Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. It's on page 1030. We're going to chapter 4 today, Revelation 4. I appreciate the work of Jerry putting this together. We did not confer what I was preaching on and what he was leading us in worship, but it fits rather perfectly. Let's see God's sovereign and gracious hand. College students, we have no Bible study tomorrow night. The elders have asked if they could meet on Monday night. So we're giving them that opportunity to meet, giving me that opportunity to meet as well. Give you guys a week off. Maybe you can do some homework if you haven't done that in a while. Maybe you can catch up. So no Bible study tomorrow night at our house. I won't be there. You can come hang out with my wife, though. That's fine. Sasha's there, too. So love to hang. Book of the revelation of Jesus Christ chapter 4 we will be looking at one verse today verse 11 Worthy are you our Lord and God? To receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and By your will they existed and were created. This is God's Word today. I If you're honest with me today and if I'm honest with you, it's kind of hard to find truly honest Christians these days, but if we're honest with one another, the truth is we all have idols, don't we? We all have something that we prop up in place of God, or at least on the same plane as God, and we try to act as if those things are God within themselves. And of course, we would never say these things. We're good Christians. We don't ever talk like these things are God, but we certainly will live our lives like that. Our time will relate to our money, our priorities around these things to worship them. Things like money or material objects. Maybe you worship your bank account and you just are penny pinchers, right? Or maybe it's your car, right? It's your awesome car. Maybe it's just prestige or image. Maybe it's how you look or how other people see you or how you see yourself. Maybe you worship that image that you prop up. Maybe it's just comfort. Maybe it's just comfort. You just love being comfortable. And when God brings circumstances into your life, you will do whatever it takes to regain that comfort back into your life. Maybe it's friendship. Maybe, maybe it's just your spouse. You just, you cannot imagine life without them. And, and man, God would be so cool if somehow you weren't together with that friend or that loved one. Maybe it's just this idea of control, right? Circumstance don't go our way. Can I give you a thing that I struggle with? I really struggle with control and it shows up when I'm running a little bit behind and a light hits yellow, right? the fear of losing control over my life, my schedule, things going on around me. And we prop these things up, not giving a second thought towards God, or our relationship with Him, or His role in these things in which we worship. For most of our idols, it's not as much about external actions, as I've said, though it certainly will involve that, and it'll lead to that. But mostly, it has much to do with internal estimation. Right? It's how we value these things on the inside. It's what our own heart values. For instance, my idol is different than your idol. Right? Because my heart's different than your heart. What I love is different from what you love. We view some things as better than God. That's just the honest truth. Or more important, more vital for our existence. Or sometimes, sometimes just more fun. Sometimes they're just better. My question to you this morning, though, in relation to our idols in our verse today, how's it going with those idols? How are they treating you? Are they treating you well? Are you doing okay with them? Are they giving you a long, happy life, everything you wanted? Are you getting those things from your idol today? I think if you're honest with yourself and with me, we realize that our idols fall woefully short of what we fully expect from them and certainly don't pay us back for the worship that we often give them. We treat our idols as if they are praiseworthy, right? We praise them with our time and our money and our resources. We give everything we have to them. We treat our idols with utmost respect. That's why we can't stand them when somebody makes fun of what we love. right? My wife and I were talking about this this past week. I love sports. And I'm getting to the point where I don't play them as well as I used to. But I certainly love watching them or talking about them. I love I love sports. And Nikki thinks it's and we'll make fun because she'll she'll joke fun with with me. It's some type of like like lower thing. These sports are like you know, only peons do sports, right? She's smart, she's smart, and she's well-gifted in the arts, right? And we're like, we're talking about, like, piano practice versus, like, watching baseball, right? You kind of feel like a peon, right? And so Nikki will, like, well, sports, right? And it's just, man, and there's something in me that, like, it kind of gets under my skin, right? Why? Because I love it. I love it. I serve these things. I worship these things. And so when somebody undermines what I love and worship, man, it gets under my skin, doesn't it? And same with you. Same with you. When somebody makes fun of your favorite car brand, it just ticks you off, right? It just gets under you, right? So how's it going? We treat our idols as if they have huge impact on our lives and we attribute power to them. Our passage this morning has a couple truths for us. One big truth and then two big reasons to support this truth. And you understand that this is much like we did this morning. This is a setting in Revelation 4 where there is worship going on. And these people aren't doing anything different than what we did this morning. They're just speaking truth. And these elders fall down and worship God, and they say what our verse has read, worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. There's two things we can learn about that first statement, worthy are you our Lord to receive glory and honor