Next time we'll do eight groups. Okay. All right. So I hope you found that helpful to you read it. The reason I wanted you to underline four things and not five and not three is because that really makes you think, what are the most significant things? Not just every single thing in here that I find helpful, but what's most significant? It causes you to think a little deeper. And then hearing what other people came across and talking it over, all of that helps you process. One of the things that stood out in our group is just the idea that you just If the incentive is there, you got all the willpower you need, you're not really fully trapped, you're not really fully enslaved, because somebody came and offered you a million dollars not to do something, it would be a piece of cake to just say, oh sure, I'll take it right then. On the positive side, and on the negative side, if they were gonna kill somebody, then you wouldn't do it. We'll cover that negative side when we get to the third thing in this class, which is fear. But for tonight, I just want to focus on the positive one. You would have all the willpower you need. I mean, you already have all the willpower you need, just not the values that you need, right? So if you value a million dollars so much that if somebody offered you a million dollars at the moment of temptation, you'd say, yeah, I'll take the million dollars. I'll pass on that. But if it's... whatever benefit I get from pleasing God at this moment, that's not enough, I'm gonna do this sin. And so, I value a million dollars this much, I value the sin this much, I value pleasing God in that moment this much, and that's what needs to shift, is how much I value what comes from obedience. And so, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Jeremiah 2. It's gonna be a very familiar principle to a lot of you. You've probably heard me talk about this many times, but it's a fundamental principle about idolatry of the heart. In Jeremiah 2, the discussion is about idolatry, the people worshiping idols, and then in verse 12 of Jeremiah 2, He says, be appalled at this, oh heavens. Shudder with great horror, declares the Lord. My people have committed two sins. So God is calling upon the entire creation to just be rattled with horror over these two sins that Israel has committed. They're so bad. So what are these two horrific sins that they committed? Well, sin number one, they have forsaken me the spring of living water. Now stop right there. That's a metaphor, right? God's not literal H2O. He's not fluid. He's comparing himself in some way to water here. So when you interpret a metaphor, that's the question, okay, in what sense is it similar? That's always how you interpret a metaphor. So in what sense Is God similar to water? What do they have in common? What is the point of comparison? I mean, water is cold, you know, to the touch. Well, that's not what he's getting at. Water is fluid, that's not it. What is it? What is it about water that is similar to God? Okay, that's right, yeah, it's a source of life and it satisfies thirst. It satisfies thirst. You have a feeling of discomfort in your throat, in your mouth, it's dry, and the only thing that'll satisfy that is to drink something, and so water satisfies that. That's what he's talking about. So what would it mean then to abandon God, forsake God as water? If I forsake Him as my master, that means I don't obey Him anymore. If I forsake Him as my savior, then I'm not looking to Him to save me anymore. If I forsake Him as provider, then I'm looking to something else to provide for me. What does it mean to forsake Him as water? Okay, sorry. It means I'm not looking to him anymore to satisfy that thirst of the soul. So let's talk about thirst of the soul for a minute. Just as your body gets thirsty, your soul gets thirsty. God designed it that way. He designed your body and your soul both that way. When you get feelings inside you that are feelings of discouragement, or lack of satisfaction, or emptiness, or restlessness, you know, you just can't get comfortable, you just don't feel right. Anxiety, worry, fear, there's things in there that are just not right. When you feel all those kinds of feelings inside you, the Bible calls all those the thirst of the soul. That's your soul getting thirsty. Every soul gets thirsty, just like every body gets thirsty. And you drink, and then you get thirsty again, and you drink, you get thirsty again. Now, why did God make us, physically design us to keep getting thirsty? It's an unpleasant, sensation, right? So why did God make that? Well, so that we would drink, right? If you never got thirsty, you'd die. Because you would never discipline yourself to drink enough. You would never remember to drink enough water. You would dehydrate and you'd die if you didn't feel dryness in your mouth. And so that's a blessed gift from God, thirst and hunger. In fact, it's actually something we, even though it's unpleasant, it's something you want if you know it's gonna be satisfied, right? We got Thanksgiving coming up, Thanksgiving coming up this week. You know what's the worst? Is showing up for Thanksgiving not hungry. Right? Isn't that a bummer? If it's Thanksgiving and you're not hungry. Why? Why do I want to be hungry on Thanksgiving? Hunger is unpleasant, right? It makes you weak. It makes you tired. It makes you so that you don't have strength and it hurts your stomach. Yeah, but I want it because The hungrier I am, the more I enjoy that meal. So that's the purpose of hunger and thirst. And God is, what He's saying is, He's the spring of living water. He's the water. That when I have the thirst of the soul, I'm anxious, I'm empty, I'm sad, all that stuff. When I have the thirst of the soul, the only water that exists is the presence of God. If I experience that, that'll take care of the problem of the thirst of my soul. If I don't, I'm going to stay thirsty. So that's the whole point of thirst of the soul, and God is the spring of living water, and they forsook Him as a spring of living water. They stopped, when their souls got thirsty, they stopped looking to Him. That's sin number one. Remember, it says they committed two sins. Let's look at sin number two. Sin number two, They've forsaken me and they've dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. What's that mean? A cistern is just a holding tank for water. So what does it mean that sin number two, they dug their own cisterns? That's right, yeah. They stopped looking to God to satisfy their thirst and they started looking to something else. It's something else. What else? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. What else? Anything, any created thing, you look to it as water, that's sin number two. It could be an idol like them, a false god. It could be sex. It could be food. It could be exercise. It could be career. It could be ministry. It could be your wife, your husband, your family, your kids. Any of those things. It could be a bad thing, it could be a good thing. Anything you look to as water is an idol in the heart, because God is the only water. Because God is the only water, so if I treat anything else as water, I'm putting that thing in God's place, and that's the definition of idolatry, right? So if I ask you, what is it that you, when your soul gets thirsty, where do you run? And you say, man, I go to family. I read a book. I go to my kids. I do that. And every single one of those, that's dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, because every one of those is competing for God's place as the water for your soul. And once it becomes the water for your soul, it's an idol in your heart. It's in the place of God, okay? So that's the principle of idolatry of the heart. All enslaving sin is a product of idolatry of the heart. Some kind of a heart idol or a group of idols. And one of the first steps in overcoming an enslaving sin is figuring out what is the idol? What is that idol? What is it that my soul thinks is water? Now here's the thing you've got to be careful with here. We mentioned this last week. The idol is not the behavior or the substance. The idol is not the alcohol. If you have a problem with alcohol, it's not the alcohol, it's not sex, it's not food. Those things are not idols. Food is not an idol. If you have a problem with overeating, the idol is whatever it is you're trying to get from the food. Whatever that food does for you. The reason you go to it. Because one overeater might run to food for comfort, right? That's the water that they're trying to seek. Instead of seeking comfort from God, they're seeking comfort from the refrigerator. Someone else might have a different reason. you know, why they overeat. It's just an addiction to pleasure, or something like that. So the idol is not the thing that you do, or the substance, it's the thing you're trying to get from that. And so what we need to do is figure out what our idols are, and that's gonna be the godliness training for this week, is figure out, try to pinpoint the idols in your heart. Let's go to Isaiah 55. Wonderful passage. I love Isaiah 55. Because it's an invitation to people who are thirsty. And that's everybody here, right? Everybody. So, Isaiah 55, verse 1, God says, Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. And then verse two is poignant. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest affair. Your flesh is afraid that this class is gonna take away its water. That your flesh is afraid that the thing that is satisfying that thirst is going to be taken away. If you overcome this enslaving sin, if you no longer do this thing, then you're not going to have access to that pleasure, or that satisfaction, or that control, or that whatever it is that you're seeking, that comfort, that refuge, that escape. You're not going to have access to it. Because your soul thinks that's water. Your soul thinks that's bread. It thinks it's real food. And what he's saying here is, why are you spending all your resources on what's not bread? It's not bread. It's not water. It's sawdust. If you imagine somebody, you know, they smack their head on something and then they get some wires crossed in their brain and the next thing you know, whenever their mouth gets dry instead of craving water, they crave sawdust. That would be a bad problem, right? you'd really have a tough time drinking enough water because you just crave, like, drink sawdust, a bunch of sawdust, like, man, I just, I'm still dry, I just, I need more, I need more sawdust, I need better sawdust, I need colder sawdust, you know, and they're just, they're going after, they're running after one thing after another in life, trying to quench this thirst, and it's not, it's just making them thirstier. That's what our sins do, they're not bread, they're not water, They're leaky cisterns. Remember in Jeremiah 2 he says broken cisterns that cannot hold water. There's no water there. There's no water. It won't satisfy. Now it seems like it will because it satisfies for a moment, doesn't it? And we've got to admit that. It satisfies for a moment. But it's a shallow satisfaction that leaves you even more unsatisfied ultimately than you were to begin with. It's not a deep satisfaction. And so what he's saying here in Isaiah is, why run after something that's not bread and spend your labor on what doesn't satisfy? It's not going to satisfy. You listen to me and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fair. See, your soul is afraid it's going to be deprived. No, you get victory over this thing, your soul's not going to be deprived. It's going to be satisfied with the richest of fair. What does richest of fair mean? Fatty foods, sugars, carbs, desserts, not lean meat, the ribeye, pork, bacon, Fatty stuff, that's what richest of fair means, okay? He's saying you're gonna be satisfied with really, really good, satisfying stuff for your soul, okay? That's the promise. So, let me show you one more thing, Proverbs 9. And this is the key to overcoming not only enslaving sin, but any sin. This is the way that God wants you to overcome sin. You can overcome sin. Here's an important thing. You can overcome sin in ways that glorify God, and you can overcome sin in ways that glorify you. If your way of defeating a sin, if you run into a temptation, and it's really enticing, really enticing, and you just have massive willpower, and you just say, no, I am self-disciplined, I'm not gonna do that, and it works, and you walk away from that thing. Who does that glorify? You, right? That's impressive. You had all that strength. Awesome. Right? Awesome. Does that say anything about God? Not necessarily. Just