Altars and Idols

This last week I had the privilege of spending a few days back at my alma mater.

My college I went to is in Texas, it's just south of Dallas.

And so I got a chance to go back there, spend three days.

They have a grad school and they have a master's of leadership.

And so they have these professors that'll teach throughout the year, but then they'll bring in a practitioner twice a year to come in and talk about leadership and how you know what you're learning where you are.

So I got to do seven sessions with these students, and it was just a sharp group of young people, and I had a great time.

Tuesday night I got to speak to the football team, which I played for, you know, uh whatever it was, you know, 20 years ago.

And then um, and then I got to speak to the whole student body on Wednesday.

Um my coach that I played for is no longer the coach, but he's the athletic director now, so he's still there.

And he came up after and gave me a big hug, and I got a chance to just hang out with him.

And and um I was reminded of a story.

Um he was he was the kind of coach that uh actually really meant what he said when he said, I want to help you become better people.

Uh football is just a mechanism we're gonna use about life, it's a microcosm of life, it's not about football, it's about life, and he meant that.

And so actually, one of his best coaching jobs he ever did for me uh was after I was gone.

And actually, I left um left school, graduated, I took a job at a at a church, and I was the youth pastor.

They brought me in.

It was a small church, handful of students, and man, I just really wanted to care for those students and help them grow in their faith, but also wanted to see uh new people come.

I wanted the church to grow.

I mean, that's a healthy thing, right?

You we want to disciple people that are here, but we want to make room for new people to come as well.

And so, in order to do my part of that, I went and got myself hired as a junior high football coach, seventh grade football coach.

And so I thought this is a way I can create common ground, and so I started doing that, and pretty soon a lot of these guys on the football team started coming to our church.

And I thought this was a huge win.

I was really excited about it, but a lot of them weren't church kids, they their families didn't go to church, they didn't grow up in church, and so they were maybe a little rough around the edges, we'll say, and is by church standards.

And so they they showed up, and uh, little did I know, but I was upsetting a group of people who were mad that I was bringing bad kids to church.

And so I thought, well, I thought that was kind of the point.

You know, I thought we were all doing that, right?

Aren't we supposed to be doing that?

Uh, but they weren't not happy about it, and so they uh I think informally elected a spokeswoman to come speak to me about it, and so she pulled me into a side room and began to rebuke me, okay, for bringing bad kids to church.

And so I heard her out, and um at that time in my life I lacked the skills of diplomacy that I have acquired over years of blood, sweat, and tears.

And uh, but at that time I was 23 and had a little bit of a quick tongue.

So she she basically took me to task, and when she got done, you know, I was like, I heard this quote one time from this guy, and he said, It's not those who are well who are in need of a physician.

I came to call not those who think they're righteous, but those who know they're sinners.

His name was Jesus, you ought to meet him.

She didn't clap, she didn't receive that well.

Uh, she wasn't encouraged or edified, or um it didn't go well, and and so she she said, Um, you know, I heard these kids cussing in the church.

They were cut, I heard them cussing.

Like she thought I was gonna be surprised by that, you know.

I was like, I'm I'm sure they were.

You know, I we're working on that, you know, we're all a work in progress, you know.

We all have this tongue we're trying to tame, and I'm sure they were cussing, but I've heard you gossip twice as much as I've heard them cuss.

So if they've got to go, you probably ought to go too.

That that didn't go well.

It did not go well.

The my poor boss was like the nicest guy in the world, like the nicest human.

And he didn't know what to do because he's thinking, you know, I think he agreed with me in a sense, but you know, he's like, this guy's gonna leave, and I'm still gonna be, this lady's gonna be here, you know.

And so he didn't know what to do.

And I and I was, I mean, I was immature, frankly.

I mean, I think I had some points, but I was pretty immature and and I was in my feelings, and and and you know how it is, you know, you just want to cut bait.

And and I didn't have the fortitude and the stamina to be able to journey through this.

And so I I call my coach in Texas.

I call him up, I said, Look, I told him the story.

