Failure to Fear God

Tom Shrader begins a series on 'Dumb Mistakes and How to Avoid Them' by examining the Amalekites' attack on Israel in Exodus 17. He explains how God is objective truth, not subjective preference, and demonstrates how the Amalekites' failure to fear God led to their eventual destruction. The teaching emphasizes that understanding who God truly is must come before understanding who we are and how to relate to Him properly.

“God is an objective truth, not a subjective truth.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Dumb Mistakes: How to Avoid Them (2017)

Recorded: September 21, 2017

Duration: 40 min

Themes: fear, reverence, mistakes, wisdom, truth, obedience, consequences, priorities, new believer, struggling with priorities, making poor decisions, young adult, questioning authority, facing consequences, seeking wisdom, learning from mistakes

Scripture: Exodus 17:8-16, Deuteronomy 25:17-19, 1 Samuel 15:1-3, Romans 9, Luke 12, 1 John 5:20-21, Proverbs 1:7, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 13, 2 Corinthians 5:14, Galatians 6:7-10, 1 Chronicles 4

Theological Themes: fear of god, divine reverence, biblical wisdom, objective truth, divine judgment, spiritual consequences, theological priorities, covenant relationship

Handout Link

Full Transcript

We're going to start today—you have an outline in front of you, all you see are the two words "dumb mistakes." This is a series, four and a half years since I taught this series, and it's really important to get the subtitle: dumb mistakes and how to avoid them.

Let me give you the titles of what we're going to look at: Mistaking Lust for Love, Trying to Find Safety in Numbers, Standing in Mass Against the Evidence—that's a really interesting approach there—Mistaking Control for Ownership, Accepting Glory That Isn't Yours, Adding to the Gospel. Next week, dumb mistake number two is "A Few Drinks Won't Hurt You," or "Never Hurt Anybody." When we talk about dumb mistakes, those are the eight we looked at—maybe an infinite list, and you could add to that.

Dumb mistakes—perhaps you've made them in your career. You might be sitting next to your dumb mistake, who knows. The reason you react like that is because it's so true. I know how you are. You know what's odd? He's thinking you and you're thinking him—that's what's odd. It makes it universally appealing.

But it could be anything. When we look at the list, what to put on the list was tough. What to make number one was very easy. Because if you screw this one up and get the other seven right, it really isn't going to matter. This is the one that goes first, because it is a top priority. And it's dumb mistake number one: failure to fear God.

Three Ways to Learn

When we talk about dumb mistakes and the subtitle "how to avoid them," I talk about learning. In my mind, I'm sure there's probably nuances, maybe even other points, but I look at three ways to learn.

One is I decide that I want to learn something, and I have what we might call book knowledge, or formal training, or even informal in the sense of reading and curriculum. I'm very close to devoting twelve months or so on studying the topic of love from a biblical perspective. It's because it feels like every time I study, I come across the idea of love—either God's love for us, or our love for Him, or our admonition to love one another.

I'm not talking about love maybe perhaps in the idea of what you're thinking about, though there's some subset of it. Take 1 Corinthians 13—here's the definition of it—but once I even understand what it is, it's irrelevant if I don't first understand the only reason that I love is because God first loved me. When I listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:14, he says it's the love of Christ that compels us. When I understand Christ's love for me, that's the thing.

I probably am not going to take a course on that. I may do some research because there's obviously volumes written, but there may be some videos or something. But by and large, I'll take book knowledge, videos or something, and I'll try to put that in a package for my own edification, and if something beyond that comes out of it, great. So that's one way.

The second way is the school of hard knocks. Some of you have been down that road. It's trial and error, and from it you learn.

Learning from Others' Mistakes

I was talking to a guy the other day. As we're talking, this guy comes in, and he was a little smooth for me. He's there because he's dating somebody who's part of this priority living thing. She comes in, and they start talking, and off they go. We look at each other and said, "If we had the relationship, we'd say to her, you need to run." I spent five minutes with a guy, and all I did was listen to him, but let me just say, this is bad news. You can see it. I know how this movie's going to end. He is going to crush her. That's what's going to happen.

Ten minutes later, they're sitting over in the corner, and I'm thinking, "Oh, he's going to kill you. This is just setting you up." You know, I've watched it. This is what's going to happen. The school of hard knocks teaches you that. That's one of the great things about my job—I understand and see the hard knocks part of it.

