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THE CHURCH | Week 1 | Sermon · Rewind

Rock Point Church

46 min

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Oct 2, 2023 · 4 min read · 46 min listen

The big idea

How you define God isn't just an intellectual exercise — it actually defines who you become, so it matters enormously whether the God you believe in is the God actually revealed in Scripture.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 6People instinctively filter the supernatural through whatever they already believe about God.
Point 2 of 6We still worship the gifted instead of the Gift-Giver.

Point 3 of 6God has left evidence of Himself in creation, but a made-up mind won't be moved by it.
Point 4 of 6Confirmation bias can turn worship into violence when a preconceived notion of God is challenged.
Point 5 of 6It's easy to have the wrong image of God, even while using Jesus' name.
Point 6 of 6Only Jesus, as revealed in Scripture, is the exact image of God.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Acts 14
Acts 14:8
Acts 14:12
Acts 14:13
Acts 14:14
Acts 14:16

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Oct 2, 2023 · 46 min watch · 2 min read

THE CHURCH | Week 1 | Sermon

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Acts 14
Acts 14:8
Acts 14:12
Acts 14:13
Acts 14:14
Acts 14:16

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

How you define God isn't just an intellectual exercise — it actually defines who you become, so it matters enormously whether the God you believe in is the God actually revealed in Scripture.

God wants to be known, and He has made Himself knowable through Jesus and revealed exactly who He is in Scripture. The danger is that all of us arrive at our own preconceived picture of God, shaped by upbringing, culture, and feelings, and we resist letting that picture be corrected — but only the Jesus of the Bible, not the one we've imagined, can truly be known.

Key points

1
1People instinctively filter the supernatural through whatever they already believe about God.
Pastor Daniel walks through Acts 14:8-12 where Paul heals a man crippled from birth in Lystra, a thoroughly pagan city. Because of an old legend that the gods Zeus and Hermes once walked among them in human form, the crowd immediately concludes Barnabas is Zeus and Paul is Hermes rather than reconsidering who God actually is.
2
2We still worship the gifted instead of the Gift-Giver.
When the priests prepare to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas as gods, the apostles tear their clothes in protest, insisting they are merely human. Pastor Daniel connects this to our own culture's obsession with celebrities like Taylor Swift, arguing we unintentionally elevate gifted people instead of worshiping the God who gave the gift.
3
3God has left evidence of Himself in creation, but a made-up mind won't be moved by it.
Unable to reference the Old Testament with a pagan audience, Paul and Barnabas point to rain, crops, and the order of creation as evidence of God's goodness. Pastor Daniel describes the finely tuned orbit of the earth around the sun as further proof, but notes the crowd still would not be persuaded — they had already decided who Paul and Barnabas were.
4
4Confirmation bias can turn worship into violence when a preconceived notion of God is challenged.
Jews from Antioch and Iconium travel hundreds of miles to Lystra, turn the crowd against Paul, and have him stoned and dragged out for dead. Pastor Daniel points out this wasn't only the pagans' problem — devoted followers of God did the same thing, showing that anyone can defend a wrong idea of God rather than wrestle with the truth.
5
5It's easy to have the wrong image of God, even while using Jesus' name.
Using the golden inflatable cow prop as an illustration of the Old Testament golden calf, Pastor Daniel warns that we form mental idols of God shaped by upbringing, culture, and feelings, then attach Jesus' name to that image without checking if it's accurate. He cites Leviticus 19:4 and Isaiah 66:1-2 to show God's vastness resists being reduced to our understanding, and Romans 1 to show that inventing a God of our own liking darkens and confuses the mind.
6
6Only Jesus, as revealed in Scripture, is the exact image of God.
Drawing on Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, John 1, and 2 Corinthians 4, Pastor Daniel shows that Jesus makes the unseeable God seeable and touchable, but only the Jesus described in the Bible — not the one shaped by culture, upbringing, or feelings — is trustworthy. He stresses Scripture is complete and needs no new revelation, and that Satan blinds minds specifically to this exact image of Christ.

how we define God, that thing, it's not just an intellectual conversation because how we define God, it really defines us

A story from life

Preacher's story about shattering a glass cup while arguing with his wife and sealing the wound with Gorilla Glue

Application

Pastor Daniel's charge is to let go of whatever picture of God we've built and let Scripture reveal who He actually is.

