Gold In The Ground | Fool’s Gold | Jeremy DeWeerdt

All right, hello, City First, how you doing today? How you feeling? Everybody happy to be in church? I'm glad you're here. I wanna take a moment, and we just recognize the pastors here at Spring Creek, and I just wanna say thank you on behalf of Jen and myself. We are very honored. Thank you for your recognition, but I just want you to know we're humbled to do what we get to do, but I wanna highlight something. There are a whole host of pastors, some of them are on the stage, some of them are still running things, and many of them are even at other locations right now. These people are the heroes of this place. They are running the various ministries, and so I want us to just take a moment, and I want us to recognize all the pastors in all the ministries at all locations. Can we put our hands together for all of them? They are heroes. We love them. Jen and I could not do that, what we do without them, so I just want you to know they are amazing, amazing souls, and they love Jesus, and they love you. They love you. Well, we are in this series called Gold in the Ground.

It's actually, today is our last weekend of the series, and the topic this month has been focused on discovering the life that God wants us to live, the purpose he wants us to live, and how to kind of dig through the rock and find that and have it become a reality. So I have a story for you. Back in 1848, there was a man by the name of James W. Marshall and here's his mug right here. He was out in California in a place called Sutter's Mill by Coloma, California, and he discovered gold. He dug up gold. Word began to spread literally around the world in a day where there wasn't TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, you know, the internet, nothing like that, and literally, word spread so quickly that within a year, 300,000 people from places as far away as Latin America, Europe, and China, as well as all of America, descended upon that area to try to find gold. These people were called the 49ers because they basically, they came in 1849. Some of you are like going, oh, that's a football team. Well, now you know why, all right? It's called the 49ers, and many of them found gold. Many of them became rich overnight, literally, and it was a pretty amazing thing in our history. However, there were some 49ers that got out there to California and they discovered gold and they found out, though, that it wasn't real gold.

In fact, it was called pyrite. This is a picture of pyrite. It looks like gold, but it's not gold, and it has absolutely no value. There are stories of people that dug up these rocks of pyrite and they thought that they had become millionaires overnight only to find out they were just rocks, they were worthless. And some 49ers even loaded up their entire wagon, because that's what they used back then, wagons and horses, load up their entire wagon full of pyrite and took it to the assayer, and basically, that was the individual who determined whether it was gold or not, and that person would say, I think this isn't gold, and they'd found out that they had just hauled hundreds of pounds of rock for no reason. So these 49ers were called fools, and that's why pyrite, the nickname of it, is fool's gold, fool's gold. I remember going to Cripple Creek, Colorado, as a child, my grandparents lived in Colorado Springs, and right up into the hills there, into the mountains, there's Cripple Creek, and it's an old mining town, and I went there, they had in the gift shop, they had pyrite, little pieces of pyrite that you could buy, and so I asked my grandparents, I was like, well, can I get some, and they bought it for me, and I brought it back to Rockford, and I put the little pyrite on my dresser,

and I thought it was so cool. But that had no value, it literally was a rock. It had no value at all. Fool's gold looks like treasure, but it really has the value of trash. And today, I wanna talk about how sometimes we can pour our time and energy in life into chasing things that we think will bring us treasure and richness in life, only to realize that it doesn't have any value at all. In other words, it's easy to pursue what glitters and truly miss what's gold. Really, that we could chase things with our efforts and our time and our energy and our hearts, and we think this is gonna make us rich in life, it's going to add, but it doesn't, it's actually just a waste of time. 300,000 people from around the world went to California, and it was called the gold rush. And just like the impatient prospectors in the gold rush, who grabbed at anything that glittered, we too can rush after things that look promising when we grow tired of waiting for God's timing. We get a gold rush, but it's fool's gold. There's a story in the Old Testament that illustrates what happens to the human heart when we become foolish, when we're forced to wait. In Exodus chapter 24, God calls Moses to meet him on a mountain. Moses has just brought three million Israelites

