Morning, if you're able, please open up your Bibles to Romans chapter one. And when you found it, please stand for the reading of God's word together. Verse 14 to verse 23, hear now God's word. I am under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. Thus I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first. and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is being revealed from faith for faith as it is written, but the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness are suppressing the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks to him. Instead, they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the imperishable God for images resembling perishable man and birds and animals. creeping things. Let's pray. Father, what an incredible diagnosis we see here this morning of the natural man outside of and apart from Christ. Oh, Father, I pray that as Your Word is preached, as the gospel goes forward, that You would be granting light to those who are in darkness. And, Lord, for those of us whom You have saved, I pray that You would grant us incredible gratitude, and that we would not be like the heathen that Paul is writing about, who are thankless in grace, those who do not want to honour You or glorify You, those who exchange the truth about God for a manageable, comfortable lie. Oh, Father, thank you for your sovereign grace. Thank you that you would send your Son into the world to die for such idolaters, and then you would pour forth your Spirit who would quicken those who are dead in their darkness and dead in their sins, that you would grant faith and repentance, that you would change our affections, that we who loved idols and took them up in our hearts would then exchange them for the true and the living God as revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we just pray. Speak to us this morning. I pray not only for your saving grace, but your sanctifying grace, as we read about in John 17. Oh, Jesus, thank you so much that out of your love and for our sake, you set yourself apart to save us and to conform us into the true image of God in righteousness and holiness. So, Father, I pray that Your Son would accomplish His work, not only in saving His elect, but in sanctifying them. And one day, we will share in this wonderful glory of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. Help us to be good evangelists at home, at work, at school, everywhere we go, O Lord. Help us to be good doctors who can show people and diagnose the errors of their way. and to show them why salvation must be in Christ alone. Help us this morning, Father. Grant us great affections for the Lord Jesus Christ and enlighten our minds to receive the truth as it is in Jesus we ask in his name. Amen. Please be seated. Well, as a precursor, rather than just always quoting names, I'm drawing heavily from commentaries, and then two books that I would actually encourage you, if you want to study more about this notion of idolatry, which pervades the scriptures, because the scriptures are the story of how God is saving This one is actually very good and readable. I don't agree with everything Timothy Keller says, but this book has been very helpful for me as a pastor all these years. And then for nerds, this is actually a very good book by G.K. Beale. He is one of my favorite guys, and it's called We Become Nerds. what we worship, and it's a biblical theology of idolatry. And I hope to show us this morning that idols are not merely in places like India or in Africa or Papua New Guinea. Idols are rampant, and if we're not careful, they will be taking up their residences in the very temple of God like they did in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. And so please don't hear that this is for unbelievers. This is actually written to believers, right? Paul wants to preach the gospel to those who are in Rome. He wants to share with them some spiritual giftings from the gospel, and the gospel has everything to do with idolatry. And you might remember going all the way back to our first introductory message on Romans, and we talked about how God, through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, is reclaiming his glory. Idolatry is the exchange of God's glory for inglorious things. And so God is so jealous for His glory that He sends His Son into the world, that we who give glory to corruptible, perishable things might be radically transformed and give glory to the true and living God. That's how passionate God is for His glory. He sends His Son into the world to save us not only from our sins, but from our false worship. So, we'll see in our text we're looking this morning primarily at verses 21 through 23, and last week we saw that there was sort of this unit of verses 19 to 23, and in the very middle of it, the meat of the sandwich, is this interesting phrase Paul says, so they are without excuse. And Paul here is talking about primarily the Gentiles. However, he is going to say that the Jews are just as idolatrous as the Gentiles. Please don't think the Jews get off the hook. Last week, we showed that Paul is putting