Reversing Idolatrous Consequences, Part 1

Idols are used by demons to draw us from the living God. Dr. Tony Evans says idols aren't just statues. A false God can be anything we put in the Lord's place. Whether it's the God of technology, whether it's the God of athletics, God is daily insulted by the other gods we bring. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oakland. Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Competition is a healthy thing in the business world, but Dr. Evans says it's dangerous to let anyone or anything in your life compete with God. So today he'll help us learn how to keep our faith in focus. Let's join him. In other words, you want to be in it.

No matter whatever else and whoever else is around, you too want to be on display. One of the things God said to His people is, Don't take any pictures of me. Don't even try it. You shall make no image of the living God. God only took one selfie in history.

His name is Jesus Christ. That's God's selfie. He said, don't make any image of me because anything you make that you think looks like me will only distort me. Your pictures will be bad photographs. That'd be like the photographs you used to take at the mall in those little booths with the curtain.

You sit down there and click, click, click, click, click four photographs would then come out of the machine. Don't show those pictures to nobody, because those will not be complimentary photographs. They're a cheap reflection of who you are in most cases. God says, don't have any image of me because in attempting to picture me, you will distort who I am. And any distortion of me is idolatry. It is idolatry.

We live in an idol-saturated society, although sophisticated. Remember that an idol is any person, place, thing, or thought that you look to as your source. It is any person, place, thing, or thought, any noun that you put beside God or in front of Him. You can always know what your God is by what comes first.

Love the Lord your God first. Anything else put first in competition with or in front of the God of the Bible is idolatry. I know in our culture we live in the culture of the American Idol, sophisticated idols. But idols come in all shapes, in all sizes, in all forms, and they're always designed to compete with God and draw us from God. Idols have one overriding purpose, to compete with God and to override God. Idols are used by demons to draw us from the living God as He brings about competitive forces to steer us from the truth and devolve us in our lifestyles, in our decision-making. Virtually everything wrong in our lives that continues to devolve us over time, even though it may have started out looking okay, is because whatever that thing was or is has become an idol.

It has become, unbeknownst to most of us, an object of worship, or because He's not one of your more popular figures in Scripture. But in 2nd Chronicles chapter 33, we are told about Manasseh. I don't care how bad you have been or are, you're probably not as bad as Manasseh.

That's the good news. It goes south from there. First of all, we're told in verse 1 of 2nd Chronicles 33, Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem. So Manasseh is 12 years old, and what that means when you're 12 years old and you become king, it means they elected him to be the future king, so he comes in as a co-regent or co-king with his daddy. Now, to appreciate the story of Manasseh, you have to understand he was raised in a godly home. Manasseh was raised right. A summary of Manasseh's daddy is given in chapter 29 of 2nd Chronicles, and his daddy's name was Hezekiah. Hezekiah, verse 1 of chapter 29 says, became king when he was 25 years old, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. Verse 2, and he did right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father David had done.

In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them in the square on the east, and he said to them, Listen to me, O Levites, consecrate yourselves now, consecrate the house of the Lord, the God of your fathers, and carry the uncleanness out from the holy place. Hezekiah is Manasseh's father. He was raised by this kind of daddy. He was raised by a father who loved God, who served God, who wanted to obey God, and who brought the people around him to take God seriously. But not his baby boy, Manasseh.

Because we find out in verse 2 of chapter 33, he did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel. So Hezekiah's daddy was a great godly man, but his baby boy Manasseh went left, way left, according to the abomination of the nations that were surrounding him. So let's picture Manasseh. He's growing up. He's having devotions with his daddy. His daddy's taking him to temple. He's getting all this godly stuff put in him. And then along the way, he looks out and sees all the folks around him.

It says all the nations, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the termites. I mean, he's seeing all the nations around him. And he sees these nations living it up. He sees these nations in all kind of stuff.

It becomes attractive to him. God calls them abominations, but He calls them what's happening now. God calls them evil, but it looked like fun to him. So he adopted their worldview in God's place. Okay, you say, well, that's good, but that doesn't relate to me.

Okay. For everybody here that was raised by a grandmother or a mother who prayed for you, made you go to church on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Well, no, on Sunday you had to go to service, then you had the afternoon service, you know, and then you had the night service. I mean, they bibled you to death. They just, they just, I mean, the dog was Christian in your house. They just overwhelmed you with Christian stuff. And then you went to college. You went to college, and you found out, I don't have to go to church no more. And then you looked at all the folk from all the other places, all the other towns, all the other cities, all the other house, and they were having a good time. Grandmama calling you, I'm praying for you.

