Flourish: The High Price of Idolatry

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Amen.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we've come to confess what we know to be true about you.

We're not here in the name of a dead religion.

We're here to worship a living God, to stand in your presence, to hear your word, breathe life and fresh wind into ourselves, perspective into our heads and the way we think, so that it shapes the words that come out of our mouth.

We're here to celebrate the narrow way.

That doesn't mean we're narrow-minded.

That just means that sometimes you take us through narrow places to just kind of scrape off all the unnecessary out of our lives.

And so, Lord, just kind of scrape off the barnacles that have kind of gotten themselves attached to the holes of our hearts today.

We want to be liberated.

We don't want to be people of idolatry.

We want to be people of true worship, of the one true God.

We want to not only worship you, God, but we want to worship you in the way that you demand to be worshipped, and that is in spirit and in truth.

And so we turn to the Bible, because it is the truth, and the Spirit guides us into a right understanding of the truth.

And so, Lord, to all this, we yield ourselves now and we say, speak.

Now, before I finish this prayer, I want you to pray just for about 30 seconds.

I want you to ask the Lord to show you what's unnecessary in your life today.

If there's anything, just Lord, if there's anything in my life that's just unnecessary, show me.

And so, Father, we uh we ask you to reveal, to make clear, to clarify, to speak, and we'll do something with what you show us.

That's our that's our commitment to you today.

We offer this prayer in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a scene.

If you have got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a Bible, there's one on your row.

And I'm on page 61.

And uh we are going to the book of Exodus, and we got to the Ten Commandments, and we're calling this series on the Ten Commandments flourish.

Living the life you were created to live, because God gives the little translation in the Hebrew is ten words, the ten words.

And so God gives kind of ten words to kind of shape and fashion and remind us and call us to and woo us and win us to the life that we were created to live.

And so uh I now let me just say this.

I'm gonna talk today about the high price of idolatry, and then we're gonna read the passage.

I'm gonna read Exodus chapter 20, the first six verses, and then I'm gonna make four statements uh based on what the Bible says.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

And at the end, we're gonna sit and just kind of think about our lives, uh, and then we're gonna be dismissed, and we'll scatter and get out of here.

Because God is so good that there's such a thing on TV today.

It's called football, and you have a couch and you have some sweatpants.

And God's calling you to all that.

And why do I say that?

Because we kind of act like sometimes when I lay around and do nothing, I feel guilty.

No.

No.

You should lay around and do nothing.

Just to remind yourself that somebody else is in charge of the world.

It doesn't depend on you working 24-7.

And so, uh, what's that got to do with idolatry?

Uh, we sometimes feel guilty about things we shouldn't feel guilty about, and we don't feel guilty about things that we should feel guilty about.

Now, when I say idolatry, most of you are like, I ain't gonna statues in my house.

I don't have like a shrine to Elvis or anything like that going on.

I'm not guilty of idolatry.

Maybe this will help us to get at it.

Ask yourself this question: in what ways are you dissatisfied with how your life is going?

In what ways are you dissatisfied with how your life is going?

Where's my life most out of control?

Where's my life most out of control?

Because if you can identify and we can identify the dissatisfaction or dissatisfaction with life, that is the place that we are most prone to manufacture an idol, to be guilty of idolatry because I'm not happy in this area, so I gotta do something about that.

What does that mean?

It means maybe if you're single and you're like, man, I just want to get married, you can make an idol out of marriage.

If you're insecure, you can make an idol out of acceptance, so you're checking Facebook and Instagram every 15 minutes.

Uh that's what the Bible talks about when it talks about idolatry.

If you're broke, then money can become an idol.

If you're going through pain, then relief can become an idol.

If you're dissatisfied with politics, then your favorite politician can become an idol.

John Calvin, the great theologian, said this.

He said the human heart is an idol factory.

We manufacture idols.

We just come up with things to fixate upon.

And the Bible says, not only do we do that, but there's a reason that we do that.

And there's a price to doing that.