the Gentiles on the hook. And Paul is doing so in chapter 1 so that he might say to the Jewish people of chapter 2, you are just as much on the hook because your whole history is characterized by idolatry. Actually, the history of mankind is characterized by idolatry. From the very creation of the world, Paul says, in the things that have been made, we should be able to see God's glory. Instead, we do two things with it. Last week, we saw that we suppress the truth about God. We suppress it in our unrighteousness. But that was last week. This morning, we're going to see how out of that suppression comes an exchange. And I love the title of John Piper's message on this very text, and he calls it The Dark Exchange. God's glory, his refulgence, his splendor, his majesty, light, you might say, is exchanged for darkness. The light of God's glory is exchanged for the darkness of worthless idols. And that has everything to do with us all. This isn't just for people that we send missionaries to. This is the history of humanity. And this is why, in Paul's logic in verse 18, God's wrath against all ungodliness, all godlessness, all idolatry, you might say, and unrighteousness is being revealed from heaven. God's wrath against Jew and Gentile alike is righteous, which is why Paul must preach the gospel. He calls it the light of the gospel in the face of Christ. There's only one thing that can overcome this dark exchange, and it's the light of the gospel, which is why Paul says again, send me to Spain. These idolaters in their darkness, the light of the gospel must shine upon them if they are to be saved from God and his wrath. Does that make sense? And this has everything to do not only with your co-workers, it has everything to do with actually your children, your neighbours, and yourselves. We are without excuse. One of the common things people raise against God when they hear about something like hell is, that's not fair. And Paul's whole argument of Romans 1, 2, and 3 is to say God is entirely righteous, entirely just and fair to judge sinners. They are not innocent. They suppress the truth. When God reveals the truth about himself in creation, they suppress it. And rather than humbling themselves as more information bombards them, rather than suppressing it, they exchange it. And this happens in universities, it happens in Parliament, it happens everywhere. And if we're not on guard, it happens in our own hearts. So, let's just look at the text here. We're thinking of how God is just in His wrath against idolaters. And he's just in his wrath because they are without excuse. Verse 20. What does verse 21 begin with? It begins with an important conjunction, because. I don't like the word for. It's the exact same conjunction of verse 19. And so you're to see verses 19 and 21 mirroring each other. Okay, because they begin with the same Greek conjunction, deati, and so God is comparing now suppressing the truth with exchanging. And I think there's an elevation here. When people grow faint of suppressing the truth, they exchange it for something more manageable. So remember the illustration of the child at the beach? He's in the water and he's got a big beach ball and he's trying his darndest to suppress that sucker. That's a lot of work. That's a big beach ball. It takes a lot of energy to suppress the truth. Give me something more manageable that I can handle. Give me an idol that looks like a beach ball that I can suppress more easily. And that's what happens with humanity. We exchange God's truth. We get tired of suppressing it. That's sort of the first stage, and here now, we begin to exchange it. And we're going to see that there are terrible ramifications of this. This is what godlessness looks like. Remember, God's wrath is revealed against all godlessness. What is godlessness? Suppressing the truth, exchanging the truth. So let's look at verse 21. For although they knew God, you could translate it because when they knew God, and literally, I would translate it, because knowing the God. They knew the God of the previous verses. They know, as it were, the true and the living God. And you're like, wait a minute. How do they know God if they've never heard the gospel? Well, this is talking about knowing through sense perceptions. So I can know something about Anthony if I see him crossing the street. With the limited information coming in, I could say he's 5'24", he's probably Dutch, he's probably cheap. There's certain things I can say, I know a little bit about him. But until I talk, until he reveals himself to me, I'm the son of Harry and Alice Coppert. I have this many siblings. I live in Tabor. All those things. So there's limited knowledge. And I could say, well, I know Anthony. And from what I know about him, I don't like him. I didn't mean to say that. Or maybe I did. And that's what Paul's saying here, is that there's these Gentiles, that from creation, and from providence, and from history, they have enough information to know. Like, I can see that Anthony's not some figment of my imagination. He's not, you know, some phantom or hologram, some AI projection. He's