Well, that's nice. You keep praying, but I'm getting my, I'm getting my thing on. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, because I see what's happening in the environment all around me. And it looks like they're having more fun than I am, having more joy than I am. I'm looking at all the things around me, and I have become attracted to them. And as a result of that, I pick up their habits. I pick up their worldview. I pick up their thinking. What I was made to feel bad about in the house that I grew up in, I don't feel that bad about in college.

What was shameful back then, not that bad right now, because everybody around me has adapted that lifestyle, and I'm no longer accountable to the world in which I possibly was raised. So, Manasseh decides to incorporate the worldview of the society that surrounded him, rather than the godliness in which he was reared. So that's how he decides to operate, and he is now the king. Dr. Evans will tell us about the downward spiral that followed Manasseh's decision when he continues our message in just a moment. First though, I wanted to let you know that Dr. Evans has written a brand new book that goes hand in hand with the lesson we've been hearing today. It's called U-Turns, and it's a look at how you can turn around vital areas of your life and allow God to manage them.

Areas like fear and anxiety, financial challenges, addiction issues, and sins that can be passed down from generation to generation. For just a couple more days, we're bundling this powerful new book, along with all 12 full-length messages from his current teaching series, U-Turn Reversing Spiritual Consequences, and offering them as our gift to you when you make a donation to help us keep Tony's teaching on the station. And if you're interested in sharing these powerful lessons with others, or just understanding the concepts better for yourself, be sure to ask about the companion U-Turns Bible Study and DVD Kit. Together, this complete package of powerful resources can help you get yourself and those you share it with headed in a whole new direction. Just call us at 1-800-800-3222, or visit tonyevans.org to get all the details before time runs out.

Again, that's tonyevans.org. I'll have our contact information for you again after Dr. Evans brings us the second part of today's lesson and this. How have we, the Church, missed the division that has set into our culture? How can you bring unity to every area of where you are? Dr. Evans has written a book called Oneness Embraced. Walk in the footsteps of Dr. Evans as he tells the story of how he had to straddle Black urban culture and White mainline evangelicalism. Find out what he endured and learned to bring us a biblical and pastoral guide for unity across racial divides. This call for unity is as timely as ever. Get your copy today of Oneness Embraced.

Find it at tonyevans.org. Well, what did he do? Verse 3 tells us, He rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down. That is, the idol worship centers. He also erected altars for the Baals, idols, and made Asherim, he made more idols, and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served them. Oh, but it gets worse. Verse 4, He built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, My name shall be in Jerusalem forever. So, wait a minute. Number 1, he goes out and he adopts the idols of the culture.

That's number 1. But then, according to verse 4, he brought the idols of the culture into the house of God. He brought them to church with him. He's in the house of God because you want to be close enough to God that it looks like you're worshiping for real. But while you're looking like you're worshiping for real, because you're in the house of God, where the sermons are being preached and the songs are being sung and they're doing the Christian thing, but you got that culture up all in you.

You got that world all up in you. You got that secularism all up in you, and you bring that with you to the house of God. While the only reason you bring it with you to the house of God is because you had it outside of the house of God, and you just can't leave it when you walk through the door. So, they brought the culture out there and made it the worship of God. That's why you hear Christians, because he said he worshiped the astrology.

That's why you got Christians talking about, praise the Lord, hallelujah, I love the Lord, amen. And then opening the newspaper and reading the horoscope. To look to your horoscope for guidance is to look at the heavens that God has made so that you are literally choosing it as an idol, because now it is competing with God. So, once you look to God and look to his word and then look to the horoscope, you have now brought idolatry into the house of God. That is to look to the creation, Romans 1 says, which is to insult the Creator.

So, it's bad enough you adopted it in the culture. It's even worse when you brought it into the house of God, because once you bring it into the house of God, you make the true God seem like he's saying okay to that which belongs to the nations around, to the secular world system. You and I live in a day of idolatry. We live in a day when God is daily insulted by the other gods we bring, whether it's the God of technology, whether it's the God of entertainment, whether it's the God of athletics. None of those things may be wrong in and of themselves, but the moment they compete with the God of the Bible, then you have adopted the worldview, sprinkled the little Jesus on it to make it feel better. He had brought it into the house of God.

