SEP 18 2022 | Paul’s Second Missionary Journey S1E8 | American Idol

Sea Change Church · SEP 18 2022 | Paul’S 2Nd Missionary Journey | Ep. 8 : American Idol
Acts 17:22-31
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

And he is not served by human hands As if he needed anything Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else From one man he made all the nations That they should inhabit the whole earth And he marked out their appointed times in history And the boundaries of their lands God did this so that they would seek him And perhaps reach out for him and find him Though he is not far away from any one of us For in him we live and move and have our being As some of your own poets have said We are his offspring Therefore, since we are God's offspring We should not think that the divine being Is like gold or silver or stone An image made by human design and skill In the past, God overlooked such ignorance But now he commands all peoples everywhere to repent For he has set a day when he will judge the world With justice by the man he has appointed He has given proof of this to everyone By raising him from the dead The word of the Lord The word of the Lord Right on, well good morning Good morning I'm just wondering, maybe it's a little too soon For the fall at the moment A little flannel, I don't know if you guys Are feeling that in the air Things are changing It was a little warm today But we're going to feel some pumpkin spice today So it is on offer Before we get to the last stop on Paul's journey Second missionary journey We're ending it today He's in Athens He's hanging out He's been sent there because of persecution He's run away He's gone to a hotbed of discussion And Greek thought Where there isn't a lot of persecution From some of the Jewish leaders That were coming against him We know a lot of Jews were Making a decision to follow Jesus as well But Paul has turned tail And he has taken off And gone as sometimes he would do Other times he'd stay Other times he would go back into the city After being attacked Sometimes he would use his Roman credentials This time he bounces And so he ends up in Athens We're going to talk about Athens Why that's important And kind of some of the themes Behind the second missionary journey That you can use in your life Before we get to that I want to maybe bring up again You saw perhaps again in the news this week That Christianity supposedly is on the decline Perhaps you saw that You saw that Joan?

Okay, I saw it too And I don't know Every year around Easter A couple times a year You get that article You know 64% of people in the United States Identify as Christian I would say probably 20% of those Are probably actively living their faith From what I understand It's usually a 20% rule So 20% of the 64% But the 64% is open Probably going to Easter and Christmas Which is interesting This article talks about How Christianity is going to decline And no longer exist And this happened in France During the Enlightenment This has happened in the first century I mean this happened a lot Although nations rise and do decline It seems that the message of the gospel Especially if you look at conversion rates in Africa And places like that Exced on the rise worldwide But it is speaking about that And what I thought is interesting And this is actually true 31% according to Pew Research So if you want to check this out Go to Google Not right now Go to Google And put in Christianity decline And then go to the news search You'll find the article It came out on the 15th It says 31% of young people That are raised in the church Leave the church Now it was 20% That was the big number When I wrote my first book It was 20% of the kids are leaving Now it's 31% What's also interesting Is it's not replicable In that 21% of people That are atheist Agnostics And have no faith Are actually converted Every year as well So 31% leave 21% of people Come into the faith That are non-believing Which I actually think It was way higher Than I thought it was Which means A little bit over Two out of every ten people You walk by in the street Are open to the gospel Two out of ten Just go to the mall You walk by a hundred people Like that Just know if you walk by A hundred people Twenty of them you walk by Are open to the faith And if they are agnostic people Those are agnostics Not people that are Christian But if you walk by Every person that's an agnostic Or an atheist 21% I thought that was Really really encouraging And so the article posits That Christianity Is on its way out One thing they didn't mention Which I thought was interesting Is that right now We have a large surge Of people coming into our country Right And in this country 81% Of all immigrants So there was 2 million last year I think is what the number was 81% Of the 2 million Migrants Who have come into our country Identify as Christian 81% That's really interesting Because I think that That is actually going to have An interesting effect It's almost like A reverse Evangelism I mean You know that these things stick Because if you were to go back To the 1600s The English Took a bunch of Protestants And moved