real, and I reject it. And so what Paul is saying here in verse 21 is that humanity has enough information to know about God, and they should worship Him, they should honor Him, they should thank Him, but they choose not to. And we're going to see why. Because we love ourselves naturally more than God. This is why we are culpable and on the hook and just and worthy of God's indignation. Although they or you should translate that perhaps or apply it we Some of you sit here this morning Unbelieving you will not bow your knee to Christ, and it's not for lack of information Please understand this when you're sharing the gospel with people you think you need to give them more information No, they need light I have beat my head with atheists trying to give them more facts, showing them, showing them, showing them, showing them. It's like trying to explain to a blind man something he can't see. They have enough knowledge and it condemns them. They need the gospel. Remember Paul? He's the apostle. He's been given grace and apostleship to do what? To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of Christ's name among the nations. And he does so by preaching the gospel. It's not enough to get people to believe that there's some God out there or an intelligent designer. That's a great starting point. You don't need to prove to people that there's a God. They already know there is. The problem is, is that they're exchanging the truth about God for the lie. They're changing the glory of the incorruptible God for corruptible images. for although they knew God. So put that in your back pocket. Everybody you see, irrespective of where they've come from, you can go to university and you can say, well, they don't know about Jesus. That's why you need to tell them about Jesus. We have lots of people coming in from all over the world, and they worship a plethora of gods. I don't need to prove to them there's a God. They already know. Their problem is not that they know God. Their problem is that they have exchanged the true God for false gods. And only the gospel is the power of God that can break that idolatry. The gospel is a power. It's not just a message. It's God's power. Because people are dead in their idolatry and dead in their sins. For although they knew the God, the true God, what does it say? What does it look like to exchange? What does idolatry look like? Why do people commit idolatry? Because we hate God. We hate the true and the living God. We can worship manageable idols that we rule over. Please see that. A lot of people think idolatry is me bowing to some statue. That's not what idolatry is. Idolatry is me refusing to bow to God, and then me becoming like God and making something in my image. That's what idolatry is. The idols always represent us. And that's the sick thing, is we were meant to represent God, and since we are so corrupt and broken and sinful, We create things in our image and we try to become like God. That's the lie. Do you remember in Genesis 3 what the serpent said to Eve and Adam? You will become Like God, he doesn't say you're gonna worship false gods. Now that's what happens. But the lie, when it says they exchange the truth about God for a lie, that's not what it says in the Greek. They exchange the truth about God for the lie. You should be writing that in your Bible. The lie that goes all the way back to Genesis 3. The lie that says that though we were created to worship God, we're gonna exchange that so we can be worshiped. Idolatry is self-worship. It's self-gratification. It's self-exaltation. It's self-justification. It's self, self, self. The greatest idol is not Baal or Allah or the gods in India. The greatest idol is the human heart that resides within you. That's the idol you need to be most afraid of. It might take on various images. But the very first thing that Paul mentions is the image of mortal man. I'm not worried about anyone in this room really worshiping birds or beasts or creeping animals. I'm really not too worried about that. Now, if you continue on in your hardening, right, if you continue on in your idolatry, it gets that insane. Idolatry is insane, but it all starts with the mirror. And remember, God is putting these Gentiles and Jews on the hook. So what is our problem? Not lack of knowledge of God. We know God and what we know about him we hate, unless something more powerful comes in and changes our minds. This is why we preach the gospel, because the gospel is power. It brings salvation from sin and self, and therefore, idolatry. Are you struggling with idolatry this morning, dear brother or sister in Christ? You need to start glorifying God again and giving him thanks. You need to start preaching to yourself the gospel and the truth as it is in Jesus. Turn to Ephesians 4 quickly. I just have to go there. Because this is very similar to what Paul's saying here. And here's the application. I just said, Christians, you need more gospel. I've been to many churches where there's lots of religious stuff talking, but not a lot of gospel. Look what Paul says here in verse 17. He's trying to encourage the Christians to