It gets worse. He built altars to the host of heavens, verse 5 says, in the two courts of the house of God, and he made his sons pass through the fire. That's child sacrifice. We've got child sacrifice today. It's called abortion. That's child sacrifice. That's killing the unborn, who are persons.

You have to understand. The issue of abortion has got nothing to do with women's rights, and it's got nothing to do with this is my body. That's irrelevant, because we're not talking about your body.

We're talking about the body of another that you happen to be housing for a nine-month period of time. The Bible says in Psalm 139 that God stitches the baby in the womb, and that that baby has the image of God. So to abort is to attack God.

You see? It's a God attack. It's child sacrifice.

So while we have sophisticated it today, and somehow we think because it's legal, it's legitimate. Somehow we think because the secular world has said it's okay that God says it's okay, and you bring that into the house of God because the society the nations around have made you feel okay about it. So the house of God gets contaminated by the thinking of the world because the thinking of the world has rubbed off on the people of God, and we become babies of Manasseh. It says he sacrificed on the altar his children. He keeps going. Verse 6 says in the middle of it, he practiced witchcraft, divination, sorcery, and dealt with mediums and spiritists.

He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Folks reading lines on your hand to tell you your future. And I don't know if you ever noticed it, if you ever been to a palm reader, but once you pay the palm reader, the line's going to be good.

The line's going to be good. You don't pay a palm reader and them give you a bad read. Why?

They need you to come back. He used spiritists. He used wizards. He went outside of divine revelation to get information about how he should do his job. When you leave divine revelation and use errant sources in the creation, the Bible just called that an idol. Whenever you add to, the Bible pronounces at the end of Revelation, a curse on any man or any woman who adds to divine revelation. That is, you bring outside contradictory thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and what's worse about it is when it's done in the house of the Lord. One of the reasons our culture is falling apart is that instead of the church influencing the culture, the culture is now influencing the church because now folk are bringing the mess of the culture into the church asking the church to go along with it. And what's worse is that many churches are going along with it.

In order to be popular, in order to raise money, in order to have big crowds, in order to get notoriety, in order to be all this and a bag of chips, they will compromise divine revelation to keep people happy, keep people coming, keep people giving, and to stay popular regardless of what divine revelation has said. You know that the culture's in trouble when the pulpits and the pew acquiesce to the culture, when we bring the idols of the culture into the house of God while worshiping God. There's social idolatry, relational idolatry. It is the bringing of any noun, person, place, thing, or thought, in competition with the living God. And whenever you bring competition, idolatry, and you put it next to God, you have to understand that you have just made God your enemy.

And watch this. Ezekiel chapter 14 verse 6 says that when you choose an idol, with that idol comes detestable practices. In other words, idols lure you into a lifestyle that is godless. They may not say that out front, but you hang around an idol long enough and that idol will woo you in. You see, the idol of pleasure doesn't start out with pleasure. It starts out with a drink or a hit. It starts out with a feel-good, but then it keeps working you and working you and working you and working you and working you until now. You don't own it. It owns you. So he says with idol comes detestable practices.

And so idolatry is any person, place, thing, or thought that competes with and therefore lures you from the living God. But reconciliation is right around the corner, and Dr. Evans will tell us more about it when he continues this message tomorrow. Right now, though, if you'd like to get a full-length copy of today's lesson, it's available in its entirety on both CD and digital download, including portions we won't have time to bring you on the air. Better yet, you can get it as a part of Tony's complete series, U-Turn, Reversing Spiritual Consequences. For just a couple more days, we're bundling all 12 full-length messages in this powerful two-volume collection, along with Dr. Evans' brand-new book, U-Turns, and sending them to you as our thank-you gift when you help support this ministry with a generous contribution. And don't forget, Tony has created a complete companion Bible study kit and teaching DVD that goes along with the U-Turn series. Get all the details and make your request online at TonyEvans.org, where you can browse through our huge library of resources and sign up for Tony's free weekly e-mail devotional. Again, that's TonyEvans.org. Or you can give us a call at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are standing by around the clock to help you with your resource request. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Most Christians think they'll never be tempted to worship idols, but tomorrow Dr. Evans will help you discover some of the surprising things that may be separating you from the Lord. Be sure to join us. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.