The mistake that so many of God’s people make, is that they think that their relationships with other people can fill the deep void within, a void that’s been designed so that it can only be filled by God Himself. And so they spend their lives getting second best, when all along, God’s very best is staring them right in the face.

Over the last week we’ve been chatting about laying hold of God’s very best for our lives because there are so many imposters out there that claim to be able to give us what we’re looking for, that they lead us astray. An imposter is never as good as the real thing.

I remember once I was travelling in South Africa and I wanted to bring home a special gift for my daughter. I was shopping in a mall in Pretoria and I wandered into a handbag store. I spotted a Louis Vuitton handbag and I thought she would really, really like that. Yeah it was pricey but I thought no she would really like it so I bought it for her.

I was right, she loved it but about eighteen months later the catch that keeps the bag closed came apart. Well not a problem, I thought, this is a Louis Vuitton handbag. So I looked it up on the internet and found the authorised Louis Vuitton repairer here at home and took the handbag into them.

The lady behind the counter took one look at it and she informed me that it was a fake, a knock off and as much as she’d like to help me she was unable to do so. Well I was pretty angry I have to tell you, not with her but with the person who sold the bag to me because I quizzed them over and over again to make sure it was the real thing. And that’s the thing with fakes, they look real, they pretend to be real but they simply can’t deliver what you’re looking for.

I remember when I was studying at Bible College, a good many years ago, one of our lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, gave a class on the things that lead ministers astray, that get them caught up in sin that ends up tearing their ministry apart. And he said something along these lines.

It comes down basically to three things; girls or in the case of women guys, gold and glory. Those are the top three things that lead men and women of God who are called to ministry, astray. That’s always stuck with me – girls, gold and glory. Pretty simple really and when you think about it, it applies not just to people in ministry, it applies to all of Gods people because those three things, girls or guys, gold and glory are pretty much the three main categories of idolatry today.

In this day and age most of us don’t think much about idols. In western countries we don’t see many physical idols and in eastern countries where there are so many religions that use idols routinely, you get to the point of being oblivious to them. I know when I first started travelling to India regularly the number of idols I saw hit me in the face but now I almost don’t notice them.

An idol is an imposter, it’s anything that we set up as an alternative to the one true God, the One who sent Jesus, His Son, to die for you and me. And we take these imposters and we worship them as though they’re real, they’re not of course but we treat them as though they are and we worship them and we sacrifice our lives to them.

So let’s start off by talking about this whole ‘girls and guy’s’ thing. It’s one of the most natural things on the planet, girl meets boy, they fall in love and they want to spend the rest of their lives together. And if you’ve been through that you’ll know how compelling and intoxicating romance is. It plays to our emotional desires and to our physical desires and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Until we start imagining that this is it, this is what I’ve always been looking for and we start expecting our mate to make us happy.

We start expecting this one relationship to give us all the contentment and joy and fulfilment that we’ve been looking for for all our lives. And then all of a sudden we’re heaping expectations on this girl or guy that they simply can never meet up to. The truth of it is my wife, as wonderful as she is, simply cannot fill the void in me that only God can fill. And if she looks at me to do that for her she too is going to be sadly disappointed.

Remember the first Commandment in the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20 verses 2 and 3:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.

The moment we take something, even something as sublime and as wonderful as this pinnacle of human relationships, the exclusive relationship of one man and one woman in the lifelong relationship of marriage and we elevate that above God then we’re committing idolatry and that goes straight to the second Commandment, Exodus chapter 20 verses 4 and 5:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I am the Lord your God and I am a jealous God.

Of course some people take this one step further, they decide to focus on the physical side of this boy/ girl thing or into same sex relationships and end up turning sex into their idol as though somehow sexual gratification will give them what they’re looking for, that too becomes idolatry, Colossians chapter 3 verses 5 and 6:

Put to death therefore whatever in you is earthly. Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.

Listen up, it is good for a man and a woman to fall in love and to give themselves completely to one another for the rest of their lives, that’s certainly God’s plan but when we take this good thing and we elevate it and place it above God or when we pervert this good plan and sleep around hoping to find gratification, it’s just like that fake Louis Vuitton hand bag I was telling you about earlier. Eventually it will break and we’re left with nothing because there’s a hole inside you and a hole inside me that only God can fill, it’s just the way we’ve been made.

In the long run idols, imposters, as attractive as they may seem can never deliver what we’re looking for, as attractive as they may appear.