I said, I made a huge mistake.

You know, I'm I'm not supposed to be here doing this.

I think I want to coach football.

I think that's what I'm supposed to do.

Do you have a job?

I'll coach anything.

You just give me a job, you know, I need a job.

And he's like, you know, actually, Greg, he goes, I actually am trying to fill a couple coaching uh positions, um, but you can't have those because they're not for you.

He said, You're called to do what you're doing, and it looks like you stirred up a hornet's nest, and it looks like it's probably a hornet's nest that needed stirred up, and God called you to agitate this thing, and you probably could do it with a little more diplomacy next time.

So you're learning, and God's working in you while he's working through you, but it's not time to cut bait.

I didn't coach you to quit, get back in the game, and then he hung up on me.

So I thanked him for it uh Wednesday.

You know, I started to think about it, you know, because I was thinking back on this story, and I was thinking back on, I was thinking about this, like what we do.

You know, we come together every seven days, we worship God and we look in his word, and you know, don't underestimate what happens in these moments because you know I was at a defining moment.

I was thinking back on that moment, like if he had said, Yeah, man, come come coach the DBs or whatever, I would have gone home, I would have said, Shaylin, pack your stuff up, we're going south.

You know, I'd have been out.

And I look back at my life, I'm like, you know, in these times I wanted to bail, times I wanted to quit, times I wanted to change direction, and even times I was sincerely trying to figure out what was God's will.

God used not only his word, but he used people to speak into my life at these critical moments.

And I look back and I think, like, where would I be now?

What would I be doing now?

It wouldn't be this, it would be some other journey and some other story.

And you know, you think about these moments when we as we gather together, you know, God uses messages, he uses people, he uses his word to speak to you at important times, important times to guide you, not necessarily into what your feelings are, because your feelings and your where you're at in your development might lead you to make a bad decision, a short-sighted decision that would impact the rest of your life.

And so I'm so thankful.

I hope that you come in with high expectations, uh, not based on even whoever is up here speaking, but of God's ability to speak to you and to actually get you where he wants you to go and to guide and lead you.

You know, it says in in Hebrews 11, okay, we're looking at Hebrews 11, looking at these 16, you know, we're not gonna look at all of them, but 16 people that are named in Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, and talks about, you know, their life, they followed God's path for them.

God's path for them.

It wouldn't have been right for me.

It's great to coach football or it's great to, you know, do these other things, but that wasn't what God had for me.

And so you see in each one of these people in Hebrews 11, they walked the path God created for them, what they were supposed to do, and they were faithful to it.

And of course, if we all do that, you know, we become a part of this larger picture.

Um, it says in Hebrews 11:1, though, it says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

You might have seen this verse before, but I want you to take another look at it, and I want you to look at those two statements and how they're kind of the same but kind of different.

So it says faith is the substance of things hoped for.

Think about what things hoped for means.

If you hope for it, it means you can see it in your mind's eye.

You're clear on where you want to go.

You you have you have a vision of where you want to be or what the dream is or what the goal is.

You're moving towards something.

And the issue isn't can I see it?

It's am I ever gonna get there?

For the joy set before, he endured the cross.

I I can see the vision.

And some of you, that's where you're at right now, is it's it's not that you have any shortage of dreams or or visions.

It's am I actually going to be able to get there?

Am I going to be able to close the gap?

And faith, he says, that faith is the substance that will keep you taking those steps day in and day out, that will keep you from quitting on that journey, that will keep you faithful.

Faith will keep you faithful to get to the place that you can already see in your mind, but you're going, it just doesn't feel like I'm ever gonna get there.

So it's the substance of things hoped for, but it's the evidence, it says, of things not seen.

Not seen is different than hope for.

Hope for, I can see it.

Not seen is I can't see it.

I can't see a way I'm ever gonna forgive.

I can't see a way I'm ever gonna heal.

I can't see a way that I'm ever gonna find joy again.

I can't see, I I just can't see away, I can't see a way.

And faith will keep you moving in the right direction even when you can't see it.

