All right, Romans chapter number 1 and verse number 22. It says, "...professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things." All right, let's pray. Father, we thank You and praise You, God, for all that You do. Thank You for Your blessings and Your goodness. Thank You, Lord, for this privilege we've had to be in Your house, and that, Lord, even with it supposed to having been a bad day to have so many people here anyways, and have a good opportunity of fellowship and strength and encourage one another. Lord, I know we have a lot of projects going on, a lot of things going on in our church right now that at times it's too much, but Lord, I want to be a church that's doing too much for youth and too little. And so I pray, God, that you just help us, Lord, to get a heart and a zeal to do for you everything that we can to make you the preeminent, give you preeminence in our lives so our life is about you. Lord, we thank you for all this and we ask it in your son Jesus' name, amen. Now we have looked at this two verses from two different angles. We're coming at it from the third angle and the final angle we'll look at it from. And that is, he says that when somebody denies God, foolishness will grow in the heart of that person. They will become foolish. And so we looked at it in regards to the foolishness of atheism, how that once you take the central point of truth for the entire universe, that there is a God, and say, I don't care about it. I don't want to hear that. You give me any other form of thinking, but not that one. You destined yourself to become a fool because you have taken the foundation of all the universe and thrown it away. And now you're trying to interpret the universe without it. And it just doesn't work that way. You can't do that. I think the example I gave that I'll use quickly is it would be like me asking Ruben to go to work tomorrow and to do his job, which heavily involves numbers, I would assume, and tell him that numbers no longer exist. You're not allowed to use those. We don't believe in numbers around here. Figure it out, and he'll come up with something, but it's probably not going to be correct. It'd be partially correct, it may have some good thoughts in it, but when you rob somebody of the key ingredient by which they're supposed to do everything, you limit their ability to do it right. And that's what somebody does when they deny God. They limit themselves in their ability to actually understand the universe. And as they limit themselves in their ability to understand the universe, they think they're wise. They're educated. They know some stuff, but they become fools. And so that's what happens. Then we saw that from atheism's perspective. Humanism we saw, which is really what verse 23 is going into, is humanism, idolatry, those kind of things, wherein you have God who is uncorruptible, God who is perfect, God who is immortal, eternal, the invisible God, the God who inhabits this eternity, and we exchange Him to worship and follow and pray to idols, animals, men, everything else in this universe you can imagine. And so we looked at it in terms of humanism, how foolish it is to look at God and say, you know, I know you are the only eyewitness to creation and you say you did it this way, but I think actually it was done the other way. I think maybe I got this thing figured out a little bit better than you do. And the foolishness it would take to look at God and say something like that. So today, we're going to follow that by taking the natural next step in this way of thinking. We're going to look at idolatry and how foolish it is because deep down inside of somebody's heart, people know there is a God that's part of the point of the passage. I mean, that's what he's been talking about in the verses before this, is that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. So deep down in people's hearts, they know there's a God. And deep down inside of people, there is a hunger and a desire to know God. They may not realize it. They may, through society and culture, do a lot to push that down and try to cut that out of somebody and strangle that from you, but it does exist. And part of it is because there is a vacuum there, in a sense, in that you have been born into this world dead in trespasses and sins, and because that spirit inside of a person is dead, there's a knowledge that something is missing. And because of that void that something is missing, because part of you is dead from the time you come into this world, you can try to fill it with everything you want. You can try being successful. You can try having everything the world has to offer you. You can try all of that. And ultimately, still come up empty. And if you want a good evidence of that, just go read the book of Ecclesiastes. It's literally the point of the book. Wisest, wealthiest man, one of the most productive men who ever lived, one of the greatest kings, most respected, most honored, most revered, like everything you could look for as a pinnacle to have hit in life, Solomon hit all of them. You know, if family could have brought fulfillment, then somewhere, you know, past 900 wives and concubines, probably you should have found it. money could have brought fulfillment, then I guess, you know, some point after you destabilize the value of silver and made it where it's like gravel on the ground because it's worthless now, money probably should have been able to provide that for you. If education was able to do it, then when you became the wisest man in the world and people gathered from the four corners of the earth to hear your wisdom, you probably should have found it somewhere. That's the point is he's looking at his life and he's saying, look, I tried this, I tried this, I tried it all. I even went and tried idols and nothing could give me what God could naturally give me. Nothing could satisfy the longing deep down within the human soul. So if you're asking a question up front as to why someone who deep down inside knows there's a God, who deep down inside has a hunger, something missing inside of them that no alcohol, no drugs, nothing in this world can fill it or satisfy it, not even things that are good like family and work and all this stuff, that nothing can satisfy it, how do they then come up with the idea to fill it with a statue? I'm going to go carve this statue and make it and then I'm going to set this there and that's going to satisfy the longing in my soul. That's going to bring me fulfillment in life. How does somebody do that? How do you become so foolish as to think that this is the answer to your problems? And God explains it in multiple parts of the Bible. Before I think we can get into how foolish it really is, we have to understand where the idols come from. And so saying that, I want you to go with me to 1 Corinthians 8, verse 4 through verse 7. So 1 Corinthians 8, verse 4. It says, as concerning, therefore, the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there be many gods and lords many, but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom we are all things, and we by Him. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge, for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled. So what God is saying to you in this passage is that if you are spiritually mature enough, you'll understand this. An idol is nothing. Like this statue is nothing. For example, we moved into this building and I was going to look for something to see if I could use it. The best thing I've got is my bell here to represent an idol today, but we're not going to do it because then somebody will throw my bell away. But when we first moved into this building, there were three very prominent idols here. A statue of Buddha, which I don't understand why a Muslim would have, but a statue of Buddha, a statue of Santa Claus, and one of the most prominent, that's the idol of the U.S. if you don't know. some statues of cats. No, the statues of cats were just statues of cats. But I'm going to tell you something. They were far more powerful than any of the other idols that were in this building. We threw Buddha away. No problem. Like we already took a video of herself. She threw him in the trash can. He was gone. He never came back. He didn't rescue himself. He got ground up by Evago and disappeared. Santa Claus the same. It was no problem. Santa Claus, I mean, I guess if you think he can come down your chimney, but he couldn't get out the trash can. He was gone and in the trash, but those three or two or whatever, cat statues, I guess, I know there's two at my house, so there's three. You have one? Okay. So, and it's still surviving? Okay. We'll ignore the third one for now and just focus on the two. Those two cat statues, they're just wooden carvings of a cat. They're not intended to be an idol. It's just a statue of a cat. And honestly, if you pay attention, the Bible is not against you having statues. There was lots of engravings and carvings and statues involved within the tabernacle and all that stuff. God's against you worshiping and bowing down and giving veneration or reverence or prayer or any of that kind of stuff to statues and things. So, saying that, those two cats, I just thought they were very ugly statues. So, I told Lori, when she asked, what should I do with these? I said, throw them out with Buddha. Get rid of all the idols. Get rid of each of them. And so, she went to throw them away, and somewhere, somebody got the impression that heart wanted them. She says that it's not true, but somewhere, somebody thought heart wanted them. So, I said, if she wants them, she can have them. It's not like Buddha or Santa, you know, those go in the trash. But the cats, they're just statues. If she likes it, she can have it. As far as I know, it's not attached to any religious practice. Maybe it is, and I don't know it. But she said that she didn't want it, so I said, throw them in the trash again. So once it survived the trash, it went to go to the trash again, and somehow Ariana got one and my kids got two. And now that cat statue lives on at my house, even though I've tried at least three times now to throw it away. I've knocked it down on the stairs by accident a few times, and it still won't break. They have more strength in them than any idol I've ever seen. They have saved themselves at least three times by now, if not more. So, all joking aside, you understand that that statue is nothing. I always like the story, I can't think of the name of the man right now, but he was one of those men back in, I think, around the 1800s who, during a time of religious oppression coming from England, maybe even actually further back than that, he was I'm not from England, I'm from the Catholic Church at that time. He was facing some religious persecution. He had been put as a prisoner and he was being hauled on a boat and they brought the statue, like just the head of Mary. They were bringing it around to each of the prisoners and saying, kiss Mary that she'll be pleased with you. They were misquoting Psalm 2 apparently. and bringing it and making all the prisoners to kiss the statue of Mary because it was a Catholic thing for them. And so he, right when they brought it to him, managed to break his arms loose from the man holding him, grabbed the head of the statue, threw it over the side of the boat, and when everybody got offended and was like, how dare you do this? He said, if the woman be true, let her save herself. And when they all stepped back and realized that Mary sunk, she didn't save herself from the water. So why am I praying to this statue then? It couldn't even save itself from drowning. You and I have enough wisdom and understanding about us sitting in this room that we realize that's foolish for me to take a statue and call it a god, something that somebody carved it with their hands and made it. And oh, it's a god now. I'm going to pray to it. It's going to heal my children. When I'm sick, it's going to make me feel better. When I need money, it's going to make it fall from the sky. All this kind of stuff. Now, ironically, the people we've been preaching against for the past several messages, the ones who reject God and replace him with the worship of men like Darwin, they would accuse us of being the ones who think that money is going to fall magically from the sky because we prayed to an idol, but we don't worship idols. We don't pray to any of that stuff. We also think that that's crazy. And that's the thing you find many times people have a problem with Christianity is they have in their mind that we Christians are just like the ancient Greeks worshipping their statues, or like the Hindus worshipping their statues, or the Buddhists, you know, setting up the statue and hoping it means I'll have good luck this week, or the Catholics praying to their little statues of the saints and putting this statue on the car dashboard, because if I have Saint whatever, the patron saint of travelers, I will get to my destination safely today. And I understand why they feel that way, because, again, there are branches of things that call themselves Christian that do that. There are things that call themselves Christian, and in this part of the world, it's the majority of what you will find, where they think if you go in there and you pay one euro to buy their candle and you burn it, the candle is magical and will therefore heal your loved one or sick person or whatever it is, whatever prayer request you have is going to help you with that. Or that if you take a set of beads that you bought, probably from China. I don't know where they get them made at. And you rub the beads hard enough while you pray and you say the ritualized prayer that somebody come up with, that that's going to somehow make your sins disappear like they never happened. Now, the same people who tell you that are the same people that say that we can't promise you you're going to go to heaven, but if you give us enough money, somewhere we'll get the time to pray for you to get you out of purgatory. So, you know, you ought to be smart enough to know that you're being misled entirely by that group. But the thing is, I can't expect the average atheist to be smart enough to understand that what they do has nothing to do with what I do. What they believe has nothing to do with what I believe. I will admit, the Catholic Church has a few things right here and there, but they have nothing to do with me. Like, we're completely separate in all of this. But I can't expect atheists to understand that no more than I can expect them to understand a great deal of things about what we