You know I love my wife dearly and I remember when we were courting and that feeling of thinking, ‘This is it, this is what I’ve been looking for’ and I must confess, in those days, I drifted away from God a bit, so intoxicating was this romance thing. It doesn’t take long for reality to sink in, the kids, the mortgage, the pressures of work and I came to a point where I realised that if I was expecting her to make me happy I was going to be sadly disappointed, that’s not after all her job.

So I set about going deeper in my relationship with God and what I found is that when I’m close to God I make a much better husband. When I get up in the morning and I pray and I draw on God’s strength and I’m filled with His Holy Spirit and His Word every day, hey I make a much, much, much better husband than when I neglect my relationship with God.

When I do that, when I neglect God I become scratchy and sensitive and difficult to live with, I become less forgiving, I’m a much worse husband, it’s the way it works for me, I’m guessing it’s probably the way it is for you too. Once that God sized void, that emptiness inside us is filled by the only one who can fill it then, all of a sudden, His goodness overflows out of us which is exactly how Jesus said it would work right? John chapter 7 verses 37 and 38:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink and as the Scriptures have said, ‘out of the believers heart shall flow rivers of living water’.

Remember idolatry doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter how good the thing or person looks like, how good they are, you elevate them above God and they become an idol, an imposter that simply cannot deliver what you’re expecting of them.

For some reason, gold has been considered to be one of the most precious metals on the planet for centuries, millennia. There’s something …. intoxicating about gold. It’s so shiny, it’s … gold, right?! And whilst these days very few of us ever handle gold, except perhaps in small pieces of jewellery, gold and what it represents, remains a very intoxicating thing.

Gold is a symbol of wealth and it’s one of the main things that draws us away from God. Think about it God/ gold, only one letter of difference between those two words and how easy is it for us to substitute one for the other. Even more so because in this world we’re told wealth equals success.

Who among us haven’t dreamed of striking it rich, of being able to live in a big house, a mansion with all the comforts and pleasures that money can buy. A great view, lots of rooms, lavishly furnished, a few high and luxury cars in the multi car garage, flying around the world first class of course or even in your own jet with everyone kowtowing to you because you’re such an important person.

That’s a dream, a fantasy that many people churn over inside themselves over and over again. It’s so seductive that many people are intoxicated by it and they can’t let it go. So here’s what they do, here’s what I did for much of my early adult life, they sacrifice their lives to it. They throw themselves into the pursuit of earning as much money as they can.

I’ve seen some of the houses that people build for themselves, not far from where I live, live some of the wealthiest people in Australia, houses that sell for upwards of thirty million dollars, one recently just went for fifty million dollars. Hey that’s a ridiculous amount of money and these mansions are so big, so ridiculously huge they must be cavernous.

I was having a room in my apartment painted not so long ago. I’m a hopeless painter, best to get a professional in to do it and the painter, Stan, was telling me about a job that he and his brother completed recently in one of these mansions not far away. He said the place was just enormous, three levels plus a fourth for the basement and garage, it has an elevator because the occupants were an elderly couple, obviously very wealthy. Now the middle floor they never went into, it was essentially vacant.

These two people weren’t happy at all, in fact they were pretty miserable. Now stand back and think about that for a minute, that right there is idolatry. With so many people in this world who don’t have a roof over their heads, who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have even clean drinking water, here you have these two mega rich people occupying a property that they don’t need, that’s way too big for them and that isn’t making them happy.

Psalm 135, verses 15 to 18:

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but they do not speak, they have eyes but they do not see, they have ears but they do not hear and there is no breath in their mouths. Those who make them and all who trust in them shall become like them.

Isn’t that the perfect picture of the futility of idolatry, of setting up the things of this world as our little gods? I think that passage applies so aptly to the picture of that wealthy couple in their golden prison, the emptiness, the loneliness, the futility of it all and yet so many people sacrifice their lives to this idol of gold, of wealth, of what other people will think.

How about you? How much do you dream of being wealthy? How much do you sacrifice your life to the futility of wealth?

You may have heard me tell this story before but I’m going to tell it again. For the first thirty-six years of my life wealth was what mattered to me. It was important to me that I drove a car that would impress other people. It was important to me that I lived in a house that people would look at and think, ‘Wow that’s grand, he must have a lot of money, he must be successful’.

And that constant need to have more and more and more drove me although the more I had the less satisfied I felt, the more I filled myself up the emptier I became, the more that other people looked at my obvious wealth and success the more desperate and empty and lonely I became.

