This transcript was generated automatically and may contain minor errors.

Well, good morning. It's so good to see you here this morning. Would you take out your Bible with me and turn to first John, the book of first John, the epistle written by John? And we're gonna look in the fifth chapter. Verse 21 is gonna provide the basis for our lesson this morning.

So first John chapter five and verse 21. We'll read some other verses in first John, but that'll provide the basis for our lesson. Grateful for the presence of all. We have some who are visiting with us, some we know very well. Others we're meeting for the first time.

We're grateful for all of your presence. We hope you know that our goal and our our aim here is to be pleasing unto God and to help one another as we're all striving to do that together. Thank you for those who have led us so ably in worship this morning. And I hope the things that I have to say will be helpful to you, not just right now, but as we go through those doors and try to live what it is, the calling by which we were called in Jesus Christ. I was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago with a young couple, a couple about ten years younger than me, and they were talking about his new job and his new schedule and the things that were going on with that.

And we were talking for about five minutes about that. And finally, he revealed something that to me was the most relevant and important information. And so I said to them, woah. You really buried the lead on that. They looked at me like I had three heads.

Like like, they didn't understand the words that were coming out of my mouth. And they said, what what what does that mean? Bury the lead. So I don't know if that's like a generational thing. So by curiosity, who is familiar with, has heard, and knows what that means, to bury the lead.

K? I think there's a generational issue there, and it kinda makes sense because this comes from journalism. It's a phrase that came about in the nineteen seventies in newspapers. Remember those newspapers? And the idea of the lead, according to Webster's, is this defined this way.

In journalism, the lead refers to the introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the readers to read the full story. It usually includes the most important information that the reader needs to hear. So to bury the lead means that you put the most important part of the story later on, often obscured by less important or even irrelevant information. And a buried lead might be unintentional where the writer or speaker just doesn't realize the importance of something, and so they don't emphasize it like they should. But oftentimes, a buried lead is a is a bad thing where someone is being intentionally deceptive by keeping an important piece of information hidden, where it's at the end of the story or even in a footnote, and you're like, that's something that I really need to know if I'm gonna understand this story correctly.

But every once in a while, burying the lead or at least that concept is something that is good or important or powerful because what is most important is safe till last so that it has greater impact on those to whom it is communicated. When Stephanie and I got married, we told her parents and my parents, don't ask about us having kids for five years. Don't even ask about us having kids for five years. Then after five years, you can start asking. We're not saying we're gonna have kids after five years, but after five years, you can start asking.

And so after about three years of us being married, at that Christmas, we had exchanged gifts and so forth. And we said to my mom, we've got one more gift for you. We gave her a card, and she starts reading this little poem that Stephanie had written, and she goes and she ran into the bedroom and got her glasses to make sure she had not misread the last line that says your first grandchild. We buried the lead that Christmas, but it was because we've got something really important that we wanna tell you at the end, and it's and it's something that we want you to take with you that this is, you know, kind of the big thing of this Christmas, which brings us to first John chapter five. John writes an epistle to his beloved, his spiritual little children, he calls them, and he writes that their joy may be full, he says in chapter one.

And he writes an epistle that is all about forgiveness and love and the power of Christ to make you free from sin, all sin. And he talks about the truth and the power that that truth has and the expectation that we should have for Christ coming again and that we can have that expectation with confidence to stand before him. And he wants us in this epistle to know that we are saved and to know that we have eternal life in Jesus Christ. And it is a very, if I can put it this way, new covenant epistle. It is looking forward.

It's looking at Jesus Christ and who he is. So how does John, the apostle, choose to end this encouraging, joyful, love filled epistle? First John chapter five and verse 21, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. Wait.

What? Where did that come from? May I suggest that John buried the lead with this phrase, keep yourselves from idols? John ends the book by warning his spiritual children to guard themselves against idols, but there is no previous mention of idolatry in the rest of this book. And at first glance, it seems as though this is totally out of left field.

You have all of these things you're talking about, and then at the end with no explanation, you just say keep yourselves from idols? Why does he say that here? Why is this the last verse? Why end it this way? Well, may I suggest this morning three possible reasons why John buried the lead, why he waited to the very end of the book to say, keep yourselves from idols, and hopefully make some applications to our lives and what we ought to be doing as Christians.

So here's John's buried lead. And the first possibility why he did this, which is certainly true from biblical perspective, maybe he said this, keep yourself from idols in a representative sort of sense that anything placed ahead of or before or in place of God is idolatry. And so he's telling them, you need to keep yourself from idolatry. Don't put anything else ahead of or before or in place of God. And we know that to be true.

