Apostates and Idolators

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If you'll turn with me please in your Bibles to the 13th chapter of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 13.
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Before we begin to look at this important text of Scripture, let us once again ask the Lord to bless our time together.
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Our Grace Heavenly Father, as we once again seek to handle the very Word of God, we ask that you would be with us, that you would guard us from distraction, that you would help us to focus our hearts and our minds.
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Lord, we all have things that are coming in this coming week that are pressing upon our minds, but help us during this time to lay those things aside and to look into your
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Word. Work with us now by your Spirit and your Word. Make us more like Jesus, we pray in Christ's name.
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Certainly, Deuteronomy chapter 13 is a text that I have presented to people for many, many years.
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As many of you know, certainly we are already involved in doing this work. When I first came to Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, even a few years before that, we had begun going out to the
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Easter pageant of the Mormon Church in Mesa, up to the General Conference of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, and were witnessing to Mormons regularly.
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And Deuteronomy chapter 13 is a well -known text in regards to, certainly, idolatry, but the first few verses especially, to the idea of one of the important tests of a prophet.
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Now we know, of course, that the most basic and simple test of a prophet is whether they prophesy falsely.
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If they prophesy falsely, then they are a false prophet. That's sort of basic and straightforward. But here in Deuteronomy 13, we are given another test that was very specifically relevant to the issue of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.
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Because Joseph Smith, it was pretty easy to demonstrate a few false prophecies on his part, but he didn't do a lot of that kind of prophetic thing in the sense of predicting things in the future.
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He did some, and you can turn to section 114 of the Doctrine and Covenants and demonstrate that Joseph Smith blew it there and a few things like that.
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But the primary issue with Joseph Smith was not standing around trying to argue certain historical facts about David Whitmer in the 114th section of the
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Doctrine and Covenants. It was the fact that Joseph Smith taught a completely different god. The god of Mormonism is totally unlike the god of Christianity.
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I can't think of a more polytheistic religion than Mormonism. And therefore, that was the real issue in regards to Joseph Smith.
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And hence, we looked at Deuteronomy chapter 13 a number of times with my Mormon friends.
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But in reality, this text just continues on with exactly the same theme we saw this morning, which shouldn't surprise us.
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We only remind ourselves once again that chapter and verse divisions are a modern innovation, that for the vast majority of the history of the biblical text, there were no divisions like that.
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And so when we think about what the emphasis was this morning in regards to the warning against idolatry, the warning against following after other gods, we will see that that same theme is continued on here in chapter 13.
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Let's take a look at what is said. If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying,
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Let us go after other gods, whom you have not known, and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.
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For Yahweh your God is testing you to find out if you love Yahweh your
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God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow Yahweh your God and fear him, and you shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, and cling to him.
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But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against Yahweh your
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God, who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery to seduce you from the way in which
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Yahweh your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. If your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, literally of your bosom, or your friend, who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying,
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Let us go and serve other gods, whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you, or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end.
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You shall not yield to him or listen to him, and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him, but you shall surely kill him.
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Your hand shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death, because he has sought to seduce you from Yahweh your
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God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.
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If you hear in one of your cities, which Yahweh your God has given you to live in, anyone saying that some worthless men have gone out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their cities, saying,
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Let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly.
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If it is true in the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it, and its cattle with the edge of the sword.
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Then you shall gather all its booty into the middle of its open square, and burn the city and all of its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to Yahweh your
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God, and it shall be a ruin forever, it shall never be rebuilt. Nothing from that which is put under the ban shall cling to your hand, in order that Yahweh may turn from his burning anger and show mercy on you, and have compassion on you, and make you increase, just as he has sworn to your fathers.
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If you will listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, keeping all his commandments which I am commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of Yahweh your
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God. So here we have, surely in making the chapter divisions, this is an appropriate chapter division.
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This is certainly one that is very compact, and it really speaks to us about what the nature of idolatry is to be, but more so it speaks to us of what the nature of commitment to the worship of the one true
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God was to look like in this context, and why idolatry and going after other gods was such a tremendously serious sin.