worship with God. And so that's why I understand that to them and their mindset, we're all just a bunch of people who worship a man-made God and not a God who exists and inhabits us eternity. But today, we're going to look away from that to focus on these people with idols and ask, how do you look at something that's clearly a statue? It has never answered one of your prayers. It has never met any of your needs. Yes, your child who had the flu got better three days after they got sick, like everybody else who had the flu. And you put the statue next to him, hoping that little trinket was going to make them better. But that was just their immune system. I understand that. Now, on the other side of that, When you have a man like Brother Knox who went to a doctor, had the MRI done, and the doctor tells him it is 100% you have cancer in your bones, there's no question about it, you had it, we know that it was there, it's a very accurate system of measurement, but we just did another test and it's not there anymore. Now, I'm not talking about I put a statue next to a child who had the flu and was already going to get better in three days, and now, oh, look how glory to God, what great thing happened. I'm talking about this is something the doctor looks at it and says, no, no, there's no medical explanation for this. This is a miracle. There's a difference between those two things. I can't expect the atheist to understand that because they have cut off their mind. They shut it down and said, I'm not going to listen to anything that says there's a God. But you and I are smart enough to understand there is a difference between those things. There's a difference between you and I giving God the glory because something happened in our life and we could have got hurt and God spared us. And somebody who sees a random Facebook post of somebody who had an accident on their car and, you know, the car crashed and, you know, got a few scratches on it or whatever, and they want to praise God because the person didn't die. There's a difference between those things. It may not sound like there's a huge difference, but the difference is all the world. The difference is greater than you can realize because the difference is looking at things that, yes, perfectly natural. Yeah, I bumped my car into you at five kilometers. I probably wasn't going to die. Like I didn't need divine intervention to save me from that collision. However, when I flipped my car ten times and every medical professional in the world says, I don't understand how you're alive. I don't know how you're here. And you say, well, in that moment, I just I. prayed, as I was going through it, I just leaned on God, I trusted in Him, and I don't know what happened to myself either. Those are two very different things. There's very different things when people say, for example, that I went out, I worked, I made a lot of money, I got rich because anybody in the world can do that. And when somebody says, no, I looked at what the Bible says, I followed God's pattern of wisdom, I did what He told me to do, and He blessed me for that. But the problem is so much of Christianity is cheap today. So much of what people worship and do is cheap today and has been twisted so that what most people think Christians are is, you know, your random relative on Facebook who shares those pictures that say, if you don't share this, Jesus is going to be sad with you. And they think that's what Christianity is. They think that when you go to God and pray that you're just like somebody rubbing the belly of Buddha hoping that it's going to make you feel better today or have good luck or whatever it's supposed to produce. Because they don't understand that there is a difference simply because you're going to a God who is real and bringing to Him problems that are real and not just trying to read into every situation, oh yeah, that was God. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I'm not going to pick on the missionary and his prayer letter, but if I was editing it, that line about after we finished it started to rain, I would have removed that. And here's why, because I've been in this long enough to know that it doesn't hold off the rain every time I go to do soul winning. Yes, I believe God's in control of the weather, but I believe also I'm supposed to be faithful and do my job. Sometimes it rains and I may not be able to go because it's too much. Sometimes I have to be strong enough to go even though it is raining a little bit. But if your argument for there is a God is that when I was out giving tracts it didn't start raining until after I finished, then is there not a God next week when the rain doesn't hold off and it does come while you're giving tracts? You understand there's a lot of foolishness in Christianity and so-called Christian religions where people put things on God that I'm sure God in heaven would say, I had nothing to do with that. That's not from me. And there's a lot of things that get attributed to him that are silly superstitions and all this kind of stuff that then people look at that who have some degree of intelligence and they say, yeah, those Christians are not very smart. Those Christians are foolish. And so that's what we have to understand is we probably should be more understanding of why educated people are not so quick to listen to what you have to say because the vast majority of people they have encountered in their life go kneel down at the Catholic Church over there, burn a candle, pray to a statue that's been sitting on that wall for hundreds of years and has never moved and never answered a prayer and never helped a single person and never done a thing. But people who just desperately want to believe that it's there are looking for it. It's like people who believe in ghosts and then they go into the haunted house and they have specks. They stir up dust in the room. They take a picture and there's little light dots all over the picture because, yeah, you stirred up all the dust. That's dust particles in the air. But they want to believe it's a ghost. So therefore, it's proof there is a ghost. are people who do... You understand, people do whatever they can to prove what they want to believe many times, and they start making evidence where there is none. And the vast majority of people that they have encountered in their life are those kind of people. You are the vast minority in this world. You are way outnumbered, more than you could ever imagine in this world in regards to what is out there. So they have not experienced biblical Christianity. They don't know what real Christians look like. They know, again, your crazy aunt on Facebook, Catholics, ghost hunters, Buddhists, conspiracy theorists, Hindus. That's the kind of stuff they know. And because of that, they think you're foolish. I'll be honest with you. Notary, one of his questions for me when he found out that we don't believe in evolution. Now, I gave him a good scientific argument for that, but his first train of thought he went to after I told him, I said, What do you believe about the shape of the earth then? You understand like that's the first thing he thought, because far too many people spend their time on Facebook arguing about that and far too much time on Facebook in America arguing about who's