Burn Your Idols | Darren Rouanzoin

You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.

It's good. This is really good. 9AM. I'm glad you're here. Huntington Beach, I'm so glad you're you're watching in Huntington.

I don't know if you have overflow today, but I love you guys. We are, I was here last week and pastor Bill made a comment because I was here and I went to Huntington and he made a comment. He said, if Darren preaches this chapter right. You hear it? Were you here?

He's like, if Darren preaches it right. I was like, okay. Okay. So I I didn't listen to a sermon at the 11:00. I just wrote a six part series on chapter 19.

So today, we start here as in heaven, a visionary series because this chapter has shaped the GARDEN CHURCH from 2010 on. So when we started our church, we had vision, but this became the most identifiable pass, passage of scripture for how I shaped the values and vision of our community for the last sixteen years. Yes, sixteen. More than that. 18 but 16 consistently.

The first time I preached it was in 2015 and it changed my life. And so there are passages that just destroy you and wreck you and you keep coming back to it. So I'm approaching today with such, fear and trembling. Not not playfully, like I walked in with fear and trembling. I sat and worshiped until these guys were dancing up here.

I did not feel a sense of joy yet. So I'm excited to preach through what will be six weeks on the conditions of revival. Cause what you see is the most effective ministry that Paul had was in Acts chapter 19. And there's lots of reasons for that. Can I pray before I jump in?

Acts 19 · chapter mention

I wanna I wanna set the heart, my heart before the Lord. Jesus, I need you today. I don't want familiarity with the word. I want it to be fresh as I preach it. So would you give me everything I need but may we be open to your word.

May Southern California wake up, Jesus. We want revival. And as we walk the next six weeks, we we we will say that with confidence knowing the cost of revival to our own life. So Lord, I pray today that you would move in the word of God and in our response to you. In Jesus name, Amen.

Everybody's talking about revival right now. Have you noticed? It's like every church seems to tweet it, live stream it, every chapel service. And I'm not against it like some chapel service just goes off and people buy tickets to find it, you know, whether it's in Asbury or in Florida. Not knocking those things, they are the real deal.

But we're talking about it and sometimes we're sold a highlight reel, what we think it is. And I want to frame it from the biblical mindset. But you can look historically at what's happened in history and see the remnants that were in the city and the Church of Ephesus. In 1904, in Wales, a 26 year old former coal miner named Evan Roberts started praying one day, bend me. And after he preached to a bunch of college students outside of a chapel, teenagers, God began to move and mark Wales in a way that hundreds of thousands of people came to Jesus in a couple of months.

In Wales. Hundreds of thousands. It's called the Welsh revival. Nineteen o four began. But what I need you to understand about the Welsh revival as you look at it, it wasn't marked by the meetings they had.

It was marked by the effects outside of the meetings. Bars and taverns closed down. People stopped drinking alcohol. Oh, we're offended already. Debts were paid off, not by the wealthy, but by ordinary folks.

They just paid off each other's debt. The courts were shut down because there were no crimes to prosecute for a year. The coal mines, which was the primary industry in Wales at the time, had a hard time because the pit ponies, the little mini horses that were used in the mines, didn't understand the language of the miners because they stopped cussing at the animals. It's all historical. Revival hit Wales, and the horses noticed.

But that's not a one off. In eighteen o one, before this, in Cambridge, Kentucky, some 20,000 people show up to a frontier communion weekend, and it becomes what's called the America's Pentecost. God just begins to move across The United States in the second great awaking. In 1857, in the middle of Wall Street, a bunch of laymen start to gather at noon and they begin to pray at Fulton Street in Manhattan. And with started with six people.

Two years later, a million people were gathering to pray and coming to Christ through a businessman's meeting at lunchtime. And then in nineteen o six, a one eyed black preacher named William Seymour, the son son of a formerly enslaved parent, started holding meetings in a rundown formal stable in at 312 Azusa Street. No stage, no sound system, no marketing, just the presence of God. And the service lasted three years straight, three services a day. Black, white, Latino, Asian, rich, poor, all packed into a barn.

