On page 127 is entitled Keep Yourself from Idols and my name is Rod James. The theme of this study is idolatry and the danger of idolatry in the life of God's people. Let us begin then by refocusing our awareness of what idolatry is. the nature and power and evil of it. Noel Jew in Created for Worship and that book is sold out here unfortunately at the moment but it is available at Curon, alerts us to the context of idolatry which is worship. Noel says, human beings were created to worship God and to express their devotion to him in obedient faith. Where this worship is abandoned, the result is not a state of no worship, but a state of false worship. For a human being, there can be no vacuum of non-worship. One is either submitted to God in the doing of His will and the glorifying of His name, or one is submitted to someone or something else. The error described in Romans 1.18 following is not the neglect of worship but the exchange of worship. Men and women are inveterate worshippers. Worship belongs to their essential structure. The expression of human sin is that the worship for which they were created is exchanged for idolatrous worship. They sin not by not worshipping, but by worshipping wrongly. It's a very important truth, isn't it? Now Geoffrey Bingham's Dear Darling Idols, a little book that is available in that publication for the sum of $3, I commend it to you, is a concise and accurate and essential treatment of idolatry. It really is excellent. Geoffrey clarifies for us just what idolatry purports to do for humanity. He says the genius of evil then is idolatry. It gives a God but not the God. It gives a system of worship and service but not the creational system. It even provides the other elements which belong to God and channels them through idolatry. We will look at these needs but even without seeing them in full we can realise that idolatry is man's way of rationalising his universe. To worship the creature, the creation, and to serve and worship it rather than the creator lets man out of his creational and so functional responsibilities. Man is free then to go the way he has structured rather than the way God has commanded and designed him to go. Idolatry therefore is man's substitute for everything. On page 52 the other day Brian Arthur said, Idolatry is the world's brilliant scheme to attempt to insulate themselves from direct contact with the Lord whom they have rejected. Let's look at idolatry and demons, provocation and judgement. Recently I found myself staring at a poster on the inside of someone's toilet door, as you do. The poster extolled the superior nature of a teddy bear as a friend. He's always there, he won't tell you what to do, He won't criticise you or interrupt you and so on and on it went. Very telling poster. Now we are prone to idolatrising God as a divine teddy bear who comforts us and benignly allows us to think what we want to think and do what we want to do. But behind an idolatrous view of God which may seem benign and even nice there lurks something far more sinister and horrible. St Paul warned the Corinthian Christians that behind the nothingness of idols lay demonic powers. What do I imply then? He says that food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Now Lenski comments on this passage. It is a great mistake to imagine that the that back of their idolatry and their idol sacrifices there is nothing but an empty vacuity. True enough as chapter 8 verse 4 says, the gods of the idols have no existence whatever. No being by the name of Jupiter exists and this is true with respect to all other gods. But something does exist, something that is far more terrible than these pseudo gods. namely an entire kingdom of darkness which is hostile to God, a host of demons or fallen angels who are ruled by the greatest of their number namely Satan. As these wicked angels under the leadership of Satan rule the entire evil world, so in particular they are the originators of the spiritual darkness of which idolatry is the most terrible evidence. Commentating on 1 Corinthians 10.20, Calvin says, when men become so futile in their thinking that they offer worship to the creatures rather than to God alone, they are ripe for the punishment of being servants of Satan. for they do not find that intermediary position between God and Satan for which they are on the lookout. But as soon as they turn their backs on the true God, Satan immediately sets himself before them as an object of worship. When Paul asks, shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy, are we stronger than he? He's clearly mindful of the song in Deuteronomy 32, which God gave to Moses to speak to the people of Israel prior to his death. This awesome song should be read with trembling, dare I say, by Christians, in order to better understand what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 10. Moses calls heaven and earth to listen to the proclamation of God's awesome greatness. He says his work is perfect for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness without iniquity, just and upright is he. But Israel has dealt corruptly with him. They are no longer his children because they are blemished. They are crooked and twisted generation. Moses pleads with Israel to remember your father who created you, who chose, delivered, cherished and nourished you. But Israel has been a foolish and senseless people and has repaid the Lord by turning to idols. By so doing they have invoked his fierce anger. And so he says they stirred him to jealousy with strange gods. With abominations they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently whom your fathers had never dreaded. You were unmindful of the rock that bore you and you forgot the God who gave you birth. God therefore bore witness to his just wrath on Israel's evil. They have made me jealous with what is no God. They have provoked me to anger with their idols. And there is Paul's terminology you see. Through his servant Moses, soon to be taken from the earth, God makes known