Second Commandment

We are continuing in Exodus and well, we really have our second little mini-series in Exodus. We had the grumbling mini-series and now we've got the Ten Commandments. We're on the second commandment. You can turn in your Bibles to Exodus 20. The context is God has saved his people. He has called them to himself. He's making them a holy nation. And now he is giving his expectations of how they will live as His people. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. God said you were to be monotheistic. You were to worship one God alone. And I am that one God who is the one true God and the God who saved you. The second commandment tells us how to worship him or protects us from worshiping him wrongly. You're to worship the one true God and you were to worship him according to his way with no images. It's interesting. There's 10 commandments. One fifth of those commandments is focused on idolatry. The one true God, the one true God, the right way. This is important. Really, if we're to look at the entirety of the Bible, there's a number of ways we could organize it with themes. One of those themes is this. There is a struggle between true faith and idolatry. We can look at the Bible and we can see that that would that would help us understand a great amount of what's going on. We have struggled as humanity between trusting the one God and trusting idols. Will we trust the creator or will we place our trust in something created? Will we love the redeemer or love the sins he has redeemed us from? Will we obey God or will we serve idols? We must worship God. No gods before him. That's last week. This week, we must worship the right God in the right way. I quoted Tozer last week. I quote Tozer quite often with this particular quote, especially what you think about God is the most important thing about you. How you think about God is the most important thing about you. And if you want to know what someone thinks of God, don't look at their doctrinal statement. Watch their worship. How you worship tells you more about what we think of God than our doctrinal statement, because that's how we express ourselves to God. As Christians, our worship must include reverence because God is holy, repentance because we are sinners and rejoicing because Christ has saved us. Look at the bulletin. We start, O for a thousand tongues to sing the great Redeemer's praise. There's reverence for the holy and almighty God. Come help us to sing your praises. There's repentance. O great God of highest heaven, occupy my heart. Remove the vices that keep me from seeing you and loving you. And there's rejoicing. Mercy, my God, is the theme of my song. In Christ alone, I have a perfect plea. Our message this morning, we are called to flee idols and cling to the one God who saves us. We're continuing the Ten Commandments. These are our commandments in Christ. Let us turn to God's word. I'll begin reading in chapter 20, verse one, because that context is very important. The first word that our God says here is the most important word. He saves us to be obedient. We don't obey enough to be saved. Chapter 20, verse 1, And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers from the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, showing steadfast love. to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. As you look at our text this morning, there's an outline. I hope this helps you follow our first. The first thing we'll see is that God directs how we worship him. Secondly, we'll see that our worship controls us. Third, God desires our worship. Fourth, Our worship is not private. And then finally, our hearts are the source of our idolatry. God directs how we worship Him. Our worship controls us. God desires our worship. Our worship is not private. First, the simple, clear, basic point of the command, you shall not make for yourself a carved image. God directs how we worship it. Now, as I look into our culture, and I look out, and I assume if I visit your homes, you're not going to have idols like they had in the ancient Near East or the time of Israel coming out of Egypt. I don't see making images and making statues a problem that really plagues our society. No, the opposite problem. We believe there is no God and we ignore Him. It was a great temptation for Israel. We see just chapters later, after God had spoken directly to them and said, do not make an image, they call Moses back. But while Moses is on the mountain, they get tired of waiting and they make a golden calf. Idols are going to plague Israel to the point where God takes them out of the promised land, drags them into a land that is plagued with idols to cure them of their idols. For us, it's not making images. It's questioning His existence. It's worshiping something other than God, and it's not an idol. It's ourselves. Idolatry is a much bigger picture than just making a carved image or having a picture to look at and think that God is in that picture. No, idolatry is putting your affection that God alone is worthy of on something else. But let's look at the basic of this command. Have no carved images of likeness of nothing. So why would this be offensive to God? Here's some truths about God, I see why idolatry, making images is offensive to God. First, God is the creator and is distinct from his creation. God is the creator and he is distinct from his creation. When someone would make an idol, a statue, they will believe that a God existed in that statue. Not the entire of that God, but that God was bound, spiritually present in that statue. They're believing that somehow there's a syncretism, there's a unity of God with that physical being. And what we know as Christians is that God is distinct from his creation. He's spoken into