Chapel: Britt Merrick, Feb. 5, 2010

our speaker is well he's well known to a lot of us he's a local who's doing things around the world through his his church britt merrick grew up in santa barbara and carp i like to narrow down to cart because we all who live in carp know what a great place it is but he's pastor founding pastor of reality Carpinteria it's a it's a church that grew out of a bible study they're committed to ministry to youth through community transformation to training the next generation of leaders to sending missionaries around the world and they are doing it i read a lot of the Vita's speakers come in here and no one ever tells me what they love but brit loves his wife kate his son Isaiah his daughter Daisy love he loves the Bible he loves the church and yes he loves Jesus Christ and Brit we're glad you're here god bless you we're eager to hear what God's given you all right it's good to be with you guys a dear friend of mine he's a really close friend in fact I am his son's Godfather he's got a five-year-old son he's dying of cancer he's not dying like you know he's gonna die sometime I mean by the time we leave this Chapel he might be dead i sat with him the other day in his living room him his wife his five-year-old son and we worshiped the Lord together and I've never seen worship like that he's one breath away from heaven he knows that he's a moment away from heaven and for him things like heaven and Jesus are becoming very real and I was worshiping the Lord but I couldn't help but see his worship of the Lord I don't know that I've ever seen anything so beautiful recently I heard a famous evangelist speaking in a stadium and he was speaking on the subject of heaven and he talked about heaven as a place where there'll be no more cancer there'll be no more handicaps they'll be no weeping mourning there'll be no more pain sickness conflict disasters but there'll be pleasures forever all your friends will be there grandma will be there too and he went on and on for a while about heaven and afterwards he gave an invitation and a lot of people came forward I mean why won't you but in that description of heaven there was only one thing that was missing Jesus Jesus was presented at the end as a means to get to heaven he was never presented as the centerpiece of heaven and Jesus is the centerpiece of heaven he's not some friend you know that works at Disneyland who can get you in for free you meet him at the parking lot he slips you the tickets and you roll in he's not the means to get to something wonderful he is the something wonderful Jesus is I was recently reading a book by John Piper who you guys will enjoy in a few weeks and worst book I ever read it ruined my life great book but it ruined my life it asks this question of me at a varible a very vulnerable moment of my life and I want us to ask this question of ourselves this morning he said this if you could have heaven with no sickness with all the friends you ever had on earth and all the food you ever liked and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed and all the natural beauties you ever saw all the physical pleasures you ever tasted and no human conflict or any natural disasters could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ were not there could you be satisfied with heaven if Jesus himself were not there now I know our religious answer I know where we are I know the religious answer before you before you blurt out no I want us to ask ourselves this question then why do we seem so satisfied with a Christianity like that how can we say we want to be satisfied with a heaven without Jesus when so much of our Christianity is that very way for many of us Christ has become the means and not the centerpiece our Christianity is us centered it's egocentric it gets anthropocentric instead of Christocentric Jesus is pushed to the periphery rather than being the prize our faith becomes about our happiness our goals our gifts our healing our roles our relationships and if our Christianity is like that what makes us think that we wouldn't be satisfied with the heaviness like that and if that's the case and this is often the case then we have missed the gospel I mean we have missed the gospel because the gospel is not that some day we get to go to heaven and grandmas there the gospel is not your best life now and all your problems are gone but God Himself is the gospel God Himself is the good news what we gain most through the cross of Jesus Christ is Christ himself we need to ask ourselves afresh what was the purpose of our cross we sing about our Redemption we rejoice in our Redemption we speak about we preach about this Redemption but what is the goal of it all is that merely so that we don't feel guilty anymore is it simply a tool to deal with our problems is it a way to overcome our bad habits is it so that we ultimately get to that place what is the goal of the Cross the New Testament tells us in 1st Peter 3:10 Christ also suffered once for sins the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God is what the Bible says the goal of the Cross is that we might be brought to God to God himself an intimate relationship the greatest thing that we gain through the cross of Jesus Christ is Christ himself the goal of it all is that we would now be with experience and enjoy God here and there the greatest thing that God could ever do is give us himself he is what we gain God is the good news when sinners are united with this holy God then humanity is healed and God is glorified when we're united in that relationship through the cross then humanity is healed and God is glorified and what stands in the way of and constantly interferes with this holy union is idolatry and adultery and I'm using adultery in the way that God uses so often in the New Testament to speak of his people's commingling with idols his people's involvement with idols his people's distraction with idols idolatry for us I'm not talking Old Testament times I'm talking our times idolatry for us is what gets in the way of and interferes with this relationship in which humanity is restored in God is glorified and throughout biblical history and in current culture God is always warring against idolatry always coming against the idols of the day and I would suggest that it's quite possible that we are the most idolatrous and adulterous generation the world has ever seen because at the click of a mouse we can Google more idols in a nanosecond and commit more adultery in an evening then the Canaanites could have imagined in generations of course we're not talking about graven images in high places what we're talking about when I speak about idols in our culture is this the taking of good things and making them ultimate things this is our struggle with idolatry this is what our generation our culture has to deal with the taking of good things because we are the culture of so many good things the taking of good things and making them ultimate things a successful career academic performance the right friends the right spouse love material possessions money entertainment sports even family