Made for Worship

[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a Bible, turn to Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: We will be mostly in verses 1 and 2 this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: As you're turning there, if you are new to Susan's church, welcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Jayman.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of the pastors here, and we are honored that you're worshiping with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you are here and you call Susan's home, I want to say to you, happy birthday.

[SPEAKER_01]: Around this time seven years ago, Citizen's Church was commissioned by the village church to become citizens.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we've been a church for about seven years, and for our birthday, we bought ourselves new carpet.

[SPEAKER_01]: So happy birthday, Citizen's Church.

[SPEAKER_01]: Most of you will never have this experience, but

[SPEAKER_01]: If you are leading worship at Citizen's Church on a Sunday, you're serving in some way playing an instrument, singing, or even teaching, then you'll walk through that door because that door is closest to stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the other side of that door is where the band and ministers hang out before on a Sunday.

[SPEAKER_01]: And on the other side of that door, taped to that door is a prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: that bleaker printed off and taped to the door for us to read as we walk in.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's the title of the prayer is called a prayer for those who take the stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's some of what it says.

[SPEAKER_01]: What have I to offer here that might sustain the souls of others?

[SPEAKER_01]: Alone, I have a little more to show beneath this scrutiny of lights than my own pride and insecurity, my craving for praise, my fear of rejection.

[SPEAKER_01]: Rather, let me offer something greater in this place of Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: As I step onto this stage, meet me amidst the wreckage of my ego, my woundedness, through me, give what I alone cannot.

[SPEAKER_01]: I offer you all that I have.

[SPEAKER_01]: My talents, my training, my passions, my personality, my history, the many sacrifices I and others have made in order for me to be here.

[SPEAKER_01]: I give you even my brokenness.

[SPEAKER_01]: of which I'm also a steward.

[SPEAKER_01]: Take this tiny heap of my talents and my brokenness, like this jumble of what is best and worst in me meld it to the greater work of your spirit using each facet as you will, so that even as sunlight coursing through a cracked prism, your grace might somehow be revealed upon this stage in whatever glory didn't procure your patterns you fashioned me to display, amen.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a beautiful prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a prayer that's after honesty.

[SPEAKER_01]: Before I stand in front of others in a church in this religious space, it's just an honest admission of my own weakness, it's a humble plea that God would use all that I have, all of the mixed bag of what I bring to space like this and use all that to make much of Christ on this stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a mess of talent and wounds and pride and unholy desires and holy desires and the prayer is Lord, I put all of it into your hands that somehow your grace might shine through and what I hope is true is that my motivations are greater than my own glory and pure than just boosting my ego and here's what I'm assuming, as you hear that, I'm assuming

[SPEAKER_01]: that this is the kind of thing that you would expect from somebody who leads up here.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, whether you're, maybe there's your first Sunday at Citizen Church, ever, welcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you've been here since the very beginning.

[SPEAKER_01]: You expect in a church, the people who stand on stage and lead on stage, you expect them to lead in a way that it is not about them, but it is about God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's not just any stage, it's a church stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's somewhat of a sacred stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all have this expectation that what happens here is supposed to be about God, and so there are a few things more troubling as when someone steps into a space that is supposed to be about God, and they make that space all about themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: If bleaker came up here, and was like, guys, I wrote a new song, it's called I Exalt Me.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about how amazing I am.

[SPEAKER_01]: My vinnmo's going to be on the screen.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can send me some money if you like it.

[SPEAKER_01]: As you leave, there are t-shirts in the foyer.

[SPEAKER_01]: They've got my picture on them.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can buy one.

[SPEAKER_01]: If he ever did that, that would shock and disappoint everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then what I would have to do is, I would buy a shirt, obviously.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then we would have to have an awkward hard conversation.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he would have to do the same thing with me if I ever did something like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because this is not a rarath, it's not about us.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's about Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: This, this is not a performance and you did not pay to be here.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are not putting on a show to entertain religious people and to boost our ego.

