You know the saying: “no man is an island”. None of us can go it alone. We all need help, wise counsel, a bit of muscle from time to time. The question is, who or what do you turn to, to get that help when you need it? When it comes to getting help, sometimes, we do the craziest things.

THE STUPIDITY OF IDOLATRY

There used to be a game show on television called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they asked you a whole bunch of questions and if you got them all right you would end up winning a million dollars. Well not surprisingly not all that many people won the million.

One of the rules of the game was that you had three lifelines when you ran into a difficult question, you could ask the audience, you could do a 50/50 where the computer removed two wrong answers out of the four multiple choice items or you could phone a friend.

The ‘phone a friend’ always intrigued me. The contestant would run into a difficult question and choose to phone a friend, they would give them a thirty-second call with a friend of their choosing. Sometimes the friend was able to help with the question, other times not.

I wonder when you run into a difficult question in life where do you turn? What option do you take, ask the audience, 50/50 or phone a friend? It seems that often what we do is we try to build ourselves an insurance policy in life to provide a safety net for those difficult times.

Some people try and get a financial buffer by earning lots of money, some people try to build a social relationship safety net so that they have friends and family in place when the difficult times hit. That’s not a bad thing. Other people invest in their career and their reputation as though that somehow is going to make a difference when the tempest hits.

Whatever your safety net is it’s something you’ve had to work hard to build, it’s been an investment. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of sound planning, it’s good to have a network of family and friends, it’s good if you can to have some savings to fall back on and if there’s still such a thing a secure job and a career path. Nothing wrong with any of those things until we put all our trust in them as though they’re going to be able to save us when a tsunami sweeps across our lives.

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about idolatry. My favourite definition of an idol is anything that we place above God in our lives. We have a innate desire to worship something, that’s how we’ve been made and the crazy thing is that often we worship the wrong things and in so doing we miss out on the very best that God has ready and waiting for us, that God has ready and waiting for you.

Idols are always imposters. Idols can never deliver what we hope they can deliver. So in your life what are the safety nets that you’ve been investing in and building that you put your trust in?

One of the things we can so easily do is to work hard and save hard for a home of our own and when we finally get that we start behaving as though this home is a ‘forever’ thing, that it’s safe and permanent and inviolable. I happen to own a small apartment only several hundred metres from the ocean. We literally live at sea level and as safe and secure as this home feels, hey should a tsunami hit we’re done for.

Why is it that we behave as though the things of this world have the power to withstand the tsunamis of life? When we do that it’s called idolatry because we end up worshipping those things with our lives, we end up placing our trust in them and when you stand back from that behaviour and you evaluate it objectively it’s just nuts and not surprisingly that’s exactly what God says in His Word, lets take a look, Isaiah chapter 44 verses 9 to 20:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they were put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human, let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches a line and marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass. He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine.

He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak tree and lets it grow strong among the trees in the forest. He plants a seed and the rain nourishes it then he can use it as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes some bread, then he makes a god and worships it and makes it a carved image and bows down before it.

Half of it he burns in the fire, over that half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied, he also warms himself and says ‘ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire’ but with the rest of it he turns it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it, he prays to it and says, ‘Save me for you are my God’.

They don’t know, they don’t comprehend, their eyes are shut so they can’t see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say ‘half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted me and I’ve eaten, now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood? He feeds on the ashes, a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?

Hmm, isn’t that great? There was Isaiah talking about physical idols, statues but they’re no different to the idol we set up in our lives today, the physical things that we build to worship and place our trust in. I love how he unmasks the stupidity of idols. That’s exactly what we do with the physical things that we turn into idols.

One half of them we consume and enjoy like money or a nice house or friends or our careers, whatever it is that we’ve set up above God in our lives. And with the other half we sacrifice to it and we trust in it as though somehow it has the power to save us like some god.

Even our relationships, good as many of them are, have you ever been in a difficult spot and used the ‘phone a friend’ option and found there’s nothing your friend can say or do to help you? Of course you have. Have you ever asked the audience, gone out there for help and found that there was no help that could withstand the tsunami? Of course you have.

Right at the end of that passage that we just read from Isaiah, the prophet leads us to the right question to ask, the question we should be asking of the idols in our lives, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?’

