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Pastor David Mitchell
In Esther chapter 3, we noted that Mordecai would not bow down and worship Haman, this servant of Artaxerxes. And Haman, if you go back and you study his family line, he goes all the way back to Esau, who is a type or a picture of the flesh.
And so Haman is kind of a picture of the flesh. If you want to study the world, the flesh, and the devil, Haman is from that point or that lineage. And so he is also, from his family, is like the eternal enemy of Israel.
You know, that sort of thing is going on. And so here, Satan raises up this man from this lineage who's always hated Israel. And Satan attempts to bring into place a way that the entire nation of Israel would be slaughtered, where there would be no lineage for the Messiah.
And you know, when we're dealing with enemies in our own lives, human beings, the scripture tells us that we battle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, or principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places.
So we're always looking at the wrong thing when we blame another person or get angry with another person or want to lash out at another person, where the target is incorrect. That's not where the attack came from.
It came from Satan. If you're a Christian, he's attacking, he's always attacking. So Satan is attacking through this man called Haman. And so we came to ask the question, why is it that out of all the servants of King Artaxerxes, all of them agreed to bow down to Haman and worship him when he walked by?
Like if he came down the street, if he rode his horse down the street, everybody had to turn, go to their knee and worship this man because the king said they had to. And Mardukai, being a Jew, refused to do it.
And so because of this, it gives anger into the heart of Haman. He decides he's going to not only kill Mardukai, he's going to kill his entire race and just remove him from the planet. Now, where do you think that came from, that inspiration?
That is not normal. It came from Satan, same as with Hitler. He energized Hitler's mind to believe that he should remove that race from the planet, didn't he? And so that is Satan, it's Antichrist, and so forth.
So this is what the question we asked is, why is it then that Mardukai wouldn't do it? And that brought us into a little bit of a study on this great doctrine of the oneness of God, the fact that there is only one God, and that the Jews had that placed into their mind from the time they were a little bitty child.
Their whole life, the Jewish grandmoms and moms are teaching their children there is one God. There is only one God, and they get this over and over again. They will refuse to serve another God. I'd like you to take a look at Acts chapter 7 quickly here, and then I'm going to take this into Deuteronomy chapter 4 here in a moment.
And I'd like to continue this study for a while longer on this question of why would the Jew not worship a man. But look at Acts chapter 7 verse 41, and they made a calf in those days and offered sacrifices unto the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
Now it's interesting, if you go back last Sunday, just to review a little bit, we went to Deuteronomy chapter 5 verses 7 and 8. We talked about the Ten Commandments, and the first two of the Ten Commandments actually seem like one.
In fact, a lot of people, when they read that, they think it's the first commandment. It's actually two commandments. The first of the Ten Commandments says this, have no other gods before me. And the second commandment says, make not any graven images unto thee.
So I want you to focus on two words there. The first word is have, and the second word is make. And what's interesting in life, as far as how it plays out in order, it's the opposite. Now God put the most important commandment first, the one about have not other gods before me.
That is the larger sin. So it's placed first. But as far as how it happens in the life, it happens the other way around. We make them first, and then we have others. That's how it works in life. The first thing that happens to God's people is not that they go out and worship the gods of the pagans, such as Moloch, because that seems evil to us at first.
So the first thing we do is we make our own gods that don't seem so evil. And then once we make our own gods that are of our own hands and don't seem so evil, and we begin to worship them, and our affection is taken away from the true God towards these things, then it's very easy to fall into the greater sin of having the gods of the world.
The gods of the world are the dangerous ones. Well, they're all dangerous. The ones we make with our hands are dangerous because they lead us to the gods of the world. Are you following what I'm saying?
So you make gods. That's one sin. Second sin is you have the gods that the world offers you is the deeper and more dangerous thing that we're led into. We see that in the Ten Commandments. And then we see in Acts chapter 7 verse 41, it's talking about the history of the children of Israel.
And while Moses was on the mount getting these very commandments, the children of Israel were down making a molten calf and dancing naked and worshiping it. One point we made last week, which has always been true, still is true, is that when you have a situation where a people are led into idolatry, it is always accompanied by sexual immorality.
The two go hand in hand. There's no secret as to why demons are called unclean spirits. They are into that particular sin. Why is it that they would be into that particular sin? Because one of the greatest types or object lessons in the physical world that God gave to picture the relationship of your spirit and Jesus's inside of you when you are saved, when you're born again, and you have a human spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes in and says when your spirit filled, the two become one, and it's one spirit.