You, as Bible students, know. Anything that we serve or worship or desire or have faith and trust in or love, anything by which we seek salvation or purpose or meaning that is not God becomes an idol to us. Anything in the world that we love more than God can become an idol to us. And that's the point of one of the most famous series of verses in first John, isn't it? If you go back to first John chapter two verses fifteen and sixteen, this is what John says, do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the father but is of the world. And so John says, you've got a choice here. Either you can love this world and the sinful things in this world, you can pursue your own lust and your own pride and the things that make you feel good in the moment but don't have any eternal significance, or you can choose to love God and put him first so that you know when this life is over, you have hope beyond this world that is constantly and consistently passing away, as he says in verse 17. John says, you've gotta make a choice.

There's no spiritual Switzerland on this deal. There's no middle ground. Either you love God or you love the world. And if you love the world, you can't say that you love God because you've turned the world into an idol. The hellfire and brimstone preacher, Charles Spurgeon, once said this, if you love anything better than God, you are idolaters.

If there is anything you would not give up for God, it is your idol. If there's anything you seek with greater fervor than you seek the glory of God, that is your idol, and conversion means a turning from every idol. That's what these brethren had to do in the first century, and that's what we have to do today. What were the first two of the 10 commandments? Do you remember?

Thou shalt have no other gods before me, before my face. In other words, I don't wanna even see any other gods, God says. And the second commandment is what? No graven carved images, No idols. No no other things before me and no idols.

And those two things go hand in hand. Anything we place before God is an idol. And that's not just an Old Testament problem. What is the greatest command according to Jesus? When they came and tested him and said, what's the greatest command in the law?

He said what? Love God as best you can. Love God as much as you can. You got lots of things that you love, make sure that God is on that list of things you love too. No.

He said, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength, with everything that you are. You've gotta love God if you're gonna fulfill what it is to be his child. And so maybe John, at the end of his book, is just saying, listen. There are all sorts of things in this world that you might choose to love ahead of God, but if you do, it becomes your idol. There are lots of examples of this in our Bibles.

Now I want you to turn to Colossians chapter three. You've heard me preach for any period of time. You probably know how much I love Colossians three. And Colossians three is making applications to some things he said earlier in the book about not just the preeminence of Christ, but also this transformation that takes place in us when we come to Christ. And so he says in verse one of Colossians chapter three, if then you were raised with Christ.

If you're a Christian, that's talking about you that you put off your old man of sin, you were buried in baptism, now you're raised with Christ to newness of life. So if that's true, if you're a Christian, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth, for you died who you were. Your old man died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now your life belongs to Jesus.

That's where it is. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Those are big theological thoughts. Set your mind on things above, but then he gets super practical. Verse five.

Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. And it's not that they were falling down and worshiping a graven image. It was covetousness. And he says the same thing in Ephesians five and verse five, that covetousness is idolatry. Covetousness, that desire for something that that moves you to do whatever it takes to try and get that thing.

And maybe it's money. Usually, it's money in the New Testament, but it doesn't have to be money. Anything that we covet in that way becomes an idol to us. Anything that we I said this a second ago, but let's let's say it again. Anything that we serve or worship or desire first, anything that we have faith or trust or love in, anything that we seek salvation or purpose or meaning from that is not God has become our idol.

And Paul talks to Timothy about this desire to be rich and the love of money in first first Timothy chapter six six through 10. He tells him that you can't trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God in verses 17 through 19. And money, and the pursuit of money is an idol for so many. But that's not the only thing that we covet nor the only thing that can become an idol. Turn to first Peter chapter four, if you would.

Just a few pages back there from first John. First Peter chapter four. And the emphasis that I'm trying to make is idolatry is alive and well. It's just repackaged as the devil so often does. And I think we see that in the sins that are listed here.

First Peter chapter four starting in verse one. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh, our time on earth, for the lust of men but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime before we became a Christian in doing the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lewdness and lust and drunkenness and revelries and drinking parties. Just go to a college campus, and you can find all of those things. Go to a lot of workplaces, and after work, you can find a lot of those things.

But that's not where the list ends. And abominable idolatries. That's a really bad idolatry, isn't it? It's abominable. In regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation speaking evil of you.

So what other things can be idols to us? Well, popularity can become our idol or recreation or sensuality and sexuality. Education can become an idol if that's what consumes us. A social cause that we believe in, though it'd be good and important, can become an idol if that takes place above God. Politics are the idol of some.

A person that we love can become an idol. And the most dangerous false god of all, a name that I hesitate even to say out loud, so I will just spell the name of this idol. Are you ready? It is spelled s e l f because we become our own idol when we place ourselves ahead of God. Preston preached about the kingdoms that we set up, and that's the same concept, the same idea.