out of slavery, out of Egypt, and they're now in the wilderness. They're on the way to the promised land, and God says, we're gonna put a pause on it. You're gonna meet me on this mountain. We're gonna talk a little bit. And what God was doing was communicating to Moses how the children of Israel, God's people, are to live. And so he was giving them commandments, like the 10 commandments, all kinds of instructions. And the Bible says in Exodus chapter 24, verse 18, it says Moses stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. It's a long time. The three million Israelites were at the base of the mountain waiting for Moses, their leader, and God to converse and for Moses to return. However, the people of God got super impatient. And eight chapters later, we see in Exodus 32, we see this. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron, who was the high priest, and said, come and make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. So in other words, they're going, we're getting impatient waiting for Moses and God to do whatever they're doing, and we don't even know. He might've died on that mountain. And we're getting impatient.

And so Aaron, you're our pastor, and we want you to make us some false gods, some idols that we can worship because we're getting super impatient. What does this show us? It shows us this, that when God seems slow, our hearts start shopping for substitutes. And that's even in 2025. Substitute sources for joy, substitute sources for satisfaction, for happiness, for fulfillment, or finding value. And what makes it worse is you and I now live in a culture that is hooked on hurry. We're hooked on hurry. Everything is now. I have a confession to make. The DeWert house is an Amazon house. We use Amazon a lot. It makes it so convenient, right, for shopping. Do you remember in like the olden days where you had to go to a store to buy something? Well, now you just go to your computer or your phone, your smartphone, the app, or whatever. In fact, it seems like the Amazon guy is coming to our house on the daily, literally. And in fact, the other day he rang the doorbell to do a wellness check on Jen because he hadn't delivered anything for a couple of days, just to make sure she was okay. I noticed something the last time that I ordered on Amazon.

I noticed that I could get whatever it was I wanted shipped to me next day, and I could pick a window of time. I could pick a window of time that it could be delivered between four and 8 a.m. I mean, I thought that was interesting. I'm like, wow, I don't have to wait until noon to get my socks. I can now get them delivered to my porch at 4 a.m.? Wow, what a society and a civilization we live in, right? But here's the problem with that. We think that's the way life should be, and that's the way God should be. And when we pray prayers, we expect him to deliver the answer on our porch by 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. And we obey God, and we know that God says, if you obey me, that you'll, your blessings. And so we make a right choice and obey him, and then we expect the blessing to be there right away within 24 hours. We read the promises that are in the word of God, and we say, God, this is what your word says. I stand on that promise, and we expect divine prime delivery, right? But that's just not how God works. In fact, I've said this many times, that God's never late. He's just not on our schedule. His timing is perfect. Our timing is many times unrealistic, or it's not right.

Divine delays are never fun. In fact, I will say waiting is never wonderful. I don't like to wait, you don't like to wait. In fact, I would say in the over 35 years that I've been a follower of Jesus. this, one thing I've discovered is that God rarely makes you hurry. He most of the time makes you wait. There's very few times that I can even think of in the last three plus decades that God said, hey, hurry up. Instead, it's always like, hey, Jer, slow down turbo. You see, what we do with delay reveals our spiritual maturity. Life is full of delays and waiting, and the children of Israel were sick of it. They are down at the base of the mountain, and they're waiting for Moses and God to finish up and they start getting all antsy and they start getting all like bothered and salty and everything. And I think it's just interesting that God had delivered them out of 400 years of slavery, but they couldn't wait 40 days. They had seen miracle after miracle after miracle in their lives during the exodus out of Egypt. I mean, there were the plagues that came that were the catalyst that made the Egyptians say, yeah, we're going to let we're going to let God's people go. And then there was the big body of water, the sea that literally opened up and they were able to walk across on dry land. I mean, miracle after miracle. And yet now they're in the wilderness and they're having to wait a couple of weeks and they are ready to throw in the towel on their faith. Here's the unfortunate part of our humanness. You ready? We have what I call messed up math. Messed up math. You go, what's messed up math? Okay, here it is. 100 divine blessings plus one unanswered prayer in our minds equals one unanswered prayer. See what I

