Biblestudy: The Commandments (Part One)

Idolatry, Part One
#BS-TC01
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 02-Jul-88; 76 minutes

listen:

playlist:
Go to the The Commandments (Bible study series) playlist

download:

We are going to begin today with what I consider to be the commandment of supreme importance to every one of us. And that, of course, is the first commandment and the subject of idolatry. I feel that this ought to intrigue, not only me, but all of us here to a very great degree. I feel that it is of supreme importance, as I mentioned before. And I know that in my life, I am always trying to look for refinements so that I can be aware of what is going on in my life and aware of whether or not I have a reasonably good handle on the keeping of the other nine commandments. I feel sure that for those of us who are converted, that it is our sincere desire that absolutely nothing come between us and God. If there is any kind of a barrier there, we want to make sure that it is removed, that we are able to repent of it, and make sure that we have nothing that hinders our communication with God and our continued growth in the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Now, there is a reason, I am sure, that this commandment was placed first and we are going to be concentrating on this reason at the very beginning of this sermon. In fact, it may carry through the entirety of the sermon. I just do not know yet for sure. But this subject, I guess you might call it, that I am talking about here has to do with the source of what we do and what we believe. And we are going to begin in a verse that seemingly has nothing at all to do with the first commandment. But I think that it does. And that is in Romans 14, verses 22 and 23. The overall subject in chapter 14 has to do with judging. But Paul makes a statement at the end of the chapter that concerns us in regard to the keeping of this particular commandment. He says,

Romans 14:22-23 Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves [that is, in what he permits himself to do, what he approves as a way of conduct, a way of living in his own life]. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.

The apostle Paul is dealing here with a clash of values within an individual. He is also dealing with a clash of values between individuals. But by the time he gets to verses 22 and 23, he is concerned about a clash of values within an individual that may or may not involve another person.

Now, he is talking here about a person who is conscience-stricken about what he has permitted himself to do. The person does not feel good about what he has just done or he does not feel good about what he is thinking about doing. So, Paul makes the statement, "Happy is he who does not condemn himself." Now, if there was no clash of values where a person might feel that he was wrong, there would be no reason for self-doubt or self-condemnation. But I know that there are a lot of times that you are not quite sure about what you are either about to do or what you have just done. And so there is confusion in your mind and you are arguing back and forth forth. It is as if one side of your mind says, "I shouldn't have done it." The other side of your mind says, "Well, it was ok that I did."

Why are you unsure? That is the question that at least partly needs to be answered. We might say that a person is unsure because he is just ignorant of, at least at this point, what is right or wrong. Well, that is a very simple answer. We are going to kind of shove that aside and look at something that is a bit more detailed.

Maybe we ought to ask the question: what is the source or what is the authority for what you permit yourself to do? Is that an authority that you can absolutely rely upon, that is right every time? Are you sure that you are right even when you are not conscience stricken? Well, that is another aspect of the question. There are many, many things that we can do and we never even give it a thought as to whether or not it is actually right that we are doing this thing.

Are you frequently evaluating what it is that you are thinking, what you are permitting yourself to do, to find out whether or not what you are doing really is right? It is entirely possible to do something wrong and never even feel a twinge of conscience about doing it. Years ago most of you kept Sunday and you did not have any twinge of conscience about whether it was right or wrong. You accepted that it was right and all the while that we were keeping Sunday, Christmas, and Easter, and not tithing and not keeping God's holy days, all the while we were doing or not doing, it never entered into our mind to question whether or not what we were doing or not doing was right or wrong. We just accepted it at face value and we did it and there was never a twinge of conscience about doing it.

Is it possible now that here you are in the church, maybe you have been in the church for many, many years and you are still in the habit of doing things that you never question whether they are right or wrong? And because you never really question, you just accept that it is right.

Now, I want you to apply this that I am talking about not just in regard to things that are religious. I just use that as an illustration because it is easy for us to see that there were times in the past when we did things without a twinge of conscience at all. And now we find that those things were not approved at all, but we thought they were approved because we unconsciously accepted the source as being authoritative. We never questioned.