So let's look at what the Bible says and let's think about our lives in light of this today.

This is Exodus chapter 20, verse 1.

Exodus 20:1

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

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 underneath the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I am the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Now, the first command we looked at last week was about God says, Hey, I want you to worship the one true God.

Now, the second commandment is about worshiping the one true God in the right way.

You say, What do you mean?

Uh the if you read in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, you'll see the Bible never talks about, never forbids unbelief.

It never says, hey, you should believe in God or you shouldn't be an unbeliever, because the issue is not unbelief, the issue is idolatry because you're going to believe something.

If you say, I don't believe in God, that doesn't mean you don't believe anything.

That means you believe something that's wrong.

And so, all through the Old Testament, into the New Testament, you even see in Romans, it says they exchange the truth of God for a lie, and they worship and serve created things instead of the creator who is forever praised.

And God responds to that because idolatry, worshiping God in the wrong way, uh uh according to our terms instead of his terms, has always come at a high price.

And so, what do you mean the high price of idolatry?

Let me just point out four things, okay?

Number one, idolatry changes the nature of the relationship.

Idolatry changes the nature of the relationship, and it does this by taking what is verbal and making it visible and doing away with our dependence on the words of God.

Let me say that again.

It changes the nature of the relationship because it takes what is verbal and it makes it visible.

We fashion for ourselves this graven image.

We come up with something for the children of Israel later in Exodus, and they get tired of waking on Moses, and so they take all their jewelry off and they give it to Aaron and say, make a God for us, something that we can see.

Why?

Because we we we don't want to wait, we don't want to live in this intimate dependence upon the voice of God.

We want something that's visible that we can look at.

And that's what Aaron does.

And he rolls it out.

This there's not a greater insult.

He rolls out this golden calf and he says, Behold, this is the God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

Now, why is that such a big deal?

Because God, he even does it right here in the Ten Commandments.

He always describes himself as, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of slavery, out of the land of Egypt.

And here they are.

Idolatry is taking the credit that belongs to God and giving it to somebody else or something else.

And we do that on a consistent basis.

It's so subtle, you don't even realize that you're doing it.

But what I mean when I say it changes the nature of the relationship, it goes from being verbal to being visible because we would rather look than listen.

Because listening takes more time.

You say, What do you mean?

Let me demonstrate.

If you're in Exodus chapter 20, flip over to Deuteronomy chapter 4.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention Deuteronomy 4 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible or you don't feel like turning, it'll come up on the screen.

Uh this is the high priority that God places.

This is a verbal relationship, and verbal relationships have to be maintained.

That's why when you go home, man, and your wife says, What'd you do today?

She wants to hear more.

How was your day?

She wants to hear more than good, what's for supper.

It's a verbal relationship.

This is what God says.

This is Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 9.

Deuteronomy 4:9

He says, Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life.

Make them known to your children and your children's children.

How on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Oreb, the Lord said to me, Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, that they may teach their children so.

And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud and gloom.

And then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire.

You heard the sound of words, but you saw no form.

There was only a voice.

And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is the Ten Commandments.

And he wrote them on two tablets of stone.

And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules, that you might do them in the land that you were going over to possess.

Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Oreb out of the midst of the fire.

Beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.

God just forbids making this idol, making this graven image out of anything.

Why?

Because he says, Hey, you you heard a voice, but you didn't see a form.

See, if you want to change the nature of relationship, ask yourself this question.

The Bible says that not only has no one ever seen God, but you cannot see God.

It's not humanly possible.

So anybody that says, I saw God, not true.

So if you're gonna make an idol or grave an image, something that kind of represents God, then what do you base it on?

Let me give you a common illustration.

Uh there's a show on TV, I'm not making this up.

I think it's on the Animal Planet, and it's called Finding Bigfoot.

Did you know this?

And grown men, yes, I see the hand, or there are others.

Go ahead and admit to it.

You flip over every once in a while.

