“Tear Down the Idol and Come Home" | Big Ten Week 2

Welcome to church, everybody. How we doing this morning, we good? Good to see everybody in the room, those who are joining online. I wanna say a little special shout out to our Roan Winn Community Group and the God Behind Bars men and women who are joining us. Faith Promise, can we give it up for them? We are so grateful that you are here this morning. If we haven't met yet, I'm Chase. I serve as the campus pastor, and man, I'm honored to bring God's word to you today. And I have to admit, it's been a heavy couple weeks preparing for this message. And I'm just gonna kind of put it out there and give it to you just for a second because it's one of those conversations that it's hard to have, but it's necessary for the freedom in your life. And so we're gonna be talking about idols and idolatry today, okay? And so I promise you there's hope, okay? There's freedom today, and we'll get to that here at the end. But I want you to imagine yourself sitting at a table with me this morning. Not in this room, not here at church, somewhere comfortable, okay? Somewhere familiar.

Maybe it's in your kitchen, maybe it's on the back porch when the weather is just right. Like you're sitting around the table with people who know you best, whether that is your spouse, your closest friends, your kids, the one person in your life who has seen you at your worst and stayed anyway. That's who's around the table. The person who knows what you're like when you're not performing, when you're tired, when you're stressed, when the version of you that no one knows about shows up. Now imagine I walk in the room and I sit down with you guys, and I ask you this question. What gets the most of him or her? Not who they wish got the most of you, not the Sunday morning version of you, like the real answer, the honest one, the one that they may think about or talk about when you're not in the room. What would they say? What gets the most of you? Because the reality is, those people around the table, they know. Your spouse knows. They see your eyes.

They see where your eyes go when you walk in the door. They know whether you're actually present at dinner or just physically there. They know what you reach for when you're stressed. They know what keeps you up at night and gets you up in the morning. They know. Your closest friends, they know. They've watched the pattern long enough to see it for what it is. And maybe they've even tried to say something about it once and they decided the conversation wasn't worth it. Somewhere underneath all of that, you know too. Maybe it's the phone. Maybe it's the job. Maybe it's the version of yourself that you've been trying to build for people who don't even know your name. Maybe it's the relationship that occupies more of your heart than it has any right to. Maybe it's something that you haven't told anyone about. Something that lives in the part of your life with the door closed. Whatever it is, I want you to let it surface for just a second. Don't push it back. Just let it be there. Because that thing or things right there is what we're gonna be talking about today. And the Bible has a name for whatever sits in the seat

that belongs to God. And it's called an idol. Today, we're going to find out about the second commandment and the seventh commandment. And they've been asking the same question in different ways. And so if you're taking notes, I wanna encourage you to write this down and I want you to process this as we go along today and even throughout this week. And the question is, who's are you? Last week, we talked and we walked through the structure of the 10 commandments where we have the two tablets, the five rows. And we realized that every commandment about God on the left has a mirror on the right, which you can see right here on the screen behind me. And row one. We talked about, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. And then we discussed, you shall not murder. So PZ kicked us off for week one. I'm gonna continue with row two. And our commandments for today is that you shall have no other gods before me and you shall not make yourself an idol. And then the seventh is you shall not commit adultery. Same row, same heartbeat. And I wanna give you the anchoring thought today that we're gonna spring forward from and really end with, and it's this.

Every act of unfaithfulness in your life started with a God you set up before the one God who loves you. I wanna read it one more time. Every act of unfaithfulness in your life started with a God you set up before the one God who loves you. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Exodus chapter 20. And that's where we're gonna be in scripture today to find these commandments. And Exodus chapter 20 verses three through six. It'll be on the screen. You can turn obviously in your physical Bible. We have the Faith Promise app that you can follow along with as well. But we would love for you to dig into God's word with us today. So Exodus chapter 20 verses three through six, here's what it says. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make 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 underneath the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am a judge and your God am a jealous God. If you highlight, if you're taking notes, you might wanna star that, underline that.

That is important for our conversation today. The iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me but show steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So one of the first things that we see in Exodus chapter 20 verses three through six is that God is not asking to share you. What we see is that God is jealous. Everybody say jealous. And I know that the word does something to you, right? Because most of the time, the only jealousy most of us have ever experienced is the ugly kind, the controlling kind, the kind that checks your phone, you know, that tracks your location, that makes you feel real small. You know what I'm saying? But that is not what God is describing. There's two kinds of jealousy. There is jealousy that wants to possess what isn't yours. And then there's the jealousy that refuses to surrender what already is. If a stranger across a coffee shop, right, flirts with someone that you don't really know, like you don't really feel anything, right? Like you have no claim. But if someone flirts with your spouse in the coffee shop in front of you, you feel it in your bones, you know what I'm saying? Not because you're insecure,