did there? I mean, God could do all these things. He could have hundreds of blessings. He could answer prayers in the past. He could have given you resource and provision and all of the different things of the past. But right now you're up against something. You're praying a prayer. It's not being answered. You don't remember all that. All of it that you remember is just the one unanswered prayer. And Israelites, they're the same way. I mean, they're no longer in slavery. They were slaves. They have freedom. They were being beaten and abused and tortured and they were working their fingers to the bone. They now have freedom. They're on their way to the promised land and they have a slight delay and they're like, oh, we don't believe in God anymore. And before we sit there and think to ourselves, oh, that primitive civilization, how stupid were they? We are advanced. We are so smart. We're educated. We have affluence and success. No, we do the same thing. When we have to wait, our hearts start shopping for a substitute God. Now, we don't like to word it that way because we don't think like, well, I don't have any idols in my home. I don't like have a statue somewhere or I don't worship. Okay. We start making all the excuses, but in reality, our heart starts searching for a source of happiness and comfort that we aren't finding readily available with God in our timing. And so most of the time, the substitute God is something that the real God actually gave us. You go, what do you mean by that? Well, what did the children of Israel do? Well, it says this in Exodus 32. It says, Aaron, who's that pastor, he's supposed to be leading them, but he's leading them in a bad way. He says, take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me. So

all the people took off their earrings and they brought them to Aaron. They took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. So literally he's calling for their gold. He's like, you give me your gold. Now I think this is very interesting. I want us to stop for a moment. Let's just not read that at face value. Let's go slowly through the story. Slaves don't own gold. They had just gotten released out of Egypt. They don't have, in fact, slaves, if you look at the history of slavery throughout all the millennia, slaves are purposely kept poor. They don't have resource. Where do they get gold? Where do they get it? Well, you have to go back to the beginning of the story after the plagues are happening and God sends like this move in the land of Egypt. That is kind of the catalyst that makes Pharaoh and the others say, we're going to let God's people go as they're leaving. This happens in Exodus chapter 12. The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver. in gold and for clothing. The Lord had made the Egyptians favorably disposed towards the people and they gave them what they asked for. So they plundered the Egyptians. What's really happening here is that the Egyptians are so ready for the Israelites to leave because they're underneath judgment from God that God changes the Egyptians' hearts and the Israelites, the slaves, as they're walking out the door, look at their slave owners and say, hey, can I have your gold?

And the slave owners are like, take it. Take the gold, take the silver, take the clothes. Because again, the slaves didn't own anything. So here it is. Now, fast forward, they're at the foot of a mountain. They're getting anxious and impatient and they're taking the very blessing that God brokered for them and they are now throwing it into a pile to make an idol out of it. You know what that tells me? That sometimes what God gives us becomes the affection of our hearts in an unhealthy way. God gave you money. Don't you dare make it an idol. God gave you material things. Don't you dare make it an idol. God gave you favor. He gave you your business. He gave you your job. He gave you your freedom. He gave you your ability. He gave you these things. Don't you dare worship those things. Those are nothing but the gifts and the blessings of God. They are not God, they are not your source. And so many times, we as individuals, we get the blessing of God and all of a sudden we start focusing our heart on the blessing rather than God himself.

In other words, we don't look at his face, we look to his hand. Mm-hmm. Think about it. We can even do that in 2025. I literally am reading this and I'm like, they took the blessing of God and they made it into a calf? I mean, they didn't have any riches. They had nothing. They were going to the promised land. They needed some currency and they're taking all of their gold and they're throwing it into a bowl and they're boiling it down and making a calf. Now, why a calf, why a cow? That makes no sense. Well, the Egyptians, if you study history, the Egyptians actually worshiped cows. And so, I think it's even more disturbing that these ex-slaves are now wanting to worship the God of their slave owners. To me, it's mind-blowing. I would almost be like, I want nothing to do with that. But yet, it's interesting because they had grown up in Egypt. All they saw were people worshiping calves and cows and statues of cows. And they're like, well, we're going to do that too. To me, it's amazing how stingy we can be with God and how generous we are with our idols.