So it's the substance of things hoped for that I can see but I don't have.

And it's the evidence of things I can't even see.

And so the way that God works in those two steps of faith is illumination and calibration.

Illumination is sometimes God will show you something you can't see.

He illuminates it, he reveals it.

But the other is calibration, which is I can see it, I know what I'm supposed to do, and I'm going to stay faithful to what I'm supposed to do.

Often, people who say they don't know what they're supposed to do do know what they're supposed to do, they just don't know if they want to do it.

And so faith will keep you moving toward what you know you're supposed to do, or it will guide you in the right direction when you don't know what to do.

And so, what we're doing is in our lives, we're looking at these 16 characters, we're looking at these people and looking at their model of faithfulness and learning what we need to learn so that we can run our leg of the journey well.

Okay?

Today I want to look at uh one of the people that's mentioned in chapter 32 of Hebrews 11, a guy by the name of Gideon.

Gideon.

Uh Gideon's introduced in Judges chapter 6.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

In the book of Judges, this is a period of time before the nation of Israel had a king.

They had no king.

And so what God would do is he would raise up uh what they call a judge, but don't think like Judge Joe Brown or Judge Judy.

Think of like a leader.

Okay, this wasn't like uh somebody in court, part of the judicial system.

It was actually an individual that God would raise up for a period of time to solve a specific problem to lead people out.

In Judges 6, the problem at hand were the Midianites.

The Midianites were a group, uh brutal group of people.

They were oppressing and had brought the nation of Israel into captivity, and they were so brutal, they were trying to starve them to death.

They would burn their fields down, they were brutalizing the nation of Israel, but there was really nothing Israel could do about it in the natural because they just didn't have enough firepower.

Um, they were outnumbered dramatically.

And so you have this guy, Gideon, who shows up on the in this text, and he's been completely and totally emasculated.

Uh he is he's hiding in a wine press smuggling grain.

Okay, you think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

He's trying to get air and food.

He's not thinking about self-actualization.

There's no big dreams going on.

It is just eat and feed these kids, and that's it.

I'm trying to make it to tomorrow.

And so when he's in that spot, the angel of the Lord appears to him and says, Mighty hero, mighty hero, the Lord is with you.

And it almost feels condescending, it feels sarcastic.

Gideon's like, haha, you know, what are you talking about?

I'm smuggling grain.

And he gets a little salty, you know.

He's like, if you represent God, why don't you go talk to your boss?

Because our ancestors told us about Moses, who led our nation out of Egypt, and here we are, right back.

I mean, these days are worse than they've ever been.

We're in captivity to the Midianites, and I'm just trying to make it to tomorrow.

And the angel of the Lord essentially says to him, Hey, God's gonna use you.

He's gonna use you, and he's gonna give you a plan.

And he said, You're gonna fight this massive group of people like they're one person.

God's gonna deliver you.

And so he's he goes through a process basically where he has to be, he has to have the faith to step out and do it, and it feels like a long shot.

Well, it's interesting because once he finally agrees to do it, the first command that he has is to go tear down his father's idols.

His father had idols to Baal.

He said, I want you to go tear down your father's idols.

If you think about that, if you're Gideon and you're already overwhelmed by the Midianites, okay, for the quick math, they had 120,000 fighting men, and the nation of Israel at best had 22,000.

So this is this is no, we have no shot.

This is crazy.

And so we're already at this huge disadvantage, and you're telling me my first act as a leader is to go make my dad mad?

Okay?

Our problem is the Midianites.

And you want me to go disrupt my neighbors?

You want me to go upset the people who I need to be in our army?

I need them to fight, I need their loyalty.

You want me to disrupt the loyalty of the only people I can count on when we have an existential threat from the Midianites?

But that's exactly what he does.

And he goes and he tears down his father's altars to Baal, these idols to Baal, and builds an altar to Yahweh, and they almost kill him for it.

They almost kill him.

And it was actually his dad, to his credit, stepped up and said, You know, we were wrong, actually.

We were wrong.

