Idolatry

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The Heart is an Idol Factory: True or False?

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.
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This is Mike Abendroth, and we're on again today, host station WVNE in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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Today we're going to talk about an interesting topic. We're going to talk about idolatry. Now most people think that's what happens in other countries, and we
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Americans, especially we evangelical Americans, are way too sophisticated, way too educated, way too irrigated to ever fall for any kind of idolatry.
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I remember once when I went to India, been several times, and my first trip I went to India.
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And I remember after some time getting off the plane and looking around and seeing all the idols, it was almost kind of an oppressed feeling that I would feel come over me that there was just idols everywhere, rampant idolatry, people just loving idols with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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Everywhere you would turn, some kind of idol. Oh, by the way, I'm not talking about when
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I got off the plane in India, I'm talking about when I got back to Boston and landed in Logan, where you see we
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Americans are very good at idols and idol -making because we can't run very far from our own hearts.
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Calvin said that our hearts are like idol -making factories. And our family here in Massachusetts, my girls especially, love
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I Love Lucy. They have all the DVDs and watch them all the time. And I remember that one
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I Love Lucy, she's in the factory, she's trying to put candies in a box, and the mean manager keeps turning it up faster and faster and faster.
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And pretty soon before you know it, there's candy everywhere. The faster time goes, or as time goes, the faster we create our own idols.
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And so I'm not talking about idolatry today, just simply as do you have a little cat god in your
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Chinese restaurant, but we need to talk about idolatry that even we might partake in.
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You know, a billion people in India, over a billion people with 330 million different gods and goddesses from sacred cows on down.
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And it sounds weird when you think about worshiping a cow, but it's almost worse when you worship something like sex, or money, or power, or the
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Red Sox, or education, or knowledge. It seems gross when you talk about fertility gods, but it's even worse when you try to put some kind of sophisticated veneer or shellac on them.
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I found one of the Theravada Veda praise the cow verses, worship to thee springing to life and worship to thee when born.
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This is a praise song, a Hindu praise song to a cow. Worship, O cow, to thy tail hair and to thy hooves and to thy form.
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Hitherward we invite with prayer the cow who pours a thousand streams, by whom the heaven, by whom the earth, by whom these waters are preserved.
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And so you've got this cow to be praised because this cow providentially is over the waters.
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Forth from thy mouth the songs came, from thy neck's nape sprang strength,
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O cow. I mean, how can I make this up? This is Atharva Veda, Roman numeral 10, colon 10.
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Sacrifice from thy flanks was born, and rays of sunlight from thy breasts,
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I changed the word there, from thy forequarters and thy thighs motion was generated, cow.
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Food from thine entrails was produced, and from thy belly came the plants.
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They call the cow immortal life, pay homage to the cow as death. She hath become this universe, fathers and rishis hath become the gods and men and spirits.
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The man who hath this knowledge may receive the cow with welcoming. So for the giver willingly doth perfect sacrifice pour milk.
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The cow is heaven, the cow is earth, the cow is Vishnu, Lord of life. I don't know if I can keep going.
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Actually as I'm saying all this stuff, I'm starting to get quite hungry for some tenderloin right about now.
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I like mine just barely cooked, two minutes on each side, bloody, nice and raw, nice and rare.
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Just cook off the bacteria on all sides and then give it to me for my own version of steak tartare.
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Well I'll continue on. This is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry, and I'm reading the sacred cow verse from a
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Hindu prayer, people worshiping the cow. The heavenly beings have drunk the outpourings of the cow.
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When these heavenly beings have drunk the outpourings of the cow, they in the bright one's dwelling place pay adoration to her milk.
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For Soma, some have milked her. Some worship the fatness she hath poured.
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Yikes. They who have given a cow to him who hath this knowledge have gone up to the third region of the sky.
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Excuse me, cat got your tongue? Or cow's got your tongue? He who hath, maybe the cow is somehow judging me.
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Yikes. I need a cough button here in the studio. There is one at V &E, but not one here at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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He who hath given a cow unto the Brahmins winneth all the worlds. For right is firmly set in her, devotion and religious zeal.
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Both gods and mortal men depend for life and being on the cow. Last sentence,
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I promise. She hath become this universe. All that the sun surveys is she.