But what about business practices? Something that is seemingly entirely removed from religion. It is not really entirely removed from religion at all. But are you sure that the business practices that you commonly do are something that is acceptable before God? Because have we not, since coming into the church, accepted in our life a different source from the source that we had and accepted when we were children, teenagers, young adults moving into the work world, beginning to practice the ethics of the world in business. Are you sure now that what you are still practicing in business is something that is approved by the Source to which we give our allegiance which we submit to?

Let us bring it a little bit closer to home. It is something that we frequently talk about, at least we mention from time to time. How about in the area of child rearing? How about in the area of husband and wife relationships? You know, you can go sailing along in your life, conducting your marriage, as it were. What is the source of what you are doing within your marriage? Are you sure that it is really authoritative? Can you rely upon it? Is it entirely possible that somewhere you have not even really checked up on what you are doing, what attitude you permit yourself to have towards your mate or to your children? Is what you are practicing there really in harmony with the law of God? What is the source of what you permit yourself to do?

How about in the area of fashions? This is something that especially, it seems, young people have constantly tugging at them. There is pressure from their peers, there is pressure in business that we conform to a certain mode, a certain style of dress. Are you sure that the source that you look upon as authoritative is really a source that you want to imitate and make a part of your life? It is entirely possible that you are sailing through life without ever even questioning whether or not this is right.

How about in the area of food? You know, when you were in the world, you never questioned, for the most part anyway until God began to call you, about eating things that were were unclean. You accepted it as a part of life from mom and dad, from society around you. You ate those things with an entirely clear conscience. You never looked into the source of what was right in regard to diet until some kind of knowledge began to come to you, and then hopefully you began to make a change.

But what about since you have come into the church and you began to find out that God places a great deal of stress on the kind of diet. It is not just a matter of clean and unclean. It is a matter of right balance. It is a matter of eating the right things, in the right amount, in order that we have the best possible chance to produce the best possible health. Now, have you questioned the source of your ideas regarding life in that particular area? This is something that has to be applied in every aspect of life.

One time during 1983, Mr. Armstrong gave a sermon regarding the source or the origin of law. Now, law is that base or that body of beliefs from which you operate and that body of law is your system of morality. I want you to get this connection. That body of law is your system of morality and from that system of morality come the ethics that we apply in other aspects of life.

Let us turn that around. That system of morality is also a system of laws. I have just turned the sentence around. Or we might say that that system of morality is also a system of values. They are things that you have learned, in most cases, while you were growing up. Where did yours come from? Very likely your system of values, your system of morality, has very largely come first of all, from your mother and father, or if you happen to be reared by an aunt or an uncle or grandmother or grandfather, it came from those people with whom you had the greatest amount of contact while you were in your most formative years.

Now, by definition, any system of morality is an expression of religion. We are taking this one step further, that any system of morality is an expression of religion because religion is a way of life and worship is the response to one's god. Now, the reason that any system of morality is an expression of religion is because it concerns itself with values and the way we live. Law therefore is nothing more than enacted codified morality. It is morality that is put in words. That was the conclusion that Mr. Armstrong reached in that sermon.

What is important, of course, is what is the source? Where is your particular code of morality, your value system, that upon which you base the way that you live, that upon which you automatically respond to given situations, those things that we call attitudes. Is your response, your attitude, your approach to things, is it really in harmony with God? That is what we are examining here. Because this has very much to do with idolatry, whether or not we are committing idolatry and not even realizing it because we are not really examining the source of our value system.

Now, most of us do not take the time to sit down and say, "Well, this is what I believe," and so we do not come up with a code of laws like the Ten Commandments—and hopefully any one of us who would sit down and do that would at least come up with the Ten Commandments. But there is a great deal more to our life, is there not? And in a sense, the sad part is that most of us do not take the time and opportunity to do this. What we do is we carry this thing around in our head and all too frequently, it is not adhered to. Our value system changes, it fluctuates all too frequently with the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

That is what was going on here in Romans the 14th chapter. What was going on here was it began with judging but then, slowly but surely, the subject of the chapter got around to faith and "Happy is the man who does not condemn himself in what he approves." Now, what he is approving is supposedly in his value system. What he is approving is supposedly in that body of laws from which he is conducting his life.

Do you have a clear conscience in what you permit yourself to do? Or is it possible that your value system is constantly undergoing changes? Well, believe it or not, we do want our value systems to change, but we want our value systems to change to the right source.

