Go ahead and turn, if you would,
in your Bibles. First place we're gonna look
at this morning is in Deuteronomy. We're gonna be in Deuteronomy
to start off with. Deuteronomy chapter 17. Still
looking at some aspects of worship. Unless the Lord kind of brings
anything else to mind this week, this will probably be our last
look at this particular subject. Deuteronomy chapter 17, we looked
last week and seen that, well, I'll just back up, kind of refresh
us about all of what we've talked about on this topic of worship.
We've seen that worship was an act of reverence or an act of
extolling God for who he is. And we've seen that worship is
a, As it pertains to God, we've seen what it was defined in John
4 that we should worship in spirit and in truth. That's what true
worship is all about, is worshiping God in spirit and in truth. We worship Him with our spirit. Our heart rises up in praise
and adoration for who He is, but we do that as it pertains
to the truth of who God is. You know, there's a lot, as we've
talked about, there's a lot of people out there that are gathering
in places today that are saying that they're there to worship
God, but yet they're worshiping a false God, a false Jesus with
a false gospel, with false preachers that are preaching that. And
some of them, you know, are deceived and thinking that what they're
doing is genuine worship. And a lot of people even look
at that and say, you know, well, what harm could that be? I mean,
their intent is good. Or, as I've heard many times
before, you know, well, God knows their heart. You know, their
meaning to be, you know, worshiping God. They just don't understand
or they don't know. That's the thing that we gotta
understand, brethren. That's the concept that we have to have
in our mind that the Bible teaches from cover to cover, is that
the people of God are given faith And that faith that they're given
is a faith that looks only to Jesus Christ and His finished
work. And as we looked in talking about grace a few weeks ago,
we see that the Bible teaches that the only gospel is the gospel
of grace. And it's the gospel of sovereign
grace. It's not the gospel of any other kind of grace. It's
the gospel of sovereign grace. And as I mentioned that that
study back then, There's a lot of people that'll
say, well, you're just kind of drawing that out. It says that
it is the gospel of grace, but it doesn't say the gospel of
sovereign grace in that scripture. That scripture doesn't say sovereign
grace. You guys are kind of making that more about a man's theology
or a reformer's theology or points of theology than you are about
what the scriptures say. No, that's not true. It has nothing
to do with reformers. Matter of fact, we don't have
any regard of reformers around here. We don't hold them in high
esteem. Matter of fact, we think that
every one of those reformers back there was in gross error
on a lot of stuff, even as it pertains to the doctrines of
grace, the five points that people push out that we're five-pointers. We even have disagreements with
the reformers on their views of that. However, we see that
worship is something that comes from the heart, it's given to
us, and we are enabled to worship. And so just because somebody's
out there, you know, going through the motions and doing everything,
you know, religious doesn't mean that what they're doing is true
worship. And it isn't just something that we can say, well, it's all
right. You know, long, you know, they just don't understand. No,
we've been given understanding. We've been given understanding
and the gospel of grace is the grace of God in his sovereign
work of election of predestination and his sovereign act of dying
for his people and his people only. And so if that gospel doesn't
have that as its center point, Christ is the center point, but
coming from that basis, then that gospel is a false gospel.
And it can't be touted as, well, it's the gospel, it's just not
all the gospel. Or it's baby gospel, you know. You guys are preaching adult
gospel and this is baby gospel. You know, what did Paul say?
He said there's only one gospel. The same gospel that I've taught
my kids from the time they were very little. You don't have to
be an adult to understand these things. I teach these things
to my kids. I teach these things to anybody.