shows that you're really got your act together. Glorifies you. But there is a way to defeat sin, to say no to sin, in a way that doesn't point to you, points to God. Glorifies God. And that's the way that God wants us, obviously, that's the way that God wants us to do it. So let's look and see what that is. Proverbs 9. There's two banquets in Proverbs 9. If you study this chapter, you'll notice the language is repeated. First is Wisdom's banquet. Verse 1, Wisdom has built her house. She's hewn out seven pillars and so on and she calls, look in verse 3, she's sent out her maids and she calls from the highest point in the city, let all who are simple come in here. That's Wisdom calling all the simple, that means the people that aren't too bright, and saying, come in here to my feast. Now look at verse 13. The woman Folly, now this is the opposite of wisdom personified also as a woman, the woman Folly is loud, she's undisciplined, without knowledge, and she sits at the door of her house. and on the seat at the highest point in the city, just like Wisdom was at her house in the highest point of the city, now Folly's at the highest point of the city in her house, calling out to those who pass by this, who go straight on their way, And verse 16, let all who are simple come in here. So she's addressing the same people. The people aren't too bright. I'm calling you. Come on in here. Wisdom's saying come to her house. No, come to my house. Come in here. And she says to those that lack judgment, stolen water is sweet. Food eaten in secret is delicious. So she's got a feast. She's got a sinful feast, but she wants you to come and have her food and her drink. But wisdom, look at verse 5, wisdom is saying, Come eat my food and drink the wine that I've mixed. So two different banquets, wisdom and folly, both inviting everybody to their banquet. Now, what God wants you to do is not to just resist folly's banquet. That's not enough. That glorifies you, not God. If you stand there and just your plan, your game plan is just, I'm going to just learn how to just say no to this banquet. I'm going to stand by this banquet table and I'm going to look at all this food and drink and I'm just going to keep saying no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. You try that, it'll last a little while. Some people it'll last a minute, some people it'll last an hour, some people it'll last a day. Eventually, you're gonna be sitting at that table eating. Right? Guaranteed. But even if you did, even if you could just say no indefinitely, and you just deny yourself what you really want, and that's how you go through life, just denying yourself what you really crave, and forcing yourself to do what you don't want, does that glorify God? No. No. How can that glorify God? Your heart's in love with the world? It'll never glorify God if your heart's in love with someone else. Right? That doesn't glorify God any more than it would honor your spouse. If you told your spouse, every minute of every day, I want to sleep with that other person, but I am forcing myself to come home to you. Does that honor your spouse? No. No. God, the relationship with God is the same way. What God wants and what honors God is if I defeat that sin, not by resistance, but by preference, by saying, you know what? You got that, you got that stuff, he's got this stuff. I like this stuff there. I'm coming over here. That, who does that honor? The chef over here? The one who created all this food and drink? Put it on the table? If you really want to show honor to some chef in a restaurant around here, the best way you can show him honor is not to talk about how much you are able to resist other chefs' food. The way to show him honor is just go there and eat. Then that'll show him honor. It's like, you're here every night eating? Okay, I think you like my food. So what God wants is for us to resist sin by wanting something else more, something better, more than we want that sin. The sin does bring pleasure. It does bring momentary satisfaction, intense pleasure in some cases. That's why we get hooked on it. You're never going to break free until you've got something that brings you greater pleasure, greater fulfillment. So, what we're gonna be talking about in future sessions in this class is, and especially what the godliness training exercises are gonna be all about, is having experiences at wisdom's banquet, having experiences at God's feast that really are pleasurable, that really are satisfying, delightful to your soul. Because if you try to tell your soul Oh, God's way is better. God's way is more satisfying. What's your soul gonna say? Right. I mean, I indulged in that sin. Last time I indulged in that sin, it was thrilling. And the last time I opened my Bible, I couldn't even stay awake. Don't tell me. I mean, prayer, okay, maybe I'll do it, but it's boring. That is exciting. You can't tell me that I'm going to come out more fulfilled tonight if I do this instead of that. I know from experience that's not true. In order for you to convince your soul that this is better than that, you're going to have to be able to make a compelling case. And the only way you're going to be able to make a compelling case is if you can point your soul back to times when it was more satisfying. Do you remember that experience that you had with the presence of God? Soul, last time, don't you want that again? Wasn't that greater than that? And you have to be able to make that case. You're not going to escape enslaving sin until you succeed in having experiences with the presence of God that are delightful to your soul to the point where your soul likes it, craves it more than the pleasures of sin. So that's what this class is gonna be all about, is how to get there. How do you have those experiences with the presence of God so that you can defeat sin by preferring rather than by just resisting? Okay. Yeah. Okay, so Luke 9.23 says, deny yourself and follow me. Scripture says a fair amount about self-denial. So where does self-denial fit in? It fits in, self-denial, it's a great question, self-denial fits in in the acknowledgement that the pleasures of this world are indeed real pleasures. You have to have a certain amount of experience a certain amount of loss in order to get this gain. That's the denial part. What I'm