Regaining Lost Ground

Pastor Shane Idleman: Be careful with this topic of idolatry. Give it to the Lord this morning, repent, and say, "Lord, cleanse me. Cleanse me that I may be clean." And God will do that. For those here who do not know Jesus, the Bible's pretty clear. It just says repent and believe. Repent and believe in the Gospel. Very simple. That's all you have to do.

Repent, acknowledge that I need God, and believe in Jesus. And God says He will set you free because that penalty of sin can't just be released by our own good works. It has to be His finished work on the cross that released us.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us here at Westside Christian Fellowship, located in Leona Valley, California, one hour north of Los Angeles. Today on Regaining Lost Ground, we hear the third and final part of this chain-breaking message titled, "The Subtlety of Idolatry."

John Calvin once said, "The human heart is an idol factory." For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the Giver himself? Do you find yourself spending more time with things and less time with God? Do you seek holiness but don't know where to begin? Break off the chains and strongholds that have kept you from all that Jesus offers you today in this powerful sermon from Pastor Shane, loaded with truth, a packed powder keg of Holy Spirit fire. Take a listen.

You can hear the whole message at Pastor Shane's YouTube and Rumble channels. Make sure to subscribe today. For more information, visit us online at westsidechristianfellowship.org. We also encourage you to hear more truth from Pastor Shane with the Idleman Unplugged weekly podcast. And now, from Westside Christian Fellowship in Leona Valley, California, here's Pastor Shane Idleman.

Pastor Shane Idleman: I've seen others, godly women, choose the wrong person. "Oh, but I'll lead him to the Lord." Well, maybe eventually, but it's going to be a life of hell for a while. And that's actually not biblical. If you've already said "I do," you're in it. But if you still have the opportunity, make sure you look to God.

Trusting in God means relying completely on Him, on His character, on His promises, rather than on your human strength, on your control, or your own understanding. Demonstrating confident dependence upon God regardless of changing circumstances. Why do I mention trust? Because some idolatry is the result of not trusting God. We begin to trust other things and that becomes the idol in our lives.

Let's reverse it. Not trusting in God is relying on our own strength, our own control, and our own understanding. How many have problems with that sometimes? That's why the Bible says lean not on your own because, "Lord, this doesn't make sense. I've got to do something." I'll give you some practical application to think about this morning. Idols can't just be removed; they must be replaced.

So you remove that bad relationship that you know needs to end. You better put God in there. Something has to fill that void. Idols must be replaced with God, the things of God. Killing idols requires action. You do have to fight this battle. Remember Josiah? One of my favorite kings, for sure.

He read the Word of God and he got ticked off. He tore his clothes. He went and he just—I wish we could study it sometimes—he broke down the sacred pillars of Baal and Asherah, and he burned them with fire. He removed them. He replaced them with God's Word and the teaching of Scripture.

So the parallels into our life: to kill an idol—is there an idol in your life right now?—you have to break it down, you have to burn it, you have to remove it, and you have to replace it with something else. Burn it, trash it. Don't give it to someone else.

I remember when I first came back to the Lord. I'll never forget this. Remember when CDs were in style? I found an old cassette tape. I'm going to show my kids and see if they—we should ask, "Do you know what this is?" Eight-track? You're going way back to eight-track. Eight-track! I've got some memories with that. We were up in the High Sierra mountains. My mom would grab that big eight-track, she would stuff that thing in, and John Denver would come on. "Mountain mama, take me home, country roads." And the "Country Boy" one—"Cakes on the griddle, life ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle. Oh, thank God I'm a country boy." And then you've got to pull it out and put it back in.

And then after that was cassette tapes. Eventually CDs on discs. Young kids probably don't know what those are either. But I had the collections. You know how you buy those big thick CD holders that hold 500? I thought, "Man, I'm going to go get some good money for this." You open it up, there's Iron Maiden, Metallica, Ozzy with the cross. Black Sabbath. All these. And then some country ones too. Remember Conway Twitty? "Hello darlin', it's me." See, I've got it programmed. I'm trying to get rid of that stuff.

But I'm going to bring all this to sell it. And as I'm going out, God was like, "Trash can." No, no, no, Lord. And I put it in my truck, I remember. I'm driving and finally threw that away. And there was so much peace. God deals with us differently. And it had to be burned and removed. I know people who literally would text me and say, "Well, make sure it's in your backyard and it's not—" but they would burn their Ouija board or their books on witchcraft and the tarot cards they got.

You ever go into Walmart in the stores? Now they've got little witch and casting spells for little kids. That's demonic. And don't sell it at a garage sale; just burn it. There has to be a strong stance. The stronger the stance, the more it pleases the heart of God, I believe, because compromise doesn't come in. I remember when I went through my movies too. It was a process. You get rid of some and then you're like, "Not those ones, not those." A couple of weeks later, you go back, you get rid of those. It's a process of these things because they draw you away from God.

