Idolatry, Unbelief and Repentance — Michael Durham

Romans 1 and the Exchange of Truth for Lies

Romans chapter 1, we'll begin reading with verse 24. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. The power of sin's appeal is its promise to provide you with better gods. Now, what is sin? Sin is merely asserting your will above God's will. It is to transgress His blessed will or commandments for your life.

In other words, it's to do life according to you. That's sin. And sin's appeal is this, that it will offer you someone or something better than Jesus. That's its temptation. It's most unlikely that the devil will ever approach you in those exact words, because he knows that he cannot seduce you if he was to plainly expose what he's really trying to do.

Yet whether he says it or not, the temptation is just that, a promise of someone or something that will care, help, or provide for you much better than the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that, my dear friends, is the essence of all temptation.

Idolatry as Misplaced Trust in Something Other Than Jesus

Temptation is simply the enticement to do your will over God's will. And that is the heart of it. The beating heart of every temptation is that something or someone will care for you, help you, provide for you, satisfy you more than Jesus.

And you can know if something is an idol towards you or for you, if there is something in your life that you are trusting in to care for you, help for you, provide for you more than Jesus. You can know that.

And the test is quite easy. Is there anger? Is there resentment? Is there turbulence? Is there a disturbance in your heart and life today? If so, you have an idol. Is there any unrest and anxiety? Is there any inward pressure that is disturbing tranquility and an inner balance?

My dear friend, you have an idol. I find that Christians' most difficult task should be the easiest task, maintaining fellowship with Jesus. And yet we find it to be so difficult. One day our hearts are emblazed with love for Jesus and the very next day it's as if we are as cold as ice.

Our fervor, our devotion, our commitment has seemed to take wings and fly and there is nothing in our hearts and we wonder if have we really been genuinely convergent because how could we not love the Lord with great devotion?

And the reason that I think it is difficult for us to know how to maintain fellowship is because we have been blindsided by what we really believe worship is and what we believe idolatry is. And so I pray God help us here this morning to understand that if there is any anger, resentment, turmoil, a loss of joy in your life, then wherever the source of those things are, there's your idol.

Marital Disharmony and the Idolization of a Spouse

For example, suppose a husband and wife are experiencing strife here this morning. The wife's world is totally out of kelter on the inside. She has no sense of internal balance, no joy, no peace because her husband is not doing for her what she expects.

I understand that that can't be so in this audience today, especially after our men's retreat. But how is this possible? Well, it's possible that she has actually turned her husband into an idol looking to him to do for her what she ought to be looking to Jesus to do.

And now the point has come in her life that she's actually built up resentment and bitterness towards her husband. And you say to me, how then can she be worshiping or have he as an idol? And the answer is quite simple.

Worship is more than just adoration. Worship is to depend or trust upon something or someone else to provide help or care or satisfy you more than the Lord Jesus Christ. My dear friends, her life revolves upon his approval for her, his affection for her, his treatment of her.

And that is idolatry because she should be looking only to the Lord Jesus Christ for this internal balance of her world. Now that's hard. That's a powerful punch in the face right at the beginning of this message.

I understand that. But I only have one time with you this morning, one message. And I want to get as quick to the heart as I possibly can. This is where we live, friends. This is where I live every day.

I will either choose to worship the Lord God or I will chase idols of my heart. And believe you me, my own heart doesn't need Satan's help or aid to produce any idols. Now let me briefly explain what I mean by internal balance.

Inner Balance, Adversity, and the Two Houses

This is extremely important. What do I mean by having internal balance? Internal balance is simply inner harmony or a steadiness or a tranquility, no matter what's going on on the outside of you. Inner balance does not depend upon your outer world being balanced and tranquil.

In fact, inner balance is so wonderful that when your world is out of Kelter and everything around you is not trustworthy, there's no dependability, no security in your life, you can be as much at peace as if it were.

Remember Jesus asleep in the boat when the storm was brewing fiercely. Adversity actually exposes whether or not a Christian is building any part of his or her life on an idol. Adversity. If you are experiencing, again, any kind of discomfort this morning, it proves that you are not worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ, that you're worshiping an idol.

That discomfort will prove either you are or you're not worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. Because problems detect whether or not your life is built solidly on the rock. Did not Jesus tell this to us in the story of two houses?