them to a place Called Ulster Up in Northern Ireland It is 400 years later It's actually Yeah 400 years later And it is still a Protestant A thick Protestant area I was talking to some of my Latina sisters Here in the church today I know Adelaina She actually goes to tribes Down in the hills And she says she has A hard time understanding The Spanish She'll go and share the gospel In some of these tribes Up in the mountains But I was talking to Doris I was talking to Christina Who's new on our staff And really one of the things That they were saying Is there's this massive Opportunity for the church Like if you just want to Look at like the political Thing Then you can do that But if you want to look The call of Christ First to help people Who show up I mean that is our call Whether it goes against Your politics or whatever To just help people But then also to give Christians a landing spot 80 I think it was 83% I think that's what it says In the article All these Christians If Christians were coming From all over the world I mean would other As Christians Wouldn't We want to reach out To people that aren't Christians as well But they were positing to me Look at the opportunity To restore faith in this country I mean a massive number Of Christians are just Flooding into the country And separate of the I don't really care About the political conversation I care about the Theological conversation Now Paul is doing The opposite here Paul is like going To places where There's no believers Not places where Believing is not Trending in But he's going to These places where There's no believers And starting from Scratch And so one of the things He does is he meets This woman Lydia The first convert If you weren't here A few weeks ago The first convert In Europe Was a woman By the name of Lydia And he reaches out And talks to her So we're going to be At this stop We're in Athens today And I want to just Give three quick Things that Themes from the Second missionary Journey that we saw To end my conversation I was talking to my Friends today Christina and Elena and Doris About hey what can we do And one of the ideas Was like hey maybe We can find a place And have a service Or some kind of thing Where we can just Reach somebody and care So it's just something That's bubbling in the Conversations and hopefully You have conversations You're like who can we help Who can we care for Really cool So here's a couple Things that happened First of all we saw That this entire Missionary journey Is about open and Close doors Paul has places He strategically wants to go God opens doors God closes doors The key is Paul is walking Towards the doors Right If you're not walking Towards doors Don't expect You gotta walk Through a door If God opens a door You gotta walk Through it Not everybody Walks through a door That God opens God also will close doors And so you wanna be Asking God regularly Would you open Would you close doors But we've gotta have Some movement In the right direction Paul's got some movement So in regard to Sharing the incredible Message of Jesus Which we wanna stay On point right I'll say that in just a moment We wanna stay on point I wanna talk about All the political issues I don't wanna talk about All these other I wanna talk about Jesus And when I talk to people I'm personally Trying to bring the conversation They'll be Well what about this What about this issue You know what I just wanna talk about Jesus I wanna talk about my Jesus Let's talk about that Because no one wants To talk about Jesus And Jesus is incredibly Disarming So the first thing is There's open doors Is God opening doors for you Are you asking for open doors It says ask and what He seek and knock And the door shall be open What do you wanna see In regard to Not just Hey I wanna buy a house But what is God doing In your life To change people's lives Wasn't that inspiring today To see the unity for orphans And the aleph And all the things I mean that was so inspiring To me I'm like I gotta get my game on Like that's amazing Let's We wanna be that church right You wanna be that people I want people to say Hey I've met those Loyal Christian Fellowship people Man they changed my life They showed up And made a difference And so we see these open doors You're walking towards it We also see that People that don't know Christ The Greeks are being invited in To the fellowship We saw that a lot of Greeks And people groups That you wouldn't expect Are open and available Not all of them Will chase you down Like some of the Jews Caused a mob It says in this And some of the You know the The leading Jewish people That were there Many Jews did follow Paul But there was an openness to that What group are you reaching?

Right now I'm really focused on Just caring for Especially girls basketball team That my daughter's on I'm just caring for that team I'm the foundation member now I raise all the money For the girls basketball team I just dove in We got a bus We can take them to the games I wanna try to get my bus license So I can drive them to the games And just care for them And sponsor the kids That need sponsoring I just And you know what?