his sole divinity as creator of all. His absolute justice and faithfulness as the holy and righteous God. His great grace in calling a people to be his treasured possession and his fierce anger and just judgement upon all evil and towards those who defiantly provoke him. for a fire is kindled by my anger and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. Concerning Paul's questions, shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Calvin asks, is it not the case that those who evade the issue thinking that they may disobey the command of God without suffering the consequences, are openly taking up arms against God. I found that phrase just remain with me, openly taking up arms against God. To summarise thus far then, idolatry is a very serious business. For one, it places the devotee in the bondage of evil powers and two, it provokes the one true God to defend his sovereignty and to punish evil insurrection. So it's pretty heavy stuff. Jeffrey Bingham again says, when John says that the whole world lies in the evil one, he means what Paul means in Ephesians 2. That all mankind was deceived in the fall into the power of Satan. That is man is under the control of the prince of the power of the air. Which means that he cannot have his idols to himself. He can neither subjectify nor objectify his rejection of God without being incorporated into the whole system of evil. His idols then are infested with demonic powers and evil spirits. He has now to contend with fallen celestial creatures and other supramundane elements. he cannot have his idolatry in mild forms. I think that's memorable too. The warnings given by Moses to the Israelites concerning idolatry are therefore dire. He says, you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed and you've seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold which were among them. Beware lest there be among you a man or a woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there is among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit. One who when he hears the words of this sworn covenant blesses himself and his heart saying, I shall be safe though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart. This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. The Lord will not be willing to forgive him but rather the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man and the curses written in this book will settle upon him. and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. A little later Moses goes on, while the secret things belong to the Lord our God, the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. That is so that we may do all the words of this law. These things are revealed says Moses to us that we might heed them and repent of our idolatries. But if those engaged in idolatry are in the bondage of Satan, how shall they be delivered? Idols smashed and idolaters set free. Having turned from the living God to worship idols, humanity was in the bondage of the idols and the evil powers that indwelt them. But God promised Israel that he would cleanse them from their idols. Ezekiel who said, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. From Zechariah, on that day declares the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land so that they can be remembered no more. and also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness. Now these promises of redemption were so comprehensive that they could only be fulfilled in the new covenant brought into being by the coming of the Son of God. So John says the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Now I'm not going to work through that section, I've just put there many scriptures related to Jesus' work that shows how he is the one who does that, but I think that's not directly my work in this study. Let me come to the large paragraph at the top of page 131 and to the third sentence. Therefore, redemption in Jesus Christ is a total deliverance from all idolatry. For with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world. Therefore Paul can claim and proclaim that God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Yesterday in the discussion time Noel made the comment there can be no syncretism in the temple. Last sentence of that paragraph, while this is the position and therefore the condition of those who are in Christ Jesus, that is a complete deliverance from idolatry and syncretism, The scriptures warn us against turning back to idols. We have a responsibility to guard or keep ourselves from idols. The injunction of 1 John 5.21 to keep yourself from idols comes as a startling conclusion to that letter. I've set out some of the verses before it and as we read them I think you'll, as I did, see the impact of what John is saying. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him. The evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. We know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true, in his son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. You see how that fits in there into the whole matter of what we are looking at. I've quoted at length from the word Bible commentary of Stephen Smalley where he deals with what it is that John really means by this exhortation to keep ourselves from idolatry. I'm not going to go through that material but I'll highlight a couple of his conclusions. As he says there in the darker print on page 132, John is saying avoid the sham. John warns and keep to the genuine of which I have spoken. He suggests that John understands an idol as anything which occupies the place due to God. In this case he says John is urging his readers to keep away from sinful God substitutes. So he's not just locating it into the particular kind of idolatrous religious cults of the day but he is taking it on that broadest field. Smalley concludes that John's meaning is that all false gods are to be rejected in favour of the real God who in his Son brings eternal life to the true believer. Let us turn then to the danger of idolatry in