Now, here's the problem with book knowledge and the school of hard knocks: the tuition's so expensive.

Here's a third way to learn. It's a great way to learn, and this is what I get in my job—the opportunity to observe others in their successes and failures. That's a side benefit to what I do. It is not at all unusual for somebody to say, "You don't know Bob and Betty, but I'd love for you to meet with them." Rarely is it because they have this success and they're trying to figure something out. It's never somebody with a large trust fund. It's always somebody who either had a large trust fund or aspires to have a large trust fund, and they just want to meet, which is fine. I have no problem with that. But as they tell their story, I'm going, "Wow. Note to self, don't do that."

A Marriage Counseling Revelation

I think I've told you this story before. It's an amazing story. I don't do marriage counseling anymore. I used to do—it wasn't even counseling, because it would be like one session, and I'd say, "Do you know what to do?" "Yeah." "Okay, then you ought to do it." That's kind of how I do it.

This guy—literally this guy—he's just a doofus, you can tell. She's really sharp. That's most often the case. She said, "Here's what he said to me this morning." And she went, "Ding, ding, ding." It was almost verbatim what I had said to Susan that morning.

It was great, because I'm going, "Oh wow, I probably owe her an apology"—although I wonder if she did something to provoke that. But here's what I saw: I saw, "How come they're in my office, and Susan and I aren't?" I realized that we had a relationship. The problem here was not what he said. It was they didn't have any relationship to absorb that. But it made me go home to Susan and say, "Hey listen, I've been thinking about this morning..."

That's how we're going to learn in this series. We're going to look at eight situations, experiences, and stories from Scripture. Some you may know, some you may not know. Today you may not know this story.

Exodus 17, so if you have Bibles, you can turn there. Amalek is the character we'll be looking at, and his followers, the Amalekites, make a really stupid mistake.

The Scale of Moses' Leadership

A little bit of history. In the book of Exodus, we're seeing the Exodus, the movement of the nation of Israel under Moses' direction from Egypt to the land that God has promised to give them.

Here's the kind of stuff you probably don't know. In your mind, when I say here's Moses leading the people, I don't know if you have in your mind the size of the group he's leading. You may think of several hundred or several thousand. Moses is moving about two million people on a trip that should take two weeks, that takes 40 years. Think of the logistics.

When we would go on vacation, we'd travel very heavy. I'd just take a lot of stuff. But we have places along the way. I'm thinking about, I don't know if it's going to happen this fall, and I did it like a decade ago this fall, just flying into Boston and landing with no reservations or schedule, and then just start driving. I'd like to go to a football game at West Point. I think that would be cool.

There's a guy who was at our church that just got a job coaching basketball out there, so maybe call him. My fear is I get out there and they see the raw material and they want to make me like a general or something, and I don't know if I'm ready for that. That sounds like a full-time job, and that doesn't sound like an entry-level position, but I'd be good at that. I'd go, can't we get along?

Here's what I know: along the way, there'll be plenty of places to stay, plenty of food, plenty of everything. Moses is moving two million people, and there aren't a bunch of hotels, and there aren't provisions to stop along the way and say, I need two million cheeseburgers and two million fries and two million Cokes. It's not there. So Moses is doing this.

The Background of Amalek

Along the way, there's opposition, and today we look at it from a group called the Amalekites. Amalek's grandfather is Esau, so we're going to do this backwards. There was Jacob and Esau. Before that, they came from Isaac. Before that, Abraham. So you see this link.

When Isaac has these two boys, Jacob and Esau, we learn in Romans 9 that while they're still in the womb, they haven't done anything, God says, "Jacob I love, Esau I hated." It doesn't mean He's going to intervene and make Esau do something he doesn't want to do. He's just going to let him be who he really is. From that, his grandson is Amalek. So that's a little bit of the background.

The Battle with the Amalekites

Here's the story: "The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites. Moses said to Joshua, 'Choose some of our men and go out and fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I'll stand on top of the hill with my staff of God in my hand.'" This staff represents the presence of God.

"So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered and Moses and Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hand, the Israelites were winning. Whenever his hands were lowered, the Amalekites were winning. And when Moses grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so his hands remained steady. So Joshua overcame the Amalekites."

