Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, November 14, 2024. Idol Worship and the Image Bearers of God.
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and my sisters. It is Thursday November 14, 2024 and today I am EN FUEGO!
We discuss what is perhaps the most powerful force that draws people away from the church and the church away from Jesus – Idol Worship.
From a conversation about Christmas worship to the interpretation of the birth narratives, to wrath of God on full display in Romans 1.
Today is all about keeping our focus and all of our worship on the only One Who is worthy – Jesus, the Christ of God. Our Savior and our Lord.
may God bless you and keep you and, as we always say…
WE WILL SEE YOU IN CHURCH!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, November 14, 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, November 14, 2024. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, November 14, 2024
Good morning, good morning. I got a message first that broadcast failed and then a message that something went wrong and that elements of the broadcast may not be in play. So we are going to wait here and see if it is broadcasting. I have no way of knowing other than people coming on and commenting and that sort of thing. So we will sit here a little bit and we will turn on the lights and we will see if we can get a broadcast for this morning. If not, I mean that is okay. As the kids say, it is not the end of the world, Dad. No, it is not. But it is fun and we like this little part of our world. We have been working hard these past few days. I do not know if anybody will ever hear this so I will just tell you what has been going on. We have got a lot going on as we head into the Thanksgiving season. Big baby dedication service this Sunday including a baptism. Lots of moving parts. And then I sort of have the last normal week we are going to have until January. We have next week is sort of a normal week. And kind of looking forward to that. I have worked a little ahead so that I can maybe have a little time next week. Maybe get up in the mountain and go shooting or something of that nature. And then it is on. Okay, so I guess we are live. Like I said, the first attempt complete fail. This attempt, it said broadcast failed. And then it said certain aspects of the broadcast have problems or something of that nature. So if you can see me and you can hear me, if you come on, give a thumbs up. Good morning. Okay, so I guess we are all on. Yeah, it is not too warm here either. Good morning. Okay, this is good news. This is good news. Like I said, Facebook was playing around with me and told me that first it was failure and then that this one was going to be part failure. So I am glad to see that they lied. Shocking. Whatever you can tell the weather. Whatever is going on. We are live and that is a good thing. So I was sharing with you that next week is the last normal week. If I ever have a normal week, it is the last normal week before January. Because after next Sunday, Wednesday night, we have Thanksgiving Eve service. Come on out. It is so chill. It is such a chill service. It is so amazing. The Lord’s Supper and we just sing and we just take a moment. We just take, it is so, so chill. Lights are dim. It is just like, I love it. I love it. And then we have the following Sunday, which is the first Sunday of Advent and is followed up that evening by the Christmas hymn sing. So we get off to a fast start and then Advent, Advent, Advent, Christmas, Christmas caroling, Christmas this, Christmas that, all kinds of Christmas things. And we will be doing Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. And then after Christmas is a fifth Sunday celebration service. And so we have our charities lined up and we are, because there are five Sundays in December. So we’re staring down several weeks of busyness. You have to forgive my voice. Let me just see what I can do here. Good heavens to Murgatroyd. Now it’s going to decide, it looks like it’s going to decide to be fall. Maybe? I don’t know, but it’s 80, it’s 70, it’s 40, it’s 70, it’s 40, it’s 60, it’s 70, it’s 40. Let’s try fall for just a little while now. See how it goes. Cause that would really be beneficial to a lot of people’s health. Although that’s a total first world problem, right? What’s your biggest problem? Well, allergies and sinuses from the change of the seasons. You’re doing pretty well. Yeah. So I’m doing pretty well. Is something that, well, pray for the Lord’s blessing over our conversation today and that your word goes out and softens hearts and minds in Jesus name. Amen. We’re going to be talking about a lot of things this Sunday, Tracy. We’re going to have parents and children. We’re going to have the whole chamalay here. We’re going to be laying on his hands. We’re going to be praying and anointing and we’re going to be dedicating and we are going to be vowels one to the other to stay in Christian relationship. One with the other through the years and support one another until the Lord comes. It is a wonderful Sunday service and like I said, lots of moving parts, a little challenging to put together, especially when the new song singers will be leading the service. It’s another element that needs to be worked in there, but I enjoy that. That’s the creative part of what I can do, of what I do and putting things together and then make it go in such a way that it all points to the Lord. Right? And I don’t know about other people or how other worship orders or whatever are put together. I know that you can buy them off the internet. I know a lot of churches. That’s what a lot of churches do these days. There’s an entire budget because there is an entire industry. If you are a medium to large sized church, you, you