10c No.2 Pagan Practices

Reading from Isaiah chapter 44 verse 9. Isaiah in chapter 44 is just trying to point out there how ridiculous it is to make idols of wood and stone and to worship them. Verse 9. All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind, they are ignorant to their own shame.

Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit him nothing? He and his kind will be put to shame. Craftsmen are nothing but men. Let them all come together and take their stand.

They will be brought down in terror and infamy. The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals. He shapes an idol with hammers.

He forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength. He drinks no water and grows faint.

The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker. He roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in the form of man, of man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a shrine.

He cuts down cedars or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest or planted a pine and the rain made it grow. It is man's fuel for burning.

Some of it he takes and warms himself. He kindles a fire and bakes bread, but he also fashions a god and worships it. He makes an idol and bows down to it.

Half of the wood he burns in the fire. Over it he prepares his meal. He roasts his meat and eats his fill.

He also warms himself and says, Ah, I am warm, I see the fire. From the rest he makes a god, his idol. He bows down to it and worships.

He prays to it and says, Save me, you are my god. They know nothing. They understand nothing.

Their eyes are plastered over so that they cannot see and their minds closed so that they cannot understand. No one stops to think. No one has the knowledge or understanding to say, Half of it I used for fuel.

I even baked bread over its coals. I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood? He feeds on ashes.

A deluded heart misleads him. He cannot save himself or say, Is not this thing in my right hand a lie? Well, that's an interesting passage, isn't it? And we look forward to hearing more later on. And let's turn together in the Word of God to Exodus and the 20th chapter.

We're actually coming to the second study from the Ten Commandments. And I want us to read out together, assuming we have the New International Version of the Bible, from the fourth verse, right through to, but not including, the seventh verse. In other words, verse four through two and including six.

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. There's a letter to the Times concluding considerable correspondence some while ago.

The subject matter had been something rather theological and technical. And the one letter writer who got the best prize in our estimation was the shortest. And he said, Let us have more thus saith the Lord and a lot less codswallop.

Well, within the Decalogue that's another way of saying the Ten Commandments there is a great deal of thus saith the Lord and there is no codswallop. Of course, the Ten Commandments are under attack. I mean, they start with negatives.

Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not and we don't like to be told thou shalt not. Instead of Winston Churchill when he was first given a lesson in Latin he had the effrontery to ask why. And in that sense Churchill was perhaps encapsulating the modern mind when we don't like to be told not to do a thing.

We ask why and suggest that we have authority to make up our own minds. Our Anglican friends are in trouble again. They seem to have quite a lot of difficulty within our established denomination in this country.

The controversy that broke out this last week was well, the more traditional organists were getting their own back. They don't like the takeover of quote, happy, clappy songs. I rather like the title of the normal Anglican hymn book.

Know what it's called? Hymns Ancient and Modern. It seems to me that that title of the hymn book within the Anglican community might well be taken and adapted as the lead-in for the Ten Commandments. Ancient and Modern.

I was given some while ago a hi-fi set. It's not that easy to get the jolly thing working not unless you've got a BSc degree. They offer you in all the wisdom of the Japanese manufacturers a little booklet that tells you how to put the thing in order.

Fifty pages, it's rather a lot, isn't it? And so you could just toss it on one side and say, well be blowed, I'm going to plug in and I'll arrange things as I want. And if you were so stupid and you did plug in and everything blew up the fault would not be the manufacturer it would be your crash's idiocy in refusing to take what the manufacturer gave you. Because, well, his intentions were for you to enjoy the equipment to the best of its capacity.

What do you think about God? I mean, the Lord God who made heaven and earth. Do you see him as a sort of doer figure who wants to box you in with ten regulations which have as their objective to make life as boring and as narrow as possible. Now if that's your view, you're going to have problems finding information from the Bible to support it.

But most people's wrong conceptions about God are as a result of total ignorance of what the Bible teaches. Now when our Lord sent his representative on earth the Lord Jesus some of the most glorious words that he ever uttered say this, I am come that you might have life now those of you who are as old as me you can complete it and have it more abundantly. So in other words our Lord is concerned that you and I get from life the fullest value.

We live it to the best. And to ensure that this happens he gives you if you please the manufacturer's instructions. They're ancient and yet they're modern.

They were written yesteryear yet they are applicable today. And you'll balk at putting them into practice at the risk of ruining the life that God gave you. So the commandments lead off as brother Tim reminded us last week with this statement as to the being of God.