Now listen to this: "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write this down on a scroll as something to be remembered.'" I come back to this again. That's another one of those things we see over and over again as God says in the midst of this, I want you to remember this.

This Story Is Really About God

Though we're going to look at Amalek today and we've got all sorts—you've already met some of the characters: Moses, Joshua, Aaron, Hur—this story is really about what? God. You already see it.

If I do get to West Point next fall and if I get an opportunity to go around and just look, there's not going to be a wing where they say, "Here we want to teach you a strategy for battle in Afghanistan. When General Petraeus holds up his hands, we win. When they come down, we lose." This is not about a battle strategy, this is about God's provision.

When we look at God's provision, here's what He says to us over and over again: I want you to remember this provision. Like at the church I go to, every Sunday we stop, depending on how the service is structured, either about 20 minutes into it or about an hour into the service, we stop and we follow the commands that Jesus gives us, that Paul reinforces in 1 Corinthians 11, and we do this in remembrance of Him.

Remember and Do Not Be Afraid

God says to us over and over again: remember, remember, remember. We need to do that. Oftentimes, as I read through, there'll be a connection, either explicit or implicit, between "remember" and "do not be afraid."

I go back and I go, this is what God has in mind with Moses. Listen, generations from now, we want the people to be able to read this story and to look at the provision, to remember. As I come to instances in my life where perhaps circumstances are overwhelming me, I can go, "Oh yeah, this is how God works." It's not that God's necessarily going to get me out of this, but God will provide me something in the midst of this.

There's this really interesting dynamic that we see. Maybe you can relate to it, either in your own life or the life of others. A person comes to Christ, and at our place, we might even describe them as "ignorance on fire." They love Jesus, and they can't stop telling

The Fire of New Faith vs. The Dullness of Familiarity

I've noticed something fascinating about people and their spiritual journey. When people first come to faith, they have this incredible fire and passion, but they don't know much. You push them to explain their beliefs, and they don't know anything. After 10 years, they know a bunch, but the fire's gone. Isn't that interesting? Because it seems like it should be exactly the opposite.

I had a situation last night where we have an organization that invites a lot of churches in, and we provide some training and leadership. Last night was leadership training. Jamie spoke for an hour, and then I interviewed him. Tonight, Marty Caldwell speaks for an hour, and then I'll interview him. I was struck last night at how much Jamie talked about passion and conviction.

It would be interesting because it would seem like that passion would grow as I saw Jesus work in my life. But I go from ignorance on fire to intellect that's dull. Remember the church at Ephesus - they lost their first love.

Finding Examples of Lasting Faith

One of the best things you can do in your life is to find an individual or a couple who have walked with Jesus for a long time. Grace Community Church had a great missions philosophy that really impacted me. Rather than give a bunch of money or a little bit of money to a bunch of people, they gave a bunch of money to one group. It was David and Mary Lamb in Calcutta.

I got to hear their story and then got to meet them. I actually got to meet them in Calcutta, but the story was this: they were the last on the last ship out of Shanghai before the communists took over. They didn't know where to go, so they ended up in Calcutta. Within Calcutta, because they were Chinese in Calcutta, they were actually the sub of the worst of the worst of the poor of the poor.

David was just convinced that God called him to preach, so he followed that. You got to admire that. If you really think God's called you to do something, you need to do it. So he rented a storefront, somehow put this thing together, obviously tried to work whatever he could. But on Sunday, he would open up the storefront and preach. For many, many, many Sundays, he would preach only to Mary - no one else would be there.

God's Miraculous Provision

Then a few people started to come. One person shared David's idea for a school and an orphanage, and this guy gave him a bunch of land. Now, David went out to see the land, and it was submerged under two, three, four feet of water. It's a swamp. He gave it to him because it was of no value, literally.

David didn't know what to do. Here's what he decided to do: go out there every day and pray that God would dry the land. We wouldn't even think of this. We might think of it, but there's TV to watch, there's things to do. Plus, you don't want to look like an idiot. You might go a day or two, but he just went every day.

One day he went out, and it was completely dry. I heard the story, but then I was there and taught in the school and the orphanage. It's an amazing thing. When they grew really too old to be in Calcutta, they came back here and Grace Community Church put them up at Westchester, a senior adult living facility. I would go over about every six weeks, maybe two months, just to meet with them and let them tell stories. They would tell me these awesome stories. Every time I walked away, I walked away going, "They're really interesting people, but God is an amazing God."

A Book Recommendation

Let me give you a book to read. A lot of you, especially the ones that just turned over the page to write the name of the book, are probably these really theologically sharp people, so this should disappoint you. The book is by Corrie Ten Boom, and it's called "Tramp for the Lord." It's not one of these Calvin, Luther, Sproul, MacArthur books. It's Corrie Ten Boom's story.

I've been through that book like a thousand times, it seems like. It's simply her story about living for Christ. It's her story of watching the faithfulness of God. Somewhere, I'll bet you can go online and Google Corrie Ten Boom and hear her speak. It's really interesting to hear her speak. I used to have 33 and a third records of her, and then I had some tapes and listened to her.

Stories of God's Faithfulness

Listen to one story. She's hiding Jews from the Nazis, so she ends up in a prison camp. The guards are just abusing everyone, and she wants to do Bible study and church, but it just isn't going to happen. So she prays, "God, we want to do this." God brings an outbreak epidemic of lice in the camp, so severe that the guards won't go in. So she praises God for the lice, so she can do Bible study. Isn't that amazing?

It's story after story. She would say, "I need to go to Munich." They'd ask, "What are you going to do when you get there?" "I don't really know. I just know God wants me to go to Munich." She'll go to Munich and get off the plane, and there's somebody there. To see God's provision in a way, it's really humbling. I look at that and go, "I don't do that." But to understand the faithfulness of God - well, that's all background.

The First Dumb Mistake: No Fear of God

Deuteronomy 25:17 - you get to the dumb mistakes. Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind. Here's these two million people, and as they're tired, you can't just keep everybody up to pace. People are dropping behind, and the Amalekites would take them off, cut them off, and kill them.

Here's what Scripture says about them: they had no fear of God. Dumb mistake number one - to have no fear of God. Now this is when we get into a really important distinction that may seem obvious, but it obviously isn't, because the world so disagrees with it.

Here you go. God is an objective truth, not a subjective truth. So here's the difference. I could say to you right now, how many of you are cold? And then some of you are not even cold. How many of you are hot? Some of you are hot. How many of you are just right? There's never a group of those. Well, it's totally subjective. I would never go to the people and say it's hot and go, you're wrong, or the people say, it's cold, and go, you're wrong. I go, you know, it doesn't matter, it's subjective, it's what you think it is.

But if I said, two plus two is four? Now, it would never occur to a reasonable person for you to go, for you it's four. But I feel like it's five. I've heard a lot about four, but five feels right to me. I sense it's five. I know I'm bucking trends, but for me and my household, it's five. And you would go, look, now I may not say when you say it's cold, I'm not going to say you're wrong, it's cold, but if you said two and two is five, we would be very comfortable in saying, you're wrong. Because it's objective truth, it just is. Two plus two is four. The sun is out, I mean, we can't argue about this.

God as Objective Truth

When it comes to God, He is an objective truth, though the culture treats Him like a subjective truth. People give me stuff all the time, which is great, but this is like, you know, one of those cards that you send out, and they had actually gotten this card from somebody, and on the front, there's like a picture of a mountain and a hill, and it's from the Deep Thoughts series. Here's what it said: "Instead of having answers on a math test, they should call them impressions. And if you get a different impression, so what? Can't we all be brothers?"

This isn't deep, this is stupid. I'm not deep about that, but I think sometimes we go, that's so obviously stupid, I must not know something. This guy just knows how to make money, because somebody wanted to buy that.

We come to God, and we do treat Him as a subjective truth, or she, or it, is a subjective truth, and ultimately, I will make that God in whatever image I want that God to be. So listen to either yourself, or to people around you, when they use phrases like, "my God would never." Right there we know we got a problem, because you just told me what your God would do. You've created a God in your image, in your likeness, slightly above you, perhaps, but totally in submission to you. And no one ever creates a God that they don't understand, or they're afraid of. It's a loving God, it's a kind God, it's a grandfather God, at very worst, it's like the wizard in the Wizard of Oz. We pull away the screen, and we understand Him.

Well, God is an objective truth. Now, here's the problem. If I don't understand God as He really is, then I'm never going to understand who I really am, and I'm never going to understand how to come in right relationship with Him.