It was not the fair sunshine and great weather that determined the stability or instability of those two homes. No, no, it was the storm. It was the difficulty. It was the adversity that proved one to be true and the other false.

Salvation from Sin’s Penalty, Power, and Appeal

Salvation then is not just a deliverance from sin's penalty. Are you listening? Salvation is not just deliverance from sin's penalty. It's also deliverance from its power and its appeal to worship other gods.

And that's what the apostle is telling us here. As he recounts the history of man's delusion, he exchanged, verse 25, the truth of God for a lie, and he worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. There's your problem. And it is always the problem, whether you're a saint or a sinner, a Christian or a non-Christian, a believer or unbeliever, the issue of inter-balance and tranquility or not is an issue of worship and believing the truth or believing a lie.

And if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, but there is inner turmoil and a lack of inner balance, I am here as, I pray, a spokesman, just a representative, just a brother to say to you from God's word, you are committing idolatry this morning.

And God is here in his mercy to deliver you because salvation's deliverance goes beyond just the penalty of our sins, but to its power. Jesus is not here to condemn you for your idolatry. He's here to deliver you.

This is good news. This is something we ought to be happy and the anticipatory joy should be flooding our hearts that this morning I can be delivered. You can be set free today if you learn how to trust and to recognize the lies that would persuade us to look to someone else other than Jesus for the care and satisfaction we need.

The Lie of Temptation in Genesis

So, let's see if we can go a little deeper here. All I'm telling you is what the text is saying. As Paul is recounting man's idolatry and rejection of God from the garden to today, he says it's all about sin being the result of believing a lie about God.

That's all it is. Sin is about believing a lie about God. Yea, hath God said, was the words of the tempter. Can you be sure? I don't think so. I think he's trying to tell you something that misleads you.

Because he knows if you eat of the fruit of the tree, you'll be like him knowing the difference of good and evil. He's withholding something from you. He's keeping back something from you. He doesn't want you in on all of his privileges and powers.

And the lie of temptation will always be about one of four things or a multiplicity of these four things. Combination of these four things about God. Number one, a lie about God's goodness. Secondly, a lie about God's graciousness.

Thirdly, a lie about God's greatness. And lastly, a lie about God's gloriousness. Let's take a look just for a few moments about the lie about God's goodness. Sin's appeal is that something else can treat you better than Jesus.

Someone or something else can give you the sense of goodness and care for you better than Christ. And so the child of God is tempted to believe a lie, to exchange, literally exchange truth about God that God is good for the lie that God is not good.

That's what's happening. That's what the text is saying. And so we say things to ourselves. Our subconscious, the very soul, betrays us. If God was good, why would he be allowing this to happen to me?

We've all said that one. Internally, we would never dare breathe or utter it to another soul. But we believe that, that if God was good, he would not be allowing this to happen in my life. The bill's passed due.

You're doing the best you can do. And you wonder why God is doing this to you. You doubt his goodness. We doubt his goodness. Now, there's two reasons why I think I or you would struggle believing that God is good.

Because number one, we've become convinced that we deserve better treatment. We have highly esteemed ourselves. I don't know if I have my mother-in-law's permission, but she's not here, so. My mother-in-law lives with us.

She has since our youngest child, Victoria, was born. Born with Down syndrome. And she retired and came to Paducah and moved in with us to help us care for Victoria, who requires 24 hours, seven days a week supervision, even today, being almost 18, still can't communicate, has to be fed, has to be just completely taken care of.

About two years ago, we discovered that she had, was going blind in one eye, and then the last year she's gone, going blind in the last eye, the other eye, and today she's completely blind. She's been serving her Lord since she was 12.

She's 78 now. All of her life, she has served and walked with God through many storms and adversities and conflicts. She's been faithful to the Lord when she or lesser people would have thrown in the towel and said, if this is the way you're going to treat me, I'm not walking with you.

And she was, God has helped her to be faithful all of these years. But this adversity has really exposed some things. And it's been amazing to watch God in her life these last few years. For example, early on, she was just absolutely resentful and bitter.

And I heard her say, I don't understand. I don't understand because I've served the Lord all of these years. Why is he doing this to me? It was an honest inquiry. I don't understand this. If God is good, why would he allow me to lose my eyesight after all of these years of being faithful?

