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A little over the last 40 years. And some of our conversations this week have to do with the topic of life and where we find it. So I just want to begin. Let's begin together in Athens. Athens, Greece. And so, in fact, I'm wearing that shirt right there in that picture. That's not intentional. I only have two shirts, so it was one or the other. That's Chris and I in front of the Parthenon in Athens. And we've been there a handful of times over our lifetime. But I don't want to talk about our time in Athens. I want to talk about a guy by the name of the Apostle Paul and what he experienced in Athens in the first century. And this would be during the second missionary journey of Paul. So map time here. Second missionary journey begins up in Philippi. Paul and his sidekick Silas, they get beaten up in Philippi. They travel over to Thessalonica. That's like 100 miles away. There's a riot that takes place in Thessalonica. The believers there scoots them out in the middle of the night for their safety. They go down the road to Berea, and then they head down to Athens. And Paul does something in Athens which is highly uncharacteristic. He splits up his team. His team. At that point, you have the Apostle Paul, you have Silas, you have a disciple, a learner by the name of Timothy. And then Luke is with them for a short time. He splits his team up because he is, like, sick over whether or not the believers that are baby Christians up in Thessalonica are even surviving in their faith. And so he sends Timothy and Silas back up north to check up on them. And so what he's doing in Athens is he's waiting. He's waiting for them to get back and give news on the baby Christians up in Thessalonica. And so you. You see, while he was waiting for them, he observed something in the city of Athens. And so you'd find this in your Bible. In Acts, chapter 17, you'd find these words while Paul was. While Paul's doing what? Waiting for them. And when they get there, they're going to head down to Corinth, and he'll spend a year and a half of his life in the city of Corinth while he's waiting for the team to regroup for them in Athens. He was greatly distressed to see that the city was so full of idols. While he's in Athens, he's waiting for them. And it just really, really messed with him how the City was full of idols. You know, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There were idols around. But you're in the historic city of Athens. There's so much else to do. I mean, there's amazing architecture and there's the. I mean, Greek theater, Greek tragedies was born in Athens, right down the hill from the Acropolis. And oh, my goodness, the Greek Olympic Games. I mean, go watch some sports a mile away. Or there's the trades. I mean, Athens is a working city. There's the trades and the guilds and people actually doing work. Okay. About that, that beautiful architecture, the building that Chris and I were standing in front of, this building right here, that's the Parthenon. It's on the Acropolis is the hill. The Parthenon is the building. The Parthenon is a temple to the goddess Athena. All right. And so the landmark dominating the landscape is a temple to a goddess. There was a massive statue of Athena right out on the edge of that hill. So, well, how about athletics or sports? There's the Panathenaic stadium. This was rebuilt in 1896 for the modern Olympic games, but it was a reconstruction of a theater that was back there way back in the day. And so this is like only a mile away. But the games in Athens were run in honor of the goddess Athena. So first you'd go pay your sacrifices to Athena and then you'd come be involved in the athletic competition, whether that was run or discus or wrestling or boxing. So even sports was kind of wrapped up in the life of the gods. And it is where theater was born. And this theater here is on the very foot of the Acropolis. It is the theater of Dionysus. Dionysus was the God of wine. And Greek theater was born out of a festival every year where you offer sacrifices to the God of wine. And then it turned into a coral festival, and then kind of place grew out of that. And so there's a temple of Dionysus, the God of wine, connected to the theater building. And as far as jobs and work from the Acropolis, you look down and there's this building right here. It's the temple of Hephaestus with its Doric columns. The temple of Hephaestus. Hephaestus is the God of blacksmiths and metal workers. So whatever trade you belong to, there was a God attached to that theater. There was a God attached to that athletics, there was a God attached to. It was an idol soaked culture. It was woven through every single aspect of life. And when the apostle Paul is There, waiting for his team to regroup, there's this cascade, this tsunami of idle interest, and it messed with him. The verse that we read before, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So even before his team gets back, he wants to get down to Corinth and launch a Jesus community in Corinth. But even before they get back, he goes into action. In the next verse, verse 17, it says, so he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace, like with philosophers, day