The Bryce Crawford Podcast - What Do You Worship? (EP 28)

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

In this video, Bryce talks about worshipping one God only. Filmed By; Josh Rodriguez @whitehorse.studios MERCH👉 https://www.jesusinthestreet.com subscribe for more! Sow Into My Ministry One-Time or Monthly! Visit 👉 https://www.equipnet.org/missionaries/bcrawford (all donations are tax deductible) Download Our FREE Bible Plan https://growinfaith.readytoconnect.com/join-the-one-year-bible-challenge follow me on other platforms! Podcast Instagram 👉https://instagram.com/brycecrawfordpodcast Personal Instagram 👉 https://instagram.com/brycecrawford Merch Instagram 👉 https://instagram.com/ilovejesus Tiktok (main) 👉https://www.tiktok.com/@brycecrawford Tiktok (2nd) 👉 https://www.tiktok.com/@adventuresofbryce Snapchat https://snapchat.com/add/brycecraww Twitter 👉 https://twitter.com/ibrycecrawford #christianity #christian #Jesus #BryceCrawford #christiantiktok #christianvideos #holyspirit #Jesusheals #viral #christianvideo #venicebeach #evangelism

What's going on, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Bryce Crawford podcast. I'm Bryce. Today's episode, really fun. By the title, you guys might be clicking on it because the title convicted you or your spirit unctioned you to click on it. But the title of today's episode is, what do you worship? And I think this is very important because we all are wired to bow down to something. And every day, we either surrender to Jesus or we, we're going to. we surrender to Jesus sometimes and we surrender to other things in our life or we just flat out surrender to everything else but Jesus. And so we're going to talk about idolatry and what that looks like in today's modern day and age, what it looked like back in the Old Testament and back in the day. And it's going to be good. Before we get into this, I want to share two things real quick. First off, you're seeing I'm wearing the merch again. The merch website might be back up. I'm not going to say it is for sure. But if it is, go to Jesus in the street.com. Support us with the merch. It supports us a lot. But number two, I want to

share something that happened to me a few nights ago. It was really interesting. I was, I was laying awake. It was like late at night. I was laying awake and I was having a hard time going to sleep. And I remember when I was at night and I was laying awake, I did something. Like I was thinking about something and I did something and said something to myself when I did it. And after I said this thing to myself when I when I was laying awake I heard the Lord speak to me the Holy Spirit I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me saying you grieved me and that's got to be one of the saddest things that you could ever hear in your life like I've experienced a lot of loss I've experienced a lot of sad and troubling and tribulation times in my life but when

I lay, when I was lying awake and I said this thing to myself and then I hear a voice tell me that you grieved me from the Holy Spirit, that messed me up. I, I cried for an hour that night after, after I heard that. Obviously, because it wasn't intentional, like what I said wasn't intentionally trying to grieve, I wasn't trying to grieve the Holy Spirit. but knowing that us as Christians and us as human beings

can grieve the Holy Spirit should be one of the saddest realizations that we need to weigh with ourselves because every action and every word and everything that we do can either honor the Lord or it can grieve him

and what I said in a moment of frustration when I was lying awake and thinking in my head what I said grieved the Holy Spirit like that that was super sad and and it really it really um it marked me in such a way that it made me want to be cautious on how I speak and how I act and how I and how I am what I say when I say it um because I think nowadays we're so careless just to say and do whatever we want in the moment and then we just let things go um but I want to share that because it really convicted me not that I was trying to do that, I would never want to purposefully try to grieve the Holy Spirit, but that happened and I was really sad. I cried for like an hour. But with that being said, this is a call to us as believers to honor the Lord with our lips and our actions.

And one way that we can really effectively do that is if we're cautious on what we consume, what media we consume, what music we consume, what books we read, who we surround ourselves with. because if we're not consuming heavenly things, then it's going to be 10 times easier to act on and say things and do things that are not of the Lord that can grieve the Holy Spirit. And so I just wanted to say that to encourage you guys and kind of give you guys a little inside access on my life of, hey, I'm not perfect. But let's jump right into this episode on idolatry.