It's not God-honoring. Partial reform only leads to partial victory. That was a sermon title that I was working on. I don't know when that will be, but partial reform only leads to partial victory. When you partially reform something—the Bible talks about removing it because if you negotiate with the devil, he'll win every time.

And then I was going to talk about the snare of keeping the high places. This is one of the most interesting things to me in the Old Testament. The king is doing great things. The people are on fire for God. And oh, I'm getting so excited, I'm reading, and then it says, "But the high places were not removed." Man, they're doing great things, but the high places were not removed.

Now, commentaries are divided. To me it seems like, reading them, studying the high places—obviously they're high places up on a hill. It's where sacrifice would take place. My thing is they probably left it for convenience. Like, "We don't want to travel all the way to Jerusalem to worship God. Let's meet in the high place." But God has established one place to worship Him, and they would not remove the high places. There could be other reasons as well. The bottom line is they did not remove what God said remove.

Be killing sin, or sin be killing you. John Owen. Isn't that cool? I was able to—we took a brief tour of The Master's College and I could stay in that library area all day. It said the "Complete Works of John Owen." They had all these books, all these things, and I just remembered the rich words of the Puritans. I used to read those when I came back to the Lord. I had John Owen and John Bunyan and some of the older Puritans. They were so serious about sin because they knew.

William Gurnall—you won't hear that name very much. It's a big thick book, *The Christian in Complete Armour*. If you buy it, buy it in the modern language because it's tough. But they're just talking about hitting sin full-on. And then now you listen to a lot of people say, "Oh, it's no big deal, man. Just come as you are, stay as you are." We don't want people to repent and talk about the cross and judgment. Oh my goodness, that's tough.

No, be killing sin, or sin be killing you. You can't negotiate with this enemy. The Bible is radical, the commandments profound, and the principles of the Word are priceless. And at the core of idolatry is compromise, which fuels anger. Did you know that idolatry in the life of a Christian—I don't know women too, of course, but men—it makes you angry a lot because you're bowing to the idol and you know you shouldn't be. And it makes you angry. And there's often addiction involved, then there's arrogance involved, there's pride involved.

And this idolatry sets in when we become comfortable and spiritually lazy. Watch out, folks. If you ever get a hard season, you should thank the Lord for it because it'll draw you back to your knees. Because comfort and spiritual laziness is the final nail in the coffin of a Christian fading away from God. We have to stay alert. We have to stay vigilant.

Look at this from Psalm: "But they mingled with the Gentiles." Mingled. You know what mingled is, right? Had a couple of drinks. "We serve God, you serve Baal." And they mingled though. And be careful when you mingle. What entertains you, you begin to compromise. If you're not strong enough to bring them up to you, don't go down to them. You've heard me teach on that before. Is it easier for me to pull somebody up to me or for them to pull me down to them?

They mingled, and what happened? They learned their works. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. It was so destructive that even abortion followed. Did you know that? The children of Israel would learn the practices of the pagan nations. They would begin to serve their gods and they ended up eventually giving up their children to Molech. Unbelievable. What they would have never done—you've been there maybe before—what you never would have done, and you get to a spot and you say, "How did I get here?" It's because idolatry.

So I'll just give you a few examples of idols that we—I mean, we kind of already talked about, but it's good to reinforce. Money and wealth can become idols. Especially as you're young. You see these guys making a million dollars on YouTube a year, or you see influencers on Instagram. Or you see women forget that one of the most important jobs in the world is being a mom. I'm not against women working; I think it's up to you. But we need to put things in perspective as well. Even men working too much, putting things before their family. Money and wealth can become idolatry.

What about fame and notoriety? These four almost took me out when I was younger. As a Christian, even, I would bow. This was my god. And I would squeeze God in—not very much back then. Maybe when something bad happened. But that was my god, and that took me out. I was a little heavier back then, as you could tell. For those interested, it was Family Fitness Centers, started in San Diego. We were managing partners up here in Lancaster. We opened the Lancaster and Palmdale Family Fitness Centers, and then they merged with 24 Hour Nautilus and became 24 Hour Fitness.

And that's where I just worked up. It was my god. Every seven days a week, I'd be—just more money, six figures in the '90s, my own custom home in Quartz Hill at 26. I still drive by sometimes and remember those days. And that was my god. That drove me away from the Lord. And it took God taking all of that out of me to bring me back to the Lord because the idols will never satisfy. The idols will actually destroy you if given the opportunity.

Money, wealth, fame, notoriety, looks, perception, health. I talked about all that before, how that can become an idol. Many of you—how many of you focused on health? You're really into the health. Well, you're not going to be honest. But you know, there's people in here more passionate than I am. And that can become your god, your idolatry, and putting that before God and realizing that our breath—He holds the palm of our breath in His very hands. It's anything we put before God.