going to be the next president and all this kind of stuff that what their opinion of Christianity is, is a bunch of in America, a bunch of illiterate backwards people and all this kind of stuff. Here, it's that you're the kind of people who believe in fairy tales and do all the things I just talked about. So that's their opinion of you, because some people in this world Instead of getting to know the real, true, and living God, he said, I'm going to take a statue, which is nothing, and I'm going to pray to it, and I'm going to find any excuse to believe that that statue is answering my prayer, even though there's no evidence at all. Like, we can sit here today. and read a list of prayer requests that have been answered. I mean, if I was to write a prayer, just a list of prayer requests this year that God has answered, the vast majority of them are things that there is no scientific, medical or any kind of argument for it. Many of those are things where, while yes, you could explain it away, it's not natural that it would have happened. I mean, in the sense, like, for example, people just deciding we're going to give money for this building who have no reason to do that. It's not natural that they should do it. And yet, They hear about what's going on and they just want to be a part of that. Yes, that's not supernatural in the sense that those people had the money. Those people chose to give the money. But when you start looking at how God moved in their heart and how he brought all that together, how we found the one person all of Belgium who would actually help us to get a building and all this kind of stuff, it starts to get a little bit more where it's harder to write it off as just coincidence, because if they think it's coincidence, I'm flattered that they would think that I'm smart enough to put all that together. I'm not. I mean, I'll spoil it for you. I'm not that smart. I'm not sure exactly how smart I am, but not that much. So the point is that Me and you can sit here today, and we could talk the rest of the day about things that our God has done, just this year. I'm not talking about in your lifetime. I'm not talking about the changes He's made in you since you got saved, and you can reflect on that for a lifetime. I'm talking about just amazing things that we as a church have gathered and prayed about that are not possible in man's power, and yet somehow these things have occurred. And just this year, we could spend the rest of the day talking about that. For every person you know who takes that statue, that idol, that icon, that rosary, that whatever they do, makes the sign of the cross, all these kind of superstitious religious things and wants to say, look what God did for me, be honest with yourself. I've got plenty of friends and family like that and everything they've ever given me as evidence of God answering their prayer was nonsense. It was not something, and I'm saying this as a religious person, a person who believes God answered prayers. As a person who fully believes and trusts in God and knows that He's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we may ask or think, I look at that person and realize what they're saying is complete and total nonsense. And so when you understand that, you have a God who is very real and very capable of doing anything. They have a statue. If we want to talk about the foolishness of idolatry, it's about as simple as that. I'm going to give you a lot of Bible verses for it, but it's about as simple as that. So 1 Corinthians, sorry, Exodus, I'll skip past Exodus 20. I'll just mention it to you. That's the commandment where God says, thou shalt not make any graven image of anything that's in heaven, anything that's on the earth, anything that's in the sea or under the earth. And He immediately follows it with the statement to not bow down to them, to worship them, and so forth. So you see, it's not that God's against you having statues because, again, God commanded carvings of trees and things to be carved into the walls of the temple and so forth. God Himself was very much in favor of some nice artistic design into His building. So it's not that God's against that. It's God's against you making images of things that are in heaven or things that you might would worship, that you might would bow down to. And that's why you shouldn't make an image and call this, oh, this is Jesus. This is a picture of Jesus and so forth, because then you know that you're going to get reverence to it. And here's the evidence. Here's the thing, a lot of times it'll help you to know whether you're getting too far on that commandment or not. I can take any statue, we don't really have much besides the cats, I'm sure the kids have like little toys and stuff, but I can take any of those statues that I can find in my house and in terms of religious reverence for it, I can throw anything I have away in the trash right now. Now, I'm not talking about my Bible or stuff like that. I'm talking about any kind of statues or stuff I have. I don't have anything where it's like, oh no, I would be dishonoring Christ because I took this cross and threw it in the trash can. No, because that cross has no power. And I keep it there to remind me what Christ did if I have one, but it has no power. And I made this one with my own hands. It's evident by looking at it. I made this one with my own hands. We've had it for years. It has great sentimental value. But if God at any point gave me any reason to put it in the trash, there's no problem, smash it and put it in the trash. I have no issue with that. If it got broke when we were moving buildings, I didn't care because it's just a piece of wood. But when you start giving devotion to that, where it's like, no, no, no, you have to treat this very sacred, you have to treat this very precious, there's a difference. Now, here's another difference in that, because this is complicated, some of the stuff I'm talking about. When it belongs to God, I don't care if it's the trash can in the church building, if it belongs to God, you're supposed to respect it because it's God's. Not because it's important, but because He's important and you don't mess with His property. The same way I'm not going to go to your house and take your trash can and throw it out the door because, oh, it's just a trash can. Who cares about that? Because I have enough respect for you to respect your property when I'm at your house, except for Jared at his house. I'll go break all his stuff. I don't care about that. But for the rest of you, I respect your property. And so when I come to your house, if I do, I'm going to respect your property because I respect you. So I'm not talking about respecting stuff in the church house because it belongs to God. That's still a different issue. That's why the man who touched the Ark of the Covenant died is because he didn't respect God enough to respect His property. But I'm talking about your property, the stuff you have at your house. If you have some little statues, some little thing, a cross. Some of you I know have little statues of the Ark of the Covenant, that kind of stuff. If you put some kind of regard into that, where if it fell off and got broke, it's like, oh no, we've dishonored God. Then you have an idol in your house. That's the thing He's wanting you