I love it It's just the thing Find the thing you love And go do it Pray for God to open a door I'm like bros with a principal now It's like I gotta get invited to a pizza party It's awesome So find that thing You know Other thing is We saw the door open to women Women are mentioned a bunch of times I had a guy this week And he's just like I wanted to come up for prayer afterwards But after the feminist message I didn't want to get tackled or something So I said alright It wasn't a feminist message It was showing that the gospel Is open to women And we see that here That we see this incredible empowerment And the challenge last week was Ladies Let's keep it up Step your game up Keep caring Keep serving Keep challenging us men Let's go Okay And then we also saw persecution There's pushback If you're gonna do these things There's going to be pushback Right And what are you gonna do with pushback?

You're gonna wilt when there's pushback Alright Here's two quick points today And then we'll tap out The first one is this We want to proclaim a simple gospel Gospel's gotta be simple Granted It's an eternal gospel From a cosmological God That is all things We have to know our stuff We wanna learn the Bible We wanna go deeper But ultimately You wanna just keep coming back To basic A simple gospel It's a simple gospel I think that works the best How do we share a simple gospel?

Paul in this passage right here What is it? I don't know 10 I try not to preach more than 10 or 12 verses at a time 10 or 12 verses Lays out the entire gospel 10 or 12 verses He's like boom Like in the line at Starbucks You know We were at Target Starbucks Target was on fire yesterday There's a lot of people at Target I guess everybody's going back to school Dropped my daughter off at UCSD I was super stoked She's doing marine biology Just as a dad I'm like yeah right That's cool right I'm so proud of her Super proud And we went there And there's all these people They have shirts on And they're getting their stuff And whether the line was super long It was a long line to Starbucks I had to get my Vente You know sweet cream cold brew And as I was there I thought In this line Like there Could I share the gospel The entirety of the gospel As I'm waiting with somebody Talking to him You know Paul had the ability To do that Why?

Because he had a really simple gospel In order to proclaim the gospel You're gonna have to know the gospel Like understand it I said that you know A lot of us can talk You know these We have all these You know things that we understand In our culture But we couldn't share the gospel In five specific points Five basic points And so Paul had the simple gospel That's the first one Proclaim a simple gospel Talk about Jesus Keep it on point Talk about Jesus That's what we're talking about There's a bunch of other issues In the world Everyone wants to take it To all these other issues I want to talk about Jesus I want to talk about How my soul needs salvation How your soul needs salvation How good he is How much the Holy Spirit loves me How he comforts me How in my darkest moments He's never let me down Boom That's what you're talking about It's your testimony Simple gospel And then the second one Is when Paul gets to Athens He sees all these idols So I want to encourage you To know the difference Between a carved idol And then things that We devote our lives to We want to clear those things out Because that's a hindrance To us sharing the gospel When you have all these hindrances Sometimes I find that If I have a hindrance in my life I won't step into my faith Because I have like I feel guilty Or I feel like I shouldn't be saying it Or I don't know why But one of the best things For evangelism Is having a cleared out life Just feeling like Hey I'm right before God I'm because of the blood of Jesus And because I'm making right decisions The Bible says That he will make our paths straight But it also says Make your paths straight In Proverbs And so when you get You make your paths straight And then God straightens your path That tiller in the ground Is running a straight path I was just looking at During the Iron Ages When they invented The iron till And when they were able To do that in farming All of a sudden Production and population Went up three times In Britain Just because of that invention Because they could till straighter They could till deeper And God is doing that And one of the things That stops us From having straight lines In our lives Is having all these things We're devoted to That often times Are called idols Let's look at these real quick And proclaim a simple gospel Paul's one minute gospel I mean Paul basically Had a one minute gospel And when you get ready To share the gospel One of the things you need Before you share this Is an awareness Just have open eyes Who's Like when's an appropriate time To share the gospel You know what I mean Like there's certain times You just Hey it's not hitting right I'm not feeling You know Now is not the moment But there are other moments When someone is open To the gospel You know And I usually I'll start with something like Even if I'm playing basketball If I I played on Friday Down at YMCA And one of the things I would you know Talk about I'd say hey I'm in this league Everyone knows a certain league I say I play on my church team I say that on purpose Why?

