I just finished reading Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller, which is an excellent series of sermons-turned-book-chapters about idolatry. I’ll post a review for the book next Friday. (This week I’m posting a review of God is Great, God is Good, which I promised would come two weeks ago.) But I wanted to do more than just review the book here, because idolatry is a core issue for all of us, and yet most of us don’t even think about the idols that we worship. We think that sort of thing only happens in primitive cultures that aren’t as technologically advanced and civilized as our own. And yet…

Love. Money. Power. Success. These are the four idols Tim Keller assails in his book. You could probably add to that list Fame, Pleasure, Attention, and so on and so forth; but the four that Keller addresses are as good a place as any to start.

An idol, he says, is something you can’t live without. It’s something that you can’t stop thinking about, that you obsess over and would be devastated if you lost it. It’s something by which you identify yourself. Without this thing, you would not be a complete person…or so you think. Idols promise what only God can deliver. Idols take up residence in a place that rightfully belongs to God–the throne of our hearts. Idols usurp the place of God, and steal the blessings that he longs to pour out onto our lives. They promise to give us so much, but they are nothing but thieves.

Destroying the idols in your life begins by naming them. Naming your idols means unmasking them, bringing them out into the light where they are exposed to the heat of the judgment of God. It means exposing them for what they really are. When you name your idols you come fully present to the reality that what sits on the throne of your heart is not Jesus. It is something that goes by another name, something that doesn’t belong there.

I was walking into work yesterday thinking about the idols in my life. I wanted to name them, to expose them so that I could conquer them and put them back into their proper place. (So often an idol is a good thing that has been given primacy in your heart.) I thought about the things my heart desires when I get tired: lying on the couch, watching TV, relaxing, eating whatever food I want, drinking a Coke (or a Throwback Pepsi made with real sugar–mmmhmmm!), just taking it easy. Then it hit me: My idol is Ease! I want a life of ease, of comfort, of painless existence and the absence of hard work. Something clicked inside of me as soon as my idol had been named. I knew that Ease sat upon the throne of my heart–the seat that only Jesus Christ could rightfully claim as his own.

The thing about it is that Ease is not necessarily a bad thing. God has a different name for it: He calls it Rest, or Sabbath. Rest is my eternal destiny. Sabbath is ordained to occur once a week. But I want a lifestyle of Ease, devoid of difficulty and drudgery. So I let projects pile up. I procrastinate. Certain things don’t get done in my never ending quest for Ease. But this is not the Rest that God wants to provide me. Ease comes with guilt, that nagging feeling that you should be doing something instead of nothing. Rest from God comes with the peace of mind that you have worked hard and the invitation to enjoy some recreation. As an idol, Ease sucks. As a gift from God, Rest is glorious.

What are your idols? What can you not imagine living without? What do you fixate on? What does your heart want most of all? Naming your idol is the first step in giving the throne of your heart back to Jesus Christ, the King of All Creation.

I must get this e-mail once a week. It comes from a local clinic that helps women in difficult pregnancies find alternatives to abortion. The e-mail I get is a prayer list, asking me to pray for these anonymous women and their unborn children. This week there were 14 women on the list, which is pretty much typical. As I scanned the requests it occurred to me that each of these women represented a human being who could be dead within two months. All of them are considering abortion, and to carry through on that choice would mean that their unborn babies would die.

What would you do if you received a message telling you that 14 people you do not know and will never meet could very well be dead before Christmas? I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it like that before. I stopped in my tracks. I was overwhelmed. Here were 14 real human beings, fully alive, unknowingly facing the prospect of being killed in a matter of weeks; and that by the choice of the only person they’ve ever known.

I don’t know how anything has ever been more unjust than abortion. I really don’t. It used to make me angry, but now I just get sad. I’m sad that evangelicalism is trending away from this issue. I’m sad that something so clearly immoral has become so irreparably political. I’m sad that a lot of humans never get the chance to know what it’s like to breathe the air. I’m praying for these 14, that they will live to, quite literally, see the light of day.

