Powerful Talk on Overcoming Addiction

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Romans chapter 1 has been the starting point for us today as a means of discussion getting into biblical anthropology, our view of human beings in relationship to God, the suppression of truth.

00:15

There was the great exchange of the switching of God to idols. There is the futility in thinking life apart from God, professing to be wise, becoming fools.

00:24

We see that great exchange, switching God for idols. That's the human story. Now, I didn't always have a full understanding of this text.

00:33

God has worked a lot in my life. My own story isn't overly important in this discussion, but I think it might be a bit helpful, my way of getting into the discussion of addiction and seeking pleasure and idolatry.

00:49

I wasn't raised in a Christian home. I knew that there was a person named Jesus who died on the cross and rose again.

00:57

That was the claim. My home wasn't a Christian home under the hearing of the gospel. My mom was mildly spiritual.

01:04

When things were going wrong, she would sort of act kind of spiritual. But we didn't go to church.

01:09

I wasn't under the hearing of the gospel. And there was a Bible that sat on my shelf. No matter where we were in the world,

01:15

I was a military brat. And so I grew up in Holland, in Japan. And there was this King James Version Bible that sat on a shelf wherever we were.

01:25

And it usually carried about an inch of dust on it. And that was his book. That's what

01:30

I knew about that. It was his book. I remember seeing a movie about Jesus some

01:36

Sunday morning, Resurrection Sunday morning, when I was very, very young. Watched this movie because it was on television.

01:43

And that was sort of the context, all that I really knew about Jesus. I didn't understand the gospel. Didn't understand the

01:48

Trinity. I didn't really understand the Bible. I remember being 14 years old once. And I picked the

01:54

Bible up. And I opened it. And I remember that I was terrified. That's all

01:59

I remember. I was terrified. I had seen a tract earlier in life and was terrified at a point, thinking about God and holiness and judgment and sin.

02:09

But I remember opening the Bible. And I think, at one point, I did open the book of Revelation. Which, by the way, if you're a baby

02:15

Christian, a new believer, don't start in the book of Revelation. Reading about seven -headed, ten -horned beasts and whores drinking blood, riding beasts, is not helpful for the new believer.

02:28

It's good to understand the Old Testament a bit before you get there. But I remember I was scared and didn't understand much.

02:34

So about 16 or 17 years old, I was a big martial artist. I actually owned my own karate school at the age of like 16 years old.

02:43

And I came home from teaching karate one night, was watching television, and Billy Graham came on. And for the first time,

02:49

I heard the message that I'm a sinner. God is holy. Christ died for sinners and rose from the dead.

02:57

You can't earn your way to salvation. If you want to go to heaven one day, pray this prayer.

03:04

That's how I heard it. And so I did. I prayed that prayer. And I thought I had a life change.

03:11

To this day, my wife and I will debate over it. I don't believe my conversion was genuine.

03:17

She tends to think that it was. But I had what I thought was a conversion. And my life sort of seemed like it was starting to change.

03:24

I had a really, I did have kind of a love for God's word. I ended up going to Bible college and I served

03:31

God in ministry. And I would have professed to be a Christian to everyone around me.

03:37

I thought my life had changed a bit, but I was also living two lives. I had the church

03:43

Jeff. I had the Jeff at Bible college, the Jeff that went out and did ministry. But I also had the

03:50

Jeff that I was outside of that context and the group of Christians. If there was an opportunity to go out drinking and get drunk,

03:58

I would do it and didn't struggle with it ultimately. And I lived in relationships outside of marriage with plenty of women and all of that while a professing

04:10

Christian. And so there was a contradiction in my life of what I said I believed and what

04:15

I was actually doing, how I was living. And it all came crashing down one time when

04:20

I went out with some friends from Hollywood. We went out partying one night and drinking. And I drank so much that I essentially blacked out.

04:28

When I came to, I was at a different club and I did something that night that I never would have done before sober.

04:36

I essentially came to with a pill in my hand. It was ecstasy. And I remember that I had one chance basically to get rid of it before security came over.

04:45

They were running up with their flashlights. I can either drop it and get in trouble for it or I can swallow it and I swallowed it.

04:53

And so that one night turned into an entire year of depravity.

04:59

That first weekend turned into the next Friday night and then the next day and then it was virtually every day for a year.

05:07

At a certain point near the end of the year, I was up to about six tabs of ecstasy at once.

05:14

And if anybody in here has ever done ecstasy before, you know that that is a whole lot of ecstasy.

05:20

And I drank an entire bottle of vodka, six tabs of ecstasy, an entire bottle of vodka.

05:26

I was on my way out. One night I was at an after party after partying for two days straight, taking a bunch of ecstasy, this bottle of vodka.

05:37

And I remember that I, out of complete fog,

05:44

I all of a sudden realized it was happening to me. My heart was coming out of my chest. It felt like it wasn't gonna stop.

05:50

I looked down at my body and my arms were blood red and I started having a hard time breathing.

05:57

And I recognized, ecstasy users know how you die from using ecstasy. You overheat.

06:03

You essentially cook yourself from the inside. You overheat and you die. And so I realized instantly that that's what was happening to me.

06:10

My heart was going crazy. It was like someone had their foot on a gas pedal and it wouldn't stop. And so I tried not to panic.

06:18

I almost called. I actually grabbed the phone to call 911, but I was in a room full of a bunch of people and I didn't wanna freak them out.

06:24

And so I was terrified. I ran, I grabbed a bag of ice out of the freezer and I turned all the air conditioning down, or how do you say it here, cooling.

