SPEAKER_02 0:00

Morning, church. It's great to see everyone here this morning. My name is Nick, and I am one of the pastors here at Point Community Church, and I am grateful to get to serve in the capacity of leading and also getting to teach regularly. If you come to Point Community, you're going to get to hear a lot of different voices because we believe that God has gifted a lot of different people to teach his word. And we we love his word and we love what God does through it in our lives, even though sometimes it's painful, right? We love God's Word. And if you're a guest this morning, I just want to again say thank you for being here. Welcome to Point Community Church, as Josue has already said. We are a family, and uh, and we're not a perfect family. The longer you hang out with us, you'll find that out. Um we can sometimes put on a good front, like I'm sure you can in your own little world. Uh, but we all have issues, we all have challenges, and we all have struggles, but thankfully God is gracious and he is good and he meets us in that, right? So we don't have to play a game, we don't have to put on a front, we don't have to uh make up any kind of uh we don't have to wear masks. Uh we get to be who we are and we get to thank God that he is good and gracious in our lives. So uh this morning, you probably noticed if you haven't been with us, or maybe even the last couple weeks you have, we've got a lot of uh elementary age kids in the room. Uh that's for two reasons. Uh first, because we don't have the portable building uh that we are hoping to have ASAP, uh, because we are we've been trying to work through the permitting process. We want to follow the laws of our governing bodies, and so we're trying to make sure we get everything together. We've got a great team of folks that are ready to jump in and to serve kids. Uh but secondly, because we want you to know that we need space for kids, and so when you got your kids next to you, it's a constant reminder, right? That we've got to give so we can serve our kids and steward the next generation. Well, uh, let me just make a note on that that we do not believe that what we do as a church is child care. Okay? Now, that would be like me as a dad saying that I babysit my kids. I don't babysit my kids, I'm their dad. That's being a dad. And as a church, we don't do child care, we steward the next generation, we serve them and we disciple them towards Jesus. And so let me just make that caveat this morning that we believe in investing in these kids' lives because they are not a burden. The culture says they're a burden because they cost a lot of money or they cause us issues and pain. They are a blessing and a gift from God. And we believe that. And we believe that a church gets to see all these kids around here like this is a gift from Him. And so we're thankful for that. And so, for you kids this morning, we got a quick little video for you. So here you go.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Hey, Sprinkles! I got a question for you.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Good, because I got an answer for you.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Okay, where do you think we came from?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Oh, ho! I know Frosty! Alien beams in there. They're from the planet Refrigerator. No way, Jerry. That's ridiculous. Everyone knows we all started out just as crumbs in the bottom of the oven, then slowly we turned into cookies, and for cookies, we became brownies, and then for brownies, we became cupcakes. Filled with sweetness and goodness. Theorists. It's a theory.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I don't know. I heard the muffins talking about the baker. The muffins said we were formed by the baker who made us from scratch and designed each of us with unique toppings for a special purpose.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

And what purpose is that? To be eaten.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Alright, kids, are you with me? Here's the truth. You're not here by accident, kids. And adults, you aren't either. God created you and he has a plan, and it's not to eat you. Okay? It's not to eat you. It's he loves you and he has a plan and a purpose to use your life, as Josue said earlier in the welcome, to point others to life in him. He wants to know you and he wants you to know him, and he wants to have a relationship with you. And that's an awesome thought, isn't it? That the God who breathed this world into existence, that spoke it into existence, he wants to have a personal relationship with every one of us in this room. Well, today I want to draw your attention to something before we dive into the message, and that is if you've got a worship guide, looks like this, uh, I want you to pull that out. If you did not get a worship guide, we have some ushers around the room who can get you one. You just lift your hand real quick. Uh anybody need a worship guide that didn't get one? Okay. Uh there's a few here. I think if you'll just hold your hand up until they get it to you, they'll bring that to you. Thank you, ushers, for doing that. We've got a great team of ushers who serve so well. Um, but as you open that guide up, there are a couple things that I want to make sure you see. Um, on the left side of the page, it looks like this. I have the one from last week, actually, with 18 blanks on it. Um we have a side where