live lives that are worthy of the calling to which they've been called. Paul says this in verse 17, Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk. So how did the Gentiles of Romans 1 walk? In the futility of their minds. You're going to see a lot of similar language. Before we came to know Christ, irrespective of how many degrees we had, what our IQ was, how intelligent or unintelligent we were, Paul's saying that the Gentiles used to walk in the brokenness, the futility, the vanity, the worthlessness of their minds. Are you saying these guys who are so brilliant, their minds are worthless? Yes. When it comes to spiritual things, their minds are broken. They could probably beat me in chess in like one second. I get it. I can't design, you know, all kinds of things that engineers do. I get it. But Paul says, as brilliant as they are, They walk in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated. And these are perfect tenses for you nerds. They're alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance. What? Jeff Bezos? Is he ignorant? No, but he's ignorant of the gospel. This is why he needs the gospel. He doesn't need religion. He's already religious. Oh, he's an atheist. Exactly. Atheists are religious. They worship self and science and self-justification. Right? Like, listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson, that arrogant guy. He's the most arrogant guy in the world. He looks down on everyone else. And then you just listen to how insanely dummy in the most obvious things. Futile, darkened, broken mind. Brilliant, right? Quantum physicist, brilliant. Broken, darkened, I doll at her. Don't listen to his interviews. You just want to throw up. because of the ignorance that is in them. Gospel ignorance. This is why Paul's a missionary. Due to what? The hardness of heart. Their mind is broken, but that's because they love idolatry. Why are they ignorant? Because of the hardness of their heart. And why is their heart hard? Paul says in Romans 1, Their foolish hearts were darkened. Why are our hearts darkened? Because we exchange the light and truth about God for darkness and a lie. That's why idolatry is serious stuff. In his excellent book, Beal says, idolatry is the root sin. He says it's the essence of sin. I would say that behind sins, plural, is the sin, singular. The sin of idolatry. And I want you to think about this. Why are there men who are workaholics? Is work good? Yes. But why is a man a workaholic? Because he's taking things that belong to God and he's ascribing it to something else. All of his time, all of his thought, all of his passions, all of his affections. It's because of our broken hearts. And so, Christian, are you struggling with affections for Christ? It's because you perhaps are darkening your heart through exchanging the truth about God for lies. And so Paul writing to these Christians, explaining the problem of humanity, and specifically here Gentile says, although they knew when they knew the God, they did not honor him as God or give him thanks. I want to focus on those two words quickly. The SV has the word honor. I don't like that. It's literally the word glorify. What does it mean to glorify? I tried to think about that. What means to give glory to? Okay. So it might be helpful to understand that Paul is Jewish, and the Old Testament word for glory is a wonderfully rich picture word. Does anyone know what the Hebrew word for glory is? No nerdies here? Kavod. Anyone ever heard that word before? Kavod? It means heavy, weighty, substantial. It's interesting, what does that have to do? I always thought glory had to do with light and honor. But when you understand that this, so when it says, when we study Genesis, that Abraham was cavode in Adam, he was heavy with, he had a substantial amount of things. And so here's how I would think of it. Think of gravity. And if there's something that is weighty, it draws things to itself. It's worthy, it's weighty. Right? And that's really what this idea of glory is. What does it mean to glorify God? It means to acknowledge and praise him for his worthiness, his weightiness, his substance. He has essence, right? He is like that great sun around which everything else ought to orbit. And we don't do that with God. We'd rather do that with ourselves. We want everything to orbit around us. We want everybody to fit around our schedule. I want everything in my life to orbit around me. I'm a self-glorying thief. God made all things, right? The chief end of man is to glorify God. And what does that mean? Make him central, right? He is the sun, he is the center, the substance of your life around which everything, whether career or family or friends or hobbies, okay? And we have to be very careful that some of those things that are related, that should be orbiting the sun, don't seek to supplant it. I'm not against sports, but what happens sometimes for us as men is that sports are exchanged now for the center. Now everything, my schedule, my money, my time, I won't minister, everything now is around sports or work or maybe for girls, how you look, what clothes you wear. For