God’s Presence Rescues from Fatal Attractions

Why does God make us wait?

Whether you're waiting for healing, direction, a relationship, or God to answer your prayers, waiting can feel frustrating and even confusing. But throughout Scripture, we see that God never wastes a waiting season.

In this message from Acts 7, Pastor Matt Shackelford continues the Dwell series by examining the life of Moses. Before God used Moses to deliver Israel, He first prepared him through years of waiting in the wilderness. The same God who worked in Moses' waiting room is still at work in ours.

You'll discover:

•  Why God often works while we wait 
•  What Moses' life teaches us about trusting God's timing 
•  How waiting prepares us for God's purposes 
•  Why God's presence matters more than immediate answers 
•  How Jesus meets us in seasons of uncertainty 
•  What it means to trust God when life feels delayed 

Your waiting season isn't a detour. It may be the very place where God is preparing you for what's next.

Scripture: Acts 7:17–43

Series: Dwell

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Transcript

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Well, let's take our Bibles. Let's open to Acts chapter 6. Acts chapter 6. Excuse me, chapter 7. Thank you. Still living in chapter 6, apparently. As you're turning there, I um I have to confess to you, I have a very guilty pleasure. Every time we go down to Destin, I find a donut shop called Parlor's Donut. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Parlor's Donuts? It is the most decadent, wonderful donut shop known to man. I mean, look at some of these, not just those, these are the simple donuts. Look at the good ones. This is a parlor's donut. Now there's one called Reese's Pieces. And it's this chocolate peanut butter mix. And as soon as you eat this thing, they give you a certificate because now you have diabetes. Just instantly. There's so much sugar. And this is my guilty pleasure. And it reminds me of the story of the guy who said, you know what, I'm eating too many donuts. I got to cut this out. It's become a temptation, a stronghold in my life. I've got to stop eating so many donuts. He told his coworkers, I'm done. I'm serious this time. That's why they were so shocked when the next day he walked into work with a big box of donuts. They all laughed at him, they all criticized him. And he says, Look, don't judge me. These are the Lord's donuts. These are godly donuts. And they said, What are you talking about? And he said, Well, I drove by the donut shop this morning and I said to the Lord, Lord, if you want me to have a box of donuts, you're going to have to give me a sign. I want there to be a parking spot just for me right in the front. And he said, Sure enough, there was an open spot for me. It just took seven times around the building for it to open up. And it's like, okay, we all have kind of these attractions in our life. And that's really what I want to talk to you about today. You and I will sense daily, we will live with and fight these battles toward what I like to call fatal attractions. There are fatal attractions. We will fight temptations with the old life. For some of you, it's an addiction, or it's a sexual sin, or it's anger, or it's your harsh tongue towards your spouse. There are these sirens songs that come to us and call us back to the patterns and the paths of the old lives. We sometimes even fight the fascination with sin. I mean, there can be this call, this fascination with sin that calls us into sin all over again. Another confession. I'm confessing a lot this morning. You're really getting to know me. When I fly on a plane, I love the exit row. Anybody else with me on this? You like the exit row? More leg room, right? But but there is a temptation because they always come by and point me to the exit window. And they say, look, are you willing to help in the event of an emergency? And I say, of course. I'll make that deal if I can fly there. But then I drift up, I kind of look up, and I start looking at the lever. And I start thinking to myself, even though there's all these warnings, what would it be like to pull that? I mean, I've never seen the whole slide come out. I'd kind of like to see that, if I'm being honest. Just this giant slide inflate, and and there's just a little temptation, maybe just a little bit, but even though there's warning signs there, you and I are tempted into the fascination with sin. What would it be like to do that thing? What would it be like to experience that thing? We fight those attractions daily. Hearts that ignore the warning labels, they ignore the warnings. The hymn writer said it so well, he said, prone to wonder, Lord. Prone to wonder, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart. Oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. This is really the heart of what we're talking about today. We have wandering hearts. You and I will fight this temptation to sin over and over again. And maybe you feel it this morning. Maybe you're even saying to the Lord, Lord, what is wrong with me? Why do I feel this fascination with sin, this constant battle with sin, this attraction? And how can I overcome the weakness that I feel? Well, if you're just joining us, we're in a series I've entitled Dwell. We're in Acts chapter 7, and in verse 37, Stephen is giving his defense. And now he comes to Israel's heart to sin. There's a pattern. And in verse 39, he identifies the true problem. He says that in their hearts they turn to Egypt. You see, the heart of our fatal attraction is really the heart of the matter. It's the matter of the heart. It's that you and I have these heart temptations inside of us that we do battle with. And he's going to address this in Israel. Israel had a long pattern of running from God, of wandering away from God, of hearts that were prone to wonder. They rejected God's leadership. They rejected God's man, Moses. And before we're too hard on Israel, we do it too. Oftentimes we will turn to a substance, a bottle, a job, a money, a person, and we will say, that's our hope to be satisfied. Today we're learning that God's presence rescues us from the fatal attractions. Would you take your Bibles? Let's stand together in honor of God's word. Acts chapter 7, verse 37 says this. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with your fathers. He received living oracles to give to us. Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. But God turned away and gave them over to worship the hosts of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets. Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifice during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your God Rephan, the images you made to worship, and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. Here's the big idea this morning. It takes extreme heart action to fight those fatal attractions. You're going to have to learn to take some extreme action. You're going to have to learn radical amputation. You're going to have to learn really the hope that we have is found in some extreme actions. Now that's that's a really good thought for us today. Many have taken extreme actions before us. I'm reminded of Addie Rickenbacher. He was the legend of World War I and the ace who flew so many flights, and these guys, the legend goes, they would get into their planes without a parachute. They didn't want the temptation in their life. No parachute, no way out. Early missionaries would go to the mission field. How would they ship their belongings? They would buy a one-way ticket and they would put their belongings in their coffin, expecting to die on the mission field. I'm not coming back. Cortez, I talked about this at our last men's breakfast. Cortez, when it got hard in the New World, when they came over from Europe and things got very difficult, what did he do? He set fire, the legend goes, set fire to the ships. He ran them ashore. He broke them apart. Why? Well, you've got to get radical. You've got to take radical steps when it comes to temptation. And today I want to show you three extreme heart actions. Number one, I want you to see the person of revelation. Your hope for being free is not in better discipline. It's not in more religious duty. It's in a delight of a person. Number two, we've got to see and reject the passions of rebellion. We've got to understand the heart is deceitful. You can't trust it. The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. We've also got to realize that there are pains associated with our rebellion. And we've got to see those pains, fear those pains, reject those pains. And so let's take some extreme action. May God bless his holy word. May God bless all of you. You may be seated. We're looking at three extreme actions. If you want to be finally free, if you want to be free from the temptations that cling so close. Number one, let's talk about the person of Revelation. You see, your hope is not discipline. Your hope is not religious duty. Your hope is a person. Now, speaking of a person, the Jews they respected Moses. They loved Moses. This was their guy. And it's interesting how similar Moses is to Jesus. Moses and Jesus are very similar characters. In fact, they both had a king trying to kill them at their birth. Interesting. They both had royalty and yet they stepped down from royalty to be a savior. They were both rejected the first time and accepted the second time. When Jesus comes back, you can read Zechariah chapter 12 through 14. When Jesus comes back, this has not happened yet, where the people have accepted him, but in Zechariah 12 through 14, Israel will accept Jesus. He was rejected the first time, he will be accepted the second time. They both mediate a covenant. Moses mediates the old covenant. Jesus mediates the new covenant. And what Stephen is trying to get them to understand is that their heart problem is that they are rejecting the very person that Moses foretold. Look at verse 37. It was Moses. Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up a prophet like me from your brothers. This prophet really was like Moses in a lot of ways. He did all those things. And Jews knew that prophecy. They knew the prophecy very well. Came from Deuteronomy 18. In fact, they were looking for this guy. Wasn't it John the Baptist that they said, Are you the one? Are you the one we've been told to expect? And John said, No. He's there to prepare the way. He's a voice calling out in the wilderness. Stephen's saying, look, I'm not against Moses. Remember the criticisms? You're against Moses, the temple, the law. Stephen's defending himself. And he's saying, I'm not against Moses. Absolutely not. You're the one who's rejecting the words of Moses, the person Moses talked about. And so Stephen doesn't start with a behavior. Stephen doesn't start with a religious duty. Stephen doesn't begin with a discipline to add to your life. He starts with a person. And I think this is really important. The only thing that can fix