you can take notes. And we want to make sure that you guys can take notes from the sermon because I've learned that even if you throw this in the trash when we're done, writing it down helps you to remember what you heard, right? And you can write your own notes of what God's saying to you specifically as you hear the message, and hopefully God is speaking to every one of us. And what's neat is that God will take a message that's intended for all of us and he will make it specific to each one of us. And it's really powerful. So write the notes. But on the right side, you'll notice it says takeout, which simply means that we want you to take this home and do something with it. We believe that if you will spend personal time, private time in the Word of God, it will change your life. It's kind of like being a boulder that gets put into a river, and over time the river washes over the boulder. And if you've ever gone down to a stream, you find these really smooth stones down in the river, you know what I'm talking about. When you get consistent in reading God's word over your life, it knocks the rough edges off. And as the seasons go by, you begin to see God will shape you with his word. It washes over us. And so I encourage you to read God's word. And if you need a place to start, you don't have to use this plan, but we try to put some passages that relate to the message that we taught that week. And then we always try to put a verse to remember, because uh, if you're like me, if I don't have a plan, I don't memorize scripture, but the Bible says it's important to put that word in, so we have a filter to weed out the things that are not true that I'm being taught. And we're gonna talk about that more in a minute today. So putting a word in our life, and then there's some discussion questions. And those discussion questions, you can completely, totally do these on your own and fill them out. But what I would encourage you to do is to find a life group. And if you don't know what life group to get connected to, at the connection point at the back of the room, there's some uh some guides that are back there. There's an explanation of 14 different groups that you could connect with one of those on a weeknight or even on Sunday afternoons, and get into a community with a group of people and walk through those questions together, pray for each other, encourage each other, challenge each other, hold each other accountable. Okay? We need that. I need that. Uh spiritual growth, you're gonna hear us say this a lot, too, like it's a broken record. Spiritual growth and maturity is not something you can do in isolation, it's a community project. Okay? And so you get into one of those groups, find a group. If you need help, let me know after the service or one of our pastors or elders. We'd love to point you to a group you can get connected to. And then there's you'll notice they're taking the next step. We don't want to just be do, we don't want to just be hearers of the word, we want to be doers. We're gonna actually put this stuff into practice. All right. So we're in our week two of gospel DNA, and uh, I gotta ask you a really serious spiritual question. Are we do we have any mechanics in the house? Any mechanics? Okay. Um when I was growing up, my dad uh he told me he was a mechanic at one point, and I obviously know that because he's very skilled at working on vehicles, working on cars and trucks, and in fact, when he was going through college, he he worked three different jobs. One of those jobs was that he was a diesel mechanic and he would work on engines. But he taught me some different things about that. The problem is that most of what I saw him do, I never got to get my hands on personally. So he did it, but he didn't really teach me to do it. So when I try my hand at mechanic stuff, um, my wife usually says, Oh, don't do that. Don't touch that. Because she knows it's gonna take 40 times as long to get the project done, and I'll probably mess up something else in the process. So I'm just gonna admit that I've got some work to do. But I do know something very important about vehicles, cars, and working on them. Imagine with me for a second that you're driving down I-35 over here, and as you're driving down the road, your car breaks down. Actually, let's just say it's my car, it's my truck. I have a white Dodge truck, and I'm driving down the road and it breaks down, and I'm I have to pull over to the side of the road because you guys know how how crazy that road is and how stuffed up it is. And so I pull over to the side of the road and I call a tow truck and I say, tow truck, you got driver, whatever your name is, I need you to come and and to tow me. So he gets there and he hooks up my truck to his tow truck, and I say, Um, I'm not completely sure where the closest car wash is, but can you please take my truck over to the closest car wash, the best car wash you know? And so he tows me over to the car wash, and I get to the car wash and I have him pull me into the little uh the little section there where they wash the cars and say, I'm good, man. You can drop me off here. And then I proceed to give my truck the best car wash it has ever gotten. And I wash that thing up and down. I do the tires, I pay for the deluxe, deluxe, deluxe car wash, which I never do. And I do that, but I but I go ahead and do that. And I have, man, this thing, when I'm done, it looks incredible. It is clean, it is shiny, the