06:32

No? Someone called the air conditioning guy here, the cooler man. I thought that is amazing. Sounds like a hit man or something.

06:39

He'll put people on ice or something, I don't know. Put the air conditioning all the way down. I went into the bathroom.

06:45

I poured a cold bath. I dumped all of the ice in the bathtub and I got into the bath with all my pulse points under the water.

06:53

And it wasn't doing anything. I was getting more and more hot. I was out of control of my heartbeat.

06:59

I couldn't breathe. And at that moment I realized, I'm dying. I'm gonna die.

07:06

And so it wasn't stopping. I knew that at any moment my heart could stop, I could pass out. So I went into my friend's bedroom.

07:13

I sat on his bed and I had a moment between God and I. I remember that I knew that what was wrong with me was not simply the drugs.

07:26

I knew what was wrong is I was rebelling against God. I was chasing something in place of Him.

07:32

I knew that this was sin through and through. There's no question in my mind. I understood that much about the

07:38

Bible. I knew who Jesus was. I knew what this was. I knew what I was doing. And I remember that I was talking to God in this moment before I'm gonna die.

07:48

It's getting worse and worse. I'm starting to panic now. And I just started talking to God. I said,

07:53

Lord, I know what I'm doing and I know that you have every right to kill me.

08:00

And so I remember that I asked him, I said, Lord, just please don't kill me yet. I said, just smash my life, destroy it.

08:08

Just smash my life. You have to do something. Just please don't kill me yet. And all at once, after this awful moment where I was on the edge of death like that,

08:23

I was as sober as a fundamentalist Baptist preacher on a Sunday morning. No more heart racing, my skin back to normal, completely calm.

08:37

I was no longer in a daze. I was no longer high. I was sober, completely functioning, just fine.

08:46

Now, I would love to tell you that that all of a sudden I turned my life to Christ and I never used drugs and alcohol again.

08:54

But the truth is, is my motivations were not pure there. I just didn't wanna die.

09:00

And so I did, I continued to go back and use again until about two weeks later where God smashed my life.

09:07

He was really good at it. Two weeks later, from 6 a .m. to noon, I woke up to watching my car getting repossessed and towed away to a note on my door, an eviction notice, telling me the sheriff was gonna throw us out.

09:22

They shut our water off. They shut my electricity off. They shut my phone off. And the person that I was working for at the time said,

09:29

I'm not paying any of you. If you don't like it, sue me. Kind of hard to do with no electricity and no money and no phone.

09:36

If you don't like it, sue me. So I was sitting down in an apartment with a newborn baby and a son, a one -year -old son and a wife with no electricity, no water, no phone, no money, no car.

09:49

All the music and all the sound had stopped. I was sitting in silence with all the damage that I had done all around me.

09:58

For that year, I would disappear for days at a time. I would use and disappear. I wouldn't call anybody.

10:05

I wouldn't talk to anybody. I did shameful things that year. My life was sunk in depravity.

10:10

I was using every single day, you name it, ecstasy, alcohol, pills, marijuana.

10:16

I mean, I was using everything I could, taking bumps of cocaine. It didn't matter, I would use it.

10:22

And now I'm sitting now with no more lights, no more music, no more people. I'm just sitting now with the realization of all that I had done.

10:31

And so I knew I can only come to God. And so I started opening the Bible again, started reading

10:37

Christ's call to come to him for salvation. I started seeing in the calls of Jesus that he would call people to come and die.

10:46

He would call people to turn from their sin to believe in him, to be reconciled to God. I started to ask some deep questions that I really hadn't asked before.

10:56

Had I ever actually turned from my sin to trust in Christ? Did I come to Jesus because I just wanted to go to heaven one day?

11:05

Did I really even understand the call of Christ over my life? Was Jesus even

11:11

Lord of my life? Or was I simply pretending? Was I one of those people that had a mere profession of faith?

11:20

I just said that I believed, but I didn't really possess any faith. I didn't really even trust in Christ.

11:26

So I started examining the scriptures and I came to this realization after a little while studying the scriptures that I was absolutely a wretch.

11:35

I had nothing to offer God. I had completely destroyed my family, my own life.

11:41

I was lying to everybody around me about who I was and I was just overwhelmed with a sense of my own sin and shame.

11:50

And here's the thing you gotta hear. There wasn't a point really in all of this where I actually thought to myself,

11:58

I'm a drug addict. Like I have the disease of addiction. I never thought anything like that.

12:05

But the whole context of my thinking is it wasn't just the drugs and the alcohol. It was the sin, it was the lying, it was my rebellion against my own creator.

12:15

It was my idolatry. It wasn't just drugs and alcohol. I just need to get sober. I realized that this is fundamentally my relationship with God.

12:24

I am a sinner against a holy God. I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own guilt and shame and so I nearly crawled into my closet and I got into my knees and I just started praying and I don't,

12:37

I can't recite exactly what the prayer was. There's no magic prayers. I just essentially pleaded with God to save me.

12:44

I remember I said something like, you're the boss. You tell me what to do. You rule my life.

12:50

I said to God, I have nothing to offer you. I'm not good. I never will be good. All I can have is you.

12:56

So please save me. Take away my sins. Rule my life. Be the boss of me. Rule my life.

13:02

That was a long time ago and God completely transformed me from that day.

13:08

He began to work on me. I remember the first year I had come to Christ out of drug and alcohol addiction.

13:14

I remember that I had this new desire and hunger to like honor God and live and be holy for God and no longer use drugs and alcohol and no longer be that old man again.

13:24

It was there but I also had moments where there was temptation and struggle going so now there's a new war that formed in front of me that hadn't been there before.

