Talk

Kill Your Idols

Ben Stuart
January 22, 2023

When we remove God from the center of our lives, we all fill the void with a lesser thing in our search for meaning. As we continue in our new series, Ben Stuart looks at Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians and explores what it means for us to turn away from the idols we have constructed in our lives and fix our gaze on Jesus.

Key Takeaway

The world is using idols like success and power to fill the vacancy in their hearts that only God can fill.

  1. Idolatry is anything you put above God in your heart in order to find satisfaction or purpose.
  2. Idols will never fill the hole in your heart that you're trying to fill up/satisfy. Only God can fill that hole.
  3. The only way to dislodge an idol from your heart, is to replace it with a more beautiful thing—Jesus.
"The incomplete joys of this world can never satisfy the human heart. They were not made to."
Ben Stuart

Discussion Questions

  1. What is an idol?
  2. Does it change your perspective on idolatry knowing that anything can be an idol?
  3. Ben Stuart defines idolatry as something we orbit around something God made instead of God Himself. If you take a look at your own life, do you have anything you're putting before God? Have you ever considered that it was an idol?
  4. Does it change your perspective on idolatry knowing that anything can be an idol?
  5. If you have identified idols in your life, why do you think you have them? What is the core desire you are wanting to be fulfilled?
  6. How does it make you feel knowing that God could allow you to have that desire, and you would still be empty because He is the only one who is meant to fill it?

Scripture References

20Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;

he cannot save himself, or say,

“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

6You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.
7And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.
8The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it,
9for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,
10and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Ben Stuart
Ben Stuart
Ben Stuart is the pastor of Passion City Church D.C. Prior to joining Passion City Church, Ben served as the executive director of Breakaway Ministries on the campus of Texas A&M. He also earned a master’s degree in historical theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Donna, live to inspire and equip people to walk with God for a lifetime.