wheels look great, everything about it. Some of you men in here, you you know what that looks like. You guys do that to your your vehicles regularly. And I finish that, and then I jump back in my truck and I put my key in the ignition and I try to turn it on and take off. What's gonna happen? Nothing's gonna happen, is it? You see, it doesn't take a mechanic to understand that the problem is not how the car looks, it's not the truck. I hope I hope you know, I hope you know that, right? Hope we got that much. You see, no matter what I do to the outside of the truck, the problem's under the hood. And here's the reality people treat church like a car wash. So much of the time we we treat church as something that we go to to try to wash off the outside, to get it cleaned up so that we look better, so that we feel better, so that what? So that since people will think we're a good person or we have God's approval. Maybe we just feel better that week. We've gone through a week and we've collected a lot of grime, a lot of dirt, a lot of grime, a lot of sin. But the reality is the problem is not the outside. The problem is going on at the heart level. It's under the hood of our lives. And that's what I want to talk about today because I believe that if you and I don't get this, we will spend our lives trying to clean up something that is not an exterior problem, it's an interior one. If you got your Bible, I want to encourage you to go to Romans chapter 1. The verses will be on the screen, but I always encourage you to get the Bible out for yourself. There's some Bibles underneath the seat in front of you because I really believe that when, again, you look at the word for yourself, it's transformative. So Romans chapter 1, and I gotta tell you, this passage of Scripture is it is beautiful and gut-wrenching at the same time. It is glorious and it is devastating at the same time. Because we're talking about the gospel, we're talking about the nature of this good news, this message that God has given us. And I want you to know that the gospel is not just the foundation of our faith. It is what sustains us, it's what drives us, it's what continues to help us become more and more like Christ. In fact, the gospel has been described as a pool in which a toddler can wade into, but yet an elephant can swim. Isn't that great imagery? The gospel is simple enough that I can tell my little children about it and I can explain to them what Christ has done for them, and yet it's so profound that men will give their lives to studying it and never fully fill out uh be able to figure it out completely. The depths of the gospel. Isn't that an awesome thought? See, the gospel is not just the ABCs to Christianity, like we talked about last week. It's the A to Z. It's everything that we need to live the way that God intended us to live. So this morning, I want us to look at Romans chapter 1 and I want us to think about this beautiful gospel and what it does. Verse 16 says this in chapter 1 of Romans. For I am not ashamed of the gospel. I am not ashamed. This is Paul writing to the church at Rome. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why would he even say that? Why would he even have to say that? Because can I be real honest with you? Maybe you don't um, maybe you don't uh fully understand this, but the gospel message, it's actually foolish to human beings. It says in the scripture, it's it's foolish to those who are perishing. The message is kind of silly. That some man who was raised in a carpenter's home, that he lives and that he dies on a terrible cross, a cruel cross, at the hands of Romans and Jewish leaders, and that he goes into a grave and that he comes out of that grave and appears to others, and that now if we put our trust in him, we can be forgiven and set free and made right for not only here and now but for eternity. Like that's kind of silly. Now, if you've been in church all your life, you may be like, that's not silly. That's that's our message, that's our hope, right? But think about it. For people who've never heard that message before, and you tell them you've got to believe in some man who came and died on a cross, it's foolishness. But to those who are being saved, it's the power of life for all who believe, right? So he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is God's power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and also to the Greek. For in it, God's righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. Everybody said the word faith. God has said to us that all we can do in the process of being saved is receive his gift by faith. And that our righteousness, our right standing before God, our holiness is not attached to our performance, it's attached to Christ's performance. It's been defined by what Christ did that we could not do. And this is why we can rejoice, even though the gospel is devastating, it's also glorious. Because in the moment when we understand the gospel, we realize that we are more deeply entrenched in sin. We are the biggest failures ever, and at the same time, we are more loved and cared for, and we are valuable because of Jesus. And those two things are held in tension, aren't they? Because the gospel, the good news, the message of Christ. Let's continue on. For God's wrath. Oh, that's not a word we like to talk about in church. It's not a word we like to talk about, period, right? God's not just loving and gracious, he's also full of wrath. He