13:32

Now all of a sudden I wanted to seek God for pleasure and for joy. I wanted to go to him for my loneliness but I still had those moments of deep struggle and so God sent men to be around me in the church that were around my life, kept me accountable, spoke into my life, encouraged me.

13:49

I got to experience real joy in the fellowship of the saints. I got to actually experience

13:55

God and I realized one night I was with a bunch of believers and we were just at Starbucks, Christian Crack House, that's what it is, okay?

14:05

Where else do you go and you walk in and the dealer knows what fix you need, right, and everything else and you can sit and squat for hours, right, it's weird, right?

14:13

But I'm at a Starbucks and a bunch of Christians and I remember that we were in the word of God just talking about Jesus and how amazing he is and we're just studying the

14:20

Bible and I'm here and all of a sudden it dawns on me all at once I was exchanging true joy and pleasure and intimacy

14:31

I was exchanging God for something else. I went to the ecstasy for joy and pleasure and intimacy and relationships with other people.

14:40

I went to it and it was nothing but a functional savior and functional God for what

14:46

I could truly have in Jesus Christ, it hit me all at once. And I remember that I was under men of God, pastors who could speak into my life,

14:54

I had Christians around me that I could talk to and confess my sins to and they would encourage me and build me up and God began to actually transform my heart now that I had tasted and seen that God was good,

15:06

I no longer wanted the bootleg pleasure, the bootleg joy, I never held any power over me anymore.

15:14

The idol lost its luster once I had experienced Christ. That was my own path out of addiction.

15:24

It was gospel focused, gospel centered, I never actually thought coming out of addiction, where's the nearest

15:30

AA group? Where's the nearest NA group or SA group?

15:35

I never thought I need to find Alcoholics Anonymous because they have the answer as they had to get free from drug and alcohol addiction,

15:41

I knew that my problem was sin, what I needed was Christ and I knew that God had formed a community called the church that was used by God to be his hands and feet in my life.

15:52

And that's where I went. So, here's where the story took a change, our turn

15:57

I should say. About eight or nine years later, I was already, many years later, a pastor at a church in Phoenix, I got a phone call from a friend of mine, you should know

16:09

I was actually on my way across the country, I had been in a year long search committee process with a church in South Carolina, a very big church in South Carolina that had basically hired me to be a pastor of this church, we boxed our entire house up everything in my house was in boxes down to forks and knives, we were eating off of plastic forks and knives, my entire house was boxed up, we were leaving,

16:33

I was saying my goodbyes, when it was all said and done, I was gonna make a phone call, they were gonna send a truck and buy our tickets so we would fly out and move to South Carolina, that was my plan, everything was ready to go.

16:46

While I was pastoring at a church in Phoenix, I got a phone call from a friend of mine that said, hey Jeff, we lost our chaplain at the hospital, can you come to preach the gospel tonight to this room and chapel?

16:57

I said, wait, what is it exactly? He said, oh, it's a drug and alcohol rehab facility, it's the oldest one in Phoenix and they have a

17:03

Christian program, our pastor, he's gone now, he had to leave and so would you come and preach the gospel to this room?

17:09

I said, wait, you mean it's a room full of people that can't leave and I can tell them about Jesus? He said, yeah,

17:15

I said, I'm in, I'll come, okay. Captive audience, kind of like you right now. So I went to this hospital not knowing anything except these people need to hear the gospel and so I walk into a room

17:28

I'd never been in before and I'm in front of people I had never seen before and the room was full of people that night, some of them still on detoxification medicine and that night as I'm preaching the gospel to them and I'm telling them about Romans one and the great exchange and idolatry and their need for salvation and redemption, people in that room, people in the room came to Christ that night right in front of me and I remember that as I was leaving the hospital that night going home to a house that was in boxes,

17:56

I thought to myself, God, this is like every day here. They're bringing new people into this room every single day.

18:04

I was looking into my own face in that room and I realized immediately that's me in front of me.

18:10

So I called the search committee in South Carolina and I said, hey,

18:16

I don't know how to say this to you. I know it's been a year -long process. I know you guys all unanimously picked me and I know you're waiting for me to call you to come.

18:26

I think God is telling me to stay and I'm sorry. I don't know what else to tell you.

18:32

He said, Jeff, I'm your biggest supporter. You say the word and you are out. I will buy the tickets and send the truck.

18:39

He said, but it's really strange. Today I've been having the same feeling. That you're not supposed to come.

18:46

And everything was all set. We were all ready to move. They're ready to receive us. I had no idea if there would be any more opportunities to continue at this hospital.

18:56

I just took a step of faith and trusted in God that there was something happening here. And so to cut past a lot of really amazing things and difficult moments, what

19:08

God ended up doing is putting me on full time at this hospital to preach the gospel to them for four years full time while I was also a pastor at a church.

19:17

He ended up actually calling us to plant Apologia Church. And so we planted

19:22

Apologia Church out of the family building of this drug and alcohol rehab facility. So we were at a hospital in the family building.

19:31

The room was filled with people who were in halfway houses. Some of them still on detoxification medicine.

19:37

We didn't have two nickels to rub together. Or what do you have here? Sorry, that doesn't work. By the way, your coins are weird.

19:45

Your $2 coin is this big fat 50 cent piece. It's like $2, $2, and then 50 cents, boom.

19:53

Weird. We didn't have any ability to provide for ourselves.

20:00

The elders of the church that I was at laid hands on me and I left to go and plant this church with never before this, any time in my mind that I ever thought

20:11

I would plant a church. We planted Apologia Church, end of February this year. It'll be seven years.

