Churches in Riverton

“But look, listen. If more meant more satisfied and delighted, the wealthiest or even lottery winners would be the most satisfied of all people. They are not. We must demolish the God of greed. It's a terrible God. Let's talk about the God of beauty and sex for just a little bit. The God of beauty and sex, which really underneath it is could be the false God of of love, what people just give me. And we could do the same thing. If that satisfied, then the people who have the most sex or are in the sex industry would be the most satisfied of us all. That is absolutely not the case. Sex is a horrible God. Horrible false god to worship. We dis we demolish, we dismantle these things that seem to promise some sort of salvation and transcendence when they don't. Because there will be a moment that those gods go silent. No response. No attentiveness. They do not care. False gods always, always, always go silent in the end.”

“Okay? But this is also the way of irreligion too. Because irreligion is I will behave and do everything I can without God still hoping that I earn what I'm after. I will behave so I can control every aspect of my life. I act, and then what I'm pursuing will act in accordance with my work. It will give me what I'm after. This is just how worship looks for so many people. Say it like this, worshipers often behave in ways that they believe will force their God to act. If I do enough, I will force my God to do what I want. This is the way of worship for so many, but not Jesus followers. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. I wanna illustrate though this point in a bit of a unique way. I wanna help us spot when this happens.”

“And when they get to the end of their life and take their last breath, the God of career is nowhere to be found. This plays out with all false gods because all false gods go silent in the end. Live for beauty. You get to the end, that god is silent. Live for your money. You get to the end. It cannot save you from death. Get to the end and there's still relationship turmoil and conflict. Okay? You can't buy your way out of some of that. No amount of money can insulate your life from what's about to happen in the end. And on that day, we need a God who's already lived through death. That is Jesus. Listen, we don't wanna get to the end and cry out to the God we knew and be met with silence. You don't want that. I don't want that for you.”

“See, the thing about counterfeit rival gods is they can be sneaky to see. I mean, the worship of all with the the the statues and the shrines and the temples, like it was easy to see. The rival gods in our lives are just harder to see. So we must get good at spotting them in our lives. Now here's the challenge. Because a rival god is any good thing that becomes an ultimate thing, we have to know how to spot when a good thing becomes a god thing. Is it a bad thing? So I thought I would illustrate it with something that's been in my feet, at least when I was writing this sermon. Let's talk about Coachella for just a little bit. Alright?”