DECONSTRUCTING THE WRONG GOD | Pastor Matthew Johnson

"When you have the truth and you have genuine love, then that love compels you to share that truth." — Pastor Matthew Johnson

Pastor Matthew Johnson opened the final message of a seven-part series on deconstruction and reconstruction by explaining something personal. The week before, a guest pastor had noted that one of the things he respected about Pastor Matthew was his willingness to address difficult topics, even when they are controversial or unpopular. Pastor Matthew took a moment to reflect on why that is true of him.

He said it is not primarily about courage. It comes down to two things. He genuinely believes he has access to truth through God's word, and he has genuine love for the people he serves. Those two things together are what compel him to speak even when a message is hard to deliver.

That foundation set the tone for everything that followed. Pastor Matthew was clear that the final part of this series would require directness. He had been intentional throughout the series to speak with compassion, knowing that people walking through a season of questioning their faith are in a vulnerable and often disorienting place. But in this closing message, love required honesty.

Pastor Matthew has spent years as a student of culture. Through social media, books, videos, personal conversations, and stories from people who think and believe differently than he does, he has observed a consistent pattern among those who step back from their faith.

He narrowed it down to three reasons. People deconstruct because God did something unexpected, something confusing, or something undesirable. They had a picture in their mind of what life with God was supposed to look like, and reality did not match it. Maybe a health crisis came. Maybe a relationship fell apart. Maybe they prayed for something specific and never received it. Maybe the brokenness of the world simply felt incompatible with a loving God.

Pastor Matthew was direct. If someone is pulling back from God because he did the unexpected, the confusing, or the undesirable, then what they are really saying is they want a God who does what they expect, what they understand, and what they desire. And Pastor Matthew named that plainly. That is not a relationship with God. That is wanting a genie.
He was careful to say he was not being snarky. He was not attacking anyone. He was being honest about what that posture actually communicates, because dishonest or incomplete perspectives, in his experience, lead to more confusion rather than less.

Pastor Matthew made a point that anchored the entire message. He said the culture has been deconstructing the wrong God. What people have been pulling away from is the true creator God. But what actually needs to be deconstructed is the idolatry of self.

The culture, he explained, has trained people to believe they can create their own truth, define their own morality, and shape their own reality. In that framework, the self becomes God. And he said plainly that we make a bad version of God.

With that foundation in place, Pastor Matthew offered four suggestions for anyone who wants to experience real life, a healthy relationship with God, and a faith that is genuinely strong.

The first suggestion was the most foundational. You are not God. Pastor Matthew was not saying this to be condescending. He was pointing to something that has to be genuinely settled in a person's heart before anything else can follow.

He walked through the scale of creation to make the point. The sun alone produces enough power every second to power the entire earth for 634,000 years. And the known universe contains an estimated 200 billion to two trillion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. The power required to create all of that is beyond anything a human mind can fully take in.

Beyond power, God has wisdom and knowledge beyond comprehension. Pastor Matthew described the staggering complexity of conditions required for life to exist at all, from the atmosphere to the water cycle to the stability of the moon to the way soil organisms recycle nutrients. Everywhere you look in creation, systems are connected to other systems, each serving a purpose beyond itself.

And if God designed creation with that level of purpose, Pastor Matthew asked, why would anyone assume he has no purpose when he allows something that does not make sense to us?

The first suggestion leads naturally into the second. God is not just powerful and wise. He proved who he is.

Two thousand years ago, God became man in the person of Jesus. Pastor Matthew pointed to John 1:3, where the apostle John wrote that all things were made through Jesus and without him nothing was made that has been made.

Jesus demonstrated his identity in ways no other person in history has. He healed bodies that medicine could not touch. He gave sight to the blind, speech to the mute, and hearing to the deaf. He raised the dead. He controlled weather, walked on water, and multiplied food. Demonic forces obeyed him without resistance. The laws of physics did not constrain him.

And this same Jesus, the creator God in human form, said he did not come to be served or to condemn. He came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. He came to die on the cross for the sins of people who were broken and rebellious so that anyone who puts their faith in him could be reconciled to God.

Pastor Matthew brought this back to the practical. When you surrender your life to Jesus, you are surrendering to a God of power, wisdom, purpose, and love that are all beyond your comprehension. He is going to do things that are unexpected. He is going to do things that are confusing. He is going to allow things that go against your desires. But every single thing he does is being done by a God who loves you more than you can fully understand.

Pastor Matthew was careful to define what biblical faith actually means, because he said it is often misunderstood. Faith in the biblical sense is not blind trust. It is not closing your eyes and walking forward without forming an opinion. It is something much more grounded than that.