20:17

This room was completely full of broken people. Our church was known in the valley as that drug church because everybody at our church had come out of drug and alcohol addiction and it was glorious.

20:31

I saw God, after four years, I saw God save literally hundreds of people out of drug and alcohol addiction.

20:40

Apologia Church to this day is filled with people you would never know. Some of them almost died.

20:47

One man was addicted to heroin, IV heroin use, and he was so addicted to heroin, he almost died numerous times, but he ran out of a liquid at one point to shoot the heroin up with, so he used his own urine to cook it on a spoon and then shoot it into his veins.

21:07

He almost died one day in a gas station bathroom.

21:13

It was six o 'clock in the morning and he starts to walk into the bathroom and his father had happened to drive by after like two years not even seeing him because he had basically run away from the family.

21:23

He happened to drive by and watch him walk into that bathroom. He walks in, but he didn't come out for a little while, and so his dad actually went to the counter and said, hey,

21:31

I don't know what's going on, can you check it out? They opened the door and he was in there completely blue. He would have died, and now he's a believer who loves

21:39

Jesus, life totally transformed, married to a woman, beautiful, praiseworthy, amazing story.

21:44

I have hundreds of those stories of what God has done at Apologia Church through our ministry to addicts, but that's not really why you're here today.

21:53

That's just the backdrop of what God has done. I wanna talk to you today about the sorts of things that I would say to people who are struggling with addiction for four years.

22:03

We're gonna talk about what the problem is, the problem of addiction. So, if you have your Bibles, open them to Romans chapter one.

22:14

One of the things that was difficult for me as I first entered into this industry of drug and alcohol addiction, and it is, by the way, an industry, it is a huge money -making machine, you ought to know that.

22:29

One of the things I noticed is that there were so many different voices out there saying this is the problem of addiction and here is how it is solved.

22:39

Within a secular community, the voices are myriad. They're unending.

22:45

If you went to a secular conference on drug and alcohol addiction and how the problem is solved, and you put a microphone up front, you can have people in white lab coats walking up saying this is the problem of addiction and here's how it is solved, and the next person would tap on their shoulder, push them out of the way and say, no, this guy is bonkers.

23:04

This is the problem of addiction and this is how it's solved. It would be an unending stream of people with different voices as to what the problem is and how it is solved.

23:12

One of the frustrating things for me as a pastor, as a minister of the gospel, is when

23:18

I got into this field, they said, Jeff, you're in charge of the Christian program, make a Christian program, but they were also doing

23:24

Alcoholics Anonymous. And what I began to discover as I was reading through the Alcoholics Anonymous material is that while there are certain biblical principles borrowed from in AA, I noticed that it is a system that is totally devoid of Jesus Christ, the gospel, and the biblical worldview.

23:42

At many points, it is in collision with the biblical worldview and the gospel. And so it was kind of frustrating.

23:48

Is there a Christian addiction program out there? And as I began to research, I began to look things up and realize that much of what says, what purports to be

23:58

Christian recovery programs today is just mostly warmed over Alcoholics Anonymous.

24:03

It is Alcoholics Anonymous with a Bible verse or two slapped onto it. I began to contact pastors.

24:11

People would come to Christ at the hospital. I'd say, I need to send you home to a good, solid church. I would call a pastor up and say,

24:17

Pastor, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin. I'm from this hospital in Phoenix. We just had someone that came to Christ here at the hospital.

24:23

They're an ex -heroin addict. I'm gonna send them to you to meet with you. Can you take care of them? I got this more times than I can count.

24:30

Oh, okay, what do I do with them? That question came up all the time.

24:35

What do I do with them? Or they would say something like, oh, great, Pastor Jeff, that's wonderful. We actually have an AA group that meets here on Wednesdays.

24:43

I would say, who runs it? Oh, it's a local AA society.

24:49

Are they Christians? Oh, well, no. And so what happened is we'd have Christians now in their churches having secular

24:56

AA groups doing addictions meetings for people. And if you only knew what they were saying in those meetings.

25:03

I used to have to sit through meetings at the hospital, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I would watch

25:09

Christians get destroyed in those meetings. You were allowed to have any God that you wanted in AA.

25:16

You could worship a tree, a doorknob, electricity, your friends, as long as you called it a power greater than yourselves, it was acceptable as a

25:27

God in that system. But the moment in the AA group that you mentioned Jesus Christ, there was hostility.

25:35

I watched people get kicked out of AA groups for merely bringing their Bibles to the

25:41

AA groups. And so it was difficult. How will we work through this? And so I started seeing, how do the secular people actually talk about the problem of addiction and the pursuit of pleasure and all these different things?

25:52

Began to see that it really is, believe it or not, dependent upon the Darwinian model.

25:58

There's a very, very famous film that actually is played in a lot of these recovery centers across the nation.

26:04

It was played weekly at mine, not in my group, by the way. I believe the name of the movie escapes me.

26:11

I think it's called Unweaving the Rainbow. And essentially, the summary of what they say in this is that the reason people are addicted to drugs and alcohol is because through evolutionary processes, we've evolved to actually behave in a certain way.

26:28

And so people are ultimately not responsible for their choice to be an addict.

26:35

They are addicts. They were born that way. You would hear a lot of that sort of a thing.

26:41

I would hear this in AA groups. Hey, look, these are the cards you've been dealt. Once an addict, always an addict.

26:49

They would say this. They would say, look, once an addict, always an addict. You're just an addict. You've got the brain disease of addiction.