[SPEAKER_01]: We want Christ adored and exalted in this place.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the role of the leader is to lead in such a way that they fade from the spotlight in Christ's takes and to stage, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: All that happens on this stage, all that happens, the planning, the effort, the talent, the time, it is meant to direct our eyes and our hearts away from this stage and towards Jesus Christ our Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you with me?

[SPEAKER_01]: What we will see this morning, that is every single Christian's role in life.

[SPEAKER_01]: everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone is a worship leader.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're not just a worshiper.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know that most of us know that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're not just a worshiper.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were made to lead worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're God has placed you and not for everyone in the guitar and singing in church kind of way, but God intended your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: has placed you in your life as a sacred stage where you use your gifts and your time and your energy and talents and dreams and hopes and desires and even your woundedness to cultivate greater worship of Him in a way that isn't about you and in a way that isn't just about you and God, but it's about drawing others around you into that worship of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: You are a worship leader.

[SPEAKER_01]: that the theological term forward is the priesthood of all believers.

[SPEAKER_01]: You are a worship leader.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your life is a sacred stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I hope to see this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our outline for every sermon in the series is God's design sends distortion and Christ redemption.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to see God's design for our worship sends distortion of our worship and then Christ redemption.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at Genesis 127 with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a poem in Hebrew.

[SPEAKER_01]: My friend, Jared Vasters, is this way God is so delighted about what he created in humanity that prose won't work, it requires a song.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, in the very first verses of God creating humanity,

[SPEAKER_01]: God sings.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's word sings about humanity because God is so delighted in what he's created and humanity is so in awe of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we already have worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: And God bless them and God said that then be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: God blesses and speaks purpose over woman and man.

[SPEAKER_01]: Be fruitful and multiply, fill and subdue the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are two creation accounts in Genesis.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're not different.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same story told from different vantage points.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you described the city of Plano from a plane,

[SPEAKER_01]: And then you describe the city of Plano on the corner of legacy in Preston.

[SPEAKER_01]: You would describe it in two different ways, but you'd be describing the same thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's Genesis 1 and 2.

[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 1 is the air level description of creation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 2 is the ground level description.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what we get in Genesis 2.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll start in verse 8.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord God planted a garden and Eden.

[SPEAKER_01]: in the east.

[SPEAKER_01]: There he put the man whom he had formed out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

[SPEAKER_01]: The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil in verse 15 that Aubrey read for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Fill and subdue the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: Work and keep the garden.

[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 1, God blesses the air level command is filled, subdued.

[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 2, God plants a garden called Eden, places Adam and Eve there.

[SPEAKER_01]: The ground level command is work and keep.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what God is doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: The garden.

[SPEAKER_01]: is the sacred stage where Adam and Eve are placed to worship God and to lead creation in worship of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: As they work, as they keep, as they rest, as God rested, as they love and serve one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of that is cultivating in creation among God's image bears, a greater worship of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we are, most of us, are at an incredible disadvantage here in all that I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: The language of all of that does not meet our expectation for what worship language sounds like.

[SPEAKER_01]: Adam, any of our gardeners, they were farmers.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's manual labor to keep a garden.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't think of all that as something that a worship leader does.

[SPEAKER_01]: My dad started pastoring the year I was born.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's been a pastor, my whole life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of my life here's kind of the perspective I had on all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: My dad had a God job.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all my friends' dads had normal jobs.

[SPEAKER_01]: So my dad had a sacred job as a pastor, and one of my friends' dads sold insurance.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of my friends' dads worked at a power plant.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of my friends' dad owned a country club.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a lot of time with that friend.

[SPEAKER_01]: They had secular jobs and dad had this spiritual job.

[SPEAKER_01]: When we think about something, that is holy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that I

[SPEAKER_01]: I use that just to illustrate a mindset that is just so common to us growing up where we grow up and living where we live.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we think about something that's holy or sacred, if you think about somebody that does something that is ministry to God, we don't think about trees and gardens.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't think about laundry and lunches.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't think about stock markets and classrooms, even today, even today, you likely.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll think about the hour and a half that you're here as the religious thing that you do today.