I mean, they're taking gold and saying, I'm giving it to this idol. I mean, it's amazing. Like Americans, Americans were like, oh, you know what? I don't have much that I can give to God. Also Americans, look what I bought for my front yard. Do you know that Americans this year will spend more money on the holiday of Halloween than any other generation in human history? We will spend right at $13.1 billion on Halloween. We will spend $860 million on costumes for our pets. And yet we're like, oh, I don't have much to give to God. Now I'm not, I know some of you are like going, oh yeah, you're doing the pastor thing. You're all anti-Halloween. I could care less if your kids dress up. Just don't dress them like demons, okay? That's the only thing I'd say don't do, okay? But if they wanna dress up like Elsa and let it go, let it go. Does that make sense? All right, I'm fine with that, okay? But my point is, is this, it's not just about the money. How about our time? We're so generous with our idols, right? I mean, we're like, oh, I have no time to pray, but we'll watch five hours of football this afternoon. Hello. Some of you just got salty with me.

You're now ticked. You're like, uh-uh, you can talk about Halloween. You do not talk about, you don't talk about football. Or how about, you know, some people are like, oh, I can't afford to send my kid to, you know, the Thrive Youth and Young Adult Conference, but I'll spend $20,000. junior's travel team this year. Or I don't have time to serve in church, but I'll binge on YouTube videos about politics all afternoon. Are we okay? This is like a spiritual colonoscopy. You're like, oh, just get me through it. I guess my point is this, guys. All right, just put down our guards. Let's all do it, me included, okay? It's amazing how generous we are with our time and our talent and our money when we put it towards the blessings that God gave us. And those things are not bad, but they aren't God. They're just a blessing. And those things can turn into golden calves, and we could all like look down on previous civilizations and say, down on previous civilizations and think they're all like barbarian and backwards. Or we can go, you know what? We probably have some golden calves too in our lives. Like when we get impatient, we start calling man-made things miraculous because delay can create that distortion. When we start waiting, we don't see God give us what we want right away. We start looking to other things or other people, and we start grappling and being like, what is gonna give me comfort, satisfaction, fulfillment, value? Exodus 32 said this. It says, the story goes on that these are your gods, they said to Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. I mean, this is mind-blowing. They literally put gold in a kiln, and they make some sort of a cow, and then they're like, this thing is what gave us freedom from Egypt. They give the cow credit for their freedom. I mean, God's people credited their creation with their salvation. And man, we can do that too. Look what I've done with my life. Look what I've done in my career. Look at what I've earned. Look at what I have. Look at who I'm dating. Look at who I'm married to. Look at the things that I have in my arsenal of my abilities. See, we can do that too. We create, and then we think that's what gives us

freedom. That's what gives us happiness. That's what gives us salvation. And I will tell you that all of us can do it, including myself. In fact, earlier in my career, and sometimes, I mean, still tempted to do this, so I'm not trying to sound like I'm all sanctified with this, but especially earlier in my career, I used to think to myself, if I could just speak at that event, or if I could just get invited into that room, or if so-and-so would just recognize my gift, or if I could just run a certain size ministry or church, then I will be successful, recognized, happy, and fulfilled. And the reality is that in the last over 30 years I've been doing this thing, I actually, by God's grace, I have been able to speak in some pretty amazing rooms. And I have been invited to meet with some pretty amazing people. And I have received some recognition, and I run a pretty decently sized church. And I feel honored, and I feel humbled, and I feel grateful for it. But can I be really honest with you? Not one of those things has given me lasting fulfillment. Not one of those things. Now, again, I'm not discounting it. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm not saying there's a sense I'm not saying there's a sense of, like, God, thank you. That's there. But those things have not made me who I am. They are not my identity. They don't give me lasting fulfillment. It doesn't give me lasting happiness. Otherwise, the richest people in the world would be the happiest people in the world. And here's the thing. I'm just saying there's nothing wrong with riches, and there's nothing wrong with accomplishments. And I hope you have all kinds of degrees on your wall, and I hope you get medals, and I hope that you get awards, and I hope that all those things happen to you. But none of those things make you the man or woman that you are. None of those things make you who you are. In fact, I think there's two questions we all ask. Now, we don't say these verbally, but this is what we're asking maybe subconsciously to other people. We're thinking, do you think I'm important? And do you see my value? Do you think I'm important? Do you see my value? That's why some people try so hard to do the humble brag thing, right? That's why some people try so hard when there's pride, they're trying to compensate the sense that they don't feel like maybe they're important enough or they don't have value. And here's the problem, when you look at a golden calf and you ask him that question,