It was the most segregated era of America and life Oh, eyewitnesses said, the color line was washed away by the blood of Jesus. That's a quote from the early. And now there's 600,000,000 Pentecostals globally. The fastest growing Christian movement in the history of the Christian church is the Pentecostal movement that started in nineteen o six. And brothers and sisters, we gather in an institution formed out of that movement.

We're in a building that was shaped out of the Azusa Street revival. In 1920, a bible school came out of that movement to raise up the next generation, Vanguard University. In 1965, a few blocks away, pastor Chuck Smith took over a little congregation with 25 people. Eventually, it becomes the Calvary Chapel movement where a bunch of barefoot hippies come from the beach to accept Jesus. And you know the story, the elder board is upset because they have new carpets and Chuck says, rip out the carpets.

We've seen movement after movement, revival after revival, different centuries, different continents, different denominations, same fingerprints every single time. The presence of God, the fear of the Lord, sin confessed idols drops in cities that tell the tale of what happened outside of the church building. So here's my question for the next six weeks. What are the conditions of revival? Not the feelings, the conditions.

The same thing that happened in Wales, Kentucky, in Azusa Street. Look, it didn't It wasn't scheduled, but God showed up. You cannot manufacture revival. You meet the conditions and God sends the fire. Because there is a whole chapter in the bible that we need to read that influences all of this.

It's in Acts 19. So if you have a bible, let's raise them up for a second. Let's all Let me see Costa Mesa. Let me see Huntington Beach. You out did it.

Costa Mesa, I don't know. Keep them up because I'm gonna look on the live stream and see how Huntington Beach does. Thank you very much. I like to compare the brothers and sisters in the faith to see their eagerness to follow Jesus. Acts 19 verse one.

I'm sorry. You know what I'm gonna do? Go to verse 23. I forgot. I'm gonna start it like an action film.

We're gonna jump into the middle of the crisis then we're gonna go backwards. We're gonna dissect this out of order because I just thought why not? Why not get creative? I like movies. That's how movies do it.

Acts 19 verse 23. Let's jump into the action. This is two and a half years after Paul shows up. About that time, there arose a great disturbance about the way. A silver smith named Demetrius who made silver shrines of Artemis brought in a lot of business for the craftsman there.

Acts 19:23

He called them together along with the workers and related trades and said, you know, my friends that we receive good income from this business. And you see in here how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is a danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the goddess Artemis, the great goddess Artemis will just be discredited. And the goddess herself who is worshipped throughout the province of Asia and the world will be robbed of her divine majesty.

When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Soon, the whole city was in uproar. It goes on and we see that the city riots, they gather in a theater that fits 24,000 people and all the craftsmen that worship Artemis are trying to protest and riot against Paul and the church. Come on. It's a fascinating moment moment.

Dimitri, sorry. Dimitrius runs the gift shop for Artemis. He's the supplier of the little silver shrines. And his business is drying up. And, he he challenges the the people who are part of his industry.

He says, our money is losing trade. The temple's being discredited. The institution of Artemis is being discredited and the goddess herself, our devotion is being lost. Now, the church is blowing up and the enemies against the church are noticing. He And this is actually interesting.

You could say that Demetrius is one of the first persons

to identify the church growth in the first century. Practically, the whole province of Asia is going to church.

Could The church notices. Do we have some slides? Let me just see because I forget what slides. Can you go to the next slide real quick? Let me what do I have here?

You're gonna guide me through this. Oh yeah. That's great. So the question is, what caused the riot? Let's go back to Acts 19 verse one.

Thank you. I'm gonna need you the rest of the day. Yeah. Okay. While verse one.

While Paul was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples. Pause right there. So that's that's the verse. So Paul, can you go to the next slide?