One of my children who will remain unnamed, but she's the youngest, is fascinated with this show.

I'll go through and it'll be on, and there's grown men.

Remember those TV antennas when you were poor, you had it on the pole, the thing goes on the spread.

They got these things on poles and out in the woods, and they got headlamps and cameras, and they'll stop.

I'm not making this up.

One guy stopped and goes, he goes, I'm calling out to the squatch.

And I'm like, No way.

Are you kidding me?

Yes way.

And so I said to my daughter, I didn't want to crush her world.

So I was like, I want my kids to think there's like a big hairy, like grape ape on steroids out in the woods in Seattle or in Washington or somewhere.

And I said, Hey, well, she's a whether it's finding Bigfoot.

And I went, have they found Bigfoot yet?

Have they seen Bigfoot yet?

No, no, no, but they're looking.

I don't want to ruin this for you, sweetie, but they ain't never gonna find Bigfoot.

This is what they got to do to sell potato chips.

They gotta make a show out of this.

I make a show out of anything.

Why do I tell you that?

Because you can put your antennas and your radars down and kind of go, oh, I'm gonna go see God.

No, no, no.

You can't see God.

Not that He doesn't exist.

No, no, you're not allowed to see God because your insistence to make it visible means that the verbal is not enough for you.

And so when you make a graven image, what you're saying is, hey God, you know what?

Here's the the the deep offense, and Deuteronomy kind of refers to this in a really subtle way when he says down there, he says, Hey, you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain in verse 11 while the mountain burned with fire.

The Lord spoke to you in the midst of the fire.

You heard the sound of his words, but you saw no form.

There was only a voice, and he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform.

If you and I insist that, hey, just the voice of God is not enough for me, what you're saying to God is you can't be trusted.

And beloved, you don't want to say that to God.

You don't want to say to God, hey, that's great and everything, you know, your covenant, your word, your oath.

But can we kind of get something I can look at to kind of remind me?

Idolatry changes the nature of the relationship.

I mean, just this is free, but the highest expression of this is in the Old Testament.

Remember when Israel looked around and they said, Hey, all these other nations around us, they have a king.

We need a king.

Give us a king.

Remember what God said?

You don't need a king.

You got me.

I'm your king.

This is a theocracy.

You don't need a monarchy.

No, we like to have a king.

And God said, Okay, I'm gonna give you a king.

Why?

Because we love to have something to fixate on, to look to, something to blame and hold responsible.

Translation, we love to change the nature of the relationship.

Secondly, idolatry robs God of His Majesty.

Idolatry robs God of His Majesty.

Let me let me ask you a question.

How many in this room would consider yourself kind of an artsy person?

I kind of think, I get them confused, left brain, right brain, whatever arch tastes like.

How many would say, I'm kind of wired up that way?

Can I see your hand?

It's a good thing.

Hold your hand up real high.

See, you can help people like me, because I'm the other side of the brain.

Okay?

My wife took me to a museum one time when we were dating, or we were married, we were in Fort Worth, and took me to a museum one time.

We walked around and she's like, You're not having fun, are you?

Nope.

I don't understand what any of this means.

Some guys kind of go, see, this painting has movement, and I'm like, it's gonna move or something.

It didn't move, it just stood there.

This is worth six million dollars.

Man, somebody got ripped off.

And so artistic people help us when we say idolatry robs God of his majesty.

You say, What do you mean?

Think about it like this: the Bible says in Psalm 18 of God that he made darkness his covering.

Yet it says in 1 Timothy chapter 6 that he lives in unapproachable light.

1 Timothy 6 · chapter mention

He made darkness his covering.

And yet he lives in unapproachable light.

How do you capture that on a canvas or from a block of wood?

See, there's something majestic about God.

There's something holy other than.

Here's the word.

There's something transcendent about God.

There's a limit to what we can understand about God.

We can only go so far with our finiteness because God is infinite.

There's a lot about God you're never going to be able to verify and validate and stamp and say, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Here's the word we don't want to admit.

