A Struggle for the Throne

I want to greet you in Jesus' name. Thank you for your presence here this morning. And, uh, especially all the visitors. Thank you, thanks for being here. And I pray that, uh, your time here could be beneficial to you.

And I pray that you could walk away from here with a better understanding of God and what He requires of us as His children. I want to start by thanking those that took the time this week to reach out to me and to offer your support in your prayer.

It's something I probably mention every time I preach, and no matter how many times I preach, it is never less meaningful when someone takes the time to say their praying. Because every time I also preach, it is very, very sobering to me, the responsibility that I have. And when I feel like there's other people praying for me, I feel like there's safety in numbers, and that I have a better chance of speaking the truth and speaking what I should when people are praying for me.

I'm going to start this morning by drawing a line graph on the board.

A line graph is made up of an X-axis, which is horizontal, and a Y-axis, which is vertical.

Usually, the X-axis has numbers for a time period, and the Y-axis has numbers for what is being measured.

I'm not quite even here.

Line graphs can be used to show how something changes over time. And if you unless you were under a rock the past couple of years, line graphs have become were have were predominant in our society in relation to COVID.

We all heard the term "flatten the curve." And basically, they by using a line graph, they predicted whether the cases were increasing or decreasing and made decisions on how to deal with it based on the trajectory or the pattern of the graph.

I enjoy graphs. I, uh, I enjoy being able to see, like, a predictable pattern or, like, how something is trending.

I've wondered at times what if I was able to graph my life, what it would look like. If I could measure the quality of life, let's say, could I if I graph the quality of my life. And that's a broad term, but I'm thinking more like my walk with God, the quality of my relationships, and the fulfillment of my responsibilities. That's just to give you a little bit of an idea. What would the pattern be? What would the trajectory be?

Towards the end of last year, I found myself at a low point.

For those of you that have that spend more time around me, and probably those of you that don't, if I'm honest, there is a rather repetitious theme of my life. And it goes like this: too busy, too tired, too far behind, and so frustrated.

So at the end of last year, I find myself at this spot here, which I call burnout. Burnout is the result of consistently being too busy, too tired, too far behind, and too frustrated. And I found myself here, and I was like, "Why am I here? Why am I at this spot?"

Um, unfortunately, again, because if I'm honest, if I would if you would track if you would graph my life for the past 10 years, I end up here. There's a pattern. And thankfully, I feel like I have made progress in my life. I feel like the pattern the peaks and the valleys are spread out a little bit farther than they used to be. I don't I don't end up here as much.

But I was trying to connect where I was with what Jesus said. In John 10:10, He says, "I have come that they might have life, and they might that they might have it more abundantly." I'm pretty confident that when Jesus was saying, "I've come to give them abundant life," it did not include habitual burnout. I do not think that was part of His plan.

So I'm going to take you into a little bit what I believe God has showed me and that God is trying to teach me of what may be the root of my problem. Normally, when I get to this point, I sort of gravitate towards a couple of things: time management, learning how to say no, getting my priorities right, and the list goes on. But I'm not going to talk about any of those today.

I'm going to start in the Old Testament, and I'm going to ask you to turn to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 is where God spoke and gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments. And I want to I'm just going to focus on the first two.

I'm going to start in verse 1. "And the Lord God spoke all these words, saying, 'I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.'" And two, which is directly connected to commandment one, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

But show mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments."

Idolatry was one of the foremost issues of the Old Testament. If you would graph the Israelites in the Old Testament, there is almost a predictable pattern that was followed. They would follow God. They would have success. They would fall away. They would turn to idolatry, and then God would bring judgment into their life. And so they got sick and tired of it, and then they would repent, come back to God, and repeat that sequence over and over again. But the most impactful issue when it came to the success of the Israelite people was idolatry.

So I want to explore idolatry just a little bit and define what it is. And I want to start by going back to the beginning, to creation.

I'm going to ask you to turn to Genesis chapter 3.

The purpose of creation was and is worship.

Psalm 19:1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiworks." I'm going to use the words of glory and worship sort of interchangeably today. Worship is the feeling or expression of reverence or adoration for a deity.