Remember geography is theology. So check this slide out. Paul goes from the interior area into Ephesus which was Asia. Remember Paul was was stopped by the Holy Spirit and Jesus to go into Asia. Remember that?

Now he's there in Ephesus. He arrives. And we're gonna work our way through this text. Go to the next slide. And, Ephesus was the the biggest city Paul had ever been to at this point.

So in order to understand, I'm going to you know what? Forgive me. You're going to get twenty minutes of history. Can I do that? I like I just in order to make sense of what we're doing here, like I need to just give you lots of context.

Because geography is theology. You can't understand this chapter until you understand where Paul's standing. The city matters. Ephesus was the biggest, the richest, the most prosperous province in the Roman Empire. It had 200,000 people.

Every road in Asia ran to Ephesus And you could sell to it. There was a harbor. Check this out. There's a picture I have, that was helped. There was this beautiful harbor, arbor, harbor of Asia, sorry, that that flooded all this import export business.

It had this massive walkway that was 36 over here, 36 feet wide that went from the harbor all the way up to the theater that fit 24,000 people. And and on the sides was shops like packed full of people. Tons of shops on this marble archway where you were buying and selling all sorts of good. And then, had It was also the epicenter for the Temple Of Artemis. Artemis was the Ephesians god.

She stood, the temple stood at the top of the city, and it had a 127 columns, 60 feet high. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There were 36 of those columns that were overlaid with gold. Here's a picture of what it could have looked like back in the day. Just this massive property fit two football fields at least inside of it.

And Artemis was Okay. So this is great. I I was like, hey, show me what the Artemisia Festival would have been. There was an annual festival once a year, where people would come from all over the world because she had missionaries for her cult that went out to 33 other cities and built Artemis temples in 33 other cities. It's the most popular goddess of the age.

And, outside of Roman, gods, she was the She was it. She was an influencer. And, the festival had over a million people that would flood to Ephesus for the annual festival. A city of 200,000, 1,000,000 would flow in flow in. And there was all this unrestricted, worship.

And the way you would worship to Artemis is through temple prostitution, through your sexuality because she represented all sorts of things. Artemis was, the savior of the city. She was known as the banker and the refuge. So, to to be Ephesian was to worship Artemis. Listen to me.

You need to hear this. To be part of that community was to embrace a cultural identity of pagan worship. Like there are things that are in culture that are just naturally, It's the water we swim in, so we don't even know we're worshipping idols. There's identities associated to where the geography of place that shapes how we worship. So Artemis was this great deity who had a cultural identity, a national identity.

And so, you were born in Ephesus, you just worshipped Artemis. And her statue was washed, and dressed, and crowned, and paraded through different Every single shop, twice a month for blessing. She had her chant, which Luke quotes, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. That's a a chant that, Ephesians would would would say. That was her branding claim.

It was the just do it symbol. Great is the Artemis of the Ephesians. But this temple was the bank of Asia. It was the The temple was the economic, the center of economic power in the province. Kings of other nations would deposit money at the goddess of of Artemis temple because she was seen as the goddess of financial security and blessing.

The temple owned 70,000 acres of farmland. She was the greatest landlord in Ephesus. Any of this sound familiar? She paved the streets. She paid for gymnasiums.

She ran a missionary program from Syria to Spain. Artemis offered everything a human being wanted from a God. Identity, financial security, provision and prosperity, protection from what you cannot control. She was the goddess of health, and wealth, and sexuality, and fertility. So to attack this goddess was to attack everyone's saving account, everyone's landlord, and everyone's insurance and policy.

Insurance policy. So remember that. We're going to come back to it. But so the the worship of Artemis was part of the Ephesian culture. Everything we know about Ephesus, a third of everything written in history was also written about Artemis.

So they're just fused together. So to study Ephesus is to study Artemis. But I wanna go back even further. This is history. I wanna get you into the mindset of the first century church in Ephesus because that will shape how we read the scripture.