[SPEAKER_01]: Church is the Christian thing that you'll do today, but the football you watch later, the meal you'll eat, the people you're around, how you spend Monday through Saturday.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's like outside of all this.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there are sacred things, and then there are normal things.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are spiritual things, and then there are non-religious things.

[SPEAKER_01]: And hear me, that is not how God designed it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here are two wordy quotes that come from a theologian named G.K. Bill.

[SPEAKER_01]: He wrote a couple incredible books on this.

[SPEAKER_01]: He helps me see what is happening through the sacred lens.

[SPEAKER_01]: Eden was a garden sanctuary.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Adam was its high priest.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no secular sacred divide.

[SPEAKER_01]: Timples in the ancient world had images of the God of the temple placed in them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Adam was that image placed in the Eden temple.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was to expand the borders of Eden, the place of God's presence until they circumscribe the earth so that God's glory would thus be reflected through the whole world through his image bears.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's another one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Adam, as God's vice-regent, so Adam is high priest.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now he's vice-regent.

[SPEAKER_01]: His progeny would have put the finishing touches on the world God created in Genesis 1 by making it a livable place for humans.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's ultimate goal in creation was to magnify his glory throughout the earth by means of his faithful image bearers inhabiting the world in obedience to the divine mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wherever God is,

[SPEAKER_01]: That place is holy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wherever God is present, wherever God is present is a holy place.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so if God is present in the garden, that makes the garden a kind of temple.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's holy place, and the way that God showed His gracious rule over the garden is by placing His image there.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other gods of the other nations would place some sort of statue, some sort of created thing from creation as the sign that they occupied or were present in that spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: God didn't do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: God placed humanity in His garden temple.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word work, if you remember that word, the word work in Genesis 215.

[SPEAKER_01]: can also be translated as serve or even worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: The two words work and keep are mostly used in the Old Testament to describe what priests do as they serve God in His temple.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's worship work.

[SPEAKER_01]: God created, if you remember, he created his creation to keep creating.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reason Genesis chapter two has all of this detail in it about rivers and gold and trees and all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: The point is that God has filled the garden with potential and has placed his image out of an eve in the garden to steward that potential so that all of it would more fully celebrate God's glory as an act of worship to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The garden was never supposed to stay just in the garden.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not all of creation is the garden, just Eden is the garden, and the Genesis one command is to fill.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the idea is that God's image bears which fill the earth Adam and Eve would have children who had children who had children as they create with God and their family grows.

[SPEAKER_01]: What would happen is the borders of the garden would then expand and as God's image spreads.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as the borders of the garden spreads,

[SPEAKER_01]: all of creation, all of creation becomes the temple of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're God's worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's why when you do your Bible reading plan, you just try to go from book to book to book and do it in a year, and you bog down in the middle of Exodus, like you run into 10 chapters, describing what the Tabernacle supposed to look like, and it's not your favorite scripture in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay to say that, that's not your favorite part of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it shall be an all-man branch measuring this high.

[SPEAKER_01]: You don't post that on your mirror to motivate you on a Monday, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: But what all that is, God commands that the Tabernacle

[SPEAKER_01]: like a garden, and then later when God commands the building of His temple, it's to be decorated like a garden trees and vines and gold.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because God had not given up on Eden in the goal of creation is and is still for all of the earth to be God's temple.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, here's the point.

[SPEAKER_01]: God designed us.

[SPEAKER_01]: you to be image bearing priests who steward in rule over creation in such a way that all of it celebrates God's glory, not just a worship God but to lead worship of God in the way that you use your time and your talents and your gifts where God has placed you.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there is no secular sacred divide in the world God made.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your work is worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your marriage is worship, your relationships, your friendships, your worship, your sport is worship, your meals are worship, your Mondays are worship, not just as a worshiper, but as an image-bearing priest worship leader entrusted to direct praise to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's design, all of life is sacred stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: You are a worship leader.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you with me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Since the storeship, look at Genesis 3 years four.