to look for. And that's why you know you cannot have any picture of Jesus, any kind of statue of Jesus, because no matter how pure or good your heart is, you're going to do that. You're always going to give some degree of reverence to it to the point where you would. Like if you have a cross with Jesus hanging on, you have any of that kind of stuff. We talked about on Wednesday night why you shouldn't have that anyways. But if you still have one because you don't believe that part of the message, I'll give you the other half of the message. If you have something with a picture, icon, image of Jesus in any way, You will give undue reverence to that piece of stone, that piece of metal, that piece of clay, that piece of wood, whatever it is, that painting. You will give undue reverence to it simply because in your mind you have a hard time separating this from the fact that that's not God. That's an image somebody made of their opinion of what He looks like, but that's not Him. And that's why when you go to the Catholic church, they get offended by many things. So that even when we considered buying a Catholic church one time, the man who sold the building was not a Catholic, so he didn't care. He actually was in favor of the idea of me taking cement and filling in all the carvings they had made of Jesus and stuff on the walls, because he realized that's not Jesus, it's just a statue, it's a carving. However, somebody who was going to our church at the time, who was very friendly to the Catholic church, and oftentimes I questioned why they were going to a Baptist church because they were very pro-Catholic, got deeply offended to his core because we said we would fill in those carvings with cement because I don't want people giving undue reverence to them, and then proved literally my point by getting so mad they wanted to fight with me because I would dare fill in a carving with cement. So you understand that that's what the commandment is dealing with. God doesn't want you to have images that you would be inclined to bow down or worship or give any kind of reverence to them to where if you did something to this and you, oh, I accidentally knocked down that picture of Jesus and now God's going to be upset with me kind of thing. He doesn't want you to have any of that in your life because He's supposed to be your God. So it was in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 7. And I'll admit, I've not gotten into my verses, and time is gone. We'll have to move fast with this. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 7. It says, Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them, as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of the serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for examples. and that they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. So we talked about this the other month, I think back in August, that when you look at that passage, you have to understand something. We always read these verses separate. The part about take heed if you think you stand lest you fall, we think about that as sin in general. We take a lot of what he says here, think about it as if you're tempted above what's able, but the temptation that's come to you is common to man. And we make it always about just general sin. And there's application for that in the passage, but you go back and think about what we just read. The first thought in the story is idolatry. What's the last thought of the story? Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. When He says wherefore, it means whatever has come before this is to teach you to flee from idolatry. So when he says God's not going to allow you to be attempted above that which you're able, that this temptation is common to man and God's given you a way to escape it, that's in reference to idolatry first and foremost. You can take that and apply it to other stuff, but first and foremost he's talking about idols. And part of the way He's giving you to escape it is He says, I've given you all these examples so you can learn not to fall into it the way that Israel did. So you understand the context then, what He's saying here, is the reason why it's so dangerous for you to have things around your house that you're going to give some undue religious veneration to it, that you're going to get these traditions, these statues, these images, these whatever they are, and they're going to become not precious to you because of sentimental value, but precious to you because they are somehow attached to your faith. Those kind of things, God's saying you understand that everybody's tempted by that kind of stuff more than you realize. Israel, that's why we came up the other month, Israel literally began to burn incense and pray to the brazen serpent. The people who knew from God Himself not to worship idols did that. Israel also, over time, as they watched their neighbors burn their children in sacrifice to the statue of Abel, began to do that. Israel also began to worship statues of fish people and all this other kind of stuff that their neighbors around them began to worship because, as they saw other people doing it, that temptation fell upon them. That's not a big deal. So that nowadays, the equivalent of what you would see this looking like is America is fully sold out to the worship of Santa Claus. You know, I'm not one of the people on the train being against Christmas. I'm very much in favor of celebrating Christmas. We like celebrating it around here. We just try to do it as scriptural as possible and leave out all the nonsensical stuff in it. But Santa Claus has nothing to do with the Bible, has nothing to do with any of that, and if you're offended because I'm getting ready to preach or say anything negative against it, then you are exactly the reason why I have to preach or say anything negative against it. Where I come from, that is the idol. Like I had members of my family, some of my best friends in the world get mad at me Because I said I wasn't going to teach that to my children. I wasn't going to lie to my children for the first 8 to 12 years of their life and then be like, okay, that was a joke. I was just joking with you this whole time. That wasn't real. But Jesus, yeah, He's real. Don't question that one. That one's real. Santa Claus, that was fake. But Jesus, He's real. You understand, like you sabotage the entire relationship with your children with that kind of nonsense. But you, growing up here, if you've never been to America, if you've not lived there, you don't have a lot of friends or family there, you cannot imagine what a cult-like religion is built around that. So that I, growing up in the U.S., didn't even know that Christmas was really about the birth of Christ until I was a lot older than I would like to admit, because it's not taught, it's not talked about. It's all about Santa. It's all about reindeer. I knew every word to the song of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, but I didn't know a thing about Jesus Christ and how he came to die for our sins. You understand that's what the culture is there. The equivalent of that is people here are looking at America and how much fun they're having, singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, watching all the cartoons, watching all the movies about