Examine how you arrived at your image of God
Ask honestly how upbringing, culture, social media, and what you've heard secondhand have shaped what you believe about God, and whether it's actually accurate.
Stop worshiping the gifted instead of the Gift-Giver
Notice where celebrities, influencers, or gifted people have quietly become objects of worship in your life, and redirect that attention to the God who gave them their gifts.
Test your picture of Jesus against Scripture, not feelings
Hold every idea about who Jesus is up against what the Bible actually says, especially claims based on how you feel or hope God to be, rather than accepting it just because it uses His name.
Get into community to wrestle through these questions
Find people to process with as you examine where your definition of God may be off, and have the courage to let it change.
Spend time in the word and in prayer this week
Ask God directly to reveal Himself as He truly is, starting from as close to a blank slate as you can, trusting that if you seek Him you will find Him.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“if you brought a Bible, open them up to acts chapter 14 is where we're gonna be today. We've got a lot to cover. So you turn there, I'll pray for us and we'll get jumped in”
From the transcript
“Acts chapter 14, here's how it starts in verse eight. It says, Meanwhile, they were at Lystra. Paul and Barnabas came upon a man with crippled feet”
From the transcript
“they decided that Barnabas was the Greek god Zeus and that Paul was Hermes since he was the chief speaker. They go, okay, Barnabas, the old guy with the gray beard”
From the transcript
“Look at the next verse. It says in verse 13, now the Temple Of Zeus was located just outside the town. So the priests of the temple and the crowd brought bowls and wreaths of flowers”
From the transcript
“Verse 14, but when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard what was being what was happening, they tore their clothing in dismay and they ran out among the people shouting, friends, why are you doing this”
From the transcript
“Continues in verse 16, he says, in the past, he permitted all the nations to go their own ways, but he never left them without evidence of himself and his goodness”
From the transcript
“doesn't matter what they say. It says in verse 18, But even with these words, Paul and Barnabas could scarcely restrain the people from sacrificing to them”
From the transcript
“It says, then some Jews, verse 19, arrived from Antioch in Iconium and they won the crowds to their side. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the town thinking that he was dead”
From the transcript
“Look at Leviticus chapter 19. It says, Don't put your trust in idols or make metal images of God for yourself. I am the Lord your God”
From the transcript
“You wanna know what the scriptures say about who God is? Look at Isaiah chapter 66. It says, this is what the Lord says. Heaven is my throne. The earth is my footstool”
From the transcript
“Look at how it continues in verse two. My hands have made both heaven and earth and they and everything in them are mine. Do not try to just understand God through your limited experiences”
From the transcript
“Only Jesus is the image of God. Look at what Paul says in Colossians chapter one. He says, The Christ, he is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything”
From the transcript
“He was created in supreme over all creation. Look at verse 19. He says, for God in all of his fullness was pleased to live in Christ. If you wanna know who God is, get to know Jesus”
From the transcript
“Here's what Hebrews chapter one says about Jesus. It says, Long ago, God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days that we live, friends, he has spoken to us through his son”
From the transcript
“Look what Paul says in second Corinthians chapter four. This is where this gets really interesting. It says that Satan, who is the God of this world, he's blinded the minds of those who don't believe”
From the transcript
“This is why Jesus in Matthew chapter eight told his disciples, you're either with me and fighting for me or you're against me. There is no neutral ground where we go, I like a little bit of this Jesus”
From the transcript
“here's what it says in John one. Last couple of verses, I'll get you out of here. It says, in the beginning, the word already existed. The word was with God and the word was God”
From the transcript
“Here's what Hebrews four says will happen to you and I as we sit with this word of God and allow it to transform us. It says the word of God, it is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two edged sword”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

There is something almost uncomfortably familiar about the crowd at Lystra. A man who has never walked in his life suddenly stands and leaps — and the first thing the people do is reach for the nearest category they already have. Zeus. Hermes. Their existing picture of the divine swallows the miracle whole before the truth ever has a chance to land. It would be easy to read this and feel a quiet superiority, as if we would obviously have responded differently. But Pastor Daniel's point is that we do the same thing every day. We all carry a mental image of God assembled over years — from a parent's tone of voice when they talked about faith, from the loudest personality on our social media feed, from a wound that never quite healed, from a hundred cultural signals we absorbed without realizing it. When something happens that doesn't fit that image, we bend the miracle to match our picture rather than letting the miracle challenge the picture. The people of Lystra were not uniquely stubborn or foolish. They were human. And so are we. That's what makes this passage worth sitting with. The question isn't whether we have a preconceived image of God — we all do. The question is whether we are willing to notice it.