and what our hearts have a proclivity to do is deify these things as the center of our lives because in them we believe that if we attain them we can find significance and security safety and fulfillment and so we become those people that God spoke of in Ezekiel 14 where he said these people have set up idols in their hearts it's not usually for us a graven image or necessarily a location or a tangible thing but idols that we set up in our hearts are taking up good things and making them ultimate things and what we find through scripture and in our own lives is that the human heart is an idol factory we take things that God meant for our pleasure for our enjoyment and we assign too much value to them we seek to find too much of our identity security comfort and significance in them and when we do that we become like Gollum remember Gollum Lord of the Rings with the ring remember this freaky little creature I don't know if you get from the movie but but the ring wasn't necessarily a bad thing what was bad is what people and creatures did with the ring and the ring ruined Gollum it went from a ring that had potential to do good and he went from this decent creature to this freak by himself with smile mommy one thought what happens when we take good things and we make them the ultimate things is we become ugly like Gollum we become Harley horribly distracted from what is most important and we find ourselves then in our culture at times estranged from God this is why Gollum was by himself in the dark places we find ourselves estranged from God was it mean to be a strange no longer close or in deep affection with and I think that this is it's it's chronic in our culture among Christian young people that we are the most distracted generation the world has ever seen and we find ourselves estranged from the very purpose for which we have been saved if idolatry is too strong of a concept for you can you at least admit that you are chronically distracted a recent survey of born-again Christian says this born-again adults spent seven times more hours each week watching TV than they do participating in spiritual pursuits such as Bible reading prayer and worship they spend roughly twice as much money on entertainment as they donate to their church and they spend more time surfing the net than they do conversing with God in prayer now that's an easy one because we're all guilty to one degree or another of such things that survey is about us and the reason that we have this problem is because we don't love God the most we've neglected the first commandment thou shalt have no other gods before me and the greatest commandment you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength that's the most important one that's the one that Jesus said if you're gonna get anything just get this just love God more than anything else and yet that is the one that we so easily dismiss and we squall of the squabble about and work toward an and hassle around all the other ones while neglecting the most weighty one giving God priority letting him be above everything else and the greatest prize and affection of our lives and the reason that we struggle with this the reason that we don't always love God most is because we have been taught that God's love is primarily about us I want you to listen to me we have been taught so often that God's love is primarily about us and this has a defective effect on the heart of humanity you see we feel loved because God makes much of us but the truth is that at the cost of his son God has enabled us to make much of him forever our happiness is sometimes hung on the perception that the cross is the witness of our worth when in reality the cross is a way in which we are freed to enjoy God's worth forever and at some point though the former is true at some point we've got around the theological corner toward the ladder yes God does love us yes it's an amazing incredible love but we don't merely bask in that lava zone we are the ultimate object of it at some point we must mature and round the theological corner that it's not altom utley about us it's about Christ and who he is and us being set free from sin that we might love and enjoy him see God didn't love you because you're valuable you're valuable because God loves you and there's a subtle difference that we need to lay hold of again John Piper says this this distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self admiration is subtle it creeps into our most religious acts we claim to be praising God because of his love for us but if his love for us is at the core his making much of us then who is really being praised we are willing to be God centered it seems as long as God is man centered we're willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is the witness of our worth who then is our pride and joy he asks who then is our pride and joy we are willing to be God centered as long as God is man centered my own man centered theology and my questioning of who my pride and joy is has been radically challenged this year on September 21st it was a Monday my wife and I were getting ready for our date we have Monday surf dates we don't get out together that much at night because we have little kids so on mondays we go surfing together and that's our date day and on Monday September the 21st we were leaving to go surfing and just as we were walking out the door my daughter Daisy loved five years old her school called we have a picture of Daisy can we put that up there's Daisy love and her school called and said listen Daisy fallen down on the playground and she doesn't seem to be well and and that's not normal for Daisy she's like a tough crazy little tomboy she handles her eight-year-old brother all the time show the other picture that's Daisy that's these these personality right there she's crazy I mean she handles her eight-year-old brother so to hear your daughter's falling down and she's not responding correctly was not normal and so we rush out there and Daisy was coming in and out of consciousness there at school and she was throwing up and she looks like no little kid should ever look and and the faculty was standing there they said look she told us that that we need to call 9-1-1 and Daisy just doesn't say things like that so we threw her in the car and we took her to the hospital they rushed her into the emergency room and they started doing some tests and I could tell it was getting radical because of more and more people were coming into the room and pretty soon they ushered Kate my wife and I out of the room and a few minutes later they emerge and they said look we don't know what's going on there's a giant mass in her abdomen she's got radical internal bleeding but it doesn't make sense that's not possible for the small fall that she had there's no bruising or scrapes or anything we're trying to figure it out a couple hours go by in the emergency room and finally one of the doctors comes out to us later and says what we thought was a massive blood forming internal bleeding is not blood at all it's a tumor and it's the biggest tumor we've ever seen and again