You shall have no other gods before me. Now that of course has been the subject matter of miles of print in the last two weeks because well the scientists have made another tremendous advance in understanding the origin of the universe. Don't get too tyrannized by the scientists.

Stephen Hawking for whom I have great respect in one of our ancient universities perhaps overstated the case when he was evaluating the new shade of understanding we have as to the nature of the Big Bang that this was the greatest news of the century if not of all time. Considering that there's still an awful amount of time to come it might have been better to have put a few reservations on his conclusion. Patrick Moore who Bernard Levin describes as the plain man's guide to the universe I quote, jollier and barmier than ever tells us in his own inimitable fashion that everything came into existence at one moment between 15,000 million million years ago and 20,000 million million years ago.

And Levin comments, well you've got a lot of leeway there Pat. You must admit even British rail timetable can be more exact. If you ask Professor Wheeler of the University of Texas what was before the Big Bang as I heard a British scientist being questioned in a similar vein just ten days ago the American and the British scientist said it was a nonsense question.

What they really meant was that it was a question they can't answer apart from philosophy and faith. Faith in the eternal existence of matter which from my limited knowledge of science is beyond the capability of anyone to verify. Malcolm Muggeridge, he helped us a few years ago by saying if it is a choice between the first page of Genesis and Professor Fred Boyle's Big Bang Theory give me Genesis anytime it wins hands down.

Well, the first commandment says you shall have no other gods before me and it posits, it presupposes the existence of God. The second commandment runs on from it. It's not a restatement of the first though in one sense there's a development in terms of the responsibility on the part of the reader.

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth below. The first commandment commences with a statement about God and finishes with a command. The second commandment starts with a statement about us and tells us later on something about God.

It tells us what not to do and why we ought not to do it. What ought we not to do? You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything. Why not? Because, well, you might get your idol wrong and you might transfer to your idol the actual worship and devotion that you give to me and also I'm a jealous God and I'll check you out in terms of your ideas of God and the way that you live as a result of those ideas.

Have you ever noticed there's something different about the tab to most churches? I'm not referring to the absence of vestments, clerical collars and the like. It's really incidental. I can't get a tie on with a clerical collar and I prefer my tie.

There's one man who came into the church and he just could not believe that at the back of those curtains there is nothing apart from space and another wall. So I pulled the curtains back and showed him. There he thought was our altar.

Where's your crucifix? Well, we actually don't have a crucifix. Where are your religious icons? Well, we don't have any religious icons. Why not? Well, you see we're Protestant.

What does that mean? Well, it comes from the word protest. We're not exactly the strongest church in the town in terms of defending a denomination because we've never quite found a denomination that we really want to defend. But we do go back to the days of the Reformation when great men like John Calvin and Martin Luther protested that the church had a defective approach to the worship of God.

And certain icons seemed to have in the estimate of the worshipper a sort of divine attribute. So Luther criticized the church of Rome and Calvin was not short on criticism himself. And ere long what we call the Reformation occurred in England I will admit that they went over the top in the way that some of the great works of art were ransacked from the cathedrals but the motive was this to get rid of any idolatry within the church.

Why? Well, thou shalt have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything. Because if you have an idol you might transfer the worship and the devotion that you should offer to Almighty God to that idol.

You walk the streets Shanghai, Canton, Peking, Calcutta, Bombay they trip off the end of the tongue almost without limit because these large cities in third world countries are peopled by those many of whom have come under the bondage of idolatry. India has more than one thousand I underestimate one million gods on its pantheon a pantheon is a word that describes a lot of gods so they got a fair number. You know what a lucky charm is? It's something which really has taken on religious importance on the part of the worshipper.

Now, there were dangers in the Old Testament that this could come about. You heard of the Ark of the Covenant that was a bit of furniture that they had first of all in the tabernacle and then later on in the temple. There was nothing of matter with it it was prescribed by God to be built it was made out of gold and there were two golden seraphim sort of angelic beings that were also crafted by the expert as it was fashioned.

There once a year the Hebrews believed that God would manifest His presence and they linked to that the thought that the Ark actually had encapsulated had within it the presence of God so on one occasion the sons of Eli took the Ark into battle believing that as a result the Hebrews would win over against the Philistines. They lost many lives many men slaughtered the Ark was stolen and when Eli heard of the news he died of a heart attack. People who began to be suspicious and to think in terms of lucky charms the very prohibition that Moses was making in the name of God when the second commandment was given.