Glory is worshipful praise and honor or distinction. They're synonyms.

Man is the pinnacle of God's creation.

We, as humankind, are God's best work. And our design, like all the rest of creation, is to bring worship to God. That's why He made us. We are all designed for worship. And as a result of that design, we all worship something.

It's not like you are a worshipper or you're not. You are worshiping something.

And I believe when it all boils down, we have two choices. Either we worship God, or we worship ourselves. Generally, those are the two choices. And this self-worship goes way back to the beginning. It didn't start with the Israelites.

It started with Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. "Now the serpent was more cunning than any of the beasts of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.' Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and she ate. And she also gave to her husband with her, and he ate."

I want to point out the shift in the dependence of Adam and Eve and the worship of Adam and Eve.

It went from worshiping God and dependence upon God to, like, "I can be like God." And when that shift occurs, the shift from God in our dependence or in our worship, we have entered into idolatry.

It's a shift from God to an alternative God. And as the masterpiece of God's creation, when we shift our dependence, our devotion and our worship follow. And instead of reflecting glory, we're supposed to be mirrors to God as His creation. We begin to absorb or deflect worship from God to another.

Exodus 20, there also talks about God being a jealous God. I often think of jealousy as a feeling. This is the first definition of jealousy: the feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages. But God is not a narcissist when He asks for our worship and dependence.

The jealousy that God had, God has, is more of the fiercely protective or vigilant fiercely protective or vigilant of one's rights or possessions.

When He asks for our worship as the Creator and as and we as the created, He is asking to have what is rightfully His. He deserves it. We are not giving Him something that is ours, and we have to give it to Him. It is something that is His, and He has every right to ask for it.

I'm going to use an example of a painter and a painting. If you were at an art museum or an art gallery, and you overheard two people, some people looking at a painting, and they were just exclaiming about, "Just look at this painting. Just look how the paint adheres to the canvas. It's phenomenal. It's just I mean, it's so oil-based. It is so glossy. I can't get over the painting. The paint, it's amazing."

And I don't know what this plaque down here says something about Van Gogh, but I mean, how audacious is it of him to put his name beside the painting? Because it's the paint. It should say, "What kind of paint is this? How did this paint" I would like to know how this paint leapt from the can onto this canvas and adhered to it.

That's ridiculous because the painting and the paint brings glory to the Creator. The paint in and of itself is nothing. But when it is put in the hands of a Creator, it creates something beautiful. And that is that's what we are here for. And when we take glory to ourselves, it is just as ridiculous as the paint feeling like it is the reason for the painting.

The Old Testament is full of the results of idolatry. Nothing arouses the wrath of God like of God, like when His people worship idols. I'm not going to take the time to go through many of the accounts. The Old Testament is full of them. It's also full of God's judgment.

But consistently, when the children of Israel fell into idolatry, it caused God to remove His blessing, His protection, and His power from His people. I'm going to look at one account in 1 Kings chapter 16, and I'm going to start in verse 29.

This is the story of or the beginning of the story of Mount Carmel,

verse 29.

"And in the 38th year of King Asa, king of Judah, Ahab, the son of Amnori, became king over Israel. And Ahab, the son of Amnori, reigned over Israel in Samaria 22 years. Now Ahab, the son of Amnori, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbael, the king of the Sidonians. And he went and served Baal and worshiped him.

Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a wooden image. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger him than all the kings of Israel who were before him." I'm going to stop right there.

Ahab here engages in an all-out revolt against God. This was not on the sly. This was audacious, in-your-face disobedience against God, and specifically in the area of idolatry. He takes a wife from the Canaanites. He marries Jezebel, which was a no-no. God specifically said, "You should not marry those people."

And along with that, he joins to her God, which was Baal of the Canaanites. And not only does he begin to worship them, he builds a temple in Samaria and encourages and forces in ways for the people to worship Baal as well.

This is a good example that comes to my mind when the subject of idolatry is brought up: worshiping an image. This is the whole deal. He's broken both commandments here. He's worshiped another God, and he's made an image, and he's worshiping this image of Baal.