Turn with me back to Romans the third chapter, verse 20.

Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

You see, it is a body of laws that tells us what is moral and what is immoral. That is the purpose of law. That is why Mr. Armstrong said that law is nothing more than enacted codified morality. It is morality that is written down, it is morality that is put into words, expressed verbally. And so then law tells us what is right and what is wrong.

We are very familiar with this, I think, in the area of religion, but unfortunately, we kind of tend to contain it within religion when actually this principle that I am talking about is involved in virtually everything that we involve ourselves in life. We do not always call it law. We may call it etiquette. We may call it rules. We are very familiar with games and usually in games, we call the laws of that game "rules." And we are very familiar that if a person plays within the rules, then he is free to conduct himself within that game. If a person breaks the rules, then that person is penalized as a result of the breaking of rules.

As in a football game, you get a five yard penalty, a 15 yard penalty, because you have broken the code of laws for that particular game. And within the framework, within the context of that game, the person who is penalized has sinned. It is not spiritual sin as in terms of the Bible, but it is synonymous with sin in that the person has broken the rules. He has been, for that particular moment, immoral within the framework of the game.

So by the knowledge of the law comes what is our understanding regarding morality or immorality, or as we would say in the biblical context, what is sin and what is righteousness.

Now turn to chapter 4, verse 15. Here, the subject is a little bit different from what it was in chapter 3. The apostle writes that,

Romans 4:15 because the law brings about wrath. . .

Because there is a penalty connected to law and whenever a person breaks the law there is wrath. That is, as in the football game, the team is penalized. They are set back. Now when we break a spiritual law, the penalty for that is still somewhat off in terms of a death. That is the wrath of the law. The sting of the law, as Paul put it in in I Corinthians 15, is death. So there is wrath connected with immorality. There is wrath connected with sin.

Now, we may begin to feel the wrath almost immediately because we feel ill at ease. If we have gone against our conscience, we are aware that what we have done is sin. We begin to get ill at ease. We feel guilty, we feel self-doubt about ourselves. We feel self-condemnation as a result of what we have done. We are ill at ease. We are uncomfortable until we feel as though we have been forgiven by God. And then there is a clearing of ourselves. We feel justified and then the spiritual penalty begins to lift.

But the breaking of the law, especially where there is knowledge, carries wrath with it.

Again, let us go back to the original question. Whether we realize it or not, if we are doing something that is a breaking of the law of God, we do not even realize that it is a breaking of the law of God, we can break that law not feeling an ounce of self-condemnation and yet we are headed toward the wrath of the law in the end, you see, which is death. So it begins to become very important that we evaluate the source of law. That is, the source of our morality, the one that we are carrying around with us, and see whether it or not it is really in harmony with the law of God, the morality of God.

Romans 4:15 Because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.

Here is another aspect of it. If there is no law, there is no penalty. And if there is no law, then is not a person free to establish his own thinking, his own morality regarding that particular situation? The answer to that is yes. The Bible answers in the affirmative. Where that particular act or occasion is not covered by law, then the person is free to establish. But if there is no law, then there is not going to be any wrath and there is not going to be any transgression at all.

So we are beginning to see more and more evidence that codified law is nothing more than enacted morality. It is something that is verbally said or written down on a piece of paper, but it is nonetheless a code of morality.

Let us go to Romans the seventh chapter.

Romans 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law of sin? [talking here about one of God's laws] Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness [a particular law] unless the law had said, "You shall not covet."

The law does say that and therefore that is something that has to be part of our code of morality. It has to be part of the base or the foundation of our thinking. It is something that if we break it is going to eventually break us. And along the way, it is going to inflict its wrath upon us as a result of our breaking that code of morality.

Let us extend this out into the workaday world. I do not know whether you have ever thought of this in principle, but in principle what our legislators are doing—whether it be in the state government, whether it be in the federal government, whether it be in the council chambers of downtown Los Angeles, or whether it be in the councils of the county government here in Los Angeles—are they not enacting laws? Are they not therefore telling us what is moral in a specific area of life for those who are living within the jurisdiction of those particular legislators? In the case of the legislators in Washington, why it covers the entirety of the nation. And they are telling us what is moral in a particular area for life in the United States. They are codifying morality and they want that to become a part of the conscience of a person so that they will obey that particular law. And so they are telling us what is moral in a very specific area of life.