but because that is your, that's your person. That second kind of jealousy, man, that is love. And so one of the things I wanna make clear today is that God is not like a jealous, controlling boyfriend. He is a jealous, He is jealous like a faithful husband who has already paid everything to have you. That's the God behind the second commandment. Not a rule keeper, He's a husband. And He is not asking to be one of your priorities. He is not asking for a slot in your schedule. Come on, somebody. He's not asking to be somewhere in your top five. God is asking to be your only one, which means there is a question that we have to answer. And it's a little bit uncomfortable, especially in the room right now. Because if He's asking to be your only one, then why does He keep getting treated like one of many? Why do we keep walking past Him? I wanna tell you why this morning. It's because something else always gets there first. But God is not asking to share you. He's not asking to share you. Because in our lives, unfaithfulness always starts with an idol. Every single time, unfaithfulness always starts with an idol. We don't blow up our lives and then find the idol. We find the idol first, and here's what happens. We start feeding it. And then slowly and quietly,

it starts asking more than we plan to give. Tim Keller said it. He defined an idol better than anyone that I've ever read. He said, an idol is anything more important to you than God. It's the thing that you put in front of God that you keep walking to and you pass him all the time. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you go to for what only God can give you. And so by definition, every person in this room has at least one. And that's not condemnation. That is what it means to be a human in 2026, okay? Just period. For some of you, it's the career. It's the title. It's the version of success that has become the actual center of your life. You know, you check the email before you spend time with him before you pray, before you read your Bible, like your self-worth lives in your last performance review. For some of you, it's your kids. You have poured out so much of your identity You have poured out so much of your identity into being a parent that their failures feel like your failures. That their disappointments feel like your disappointments and you've handed them honestly a weight that they were never built to carry. And it's just bending you both.

For some of you in the room, it's your marriage. You've asked your spouse to be God to you. To fill a hole shaped exactly like the Almighty and they just, I'm here to tell you, they can't do it. Nobody can. And what's happened is there's been a distance between what you need and what they can give and it's turned into slowly resentment. For the single people in the room, maybe it's the app. Maybe it's the fantasy of the relationship that hasn't happened yet. The version of yourself you keep performing for people who haven't noticed you. And that bitterness has moved in after the last relationship and it's just never left. Whatever it is, here's what we all know. It's costing you more than it told you it would. Because here's where idolatry leads. I just wanna call it out today because this is half the battle. The career idol, it leads to the emotional affair with a coworker who finally sees you. The phone idol, it leads to pornography. The approval idol leads to the flirting that should have ended three texts ago. And here's what you have to understand. Idolatry is always the disease. Adultery in whatever form it takes is always the symptom. You cannot heal the symptom without going after what's underneath.

And this is the conversation today. And I promise you there is hope in the room because God keeps coming after you anyway. Is anybody grateful for that today? Come on, somebody. Hey. And I wanna tell you a story about a man named Hosea. Hosea comes to the prophet with a calling that sounds less like a ministry and more like just a sentence. It's like something that you wouldn't want God to come to you with. He says, go and marry a woman named Gomer. Knowing that she will be unfaithful, knowing that she will leave, go love her anyway. Make your marriage actually the sermon that I've been trying to preach to my people. So Hosea goes and finds Gomer and he marries her and they build something together and it's awesome and it's amazing. And then one day she's gone. She leaves. She leaves the covenant. She goes looking for something that she thinks will finally fulfill her. And she spirals. She ends up, this is chapter three in the book of Hosea, she ends up on the auction block. And God comes to Hosea and says, hey, go get her. Go buy back your wife.

And Hosea walks into the place and he pays 15 pieces of silver and some barley, the price of a slave for his own wife, the woman who left him. He pays without a speech, without a list of conditions, without making her earn it back. He just pays it and he takes her home. This story is not about Hosea and Gomer. This story is about God and us. We are Gomer, okay? I am Gomer. You are Gomer. And I just wanna say this out loud because I've been thinking it all morning. Gomer is a goober. But guess what? How many times in your life have you just been a goober? I hope that's not inappropriate, but I just think it means that you're not choosing the right things. You know what I'm saying? The story is about Hosea, and it's not about Hosea and Gomer. It's about God and us. We are Gomer. I am Gomer. We are the ones who keep wandering off toward the things that cannot love us back. And God is the one who keeps showing up at the auction and keeps paying what we cannot pay.

And he says, hey, come home. Hosea 2, verse 14. And then 19 and 20 say this. It'll be on the screen. Just check this out. Here's what it says. Therefore, I am now going to allure her. I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you in righteousness and justice and love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord. He uses this word betrothed three times. And he's not just forgiving. He's not just moving on. He's renewing the covenant and he's saying, I choose you again. Right now, in this moment, after everything that you have done. And I wanna tell you today that this is the heart of the seventh commandment. It's not a prohibition. It's a picture. A picture of faithfulness that God has been practicing toward you your entire life. Toward me, my entire life. And in fact, Jesus takes this all the way into Matthew 5.