Many of you are nodding your heads because you understand. Though you may not have had the trial of blindness in a prayer you never will, you know what I'm talking about. You've been there. You have uttered words very similar.

And if you peel back the layers of why we say these things, why the heart has the audacity to assert such a proposition, it's because underlying, underneath our souls is this belief that somehow I've deserved something better.

God shouldn't deal with me in this way. Let him deal with the renegade, the rebel, the man that rejects him. I'm a child of God. How can a good father do this to me? My hero is Charles Spurgeon. And like any good Baptist preacher, as I was listening to you, brother, I had flashbacks of Spurgeon.

And even though I've never met him, I want to make sure that's understood, I've not met Spurgeon. I'm getting older, but I'm not that old yet. He would have been very pleased to have heard what I heard today.

It was beautiful and powerful. Talking about God like you did, that was a blessing. Nobody could do that like Spurgeon. But what we don't know about Spurgeon, he was a man of great affliction. He was a man of great affliction.

Breit's disease, gout, other issues. And one day he was in a meeting in a room with a few men and the pain was so severe, he said it was attack like he had not had ever before. And tears were starting to well up in his eyes because it hurt so badly.

He asked the men to dismiss themselves. And then he cried out to God and said, Father, Father, this hurts so bad. I would not do this to one of my children. Please, Father, give me reprieve. And the father immediately intervened and the pain left.

But he never was healed. And at the age of 58, he died a young man. The combination of all those diseases. You look at a life like that and you wonder, is God good? Is this the way an employer pays his laborers?

Oh, dear friends, he is good. There's another reason why I think we may doubt the goodness of God is because we forget that through much tribulation, we shall enter the kingdom. It's not God who's being mean to us.

It's not God bringing retribution for our lack of obedience as his children. No, no, God disciplines, he chastens, but that's an act of kindness as you would for your own child. God is not a retributive God towards his children.

We forget that we are living in a world that is plagued with helter-skelter. A world that is rife with wickedness and where sin abounds. There can be no harmony and balance in this world. No way there can be order in this world because man has rejected God's leadership.

And if we forget that this is the environment in which we live, if we forget that therefore because we too are not perfect, still yet corrupt, still flawed with bodies that are less than perfect, then we will often want to say that God is not treating us fairly.

But the Bible says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Now, listen, I said this to the men this week and I want to say it to us today.

Taking things by faith is absolutely essential. We live by faith, but what do you mean when you say you take something by faith? For most of us, we simply say or mean, I agree, God is good. I agree, oh yes, the Lord is good.

Oh, I agree, taste and see, the Lord is good. We recite the very verse. But that's not what the psalmist is saying. The psalmist is saying, taste. In other words, there is a responsibility here. He's not asking for mental affirmation.

He's not asking, do you agree with this theological point? He is saying, I want you to engage, my goodness. I want you to be involved. I want you to experience, experience my goodness. I want you to taste it.

I want you to engage it. And find out firsthand that the Bible is just not a series of declarative truths. They are truths that are to be experienced, to be lived, to be known in reality. So if you have an idol that has caused you to doubt God's goodness, my friend, the remedy today is to engage, taste, reach out, desire at this moment within your soul.

Grab your heart, man, and say, we will seek the Lord and find Him and taste Him. Know He's good. Because when you experience God, you experience goodness. What man is there among you who, if he has a son, asks for a bread, he will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, he'll give him a serpent. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give good gifts, things, to those who ask Him?

God is good. God, quoting Spurgeon, is too good to be unkind. Did you hear that? God is too good to be unkind, too wise to be mistaken. And if you cannot trace His hand, you can trust His heart. The idol's lying to you, friend.

It's time to exchange the lie about the idol for the truth of God. There's another lie, the lie about God's graciousness. This comes in many different ways. One that I've struggled over in the past. Can God really be that merciful to me and that gracious?

God’s Graciousness and the Sufficiency of Grace

I've been at Oak Grove Baptist Church now for, as you heard, 23 years. And in that 23 years, I've pastored three churches all in the same building. When I first went there, it was a fighting, feuding church.

There was no such thing as order and decency. And God, in His miraculous intervention at about a year and a half point, delivered us from the contention and the fighting. And from that moment, the church began to take off.