Where do people get their ideas regarding what is moral? Now, there is a logical conclusion to all this that I have been building up to, and that is, where do people get their ideas regarding what is moral in regard to religion, the making of law for a state, in the areas of business? Where do they get those ideas?

We are going to carry this one step further. And that is this, that religion, that law, that state (by state, I mean, like the state of California. Or by state, I mean, even the federal government. I am talking about a political entity), that religion, law, the state, and morality are all part of the same family. I know what I am saying is true because that is the way it is in the Bible. All I am doing is extending this out into, let us say, the carnal area, the physical area of life. And what I am talking about here is that the federal government, the state government, the laws that they enact, morality, are all part of the same family. Whenever the state enacts a law, they are telling you and me what is moral within the frame of their authority. Therefore, there can be no separation of church and state! That is an impossibility. And they try to tell you in the United States of America that church and state are separated. But that is impossible.

By the way these terms are used, the state is telling us what is moral. They are establishing a body of codified laws. And they are saying that this is moral in this area and this is moral in this area and this is immoral in this area. And if you obey the laws, then you are not going to feel the wrath of the law, you are not going to receive a penalty because you are moral to the state laws. I do not mean to say that all of these things are specifically the same thing. They are not. The state is not law and the state is not morality and religion is not the state, but they cannot be separated from one another. Because once a state and authority begins to establish law that is to be obeyed, that state, that dictator, or whatever, begins to become, in the biblical sense, God. I will prove this to you in just a bit.

In Ezekiel the 20th chapter, this chapter is a revelation from God regarding why He had to break His relationship with Israel. In the technical sense, He gave them a divorce. In the physical sense He brought upon them the nation of Assyria, and Assyria defeated them and Israel went into captivity and seemingly has not been heard from since. Now, we know better than that.

But there are two main laws that He points to that were broken and that the breaking of these laws led to, of course, the breaking of others. Now, those two laws were the Sabbath law and idolatry. And when we come to understand it, breaking the Sabbath has overtones of idolatry. The first four commandments have to do with our response to God and our worship of God and obedience to God. And the fourth commandment is very much a part of that entire system and it cannot be separated away from the three commandments that precede it.

It is difficult to say which came first, the breaking of the Sabbath which led to idolatry or the idolatry which led to the breaking of the Sabbath. But in either case, those two laws were the ones specifically that God points out that caused God to react the way He did. Now, in verse 23 He is talking about them being in the wilderness. He says,

Ezekiel 20:23-24 "Also I raised My hand in an oath to those in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the Gentiles and disperse them throughout the countries, because they had not executed My judgments [You see, which was a decision based upon His law, His system of morality.], but had despised My statutes [Another aspect of His judicial system, another aspect of His codified enacted morality, His body of laws.], profaned My Sabbaths, and their eyes were fixed on their father's idols."

If a person turns away from that body of law, which is codified morality, if a person turns away from that body of law that God gave, where pray tell, are they going to turn for another system of morality that is going to provide them with guidance for their life? Where are they going to turn?

Here, we are beginning to see the first elements of what it is that constitutes idolatry. If an individual or a nation turns away from the body of law that the government of God enacted, then that individual or that nation only has one alternative. They have to turn toward that which has come out of the mind, out of the experience of men. They then begin to yield in obedience, conduct their life according to that body of law, that body of morality, and that is the beginning of what idolatry consists of.

Perhaps you will begin to see why God is so concerned about law. Because law is the foundation, it is the basis of morality. That law is a verbal description, a written description of His holiness. And He tells us in Leviticus 19 that He has given us this law because He wants us to become holy and because He is God! The implication, He is the true God and this is true holiness and this is true morality. It is truly the way that a person should conduct his life and it should provide the foundation for a person's thinking about what he has done or what he is permitting himself to do or what he is about to permit himself to do.

Now, we begin to see why Paul asked the question. Happy is the man who does not condemn himself in what he allows or permits himself to do. Now, that does not answer the whole question. But it gives us a pretty good idea. A person can be ignorant and not be filled with self-doubt about what he has done. In that case, that person is still able to repent. His mind is able to be changed. His character is not being damaged by what he is doing.