hates sin. He hates what it does to you. He hates what it's done to his son, he hates the separation that it brings between him and us. He hates the separation that it brings between us and one another. He hates it. He is he is angry about sin. And he is pouring out his wrath, and it's not what you think it is sometimes. I'll talk about that in just a minute. His wrath is being revealed from heaven against what? Godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Ouch. Anybody in here ever suppressed the truth? Resisted what you knew was true, you knew you were wrong, you knew what you were doing was wrong, you knew the situation, the circumstances were not God honoring, but you suppressed it, you pushed it aside. He says that every one of us as human beings do this all the time. We suppress the truth. Here's the truth that Jesus Christ is our Savior, that he is our rescuer, that he is our redeemer. We are broken and that we need him. And we suppress that truth. Since what can be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them. His invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. What is Paul saying? He's saying that every person who walks this planet, every person who breathes in oxygen, whose heart is beating in their chest, when they look at the world around us, the gloriousness of creation declares that there's a God. It declares and cries out, there's a God. And the only reason that we don't believe that, we don't buy that, is because we are suppressing the truth. It's because we've decided, no, God, we're smarter than you, we're wiser than you, we're better than you. I want you to understand something. This is a whole nother topic for another day, but we need to at least touch on this here. When I talk to people about God, believing in God, following God, putting their trust in Jesus, they want to make it an intellectual conversation. They want to talk about why they can't believe in God from an intellectual level. And can I just be honest with you today? And can I encourage you to be honest with yourself and with those around you? It is not ultimately an intellectual conversation. I don't mean that we can't dive into the fact that uh that there are intellectual components to our faith. We shouldn't be a church, we shouldn't be a group of people, of Christ followers who basically shut down our brains so that we can just absorb Jesus. No, he gave us our brains to love him with our minds, with our thinking, right? But if you try to make it just an intellectual conversation, you can reason your way out of anything, can't you? I can. We can justify so many things in our lives just by using our reasoning. It's dangerous. But the issue is that it's, again, it's under the hood, it's at the heart level. See, the reason we don't want to buy into God is because if we believe there's a God, then our lives have to change and align up with his authority, with his lordship, with his kingship. I can't say I believe in God and ignore him. I can't say I believe and buy into the fact that there's a God and then just live however I want to live. It changes everything, doesn't it? But notice what he says. Though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Man, I'm such an ungrateful person. I'm trying so hard to grow in this. You know what? You know what the opposite of gratitude is? Entitlement. It's when you think you deserve things. You think you just, God, God, you owe me this. I mean, my life's been hard, God, you owe me this. Don't ever trust a pastor or a preacher who gets up and says, God owes you anything. He doesn't owe us anything. He has given us everything we need in Jesus. And if we have any blessings, that is purely, again, his grace and his mercy and his goodness to us that we don't deserve. If you have a house to live in, if you have a car to drive, if you have clothes to wear, if you have kids, if you have a spouse, if you have anything, it is a gift from God. But the ultimate gift has already been given through Jesus. And he says, though they did not, they they knew God. They knew they were aware there was a God, but they didn't glorify him. Instead, they were thinking, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. There's some people in the world, maybe you've been in this boat, and I know I have it my time at times. And I think I'm wise in and of myself. Listen, we are fools. And we're most foolish when we think we're the wise ones. And he says they they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. He's talking about idols, right? He's saying that they built these idols to worship these man-made things. Therefore, this is a scary, scary verse, people. Listen, this is a scary, scary verse. It says, therefore, remember when I said God is wrathful against sin? Remember, I said God is angry about sin? One of the ways that he demonstrates his wrath is what I'm about to read. Therefore, God delivered them over in their cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. You know what that verse is telling us? It's telling us that one of the ways that God reveals his wrath against humanity is by giving us what we want. Let that settle in for a second. We go to God and we say, God, we want this, we want this, we want this, we want this. God, would you fix this? Would you do this? Would you give me some more money? Would you do this? Would you do that? And listen, God is a good heavenly father who wants to give his children good gifts. Don't think