you, the only thing that can address those longings of the heart, those fatal attractions, is Jesus Christ. You don't have the power to free yourself. But when Jesus saves, he creates new desires. He creates new longings. He gives you new appetites. He teaches us a new identity. Identity, that's a huge word for our culture today, isn't it? You see, you need to define yourself by Christ, not by your sin. Let me say it again. You need to define yourself by Christ, not by your sin. The old life is not who you are. And we see this everywhere in our culture today. You are not a drunk Christian. You are not a porn watching Christian. You are not a gay Christian. You're in Christ. And you have to preach that identity to yourself. I was with a guy just this week and we had lunch and he was telling me about his journey to health. And he shared with me that he lost 40 pounds. And I always get into, I'm always curious when I hear that. How'd you do that? And he told me his story, and here's what research says. This is really interesting. Research tells us that the way to a major life change is connected to your identity. It's like this. It's like you're presented with a delightful box of donuts. If you can imagine it, all right? And how do you avoid that? How do you escape that fatal attraction? How do you make progress in your health journey? Well, you have to connect it to your identity. I don't do that. That's not who I am. That's I if someone offers you a slice of pizza. No, I don't, I don't do that. I'm I don't eat pizza. I eat beans and salads. And I lose the will to live sometimes. You have to connect it to your identity, though. That's how you do it. It's who you are. This is who I am. I eat healthy. And the way to move forward is connected identity. And the way for you to move forward is through the person of Christ. It's the identity that He provides for you. This is who you are. Notice this person offers us a speaking relationship. A speaking relationship to fight fatal attractions. Look at verse 38. He received living oracles to give to us. Logia, this is the Greek word in the Septuagint. It's from that idea of logos, right? In contrast to all the other false gods, gods who cannot speak, our God speaks. He offers us his words. Now, this is entirely different than how our society does things. Our society is mostly feeling-led. It's not word-led, it's feeling led. I can't tell you as a pastor how many times I've heard someone say these words. I'm not making this up. God has given me peace about leaving my spouse. God has given me peace about this new relationship, and so I'm going to divorce my spouse for this new woman, this new man. I was in Texas, pastoring at a church just south of Dallas. A guy walked in. He looked me dead in the eye. Never met this guy, and he said, God told me that I'm supposed to speak at this church this Sunday. I looked at him and said, Weird. God didn't tell me anything like that. And I couldn't, you know, people do that though. They live their life not on the word of God, but by the feeling that they have in their heart. And God calls us back to his word. You see, feelings are helpful tools, but they're terrible masters. You might even write that down. Feelings are helpful tools, but they're terrible masters. We have to be word-led, not feeling-led. We have to capture a hunger for God's word. Now, now, this is really something that really is insidious inside of our hearts, and we're addressing the heart this morning. All of us, we have respect for the Bible. You can have respect for the Bible and not hunger for it. That is the tragedy of our time. In fact, I love taking groups to Israel. There's a place in Israel, and it's this dome of the scroll, it's this place where the scroll, the Isaiah scroll is found, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and you can actually go there and you can look at some parts of all the scrolls, all of the things that were found there. There's this display of the Isaiah scroll behind thick glass, and all of these tourists will come and they'll put their face on it. They'll get in close to it, but but many of them can't remember the last time they actually read Isaiah. It's amazing. We can lift up an object, we can give honor to an object, but not take it in. And that's part of the culture of America. That's something that we have to address. We have to regain a hunger for God's word. I was with a ministry partner this week, and I think it was Tuesday. He came up to my office, and uh he leads a recovery ministry, and we were just connecting, trying to understand what he does. And um I don't know how we got into it, but we both started talking about our trips to Africa. He had been to Africa. I just got back from Africa in July, and marvelous trip, great trip. Can't wait for us to talk about next year's trips. But uh we just we were just talking about that, and he said, How was how was the church services that you were a part of? And I said, It was amazing. He said, Yeah, me too. And we just started going back and forth. They would have three hour-long church services. I preached a 50-minute sermon in one of those services, and they wanted more. They were like, That's all you got? That's it. They wanted the word of God. And this ministry partner looked at me and said, How do we get that in America? Because that's it's not here. Americans don't love the word of God, they don't want to dwell in the word of God, they don't want to hear the word of God. They want a short sermonette, they