[SPEAKER_01]: The serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

[SPEAKER_01]: For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evil.

[SPEAKER_01]: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,

[SPEAKER_01]: that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit in eight, and she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the second major scene in the Bible's story.

[SPEAKER_01]: If act one is creation, act two is what theologians call the fall.

[SPEAKER_01]: So much of what we'll say in the series is about this moment for the scope of this morning, see something.

[SPEAKER_01]: See with me how Adam and Eve fail in their role as garden priests and worship leaders.

[SPEAKER_01]: A snake comes into the garden.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's part of creation that they're supposed to rule over.

[SPEAKER_01]: Part of creation, they're supposed to direct to worship a God, and that snake speaks to them and instead of ruling over creation, they obey creation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then it says, Eve, saw that the tree was good.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a delight to the eyes.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was desired to make one wise.

[SPEAKER_01]: Meaning, I need this to make me be who I want to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: Good, delightful, desirable.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll God made them with the capacity for all of that, to delight in things, to desire things, to become more than what He made them to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what's the problem?

[SPEAKER_01]: They were made to find all of that in God.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were made to look to God as what is ultimately good, and to delight in God as what is best, and to desire God in His wisdom.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what worship is.

[SPEAKER_01]: If Eden is the sacred stage where God placed Adam and Eve to worship God, the fall is where humanity stopped worshiping God and started worshiping the stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Romans 1 says it this way, they exchange the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served creation rather than creator.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word that Bible uses for this is called idolatry.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fatal, if you read the Old Testament,

[SPEAKER_01]: The fatal flaw in the people of God is idolatry.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they would take the gods of the other nations as their gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: Think of how distorted it is compared to how God designed it.

[SPEAKER_01]: God designed it as God's people made in God's image to make creation gods temple.

[SPEAKER_01]: And those people would go into temples and worship created images of false gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have our own version of that today.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to try to help us find ourselves in all of this, because if we don't, I don't think this is going to matter as much as it should.

[SPEAKER_01]: Eidoletry has a form that is polytheistic, and that's what we're familiar with in terms of religious idolatry, meaning the polytheistic idolatry is religions that believe in multiple gods and people worship those gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: And most of us are doing just fine on that front.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not worshiping statues of other gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't go burn incense in a temple last Thursday, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a form of idolatry that is modern, it's secular.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not religious, but it is still worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our gods don't have, for most of us, our gods don't have names and statues, but they still have our hearts.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it helps to name the false gods that we give our worship to.

[SPEAKER_01]: So some common ones around us, money, we can worship money as a false god.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's given by God as part of our stage to steward and for His glory and purposes, idolatry is when we look to our money, the way that Eve looked at the fruit.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's an ultimate good.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's our greatest delight.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need it to become who we wanna be.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a money idol.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can make an idol out of our work out of our career, my job, my career goals are my ultimate good, my greatest delight, I am whom my job performance tells me that I am.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a work idol.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can make children our God, generous children, our generous gifts from God, and we look to our kids as the ultimate good in the ultimate delight and place on them the pressure of justifying our existence, and so we can make sun idols or daughter idols.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can make religion and idol.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can worship our own morality, we can worship our own religious activity, and find our worth not in Christ, but find our worth in being better than other Christians at Christianity.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a religion idol.

[SPEAKER_01]: We do this with sports.

[SPEAKER_01]: I told some friends the other day, it's the beginning of the fall season, and I feel very optimistic about both my college team and my NFL team.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I just think it's our year.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I've allowed myself to do something that's very dangerous.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've allowed myself to hope, again, which means very soon, and by very soon, I mean yesterday afternoon, pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, darkness, my old friend is here, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is true, most places in America, but there is something pronounced about our relationship to sports in this part of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: I heard someone say that because DFW doesn't have mountains and they don't have oceans, we've made club sports are hobby.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there is an amount of emotion

[SPEAKER_01]: resources, like as sports fans, as parents of kids who play sports, or if you're in here as a student and you're a student athlete, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: There's an amount of emotion tied to wins and losses, there's amount of attention and money and time given and it look.

[SPEAKER_01]: It hits a certain amount where the only way to describe it is worship and idolatry of competition, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Tim Keller says, you can find your idols in whatever you dream about, whatever you spend your money on, or in your most uncontrollable emotions.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we do that around a whole host of things, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Family, job, religion, sports, politics, marriage, health.

[SPEAKER_01]: OK, is it OK with you?

[SPEAKER_01]: If we dig a little deeper and make this more confrontational, it's a rhetorical question.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of those idols that I just named are above the surface idols.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to show you a slide.

[SPEAKER_01]: You might remember this from last year.

[SPEAKER_01]: You probably showed up hoping we'd be doing this again this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are idols that are above the surface.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are idols that are below the surface.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's surface idols and source idols.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tim Keller, many pastors, theologians, counselors smarter than me have named the four source idols as power, control, approval, and comfort.

[SPEAKER_01]: Two people?

[SPEAKER_01]: have different relationships to money.

[SPEAKER_01]: Two people can have different unhealthy relationships with money.

[SPEAKER_01]: One person spends and spends and spends and goes into debt buying clothes they can't afford.

[SPEAKER_01]: Spins on a skincare routine that's not in their budget.

[SPEAKER_01]: Spins on vacations and toward the end of that vacation, they're already planning to spend on the next vacation.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have another person who saves and saves and saves and hordes what they have.

[SPEAKER_01]: They could give, but they don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: They could give more than what they give, but they don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: They could spend, but they don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Both have an idol of money.

[SPEAKER_01]: One.

[SPEAKER_01]: That idol comes from somewhere deeper in their life.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of them that comes from a deeper idol of comfort, the person that spins and spins and spins, clothes and trips, they need their money to serve their idol of comfort to make them feel more comfortable to help ease their restlessness.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other person looks to money as providing a kind of security that it can't.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they hoard and hoard because money is serving their control idol and money gives them a sense of being

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the same idol above the surface it comes from a different place below the surface.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's why in marriages we fight so much about money because we look to money to serve different gods.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not that husband worships money and wife doesn't and it's that husband and wife both worships money but they do so for different reasons so they can't agree on how to spend or save the money.

[SPEAKER_01]: Two people worship their kids and one person worships their kids and they worship their kids they never say no.

[SPEAKER_01]: No boundaries, no rules, give the child whatever they want, acts more like a friend than a parent.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other person places an impossible, impossible standard on their child.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have to get the best grades.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be the best athlete.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be the best child.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of expectation, little room for failure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Both idolize the child.

[SPEAKER_01]: below the surface, one worships approval, and the approval they most want is their child.

[SPEAKER_01]: So idolatry comes out as my child has to love me no matter what it costs.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other person worships power and success, and they live that through, by curiously through their child.

[SPEAKER_01]: So idolatry comes out as my child has to win no matter what it costs, even if it costs me relationship with that child.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not enough to just ask about our above-the-surface worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have to know what's driving it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we stop worshiping money, but we don't stop worshiping power, the power idol will just come out of our life in a different way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tim Keller says it's like changing cars when what we need is a new driver.

[SPEAKER_01]: These are the names of the gods we worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: Living where we live, living when we live.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lean in for a quick word about EHA.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe if you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you'll find yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: If my source idol is power, I have to win.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have to win.

[SPEAKER_01]: My worst nightmare is to be humiliated by loss.

[SPEAKER_01]: The emotion I feel is I'm easily angered because the power I want, I don't have and when I come to the limits of my power instead of repenting, I just get angry because angry gives me the illusion of being powerful.

[SPEAKER_01]: The people in my life feel used by me, because they are just sacrifices I make on the altar of my power God.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're just a means to an end.

[SPEAKER_01]: If my source idol is control, the uncertainty of life is my nightmare.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I am haunted by worry because of my idol is control.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't take long to realize the limits of what I do and don't control.

[SPEAKER_01]: People around me feel,

[SPEAKER_01]: controlled by me, under constant scrutiny, under constant pressure.

[SPEAKER_01]: If my source idol is comfort, my nightmares, the stress of life, pain and difficulty.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, no matter how comfort I feel, how much comfort I feel my life with, I feel restless because there is no amount of comfort to satisfy what my soul actually longs for.

[SPEAKER_01]: The people around me, if I worship comfort, feel neglected.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what relationships take?

[SPEAKER_01]: Work.

[SPEAKER_01]: relationships take work, and people who worship comfort don't like work, and so the people around me feel neglected, because I'm not willing to put in the work that relationship require.

[SPEAKER_01]: If my source idle is approval, if that's you, would you raise your hand?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just kidding.

[SPEAKER_01]: My nightmare, if my source idle is approval, my nightmare is rejection.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am afraid of what people think of me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am afraid of what people might say about me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am afraid that no matter how hard I try, the people in my life won't be pleased with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the people around me feel smothered by that, because the approval that I'm after is more approval than what anyone human can give, and so it's never enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what happens in all of this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what happens.

[SPEAKER_01]: False gods fail.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Israel's story, worshiping idols always led to the same place, whether they were worshiping the gods of the Philistines, or the gods of the Canaanites, it always led to the same place.

[SPEAKER_01]: Worshiping false gods always led to self-imposed slavery and oppression.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing has changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: These idols will enslave you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Worshiping power will enslave you to anger, worshiping control, will enslave you to worry, worshiping comfort, will enslave you to restlessness, worshiping approval, will enslave you to fear because we were not made to live like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your home, your family, your friends, your job, your gifts, your resources.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is the garden where God has placed you to work and keep.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the sacred stage where as God's image bearer, you are charged to worship and lead worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when we make that, about power and approval and comfort and control, it is like the worship leader who stands in front of a church and sings songs about themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: It does not lead to freedom.

[SPEAKER_01]: We never arrive at what we're after.

[SPEAKER_01]: The stage, showers, and the idols in slave.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just kidding.

[SPEAKER_01]: The summary of the series, that would have been such a bummer, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: The summary of the series is recovering our humanity through Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And part of that, part of putting some of it

[SPEAKER_01]: for making Christ the hero of every sermon because he is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not recovering our humanity through a better understanding of Genesis 1 and 3.

[SPEAKER_01]: That'll only get us so far.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not recovering our humanity by feeling bad about our idolatry.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're feeling bad about the fact that we heard this sermon a year ago and you've made much progress since.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the aim.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need God's design for our worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need to see sin's distortion of our worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: What we most need, I'm going to give you a chance to aim in, what we most need is Christ's redemption for our worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: are tempted in the garden and fail.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is tempted in the wilderness and is faithful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you consider with me the same Satan from Genesis 3 tries his lies on Jesus in Matthew 4.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what happens.

[SPEAKER_01]: Satan comes and says, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loads of bread, tempted to find Jesus as fasted for a month,

[SPEAKER_01]: Satan tempts him to find comfort in his hunger.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Satan tries again if you're the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written, who command his angels concerning you on their hands, they will bear you up, unless you strike your foot against the stone.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's tempted.

[SPEAKER_01]: Satan tempts Jesus to exploit God's power for his own purposes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus said to him, again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and they're glory, and he said, all these I will give you if you will fall down.

[SPEAKER_01]: and worship me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you all the control and approval that comes from ruling all the kingdoms of the world and you won't even have to die on a cross to get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Satan tips Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: The same way he tempted Adam and Eve find a part from God which you can only find in God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Worship power, approval, comfort, control, outside of God's will make this stage about you and Jesus shuts the mouth of the

[SPEAKER_01]: For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that word worship is the same word we saw in Genesis 215, where Adam failed to worship in the garden, where we failed to worship, where God has placed us, Jesus stands where we fall.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the true human.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's the true worshiper.

[SPEAKER_01]: The very image of the emisable God and the good news look right at me.