after day with those who happened to be there, the dude couldn't keep his mouth shut. So disrupted by the idolatry that he can't help but say, listen, the son of God, our creator came to earth and gave himself for us so that we could have life. He goes to the synagogue and he has conversations there in the marketplace. He just walks up to philosophers, starts conversation with him. And if you read the rest of Acts chapter 17, you'll see that that leads to this conversation at Mars Hill, the Areopagus, where Paul gives this speech in Acts chapter. So you look back on that, an idle saturated culture, and you think, dude, I'm so glad that we've outgrown that. So here's the statue of Artemis. Literally, that thing was up on the Acropolis. That's what Artemis, excuse me, Athena looked like. You think, I'm so glad we've outgrown that. And for us it just, it takes a different idolatry, takes a different form. I think personally it can be harder to identify because what an idol in our lives wants to do is capture our attention, dominate our dreams, mobilize our energy, ready, without us knowing it's happening. So I've quoted this guy, Tim Keller, died a couple summers ago from pancreatic cancer. Pastored in Manhattan Redeemer Church in Manhattan. And Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit God, says an idol is anything that in your heart of hearts, you go, man, if I get. What's the word? If I get that, then I'll feel my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value. Then, then I will feel significant and secure. And by the way, if these set of conversations is stirring something in you and you just want to go deeper in idols and the way they mess with us and how to combat them, you could do worse than starting with Tim Keller's book Counterfeit Gods on our substitute Gods. By the way, the subtitle is the Empty Promise of Money, Sex and Power. And the only hope that matters. And he spoke these messages to, to a congregation in Manhattan, New York. Money, sex and power. And the only hope that matters, the center of business, the center of finance, the center of fashion. And he goes, friends, what are we chasing? So I like, not only that Tim wrote that, but the context in which he wrote it was brilliant. And he wrote it in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, as the financial markets were wrecked and people were just going, my life is over without my money. And he goes, it shouldn't be. And so that calamity exposes perhaps that money meant far more to us than it should have with the financial collapse. So an idol is anything we look at and say, if I get that, if I get that, then let's go back, let's go back. If we can real quick, then my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value, then I'll be significant and secure. Do you know what your that is? And again, it's not, is there an idol in your life? It's like what, two or three are lobbying for your attention at any given time? I think it's just safer to assume that they're there and we got to figure out what they are and attempt to replace them with the living Christ. So Keller was famous for quoting this novelist named David Foster Wallace. David Foster Wallace is not only a novelist, award winning novelist, and there was this commencement speech that he gave, graduation speech to the graduates of Kenyon College. And this is what David Foster Wallace said. He's talking about worship and the things we worship. Let this soak in. David Foster Wallace said this. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap your meaning in life, then you will never have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. Worship power. You will feel weak and afraid, and you will need even more power over others to keep that fear at bay. Worship your intellect. Remember, he's speaking at a college graduation, right? Worship your intellect. Being seen as smart, you'll end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And he said, if you want to worship like something transcendent, like God or something like that, the best reason to do that, it is the only thing that will not eat you alive. But worship, power, money, beauty, intellect, it will eat you alive. So those three steps that we've talked about. Can anyone give me the three words and they flashed up on the screen a moment ago, the first word was what? Identify. The second word was expose. And the third one was replace. Identify, expose and replace. If I were you, I would want to figure out what my one or two top idols are that lobby for my attention. So some years back, a guy named Arthur Brooks wrote this book called Strength From Strength to Strength. Have any of you read this? Have any of you seen this? Okay. Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, wrote this book, Strength to Strength. The subtitle is Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. And his thesis is this. He's writing, he's thinking here of strivers. And what he means by a striver is a man or woman that worked their tail off to arrive at a certain position. You throw yourself into it. You obsess about this area of business. You often to the exclusion of your family and the care of your body, you just hammer and hammer and hammer. And he says it works until that point when it doesn't. And the point when it doesn't is often midlife where you just don't have the energy that you once had. And what happens there is often people depress out or they double down. If I can't do it in 12 hours a day, I'll do it with 16 hour days. And they just burn more and more time. And what he basically says, his thesis statement in the book From Strength to Strength is that all of us go into decline and some fields faster than others. In professional athletics, you might hit your peak at age 26. If you're a history professor, you might hit your peak at age 56. But everyone will start to go into decline at one point. And what he does, this brilliant research and creative writing in moving from strength to strength is he attempts to convince men and women approaching their middle years to move from something he calls fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is like innovation. The ability to come up with new ideas, problem solving, and you hit 40 whatever or 50 whatever, and you're just not as quick as you used to be. He says move to crystallized intelligence. The way he describes crystallized intelligence is basically wisdom. So you need to move from this striver, this person that just hammers and hammers to, to the role of coach, to the role of advisor, to the role of someone who has amassed this life wisdom over time and can now get that. And he encourages you to do that in the second half of life. Now I say all that to say this for some reason, at around page 70, he turns to the topic of idolatry and this isn't a Christian book, but he has a faith background. And then he starts to bleed it and kind of show his hand about halfway through the book as a person with a faith foundation. And so what he plays with his Harvard students is a game called what's my Idol? And he makes you choose from these four in his class. The next slide. Here we go. Money, power, pleasure, and fame. We've had different lists up in our time together. Money, power, pleasure and fame. And the reason he does that is because back in the day, Thomas Aquinas, theologian, philosopher, Thomas Aquinas said that these were the four that would most likely grab our hearts and that we would struggle more with one than the other three. So if you've got a note taking device, either pencil and pen or paper, or whether you want to use a phone or something like that, I'd like you to write down those four words. Money, power, pleasure and fame. And for the next five or six minutes, we're going to play a game, what's my idol? And trying to figure out what it is. But first, definitions. Let's go to the next slide if we can. Money. He describes, as Arthur Brooks describes as the pursuit of wealth and financial security as a scorecard for self worth. And so if you're taking this, go, money as a scorecard, all right? Money is a scorecard for my worth. I equate my self worth with my net worth. Power. You think, oh, I don't need power over people. Do you need to control situations? Alter call now, the desire for control, influence and authority over people or situations. If your family members ever accuse you of being a control freak, and from time to time you suspect that there could be some truth in that, then power might be yours. Third is pleasure. Think more of instant gratification. I can't wait. I don't know if you're in the habit of racking up credit card debt in order to have something, because I have to have it right now, then maybe pleasure would be. Remember, all of us are drawn to one or two of these. Our goal is just to figure out of these four, which 1am I drawn to more than the other three. So pleasure, craving for sensory comfort, entertainment and immediate gratification. All right, Fame. I put the word honor. He puts the word honor next to that and you might think, yeah, I don't need to be famous. But no, no, no, no. Do I crave the attention of the right people? It might not. I don't need the whole world to know who I am. You know, I don't need no American Idol. The voice. No, no, no, no. Do I need the affirmation of the right people? The need for localized or widespread admiration, prestige and applause from others? And it might be four or five people in your world and you would just die to have them know you and appreciate your gifts. And so that's fame and honor. So if you looked online, just YouTube this. Arthur Brooks being interviewed by people after he wrote Strength to Strength. He plays this game with the different people interviewing him. He plays this with Jordan Peterson. He plays this with Eric Metaxas and just goes, okay. And this is what he does. He first says, eliminate two, cross two out. And usually the person's paralyzed a little bit. And then he says, where would you be willing to be normal? Just national average, Just median. Oh, pleasure. And someone's like, I run marathons, I camp out, I backpack. I just don't think physical pleasure is my. Okay, cross that one out. Okay. Power. Power over people and control. It's just not a deep need. Okay, now you're down to two. So do this with your list of four. Try to people say money. I'm glad I earned what I earned, but if I made national average, I could thrive at national average economics and maybe even