and power. The first thing is God alone really is worthy. It's God and God alone. I actually like the King James reading a little bit better than our ESV readings. It says this, thou art worthy or you are worthy, you are worthy. our ESV says, worthy are you. And I don't know, as I kind of read it, you kind of, my life kind of displays this a little bit. It says like, worthy are you, and worthy are you, and worthy are you, and worthy are you, right? Our life can look like that sometimes. But a proper reading of this text, you and you alone are worthy. Only you are worthy. These elders, they're not making a claim for anything else. They're making a claim for God and His worthiness alone. The second thing we learn is God alone is worthy of it all. of it all. In our English text, we don't see them, but there are articles in front of the glory, the honor, and the power. In your text, it probably just reads glory, honor, and power. Am I right? Right there? In the Greek, you'll have these articles. Worthy are you to receive the glory, and the honor, and the power. It kind of qualifies what's going on here. It's not just, you're worthy of little glory over here, little bit of honor over here, a little bit of power right here. It's you're worthy of all the honor. You're worthy of all the glory. You're worthy of all the praise. God alone is worthy of all of those things. And they're simply making an accurate statement. And it's not that these things are ours and we hand them to God. It's not like these elders have the glory and the honor and the power. And they're saying, worthy are you to have that. You can receive some of the stuff that we have. They're not saying that at all. They're attributing these facts to be true about God. They're saying, we are saying these things because you already have them. You already have them. And it highlights his worthiness. It highlights that as we appropriate the truth about God to Himself, God is worthy to hold up underneath all that we ascribe to Him. See, we are attributing these things to God because they are true. And John, in this text, is going to give us two reasons why God is deserving of all of your worship. Two reasons. We'll look at this morning. Two reasons why God is deserving of all of your worship. Because God is worthy of all of our worship, we must put down all of our idolatry and worship only Him. And that's what we're going to conclude from this text today. Because God is worthy of all of our worship, we must put down all of our idolatry and worship only Him. So what's the first reason why God is deserving of all of this? Well, first of all, it's God's creative power. God's creative power. Verse 11, worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things. There's some emphasis placed on that pronoun you, you yourself. You and you alone created all things. Are you aware that God doesn't need you today? Are you aware of that? You and you alone created all things. You were not there when God made everything. You were not there when God made you. You weren't standing by giving your opinions when God created things, right? You didn't have any input or say into how God created or what he created or when he created what. You are the product of the creation. You are the output of God's power in creation. You are part of the creation. You didn't join in at all. I love how Paul says it in Acts 17. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. God stands alone. God does not need you. He himself created all things. See, the truth is God does not need you. You need God. God does not need you. You need God. In other words, you are a totally dependent creature upon the creative power of God Almighty. In his Sermon on why God cannot be served but loves to serve John Piper says this if you feel strong and Self-sufficient and morally in sync with God and able to serve God and make independent contributions to God in his work Then this is bad news when Paul says God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything in other words if the message is true about God then self-sufficient people who think they can negotiate with God are deluding themselves and God doesn't need you today. You need God. It's not just that, though. God owns you. You yourself created all things. God owns what He has created. He made you. You did not make Him. God is the source of all things, and we have no right or even the ability to question Him in any meaningful sense. You know who got this? You know who knocked this out of the park? A guy named Job. He nailed this. You talk about a man who had a couple rights to question God, right? I mean, this guy knocked this out of the park. Listen to what he says in Job 9. If one wished to contend with God, one could not answer him once in a thousand times. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength, who has hardened himself against him and succeeded. he who removes mountains and they know it not, when he overturns them in his anger, who shakes the earth out of its place and its pillars tremble, who commands the sun and it does not rise, who seals up the stars, who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea, who made the bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south, who does great things beyond searching out and marvelous things without number, Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not. He moves on, but I do not perceive him. Behold, he snatches away. Who can turn him back? Who will say to him, what are you doing? This is a man who is ransacked of all that he owned by God himself. We were at the Creation Museum with Northside, and that was the first time I'd ever been to the Creation Museum. In fact, it was great to have already been led in this worship of God this week, and then go down to the Creation Museum, and I kind of compartmentalized the two. I was thinking of it later on in the week, man, I get to go to the Creation Museum after already having studied all this, and man, what a great point. they draw. If you've never been, one of the main things they really put a