There's more to God than there is to us.

And that's a great admission, beloved.

That's a great yeah.

See, idolatry shrinks God down and robs God of his majesty.

Ask yourself this question: what's the last big thought you had about God?

What's the last time you had a really big thought where you're like, wow.

Man.

The Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, he pastored a church, was a great thinker, but every day he got in the habit of doing this.

He would get on his horse and ride out in the country and just disappear for two or three hours.

And he'd get off his horse and he'd just walk around holding the horse by the leash and just walk out in the woods.

And finally, one of his people is like, hey, where do you go every day?

And Edwards said, Your thoughts about God are commensurate with the size of the room within which you have them.

You're like, What say that again?

Ooh, that's deep.

He says, Your thoughts about God basically are about the size of the room within which you have them.

He said, I have to get out of my office and go into the outdoors.

It's the biggest room I know because I want to think God, I want to think about God as big as God is.

I want to think thoughts about God that were in keeping with how big God is.

So he would go out, walk around, and he'd take a piece of paper and a pencil, and he'd write stuff down.

He'd pin the notes to his jacket.

This is before sticky notes.

And he would come back, and his wife Sarah said, I would hear him coming on this horse, and I would hear paper flapping in the breeze.

And she said, I knew my Jonathan had been with the Lord.

He'd get off his horse and she'd take his coat off and go inside and lay it down and unpin the notes and lay them out on the table so he could kind of come back later and expound upon these thoughts.

Jonathan Edwards went outside almost every day of his life for two to three hours and just thought about God.

What's the last big thought you had about God?

Here's another question.

Where do you go to be reminded of God's majesty?

Where do you go?

See, my concern is that the pace of our life is so go, go, go, hurry, hurry, hurry, work, get kids to school, get up, get kids to school, get ready for work, go to work, come home, fix supper, order pizza, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Get homework, go to bed, look at the husband, watch TV, go to sleep, get up, do it again.

After a while, you're just kind of like, here's the problem with that kind of pace.

There's no room for majesty.

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?

Nobody goes to the Grand Canyon to feel better about themselves.

Marcy and I, before we had kids, we had disposable income.

Remember that?

Yeah.

We went to the Grand Canyon.

And honestly, when she talked about going to the Grand Canyon, I was like, Are you kidding me?

It's a hole.

That's not a vacation.

That's a waste of gas money.

But I didn't say that because I'm a husband.

You can't say everything you want to say.

And so we got there.

I walked up on the edge of the hole, and I was just kind of like, oh my.

Lady came up after the last service.

I was talking about this, and she said, I've hiked the Grand Canyon.

She's joking back tears.

I've hiked the Grand Canyon.

I said, How was it?

She goes, mind-blowing.

I just realized how small I was.

I said, tell me about it.

She goes, Well, we were hiking and we paused and I looked down and then we're down the bottom of the Grand Canyon and a lizard crawled by.

And I thought, I'm like that lizard in the Grand Canyon.

And I said, Yeah, it gives you this sense of perspective.

You need to go places.

It may be in nature, it may be at a museum.

That's great.

Just don't invite me to go.

It may be somewhere.

But go somewhere and get around some things that are so big that they kind of invite you to kind of think about God's majesty.

Because idolatry robs God, it strips God, it makes it all pragmatic and not majestic.

And God is a majestic being.

When you read in Isaiah chapter 6, and it says, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord lofty and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple, and above him were seraphim, where seraphims these angelic beings, each having six wings.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Hello, six wings, turn off your Xbox and think about God in terms of that.

With two they covered their feet, and with two they covered their faces, and with two they flew, and they were crying out to one another: holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

The whole earth is full of his glory.

They were not saying to God, You're holy, you're awesome, you're rad, you're my dad.

They were warning each other before worship goes vertical, beloved.

It goes horizontal.

Hey, oxygen masks are going to deploy.

Put that on yourself and then on your kid because we're fixing to get into the presence of a holy God.

He's majestic and he is so overwhelming just at the sound of the voices of the people that worship him, the doorposts and the thresholds and the foundations shake.

Where do you go to think about God as God really is?

Third thing about idolatry is it's an attempt to use God.

It's an attempt to use God.

You say, I would never do that.

Let me ask you a question.

Anybody in this room ever sold a house because I see your hand?

Yeah.

Put your hand down.

Any of you here had a house for sale and it wasn't selling, took a while to sell your house?

Put your hand up.

Have you done that?

Yeah.

And of you people that had that experience, did anybody tell you, hey, what you ought to do if you're gonna sell your house is get a statue of St.

Joseph, turn it upside down and bury it in the backyard.

How many of you know what I'm talking about right now?

I'm not making it up.

People, you can go go online and Google St.

Joseph Kit and you can buy it today on the internet.

And people believe if I take a little statue, an icon, idol, uh, of St.

Joseph, turn it upside down and bury it in the backyard.

Here's my favorite part with its face towards the direction I want to live.

I'm not making it up.

That's gonna sell your house.

Now you're like, oh, I would never do that.

Some of you are like, don't make eye contact, honey, with household.

That's all that matters.

Sure.

Here's a way we use God.

I heard it right here in the lobby a couple weeks ago.

Some woman said to her kid, hey, hey, would Jesus want you to do that?

Don't do that to your kid.

Because I'm out there getting the kid liquored up on suckers, and you're like, and the kid's running around, he's like, Pastor Neil got me hyped up on this stuff.

He gave me some Mountain Dew and you come along and go.

Hey, would Jesus want you to do that?

Because here's what happens you're using Jesus to control your kid's behavior.

You should have enough authority in that relationship, but you don't have to invoke Jesus.

My my dad, for all his dysfunction, he never invoked Jesus, he brought the thunder himself.

Hey, hey, you need to get Straightened up?

No, sir.

I'm straight as I can be.

Now she says it like that.

Oh, I'm so straight, man.

Yeah.

He never once said, Jesus is not happy with you, Neil.

That's how that's how subtle it is when you use God.

The Bible don't turn over the Bible tells the story of 1 Samuel chapter 4 of the Israelites and they're at war with their nemesis, the Philistines.

1 Samuel 4 · chapter mention

The people had Goliath, the big nine foot six-inch tall guy.

They're at war and it's not going well.

And they had two guys in charge that weren't spiritual men, okay?

This is Phinehas and Hopni, the two sons of Eli.

And they're like, hey, well, uh, we're losing the battle.

I'll tell you what, go down there to where the the Ark of the Covenant is and get the Ark of the Covenant.

This is where God dwells, and bring that out here.

And basically, we're going to use God to win this battle.

And so they got it out there.

And let me tell you something.

It does, this is free, beloved.

It does no good to have the presence of God if you don't know what to do with the presence of God.

And they got it out there, and the Bible says, you can read it later.

It says that, hey, when the presence of God came into the camp, there was such an uproar.

The Philistines, their enemies across the battlefield, heard it and said, A God has come into their camp.

And they went out to battle, and because they wanted to use God to get victory, they were routed.

30,000 Israelites were slaughtered.

And the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant.

Why?

Because idolatry is just about trying to use God, trying to manipulate God.

You say, I don't know.

I have a conversation with a friend of mine.

He's brilliant.

He's a, he just falls out of bed in the morning and makes money.

He's just got the way God wired him up.

He's great.

He called me.

Uh, and we were talking, and he said, Man, I said, Well, how's it going?

He goes, Well, that's what I'm calling you.

I need some prayers, you know.

You know what they say is as as it goes January, so goes the rest of the year in the stock market.

And I was like, Well, I don't know what that means.

I'm talking to the wrong guy.

And he said, Well, I mean, it's bad, the market's down, blah, blah, blah.

And I just kind of, you know, get you to call in some favors for me.

Because I'm sure you don't have friends like this, but I got some friends that, for them, I'm just like a big rabbit's foot.

They just rub me and their life gets better.

Or they take me to lunch and they say, Hey, now, when you talk to the big guy, give me a little shout-out.

You're kidding me, right?

Is that why we're here at lunch?

I thought we were just friends.

You know, man, I mean, I can use a little bit of something, something.

I got a lot of stuff going on.

Well, this guy says, I said, Well, how's it going?

It's terrible, man.

The market's down, it keeps going down.

China's is just unstable and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And in the midst of the conversation, yeah, just boil it down and get down to the part where he just said, Hey, I said, Well, how is your faith sustaining you in the midst of this?

How is your faith giving you a different response to all your businessmen, friends around you?

And he said, Well, you know, I told God the other day, if he'd make the market go up, I'd give away more money.

And I started laughing.

He goes, Well, it's funny.

And I said, Did you just hear what you said?

You basically acted like you could kind of control God and get God to do what you want.

If God will make the market go up, I and now you you guys are all here like, oh, I would never do that.

Some of you did last week when you bought that Powerball ticket.

Sure you did.

And I'm not mad at you.

I know you bought the ticket and you said, no, Lord, if I win, I'm gonna give the church$50.

But now right now.

$50.

I'm good for it, God.

Yeah.

So here's my thing: that kind of thinking takes many forms.

So I wasn't hating on him.

I just kind of said, Hey, let me just love you and just say, hey, what if the market at the end of the year is down 30%?

Is God still God?

Is he still good?

Oh, I don't need that.

I don't don't say that.

Don't speak that.

Don't speak that.

I don't receive that in Jesus' name.

Shut up.

Just hush.

Now, boys and girls, look at me.

If you're under the age of 10, shut up is a bad phrase.

You don't need to use that.

But God has given Pastor Neil special permission.

See, idolatry is about our attempt to use God.

Fourthly and finally, idolatry shapes your trajectory of your family.

Listen to me, beloved.

Idolatry shapes the trajectory of your family.

Look at what he says there in verse 4, or excuse me, verse 5.

He said, 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 fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Now, we gotta let me speak to something that a lot of people think, and some have even been told, and it's it's a bad rendering of what the text says.

When the Bible says, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the third and fourth generations, look at me, beloved, that is not saying that God's gonna punish your kids for your sin and their and your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids for your sin.

That's not what God does.

We're responsible for our own sin, okay?

But what it actually says is worse than that.

Here's what it means to visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations.

God doesn't punish them for your sins, they take up your sins and do them themselves.

And that's punishment enough.

If you're the guy that right now you're 33, 32 years old, you're kind of like, oh man, I can talk to God as good and dearstand as I can in a church building.

Then when you're 68 and your 32-year-old son says that, your heart's gonna break on a level you don't have words for.

It's just marriage falls apart, and you're like, son, you need to find yourself a good church and get in it.

Your son's looking at you kind of like, really, Dad?

Like you did.

That's what it means to visit the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generations.

It's not punishment, it's that your kids look at you and they look at me and how you live and what you worship and how you worship that.

And it matters because God says, hey, this is gonna be spooled out.

This is gonna be picked up on.

It's my buddy who's going down the road.

This happened about a year ago.

He's driving down the road and the guy pulls out in front of him.

He locks the brakes up, and from the backseat, he hears a word come out of his kid's mouth.

His kid's like six, and he's like, grabs a rearview mirror.

What'd you say?

And the kid said it again, and he said, Where did you hear that?

He goes, Oh, mommy says it's the people driving all the time.

I get a text, pray for me.

I'm going home to confront my wife.

Like, good luck.

Yeah, see, see, that's what it means, visiting the iniquity.

But hey, don't hear it in a negative way.

Because a lot of times you come to church, you think, oh, that's bad.

No, no, no.

Look at what the Bible says.

Look at verse 6.

He after he says, hey, God's jealous for the Lord your God, he's jealous.

That doesn't mean that that means he's zealous.