When our Catholic friends go to Mass at one point the priest will take the wafer some years ago he would lift it up and in the Latin tongue he would say Hot Corpus Esmius This is my body and by the claimed authority of his priestly office the wafer will become and it is believed today becomes the body of Christ. So in Catholic countries you will get the Feast of Corpus Christi and sometimes the host will be elevated and a procession of people numbering often thousands will go down the streets of the city obeisance will be offered because they have got the body of God it's been transformed as a result of the so called authority of the priests. I don't say that because I want to be unfeelingfully critical of Catholicism but I am a Protestant and one must expose idolatry in any of the forms that it takes whether it's within so called Christendom or whether it's in Hinduism or whether it's out in one of the folk religions of China You shall make for yourself no idol you shall not bow down to any idol or worship them Psalm 95 and verse 6 says Come let us sing for joy to the Lord let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song the authorized version is let us bow before him I do wish that the people who gave us this beautiful sanctuary had been a little more generous in space between the pews and maybe that we hadn't teared off the balcony unless you're thin or athletic or both it's very hard to kneel in the tab and yet kneeling is a physical indication when you're in an attitude of prayer that you are honoring the one to whom you are offering your prayers you shall not bow down to them there is only one person before whom we are to prostrate ourselves in the form of offering worship and that is the Lord our God to whom do you offer your worship? you may say well I don't believe in the God in whom you believe well alright but man is such a remarkable creature that it seems that wherever you go there is this common denominator amongst groups of men and women that somewhere and somehow in their life they discover a thing or a person to which they direct attention that is little short if short at all of worship the apostle Paul talks about those authorized version whose God is their belly he writes on another occasion to the Corinthians in the fourth chapter of the second letter about the God of this world it's spelled with a small g the God of this world who has blinded the eyes of men and women preventing them from coming to a knowledge of the truth wherever Paul went in the Greco-Roman world he found people who were worshippers sometimes they were worshipping as a result of superstition on one occasion in Athens he came across an altar that was dedicated to the unknown God but wherever he went he found that people by and large were a worshipping community and the years have slipped by and rolled into centuries but still the same conclusion can be drawn people who worship sometimes their pagan gods as they do unashamedly in India or the whole of the subcontinent out there or in a more sophisticated fashion in the West when our gods can be material possessions our gods can be permissiveness our gods can be a more sophisticated version of that a return to nature to attention with the environment and ecology and so forth now those of you who hear me frequently from this pulpit will know that I have every respect for retaining this world in the condition in which it ought to be retained for the honouring of animal life and so on and so forth but one of the problems of this new movement that is arising, this sort of green opinion is that there is more than just a hint within it of a return to the natural pagan religions of our country the worship of Mother Earth and so on and so forth you can get any tabloid newspaper and you will find it difficult to discover one that does not have a horoscope that does not underline the so-called power of the zodiac if you want to go to Disneyland in Europe, God bless you you could stop off in Paris and check the number of Roman Catholic priests of against Spiritists and you'll find that the latter have greater numbers in their ranks swelling in the United Kingdom the religion is the ancient religion of Wicca Spiritism Naturalism now Isaiah in the chapter that was read to us by by Alan indicates that the philosophy of idol worship is this that the worshipper often finishes up very much like the object that he is worshipping and this is the reason why Moses makes this prohibition in the name of God you shall not make yourself an idol in the form of anything why? because it may so influence you that you distance yourself from who God really is His eternal attributes the pure aspects of His character and His righteousness you cannot limit God by putting Him into an idol by getting some sort of representation of who He is once you do that then you start to narrow down your understanding of God God is spirit says our blessed Lord Jesus and those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth and anyone who has a wrong idea of God and approaches it incorrectly and this is the reason for the importance of this subject runs the risk of falling foul on the mercy of God for I the Lord your God am a jealous God you see if you're going to interpret this commandment you've got to interpret it by its context I was amazed some days ago speaking to some ministers and preachers to hear one say that the context didn't matter in understanding scripture I tell you that the context is vital and the context here says that I am not to make another God and worship it because my God the God and Father of Abraham and Moses and our Lord Jesus Christ is a jealous God and jealous is to be understood in terms of God suspicious of anything that may take the affections of the sons of Adam and deflect it from Him to something else He is a jealous God Israel was condemned for going off with other gods in a phrase spiritual adultery you see this subject is so important one