question in your mind about is this truth. Where is your starting point when it comes to why you exist or where we all come from? And they ask this very simple question. Are you going to believe God or are you going to believe man? You could ask it this way. Did God make man or did man make God? Very simple. That's the question. That's the question. God doesn't need you today. You need God. But God entirely owns you. He entirely owns you. You know, the reason that we have some of the idols that we have is because we actually think that either these idols or that we along with these idols are really powerful, right? We are powerful, but man, with our idols, we are supremely powerful. We think that these idols, we have some measure of control over our life. For instance, take about your kids, right? You just love your kids, you idolize your kids, right? These are trophies of your awesome parenting at work, aren't they, right? And you feel like through them, and that is one aspect, you can just control and manipulate. You can control what people think of you by just handling your kids just like this, right? You want everyone to know about your parental awesomeness. Look how well they have turned out. Look how hard we have worked at parenting. What about your career? Man, that's the one thing you have control over. That's the one power that you possess. You're like, I don't get this family thing, right? This church thing's really hard to figure out. But man, career? Got that. Nailed it. In fact, I'm already up for a promotion next month. Corner office, here I come. That's the one thing you feel like, man, that's just, I got this. Money, right? You feel like money will allow you to do anything, right? Money is the one true ticket to freedom. If I could just get the bank account to this amount, then we can do... You actually think money is power, right? Money makes the world go round after all, doesn't it? We serve these idols in faith, believing that they will come through for us in a powerful way. But what we find is that this power is, first of all, very temporal. It goes away and it demands a quick return. And I remember when I got married, good grief, money shifted for me, right? Money was kind of like this ticket to whatever I wanted, like when I was in high school and college, right? And then I got married and I realized money goes out the door very quickly, right? Seriously, 90% of it goes to bills, right? The other 9% of that goes to my wife. It just goes by so quick. It just flies. And you parents, you people who have been out on your own, you know that. It's so temporal. Some of you teenagers, you're probably just learning that. You probably don't even have a full grasp of what that looks like. You might understand a little bit better now, but I'm telling you, money is so temporal. It just goes by. You go through it quick, not even thinking about it. Not only is it temporal, though, it's insufficient. These idols demand perfect worship. Are you aware of that? If you're going to worship your bank account, do you know how much worship goes into that to making that idol strong and work for you? If you're going to idolize your kids, do you know how much work that is? It's exhausting. It's a terrible way to live. They demand perfect worship in order for them to be truly powerful. Actually, even if you do worship them perfectly, even still, you can come up short. You have to work for them, and really, unless you win the lottery... I mean, think about that guy, right? The one guy that wins the lottery, has done like zero work all of his life, wins the lottery, and there you are, right, slaving away 80 hours a week to get where you are, and this guy just made like $32 million more than you have in your bank account. Think about that. It's crazy how that stuff just goes down. You have to work for them. Glory, man, just being viewed as some awesome parent. Think about how temporal and insufficient that is. I mean, all your kid has to do is do one embarrassing thing, and it all goes to pot, right? And we've all been there. I'm going to be there. I can't wait. I'm going to embrace that. It's going to be great. I know what that's like as a kid, embarrassing your parents. Great. It's a great feeling. You're like, yes! Talk about power for kids. Kids, that's the power you have right there. It's in your hands. If you think about honor or respect, you know, if I just had that corner office, if everyone could just walk by my name plate, that would, yeah, that's all great until Jim gets a promotion over you, right, or until you lose your job because of financial or economic pressure. You think power, you know, having all this money, I can do whatever I want, yeah, that's great until, until the economy goes down. It's all great until you find out, man, this money has to go other places to keep my life at rest. The truth is, these idols that we worship on a daily basis are simply not worthy of the worship and respect that we give them all the time. Money does not make the world go round. Jesus makes the world go round. That's the point. For you created all things. God does not need you. God owns you. You might be thinking, man, this is, this is a simple, this is one of those classic deal with it type things, right? Just, just suck it up and deal with it, like those, like those internet memes, right? There's, there's one that's called deal with it. You, you guys see those, those really stupid pictures and they have stupid phrases and you read them and you're like, wow, that's really stupid. Those type of things, right? There's one that's like deal with it and it's this, like, picture looking out of a, of like an airport, excuse me, like an airplane window, right? And there's this like turtle flying and it just says deal with it. You know, is this just really stupid, right? Is this one of those times where God doesn't need you, God owns you, and you just suck it up and deal with it? Is that one of those times? For some of you, yes. But there's more. There is more. Absolutely more. God doesn't just say, deal with my immense