Are you with me church? There was an Ephesian worldview. Worldview is how you see the world, the cultural values, the belief systems, the the longings of your heart. The language that you possess. It's our cultural Culture is part of our world view.

How they they shape the world was through pagan worship. So, how did you get what Artemis offered as a god? Through worship. Through appeasing the gods. The way you got access to the financial security.

The way you got access to health, and wealth, and fertility, and blessing, was appeasing the goddess of Artemis through worship. So the pagans had this world view that you offered the various deities responsible for those things, more and more time, and energy, and sacrifice. So to worship means you give the goddess your attention, your time, your devotion, your money, your sacrifice. Does that make sense? But here's the problem.

The gods were angry with humanity. So, if last season in the harvest, God blessed you, whatever God you worship blessed you, the goddess or the god of harvest blessed you, then you had to offer more sacrifices to make sure you appease their wrath. This was this this was the mindset they were under. And not just that, when the gods didn't work, Ephesus was famous for magic and sorcery. So, if the gods were enough, you could buy a spell.

So, we have ancient documents from archaeologists that discovered specifically in Ephesus. They had a branding of sorcery called the Ephesia Gramada, which are called the Ephesian letters. Specifically, were six words that people would use and put on various things. Our most famous one was a wrestler. An Ephesian wrestler, supposedly wore those six words around his ankles, and he couldn't lose.

They were the original Air Jordans. I know we're just talking about pagan history right now. And I know it's hard to relate. But why why would somebody in a wealthy prosperous society have such a desperation to participate in pagan worship and spell casting? The answer is very simple.

Life is out of control. Life is chaos. When the harvest fails, when the wife dies in childbirth, when your ship sinks, the spell lets you force an outcome. The money, the pregnancy, the investment, the health, the spouse, there's a spell for that. There's a God or goddess for that.

There's a scroll for that crisis, that chaos. So everyone is just trying to trying to control the chaos. And so an idol is anything that gives you meaning, purpose, security or identity outside of God. In the church and idols, anything that gives you meaning, purpose, security or identity outside of Jesus. You know what you worship by where your time and energy and money and attention goes.

Now, just stay there for a moment. What caused the riot? What caused the riot? Go to verse 17. This whole chapter breaks down to what caused the right.

That's what I want to show you. It's not one thing. It's a whole culture within the church. What what creates a revival culture, what creates revival is a culture. Like, I believe we can create the kind of positioning of our of our hearts.

We can become the kind of container that God will pour himself out in. You know what's crazy is, at Rock Harbor in 2022, when I had a vision of planning a church, I had The first thing I ever drew was Long Beach, and then there was all these markers to Costa Mesa, to London, to Paris. It was like this church planting movement. Oh, that's really clever. And and the Lord gave me a vision.

He's like, all I want you to do is build a boat for the rain that's coming. And I wasn't I wasn't charismatic. I just got filled with the spirit. I had no context for all this revival history, but that's what happens when God begins to move. It's like a tsunami overwhelms the watermarks.

And in ordinary time, the watermarks are amazing. Like, oh, the tide comes and comes and goes. But right now, after COVID, the water went out. Gen z was going to be the least church generation in American history in 2022 according to the studies. And then what happens?

The watermark went out. I know you're following. Great job. And I I know you're watching Huntington. You're like, Darren's pacing.

Okay. I love you guys. And and the water went out. But now the water's coming. Yes.

And and we have we have evidence that there's this awakening happening. It's pre revival, pre awakening, but the watermarks are gonna be overflowing. We don't have enough church buildings to contain what God's about to do. But there isn't a start because a preacher preach. It starts because the disciples of Jesus take it to heart.

So hear what I'm about to say, because what God does in Ephesus, he can do here. I believe it. Of all the context, more than Corinth, So Cal is Ephesus. Look at what happens in verse 17. When this became known to the Jews and the Greeks living in Ephesus, they were they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor.