And I want you to imagine for a moment that every morning you get up who raise your hand if you're a coffee drinker. Who are my coffee drinkers? Okay. So you get up, you get your cup of Joe, you know, you've got your coffee, and you go into the back bedroom somewhere, and there's a shrine set up to a figurine, an idol in there, and you every morning after you have your coffee, you go in there and you bow down and you worship that idol. How silly is that?

And yet there is no difference in the eyes of God. What would be in that shrine? Tear it down, brethren. And so maybe John was talking about in a general sense, nothing can come before God. We must love him most, and we must love him first.

But maybe more specifically, not just generically anything come before God, maybe he's saying anything anything that we worship, anything that we serve that is a false version of the true God, that too is idolatry to us. And we know that John loves contrasting ideas. He loves talking about light and darkness, love and hate, truth and lies, sight and blindness. And the idea of idolatry contrast very nicely with the preceding verses there in first John chapter five. Read with me verses 18 through 20.

Colton read this for us a moment ago, but let's read it again together. Think about this in contrast to idolatry. We know that whoever is born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. We know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one, and we know that the son of God has come and given us an understanding that we may know him who is true, not false, true, and we are in him who is true, not false, in his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, not not false, not fake, the true God and eternal life.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. His focus in these verses is we've gotta know the true God. We've gotta know him as he really is, not as others have imagined him to be. And that's what the devil's always trying to do.

He's trying to get us to he knows that he's not gonna get us to just reject God in totality. So what does he do? He tries to change our view and our our understanding of God and who he is. Not where we don't believe in him at all, but we believe in a false version of him that is not the God of the Bible. And all the way back to the garden, the devil has been doing that, hasn't he?

Where he's been questioning God's motives. He's been questioning God's nature. He's been questioning God's commands. Did God really say? Well, God's doing that because he's selfish.

He doesn't want you to be like him. That's the lies he told Eve. But I think as we think about idolatry, maybe the best example of this is found in the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 32. Exodus 32, this is an account with which most of us are probably familiar, the account of the golden calf.

As Moses is up on Mount Sinai, they can't even wait a month or two on him to get back down before they're they're itching, and they're saying, what are we gonna do down here? And so they ask Aaron to make gods for them. And it's interesting that Aaron does not make gods. He makes a god. Read with me beginning in verse two.

And Aaron said to them, break off the gold earrings, which are the in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molded calf. Then they said, this is your god, o Israel, that brought you up out of the land of Egypt. So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.

Now there are a couple of things that I want you to notice there that I'll point out to you in this text. This is your God that brought you out of Egypt. Not your gods. It's not a bunch of idols. It's one.

And he says, this is your God that brought you out of Egypt. And what's interesting to me is Aaron then goes on to say, tomorrow is a feast to the golden calf? Well, yes. But this is the way he puts it. Tomorrow is a feast to the lord.

Tomorrow is a feast to Yahweh. And so what Aaron seems to be doing here is not creating a new god carte blanche. Instead, what he's doing is, I'm just gonna make a molded image through which we might worship the one true God, the living God, through which we might worship Yahweh. Moses is up on the mountain. Who knows what's happened to him?

Let's give him something to worship and violates the second commandment in so doing. It was not that Aaron called them to worship another god. It's that he called them to falsely worship the true god. And maybe maybe that's the warning that we need to know god as he really is. And that's one of the reasons that bible study is so important to us so that we can see god as he has revealed himself, not as others have chosen to see him.

That I want to know him as he really is. But just knowing about him isn't enough. These people had seen God up close and personal. They knew about his power and the things that he could do and accomplish, but their hearts desired something else. Is God the desire of your heart?

God, as he really is, no matter what that means for you or your life, no matter what the ramifications are or what you need to change, is the true God the desire of your heart? Or would you rather make God more palatable to the life you're already living? If you do, maybe you're saying you're worshiping Yahweh. Maybe you're worshiping Jesus Christ, but it still become an idol. And so we have to be careful because if we let go of God and throw ourselves away from him, he lets go of us, and it leads us down a path that we could not imagine.

In Romans chapter one verses 28 through 32, that's what's described that they did not retain God in their knowledge. They didn't keep that true picture of God. So what does God do? He gave them over to a debased mind. God says, okay.

You wanna go that way? Go. You don't wanna worship me as I really am? That's your choice, and we have the same choice today. There's a third possibility.

Certainly, anything we place before God is an idol. If we turn God into something that he is not, that's an idol. But when John says, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. Isn't it possible that he's saying, literally worshiping idols is an idol?

That's true. Right? If you're falling down and worshiping an idol, that's idolatry. And maybe the point that John is making, the point that I think he is making is that sin is always progressive in nature. These people to whom John is writing are we think are primarily made up of Gentile Christians, people who are coming from the pagan world.