The Beginning of Wisdom

Dumb mistake number one is failure to fear God. That's what the book of Proverbs tells us. The fear of God, reverential knowledge and awareness of God, is the beginning of all wisdom.

A Lesson from Montana

I'm years ago invited to a dude ranch, and being a dude, I go. Now, I'm leery of it, because I said, I don't do stuff like this. I don't camp, I don't want to camp. Roughing it for me is the old section of the Biltmore. I'm just not interested in this.

They said, "Tom, you're going to love it. The guy who built this is a wealthy, multi-hundred million dollar guy out of Dallas, and he built this dude ranch, but it's these amazing log cabins. He brought all these interior designers from Dallas. It's all done in hunter green, and all these colors. We have on staff a pastry chef from the Waldorf Astoria, New York." And we're going to be the first people there. And we'd like you to come, so it's two friends of mine. "Come with us, we're going to meet the owner and one of the wranglers there. We'll get there three days before everybody else, and we'll just hang out."

So I get there, and the land, piece of land the guy bought up in Montana, it's the site where they filmed the last ever Marlboro commercial, cigarette commercial for television. So the Marlboro man was in this little meadow. So I get there, I said, "This is awesome. How big is this?" And they said, "Oh, I don't know what that is. It's 700 acres." I said, "Well, that'd be cool, I'd like to see it." And they said, "Well, let's go for a ride and see it." I head to the Jeep. And they said, "No, no, no, we're going to take horses."

So here's what I don't know. My two friends ride horses all the time. The owner was raised on a horse. The wrangler was conceived on a horse. So all these guys know horses. So I said, "I've never been on a horse. I don't know how to ride a horse. In fact, this is what I said. This is the first time I've seen a horse that didn't have a number on it." So I don't know how to ride a horse. I don't know anything about horses. And they thought I was kidding.

Up the Mountain

So anyway, we get on this horse. So I'm riding out in like a little line. I'm at the end, you know? So we go, we're in this meadow. Then there's this creek, river that's just, I mean, it's absolutely gorgeous, beautiful setting. 350 feet straight up this cliff. And then there's like a plateau. So they said, "We're going to go up there."

So we kind of angle and there's this big area that you kind of go up and around. They said, "Let's just go up the thing." I said, "Okay." So we're going up and you can't even get how dramatic this is. We're going up, not the easy way. It's about a three foot wide path, maybe a little larger, that has the mountain hill on this side and to the left is just straight down to a creek. And it's on kind of shale and the horse is... I'm last.

So we get to the top and the angle goes. His horse goes dead right and up this thing. So then I go, I get up there to my guy. I got my horse and I'm kind of figuring out.

he just keeps going straight. I'm thinking, this is cool because I like a horse that thinks out of the box. Well, he gets up and we're on this shale and he starts to slide. So all I do is pull back. Well, I don't know that's reverse. He goes back, he spins around and puts his head down and freezes.

I know you think I'm making this up. I'm not. He puts his head down, all I can see is the saddle horn, his ears, and literally this river creek 350 feet straight down. And he's frozen. I don't have a clue what to do. I have no idea how long it was. I'm sure it was seconds. It felt like an eternity.

The Wrangler, like the man from Snowy River, comes over the hill, grabs the horse, tells me to get off. I get off. This guy's shaking and then starts to unpack for me. He said, "The horse's hooves, half of them were off the front of that. You were just moments away from just diving." Well, I'll tell you the bad part of that is I can't swim. So there's a whole bunch of problems in this story.

Now, none of that is the point of the story. The point of the story is this. We got up there and they said, "We got to get back." I said, "All right." They said, "We're going to ride back. Is that all right?" I said, "Okay." I got on the horse.

Understanding Our Relationship with God

When I got back to the room, I wrote this down because I knew this was going to be a great story. I wrote this down: When I got back on the horse, we had a very different understanding of our relationship. And it was defined by me having a clear understanding of who I was and who the horse was.

That is a super long, literally five minute illustration to say, when I come to God, He defines the terms. It's up to me to understand who He is. Until I understand that, I won't understand who I am. And more importantly, until those two things are in place, I won't understand how I come into a right relationship with this objective truth, God.

I'm a very critical person of everyone except me. Is there one person on this planet to whom I give the benefit of the doubt? Yep, me. So all of a sudden, I need to understand God.