[SPEAKER_01]: The good news.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is not just faithful to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is faithful for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Faithful in our place.

[SPEAKER_01]: God requires a life of perfect worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: And only Jesus lived that life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus dies on the cross to a tone for our idolatry every moment where we make the stage of life about us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus pays for that on the cross.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is I love this.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is buried in a garden tomb.

[SPEAKER_01]: and raised from the dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in his resurrection, once again, God walks in a garden to bring life to His image bears.

[SPEAKER_01]: The one who spoke creation into existence through the power of His word brings new creation into existence through a power that is stronger than death, praise God.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of that, to forgive you of your idolatry,

[SPEAKER_01]: two things we need in response, we need deep repentance and holy moments, deep repentance and holy moments.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I mean by deep repentance.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the work around describing our idols in

[SPEAKER_01]: in a hypertheraputic culture.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is very important to have God's eyes towards what's wrong with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: In a hypertheraputic culture, it is very important to use God's words to diagnose what's wrong with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think this work of describing source and surface idols, our idols are nameless, they're immaterial, so giving them a name is the first step in taking them off the throne of our lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: freedom only comes on the other side of repentance.

[SPEAKER_01]: And look at me, repentance will only go as deep as our diagnosis.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what I hope happens, what I hope happens, it is happening in my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: That we see under the surface.

[SPEAKER_01]: I worship control.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is not just that I like things a certain way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I take what only belongs to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I worship approval.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is not just that I'm an extrovert.

[SPEAKER_01]: I crave from others, but I can only get from God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I worship power.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just that I'm self-motivated.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have to succeed to feel worth that should only come from God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our repentance needs to go as deep as our idolatry.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that will change you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It will change you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what it sounds like is not just feeling bad, certainly not feeling condemned.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of us look below the surface and we're like, is it possible to worship all of them all at the same time?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the point.

[SPEAKER_01]: The point is that we would see where these things have taken root in our life.

[SPEAKER_01]: We would see these things have,

[SPEAKER_01]: been seated on the throne of our life, and we would beg and plead and through grace and mercy replace them with Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like this, Lord, I want to depend on your power.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, I confess that you are in control.

[SPEAKER_01]: Help that be enough for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christ Jesus, you be my comfort.

[SPEAKER_01]: God, I have in you all the approval I need and nothing can separate me from your love.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a deep repentance.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the best news is deeper than our repentance is deep grace.

[SPEAKER_01]: Unending mercy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Deep repentance will restore our worship to the point that every moment, every moment, can become a holy moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: One lived not for the stage, not for self, but for God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The prayer I read at the beginning, the one bleak your head's tape to the door, it is from a book called Every Moment Holy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a book that helps us do this.

[SPEAKER_01]: It helps us live this out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It helps us treat every moment in life as a worship moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: My home, my work, my hobbies, my meals, my commute, all of it is sacred stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a true.

[SPEAKER_01]: When Christ rose again,

[SPEAKER_01]: and ascended into heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: And God sent His Spirit to once again dwell with His people.

[SPEAKER_01]: It relocates the sacred space of heaven on earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is no longer a temple in Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is no longer a garden and Eden.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Church.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wherever you are, there is the image of Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone is in Christ, there is new creation.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the sacred place where heaven and earth meet is the life of the believer in the life of the church.

[SPEAKER_01]: So no moment is an ordinary moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just like the garden was full of potential every moment of your life as a Christian is pregnant with worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, in the book every moment holy, you find all these prayers to help us walk this out and understand that there's a prayer for when you study, a prayer for students, it goes like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: May I learn to love learning a Lord for the world as yours and all things in it speak each and their way of you, of your mind, your designs, your artistry, your power, your unfolding purpose, all knowledge as your knowledge, all wisdom is your wisdom, my homework, my study.

[SPEAKER_01]: is a sacred stage where God has placed me, and it can become a moment, a holy moment of worship to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a prayer for medical providers for doctors and nurses.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh Christ, our healer, there is no end to malady, sickness, injury, disease, and this broken world.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no end to the line of hurting people who daily need my tending, therefore give me grace, so God.