talking about tonight isn't that there's no loss. What I'm talking about tonight is that if it's only loss, then there's a problem. If there was a time, a period in my life where if there was some impure image of a woman that I could look at and I'm tempted to look, and I didn't look, and I walked away. I was like, no, I can't do that. I walked away. I experienced that as loss. I walked away feeling like I missed out, and it was painful. It was just painful, because I felt like I just missed out on something that I was just craving. Now, Since the Lord has taught me some of these principles and so I've had these experiences with God. I start to get enticed by a sin, and I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is better. And as soon as I turn around and I start looking at this, it doesn't feel like I've lost anything. It feels like I've gained something. It feels like I'm coming out ahead now, instead of coming out behind, like it used to feel. And that's the goal we're shooting for, is the self-denial, once it's done, feels like gain. And that's why Jesus said, deny yourself and I will, and then he starts making promises, right? Because we need to see the game. So yeah, there is a certain amount of denial. In the short term, it does hurt. It is loss. you could compare it to, since we're talking about Thanksgiving. Suppose you're driving to grandma's house for Thanksgiving, and you leave in the morning, you're gonna be eating at, you know, two in the afternoon, say, when everybody arrives, and so you pack up the kids, and you're driving, and it's kind of a ways, and you stop for gas, you're getting kind of hungry, and you stop for gas, and they've got those gas station hot dogs in there, And you're just like, I'm kind of hungry. I'll get my appetite. I'll get a hot dog or two or another one, third one, and some chips. And I'm popping. And you just kind of lose control. And you're just like, oh, this stuff is good. And then, you're just like, you've got a gut ache, it's just like this gut bomb, and you're driving, and you don't feel good, and you get up to Grandma's house, and there's this beast, and you're not even hungry, you feel kind of sick, and you're just like, why did I eat that junk? So, the next Thanksgiving, you stop at the same gas station, you're also hungry, they've got those same hot dogs, Literally, the same ones, they've just been going on that thing for the whole year. And you see that, you just kind of want a hot dog and everything, you're like, no, no, no, I want to enjoy this thing. And it's a little bit painful to not get the bag of chips and the hot dog. It's a little bit, it's loss, it's self-denial, but only ultimately for satisfaction purposes, not just pure denial. Does that make sense? Good question, okay. All right, any other questions on that principle? That's gonna be the main guiding principle that's gonna govern everything we're gonna be doing in here, okay? All right, okay. Good, well, so now, our first step is gonna be we're gonna try to discover our idols so that we can repent of them, okay? So that's where we're going next. Now, an idol of the heart, I would define an idol as anything your soul thinks it needs to have in order to be happy. Anything your soul thinks it has to have in order to be happy. Sometimes that can be a little tricky to spot because we enjoy God through his gifts, right? That's a good thing. But sometimes it can morph into trying to get our joy from the gift instead of from God through the gift. Those are two different things. If I'm trying to get my joy from God through his gifts, that's great. The more the better. If I'm trying to get my joy from the gift, that's idolatry. Now I've turned that thing into my water and my food. And so, how do you know? I mean, we enjoy God's gifts. We're supposed to enjoy God's gifts. If we didn't, God would be disappointed. He gives us gifts so that we'll like them, right? And so, how do you know if you've crossed the line from enjoying God through the gift to enjoying the gift itself, looking to that itself as your water? There's a few things that I'll just tell you real quick tonight. The big answer to that is in the book... Gospel Treason. I always forget the name of that book. I talk about it like every week and I just still can't think of the name of it all the time. Gospel treason is a great, great resource for helping pin down what those idols are in your heart. But I'll just give you a couple of things. One is watch what the effect is when you lose that thing or you don't get that thing. Is there a sinful response? Because If I'm enjoying God through one of his gifts, let's pick one. Let's say it's my family, okay? So I'm enjoying God through the gift of my family. I see my family, I see my wife, I see my kids, it causes delight, it causes enjoyment, and I like that. And I'm enjoying him through that. Then, if it really is God that I'm enjoying, then I don't have to have that particular gift. I could enjoy God through another one of his gifts. Right? But if I'm looking to the family itself as what I need in order to be happy, then you take away that family and I can't be happy. Because all I've got left is God. What is it in your life that if it got taken away and all you got left is God, that's not enough? You're not gonna be happy. There's your idol. There's your idol. And like we say all the time, our hearts are idol factories, aren't they? Because you define an idol that way, and it's like, okay, that's like everything in my life. I mean, another way to think of it is, think of God's gifts as straws, and the joy that comes as the water that you're drinking through the straw, okay? So, my family, or my recreation, or my food, the stuff in my refrigerator, or my Jeep, or, you know, whatever, all this stuff is a straw. It's a straw. Through which I get enjoyment from God. And if God takes away the straw so that all I'm left is with some other straw, no problem. As long as it's still, the other end of it's still in the water, no problem. I can still drink. I still got God, I'm fine. Anytime I have access to God, the real water, I'm fine. Take away all the straws and I just have to drink directly, still okay. But sometimes what happens to us is we put that straw in our mouth, and we drink, and we're like, man, this thing. Every time I put this thing