From Greenville, South Carolina, we present, Let the Bible Speak. Let the Bible Speak is the radio ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, preaching Christ in all His fullness. This is Alan Kern saying hello to you once again and welcome to another Let the Bible Speak broadcast. Today we return to our normal format for the program and that means that we will again carry a commentary on some topical item of interest to God's people. We begin with a piece of news that the world will pay scant attention to but the cause for the grateful attention of all Bible-believing Christians, the death of Dr. Henry Morris. I'll have more to say about that in a moment, but first let me take a moment to give you our contact information. If you'd like to receive any of the resources that I have mentioned here in Let the Bible Speak from time to time, or if you simply wish to comment in a broadcast, you may write or call us. Our mailing address is Let the Bible Speak, 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, South Carolina 29615. or you may call us toll free at 866-877-LTBS 866-877-5827 and of course don't forget to visit our website letthebiblespeakradio.com or if you prefer the abbreviation ltbsradio.com and there you'll find audio files of our broadcasts and printable text files of all our commentaries. We look forward to your visit. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not thy compassion They fail not, as thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be. Great is thy faithfulness, Great is thy faithfulness, Morning by morning new mercies I see, All I have needed thy hand hath provided, Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above. Join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness. and love. Pardon for sin and a peace that endures, Thine own dear cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Last September when I was in California, I got to visit two men whom I have long held in high esteem. One was a man I had preached with and had as a guest preacher in my pulpit, Dr. Ken Connolly, a renowned Bible teacher whose documentary videos on the English Bible are the very best available. The other was Dr. Henry Morris, the founder of the Institute for Creation Research, whose work, The Genesis Flood, was one of the most influential books I ever read. I'm glad I got to visit with these great men of God, for within a brief time, both of them went to be with Christ. Ken Connolly died just a few weeks after my visit. When I saw him, he was just a shadow of his former self, a victim of Parkinson's disease. He had great difficulty in remembering enough to converse even for a minute or two. And yet the amazing thing is that when we came to pray, he led us and prayed with his old intimacy with God and with no sign of confusion. I took that to be a wonderful blessing. And praying with a giant for God will be for me an abiding memory. By contrast, when I visited the Institute for Creation Research, I found the 87-year-old Dr. Morris alert and in touch with the debate with evolution, a debate that he had done much to frame. We all owe an inestimable debt of gratitude to Henry Morris. It was he, a respected scientist, who planned and executed the assault on the carefully constructed but essentially weak citadel of Darwinism. With his co-author, Dr. John Whitcomb, Dr. Morris met the evolutionists on their own ground and demolished their supposedly unshakable evidence. He gathered around him a group of capable Christian scientists who launched a campaign of confronting evolutionists in churches and college campuses by means of open debate. Suddenly, the hoary old descriptions of creationists as obscurantists who could not do science began to sound hollow. Increasingly, it became clear that evolutionists had deftly manipulated the evidence and had carefully constructed a humanistic religion based on invalid assumptions and circular reasoning. Despite the strident denunciations of evolutionists, Dr. Morris continued to inspire a new generation of confident creationists, with the result that today evolutionists are on the defensive and their former air of invincibility has been stripped away from them. The system that they have espoused has been denuded of its aura of scientific certainty and stands exposed as the blind faith of a bunch of humanists intoxicated with their own greatness. No man contributed more to the discomfiture of godless evolutionism than Henry Morris. I'm glad I met him. He was a true hero of the faith, a man who would not compromise God's word to gain favor with the scientific elite. Like Moses, he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. He has gone to that reward, to the well done of the master whose cause he so valiantly championed. We salute his memory. and rejoice that though he has died, the work that he began will never die. I need Thee, precious Savior, O Thou art all to me. Before thy throne forever I stand complete in thee. Though Satan loud accuses, yet I can ever see The blood of Christ, most precious, the sinner's perfect plea. I need thee, precious Savior, for I am very poor. A stranger and a pilgrim I have no earthly store. I need thy love, Lord Jesus, to cheer me on my way, to guide my doubting footsteps and be my strength and stay. I need Thee, precious Savior, and hope to see Thee soon. Encircled with a rainbow and seated on Thy throne, There with thy blood-born people my joy shall ever be, to sing thy praise, Lord Jesus, and never gaze on thee. The Lord commands our exclusive worship and condemns every form of idolatry. The Lord commands our exclusive worship and condemns every form of idolatry. We may set that out in three very simple headings. The first commandment teaches us first the exclusive dignity of Jehovah. Jehovah alone is God. This is His exclusive dignity. He says in Isaiah 43, 10, Understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord. And beside Me there is no Saviour. Here is the exclusive dignity of Jehovah. He is our Creator and He alone can be our Saviour. And that is why in Isaiah 45 and 22 He says, Look unto Me and be saved, for I am God and there is none else. So the very first thing the first commandment teaches us is the exclusive dignity of Jehovah. But it then teaches us the essential duty of man. Now what is the essential duty? Thou shalt have no other gods before me. The idea there is that we must acknowledge Jehovah as the only true God and our own God. We must worship Him as our God and we must repudiate every other god. That is the duty of every man. This is the whole duty of man. What doth the Lord require of thee? This is what He requires of thee, to do justly and love mercifully and walk humbly with thy God. But you know what was said about the foreigners whom the king of Assyria planted in Samaria? It is all too true of mankind generally. It is a terrible statement in 2 Kings 17 and 29. Every nation made gods of their own. The duty of man is clear, but every nation made gods of their own, and men are still busy in that same pursuit. Idolatry is rampant. Old-fashioned idolatry is abounding on every hand. Not only in foreign countries, but here in the United States of America. You