This is the manuscript from my last sermon preached on September 13th, 2009. The audio file can be listened to at
http://www.keystonechurch.org/sermons.phpThe Desires of Your Hearts
Brandon Fisher
Good morning, Keystone. Are you ready for this? If you’re new around here, my name is Brandon. I’m filling in for our Senior Pastor, Keith Rohrer, who is on vacation. We’re going to do something Pastor Keith never does, we are going to start this message with a shameless plug for our Youth Ministry. Junior High, tonight, 4:00-7:00pm. Senior High 5:30-8:30pm. Parents meeting 5:45-6:45pm. Tonight is going to be awesome! This morning? We’ll see.
Here’s what I really want us to do this morning: 1)I want us to gain an understanding of sin that will help us fight against it, and 2)I want us to gain an understanding of obedience that will help us achieve it. I’m anticipating this morning to be pretty weighty and difficult, but I really hope it will be beneficial for you. Let me pray that God would make it happen.
Pray
Let’s start in the book of Romans, chapter 1, verse 18, page 1112 in Bible underneath the seat. This sermon really has inadvertently given me a way to explain how so many Non-Christians can live lives of great morality. Does anyone else find this troublesome?
I don’t know how to square this in my mind: I know a lot of Non-Christians who do really good things; they volunteer at the local mission, they’re all about ending war in Uganda, they’re not cheating on their spouse, they’re going green. Some have even managed to break free from their addictions, all without the help of Jesus. Meanwhile, I know a lot of Christians who, even with Jesus, don’t serve, don’t even know where Uganda is, have really messed up families, and are addicted to porn. This is a problem for me. What does Scripture say?
Romans 1:18-25
18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
There are a ton of big-time truths revealed in these few verses. I’m talking about massive, earth shaking, worldview-shaping, Copernican Revolution-esque truths.
1. This passage teaches me that here are essentially two things: Creator and Creation. God and everything else. There are only two categories. That’s important because some people will say there is essentially only one thing, and we are all a part of it. Everything is god. That’s not us. We believe in two things—God and creation.
2. This passage teaches me that everyone knows God. Everyone knows God. This is the common ground that everyone stands on. Verse 21 says we all know God, his invisible qualities, eternal power and divine nature. Some, however, choose to suppress this truth.
3. This passage teaches me that everyone worships something. Some worship Creator. Some worship creation. Everyone is worshiping something or someone. The question isn’t whether some people are worshippers and others are not. The question is only a matter of who or what someone is worshipping.
4. God intends for us to worship him. It’s as simple as that.
Let’s linger a bit on verse 25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” This verse where I get my definition of sin. Sin is, first of all, believing a lie and, secondly, worshipping creation. At sin’s most fundamental core, it involves believing a lie and worshipping creation.
So often we define sin simply as disobeying God, which is true. We sin by acts of commission; thinking, saying, or doing things God doesn’t want us to do. We also sin by acts of omission; not thinking, saying, or doing things God does want us to do. One of my goals for us this morning is to get us to think about sin beyond just disobeying God in what we DO.
Point 1: What is sin?
From this passage, sin is defined as suppressing the truth, believing the lie, and worshipping creation rather than the Creator. What I want us to see is that sin is not as much of a behavior disorder (I do the wrong things) as much as it is a worship disorder (I worship the wrong thing.) This definition of sin will open our eyes to a whole world of sin we never knew existed.
Where is our sin rooted? Let’s look again. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
Do you see what happened? In our foolish thinking, we believed something else was more glorious than God. Verse 21, we did not glorify God. Verse 23, we exchanged the glory of God for something else. What would cause us to do something like that?
Verses 23-24 reveal we believed that we could have the desires of our hearts met in something other than God, so as punishment God gave us over to them. As our punishment, God gave us what we wanted and gave us over to the search for satisfaction in creation.
What I see is that there is a longing inside all of us to be satisfied by whatever we find to be ultimate and most glorious. We hunger and thirst for something to fill the desires of our hearts. Somehow we got in our heads that God was trying to hide something good from us and that it would be in our best interest to search for happiness outside of him.
Wasn’t this how Eve first sinned in the garden? She knew God, but she chose to believe the lie that God was hiding something good from her and that it would be in her best interest to get it, even if God told her not to.
If you want a short and provocative answer to the question, “Why do we sin?,” the answer is, “Sinning makes us happy.” You want to know why sin has any power in the life of Brandon Fisher? It’s because he loves what sin gets him. Eve sinned because she thought eating the fruit would bring her the desires of her hearts. She thought sinning would make her happy.
I see sin as a two-step dance.
Step 1: I consciously or subconsciously believe a lie that that the desires of my heart can be met outside of God.
Step 2: I become so enamored by some thing that I believe is in my best interest and I will do anything to get it.
This is idolatry in a nutshell: I will worship whatever I think is ultimate in my life. Whatever I delight in most, I will make that my functional heaven. Whatever I detest most, I will make that my functional hell. So whatever will allow me to escape from hell and enter my heaven, that thing will become my functional savior.
This is some heady stuff. Let’s see if it holds water. How does his play out in someone’s life? Let’s take an average woman. The desire to be married is really strong in most women. If I polled all the single ladies in here, marriage may be the top desire on their list. When guys are little they pretend to play war. When girls are little they pretend to get married. It’s why high school girls have bridal magazines and scrapbooks detailing their dress, guest list, and seating arrangements. Girls want to be married.
Step 1: That girl may believe the lie that she needs to be married to be totally satisfied. She might believe the lie that marriage is the key to her happiness.
Step 2: If that girl delights in marriage too much, it will become her functional heaven. That means until she gets married, she is stuck living what she would call her hell, singleness. Singleness is the thing this girl must avoid at all cost, so whatever person or thing will allow her to escape her hell will be her savior. If some boy can deliver her from her hell to her heaven, he will become her savior. Guys make terrible saviors. And this girl will sacrifice anything she can to ensure that her savior will bring her to her idol of marriage. She’ll sacrifice her money to buy gifts. She’ll sacrifice her purity to satisfy him sexually. She’ll sacrifice her health to stay skinny for him. She will do WHATEVER she can to make sure that boy doesn’t abandon her and leave her in her hell.
It started off with the lie that she needed to be married to be happy. That lie resulted in anorexia, fornication, and, likely, depression after her savior leaves her. Her sin of anorexia and fornication are simply the symptoms of something much bigger. She has a worship disorder. The sinful act was whatever thing she thought would help get her to her idol.
No one sins simply because they are evil. We sin because we like what sin gives us. Sin is the pathway us to our idols, the place we think the desires of our heart will be met.
Marriage is a good thing. Proverbs 18:22 say, “He who find a wife finds what is good.” The problem comes when we believe that marriage will satisfy our deepest desires. John Calvin said, “The evil in our desire typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much.” Mark Driscoll puts it like this, “An idol is a good we make into a god thing and becomes a bad thing.”
Can you see that by defining sin as the means by which we find happiness apart from God, we expose ourselves to see how terribly sinful we truly are? Let’s try this:
Here’s an example from my own life. I’m going to be very honest. I love when people tell me I did a good job. I love it. Getting affirmation from people is something I crave. When my desire for people’s praise becomes ultimate in my life, it becomes my heaven, and I will do whatever I can to get it. Preaching can become my functional savior. It will give me the opportunity to reap the praise of man. So I will work really hard. I’ll spend long hours reading the Bible so I can try to wow you with some biblical truth. And I’ll do it all to the aim of obtaining my idol—the praise of man. Now tell me what is sinful in my life? Am I saying that there’s a sinful way for me to work hard, read my Bible, and preach God’s Word? You bet there is. It’s a battle I fight every time I get up here.
Summary: Sin is more than just a behavior problem; it’s a worship problem. I worship something other than God that I think will make me happy.
Here is the central reason I want to preach this message. Those of us with a religious understanding of what is morally good and what is morally bad are often blind to our own sinfulness; not because we cannot see the sin in the morally bad parts of our lives, but because we cannot see the idolatry in the morally good parts of our lives.
Paul Tripp says, “The most dangerous idols of all are those that fit well within the culture of external Christianity.” And because we are blind to them, we continue to dishonor God and rob ourselves of true joy. Even worse, our moral record may deceive us and give us a false sense of truly being born again.
I understand that you don’t look cheat on your wife. Why? Because you want to honor God by doing what’s best for you? Or do you not commit adultery because you’re so afraid of ruining your marriage, and you don’t want to lose your idol of marriage? Or losing respect in the church because church is your idol? Or hurting your family, because family is your idol? Marriage, church, and family are good things, until they become idols.
We have people think they’ve really got a handle on their sin. They’ve stopped hooking up with their boyfriends. They’ve stopped stealing clothes from the mall. They’ve started reading their Bible. They started going to marriage counseling.
We have people who are living morally. And I understand that you teach Sunday school, you serve on a ministry team, and you raised four well mannered children. I see you volunteering, donating, and serving. I know you don’t drink alcohol or do drugs or watch rated R movies.
Listen to me: I don’t care WHAT you DO!!! I care WHO you WORSHIP!!!
I know accusing people of idolatry is risky business. Things never went well for Old Testament prophets, and they were inspired by God. I’m not. I’m just on a mission for God’s glory and your joy.
All of us need to do is identify the idols in our lives. Which desires of ours do we deify? What are our sinful functional saviors?
Maybe you worship prosperity, and that underhand deal or that overtime is your savior.