The youngest of Christians who's just come in to conversion. Don't know much about the Bible
at all. What do we do? Why would you teach them things
that are aberrant? Why would you teach them things
that are, well, we're just not going to get, just tell them
the truth up front. There's so much of a lie that's
out there already. And the same thing with worship. Why would
we hint around, well, let's worship this way, and then whenever someone
becomes more mature, then we can, same thing with the kids. We don't put our kids off in
little children's churches and let them play with Tinker Toys
and things like that while the preaching of the gospel is being
done. No, we bring them in so that they're underneath that,
so that they see, so that they experience, so that they know
what this is all about, so that they understand at least In their
natural minds, they understand that worship isn't about all
this. Worship is about coming and hearing
the word of God being preached, people fellowshipping together,
praying, the hymns being sung. That worship is about praise
and focus upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what worship
is all about. So we've seen that it's defined
as being in spirit and in truth, that we've seen that it's commanded
of God. We also learned that there is
perverted and corrupted worship that's out there. We also learned
that last week, that the center of worship of all of scripture
And all of time, whether it's before or whether it's after
this time period, is all focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ
has been the center of the whole thing. Matter of fact, if you
look in the in the eternal covenant, the eternal covenant is centered
upon Jesus Christ. And I know we all talk about
how all the triune Godhead is active in salvation and in the
eternal covenant. They all have their part. And
I say their, as if there's three beings out there. The Godhead
has this tri-equal part in salvation. And I will say, there is a tri-equal
part in salvation, but it's all focused upon Jesus Christ. A
lot of people will say, well, the father has his part, the
son has his part, and the Holy Spirit has his part. but all of that focuses on Jesus
Christ. The Father gave a people to the
Son. The Holy Spirit speaks only of
Jesus Christ, quickens those whom the Son says to quicken,
brings them by conviction to their knowledge of Jesus Christ
and their need for Jesus Christ. He works in them to will and
to do the good pleasure of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is the
one who made all of it possible through his redemption and his
salvation by blood. And so we see Jesus last week
was the center of that. We've seen that angels worship
Jesus, that wise men worship Jesus. that men in general and
women in general worship Jesus, that his disciples worship Jesus
as God. All these worship him as God.
And then we've seen that there was a heavenly host of angels
who worshiped him as God. So all of creation was worshiping
Jesus as God. And matter of fact, and I left
this out and I realized it after the fact, but The Bible says
that the whole creation groans in expectations waiting for the
sons of God to be revealed. That also is an exaltation of
Jesus Christ because those sons are not gonna be revealed without
the finished work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ are the ones who
are bringing many sons to glory. And so until those many sons
are brought to glory, the creation is waiting in earnest expectation
for the revealing of those sons. And at the end of all of it,
it's all gonna glorify God. Now I tell you what, the Bible
says that the trees and the fields, they all worship God. Jesus said
that if you guys don't worship me, I can raise up rocks to cry
out in my name. What an amazing thing that that
would have seen. Can you imagine? And I don't know about you guys,
but you know, it's pretty rocky around here in Missouri. Our
yard just like grows rocks. And to just walk out one day
and all of a sudden them rocks just stand up, start giving praise
to God. I mean, that'd be an amazing thing. It's not science
fiction. Jesus said, if you don't give
praise, these rocks will. Of course, we always used to
talk about how sad that would be for the rocks to cry out for
us and how shameful that should be and stuff like that. But it's
true, the whole creation is focused upon Jesus Christ. Now, today
I thought we might look at a few things that the Bible tells us
are wrong objects of worship, wrong objects of worship. You realize that just because
you quote unquote worship doesn't mean you're necessarily worshiping
the right person in the right way. And we've kind of had that
discussion already, but the Deuteronomy chapter 17, we find some verses
and I'm going to start reading in verse two. I'm going to read down to verse
five. It says, if there be found among
you within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee,
man or woman that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the
Lord thy God in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and
served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun or moon
or any of the host of heaven which I have not commanded, and
it betold thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently
"'And behold, it be true and the thing certain "'that such
abomination is wrought in Israel, "'then shalt thou bring forth
that man or that woman "'which have committed that wicked thing
unto thy gates, "'even that man or that woman, "'and shalt stone
them with stones till they die.'" That's pretty harsh. Now, the Lord doesn't have us
do that today. And it's not that he's changed,
he's not changed. But his precepts on how things
are taken care of and done have changed for his purposes. But still that doesn't negate
the fact of this right here shows us the attitude of God towards
idolatry. This shows us how God thinks
about worshiping other gods. And now you kind of understand
and can kind of see, you know, whenever I make statements like,
I can't ever go back and ever be a part of a church that preaches
a false gospel or teaches a false gospel. I can't go to them. You
know, if I'm invited to somebody's church that doesn't preach the
gospel, I can't go, I just have to say no. I can't go. I'm not
going to join in with them to worship a God that is not the
true God. To hold hands and say, yes, let's go to worship together.