that God is not good. That he's not merciful and gracious. But you know what? If he gave us everything we wanted, we would destroy ourselves in a heartbeat. Because what we want is not what we need. A lot of the times, what we want is not what we need. There's a verse that was claimed all the time when I was in college. Uh I remember being in college and university, and everybody's thinking about getting married, and they're all thinking about uh I'm gonna get a spouse and I'm gonna have this job and I'm gonna have all these things, and they would quote this verse, uh, Psalm 37 4. You guys know the verse? I heard some giggles in the room. It says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. I can say this because it used to be right there next to my speedometer in my car. And as I was thinking about my soon-to-be-wife Jada, I was like, delight myself in God, and He will give me Jada. We play those games, don't we? And here's the thing: when you and I delight ourselves in God, we understand He is what we need. He is what we want. And everything else is just icing on the cake. So claiming to be wise, they became fools. God, He turns them over to their desires. They degrade themselves because they get what they want. But I want you to catch this last verse, and here's where we're going to camp out for the remainder of our time. It says this in verse 25. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worshiped and served something created instead of their Creator who is praised forever. Amen. Here's what we're going to talk about for the next 15, 20 minutes. There is a lie that I tell myself all the time. And the truth is, every one of you in this room, you tell it to yourself as well. And the lie is this the big lie that's underlying all of our lives is that life is found in something other than Jesus. That life is found in something other than Jesus. In this passage, Paul is revealing that all of us are idol worshipers. In fact, Martin Luther says at one point in his ministry, he said that our hearts are idol factories. That great imagery. That literally our hearts pump out idols every day. We manufacture idols every day. And whatever you choose to worship will control your life. Whatever you choose to put on the throne of your heart will control and drive your life. It will motivate you. It will move you. And it will ultimately kill you and devastate you if it's something other than Christ. You see, in this passage, we're reminded that idolatry is rooted in exchanging the truth for a lie. Exchanging the truth of God and what he has done and who he is, what he is about, what we were made for, we exchange that truth for a lie. And that lie is simply, again, that there is something better than Jesus. Now, just to make sure that we're talking the same language here, I want to make sure that you guys know what we mean by life. Where do we find life? Really, two things, two kind of umbrella overarching ideas. The first one is this we are all looking for significance. We are all looking for significance. Would you agree with that? We all want to be valuable, valued. We want our opinions to matter, we want our lives to matter. Is that wrong? No. I'm not saying it's wrong at all. In fact, I believe that is a God-given desire for us to live significant lives. I mean, truthfully, if you don't have significance, like, just you want life to be over. It's done. I don't, I don't, I'm not significant. Doesn't matter. Does anybody care about me? Does anybody know me? Does anybody love me? But significance is something that we long for, it's something that we value, it's something that we find our worth in, it's something that we find our identity in, it's something that we pursue recognition in. And for all of us in this room, that can be different things. It could be work, it could be parenting, it could be all these different uh roles that we play in life, and we can find our significance in those things. But the other thing is not just significance, but satisfaction. What do we find our satisfaction in? Where do we get our pleasure? Where do we get our happiness? Because everybody's on a pursuit of happiness, right? In fact, our country, we know it's in our preamble, our constitution, that everyone has the right to pursue happiness. The question is, is what are we pursuing happiness in? Pursue happiness. How about peace? Anybody in here just want peace? They just long for peace? I mean, we live in a chaotic world that is messed up by sin. And our relationships, our health, our finances, everything is in a chaotic state because we live in a broken, fallen world. And so we're saying, where's the peace? But here's the truth. Many of us look to things to try to find satisfaction and peace that are just going to lead us to more chaos. So we put a relationship in that place and we wonder why it doesn't satisfy. And we put some more money in that place and we wonder why it doesn't satisfy. Because money many times is just funding our sin. Right? But we look for satisfaction. We look for rest. We look for escape. Truth be told, some of you in this room are just like me, you're addicts. I'm not talking about just drugs and alcohol. But you're addicted. You're addicted to the pleasures of this world. You're addicted to what other people think about you. You're addicted, I'm addicted, to success. We're addicted to more, whatever that more is. Because we never get satisfied, do we? Because you can't find satisfaction