find it a challenge. So I just don't think that money as my scorecard. I don't think it's that one. So eliminate two. Now you should be down to two. And if you say, yeah, I don't know, I need more time with this, then go to the YouTube videos and watch how we walk through this with some people and it might help you a little bit. Now you're down to. Now you have to eliminate one to eliminate one to come up with one. And it was just interesting for Arthur Brooks, for Eric Metaxas, and for Jordan Peterson. As I watched these, they all had the same idol and it was the last one. It was honor. It was having affirmation from the right group of people in their field or in their life and they worked through. So that happened to be theirs. In a sampling of three, do you have any clue what yours might be? I would want to know because unharnessed and undealt with it can wreck you. Control freaking people and situations can rob you from the daily enjoyment of community and being able to walk into a space and not be constantly on edge because you're not in control. Pleasure can be a runaway train financially, can cause long term serious financial ramifications, or it can cause you to cheat in business deals and take shortcuts. That are either unethical or illegal in order to garner more financial resources. It can end up wrecking you living your life to try to get the approval of other people can do the same. And so the idea here is that you now here's the question. Why in the world, why in the world would Arthur Brooks bring this up in this book on reorienting your world in the second half of life away from striving and toward coaching. The answer is you're going to have to freakin let go of what brought you power and what brought you money and what brought you prestige in order to step into your second half of life in order to move from fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence. And the reason this appears in page 70 in his 74 or something like that in a section called Chipping Away is because we can't let go of what we've been chasing and striving if we haven't dealt with the why. Why am I chasing after that like a madman? Why am I unwilling to let that go? Two and a half years ago, I handed off the senior pastor title and responsibility to my former sidekick Aaron Buer, who is now my boss. I went from being the leader of the organization to a support role within the organization. That handoff two and a half years ago was after a two year process where a small group of our elders asked, is this wise to make Aaron our new senior pastor? And is this wise to let you stay around after he takes responsibility? Because most of the time this doesn't go well. When asked why the transition has gone so well, I don't think it's tactical. Do this first, do this second, do this third. I think the person you have been trying to become before the transition begins is likely to determine the success of the transition. Put simply, if I had approached that transition as a control freak who still had to be in charge, no way this would have gone. I started conversations before I knew what I was going to be paid. That is, I knew I was going to go from senior pastor to a teaching pastor where I cover 15 to 20 weekends a year, no longer responsible for the vision direction strategy of Ada Bible Church. And I knew that my elders would then step in and say, okay, this is what we think that's worth. I had to have enough confidence in God before the conversation started and quite frankly, confidence in these loving elders that I had worked with for some time to be able to say, if I let this go, I think I'll be okay. And speaking for Aaron, he had to have a level of Humility and a level of security that let the founder figure stick around without being threatened by that. The person Aaron was becoming before the transition started and the person I was becoming before the transition started allowed us to make a seamless transition as fluid as I can possibly imagine for a nonprofit organization or for a company. And the gift to our people to go from someone they knew, trusted and loved to somebody else that they knew, trusted and loved. Because Aaron had been on our staff for 15 years and had led our youth ministry and it was bringing someone up from the inside. And I think when Brooks says, okay, what's your idol? Identify your idol. Which one gets your attention? Dealing with that is mandatory for letting go. And I just don't mean letting go of a ministry. I mean letting go of your kids when it's time for them to adult. I mean letting go of a house when it's either too big or there's just too many steps as you push into later years and you life is full of letting go. And I think, just, can you do something real quick for me just as a practice, can you grip your hands like this? Like white knuckle it for a second, just white knuckle it for a second and then just kind of release that and go like this. God is going to ask us to release all kinds of stuff. And I think we're more capable to open our hands and release those things when we're not clinging to them because we're convinced we only have life with them. And our gracious God wants us to find life with him apart from them. This might be letting go of a