I'm not going to worship together. I'm not worshiping your God.
I'm not gonna be a part of that. And the reason why is because
God is very, very, you know, firm here in the fact that anything
that is worship and and particularly here we see uh the sun the moon
or any of the host of heaven now that host of heaven there
i kind of wasn't exactly for sure exactly what it was talking
about whether that is talking about the stars or whether it's
talking about angels because both are alluded to whenever
it talks about the host of heaven but either way Don't worship
them, okay? Don't worship the sun and the
moon. That kind of takes me on a side note here about this sun
worship. You know, that's a Babylonian
thing. I mean, that comes straight out of paganism, the worship
of the sun and everything revolving around the sun, everything rotating
around the sun. Everything pointing to the Sun
and you see all this imagery in a lot of things today in the
in the marketplace and in the entertainment world you see all
the aspects of this God worship matter of fact, I was Mentioning
to you guys a few months ago that I'd watched a video where
this This guy who does videos that I've seen was in New York
and he had went into this bookstore and happened to come across,
which is very strange because you don't see this very often,
came across a Masonic Bible. And those King James Bibles are
given out to Masons whenever they come into the lodge. And whenever they die, those
Bibles are having to be given back to the lodge. They're not
able to pass those down and they're not able to keep it down in the
open. Well anyway this guy come across one in a bookstore obviously
somebody had passed away nobody knew they were supposed to give
that back or whatever and they just took it to a bookstore.
Well this guy found it and in that King James Bible had been
added at the back of the Bible several pages of illustrations of all these
Babylonian gods. And I mean, it even talks about
it, you know. It had Ra, it had all these gods in there that
are worshipped by the Babylonian pagan people. And that was in
their quote-unquote Christian King James Bible. And it talks
all about this worship in the back. And you see that's mixing
the things of God with the things of paganism or the things of
idolatry. And here the Bible says that
they're not to serve other gods to worship either the sun, the
moon or any of the host of heaven. And so we need to be very careful
about a lot of things that come up that are very closely tied
to those things. Now, look, if you would, while
you're there, did you have something I've seen you? No. Okay. Just flag me if you have something
to add. Okay. Look with me, if you would,
over into Exodus chapter 20. Somebody said, well, you know, that's
in one part there. The Bible says that in the mouth
of two or three witnesses, a thing is established. So let's look
and see if this is established in more than one place. Exodus
chapter 20, and look with me at the very beginning of the
chapter. It says, and God spake all these
words saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. thou
shalt have no other gods before me now let's just stop there
now we know this to be a physical truth right this is a physical
historical reality god did choose israel as a nation a physical
nation Okay, and he chose them above all the other nations of
the world. So he elected a nation out of all the nations to be
his peculiar people that he would have dealings with, that he would
meet with, that he would bless, that he would do all these things
for, and that he would give the Messiah to, okay, and give them
to the Messiah. And so that was a, that was a
true thing, okay? And we learned that in, out through
all of the Old Testament, that God was with them. All, everywhere
they was at, God was with them. And we learned in other places
that it was Jesus who was with them, that met with them, in
all these different places. But anyway, So we see in the
Old Testament, we see this physical thing taking place. But as we
learn in the New Testament, the New Testament says that all these
things in the Old Testament were written for our understanding
and for our understanding to know the spiritual application,
the spiritual things of these things. Now while they really
happened, God so orchestrated all of that time of history in
real life actions of people so that it would illustrate in a
spiritual level to us what is going on in the spiritual realm
between God and his people, his spiritual people. And so we see
here that God has taken a people for himself and has brought them
out of Egypt. We know that spiritually speaking,
that God has brought us out of our sin. He's brought us out
of our corruption, has brought us out of our natural self and
made us one with him, has made us one with God. quickened us
to new life. And so we have been brought out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. We've been
brought out of bondage to sin and to self and to the world
and all the things that are in it. And so this is a picture
of that. When God brought those people
out, that's what it pictured. And so God is saying to us in
a spiritual way, he said, those of you who have eyes to see and
ears to hear, Listen to what I'm saying. The God who has brought
you out of Egypt and out of the bondage, the house of bondage,
thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make
into thee any graven image. or any likeness of anything that
is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, and that
is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself
to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. So God
here is very clear. He says, thou shalt have no other
gods before me. He said, thou shalt not bow thyself
down to any graven images. So there should not be any worship
through images. And here we have a lot of people
that have all these images, these images of Jesus, these images
of crosses, these images of all these religious things, and they
use that and they put that as part of their worship. That becomes
part of their, again, as we went back at the very beginning, that
gets us into the mode of worship. It prepares our hearts for worship.