this side of heaven in anything other than Jesus. The truth is, Jesus can meet us in this. I want to give you five questions. And if you're brave, if you're brave and if you're willing, I want to ask you to take some time and answer these questions this week. Five quick diagnostic questions. I mean, I want to make sure that we're not just talking high pie in the sky ideas, okay? Because sometimes at church we can go and we can talk about spiritual things and we kind of keep it at a real high level and say, you know, hey, like we talked about these things, and but we really don't drive it down to what's going on in our hearts. It's just a car wash. It's just a car wash. Here's five questions. And can I just be honest with you? These have hurt me this week. They have wounded me deeply. That's a great way to set them up, right? Number one. Do I feel like I have enough money and possessions right now? Or do I feel like I need more? Do I feel like I have enough money and possessions right now, or do I feel like I need more? What a mirage, huh? What a mirage. Number two, do I feel like I have control in my life? Or do I feel like my life requires more? Some of us are money's not an issue for us. We just want to control everything. We just want to make sure that we're the ones behind the steering wheel. As long as we can keep things under our control with our hands on the wheel, that that's that's how we know things are gonna be okay. Number three, is there a relationship I feel I must have for my life to be truly worthwhile? It was Valentine's this week. You men, you had a home run, right? Every one of the men in the room? Yeah? This isn't sounding so good. Told your wife you love her. Hopefully you don't just do it on Valentine's Day. But so many people are looking for significance in relationships, right? And if they don't have that relationship, they are going to die. Listen, there is no man or woman in this world who can complete you. They can compliment you, they can offset your strengths and your weaknesses, they can help you accomplish God's purpose for your life and giving him glory and pointing others to life in him, but they cannot complete you. Because only Christ alone can complete you. And if you look for a man or woman to do that, listen, people, if you do that, you are headed down a path to destruction because you're gonna elevate them to the place of Messiah in your life and you're gonna crush them with your expectations. And you're gonna be devastated and disappointed when they don't deliver, they don't measure up. Number four, what am I willing to betray my values to obtain? What am I willing to, I mean, we live in a world where we are sneaky. And we will betray, we will look for different things to get ahead. What are the things that will cause you to do those things at work or in your life that will try to help you get ahead? And you'll do those as long as people don't know. As long as you don't get caught, which just a word here. People don't suddenly go bad, they just get found out. You don't just suddenly like turn up to be a person who's out in left field having an affair. Like that's been a process for all of us. Number five, what desire is so strong that it can warp my thinking? What desire is so strong that it can warp my thinking that you can begin to rationalize, you can justify, you can deny, you can go into secrecy. Listen, church, this is not a new problem. This is not a new issue. John 8 44 says that there, it says that the devil, he is the father of lies. Write that verse down. Go read that. There is no truth in him. Listen, if sin was unattractive, none of us would do it. Right? If sin was unattractive, none of us would do it. But here's the reality: it's attractive, and the Satan is the father of lies. Here's the other thing you need to know. In this passage in Romans, it tells us that they exchanged the creator for the created. They started looking to the created to do what only the creator could do. Right? To meet their deepest needs, they looked to the created instead of the creator. Now here's the problem. Sometimes we think that idols are just bad things, they're just evil things. But the most dangerous idols in my heart and your heart are actually good things. They're gifts from God. When God created the heavens and the earth, it says that God made these things, and then what does it say after each day? It was good. See, the most dangerous idols in our hearts, these idol factories, are the things that are actually really good that become gods. Little G gods, by the way. Not big G God. They become little g gods in our life. Because for me, if I can just be completely vulnerable with you, Jada is a gift from God for me. For me. I am so thankful for her. But if I'm not careful, I can turn her into a God in my life. I can have my ups and my downs based on how our relationship is going. I can let her determine how my walk with Jesus is going and how I'm going to point others to life in him based on how we're doing. And this week, and I'll be honest, it wasn't too good. I went to a retreat and I got home and there was this wall, and she and I have been busy and we've been going hard at it and we haven't been going to bed till late at night, and it's been a rough week. Can a pastor say that? Absolutely, because I'm a human being and we need Jesus to rescue us. I need him to rescue my heart from the idolatry of my wife. Because she can't save me from myself. Only Jesus