What became known? A bunch of fake, people that were trying to do exorcisms that didn't have life with Jesus, tried to use the name of Jesus to have the effects of Jesus, and they get beaten up by the demons. That's a crazy story. We'll save that for a couple of weeks. It's so good.

It's the seven sons of Sceva. That's literally the name in the scripture. It's the new emo band that I think needs to be created. Oh, emo's gonna come back. I can't wait.

Can't wait. Can't wait. That's the I was here, emo. Was just long hair, hoodies. We just went to coffee shops with our journal and listened to dashboard confessional and cried.

Just longing for a girlfriend. I my wife here and she's here and I can't be emo anymore because life's good. No. Anyways, let's keep going. Many of those Okay.

Here here it is. Here it is. You wanna know? Verse 18. Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done.

A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to 50,000 drachmas. In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. Oh, this is is this is where it is. The God begins to move.

A bunch of freelance exorcists try to use magic to claim freedom for demon possessed people. And then they get beat up. And now they're like, wait. We can't add Jesus onto our life anymore. Many of those who believed, those who believe, that's a perfect tense.

So the Greek word is those who had believed and kept on believing. These are not new converts to Christianity. These are the Christians who show up on Sundays that go to house churches that worship Jesus. They're the ones still holding on to old spells in the drawer next to their bed. Just in case Jesus doesn't come through with the mortgage, we have this other thing to hold on to.

Just in case he doesn't come through with the diagnosis, I can use this scroll to manage my life. Church, this is most of us. We don't throw away the old operating system. We just installed Jesus onto the already operating system. So why do Christians hold on to the old way?

Why keep the old spells in the drawer? Because of fear. You keep You don't keep this You don't keep the spell because you love it. You keep it because you're not sure if Jesus is going to show up. And every idol in the drawer is a confession that you have not trusted the Lord with that part of your life.

You have fear. He won't show up. Idols work a little bit. Right? Money gives you a sense of security, doesn't it?

Like, when you look good, it gives you a sense of identity and purpose when you're doing those selfies all the time. And you get all those likes, something inside fills your cup. Does it not? It works a little bit. Idols deliver a little bit.

The wrestler didn't lose according to history books. The algorithm numbs loneliness a little bit. That drink takes a bit of the edge off. Idols give small immediate return. And the old operating system keeps running because it keeps producing a little bit.

Also, third reason you keep it in the drawer is you never said it out loud. You come to faith and you get going. And then you get a little bit afraid, what will people think if I tell them this thing? And so a spell historically lives on the power of secrecy. Some of you have never told a single person what's in your drawer of your past.

And it hasn't lost power over you yet. So disciples were baptized. They're filled with the spirit. They're they're discipled for three years by Paul. And that the church begins to grow, but their idols in their homes were untouched until they dragged them into the light.

Every one of those says the same thing. I believe in Jesus and I do not yet trust him with this part of my life. In Ephesus, historically, a spell only worked while it was in secret. And so say it out loud, the spell you have and it dies. The magic power dies.

So what the Ephesian church did is they they dragged all of their stuff that was hidden into the light and it lost its power on the spot. Secrecy is the oxygen of every idol. Secrecy is the oxygen of every sin, by the way. The moment you say it out loud to somebody, it starts losing its power over you. That's what the fear of the Lord looks like.

Verse 19, it says, a number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. The value was 50,000 drachman. You know, 50,000 drachman, that's fifty thousand days of labor. Fifty thousand. That's a hundred and sixty seven years of six days a week of work.

That's a conservatively $10,000,000 to Orange County money today. In that way, the word of God grew. The word of the Lord grew widely in power. So Ephesus was a city of power, was a city of magic power, banking power, and political power, and religious power. And the word of God out powered all of those powers.

Not with a sword, not with a boycott, not with a protest when the church stopped worshipping its idols. This was all historical context. I could preach forever on this chapter because there's so much more, but that's why I broke it up into 16 chapters. I wonder what the gods of our age are. You know what I was thinking about?