It visually brings us into a time of worship and everything. Again, if we cannot worship God
for who he is alone, then we're having idols. We've got idols
there. If it takes a picture of Jesus,
to bring us to worship, then we're idolizing a picture. If it takes a cross or a steeple
or whatever the case might be, those things are idols if we
think that we have to have that for worship. Oh, you mean you
don't have any crosses in your church? You don't have any pictures
of Jesus? You don't have a steeple? Well,
that's not a place of worship. Well, what do you mean? Are we
going to the idol factory to worship? where two or three are
gathered in his name, there I am with him. He said that, lo, I
am with you always. He didn't say if you have a steeple.
He didn't say if you had a cross or a picture of Jesus or an angel. We got to be very careful of
these things. I know a lot of people inadvertently have all
this kind of stuff and, you know, we just need to be mindful of
that. And I definitely don't think there's any place of that
whenever it comes to the meeting house, whenever we come and meet
together, that having any kind of relics and things like that
that we put up as things of worship. I mean, it's bad enough we've
got bricks out here in the line of a, you know, if it was up
to me, we could cover all that up, but unfortunately I can't. But anyway, you know, we shouldn't
have those things whenever it comes to our worship. The Lord
is very clear in this, that we should not involve these things
in our service to Him, in our worship to Him, and that He is
very serious because He says, that I, the Lord thy God, am
a jealous, God. Now I've actually had somebody
say, well, that don't mean he's jealous because God can't be
jealous. That's a, that's a attribute of man. You know, man gets jealous. God can't be jealous. Well, turn
with me over to Exodus chapter 34 because he didn't just say
it there. He said it in a few other places. Exodus 34 starting
in verse 14. Matter of fact, let's just go
back. I want us to go back because
I want us to see. There's a lot of rabbits out
here today and I'm very prone to chase them down. We get around
all these holidays. and feasts and festivals. We've
got this whole Hebrews Roots movement popping up, pointing
everybody to go back and observe all these feasts and festivals
in the Old Testament, all these things. We've got all these holidays
that have come out and stemmed from pagan and Babylonian things. And All I hear from Christians
is, you know, when it comes to like Easter and Christmas and
when it comes to even Halloween. You know, well, they've been
Christianized. You know, they've been Christianized.
Well, wait a minute. First, let's think of who quote
unquote Christianized them. It was the Roman Catholic Church.
They're not Christian, okay? So any holiday that you think
has been Christianized was Christianized by the Roman Catholic Church.
But if you know the scoop behind the whole entire thing, the Roman
Catholic Church is ran by Babylonian pagan worship. The Jesuits stem
from that very worship. So those worships that were being
seen of the Druids, those worship that was being seen by all these
in the Easter celebrations and in the Christmas celebrations
and all that stuff, all came from pagan stuff But again, the
Catholic Church puts the Christian spin on there to make what is
dark light. Remember, the Bible says that
Satan comes masquerading as an angel of light, an angel, a messenger
of light. Oh, let's take that and turn
it into a message of light. All of while you're still participating,
you're still entering into what they We're celebrating. Now listen to what the Bible
says. Look at verse 11. Observe thou which I command
thee this day. Behold, I drive out before thee
the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite,
and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou
make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, whether thou goest,
lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee. But ye shall destroy
their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves. For
thou shalt worship no other God, for the Lord whose name is Jealous
is a jealous God. Lest thou make a covenant with
the inhabitants of the land, and they go a-whoring after their
gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and
thou eat of his sacrifice. And thou take of their daughters
unto their sons, and their daughters go a-whoring after their gods,
and make thy sons go a-whoring after their gods. Thou shalt
make thee no molten gods." You look here, what's God warning
them? He's saying, listen, I'm driving these people out, separating
them from you. And you should separate yourself
from them, not have anything to do with them. Why? Because
they will have an influence upon your worship. and your men and
your women will go out and begin to see how they worship their
gods. And then when you see how they
worship their gods, then all of a sudden now you're gonna
go out and wanna worship your God the way they worship their
God. And the scriptures say that we
are not to follow as the heathen do in worship of their God. We're
not to follow that way. We're not to look to them. You
remember, and I think there may still be some more out there
on the table about what we have against Easter, but there's a
whole litany of scriptures out there showing that the Bible
commands us and tells us that we are not to participate or
look to even how they do their things and try to do it our way.