But if you condemn yourself in what you are permitting yourself to do and you know that what you are doing is wrong, you are in trouble with God. That is flagrant idolatry because you are willingly turning aside from what God has established as righteousness. That is what Israel did. God verbally spoke His law to His people that was to provide the foundation for their lives. And when they turned away from that, they had to turn to another source, and that is what idolatry is.

In verse 25 I am going to prove that part to you.

Ezekiel 20:25 "Therefore I also gave them up to statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they could not live."

You see, when a man turns away from the law of God, there is only one direction that he can go and that is the mind, the experience of man, and man is going to come up with a system of law, a body of law, codified morality that is not going to be in harmony with God's law.

Now back to something that I said before. Where did your system of morality come from? The chances are very great it came largely from mom and dad. When you began to go to school, that body of beliefs began to expand and you began to include in that body of beliefs ideas and attitudes that came from other families, other systems, until by the time you get to be 20, 30 years old, when God begins to convert us, we are a confused mess regarding values. And as long as God does not interfere, it is very likely that we will largely be able to conduct our lives without serious doubt or self-condemnation about whether what we are doing is right or wrong.

Turn to Acts 5, verse 29. There is something that I feel that I need to inject here, just thinking about what we just discussed in Ezekiel 20. When they turned away from God and the body of law that He had given to them, then it says that He gave them up to judgments and statutes that were not good, judgments and statues that could not produce life. And that is what idolatry is. You see, they turned to another source, they turned to another god, and that god happened to be whomever it was that was giving them a system of morality by which they were supposed to conduct their lives.

Now, if the source of law is a man, as in a dictatorship, then that man is the sovereign. In the principle of this that I am talking about here, that man is the god. We are going to carry this further. But I want you to build on this principle here. If the source is the state (as in socialism where there is a body of men enacting laws, let us say in the British system, there is a body of men that they call Parliament; in the United States, as in a republic, there is a body of men and women that we call Congress), but they are responsible for producing laws. They enact laws and those laws become codified morality. In the biblical sense here, then, that body becomes the god because that is what we are yielding to.

Now, before we go to Acts 5, I want to just pick up one verse here in Romans 6. I feel that this is necessary to insert it this time. We will not expound on it a great deal. But I want you to see that this principle is validated by the Bible.

Romans 6:16-18 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey [does not one obey his god?], you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness. But God be thanked that though you are slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness [that is, of God].

And if we are slaves to that God, then logically, we are slaves to another god whenever we are out in the world and have no knowledge of the true God. Now, what are we obeying when we are out in the world? We are obeying the state or we are obeying a false religion.

Acts 5:29 But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: "We ought to obey God rather than men."

Now, we generally only apply this in terms of persecution and that there is a crunch on us and the state is asking us or telling us or threatening us that we should go in this particular direction and live in this certain way, that is, that we ought to follow their particular appraisal of what is moral and what is immoral. Now, what these men were doing to the Jewish people, there was something that was not acceptable to them. It did not fit in with their body of morality. And so they were persecuting the true church while that was going on and hailing these men into prison and at least threatening them and sometimes even beating them.

I want us to understand that the same principle is at work all the time, whether we are being threatened, persecuted, or whatever at all. There is always pressure coming in from the outside to try to get you to yield to another god who has a different form of morality, who has a different system that would produce "holiness." Do you not understand that this is what we are being converted from to? We generally put it in much simpler terms.

[unclear] and what we have to get straight here is to check on ourselves as to what really is the source of what we permit ourselves to think, to say, and to do. Where did it come from?

Law is inseparable from sovereignty. A sovereign gives commands and the subjects obey. That is the principle that Paul was talking about there in Romans 6. And whatever it is we obey that is the sovereign. Again, you see, what are you permitting yourself to obey? Whatever you permit yourself to obey, Paul says, shows who it is that you are a slave to.

Let us carry this one step further. You show me who has produced the law, you show me who it is who is the source of the body of law that we use (maybe not us right in this room) as the basis for our morality, that is, the basis for what we conduct in our life, and I will show you who the god of that system is. It is simple. Once you begin to see the principle that is involved, once you begin to see what it is that God is attempting by His creative power to convert us from to. This is why Mr. Armstrong so frequently made the statement that the church is the only place on earth in which the government of God is being obeyed because it is the only one that has God as the source of its law, of its policies. If there is another source, then the god is something else.