So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Matthew 5, verse 27. And we're gonna read through verse 30. And Jesus, when he does, he does something that would have stopped his audience in their tracks. He's really kind of going after the Pharisees here, the people who like kept all the rules and look really good from the outside. The Pharisees had spent generations building a fence around adultery. Their whole system was, their whole system was, hey, don't cross the line. Keep the external behavior clean as long as you haven't technically done anything. You're righteous. You're in. You know what I'm saying? But Jesus walks in and he says, hey, you guys, you've been asking the wrong question. The question was never, where's the line? The question is, what is happening in your heart before you ever get to the line? Matthew 5, verse 27 says this. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body. Go in to hell. Check this out for a second. Some of y'all, we live in the Bible Belt, we've been around Tennessee too long and Faith Promise too long, and you know the Bible, but just put yourself in somebody's shoes right now who's never heard the Bible, who doesn't know Jesus, and who walked in this place for the first time. I'd be scared to death reading this thing. I'd be like, these people are crazy, you know what I'm saying? Talking about cutting off your hand and gouging out your eye and all this stuff? Hang with me for just a second, okay? Nobody do that today. Everyone who looks at a woman or man with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her or him in his heart, already, okay? Past tense, before anything happened, before anyone found out, before the act ever occurred, it already happened in the heart. Now, here's what I want you to see.

Jesus is not making the standard harder to hit. He's not piling on more rules. He's doing something that is actually far more liberating than that. He is going to the source. He is saying, the reason you keep ending up at the line is because something inside of you is already moving toward it, and long before your body gets there, it's happening. And I wanna tell you something, Dave. If you only ever manage your behavior and never surrender your heart, you will be white-knuckling your way through life for the rest of your life. But if you deal with the heart, if you let me in, God says, to the part that actually is driving this, I can set you free. And church, that is not law, that's grace. The eye that tears out and the hand that cuts off, Jesus is not being literal here, He's being surgical. He's saying, whatever access point the idol is using to get to your heart, you gotta close it. You gotta do something about it. You gotta be ruthless about it. You gotta kill the sin in your life because the cost of leaving it open whew, it's higher, it's higher than you think. And so He moves the line back past the act to the heart. You know, the lust, the imagination,

the scream, the daydream about someone who isn't yours, the thing that you went back to last night that you said you wouldn't go back to. And I'm gonna name something directly because there's a lot of people in the room who walked in carrying it and probably praying no one would say it, but it's pornography. And pornography is running rampant in our culture, but the reality is that there's men and there's women and there's married people and there's single people and there's teenagers who struggle and deal with this very thing in this room. And there's a lot of people in these seats that not only has committed, you know, that have sinned in this way, but there's also people in the seats on the other side of the unfaithfulness of it, whether it's been on bed or in a screen or, you know, in their partner's wondering heart and you're just like sitting here bleeding. And I just wanna say in the room today, there is hope for both sides. There is healing for both sides. There's freedom for both sides. And none of us, church, we're not too far gone. The husband in this story keeps walking into the auction and he keeps paying the price, and this still is the story. And you and I, guess what? We're in it. So what do we do?

So what do we do about all this? And I wanna encourage you today to tear down the idol and come home. Tear down the idol and come home. Every act of unfaithfulness in your life started with the God that you set up before, the God who loves you. Now we gotta flip it. Every act of faithfulness starts the same way. For some of us today, we gotta tear down the idol and we gotta drag that sucker into the light and let God knock it over. You know what that's called? That's called repentance. And repentance is not feeling bad. Because feeling bad is just guilt and guilt by itself has never changed anything. Repentance is turning around, turning away. It is taking the thing that has been sitting in God's seat and removing it. Not forever in your own strength, but just for the day. You gotta play a part in this, you know what I'm saying? For some of you, you gotta put the phone in a different room tonight. For some of you, you need to delete the app and you know which one. For some of you, you need to end the conversation that crossed the line a long time ago. Some of you, you need to say the name of the idol out loud to the one person who will hold you to it.

Because naming it is half the battle. I want you to hear this really loud today and I want the enemy to hear this really loud today. The enemy loses power the moment that you stop protecting his secrets. Here's the gospel. The whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation is one love story. A faithful husband, an unfaithful bride, and a God who refuses to let the story end in abandonment. From Genesis three, we keep walking out. Come on somebody, we're a bunch of goobers. You know what I'm saying? Goobers, gomer, goober, whatever it is. You know what I'm saying? We're walking out. Genesis chapter three, we're walking out. Genesis chapter three, guess what God does? He just comes after us and he keeps being faithful. And guess what? Jesus shows up. Jesus, the faithful one. The only faithful one in the entire story. He had never had another lover. He never set up another God. He never looked at something else to feel what only the Father could feel. He walked straight to the cross with a heart that had never once belonged to anyone else. And you know what he did?