This idolatry, sacrificing your life to gold, to wealth is such a terrible scourge. You’ll understand then how gobsmacked I was when finally I stumbled across this Bible verse, 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 9 and 10:

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

Right there was a picture of the first thirty-six years of my life which culminated by the way in me becoming so desperate that I came within inches of taking my own life. Idolatry doesn’t work, these imposters lead us to ruin and destruction. That’s the marque of a idol in fact, it looks so good, it speaks so smoothly, it draws you in so seductively and then it plunges you into ruin and destruction. And gold, wealth, it’s the very worst of all.

We kid ourselves that we can pursue wealth and love God but it simply isn’t possible. This is what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6 verse 24:

No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

You just can’t and when we give up the pursuit of wealth, when we put money back in the place where it belongs there is such an incredible freedom in that. Money is a great servant but a terrible master. Let me say that again. Money is a great servant but a terrible master. I didn’t read that in a textbook. I discovered that the hard way and the best way, the only way in fact, to break this idolatry is to start becoming generous and giving lots of it away.

You don’t have to be rich to do that, rich or poor we can idolise wealth, rich or poor we can give sacrificially and allow God to set us free from that. Let me say it again, just in case you missed it, let me say it again, money is a great servant but a terrible master.

I mentioned before that I used to have this insatiable need to drive a car that declared my financial success and live in a house that did the same. This whole need to keep up appearances was so exhausting. I was like a drug addict, I always needed the next hit, I was always looking for the next thing to buy. It was terrible.

When God finally dragged me back from the brink and got a hold of my life He so deeply convicted me of the vital importance of generous giving. It wasn’t easy at first to give away the things that I’d worked so hard for and not just worked hard for but sacrificed my life for, my relationships for, my marriage for. But over the last couple of decades He has so completely, so remarkably set me free from this addiction to wealth, this idolatry, that I count it as one of the top two or three blessings in my life.

These days if I’m looking to buy a new car I go to the second-hand car lot and I look for something that is good quality but inconspicuous, something that will give me fuel economy and longevity, something that’s good value. Let me let you in on a little secret, when I drive around in my little second-hand, fuel-efficient, Japanese made car one of the great delights in my heart is that nobody notices me anymore. It’s a little joy that lights up my heart on a regular basis because this freedom from idolatry is something that God did for me.

And if you see this idolatry to wealth in your life I’m encouraging you today to take it to God, to lay it down, to get into His Word and to let Him set you free because when the Son of God sets you free you’ll be free indeed – Jesus.

One of the most intoxicating commodities on this planet, is glory. Recognition. Fame. People smiling at you, patting you on the back, telling you how wonderful you are. Yep, recognition is a terribly intoxicating commodity. Problem is, if we live our lives for recognition, we end up on a treadmill that we can’t seem to get off.

You know the saying: “no man is an island”. None of us can go it alone. We all need help, wise counsel, a bit of muscle from time to time. The question is, who or what do you turn to, to get that help when you need it? When it comes to getting help, sometimes, we do the craziest things. 

There used to be a game show on television called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where they asked you a whole bunch of questions and if you got them all right you would end up winning a million dollars. Well not surprisingly not all that many people won the million.

One of the rules of the game was that you had three lifelines when you ran into a difficult question, you could ask the audience, you could do a 50/50 where the computer removed two wrong answers out of the four multiple choice items or you could phone a friend.

The ‘phone a friend’ always intrigued me. The contestant would run into a difficult question and choose to phone a friend, they would give them a thirty-second call with a friend of their choosing. Sometimes the friend was able to help with the question, other times not.

I wonder when you run into a difficult question in life where do you turn? What option do you take, ask the audience, 50/50 or phone a friend? It seems that often what we do is we try to build ourselves an insurance policy in life to provide a safety net for those difficult times.

Some people try and get a financial buffer by earning lots of money, some people try to build a social relationship safety net so that they have friends and family in place when the difficult times hit. That’s not a bad thing. Other people invest in their career and their reputation as though that somehow is going to make a difference when the tempest hits.

Whatever your safety net is it’s something you’ve had to work hard to build, it’s been an investment. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of sound planning, it’s good to have a network of family and friends, it’s good if you can to have some savings to fall back on and if there’s still such a thing a secure job and a career path. Nothing wrong with any of those things until we put all our trust in them as though they’re going to be able to save us when a tsunami sweeps across our lives.

