We see pictures of people in other lands going to heathen temples and worshiping there, and we feel sorry for them in the darkness of their idolatry. But I suspect that those around us are in even greater darkness, for they have heard the Word of God and yet they get up each day and rush off to worship their own idol and to bow before it  -  often times that idol is money.

Again and again in Old Testament times the prophets warned against the sin of idolatry, saying that because of it the whole nation of Israel would go down. 

The prophet Micah describes the specific sins of the people:

Micah 2:1   "Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand."

Judgment came upon these people because they had gone into unbridled covetousness and idolatry with all that it implies.

Many folk go to bed at night thinking about money, their bank book is their god.

Others can't even sleep because they are so busy thinking up schemes on how to make money.

But there are many other gods being worshiped in our day, as we shall, see.

What is Idolatry?

Idolatry is anything that takes first place in our hearts. That is our idol.

Anything that we give ourselves to, especially in abandonment, becomes our "god."

Many people who would deny worshiping Bacchus, the cloven-hoofed Greek and Roman god of wine and revelry of long ago, worship the bottle just the same. There are millions of alcoholics in the world. The liquor interests like to tell us about how much of the tax burden they carry, when actually they do not pay a fraction of the bill for the casualties they cause by their product.

Whether or not these folk recognize it, they worship the god Bacchus.

Or they may be worshiping Aphrodite; that is, the goddess of sex.

In Colossians 3:5 we are instructed clearly to

"Mortify (put in the place of death), therefore, your members which are upon the earth: fornication (sexual immorality), uncleanness (includes thoughts, gestures, jokes, inordinate affection (uncontrolled lust), evil desire, and covetousness (which is idolatry)."

Covetousness is when we always must have more.

"Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth" (Isaiah 5:8),

This was the first sin of Israel - the lust of the eye - more specifically, covetousness. 

Covetousness is idolatry.

It is a big business expanding at the expense of the little man. 

That is what happened in Israel - the little man was squeezed out. 

It was done so that great fortunes might be accumulated.

The only excuse for such expansion is the insatiable greed for more property and possessions. 

God will and did judge His people.

It is a sad story that we have here. The picture is one of a great complex of farms. 

In Isaiah’s day the people were agricultural people. They built big corporations, big complexes. This was not done for the good of the little man, the small operator. It was done to accumulate wealth. Anything to which you give yourself completely becomes your religion. 

Many people today are worshiping at the altar of covetousness.

Covetousness is a mean-looking god.

It is what brought Israel down and for 

which God judged them. 

Instead of following God’s instructions, they were beginning to take all of the richness from the soil. 

We are doing the same thing today. We are living in a world which is actually depleted of its energy. We are frantically searching for oil, for any kind of energy that can be used. Why? Because men are covetous, and that covetousness is depleting the earth of its riches. 

That is a judgment of God.

"In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah (Isaiah 5:9–10).

God is simply saying that even though they expand their lands, the yield will not be great because there will be a famine which will decimate the crop. 

Extended holdings will not produce a bumper crop.

The earth you and I are living on is running short of energy. We are running out of oil. We are running out of arable lands. This subject of ecology is an important matter. Pollution is destroying much of the earth. One of these days we are going to be on a desolate planet. 

There is going to be a shortage of fuel. 

It may not happen in our lifetime, but there are those who believe that it will be in our lifetime. 

This is the judgment that God made on the nation Israel in their day.

"Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands (Isaiah 5:11–12).

Drunkenness, pleasure, music video's plugged into the ears  -  or on an i-pad -  from "the jukebox in the clouds" are all on a national scale today. 

They are the sins mentioned here. 

They lead to the deadening of all spiritual perception.

The majority today think it is sophisticated to drink. 

That is idolatry.

Idolatry in that day represented gross immorality, and the wages of harlots ran the "high places" which the prophets warned against. Prostitution was the source of funds for their religion since sex was associated with idolatry.

We find that same thing today in the occult and in Satan worship. There is a connection between the occult of today and the idolatry of Micah’s day.

Sex plays a very prominent part in both of them.

Sexual sin and idolatry seem to go together.

They destroy the home and destroy

the sweet and tender relationship between a man and a woman in marriage. When sex is kept within the marriage relationship, it can become the sweetest and most precious thing on earth.

When a nation moves sex out of that context and encourages illicit sex in the name of religion or "new morality," it is evidence of the fact that the nation is in decline and is on its way out.