it's the size of a nerf football took up more than 50% of her abdominal cavity to reach from down inside her pelvis up into her diaphragm was pushing against her right lung he said when she fell it ruptured that's why she's not well right now and it's spilling cancer cells into her bought into her body came out that she had third stage three cancer and a tumor the size of a nerf football they said we're gonna have to operate to get it out we didn't know if we could get it out this is dangerous they couldn't operate until Thursday late Wednesday night I sent my wife home to be with our son who needed some emotional support and had been with Grandma all week I stayed in the intensive care unit with Daisy that night and I knew she was going into surgery the next morning and people around me immediately we had people all around the world praying and people all around us were full of faith they believed that they would get the tumor that Daisy would come out okay and then everything would be fine but you know it's weird my Heavenly Father didn't let me go there he didn't let me feel secure about Daisy surviving that operation on Thursday and on Wednesday night the 23rd of September for the entire night in the intensive care unit I had the dark night of the soul I wrestled with God that whole night sensing the very near possibility that the next morning when Daisy went under the knife for her heaven was only a breath away and God brought me to the place that night where I was enabled by the cross and by grace to say God I love you more than I love my daughter you are more valuable to me than my little baby and my little baby dies tomorrow nothing changes between you and me God you're my greatest treasure in this world and that night my life changed I discovered what what was most valuable to me and I watched it be challenged by who Christ is and I'm not saying that God gave my baby cancer I am saying that he allowed her to have it that God is big that God is sovereign I do have a theology that says God can heal of cancer in a moment I've seen him do it in my own family we prayed like we've never prayed before and God did not heal Daisy love believed in His sovereignty and his kindness he was ratalie me and that he would rattle more to question who is most precious in this life my Daisy love has suffered immensely there's another photo of her there's in the hospital after her operation the lower half of her abdomen is covered they cut her from the back of the ribcage to the other side of the belly button they basically cut her in half to get this tumor out and miraculously they got the whole tumor since that time she's undergone radiation chemotherapy this little girl has suffered more than some of us could ever bear to think and you guys won't understand what I'm about to say now because most of you aren't parents but any daddy that has a little girl will tell you that it is infinitely worse to see your little girl suffer them for you to suffer I would have taken that cancer on me in an instant if the Lord had allowed it remember when your parents used to spank you I hope your parents spanked you remember when they used to spank you and they would say this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you and we never believed it believe it it is the absolute truth that it hurts the parent more than the child somehow this is analogous for the fact that God in redeeming the world gave his child God gave his son there is nothing more that he could have given no greater sacrifice could be made than the child of the father and the goal of that sacrifice is simply to bring us to him and brothers and sisters God will allow circumstances in our life that will truly bring us to him that will bring the reality of the cross to bear on our lives that we might be brought to the place where we could say as Paul said I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my lord so that we might be brought to the place where we could say like the psalmist said besides thee I desire nothing on earth so that we could say with the psalmist your love is greater than life and all I wanted to accomplish this morning was to rattle our cage a little bit because some of you can't say that with the psalmist you can't say God your love is greater than life you can't say with the psalmist to God I desire you above everything else on earth some of you it's because you haven't suffered yet don't go looking for it it'll find you but others of you it's because you've never repented of your idols and you need to go looking for them you need to go looking for the idols in your life those distractions that have you estranged from God those things that you immediately run to to distract your mind soul and spirit from the one who loves you with his very essence more than you could imagine those things generation those things brothers and sisters we must deal with ruthlessly and as we rid ourselves of adultery we move from being like Gollum who was made so ugly by his obsession with an inferior thing and we move into being the body of Bride of Christ who was beautified by the love of Christ speaking of beauty one last picture of Daisy love this is her today there she is she's lost all her hair she's fighting cancer she drew this picture a couple weeks ago and because I'm familiar with her artwork I was able to identify a couple elements and I I looked at that thing on the left and I said Daisy wow that's a nice fire-breathing dragon and she said daddy that's not a dragon I said what is it she said daddy that's cancer and that's me and I'm beating cancer I want you to notice that she drew herself a long hair and a big smile and a big sword I said Daisy that's a nice sword she said that's the sword of the Spirit this is a brave little girl brothers and sisters we can learn something from the way this girl is fighting if we would fight the idols that are competing for our love and our affection the way that this little girl is fighting cancer we would be the pure spotless Bride of Christ that he has meant us to be by his blood on the cross if we would fight with the same bravery and commitment against these distractions that have beset us we would be a different Church we would be a different people and the world would see a different Jesus one who's worth far surpasses anything this world has to offer Lord that you would give us the grace to see the idols in our lives that you would give us a strength to fight them off Lord the Holy Spirit you would do an identifying redemptive work in our hearts you would shine your light in our hearts and reveal our true affections and in your grace in your mercy come against those radical distractions that you Lord would bring us to a place of repentance for all of our other loves and all those good things that we've made supreme teach us to repent and you become bigger in our hearts in Jesus name you

Channel: Westmont College

Views: 11,432

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: Westmont, College, Chapel, Britt, Merrick

Id: ZVWRAUzPtc8

Length: 29min 9sec (1749 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2010