dream, it might be letting go of a person, it might be letting go of a child as they adult might be letting go of a position, it might be waving goodbye to some financial security for any number of reasons. If you would like some help, let me just stop there. I just need to let that rest for just a minute. I think we cling. I think we white knuckle it because we believe I have to have this to experience life. And Jesus, who came to be the bread of life, the source of life and the water of life, he goes, it's in me and it's through me. Find it in me. Continue to cling to that. It will eat you alive, maybe wipe out some relationships and your health in the process. I came up with a statement in March. I'd never thought of this sentence before, but I was thinking through idolatry. I was preparing to work on this material and the statement was this. It's calamity exposes idolatry. Calamity exposes idolatry. And what I mean by that is if you have question about what your top couple idols are, you might figure it out when your fingers are forced open to let something go in a calamitous way and suddenly you discover, oh, that meant far more to me than I knew that it did. So I like watching money grow. Not your money. I like watching my money grow. And a few years back I purchased a rental property. A fun way of watching my money grow. Did I mention that I like watching my money grow? And in the second week of March, I received a telephone call at 1:30 in the morning from our property manager. Furnace out. Oh no. There had been flooding in downtown Grand Rapids because of some problem with storm drains where whole streets were suddenly underwater. Not in floodplains, mind you, not down by the Grand River. We're talking up on Michigan Hill. There were streets that were underwater and my property was one of them. So I say, well, there's nothing we can do about it tonight. Power was shut off. Every house on the block had basements filled with water. Water was a foot and a half up our garage. Alright. And again, this is not a floodplain area. So I pull my car, my Bronco into that driveway the next morning with a pump that I got from a hardware store. And my property manager, who happened to be my son in law, met me in the driveway and saying, not only do we have four feet of water in the basement, but a wall collapsed. Now this is a hundred historic Grand Rapids house. Would you like to see a picture? Because I would like to show you one. When I say a wall collapsed, we are talking a gap. And all of a sudden the cash register. No, we did not have flood insurance. Why would you need flood insurance 60ft above the Grand River? I was insured, just not insured for that. So the cash register starts clicking. And it began with having people come in and build a temporary wall. And then it turned from there into having someone come in and muck the place out. Two inches of mud. Things turn moldy very fast. So we had to come in, pump all the water out, clean the entire thing. I just want you to hear a calculator running in your mind as I mention these things. Let me take you on a quick tour real quick. These are the two hot water heaters. This is the furnace. Look at the water line on the furnace. And then, oh, there's the electrical panel. Oh yeah. So power out. Is it safe to turn that back on? And You'll. Yes. Building a glorious wall. And so it's. Did I mention that I like watching money grow? Did I mention that to you? So it's only money. So so far, up to like 60 grand in these things as they've gone by, you know, again, uninsured. Now putting 60 grand into a rental house might be a wonderful idea. Yeah. For a new kitchen and for a new, you know, flooring for the living room and a new bathroom and things that elevate the quality. All of this. The furnace works. It's new. Yeah, we don't care. We just want heat in the winter, you know. So this is what I mean by calamity exposes idolatry. That was the opportunity for me to ask the question, where is your security, Jeff? Where is your value and where is your worth as $60,000 went gone? And to be able to say in that respect, you know, I think I'm okay. Wonderful verse in the book of Hebrews, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. Have you ever heard that? That's the second half of the verse. I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. Do you know what the first half of the verse is? Set your hearts free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Because he has said, God has said, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. Even if $60,000 does leave you and forsake you. And that verse, it doesn't mention idolatry, but it's just, set your heart free from the desperate need to see my money grow. Because he has said, my God has said, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. If someone had asked me, is money your God? I'd say, man, I think about it way too much. I don't think so. But maybe I don't think so. Calamity exposes idolatry. And it's not just water in the basement of a rental property. She didn't know how much her self worth was tied in to the behavior of her children until a 17 year old ran off the rails in a very public way. And suddenly those feelings, I am nothing. I have no value, I have no