He used a scene from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to illustrate it. Near the end of the film, Indiana Jones faces a massive chasm with no visible bridge. His father is dying and the only hope is to reach the other side. The clue in his book says it is a step of faith. So he closes the book, lifts one leg, and steps forward into what looks like empty air. The bridge catches him because it was there all along, designed to blend perfectly into the wall. He just could not see it. After that first step, his eyes adjust and he walks the rest of the way with confidence.

Pastor Matthew said that first step carries the most risk. But after it, faith becomes an educated decision built on experience with a faithful God.

He then walked through Hebrews 11:1 word by word. The writer of Hebrews defines faith as the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. The word translated as assurance or substance in the Greek literally means foundation. Faith is the foundation of a life built on real experiences with God, on moments where he showed up, on steps taken in obedience where he proved faithful. Hope in this context is not a wish. It is a confident expectation grounded in God's promises and in what he has already done.

Pastor Matthew illustrated the conviction aspect with something close to home. After 25 years of marriage and eight years of dating before that, he said no one in the room could convince him that his wife does not love him. He cannot prove it in a way that satisfies a skeptic, but the accumulated experience of their life together has become proof inside his own heart. That, he said, is what biblical faith looks like in a relationship with God.

The fourth and final suggestion was the most urgent. Pastor Matthew said the relationship will be attacked. Jesus promised it. Paul confirmed it. The enemy has military strategies set up against every believer's faith, and those strategies are designed to exploit the moments when God does the unexpected, the confusing, or the undesirable.

To make this concrete, Pastor Matthew told Paul's story. Paul was the best of the best in the Jewish religious world, a Pharisee of Pharisees, disciplined and trained at the highest level. Then he had a direct encounter with the risen Jesus, received a specific calling, and was given special revelation about what was ahead. By any reasonable expectation, the next chapter of his life should have looked like blessing and fruitfulness.

Instead, Paul was imprisoned repeatedly, beaten five times with 39 lashes each time, beaten with rods three times, stoned once, shipwrecked three times, and spent a full night and day adrift at sea. He faced danger in cities, in the wilderness, on the water, and from people who should have been on his side. He went without food, without water, and without sleep. And on top of all of that, he carried a daily weight of concern for the churches he loved.

Pastor Matthew said plainly that if anyone ever had a reason to deconstruct, it was Paul. And yet Paul wrote from that exact experience in Philippians 4:11 that he had learned to be content in every circumstance, whether in abundance or in need. He explained how in the verse that follows, one of the most misused verses in the Bible. When Paul wrote that he could do all things through Christ who strengthens him, he was not talking about achieving something he wanted. He was talking about accepting something he did not get and remaining at peace because of his relationship with the living God.

Pastor Matthew then turned to 2 Corinthians 10, the other passage he had asked the congregation to turn to at the start of the message. Paul wrote there that the weapons of spiritual warfare are not physical but have divine power to destroy strongholds. Paul's strategy was to take every thought captive and make it subject to what he knew was true. When life went in an unexpected direction and the message came to his mind that God had failed him or was not real, Paul took that thought and held it up against the word of God and against his own history with a faithful God. He called the lie what it was and destroyed it before it could take root.

Pastor Matthew explained the difference between a foothold and a stronghold using two illustrations. As a kid wrestling with his older brothers, he knew that getting his foot in the door before it closed was the key to pushing all the way in. At D-Day, the allies knew that taking the beach at Normandy would create a foothold that would eventually become a stronghold against the Nazis from the west. Paul's point, and Pastor Matthew's, is that the way to keep a stronghold from forming is to destroy it when it is still a foothold. Address the thought when it first arrives. Do not let it settle.

Pastor Matthew closed with a prayer that was honest and pastoral. He acknowledged before God that there are times when he is confusing, times when his people are frustrated and disappointed, times when things simply do not make sense. He asked God to help his church be reminded of his goodness, to feel his presence, and to have that deep assurance that God is good, that he is present, and that he is working everything out for a purpose.

The series on deconstruction and reconstruction ended not with easy answers but with a clear and grounded call. The creator God has more power, more wisdom, more purpose, and more love than any of us can fully comprehend. When you trust him and walk in faith, that trust becomes the evidence that secures your heart. You do not have to deconstruct what is good. You can deconstruct what is weak and false so that what remains is stronger than where you began.

The Tree Church exists to help people find and follow Jesus. If you are looking for a church in Lancaster, Ohio, or a church in Logan, Ohio, we would love to have you join us.

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