And the right answer to that question, the only answer to that question is ‘of course it is, dummy’. When earthquakes and tsunami’s hit your life who’s going to save you? When you come to that final barrier in this life, your physical death and you’re staring down the barrel of eternity let me ask you, who can save you?

Do you see how ridiculous it is for us to set up idols in our lives and to worship them and to sacrifice our lives to them and to put our trust in them? The more we invest in them, the more we trust them, the more deluded we become imagining they have the power to save us. They don’t have that power, listen to me, idols are frauds, they’re imposters and at the very best they’re nothing but second best.

When something or someone who you trust leaves you in the lurch, when your life is crashing down around you that sense of betrayal and disappointment actually makes things worse, that’s what idols do however attractive or reliable or secure they may appear. However much you’ve sacrificed your life to them they are nothing but a fraud and that is the God honest truth.

GOD’S VERY BEST FOR YOU

One of the enduring memories of my childhood is being bored absolutely to tears at Church on Sunday mornings. I was an inquisitive energetic lad as you might imagine, precocious, always on the move, always asking questions, always trying to explore my little world and get the most out of it. Anyhow I digress, back to Church as a young lad.

The things I remember most about Church are the terrible droning sound of the minister’s voice, the boredom and the frustration of not be able to get out there and get on with my life and how incredibly hard those wooden pews were on my backside. I was one of those kids who’d stand up on the pew facing people behind me and making faces at them trying to make them laugh, oh man I pity my poor parents. I remember getting more than just the odd hiding from my father after Church. It wasn’t just the pews that gave me a sore backside.

But can I tell you as adults this remains the experience of many people’s Christianity, a Sunday ritual that for some reason they feel obligated to live out week after week. A droning minister, a sense of duty and boredom mixed in altogether and it’s no wonder that so many of God’s people have set up idols in this world that they worship above God because their experience of Him simply isn’t anything to write home about.

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about how easily we fall into idolatry and exactly how that damages our lives. All those things of this world that appear to be so attractive, so reliable, so trustworthy that we invest in them and put our trust in them above and before God and yet they always fail, they never deliver. Nothing in this world can ever deliver what we’re looking for and that’s why grabbing hold of Gods very best for you is so important.

So what is Gods very best for you, what does that look like? Well here it is, just sit back and soak it in. I’m reading from Matthew’s Gospel chapter 27.

As they went out they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon and they compelled this man to carry Jesus’ cross and when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means place of the skull) they offered him wine and drink mixed with gall but when he tasted it he wouldn’t drink it and when they had crucified him they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots.

Then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him which read ‘This is Jesus the king of the Jews’. Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads saying ‘you who would destroy the Temple and rebuild it again in three days, save yourself. If you’re the Son of God come down from the cross.

In the same way the chief priests also along with the scribes and the elders were mocking him saying, ‘he saved others but he can’t save himself. He’s the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross now and we’ll believe in him. He trusts in God let God deliver him down if he wants to for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’ The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him the same way.

From noon on darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At about three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani’, that is ‘my God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it they said, ‘the man is calling for Elijah.

At once one of them ran and got a sponge and filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick and gave it to him to drink but the others said, ‘wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him’. Then Jesus cried again in a loud voice and breathed his last. (Matthew chapter 27 verses 32 to 50.)

There it is, God’s very best for you – Jesus. This Jesus who came into this world to show you exactly what God’s like, this Jesus who suffered so terribly to take the punishment that you and I so richly deserve so that we can have a real, intimate, dynamic, powerful, tender, lifelong, eternity long relationship with God.

That’s the whole purpose of what everything Jesus did for you and for me, to open up the door to that tender intimate relationship with Him. Gods cry from the beginning of the Bible to the end is His desire to be our God and for us to be His people. He wants to dwell in our midst and for us to be with Him and to behold His glory and to enjoy His presence and to worship Him in a way that is completely divine.

Right towards the end of the Bible in the Book of Revelations God repeats His cry, a cry that we hear over and over again through Scripture but this time it is the fulfilment of His deepest desire, it is our glimpse into the future to see how all this ends, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 to 7:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more and I saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband and I heard a loud voice saying from the throne, ‘see the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them, they will be his people’s and God himself will be with them, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things have passed away’. And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘see I am making all things new’. Also he said ‘write this for these words are trustworthy and true.

