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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathan Zita

Turning God Into An Idol

Loving Father, we want to thank you for giving us your Sabbath, a special day of rest where we can come, we can worship you, we can join our voices and our thoughts to the billions of angels that are worshiping you even at this time.

And Lord, it's true we are small, but yet you have made provisions that we can be redeemed by your blood, by your grace.

As the angels walk up and down the aisle, as the Holy Spirit comes to speak to our hearts, Please, Father, may there be nothing between us and you.

If you're asking us to surrender anything, may we surrender it, Lord.

May we cause peace and happiness in your heart this morning.

Father, thank you for giving us the opportunity to be your children.

May you be lifted up, I pray in Jesus' name.

Last summer I had the opportunity to help my wife with VBS, Vacation Bible School.

And if ever you've been, had the opportunity to get involved, you know how a blessing it is to work with children.

And if you have never had the opportunity, I encourage you to get involved.

So from the 70, 80 kids that came, most of them didn't come to church.

You know, they were straight from the community.

And we had an opportunity to plant seeds in their hearts and lives.

And so I had to do the Bible station and I had to do a little bit of studying on Egypt and I found out some very interesting thing.

1 thing I found was that the Egyptians worshiped many gods or many idols which represented gods.

And the way that they would worship is they would offer sacrifices to these gods and they would offer mummified animals.

And I thought it was just 1 kind of animal, but they would mummify anything.

I mean, from chickens to crocodiles to cats, dogs, whatever.

So whatever they could catch, they would mummify and they would offer to a god, right?

And so I had, you know, talked with these young people about sacrifice.

And I went to the dictionary, and the dictionary, the definition I found, was sacrifice is to give up something that is highly valued.

I mean, these individuals sacrificed so much that it became a big business.

Some years ago when they were doing archeology, they found this huge area of mummified cats.

There was so many that they didn't know what to do and to continue.

They actually shipped tons of it to England to use as fertilizer.

I mean, how would you feel to eat, anyways, food that, but it seems that it was very good.

So I asked the kids, you know, What is your understanding of sacrifice?

And they give you all these nice, cute answers.

And 1 boy, he was so earnest, and he said, sacrifice, you know, the other day I misbehaved.

That was the biggest sacrifice I have ever gone through." And he wasn't joking.

And I was thinking, wow, do we know what sacrifice is?

And I don't doubt for 1 moment that it was difficult for him.

And some of you who are laughing, if we took away your smartphone for a week, I don't think you'll be laughing either.

But in the past, it was something physical that we would offer to a God.

In the Bible, it talks a lot about sacrifice.

Of course, we talked about the sanctuary service, the sacrifice that represented Christ, but there's other sacrifices too, the more pagan sacrifices.

The children of Israel, they started out with offering, as we saw in the video, offering lambs.

But as they started to fall away from God, they started to offer to other gods and other types of sacrifices.

And the sacrifice was no more a representation of Christ.

The sacrifice was more something to appease a god and so that the God can bless us, right?

And it got so bad to the point that they started offering people.

If you have your Bibles, let's turn to Jeremiah chapter 19.

I'm going to look at a few Bible verses quickly as we try to go through some of these principles.

In Jeremiah 19 it shows pretty much how bad things got at certain times and in certain places in Israel.

Jeremiah 19 and we're looking at verse 4.

It says, Because they have forsaken me and have estranged this place and have burned incense in it unto other gods, Jeremiah 19 verse 4, and have burned incense in it unto other gods whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocence, they have built also the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind." And so God is saying, look, you guys are offering your children to Baal.

This is something that meet God as an omniscient God, it didn't even cross my mind to ask you to do something that bad.

You know, there was a time when I used to believe that to offer your son as a sacrifice was something amazing and courageous.

And I said, you know, I could never do that.

But the more I studied, the more I realized that that's the epitome of selfishness.

And I began to realize that when my son was born.

Because I began to realize, as a parent, I would rather any day die than my son to die, right?

Well, why do I sacrifice to an idol which represents a certain God?

I need rain so that my crops can grow, and when my crops can grow, I can have food, and when I have food, I can eat, and when I eat, I don't die, right?

So I sacrifice to this idol, which represents this god, so that I can live.

Or I need health because I'm sick, or I need wealth because I'm poor.

I need relief from whatever oppression that I'm going through.

So I sacrifice, whether it's money, whether it's an animal.

And if things really get bad, then I sacrifice my son or my daughter so that my life can be preserved.

It's no better than a father in India who sells his 11-year-old girl for a few rupees so that they can have food for his family.

In 2 Chronicles 28, if you can turn there with me, God was trying to reach his people.

Second Chronicles 28, here we have King Ahaz.

And God was trying to talk to Ahaz, was trying to get through to him, but Ahaz was not really listening.

And so what God could not do in times of prosperity, God decided that he would try to do in times of adversity.

So God is blessing Ahaz, everything is going well, and Ahaz is not listening, so God is saying, okay, I'm gonna withdraw my blessings, withdraw my protection, and hopefully I'm going to be able to get your attention.

The Bible says, and in the time of his distress, that's Ahaz, Did he trespass yet more against the Lord?

For he sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus, which smoke or which beat him.

And he said, Because the gods of the kings of the Syria helped them, therefore I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.

But they were a ruin to him and of all Israel.

So Ahaz is thinking, wait a second, this God thing, this God business is not working.

Because God stopped blessing because he wanted to get his attention.

But instead of getting Ahaz's attention, Ahaz is saying, wait a second, things are falling apart, I'm losing battles, wait, it seems to work for them.

And he starts worshiping that idol, hoping that because Syria won, I can worship to that God, and maybe that God will give me the victory.

But Isaiah 59 tells us, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is ear heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear.

He was a professed follower of God but yet he was set on doing his own thing, holding on to his own sin, worshipping his own idols.

And so what should have been something that would drive him to God was actually something that drove him away from God.

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Turning God Into An Idol

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