I actually brought a fire pit. Chance, can I get you right now to bring that to the center real quick? So this is a camping fire pit. Would you put that right here? I want people to see this.

So the image we have is a church that burned the scrolls. Do we have a picture of that church burning the scrolls? I know I'm out of There it is. I I had You know, I'm just playing around with Gemini now. So I use Claude primarily because it's got the most moral integrity but it doesn't do images very well yet.

I don't know why it threw the keys, You know? It's really cool. Yeah. All right. You can put that away.

Now I'm getting distracted. I don't want to give you a nice takeaway about boundaries today. Ephesus did not balance the scrolls or sorcery. They burned them. So I brought a fire pit.

Let's let that sit there for a second as a visualization of what you would have to throw in there. But can I read a couple of things? I recognize we don't have silver shrines in the corner of our homes. We just have them in our pockets. Yeah, right?

We don't need to set something up when our life is constantly worshipping various gods. Can I name a few real quick generally? Then like when I look at what's going on, and I'm not going to name all of them because I don't have time. Actually, I had too many notes on this one. But if I were to say, you know, to be Ephesian was to worship Artemis.

To be Southern California is to worship your body. To worship wellness. The cleanse, the cold plunge, the supplements, the pilates class, this body becomes your form of salvation. I'm not saying don't Absolutely take care of your body, but do not let it become your God. And part of your body is your sexuality.

In our context, we have elevated our sexuality to the biggest thing. We are filled with pleasure everywhere we look. We are overly pleasured today. And if you were to take if you were to be honest with how many people are struggling with this, we're struggling with lust and pornography addiction like never before. And that is a real threat to your wholeness in Christ.

And part of it is you just keep feeding the God of lust. And you feed the God and try to become a follower of Jesus and then put some boundaries around your idol worship rather than burn them up in a bonfire. And you're like, okay, I'll just post a couple, and then all of the reels are your selfies that are airbrushed and, you know, and edited and perfectly curated to project that to the world. And we're like, let's be our authentic self after you edited it for an hour. And there's a Christian influence side to this that we're just like, yeah, but their heart is good.

We got to stop the worship. If Paul was here, he would call that out. Your body, yourself, your image. It's not something to worship. Take care of your body, but stop idolizing it.

Stop liking those images. Stop scrolling, and you're like, well, I got rid of that. I got a software that keeps me from those pages. But all you gotta do is go on YouTube at night and watch shorts. Go to Capcut.

Go to Instagram and TikTok, and it's filled with images, and you're like, well, I can manage it until you can't. And then you feed the beast, And you wonder why we're addicted, and anxious, and and depressed, and we offer nothing to the world because we do exactly what the world does. And no church is calling it out. You just go to the other church once the pastor offends you. Doesn't preach the way you want, doesn't have the politics the way you want, doesn't dress the way you want, isn't as funny as the older guy.

And so you are never discipled into Jesus because you're cherry picking your consumer church. And we gotta stop now. We gotta burn the idols. Because we're not talking about the world. We're talking about the idols you brought in here.

I'm passionate. I didn't know it was gonna get like this. Couple more I'll just name just for fun. Entertainment. Somebody asked me on Instagram, what's your view of video games?

And the same perspective I have with anything that provides entertainment Netflix, YouTube, Instagram, phone. Just we're just entertaining ourselves into oblivion and you shouldn't play video games. If you're a young man, don't play video games, build something. I'm sorry, it's gonna be offensive. Have have strict limitations on the video games.

Right? Have strict limitations. Have strict limitations on Internet access. Have strict limitations on on on YouTube shorts. Have strict limitations on any form of entertainment.

Brothers and sisters, they're after your sleep. According to the CEO of Netflix. He's not competing with HBO Max and Disney plus. He's competing with your sleep, and you give it to him. No wonder you don't wake up and counter form yourself in the word of God in prayer because you stayed up all night gaming with your bros.