That's the whole secret sensitive movement. They are looking to
the world to see how does the world. appeal to people, well
then let's bring that into the church and do that here so that
we can be appealing to the church so that we can get people in
because, again, at the very end of all of it, we think that we
can convert people to God. We think that we can save souls.
We think that we can change people's minds. We think that salvation
comes by a decision that is made by either coercion, that is made
by manipulation, that is made by even debate and reasoning. And so we think that if we can
just get them here, then we can preach to them. And if we can
preach to them, then the power of the word being preached will
convert their souls. That is the modern evangelical
train of thought. And so they begin to devise among
themselves all these devices to get in the masses. So what
they've done is they've looked to the world, they've looked
to pagans to see how do you do it? How do you get a crowd? Well,
let's do that like that and we can get a crowd, but we'll feed
them the good words, not the bad words. And so we've got a
whole lot. The Bible says, come out from
among them and be separate. You know what? This right here
is not appealing to anybody except who has been born of God, who
loves the word of God. What we're doing here today,
singing from a Gatsby hymn book, hymns written way back whenever,
no music, not that I'm against music, but no music. Gathering in a small little group,
going through the Bible and preaching about Christ. that don't appeal
to a lot of people. Even quote unquote strong type
Christians, that don't appeal to them. They want to have the
upbeat music. They want to have the big stage
and they want to have all the stuff. Listen, that all becomes
idolatry. And the Bible here is telling
us that we don't need to be doing the things. He says, matter of
fact, he said, you're to go in and destroy their altars. You're
to go in and break their images, cut down their groves. Now again,
remember, they were going into their land. These were things
that were already established by these people. God was clearing
them out, bringing these people in, and God said, whenever you
go into this place, I want you to rid yourselves of anything
that looks like their worship. Get rid of all of it. I don't
want any of it around. But yet, just the opposite is
going on today. People are coming into towns,
churches are coming into towns, and they're looking for every
way to be like the world to entice the people to come. So God was
very, very stern about that. That's how he felt. But again,
if you'll notice the phrase, he said in verse 14, thou shalt
worship no other God for the Lord whose name is jealous. Now, that's a little bit stronger
than we just read in Exodus 20, right? God said in Exodus 20
that he was a jealous God. That is an action by God. But
here, we learn that jealous is the character of God, is the
name of God. If you'll remember, it's been
several years ago, we went through all the names of God In the Old Testament, not all
the names, but quite a few. We've been on there for quite
a while. We went through the names of God, and we've seen
that there was a lot of names for God in the Old Testament.
We've seen that I am that I am was given his name, his proper
name. Well, brethren, here he's saying his name is Jealous. Jealous is who he is. It's not
something that he just does, and that's a character flaw.
A time of weakness, God gets jealous, you know. I can get
jealous sometimes. I get jealous of my wife. You
know, some guy is talking to my wife, and I kind of get jealous
about that, you know. Some guy that I don't know, that
she don't know, and all of a sudden has approached her and is talking
to her, especially if he's talking nice, sweet things. I get jealous. There's times that somebody may
be given accolades, and I'm kind of jealous. I'd like to have
accolades. My pride, ego, I kind of like to have accolades. But it's different with God. See, we're jealous for the wrong
motives, for the wrong reasons. God is jealous because he is
deserving of all and only worship, right? He's deserving of all
worship from everyone. And He is deserving of only worship. Nobody else. And so He says here
that His name is Jealous. For the Lord whose name is Jealous
is a jealous God. pretty stern. I think we should
be careful in our worship that we not make God jealous. See, Israel made God jealous.
She did. Exactly what happened here. Exactly
what God told them would happen, happened. They came in and what
happened? They went whoring after other
gods. When they went down into Babylonian
captivity, all these other gods. You see what happened with Samson.