[SPEAKER_01]: that I might be generous with my kindness, and that in this healing and care-taking vocation, my hands might become an extension of your hands in my service, a conduit for your mercy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a prayer for doing laundry.

[SPEAKER_01]: May I recall in this needful parable of soil and rags of soap and water and cleansing, the work which you have done for your people, oppressed, and the work which you are now doing in me?

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a prayer for morning coffee.

[SPEAKER_01]: Meet me, O Christ, in the stillness of morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Move me, O Spirit, to quiet my heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mind me, O Father, from yesterday's harms.

[SPEAKER_01]: Restore the joy of my salvation in these glorious grounds in single-orging caffeine.

[SPEAKER_01]: I added that last night.

[SPEAKER_01]: A prayer for when we eat alone.

[SPEAKER_01]: You created us for companionship, oh God, for the sharing of burdens, for the joining of celebrations, for the breaking of bread and fellowship.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not unnatural that we should taste a particular sorrow in eating a meal alone, sit with me and linger at this solitary table, oh Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sit with me as my father, sit with me as my brother, sit with me as my shepherd, sit with me as my friend in the absence of human companions may I know more fully your presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a prayer for those who employ others.

[SPEAKER_01]: What a gift to a Lord to be so blessed that I might extend this bounty to others in the form of honest employment whereby they might also bless and provide for those who depend on them, teach me each day, the way of Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: How better to serve those I would lead, give me wisdom and mercy in my dealings with those I hire, may I be patient and gracious and slow to anger, recognizing always your image within those I employ.

[SPEAKER_01]: Prayer for shopping, prayer for bills, prayer for changing diapers, prayer for first responders, prayer for competition for day one of evocation for sunsets, flowers, life, and loss.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the point I'm trying to bring home, beloved.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no separation in the life of the Christian between the sacred parts and the secular.

[SPEAKER_01]: between the godly and the normal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your work is worship your marriages, worship your friendships, or worship your sport is worship your meals, or worship your Mondays, or worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't mean that you are always at all times praying these prayers.

[SPEAKER_01]: It does mean that you are always at all times posturing your heart away from stage, away from self and towards the beauty and glory of Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of your life is sacred stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christ has redeemed our idolatry that we might lead lives of worship.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you prove it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, we need you.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I Lord, this is the sacred stage that you have placed me on this morning, and I am feeling in this moment, the limits of my ability to work and keep or you've placed me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how God

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to push through the wall of malaise that marks so much of Christianity in this part of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to deal with my own apathy and shallow appetites and distraction.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to deal with that my own life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Much less.

[SPEAKER_01]: Awaken us to your presence and your beauty.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what I'm asking Spirit of God in this moment is which you're strength to be made perfect in my weakness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christ Jesus, this is your stage.

[SPEAKER_01]: These are your people.

[SPEAKER_01]: These are your words.

[SPEAKER_01]: Only you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Only you can.

[SPEAKER_01]: fall on a heart in such a way that it provokes deep repentance, not like I need some help, I need a little bit of work, I worship, control.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have made my life about approval,

[SPEAKER_01]: I am making daily sacrifices on the altar of power.

[SPEAKER_01]: And only only you can give us eyes to see that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And only you Christ only you can provide a way out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Only you can grab our idols by the throat and remove them from the throne, which only you belong.

[SPEAKER_01]: God, by your spirit, would you break our hearts for what breaks yours?

[SPEAKER_01]: Only you can give us eyes to see every moment as a sacred stage moment, our classrooms, our living rooms.

[SPEAKER_01]: our drives, only you, and so would you do it only you can do it or God?

[SPEAKER_01]: Beloved, would you just take a moment and turn whatever work God has done in your heart and mind and right now, would you turn it into honest prayers?

[SPEAKER_01]: Ask God to reveal, ask God to lead you to deep repentance, to find even deeper grace and mercy.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need you Lord, you, O God, are beautiful, it is you that we seek, meet us.