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about idolatry. My favourite definition of an idol is anything that we place above God in our lives. We have an innate desire to worship something, that’s how we’ve been made and the crazy thing is that often we worship the wrong things and in so doing we miss out on the very best that God has ready and waiting for us, that God has ready and waiting for you.

Idols are always imposters. Idols can never deliver what we hope they can deliver. So in your life what are the safety nets that you’ve been investing in and building that you put your trust in?

One of the things we can so easily do is to work hard and save hard for a home of our own and when we finally get that we start behaving as though this home is a ‘forever’ thing, that it’s safe and permanent and inviolable. I happen to own a small apartment only several hundred metres from the ocean. We literally live at sea level and as safe and secure as this home feels, hey should a tsunami hit we’re done for.

Why is it that we behave as though the things of this world have the power to withstand the tsunamis of life? When we do that it’s called idolatry because we end up worshipping those things with our lives, we end up placing our trust in them and when you stand back from that behaviour and you evaluate it objectively it’s just nuts and not surprisingly that’s exactly what God says in His Word, lets take a look, Isaiah chapter 44 verses 9 to 20:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they were put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human, let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong-arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches a line and marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass. He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine.

He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak tree and lets it grow strong among the trees in the forest. He plants a seed and the rain nourishes it then he can use it as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes some bread, then he makes a god and worships it and makes it a carved image and bows down before it.

Half of it he burns in the fire, over that half he roasts meat, eats it and is satisfied, he also warms himself and says ‘ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire’ but with the rest of it he turns it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it, he prays to it and says, ‘Save me for you are my God’.

They don’t know, they don’t comprehend, their eyes are shut so they can’t see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say ‘half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on its coals, I roasted me and I’ve eaten, now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood? He feeds on the ashes, a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?

Hmm, isn’t that great? There was Isaiah talking about physical idols, statues but they’re no different to the idol we set up in our lives today, the physical things that we build to worship and place our trust in. I love how he unmasks the stupidity of idols. That’s exactly what we do with the physical things that we turn into idols.

One half of them we consume and enjoy like money or a nice house or friends or our careers, whatever it is that we’ve set up above God in our lives. And with the other half we sacrifice to it and we trust in it as though somehow it has the power to save us like some god.

Even our relationships, good as many of them are, have you ever been in a difficult spot and used the ‘phone a friend’ option and found there’s nothing your friend can say or do to help you? Of course you have. Have you ever asked the audience, gone out there for help and found that there was no help that could withstand the tsunami? Of course you have.

Right at the end of that passage that we just read from Isaiah, the prophet leads us to the right question to ask, the question we should be asking of the idols in our lives.

Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?

And the right answer to that question, the only answer to that question is ‘of course it is, dummy’. When earthquakes and tsunami’s hit your life who’s going to save you? When you come to that final barrier in this life, your physical death and you’re staring down the barrel of eternity let me ask you, who can save you?

Do you see how ridiculous it is for us to set up idols in our lives and to worship them and to sacrifice our lives to them and to put our trust in them? The more we invest in them, the more we trust them, the more deluded we become imagining they have the power to save us. They don’t have that power, listen to me, idols are frauds, they’re imposters and at the very best they’re nothing but second best.

When something or someone who you trust leaves you in the lurch, when your life is crashing down around you that sense of betrayal and disappointment actually makes things worse, that’s what idols do however attractive or reliable or secure they may appear. However much you’ve sacrificed your life to them they are nothing but a fraud and that is the God honest truth.

If I told you that God wants to give you His very best, to bless you, what do you imagine that that would be? What does God’s very best for you, actually look like, feel like, taste like? The sad truth is that many of God’s people, simply don’t know because they’ve never actually experienced God’s very best for them.

One of the enduring memories of my childhood is being bored absolutely to tears at Church on Sunday mornings. I was an inquisitive energetic lad as you might imagine, precocious, always on the move, always asking questions, always trying to explore my little world and get the most out of it. Anyhow I digress, back to Church as a young lad.

The things I remember most about Church are the terrible droning sound of the minister’s voice, the boredom and the frustration of not be able to get out there and get on with my life and how incredibly hard those wooden pews were on my backside. I was one of those kids who’d stand up on the pew facing people behind me and making faces at them trying to make them laugh, oh man I pity my poor parents. I remember getting more than just the odd hiding from my father after Church. It wasn’t just the pews that gave me a sore backside.