worth. I raised this child. This is what they're doing. Utter collapse of self esteem. This, my friends, is a glorious gift from God and a wake up call just for him to knock and say, listen, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. Calamity exposes idolatry. Sometimes we don't know, until it gets messed up. And it's God's harsh, beautiful way of saying, yeah, it meant a little bit more than you thought, didn't it? Now, don't sugarcoat suffering. We are allowed to experience vast disappointment in life and a series of disappointments, and to lament and say, I'm really bummed about this, I'm heartbroken about this, this, but my life isn't over because my life is bound up with Christ. This is huge. You didn't realize how your reputation had become your God until someone went on a slandering campaign to ruin your reputation. And then you just go, okay, hands are open, I've got you. And I just realized that that meant a whole lot more to me than I ever thought it did. Calamity exposes idolatry. And the gift that is in that mess is the ability to come to our heavenly Father and say, I think I had a counterfeit God there. And I think I was using something that wasn't. You help me one day at a time to begin to find you once again. Because that God is an unreliable God. It was there and it's gone. 1600s, there's a French mathematician by the name of Blaise Pascal, brilliant by brilliant child prodigy. He wrote a textbook on geometry when he was 16 years old. What that means is if we had gone to high school together, we would not have hung out. Textbook on geometry, mathematician, inventor. And then God captured his heart in some interesting ways and he began to turn this brilliant mind in the direction of pursuit of God. And so he wrote some reflections. And it's called Pensee. And in the reflections, Ponce Pascal. If you've never heard the name Blaise Pascal and you've never heard of Ponce, chances are you have seen this quote in reduced form. And so here's Pascal and here's the quote. There's a God shaped vacuum. You ever heard that one? That's Pascal. 1600s, French mathematician. God shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ. And so that gets reduced because that's kind of cumbersome. Even more to, there's a God shaped heart in every heart. There's a God shaped hole in every heart that only he can fill. Bumper sticker size, poster size, have you seen that one? There's a God shaped hole in every heart that only he can fill. And you think, oh, that's wonderful. There's just this little space in my heart that only God can fill. No, he Wasn't talking a little space, he was talking about this something the size of the Grand Canyon. That's the empty space in me. It's cavernous, it's hungry, it's massive, it's vacant. And I try to fill it with stuff so it doesn't get quoted because it's wordy and complex. Is this next statement where he says this? He tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not the help he cannot find in those that are. Though none can help since this. Since this what? Since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object. In other words, by God himself, It's not this little hole that only God can fill. It's this massive infinite abyss. When he said there seeking in things that are not the help he cannot find in those that are what? Seeking in the house that I want, the solace I cannot find in the house that I have. Seeking in the next person I hook up with. The fullness I cannot find in the person I'm with now. Seeking in the job I want, the fullness I cannot find in the job that I have. Seeking in the things that are not the help he cannot find in those who are. Pascal, 1600s mathematician is a little too dense for you then. Let's go with Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers neighborhood. Fred Rogers said, the older I get, the more I've come to believe that nothing I buy can take away my loneliness, fill my emptiness or heal my brokenness. I just go, yes, nothing I buy can take away my loneliness, fill my emptiness, or heal my brokenness. The Israelites leave Egypt in captivity and they're moving to the land of promise. Moses receives the ten Commandments. They do not leave Egypt as a well ordered group of God followers in order to cross the desert. The Israelites depart Egypt as an unruly mob of ex slaves indoctrinated in generations of Egyptian idol worship. And they don't know this God and they don't trust him yet. Moses ascends Mount Sinai and receives the ten Commandments. Commandment number one, no other gods. Our Creator is saying, I want to be your one and only God through Christ, as God reveals himself as the source of life, the bread of life, the water of life that we crave. I want to challenge you not to forget this and just to do regularly the honest heart work, just to go, what am I chasing? What am I chasing? And what do I think it will do? You identify it. You expose it. You ain't gonna do it for me. The hole is too big and you replace it. You replace it with the water of life, the bread of life and the source of life who came for us. It's not that Jesus should fill that space. I think he's the only thing who can. No other gods. No other gods. No other gods. That's the quest that I invite you into.