some people, it becomes just getting more information. Anything, Keller says, anything can become an idol. Everything has become an idol. It's so ubiquitous, it's everywhere. I hope I'm communicating this. It's everywhere. The idols aren't just out there, they're everywhere. They're lurking outward and inward, and anything can become. And you might know God, but there is this fallenness about us that we want to glorify ourself. Lloyd-Jones says that the essence of idolatry is pride. And as Artie taught me, the middle letter of the word sin is I. And the middle letter of the word pride is I. I thought that was interesting. It's for your consideration. We might know, but they forgot or they refused, I should say, to glorify him as God. He is worthy to be the center of all of our thinking. all of our emotions, all of our choosing. That's what Christ came into the world to redeem. Our broken, idolatrous hearts that exchanged the truth for a lie. Christ came in that we might exchange the lie for the truth. So first, people exchange God's glory because they don't want to glorify Him. So I'm going to put this out here. You will glorify someone or something. You can't help it. You have been made to glorify. You will worship something. Atheist, I don't worship anything. You worship yourself. You're so self-referential. Everything is about what you think, your study, your books. You're the god of your universe, atheist. I don't believe in a god. Well, you're so darkened and corrupt in your mind that you can't even realize that you've worshiped yourself. So do understand that. You can't turn off the worship button. You are worshiping today. You're going to worship tomorrow. The only question is, will you worship the true and the living God in Christ, or will you worship images and counterfeits? Second, the reason why God is handing these people over is because, linked to not glorifying Him, is not thanking Him. They're not identical, but there would be, does anyone know what a Venn diagram is? Two circles? It looks like I'm landing a plane or washing a car. and then there's an overlap. Okay, so glorifying God is not thanking him. However, glorifying God involves thanking him. Does that make sense? And this is gonna be like the easiest application for you. When you're at work, please don't take this as Mr. Religious or, you know, be Mr. Hypocrite. Just bow your head and give thanks to God. That's no big deal, I'm not preaching the gospel. This is what it means to be redeemed. Right? The idolater says, I deserve this. I worked for it. God owes me. I'm the center of the world. Of course he gives me food. The humbled Christian who has a new heart says, Lord, I am so unworthy. I sin against you day and night, night and day. I'm so ungrateful. but I remember to give you thanks for my daily bread. You have caused the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the evil who don't deserve it. You continue to pour out your blessings. You continue to reveal yourself to me. You've given me a family. I was able to afford this because you've provided me with work. God, I'm so thankful. The only thing I deserve from you is wrath. That doesn't seem like much, But that's radically different from the world. I was reading in some of my studies of the story of the Christian boy who went over to his friend's house, and they put the food down before them, and they all just started devouring, and he's pausing. He's like, well, I thought we were going to pray. And they're like, what? He says, yeah, you guys, you're just like my dogs at home. You don't pause to pray and give thanks. And that's what Paul's gonna say is actually, this is what idolatry does. It makes us like animals. We are made the very image of God. And if we refuse to glorify him or give him thanks, we lose that image as it were. We become like what we worship. Seeing they see not, hearing they hear not, nor do they understand. You start looking like Ashura, or Baal, or Kamosh, and all the false gods. You start looking like, in India, the gods of money and the gods of sex. All addiction to pornography is, is idolatry. It's self-love and self-gratification. Being cheap. I have to be careful on this. It's all about self and it's just an ugly, ugly thing when the worshiper becomes like the thing he worships, unless it's Christ. So this is what you're thinking through. Though they knew God through creation, they refused to do what? Glorify Him. They refused to give Him thanks. What should Christians do in their witness? Glorify Him. I call it doxological evangelism. Doxa means glory. Praise Him with David. Praise Him with the moon and the stars. Praise Him when you see a beautiful sunset. Praise Him when you see, you know, the seasons changing. And even praise him when the snow comes back when you thought the seasons were changing and it seems like winter again for a week. Praise him for that, too. Praise him for everything. You might not think it's a big deal, but the nations don't praise him. This is radically different to give thanks to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You might not think it's a big deal, but if