He got tangled up with the wrong woman and went whoring after
their gods. All these things did exactly
what got it. Do you think you're any better
than they are, brother? I don't think we're any better
than they are. We are susceptible to those same things. If we are
influenced by those things, it's easy for us to be able to be
sidetracked. God forbid, and by grace, pray
that it don't happen, but that is God's admonition to us. Look with me, if you would, over
to, back to Deuteronomy, if you would, chapter four. Deuteronomy chapter four. Look at verse 23. It says, take heed unto yourselves
lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he
made with you and make you a graven image or the likeness of anything
which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is
a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Okay, so here again we see
another place, this is the third witness in scripture, that God
is a jealous God and does not like idolatry. Commands us not
to have graven images or any likeness of anything in our worship. Look over to chapter six. If
three witnesses are not good enough, how about a fourth? There
was actually more than that. This is all I put down though. Deuteronomy 6, look at verse
13. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy
God and serve Him and shalt swear by His name. Ye shall not go
after other gods of the gods of the people which are round
about you. For the Lord thy God is a jealous
God among you. Lest the anger of the Lord thy
God be kindled against thee and destroy thee off the face of
the earth. Now, brethren, that's... That's
pretty serious. That's pretty serious. Matter
of fact, verse 16, he goes, ye shall not tempt the Lord your
God as ye tempted him in Massah. So God here is telling us that
we shall not go after other gods. Now, let's put that into perspective
of what's going on today. Today, we hear this ecumenical
movement Whether it's local, or whether it's national, or
whether it's international, there's this ecumenical movement about
us all just getting along. You see the little bumper stickers
on everybody's car. Coexist. Let us just get along. Hold hands together and preach
peace, and joy, and harmony, and love. Worship the God of your choice
Go to the church of your choice. I've heard that listen. I've
heard I've heard that from people I know that you know, it don't
matter where you go to church Just go to church Go to the church
of your choice and worship well God right here saying there is
a difference in where you go and how you do it and what you
do and who you do it to and that not everybody is worshiping the
same God. This is just kind of one of those
things that gets under my craw. How can you, Presbyterian guy
over here, say this is what I believe and here's your set of doctrines.
And you Methodist guy over here say, this is what I believe.
This is my set of doctrines. And I'm not going to go to the
Presbyterian church because I don't believe what they believe about
this, that, or the other. So I'm going to go to the Methodist
church. And then you have the apostolic, full gospel, charismatic,
Pentecostal, jump down, turn around, pick a bell, cotton church
over here. that has a particular doctrine.
And I said, well, I can't go over here because I don't believe
in that. And I can't go over here because I don't believe in that. So we
gather ourselves together over here. And then you've got every
thousand splinters of Baptists over here saying, this is what
we believe. And we can't go to this one or this one or this
one. And then you have the Catholics over here that says, no, we're
the only thing that's here. And everybody else is looking
at them saying, no, you're the one that's not. You've got all
these little groups, the churches of Christ, the churches of God,
the whatever the churches, the non-denominational. We're non-denominational. Well, non-denominational has
now become a denomination because all the non-denominational churches
basically believe the same thing. They don't believe that you have
to believe anything. You got all these people, they've
got all their thoughts about what the Bible says about something.
But yet they can sit there and say, well, let's all hold hands
because we're all worshiping the same God. What schizophrenic, changing God are you worshiping?
That over here, it's all right to baptize babies, but no, over
here, he's commanded to not baptize babies, but immerse professing
adults. What guy over here says, oh no,
the spiritual gifts is ended, but this guy over here says,
unless you show these spiritual gifts through speaking in tongues
and whatnot, you're not even a Christian. And this guy over
here is saying, unless you've been baptized in water, then
you haven't been saved because baptism is what washes away your
sins. And this guy over here says, well, I don't even think
baptism is in vogue today. Period. But yet, you're all going
to hold hands together and say you're worshiping the same God. You know what that's called?
It's called confusion. You know who's the god of confusion?
Satan. And that's what's going on. That's
what this verse is talking about. You're going after the gods of
the people, and you're wanting to cherry pick. You're wanting
like a buffet, cafeteria buffet. Oh, I'd like a little of that.
