad thing in your life after another. Until you stop, acknowledge you failed to follow him, and make a promise to live in obedience to him the rest of your days. You do it. If you've never done that, you can do it very simply. You don't have to be in church, but you can be right here. You just say to God, I don't think I really have ever committed myself to live as you want me to. But today, I want the direction of my life to change. I want you to guide me, direct me, and control my future. I give myself to you. That simple prayer in your mind causes God to forgive your sins of the past, to place his Holy Spirit in you, to give you the power to be able to resist sin, the wisdom to be able to make the right choices, the faith to trust him when things are not the way you want them to be. Everything will change with that surrender of your will to him. You can do it now. God, here's your thoughts. Something happens to us, though, when we start our journey with God. You always come to places where you say, I'm trying to do everything God tells me, but things are not working out the way I thought. That's a very important thing to say, the way I thought, the way I'd planned. It reveals to you that you have put yourself in a position of God, and you want God to fulfill your plans the way you want them to be fulfilled. Don't let Satan deceive you. When you do your plans the way you make them, it's like a firecracker. When God works in your life the way he can, it's like an atomic bomb. Don't trade the power, wisdom, and strength of God for your own puny plans. Remember the promise you made to God. Get back on track. I hope in the moments that we've been here together, you've heard God speak to you. He should be speaking to every single one of us here. He has me in the preparation for this. What is it that God wants from you? To renew a promise you've made years ago? Or to begin that journey with him? I want to ask the pianist to come and play. I want to ask you to think, am I serving the Lord as if he were the ruler of the entire universe? Or am I stumbling along in life, making myself a substitute for God? If you want someone to pray with you, if you want someone to help guide you through a commitment of your life to Christ, I'll be at the front. There'll be others here too. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'm going to ask her to play the piano and allow God to speak to you and ask you to obey what he tells you. I'll let you go this morning saying that she recognizes there's things in her life that God's not pleased with. And I just ask that you lift her up in prayer this coming week. You know, the first part of following God and being obedient to God is recognizing that there's areas in our lives that God's not pleased with. And I think she recognizes that this morning. Thank you for that. Well, we don't want to single you out. I'd like to ask for a vote. How many of you here have something in your life you know that God is not pleased with? Hold your hand up. Welcome to the crowd. Would you stand please for a prayer? We are sinners saved only by your grace. We know that by the power of your Holy Spirit you change us. You don't change us all at once. And you don't change us immediately. But throughout our whole life you're transforming us to be more and more like yourself. Help us to never lose trust in you. And help us never to insult you or dishonor your name. Give us instead a passion to be like you. That the world would know you and know how to trust you and how to live. In the name of Christ we give thanks that you're our Lord. Amen. Let's sing together Amazing Grace and don't forget church service tonight. Amen.