It's like your spirit and the Holy Spirit is one spirit when your spirit filled. You will not sin when your spirit filled. You won't. You can't. And that unity of your spirit and the Holy Spirit, a oneness that becomes actually a oneness, is pictured in the unity of marriage.
And so what is the opposite of the purity of marriage is the horrible way that the world depicts sexual immorality and makes it filthy and disgusting and dirty and everything can be imagined. It's always been in the world, though.
This is not a modern discovery. And because Satan hates God, he hates God's children, he hates that picture of purity in a marriage and that oneness. He hates that, so he destroys the type by perverting that picture.
Fornication and adultery, all of those things are perverted. They are perversions of God's pure way. He says the wedding bed is undefiled, and so we want everything other than that. You know, if that's okay, then humans will just pick everything other than that.
All of that other is perversions, and Satan is behind it and his demons are unclean spirits. They fill the heart and mind of people. Jesus said in the last days it will be just like in the days of Noah.
And we know that one of the main reasons that the whole world was destroyed in that day was because of sexual immorality and other things, but that was one of the great things that they had going against them there, and not all that different than Sodom and Gomorrah.
So we see these things will be reappearing in the end times, and we can see all around us if we look at our own nation, that the morality or lack of it even in our churches today, there's less morality in church than there was among just the worldly nation back in the late 1800s.
People who didn't even go to church had higher moral standards than people in church now. So what does that tell you? There is an eating away, a decaying of morality in our nation and even in our churches.
And so what these people did while Moses was up with God and God was giving the Ten Commandments, the first two of which said, the second one said, make no God, then they're down there making a calf. And it says, and they made a calf in those days and offered sacrifice unto the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
So we talked about that last time. Now once they began to rejoice in the work of their own hands, the next verse, verse 42 in Acts chapter 7 says, then God, then after they made gods with their own hands, then God gave them up to worship the host of heaven.
As it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have you offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of 40 years in the wilderness? No, they stopped doing the correct offerings that pictured Jesus.
They stopped doing those. So what happened when they stopped that, then a void was in their life and the demonic forces filled it with this. Verse 43 says, yea, you took up the tabernacle of Moloch. Moloch, that religion believed in offering little children as sacrifices on his altar.
So that's who the Jews took up to worship, but they didn't go straight from godliness to that because that was evil. So the first thing they did was they just made a little harmless god with their own hands, a little golden calf that really they knew wasn't really god, but they worshipped him, danced around him naked in nakedness.
And then they worshipped that for a while. And then as God saw that, God being a jealous God, turned them over to their own minds. That is a dangerous place to be. They were turned over to their own minds.
And once they were turned over their own mind, they began to go after the gods of the world. This one happened to be Moloch. And then also to the star of a different god they had called Rimfan and figures which he made to worship them.
And he says, I will carry you away beyond Babylon. God says, you will now become a slave to Babylon because you've done this. Now that we covered that last time. And so this time I want to go into a little more detail of this progression that takes place.
And we'll talk about three points here. The error of going after other gods and making gods, which is the first step of that. And secondly, we talk about the process of how that happens to God's people.
Isn't that odd that we even would discuss that that happens to God's people, but that's who it happens to. And then thirdly, the result of it. I don't, I doubt we'll get to all three points today, but that's where we're headed.
So turn with me, if you would, to Deuteronomy chapter four and verse 15. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves. Don't you think that's a good start? Take you therefore, not just heed, but good heed unto yourselves.
Now yourselves is who? Yourselves is God's children. So he's not talking to the world here. And what you'll find is the entire word of God is written to God's children. That's to whom God speaks. Church today is supposed to be for God's people.
We should be able to come into this place and the, you know, one time out of our week, we have shelter from the world and the world system. We come in here. We should not be bringing the lost in here to hear me preach.
I don't want you to do that. Do not bring the lost in here to hear me preach. I don't want to win them to the Lord. You need to win them to the Lord. You need to win them in the Lord, to the Lord out there, if you can.
Now you can't save them though. All you can do is witness. And that is our responsibility is to tell them about Jesus Christ and, and they will, or they won't. And you can't control it. I don't care how good your presentation is, how good your personality is, Brother Dave back there.
You can't win people over in the sense that some people mean that when they say it. In fact, if their mind is not open, if you throw a snippet out there of spiritual something and they change the subject, you might as well just change the subject too.
But if they take that and they're open and throw something else out there and see if they'll take that. And if they do, you might find yourself showing them from the scriptures, what Jesus has done and how they could be saved.