What is idolatry? Idolatry is letting something matter more than what matters most. And at the end of the day, Jesus Christ is what matters most. Now, back in the Old Testament and back in the Bible times, they would call it, you would have people that were building altars, building false gods, and sacrificing to them and bowing to them and worshiping to them and offering offerings to them. Okay, these false gods. And even in today's culture, I mean, you don't really see that much.

I mean, I know Josh and I went into a donut shop one time, and I saw an altar literally behind the cash register. And even in Hispanic culture on Al Dio de los Moritos, they actually build these altars for their ancestors, and they put food on them, and they feed their ghost and all this stuff. And you have these false gods that are still going around, like in Buddhism and Hinduism, they worship these false gods and all these things. So yes, that stuff is still happens today. But in America, when we think of idol worship, we think of that and we say, oh, that doesn't go on in America. But idol worship in America isn't necessarily us building an altar to something. Idol worship is us glued to our phones.

Idol worship is when when I feel sad, I run to Netflix and food instead of the Lord. That's idol worship. idol worship is letting something matter more than what matters most, and idol worship is allowing something to try to fill the hole in our heart than Jesus. Because if we can look to the cross and say, Jesus has finished everything, and although my feelings are good servants,

they're not good masters, and I'm not going to let my feelings of, oh, I feel sad, or, oh, God hasn't showed up for me immediately, so I need to go to this other thing. I'm not going to let my feelings dictate what I bow to. Because when I became a believer, I surrendered my heart to Jesus,

and I said, Jesus, I'm bowing to you. My knees and my heart is yours, and I've got open hands and an open heart for you and nothing else. But it's so easy to open our heart and bow our knees to other things when things aren't going our way. We made a friend the other day. He's a homeless man. If you guys watch the main channel, you might have seen him. His name is Security Shea. All right. And Security Shea has a buddy named Patrick. And I'm talking to Patrick last night. And Patrick was telling me about how he was sorry that he had done some drugs in front of me the first time. man, he's like, oh, I don't ever want to do drugs in front of people, blah, blah, blah. And so I just said,

Patrick, well, why do you do drugs? You know, everyone has a reason and why do you do drugs? And he said, to be honest, man, it makes the pain go away. It's the way he said. He said, to be honest, makes the pain go away. And I love the feeling I get when I get it. And I go, man, okay. And in my head, I'm thinking, Patrick is running to the substances. Maybe not necessarily because he wants to, but because he knows it'll take the pain away. And when we talk to Patrick, he knows stuff about Jesus. His grandfather used to be a pastor before he passed away and all this other stuff. But just because you know of Jesus doesn't mean you know him.

And since Patrick doesn't necessarily know Jesus, it's easy for Patrick to bow down to other things than Jesus. But if Patrick could just learn and understand it as we've been meeting them and he's slowly starting to understand that Jesus can be his source of freedom. Jesus can be his source of joy because we know anything in this world finite, whether it's an idol, your phone, food, Netflix, substances, alcohol, whatever. It may feel good in the moment. It may give you joy in the moment, but the second that feeling goes away, what do you have to do? You have to run back to something else to get that feeling again. Whereas Jesus always makes your cup overflow. And 1. Peter 2 actually says, as we come to him. And 1 Peter 2 is as we come to him. And 1st Peter 2 is as we come to him. And so as we come to him is implying that we need to daily come to Jesus as our daily

bread. And so I would argue if you're a Christian that says, oh man, you know, I really love Jesus, but I find myself idolized in my phone sometimes or idolize in my friendships or idolize in my relationship. I would argue to you to reflect on what's your daily bread. Are you running to your daily bread? Are you running to Jesus as your daily sustenance? Because if he's our daily bread and we don't fill ourselves with Jesus and we're going to feed ourselves with something else like Netflix, our phone, relationships, friendships, whatever it is. But we have to be willing to surrender to Jesus, even if we don't get what we want immediately, because sometimes what we want is just wants and not needs.