purchase, for example, a four week, six week, eight week program that it comes complete. You’ve got your sermons and you’ve got all of your media that you need for social media. You’ve got all of your media that you need for the sermons like slides and so forth. You’ve got all of the youth group materials and all of the media for that. You’ve got all of the small children teaching. It all comes in one package and then you just move along week after week after week and the pastor can put his own touches on the sermon, but right there it is for you. And so the basic work of that church is coordinating all of that. That’s not how it goes here. So I have a lot of input and a lot of help to be sure. A lot of wonderful people that do a lot of wonderful things, but ultimately it comes through this funnel and I want everything to point toward the Lord. I don’t, you know, of course we recognize great talent and the individuals who choose to display that talent here at the church and we say, thank you very much. Yes, we should clap. Not in, not because they’re a rock star, but clap. Well, how else are we going to show our appreciation for that tremendous amount of hard work that went into that special piece of music, for example. And so we want everything to be directed. Like I love listening to beautiful music and just praying and you’ll see me up here and sometimes I catch myself rocking back and forth or whatever, but I’m just, ah, and that music, you can tell it’s Holy Spirit inspired and it’s leading your thoughts and leading your prayers and leading your heart to the Lord. It’s just amazing. So how, how quickly can I go down a rabbit trail? I’m just talking about this Sunday’s service. It was, been working on it for a week and a half and I think I’m working out all of the kinks now finally to make everything flow and point to the Lord. So, but there was something that Rosie brought up about the birthday of Christ and we don’t know. We, you know, was he born in the spring? Was he born in the fall? Was he born in the summer? We know he wasn’t born on December 25 and there are various accounts of why it is December 25, trying to attach it to other celebrations of the Roman Pantheon on December 25th, the sun god and all these different things. And none of that really matters. What matters is that we celebrate it. And I shared with you, it’s not that I poo poo Christmas because it’s in the gospel accounts and we should celebrate the birth of Christ, not, not for the reasons of just, okay, now he’s here. It’s a baby in a manger. Yay. You know, a baby is born. He is born, right? The story of the birth of Jesus Christ, the accounts are really there theologically to make known and make firm the fact that Christ is fully human and fully divine. That’s what we can’t lose track of as we approach the Christmas season and Christmas preaching and celebration of the baby, the baby, the baby, the accounts are there not just to say that the Christ is born of a woman, but to say that he is conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a woman, that he will live in a fully human body and have a fully divine perfect nature. The only human being to do so. Yes. Right? That there’s no salvation if that piece of the theology isn’t true. And so you’re, I know you know that. I know you know that, but I always try to bring that to the forefront and then the baby in a manger and the Koresh and all of that kind of lesser, more of the fact that he is the Christ and the accounts are there to tell us that he is the promised one. And because if he is not fully human and fully divine, then we are worshiping idols. We’re worshiping a book or we’re worshiping an idea or we’re worshiping a crazy man who lived 2000 years ago and still has a hold on us somehow, a hold on our imagination. If that aspect of his creation of his inception, conception is not true, then nothing is true. And so that is always what I bring about and bring to the fore in the, during the advent season. There’s a lot, and don’t get me wrong. I don’t poopoo the, there’s a lot of other beautiful things and peace and love and joy and hope and all, you know, the advent season advent is a human construct. It’s a non biblical construct. It’s a church construct. Many church constructs and many human constructs. I have nothing to do with because they’re, they’re trying to whatever regulate the church or people or your behavior. I only keep the constructs. I only enter into the constructs that point to Christ. Advent is a good one. Advent is a good one. And of course it used to be 40 weeks long, right? Just like Lent. Your basic year was Lent and Advent and there was an overlap. But anyway, so everything’s cut down now. But Advent is a good human construct, a good church construct and it points to Christ. But what I always want to point to Christ is that he is fully human, fully divine. The reason that we have the stories, the birth stories are not just so we can go, Oh, a little baby in a manger. Forgive me Lord, but you know what I mean? It is so that we know he is fully human, fully divine. The accounts are there and that is important. More than important. When we talk about, and you’ve heard me say this before, when we talk about the sanctity of human life, we know that this is the most important. This is the crux of the issue. We believe that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. We have the account, right, of Mary being told the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will conceive. Well as she conceives by the power of the Holy Spirit, is that not Jesus? Is that as we would be led to believe at this point in time, just a clump of cells or a zygote or an embryo or a non-human? Because if we believe that, then we say Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine, except