Now here in Psalm 81, verses 1 through 4, a psalm that is frequently used on the Day of Trumpets. I just want to pick out one line here. We will lead up to it beginning in verse 1.

Psalm 81:1-4 Sing aloud to God our strength; make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob. Raise a song and strike the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the lute. Blow the trumpet at the time of the New Moon, at the full moon, on our solemn feast day. For this is a statute for Israel [You can think of that in its covenant title terms, either ancient Israel or to the Israel of God, the church.], and a law of the God of Jacob.

That was put in there to show us the source of this law, that it is something that has come from God and it teaches us that law is inseparable from sovereignty. Whatever it is that we are going to give our allegiance, our obedience to, that becomes the god. So the god of any system can be identified by locating the source of its laws.

Now, in the beginning of the United States of America, back in the 1700s, our system of law and morality was lifted almost wholesale, sometimes almost verbatim, out of the pages of the Bible. After the Civil War, when the Industrial Age was really beginning to get underway, the basis of our law gradually, slowly but surely, switched from the absolutes of the Bible to human relativism. In other words, human experience began more and more to become the basis of our thinking, not just in law. That was a devastating aspect of it.

But perhaps even more devastating is it first began to creep into religion and then from religion out into education and from education it filtered its way into virtually every discipline that there is on the face of our society. And so now we conduct our marriages, our marital relationships, our child rearing practices according to human relativism, which was spawned from the minds of men. Not from the absolutes of God, but from the minds of men.

What does that do to a people's morality? When you no longer have the absolutes of the Bible but instead now you have only human experience to provide a backdrop for the conduct of our social programs. Well, all you have to do is look at the evidence on the streets of the cities everywhere. We have raped the earth—business, manufacturing—because there is little or no moral content to their thinking. I mean, right moral content to their thinking. The only thinking is, can we do it? Not should we do it, but can we do it?

And so we see the landscape scarred from one end to another, trees chopped down, the land will no longer grow what it used to. The weather patterns are changed. Droughts and famines are right around the corner. Who knows how many? Even earthquakes have been caused by the displacement of tremendous amounts of weight on the earth by the erection of great vast dams like the Hoover Dam or the Grand Coulee Dam. Who knows? But this kind of thinking has seeped into every area of life. I do not care whether it is engineering or whether it is social programs, it has gotten into everything, into agriculture, marital relations, economics.

And so the evidence is there that the end is not all that far away. How much can the land stand before it vomits us out? And all because the system of morality was changed, the basis of law, those enacted codified laws which tell people what is right and what is wrong, and by which then they conduct their lives. We are seeing idolatry, not just in religion. We are seeing idolatry in economics. We are seeing idolatry in social programs. We are seeing idolatry in agriculture. We are seeing idolatry in manufacturing, and on and on it goes because the practices come out of the mind of man.

Now let us go back to Psalm the 10th chapter. Remember what God said there in Ezekiel 20. That when they turned to idolatry, God gave them up the laws and statutes that were not good for them, that would not produce life.

Psalm 10:4 The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts.

What kind of a system of morality is a man going to come up with when God is not in his thoughts?

This is my concern as we begin this series because we have all grown up, influenced for varying numbers of years by a system of morality that had little or no connection with the true God. And it has only been since conversion that we have begun to include God in our thinking. If we do not include God in our thinking, then how much idolatry are we going to commit, unknowingly, unconsciously? That is why it is supremely important that we evaluate our system of morality.

Back in I John 2, verse 15 John writes,

I John 2:15-16 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father.

It cannot be because God is not in his thoughts. And God has pretty much given mankind free rein in terms of government, in terms of what their legislatures enact as their codified morality in their particular nation. And you know very well from your experience that as you move from one country to another, there are differences in the cultures, and God says that none of it is from Him but is of the world.

Do you know what that word world is? I thought it was really interesting that we called our little figure here for Family Day International "Cosmos." Cute little name because it means world. But it is a little more serious than that. It means, or let us say, it is used in the Bible as the "world apart from God." That is the word that is used here. Do not love the world, the world apart from God.