And what did they do before they worship the one true god? They worshiped idols. It was idolatry. Right? That was the life that they had come out of before they became Christians.

And so it could be that he's talking this about this progressive nature of sin, and you need to be careful if you go down this road of sin where exactly that is going to lead you. That progressive idea is found throughout this book. It's found there in verse 18 when he says, we know that whoever is born of God does not sin, New King James, ESV, New American Standard, and several others say, does not keep on sinning. That's the sense because of the tense of this word. This is an ongoing thing that if you just keep on sinning, that's gonna lead you down a path that you don't wanna go on.

That's gonna lead you away from God, and where it might lead you is right back into the idolatry that you left. Gnosticism, which John was writing against today, he says, you accept all of that nonsense about who Jesus is and is not? Gnosticism today, idolatry tomorrow. A sow having washed to her wallowing in the mire. And maybe that kind of extreme language would jolt them awake.

You know where this leads, John says. You've been down that road. Do you wanna go back where you came from to idolatry for any who have ever been deep into sin? You know. It didn't start with some great big sin.

It started with a small compromise that led to a bigger one and a bigger one and a bigger one. You know where it leads. So what we must do is tear down the idol so that we can't worship it anymore. If we put up with small sins, it's not gonna stop there. Compromise doesn't work with sin.

Sin can't be reasoned with or pacified. Sin left unchecked and unrepented of always leads to more and greater sin in terms of how far it is from God, in terms of the consequences of us in this life. And sometimes we look at the sins of others and we say, I would never do that. Raise your hand if you've ever said that. I've said that.

I would never, in a million years, do that. Usually, in a fit of frustration, you know, over some sin that somebody I would never in a million years do that. That's usually when Stephanie looks at me like this. Really? Really?

And in my mind and in my heart, that's the truth. I would never ever do that. But how do I know? If I allow other sins to creep into my life, I need to take heed lest I fall. I need to consider myself lest I also be tempted.

If you would sin against God in the ways that you are, left unchecked, you could sin against God in worse ways. Porn and lust and inappropriate conversations with people of the opposite sex, those things can lead to adultery. Greed and covetousness, if left unchecked, can lead to theft of many kinds. Anger and hate can lead to murder. Bitterness and resentment to your spouse can lead to divorce.

And we say, I would never murder someone. Maybe, but don't start down that road. And Jesus makes clear that lust is just adultery in the heart, and anger is just murder in the heart, and greed is just theft in the heart. It's the beginning of the road that leads to full blown idolatry. And if we put up with the idols in our lives, how are we any different or any better than those who fall down before graven images?

You know, John wrote this two thousand years ago in a different time, in a different culture, But the reality is things haven't changed that much. We still need the messages that John is giving in this gospel or in this epistle. We still need the message that when we sin and then he writes these things so we may not sin, we still need the message that we have an advocate with the father. And if we will confess those sins, his blood is able to cleanse us of all sin, all unrighteousness. We still need the message that John gives in this epistle that if we love him and if we love the truth and if we love our brethren, we can have confidence before God in the day of judgment.

We can know that we are saved. Do you need that message? Do you need that confidence? We still need the message that John provides in this gospel about the power that prayer has to be answered by God, and we still need the message, brothers and sisters. We need the lead that was buried.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. And fifteen hundred years before John wrote those words, Joshua wrote this in Joshua twenty four fourteen and fifteen. Now therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And maybe what we need to hear is the same sort of call. Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Whether the idols that they served in days past, whether it's Baal or Ashtaroth or Zeus or whomever, or the idols, the gods of the land in which you dwell, the gods of sensuality, the gods of covetousness, the gods of modernism or whatever ism you wanna put in there.

Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, as for you and your house, we will serve the Lord, and we will keep ourselves from idols. There always have been and always will be plenty to choose from when it comes to idols, but there is only one true and living God, only one who can save you from sin, only one who created the world and all that was in it, but even more sent his son who came and died on a cross so that you could have the hope of eternal life. And if you're not yet a Christian, my call to you and Christ's call to you is turn from those idols in your life. Turn from those things that you placed ahead of him and say, God is my God.

He is Lord. He is Christ, and I will serve him whatever it requires of me. And to begin that journey, where you start is, as we talked about in our Bible classes, to come in humble submission and put Christ on in baptism. Not the finish line, though you are saved in that moment, but the starting line of a life in service to the one true and living God. If you're already a Christian and you realize the idols have come back in your life, that they've been reerected, know that you're not alone in this fight and that we are willing to stand beside you and stand with you to pull those idols down.

If we can pray for you or we can help you, won't you come while together we stand and while we sing?