Because I want to bring up Oh yeah by the way I'm the head pastor And granted I know that's not fair You know It is sometimes A disadvantage as well Right? So some of you are like Or the pastor Oh run away from you But I try to bring that Into the conversation And sometimes This one minute gospel Is over a series Of months with people It just keeps showing up Keep you know Keep saying hey What's up Keep going to the Seven, eight places You go on a regular basis There's only seven or eight Places you go For the most part You go to the same store You go to the same dry cleaner You go to the same coffee house Go to the same school I mean most of us aren't You know We're in El Cajon one day Poway the neck Like you have this little life You live this little diaspora Is what they call it This place you go to And how are you Building relationships there And how are you Making a difference Paul was doing that So the first thing Is this is awareness First of all When you Find out those places In your mind If you want to share the gospel If you want to make change In life In people's lives Like Joe was talking about In the missionaries If you want to be that person If you want to live the gospel Be aware of where you go If you walk your dog On the same area Say hi to the people Like it's so easy Just put your podcast on I don't want to be bothered You know But have a mission Know the route The place Maybe it's not Athens But maybe it's Trader Joe's Maybe it's not Berea You know But maybe it's 24 hour fitness Or wherever you are Just be aware And then go there And make a difference Be a positive light Bring that Holy Spirit energy And bring a change One of the things I I think I said last week I deleted a bunch of podcast apps On my phone I'm like This isn't helping me This isn't helping me You know what I mean And I convinced myself I need to be aware Of all these things Because of what I do For a living And whatever But there's just certain things I just need to X out You know what I found out It was a lot easier To smile this week It was a lot I was walking The place Like what's up Hey good to see You know what I mean I just noticed That a lot of that Actually changed What you feed yourself Is what you're going To put out It's impossible To put something Into your heart Without it coming out So you just want to Make sure we're in the Gospel and those Different things But that's awareness Alright Paul had five things First of all This is how he laid it out And there were some key words He had used the word made He used the word gave He used the word find Repent and raise Those are just five I picked Right So in this little One minute gospel He had these little words That he pivoted off of Here's the first one He started with God Now Harry spoke about this A few weeks ago He said GPS If you're talking to people Talk about God Talk about the problem There's a problem We're separated from God There's sin in the world There's evil in the world Instead of using sin Just use the word evil It'll still work People Non-believing people Are more apt to You know Lean into the word evil Because they understand There's evil in the world With school shootings And things And they are sin But the God GPS God Problem And then salvation Or solution Here's the solution God loves you He wants to care for you So with that Paul has this Verse 24 The God who made the world And everything in it Is the Lord of heaven and earth And so he starts out With this word made Hey God made you Now I would say That this You know Separate of what you think About all the climate Arguments in the world It is one of the most Incredible pivots For believers To share the gospel That we have had In hundreds of years I think In regard to God created The universe And we want to care For the things God created And be a conservationist My daughter going Into marine biology She's always talking To me about kelp And how much We drive our cars And all these things And that's a big thing For young people It's a real big thing For young people And I want to say Use it If Paul walked into A climate conference In Scotland I was there Not too long ago And they had that If he were to walk in He would look around And go like Well I don't know About that argument Or that argument But let me tell you About who created All this And let me tell you Why we want to care For it And he would say And who God is He was like Boom He would just Okay I'll take that Whatever you're Talking about You're talking about Migrants Alright well Let's do that Oh you're talking About climate Alright let's Let's do that You're talking about And instead of He would just Turn it into A gospel You have to understand This is low hanging Fruit for you guys This is These are like We're playing softball Today okay And I've got these Big giant Like neon softballs I bought six of them So come down And watch today And you can watch We strike out But you see that Thing coming These are This is a softball These conversations Are softballs Unless you want to be Like I'm all upset Because my opinion And I'm upset Because I think this And this And this And I'm Rather he himself Gives everyone Life and breath And everything else God wants to give That's a great word If you're talking To people And you said Hey God made you He loves you He wants to Give you life He wants to give to you He wants to He wants to shower you With his blessing I want to hear that message I want to hear that message If you want to get me off On a topic about sexuality And all And not that Christians apologetically Don't have those conversations We definitely have those conversations But in my evangelism I just need to I need to filter all that out I made coffee with a French press This morning okay A lot of grounds in it right I need to filter that out I actually had to take it And refilter it through a thing Because I'm like There's way too much silt here I want to say When you're having conversations About the gospel All of a sudden You're moving into All this other territory Filter that stuff out man Filter that out Get that filtered out Talk about your Jesus Talk about that beautiful Jesus Who died on the cross for us Who loves us Who saved us Because he made us And he gave us And then find Look at this word find God in verse 27 God did this So that they would seek him And perhaps reach out to him And find him Do you want to find God Imagine saying that to him Do you want to find God He's a God that wants to be found Find Let's find God I love it Repent This is a tough one He says in the past God overlooked the ignorances The evil of the world basically But now he commands people All places to repent Why?