power in creating you, and me not needing you, and me owning you. You need to accept that, but there's way more than that. This is the second truth, the second reason why God demands all of your worship. Not just his creative power, but his creative plan. At the end of verse 11, See, the truth is God designed you God designed you. He doesn't need you. He owns you. But the truth is, He designed you. By your will, you exist. By His will, you exist the way you do. This has to do with right now. The way you exist, where you exist, when you exist, how you exist, is all according to the will of God. It's all according to His great and powerful plan for you. And it's not just you, though. God has designed Everything, everything that he has brought into your life, other people, your circumstances, your government, your economy, the amazing things, the catastrophic things, the blessings, the sufferings, the entire universe has an appropriate and proper design planned out by God right now. We'll keep reading in Acts 17, And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined and allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far away from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own prophets have said, or poets have said, for we indeed are your offspring. God has designed where you live, and how you live, and what time you live, and what place you live, so that you would seek God and find Him. And the truth is, He is not far away from you at all. The point is, we don't want Him. You and your life, you have a design. You just don't want Him. Some of you are looking for answers and are generally hopeless. And I suggest that some, if not most of this is because you fail to see God's purposeful design in every aspect of your life. You just blow right through it. Like luck and chance are huge things to you. Your boss, your money, your looks, your kids, your spouse, your house, your circumstances, your church, all of it goes back to God who purposefully brings things into your life so that you will learn to delight in Him. God has designed you for this and everything in your life, not just you and the way you are and the circumstances of your life, but when those other people's circumstances come crashing into your existence, right? Like that one father I said, I'm just trying to get from one end of the living room to the other end of the living room without getting sucked into the vortex of someone else's life around me, right? But shame on us for thinking that way when we believe that God has designed everything for its purpose, for His purpose, to seek Him and to find Him, promising to you that He will be found. But it's not just that God has designed you. He has plans for you. As you get to the end of verse 11, they exist by your will and were created for your will. So if your existence has to do with the right now of God's plan and God's design, you were created. This has to do with all times. It has to do with past, present, and the future. The whole reason for your creation, why you're here. This has to do with the whole timeline of your life. God has specific plans for you on a cosmic, eternal timeline. God has specific plans for you on how he will glorify himself through your life. Let it be known, we've already sung about it today, regardless of who you are, regardless of where you exist, when you exist, how you exist, God has plans for your life to get glory from your life and he will see to it that his plans are accomplished. My friends, this has nothing to do with you. has nothing to do with you. We've already sang it, but in Philippians 2, this is what Paul says, Therefore God has highly exalted Jesus, and bestowed on Jesus the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That's every tongue. That's every knee. That's not just saved people, that's people who are unsaved as well. That's for some of you lovers of Jesus, and that's some of you critics of Jesus. All of us will be there, and all of us will confess the truth with our tongues and with our knees. Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. It'll happen. The question is, how or in what way will your life bring God glory? There's two different ways that this kind of looks like. And the question for you today is, what will that look like for you? That's the end road. That's where we're going. Every tongue, every knee, that's the end. There's two different paths. And then from that, there's actually two different eternities. What would that look like for you? That's the question. The answer to that question really lies in the answer to another question, which is this. What do you believe about Jesus right now? What do you believe about the person and work of Jesus right now? And I'm not just saying any Jesus out there, right? There are a lot of Jesuses, aren't there? Tons of Jesuses. There might be 200 Jesuses in this room. There's only one real Jesus. Here. The Jesus. God's Jesus. This is not just the Jesus of love everybody and accept everything and love is an open door and all we need is love. Right? This is the Jesus of wrathful vengeance against sin. bearing the wrath of God for those who deserved it by their sin. This is a sell everything that you have and give it to the poor type of Jesus, right? This is the follow me at any cost type of Jesus. This is the if nobody would abandon their loved ones and follow me is not worthy of me Jesus. That's this Jesus. This is the offensive Jesus that when he came into his own, his own did not receive him, more than just did not receive him, they put him to death. This is the Jesus that we're talking about. And the question for you today, how will God get glory for my life has much to do with how do you or what do you believe about that Jesus right now? Jesus makes us. We don't make Jesus. Jesus makes us. We don't make Jesus. Some of you have a Jesus that you like a whole lot better, right, than the Bible's Jesus. And in your pride, you prop up your own ideas of what Jesus should be or could be, instead of looking through the scriptures and finding what Jesus is and who he is and what he's done. And somehow you think that your idea of a Jesus is a lot better than God's version of a Jesus, right? For those of you who believe that, believe whatever you want to believe about Jesus, here's a word from Proverbs 16. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Be assured he will not go unpunished. God's glory in the life of somebody who believes in the not Bible Jesus will look like God enacting His vengeful wrath on those who sin against Him. And you're like, that's mean. No, it's not. Not in the Jesus of the Bible. Not the one who created you, who owns you, who doesn't need you, and you slap in His face with your sin and act like it's no big deal. God has every right to do as he wishes with you, and his holiness and his perfection, it's all his. And you don't get to raise a question. Much like Job, you just need to put a hand over your mouth. Be assured he will not go unpunished. And God's glory in your life may look like his immense justice, wrath, and vengeance against sin. And that's a you problem, my friend. That's your sin. That is your sin. It's not God's fault. It's you. It's because you hate God. You hate the Jesus of the Bible. You want a nice-looking Jesus. You want a non-offensive Jesus. And God said, I will have no part of that. The wicked will not be not punished. It'll happen. God will glorify himself in executing his justice on your soul because of your sin. Those who because of their sin of unbelief in Jesus will glorify God in a real eternal hell forever. Let it be known. However, there is hope. Much, much hope. Because you're asking to yourself, well, I don't live up. I do hate Jesus. All my life I have hated Jesus and served other idols. Is there anything, is there anything that can be done to rescue my relationship with God against my sin against the Holy God? Absolutely there is. 2 Peter 3.9, the Lord, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. You want to talk about God's plan? Talk about what He wants? Let's talk about that. In your sin, you don't want Jesus, but the truth is Jesus wants you. He does. He's not willing that any should perish. The point is, you want to perish. God has a rescue plan, and for some, the truth is, you just don't want it. John 3, 16, you know this verse. I'm going to actually keep reading in this passage a little bit longer. Maybe you haven't heard these verses. For God so loved the world, or God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned. Whoever does not believe in Him is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Boy, is that true. For those who do not believe in Jesus, God's plan includes eternal wrath and punishment. However, for those who do believe in Jesus and in God's eternal rescue plan, God's plan includes eternal joy and fellowship with Him. We just read through, what was that, what was that? Psalm 16, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. We have no idea what's in store for those who believe in Jesus, none. I mean, we can kind of describe it in scriptural words and verbiage, but we don't know exactly what that looks like. It's too much, too much. So what does that look like for here and now? I always point to Romans 8. It is one of the grandest texts in all of scripture. I think we should have, we as a church, should have Romans 8 memorized. Because it gets to the end, and you're like, well how does this look? God glorifying himself in my life as I believe in him, what on earth could that possibly look like? Looks like this, God's plan for you, Romans 8. And we know that for those who love God, All things work together for good to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to conform to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers." And that's a lot of biblical language. Let me explain what's going on. God says this, whatever happens in your life, I'm behind it. I'm behind it and here's what I'm doing. I'm getting you the most good you could get. How? How are you doing this? What I'm doing is actually helping you to conform to the image of Jesus. And in doing that, in heaven, there will be lots of people who look like Jesus. And in the end, Jesus will be the firstborn among all those people who look like Jesus. So of all those Jesus-looking people, Jesus will be the best. Jesus will be the most glorious. Jesus will be the most worshipped. We will honor and glorify and attribute power to him. That doesn't happen unless you look like Jesus. And that doesn't happen unless God works all things to make that happen. He says, when this happens, when this happens, when you are transformed into looking like Jesus and Jesus receives glory and honor and power out of your life, out of your existence, that is your ultimate good. That's what he's saying. That's what he's saying. And listen to this chain of events. For those whom he foreknew or loved first, He predetermined to conform them to the image of Jesus so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Those whom he predestined to look like Jesus, he called them. Those whom he called, he justified. He declared them righteous. And those whom he declared righteous, he also glorified." It's a done deal. That verb is in the past. Done. Glorified. That's your good. That's your good. So what is my plan? Why am I here? For you have created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. God made you to get glory out of your life. That's why he made you. And he calls that your greatest good. So what sort of eternity have your idols been planning for you today? Hmm? Has your retirement account really planned unimaginable spiritual things for you? Right? Has your financial advisor really thought about your eternity in heaven? Does your volatile image have great plans for you when you die? Does your dream jobs benefit package include solid joys and lasting treasure? Is that part of it? Can your bank account pay for the crimes committed against the God of the universe? See, the truth is all of our idols are weak. We ourselves are weak. They hold very little to no power at all. Certainly