That's why I cringe at that show *American Idol*. Could you think of a better name? *American Idol*. And what do they do? And then when we run into those people, what do we do? I saw an interview about—I don't remember this—but there's a documentary out, I guess, on Michael Jackson. One of his concerts, girls were just passing out. They're taking them out. And all these people just going crazy. Or you guys remember the Beatles? You ever seen those videos? "Oh my gosh!" People, they are just men. These singers are just women. They actually don't have that great of a voice sometimes. All they do is have the marketing machine behind them.

Do you know you can get them in a studio? Some of the best music I have ever heard in my life is AI. My wife and I still go back and forth. I'll send her a song and she says, "It's AI, I don't want to listen." I'm like, "Oh, I love this song!" Like, did you guys hear that song I played Wednesday? "Hem of His Garment." AI. I mean, if you're taking—well, I should clarify this so I don't get 100 emails. If you've got Scripture, the person producing it is Scripture, they're using a great voice, and they just put it together. Now, if it's some AI system doing all this, I got it. But it's just what we idolize.

Idols deceive. I love Deuteronomy 29:19. They fell into idolatry and they said, "I shall have peace even if I follow the dictates of my heart." And God says, "Yeah, as though the drunkard could be included with the sober." You'll never have peace. You'll never have peace. Here's why it deceives us: there's an illusion of peace. I call it the "new car smell." There is—man—you're worshipping this idol, you meet your celebrity friend, your business is growing, and there's a euphoria about that. But it will come at a price.

Now, if God opens the door and you're excited about what God is doing and opening the door and pursuing God—maybe God put you on a stage like *American Idol* or whatever and you use that to God's glory—that's different because you're there to make a difference. It all has to do with our heart: where are our passions and our desires?

So here's the key I want to leave you with: repentance breaks the hold of idolatry. Repentance breaks—so what has a hold? Can shopping become an idol? Anything you put before God, repentance will break that hold. But guess what? You also have to remove the idol. You can't say, "Oh, Lord, I repent from bowing to the statue in my house," but I'm not going to remove it. And now we don't have statues; we have 50-inch entertainment centers.

Worship puts God back on the throne. Prayer fractures the influence of the idol. And the Word of God re-establishes the right direction and the right course for our lives. From Hezekiah to the walls of Jericho coming down and from David to you and me, worship also breaks that stronghold that the idol has.

So idolatry must be crushed. It's not easy. You know why it's not easy to break free? Because it has your heart. Isn't that the challenge? It has your heart. You know it shouldn't have your heart, but it does. It's hard to break that free. So maybe this morning it will begin with repentance and cry out like the psalmist, "Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord."

So, guys, I know it's a heavy message, but you can break free of idolatry. And maybe some of you are fine. Maybe some of you are maintaining well. But I know, if I know Christians, there's many in here who something has got a hold of your heart and it's challenging your relationship with God. It could be a number of things. You know because you're convicted about it.

I've had people come in the prayer room—and there's so many examples—"Hey, I know you talked about this, but my marijuana use is medicinal." Why are you convicted then? If it's no big deal, why are you coming to me trying to debate something I didn't even know about? Now we know.

See, what's that conviction? "I have to have a couple drinks at night to relax, Pastor." Oh, you have to? Do you know what it jacks up your sleeping? You don't sleep as well as you think. Watching these things, listening to these things. What about the music today? Oh my goodness. I mean, is there a correlation between the music and social media and the epidemic of suicide among young adults? Absolutely. Has social media become an idol that we look to that more and more? And we become disgruntled. Be careful.

Be careful with this topic of idolatry. Give it to the Lord this morning, repent, and say, "Lord, cleanse me. Cleanse me that I may be clean." And God will do that. For those here who do not know Jesus, the Bible's pretty clear. It just says repent and believe. Repent and believe in the Gospel. Very simple. That's all you have to do. Repent, acknowledge that I need God, and believe in Jesus. And God says He will set you free because that penalty of sin can't just be released by our own good works. It has to be His finished work on the cross that released us.

Hello, this is Pastor Shane Idleman. I wanted to let our listeners know that due to budgeting issues, we will be removing Regaining Lost Ground from some of the radio stations that we currently air on. Therefore, to continue listening to the sermons, I want to encourage you to follow me and Westside Christian Fellowship on YouTube and Rumble today, as well as other social media platforms.

Again, due to budgeting issues, we will be removing Regaining Lost Ground from some of the stations that we currently air our program on. Therefore, to continue listening to the sermons, I want to encourage you to follow me as well as Westside Christian Fellowship on YouTube and Rumble, and also follow us on all other social media platforms as well. If you have questions, please reach out to us at westsidechristianfellowship.org. Again, that's westsidechristianfellowship.org.

Guest (Male): Westside Christian Fellowship is located 60 miles north of Los Angeles in Leona Valley, California. Thank you again for listening to today's message of Regaining Lost Ground, where we are reminded daily, "Times change, truth does not."