Because he wants to be a buzzkill To all your fun No because he wants To be close to you Because he wants to embrace you Because he loves you Because he created A best practices model For living in the Bible These best practices Will bring the best results That he has And then the final one And these are just five I picked It was so easy Raised He's given proof to everyone Because he raised his son From the dead And God wants to raise you as well He wants to raise your life From the dead Do you feel like Your life is in the ashes This new rebuild series We have coming up Bring friends If you know people That are in a divorce You know people That have mental health issues Especially if somebody Tells you the mental health Man is an issue It's a massive issue Right now They'd have to get Four more counselors At the school For young people If someone tells you They have a mental health crisis Invite them to church Let me say They are wide open For solutions When you cannot sleep at night Because of your anxiety Or you can't get out of bed In the morning Because of your depression Or you have suicidal ideation Let me tell you You get to a place in your life Where like I'll do anything I will do anything And so One of the things I want to say Is invite them Say I want to tell you About this Jesus He's not a It's not going to Always a perfect solution Immediately Where it just fixes all that But it gets us On a different path So that's the first one Proclaiming the simple gospel Are you aware Do you want to share Do you want to bring That life giving energy Like they were talking about In those missions Say you have a mission You are a left You are unity for orphans You are a mission Wherever you live In your business And in your world Let's go Let's make a difference In the world You know Let's care The final one is this Destroying idols This is the second part So Paul gets to Athens If you were to go past This passage A little bit further It was a very long passage But he's waiting For his companions To join him Because they stayed back He had to leave And like I said Sometimes Paul would go legal He'd say like Hey I'm a Roman citizen I'm going to use my legal thing Sometimes he would leave He would like You know Tuck tail and run You know And other times He would stick out the persecution And go back in there Even though it was You know He could possibly be killed He always had a different way Following the spirit Of what he would do But he ends up in Athens And when he's there If you've been to Athens There's like Just these idols everywhere They were looking for God They were looking for a God Who would change their life And they didn't want to miss any So this is a big thing As opposed to going in And going All these gods are false gods And hitting them with that He like looks around And he sees this one It says unknown God And he's like Okay I can parlay this I can pivot I can pivot off this Where can you pivot My daughter plays basketball right now She's my youngest daughter And we're talking about defense She had a great tryout on Wednesday It was amazing But nonetheless We were talking about pivoting on defense Her best friend Keeps going around her You know She's so mad But her best friend's really fast And so she keeps going around her And she can't guard her I said You gotta pivot You gotta pivot You gotta block that angle off It's the same thing that Paul's doing He doesn't sit there And let people go around him He actually pivots Using a conversation And pivoting to life Making sure in a conversation Pivot to life I would say Even in your relationships With your wives Your children Pivot to life The words have power Of life and death The scripture says Pivot to life And so we see Paul Doing that here As he says There's an unknown God I wanna tell you About this unknown God Is but later down In the scripture It says While Paul was waiting For them in Athens He was greatly distressed To see that the city Was full of idols And what does it mean To have an idol I have people In the Christian church And they say If you have an addiction That's an idol And I think metaphorically It is an idol And I've had people say It's the same as Worshipping Baal Or Baal Or it's the same as Worshipping one of these Gods of the Old Testament I personally reject that I would say that Having something That you become devoted to That metaphorically Is like an idol Is different than Having a carved image Where you say That this image is God I worship it as God I would allow it To be inhabited By a demonic force Because demons Are always looking For something To be attached to That they can be worshipped Or be a part of It's different than That type of idol That's something You would have seen In Raiders of the Lost Ark But it's still problematic Right So these idols Are still problematic And you're starting To see in our