Inordinate affection.

The filthiness of the flesh are those sins which we commit in the body.

This has to do with unholy lusts, unbridled appetites, drunkenness, gluttony, licentiousness, inordinate affection, sexual child abuse, rape. These are the sins of the flesh. These are the dirty things. 

We today are living in a world that gives a respectability to the sins of the flesh.

How can we cleanse ourselves?

 We cannot cleanse our own conscience from the guilt of sin. 

We cannot remove the stain of a guilty conscience, but

God has done it through the death of Christ and the shedding of His blood. 

After we have been cleansed from our sins by the blood of Christ, our hearts still need a daily cleansing from the contamination of each day. When we receive the Word by faith in Christ we act upon that Word and we are cleansed from all the filthiness of the flesh and spirit. 

This is what our Lord Jesus meant when He said, 

"Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth" (John 17:17).

The best bar of soap in the world is the Word of God. 

It will clean us up. 

The Holy Spirit enables us to deal with the sin in our lives.

Apostle Paul says we are to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit. All sin is filthiness in the sight of God. 

What is the difference between the sins of the flesh and the sins of the spirit?

What does the Bible say about this?

Listen to prophet Habakkuk 

"Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!" (Habakkuk 2:15). 

God have mercy on you if you serve cocktails in your home and tempt your neighbor to drunkenness.

The Word of God rebukes that.

Another illustration of the filthiness of the flesh is the bookstands filled with the vilest pornographic literature that is imaginable which glorifies the human body and sex. In this permissive society we live in today God’s Word still condemns the sins of the flesh. If we as a Christian are going to indulge in them then God cannot act toward us as our Father. 

Although we could actually be His son, He cannot treat us as a Father would like to treat His son.

Apostle Paul mentions the filthiness of the spirit.

What are some of those sins? 

How about vicious slander against a believer who is seeking to get the Word of God out?

There are a great many people who would never take a gun and pull the trigger to shoot a person down, but they will take the dagger of slander and put it in our backs.

There are the secret sins of the spirit such as vanity and pride. Conceit, haughtiness, unbelief, and covetousness are the dirty sins of the spirit. There are a whole lot of saints in the church who live by a series of "don’ts" - don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t play cards. Not one of them would have a cigarette on the end of his tongue, but the words on the end of his tongue burn more deeply than a cigarette could burn. These are some of the sins of the spirit.

Inordinate affection means "uncontrolled passion or lust." 

Many folk like to say they just cannot help themselves.

Dear reader we ought not ever to get in that place in the first place.

It’s like the little boy whose mother called to him one night when she heard him in the kitchen, "Where are you?" He said, "I’m in the pantry." He had the cookie jar open. She called, "What are you doing?" He answered, "I’m fighting temptation!" That was the wrong place to fight temptation if we are not to have the cookies. 

The same thing applies to inordinate affection.
Let’s not kid ourselves - there are many folk who are covering up this sin, and yet they still talk about being dedicated Christians! Apostle Paul brings this right out into the open and tells us that we are to put our physical members in the place of death.

Do our eyes cause us trouble? 

Do we look with the eye of covetousness, or the eye of lust? 

We are to place those eyes in the place of death.

We are to use our eyes for Christ, to look upon Him. 

When we look upon Him our lives will be made new.

Dr. A. J. Gordon wrote: 

"The look saves but the gaze sanctifies."

Uncleanness includes thoughts, words, looks, gestures, and the jokes we like to tell.

Let us ask God through Christ Jesus our precious Saviour even right now to bring us into vital relationship with Himself and let us behold Him who died upon the awful, cruel cross of Calvary for these ugly sins of the flesh and spirit. Let us confess our sin and mourn over our carelessness.

1 John 1:7, 9   "But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 

Did you know that we can blaspheme another Christian when we make a statement about them that is not true? 

Some time ago I heard a statement made by a person about a preacher of the Word of God who was fundamental in theology. The person made the statement said that this preacher was "of Satan." 

When we say things like that, untrue things about a dear child of God, we are guilty of blasphemy.

It is psychologically true that we are able to put off old habits and form new ones. But it is especially true for the believer because we have the power of the Holy Spirit within.

We are to "put on the new man."

"Renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him" (Colossians 3:10). 

That new Man is Christ. 

In that way the church is able to represent Him on this earth.

O today let us cry out to God for mercy and let us stop bowing down to the devils idols.

Exodus 20:5-6   "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; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments."

These verses have presented a problem to many people.

Will God punish the children of sinning parents?

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan gives a fine interpretation of this:

Quote:

To pass on to children a wrong conception of God … is the most awful thing a man can do…. When a man puts something, as the object of his worship, in the place of God, he passes on the same practice to his offspring. What a terrible heritage he is thus handing down to the child!

But notice the gracious promise standing side by side with the warning: …"Showing mercy unto a thousand generations of them that love Me, and keep My commandments." … Here is a remarkable comparison—God visits the iniquity to the third and fourth generation; but He shows mercy unto the thousandth generation! If a man will commit to his posterity a worship which is true, strong, whole-hearted, and pure, and will sweep away all that interferes between himself and God, he is more likely to influence for good the thousandth generation that follows him than a man of the opposite character is to touch that generation with evil…. Whenever a man stops short of that face-to-face worship of the Eternal God, he is working ruin to his own character, because he is breaking the commandment of God. (Morgan, The Ten Commandments, pages 34 and 35).

The Downward Path.

From the beginning, man knew there was only one God. 

How did it happen that idolatry has taken over the great masses of humanity in the world?

Apostle Paul answers that question in 

Romans 1:21–23  "Because, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."

Here we see that there are 7 steps which mankind took downward from the Garden of Eden:

There is no such thing as man moving upward.

These verses contradict the hypothesis of evolution.

Man is not improving physically, morally, intellectually, or spiritually.

The pull is downward. 

Of course, this contradicts all the anthologies of religion that start with man in a very primitive condition as a caveman with very little intellectual qualities and move him up intellectually and begin moving him toward God.

This is absolute error. 

Man is moving away from God, and right now the world is probably farther from God than at any time in its history.

The fact of the matter is that every primitive tribe has a tradition that way back in the beginning their ancestors knew God. But no people have ever lived up to the light that they have had. Although they had a knowledge of God, they moved away from Him. 

"They glorified Him not as God." 

They did not give Him His rightful place, and man became self-sufficient.

In our day man has made the announcement that God is dead.

In the beginning the human family did not suggest that God was dead, they simply turned their backs upon Him and made man their god.

They "became vain in their imaginations" - they even concocted a theory of evolution.

"Their foolish heart was darkened" -  that is, they moved into the darkness of paganism. 

We see living proof of this as we look at the streets of Cairo in Egypt or of Istanbul in Turkey and frankly all we need do is walk down the streets of our town to know that man’s foolish heart is darkened.

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." 

The wisdom of man is foolishness 

with God. 

Man searches for truth through logical  reasoning but he arrives at a philosophy that is totally foolish in 

God’s sight.

"And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."

Have you noted that the unsaved world has made caricatures of God?

Look at the images and the idols of the heathen.

They turn the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible mankind.

Idolatry is a cartoon of God; it is a slander and a slur against Him. Personally I do not like to see any pictures of our Lord Jesus, as Paul says that we know Him no longer "after the flesh" (see 2 Corinthians 5:16). 

He is today The Glorified Christ.

He is not that picture anyone has hanging on their wall. If He came into our room, we would fall flat on our faces before Him. 

Don’t slur our God by having a picture of Him! The Greeks made their gods like themselves with their own imperfections; the Assyrians and the Egyptians and the Babylonians made their gods like beasts and birds and creeping things.

Man did not begin in idolatry. The savage of today is very unlike primitive man. Primitive man was monotheistic; idolatry was introduced later.

In the Word of God the first record we have of idolatry is in connection with Rachel stealing her father’s idols (Genesis 31). Man descended downward; he did not develop upward. Religiously, man has departed from God. 

Sir William Ramsay, who was once a belligerent unbeliever, wrote in his book The Cities of Paul,

Quote:

"For my own part, I confess that my experience and reading show nothing to confirm the modern assumptions in religious history, and a great deal to confirm Paul. Whatever evidence exists, with the rarest exceptions, the history of religion among men is a history of degeneration…. The fact of human history [is] that man, standing alone, degenerates; and that he progresses only where there is in him so much sympathy with and devotion to the Divine life as to keep the social body pure and sweet and healthy."

The reason there is failure in our poverty programs and health programs and other social programs is because of gross immorality and a turning away from God. 

They say, "We want to be practical, and we do not want to introduce religion." 

That’s the problem.

The only practical thing for man to do is to return to the living and true God.

In spite of the fact that the people of Israel made a covenant to serve God during the reign of King Josiah, the revival in the land proved to be largely a surface movement. There is no question that the words of Jeremiah had their effect and that there were some who genuinely turned to the Lord. 

However, things in the nation were deteriorating. After the revival, interest in spiritual things began to wear off again and the people returned to their old ways. That which followed was a very evil period in the life of the nation. Josiah had been slain, Jeremiah had been forced to leave his hometown, and evil men had come to the throne.

"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond; it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars, while their children remember their altars and their idols by the green trees upon the high hills" (Jeremiah 17:1-2).

There was evil in everything the people of Judah did. 

It even permeated their religion.

Dr. W. G. Moorehead has given us this very graphic picture of Jeremiah:

Quote:

"It was Jeremiah’s lot to prophesy at a time when all things in Judah were rushing down to the final and mournful catastrophe; when political excitement was at its height; when the worst passions swayed the various parties, and the most fatal counsels prevailed. It was his to stand in the way over which his nation was rushing headlong to destruction; to make an heroic effort to arrest it, and to turn it back; and to fail, and be compelled to step to one side and see his own people, whom he loved with the tenderness of a woman, plunge over the precipice into the wide, weltering ruin."

The prophet Jeremiah lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity. He mourned for Jerusalem, standing alone amid the ashes, weeping.

"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow…. Hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow; my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity" (Lamentations 1:12, 18).

The people of Israel had listened to the wrong voices, and we are doing the same thing in our day.

The great English jurist, was asked what was the mark of a great statesman. 

He gave this answer:

"A great statesman is a man who knows the direction God is moving for the next fifty years."

Dear reader, we certainly have not had leaders like that.

We are headed down the same path as Israel.

We have refused to listen to the Word of God.

To you is it nothing  That Jesus should die?

For what you have done  His blood must atone:

Your sins on the Lamb,  And He bore them away.

He died to atone,  For sins not His own;

Who made intercession,  "My Father,  forgive!"

Why had Jerusalem been destroyed? 

The people had sinned against God. 

God is righteous and He destroyed it.

God was right in what He did. 

This is difficult to understand, and I feel totally inadequate to deal with it. 

Jeremiah entered into the sorrow of our Lord Jesus Christ much like He did six centuries later when

He wept over Jerusalem:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them who are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (Matt. 23:37).

We can merely stand at the fringe of this sorrow, I find I cannot enter in.

A statement from G. Campbell Morgan may help us to understand the revelation of God’s anger:

Quote:

"This is a supreme necessity in the interest of the universe. Prisons are in the interest of the free. Hell is the safeguard of heaven. A State that cannot punish crime is doomed; and a God Who tolerates evil is not good. Deny me my Biblical revelation of the anger of God, and I am insecure in the universe. But reveal to me this Throne established, occupied by One Whose heart is full of tenderness, whose bowels yearn with love; then I am assured that He will not tolerate that which blights and blasts and damns; but will destroy it, and all its instruments, in the interest of that which is high and noble and pure. (Studies in the Prophecy of Jeremiah, page 248).

We are living in a universe where there is the eternal God, the living God whose heart goes out in love and yearning over us. 

But I want to say this to you very kindly my dear reader: 

If you turn your back on Him, He will judge you even though He still loves you.

God is Righteous in all that He does.

He is the true God of this universe.

We cannot understand it all but we do know that it is what He says in His Word. 

Someday I do believe He will make it clear to us that hell is actually there because He is a God of love and a God of righteousness and a God of holiness.

At that time the whole universe, including Satan himself, will admit that

God is righteous and just in all that He does.

In the first two of the Ten Commandments which deal with man’s relationship with Himself, 

God says:

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 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; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments" (Exodus 20:3–6).

Dear reader, God is Great and Wonderful and Good we dare not trifle with Him.

This is My commandment,
That you love one another
That your joy may be full;
This is My commandment,
That you love one another
That your joy may be full;
That your joy may be full,
That your joy may be full.
This is my commandment,
That you love one another
That your joy may be full.

Thanks: www.biblestudycharts.com

Amen!

THIS PAGE UPDATED: 10-4-2011.