existence and he is different. He is distinct from his creation. So whenever you believe God is in that idol, you would believe that you can manipulate and determine what God did. You would try to give that God gifts. You would try to burn incense. You try to make that God happy so that you can manipulate that God into blessing you. Well, this denies God's ultimate goodness. He doesn't mean manipulated to give us good gifts. It denies God's freedom to give good gifts as he desires. Ultimately, idolatry represents a lack of trust in the goodness of God to do what he wants and to know that whatever he wants is good. So the first thing we see that's offensive is that God is distinct from his creation. He's not captured in anything in this creation. Secondly, and even more so, God cannot be represented by things made by our hands. God cannot be represented by things made our hands. God is holy. God is infinite in his beauty and his glory. There's nothing we could make that could ever even begin to reflect the power and the beauty of God. Yes, God has made us creative. God has made us to think about him greatly, but nothing we could make could ever capture the glory of his infinite essence. Seriously, if you go to Isaiah 40, it's great satire. The prophet mocks idolatry. How do you worship something that could have been made into something plain and for ordinary use, but since it's been made to a god, you bow down before it? He points out that it's the will of the craftsman that makes an idol something holy and something to be revered rather than a fork or a spoon or even less so, a spork. It's great satire in that you think this is divine, but it could have made it into anything. Why think that God exists here? In the early church, it's called the Epistle to Diognetus. It's an early church writing, and he goes even farther with this satire. You're metal God's rust. You're wooden God's rot. You have to move them because they can't move themselves. You have to protect them so they don't get stolen. You have to protect your gods. Mocking the very nature of idolatry, because it's it's silly as we see it from a distance. Let's get back to Isaiah. Isaiah six is really one of those important chapters on idolatry. Isaiah, as God is calling him to be a prophet, God says they are blind. They're deaf. They do not understand. And it's because they're worshipping idols. He's saying you reflect what you revere. If you're going to turn your mind and your heart to worshipping something that cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel, cannot think, you're going to be like them. If you look to God, the God of life, the God that gives eyes to see, the God that gives a heart to love, you will be like him. You'll reflect him. But when you turn your heart and your mind, your worship to idols, you will become like them. Hard, stiff-necked, immovable. Spurgeon says this, idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images. And that's because nothing can reflect God truly. Calvin says this, a true image of God is not to be found in all the world, and hence his glory is defiled and his truth corrupted by the lie whenever he is set before our eyes in a visible form. Therefore, to devise any image of God is itself impious, because by this corruption, his majesty is adulterated and he is figured to be other than he is. There's a warning here. What do you think about when you think of God? One, we can see J.I. Packer, he got in a lot of trouble for this, but he challenges evangelicals. Why do we have pictures of Jesus in our home? Is that a true representation of Jesus? Is that a true representation of God? Jesus did not have blonde hair and blue eyes. I am certain of that. We need to be careful of casting our ideal of what a man is upon Jesus in a picture. More so, we need to be careful of the ideas that we project upon God, that we don't make our ideals and our sinful desires who God is. No, we hear from God who He is. We receive truth from God concerning who He is, and we worship Him as He is. No images. Third, the third thing we learn about God as we think about images is the reason this is offensive to God. God provided his own image and creation. I'm looking at about 170 of them right now. We are made in God's image, he's provided something that images and he's provided his own reflection, we were created to reflect his glory throughout all the earth. Adam was told, you will exercise dominion, you will exercise my right rule, reflect me. And instead of choosing that high honor, that high privileged position above all other things in creation, Adam saw the fruit that God commanded him not to eat is something to be desired more. He made an idol out of his own appetite. He made an idol out of becoming a God himself as Satan tempted him. He's ruled by his appetite. We no longer reflect God as we were. We still are made with a sanctity, we're still sanctified in the sense that life is precious, life is sacred, but we no longer reflect God. Instead, we reflect our own sinful desires. Next, Jesus is the perfect image of God. Where we fail, Jesus succeeds. Jesus Christ is fully man and fully God. He is the new Adam, born without sin, and therefore he perfectly reflected God the way an Adam was meant to. He is without sin. He's also fully God, so he can tell Philip, when you see me, you see the Father. He perfectly taught everything that God wanted him to say. He perfectly did everything God wanted him to do. He was a perfect image and reflection of God. This is why the author of Hebrews is able to say in chapter one, he is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of his nature. He was born without sin, so he reflected God in every way. He was born without sin so that he was perfect and righteous. Let me stop