you do it, like some of you guys who finished hockey this weekend, to give him thanks in the dressing room. When you go out for dinner, the boss takes you out. To say, I just need to give thanks to God. I want to glorify Him for all He's done for me. I don't think that's self-righteous. And so what does God do when people refuse to give Him thanks or glorify Him? He judges them. He hands them over. We're going to see that more clearly in verse 24, but we're already smelling it. Rather, they became futile in their thinking. That's God's judgment. They became futile in their thinking. And this word for thinking is the ability to reason. Now I'm not saying that they can't figure out the laws of thermodynamics. Some of the smartest people in the world don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that kind of reason. I'm talking about the fact that God is everywhere screaming in his poiema, in his creation. And then you get a guy like Richard Dawkins saying, well, I don't believe in the God of Christianity, but there's a good chance that aliens from another planet visited Earth, and he says it in this voice, and then they took like a little pipette, and then they inserted some of their DNA on Earth, and then over billions of, that's insane. That's absolutely insane. and he's under God's judgment. And so Richard Dawkins doesn't need a lesson on science, he needs to hear the gospel, because only the power of the gospel can save such futile thinking. I love the Greek word, dia means through, logos means word, so you're thinking through words, or you're thinking through facts. They cannot think through the facts of God that is screaming his existence and his glory, right, his eternal power in Godhead. And they're broken because they've exchanged the light about God for darkness, the truth for the lie. This is the scariest thing for you children, is that you can come to church and hear the gospel, but if you refuse to give God glory, if you refuse to thank Him in Christ, especially for salvation, what He has accomplished, you may become futile in your thinking. That's scary stuff. This is way scarier to me than an earthquake. It's way scarier than some of the natural expressions of the wrath of God. This moral judgment is terrifying. If you continue to reject God, if you continue to suppress the truth and exchange it, This is what awaits you, a darkened heart. What do you mean like, like smoking and then like the way that if lungs get dark with not literally dark, this is spiritual darkness. The darkness of, say, like in Exodus, but inward. The darkness of idolatry. Walking in the dark spiritually. And the heart has to do with thinking. It has to do with feeling. It has to do with choosing. The scariest thing, parents pray that your kids will not be given over into a darkened heart. Because now you can't think rightly, you can't love rightly, you can't choose rightly. And this is what the Gentiles do. This is why we have no problem as a nation aborting millions of babies. Well, we have no problem as a nation applauding Maid. Let's kill the old people. That's insane to a reasoning mind. But to a mind that has given over to futility, to a heart that has become darkened, that's no problem. It's gonna save us money, right? We don't have to pay to have them in hospitals and stuff. Of course that makes sense. To a reprobate mind, yes. But to Christians, no. And so what does the culture need? We need to get Paul Yevon. Well, I would love that, but that's not going to save us. Paul doesn't want to go to Spain to give them conservative values, to bring in a Republican government, which I would vote for. Like, everyone knows me. I'm that guy. I get it. But he has to go and preach the gospel. This is what they need. Only the gospel can lighten the darkened heart. The darkness cannot overcome the light, John 1 says. Verse 22, here's this snowball, this regression, devolution. So here they are, their foolish hearts, they've become dark. And how do you know they're dark? Because they're boasting in their wisdom. When people boast of how smart they are in their denial of God, it only proves their hearts have become darkened in God's judgment. And this Greek word for claiming, it's interesting. It's like somebody who's making a claim that everyone knows is false. You've seen these hucksters. Whether they believe it or not, I don't know. But, like, everyone around them knows. This guy's boasting and all these things. Like, this guy's full of it. Like, this is so wrong. It's so obviously wrong. This claim he's making has no substantial evidence to ground that claim. And yet, that's the insanity. Idolatry is insanity. They actually think they're wise as they're running headlong to hell. This is why they need the gospel. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And the most foolish thing a person can ever do in verse 23 is exchange the glory of the immortal God, or you could translate that word imperishable God. for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. And so here is why God's wrath is being poured out, and here's the progression of idolatry. Do you sort of see how it starts? They begin to suppress the truth, and then when they exchange it, they become futile, their brains don't work. Their hearts become dark, they begin to boast in their folly and in their shame, and they become fools. And we know what Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 say, the fool has said in his heart there is no God. Now, he's not being an atheist, but he's living and acting like there's no God. Like there's no God who's going to judge. There's no God who is holy. There's no God who cares for them. They begin to live in godlessness, which brings us back full circle. The wrath of God is being revealed against all godlessness. See, we think the problem of sin is the act. And Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no. God's wrath is first against godlessness or ungodliness, right? The vertical is the main thing. And so we're gonna say, you see drug addicts and stuff like that. Yes, we wanna help them, right? They're living unrighteously. They're doing things they ought not to. But the root issue is idolatry. They need to be cured of their idolatry. Because you know what happens with me? I'm an idolater, by God's grace, a recovering one, but this is stuff I'll do. I can get into laziness, and so I'll start watching something on YouTube, and like, ah, the idol is this, and I'll stop watching, let's say, football, and I have. When they went woke, that was enough to cure me of football idolatry. But then I just exchange it for something else on YouTube. Now it's hockey, or now it's stocks, or now it's cooking, or now it's something. Do you guys see how that works? The issue isn't the football, or the hockey, or the cooking, or the investment. None of those things are wrong. It's the hard issue that is idolatrous. And so when we're talking to people who are addicts, whether to drugs or to pornography or to food or to money or to laziness, understand, now you don't have to say you're an idolater, but you need to be thinking, right? Their mind's not working. Somebody who's addicted, like when you talk to somebody on the streets who's addicted, they're insane. This is killing you, man. Their foolish hearts are darkened. What? So they need the gospel. Love them, buy them a sandwich, but give them the gospel. I wish I could say this to Streets Alive, actually. I love that ministry, but make sure you're giving these people the gospel, because all you're doing without the gospel is just perpetuating and lengthening their idolatry. That's the root issue. The gospel's not band-aid, the gospel gets at the root, it gets at the essence of sin. And it's seeking to give glory to something other than God. So let me close with the best definition. Warren, do you have your Bible with you here today? I was hoping you'd be here. So go to 1 John chapter five and verse 21. He has his NLT, and you might wanna write this down in your English version. Because you're like, well, how do I know? This idolatry thing sounds scary. I want to run from it. Can you read it nice and loud? The very last verse, my little children. 1 John, chapter 5, last verse, 21. And God himself has commanded that we must love not only him, One second. I, I, I'm. Okay. That's the best. There's tons of definitions of idolatry in all the books, all the commentaries. That's the best definition. 1 John 5.21 in the NLT. My beloved, my dear, my affectionate children, keep your hearts away from, no, keep yourselves from anything that can take God's place in your hearts. That's all idolatry is. is something that takes God's place in our hearts. That gravitational center, that glory. And so just guard yourself from anything. And as Keller says, the worst idols are the best things. Things like family, or work, or even government. He says there's personal idols, but there's also societal idols. And I want us to guard. Some of us, we have to be careful that we don't put our trust in the government. What happens if this whole coup of Carney, what happens if he gets in? Is that gonna destroy us? If it is, then perhaps government has become an idol, right? I'd say that to my American brothers down south, right? I'm glad Trump got in instead of Harris, but if he didn't, is that gonna absolutely undo you? Some of us who are in ministry, I've thought about, trust me, I've thought about this. A lot of pastors, they fall. And I think it's because they made ministry their idol. It's their identity. It's what gets them up in the morning. It gives them purpose. It validates them. They get praised. Great sermon! Now, I don't hear that often. Great leading! Joey, that was awesome what you did at men's breakfast. Now that's good, I'm glad you did, but we always have to guard ourselves. Why am I doing this? Am I doing this for God's glory or my glory? Why do you go to work? Why do you want to go to university? Why do you, right? This is just helping us think through these things, and there's all kinds of counterfeits that can take God's place in our hearts. And so we close in Romans 12, and I give all of the credit to Mr. Beal. Go to Romans 12. He pointed this out to me. And he says that Romans 1, this