And in just a few short years, we went from 50 to 125, 130, nearing 150. We had no room in the sanctuary, the tiny room. And so we had started building plans. And all of a sudden, here comes God with His wrecking ball.

To all of my plans, we had met with an architect and we had said, we want at least, we want a sanctuary that'll at least seat 1 ,000. Because this is where I was going. And I knew how to get there. And I was on my way until God showed up in His mercy.

But at the time, it didn't feel very merciful. It didn't feel gracious. God would intervene me and keep me from my prideful ambition which would eventually destroy me. I know it would have. He was so kind to destroy those plans.

One of the closest men in that church proved to be a Judas to me. The heel of my familiar friend was lifted up against me. Broke my heart like I'd never been broken before. And with that, he took a bunch of people.

And it seems like when I prayed, I couldn't get God to hear me. Couldn't get God to move. Couldn't get God to pay attention to me. And when I'd stand up, oh, I hated to go to the pulpit on Sunday. I was like Jeremiah.

I was longing for that wayfaring place where I could take the wings of a bird and fly and escape. And when I'd stand before the people on a Sunday, like I'm standing before you, it was like there was a glass wall.

I could see them. They could see me. But I just felt like they weren't hearing a thing I was saying. And I just began to tailspin because I saw God disband my structure, my works. And I came to the conclusion that maybe God doesn't love me.

Because if He loved me, wouldn't He be blessing my ministry? If He's really gracious and good, wouldn't He be allowing souls to be saved? People to be added to the church? Isn't that the way God shows His love and kindness?

He blesses you with good things. Wonderful gifts. So that's not happening. And I began to exchange the truth of God for a lie. And I began to doubt God's grace to the point I didn't even know if I was a Christian.

I got that low, brother. I got that low. I called up my dear friend and closest friend besides my wife, Mike Morrow. Some of you have met him. I said, I got to talk to you. Let's have lunch together. Went to lunch and I just told him.

I said, I'm not even sure if I'm saved, brother. Mike looked at me and said, well, I don't know what to tell you. I wanted to choke him so badly. Went home, back to the office after lunch. Buried my head on my desk and wept.

Wept and wept and then wept some more. And all of a sudden, I tell you the truth. Ephesians 2, he came. For by grace are you saved through faith. That not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast.

And immediately the clouds dispelled. The depression left and the sun shone. That has been shining ever since. He's gracious. Even in the providential acts of adversity, he is gracious. You can believe that even in his frowning providence, he hides a gracious smile.

You find it difficult to believe that his grace will be sufficient to enable you to overcome. How many of you have been there? I'm in this extremity and I know what I need to do but my heart doesn't want to do it.

And you cry out and you ask God to help you. And nothing happens. And you begin to exchange the truth of God for life. You begin to say, I don't think God's coming through for me. He'll do that for Brother Lee or Brother Phillip or he'll help the elders.

He helps preachers like that. I hear their testimonies, but I guess I'm not as good as they are. Friends, when you look at your goodness, your deservability, when you look at you, you're doubting God's goodness and graciousness.

This is not about us and our performance. It's about his performance, that he loves the unlovable and he's good to the undeserving. Another way in which we lie to ourselves about God's graciousness, we often try to impress others because we don't believe God's favor is enough.

Try to impress. We want people to like us. Why do you want people to like you? I challenge you to answer. Why do you like people to like you? Because there's something internal that says, the more they like me, the more it validates me.

The more it proves that I'm somebody and you reject the value that God has placed upon you. Listen, these people out here are imperfect. God's perfect. And God being perfect does love you and accept you in Christ the Beloved.

And by the way, I want you to know, He even likes you. God likes those people He calls children. He likes you. He delights over you. He sings over you with dancing. He rejoices over you. He knows what He's doing with you and what you're going to be.

He's not worried about it. Trust in His grace. To the praise of the glory of His grace by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made abound toward us in all wisdom.

My favorite verse, one of my favorite, not the favorite. 2 Corinthians 9 .8. And God is able to make all grace abound towards you that you always having all sufficiency and all things may have an abundance for every good work.

A lot of alls and everys in there, is there not? God's grace is sufficient. Don't doubt it. Another lie we believe about God is His greatness. We doubt the sovereignty of our good God. We give more homage to the devil and his cunning than we do to the power and providence of God.