The Consequences of Failing to Fear God

Now, their failure to understand God - I got to go fast - is in 1 Samuel 15, 1 Chronicles 4. You fast forward, and for some of you, this is going to screw you up big time. You fast forward 350 years, 1 Samuel 15:1, "Samuel said to Saul, 'I'm the one the Lord sent to anoint you.'" I'm going to edit this. "I'll punish the Amalekites for what they did."

And now here's the instruction God gives: "Now go and attack the Amalekites, totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them. Put to death" - 350 years later now - "put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

Now there's a whole side of us that says, "Gee, that doesn't seem fair." But here's what God said. God said, "Listen, when you sin, there are consequences to that. And those consequences aren't actually even isolated to you." What God said is, "I'm going to destroy these Amalekites." Rather than go, "Oh, look what God did, how harsh He is," I would go, "He waited 350 years." There's a sense in which you see great patience here, not infinite patience.

The reality is, if I decide that I will not fear God, somewhere in my life or at death, there will be consequences to that.

The Principles of Sowing and Reaping

God's got laws. We just talked about them if you're at a redemption church - we talked about them last week - the principles of Galatians chapter 6 verses 7, 8, 9, 10, the principles of sowing and reaping. Here's what I know: there's no way I'm ever going to reap if I don't sow, and whatever I sow, I will reap.

You would have to be an absolute fool to sow or plant corn, and then go out and look for wheat. We may not know the yield we'll get, but we certainly know what the crop's going to be. It's going to be whatever we plant, and God tells us we're going to plant one of two things, either the flesh or the spirit.

We're going to plant either out of selfishness and jealousy and selfish ambition, in which case the book of Galatians and the book of James tells us we're going to reap disorder and chaos. Or we're going to plant the spirit, especially the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. From that we're going to get a life that may not be smooth and easy, but there will be a peace in the middle of even the uneasiness.

Testing Reveals True Character

Because if you take those first - love, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience - all of those demand aggravation. You don't know if you're a loving person till God brings in somebody unlovable.

I'm driving last night, and I'm going home, and I'm going over Warner. I have from the 10 to my house, it's a drive of about 15 minutes. I don't know how many stoplights I have. Last night, essentially every one of them was green. When I got home, I reflected on it. I thought, "That's the best trip I've ever had home." I was calm, serene, almost in a trance.

I contrast that with that trip a few nights ago, where literally almost every light was red. I was so frustrated by the end of it, with city planners, and ADOT, and the guy who made the red lights, and everybody that was associated with it. I don't know if I'm patient if I have all green lights. I don't know if I'm a patient person.

Love, joy, peace - I don't know if I have peace until I have turmoil. Love, joy - I don't know if I have joy. All of those are fruit of the spirit. All of those are what I'm going to get as I understand what I sow.

The Proper Fear of the Lord

The result of it is, if I'm not a fear of the Lord - and by that we mean a reverential awe and understanding. Let me go back to the horse: an understanding of God, who He is, the relationship as He defines it, not as I define it or I want it to be.

The principle is, in Luke 12, Jesus said, "Don't be afraid of those who kill you, and afterwards they can't do anymore, but I will show you who to fear. Fear the one who, after killing you, has the power to throw you"

into hell. This is who God says He is.

In the Ten Commandments, at the beginning of the book of Exodus, God says this: "I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt and out of the house of slavery." Look at the principle of remembering again. "I'm God, here's what I did, remember? You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of what's in heaven above or earth beneath or the water under the earth, and you shall not worship them or serve them. I'm the Lord your God, and I'm a jealous God."

I think of dating, male-female relationships, and how hard that is. You have this dating relationship, and in your mind, it's like an exclusive relationship, but it's never defined. Then you say to her, "You know, let's go out for dinner Friday night." "I really can't." "You understand, so what?" "I have a plan." "What do you mean you have a plan?" "I'm going to—who are you going with?" "I'm going with—I have a date." Just everything in you goes, "Okay." That's how I think jealousy works.

God's Jealousy is Different

God's not like that. He's saying, "Listen, here's what I want. I want what's best for you, and what's best for you is to worship me, the one true God." When John ends this little book, 1st John, tucked in the back of the Bible, I think it's 1st John 5:20-21, he ends it in just a bizarre way. He says, "Little children, have no idols." An idol is anything that takes the place in your life that is reserved for God.