have heathen temples. You have heathen gods. All around you in every great city of America, old-fashioned heathenism is seen. And then on top of that, we now have the worship of man and his scientific and technological accomplishments. Men call this secular humanism. They call it atheism. But in reality, it is idolatry. Then we have the yuppie religion of earth worship. We have these who are forever talking about Mother Earth. They even have the old Greek name for her now, taken from the Greek word for earth. And that was the name of the old Greek goddess of the Mother of all living. We hear it on television, we see it in the newspaper, it's on people's lips, the worship of Mother Earth. Then some of the so-called Christian, far from Christian, but it's the name they take, Christian feminists, worship the goddess Sophia. In fact, they had a big conference not too long ago, at which they announced to the world their rejection of the God of the Bible, their rejection of the Christ of the Bible, and their embracing of this goddess Sophia. They announced that to the world, mostly with the help of a huge contribution from the Presbyterian Church USA. Idolatry on every hand. So pervasive is this idolatry. When you think of the Church of John Knox, the Church of Scotland, in 1993, There was a motion before its General Assembly to reaffirm to the world that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. And that motion was defeated by over 400 votes to about 300 in the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, idolatry on every hand. But then there are many other idols. Idols that are so popular that they're welcomed even in church. And I'm not talking merely about the little statues of Mary and the non-existent Saint Christopher. I'm talking about the things that are welcomed in our own churches. in our own homes and in our own hearts. I am talking about things that will brand every man and woman in this meeting tonight an idolater by nature. What does the Bible say? Colossians 3, 5, Covetousness is idolatry. That is God's interpretation of idol worship. Covetousness is idolatry. Where is the man then who can hold up his head and say, I am not an idolater? Samuel tells us in 1 Samuel 15, 23, rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry. A stubborn pursuit of our own way. A stubborn rejection of the wisdom, word and leading of God. God says when you stubbornly set your face for your own will in defiance of the will of God, that is idolatry. Paul mentions sensuality. Philippians 3.19, he says, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. What a description of idolatry. Minding earthly things. glorying in shameful things. Paul writes of things that ought not even to be mentioned among the people of God. He talks about things that are too shameful even to soil the lips of the people of God. We live in such a sensuous age. Sensuality is accepted in every hand. People dress sensually, walk sensually, talk sensually. Vile and filthy conversation defies their lips. God not only says that is a breach of the later commandments about morality, but He said that is an attack on the very being of God. breach of the first commandment, it is idolatry. I think you could make a very good case, therefore, from Scripture that ungodliness is essentially idolatry. Is it not idol worship? Is it not idolatry? Deliberately to ignore God and His Word? Deliberately to neglect the God of Scripture? Is it not idolatry that would let some who even come to a church like this and sit from week to week, participate in the service, sing the hymns, bow their heads to pray, etc.? But that will allow them to resist the workings of the Spirit of God and reject the Lord Jesus Christ because of some trivial thing in the world? Because of their attachment to something of the flesh or the world? What is this? It is idolatry. And what shall we say of those who have a hypocritical pretense to worship? What shall we say of those whose outward demeanor professes that they acknowledge Christ, that they worship God according to His Son, but all the time they know Him not? Jesus said in Matthew 15 here, this people draweth near to Me with their mouth and honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. One old preacher put it this way, he said the hypocrite calls on God to be an accomplice and a partaker with Him in His crimes. What an idolatrous and wicked sin it is to put up a pretense. Oh, you pass as a Christian. You pass as a godly young man or young woman. But all the time of a heart of rebellion against God and rejection against His Son, you bow your head, you say your prayers, you read the Bible, you would make the very God of heaven an accomplice in your crime. This is idolatry. Such sins are heinous enough in themselves. But according to our text, they are committed in the very face of God. He says, "...thou shalt have no other gods before me." Literally, before my face or in my presence. Every sin is committed in the Lord's face, under the Lord's eye, but especially this sin of idolatry. Idol worship, all this great catalogue of crime and sin and wickedness, is not only not hid from God, but it is committed right in His face. That's why He says in Jeremiah 7 verse 9, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you know not, and come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations. Will you not tremble to break the first of these great commandments? This commandment exposes sin. And it calls you, as the Thessalonians did, to turn from idols to serve the living and the true God. You have been listening to Let the Bible Speak, the radio ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America. I hope that you found today's broadcasting a blessing to your heart. If you'd like to email us, our email address is ltbs at freeprez.org. Or if you'd prefer, you may write us at Let The Bible Speak, 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, South Carolina, 29615. We would love to hear from you. If you'd like to know how to be saved and how to be sure you're saved, we'd like to send you my booklet, A New Beginning, and I think that you'll find it very helpful. Each quarter we publish a free full-color magazine, Let the Bible Speak Quarterly, with a good variety of Bible teaching and testimony. It's available to all who request it. If you'd like to receive more information about the Free Presbyterian Church of North America and its ministry, We'd like to send you our booklet, Separated Unto the Gospel. Or if you'd like to have tape or CD copies of the messages here in Let the Bible Speak, you may have them by contacting us. Or you may visit us on the web at letthebiblespeakradio.com. Now that's a lot of information to digest all at once, but you can find it all on our website, LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com. There you'll be able to listen to and download our programs, visit our online bookstore, and read a text version of each day's commentary. So visit us today at LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com. This is Alan Kern saying, thank you for listening. I trust that you'll join us each day at this time, Monday through Friday, as we let the Bible speak.