And so when I look at it, what was the attraction? What was the attraction to idol worship that the Israelites consistently fell back into it? To me, it seems somewhat ridiculous. Come on. It wasn't that hard. All you had to do is go to the temple and worship God versus worshiping Baal or Asherah. I mean, there's a whole list of gods they continually fell back into.

I mean, was it partly a cultural practice? A cultural practice of what the people did around them? I mean, did they eat, sleep, and worship an idol? It's just sort of what you did. But I believe it was much, much more than that.

The worship of idols in the Old Testament was directly tied to the worship of self through the avenues of pleasure, sex, and power.

They believed that in worshiping these idols, they would gain favor from these gods, and they would get what these gods provided in order for them to consume it upon their own lust.

Baal was a god of fertility and weather, specifically rainstorms, which is ironic given the story.

I think if you study the gods of the Old Testament, you would find that they all fall into one of these three categories.

And it's easy to be critical of the Israelites in the Old Testament, but mankind has not changed.

The gods of the Old Testament are the same of the New Testament and are the same of the gods today. John 1:2-16 says, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."

And the gods of our day, more than ever, worship self through these three avenues consistently, and it is never more blatant than it is today: the worship of self.

You're probably wondering a little bit how this relates to how I started and my graph and my burnout.

Maybe you're a little scared.

But I find the idea of worship, of idol worship, somewhat easy for me to check off the three categories. Am I worshiping pleasure? Not really. I mean, I don't go to amusement parks, and I don't spend a lot of money on this and all that. No, I'm good. I'm good.

Am I worshiping sex? Nah. I'm not addicted to porn. I'm faithful to my wife, so we're good. Power? It hits a little closer home.

Might occasionally be something there, but overall, I think I'm good. Idolatry is not the biggest issue of my life. Really isn't. I have a lot of issues, but idolatry, on a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably 10 being the worst, probably a 3.

I'm going to read you a quote by Oz Guinness. He says, "Idolatry is the most discussed problem in the Bible, yet for Christians today, it is one of the least meaningful notions. Idols are not just on pagan altars, but in well-educated hearts and minds." I want you to pay specific attention to this next phrase. An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as God.

And I want to speak a little bit now on when good becomes a god. There are many perks, or I should probably use the word blessings, of being a Christian, of being a child of God. God blesses His children with many, many gifts: a good job, a good marriage, a good family, good relationships, and the list goes on. There are many, many things that I benefit from that are a direct result of my relationship with God and His blessings to me.

But God's best gifts have the potential to become His greatest competition.

Anything that shifts dependence from God and worship from God to it, them, or me becomes an idol.

I don't know about you, but suddenly, idolatry feels much, much closer than a stone statue in some far and off land that people burn candles to and lay out food for it. I believe this is what Jesus was referring to when He said, "Unless you hate father and mother, you cannot be My disciple."

This is also the reason why God asked Abraham to take Isaac to the mountain and offer his son as a sacrifice because He wanted to make sure that the gift had not become a god to Abraham.

And that scripture where it talks about hating father and mother has always puzzled me and always, at some level, bothered me. I mean, we all know that in the Bible, we're also commanded, instructed to obey and to love our parents.

And we've heard that it means to love. Jesus wasn't saying, "Oh, yeah. You just hate your parents, but you're supposed to love less."

I think it's a little bit stronger sometimes than we're willing to admit. I think Jesus used the word hate to illustrate the distance between what is first in our lives and what is next in our lives. And that distance needs to be so great that in comparison, in our love for God, in our devotion to God, it looks like we hate the second thing because God doesn't want to be just He doesn't want to be number one in our lives. He wants to be the one of our life. And so many times, I find myself saying, "Yes, God's number one, wife's number two, family's number three," and I categorize it out, and the distance between them can get a little bit fuzzy at times.

Kyle Edelman - I got this illustration from him - he talked about if someone would come upon him at a nice restaurant having a candlelit supper with someone other than his wife, and they would be outraged, and they say, "Why are you doing this?

Shouldn't you be doing this with your wife?" And if he would reply, "Oh, no. She's fine. She's fine with it. She just wants to be number one. This is number two. And on Thursday, I'm going out with number three, but she's good. I mean, when I come home, she'll be like, 'I'm number one. Yep, yep. You're number one. Everything's going to be fine.'" He said, "Honestly, it doesn't work that way."