And why don't I have a girl? That's Start with that and make your bed. Can I say parents with kids, there's there is a crisis and you're letting your children, you're handing your children over to your idols? They're being parented by YouTube algorithms, by Instagram, TikTok, by connection to friends that your hand If you want their innocence to go, give them a phone before fifteen. And I know I know, you know, you need to drop them off.

They can use communication device that doesn't have unlimited access. I'm saying it now because I thing. It's life and death for the next generation, and it is We're forming disciples now, and otherwise, what you're gonna see, what's gonna happen is you send them to youth group by the time they're 13, 14, and they've already been discipled by the world, and the world is being discipled by a dragon with seven heads. It's not neutral. And we're like, okay, just we're gonna check it.

You don't check it, you can't see all the things. If you are just insidious as hiding these things, they are too unfortunately. So parents, be intentional, please. Disciple your kids. Say no because we are different than the world.

And if you're part of a Christian community where everyone has it, be the lone advocate that's willing to stand for what Jesus stands for. Okay. Don't clip this. Let's edit this later out of thing. I'm just going off now.

Is that okay? I'm get I'm not I'm asking my wife. I don't need any of your opinions. Our current Western context deforms our hearts and lives destructive ways. Big business, big data, and big porn's ability to reshape our inner world is in unparalleled in human history.

Therefore, the next great awakening, the next renewal, the coming revival must be centered on our hearts being changed by God. It must begin by replacing the pseudo Christianity of lifestyle enhancement with the spirit filled faith of biblical Christianity. That's from Mark Sayers' book, Reappearing Church. He says, pseudo Christianity of lifestyle enhancement. That's the old operating system with a fisher's fish sticker right on top of it.

Right? We're not short on consumerism, image focus, anxiety, depression, addiction, and loneliness, and despair in this country. We are short on a church that has stopped feeding the gods that caused it in the first place. So burn the idols. In Korea in nineteen o seven, there was a confession that lit the nation and launched a missionary campaign like no other in the country, in South Korea.

In January nineteen o seven, a city had 1,500 men at a church gathering at a bible conference, And night after night, the meetings were stuck, and they were heavy, and nothing was moving. And then one of the, respected elders gets up, one of the most trusted leaders in the Korean church stands up in front of everybody in nineteen o seven, and he confesses out loud. He says that he was aching in the camp. He had taken money entrusted to him from a dying friend's estate and he had hated the missionary that came from The United States while he served next to the missionary. He names it publicly.

He commits to paying back what he took and the room breaks open. Grown men fall on the floor over their sin, and confession starts pouring out that night. The stolen money is returned, and the city is overwhelmed. Enemies were reconciled, and revival breaks out, and the Korean church DNA is formed, dawn prayer meetings, whole congregations praying out loud. Hundred years later, Korea sends more missionary than almost any other nation on the earth.

They call that city the Jerusalem of the East. Four years earlier, another missionary from The US came in and confessed what he had done. It had been rooted in their church. It took somebody to confess what they were brought what their sins were, what they were doing. So I thought, why not start now?

I brought my idols today. And I'm going to name some more of Orange County idols with you. This is going to be playful and very serious. This represents my preferences. My particularities.

This is an electric kettle from Fellow. I pour over, obviously. If God was like, what would you need? What is the God? It's it's my stomach.

I I had pastor John. Pastor John, I love you. Last night, he texted my wife and I, and he's like, we're bringing rib eye over. I'm like, absolutely say yes to this. I will never say no to rib eye.

He brought me I prefer rib eye. I prefer pour over coffees. I have a preference of the foods and the drink and it's become a way of of just being Southern California cool. The reservations that you get access to months in advance, you know it. It's what we do.