Here's a really simple test: If you say, "If I did not have this in my life, life would not be worth living," or "If I lost this from my life, I would not want to live"—whatever that is, if it's other than Jesus, it's an idol. It can be a good thing. I think I know people for whom their kids are idols. They live their life through their kids. In a way, just by the way they respond, they worship their kids.

The Danger of Making Good Things Ultimate Things

My son Brayden's playing in a league for six, seven, and eight-year-olds, but somehow they conned him to take Yale too. Yale gets on first base the other day, and he's standing there. I'm not kidding, the first baseman is here, and literally Yale comes up to right here on this kid. Yale's just—I don't know if he's ever going to be any good. He's got whatever, he is so competitive. I don't know if he has any skill. He just sets his jaw. I mean, it's just fun to watch.

Well, I'm watching him, and they got killed. Now, here's the problem. The problem is systemic. They're playing the Yankees, and the guy who's the coach of the team picked the name of the team—they're the Wildcats. They wear this U of A stuff. Well, it's an A, it should be an L, because these guys are losers. They're going to be losers. I can tell. They got obliterated. I mean, it was—if you cared, it would be embarrassing. It was amazing how many parents cared. I wanted to go, "Major league baseball doesn't matter. This really doesn't matter."

How the kids walked off, and how they lived it. I only want what's best for my kids. Now, they're six years old taking hitting lessons. But I got to tell you, you're setting yourself up for a fall. Your kid isn't Albert Pujols. Your kid is like George Lopez. You don't got to be an athlete.

Identifying Your Idols

In this whole process, what are the idols in your life? And then, here you go—whatever they are, you got to kill them. You got to put them in the proper perspective. Is there anything wrong with cheering for kids? Heck no. I'm there cheering. I want to see Yale. I want to see Brayden. I want to watch it, but there's a line. Listen, that baseball—I'm all for it. I'm all for athletics. I love athletics. I'm not like soccer. That's not athletics. I mean like baseball, basketball, football. Real sports. Archery. Real sports. Golf. Now very athletic. Very athletic.

But is there anything wrong with money? No, there's nothing wrong with that. Is there anything wrong with wanting to have nice things? No. But when all of a sudden, that's the thing that—what's the last thing you think about at night and the first thing in the morning? I'll just tell you where your heart is.

The Solution: Understanding and Worshiping God

The solution—and you would think I would have this time so we had more time for the solution—the solution is this. You need to understand who God is, and then you need to respond and worship Him. In our context at church, here's the question we're going to ask, because here's what we know. We know on Good Friday and Easter, we're going to see people we haven't seen since Christmas. We're going to try to say to them, "There's some reason you come. We're glad you're here, but you better figure—especially at Easter, think about this."

If Jesus really rose from the dead—now I would argue He did, and I think I can build an overwhelming, evidential case for you—if He really rose from the dead, we better look at who this guy is. What we did is went back and looked at all the Gospels, every one of them, there's a point at which people are going, "Who is this guy?" And then Jesus even said, "Who do you say that I am?"

When you understand that here's what God, who created the universe, sent Jesus here—Jesus, God now in the flesh—to die on the cross. This is the Bible I teach out of almost all the time, and literally, page 1 and 2 is God creating, page 3 is man sinning, and page 4 through page 1268 is God fixing. Literally, that's the story. God creates, man sins, God's provision for a sinful man to reach Him is Jesus Christ.

The Call to Repentance

Peter delivers this powerful sermon in Acts chapter 2, and the people say, "What should we do?" And Peter says, "Repent." Dumb mistake number one is to not fear God. God shows us His power in His creation. This morning at 6:23, that sun came up over Four Peaks, it was amazing. And it's all designed so you go, "Oh wow, there must be a creator." And I know we have people who don't believe that.

There is someone who created, but at that point you're educated way beyond your intelligence, because all of a sudden you're thinking something came from nothing. Jonathan Edwards used to say, nothing is what a rock dreams about when it sleeps. You can't even contemplate nothing.

If I say to you, here's what we're going to do, I'm going to count to three, think of nothing. One, two, three. I don't know what you thought about, but it was something that God creates. But how I really know Him is the study of this Word, where He reveals who He is, who I am, and how we remedy that situation.

Next week, dumb mistake number two. There are some people who think a few drinks won't hurt you. We'll take a look at that next week.