culture More and more Actual idols Right I mean granted They're art So you go to World Costco World market Or whatever And all of a sudden There's like idols And they're kind of Everywhere You see more and more When I was in Indonesia Surfing in the late 80s I remember they would have These little fruit sacrifices And everywhere Would have incense And a fruit sacrifice Every single morning And they would put those out And they would actually Worship these idols I walked by this giant Dragon's head one time It was like a lion Or a dragon And I walked by it And I got right up in it And I was like I wasn't even following Jesus at the time And I was like I wonder what demon you are And all of a sudden I felt like this Roar over I was like Oh jeez I don't know what that was But it was like Spooky You know what I mean I don't know what happened But you ever seen a movie And like something jumps out Like you know And you get freaked out I was like Whoa I don't know what I just did But I'm just gonna go surf I'm out And so We see that So idolatry in Judaism In Christianity Is the worship of someone Or something Other than God As though it were God Now once again I don't think that If you have A lust issue If you're addicted To whatever Or money Or your body image Or whatever I don't put those In the same category They can metaphorically Let's call those idols Because they're metaphorically Idolic Because we do devote Our lives to them I mean you kind of Worship I wouldn't say worship In the same way As you're bowing down But they are venerated So one of the things People don't understand About Mary in the Catholic Church Is Mary is not supposed To be worshipped She's supposed to be venerated Venerated means that Mary You believe that she's A holy woman You believe she's godly You want to give her honor But you don't worship Mary And so a lot of Protestants Don't understand If you were to read the Catechism She's venerated Not worshipped I would say that These things that are in our life Are sometimes more venerated Than they are worship But they're still venerated And they're still things That are important to us And if you want to give A life changing life If you want to have a life I mean you really want to Do you really want to Change people's lives I mean that's a good question I mean And be honest with yourself Do you really You know Do you really want to change lives Do you really want to be That powerful difference In the world Or do you not Just be honest with yourself But if you do One of the best ways To do that Is to get rid of these things That you venerate In your life And what the Bible Would call Roman Or what we call Idols Paul says that these things In Romans 1.23 He says And instead of Worshipping the glorious And ever living God They worshipped idols Now What I would say Is when we venerate Things in our life It takes our attention Off God It takes our attention Off others It's usually We don't really Venerate things Unless we're doing it For ourselves Even You can have a person That you venerate You know In a relationship That's maybe not healthy Or something like that And so we see that But it is something You were devoted And here's what it says In verse 16 It says that Paul Was greatly distressed About this That word really Stuck out to me Because I think Often times I'm not Distressed enough And I'm definitely Not greatly distressed I mean I'll get distressed About everybody else's stuff You know what I mean I see things in the culture I don't know They trigger me I see this in the culture I see that in the headlines I get all triggered Right Greatly distressed But I'm all cool With my idols Right With the things I venerate Like You can hang out over there You're all good You know what I mean And so one of the things You want to look at Is really take an inventory Now One of the things We've been doing A Thursday fast And you can write this down If you want to partake And I want to give you Spiritual exercise On Thursdays now From now going forward For this next six week series With Nehemiah I want you to use Thursdays As a day of confession So to sit before the Lord Five minutes And just say God What am I venerating What has become more important In my life You can still fast If you want But you can use that day As a day of confession Coming in for a landing He was greatly distressed And then he pivots He goes I want you to know That in verse 23b You are very You are ignorant Maybe not the word you use Might have meant A little something different then Of the very thing you worship And this is what I'm going To proclaim to you What he's saying is What you're giving your life to He goes There's something better I want to proclaim Something better to you You know when you tell someone Hey This is something That we shouldn't be doing There's an argument In our culture right But one of the