He absorbed every act of unfaithfulness that you and I have ever committed. Every idol, every affair, every night that you went back to the thing that you promised you were done with, guess what, church? He took it all, all of it, and he said, paid. Woo! Oh! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! And if you're enjoying this, find it possible that your story does not end with a heartbroken husband standing alone, but it ends with a feast. And maybe for the first time you've been here and you've been in church for years and it's just been more about habit than anything actually real. Maybe some of you today, you've been dragged in here and you've been sitting here half listening. And maybe you've been running from God for so long that you've forgotten what it felt like to actually be close to him. And I want you to hear this today. The whole story that we've been talking about. Hosea going to the auction, paying the price, bringing Gomer home. That story is not just a metaphor. That is literally what God did for you and for me. He saw you at your worst. He saw every idol, every act of unfaithfulness, every dark thing that you've ever reached for in private and he didn't look away. He walked toward you.

He paid the price that you couldn't pay. And he's standing right here in this room saying, hey, come home. Today, maybe you hear hope and I pray that's what you hear. Because there is freedom when you surrender your heart to Jesus. There is purpose, there is eternal life, there is hope for your future. And it's not this promise that the temptation will go away because that's not true. But you will have someone who can forgive your sin and who can walk with you to pursue the holy life that God is calling you to live. And I promise you, that is the cost that you want to take with your life. And so here at Faith Promise, I wanna offer an invitation to the gospel that Jesus came to the earth, he died for your sins and God raised him from the dead three days later so that you could have hope and eternal life. I mean, if you want a relationship with a God who loves you, today is that day and this is your moment. So at Faith Promise, if you would go ahead and close your eyes and bow your heads, we're gonna pray. pray together because we pray at Faith Promise as a family. And so just repeat this prayer after me. Say, Jesus, thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins.

Thank you for resurrecting from the grave so that I have hope, purpose, and eternal life. Thank you for saving me. And I commit to follow you for the rest of my life. With your eyes still closed and your head still bowed, if you wanna come home today to a loving father and a faithful father, would you just lift your hand up? Lift it up high. Lift it up high. Our ushers are just gonna put a little booklet in your hand. And man, we wanna walk with you. And we want you to know about a God who deeply loves you. You don't have to have all the questions or you don't have to have all the answers to all the questions, but it's just a surrendered heart. Amen. You guys can look up this way. Can we celebrate those who said yes to Jesus? Come on. If you would, go ahead and stand up. We're gonna respond today. And there's another group of people in the room. And I understand this is a hard conversation. We're talking about idols and we're talking about adultery and all of these things. And you're like, the last thing that I wanna do is actually come up here and pray with somebody. I understand. But I promise you the cost to get out of your seat is worth, is worth it.

Because what's gonna cost you if you don't is far greater. And so there's people in this room, you have idols. And so I wanna invite the prayer team to come on up. And one of the things that we have to do is we have to bring it into the light. And I wanna remind you today, we are a church family. You are not made to do life alone. And if you cannot share in here and come to the altar and confess your sin to one another, the Bible says that if we do that, God is faithful and just to forgive us. And so I don't want you to look at this altar today as failure. Come on somebody, this is freedom down here. This is not failure. This is freedom. And so if you need to come and you need to pray because there's an idol sitting in the seat where God belongs, you need to come forward and you need to get right with the Lord. If you've committed adultery, you need to confess and you need to have the hard conversations today. And again, I know it's not easy, but here's what I know. And this is what the Lord dropped on my heart for this response moment. Hey, if we keep trying to fix behavior modification, again, we're gonna end up white knuckling our way through life. But David, after he slept with Bathsheba and he killed Uriah and he did those things,

there was a Psalm that he prayed in Psalm 51. And he said, create in me a new heart, create in me a clean spirit, oh God. And I wanna tell you today, that should be your prayer as you come down here. It's not to do better or try harder. It's God created me a clean heart, a new heart, renew the right spirit in me because that's something only God can do. And if you have a new heart and you're praying that prayer, I really do believe you're not gonna get close to that line because God is doing a work in you. So I'm gonna pray for you, pray for boldness, pray for courage. And again, this is not failure, this is freedom. Let's pray, Father, we love you. Lord, I just pray over this moment right now, that there would be freedom in this place. Lord, that we would see what is on the throne of our lives. And if it's not you, we would confess, we would come before you and we would repent. Lord, if we've committed adultery or anything, we would confess and we would have the hard conversations with the people that we love. And we would walk through that with grace and humility. We love you, we praise you, create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us. In Jesus' name, everybody said.