And I think that is very indicative of the relationship to God. God wants to be one. He wants to be the only one in our life.

Our heart is a throne, but many, many times, we try to turn it into a love seat. We try to make it enough room for two. And many times, it's very easy for me to put something else on the throne of my heart, a good thing, a god thing, but I am worshiping it. And many, many times, it's me that attempts to climb on that throne itself and wants to share the throne of my heart with God.

Is God end? God does not share. Isaiah 42:2 says, "I am the Lord. That is My name. And My glory, I will not give to another."

So I want you to think about what good thing in your life, in my life, has the greatest potential to take glory and dependence from God and either bring glory to myself or to it.

This hits really, really close home to me. And I'm not preaching at anyone here. I'm preaching at myself.

Maybe it's influence. Maybe it's ministry. Maybe it's the legacy that you want to be remembered for. Maybe it's church. Maybe it's my children. Maybe it's my wife.

Influence and impact and reputation has the greatest potential in my life to push God from the throne because He doesn't share. We can turn into a love seat, but it's still a throne because whenever we put something else up there, God leaves.

He doesn't share. He doesn't share with money. He doesn't share with anything else. It has to be just Him.

And I want to stress the point that these are good things. These things, like I said, can be and are gifts from God.

But many times, when it comes to influence, I cloak my desire for power behind being a great Christian, impacting other people's lives. I want to change the world. I want to do great things for God. Each one of those things is not wrong.

But if I use those things and pursue those things to bring glory to myself or to what I'm doing, it is in direct opposition to God and becomes an idol.

So the question I have to ask myself, and I really have been having to ask myself, is, "Where's the glory going in what I do and what I say?" And a lot of times, no one else may know that. You're the only one that knows that because only you know your motivation behind it, why you do what you do.

I have a couple of questions here I'm going to read through to help us determine what has the potential in our lives to become a god. These are not original with me. Kyle Edelman adapted these from Dr. David Paulsen. I'm not sure who he is, but I thought they were interesting. There's nine questions here, and I just want you to think about them as I read through them.

Number one, what are you most disappointed with? Number two, what do you complain about?

Three, what do you sacrifice your time and your money for?

What are you afraid of?

Where do you go for comfort? Number six, what makes you angry? Number seven, what are your dreams? What do you dream of?

Number eight, what brings you joy?

And number nine, whose applause do you long for?

I found these very helpful and very, very convicting in directing me to think about good things that, in my life, have the danger and the potential to become god things.

Moving on in the story in Kings 17:1, "And Elisha the tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, 'As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word.'" It's no coincidence here that God took excuse me. God took the very thing that Baal was supposed to provide. He took the rain.

He's like, "All right. Game on. You're going to worship Baal. You think it's going to rain? Uh-uh. Not going to rain."

The thing that competes the most for the throne of my heart and your heart may be the very thing that God removes, withholds, or restricts in your life.

This goes back to question one and two. What are you disappointed with?

What do you complain about?

And God not only does not share and remove Himself from, but according to James 4, we just looked at this, verse 6, He says, "God resists the proud who gives grace to the humble." Pride is simply a worship thief, a proud person. He's stealing something that is not his and giving it to himself. He's proud.

That's very, very sobering to me that God says, "Not only do I not tolerate it and remove myself from you, I will actively work against you. I will resist you."

So as you think through your life and as I think through my life, I want you to look at where are you experiencing the drought in your life, in my life?

God calls it not to rain in this story.

I want you to think about your desert and to think about the fact that is it possible that idolatry is the root of the problem? And I don't want to portray God as this taskmaster with His hand on the valve of His blessing, His protection, His power, ready to cut it off as soon as we step out of line. That's not how God is. God is so merciful, and He is so forbearing. If you look at the Old Testament, His patience with the people of Israel, He gave them chance after chance after chance for them to turn around. And He didn't drop the hammer on them, but many times, it was this gradual increase of pressure and letting them face the consequences of their actions.