section in Romans 1, 23-ish, is antithetically parallel to Romans 12-2. What does that mean? They're the opposites. Okay? And I hope you'll see this. So I'll read verse 1. He says, I appeal to you, I beg you, therefore, brothers and sisters, in light of or by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. This is worship language. This is idolatry language. When you worship an idol, you give it everything you got. You give it your time, your thoughts, your heart, your affections, your hope. And Paul is saying that because Christ has come, we can now worship the true and the living God in him and present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual or logical worship. Okay? Idolatry is insane worship. Worshiping God in Christ is logical worship, and it only happens when we preach the gospel and someone is converted by the power of God. So is this making sense? I don't want us just to be filled with words. I want you to understand that you can talk to people who are entrenched, they're completely gripped in their idolatry, whether it's alcoholism or workaholism or fill-in-the-allism. And this is why Paul says, send me to Spain. They need the power of God and it's only in the gospel. Verse two, stop being conformed to this age. rather be being transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing you may discern, right? This is a lot of the same Greek language. You just have to trust me, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And what Beal is getting at is what I think Paul is getting at, is that the cure for idolatry is the gospel, that idolatry presents to you a false god to worship. And the gospel says, no, here's the true God. This is what he is really like. This is who you really are. Trust in him. And that this message isn't only for unbelievers. It's also for believers who struggle, like me. Like, I think I'm an OCD guy. I struggle with, like, all kinds of idolatrous temptations. And so I got to be addicted, as it were, to the gospel. I have to let this gospel transform my mind. Because our minds are broken by the fall, going all the way back to Adam. And we naturally believe lies, and we naturally tend towards darkness. And the gospel brings us, and brings us, and brings us. And so the Christian needs it as much as the unbeliever. And so that's all my admonition and encouragement to you is, never stray from this. So Paul wants Spaniards to get it, but he wants Romans to get it. I want everyone in your life to get it, but I also want you to get it. Because if we don't, we will become entrapped and gripped by what Piper calls the dark exchange. And so I would say this morning, exchange the lie for the truth, as it is in Christ. Exchange the darkness of idolatry for Christ this morning. And that's not just for unbelievers. Some of you, I guarantee, many of us have probably felt some kind of conviction. I have when I was studying this. I know there's some things in my life that need to go. Some things that are taking God's rightful place in my affections and in my thinking. If you don't know what your idol is, just what do you think about most? And if it's not God, that's probably an idol. And ask God to purge you from it, to cleanse you from it, to transform your mind. And the best way to transform your mind is by thinking about the gospel, which is all about the mercies that God has shown you in Christ. That's wonderful truth. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the gospel. I need power, Lord, not only to be forgiven of my sins, but to be delivered from its power, its grip, its alluring lies that I so often believe. And so, Lord, I pray that even now we'd be resolving in our hearts to be in your word, not just to read it so we don't feel guilty on Sunday, but to know you, the living God, to know what you have done for us in Christ, to meditate on your mercies. Father, I know that if we meditated on your mercies, we would glorify you. We would be giving you thanks always and for everything, Father. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is to be spirit-filled. Lord, I ask that you would forgive me and forgive us of how little we glorify you, how often we glorify ourselves or glorify celebrities or glorify structures or governments. You alone are worthy to be central, Lord, in our affections and in our thinking and in our living. Help us to give you glory this week. Help us to be thankful for life and breath and for food and for spouse and for kids and for work and for health and for everything, every good and every perfect gift. Help us to vocalize that. Father, give us the power to live in a manner worthy of the gospel, by the gospel, by your Spirit, as we keep looking to Jesus. Even as it says, Abraham gave glory to God as he believed and obeyed. Would you help us to glorify you this week, Father, by believing the gospel and obeying it? Would you help us to throw out, help me to throw out the idols And sometimes they hurt when they get entrenched, but help us to rip those weeds out. Father, make us pure. Help us to honor you as you deserve it, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.