Most Holy God, you are the Author and Creator of life. We bear your image by the mere fact of our existence. You have established the order of this world, including the method of procreation. You have knit each of us together in the wombs of our mothers. But millions are the souls who cry out from under your altar–the weakest of the weak, the smallest of the small, the truly forgotten and discarded. Their blood testifies against us. Bring justice for them, O God. Bring justice for the very least of all. Cause your Church to rise and remember, to engage and throw down this greatest of all evils. Tear down the idols of our hearts, and take your rightful place on your throne once again, O Great King of all. Amen.

Nothing is more important to the preacher, or to any Christian, than the Holy Spirit. He is “God with us”. The Spirit empowers us to live godly lives full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The Spirit sets us free from our slavery to sin. He reminds us of the words of Jesus, and helps us to walk humbly and obediently with the Triune God.

For preachers, the Spirit empowers us when we study and when we preach. He is with us through the whole process of sermon preparation. Some people have this understanding of the Spirit that he doesn’t show up until church starts. That’s ridiculous. He is with us, always. And he wants to be included in everything we do, especially when it relates to God’s word.

Do you pray when you sit down to study the Scriptures? Do you invite the Spirit to guide you as you do you exegesis? Do you ask him to lead you as you let ideas ruminate in your mind, or write them down on paper, or type them into the computer? Do you surrender your words, and your agenda, to the Spirit of God, praying that you would have the strength to take up his words and his agenda?

There have been times when I’ve done a lot of work on a sermon, even typed several pages of it, but then I got a sense that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what the Spirit wanted to communicate to the church. There have even been times when I’ve tossed the whole sermon out as I was walking up to the pulpit. That’s always interesting. While that sort of thing is fine to do from time to time, I don’t want to live in that place. I want to make sure I’m actively and intentionally inviting the Holy Spirit into the sermon process from the very beginning. Preaching without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit is nothing more than public communication.

There are good trees and bad trees. The bad trees are nothing more than overgrown weeds. They seek to strangle the good trees, and steal all of the nutrients from the soil. Unlike the good trees, they don’t add anything of value to the ecosystem. They are thieves. But the roots of the bad trees run just as deep as the roots of the good trees.

It’s not enough to simply cut off the bad tree at the trunk. You have not killed it. You have only made it smaller, less of an eyesore. In order to kill the bad tree, you have to remove it by its roots. You have to destroy that which feeds it. This is, by far, the more difficult task. Killing the bad tree means digging, cutting, pulling, twisting, sweating, bleeding. It is a job that requires friends. You cannot do it alone.

If you do not remove the bad tree by its roots, it will choke out all of the good trees. They will die from beneath the surface, becoming only hollow trunks, shadows of their former selves. And when the storm comes, the good trees will fall to the ground, and all the dirt will be swept away revealing only the mangled, complex, horrifying, untouched root system of the bad tree.

Exegesis is another one of those big, fancy words that seminary types (like me!) like to throw around to make themselves sound smart. It literally means “to guide out of”, and we use it to mean the process of finding the original, intended meaning of a passage of Scripture. When we exegete, we’re trying to pull the meaning out of the text, rather than reading our meaning into it.

This process is hard work, but you cannot take short cuts. This is, after all, the Word of God we’re dealing with here. You kinda want to be sure you’re getting it right. It’s truly amazing where good exegesis will take you as you prepare your sermon.

Several years ago I taught basic exegetical practices to a small group of guys, and then asked them to prepare a short sermon on their favorite Bible passage. The results were amazing! Each one of those guys delivered rock-solid Bible messages, complete with sound interpretation and meaningful, Spirit-led application. It was an eye-opening experience for me because I saw, first hand, the power of learning how to study the Bible well.

As you prepare your sermon, take your time with the text. Don’t rush the process. Invite the Spirit to be with you in your time of study. If you don’t know how to do proper exegesis, pick up one of these books:

Grasping God’s Word | Duvall & Hays
How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth | Fee & Stuart

I urge you, as a preacher of God’s Word, to let God speak through his Word. Commit yourself to treating the Bible with integrity and honor, to say what it says, and not what you want it to say or think it should say. The Bible really does cut to the heart, and it has the power to transform lives. By doing proper exegesis, you can unleash that power.