But can I tell you as adults this remains the experience of many people’s Christianity, a Sunday ritual that for some reason they feel obligated to live out week after week. A droning minister, a sense of duty and boredom mixed in altogether and it’s no wonder that so many of God’s people have set up idols in this world that they worship above God because their experience of Him simply isn’t anything to write home about.

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been talking about how easily we fall into idolatry and exactly how that damages our lives. All those things of this world that appear to be so attractive, so reliable, so trustworthy that we invest in them and put our trust in them above and before God and yet they always fail, they never deliver. Nothing in this world can ever deliver what we’re looking for and that’s why grabbing hold of Gods very best for you is so important.

So what is Gods very best for you, what does that look like? Well here it is, just sit back and soak it in. I’m reading from Matthew’s Gospel chapter 27.

As they went out they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon and they compelled this man to carry Jesus’ cross and when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means place of the skull) they offered him wine and drink mixed with gall but when he tasted it he wouldn’t drink it and when they had crucified him they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots.

Then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him which read ‘This is Jesus the king of the Jews’. Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads saying ‘you who would destroy the Temple and rebuild it again in three days, save yourself. If you’re the Son of God come down from the cross.

In the same way the chief priests also along with the scribes and the elders were mocking him saying, ‘he saved others but he can’t save himself. He’s the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross now and we’ll believe in him. He trusts in God let God deliver him down if he wants to for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’ The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him the same way.

From noon on darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At about three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani’, that is ‘my God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it they said, ‘the man is calling for Elijah.

At once one of them ran and got a sponge and filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick and gave it to him to drink but the others said, ‘wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him’. Then Jesus cried again in a loud voice and breathed his last. (Matthew chapter 27 verses 32 to 50.)

There it is, God’s very best for you – Jesus. This Jesus who came into this world to show you exactly what God’s like, this Jesus who suffered so terribly to take the punishment that you and I so richly deserve so that we can have a real, intimate, dynamic, powerful, tender, lifelong, eternity long relationship with God.

That’s the whole purpose of what everything Jesus did for you and for me, to open up the door to that tender intimate relationship with Him. Gods cry from the beginning of the Bible to the end is His desire to be our God and for us to be His people. He wants to dwell in our midst and for us to be with Him and to behold His glory and to enjoy His presence and to worship Him in a way that is completely divine.

Right towards the end of the Bible in the Book of Revelations God repeats His cry, a cry that we hear over and over again through Scripture but this time it is the fulfilment of His deepest desire, it is our glimpse into the future to see how all this ends, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 to 7:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more and I saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband and I heard a loud voice saying from the throne, ‘see the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them, they will be his people’s and God himself will be with them, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things have passed away’. And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘see I am making all things new’. Also he said ‘write this for these words are trustworthy and true.

Then he said to me, ‘It is done, I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things and I will be their God and they will be my children.

That’s Gods very best for you, eternity with Him through Jesus His Son and that’s not something that begins when you die, it’s something that begins, is meant to begin, was always ordained to begin the moment you believe in Jesus. Why does so many of Gods people try to find solace in the things of this world when Gods very best, God Himself is ready and waiting now.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul put it in his letter to the Roman Church, chapter 14 verse 17:

For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The Kingdom of God isn’t about the things of this world. Sure God’s blessed us with those things but the things of this world are temporal, they’re here today and gone tomorrow. I hope that my wife and I grow old and dotty together, really I do but either she or I could get run over by a bus tomorrow. Nothing on this earth is forever and when I’m travelling and we’re apart as much as we can chat to each other through the wonders of the internet today, she’s not there with me but God is, Jesus is, the Holy Spirit is.

God never departs and as things turn out He is the only one that can ever give me His righteousness, knowing that I’m forgiven, knowing that I’m washed clean from my sin, knowing that as far as the east is from the west so far He has removed my transgressions from me through Jesus.

He’s the only one who can give me the peace that I need amidst the busyness and the pressure and the turmoil and the demands of life and He is the only one who can fill me with the joy unspeakable irrespective of what’s going on around me. And He does that by pouring His Holy Spirit into me, into you, into anyone who puts their trust, their faith, their complete life in Jesus.

Righteousness, peace and joy granted to us because Jesus, delivered to us through the Holy Spirit. There, right there is Gods very best and nothing in this world, no idol, no possession, no relationship, no position, no recognition, no amount of money even comes close.