God’s Greatness and Sovereign Control

Is there a disturbance in your life right now? Is there inner turmoil? Is there a lack of joy? Assuredly, there's an idol there. Maybe more than one. In that idolatry, there may be this lie that God's not in control.

And you've got to be in control. The heart is so willing to believe that lie because we like control. We love. How many of you really truly seek the Lord for His will that you will not make a move about major decisions where the Bible may be silent?

And you will not do anything until you've heard from God. But you will rationalize and justify. And if there seems to be no difficulty, it looks like it's good, you will accept and move forward without God's approval.

Listen, there's too many examples in the Bible where men of God did that very thing and tragedy came. Joshua comes to my mind immediately. When the Gibeonites came to him to deceive him, wearing clothes that were wore out, having packed moldy bread, and they were just over two valleys or two or a couple of hill ranges over.

They weren't a far nation as they had lied. And without consulting God and making inquiry through prayer, Joshua struck a deal with them and regretted it every day till he died. The Bible says, but our God is in heaven and He does whatever He pleases.

All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He does according to His will and the army of heaven. And among the inhabitants of the earth, no one can restrain his hand or say to him, what have you done?

I love that. You can ask God, why did you do this? But that's not what Daniel's talking about. Actually, it was Nebuchadnezzar. That's not what he means. He means you don't have the authority to pull God up on the carpet and say, now you must give an account of yourself.

Nobody can make God give an account of himself. Why? Because He's sovereignly in control and He's in control of your life, even in your insufficiencies, indeficiencies, and all of the matters that concern you that's bringing anxiety.

God is Lord over all. Therefore, we know that all things work to good to them that love God and are thee called according to His purpose. Why? Because He is great. He is great. And He's reigning over you.

God’s Glory as the Center of Life and Satisfaction

The last lie is the lie about God's glory. We stop believing that God's worth is more than enough to satisfy every longing of our heart's desire. That's what I mean by the glory of God. God's glory, hard to understand in order to define what we're talking about here, but help me, just bear with me.

I think it's something to the order that God is so self-sufficient, so amazing, so good, gracious, great, that He is valuable beyond calculation and He is enough to satisfy the longings of even the corrupt heart.

And when you experience that glory, when you get a taste of that glory, joy and pleasure explode within the soul so much that nothing of this earth, pleasures, joys, carnal or good, compare. Nothing compares with the ecstasy of experiencing the glory of God.

Since we've got a mixed crowd, I've got to be careful here. But you can think of the greatest joy that God has given a man and a woman in physical union. The ecstasy, the joy of two being one and the melding not of just a physical affection but of spirit and soul.

There's a great joy. There is nothing like that in human relationships. But my dear friend, that pales, pales to when the spirit experiences the presence of this glorious God. Don't exchange the truth of God for a lie because every substitute of the glory of God is just that, a weak imitation.

So what happens is we cease to see Him as worthy to make Him the center upon which our lives revolve and He loses mass in our sights. You know, the sun is the heaviest object in our universe. It has the most mass and therefore all of the planets revolve and moons revolve around that solar heat we call the sun because of its massiveness, its weightiness, that's what causes us as a planet to revolve around the sun.

And when you lose sight of God's worthiness and glory, immediately you begin to wobble out of orbit. Your life doesn't have the sensibility that it once did. Order is being lost. Why? Because you have no center.

Because your idols are not big enough to bring balance. So what is worship? Because that's all I've been talking about. That's all he's been talking about in the text. They exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship the creature more than the creator.

What is worship? Let me tell you. Worship is not what we have done here this morning. It includes this, but it's a whole lot more than this. Worship is so much more than a worship service. In fact, I don't think that's an appropriate title that we should be calling our gatherings.

Praise service, yes. Worship, no. Worship is this. Seeing the glory and the worth of God and ordering your life around him. That's it. That's what worship is. It's the way you live. It's about knowing Jesus beyond just this brain and experiencing him in such a way you say, hey, he's it.

This is what I need. This is what I've been looking for. And therefore, my whole life is revolving around him. It's Romans 12, one. Therefore, brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice.

It's climbing up on the altar and saying, here I am, do with me whatever you want to do. Because you're so good, you're so glorious, you're so amazing that my life compared to your glory, it's worth it.