can do that. John is speaking to the church in his final letter before Revelation. And he says, Little children, guard your hearts from idolatry. Guard yourselves from idols. Now the truth of the matter is this morning, if we stop there, if we just stopped the train right there, we could all walk out of here feeling really guilty. Because every single one of us, if we're honest, we answer those five questions, there are idols in our hearts, aren't there? There's things that we have worshipped, we have substituted for Jesus to give us life, to give us significance and satisfaction. But praise God, that's not where the gospel ends. The gospel tells us how jacked up we are, but then it tells us how loved and forgiven we are. If we will receive it. So let me tell you, this is the trick. And it's not just a tip and trick that I came up with or I dreamed up or just kind of through reading the Bible. This is what God's word says, the truth says. It says that the only way out of idolatry is worship. Verse 25, did you catch it when we were reading through that? Verse 25, it says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and they worshiped and served something created instead of something, instead of the creator. Who is what? Praised. Giving us a little bit of a nugget there, it's not till chapter 3 in Romans that we get the full expression of this next beautiful reality of the gospel. But he says that the answer to our hearts' issues, the answer to the poison that is beating through our veins in our humanity, in our flesh, is worship to God. Because you can't just turn away from those things. You've got to turn to something because you are a worshiper. To say it another way, we know there's an illustration that was helpful for me. It's like our lives are a water hose and they're always turned on and flowing with worship. Worship's always coming out of the water hose. And the question is, is where are we going to direct that hose? Are you going to pour the life of worship into something that's not going to satisfy, something that's temporary, something that's going to be gone? Or are you going to pour that water hose if you're going to point that to Christ and worship Him the way you were intended to? I hope that visual helps you this morning because the truth is, every one of us in this room, our lives are living billboards. Our lives are living billboards. They're declaring to everyone what we worship. Where we spend our time, where we spend our money, what turns our affections, what strips away our affection for God, those are idols to us, and we're telling the whole world this is what we're about. And I am a man who is broken this morning before you. I just get to be up here and tell you. I get to confess my sin. This is great. This is my group therapy session, right? I get to be the one who stands up here and just says to you, I am broken, you are broken, we are all broken, and we need Jesus. He's the only one who can heal our hearts and the mess that we've gotten ourselves into. But praise God that He is a God who gets in our mess with us. Praise God that He is one who doesn't stand far away, He doesn't reject us and resist us forever because of Jesus, not because of your performance. Church, how long are we gonna get sold this bill of goods from the evil one that something else can satisfy? How long are we gonna continue to buy this joke? That somehow a job or a relationship or a possession is gonna satisfy kids. How long are we gonna let this evil one lie to us and deceive us? I feel like the Apostle Paul. The things I want to do, I don't do. And the things I don't want to do, I do. What's my hope? Is that Jesus is better. And I have to keep putting that into my brain and my heart over and over and over again, and you do too. That's why we come to church on Sundays. It's not so that we go through the car wash, clean off some of the dirty grime, and feel better about ourselves so we can go home and say, check the box. I went to church this week. I'm a good person. We come to this place because we need Jesus to rescue us and to recenter our lives on what we were made for. What we were meant for. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for every man, woman, and child in this room. And I just confess to you today, as a broken and messed up individual, that I cannot fix myself. I have tried far too often to just go to the car wash with my soul. I've tried so hard to just work harder and to be a better dad, to be a better husband. God, I've tried so hard. And I realize I can't do it. But Christ, you in me, you in me, you working through me, me dying to myself, you're the rescuer. I want my life to be a living billboard that declares that you are the gracious, merciful God who has rescued anyone who will believe and receive. I love you, Jesus. Here's the call to action this morning, church. As we wrap up our time together, there's really two responses. Almost every week it's this way. There's really only two responses. It's we repent and we worship. We repent and we worship. Repent is a word we use in church that's kind of churchy. It just simply means that we turn away from the idols of our hearts. We turn away from worshiping the things we shouldn't worship, and we turn to God and we give him the worship that he deserves. And here's what's beautiful when you and I worship God, when we worship Jesus, we find significance and we find satisfaction. We find the things that we want in life.