almost trembles to handle it again the controlling fact of the first statement in the fourth verse is discovered in the fifth and the sixth why is this so important I am a jealous God I punish the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments there are two visitations that God makes are you hearing me He visits those who have wrong ideas about God who exchange the truth of God for a lie and He condemns them and He warns that their bad example can infect the spiritual well-being of their children in a detrimental fashion when David sinned and engaged in adultery with Bathsheba the child died when Gehazi was smitten with leprosy it affected the whole of his family you may say that is not fair a man who plays around with promiscuity affects, infects others or can do so with AIDS a man who is stripped of nobility in the context of the United Kingdom forfeits the passing on of his title to the generations which should still follow sin cannot be boxed in why is it important I have a right idea of God not only for myself but also because my example can influence negatively or positively the examples of other people and especially my children to the third or fourth generation the second visitation is from the sixth verse God says but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments you got the statistics the negative to the third generation the positive to a thousand generations because the mercy and the compassion of God is greatly in excess of the way in which He wants to dole out judgment and reproof Jonathan Edwards a great American preacher it has been shown that his faith influenced not just his children but his grandchildren his great grandchildren and even today in the United States of America the descendants of Jonathan Edwards give remarkable testimony to a like faith of their forebear I must conclude incidentally the information I got on Jonathan Edwards came from a book entitled Living with a Difficult Man I think we should sell that book here some of our wives might like to buy it the story of Jonathan Edwards through the eyes of Sarah and by difficult she meant because he was uniquely gifted you don't need any representative of God in terms of an idol you don't need a picture of God for you to understand who God is if you have come to God through our Lord Jesus Christ then you have discovered all that you need to know about Him for Jesus says Hebrews in the first chapter is the exegesis of God God hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son what is God like? the disciples once asked Jesus and Jesus says have I been so long time with you and you never knew me I am the way, the truth and the life no man comes to the Father but by me when the Spirit of Jesus is placed within the breast of an ordinary person He doesn't need an idol He doesn't need a picture He is caught up in a spiritual relationship with God the Father and He can worship and He can honor Him and the reason why our blessed Lord came on this earth was to show us who God is what God is like He did not come basically to condemn He came to save He came to show His mercies to a thousand generations and on the cross of Calvary He took all the rubbish of your life all the bestiality of men and women down the centuries and the responsibility for that was transferred to Him so that that which keeps you from God shall be obliterated as far as you are concerned when you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior you shall have no other gods beside me you shall not make any idols because there needs to be no other intermediary there is one intermediary and that is God's own Son who is an extension of the essence of God Himself and you can prove that experimentally by confessing your sins and acknowledging that God is God the Creator of the universe who has human history in His hand and is the controller of your destiny this God honors you by saying He's jealous He wants your love He wants your affection He wants your obeisance not just a bit all of it He wants you He loved you and He shows who He is and how you can approach Him through Jesus Christ let's listen to a song of consecration Take my life and let it be Consecrated Lord to Thee Take months and my days Let them flow in Caesar's grace Take my hands and let them move At the impulse of Thy love Take my feet and let them be Swift and beautiful for Thee Take my voice and let me sing Always, only for my King Take my lips and let them be Filled with messages from Thee Take my silver and my gold Not a mite would I withhold Take my intellect and use Every power as Thou shalt choose Take my will and make it Thine It shall be no longer mine Take my heart, it is Thine own It shall be Thy royal throne Take my love, my Lord, I borne At Thy feet its treasures store Take myself and I will be Ever more And now let's offer one final act of sung worship to the Lord 390 in Songs of Fellowship O come, let us worship and bow down Let us kneel before the Lord our King Let us whisper His name, wonderful name Jesus our Lord and King For He is Lord of all the earth His glory outshines the sun See Him clothed in His robes of righteousness God's beloved Son His glory outshines the sun See Him clothed in His robes of righteousness God's beloved Son And Father we believe that one day on the streets of Peking and Manchester and Los Angeles and ten thousand other cities and towns and hamlets you will be recognized as King We look for that day when the sons of Abraham and all the sons of Adam shall acknowledge your Lordship until that time keep us faithfully declaring the unqualified Word of God reminding people of the Law and also of the Gospel Send us on our way those who leave at this juncture rejoicing in your goodness and those of us who stay Give us that spiritual sensitivity to which Mark was making reference that we may not only see of China but transfer what we see into fuel for our praying In the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen