You Don’t Get Your Own Personal Jesus, Part 2

Jeannie Greer really picture is that as a punishment. Moses meltdown this golden calf bronze about Nixon and Reagan given to us a picture of what worship of false God is doing God's our new goblets look so shiny and amazing and so awesome, ends up disappointing us is our new gods can't satisfy us our new gods are beautiful enough, our new gods aren't God enough alone can lead to disaster as we try to fix things on her own so guilty of this today on Summit life Jeannie Greer's continuing our teaching series titled God enough.

We are being challenged to exercise patience when God doesn't show in the way that we wanted to, or the time that we requested. If you missed any of the previous messages in a series. Visit us online.

Jeannie Greer.com.

Today's message is called don't get your own personal Jesus to which version of the story mode also gone up in the amount sought to be with God, and to receive the 10 Commandments. Moses ends up being called little bit longer than planned eyes a few days tardy on his return so everybody freaks out God and Moses had abandoned them. Verse two. So where there was Moses brother, the associate pastor campus pastor of Israel. You might say said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives receive the gold from her hand and fastened it with a graving soul and made a golden calf and they said these are your God told Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before the mayor made proclamation and said tomorrow shall be a feast to help to the Lord. They were still trying to worship the Lord in fact the bull was something God had told them to use to sacrifice and worship him.

Bull represented the part of God that they felt like they needed most right man.

You see the ancient peoples. The bull represented strength and that's what the Israelites most wanted right then. In that moment, so they were attempting to reshape God into a form that guaranteed to them.

That sense of power and protection that they craved so verse five Aaron makes the calf and he declares a feast of the Lord and they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offering to those of the very offerings that God had instructed them to give to him. So again, they haven't gotten into a brand-new religion.

This is just a new and improved version of their religion and the people sat down to eat and drink and then they rose up to play the wordplay there in Hebrew has clear sexual connotations. After this new and improved worship approach. In other words, they all got hammered men got jiggy with it I guess you would say that is not typically how God prefers for his worship services that you so it's not going well. So God tells Moses were seven notice you better get down there.

You better get down there.

The people of corrupted themselves as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the Nancy Moses his anger burned hot.

Moses gets mad because he knows what they're doing and he throws the tablet out of his hands and breaks them at the foot of the mountain. They took the calf that they had made and burned with fire, and then he put it in his Vita mix and ground it to powder any scattered on the water and made the people of Israel drink. It was a false God's ability.

Then then all in one of truly my safe seats in the Old Testament. Moses then turns to Aaron and says Aaron what have you done and Aaron said whoa.

Wait a minute. Let not anger my Lord Barnhart you know the people you know the people most like up on other people that we know the people that they are set on evil. They said to me what I do, make us gods usual before us.

There's a lot of them. Not many me.

As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of eat we don't know what's become of him. By the way that's a little passive aggressiveness right there she's blaming Moses what you were here right here and what ears are you relates what was I supposed to do. Moses not my fault you want. So I said to them, letting you have goal take it off so they gave it to me and I fill in the was the best part is, is Aaron in middle school, I just doing the fire and what can I do Moses either worship and we had a worship no other alternative easy difficult situation I was in Moses you relate the golden argument. What else can I do anyway. This whole terrible story.

This whole debacle. What it reveals to us the reason that it's in Scripture. Is it reveals to us three genuine truths. I believe about counterfeit gods.

Three genuine truth about graven images number one what we see from the stories. The counterfeit gods almost always correspond to our fears.

What were afraid we come up with a God to take care of Israel created this image because the promises of an invisible God were not enough for them at this point, not when it will real needs and real enemies to be met and they felt like they needed something more than an invisible God and his promises to protect them.

Counterfeit gods always were a lot of distrust those places where we feel like we need something beyond God and his promises, so will we do is we reconstruct God in a way that guarantees he will give to us those very things. For example, we feel like we have to have money and prosperity to be happy. So we invent a God that will guarantee those things to us. This is literally called the prosperity gospel, and it leads to books like your best life now or for example we really need family stability to be happy. So we invent a God who guarantees family stability and we get angry at God if he let something go wrong or we want to have unchallenged sexual freedom so that we can do anything and everything that we want so long as it doesn't hurt anybody. So we invent a permissive God who was okay with that and we write angry blogs about how evangelical Christianity wronged us.

When God would let us have those things where I've known people who really wanted, for example, to be out of the marriage and so they invented a God who was okay with that. Even though it went against what God's word says yes I understand there places and times that the Bible indicates. Divorce is an acceptable choice and I know it's a complex question, but nothing in my experience, a lot of people aren't concerned about what the Bible actually says it all.

All they're looking for is a God who will justify they've already made up your mind to do in the first place you listen I'm not trying to imply that this is all y'all's problem or occultist problem and on my own. So this week just for fun I made a list of all the ways over the years that I have reshape God to guarantee that he will give me something that I wanted to call this list who God should be according to JD in this list read something like this. If I obey God. Nothing bad will ever happen in my family and my church will always prosper and succeed. That's God's reward for me doing the right thing.

If I tie it by Todd God will always reward me by making me so flush with cash that I can still afford all the nice things I wanted to have anyway, this would've on the good pastor God will make it so that people will always respect me and like me, that's just part of the package, Goodpaster people will love me and respect me, never get slandered or falsely accused of anything, even though that happened to Jesus if Megan happened to me. If I pray for my kids.

God guarantees they will grow up and love Jesus and Mary. Great spouses you love Jesus and make lots of money as a part of a package right God or about this when God will make sure that every person who's invented a computer virus that affected my computer will catch a real virus and die a slow painful death right this is taught according to JD the tragedy with these counterfeit gods goal is that when God done, do one of the things we don't want those things.

We complain that God and keeping up his end of the bargain and maybe we even begin to supposedly don't exist. The irony of this is that we've lost faith in a God who never existed in the first place.

We've lost faith in God that was a figment of our imagination.

Or maybe we just lose confidence in God because we we we evaluate his love. According to these made-up terms rather than receiving the love that is given to us on his terms. You realize that when it with an infinitely wise and infinitely powerful God. Just because you can do things the way you think he should do them. That doesn't mean that his love and control is not really just means that you have redefine his love and control the way that you prefer, rather than receiving it on the terms that he is offered it to you. Number one. Counterfeit gods come for God's correspond your fears number two counterfeit gods to corrupt the spiritually you can see that in the story right to worship their worship of this distorted God lasts less than a day before they're involved in a full-scale orgy that is a picture is given to us a picture of what happens to eyes to our souls when we worship a false God. You see Jeremiah 25 tells us that we will become like whatever we worship. Jeremiah 25, probably Jeremiah reflecting on the story Israel strayed far from me.

They worship worthless idols so they became worthless using the parallelism they worship something worthless and that made them worthless. Graven images distort the real God, which in turn distort us.

The Israelites tried to reduce God down to a single attribute in this case, his strength that was the one they felt like they needed at the moment the job God cannot be reduced to a single attribute God's perfection is found in the totality and the harmony of all of his attributes.

God is infinite and love and strength and is infinite in wisdom and that means that just because you didn't do things on our timetable. That means that that means you not working out a good plan just means that he is wiser than us. We may not be able to understand at this point God is infinitely compassionate and the most accepting God of the universe, but he's also infinitely holy, which means that he take sin seriously, even when he gave his son to make a way of escape from sin he take sin seriously and says you can't to repent and so when we say one representing God not accept all people, but I call acceptable what he calls abominable.

We are not worshiping the real God. Your genuine healthy spiritual growth comes only from seeing and knowing God as he really is all loving the real him not part of him, and when you focus on only one dimension of God. When you isolate your favorite part of God in worship only that thing you will grow spiritually in a deformed way. For example, if your God is holy and just is not compassionate and gracious when you can end up being a judge mental mean religious person is a jerk and give us all bad name but if your God is gracious but is not righteous and holy, then you're gonna find yourself always just go along with whatever culture says is okay and you say all this is acceptable in the successfulness is alternative when God says is not if your God is not fully sovereign them when something goes wrong here to find yourself panic and you can about what's happening wiser God doing something something wrong with me about forgot to pray enough, or if your God is the judge of sin, but is not the faithful redeeming father. The cross and you probably will never be able to shake that feeling that you're condemned, and that you need to prove yourself if your God is the ruler if he's the ruler, but is not beautiful and all satisfying your gonna find yourself always yearning & even when you're surrendered to him. You got home and obey God because I want you to get a good judge and burn in hell.

But man I wish I could live like this, people outside of the faith live a but they have so much fun.

I look so enjoyable. You are what to use an Old Testament metaphor, your yearning back after Egypt, even after God is delivered you to the promised land.

You promised land situation, but in Egypt heart because you are still enraptured by sin, because God hasn't changed. And when you see the true God sitting in changes you a distorted view of God leads to a distorted spiritual life, which is why I said last week is like the whole main point of the book all our spiritual problems.

All of them go back to a view of God that is distorted or too small. In fact, St. Augustine, St. Augustine 1500 years ago.

He said you can identify your own views of God, just by tracing the worry and the stress and the dissatisfaction he like to trace them back like smoke from a fire that will lead you back to whatever fire you build at the altar of the false God, you're worshiping that that's my challenge for you this week. Why don't you identify the areas of stress, worry, dissatisfaction, bitterness, unrest, the places you're most tempted to sin trace them back to their source, and I guarantee what you find is that they come from a distorted view of God.

Are you worried embrace God's sovereignty. Do you feel insecure and embrace the promises of Christ that he has chosen you and promise to make you sufficient for whatever task he has assigned you. Do you find yourself being judgmental a lot. Embrace what the cross teaches you about how sinful you were when God saved you, are you not naturally generous.

Then think about the generosity God poured out on you when he saves you. Are you materialistic, then think about how much richer a treasure you possess and him and how little life treasures matter in light of that treasure. Incidentally, by the way, this is why we encourage you to start your prayer time of adoration we say start with adoration because as you adore God. Listen, you are literally breaking the power of sin in your life and you are releasing in yourself the power of holiness is right worship of God that releases us from the power of sin, because again summit you become like what you worship you become like what you worship someone 58.

Those who make these worthless idols become like them. You begin to resemble what you worship. Number three, for God's number two was they crept to spiritually number three, for God's discipline is bitterly maybe the most pathetic part of this whole deal is.

After Israel creates their own God is that now they got the burden of caring for this God and his golden calf that was made up of bracelets and navel rings. This golden this golden calf. He couldn't speak to them.

He couldn't take care of them. He didn't comfort them. In fact they had a dance for him.

They couldn't even move himself in place to place. It might be the most pathetic thing here God Exodus 19 had promised to carry his people to the promised land, as it were, on Eagles wings and now they've got the burden of carrying this big old golden calf from place to place.

What a terrible trade. The true God and promised to supply all their needs. The true God promised to protect them when they were afraid to satisfy them when they were hungry, the true God promised never to leave them one day the true God would even give his life to redeem them. They traded all of that for a golden calf that they fashioned from the left over jewelry really interesting picture is that as a punishment. Moses meltdown this golden calf. Granted not make him drink it. Course that's not good for your diet never seen the divers enjoyed gold and a small sick see that's given to us is a picture of what worship of a false God and subduing us our new goblets look so shiny and amazing and so awesome in some disappointing us ends up being bad for our souls ends up corrupting us ends up making us sick because her new God can't satisfy us. Our new God term big enough our new gods are beautiful enough for new gods aren't God enough for a while they felt easier to believe in.

For a while they were exactly what we needed, but a God that we create is never a God that is big enough to satisfy the desires of our soul is not a God that is big enough to deliver us from our trials and our sin to see some a church. You gotta choose. You gotta choose between the God that you can understand and control a God who automatically likes whatever you like and affirms what you affirm for a God who sometimes confuses and contradicts you, but in the end lacks the power to save and satisfy you. Which one are you going to choose has for me in my household and serve the Lord because we need to be saved and satisfied. We were created for the real thing, not a fake thing. Yeah I know sometimes that will fake guy that I come up with feels easier to believe in is not embarrassing to make me mad, but in the end I need to be saved and satisfied and only an eternal God can do that for me so I will take my posture humbly before the real God and say confuse me make me mad, but what I need is you don't move for a classic summit story here in River that with my classic summit ceramic classic JD story that I tell from time to time, but it just illustrates so perfectly that I have to bring in here in the use of the book, so I'll tell it for the sake of you that haven't been here three months on the totality of years ago. Several years ago I was some in an airport which was my source for this like I was an airport getting ready to come back home and the flight out of Atlanta was delayed, which evidently is par for the course and so I'm sitting there in the waiting room is packed. The gate area.

Everybody's in a bad mood return shall more people in our plane rides in a bad mood and that we got about an hour and supplement book of Michael uses on catch up on some reading, some reading and I looked up after reading for a few minutes and I noticed this woman right across the road for me as is looking right at me and Atreides are like like modems ignore it but look up to three times Jesus still looking at me as if I was like hi and she said that she said are you on what he reading so I told her it was about Charles Spurgeon told Charles Burton was glad to be talking about who Jesus was and all that you desire. What are you religious acid in a manner speaking, I guess you could say that and so that led to this wonderful conversation. I thought about who Jesus was only done for me I would change my life and she was listening seem to be so interested, after I talked for five minutes.

She said well she could not think that's wonderful. She said I'm kind of a religious expert to and I said you don't say. She said yeah she said I actually only shot down in Miami and down in Miami. I have so all these religious artifacts from all over the world.

She said about what I'm doing now I'm on this on my travel on all of the world to collect the best parts of every religion and that appeal to me and she says and I put together this kind of this big religion that sort of like the best reflection of me because I think religions all over the world have great things offer and so I just like a smorgasbord I get to choose and put together the religion and then offer to people and say let you assemble your religion out like a like Burger King you have it my way.

Yeah, exactly. I like when you met a complement chanson and I'm sitting in the car flight to me in on this woman start walking down the jetway together and we rightfully get on the plane. She said she reset she touches my shoulder. She says she does, you know, you're such a nice young man she is. I want you to have this and she said I have two of them with me and she handed me a rosary and she said I want you to just hold on this real tight and I promise you that when you're afraid when you're afraid it'll make you feel better if you hold onto it when we take off when we landed will guarantee that you get there safely was like the Lord Jesus like you can't let the conversation.

In this way, you know to give me some of the sale of the site and then all of a sudden it can't talk to my heart and I psychotic man.

I think first of all that is readily gracious, thank you for this gift, I will take it I will put in my pocket.

I will hold onto it when we take off when we land that I will think about you. I said but if you just let me be really bold with you here for a minute I said you notice this little rosary ring, you got this got crucified in the top she said yeah I said I'm assuming you know who that is, its Jesus right and see what the Bible teaches us is that Jesus created the heavens and the earth and the Jesus love me and you so much that he came to earth and he died for us. MM John 10 he promised me in John's hand that he holds me tightly in his hand as to what that means is that when we take off here in a few minutes I want to be in his hand and we land in Raleigh-Durham.

I'm still to be in his hand and him. If we blow up in their I'm still in a be in his hand and said, no offense to you at all, but you understand that if the Almighty will all loving God is clutching kindliness and I don't feel that much need to cling so tightly and with mine anymore. So that's the choice that you get to make you get a god, but you get the fashion a god it feels easy to believe in a God that you can throw in your pocket and take out when you need but that is not a God who can save you. It is not a God who can satisfy you is not a God that you can hope and trust and it is a figment of your imagination LOL Tim Keller says this uses what it is only the faith that believes God regarding things. It didn't want to hear and believe God about the things desperately does want to hear what you want to hear what you were created to here is the voice of an eternal heavenly father who says you are my beloved son or daughter in you. I'm well pleased.

You need to hear the voice of the heavenly father. This is well done good and faithful servant. Nothing can separate you from my love will never leave you or forsake you. You need to hear the voice of the heavenly father that is said as far as the east is from the West.

That's how far I have removed your transgressions from you. You were created to be satisfied in an eternal God's power is about to happen to is outside of time we spoke everything into existence, and then says to you as high as the heavens are above the earth. My love for you is even higher. That's what you're searching for. It's what you long for. And until you humble yourself before the real God, which means that he will say things to you that contradict you and confuse you and make you mad until you do that you're never to be able to have that thing that your soul thirsts for that you choice you want to God that you can create a God that will make you mad God, you can understand what God that is worthy of worship.

I got it small enough to be understood is not big enough to be with Pastor anger toward him believing what he says even out the hard things difficult things.

The things you find disagreeable since it would you think that you can come up with an image of him that is better than the real thing were praying for surrender here at Summit life with Judy Greer to hear this message again. Visit us online@jidegreer.com. We want our lives to count for asked what are you going to do with your life. We want to be able to answer in a way that shows our life has some significance that is a yearning, put into us by God and many of the causes that we consider are good and were anyone's for the Christian, there is one cause that should outweigh them all what Jesus said was true. What determines a person's eternal future is whether or not they know him. Pastor Jenny talks about this more in his brand-new book titled what you going to do with your life. We'd like to send it to you today along with the special edition study guide save the last chance for this exclusive study guide only available here on Summit life includes devotionals from Pastor JD along with a 20 day guided reading through many of the scriptures included in the but you can use the study guide and a couple of ways you can use it as a way to reflect and work alongside the bucket south or you can use it as a standalone devotional guide for your daily time, you can do both of those things on your own or the small group of people join our team of supporters today and ask for your copy of Pastor JD's new but what are you going to do with your life in this companion work but give us a call at 866-335-5228 66335 or give online and request the JD Greer.com flyer on the website. You can learn more about what it means to join our team monthly gospel partners gospel partners commit to a regular monthly all we do here at Summit life less than a dollar a day rate way to help spread the gospel through this ministry right now when you get a JD Greer.com and I'll even if it's joining us today.

Be sure to come back next great weekend here on Monday night. JD Greer