The experience of God on a day-by-day basis is worth being extinguished for God. Because that's what you do with sacrifices. You kill them and then you burn them up. That's worship. You can come here every Sunday or wherever you normally meet and you can sing with robust those great hymns and you can pray prayers.

But brother or sister, if your life is not ordered around experiencing the glory of God, then you're not worshiping. You've exchanged the lie of God, the truth of God for a lie. So let's go back to our husband and wife example to maybe just give you a little parable.

Marital Idolatry Applied to Daily Life

Put all this together and then I'm gonna give us the gospel solution. Okay? Be terrible if I ended the sermon right now, right? I know I've been preaching for 40 minutes and that's normal length for most preachers.

But boy, that would be sad if I just stopped right now. You don't want me to stop right now, do you? Thank you. One day I was preaching many years ago and I asked something like that. And the woman back in the back said, about right there, she said, I wish you would shut up.

Brother sitting right about there, he said, no, no, we need to hear what you've got to say. Please go on. Two people were converted that morning. At least they professed faith in Christ. Let's go back to our husband and wife spat or marital disharmony.

Your spouse is not treating you as well as you think you deserve. And as a result, you become irritable, malcontent and resentful. Your friction may even break out into heated words, terrible remarks that wound one another and your hearts begin just to drift away from one another over time.

The fact that your spouse could disrupt your heart's satisfaction. Now listen closely. I know this is hard for some of us to believe that our hearts are so delicate that this is true. But it is. The fact that your spouse could disrupt your heart's satisfaction is because you have established him or her as an idol.

If he or she was in their proper place and Christ was the center, he's the worship object, then even in your friction and discomfort with one another, your life could still have tranquility and inner balance and joy.

I can see it in your faces. They betray you. You're saying, I don't believe that. That's the problem. That right there is the problem. You don't believe what I just said. You've exchanged the truth about God.

God is enough! And your heart is shaken today to its core. And you're even wondering if you're even saved. I'm telling you, the problem is not, is He enough? The problem is you've doubted it. You don't believe it.

Remember, worship's not defined by bowing down to images of gold or silver or wood, or it's not confined to church services. It's valuing something or someone to the point you build your life so that it revolves around that something or someone.

The objection you might have right now is my spouse could no way be my idol. I don't even like him. How could he be my idol? How can I worship someone if I can't even tolerate him? And the answer to the objection is although you are resentful and you complain about your wife or your husband, you do in fact worship him or her because you've built your life and its contentment on your partner.

And therefore, they've become an idol. You've put that person in a place where they could actually quite unfairly, they could never ever have accomplished what you've asked of them. Only Jesus can do that.

And if your life didn't revolve around your spouse, then you could maintain joy and satisfaction no matter the treatment. No matter the treatment. But you place such an emphasis on this particular person that he or she can control your life and its joy and its contentment.

Your spouse controls your world. That's the problem. He or she makes life either good or bad for you. You may not be having problems and you're still worshiping your spouse because your definition of a good life is how he or she treats you.

And if you got a good, what is it? Happy wife, happy life. And there's a great deal of truth to that, sadly. If I got a good home life, got a great job, everything's going great in my life. I've got the 2 .3 kids, got a three-car garage.

I've got a membership at the golf club. Man, what are you talking about? Jesus is really good. I love Jesus. And you could be a great idol worshiper because you're not really thankful to God. You're looking to all of these things.

The good life has become your idol. I'm thankful for adversity because it exposes it. When you're living the good life, you're most deceived if you have an idol and involved in idolatry. Only God should have this kind of power and control in your life.

So you believe the lie about God. You believe God was not sovereign. Here, let me give you an example. Now, here we go. You've believed a lie that God perhaps is not sovereign over your wife or your husband and therefore God allows this oppressive behavior to expose your heart.

I've counseled so many couples over the years and so many times, this is one of the main issues. That wife, it's usually the wife. She cannot trust that God is sovereign over her husband. That she can even come under his headship because he's not trustworthy.

A lot of husbands are not trustworthy. It has nothing to do with their trustworthiness. It's about the trustworthiness of Christ. Do you trust God that if He says you obey Him, He is sovereign and in control?

Can you trust the man to your God? Another possibility could exist. You could have disbelieved God's worth and therefore God's approval is not enough. You're looking to this man or this woman for your approval, your validation.