when you look at the golden calf and go, am I important, do you see my value, you get a blank stare. So what do you do? You keep searching for importance and value because you're not getting it from the idol. You will never get importance and value from the blessing of God, you will only get it from the person of God. You understand that? You will never get it from the blessing, never. But when we ask God and we say, God, am I important? Do I have value? All you gotta do is read in the word of God and you listen to his voice and there is a resounding yes. God says, you have value, you are important to me. The Bible even says that we are the apple of God's eye. We are everything to him. He's the one that gives us value. Back to our story, Exodus chapter 32. So what happens, Aaron, this really wacky pastor, he builds an altar in front of the calf and announced tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord? Wait a minute, wait a minute. There must be a typo here in the Bible. The festival, okay, they have a calf, they built an altar in front of the calf and Aaron announces there's gonna be a festival or a church service to the Lord.

So the next day, the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. All right, now this is one of the weirdest verses. Sometimes we read this story, for those who grew up in Sunday school and you read this story, we skip right past this. They actually were saying we built the calf and we're gonna have a festival to the Lord. Pastor David Guzik wrote something. I thought, man, I'm just gonna read what he wrote because I thought it was a real good commentary of this passage. He says this verse shows that the creation and the worship of the golden calf was not a conscious rejection of the Lord. Aaron and the rest of Israel probably thought that they could give honor to the Lord through the golden calf. Aaron was not crass enough to say let's do away with the Lord God. As Israel saw it, Aaron didn't take away the Lord God, he simply added the golden calf. In other words, they didn't replace God, they added to God. They wanted the power of an invisible God and the comfort of a created one. Oh man, and that's us as America.

I don't think anybody says, I just wanna reject God. No, there's some obviously, but I'm rejecting God and I'm choosing money. I'm rejecting God and I'm choosing this wrong relationship. I'm rejecting God and I'm choosing to put my trust in my abilities. I don't think that's what's happening. I think what we're doing is we're saying, no, I worship God, but I'm not sure he's enough. I feel like it's God, but I've been praying prayers and I've been asking for blessing, but it's not coming, I'm waiting at the base of the mountain. And you know what? I kind of need to take matters into my own hands, so it's God and, and you fill in the blank. So it's your God and, hmm, right? Your God and, it's God and my 401k. It's God and I'm a little lonely, so I need somebody. It's God and I could just buy this and I'll be happy. See how it works? Like that civilization thousands of years ago, isn't as antiquated as sometimes we think, because the human heart is the same. Sometimes I wonder if God's delays are just a test. Not always, but I wonder if God's delays are a test. In other words, he's waiting to see, are we gonna go chase some substitute source for our happiness?

Are we going to remember all the blessings that he's given to us up until that point? Are we gonna forget it? And like Israel did, they forgot all the miracles and they're like, we're angry, we're waiting 40 days. We've been in slavery for 400 years, but we're waiting 40 days and we forget what God has saved us from. See. Sometimes delays cause us to create a quick fix because of our impatience and I think sometimes God doesn't answer our prayers right away or the blessings don't come right away because I think he's waiting to see what's in our heart. He's waiting for us to wrestle a little bit with our faith and that faith and that wrestling makes us resilient. It really does. I wrote this for kind of our closing here. Waiting reveals what we actually believe about God. It's easy to trust him when life moves fast and our prayers are getting answered, right? But real faith is forged in the slow seasons. When we can handle delay without losing confidence in his character, when we can handle delay without losing confidence in his character, that's when we've moved from knowing about him to actually knowing him, right? Some of you are in the delay right now. You've been praying for the healing, you've been praying for the person that you want to marry someday, you've been praying for the right job, you've been praying for the blessing to come, you've been praying for the fix to whatever the problem is in your life. I mean, you've been praying. It hasn't materialized and you're in the waiting and it's not wonderful at all. And I would just say, please hear me say this loud and clear. God loves you. He has not forgotten about you or that situation and he is with you, alright? You're in a delay right now. So don't trade the real riches God promises for the fool's gold of impatience. Don't do it. Don't do it. Because you're gonna put all this effort into digging up this rock and you're