If we ask God to show up, God's timing is perfect. And if he doesn't show up when we want him to show up, we have to understand that when he shows up, it was the perfect time. We have to be willing to understand that. When it comes to surrendering to Jesus, a lot of his, it's humility, humbling ourselves and understanding, okay, God's timing is perfect. If God allows this thing to happen, it's in his will. If God doesn't allow it to happen, it's in his will. We just want to be aligned with the Father and his heart and what he wants. Now I'm going to point us to

two stories of idol worship in the Bible. Okay, I want to point us to Exodus 32. If you don't know around the Exodus late 20s and early chapter 30s, Moses goes on the mountain to meet with God to get the Ten Commandments. And when Moses gets sent up, the people are hype. They're ready for God to come back down and then Moses to come back down with a message from God. But they get a little antsy in chapter 32. Okay. And so they go to Aaron and they say, Aaron, you know, Moses has been gone too long. We want to worship something.

So you need to build us a false God that can go before us since Moses is taken too long. And so Moses is up on the mountain. The people of Israel take all their gold jewelry that God allowed them to loot from Egypt. You know when they were slaves in Egypt and Moses came and they. and he set free the Israelites. When he sets the Israelites free from Egypt, God allows the Israelites to loot the Egyptians and they get all this nice gold jewelry.

The gold jewelry that God allowed the Israelites to take from Egypt, they now give to Aaron to build a false God with. So they give Aaron all this gold jewelry that God allowed them to have. They give it to Aaron and say, build us a false God. So Aaron builds them of a golden calf,

and when Moses comes down, he sees the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. Now there's two important things. to recognize here number one a golden calf often symbolizes a god of fertility which means a whole lot of people are going to be doing a whole lot of nasty stuff a whole lot of nasty sexual stuff is what that means but the second thing it means is that the israelites lost side of the goodness of god and took a blessing from god and perverted it and turned it into something worldly they took what god gave them and turned it into something fleshly for them they took a gift from god the gold jewelry that god

didn't have to give them that but he said listen i'm setting you free go take some of this gold jewelry he allowed them to loot it and they take it and they pervert it and they build a false god with it do you know why that happens sometimes there's two reasons why i brought it up number one they lost sight of the cross whenever us as human beings fall to idol worship we fill the hole in our heart with our screen time we feel the hole in our heart with Netflix we feel the hole in our heart with drugs and substances we do that because we lose sight of the cross and the goodness of god because our eyes are now inverted on herself and not pointed to Jesus. And if you look at Genesis 3, the whole reason why Adam and Eve fell is because

our eyes weren't on Jesus anymore. And so it's easy for us as human beings to fall to idol worship and worship other things than Jesus when our eyes are more focused on ourself and how our needs need to be met and how my feelings need to be quenched than allowing ourselves to worship God and allowing God to fill that and sustain our needs when our needs are actually needs and when our needs aren't actually wants. And so that was right there in Exodus 32. These Israelites get antsy and they say, hey, Moses has taken a long time. You should just build us a false God right now. And it's crazy because Aaron doesn't. Aaron's Moses's right-hand man. And he builds a false God for him. Now, if you

fast forward a little bit and the prophet books later in the Old Testament, you got a book called Daniel. And in this book, you have a king called King Nebuchadnezzar. King Nebuchadnezzar. King Nebuchadnezzar is an power and he has built a golden image and he sets it up high in the city and he tells the people he says whenever this horn gets blown you guys are going to bow down and worship this golden image and everyone does it except three dudes shadrach meshach and abendigo these three absolute gangsters of the faith they're like i'm not going to bow down to any any idols i worship god and so nebuchadnezzar gets frustrated So he heats up this massive furnace seven times hotter than normal. And they bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abindigo.