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So you'll notice that there are basically three sections. The first five verses is about this prophet or dreamer of dreams.
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But you know, it's interesting, even though, as I said, I have used this text many times, and I think appropriately with other people, there are other religions that this text would apply to as well,
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I think that this is relevant to an examination of Muhammad and his claims to be a prophet, because he leads us after a
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God other than the God who has revealed himself in the rest of the Bible, yet that's really not the focus, is it?
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The focus is not on that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. The focus is on the faithfulness of the people being tested by God.
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I mean, when you think about it, the prophet, the dreamer of dreams, gives you a sign or a wonder.
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A sign or a wonder. Not really sure what a wonder would necessarily be, some type of miraculous event, maybe some type of something that happens amongst the stars or something,
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I don't know. But it is coupled with the invitation to go after other gods, to go after other gods and to serve them, that term avad, to serve, is translated both as to serve and to worship.
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And so they are very intimately related concepts in the
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Hebrew language. Notice what it said, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, that dreamer of dreams, why?
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For Yahweh, your God, is testing you to find out if you love Yahweh, your
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God, with all your heart and with all your soul. Now, what does that mean? I mean, because what the guy said came true, isn't that,
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I mean, if one of the tests is you blow it, you're a false prophet, then by logic, if you get it right, then you must be a, no.
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That would require that that's the only criteria. But what
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God is saying is, that's not the only criteria. There's another criteria, and that criteria is of faithfulness to the one true
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God. And so if someone comes along, and even if they get it right, then that is a test from God.
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Now, what kind of theology must we believe to even begin to understand this text?
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God has to be sovereign over his creation, do these words even make any sense? Because if he was not, if he's just the
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God up there who's constantly responding to what's going on down here, hey, if it's all just a matter of the creature's free will and God's just sort of bouncing along trying to respond as best he can, then someone could get it right and that wouldn't be a test from God.
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But here it's very obvious what underlies the very language is that God is in control of all of this, and he has brought this dreamer of dreams, or this so -called prophet, as a test for the people to see if they will remain faithful to their
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God. Only way it makes any sense, I mean, any other theology would leave you scratching your head as to how it could be phrased in this way.
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But once you understand that God is sovereign over all things, well, this is a test that God is bringing against his people.
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Now, that also indicates something else. He's using this individual. This individual is a sinner.
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This individual is under the judgment of God, and he's using this individual, and evidently even to the point of, this guy might actually think he's a real prophet.
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I mean, he may really think he's hearing from God, it's just he doesn't know the true
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God. And I can guarantee you, I think there have been tens of thousands of people down through the ages who thought they were speaking for God, when in point of fact,
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God was simply using them. I mean, what other explanation do you have for all of the religious groups that have started out there from some, and yeah, some of them, yeah,
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Joseph Smith, 48 Wives, and all the rest of that stuff, yeah, we sort of know what he was about, and we can see his angle on things and what he was into, but there have been people that have started religious movements, who eschewed the things of the world.
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They weren't interested in money, and they weren't interested in women, they were primarily interested in having control over other people.
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I'm not saying they had great motivations, but it wasn't just the normal stuff, everyone's always trying to make a buck here or there, everywhere, no, there have been people that have done it for other reasons, and yet, they have been completely heretical, and completely false in what they were teaching, and it seems that what happens here is, well, that prophet, that dreamer of dreams, is executed.
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He has counseled rebellion against Yahweh, your God, and so even though God uses him, here's another example, remember some of the other real clear examples in scripture where God uses someone in this way, remember
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Joseph's brothers, remember Assyria in Isaiah chapter 10, God says,
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I use Assyria as the rod in my hand to discipline my people, well, here's another example, and if you have a problem with God justly using condemned sinners for his own purposes, then you've got a problem with the
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God of the Bible, and you're probably, like many people, trying to judge
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God on the basis of your own very limited experience, and your own creaturely standing, rather than recognizing that God is
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God, and you are not, and that's a very important observation we all need to have.