God is also just, and He always let them eventually feel the judgment for their decisions.

God is patient with us, and He is very merciful to us, but He's also just.

And so there's, at times, He does allow pressure to build in our lives in order for us to look to Him and to change what we need to change because we don't change very easily. I don't. The older I get, the more I realize that change is extremely difficult. And I don't think there's some parts of my life where I have changed, and God has done a work in my life, and if it wouldn't have been for the pressure that God brought to my life, I don't think I ever would have changed.

And as much as I'm glad to change, I do not miss the pressure at all.

I'm going to continue reading here in chapter 18. I'm going to skip a little bit here. Elijah issues a challenge. I'm going to start at verse 17 and read for a bit.

"Then it happened when Ahab saw Elijah that Ahab said to him, 'Is that you, O troublemaker of Israel?' And he answered, 'I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the Baal.

Now, therefore, send and gather all of Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.' So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel. And Elijah said to all the people and Elijah came to all the people and said, 'How long will you falter between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow Him, but if Baal, follow him.' The people answered him not a word. No one was willing to commit to anything, either way. Then Elijah said to the people, 'I alone am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. Therefore, let them give us two bowls and let them choose one bowl for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood but put no fire under it. And I will prepare excuse me. I will prepare the other bowl and lay it on the wood but put no fire under it. Then you will call in the name of your gods, and I will call in the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, He is God.'

So all the people answered and said, 'It is well spoken.'" So Elijah lets the prophets of Baal go first. They build their altar. They put the bowl on it, and then they engage in chaos for pretty much a whole day. They danced and prayed and cut themselves, and they failed miserably. At the end, the wood was still there. The bowl was still there. No fire.

Verse 30, "Then Elijah said to all the people, 'Come near to me.' So all the people came near to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob to whom the word of the Lord had come saying, 'Israel shall be your name.'

Then with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold two seeds of seed. And he put the wood in order, cut the bowl in pieces, and laid it on the wood and said, 'Fill four water pots with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.'

Then he said, 'Do it a second time.' And they did it a second time. He said, 'Do it a third time.' And they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar, and he also filled the trench with water." I want to point out Elijah's complete and utter dependence upon God and the steps he took personally to ensure that.

He built an altar in the name of the Lord. He did it as God said. And then he gets this idea with water, and he pours water on it, so much water that the trench filled up with water around it. And this was in the middle of a drought. This was a lot of water.

He made certain that there was only one way it would burn. There was nothing done on the sly here on his part. He made it impossible for him or anyone else outside of divine intervention for this to burn.

Verse 36, this is his prayer, "And it came to pass at the time of the offering of evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, 'Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God and I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord. Hear me, that these people may know that you are the Lord God and that you have turned their hearts back to you again.'" I want to point out how many times he said, "You" and "your," and he was not referring to himself. "You are God. I am your servant.

At your word, I'm acting, that you are Lord God and that you have turned the hearts back to you again." This is a example of true worship. The created bringing glory to the creator. They're created reflecting the worship and the glory to God.

Verse 38, "Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. Now, when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, 'The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God.'" God pours out His power and His blessings on the people and the situations that bring Him the most glory.

2 Chronicles 16:9, "For the eyes of the Lord run through and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on the behalf of them whose heart is loyal to Him."

I think it's a possibility that we explain the lack of these types of acts of God in our day a little bit too quickly.

And I'm not suggesting that we need to go on miracle hunts, but just like mankind has not changed, he's still pursuing the idols of the Old Testament, the idols of the New Testament, and the idols of today. Mankind hasn't changed.

And not only has mankind changed, God has not changed. The same God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament, and He's the same God today.

And idolatry is still the biggest threat in our relationship to God and is the barrier to His power, to His protection, and His blessing.

So the challenge I want to leave with you is this.

Where do you need the rain?

Where is the dry ground? Where is our dry ground? And to think carefully where our dependence lies, are we reflecting? Are we absorbing? And how can we, as individuals, as families, as ministries, and churches, live radical, risky lives that God rushes to pour out all the power and the blessings at His disposal that the world around will say like the people of Jericho, "For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and in earth below."

That is why we are here.