26:56

What you need to do is fake it until you make it. And what that means is you need to follow the steps of the big book.

27:04

You need to have a sponsor. You need to attend the weekly meetings. You need to memorize the big book. You need to work the steps.

27:10

That's faking it until you make it. In other words, you will never not be an addict. You will always have the brain disease of addiction.

27:18

You will never stop being an addict. You will just learn to fake it. This is the sort of thing that was actually kicked around at the hospital in the secular groups.

27:27

People were told, there is no hope for you to never be an addict any longer. You will always be an addict.

27:34

You've just got to learn to cope with it. Now, from my perspective as a

27:39

Christian, that is unsatisfactory. That just will not do. You see,

27:44

I got in trouble at the hospital. I got pulled into the principal's office virtually every week.

27:50

Why? Because I was saying, Jesus Christ is the only way to God. The problem is sin and rebellion.

27:56

It's a worship problem, an exchange of God for idols. And when you turn to Christ, you are made new.

28:03

You are a new creation. The old is put away. You've put on Christ. You've been raised up.

28:09

And so you were this. And now in Christ, this is your identity.

28:15

And so I had Christians going into the AA groups. And they'd go around the room. Hi, I'm Bill. And I'm a pill addict.

28:22

Someone else would say, hi, I'm Ted. And I'm an alcoholic. And then my person would say, hi,

28:28

I'm Rachel. And I'm saved in Jesus Christ. And they got in a lot of trouble for that.

28:37

But the story was different. And what I used to say to people in this drug and alcohol addicted community is, listen, you do not have the brain disease of addiction.

28:47

Yes, there is chemical toxicity. There are issues that we need to pay attention to, because we are not simply immaterial in our aspect.

28:57

We have a physical component. And there are consequences for our sinful choices. If we put this into our body, it wrecks our body.

29:04

It puts us into a place of chemical dependency. So those are issues we have to look at. But those aren't the start of the problem.

29:11

The problem isn't the brain disease of addiction. The problem, ultimately, Romans chapter 1, is all of us are in the image of God, know the same

29:19

God. We suppress the truth of God. And we have a fundamental problem. We switch

29:24

God for idols. Sometimes those idols are in false religion.

29:32

Sometimes our exchange of God for an idol is going to chase the God of Joseph Smith. Sometimes the

29:38

God of Charles Taze Russell, Judge Rutherford. Sometimes our exchange of God is for sort of an obvious theological construct kind of an exchange.

29:47

But you know what? Sometimes our exchange of God is a little different. Sometimes as God's image, we desire what we can only have in God.

29:56

We desire joy. It's inescapable. What's it say in the

30:02

Psalms, Psalm 1611? In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand there are pleasures forever.

30:10

What's our confession of faith? I mean, listen, this is Westminster Baptists. We're together on this, guys. What is it?

30:16

What is man's chief end? Look at that unity between Baptists and Presbyterians right there, right?

30:25

To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

30:31

Some of you Presbyterians are like, it's because you stole it, OK? To glorify

30:37

God and to enjoy Him forever. You see, the biblical worldview is image of God made to be in relationship, intimate relationship with God.

30:47

And as fallen creatures, we will be about, in rebellion, sinful suppression and rebellion, we will be about getting to things in a false

30:56

God that we can only truly have in God. Joy, pleasure, freedom from loneliness, despair, depression sinks in.

31:05

Freedom from guilt and shame. Heard that all the time. People would drink and drink themselves silly because they felt overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and shame.

31:18

And so what would they do? They have guilt and shame. They want to get free from it. So when they go to God, they go to God in Christ where they can be freed and washed and cleansed of all their sin.

31:28

No, they go to the bottle and they drink to get rid of guilt and shame.

31:35

Ann Landers, not sure if she's a Christian or not, it's irrelevant, she was, somebody wrote in to Ann Landers in a column one time and they said, you gotta help me.

31:45

I have overwhelming guilt and shame and I don't know how to get rid of it so I'm drinking constantly because I feel guilty constantly.

31:53

She wrote back to her and she said, people that drink to get rid of guilt and shame need to know that guilt and shame can swim.

32:03

It does, there's no escape ultimately. As image of God, we won't be able to escape these things.

32:09

You can't help being what God made you to be. You've already heard me say that once today. I said it in the context of atheism.

32:17

You cannot help being what God has made you to be. As image of God, you will borrow capital from the biblical worldview and from God in order to live in God's world, to function because you're image of God and it's inescapable.

32:31

But the same thing works, this same story works in the area of drug and alcohol addiction. We are fundamentally at odds with our creator.

32:42

The problem is spiritual, we're at war with God and so when that need arises within us as image of God for joy, pleasure, peace, freedom from loneliness, freedom from guilt and shame, when that rises up, we're gonna make a choice.

32:58

And if we're at war with God, we're not gonna go to him for those things, we're gonna go somewhere else. We're gonna go to heroin for peace.

33:08

People who are addicted to heroin generally have a problem with peace, turmoil, PTSD, those sorts of things, they need peace.

33:16

They need an overwhelming sense of peace that everything is gonna be okay. So what do they do, go to God? God who is the

33:24

God of peace? No, they switch God for a functional savior and a functional

33:30

God that will give them what they think they need in God. Same thing with joy and pleasure.

33:38

My drug of choice was ecstasy. That's what I thought I was getting. Ecstasy, joy, pleasure,

33:45

I thought I was getting happiness. And it's amazing too, watch this. When you run and chase a false God for what you can only have in God, you always come back broken and hurting every time.