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You'll notice the exhortation of verse 4, you shall follow Yahweh, your God, and fear him, and you shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, and cling to him.
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Now, we could probably spend the whole evening, if we really wanted to, profitably, considering each of the verbs of command that are found here.
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Follow, fear, keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, remember he's saying let's go serve other gods, serve him, and cling to him, that term to cling to him is used elsewhere in the
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Old Testament, to follow hard after when Saul was just about to be overtaken by the horsemen of the armies that were chasing him before his death.
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It says that they were pressing hard against him, same root term that is used here, cling to him, follow hard after him, it is a closeness, it is a desire to be close to God.
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When you think about all these words and how they would relate to one another, following him, fearing him, keeping his commandments, listening, serving, clinging to him, and saying, wow, there is a sermon there somewhere, which we're not going to have this evening, but there is a sermon.
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Or maybe I could suggest a very, very profitable time of meditation and contemplation for you during the coming week.
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It is, I think, a rich section. But again, this idea of being a covenant follower of Yahweh, it's not just this, here's my laws, do it or die, here's my laws, and you're to fear him, yet you're to listen, and you're to cling, and you're to love as well.
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And if that doesn't tell you that love, biblically speaking, is not the westernized, postmodern, gushy emotionalism that that term has come to represent,
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I don't know what will. But the love of scripture is so much more than that.
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It is so deep and so broad, and it touches on so much of life, that truly, in our society, we have turned it into a mannequin, a fake that does not represent the reality.
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So the first section, the first five verses then, you have this false prophet, and God's using him to test you.
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Do you love the Lord your God? Will you rebel against him? And when you encounter one who is counseling this, he is to be executed.
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You want to see how deep this goes? Verses 6 -11. Did you see the list?
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I mean, we already know what it says. This is a person who seeks, not on the basis of signs and wonders and prophecies, but this is in private.
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This is around the fire, when no one else is around, and you're just having a little religion talk, and they say, you know,
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I've been doing what Deuteronomy 12 said not to do. I've been inquiring of these other gods, and I know that our forefathers wiped out all the high places, and we're not supposed to inquire after these gods, but I found some people that remembered, and I talked to them down in the marketplace, and there was some pretty cool stuff.
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You know, all we've got is, you know, the same old festivals every year, and, you know, we sing the same old songs, and, you know,
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I don't know. I just needed something new, and man, I'm going to tell you something. Peoples and nations around here, they've got some pretty wild worships, let me tell you.
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It's exciting stuff. It says it in silence, it says it in secret, it doesn't say it loudly.
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I started whispering to you, and notice the list. If your brother, your brother, remember, in these days, family relationships, much tighter than they are today, family, clan,
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I mean, the whole thing about the Avenger, that's family stuff, that's clan, tribe, that's, you know, if you're related, man, blood is thicker than water, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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A lot of those, the deepness of those relationships hasn't translated into our modern situation at all, some to our benefit, and some to our detriment.
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Your brother, your mother's son, or your son or your daughter, your own offspring, your own offspring comes to you and says, or the wife you cherish, and there's a, there's a the word there is, of your bosom, who is close to you, the wife you cherish, obviously there were situations where there were wives that weren't cherished.
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We read about that in Deuteronomy 20, tonight in the scripture reading.
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We're talking about someone who, well, the next phrase, or your friend who is as your own soul, your nephesh, your absolute best friend, closest person to you in the world.
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So your brother, your son, your wife, your absolutely closest friend entice you secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods.
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It's not just, notice how, I mean, it's global here. Notice it says, of the gods, the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end.
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In other words, it doesn't matter. You can't limit this to just the gods, the Canaanites, or the Assyrians, or anything like that.
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It doesn't matter where this god is from, and it doesn't matter who is the one enticing you.
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You shall not yield to him or listen to him. Oh, the temptation of every single one of us would be to hide the matter.
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Hide the matter. But it says, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him.