Santa Claus. And little by little, you're taking the same exact steps we did. You're getting there. That's what Israel did. He's saying it's common. It's not normal. It's not proper, but it's common that people are going to do that, that they're going to start taking the traditions and the idols and all this stuff from the culture around them if they're not watching themselves and being careful. And then one of the most important things he says about idols follows after this down in verse 19. It says, Now I'm going to stop there even though you can keep reading the rest of the passage. You know what God tells you the idols really are? He says the idol itself is nothing. The idol itself is a piece of stone, a piece of wood, a piece of clay, a piece of metal, whatever. Just some statue some kid put together. The power behind the idol is what makes it so dangerous. It's the reason why every once in a while you do see something that starts to look like maybe there is something to this is because there are devils in this world. The devil and his angels fail and they lead men. That's what witchcraft is. It's praying to devils and asking the devil to do things that you're supposed to be getting a relationship with God for. But God says idolatry is also that. It's just idolatry is instead of you willingly, knowingly, consciously worshipping the devil, it's you pretending that it's God while it's still just the devil. That's the difference. You want to know the difference between witchcraft and idolatry? It's very simple. One of them has no complaints or no issue with the fact that they worship the devil. The other one's worshipping the devil, they just don't know it. So if you want to be honest, what that really means, this is going to offend some people probably, but what that really means is every one of your loved ones who is bowing down to a statue of Mary and praying to Mary, not Jesus Christ. And I'm not in any way attacking Mary from the Bible. I'm talking about the statues they're bowing down and worshiping and praying to are praying to devils. They're not praying to Mary. Mary's not hearing or listening to anything they have to say. God's not hearing or listening to anything they have to say. They're praying to devils. Every person you know who goes to the Catholic Church and lights the candle and burns it in honor of whatever, the Orthodox Church, and they burn the candles hoping that it's going to light the way for the dead to get to the afterlife or all that kind of nonsense, they got that from Greek mythology and all these other places. That's why it's carried over into the religion because there's been a lot of false religions who've practiced it for a long time. Even the worship of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. You'll notice from looking at your Bible that there was already a queen of heaven worshipped in false religion long before people started calling Mary by those kind of titles. You understand that those people may deny it and in their heart regard that, I'm worshipping God. I'm praying to Peter. I'm praying to Paul. This candle honors God in some way. God says, no, those things are offered to devils. That's not for God. That's why he says rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. He's saying when you do this, when you offer those kind of things, you're not worshiping God. You're rebelling against God because God told you how to worship Him and you chose to replace that by saying, well, I'm going to honor God by putting this statue on my wall. I'm going to hang this crucifix here and that's going to honor God somehow. I'm going to go to the Catholic Church, go to the Orthodox Church, any place and burn these candles. That's going to honor God somehow. When I walk by the building, I'm going to make the sign of the cross because that's going to honor God somehow." And he said, he didn't get anything from that. You didn't do that for him. You did that for the devil who instituted and come up with that nonsense. That's the worship of devils. The difference between the witchcraft, the practitioner of witchcraft and the practitioner of idolatry is that one of them is honest and admits they're worshiping the devil. The other one pretends that it's for God. That's the only difference between those two things. And so God's warning us that you are going to be more easily tempted by this than you ever realized. Don't think you're too strong to withstand it, that you'll never be tempted. And to understand that while the statue may be nothing, What you're actually giving your worship and adoration to is the devil that's behind that, the one who's behind that religion, the one who instituted that, the one who came up with all that nonsense. And that's why when you start comparing them, you'll start noticing most of the stuff in the Catholic Church, we look at it and say, how'd they come up with that? Well, yeah, because they practice it in ancient Babylon. They practice it in other cultures. It's been practiced in Greece and all kinds of places. They just picked it up along the ways. You ever notice why their statues look a lot like the Greek statues and why they're so comfortable having naked people all over the walls? carved and sculpted just like how the Greeks did their statues and all this, and the Romans did their statues. It doesn't take long to start putting the pieces together to realize they're just worshipping the same devils that the people before them worshipped. They're just claiming it's Jesus when they do it. They're just claiming it's for God when they do it. And that's what He's warning you against. So now I'm going to come to the verse that settles it all when it comes to the foolishness of idolatry. On my way there, though, as you turn to Isaiah 44, I'm going to read you a verse from Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4 and verse 8. If you're turning fast, you can follow me. Galatians chapter 4 and verse number 8 says, How be it then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods? But now after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." And here's where I'm not part of the crowd who thinks every holiday is a sin because God clearly tells us we have the right to regard one day to God above another, and you have the right to not regard one day to God above another. He doesn't really care as long as you're doing it properly according to His Word. So it's good to honor some things because God honors them. For example, honoring your mother and father, God says to honor them. So having a special day for that, there's nothing wrong with that morally. Honoring the resurrection on a special day, nothing wrong with that morally. You don't have to do it the same day everybody else does it. You can pick another day. You can be like the Orthodox and pick some random day that doesn't make any sense. But you can do whatever you want. God doesn't necessarily care about that. What God cares about Is you getting this mentality that I am somehow not a Christian if I don't celebrate Christmas the way the world celebrates it with Santa Claus and the reindeer and everything else, and I don't have the manger scene set up in my yard and all that kind of stuff. What God is against is me and you falling for this trap of thinking that somehow these kind of things is what God wants from us, as opposed to us just living for Him and giving our hearts to Him and following Him biblically. That's the thing he's concerned with. And he's asking the Galatians, you used to be sold out to idols. I thought you got victory over that. Why are you going back to it? God gave you victory, why are you going back? Why are you ensnaring yourself by trying to keep all the holidays and traditions that everybody else does? I had somebody who meant very well, dear friend of our church, I won't say in any way negative about him because it was a reasonable question, asked me very plainly sometime back, why don't we keep Lent? Why don't we give up a certain thing for a certain amount of time because they thought that's what God wants them to do? And I said, well, first of all, show me in the Bible where I'm supposed to do it. There's no biblical reason for me to keep that. And then they thought about it and said, OK, yeah, that makes sense. But then why shouldn't I do it if I'm just used to it? And I said, well, because it's very much a Catholic thing. It's not something that the Bible teaches. And everybody you know who does it, if you're being honest, you'll admit that they spend the 40 days or whatever it is giving up some sin. And then at the end of the 40 days, they indulge in that sin like it's the last day to do it, and after this it's going to be forbidden, so I've got to do it as much now as I can." And you know that. And a lot of times they give up nonsensical stuff, like somehow God's going to be honored because they quit drinking Coca-Cola for 40 days, and then they drink enough to give themselves diabetes the first second that it's finished. But you understand, none of that is from God. The very thought and principle behind it is not from God. It has nothing to do with God. It's a very carnal religion that allows you to pay for vices so you can commit extra sins if you want to pay the money and God will be okay with it because you bought tickets for those. You paid in advance. You got the coupon for that. You understand that that's the religion that comes up with that kind of nonsense. That's not from God. And so for them, some people have a hard time understanding that that day is not a day that God commanded and I don't need to reverence it and I probably should stay away from it because if I start going down that road, I'm going to start offering some things to devils and idols and all this stuff that I shouldn't be. I'm going to start giving devotion I should not be to that. So as I said, I have a lot, a lot, a lot of verses, but we're going to just do Isaiah 44 and 9 because that is the verse that says it as plainly as possible. Isaiah 44 and verse number 9. Isaiah 44 verse number 9, and I will say this up front, the sister passage to what we're getting ready to read is Jeremiah chapter 10 verse 1 through 11. Anybody who wants to use Jeremiah 10 verse 1 through 11 to say, oh look, see, Christmas trees are evil, they need to first of all read the entire passage and not just the three verses that talk about trees and pretend like the rest of the passage is not there. That's the first step. The second step for anybody who wants to say that Jeremiah 10 is specifically about a Christmas tree, once you read it and you see that he's very plainly talking about an idol, like actually carving an idol and covering it with gold and all this, then you'll feel dumb for saying it was a Christmas tree at some point. But the second step is compare it to the passage we're getting ready to read in Isaiah and see that the same exact language is used in both passages. And in case Jeremiah wasn't clear enough, Isaiah makes it abundantly, perfectly clear that he's talking about idols. Not that you brought a plant into your house and said, oh, it makes my house look pretty in some way. That's not what he's talking about. So I just throw that out there because nobody in this church probably even knows what I'm talking about, but it is a religion that gets taught in a lot of places. The idea that the reason why Christmas is evil is because God specifically wrote Jeremiah chapter 10 to condemn Christmas trees when he's talking about idols that you have to nail planks to their bottom and stand them upright. and you pray to them, but they can't move, and they can't talk, and they can't do all this stuff. And it's literally saying the exact same thing, exact same wording as what Isaiah says. The only difference is Isaiah goes a little bit further and explains a little bit more about it. So it's just somebody in denial in that case. And I have good friends, very intelligent men who fit in that category, dear friends of mine, but also if they're being honest with themselves and read the passage in its entirety, they'll have to admit that they're misusing it and abusing it to say that. So Isaiah chapter 44, verse number 9, It says, "'They that make a graven image are all of them vanity, and their delectable things shall not profit, and they are their own witness, they see not, nor know, that they may be ashamed. Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image, that is profitable for nothing?' Behold, all his fellows shall be ashamed, and the workmen they are of men. Let them all be gathered together, let them stand up, yet they shall fear and they shall be ashamed together. The smith with the tongs both worketh the coal and fashioneth it with his hammer. and worketh it with the strength of his arms, yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth, he drinketh no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretcheth out his rule, he marketh it out with a line, he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with a compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house. He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oaks, and strengthened for himself among the trees of the forest, he planteth an ash, and rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn, for he will take thereof and warm himself, yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread. Yea, he maketh a god, and worshipeth it. He maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the fire, with the part thereof he eateth flesh. He roasteth roast, and is satisfied. Yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire. And the residue thereof he maketh a God, even his graven image, he falleth down unto it, and worshipeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Delivered me, for thou art my God. They have not known nor understood, for they shut their eyes, they cannot see, and their hearts that they cannot understand. None considereth his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire. He also, I have baked bread upon the coals thereof. I have roasted flesh and eaten it, and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? And he feedeth on ashes, a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? Now, there is nothing I could ever say that tells you how foolish idolatry is more than that passage. Again, Jeremiah 10 verse 1 through 11 says almost the exact same thing. I would encourage you to read it. But what he's saying to you, if I can maybe make it simple in case you didn't fully get As he says, the person who worship an idol does it because their heart and their eyes are closed. They're blinded and they're hard in their eyes that they cannot see and they cannot understand to think about the foolishness of this. So it's a heart issue just like we've been seeing in all of this. that you and I laugh at what we just read when we think about it. That a man would go into a forest, he would cut down a tree, he would bring it to a carver and that man would carve it into the shape of a person for him. And then after that he would take it to the goldsmith and he would cover it in gold for him. And then they would take it to their house and stand it up. And they would take the other half of that same tree, because you don't need a whole tree to make an idol, you only need a part of it. So they take the other half and they would drag it to their house, cut it up into firewood, stack it up, burn it to warm their house, cook their bread on it, cook their food on it, and never at any point does it dawn on them that, wait a minute, why is that half of the tree supernatural and able to heal my sick and raise my dead and answer my prayers, but this half is good for nothing but ashes? This half is good for burning to cook my food and warm my house. Honestly, this half has far more power than that half, because this half actually cooked your food and warmed your house. That half, all it did is occupy space in your corner and cost you a lot of money so that you have an idol to pray to that has no power. And that's why a lot of the verses I'm not going to get into. But for example, Isaiah 45, verse 20, Psalm 135, 15 to 18, Acts 17, 29 through 30, Revelation 9, 20 and 21, Isaiah chapter two, part of the end of the chapter there. All of those passages and many, many, many more keep bringing up the same point over and over again. God asked the question, why would you pray to something that cannot talk, cannot see, cannot move, cannot do anything? You have to pick it up and carry it. I'm sure you've seen the picture of people in flooded areas coming from India and they have the statue on their shoulders, the big blue statue of one of their gods, carrying it on their shoulders to get it out of the flooded waters because it couldn't rescue itself. couldn't rescue them and it couldn't rescue itself. And you understand something that I don't have to defend my God. If you're talking about my Bible, okay, that's a physical object that I have, but that's not my God. I don't worship this piece of paper here. I keep it because this is how I know what God has communicated to me. It's a whole different issue. That's not what anybody's talking about in this. If they are, they're foolish. But if you're talking about my God, I don't have to defend God to you. I don't have to go out on the street and punch people in the face because they say something bad about God. I'm not Santa Claus. He's the one who actually did that. Saint Nicholas is the guy who punched somebody in the face at one of the meetings because he thought he was preaching heresy. I'm not Santa Claus. I don't have to punch somebody in the face for preaching heresy or saying something bad. I don't have to let you say it here, but I don't have to go out on the streets and fight with people and defend my God. He is more than capable of shutting the mouth of anyone who's ever said anything bad about Him. And everyone who ever has, one day, has stood before Him and seen that they were foolish and wrong, and most of them, before this life was over, had to bow down and say they were wrong. Yeah, honestly, if you used to do a study of the life of most of your most famous atheists They either died miserable, horrible deaths, still in denial of who God was, or on their deathbed, they're crying out, God, please forgive me for the life that I've wasted fighting with you. One of the two is almost typical of every famous atheist you've ever heard of. So what I'm saying to you is this. You and I don't have to fight to defend our God because He's not a statue that we cut down from the forest and used half of the wood to warm our house and the other half to worship and pray to. We don't have to defend Him because He has power to defend Himself and defend us and everything else that needs to be done. You have enough wisdom in your heart to understand that because you started from the right place. You didn't deny God's existence and then try to make up for that. You started with a proper, sincere, and honest faith in God, the real God, the God of the Bible. And once you got to know Him, you didn't have to try to replace Him with idols because you realized you messed up somewhere along the way by trying to get rid of Him. You were able to put your faith in the real God because you didn't get taught to put it in something that's not real. Something that can't talk, something that can't move, something that can't do anything. My God came here on the face of this earth, walked 33 and a half years. In three and a half years, He did more than we could write down on paper. That's, again, the statement I make about all these faith healers that say that I have power, then why are there hospitals in their city anymore? Because when God was in human flesh, He eliminated hospitals in every city He went to. They drug the people out in the street to meet Him because He was healing people by the mass. And there's plenty of record to prove that He has power, He is real, and He has done things beyond what the world can even contain, all the scrolls that would be necessary to write it. But that statue hasn't done anything. So why would you pray to it? And the answer is when somebody rejects the real, true and living God, their heart becomes so foolish that they're going to start to worship man. They're going to start to worship themselves. They're going to start to worship something, even if it means worshiping the foolish, most foolish thing you can think of, a statue that they bought from dollars. Sorry. He's an American store, Dollar Tree for us, for action for you, we'll do that. The statue they bought at Action. I guess you're less religious because you can actually go buy idols at the dollar store in America, the cheap store. Here, I think you can only buy candles to burn to your idols at Action. I don't think you can actually buy the idols themselves. So you're a little less religious than we are, I guess, because we can buy the idols themselves at the Action store. But my point is, When men reject God, they will go in a direction so foolish that they will go to the cheapest store possible, buy a statue of their God, and go home and worship it and think that it has the power to save or help them in some way. And it all begins because they blind their hearts by refusing to worship the real, true, and living God, not giving Him the glory as we saw in the passage before. And so they give it to something else. And in this case, it's idols. Father, we thank You and praise You, God, for all that You do. Thank You for Your blessings, Your goodness. Pray that You'll watch over us, help us to serve You. Thank You, Lord, for how You've worked and all that's been said and done here today. I just pray that You'd help our church. Lord, I pray that You'd help in the next few weeks to really take our church in a great and mighty direction in serving You. We thank You, Lord, for all this, and we ask it in Your Son Jesus' name.