for the first trimester. He’s not really a human. Except for until he comes out of the womb and takes his first breath. Now he’s human. That’s not what scripture teaches. Jesus Christ is conceived of the Holy Spirit and we know that he is fully human and fully divine from the first moment of his life. And so we, that’s, a lot of Christians when I present that point go, “Oh, I never thought of that.” Well what were you, not to be critical, what were you thinking? Like he wasn’t human in the womb? That scripture is, scripture should have had a caveat except for these weeks or except until he was born on what we call Christmas day, he was not a human. He was not fully human and fully divine. The scriptures lie. So there is a huge point of discussion, if you will, when Christians talk about human life and when it begins, why is there a debate? Do we believe one thing for Jesus Christ, but another thing for regular humans? Do we believe the same thing? In which case we deny the hypostatic union? Like you’ve got to really think this through as Jesus, as God has chosen to become incarnate through a human being, he was conceived a human being. He wasn’t conceived a badger that turned into a human being. He wasn’t conceived into a clump of gooey cells that hopefully becomes a human being. He was conceived a human being, fully human and fully divine. So that is something to consider if you are presented and we are all the time, the idea of abortion and pro-life and all of that, and you can have the moral arguments and the ethical arguments about rape and incest. The child is not guilty of that sin. Human adults are, that’s where I am with that also, but you cannot deny that a human is a human, lest you deny that Jesus Christ is not human. There was a period of time when he was not human. So that’s a little sidebar as well. And that theology, my point is that we talk about Christmas. My theology is that this is born out of the birth accounts, the birth narratives, which are also the conception narratives of Jesus, the Christ of God. And so they serve more than just to indicate a date or a time or a what. The series of events are all put in there. Prophecies are fulfilled. Herod does what Herod does, all these different things, all contingent upon the fact that that baby being born is the Christ of God, that he is God incarnate. And we learn that from these birth narratives. So everything stems from that, everything. Right? And so, you know, we know just as Rosie said about December 25, and I never, this, you know, the next month or so you’re going to hear from every, almost said idiot, because I won’t say idiot, from every person who knows enough scripture to demonstrate they don’t know anything about scripture. You know, those folks or every atheist or every anti-Christian, all that stuff. Well, you know that Jesus isn’t even born December 25th, but it’s supposed to be a secular holiday. Okay. You got me. Checkmate. My once incredible faith in Jesus Christ is gone because of this. No, it’s not because I know that God doesn’t give us a date. He gives us a date for the resurrection. There’s the crux of our salvation. Death is defeated. Sin is defeated on that cross. He doesn’t give us a date for his birth because we would end up worshiping that date. And then what about a date for his 12th birthday or I guess we could figure that out or whatever the case may be. It could be all over the calendar, just in a lot of Christian sects, right, have all kinds of different feasts. If you look at the Catholic calendar, there are feasts and there are celebrations for different human beings and different dates and different events and different all of that stuff. Eastern Orthodox has all of those things. Oh, it’s this Saint’s day. It is the celebration of the seventh day after Ascension, whatever the case may be. They’re all over the calendar and there we are focused on what the calendar focused on saints, people focused on what events. So yeah, when I even look at the basic Protestant Orthodox Christian calendar, there are very few things I participate in because I don’t want to take the focus off of Christ. The celebration of Pentecost does not take your focus off Christ. Advent leads you into the birth of Christ. I would love to do Lent. Lent is another made up thing. It’s supposed to lead us into the suffering, right, and the passion of the Christ. But I refuse to do it unless we were to do it right. Now, I could take it upon myself to do it right and hands up. I have not, but I’m not going to put ash on my head and say, I will give up chocolate for the next 40 days. What an insult to Jesus Christ. Oh, I’m suffering like you did Lord. And I’ve said time and time again, fasting during the day, whatever the case may be, leading something that truly makes you want because you are lacking. That’s what Lent is supposed to be as we are cast into the wilderness, if you will, leading up to the suffering and the passion of the Christ on cross. And so that is something that does focus on Jesus. But again, it is something that requires involvement. Oh, it’s Lent, I’m going to give up fish or I’m going to give up chocolate or I’m going to take a two day fast every week from social media. What an insult to what Christ did for us. So there you go. There’s big picture idol worship and big picture taking our focus off of Christ. When we come together as a church, we know the cornerstone of the church is Christ. And we know the cornerstone of our salvation is faith in the completed work. There we go. And what are we going to talk about every week in church? We’re going to talk about Jesus. I always say I’m in the middle of a 52 week. Well right now we’re coming to the end of a 52 week series on Jesus. In the beginning of