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Boy, I have lots of comments. Number one, that's too long. Number two, it's gross, and it's easy to see that kind of idolatry as bad, but I want to make the point again that what we see in others with obvious recognition, we cannot always see in ourselves.
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And since we are sinful, and even if you're listening as a Christian, you still can struggle with idolatry.
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I was reading R. Spender in the Baker's Book of Dictionary, Theological Dictionary, why is idolatry so bad?
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And he gives several reasons. One, it's covenant -breaking. If you go back to Israel's day, they were to worship the one
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God, the true God, Yahweh alone, and God made a covenant with them. And you can see how
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God, this great suzerain, this great sovereign, made a treaty, and he was the one that would rescue.
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He rescued them out of Egypt, of course, and in light of who he was and what he had done for Israel, she was to obey and she was to live in light of his treaty, his covenant.
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And the second reason R. Spender gives why idolatry is bad is its direct disobedience.
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Of course, if God gives the people at Sinai, both in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5, no other gods before him, he adds to that no images, no mention of even any names of other gods.
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That was completely forbidden, Exodus 23. If you invoke the name of another god or goddess, then somehow you acknowledge that it exists and you give a belief to its existence.
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You don't swear by another god, 1 Kings 19. You don't have any kind of a binding allegiance to another god.
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Exodus 20 is clear, you shall not make for yourselves an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on earth below, beneath or in the water under the earth.
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God forbids any kind of small, miniature caricature of him.
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He is a great God, he is a jealous God, and you can't make something that looks like God.
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This is in direct disobedience to God. Leviticus 19, do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods.
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I am the Lord. How about Deuteronomy 27, cursed is the man who makes an idol or a molten image an abomination to the
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Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret. And all the people shall say,
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Amen. And so we want to be very, very strict when it comes to not disobeying
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God, and Israel was to do the same thing, for Isaiah 42 says, I am the Lord, that is my name,
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I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven images. Can you imagine people going up to some kind of graven image and praising that, praising something that was created like a cow?
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Number three, the testimony of Scripture says that God alone is worthy of worship.
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God alone is worthy of worship, and so now by default and by logical sequence, you can't praise anything else.
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You are made to praise God and boast in Him. Number four, why are idols bad? You can't represent
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God. What would you make God like so you could totally represent all of His attributes,
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His communicable attributes, His incommunicable attributes? How could you make such a
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God? You could not do that. Deuteronomy 4 says, So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the
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Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire. If you can't see God, if He's invisible, if no one can see
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God and live, how can you make something you can't see? And all of a sudden you see
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Deuteronomy 4 where people are making God in the likeness of something that creeps on the ground or in the likeness of some kind of fish or bird or creature.
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You can't do that. And the last reason why you ought not to make idols, especially in light of the
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Old Testament and God's law to Israel, it makes God angry. It provokes in Him a jealous, holy anger.
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He's mad when this God who is a consuming fire has
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His name defamed. Exodus 34, For you shall not worship any other God, for the
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Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. It was so bad back in the days of Israel in the
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Old Testament that God said, Why don't you just wipe out complete people groups?
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Why don't you just annihilate them? Because they were serving idols. That's Deuteronomy 7 with the people in Cana.
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You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will deliver to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
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If you should say in your heart, These nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? Do not be afraid of them.
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And so God says, Just go wipe them out, men, women, and children. Before I go any farther,
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I should say that when it comes to idolatry, idols can be very good for a couple different things to use, for a couple different purposes.
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You can use them for firewood. That would be a good way to use an idol. And so if you have an idol, you can certainly burn it, and that would be a fine use for an idol.
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Or you could use them for illustrations on what not to do. I like to do that with children.
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When my wife knew I was going to India for the first time, she said, Don't bring any idols home. And so, being the sinful rebel that I am, that's exactly what
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I wanted to do. Don't touch wet paint. And so I brought home an idol, and now wherever I go,
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I try to bring home an idol, and then we set them up in the house, or I use them for an illustration of what not to do, and just how stupid, how asinine, how completely ridiculous it would be to bow down before an idol.
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I remember there's an education god from India, I think her name is pronounced Saraswati, I could be wrong on the pronunciation, but I said,
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Why study for things? Just bow down and sing, Praise her, praise her, Saraswati, my blessed redeemer.