I John 2:17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

You see, God gave them over to statutes that were not good, laws that could not produce life. The world is going to pass away.

II Corinthians 4:3-4 But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Now, I said earlier that if people turn away from the law that has been revealed from God, then they are left with only one alternative, that of course, is their own experience. Well, that was not quite right. It was a little bit misleading because we find here that the real god of the world is Satan the Devil and that he has been the one responsible for the enactment of the codes of morality that we see people conducting their lives by over the entirety of the earth. And he is certainly willing and able to allow these people to express their own national characteristics within the body of law so that the cultures will be somewhat different from one country to another, the laws will be somewhat different. But he is perfectly content to allow people to express their personality within the law as long as he is able also to blind them from the truth of the law of God. And that he has done extremely well.

What he has done, of course, is that he has included just enough of God's true morality within his systems to give it an air of authority. And that is what makes it entirely possible for a person to do evil even while he thinks he is doing good.

You know, it is not until God opens our mind and begins to challenge us to examine ourselves and to see whether or not this body of beliefs that we have, that we conduct our lives by, is right, that we even stand even a bit of a chance to come out of the idolatry that we are practicing all the time and never even aware of.

Romans 1, verse 20 gives us a preview so that there is a good foundation for what Paul writes later on. He is showing the need for what follows.

Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His [meaning God's] invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Here comes God's condemnation that mankind has enough evidence at his disposal in the things that are clearly seen in nature. That is, examples of God's creative power, examples of God's kind generosity, of His providence, of His supplying the need for man, of Him having a spiritual purpose that He is working out. There is enough there to enable man to be able to turn his life to God in submission. But again, we saw Psalm 10:4 that a man's pride will not allow him to do that, his proud countenance, so that with man, God is not in his thoughts.

Romans 1:21-24 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God [they did not yield to Him as God, they did not obey Him as God, they were committing idolatry], nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts [begin to generate their own standards of morality], and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.

You see what happens when people get away from the standard that God has established in His law? That law which describes the character of God? They are left to their own devices and they begin to say, "Well, this is alright. This is not alright." And it is entirely possible for men to say that this, which formerly was alright, is now not alright. And this, which was formerly not alright is now right. Good is called evil and evil is called good. You see that in religion. The Christian churches of this society say that the Sabbath is evil. They will go so far as to say that the law does not have to be obeyed—the only absolute standard of morality that exists. That is what man does when he is left with his own thinking. That is idolatry. Now, when we covet, it is very clear that is idolatry. But do we ever stop to think that when we commit the other eight sins that that too is idolatry? I am going to show you something in just a bit.

Romans 1:25-29 Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. [Remember the wrath of the law (Romans 4), it begins to enact itself against them and here it comes.] And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting.

It is like reading Ezekiel 20 all over again.

Now, what we are seeing here is the basis—the foundation—for idolatry and that is why it is so important. You begin to examine the source of your beliefs—your own set of standards, of values—and begin to see whether or not, when you honestly evaluate them, are they God's? I want you to do this in every area of life. Your relationships with one another. Sometimes we get offended so easily, then we get angry, and when we get angry we get all to the place where hatred has an opportunity to begin to exert its influence. But it all has its start where? It starts when we begin to think that this is permissible and all it has to do is to continue the thinking, humanly, carnally, to the place where we are completely out of sync with God. And what are we doing, brethren? We are serving ourselves. That is idolatry! This is the basis of idolatry. We need to think this thing through.

What Paul is showing here is that it was the failure to keep this commandment, the first commandment, that is largely responsible for the way the world is today. Once you leave the basis, the source, you begin to then go into the kind of things that our prevalent in the world today.

Let us go to Acts 26, verses 14 through 18. Paul was describing his conversion and he says that,

Acts 26:14-18 "And when we had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.' And so I said, 'Who are you, Lord?' He said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.'

Let us take this step by step. First of all, God said to Paul, "Why are you beating your head against the wall? Why are you kicking against the goads?" I want you to consider who Paul was. He was a man very zealous for his religious convictions and so he was persecuting the church. He was a man who sincerely believed that what he was doing was right and true. And as it says here that he cast his vote against people, and there are indications from earlier in the book of Acts, that he might indeed have been more or less personally responsible for the death of Stephen.