gonna think it's gonna make you happy, you're gonna put it in your wagon, you're gonna take it to the assessor and that assessor is gonna go, it's not real. And you have wasted energy and time and heart. You know, during the delay we just need to faithfully wait on God. He's with us, he loves us, he's not forgotten about us. And it's so hard to do when we want the prime divine answer on our porch at 4 a.m. So today, can we be comfortable with being uncomfortable? And can we worship in our wait? And can we seek out the divine in our delay? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us to be faithful in the waiting. I don't like the wait, no one likes the wait. And when we start waiting and we feel uncomfortable and we feel confused, sometimes we feel disturbed in the delay. God, it's easy to chase after something that we think is going to fill the void. And like I said, most the time that thing we are chasing, that golden calf is actually something you gave us. Help us not to confuse the blessing of God with you, the person of God. So Lord, we look to you. We look to your face, not your hand. We look to the God who's faithful, the God of character, the God that will never leave us or forsake us. And we ask that you would help us to be faithful in the waiting. With every head bowed and every eye closed, we do this at every service. If you have not given your life to Jesus and made him the leader and the forgiver of your life, and maybe you even said, man, I've been chasing after all kinds of things. I've been chasing after relationships. I've been chasing after highs. I've been chasing after money. I've been chasing after accomplishment. I've been chasing after people's approval. Whatever it is. And you're like, gosh, it's fool's gold. I want to have a relationship with my creator because there I will find my identity and I'll find my purpose and my importance. And if you say, that's me. I want to pray a prayer with you. And I'd like us to just take a moment and just acknowledge that. If you say, I want to make Jesus the leader and the forgiver of my life. I want to ask for forgiveness for my sin and my searching for substitute sources of joy. Boy, and I wanna make Him the focus of my life.

If that's you, just go ahead and raise your hand and put it right back down. Yep, hands are up everywhere. Can we just all say this prayer together, whether you raised your hand or you didn't? Let's say it all together and realize as you're saying it, this is you speaking to God, okay? He's listening to you, He loves you. So let's say this prayer after me, ready? Here we go. Jesus, I declare you to be my Lord and be my Savior. And be my Savior. Forgive me for all my sin and all my searching for things that won't make me happy. Come into my heart and be the Lord of my life. I believe that you love me and that you died for me. I wanna live for you in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen, amen. Come on, let's give everybody that prayed that prayer a huge round of applause. Let's do that. Hey, if you made that decision today, we're so glad. And we just wanna take a moment and say, congratulations. That is the best decision that you could ever make. And as your church, we wanna come alongside you and help you in this journey of following Jesus. And the first thing is we have this thing called the New Beginnings Resource. And you can scan the QR code that is on the screen to be able to get your free copy of this.

But this is a great little booklet that explains a little bit further about the decision that you're making and what it means to follow Jesus. So we'd love for you to take advantage of that. That's right, and after you've downloaded and read through that New Beginning booklet, we encourage you to jump into GrowTrack. GrowTrack is a great next step in your faith journey. It's a class that's designed to help you discover your divine gifts and purpose. And so you can jump in. It restarts at the beginning of each month in person. If you're wanting to do it online, you can also jump in at any point in time. You don't have to wait to the beginning of the month. And so we would love for you to scan that QR code right there. You can sign up for GrowTrack. We have a brand new GrowTrack starting next Sunday. Yeah, and as a church, we believe in the power of prayer. So if you need prayer for anything, we would love to take a moment and pray for you. We have a team that prays for every single request that comes in. So if you jump on the City First app or the website, you'll be able to submit a prayer request there, but there is no request that is too big or too small for God. So we'd love to take a moment and pray with you.

And if this message encouraged you today, we encourage you to share this link. We don't wanna keep that hope to ourselves and also plan on coming back next Sunday. We've got some fantastic stuff. We're starting new series. It's gonna be incredible. So come back and bring a friend. Hey, Adam and I love you so much. We're praying for you. Have such a great week.