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And you could then get an A. And the kids, you know, aghastly say,
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We would never do that, Dad. That's horrible. We could never, ever worship a god like that.
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And I'm glad they say that because the Bible says that Jesus is the first and the last, and quoting
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Isaiah 44, there is no god besides me. Who is like me? Let him proclaim and declare it.
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Yes, let him recount it to me in order from the time that I established the ancient nation, and let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place.
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There are no idols that can predict the future. There are no graven images that somehow can providentially work the future so it comes out with some kind of perfect prophecy.
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So we want to make sure, as listening to the Scriptures, listening to God through the
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Scriptures, that we would stay away from idolatry. Now again, it's easy to see idolatry in others, but what about Christians?
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What about you? What about America? People struggle today with idolatry, so much so that the
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Gospel writer John, who also wrote some epistles, here's this beloved
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John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, kind older John, no longer the son of thunder, but now we have
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John. And he doesn't end 1 John with, grace to you and peace. He doesn't say, hang in there till I get there.
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He didn't say, he who endures to the end shall be saved. He didn't say, fix your eyes on Jesus. He could have said whatever he wanted, whatever the
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Spirit of God wanted him to say. But here's how 1 John ends. 1 John 5 .21.
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You probably already know what I'm going to say. Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
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Guard yourself from idols. And all the backwash that comes with idolatry.
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And so whether you struggle with materialism, greed, pleasure, comfort, money, you have to watch out for idolatry.
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J. McMath said, that for which I would give anything and accept nothing in exchange is the most important thing in my life.
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Whatever that is, is my God. Everyone, according to Bob Dylan, has to serve someone.
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And that's even true if Bob Dylan didn't say it. You're serving a God in your life now.
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You are busy serving and worshiping and bowing down to, paying attention to, loving with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength some
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God now in your life. And whatever God you're worshiping and serving is the
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God that is transforming your life into that image. You become like the one you worship.
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And if you want to worship God, the God of sex, the God of lust, the
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God of power, the God of money, the God of sports, the God of kids, the God of grandparents, the
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God of self, you become like that which you worship. And so when
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Paul writes to the church of Colossae and they were struggling with the superiority of Christ, it was
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Christ plus nothing Paul was trying to tell them. How about this, as this is the first section, this begins the section where Paul tells them what to do.
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He's told them, here's how you think about Christ, and now we move to the practical section, from position to practice, from doctrine to duty.
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Colossians 3 .5, therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality.
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They used to be alive to immorality and you engaged in those things. And he tells the church at Colossae and he tells you, that's dead, you're dead to that life, impurity, you're dead to impurity, passion, this kind of unbridled passion, you're dead to that, evil desire, you're dead to that, think in your mind,
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I'm dead to that, and greed. So he says when it comes to greed, no longer consider yourself alive to this greedy life that you used to live.
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And then, amazingly, fascinatingly, he calls greed something.
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He equates greed to something, Colossians 3 .5, consider your members of your earthly body as dead to greed, which amounts to, drumroll, idolatry, idolatry.
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Isn't it interesting that greed is essentially idolatry? John MacArthur says, when people engage in either greed or the sexual sins
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Paul has cataloged, they follow their desires rather than God's, in essence, worshipping themselves, which is idolatry.
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And you want to run from that, why? Because Colossians 3 .6 goes on to say, for it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, and in them you also once walked when you were living in them.
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This is exactly why Paul says to the church of Corinth in chapter 10, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry, whether it's conscious idolatry, unconscious idolatry.
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I don't know if there could be unconscious idolatry. Oh, very interestingly,
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I was reading Richard Baxter one time, and he posed this question. If you're sinning in a dream and then wake up, should you repent?
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And Baxter said, one of the things that you want to do, of course you could if you wanted to, but make sure you're not putting garbage into your mind before you go to sleep because that could propel your mind, your unconscious, your subconscious, to think about things you ought not to put in your mind, and you would have nothing in there for food or for fodder or for gas for the tank of these kind of sins.
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So if you sin in your dreams, you can confess it if you'd like to the Lord. You don't have to confess it to other people.