here, because this is this is the gospel, friends. If you're not a Christian, this is why the gospel is so important. We stopped reflecting God. We stopped obeying God. We do not reflect His glory. We spread our own glory. We stopped wanting to obey. And so the wrath of God is upon us. Jesus Christ, He came and He lived the life we were meant to live. He lived the life of obedience that was perfect. And this is important. This is Christianity. The one who was perfect and innocent and righteous, he died on the cross as if a sinner. So that all of us who have gone our own way, all of us who have tried to live for all glory, all of us who have rebelled against God, when we believe in him, the wrath of God is taking off of us, is placed upon him. He, the innocent, righteous one, he dies for our unrighteousness. And then his righteousness is counted towards us. It's put in our credit. Now, God looks at us and he sees that we are no longer, he looks at us as if we are no longer sinners. He looks at us as if we are righteous. And even his own son. The fact that Christ came and he lived the perfect life, the wrath of God is removed. When Christ, because Christ died for us, we are no longer guilty. The wrath of God is satisfied and we are forgiven. Finally, what we learn about God and we think about images. God now directs our worship to be in spirit and in truth. Now, worship isn't abstract. So it doesn't have images, doesn't have this this concrete thing, making an image of God. So what does it look like? Worship, the worship of the one God, it actually involves everything. Everything we do. Everything we think, everything we say, every part of life. Worship now involves real things. It involves everything. See, we are supposed to be using every part of life to worship God. We're supposed to be using everything God gives us to enjoy him. Now, this is the perversion of the heart. This is the nature of sin. We take God's good gifts and instead of using them to enjoy him, we just use them. We just enjoy them rather instead of using everything God's given us to enjoy him, to praise him, to thank him, to give him honor and glory. We just look to those things and we seek to enjoy them apart from God. Everything is supposed to be used to enjoy God. Now, some of you may be thinking, but but that one thing, how could I possibly use that to enjoy God? I hope you're asking that question because that one thing may be an idol. If you can't think, how could I possibly use this one thing in my life to enjoy and worship God? That one thing is probably an idol. Christians, we're under a particular kind of danger because we believe in God, we believe we should speak to God and we should tell him our heart's desires. We can be idolatrous in prayer when we look and we pray to God, asking him for our heart's desires, apart from asking him what his desires are. It goes like this. God, would you please just give me this? If you gave me this, I would be happy and content. This is what you're doing. You're using God to enjoy something else. God, would you be the means by which I get that one thing that I truly and absolutely desire? That's idolatry. We go to God, we go to God and pray and we ask him, Lord, change my heart. Help me to see what your heart's desire is. May my heart be aligned with it. And then we make our requests. So, this command tells us a lot about God. It tells us a lot about ourselves. The command not to make images. That's what we learn about God. Now, there's three things that it teaches us about ourselves. First, we are by nature worshipers. We are by nature worshipers. We all worship. We were created to worship. That's how you were designed. That's what your purpose is. You worship everyone here. If you're not a Christian, if you're an atheist, you worship because that's what God designed you to do. The question is, what or who do you worship? It's not if we are worshiping, it's what or hopefully who we are worshiping. Secondly, we are sinners, so our worship is naturally wrong. Because we are born in sin, because we are inclined to sin, because the heart, as Calvin said, is an idol factory, our worship is, apart from the work of the Spirit, apart from the Word of God, it's naturally wrong. We worship things that are not God. We worship our reputation, our money, our lust, our appetite, our self-worth, our success. We worship things that compete with the one true God. As Sam read earlier, Romans 1. The key is that we take our eyes off of the glory of God and we start putting on the glory of the things that are less glorious in this world. Listen carefully in the calls of relationship. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. God has given us up over to our own hearts. Our hearts naturally are going towards something not God. We need to be aware of that so that we can protect ourselves from that. Third, the third thing it teaches is about ourselves. We are saved to worship the one God the right way. We are saved to worship the one God the right way. Now, I would love to give you a long list of rules and regulations to tell you to worship, but that would probably keep you from worshiping because it would help us think about how good we're doing with the rules and regulations that would keep us in our self-righteousness, which is not worship. So let me try to be, I hope not abstract, but more general. To worship is to love. There's a love that only God is worthy of. He created us to love him in a way that we're not supposed to love anything else. And it's the greatest love. It's our greatest affection. And we have a certain limited capacity to love. And what we've done is we've taken that love that God deserves. We've placed it on other things. And in order to love God, you have to stop loving those things. You only have so much love. You transfer your love from things that are of this world and you put them upon Christ. And this isn't something you do casually. You don't fall in love with Christ, you don't fall out of love with sin. You are wooed by Christ, you're moved to love him, but then if you're a Christian, you don't casually remove idols, you intentionally pursue seeking forgiveness of idols in Christ, repentance and placing your affection on Christ more. Our second. main point here, back to the main outline. Our worship controls us, and here we're looking at just that first phrase in verse 5. Our worship controls us. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. Bow down is prostrating oneself in reverence. So worship has an aspect of reverence and trust. It says you shall serve them. Now, if you've been with us in Exodus, The word serve here is the same word we've seen over and over again. When God would send Moses into Pharaoh and say, you shall let my people go so they shall serve me. See, we're called to serve God, we're called to give up our obedience, our energy, our resources. He's saying here you shall not serve these gods. How perverse that is to think someone could be saved by Yahweh and then want to serve other gods. But that is what we do. One of the things I want us to see here, we become servants of whatever we worship. What we worship becomes our master. We become servants of what we worship. What we worship becomes our master. No one's free. As we were created to be worshipers, we are under the master of whatever we worship. So the decision is what you worship. Here's a decision, the one who God who loves us, sent his son to die for us, clearly intends all things for our good. The one who truly is able to satisfy our longings or idols that promise that they can deliver us. They promise that they can satisfy us. But they're liars, they only intend our death and destruction. To seek satisfaction in idols is like trying to quench a thirst with salt water. It only makes you more thirsty. We have to make a decision. Will we make our master the one true God or those things that claim to be God? Now, I assume most of us were Virginians. We all hate tyrants. That's what our flag says. Death always to tyrants. We hate tyrants. We hate anyone who has a tyrannical rule over people because they're abusive. They don't intend for that person's good. When we choose to worship idols, we're putting ourselves under a tyrant. We are choosing a tyrant over the good God. God said, be careful, sin is lurking at your door. Its desire is to destroy you. When we worship idols, when we worship our sin, we're putting ourselves under a master who wants to destroy us. That's why the satire is so thick in Isaiah and in the Epistle to Agnetus. How could you possibly want to do that? Why would you intentionally put yourself under the master who seeks to kill you? We were created to worship, we were created to have a master, and God designed us for him to be our master. The third thing we see, continuing the same verse, God desires our worship. God desires our worship. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. Now, we need to do some work on this word, jealous, because typically in our culture, when we use the word jealous, it has connotations of envy. And that's not what's going on here. This is a righteous jealousy. This is a jealousy. Well, I'm trying to get some examples of what this jealousy is like. This jealousy is like a wife longing for her husband's attention because all he's doing is looking at pornography and look at other women. It's a wife's longing. She's jealous for her husband's attention when all he's doing is looking at other women. She deserves his attention. The covenant has been made that he gives her his attention. She's jealous for it. And he continues to look at pornography and look at other women. She's jealous in a righteous way because she deserves his attention. The metaphor is actually throughout scripture. God is our bridegroom. He deserves our worship. but we make ourselves out to be whores, the scripture says. As you are called and covenant to love your wife, we are called to love and worship God. Now let's not miss this. I am the Lord your God and I am jealous for your worship. This is amazing if we think about the context. Israel has grumbled and complained and kicked and fought against God for how many chapters before every chapter, 19 of them, every episode, God was seeking to save them and to love them and bring them into worship him. And they kept saying, God, could you just leave us alone? They complained constantly, and God still says, I'm jealous for your worship. This is amazing. He desires our worship. One, the fact that the one God who needs nothing desires our worship. That is amazing. But secondly, we're rebellious. We fight against him, and yet he still desires our love. You may be sitting there and you may be saying, you have no idea what we've done. God couldn't possibly love me. This is the beauty of the gospel. God loves the unlovely. No one in here is worthy of God's love. No one in here has deserved God's love. It is God's great, holy, infinite love that is called everyone who is his own child. Your sin is repented of and you believe in Christ and he pursues you. He created us to worship him. He does not need us, but he desires our worship. Our fourth main point. Our worship is not private. Our worship is not private. Hear the warning and the promise attached to this commandment. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. We hear the warning. There will be iniquity. poured out upon those who hate, through the third and fourth generation. But here's the main, the real difference here, showing steadfast love to thousands for those who love me and keep my commandments. The first thing I see here is that Christianity is not a private religion. That's a real error that has crept into the church that somehow Christianity is a private matter. Your personal beliefs, your religion, it's a personal matter. If you think your religion is private, it's not Christian. Christianity is a public religion. We publicly testify Christ in baptism. We are called to share intimately in each other's lives. We are called to publicly proclaim him. We're a family. called to watch over one another, care for one another, reprove, comfort, to be connected with one another. Christianity is not private. What we do affects other people. Here we see that our worship affects other people. If we deny God, as he talks to parents specifically, iniquity will be visited upon them for third and fourth generation. Now, what does this mean? What does it mean that iniquity will be visited upon your children to the third and fourth generation if you don't obey me? But, steadfast love will be given to you for thousands of generations for those who love and keep my commandments. First, I do not think even in the context this is referring to salvation. This is why it's important to remember that the law, which the Ten Commandments are in here, they're temporary. This is for a nation whom God is the King. This is for a physical nation in a physical race, and he's not promising salvation as the king of Israel. He's promising protection and provision. Let me at least this another way that I think will hit home more. I praise God that my disobedience does not deny God from saving my daughter. My children's salvation is not based upon my obedience. It's based upon the obedience of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross and rose again in their faith in that Christ. My life does not affect directly God's free choice to save, to love, to choose my children. It's based upon the obedience of Christ and his free will. Secondly, how many of us were saved out of completely pagan homes? God's grace is powerful. God's grace saves those who were not raised to be Christians. God's grace saves those of us who were not raised in a Christian home. And the other side of this, how many parents labored so faithfully in love for children who don't know Christ? We need to be praying for those parents. We need to be praying for those children. Our obedience does not directly make God save our children. We actually do this in Deuteronomy 24, 16. Here, the emphasis on the individual and their responsibility is clear. Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one should be put to death for his own sin. Death is the consequence of sin. You are dead. You are judged. You die for your own sin. God is saying that every generation is responsible for their own sin. It's the fact that our sins do affect other people, is what this verse is getting at as we get back to it. So what does this mean? Third and fourth generation is contrasted with a thousand. God is giving us a picture of what he wants. A thousand, a perfect lineage, a perfect history of God's people worshiping God, but we don't see anybody loving God and keeping his commandments until his own son comes. So, parents, I do not want to pass this moment. How we worship affects our family. How we worship teaches our children what we truly value. May I ask this? Do you prioritize corporate worship? What other event leads you to skip the corporate worship of God's people here in the church? When you skip God's corporate worship, God's body coming together in sonship, what you're teaching your children is that thing is more important. You teach your children what your priorities are, what you think is more important based upon how you spend your time. One of the best ways to teach your children that Christ and his body and loving him are important is by being regular and faithful and present. Do you prioritize worship in your home? Your children watch. It's amazing what I learned about myself from your children observing my little weird tics preaching. When they come up to me, they tell me the things I do that I never knew I did. They're observant. They watch. Your children are learning from what they see you do. You can tell your children about Jesus Christ all you want. It's when they see how you worship Him, right? They know who we worship by how we worship. Your children are watching. Do they see us praying, reading, and loving God? We're teaching our children to worship God or idols. Finally, I'm going to somewhat move beyond the text briefly. Our last point, our hearts are the source of idolatry. As I started, I don't see carved images as something that I need to go in your homes and start taking out and burning. I don't assume that's the problem, that that's plaguing the church and having actual physical images. But I knew, though, that we are all idolaters. We all long and love things that are not God. We look at Ezekiel 13, 4. Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Idolatry is a heart matter. We love things we should not. We can look to 1 John 5, 21. Beloved children, keep yourselves from idols. Idolatry is a matter of heart. It's a battle that takes place in your heart. It's a battle for your affection. It's a battle for your love. Love the Lord your God above all else. What is your greatest affection for? We too often think of this world as a playground when really it's a battleground for your worship. Will you worship God or will you worship something else? Now, what I really want to do in this application was to go through all the different idols and attack each one, helping you understand each one and see each one. I'm not going to do that. We don't have time to do that. So, I'm going to try to do something a little more general again. I'm going to ask two questions. First, how do I identify idols? How do we identify? The first thing I want to do is know how to identify them ourselves. The second question is, how do we get rid of idols? The first. Step, I believe in identifying idols is to seek the glory of God. The first thing, the first step for you to start identifying idols is to see God for who he is. Pray to God for a clear vision of his glory, of his honor, of his power, and then all those cheap imitations will be found out. You must first see the one who is light so he can shed light on all our idols. We must first see how worthy he is of our love, and then we recognize these things that we're giving our love to that are unworthy. Secondly, First, seek the glory of God. Secondly, pray for clarity from the Spirit. Our hearts are deceptive. They say our hearts are idle factors. They love longing for these things that do not satisfy because we are bent away from God in our fallen state. We're controlled by so many sinful desires. There's so many layers of sin. It's deceptive. It's difficult. We must pray for wisdom and clarity from the Spirit. Let me just give you an example of the layeredness of sin. Let's say you love money. Let's just pretend Bill loves money, because no one here obviously would love money. Bill loves money. There's two reasons for Bill loving money. It's not just loving money. One, Bill could love security. You know, having money makes you feel secure as if you can then purchase whatever you need. What you see there is a lack of trust in God. A love of money is motivated by a desire for for for security. And we do not trust God for that security. Another motive would be this. We love money because we think the things that it buys provide us the happiness we need. We look to our consumer. nature. And we say, if only we had enough money, then we could buy what we want and we would be happy. We believe the lie from every commercial that's on TV. All you need is this and you'll be happy. You see, the love for money is one thing, but there's different ways that can be motivated. There's a desire for security. There's a desire for for buying things that will make us happy. We need a spirit to help us see how complicated and powerful these idols are over us. Another way to identify idols. The first one is to seek God. The second one is to pray for clarity of spirit. The third one, what occupies your mind? Ask yourself, what do I think about when I have free time to think? What do I daydream about? What do I long for? What occupies my mind when I have time to daydream of what I really love? Secondly, What controls my time? What do I prioritize? What do I do in my free time? That will tell you your idols. If you have a hard time asking yourself questions, ask your friends this. What do I talk about? When we come together, what do I talk about? Am I talking about God or am I talking about football? Am I talking about the stuff that I have or am I talking about what I do? Am I talking about my resume? What do I talk about? What we talk about reveals our hearts. Ask your friends, your spouse, what do I talk about? And finally, what do you do without thinking God for it? What do you do without thinking God for it? If you can't participate in something without saying, I am thankful for God for this thing that I can invest my time and energy in it. It's an idol. If you can't use it to enjoy God, it's an idol. And finally, how do we get rid of idols? First and foremost, look to Christ. How do you get rid of idols? Once you identify an idol, you must look to Christ. First, Christ is the one who gives you assurance that you are forgiven for that idol. We must remove the guilt that can plague us in finding an idol. We must see the forgiveness and that our guilt has been removed by looking to Christ. Secondly, we look to Christ because he gives us freedom over the idol. In his resurrection, he frees us from the power of sin. He tells us this idol no longer can tell you I'm your master. You are a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is your master. He gives you freedom from its power. So first, look to Christ for forgiveness and for freedom. Secondly, pray to the Father that he would help you see his glory. Yeah, we're going to come back to that because that is essential in overcoming idols. To get rid of an idol, you must identify it as less worthy than God, and then you have to start setting your affections on God all the more. Again, there's a transfer of love. You don't just look at the idol and say, I'm going to stop loving it. No, you say, I'm going to take the love that I've been giving to that idol that is unworthy of. I'm going to give it to the one who has created me and was worthy of it. And then finally. Pray for the spirits leading. Pray that the spirit would help you to see an idol for what it is. It seeks to destroy you. It's an opposition to God. It leads to death. Help. Pray that the spirit would help you see sin for what it is. Help. Pray the spirit would help you to hate sin. We are supposed to hate sin so that we can love God more. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you that you have saved us. even while we were worshiping things in rebellion against you. You saved us. You called us out from the destructive practices of self-love, of loving things of this creation. And by your great mercy and your grace, by your infinite love, you have called us to love you and to worship you again. Lord, help us. Help us to see you. Help us to see your glory and your beauty and how worthy you are of our worship and our love. And help us to place our affections upon you wholly and fully and truly. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.