want a little speech. How do we regain what they have? And I gave him, I some of you have heard me do this. I I gave him my strawberry illustration. Imagine someone, all they've had their whole life is is processed food and processed strawberry tastes. Pop-tarts. Marco Rubio, Pop Tarts, right? Pop tarts, and uh, you know, he has a love for Pop Tarts, right? And that's all they've ever had. Pop Tarts. And then you give them a real strawberry. What's the response of that person who tastes the real strawberry? Well, at first they may say, oh, it's a little bitter. It doesn't quite taste right. That's not a strawberry. And how do you help someone that has been taught their whole life that the sugary Pop-Tart is strawberry? How do you help them regain the real thing? You take them to the strawberry field and you keep feeding them real sweet strawberries, ripe strawberries. And what happens is over time they gain an appetite for it. And that's why that's why here at Central Church, we we want an appetite for the Word of God. We make it a center point in all of our ministries. We preach it on Sunday morning. We're giving you the steady diet of the real thing. And over time, what happens is a people gain an appetite, a desire, a hunger. And so I want to say to you, if if you are sensing in your life a fatal attraction, a fatal pull, the siren's call towards sin, what you have to keep doing is you have to keep putting yourself under the word of God. You've got to keep dwelling in God's word. You've got to keep taking it in, receiving that biblical counsel, receiving that biblical instruction over and over and over again. But unfortunately, for many, there's no fight in them. Unfortunately, for many in the American church, you're in the building, but unfortunately, you're not in Christ. And that's the problem. First of all, you have to be in Christ. Only He can give you that appetite. Some of you have been baptized, but you've not believed. Some of you have felt conviction, but you've not had conversion. And that's the experience of a lot of people. I feel bad about my sin, but I'm not converted. Proximity is not the same thing as receiving the person. You can be close to Christ. You can be nearer, you're nearer in this room, but that's not the same as receiving the person. And the truth is, you'll never be free when you're on the fringe. You'll never be free when you're on the outside. You've got to receive the person. That's the only way to fight fatal attractions. You've got to come into a relationship with Jesus Christ. You need his power working for you. The same power that raised Jesus for the dead is at work in you. Number two, if you're taking notes. First one is the person. Number two, you've got to reject the passions. Now we're going to talk about the heart. The passions of rebellion. This is true. We have lots of passions inside of us to rebel against Jesus, against God's word. In fact, notice with me several passions. The first passion I see is the passion to fight authority, to not receive counsel, to not receive correction, to not receive the word of God when it comes to you. In verse 39, it says, They refused to obey him. They refuse to obey God. They thrust him aside. This is the same phrase used of Moses. Moses was everything you would want in a deliverer. Moses was everything you'd want in a savior. He was rich, he was royal, he was strong. I mean, he literally, the Israelites are being abused. And what does Moses do? This strong, mighty deliverer, he comes and he puts the enemy in the ground. He destroys the enemy, buries his enemy. And you read very soon after that that Israel thrust him aside. This slave thrusts the prince of Egypt aside. It's baffling. Everything you want in a savior. And yet they thrust him aside. Now it's being used of God. We do that. We reject accountability. We reject counsel. We reject getting close to each other. We reject inviting you, inviting each other into the places we hide. Because we're embarrassed. We don't want that accountability. We don't want someone else coming alongside us, correcting us. We run from correction. We see this all the time in ministry. This is one of the things that probably drives our church staff crazy is that sometimes when we give correction, when we give counsel, someone will be offended. Someone will reject, will run from that counsel. They'll run away. In their hearts, they turn to Egypt, verse 39 says, that's the issue. You see, the Bible tells us that we have a heart issue. The Bible tells us that you and I have a traitor within. That's what John Owen called our heart. John Owen said that you and I have a traitor within. We have someone at the gates opening the gates to sin. It's our heart. You see, Israel was free, but they want to go back to the familiar. This happens in life. In fact, a few years ago, I was shocked to uncover this. I read a story about a reporter in Japan, and they were discovering these amazing trends. Elderly women in their 70s, in their 80s, were deliberately committing petty crime. They would go into a convenience store, they would steal something off the shelf and purposefully get caught in their 70s, in their 80s. Why would they do that? Well, some of them had been to jail and they actually enjoyed the quality of life. Regular meals, people to talk to, a community. And this newspaper was just reporting on that, the rise of that in Japan. Can you imagine that? Going back to prison purposefully? That's what the heart wants to do to us. That's