33:57

I would chase the ecstasy for joy and pleasure thinking that I could find satisfaction there only to find the next day

34:03

I was overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and shame and loneliness and darkness. I thought that there was true intimacy and fellowship within these communities, these after parties while I was rolling on tabs, rolling on E.

34:17

I thought that there was real intimacy there. We were really friends. We would say things to each other while we were high that like there was so much love in this room.

34:25

You know what I'm talking about, right? Some of you were like, don't out me right now,

34:33

Pastor Jeff, I'm in church. And it was amazing because I would find later that all those commitments we made to one another in these nights where we're taking ecstasy were all lies.

34:43

It's a fiction, it was all fake. It was all just a facade. It was all built upon lies, guilt and shame.

34:54

Image of God, you are gonna never be able to escape the fact that you are made in God's image and you know you've violated his law.

35:02

I have a sister, she is an atheist. She's a hardcore atheist.

35:08

When Dawkins or Krauss does anything on the West Coast, she flies out to listen.

35:16

It was amazing. I was talking to my sister a long time ago and she was having an actual conversation with me about God and so she says this really interesting point.

35:27

She says, Jeff, I'm not perfect. I'm not perfect.

35:34

An atheist saying I'm not perfect. An atheist with an understanding that there's an actual standard outside of themselves that they violated.

35:42

Even atheists, the hardest atheist knows I fall short ultimately. I'm not perfect.

35:48

I don't do everything right. There is that sense of shame and guilt. We all will feel what the law of God written within us.

35:55

We know we all fall short and you're going to go somewhere with it. It's inescapable.

36:00

You're either gonna go to the true and living God where you can have those things where they were ultimately rooted or you're gonna go elsewhere.

36:08

But you see, here's the thing. What's interesting about pleasure seeking and joy and idolatry, here's the interesting thing, is that it's sometimes the obvious idol like heroin addiction is super obvious.

36:20

Once you go down that road to seek that for peace and pleasure and all those different things, it's really, really obvious the effects of it, chemical effects of it start to become very obvious.

36:30

That kind of idolatry is obvious. Sometimes religious idolatry is obvious.

36:36

We build very big buildings with all kinds of statues and all kinds of idolatry, all those things.

36:42

They're all around us. It's obvious. Sometimes the idolatry isn't so obvious. Sometimes the false pursuit of pleasure is found in a secret addiction to pornography.

36:57

Sometimes it's found in the escape to a dark place where nobody can see you for the six hours that you get lost in pornography.

37:08

What are you seeking there? Is it just a chemical problem? Is it just simply an addiction?

37:15

Or is there something that you're trying to gain from that pursuit? Intimacy, pleasure.

37:23

And so you disappear. You give all of yourself to it. You sacrifice yourself completely to it, and you disappear.

37:30

Six hours, gone, like that. Where did it go? Lost in this false pursuit of pleasure.

37:36

And when you went that direction, did you come out of that pursuit of pleasure and an addiction to pornography, did you come out of it whole?

37:46

Did you come out of it with peace and pleasure and wholeness? Or did you walk away from that addiction broken, ashamed, hurting?

37:58

But what were you trying to find? You think oftentimes about, well, what else is idolatry?

38:03

Paul calls it idolatry. Colossians chapter three, when he tells us that our life is hidden with God in Christ, and we've been raised up with Christ's and newness of life, he says, therefore, put to death what is earthly in you.

38:17

He starts naming some things, and he says sexual immorality, you know what he calls it? Which is idolatry.

38:22

Sexual immorality is false worship. Here's the fundamental part we all get in terms of seeking pleasure and idolatry.

38:30

You don't have an addiction problem. You don't have a brain disease of addiction problem.

38:37

Ultimately, you have a worship problem. Sexual immorality is false worship.

38:46

It's idolatry. Pursuit of drug and alcohol addiction, peace, pleasure, joy, freedom from guilt and shame, and all these substances, understand that what we are doing when we go there is we are worshiping.

38:58

It's worship. Think for a moment about worship. What is worship? It's glory and it's sacrifice.

39:05

That's contained in worship. It's glory and sacrifice. What do you do in church when you worship

39:11

God together? What are you doing? You give God the glory. You're giving him the weight. He has preeminence.

39:17

God gets the glory. And you're also sacrificing to God. Sacrificing praise, sacrificing time, sacrificing talent, sacrificing money.

39:27

All those things. Worship is glory and sacrifice. What do we do when we switch

39:34

God for an idol? Whatever it is, pursuing pleasure, pursuing joy, whatever it might be, the drug addiction, the porn addiction, the

39:44

Facebook addiction. I told you I'd get you.

39:51

Think about it. You get lost. I don't have time to read God's word. I don't have time to worship

39:57

God. I don't have time to serve God. I just can't find the time, really. So the six and a half hours on Facebook today, not enough time?

40:06

How much glory did you give? How much sacrifice did you invest in that?

40:12

Think for a moment now. Again, church, glory and sacrifice, worship. What do you do when you get lost in the heroin addiction, when you seek that for peace?

40:19

What are you giving it? Glory. It has the weight of your life. You are consumed with it.

40:25

If anybody in this room has ever been addicted to drugs or alcohol, you know what I'm saying. You can't stop thinking about it.

40:31

Now they say, I don't know if I believe this, but they say that a person who is addicted to narcotics thinks about the narcotic 75 % of the day.

40:43

That has, if that is anywhere near true, that means that it has the glory in your life at that time.

40:49

The glory, the weight of your life. It consumes your thinking. It consumes all that you are pursuing.

40:55

Also, the drug addiction, the pursuit of pleasure in the drugs or alcohol, you sacrifice to it.