Maybe you sin by cheating, or maybe you sin by working too hard.
Maybe you worship stress relief or peace, and substances or entertainment is your savior.
Maybe you sin by doing drugs, or maybe you sin by watching television.
Maybe you worship motherhood, and children or successful children are your savior.
Maybe you sin by being bitter that you don’t have kids, or maybe you sin by driving your kids to soccer practice, girl scouts, and guitar lessons on the same night.
Do you see what’s so messed up about this issue of sin? Some people’s worship disorder causes them to sin by working too hard or being a super good mother. Other people’s worship disorder leads them into being a pervert, prostitute, or drug addict.
The man who worships his god of control with food and television is no better than the man who uses alcohol or pornography. It’s not really fair that the alcoholic and pervert are demonized while the glutton and sloth are normalized.
The woman whose god is her children is no better off than the woman whose god is her beauty. It’s just a shame how we compliment one for being a dedicated mother and criticize the other for being a vain housewife.
Sometimes we normalize and even commend sinful behavior because it has the appearance of godliness. When we think about it, there are a lot of good reasons for Non-Christians to live lives of moral obedience. Sadly, they’re usually the same reasons we tell Christians why they should obey. Keith mentioned some of them last week. We tell our kids to say no to drugs because drugs will fry their brains. We scare our teens not to have sex before marriage because they’ll get pregnant and ruin their lives.
Non-Christians know that they can benefit from being faithful to their partner. They know they have a lot to lose if they steal or cheat at work. There are a lot of ways to worship and serve created idols by living lives of moral obedience, and Non-Christians are committed experts in worshipping their idols. For this, they are storing up for themselves eternal wrath.
KEY: The difference between Non-Christians and Christians is not that some are bad people and some are good people. The difference is some people are dead and some are alive.
The Non-Christian’s solution to sin is not simple obedience. Their problem is much deeper. Until God regenerates them, they are spiritually dead. Even if they are able to conform their lives to some moral standard, they’re still dead. We call them white-washed tombs.
The Non-Christian’s problem is not how they can become good people, it’s how they can become living people; and the only answer is through Jesus. They must believe their salvation is a gift offered freely by God to those who believe in Jesus as their righteousness, hope, and joy. This is the only way to deal with your sin problem.
Point 2: What is obedience?
Doing good things is not the solution to our sin. Obedience is so much bigger than that. Let’s take the definition of sin that we have from before—suppressing the truth, believing the lie, and worshipping creation—and let’s bend it back to what it should be. Obedience is knowing the nature and character of God, believing the truth that the desires of your hearts are designed to be satisfied in God alone, and worshipping the Creator rather than creation. Let’s make this really simple: Obedience is delighting yourself in the LORD.
Listen to King David’s advice in Psalm 37:3-5, page 552. In no other place in the Bible does God connect worshipping him and the desires of our heart better than Psalm 37.
Psalm 37:3-5
3 Trust in the LORD and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4 Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
As I meditate on the promise given in verse 4, I find a God exalting way to worship him and pursue the desires of my heart. God commands us to delight in him, and he promises to give us the desires of our heart!
Why? Why does God want us to worship him? Is he vain? Does he need our praise to feel good about himself? Is the praise of man God’s idol like me? The answer to that question is an emphatic, NO! God wants us to worship him because HE is the answer to the desires of our hearts! God created us to worship him, to have the desires of our heart satisfied in him, to experience a richer and more enduring happiness in him. Worshipping anything else will not satisfy the desires of our hearts and will leave us ultimately with an empty and fleeting happiness.
Here’s the promise of verse 4: The desires of my heart will be satisfied when I delight myself in the LORD.
THEREFORE: The greatest weapon I have in my arsenal to fight sin is a superior delight in God. I fight every day to believe that the promises of God are better than the promises of my idols.
The question is not whether happiness exists outside of God. It does! It’s why people sin! Sin is very tempting. It’s why people lie, steal, cheat. They have happiness to gain through it! People are looking at porn and spreading gossip because it makes them happy—BUT it’s an unfulfilling, fleeting, second-rate happiness. It’s why people feel empty after one-night stands or disappointed after reaching goals.
Sin is ultimately unsatisfying because it is seeking pleasure from an inferior source. It’s forsaking God, the spring of living water and delighting in a dirty, stagnant cistern. It’s like reaching for toilet water instead of a glass of lemonade.
Everyone’s solution to sin is shifting our worship off of lesser pleasures in creation and onto ultimate delight in our Creator. Behavior modification is NOT the answer. Religion, doing the right things and not doing the wrong things, may conform me to a moral standard, but it will not transform my heart. Religion does not help my worship disorder. In fact, religion only makes my idols stronger.
So how can I make this practical for us: Three Steps.
Step 1: Know God
We’ve suppressed the truth of God for way too long. Before I’m going to trust or delight in the LORD, I need to know who God is and what his promises are. The only way to do this is by reading our Bible.
Some people will say theology and doctrine aren’t important; it’s boring and stifles worship. I disagree. I can tell you that the more I read and understand the God of the Bible and know his promises for my life, the more I find great delight in him. If you neglect to know God’s Word, you are sabotaging your own joy! You are shooting yourself in the heart!
When you go home today, read Psalm 119 and think about why David says things like, “16 I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.” “24 Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors.” “40 How I long for your precepts! Preserve my life in your righteousness.” “97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.” David loves God’s Word because it reveals to him a wonderful, loving Father and a pathway to happiness.
Step 2: Trust God
Step two is going to be hard, because it’s a step where we are going to need something we can’t produce. Our problem with delighting in the LORD is our tendency to not believe in the promises of LORD. We delight in things like sports or education or family because we don’t trust the promises of God.
Next time you read through the book of Matthew, note how many times Jesus refers to the disciples as, “O you of little faith.” It seems like every time they do something stupid, Jesus says, “O you of little faith.” Peter starts to sink, James and John start bickering, Andrew is wondering what he’s going to eat—“O you of little faith.”
Note: He doesn’t say, “O you proud disciples” or “O you anxious disciples.” The issue for Jesus is not their sinful behavior; it’s their lack of faith. He rebukes their unbelief.
Maybe the disciples didn’t like Jesus’ nickname for them or maybe they knew there was no way for them to do what Jesus commanded them to do; either way, the disciples proclaim in Luke 17:5, “Lord, increase our faith!” We need to repeat this plea.
I can hear all of us saying this:
Lord! I can’t do it! I don’t trust you when you say that singleness can be a gift. All I feel is really alone and embarrassed.
Lord! I can’t do it! I don’t trust you when you say that being honest is really what’s in my best interest! I have a lot at stake if I come clean.
Lord! I can’t do it! I don’t trust you when you say that telling this boy, no, is really going to satisfy the desires of my heart. He’s going to break up with me if I don’t let him have sex with me.
And the answer is, you can’t, and you won’t, until you trust the promises of God over the promises of your idols. We need to have faith that the desires of our hearts will be met in Jesus.
A couple weeks ago, Keith quoted Thomas Watson who says, “Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” I think that’s backwards. Until I have the faith to see Christ as sweet, sin will not be bitter. I need faith to see Jesus as sweet. I need faith to trust that God’s commands for my life are really best for me. My ability to obey is not nearly as contingent upon my best self-disciplined, white-knuckled effort as much as it is contingent upon the level of my faith.
Can I be really honest with you, again? Is it safe for me to do this here? It is an everyday battle for me to believe that God’s instructions concerning my sexuality are really in my best interest. Here’s why, I have this other voice in my head. It comes from my own flesh, it booms from culture, it from Satan, and this voice says I should hook up, shack up, and break up with as many girls as I want and then I’ll be happy. That’s their promise. Both of these voices guarantee to bring me the desires of my heart. Whichever promise I believe more is going to be the one I delight in.
Here is the prayer I pray: Lord God, give me the faith to wage war against the lie that satisfaction exists outside of you. Let me fight for the truth that at your right hand exists pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). May I taste and know that you are good and will not withhold any good think from me (Psalm 34:8 & 84:11). Make sin a bitter taste in my mouth and a disgusting sight to my eyes. I pray that I would find a surpassing pleasure in obeying you than in any other pursuit.
Step 3: Delight yourself in the LORD.
Finding our delight in God over creation is the core to obedience. My problem is how often I delight myself in everything other than God. When I’m wronged, I seek justice through revenge. I don’t believe justice comes from God, so I delight in revenge instead of in the LORD. The more run to another source for my comfort, peace, self-worth; the less I turn to Jesus.
We should do whatever it takes to stir up our affections for Jesus, so that we might delight in him. Some things draw us closer to Jesus, and other things push us away. Ongoing sin deadens our abilities to see Christ as satisfying, but do does amoral behavior.
Find out what things deaden your affections for Jesus. Certain television shows, reading certain types of books, listening to some types of music, being around certain people; all these things can cause our affections for Jesus to wane.
The better question is really: What things awaken our affections for Jesus? Is it worship music? Listening to sermons? Is it praying in groups? Is it serving with others, taking a walk, playing the piano? Whatever causes you to delight in Jesus, pursue it.
Here’s how I want to close: I want you to bow your heads and hold out your hands on your lap. I want you to think about your idols. What thing do you love more than God? What desire do you have that is out of control? What thing, if it were taken away, would totally destroy you? Where is your treasure? What consumes your time? What would you give anything to have?
I want you to picture that thing. Where has it let you down? How does it make you feel guilty? Disappointed? Unfulfilled?
Pray