the propensity, that's the passion of the heart. It is to get us back to the prison, back to depression, back to heartache. The heart is deceitful. You can't trust it. And so it will fight authority. Also, the heart has a passion for control. You might write that down. We have to reject that passion, the passion for control. Notice with me in verse 40. Notice what they did. The Israelites in the wilderness, they made an idol. In fact, they tell Aaron, make for us gods. We don't want a God that controls us. We want a God we can control. We want a God of our own making. And this God would become burdensome to them. And some of you, this is the problem of your life. You're saying to yourself, I want control. I want control of my future. I want control of my destiny. I want control of my career. I want control of my family. I want control, control, control. Some of you are even saying to yourself, I don't like the decisions that I've made, how my life has turned out. And what God wants you to do is to submit to his will, to trust him. We have to reject that heart passion for control. And we have to have a heart passion to say, your will be done, God. Last couple thoughts here. We have to also reject a passion for pleasure. A passion for pleasure. Look with me at verse 41. Let me ask this question before I read it. Is sin fun? Some of you are scared to answer because you're in church. Is sin fun? The answer is yes. Someone said it, well, if you're not having fun when you sin, you're doing it wrong. We see that in verse 41. They made a calf, they sacrificed to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. In that moment it was fun. In that moment it was enjoyable. What's the problem? The problem is that it doesn't last. It turns to ash. Proverbs 9 tells us this. In fact, throughout the Proverbs, we see all sorts of truths that speak to this reality. It says this stolen water is sweet. Bread eaten in secret is pleasant. Theft is fun for the moment, the thrill. But what happens in the end? Go down to shale. The fun wears off. Proverbs 5, verses 3 through 5 talks about the adulterous woman. It talks about a forbidden woman. Her lips, what? Drip, drip honey. Her speech is smoother than oil. But here's that phrase that should haunt us. In the end, it's not fun in the end. In the end, she is as bitter as wormwood, or your translation may say gall. This was a drink that you would drink if you had intestinal worms. It would basically kill those intestinal worms and flush them out. But it was, I'll tell you what, it's it's a bitter drink. It's a bitter drink. In the beginning, it's like honey. In the end, it's like gall. Proverbs 20, verse 17, bread gained by deceit. What does it do? It turns to gravel in your mouth. Proverbs 23, verse 31. Wine goes down how? Smoothly. It's smooth. It's fun. But there's that phrase again. This phrase bothers me. In the end, it bites like a serpent, an adder. It stings. When I was just a boy, I went to the grocery store with my mom. And I'll never forget this moment. We're walking through the produce section, and I grabbed a walnut off of the shelf and I stuck it in my pocket. I was fascinated. I'd never seen a walnut before. I stole from the grocery store. I'm in my 40s now, and I still remember that event. I still remember the thrill of the moment, and for years, almost 40 years, I have remembered that theft. The guilt will last. The pain will be there. See, we have to start living with suspicions of our heart motives. We have to stop trusting our heart and stop suspecting our heart. Some of you have been here when we did our series on fatal attractions. And uh I put up that that slide of the unmasking scene from Scooby-Doo. Anybody grow up with Scooby-Doo in the audience? It's sad, my kids don't even know what that is yet. I need to show them Scooby-Doo. But there's always an unmasking scene, and this is what it seems like to me. This is what I feel like when I when I look at the unmasking scene. Who's the villain? Who is it? It's me. It's my heart. You and I have to start unmasking ourselves. We have a traitor within, a heart that longs for sin. Don't see yourself as the hero. We have to see ourselves as the villain. And this is all of life. My son is driving now, and we are having all these late-night conversations about curfews and about communicating well and what to do if you're in trouble, and uh, you know, on the side of the road or broken down. And it's a great learning season for my son. And I sat down with him today. He's doing he's doing really well. Um I really wanted to encourage him and just said, son, you're doing great. You know, I know there's lots of new rules. This is just part of that new period of life, that new dispensation, that new house rules that are for you. You've got some more freedom. And we talked through that and I said, Does it ever feel like we don't we don't trust you? And he said, Well, it doesn't, but I mean it could. And I don't I don't feel that yet. And I said, Good, I don't I don't want you to ever feel that. But you know, the problem is it's not that we don't trust you, it's that the mature think this way. It's that you don't trust you. The mature think like this, I don't trust myself. I don't trust that if I'm in the wrong place, I'm gonna do the wrong thing, the right thing. We're trying to teach that. It's so practical. You and I have to learn to set limits on ourselves. We have to learn to restrain our hearts. We have to have this reflex to trust our authority, to heed their