For reflection

What is one picture of God you grew up with that you have never seriously examined — and where did it actually come from?

Pray

Pray for honest self-awareness about the images of God you carry and where they were formed.

Day 2

When Paul and Barnabas hear the crowd preparing to worship them, they don't manage the moment carefully or accept the honor with a modest deflection. They tear their clothes — a visceral, urgent gesture of grief — and run into the crowd. The forcefulness matters. They understood that a wrong image of God, even one offered in excitement and gratitude, was not a small thing to be gently corrected later. It needed to be interrupted now. And yet notice what they point the people toward: not an argument, not a rebuke, but evidence the crowd already had access to. Rain. Harvests. Food. Seasons. Paul tells the crowd that the living God has never left Himself without a witness — that creation itself has been quietly testifying to His character all along. There is both a warning and an encouragement in that. The warning is that sincerely misidentifying who God is carries real weight. The encouragement is that God has not hidden Himself. He has been speaking through the world He made, patiently, consistently, before any of us ever opened a Bible. Creation is not the whole picture — but it is a real one. The God you are being invited to know is not a stranger to your ordinary life. He has already been present in it.

For reflection

Where in your everyday life — nature, relationships, ordinary moments — have you sensed something pointing you toward God, even before you had words for it?

Pray

Pray for eyes to see the ways God has already been making Himself known in the world around you.

Day 3

It can feel strange to land on a single verse in Leviticus in the middle of a New Testament story, but Pastor Daniel brought it here deliberately. God's command to Israel — don't turn to idols, don't make gods of cast metal — is not just a rule about ancient statues. It is a statement about the nature of God Himself. No finite thing, no object, no image assembled by human hands or human imagination can fully contain who He is. The command exists not because God is easily offended but because reducing Him to something manageable always ends up harming the people doing the reducing. When we press God into a shape we're comfortable with — a God who confirms our politics, a God who would never ask anything hard of us, a God whose personality conveniently resembles our own — we are not worshiping God. We are worshiping a projection. And that projection cannot actually help us, because it isn't real. Idols, whether ancient or modern, always disappoint eventually, because they were built to flatter rather than to tell the truth. The living God refuses to be flattered into a smaller version of Himself. That refusal is, in the end, a mercy — because the God who is bigger than our categories is also bigger than our problems.

For reflection

In what ways might you have quietly reshaped your idea of God to make Him more comfortable or more convenient — and what might that be costing you?

Pray

Pray for the humility to release a picture of God that feels comfortable but may not be true.

Day 4

If Leviticus tells us what God cannot be reduced to, Colossians tells us what God chose to reveal Himself as. Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. That phrase is not poetic decoration — it is a precise theological claim. The God who cannot be contained in stone or metal or imagination took on flesh and walked around in history, and everything we need to know about the character of God is on display in Him. Paul doesn't stop there. He goes on: all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Jesus. Not a partial representation. Not a curated highlight reel. The fullness. This is both astonishing and deeply practical. It means that when you want to know what God thinks about people who are suffering, you look at Jesus touching the leper. When you want to know what God thinks about religious pride, you listen to Jesus in the temple courts. When you want to know whether God can absorb grief, you watch Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. The invisible becomes seeable. The unknowable becomes knowable. And the place where Jesus is most clearly and reliably revealed is not a podcast or a personality — it is the Scriptures that bear witness to Him. This is why Bible literacy is not optional. It is where you meet the actual Jesus.

For reflection

Which aspect of Jesus's character — as you have encountered it in Scripture — most challenges or surprises the picture of God you grew up with?

Pray

Pray for a growing hunger to know Jesus as He is actually revealed in Scripture, not as culture has presented Him.

Day 5

Pastor Daniel didn't soften this part of the sermon, and it would be a disservice to soften it here. Paul writes that the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ. The struggle to see God clearly is not just an intellectual problem or a cultural one — it is a spiritual battle. That is not a comfortable idea, but it is an honest one. And it has a practical implication: if you have found it strangely hard to read your Bible consistently, if your image of God keeps drifting back toward something smaller or safer no matter how many times you correct it, you are not simply undisciplined. You are in a real conflict. That context changes how we approach the work. It means we don't grit our teeth and try harder alone. We ask for help — from God, who is more than able to open what the enemy wants to keep closed, and from the people around us who are wrestling with the same questions. Community is not a supplement to the spiritual life. It is part of the armor. Finding people to open the Word with, to be honest with about where you're stuck, is not a sign of weakness. It is wisdom.