not in the next life. They have no plans for you. They don't care for you. They did not design you. They aren't even real. We prop them up to be gods. They're not even real gods. Beloved, some of you have been missing your joy simply, simply because you are worshiping cheap idols that are not worthy that do not hold up to your worship of them. The glory or the praise that you give them, they don't hold up to it. The honor, the reverence, the respect that you give to your idols, they don't bear up under that weight. The power that you attribute them, you find out they're actually very powerless. And so you cast them down. Look with me at verse 9, Revelation 4 verse 9. I want to kind of give you an idea of what this possibly would look like. That we, as God's people, because we are created by Him, because we exist for Him, should cast away our idols. I want to give a picture of what that might look like. These are the elders, okay? High position, high ranking, among the throne room of God. And here's what they're doing. Their eldership means nothing before a God who is worthy of all the weight given to him. They give it up. They give it up. They turn their idols, or they turn what they love, who they are, they turn those into worship and say, man, this crown, it's not worthy of anything. And they give it to God who is worthy. Why? Because He and He alone is worthy, can hold up under all of that worship. Some of you have never experienced the joy and beauty of Jesus because all you have ever known are idols. That's all you've lived your life after. Maybe it's not the same idol, maybe it's like this idol, and then that one kind of runs out, you jump to here, and then you kind of get frustrated, and you run to here, and you're worshiping all these different things. And maybe that whole list at the beginning, your car, your money, your wife, your spouse, a person, a friendship, identity, all those things, you've run back and forth because they've exhausted themselves. They're out of it. You give all yourself to it, and they produce nothing for you, and so you just go to the next one. You've lived your life like that. Repent of your sin. Repent of your idolatry. Believe in the gospel of Jesus. He's the only one worthy of it. He's the only one when you give praise, and when you give reverence and respect, and when you give and you tribute power to Him, say, He is all-powerful, it actually holds up. It actually is true, and so you can give all of it to Him, knowing that it will hold up, and it won't be wasted, and you won't have to run to another idol yet again. It all holds up, it is all secure, and that is something that these elders absolutely recognize. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive all that. Why? You've created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. See, because God is worthy of all of our worship, we must put down all of our idolatry and worship Him alone. Like the crowns there on those elders, what idol is God calling you to cast down? Cast it down. It's not worthy. Don't spend one more minute worshiping your bank account. It'll frustrate the fire out of you. Stop worshiping people. Stop worshiping your church. Stop worshiping the idea of church. Worship Jesus of the church. Ponder anew what the Almighty can do if by His will, He befriend you. Let's pray. Father God, we are so thankful that the worship that we give you holds up. And it doesn't just hold up under really good times. It doesn't just hold up when the church is going well and the church is growing and visitors are being added and the role is running its line and the bank account is filling up and giving is growing and projects are being accomplished. You are worthy when we have nothing else. You are worthy when we are entirely empty of anything to give. Father, I pray that today, today, there would be souls who realize, maybe even for the first time, that now is converting time. Not when they testify the truth in eternity, but now. Now is the time of repentance. Father, I pray for those who do believe, who yet still go back to idols. Father, how foolish we are as your people to continue to go back to things that, they're broken cisterns that hold no water. They do nothing for us, yet we think that they are everything. Father, I ask this question of what have our idols done? I've got to confess, God, they've done very little for me. And it's not because they haven't tried. It's because they fall short of your glory. Father, so do I. Father, may we as an entire church body, the pastoral staff, may the elders, may those who serve, may the deacons, may fathers, may mothers recognize that these idols are just, they're just time wasters. We've got to cast them down. We've got to get rid of them. We've got to focus on real things. We've got to live the one life that we have to the greatest effect for your glory and our joy and our good. Father, it's the only sensible thing to do. Father, I pray for those that the gospel doesn't make sense to you. Father, we understand this has got to be you at work. This is not us twisting arms. This isn't pressuring. This isn't a gimmick. Father, this is your Word. This is your Spirit. This is people's sin. Father, I pray you would remove that sin. Remove that unbelief that gets in the way. And may these people trust. May I trust. Oh God, give me grace for this next week. Give all of us grace for next week. We have idols staring at us in the face that are begging for our attention even when we get home. God, I pray that we would fight that and realize that really only you are worthy of all of our praise and all of our honor and all of our power. You've created all things and by your will they exist and were created. We pray these things through Christ. Amen. Stand with me, please. I encourage you to be back tonight. Disciplines of Grace series going on at 5.30. Pastor Tom will be preaching on the discipline of service. Very interesting applicational part, hands-on approach to the disciplines. I hope you come back and join us. You are dismissed. Thank you for coming.