counsel. And because of the heart, there are places I will never go, there are people I will not be alone with, there are counseling situations I will pass off, there are text messages I will include my wife on. Why? Why? Because the human heart is untrustworthy and it constantly leads us into rebellion. You and I have to learn that there is a passion to reject. And you have to ask the question: what limits do I need to purposefully set on my life? Is there a place that you need to forbid yourself from going? Is there a people you need to not be around? We need to think through that. We need to restrain our heart. Number three, and we're done. Last thought. We need to receive the person of revelation. It's not discipline, it's not a religious duty, it's a person that will set you free. And that's what Stephen wants these Jews to know. Number two, we need to reject the passions of rebellion. The heart will get you in all kinds of trouble. Set a guard over your heart, set limits on your heart, set practical limits on where you will go and who you are with, and the counsel that you will receive. Lastly, we need to realize the pains of retribution. This passage ends with all kinds of pains. In fact, it was Adrian Rogers who said, Sin will take you further than you want to go, make you stay longer than you thought you'd cost you more than you ever thought you would pay. Sin will take you further than you want to go, make you stay longer than you thought you'd stay, and cost you more than you ever thought you'd have to pay. Israel enjoyed the calf for the moment, for a season, but now we come to what I call the most terrifying verse in the entire Bible, verse 42. This is, without a doubt, the most terrifying verse in the entire Bible. There's others like it. Maybe you could say that they are the true verse, but in verse 42 it says, God turned away. And God gave them over. There are three pains I see in this passage. The first one is spiritual isolation. That if I continue in sin, if I continue walking in darkness, if I continue my unrepentant life, listen to me. One of the things, one of the disciplinary things that God will do is he will give a people over to worship things that are false, the hosts of heaven. Notice he doesn't strike with lightning strikes, he doesn't correct with plagues, he doesn't do any of the things you would think God would do. He gives them over to their sin. We get the same concept in Romans chapter 1. They worship the creature rather than the creator. They accept, they exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who's blessed forever. And then there's this descent into darkness. They embrace sexual sin, committing shameless acts with men. Their women exchange and are consumed with passion for one another. What does it say about that situation? How does it get that dark? Look at verse 26 of Romans chapter 1. God gave them up. That's the most terrifying verse in the Bible. Listen to me, you might even write this down. God's punishment for rebellion, God's punishment for sin is more sin. He turns you over. One sin becomes two sins. There's this descent into darkness. It's terrifying. Some of you are like, really? Does that really happen? Does God really operate that way? And I say to you, yes. Read Revelation. In fact, if you read those letters to the early churches in Revelations 1 to 3, Jesus says, walks in the midst of the churches. He's in the midst of the churches. That's quite a thought. Jesus is in this room. He's in the midst. He walks in the midst of the lampstand. The lampstand is a picture of the church. And he's walking. And then he says to Ephesus, You've lost your first love. You're not a loving church anymore. And he says to Ephesus, Remember, therefore, where you've fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. You'll walk in darkness. Pergamum, I will come to you soon. War against you with the sword of my mouth. Thyatira, I will throw her into a sick bed. He's talking about the sexual sin that Thyatira, the church, was committing. And he says, I'm going to do some hard things. I'm going to throw you into a sickbed. I will throw into great tribulation unless she repents. I will strike her children dead. A Sardis, it says, I will come like a thief. Sword, sickness, death, thief. This is not meek and mild, sweet baby Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas time. This is a Jesus that actually truly turns people over. And we ought to fear that isolation. There's another, it's just straight out of the text. I mean, I can't avoid it. Look at verse 43. There's another pain. The idols tend to multiply. What happens with one idol? You give in to one idol, it becomes many idols. It says in verse 43, you took up the ten of Moloch and the god Rephen. This was a Saturn star deity. Moloch is, uh it can be used multiple ways, but this is a this is a term, it's a Canaanite deity. It comes from the word Melech, which means king, and he was known as the king of shameful deeds that was uh highly engaged in child sacrifice. And what's happened? Well, it starts with a calf. Where did Moloch come from? Where did Refin come from? Idols multiply. And this is happening in our time today. I would not be a good pastor if I did not point this out in our culture today. Did you notice this past week in uh Massachusetts, the governor signed an abortion bill all the way up to birth? Did you see that? How many of you saw that this week? That was insane. I just felt in the pit of my stomach the decline of