And that's great. So use wisdom in that. But I would appreciate it if you would make sure that they have received the Lord before you bring them here. Does that make sense? Because what will happen if you bring them here is they will disrupt the service.
Now that, that is not a modern doctrine I just taught, is it? For so many years, the modern churches believe that what the goal is go bring as many thousands of people as we can off the streets, bring them in here and we'll preach to them.
And then you have no peace in your church. What does the word church mean anyway? Who can tell me what church really means? Right. So who, who is the church gathering of God's people? Okay. So who is the church?
It is all of the born again people in the world and the ones who have gone before us, right? Who are already with the Lord, right? Isn't that true? So if that's the church, where do the lost have anything to do with it?
They don't until after they are saved, then they can be a part of it. So the goal of the church is to come here, to be fed the word together, to study the word together and be strengthened so that as we go live our lives, we are light and salt everywhere.
And we can witness as God leads us, all of us individually, everywhere, whoever we're rubbing elbows with in the world, in our work, in our shopping and everything that we do. And then as that happens, God will bring his elect in.
God will bring the ones that he knew before the foundation of the world. He will bring them and draw them to the Lord Jesus Christ. And when they hear his voice, when they hear, when the sheep hear the shepherd's voice, they will follow him.
Jesus himself said that. And he said, of all of them, I will lose nothing. Isn't that wonderful to know? So there we go. And so many perversions in the church today. And a lot of it is because we make gods.
We make our own gods. You know what we do? We make our religion. We make our own Christianity. We mold it after our own image and we make church be what we think it should be in this modern world. And don't do it God's way.
And you know, one time, many times in the scripture, we see people trying to do it their way rather than God's way. And it never ends well, never ends well. All right. Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 15, take you there for good heed to yourselves so that we stay with God's way for you saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you on Horeb out of the midst of the fire.
Now, when one example is when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, that was, you know, nothing is happening by accident. God orchestrates everything. There is a reason that God spoke to him that way.
He didn't come fly in as a bird and speak to him in this case. He didn't come as a fish. He didn't walk up as, as a Brahma, Brahma bull, like the Indians like to worship over in India. He was just fire and smoke and a voice came out of that fire.
And then, and then that was over with. You see, there was no similitude. There was nothing physical that Moses could bow down and worship in this case, because God is not physical. He is the omnipotent omnipresent invisible spirit who is everywhere at once.
If you could divide him into particles, one particle would be all of him. Also, every part of the particle would be all of him. Also, we can't describe him hardly as many descriptions as he gives of himself in the word.
We still have trouble describing this spiritual being who is our father in heaven, who is invisible, whom no man has seen at any time other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And so the reason that he began with his people with this manner of there being no similitude is described in verse 16.
He said, lest you corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image. He said, if I had spoken to you through a cow, then you would have worshiped cows. Like the people in India do. If I had spoken to you through a bird, you would worship birds like some of the American Indians did, perhaps.
If I had spoken to you through a fish, then you would have Pisces or some god of the ocean that you would worship. Lest you corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, perhaps you would make a Zeus like the Greeks did to worship.
The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flyeth in the air, the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth.
He's covering all of the gods that men have ever thought up. And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon, it's no secret why there is a moon and a star on the flag of the Islamic flags.
Because their founder in the Babylonish part of the world, which had multiple gods at that time, picked one of those multiple gods, the moon god, and chose him to be Allah. And now he is their god. But he chose him from a pantheon of gods.
And he happened to be the moon god. Well, the true god says, don't worship the moon god or the stars. Even all the host of heaven should be driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.
I'm going to make a point on that phrase here in a minute. But the Lord hath taken you and brought, now who is you? That's God's people, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, which pictures the world system, and bondage to it and all of this, and to be unto him a people of inheritance as ye are this day.
Now those last two verses, verse 19, the last phrase in there, and in verse 20, let me read that again. Let's think about this a minute. He's talking about they made gods first. Then once they made gods and got comfortable with them, they began to worship the gods of all of the world, of the nations of the world, the pagan gods, which have to do with anything, any kind of similitude.
What is a similitude? A similitude is something that is like a graven image that's made to look like something else that who made, that God made. So we make something in the image of something God has already made and worship the thing that God made.
And we're not even worshiping the real thing God made, we're making a similitude of the thing God made. So we take it down a step even lower than that. And then we worship that first, but then once we get comfortable worshiping the similitude of something God made, all of a sudden we'll begin to worship the things God made like the sun and the moon and the creatures that he made.
You see that? You see the progression? And so that is even a deeper sin because we begin to worship the things that are created rather than the hand that created them. And it seems to be something that's inherent in the flesh.
And I say that in the negative sense, the world, the flesh, the devil, talking about that natural part of us, the natural man. Something is built into our flesh that wants to worship everything that God made, but not worship God.
That's why religion does it. We would rather build our own religious activities and have some activity every night at church, keep ourselves as busy as we can be busy. We won't have any time with our families and children.
We're out doing something at church every night of the week. We don't do that here, by the way, but I know how it works. I've been in churches like that. And we build these things that will keep us so busy with the things that God has made that we don't have time for God.
That's man's religion. And so the Jews had a major problem with this. I think modern Christianity has a major problem with it. So now look at this. He says, talks about the host of heaven and that we, if we're not careful, if we don't watch out, we might be driven to worship them and serve them.
Look at this phrase, which the Lord thy God has divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. Now these nations in all over the world have their own gods. They have formulated and created something to worship that's based on something God has made rather than on God himself.
Do we see that? They all have these things. And God says, look, I've put these things and given these things that I've made to all the nations. I like the sun, the rain, all the good things that I make, I give to all nations.
And rather than enjoying the things that I've made for them and in worshiping me and thanking me for it, they too choose to worship those things that I've given them that I've also given to all nations.
And what he is pointing out right here is he said, look, he's saying, if you find a God, that's part of something that all the nations have, then that's not going to be the true God. Don't worship it.
If you find something that every nation in the world worships, don't worship it. It's not the true God. Because look what he says in verse 20, but the Lord has taken you, God's people, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, which is Egypt, to be unto him, the true God, a people of inheritance.
So it's amazing. And the world rejects this message right here. The world just hates this message worse than any other message that there is. And that is that God himself, LORD here, all caps, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D in the English means Jehovah, we think.
We don't know how to pronounce it. Is it Yahweh? Is it Jehovah? I don't know, but I know this. It's the true God. The voice that spake in that burning bush, it's the true God that you cannot see. That God said, I am going to make unto me a people, and that's going to be whose God I am.
I don't belong to everybody else. Do you see that in that verse? I do not belong to the nations of the world. I belong to Israel. Israel was a picture then, an object lesson, if you will, a picture of spiritually who all of God's people are today, those who are born again by faith in Christ Jesus, is that Israel was a picture of God's child.
You, if you're born again, if you've received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, then you are God's child. And the whole nation of Israel is a type or a picture of your relationship with God in a sense, in many ways.
You can learn many ways by looking at that relationship. And so what God is telling you is that He is your God. He is a God who belongs to the elect. He is your God. He is not the God of the nations. Now, I understand that some of that will change at the end of this age, after the tribulation period, after the battle of Armageddon, after Jesus Christ separates the goats from the sheep, then all that will be left at that time will be the elect, those who will serve Him, and they will come in from all nations of the world.
But those nations that were entities before that time will be totally destroyed. And then you'll be dealing with individual people, all of whom will receive the Lord Jesus Christ. So that is a different dispensation.
But you look at the dispensation of the Old Testament times, and you look at the dispensation of the New Testament times up until the Lord comes again, and what you find God saying here is, look, don't worship something that all the nations have.
That's not going to be me. Worship the one who made all of that stuff. So we see then the first error is that people tend to make gods of their own hands, but then they will go about to worship the gods of all the nations.
And those gods will be things that will not be similitudes or graven images. They will be actual things that God made, like the sun, and the moon, or a fish, or a cow, or something that God made, or a religion.
Something that God made, they will worship that rather than worshiping Him. Now go with me, if you would, to the book of 1 Kings, in chapter 9. I guess the great point that we just saw is that God, the true God, is possessed only by His own people.
He's not possessed by the world. In fact, He's rejected by the world. And any universal God or religion that the whole world would accept, or that all the nations would accept, will be false. It will be antichrist.
Isn't that an interesting point? You find that in the book of Deuteronomy. All right, 1 Kings, chapter 9. Let's look at this, verse 4. And if thou will walk before me as David thy father walked in the integrity of heart and in uprightness to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and if you will keep my statutes and my judgments, then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever, as I promised David thy father, saying, there shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel.
But if ye at all turn from following me. Now notice that word turn is very important because that implies that we're talking, we're starting out talking about God's people to start with. So they're already following God to start with.
They're going the right direction. They're following the true God. They have to turn and go another direction to get into trouble, you see. So they're already going the right direction. They have to turn to go the wrong direction and get in trouble.
So if you turn from following me, you are your children. Now that's frightening. So we have a responsibility. It is not enough that we protect against turning. We have to raise our children in such a way that they understand and fear that they should not turn from the true God.
So he says, if you turn from following me, are your children and will not keep my commandments and my statutes, which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them. Then will I cut off Israel out of the land, which I have given and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, talking about the temple in Israel, that will I cast out of my sight.
This has all already happened. That temple was destroyed in 70 AD and that nation was destroyed and these people were scattered all over the world until right after the nation of Israel was reformed, after Hitler destroyed so many Jews that the whole world, the nations of the world felt sorry for them.
So they created a little slip of land back in the promised land and said, you can have a nation again where you can go and try to be safe. That's the only reason it exists as a modern nation. So this has already happened.
It says, I will, the house that I had, I will cast it out of my sight. That temple was destroyed. There wasn't a stone left on it. All that's left is one wall and they call it the wailing wall because they cry when they look at it and see that their temple is gone, even to this day, some 2000 years later.
Then will I cut off Israel out of the land, which I have given them and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people.
Listen, every nation in this world wants to kill Jews. Every nation in this world hates Israel and God forbid the day that our nation turns against them, but we have wins of that right now among our great political leaders in this nation, as wise as they are.
At this house, which is high, everyone that passes by it shall be astonished. Talking about the wailing wall is all that's left and shall hiss and they shall say, why has God, the true God done this to his land, to this land and to this house?
And they shall answer as we are answering today from this pulpit. We're discussing this among ourselves today because they forsook the true God. They turned and they forsook Jehovah, their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, who freed them from slavery, brought them out of the world system and has taken hold upon other gods.
So they turned back to the very gods God had freed them from in Egypt. Is that not amazing? And have worshiped them and serve them. Therefore has the Lord brought upon them all this evil. So what we see in this little progression is we see that first they turn from the true God, they begin to make gods with their own hands that are after the similitude of stuff God made.
That then leads them into the greater sin of worshiping things God really did make like the sun, the moon, and the other false gods of the world system. And then all of a sudden they fall into this little process that we just discussed.
Now in first Kings chapter nine, we see in verse six, but if ye shall at all turn from following me, you and your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes, which I have set before thee, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut you off.
Now look at that little process. We see three things that happened there in verse six. If you turn from following me, you or your children will not keep my commandments and my statutes that I've set before you, and you go and serve other gods and worship them.
So first you turn and then you serve and you worship these other gods. Then the result is that God casts you out. This has already happened to the nation of Israel and it is a warning to God's people everywhere.
We find down in first Kings nine, if we go all the way down to the last verse, it says, they shall answer. And here we see this process again. Here is why God turned his back on his people because they forsook the Lord, their God, and brought forth, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt.
And number one, now look at this little process. Number one, they have taken hold upon other gods. Number two, they worship them. And number three, then they serve them. They become a slave to them. That's the little process.
And because of this, it says in that last verse, therefore has the Lord brought upon them all this evil. So this brings the result of the fact that they become overwhelmed. God's people become totally overwhelmed with evil.
Now, next Sunday, we'll just pick this up right there because what we did was we got to Roman numeral two point A. That's as far as we got out of these three points. And we're going to talk about what happens next as the result of this, when they get to the place where they turn from God and they begin to go through this little process of taking hold of the other gods and then worshiping the other gods and then serving them.
And evil is brought upon them. They're overwhelmed. And then there are some other things that happen as well. So we'll pick that up there next time. Let's stand and have prayer together. Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for a warning that it is, the protection that it is to us today. We thank you for all the physical object lessons you give in the Old Testament that picture the spiritual truths that are true for us and of us here today in the end of the ages.
And Lord, let us take this as a warning into our own families and our church family, but our own individual families, that we would work hard at making sure we're not turning. We're not turning away from God and worshiping the work of our own hands, because that's just the first step.
It seems innocent. It seems like it's not evil. But if we get our affections off of you and on the things we're doing with our hands, it can lead to a more devastating step of turning to the other gods of the world and the world system.
And so protect us and our children from that. And Lord, we would pray that you would bring a message out to our entire nation, to your people everywhere in our nation, that we'd better be careful that we're not turning.
We're not turning toward the works of our own hands. Lord, we pray for our leaders in Congress and all over Washington. Father, there seems to be such a lack of godly biblical wisdom in their lives in many cases.
And we just pray that you would either bring people who have that wisdom and that knowledge of your word and who know you into their lives to be an influence, or that you would turn some of these very people back to you and to your word for the sake of our nation and our children.
And Lord, we just pray that you go with us into our time of fellowship now. Bless the meal we're going to have in the afternoon service, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.