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It says, but you shall surely kill him. It doesn't mean you stand up right then and there and pull your sword and, wha!
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Just as in verses 12 and following, there is a thorough investigation.
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Likewise, it's obvious in verse 9, when it says, and afterwards the hand of all the people, that means the people have gathered together, just as with the false prophet, or just as they would in striking the city with the edge of the sword.
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You don't just use this as an excuse to, you know, get an instant divorce or something like that.
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But the point is that when the execution takes place by stoning, you're the first one to throw that first rock.
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Ever read that before? Ever thought about that before? Now please note, you're sitting there in shock, but you know it's verse 11 too?
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Then all Israel will hear and be afraid and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.
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The idea is not envisioning regular executions within families.
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The extremity, the extreme nature of the punishment is meant to have a nationwide impact because you are a part of a covenant people.
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We struggle to even begin to understand this because we are so individualistic.
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And I am more than many people. I mean, Scotsmen are weird that way.
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We like our space, okay? Just ask William Wallace. We're just sort of the way we are.
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So it's tough to think about the connectedness of this covenant people of God.
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But notice the whole intention, the whole point of the text is, then all
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Israel will hear and be afraid and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.
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So in other words, if this extreme situation were to take place, it should only take place very rarely.
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But even with that, even with that, what is the obvious meaning of verses 6 -11?
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Well, you might say, you know, this is the kind of radical thing that makes people not like the
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Old Testament and like Jesus better. Which is why he said you need to hate your father and mother if you're going to be my disciple.
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Sounds like the exact same thing, doesn't it? Let the dead bury the dead.
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Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Follow me. Hmm. Sounds like the exact same thing, doesn't it?
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Absolute supremacy of dedication to God and his truth. Nothing else gets in the way.
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When I think about this, I am, you know, I just honestly,
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I know what my first inclination would be. There is every reason why verse 6 says what it does.
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It exhausts all the people that are closest to us. And says it doesn't matter how close human relationships are, your relationship to me must be supreme.
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Isn't that exactly what Jesus says? It is. And yet, how many of us in reading this go, no, and then read
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Jesus, like, it's fine. We have a, there is a prejudice amongst many people who call themselves evangelicals when it comes to reading portions of God's law.
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There really is. There really is. So, first section, going to test you.
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Love your Lord your God supremely. Fear him, keep his commandments. And that dreamer of dreams, get rid of him.
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Don't leave him amongst you. And do I need to remind us of the fact that people of Israel never carried these things out perfectly.
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They left people living amongst them. And what is the constant reason for the judgment of God upon the people of Israel throughout the prophets?
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They've rebuilt the high places. And eventually they start getting into syncretism where they're combining the worship of Yahweh with the worship of the various pagan local deities.
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And I don't know about you, but I never read anywhere in the scripture about anyone doing what verses 6 -11 said to do.
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And since nobody did, then nobody feared. And what's the result?
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We might say, oh, it's terrible, someone execute it. How many tens of thousands died at the sword of a
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Babylonian soldier because they didn't do it? Then verses 12 through the end.
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Now, let's keep something in mind here. Because again, it's very easy for us to read the text within the context of our own experience.
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And so when you talk about cities, well, we happen to live in a pretty decent -sized city.
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And so it's easy for us to think, if you're here in one of your cities, which Yahweh your God is giving you to live in, and then you've got these worthless men and they have, in essence, corrupted an entire city.
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And we're like, wow, tens of thousands of people. No. In those days, a city would be what we would refer to as a hamlet, a village.
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Yeah, some of the bigger cities might have 5 ,000, 10 ,000 people in them in these days. And some of the biggest, biggest, biggest cities would have more than that, the seats of empires and things like that.
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But in Israel, you'd be talking about some of these cities that would have hundreds to thousands at most, what we would call villages, because you just couldn't get really super large cities because you couldn't transport enough food and things like that to sustain that many people.
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It was difficult. And besides that, there just weren't all that many people on Earth. We always seem to think there were billions, but that's a rather modern experience.
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And so one of your cities could be a small hamlet. It could be as many as 50 people to 500 to 1 ,000 or maybe more than that.
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But it's a relatively small amount of people in comparison to what we would think of as a city today.
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And so what's happened is, I like the phrase, some worthless men. That's one way of translating it.
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It could be wicked men. It's men of little use. I think we have some descriptions of those kinds of men in Proverbs a lot.
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They're not content with what God has given, and they're never content with God's truth. Well, anyways, they've gone off, and they have maybe learned a little paganism.
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And so they have turned this city so that they are engaging in worship of other gods.
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Notice verse 14 says, Then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly.
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That's sort of an English Bible translator's way of saying that the Hebrew says,
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You will really, really, really, really check it out. You don't get an army of Israelites together and wipe out an
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Israelite city on rumors, on minimal amounts of information.
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You make sure to proverbially cross your Ts and dot your Is, or in this case, dot your
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Yods or anything else, and your Wows. And that's how you do this.
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You will not do this on a whim. It's so easy to see how some of these laws could be abused by evil leaders.
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They could be abused by people who use religion as a means of getting their way.
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That happens a lot in the world today. But you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly if it is true, and the matter established that this abomination, there it is again, has been done among you.
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And again, amongst a covenant people. Now, immediately you've got to recognize, if an entire group like this has decided to engage in idolatry, they have broken the covenant.
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But because they're part of a covenant people, they bring the judgment of God upon the entire people, not just upon them.
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Remember what happened? Well, it hasn't happened yet chronologically in Deuteronomy, but remember when you have that sin taking place, and the taking of something that's under the ban in verse 17, nothing from that which is put under the ban shall cling to your hand?
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Well, remember, someone took something that was under the ban, and when they attack the next city, many are killed and they run before their enemies, and why?
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Because one person amongst the covenant people has sinned. This connectedness, again, is extremely difficult for us to wrap our minds around because we are so blessedly individualistic.
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And so what's happened here is you've had people who have, this is a high -handed sin, they know that not only are they breaking what
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God has commanded them, but they know that the judgment that will be justly coming upon them, blessings and cursings, remember we saw it earlier, back in chapter 11, will not just be upon them, but upon everyone around them.
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They have chosen to act in a way that endangers and brings wrath against everyone who is in that covenant community.
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That's what makes it such an abomination and such an audacious thing. We think, well, whatever you do in the privacy of your own village is just fine.
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Well, okay, that's not the biblical parameters here at all. So once you establish the truthfulness of this, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it, and its cattle with the edge of the sword.
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That is complete destruction. That's not you kill the men of fighting age.
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You wipe them all out, the entire village, entire city, all of it. So complete is this, then you shall gather all its booty into the middle of its open square.
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Well, even that gives you an idea of what we're talking about here, the open square. That's been a common part of human experience until just recently.
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And still, when I go to Europe, you'll always find that downtown square or something like that very common. But certainly in those little villages, there's almost always that little open square where a lot of the commerce is done and the meetings are done.
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Again, more community than we can even begin to understand. And burn the city and all its booty.
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You don't get to take anything. It doesn't matter if they've got nice stuff or not. All its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to Yahweh your
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God, and it shall be a ruin forever. It shall never be rebuilt. I mean, it's supposed to be left there as a testimony to your generation and the next generation and the next generation after that.
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Everybody who passes by it as it slowly crumbles and decays into nothing. As you see those broken down walls and those charred remains, you're supposed to explain to your kids, well, you know what they did there?
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They decided to break the covenant with Yahweh and bring wrath upon all of us.
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And that's what happens when you inquire after other gods and you worship after other gods here amongst
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God's people. Nothing from that which is put under the ban, under the ban.
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It is to be destroyed, so it's under the ban. Shall cling to your hand in order that Yahweh may turn from his burning anger and show mercy to you and have compassion on you and make you increase just as he has sworn to your fathers.
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Burning anger, the wrath of God, and show mercy to you.
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Why? Because the covenant people have violated that covenant and have compassion on you and make you increase just as he has sworn to your fathers.
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If you will listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, keeping all his commandments to God and commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of Yahweh your
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God. Here, again, is the positive aspect. Doing what is right, not in your own eyes.
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Not in your own eyes. Was that not the language that we had earlier on?
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It's not like it is now where everyone's doing verse 8 of chapter 12.
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You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. No, no, no, no.
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You do what is right in God's eyes. Well, that's a silly phrase if God has not spoken with clarity.
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If God has not spoken with clarity. I commented on Twitter, I think this morning, actually.
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I saw an article, and I haven't verified the article yet. It wouldn't shock me if it was true, but it was, and I'm going to do my best to verify it, but the
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Pope had sent very positive greetings to a lesbian story writer who writes stories about alternative families.
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And I made a comment somewhere along, and I might have made this comment last night, I may not think about it, about the
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Pope lacking some very fundamental basic elements of a true
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Christian worldview. I mean, the whole thing about the family, things like that. And someone came back,
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I don't know what his background or his perspective is. I have lots and lots of people who follow me on Twitter, and I can't figure out why in the world they do.
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But he was basically saying, well, I'd use the phrase core elements. Well, that changes from generation to generation.
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I mean, Luther and Calvin would have identified different core elements than you would. And I'm like, what are you talking about?
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You clearly have been imbibing at the postmodern well for far too long.
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Well, you don't need to be. How do you put it, you don't need to be condescending to me.
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And I said, well, you just proved my point, because I point out a fact and you respond with emotions. That's the modern world for you.
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But the whole point of that is, is that here you have this situation where the world is concerned, first and foremost, about doing what is right in our eyes.
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We are the final judges. And if society says, we've changed our mind.
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We used to say that fatherhood and motherhood were good things, but now we don't like them anymore.
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So we're going to destroy fatherhood and motherhood, the whole family relationship. We're going to throw it all up in the air.
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And this is now what is good in our eyes. You know, if God hasn't spoken with clarity,
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I guess that's all anybody has. But we believe that God has spoken with clarity.
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And therefore we can know what is good and right in God's eyes. And as his creatures, what we try to tell those around us is that doing what is wrong in his eyes will bring judgment upon you.
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It may not be today, it might not be tomorrow. But judgment will be done. It will not lead you to life, it will always lead you to death.
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We want to do what is right in the sight of Yahweh your God. And we know what that is, because he has revealed to us his commandments, his law.
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And anybody who says, yeah, but that was just for Israel. Well, fidelity to God, which is the subject of this chapter, it wasn't just for Israel.
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Because it seems to me that Jesus didn't relax this, he strengthened this. He took it into the very center of our being by saying, deny yourself.
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Take up your cross. Follow me. You must love me more than father or mother.
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Your love for me must be supreme. That comes straight... He saw no contrast here, no contradiction.
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This is a continuation. God in the Old Testament called people to love him supremely.
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Jesus says to his disciples, you must love me supremely. It would be absolute blasphemy if Jesus wasn't
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God in human flesh, but we happen to know that he was the incarnate Son of God, and therefore it makes perfect sense.
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But it also tells us, my friends, that when we face a situation where the world says, you will bow the knee to the state, you will bow the knee to the culture, just like the apostles in the
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Scripture reading this morning, we have to obey God. So once again, chapter 13, some difficult words.
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The wife you cherish, your friend who is as your own soul, your love for God should be supreme above all those things.
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Now if you're sitting there going, I'm not sure that it is, well, that's where we pray.
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God, remove those idols that are distracting me from that kind of pure, unmixed, unmitigated love that I should have for you.
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Indeed, Father, that is our prayer. We do know that there are many things that distract us, many things that cause us to shrink back when we see this standard.
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And yet we desire to do what is right in your eyes, or as the New Testament puts it, to be pleasing in your sight.
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Make us to be that way in this coming week by the work of the Spirit within us and the application of your word.