things is Let me tell you Why we should be doing this Let me tell you What this brings Let me speak in the positive Let me pivot to life Why does this matter And why does it bring life Alexander Solzhenitsyn Wrote the Gulag Archipelago Pretty thick book About the Russian The communist movement In the 19 Or throughout the 1900s Has said this Thus we always pay dearly For chasing after What is cheap That's so true right So many of the things We venerate are so cheap right And I think they They discount us A lot of times They create They create a discounting Of our lives We chase after them Because it's an easy Dopamine hit Or it's an easy Whatever it is But often times It's so cheap Two practical takeaways And we'll be done The first one is this Here's your practical takeaways For the week No one proclaim A simple gospel And share the gospel With one person this week Pray to the Lord God give me an open door So that means You're moving forward right God give me a chance To change someone's life I know I'm having These conversations I'm like okay God Is there someone In our community Who's displaced That I can personally help Who can I Someone who's come newly Into the community Is there someone My family can help I want to ask God To open a door for that And I'm also going to go Look for it myself So share the gospel This week Share life Right We're sharing life So that's the first one And number two Have a zero tolerance policy For the idols The things you venerate Just have a zero tolerance Like you know the things That you're like Maybe I'm pushing a little Too hard in this direction Just have a zero tolerance policy If you need to get someone To you know Hold you accountable Or whatever it is You know I put In the final thing For the notes There's a quote there From Deuteronomy 7.5 Let me read that first But thus you shall Deal with them this way You shall break down Their altars Dash them into pieces In their pillars Chop them down Their ashrams Burn their carved images With fire You see we don't broker With idols We obliterate idols Don't broker with idols If you're brokering with idols You're going to lose Every single time You will never win You will never win When you try to make A compromise With the idols In your life You just won't They're going to put you On the back foot Every single time God has made it that way He won't If he loves you too much To let you win You won't be able to do it We don't broker With our idols We obliterate them What did they do In the Old Testament They would crush them Into powder Remember that idol When Moses came down He took that golden calf And what did he have them do He had them grind it In the powder And drink it He's like put it In some water And drink it You know where that's going Like we're done Right We're just You know We're going to be done With those things In our life That's the kind of people We want to be We want to be the kind of people That take serious The things in our life And set an altar up Only to God And then go out And change the world Right Bring that life giving energy Alright Let's go Alright stand up If you would I want to bless you today If you need prayer We want to We're going to pray for you We got people up here They have little things on To pray for you Don't miss out Don't miss out Come get that prayer If you want to pray For someone else If you want to just be Quiet up here and sit You can come sit If you want to be prayed for Come forward If you want to know More about our small groups Things that are happening How you can get involved We want you to be connected Stick and stay We want to be a sticky church Come here and get stuck You know Be a part of this community For a very long time Go to the next steps table And also the community Out at the coffee place Stop by everything As pay as you can Or don't pay at all Go to the coffee And check that out On the way out Go love on people today If you want to extend your hands I want to bless you Lord Jesus We thank you God For your goodness And your grace We want more of you God We want more of you This message in Acts Is coming to an end Lord And I pray Jesus For the spirit of Paul That message God To bless their hands Lord Jesus To bless their feet To bless their mouths To open up their eyes To bring an awareness God Of who you are Jesus We love you Jesus We want more of you Just ask him for more Right now in your heart And I pray you would give them All the things that they ask for God Lord you would open doors Close doors that aren't safe Lord God Send them out to be a change In the world And those that need more of you Can lean in Jesus Lean in to the loving arms of Jesus We bless you We send you now In the power of the Holy Spirit In the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit Amen Be blessed Go have an incredible week Change the world We'll see you at the picnic