January, it starts again. You’re welcome to jump in anytime because every week we’re going to share, bring out the scriptures and not just life lessons that they teach you. They teach you a lot of life lessons, of course, but most of those life lessons are how we respond to our salvation. For 30 years we, yeah, exactly. So why don’t we? Now there are other gospel accounts and other writings out there that talk about that and they’re insane. I read some of them, people would try to make up the life of Jesus beforehand and it’s not worth reading quite frankly, but why don’t we? Why don’t we know every aspect? Why don’t we know every, every turn of his life? Why don’t we know every event? Because we would undoubtedly be making holidays and celebrations out of them. Oh, when he was 15 he had a feast with his parents because his younger half brother, you know, became 13 and oh, let’s celebrate that. And we so on and so on and so on. God knows us. And like a title of the first title of this broadcast said, we’re built to worship, we’re made to worship and we will. It’s just a matter of who or what Satan spends all of this time presenting us with other whos, good morning, Daryl, the other whos and other whats. God has given us his word and his spirit so that we may worship him in spirit and in truth. So there are your choices, the multitude of whos and whats that the devil presents on the regular 24/7/365 and spirit and truth that we also have 24/7/365. Your choice is clear. And as we always say, and as the great rush song says, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can’t stand alone as a spiritual being in this world and not be spiritually accounted for. You are on the ledger of the book of life or you are not. That’s where we talk about the radical inclusiveness of the gift of salvation. It is open to all. We don’t discuss race. We don’t discuss creed. We don’t discuss skin color. We don’t discuss where you come from on the earth. We don’t, you know, what we discuss is that you are a human being created in the image and likeness of God. You are a desperate sinner in need of the savior and you can, that sin runs the gamut. Lay your sin at the feet of Jesus, repent and turn, submit your life and be made whole. All right. Here’s your preaching for the day. So I wanted to go into here. Here you go. There’s no better blatant discussion of idol worship than Romans one, where Paul is discussing human beings who worship not the creator, but the created and not the fruits of the spirit, but the fruit of human passion and pleasure, not the sacred, but the profane because every day human beings are given that choice as we just discussed. And we may worship the sacred or we may worship the profane, but we are going to be engaged in one, the old, the saying, and I don’t know, maybe you can help me. No man is an Island. Was that Hemingway? I don’t know, but no person is an Island. You are a spiritual being in this physical body and you do. You are accounted for the letter is Paul. The letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ. Jesus chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his good news. God promised this good news long ago through his prophets and the Holy scriptures. The good news is about his son in his earthly life. He was born into King David’s family line and he was shown to be the son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy spirit. He is Jesus Christ, our Lord through Christ. God has given us the privilege and authority as apostles to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name. All you need to do. It doesn’t really. All we need to do is replace the word disciple with apostle. We are now disciples and as we are charged by Jesus Christ to go and share the good news wherever we go, the four corners of the world. And remember he is with us until the very end of the age. So there is the commission that the apostles have, right? And it’s a commission that we have because we were commissioned by Jesus Christ to do the same thing. You cannot escape that. And you are included among those Gentiles because he’s writing to the church in Rome who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ. I am writing to all of you in Rome who are loved by God and are called to be his home in his own holy people. May God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. I love it. I mean, man, can you imagine taking the time to write that way today? Like you open a letter to a family member that way or whatever. May the, you know, may God, the father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. And we go to Romans 1 16. For I am not ashamed of this good news about Christ, which we just discussed. And we’re going to get it here. We’re going to end with this idol worship where I am not ashamed of this good news about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes. There you go. Two types of people, those who believe and those who do not saving everyone who believes the Jew first salvation came from the tribe of Judah from the Jews and also the Gentile. This good news tells us how to make us right in his sight, righteous covered by the righteousness of Christ. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. We just got done with a half an hour discussion about calendars and idol worship and festivals and manmade constructs in the church that do this and do that. And faith, Jesus Christ, the church is the bride of Christ. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the church. The cornerstone of our salvation is faith in the completed work of the cross. Boom. Let’s go from there. And we constantly are pursuing truth. We are covered by his righteousness. We are constantly pursuing his will in our lives and what that looks like inside the church and outside the church. We’re not just pursuing religious behavior, religious religiosity, right? Churchianity all these words that demonstrate and show that we actually have words for all of our idol worship. For as the scriptures say, it is through faith that a righteous person has life, but God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their forgiveness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky through everything God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. That is in the theological realm called general revelation. And we get in that conversation quite regularly, don’t we? Evolution versus creation, intelligent design versus random, right? All of those different things. And if you can honestly, if you have faith that through the course of time, all of this of nothing, no life, no life giving force, no life giving atoms or molecules ever existed. And then you look at the complexity of a single maple leaf and you can say, “Oh yes, that’s obvious that you can, it’s just obvious to me that throughout the course of time, this could happen, let alone a complex organism like a human being.” Those people have their faith elsewhere. They believe, oh, they believe just not in a creator. They believe that although there are no demonstrations of something coming from nothing ever, that somehow it did. It just randomly did. That there are no demonstrations of disorganization and chaos ordering itself into a very meticulous and well-defined structure. There’s no demonstrations of that in all of nature, in all of history, somehow it happened at this time. And as a matter of fact, it kind of continues to happen every time a baby is made, every time a new tree grows. But so their faith is somewhere. There’s no doubt about that. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power, his divine nature. You can see it, you’re just denying it. Your faith is elsewhere. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. So there it is. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. There you go. Just what I said. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. We do that today. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Hello. Have you seen the news? Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And instead of worshiping the glorious ever living God, they worship idols made to look like mere people, birds, animals and reptiles. So here’s the wrath of God in the New Testament. And tell me that we are not experiencing the wrath of God outside the Orthodox remnant of Christianity today. This is the New Testament wrath of God. And tell me that we’re not the people are not experiencing it. Well, outside of the Orthodox remnant of Christianity today, God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. Church says, follow God. The world says, follow your heart. And you will end up doing every shameful thing that your heart desires leading you away from the one true God. The wrath of God is God abandoning his creation to their own devices. Abandoning his creation to their own sinful desires. Abandoning his creation to follow their hearts and their wills and their desire instead of him. And now Paul goes on for a chapter and a half about what that looks like. Go read it, chapter one, chapter two. Very quickly. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. Hello. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the creator himself who is worthy of eternal praise. Amen. That goes for every material thing that goes for every person. That goes for every aspect of humanity. You can worship intelligence, rationality. I’m a rational atheist. You can worship sex and sexuality. God knows that that is a human, a major human drive. And he takes that major human aspect of our sexuality and our sexual desires and we, if we is left unfettered, you see what it turns into. If it’s left unfettered, unchecked, if it’s encouraged to go this direction or that direction instead of under the heading of a gift of God, we see what happens with that and so on and so on and so on. When you read the rest of Romans one and two today and you turn and you look at the world today, you will see the world today. Read it slowly. Check it out. You see people turning away from God, worshiping the things he created and or worshiping, shall we say the fruit of that creation. One of the most beautiful designs of human beings is sex between a man and a woman. Well, look at when that is unfettered outside the realm of marriage, outside that of a man and a woman. Look what happens. And we can go line for line through Romans one and two and look at what happens. This is the wrath of God. Are these people lost? No. He begins by saying for it is the power of God to save. The good news is the power of God to save whomever will believe. So all of those lost creatures out there can be saved. They can be found as part of the job of the church. Part of what we do, what we’re supposed to do every Sunday when we gather and strengthen and edify one another, we learn, we grow, we become the disciples that he knows us to be, wants us to be. And then we go and we make disciples of all the world. Yes, even the people in Romans one and two. Father God, we pray that your word will penetrate our hearts and minds in the name of Jesus Christ. We pray that this word, if it is of any value and how you have used me today and used this medium today, we’ll go to exactly the people that need to hear it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Hey, it is Thursday, but Fridays or Fridays coming. I blew that. It is Thursday. Let me be dramatic again. It is Thursday, but Sundays coming. God bless you guys. Thanks for hanging out with me and what we always say.
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