41:03

What do you sacrifice to the addiction? You sacrifice your relationships. You sacrifice your criminal record, right?

41:10

You sacrifice your money. You sacrifice your time. These pursuits are worship.

41:19

So the problem of addiction and this pursuit of pleasure in these things isn't ultimately an addiction problem.

41:27

It's a worship problem. And we live in a society today that is addicted to the pursuit of pleasure.

41:34

It's addicted to the pursuit of what makes me happy, what gives me joy. It's idolatry.

41:40

Whether that pursuit of pleasure is in some electronic thing or technology, whether that pursuit of pleasure is in a person or a relationship, we are addicted to pleasure.

41:52

And ultimately, that just displays the kind of idolatrous hearts that we have, is that we can only ultimately have pleasure and peace and joy that is at all meaningful in a relationship with God.

42:05

Think about what the biblical world view has for the world, brothers and sisters. How does, listen to this, it really just blew me away when

42:12

I would hear it. I would sit in rooms with therapists and doctors and nurses, and they would talk to groups of people, and they would say, okay, now everyone in this room has struggled with an addiction.

42:21

What was your addiction? Okay, heroin. Yours was pills. Okay, what was yours? Okay, yours was alcohol. Okay, yours was sex.

42:27

All right, now what were you feeling? What are you generally feeling when you go to pursue your drug of choice?

42:33

And somebody would say, anger. They're feeling really uneasy and just full of anger.

42:40

I was really mad. This is how the world deals with it. They say, okay, great. They would write on a little board behind them. They'd say, okay, you're dealing with anger?

42:47

Okay, how do we satisfy that in the future? All right, here's what you wanna do. In the future, so that you can avoid using, here's what

42:54

I want you to do. I want you to go ahead and take a cold shower. Now, I don't know about you, but taking a cold shower would make me angry.

43:04

They would say, okay, if you're feeling angry, here's what you need to do. Take 10 deep breaths, slow.

43:11

Try to calm yourself down. And so what they would do is they would try to give them all these tips of what to do so that they can avoid being angry, which led them into the using of the drugs or the alcohol.

43:22

Is dealing with only symptoms. Well, here's the problem. When you deal with symptoms in that way, you've never actually dealt with the heart.

43:30

You never dug deep and worked in what's actually wrong, what's really down there. Never dug deep.

43:36

And so you tell someone, take some deep breaths so you don't use drugs and alcohol. Do we think that most adults know that if they're blowing up and about to have an outburst, they should probably take some deep breaths?

43:48

That's not the problem. The problem is that it's fundamental to who we are. If that's the kind of person we are, then that's what's in our hearts.

43:57

Jesus talks about that. What comes out of your mouth is as a result of what's where? In your hearts.

44:03

James talks about how to deal with sin. Temptation meets a willing heart.

44:09

And when they join together, conceives, gives birth to sin, right? I mean, from a

44:14

Christian perspective, dealing with sin in this way, not the same thing. From a Christian perspective, when we deal with sin, we talk about the heart issues.

44:23

What's going on inside of you? What's wrong inside of you? If somebody behaves in a certain way as a

44:29

Christian, we don't deal with the symptoms. We deal with the heart issue, confession, and repentance. For example, if I'm counseling a husband of a wife, and he has kids, and he's having anger issues, and he's having constant outbursts and can't control his temper,

44:43

I'll talk to him and say, okay, tell me what's going on. And he'll say something like, she does this, or if she wouldn't do this,

44:51

I wouldn't do that. If she wouldn't do this, then I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't blow up, it's because of her.

44:58

And what's amazing is from a Christian perspective, what we would say is that if it came out of you, it's because it existed within you.

45:07

From a Christian perspective, think about how we talk about our choices. If I had a glass of water right now, glass of water, big room right now, it's a good place to do this.

45:17

If I had a glass of water right now, and I hit this glass of water, and water was on the floor, and if I actually asked the room,

45:26

I say, okay, why is water on the floor? What would you say? Go ahead.

45:34

Okay, ah, someone knows it right, yeah. They're very good. Most people say, because you hit the glass.

45:39

But think about what I asked. I said, why is water on the floor? And the answer ultimately is, because water's in the glass.

45:48

We can't go blaming ultimately the not being knocked around or what somebody else did to us. What we deal with as Christians are the heart issues, and I say, if lust is coming out of me, then there's lust within me, in my heart.

46:01

I have to deal with that issue. If anger and bitterness and strife is coming out of me, I have to deal with what actually is there in my heart, in my life.

46:10

But unbelievers don't deal with it that way. They actually deal with the symptoms. They say, are you lonely?

46:15

Someone says, I use because I'm lonely. Happened all the time. Why do you use? What are you feeling? What are you trying to get out of your using?

46:22

I'm lonely. I'm lonely, so I drink, because I'm lonely. They would say, okay, join a social club.

46:31

Get a friend. Get a Facebook. Go out to a movie. Here's the problem.

46:38

At some point, that friend's not gonna be there. At some point, you're gonna be in relationships with people who hurt you.

46:44

At some point, it's gonna be three o 'clock in the morning, and you're gonna be sitting in your own mess, realizing how utterly lonely you are, and here's the beauty of the biblical worldview.

46:53

We have the very foundation that makes sense of freedom from loneliness. Think for one moment about this last point, guys.

46:59

From a Christian perspective, we recognize that the reason anybody would feel loneliness is because we live in a fallen world.