America at that moment. And then I was horrified to learn that nine other states have the same laws and also countries. We have just joined other countries in the world like China, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia. These are the ones that allow abortion all the way up until the moment of delivery. You ought to fear the multiplication of sin, the blight that that sin is on the world. It's a blight on our nation, it's a blight on our world, it's a blight on our families. We ought to fear sin's multiplication. A final pain, just straight out of the text, guys. And if you're new to Central Church, this is what we do. We just work through verses and we just get the points right out of the text. Look at verse 43. I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. There are long-term consequences. That's another pain. You were in slavery, now you're going back to slavery. Beyond Babylon. It's going to be far. It's going to be long-term. Long-term captivity. What will happen is your church, your friends, your Christian friends around you, all that will start feeling cold in your relationship. You'll start feeling distant, and you'll start heading back into a slavery of some sort. Now, that's the exposition. That's the passage we've just studied. What do we do with all that? That's the main thing I want to answer. What should I do if I'm just like Israel? If I was talking to you at a Starbucks, if I was talking to you at a coffee shop tomorrow morning and we were applying this to our lives, what should we do? What are the first steps that we could take, that we could take to escape those fatal attractions? Number one, you need to, with every known sin, you need to take urgent steps to repent. That it is not a small thing, it is not a manageable thing. Your sin is a huge thing. It will multiply your problems. It will multiply distance. It will multiply other gods. We had a water pipe burst this last winter in our church, and we happened to be in the building. There was snow on the ground when this happened. And we happened to hear it and smell it, and the alarms went off. And our guys leapt to action. Our deacons, our pastors, everybody just kind of leapt to action to cut off the water and to stop the drain. And we were able to get it cleaned up pretty quick. But I'll tell you what Tim Clay did not do. He didn't say, Well, it's just a little leak. It's just a little water. He didn't treat it as a small thing. Everybody leapt to action. Like if somebody breaks into your house tonight and your wife elbows you in the middle of the night and says, I heard something. Someone's downstairs. No man is going to say, it's just a little thief. I mean, it's being quiet. He probably won't take much. Nobody's going to say that. You're going to jump to action. You're going to go fix the problem. I think the second thing we should do is we should actually see the love of God behind discipline. Even in the midst of discipline, and some of you feel that this morning, God's love is there. Write down Proverbs 13, 15. It says this. It says that good sense wins favor, but the way of the treacherous, the way of the sinner, uh is their ruin. Some translate this the way of the sinner is hard. It's a hard life. It's meant to be. You're meant to come to realization. It's like the prodigal son in the pig pen. I don't like this anymore. I don't like the way life is going. I don't enjoy this. When God wants to change someone, when God wants to use someone, he takes an impossible person like Moses and he crushes him. A.W. Tozer said it this way. He said, It is doubtful that God can bless any man greatly until he has hurt him deeply. If you're feeling hurt, if you're feeling distant, you're going through that same path Moses went through. Moses had to go to the wilderness to be broken. And then God used him. It is doubtful that God can use any man greatly until he has hurt him deeply. What do I do in that moment? Write down James chapter 4, verses 8 through 10. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. There's the answer. We come back to Jesus. We started with Jesus, we come back to Jesus. The way out of these fatal attractions that lead us into shale, that lead us into death, we draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, purify your hearts, be wretched, mourn, weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, your joy into gloom. Here it is. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. It is to bow down, it is to humble yourself before God and repent. Don't treat it as a small thing. It's just a little sin. It's a manageable sin. Confess it to the Lord and let your pain be a window. Let your pain be a doorway to God's rescuing, kind, loving grace. Final point. Final thought. I think the main thing that we're supposed to get from this passage is that only Jesus can change your heart. Only Jesus can rescue you from fatal attractions. In fact, write down Acts chapter 7, verse 51 to 53. In the coming weeks, we will look at this passage, and this is where it's leading for Stephen. You always resist the Holy Spirit. He's eventually going to say to these people I know I brought it up last week. You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have betrayed and murdered. You have, you who received the law as delivered by angels, did not keep it. You didn't accept Jesus. Don't resist him. Don't do what they did. Your hope for the fatal attractions of your heart. Your only hope is in Jesus. In fact, I want you to notice this verb, and we're done. Verse 42. Remember that word? Remember that phrase? Remember the darkest verse in the Bible? The most frightening verse in the Bible? God turned away and gave them over. This is a terrifying verse, but I want you to notice that verb gave them over. It's used again in the Bible in Romans chapter 8, verse 32. He, now God is using it. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. Same verb. God has offered his son as the payment for your sin. God has offered his son as the answer to your fatal attractions. And so you are to be rescued. If you're to be rescued, it is rescue through the Son. God gave over His Son to suffer the punishment that you and I deserve. I told this story to our men's breakfast the other day. I like the story of the college exam. It was a terrifying exam. Very few people passed. And the professor offered his help. He said, I want you on the day of the exam, you can bring a cheat sheet. You can bring a piece of paper. And whatever you put on that paper, you can use during the exam. You can write size four font. You can type it out. You can put reminders on there. Whatever you want, you can use. Only one student got the A plus. And it was that student who took a sheet of paper and he sat it down on the floor and he had a teacher's assistant come and stand on the sheet of paper and point to the right answer on the test. Over and over and over again. He's the only one who passed. He's the only one who got the A plus. See, when it comes to our fatal attractions, Jesus didn't just stand there. He took the exam. He lived a perfect life. Having never sinned, sat down beside us. He died for us. And for the rest of our lives, he leads us out of bondage. It does take extreme action to fight those fatal attractions, but the most extreme action of all wasn't yours. It was what Jesus did by dying in your place and saving you and leading you and coming alongside you the rest of your life to show you the way. With your heads bowed, with your eyes closed, we're going to have a time of response. And I want to call our response team forward. We have several that we've really been praying over, and we always have a couple of elders in this moment in the front of the room. I want to call those elders forward too. Dennis Rutledge, Al Eccles, along with our response team, our prayer team. And I've just been convicted of this, guys. I feel like at Central Church, every time the Word of God goes out, there needs to be a response from the people of God. Like it is right to respond to the gospel. It is right to respond to the Word of God. Guys, you can go ahead and come forward. Love to have you just all across the front here. And what we're going to do during this last song is we're going to take some intentional time to respond to the Word of God. Now, there could be a lot that you want to respond to, all right? Maybe you just need to come forward and pray. Maybe you need to come forward and say, look, I need to pray for my marriage. I need to pray really for a condition. Maybe you have a medical condition. Maybe there's something going on in your life that is emotional. And you are tempted to get into worry. You are tempted to get into fear. And you just need to respond to the word of the Lord this morning. Heads bowed, eyes closed. I want to do this with you. Just in your heart, can you identify one fatal attraction in your life? One fatal attraction. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's an addiction. Maybe it's worry. Maybe there's something that in this sermon you sense the distance between you and God. Can you just identify that thing? You see, a named sin gets fought. Vague ones get managed. I want you to get very specific. What's the sin? What's the thing that God is putting his finger on this morning and saying, this is where you need to do work? Is there an area of your life where you're wanting control? Where you're not submitting to the Lord? I mean, that was the story of Israel. We don't, we want to push this man aside. We want to push our God aside. We will not submit to his authority. We will not submit to his counsel. We will not submit to his direction. Is there an area of your life where you want control? You want a God you can control. Maybe you're not even satisfied with how your life has turned out. Maybe right now you just need to fall on your knees. You need to come and pray with another believer and ask for God's grace to fight. Maybe you're fighting a critical attitude, a critical heart, a critical mouth, a heart that rejects correction. What is it? Today I want to invite you. Would you just stand right where you're at? Would you stand this morning? Stand to your feet. We're going to sing this song. I'm going to pray over us. And if you'd like to come forward right now, you could go ahead and come forward, receive prayer, receive counsel, receive partnership. You can come forward right now as I pray, and this is a great chance for that. Let's do that together. Father, as we sing this song, I pray in our hearts, the people of God at Central Church would respond to the gospel. We would respond to what you're doing in each of our lives. We would respond to your leadership, your love for each of us, Lord. I pray we would sense afresh your commitment to us, your love to us. That even in the difficult seasons, Lord, you are working. You are drawing us to yourself. And so, Lord, let us receive. Father, let us respond. We love you. We ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.