the church. The Apostle John has reminded us that in the midst of true worship and the love engendered knowledge of God, there is the constant danger of idolatry. Paul uses the almost relentless tendency of Israel to stray into idolatrous forms of worship to make it clear to us that being the people of the covenant does not immunise us from such temptation. As Christians we have the full picture laid out to warn us, Paul says. Israel was assembled under the cloud of God's presence. They passed through the Red Sea by God's mighty hand. They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They ate the spiritual food and drank from the rock which was Christ. Nevertheless some became idolaters, some indulged in sexual immorality, some put Christ to the test and some grumbled against God. In all of these transgressions they invoked the holy wrath of God their Saviour. So Paul concludes for us, therefore let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Sadly the testimony of the church is very seriously diminished when it retains the idolatrous stance of the world. Now I just want to pause there and say that the next study by Knoll is the priestly ministry of the Gospel and taking it out to the world. So I just want to pause there and link the ideas that our idolatry clags that up very badly. So let us take heed of some of the snares and idols that lurk in our midst. Now this is not a comprehensive account, it's just a selection. Dullness and deadness to the voice of God. There were some in Israel who had taken their idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Yet they still came to consult God through the prophet Ezekiel, still showed up to ask is there a word from the Lord. In like manner we can hear God's word preached clear to us, clearly to us week after week and not respond. Noel Jew points out that those who take their idols into their hearts become dull to the reality and dead to the voice of God. He says their false trust leads them to reflect the character of the object in which they put their trust. Just as the idols are dull to the real world and especially the world of Yahweh's voice, so their worshippers are dull to him and to his word. Their senses are as dead as those of the idols themselves. So if your congregation is suffering from fish eyes, consider idolatry. The fact is that church attendance and other outward observances of Christian life can be practised without our ears having been dug out by God and without us having wholeheartedly turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness which is idolatry. In urging the Colossians to put to death therefore what is earthly in you, Paul lists these above vices which appear to be related in the sense that they all have to do with a person being controlled by the desires within them. In a similar manner John warns of the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions which are he says the things of the world. All of this is idolatrous and given the powers lurking behind the idols, it suggests the bondage of sexual and other addictions. It is quite stunning in fact to note how often idolatry is linked with sexual immorality in the scriptures. I've given you a New Testament selection there. Quite stunning if you were to read them all collectively. Geoffrey Bingham says, What we do know from Romans 1 and Acts 17 is that man's lifestyle forms his God's and his lifestyle is formed by his God's. It is other than the lifestyle God has given man which must conform with the true knowledge of God. Hence true morality resides in and is expressed by true worship. And likewise immorality belongs to the lifestyle which accords with idolatry. If what we have just said is true, then almost certainly idolatry is the greatest powerful factor in man for evil because it leads to immorality. Romans 1 18-32 must then be read as being of the one piece. and having no breaks anywhere. Sexual immorality, sexual perversity, a reprobate mind and the life of shattered relationships and deliberate evil must all accord with and indeed spring from man's idolatry. We walk by faith and not by form. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul reminds the believers that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith and not by sight. Now the word translated sight here, as Robin told us at summer school, eidos, actually means external appearance, form or shape. For example, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in bodily form, ados. Jesus said of his father, his voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen. Paul had reminded the Corinthian believers that we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. But being at home in the body and away from the Lord as we are, we are prone to turning from faith in God who is unseen to taking security in things that take material shape or form, that is the things that are seen. So in our piety we are prone to focusing on our church building or its fittings and icons, on the ordained minister or our denomination etc. the Temple of the Lord. God knew that Israel longed to walk by form rather than by faith and knowing that any graven image would become an idol and a snare, God commanded Israel not to create any images with form or appearance. There were other reasons why he commanded that but that would be one. Forms such as buildings, finances, leaders, structures, programs and church cultures are part of the creative order and may have their place. But that which has form and appearance so easily becomes an idol in which we trust and which we end up serving rather than trusting and serving the risen Lord Jesus. The remainder of that has been dealt with. The idolatry of outward appearances. Paul confronted the Galatian Christians with the question Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Having received the grace of God, the Galatians were turning back to what Paul called the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, that is to the idolatry of self-justification. Formerly, he says, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? It's very easy in our zeal and pietism to turn back So that we once again become those who want to make a good showing in the flesh. Those who boast about outward appearance. Turning back to these elementary principles then, we labour to build a visible accomplishment. Now you've never done that I know. Which justifies and glorifies ourselves in the sight of others. We call it kingdom building don't we. Paul warns that such a persuasion catches on. and that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Corporation idolatry. Over time it is possible for denominations and even for local churches to slowly change from being a spiritual house of living stones, a congregation of the saints, to become a corporation. That is an organisation made up of structures and regulations, clergy and programs, property, finance and social services. Slowly the values and interests of the Corporation Church change to reflect the self-interest, self-preservation and self-promotion of the Corporation. The Corporation Church begins to focus on such things as statistical growth, program management, property development and financial expansion. Instead of serving the living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, it begins to develop programs and practices which will make it acceptable and appealing in the sight of the world and successful in the light of its own mission goals. The objective changes from the birthing of living stones and the building of a spiritual house, the body of Christ, to the building of a material house, the corporation church. And as the objective changes, so does the object of worship change from the one true God to the idolatrous corporation. That's just been a little selection of the available idolatries in churches today. It's not exhaustive by any means. Therefore my beloved, flee from idolatry. Paul exhorts the Corinthian Christians to take care how they build and warns them of the day of God's judgement which will be revealed with a consuming fire and will destroy every construction that is idolatrous. We have here this passage where Paul says according to the grace given to me, I say to you take care how you build, whether you build with gold or silver or precious stones or wood, hay or straw. All of this will be judged on the great day which will be revealed with fire and consume that which is not authentic. The six kinds of building materials of course, three are refined by fire and the other three are consumed. And so Paul, his exhortation is to Each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If you build a little kingdom, it will go up in smoke. Paul knew that any prophet who messes with the idols in a church will be met with a volcanic eruption of angry protest. He has to ask the Galatians then, have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? Perhaps they would answer, yes. From now on he says, let no one cause me trouble for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. You can get into trouble poking the idols. But knowing only too well of the divine holocaust which awaits all idols and idolaters on the day of the Lord, Paul was bold and relentless to confront the churches he had planted about their turning back. Likewise, awareness of that holocaust should encourage us to urgently flee from all idolatry. The responsibility for guarding against and fleeing from idolatry rests with the believers. God is faithful says Paul and will provide a way of escape but we must recognise the danger and flee from it. With God's faithful help we are to flee and here are all the flee passages. We are to flee from idolatry, we are to flee from sexual immorality, We are to flee from the love of money and the desire to be rich and flee from youthful passions. It is better to flee idolatry now than to have to cast aside our idols and flee from the Lord on the day of his coming. And so Isaiah chapter 2 for the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty and then for several verses he names some of those things. He goes on and the haughtiness of man shall be humbled and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day and the idols shall utterly pass away. and the people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground from before the terror of the Lord and from the splendour of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth. In that day mankind will cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold which they made for themselves to worship. to the moles and to the bats. I think the picture is they are rushing into the caves fleeing from the presence of the splendour of God's majesty and as they do they are casting away their idols of silver and gold to the moles and the bats they are deserving. To enter the caverns of the rocks and the cliffs of the cliffs from before the terror of the Lord and from the splendour of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth. So there is that repetition in the passage. dopey idolatry and wonderful worship. Despite all God's warnings and the historic revelations of his wrath, John laments in the revelation that the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues of judgment did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshipping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood. which cannot see or hear or walk. Incredible, isn't it? They didn't repent. But to those who turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God, to these God gives the true worship which is in spirit and truth. Geoffrey's little book, Dear Darling Idols concludes with a precious little appendix which I commend to you. Worship without idolatry. which describes the thrill of this true worship as the richest, deepest exercise and experience a human being can know. No wonder, he says, man's great powers of love and adoration find their flowing fulfilment in the true object of that love and adoration, God himself. the one true God, the living father, creator and redeemer. Amen.