And he said, You know, if Baal's such a big deal, let him defend himself.

So they name, they nicknamed Gideon Jeru Baal, which means let Baal defend himself.

So if you skip through in the story, God takes him and he steps out in faith and he calls 22,000 and they keep testing him.

Bottom line, the army goes in the wrong direction.

They get down from 22,000 to 10,000, down to 300.

And God gives them this plan, and they they go and attack in the night, and they don't even have a weapon.

They have torches, they they they shatter these pictures, they make a lot of noise, they blow ram's horns, they're yelling and screaming, creating chaos.

And the armies of Midian woke up, you know, and they killed each other.

And they're like, wow, that worked.

You know, that was pretty sweet, you know.

Good job, God.

What a plan.

And so they follow all the way through.

Now it's it's this amazing story, and you have Gideon who who's he goes, you know, I'm the least qualified.

He goes, I'm I'm from the least tribe, and I'm the least in my tribe.

How could I do this?

He goes from this weakling who's hiding out with no vision but survival to a national hero.

It becomes this huge defining moment in the nation of Israel.

And so if you skip to chapter 8, Judges 8, in verse 22, it says, So the Israelites said to Gideon, Be our ruler.

You and your son and your grandson will be our rulers, for you have rescued us from Midian.

But Gideon replied, I will not rule over you.

Look at this.

He said, I will not rule over you, nor will my son, the Lord will rule over you.

So Gideon has the presence of mind to calibrate himself to himself.

In a sense, and this is this applies to all of us, in a sense, it is totally right for you to take joy and the right sort of pride, not the seven deadly sin pride, but being proud of yourself and your work and what God's done through you.

It's good to step back and just, it is good.

You know, we talked about it in Genesis 1, you know, God's doing create creating the world.

He's like, it is good.

It is good.

It's okay.

Like, there's nothing wrong with Gideon after having done this, going, you know what?

I was faithful.

You know what?

I did go from a smuggling grain in a wine press mentality to the fact that I was a mighty hero.

And I I could have said no, and I said yes.

And when it came time to break the vases and to blow the ram's horns, we did it.

And we executed and we followed all the way through.

And of course, you know, it was it was all under the power of God, but you know what?

We did this, and to take inventory of his win, and at the same time to say, you know what, but it's not about me.

It was a season of time, it's not about my dynasty, it's not about my legacy.

He's like, it's not about me or my kids or my grandkids.

He goes, God, is it this is a theocracy.

It's all about God.

And so he said, God will rule over you.

But then they something interesting happened.

He says, You know what?

Everybody brings some of the plunder, and we're gonna make an ephod.

And an ephod was like a shirt-like garment that the priests would wear ultimately when they were seeking the will of God for the nation.

And so he says, We're gonna make this ephod, and this ephod will remind us.

It will remind us of God's faithfulness and the victory that he delivered so we won't forget.

But also it'll help us, you know, essentially know God's will moving forward.

And look what it says in verse 27.

Gideon made a sacred ephod from the gold and put it in Ophrah, his hometown.

But soon, look at this, soon, all of the Israelites prostituted themselves by worshiping it, and it became a trap for Gideon and his family.

That's really provocative language.

They prostituted themselves, they sold out, and it says that it became a trap or a stumbling block to Gideon and his family.

The irony is the thing that they designed to honor God, to worship God, what was designed to be an altar became an idol.

Idols are easy to spot when they say Baal on them.

In Judges 6, there was no mistaking the idol.

Because it had Baal written across it.

What we see in Judges 8, that it's possible to have an ephod that has Yahweh written on it, and it also can become an idol.

It became a stumbling block, it says, to Gideon and his family.

What starts out as an altar can end up as an idol.

What starts out as an altar can end up as an idol.

Gideon is mentioned in Hebrews 11 so that we will be inspired in our leg of the journey to have the same level of faith that caused him to get out of the wine press mentality, to take one small step of faith at a time, to go in 300 versus 120,000, trusting God to deliver and following all the way through.

But I also think it's in our best interest to not only be inspired by his faith, but to be cautioned by his mistake.

But when it says Yahweh on it, or it says Jesus on it, or it has a cross on it, it also can become an idol.

How does an altar become an idol?

An altar becomes an idol if we stop worshiping at our altar and we start worshiping our altar.

Then the altars become idols.

And friend, this is true.

Like this is a really important conversation because we're getting ready to do$12.5 million worth of altars.

Which means if we don't stay calibrated and we don't find a way to continue to see these things the way they're supposed to be seen, we could accidentally build$12.5 million worth of idols.

So the application to the projects and everything we're doing is pretty obvious.

The obvious application is that as we do these things, it is on us to use them for their intended purpose and to keep our minds right.

Because an ephhod has a built in rebuttal if you try to hold someone.

Accountable to it, right?

If you're like, you know, Gideon, I think you're getting a little attached to the ephod.

Getting a little high on this ephod, man.

Like, I mean, I think the ephod starting to morph.

He's like, it's an ephod.

It's about Yahweh.

I mean, we're you know, it was just faithfulness.

It's like, ah, I think it's becoming a trap and a stumbling block.

Like things done for God, things done in the name of Jesus, sometimes have this incredible blind spot where at some point it went from the thing that we built so that we could worship God and really making it about Him to where it subtly becomes about us.

And so now we bow to the building, and now the building somehow is a shrine to ourselves.

Or it just it's subtle, man.

It doesn't happen overnight.

It happens slowly over time, and you look up.

And by the way, the the application doesn't just stop at what we're gonna do with the projects.

Like there is personal application for each one of us because every individual in this room, okay, you have an altar, something that you worship God with.

You have an altar, you have an instrument, you have uh God's faithfulness, and those those gifts and talents and opportunities and open doors, those all of those things are things you can either worship God with, or you can worship them.

You can use them to worship the uncreated creator, or you can worship the created thing.

My guitar can be an instrument that I use to worship God, or my guitar can be the thing that I bow to and I worship.

Your business can be the thing that you use to glorify and worship God and manifest the body of Christ in the earth, or it can be your God.

It can be an idol, your sport can be something that you use to glorify God, or it's something that you can actually, it can be your God, and you bow to it.

And so it's it's important for us.

I mean, Gideon, with all of his great faith, in some way had this blind spot, and it became the the altar became an idol and it became a stumbling block generationally that affected him and his family and the whole nation.

In fact, it says in verse 34 that they got so caught up with the ephod, it says in verse 34 that they forgot about the Lord their God.

We come together, sometimes God will illuminate something to us or to you or to me, and he always has something he wants to show us, the the evidence of things not seen.

But often God will bring us here to remind us of something that he's already taught us and he's already told us, and we know, and yet maybe we see a subtlety of how an altar has become an idol.

I told you the story at the beginning of a lady who I had an encounter with early on in ministry.

Well, I want to tell you about another lady, her name's Carla.

Carla, when she was a teenager, started serving at the church that was occupying 817 North Hamilton Road, and we came together and she was um, she's when she was 19 years old, she was the bookkeeper for that church.

It was before this property was even purchased.

They were on the other another side of town.

And so throughout the years, you know, she was in charge of paying the bills and doing those type of things, and the church uh uh was called Fairmore Assembly and then uh Evangel Temple, and the church had some some great years and and and was growing, and of course they could see the vision.

I've been told by multiple people that went to that church that the pastor, uh Pastor Eugene Spike at the time would stand here and say, Hey, there will be a day you won't be able to get a parking space.

You remember that?

You were here.

I'm not lying.

You're gonna ask her.

So there'll be a day you won't be able to get a parking space.

So there'll be a day you'll come you won't be able to get a seat, you'll have to sit in overflow.

And and it wasn't happening.

The church had plateaued and declined, and so Carla, who's in charge of paying the bills, is trying to pay bills with no money, which is really hard if you've ever had to do it.

And so she's was walking and praying the property, and she said, She's praying, Lord, shake us up.

God, do something only you can do.

Lord, I pray you would just change us, Lord.

Work move by your spirit, Lord.

Do something radical, do something fresh, do something new, do something we've never seen before.

You know, she's praying these prayers, and things are getting worse and worse and worse.

And God leads these churches together, and we came in, and we came in, we started changing stuff.

We painted stuff, we spray painted 700 chairs, you know.

We had like 1,500 cans of spray paint, okay, and and we we painted the room black and we brought in light, we started contextualized uh to this generation, and da-da-da.

Well, Carla comes in the first Sunday, we opened the doors, it was Easter, and she comes in, and the church that she had spent her life buying the property and and and taking steps of faith and building it looked nothing like nothing like what it had been, and nothing like what she saw in her mind's eye.

And she said she walked in and just was like, God, what did you do?

She said, a still small voice as she was walking down the aisle, she walked in.

The still small voice said, I answered your prayer.

It just didn't look like what you thought it was gonna look like.

And so Carla, who could have stormed out, stuck around.

She stayed around.

And what she did was calibrated herself because who could blame Carla?

All of us would have that feeling.

Hey, I saw something different.

Hey, I thought this was what it was gonna be.

It almost could feel dishonorable.

But when you look at Hebrews 11, it says, follow the faith of these people who were faithful in their time to run their leg of the journey.

In Hebrews 11, they honor, the writer of Hebrews honors Moses in other chapters, chapter 8, he's changing Moses' work.

He's changing his work and saying, that the example we follow is we're not gonna do everything Moses did the way he did it.

We're gonna follow his example of faith to follow God, even if it meant tearing something down or changing something.

So this is what I want to say.

If we do this right as a cloud of witnesses, here's how we'll know we do it right.

When the next generation, when it comes time for them to be faithful to their leg of the journey, they don't keep the stuff we built just because Papa built it.

I don't want them saying, well, Grandpa Greg built it, you know, so we can't knock that down.

Listen, if God's leading you to knock it down, all the stuff we build is to serve our generation.

And if the next generation, God's leading them to knock it down, I pray they get bulldozers and knock it down.

Because what is being passed on isn't necessarily uh, you know, the thing itself.

It's the faith to go, God, I will be about what you're about, and I'm gonna be faithful to what you're about.

So by the way, Carla, are you here?

Carla, go ahead and stand up, girl.

Go ahead and honor Carla today.

Let's put our hands together.

This is Carla.

We have a gift for you.

Hey, hey, stand there for a second.

Uh last service we gave you your flowers, literally, an orchid, right?

So, hey, we we this time we give you a different gift.

We didn't want to give you the same orchid three times.

Um, so we have another gift for you, and if you come next service, we got another one for you.

But but I want to take a moment and truly say thank you for your faithfulness.

Thank you for serving God when it seemed like a long shot, when you felt like you were 300 trying to fight 120,000, when you didn't know where the money was going to come from to pay the bills.

Thank you for not quitting.

Thank you for walking by faith and being faithful.

And you've set an incredible example.

And we will honor God first, but we want to honor you too in running our leg of the journey.

But you are a wonderfully faithful person, and we wouldn't be here without you.

God bless you.

Would you put your hands together and honor Carl?

Let's take a moment right now and uh move beyond the application of the projects into your personal application.

Why don't you take a moment and focus your prayer on kind of two different things?

Hebrews 11, 1.

Maybe God today wants to give you a measure of faith that would be the substance of things hoped for.

You have no shortage of vision.

I can see it.

I know where I'm supposed to go, I know the right thing to do.

I just I just keep wrestling.

Am I ever gonna get there?

And today, God maybe wants to give you the faith you need to keep faithful, to stay faithful, to go toward in the direction and go toward the vision that you know you're supposed to go.

That faith will be that substance of things hoped for.

And yet maybe some of you today it's going, I don't even know, I I don't have any vision.

I can't see it, I can't see a way, I can't see a way out.

And again, the same God that gives faith as a substance of things hoped for gives faith as an evidence of things not seen.