in my mouth, I get satisfied. I love this thing. And we fall in love with the straw. And so to help us with that, every once in a while, God will remove the water. So all we got is that straw in our mouth. And we're sucking, sucking. It's like, man, what's wrong with this straw? How come it's not working? How many of you have had that happen where things that normally should make you happy don't make you happy? You do your favorite activity and it's not working. You know, the guy who just lives for skiing and he gets up on the slope and one day he's skiing and he's like, I'm not enjoying this, it's not working. You hang around your favorite people and usually it makes you happy but sometimes it's like, nah, this isn't doing anything for me. It's not working, that's not working, that's not working. What happened? I got all these straws and none of them were in the water. You know, I'm trying to get enjoyment from the straw. Every once in a while, God just removes the water just to remind us, it's a straw, not water. And so, 100% of our enjoyment and satisfaction comes from God. This is why the psalmists say, God is my only, there's nothing on earth I desire besides God. That sounds like overstatement, doesn't it? Nothing on earth you desire besides God. Come on, don't you like a soft pillow when you lay down instead of like a cactus on your head? I mean, you desire plenty of stuff on the earth. In fact, just in that same Psalm, Psalm 73, he lists a whole bunch of stuff that he desires on earth. So is he telling the truth when he says, the only thing I desire is God? Yeah, he is, because he's saying, yeah, I desire all this other stuff, but only as straws, never as water. Make sense? pain-free suffering, or pain-free living, and it kind of numbs the pain. So the idol, I would say, okay, the idol isn't the alcohol, but it's that drive to not have to feel any suffering. But the way you're just describing it, that's strong to me, that kind of sounds Okay, all right, yeah, great clarification. Thanks for bringing that up. So when I'm talking about the straw, I'm not talking about the sins that we commit. I'm talking about good gifts from God that we turn into idols. So that's the only thing I meant by the straw. Because as soon as, I felt like I had to talk about that, and I should have been clearer. I felt like I had to talk about that, because as soon as I define an idol the way I defined it, then people start saying, wait a minute, isn't it good to desire my family? Isn't it good to desire exercise or sleep or whatever? Some of this stuff that food, like some of you are here because you're addicted to food and you overeat, but you can't just cut out food, you know, right? Because food is good. And so at what point does it become an idol? And I wanted to talk about that because one thing, one weakness that I see in that book, Gospel Treason, is he does a great, great job in there in so many ways, but one thing that I don't like is at one time when he says, If something becomes an idol, good things can become an idol in your heart when you want them too much. And I don't like that statement. I don't think that's a good way. Because what does that mean? So what's the solution? If my wife becomes an idol in my life, what am I supposed to do? Just go ahead and desire her, but just less? Enjoy her less. I gotta find a way to enjoy my wife less. I like her too much. I gotta get it down to just the right level. I mean, how much are you supposed to enjoy God's gifts? I just don't like that idea that it's too much. I think the more the better. If God gives you a gift, the more you enjoy it, the better. If I give my kids a gift, I don't want them to be moderately happy. The happier they are, the happier I am. And so, it's not that you want it too much. It's that you want it in the wrong way. You want it as the water instead of as a straw. So the straw thing is, I'm only talking about things when good gifts from God get turned into idols. Now, other times, the thing is just pure sin. And so when it's just a sinful thing, then the things I was saying about the straw, I didn't mean to apply that to sins. But, Even the sinful idols we have, typically what our soul is craving, the desire is sinful, but the appetite underneath it isn't necessarily sinful. It's a legitimate appetite. So a guy that desires adultery, that's wicked, but for him to have an appetite for sex, that's good. God designed that, right? So we have these appetites that are good. But our desires twist them around so that we start wanting to fulfill that appetite the wrong way, and that's sin. Okay, great question. Why do I need to name these idols? Can't I just go to God and say, whatever this idol is, God, just take it away? It's perfectly fine to pray that, to say, God, please take it away, but He won't always take it away. Sometimes he wants you to fight it. In fact, most of the time he doesn't just take it away. Rarely does he do that. Every once in a while he does, but rarely does he do that. Usually he wants you to fight it. And you gotta know what the enemy is if you're fighting something. So if I'm hooked on alcohol and I'm getting drunk, and the issue for me is, the idol in my heart is refuge. Like, I need safety, I need a break, I need refuge from the onslaught of all this problem in my life, and I just need to get away, I need to run, I need to escape, and I'm looking for refuge. And that's my problem, that's my idol. If I misdiagnose my idol, and I think, you know, my problem is just pleasure. I just like to indulge in pleasure, and so that's why I drink, and I gotta discipline myself. Don't be so wrapped up in pleasure. But that's not really the right diagnosis. Then I'll miss some specific strategies that could go directly to the issue of refuge. What I need to do isn't to focus so much on pleasure. What I need to do is focus on experiencing God as my refuge, God as a refuge. And I need to learn, somehow learn how do I get so that I'm overwhelmed with all kinds of trouble and I can go into my room, open my Bible, get on my knees, seek God and experience him as a refuge and come out a half an hour later at rest. feeling secure, feeling safe, feeling like I've escaped this onslaught. That's what, if that's me, that's what I need to learn. But if I've got a different idol, if my idol is, say, control, You