For reflection

What has most consistently pulled your attention away from getting to know God through Scripture — and is it possible that pull is more than just busyness?

Pray

Pray for spiritual clarity and for people in your life who will pursue the real Jesus alongside you.

Day 6

Pastor Daniel landed here as his final anchor, and it's worth staying with it a full day. The Word of God is alive and active — sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing soul and spirit, judging the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This is not a flattering description of Bible reading. It doesn't promise that Scripture will make you feel warm and affirmed. It promises that Scripture will get inside you and tell the truth about what it finds there. That is exactly why Bible literacy is at an all-time low, as Pastor Daniel observed. Not because people are too busy, and not because the Bible is too confusing. It's because the Word costs something. It exposes the places where our picture of God has quietly been shaped by comfort or convenience, and it does not allow us to look away. But here is the other side of that: a word that is alive and active is a word that is actually doing something. You are not sitting with a document. You are sitting with a living God who is, through His Word, doing the patient work of replacing a false image with a true one. That process is uncomfortable. It is also the most important thing that can happen to a person. Open the Bible. Sit with it. Let it do what it does.

For reflection

Is there a part of Scripture you have been avoiding because you sense it might challenge something you currently believe about God or about yourself?

Pray

Pray for courage to open the Word and stay with it even when it cuts close.

Day 7

Coming back to the whole passage at the end of the week is worth doing slowly. A man walks for the first time. A crowd reaches immediately for their existing gods. Two missionaries tear their clothes in grief and point urgently toward the living God. Then — just a few verses later — that same crowd is persuaded by outside voices and stones Paul, dragging him outside the city and leaving him for dead. It is a jarring ending. It reminds us that the stakes of how we define God are not abstract. The image of God we hold shapes the decisions we make, the communities we trust, the voices we listen to, and ultimately the direction of our lives. This week you have been invited to examine that image honestly — to notice where family, culture, emotion, or hearsay quietly shaped it, and to bring it to Scripture and to Jesus, who is the only reliable source of the real thing. That is not a one-week project. It is a lifelong one. But it begins with a willingness to say: my picture might be wrong, and I want to know You as You actually are. That posture — humble, hungry, open to correction — is not weakness. According to Isaiah 66:2, it is exactly the kind of heart God looks toward.

For reflection

Looking back at this week, what is one specific thing you want to do differently — with your time, your habits, or your community — to pursue the real Jesus rather than a constructed one?

Pray

Pray for the ongoing humility and courage to keep letting Scripture correct your image of God, and for the community to do that work alongside.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Think about the first word that comes to mind when someone says the word 'God.' This message explores where those instincts come from — and whether they're actually reliable.

Discussion questions

1
In Acts 14:8-12, the people of Lystra witness a genuine miracle and immediately interpret it through the lens of Zeus and Hermes. What does that tell us about how people tend to process something that doesn't fit their existing framework?
2
Pastor Daniel argued that it's possible to attach the name of Jesus to a self-made image of God — one quietly assembled from family background, culture, and emotion — without that image actually matching who Jesus is in Scripture. What are some of the sources that tend to shape a person's picture of God today?
3
Colossians 1:15-19 describes Jesus as 'the visible image of the invisible God.' What does it mean for us — practically — that Jesus is the place where the unseeable becomes seeable?
4
In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says that Satan actively blinds minds to keep people from seeing the glory of Jesus Christ. How does framing the struggle to know God accurately as a spiritual battle — rather than just an intellectual one — change the way we might approach that struggle?
5
Hebrews 4:12 describes the Word of God as alive and powerful, able to expose our innermost thoughts. Pastor Daniel pointed to low Bible literacy as a real obstacle to letting Scripture correct our picture of God. What do we lose when we let other voices — however well-intentioned — do our Bible reading for us?
6
Pastor Daniel called the group to find community to wrestle through these big questions together. What might it look like for a group like this one to help each other hold their image of God up against Scripture — honestly and with humility — over time?

Pray together

Asking God for the humility to release the images of Him we have built, and the courage to open Scripture and let Jesus reveal Himself as He truly is

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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THE CHURCH

Week 1 · 5 messages

Where these passages are preached

Acts 14 Leviticus 19 Isaiah 66 Colossians 1

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