Oh, I'd like a little of that. Oh, and a little of that, and
a little of that. And I'm gonna sit down to a nice good worship
holy meal. And all you've done is you've
picked a little bit of paganism. Oh, this is paganism cooked a
little different way. Oh, this is paganism stirred
a little different way. This is instant paganism. This
is slow-cooked paganism. That's all that's happening.
The Bible says that there is one faith delivered to the saints
one time, and that has been perpetuated over and over and over again
throughout all of the centuries since Jesus give it to that first
group of people and he give them the faith to believe the things,
the doctrines, all these things. He said, this is it. and the churches of Jesus Christ,
the New Testament churches, wherever they gathered, however big or
however small, wherever they gathered, in His name, with that
doctrine, with those things, wherever they were, perpetuated
the one faith given to the saints. And it still is being perpetuated
today. We're small in number. We're few in people. But brethren,
it's still being perpetuated today. And the Bible is very
clear. Do not look to those other gods
and the way they do it. So why are we seclusive? Why
are we non ecumenical? Why are we considered to be seclusive and what is sectarians? Well, because the Bible tells
us to be. Don't look to other gods. And
we see this Yehu, Purpose Driven Chariot, Rick Warren, trying
to mix and mingle religions. You see this together for the
gospel. Stuff going on where you've got
Baptists and Presbyterians and Reformed and all these guys gathering
together because we all believe the doctrines of grace. But yet
all of them have differences between each other and they have
different doctrines. Different doctrines. And they can all just get together
and say, oh, we're doing it all for the Gospel. All together. Brethren, listen, I'm not saying
that we have to have every point dotted, every T crossed. But
I'm telling you this, the gospel is going to be the gospel. It's
going to be the same gospel. And if it ain't this gospel here,
then it's another gospel. And if you're worshiping in any
other way besides this gospel and the God that give this gospel,
then you're worshiping somebody else. And you're in this place
where God has said, for the Lord thy God is a jealous God among
you. Lest the anger of the Lord thy
God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from off the face
of the earth. Now listen, I'll be perfectly
clear, and I'm the first one to say that our founding here
in the United States wasn't necessarily the awesome Christian founding
that everybody says it was. You know, those guys that founded
this place are not biblical Christians. But one thing was true, there
was a belief in God, there was a desire for God, in some aspects
where that has totally gone out the door. Any God whatsoever,
it's a godless society now. And you see what God is bringing
judgment upon our country. Where once we had peace and once
we had prosperity and once we had a lot of things going for
us here in this country, we see now is nothing but turmoil and
strife and upheaval and a rise of, I mean, just filthy evil
in all of its forms. Two things in the Bible, if you
look through the Bible, you can see whenever God is bringing
judgment upon somebody, you see two things. I'm not, and I know
this is gonna not go over with a lot of people, you see a rise
in sexual perversion, you see a rise in feminism. God used
those two things to judge the nations and then bring judgment upon
the nations. You see that God would bring a rise in women leaders
and women influence. And then you've seen
a rise in sexual deviation, perversion. of what God had intended for
man and for woman. You see men marrying men, women
marrying women, their desires after the other, and that's not what God had intended.
And you see that that rise came in all the cultures that ever
were laced with pagan worship. In all the countries and all
the places where paganism was going rampant, you see that that
was at the heart of it. Now that isn't saying anything
against women. We love women. We think women are a gift from
God. We think that our wives and our women has been given
to us by God and they have a tremendous, tremendous blessed role in the
family. I mean, honestly, my wife, without
her, I couldn't do anything. My kids would not be probably
what they are without my wife's influence and her being at home
with those kids to raise them and to teach them whenever I'm
not there. And so we definitely do not look down on women and
think that they're second rate creatures or anything like that.
We think that God has given them a blessed role that we as men
can't do. So don't think that we're down on women. We're not
down on women. We love what God has made and
how God has made men and women different. We actually rejoice
in those differences. We don't push for everybody to
be the same. They're not the same. They can't
be the same. God didn't design them the same. And so that again,
in and of itself is also idolatry. Whenever we begin to look to
races and whenever we begin to look at genders and we put them
up before God, that's idolatry. That's idolatry. All right, anybody
got any questions, anything you wanna add or anything? And we'll
take a quick break. All right, we'll take a break
and we'll be back here if we use the restroom.