know, some people get hooked on things because they want to be in control. And I've even talked to people who their thing is cutting, they're addicted to cutting themselves. And they said, it's because it's the one time I could actually be in control of when I feel something. And so, for that person, it's a whole different idol. And it needs to be addressed a different way. They need to fight a different enemy. Because there's other attributes of God that, for them, are going to be the solution. So, does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. There are people that get victory over enslaving sins without knowing all this. And a lot of times it's because the problem for them really wasn't so much a satisfaction problem as much as, say, a spiritual power problem. And so once they started getting spiritual power from walking by the Spirit, all the stuff we talked about last week, that gave them enough strength to overcome the thing because that was the main thing they were lacking. For other people it's fear of God, you know, and so they get that and then they get victory. Praise God that a lot of times victory can come without knowing all the principles that Scripture gives us. But I think the more of these principles that we learn, the better chance we're going to have to defeat the sin that's in us. And the more we understand the specific idols in our hearts the more we know not only how to defeat them but what to watch out for. Because I've seen just example after example after example of counselees who will They're fighting in the wrong battlefield and they don't realize their craving for refuge, say, is an idol. And so they don't ever repent of it. They don't name it as something that they put in the place of God. They think it's perfectly okay. And it seems okay. It seems perfectly okay to want safety, they want refuge, right? It doesn't seem sinful. And so they don't ever say, that's idolatry, that I need to repent of, I need to turn from that and seek that from God. And so it handicaps them. Yeah, I think My guess is if somebody were to read gospel treason or to understand these basic principles and not be able to discern what the idol is in their heart, it's probably they're just not willing to acknowledge it because they don't want to acknowledge it. Because it's not that hard. I mean, this isn't rocket science. What is it that gets you all worked up when you lose it? I mean, most people can answer that in a matter of seconds. And so it might be a situation where they just say, no, I don't want to put my finger on that as an idol. So I won't acknowledge that. I'm looking for something else. And of course, then that's when it gets confusing. Because if you're trying to solve 2 plus 2 and you rule out 4, it's complicated. Right? because one other aspect of this kind of goes, you know, because what you're teaching is the foundation of ridding yourself of really awesome. But our propensity is a lazy mind, and we fall right back into those ruts all the time, and that's why we need one another. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that's a good point. So if you're here and you're looking for the magic bullet, that little principle that's just going to wipe away your problem, that's not going to do it. What's going to do it is the godliness training, the exercises, you know, like 1 Timothy 4 says, train yourself to be godly. That training will do it. And the training is going to be things that will awaken your heart to the deliciousness of wisdom's banquet. And in some cases, you'll never will necessarily know what the idol was, but all you know is, well, whatever it is, I don't want that anymore, now I like this, so. If you don't know what Giordano's is, it's an enslaving sin in Chicago. Really good pizza. So we'll get to that. We'll get to the importance of accountability part and all that when we get to the fear part. in so many different ways. Then I got saved, and all of a sudden, my potty mouth was clearing up. I didn't even have to make an effort. I didn't even realize it until someone pointed it out to me. But now I have this struggle, which I found out I've struggled my whole life, I was thinking, in just a short time. And I have such high hopes for this, because I have, yesterday, when I was And it's kind of a fearful thing, because I've put a lot of hope into this class. I really have. But what I've realized is, it's like Hebrews, when it says, actually going through the struggle is strengthening our weak knees and feeble arms. And that's what it's doing, it's strengthening us. Even if we don't accomplish this through this class, Right. Yeah, the general principle will help you. Even if you don't get down to the specifics very well, the general principle will help. I mean, it helped me. It changed a lot in me when I realized that those days when I walk into the kitchen and I open the refrigerator, I'm looking at like hundreds of dollars worth of food. I mean, all this food. It's like, nothing to eat, you know? And then I open the pantry, nothing to eat, you know? And I'm like wandering around, and it's like, I just ate, I'm not... When I realized, when I just could finally talk to my soul and say, Daryl, you're not hungry for food. That's not what you're craving right now. This craving you're feeling, it's a real craving. It's not for food. It's for something else. It's for the presence of God. When I would just, you know, just wake up to that, it's like, oh, okay. And that'll save me a lot of searching around the kitchen and then some regret and everything else because it's like, no, over the years I've taken this craving for the presence of God and I've translated it into a craving for food. And that's not even what it is. No wonder the food isn't satisfying. Anytime I put food in my mouth and it's not satisfying, it's like, okay, I'm trying to feed the wrong craving with the wrong thing. Because when I'm really craving food, food is satisfying. It tastes great, you know, so. Okay. All right, well, you need to, it's essential that you identify the sins in your life. Whether you can name, you know, all the idols specifically and all that, you gotta know what's sin and what isn't, right? We need to at least get there. One of the biggest, biggest problems with overcoming and enslaving sin is knowing which things