I bring this up because I want you to see that the apostle Paul's zeal and sincerity did not make a hoot of difference. He was wrong. Now, if somebody as sincere, as zealous as the apostle Paul can be wrong, is it not likely that you and me might also be wrong as well? The apostle Paul had to make a radical change in his value system. And one of the first things that had to change was his attitude toward God, which he thought had been good. He found out he was persecuting Him. Why was he persecuting? Because he was operating from the wrong value system and thinking that he was doing God service. I know to a lesser degree, every one of us is guilty of the same form of idolatry.

The next thing I want you to notice is his responsibility to God. His commission was to be used to open their eyes, both Jew and Gentile, to turn them from darkness to light. No different from you and me. We have been walking in darkness, conducting our lives according to laws, bodies of laws, systems of morality, value systems that we thought were right, that we accepted, that we took at face value, that we did not do anything about it, until God began to challenge us. And from the power of Satan, who is the god of this world and who is our god before the true God began to interfere in our lives and begin to call us "from the power of Satan to God, that they might receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me."

Another thing that I want to add here just very quickly is what David said and then Paul quoted. That "there is none who seeks after God, no, not one." And again, all of us have been in this circumstance. We have been so deceived by Satan. He has sold us a bill of goods. We not only think that we are going after the true God, we also think that we have the right standards as well, that is, prior to conversion. But Satan has done such a good job of deceiving mankind, that God has been—the true God—completely and totally hidden from our understanding before conversion. That is why we have to be taken from darkness to light. We did not even know that we were in darkness! When you are in darkness how can you have the right standards? It is impossible.

In John 4, verse 23 (just to add this very quickly), here is Jesus talking to the woman at the well, the woman was a Gentile. You need to understand this as you are reading through.

John 4:19-23 The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you [not just her specifically, but all of Gentiles and really all of unconverted mankind] will neither worship on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. [Now look at verse 22] You worship what you do not know [We did not realize we were worshipping Satan the Devil. We had no idea we had the wrong system of morality, but we did it.]; You worship what you do not know [I might update this to converted Christians.]; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews [spiritual Jews]. The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeks such to worship Him."

I want to add something here and that is in regard to the word "worship." We have a tendency, again within the church because of our upbringing in the world, to restrict worship to something that is done at church with a minister standing and preaching. We are going through some kind of a ritual ceremony. That we worship God in a place, in a building for one hour on a Sunday morning. Now, if we bring that standard into the church with us, we are not going to fully understand what God means by the word worship. In the biblical sense, worship is your, my, response to God in every area of life, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long.

Worship is not something that is restricted to a service that we have on the Sabbath for two hours or a Bible study that we have on a Tuesday evening for an hour and a half. The worship of God is something that involves the totality of life everywhere, all the time. Because worship by usage in the Bible is our response to God. Do we respond to God only on the Sabbath? Or does God have rules, laws, a system of values, standards that He wants us to respond to all the time in every situation—at work, at play, in our marriage, in our child rearing. That is part of worship.

Matthew 22:36-38 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And Jesus said, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment."

Worship has to do with ascribing intense admiration, adoration, honor, and devotion and obedience to. Worship certainly has overtones of admiration, but it does not stop there. It has overtones of devotion, but it does not end there. It does not end until we have yielded in obedience to God in the right attitude. Worship, brethren, in the biblical usage, is our response to whatever our god is.

Just put that back in the things that we have read in Ezekiel the 20th chapter, and you begin to see what idolatry is. Some of them committed it in breaking the Sabbath, others committed it in adultery. Very likely they all committed it in a number of areas. You see, the basis of it was they did not have the right standards and they did not believe in it. They were responding to the wrong god. They were responding to the wrong sovereign. They were responding to the wrong body of laws. They were responding to the wrong codes of morality. And so they were giving their worship over to an idol, Satan the Devil, the wrong god.

The individual sin did not matter at all, in one sense. All God was concerned about was the idolatry that was involved because it was the idolatry that led to the actual specific sin.

I think that I am just going to have to quit there and I will continue the subject (unless something else comes up), in the next sermon.

JWR/aws/drm