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So you didn't sin against anyone while you were sleeping and committing sins, alleged sins in your mind, but if you read a bunch of stuff, if you read pornography before you go to bed and then have some kind of illicit dream, then there's cause and there's effect.
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Back to the topic at hand. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. This is Mike Abendroth on No Compromise Radio, I guess nocompromiseradio .com,
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and we are on WVNE 760. Paul said in 1
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Corinthians chapter 5, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. I did not mean all the immoral people of this world are with the covetous or swindlers or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.
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But actually I wrote to you not to associate with the so -called brother, if he should be an immoral person, or a covetous or an idolater.
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Can you imagine? Paul is saying when it comes to the purity of the church, we used to be idolaters, we were ex -idolaters, so why would we run back to the vomit of idolatry like a dog returns to its vomit?
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He says run from that. He said God judges churches, and so remove wicked men from among yourselves, and that wickedness could be sexual sin or it could be idolatry.
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Can idolaters go to heaven? Of course they can. Ex -idolaters. 1 Corinthians 6, or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
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Do not be deceived. It's easy to be deceived. Neither fornicators nor, second on the list, idolaters.
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There are a lot of idolaters running around the church of Corinth. They would love to go practice their idolatry with the harlots that would sweep the city, and you could have sex with a harlot, with a temple prostitute, and that would be communing with the gods.
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That would be an act of worship, and you would be committing idolatry because there's no such thing as these gods that they had there.
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And so Paul said when God saves you in Christ Jesus, His blood, His vicious death,
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His substitutionary atoning death, saves you, you're different.
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You are different. And he says that in verse 11, and such were some of you, but you were washed.
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You used to be in idolatry, you were washed. You were sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our
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God. And so if you suffer with idolatry, from idolatry, you're bound up in it and you can't seem to break the snares of pornography or illicit sexual unions or whatever you're struggling with, power, money, there's hope for you.
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And the hope is not found in you. It's like somehow trusting in the wrong things.
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That's what exactly, that's exactly what humans do. They're in a bind, and they trust in the wrong things to excise them from their bondage.
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And you have to look outside of yourself. You have to look to Christ Jesus who can save you and rescue you, who never committed idolatry ever.
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Can you imagine? Never committed idolatry. Never committed any kind of fornication or adultery or, and it was effeminate, was not a homosexual, was not a thief, did not covet, wasn't drunk, didn't revile, didn't swindle.
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Jesus Christ was a perfect man. So this perfect God -man, since he's
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God, he has an infinite amount of power and an infinite amount of righteousness to rescue idolaters like you.
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And you need to be rescued from idolatry because Revelation 21, speaking of heaven, says in verse 8, "...but
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for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
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And so you need to be saved from your idolatry. You need to be saved unto the worship of the true and living and invisible
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God. Ephesians 5, "...for this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous person who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."
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You need the power of the Holy Spirit to be in your life, working through the Word of God to help you walk in the
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Spirit so you don't fulfill the deeds of the flesh. And one of the deeds of the flesh is idolatry.
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And that's exactly according to Galatians chapter 5. The deeds of the flesh are evident, idolatry.
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And he says, "...I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."
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So there's hope for idolaters. The best thing you can do is say, God, I confess I am an idolater.
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I do worship myself. I do worship false gods. I worship a God that's not even you, the
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God of the Bible. I worship a God that's love only. Three parts love, no parts wrath, no parts holiness.
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He's just a God who loves. He's like George Burns in Oh God. He's like my grandfather. He's like the
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God that Oprah promotes and uses her vehicle called television and magazines to proselytize her listeners.
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It's idolatry. Worship the one true and living God. Why don't you cry out to God and say, God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.
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I'm the sinner. I've committed idolatry. I've committed covetousness. I'm greedy.
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I worship myself, and I need to be rescued from myself. Rescued from your wrath. Rescued from my idolatry.
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So you don't have to go around singing cow worship songs the rest of your life. So that you don't have to stoop so low to worship yourself.
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What's the difference? Worship yourself or a cow. Worship, oh cow, to thy tail hair. Worship, oh person, from the top of your head to the tip of your toes.
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God forbid. We don't want to call cows immortal, nor do we want to call humans.
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Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. Little children, guard yourself from idols. No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Abendroth, is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.