47:08

God is triune. He's an eternal community. John chapter one, verse one, in the beginning was the word, and the word was proston theon, with God, toward God, an intimate relationship with the

47:21

Father. There has never been a time in eternity where God has been lonely, ever.

47:28

God creates us in his image. We have a basis to make sense of why anybody would feel lonely at all.

47:34

We feel lonely fundamentally because our relationship with God is marred. God created you and I to be an intimate relationship with him and with one another, and sin breaks those relationships.

47:47

The biblical worldview has an answer for loneliness. Fundamentally, God, us being reconciled to him, and God's own promises to us about who he is and about who we are.

48:04

Romans chapter one provides the basis for us, watch, not only for our apologetics, endeavors, and engaging the unbelievers on their own ground, but it also provides the answer to our fundamental problem as human beings, our false pursuit of pleasure, false pursuit of joy, false pursuit of peace, false pursuit of intimacy, false pursuit of freedom from guilt and shame.

48:34

The reason we have these things is because ultimately, we switch God for idols. What's the answer?

48:42

The gospel. An intimate relationship with God, renewed hearts.

48:50

You see, here's the thing. I don't not use ecstasy today because I don't wanna get caught.

49:02

I can tell you, when we first planted Apology at church, I had more drugs in my hands than I even imagined

49:07

I would have. We had a little ritual we would go through. People would come and they'd say,

49:14

Pastor Jeff, I almost blew it today. I almost used. And they would show up and they'd have their drug in their hands and they'd say,

49:24

I need help. And we would say, we're gonna do this as an act of worship. We're gonna flush this together and we're gonna do it as an act of worship.

49:31

That we're gonna go to God right now for where you're hurting. But you're flushing it,

49:36

I'm not flushing it. And we would do this ritual. People would just, I had heroin in my hands, I had ecstasy in my hands,

49:43

I had pills in my hands, weed in my hands, right? I mean, I don't know how much that was worth, but we'd flushed a lot of it.

49:50

One time, a girl came in super fast. She's like, Pastor Jeff, I almost blew it. I just can't deal with this right now.

49:57

And we usually had to have accountability when someone handed us drugs, someone who was always there to witness the whole thing.

50:03

But at this point one night, she runs into the room and she says, I just gotta give it to you here. And she left the room. It was a bag full of dozens and dozens of pills of ecstasy.

50:13

And nobody was around me. Pastor Luke wasn't there. Nobody saw it. She left.

50:20

If I had taken it home, nobody would be on the wiser. And I remember that there was this moment in my life of sheer pleasure and joy.

50:32

She put this bag of ecstasy into my hand. It was actually good ecstasy. It was Mitsubishi, so you know it's good.

50:42

I remember that she put it in my hand. She walks out. And there wasn't even a moment, not even a moment, where I even thought or considered to go down that road again.

50:58

I walked right into the bathroom and I dumped this entire bag of pills. And I remember there wasn't even like, oh, there was nothing.

51:07

My eye had tasted and seen that God is good. And this no longer had any draw for me.

51:13

The idol had lost in my life. Here's the thing. I would never wanna use drugs and alcohol again to abuse them because watch, here's the thing.

51:23

I don't wanna lose any opportunity to have worship and intimacy with God. I know that it's a lie.

51:30

I know that it's a fiction that's trying to sell me. And I know who God truly is and what I really have in Him. If I want joy now,

51:37

I wanna go to God for my joy. If I want pleasure, I wanna go to Him for my pleasure. If I want intimacy, I wanna go to Him for my intimacy.

51:42

If I want peace, I wanna go to Him. I don't wanna chase it anymore because I realize that it is ultimately false worship.

51:50

Just know, believer, when you pursue something else in place of God for what you can only have in God, assume the position.

52:01

Oh, that'll do you in, won't it? As a Christian, to recognize that when Paul calls sexual immorality idolatry, that that's saying false worship.

52:13

When John says, little children, keep yourselves from idols, he says that to Christians.

52:19

Keep yourselves from idols, that there's a potential for Christians to engage in worship of other gods.

52:27

It's amazing, too, if you think about it. If you were in a Muslim country, dominated country right now, and you had somebody who took you and they said, deny

52:38

Jesus, deny Jesus. The early Christians had to go through this.

52:44

Say, kai sekirios, live. They wouldn't even say that. They wouldn't submit to that. But if you had somebody put a sword to your neck and they said, deny

52:52

Jesus and live, most of us would probably wanna think,

53:00

I hope I would fight. Like, if somebody grabbed you by the shoulders and they said, bow down and worship this false god,

53:07

I think most of us would wanna say, as Christians, I would resist, I would fight. If somebody put a sword in my neck and said, deny

53:15

Jesus Christ, worship this god in place of Jesus Christ, we'd say, no, I hope that God would give me the strength.

53:21

I would fight, I would give it my all. I would even be willing to lay my life down, kill the body, that's fine.

53:30

We sang a song about it today. But what's amazing is in these instances where we go chasing something else in place of God, and the

53:40

Bible calls it idolatry, the moment it's presented, nobody's around.

53:48

Here's my laptop, nobody will find out. I have private browsing.

53:58

We assume the position and nobody's forcing us. We just bow and worship.

54:08

It's an amazing thing. What's the answer? Confession, repentance, faith in Jesus Christ, a new heart, mortification, putting it to death.

54:20

We could talk for another hour, but I'd get in trouble if I did about mortification. But that's the answer.

54:25

What's this pursuit of pleasure we have in our society? What do you have to address here in Sydney? All around you, we deal with people who are seeking pleasure constantly.

54:32

It's all pleasure seeking. It's idolatry. Recognize it for what it is, it's false worship.