God is zealous for you to experience what only he can give you.

And here's where I get that.

Look what the Bible says.

He says, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

Verse 6, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You're smart people.

Hear the math again again.

Yeah, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations.

So you got third and fourth generations over here and over here, where God says in verse 6, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me.

You have the capacity to set a trajectory for your family that will go on long after you're off this earth.

Not just kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, and their grandkids, you know, third and fourth generation.

Thousands.

Thousands.

Some of you are gonna plant seeds you're never gonna sit under.

You're gonna grow, you're gonna you're gonna plant trees whose shade you're never gonna sit under.

And three generations now, they're gonna walk it back and they're gonna go, you know what?

My my great-great-great-great-grandfather, I never knew him, but he was a godly man.

And everybody in our family knows that he was a godly man because they always talk about.

Some of you don't come from a family that was a church-going family, they weren't a godly family, they weren't bad people, it just wasn't a priority.

You have the opportunity to be the person that kind of changes the trajectory of your family.

And God says, hey, it's not all third and fourth generations, it's thousands.

God, hear me, beloved, God relates to you with eternity in mind.

Not just you and your well-being or you and your kids, but he's relating to you and me today with thousands in mind.

That's why he says, by showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

So the question you got to ask yourself, you gotta think about today, is am I willing to love God and keep his commandments?

Am I willing to love God and keep his commandments?

And if you're willing to do that, what would that look like to love God and keep his commandments?

Not to take this verbal relationship and try to make it visible, but to say to God what Jesus said, hey, I don't live by bread alone, but I live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And when God speaks, that's music to my ears.

Because this beloved, look at me.

We'll be done this morning.

This is not math, this is music.

This is not math.

One plus one plus two to the third power, minus what?

No.

It's music, it's music.

And God says, I want you to hear this music.

I don't want your life to take on a rhythm.

I want you to have the sense of movement about you, not just pace, but rhythm.

The thousands who love me and keep my commandments.

Let me ask you one last question.

What if it's really that simple?

What if God just says, here's what I want you to do?

I want you to love me and keep my commandments.

God not only speaks, but he spoke through men.

The Bible says that the Bible came to existence because men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

No prophecy has its origin in the will of man.

Translation, it was God's idea.

But God, why why why do we have the Bible?

So God says, you can check the record and see what I've said, and I'm gonna do everything I said I'm gonna do.

And he's big and majestic, and you gotta get yourself in places and spaces where your mind can just kind of be blown away.

About how transcendent God is, and yet how available he is.

And in light of everything we've said this morning, just ask yourself, hey, God, ask God during this time, what's unnecessary in my life?

What is it that I've kind of come up with on my own that I could just do without?

Spend some time thinking about that for just a minute.

Yes, Lord, that is our prayer.

Let your words triumph over unbelief.

Otherwise, we're gonna fashion for ourselves a graven image, something visible we can lock on and look at.

Instead of just resting in our relationship with a God who speaks, we have to listen to.

Being made to listen reminds us that someone else is in control of the world.

And we don't dictate, we get spoken to.

And yet by speaking to us, you're bestowing dignity upon us.

And so you have spoken and you continue to speak loudest and longest through your word.

And for that we're grateful.

God, we only appreciate steak because we've had to eat bologna before.

And whether we're drinking the wine these days or stomping the grapes, we want to say out loud that you're faithful, that you're good, and you're gonna get us through it.

Whatever's whatever's before is you're gonna get us through it.

You've not forsaken us.

It is with great cause the Bible says, Yea, though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil, for you're with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

So let us be comforted by your presence, and let us rest in the sufficiency of your voice guiding our life.

That's what delivers us from the vanity of idolatry.

And so we confess this and we pray it in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Stand to your feet, hold your hands out.

Everything you have that God gave you to enjoy in a way that glorifies him and satisfies you.

So depart now and enjoy your couch, your queso, your sweatpants, and your flat screen TV, and your nap to the glory of God.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you or dismiss.