I I have my, I'm really not going to burn these because they're cool, but this is a symbol. 2015 began this journey for me where I I I did this whole see I'm not going to preach it from the stage now, but if if you're close to me, you know the story. It led to a radical season for my wife and I. But this represents something to me. It represents my particular vision of style and image to the world.

And how my particularities, whether it's Birkenstocks or whatever, my style, my clothes, this represents the image I want you to I wanna be kind of cool, but casual and not so serious and black because I want you to take me seriously, but I don't wanna dress up and like, you know you project something to the world and if you're not, you're like, I don't care about it. You're projecting that to the world. There is a sense for me that I have to give up what people think of me. Fitness has become a thing in my life. These are my brother in law's shoe.

He started OTM. Shout out to OTM. But I noticed that when I don't get a run-in or when I don't work out, I'm mean to my family. In our context, oh yeah, it's called self care. Yes, but it's also called idolatry.

If I can't love like Jesus without doing the thing, then something's wrong. And I would need to just submit my desire for the things that I would say SoCal says are necessity like for example in this would also be my AG one subscription. I'm gonna put that in there. My magnesium and my red yeast rice for various like you just I got the supplements like what? My wife calls me out, why you don't look like that of me.

You know, and then I I for I want you to I want I have to give up my right to be right. My wife called me out on that yesterday when I was disciplining my son, Ezra. She called she's like, you just posted this thing about power and love online. Yesterday, in a podcast, that real power is not having to be right. That's you saying it and you're being right right now in the house.

Put that in there. Oh, now we're getting serious. Okay. So I have my screen time print out right here. So here's my screen time for you to see.

I have my bank account information here. I printed because I thought, know, how do I show you that I'm really like, if I had to burn my eye out, would be money, poverty mindset, and always feeling like I don't have enough. And somehow like, I I I in the past, I would take jobs to preach because I I didn't make enough and I needed to I needed to go here and preach so I could provide for my family. And I wasn't trusting God in that provision. I remember I did something and it was so exhausting.

I had to travel and then someone randomly gave me twice as much that I got for the honorarium. Almost like, why are you striving, son? How many of you would put your finances in that bucket today? Bucket, that fire. Forget bucket.

That's just wet. You got to burn it up. Can I do a couple more? I don't know where else I'm going on this. This is my book proposal.

So I just finished writing my first book this last week. And there's so much pride in that. Even the way I said it was prideful just now. You know, fear of failure, the law what's the fear of failure? The need to succeed.

The need to be liked. The longing to be accepted by my peers. The longing to be famous since I was a kid and wanted to be an actor. That would go deep in there. Can't put pride in there.

You can put symbols of lust. You can put symbols of arrogance. You could put you could put the abdication of leadership. Now I'm just confess confessing sins but what you have to recognize is that anything that gave you meaning and purpose and significance outside of Jesus needs to go in. We're gonna worship but I wanna leave you with three things to burn.

If if God asks you right now to burn something. Not cut back on. Not put boundaries on. Not manage better. What would you burn today?

Number one. Name it. Write it down. I was like, why are you oh, this is great. Name it, burn it, and fear the Lord.

I wanna end with that. Stand please. In this room, you can feel it. Huntington Beach, I hope you feel it. Do you feel it right now?

Like a a a You could call it the fear of the Lord came into the room. The seriousness of what God's saying to our communities right now is right before us. The challenge is for you to obey, not to numb out the conviction of the spirit, but to press in. What if the conditions of burning the idols began right now? What if years from now, we could trace back the renewal work that God wanted to do around the world because one congregation said, we're done pretending.

We will burn the bridges back to our idolatry today so that we follow Jesus because I'm done being half in. I wanna be baptized with Jesus. Not baptized partially, fully immersed. And somehow we've created a pseudo lifestyle enhancement Christianity. But today's the day we burn that.

And as for me and my household, we'll follow the Lord. I put my idols here. I don't know what you need to burn, but we're gonna confess, we're gonna pray, we're gonna come forward and honor Jesus. Let's worship.

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