Then he said to me, ‘It is done, I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things and I will be their God and they will be my children.

That’s Gods very best for you, eternity with Him through Jesus His Son and that’s not something that begins when you die, it’s something that begins, is meant to begin, was always ordained to begin the moment you believe in Jesus. Why does so many of Gods people try to find solace in the things of this world when Gods very best, God Himself is ready and waiting now.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul put it in his letter to the Roman Church, chapter 14 verse 17:

For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The Kingdom of God isn’t about the things of this world. Sure God’s blessed us with those things but the things of this world are temporal, they’re here today and gone tomorrow. I hope that my wife and I grow old and dotty together, really I do but either she or I could get run over by a bus tomorrow. Nothing on this earth is forever and when I’m travelling and we’re apart as much as we can chat to each other through the wonders of the internet today, she’s not there with me but God is, Jesus is, the Holy Spirit is.

God never departs and as things turn out He is the only one that can ever give me His righteousness, knowing that I’m forgiven, knowing that I’m washed clean from my sin, knowing that as far as the east is from the west so far He has removed my transgressions from me through Jesus.

He’s the only one who can give me the peace that I need amidst the busyness and the pressure and the turmoil and the demands of life and He is the only one who can fill me with the joy unspeakable irrespective of what’s going on around me. And He does that by pouring His Holy Spirit into me, into you, into anyone who puts their trust, their faith, their complete life in Jesus.

Righteousness, peace and joy granted to us because Jesus, delivered to us through the Holy Spirit. There, right there is Gods very best and nothing in this world, no idol, no possession, no relationship, no position, no recognition, no amount of money even comes close

TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND

Back in 604BC a Chinese philosopher by the name of Lau–Tzu observed that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. In fact, nothing that we ever plan on doing, happens unless and until we take the first step. And that’s why I asked you that rather awkward question just before. What are you going to do about it?

If you’ve been able to join me over these past few weeks, you’ve probably figured out for yourself that there really are some idols in your life, something or someone that you’re putting ahead of God. Something or someone that you’re putting all your trust in, to the exclusion of God.

The problem with letting go of your idol is, well, it’s a bit like being a chocoholic, and giving up chocolate. You just want one more piece, right?

The thing with idols is that although they don’t, in and of themselves, have any innate power, the fact that you’ve invested so much in them, the fact that you’ve put your trust in them, means that they have their tendrils wrapped around your heart. And letting go isn’t easy. Letting go, in fact, to start with, can be quite painful.

But unless and until you take that first step, nothing is going to change. You’ll keep on settling for second best, and missing out on God’s very best. That’s the bad news.

The good news is this. As hard as it is to let go of your idols, God has all the power that you need to make it happen. He can break their hold over you in an instant, or He might choose to do that over the coming days, weeks and months. He knows what’s best for you. The first step, is deciding that you’re going to make a change here and now. That you’re going to do what the Bible tells you to do, which is this. Romans chapter 12, verse 2:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Are you prepared to do that right now? To lay down your idols at God’s feet and give them up for Him? Well if you are, then it’s time for the second step, and that second step is to lay hold of the only power in the universe that can set you free – God’s Word.

God’s Word says that:

For freedom Christ has set you free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

In other words, you have already been set free by Christ. So right now, I want to pray that freedom over you. Are you ready?

Father God your Word says that in Christ we are already free. Free from the slavery to sin. Free from the power of idols that we have set up in our lives. So today, we are going to claim your Word for ourselves, for our lives. We are going to step out in faith, away from our idols and towards you, believing that Jesus has already set us free. Lord I pray your power on every person listening today whose heart it is to be free from idolatry and completely surrendered to you. Pour your Holy Spirit upon them, that person, right now in great power, in a double portion and do what only You can do – make the freedom that Christ has purchased for us a reality in their lives right now. Right now I pray, In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I’m believing that if you prayed that prayer with me, God has done precisely what we asked Him to do. I know that over the coming days and weeks God is going to make things happen in your life to make His freedom a reality for you.

As your idol is torn away from your heart by the very power of the Holy Spirit, the same power that raised Christ from the dead, God will replace it with His very best for you, His righteousness, peace and joy through the Holy Spirit. And that right there will bring healing to you, and open the door to an amazing future, of God’s very best for you.