And he orders them to be thrown and burned, burned up in this fiery furnace. Now this furnace is so hot that when they throw Shadrach, Shadrach, Mishak, and Abindigo, the men that threw them in there actually got burned up and died. But Shadrach, Mishak, and Abindigo fall in the furnace, and they stand up in the furnace. And they're actually not getting burned alive. and Nebuchadnezzar's looking in the furnace kind of freaking out going, all right, there's three dudes, I just threw in the furnace, they're not in there, what's going on?

And then he looks in there and he says, wait, there's not three dudes in there. There's four dudes in the furnace. Who's the fourth guy? They say the fourth guy, sorry guys, my phone's going off. So Nebuchadnezzar, he throws these guys in a furnace because they're not worshipping his false God, his golden image. And then when he looks in the furnace, he doesn't see three dudes. He sees four dudes and they're alive.

You got Shadrach Meshak Abindigo and who's the fourth guy in the furnace. Well, as believers, we know the fourth dude in the furnace is the spirit of the Lord. And that language, the spirit of the Lord is referenced to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is standing in the fire and in the tribulation with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abindigo when they stand up for what is true and what is right. And we can look at the story of Shadrach, Mishak and Abindigo, standing up for their faith, getting thrown into tribulation and tribulation not overtaking them because they have Jesus with them. goes to show us that in today's day and age

in America and in this world, people want you to bow to their government, bow to their rules, bow to society, bow to the drugs, bow to the alcohol, bow to the people in power, bow to the people who have money. And we've got to say, no, I'm not going to bow to these people

that got these worldly perspectives. I'm going to bow to Jesus Christ, and I'm going to let Jesus Christ dictate my life because when you allow Jesus Christ to be the center point of your life, no matter what tribulation you go through, no matter what laws they pass, no matter what crazy world government may come

about no matter what crazy things may happen in the world when you've got jesus christ and tribulation comes in your way jesus christ is going to deliver you through that fire jesus christ is going to be with you in the storm in the fire and with you through it that's the promise of jesus christ and so yes shadrach mishak and abendigo got thrown in the fire but because of their faithfulness and obedience to jesus god sustains them doesn't allow them to die and they actually don't feel any effects of the fire and not only are they in the fire they're not in the fire alone. They're in it with Jesus Christ. It's powerful. It's powerful. And so in today's day and age, you're right. Joe Biden's not going to make you worship a golden calf, but he may make you worship him in the government. And I'm not just saying that about Joe Biden. I'm saying that about any president.

Any president could come into power and try to get you to worship them. Any human being can come into power and try to get you to worship them. You know, people are going to try to get you to worship the government. People are going to try to get you to worship your phone. You don't think you worship your phone? Turn on your screen time for a week and see how much screen time you use. And we'll see really if a phone's an idol in your life. Food might be an idol in your life. Why might food be an idol in your life? You might say, Bryce, I only eat three meals a day and snacks turn out the day.

Oh, well, do you only eat snacks when you're sad? Because if you're sad and you're only eating snacks, and that means you're trying to fill the hole in your heart with snacks and not with Jesus. It's real. So many people are allowing idols to sneak into their life and they think, oh, man, I'm not worshiping a golden calf. No, you're not worshiping a golden calf, but you're worshiping the food plate. You're worshiping the $13 all you can eat buffet.

You're worshiping your phone. You're worshiping everything else but Jesus. And so this is a call, my friends. Guys, if you know that there's idols in your life, we're going to pray and we're going to rebuke those idols and we're going to ask for a fresh hunger for nothing but Jesus. God, I thank you for everyone watching and listening to this. Jesus, I pray that you will open everyone's eyes to the idols in their life, God. will you just allow them to will you show them the idols that are in their life jesus will you give them perspective to see what they're idolizing over you and allow them to rebuke it and set it aside and let you become the center point of their life

god give them a fresh hunger for you jesus we love them it's in your name we pray amen guys guys guys thank you so much for watching and listen to this podcast if you like it subscribe to the youtube channel follow us on spotify and follow our instagram at price crawfer podcast love you guys ways to sow into our ministry one time and monthly in description Go get your merch, Jesusendostrid.com. See you guys next time.