are sin and which things are not. Because if you've got something in your life that's kind of sin, you're never going to overcome that. If you've got one of those, I probably shouldn't be doing this, you're going to keep doing it. And there's a lot of things like that where when the temptation, you're mostly convinced that sometimes like, yeah, that's sin, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I think it's sin. Other times when the temptation comes, it's just like, I don't know, is that really sin? I can't really think of a Bible verse. I think it's not sin, I'll just do it a little bit. We need to pin down what's sin, what's not. It's a sin to needlessly subject yourself to temptation. So Proverbs warns us, don't go near the door of her house. And it talks about the fool who goes to the immoral woman's house, he's like, he's walking down this the block and now he's heading towards her street and now he's turning down her street towards her corner and now he's getting closer to her house and next thing you know she comes out kisses him and boom it's gone it's over and and he never should have the point of all that is he never should have even gone that way he got too close And so he says, don't go near the door of her house. And that's the way it needs to be with temptation. Don't get close to it. Stay away from it. Now you can't always stay away, but that's why I said needlessly subjecting yourself to temptation is sin. So there's guys that struggle with pornography, and a lot of times what happens is it starts with physical self-gratification. And they start with that, and they're like, well, it's not really sin. I don't know if it's sin. Dobson says it's okay. I guess I can do it. I don't know. And I'll just do it. I'll just keep my mind pure while I'm doing it, you know, or whatever. And then next thing you know, it starts up a sequence in the body that makes it next to impossible not to engage in lustful thoughts. And then once those get rolling, then the pornography comes and it just snowballs and they can't stop it. And they lost that battle when they first started in on something that they just weren't quite sure if it was sinful or not. And for you, if it puts you in a position where you're more likely to be tempted, there's no reason you need to do it, and it's going to make you more likely to be tempted, then for you it's sin. Probably the hardest thing here with that is food. Because if you struggle, if you're going to quit smoking, or quit, you know, pornography, or, you know, drinking or whatever, you can just quit altogether, right? But food is different. You can't just quit eating. And a lot of us know that you can be eating and one bite is pleasing to God and the next bite is sin. Well, where's that line? I mean, that's tough. I mean, how do you do that? And so I think what we need to do with food is, I mean, my advice is figure out a general kind of way of eating that you want, a kind of a diet that you believe that would be pleasing to God. Just sit down, figure it out. I think what would be pleasing to God is if I eat, generally speaking, I eat this way. There's some things I don't ever do. There's some things I only do like once a month or once a week or something. There's some things I can do every day. God wants me to enjoy food, but He doesn't want me to be doing this and this and this. And just pin that down. And then you know, when I go outside of those boundaries, then I'm sinning. And when I stay inside those boundaries, then I'm not. I'm not trying to say that you come up with some kind of a legalistic standard that you would apply to everybody, or that there's something beyond what Scripture says. It's just simply this principle of don't go near the door of her house. I mean, you're trying to Follow God's will, right? Well, what is God's will? The best you can discern it, say, I think it's in this realm right here. I think this is God's will for me when it comes to eating. So define that the best you can so that you know things that are outside of that. It's not just, well, I probably shouldn't be doing this. It's sin for you at this time in your life. Maybe months from now it won't be, but for right now it is. It's gonna help you to know to know if something's sin or not, so that you don't have... Otherwise, here's what happens. You overeat, and you're continually overeating, and so you have this constant guilt, and every single bite you ever put in your mouth, you have guilt. Well, every single bite you put in your mouth is not sin. God wants you to enjoy food. You gotta get to a point where you can enjoy food, and it's not one bit sinful. It's kind of like people who overspend. You know, they overspend, especially couples. They get way in debt, they overspend, and then after that, every single dollar they spend, they feel guilty. They feel upset. They've got anxiety. And God doesn't want us to live that way. Some dollars need to be spent, right? Even if you're in debt. So I would urge you, do the best you can to at least pinpoint idols in your life, especially what's sinful and what's not. And if you struggle with that, give me a call, we can talk, or find a mentor you can talk to. Hopefully in these small groups, you'll start realizing some of these people could be a good partner for you. And you can say, hey, let's get together this week and talk about some of this stuff. Okay? All right. Okay, so we've got five minutes here for me to give you some godliness training exercises, which are gonna be what's gonna help you. So here's what I got for this week. Number one, keep praying. Pray for victory throughout the day. Again, all through the day, a couple times an hour, keep praying for victory. Pray for the Lord to enable you to prefer His banquet. And then in addition to that, ask Him to expose the idols in your heart. Ask Him to show you what's sinful, what's not. Ask Him to show you what you're looking to to satisfy the cravings of your soul. What you're looking to, what kinds of things in your life you think you need in order to be happy. What kinds of things that if they were taken away and you're left with only God, you wouldn't be happy. Ask Him to help you see those things. So that's the prayer piece. Number two, last week you found out what's the next step in your prayer life. Let's start shooting for that. Let's go for it. Some of you made it too big of a step and you're gonna struggle because it's too much. And you might have to make it a little more realistic. But let's go for it. Let's try to hit that next step. Let's try to move and grow in our prayer lives, okay? Number three, I would like everybody to get the devotional, What's So Great About God? And you can purchase a hard copy or you can have it for free online. We have that on treasuringgod.com. It's treasuringgod, it's the church website under the resource library under articles. So it's a huge article, it's the whole book, but it's there under articles, What's So Great About God? So go ahead and get that dialed up online, or you can just buy a hard copy or whatever, but get that book, and the reason I wanna recommend that book is just because the goal here is to have, remember, all of the success of this whole thing is riding on you actually having satisfying experiences with the presence of God. If you do not have satisfying experiences with the presence of God, you can tell yourself all these principles all day long, and you're still gonna go to Folly's banquet. So you've gotta, it's not just enough to know that they're satisfying, or that they're supposed to be satisfying, you've gotta actually be satisfied by them. You have to experience, you have to have wonderful experiences of attributes of God. And so that book, that's what it's designed for. One attribute each time, and you spend the whole day trying to have a delightful, satisfying experience of that attribute of God. That's what each day is for. So, if you already have another way of doing that, that's great, then you wouldn't have to use the book, but one way or another, pick an attribute of God each day and strive to have an experience with that to that day that satisfies. That's delightful, that you can point your soul to and say, don't you want more of that? And your soul will say, yes, yes, I do not want to risk losing that. Okay? That's the biggest thing we're shooting for. Now, at the end of the day, you'll ask yourself, did I experience this attribute today? And if the answer is yes, just jot down a brief description of how that happened, okay? There'll be plenty of days, you'll get to the end of the day, and it's like, nope, nope, I didn't have an experience with that attribute today. I forgot to even think about it today. It didn't cross my mind. That happens to me. I've been doing this for years, and it still happens to me. I get so, I just like, OK, I'll try again tomorrow on that same attribute. But the goal is as many times as possible, you get to the end of the day, it's like, yeah, yeah, I had a couple of experiences of that attribute today and that were satisfying, and here's what it was, and just jot it down, okay? Bring that next time. Your experiences with those attributes that were delightful and satisfying, bring those descriptions next time. to the class. Okay, number four, keep reviewing Galatians 5.16. You got it memorized, that was a great job. You'll forget it very quickly if you don't keep reviewing it. If you review it every single day, then it's easy, easy to keep it in your mind. If you do it every other day, it's a lot harder. You'll have to sit and kind of work at it, and that'll be hard. In fact, the beginning for me, I have a bunch of times during the day, I have to say it, but after a while, then once a day is fine, and you can just rattle it off. So keep reviewing Galatians 5, 16 daily, and then also memorize Isaiah 55, 2. If you're a go-getter, you might want to do 1 and 2, because verse 1 is great, too. But memorize Isaiah 55, 2 word for word. Number five, get your hands on gospel treason and read the introduction, chapter one and chapter two. and if you don't like reading or you don't have money, then you can go online and just, Gospel Trees and Sermons, Google search Gospel Trees and Sermons, it'll come up. It's Brad Bigney is the preacher, and you can just listen to him online for free, okay? But we're shooting for chapters one and two, and at the end of chapter two, there's a worksheet that helps you pinpoint where the idols are in your life, and he just asks you a bunch of real helpful questions. And you should be able to know what the idols are in your heart after you do that worksheet. If you try doing that worksheet and you still don't know what the idols are in your heart, you're doing something wrong. It's not rocket science, okay? It should be pretty easy. And then number six, keep coming to church, keep coming to prayer group, make sure you've got that fellowship, bringing power from the Holy Spirit into your life, okay? All right, any questions? Yeah, I know, the book and the... So, the reason I said... Yeah, you're right, the videos don't go exactly with the book. So, the reason I said read the introduction in chapters 1 and 2 is because I just thought that was a reasonable amount for even a slow reader who's really busy could still get that much read in a week. That's the only reason I chose that amount. So if you are going to listen or watch the videos instead of read, then just get through a reasonable amount. I think maybe two messages would be about right. It won't be the same material, but I think after two messages, you should be able to pinpoint what are the idols in my heart. Dana? Do you consider covetous desires Okay, I would just say, here's the way I would put it. I think the covetous desire is the attitude that my soul has for the idol. So what it is in me that attracts to that idol is a covetous desire. That's the definition of coveting, is when I desire something in the way that, desire something as water, as my spiritual water. That's what coveting is. So yeah, every idol, the reason it's an idol is because you covet it. Okay. Anything else? All right. You're going to be able to do this homework? All these exercises? All right. Well, good. Well, let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, these exercises, the third one, Lord, about having experiences of your presence, having experiences of your attributes during the day that really do satisfy and are enjoyable, Lord, that's going to be, that's easier said than done. We need your grace for that. We need your Spirit to enable us. Please grant that. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.