IF YOU COULD SEE, WOULD YOU BOW DOWN? ~ DEMONS BEHIND IDOLS ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 21

1 Kings ends with the son of wicked Ahab becoming king over Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah. He reigned for two years over Israel. He did evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother and in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. So he served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger, according to all that his father had done. (1 Kings 22:52-53)

 

Because of their idolatry, God had said that Israel would go into captivity in a land that worshiped false gods. Deuteronomy 28:36—The Lord will bring you and the king you appoint to a nation neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will worship other gods—gods of word and stone. V. 64—Then the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 29:28—The Lord uprooted them from their land in His anger, rage, and great wrath, and He cast them into another land, where they are today.

 

The northern kingdom was taken by the Assyrians into captivity. In 2 Kings 17 gives reasons for the fall of Israel. Vv. 7-9—Now this came about because the sons of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and they had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had introduced. The sons of Israel did things secretly which were not right against the Lord their God. Moreover, they built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.

 

-   They set for themselves sacred pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree burning incense on the high places as other pagan nations had done.

-   They continually served idols though the Lord continually warned them and reminded them of the repercussions for doing so through the prophets He sent.

-   They followed vanity and became vain and went after the nations which surrounded them.

-   They forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal.

-   They made their sons and daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him.

 

So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah. (v. 18) Judah was also culpable, but her captivity would come later.

The primary reason for Israel’s captivity is the worship of other gods…false gods. They sinned in private (secretly), but they also sinned corporately. In Deuteronomy 12:2-3, the children of Israel were told: You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their Asherim with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods and obliterate their name from that place.

 

Most likely, when trying to do a word study on this word Asherim (plural for Asherah) in Scripture, you will see it translated ‘groves,’ as in a grove of trees. The worship of Baal and Asherah (Ashtoreth) was a constant struggle for the Israelites. Baal, as we have seen, was also known as the sun god or the storm god, the supreme male deity worshiped by the Phoenicians and the Canaanites. Asherah, the moon goddess, was the main female deity worshiped by the Syrians, Phoenicians and the Canaanites. It is necessary to understand what was behind Israel’s struggle to denounce these false gods because we can see a similar thread of idolatry that continues to weave itself throughout our day. That thread is the need for sensuality in worship or the need of the flesh to ‘experience’ worship through all the senses.

 

1.   Baal and Asherah held worshipers captive by the allure of illicit sex.

The religion of Baal and Asherah worship involved ritual prostitution. Numbers 25 gives us a great picture of this where we see the Midianite women seducing the men of Israel to sexual sin in conjunction with sacrificing to their gods. The gods of the pagans were often fertility gods, so the ‘worship’ of such gods involved sexual acts. (See Numbers 25:1-3.) Baal meant “lord”, “master”, or “ruler”. Baal was the umbrella term over many gods of the Canaanites. Baal-Peor was the Baal of Peor or the Lord of Peor (“opening”). The Corinthians may have been susceptible to this same type of temptation living in a city filled with idolatry and sexual immorality. There is some question as to whether Paul was referring to this incident in Numbers 25 when answering the question regarding eating at idol temples in 1 Corinthians 10 or Exodus 32. He says in 1 Corinthians 10:8: “We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day.” 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 says: Therefore, concerning the eating of food sacrificed to idols, we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is only one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

Paul then warns his readers that these things happened to the children of Israel as examples and written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. It is in this context he says we are to flee idolatry.

Many appearances of idolatry have changed since Israel’s sin at Baal-Peor. Some statues representing the same gods/goddesses of ancient times have been cleaned up, dignified, and dressed in royal robes, but the basic temptations of man have not changed!

Then, there is still a lot of subliminal eroticism in contemporary charismatic worship today. Don’t believe me? How many times have we heard professing Christians say they think about God when singing pop-culture love songs? Or, how about the lyrics to the song, “Breathe”, intended to be sung as a worship song in many contemporary charismatic-type churches?

 

“This is the air I breathe, Your holy presence living in me. This is my daily bread, Your very word spoken to me. I’m desperate for you and I’m lost without you.” Repeat 100,000 times…

 

Or how about the lyrics of “The More I Seek You”?

 

“The more I seek you, the more I find you, the more I find you, the more I love you. I wanna sit at your feet, drink from the cup of your hand, lay back against you and breath, feel your heartbeat. This love is so deep, it’s more than I can stand, I melt in your peace, it’s overwhelming.”

 

Seriously? What’s wrong? Is worship to be focused upon God or on getting my needs met? It’s so obvious that these songs are meant to focus on what God can do for me! If the songwriter knew Scripture at all, the cup Jesus is holding is no doubt the cup of suffering, the cup of dying to ourselves that we are called to submit to for His sake in this life.

 

Personally, this is one reason why I would choose to worship in a church where hymns full of theology and significance are sung that focus the worshipper’s attention on God alone. Worship is NOT about singing about God’s love for the emotions it provokes in me. The pagan unbeliever living next door can get that same feeling at the closest nightclub!

 

2.  Another reason Baal and Asherah worship was a persistent problem for Israel was due to the peer pressure of the nations around them.

 

Israel wanted to be like other nations. (See 1 Samuel 8:5, 20.) Again, this is a real struggle for the church in the world today. In a large part, she has bought into and adopted worldly philosophies regarding humanity’s self-esteem issues and secular psychology ideologies. Instead of influencing the world for Christ, the church has allowed the world to influence her in all its pagan practices and belief systems.

 

3.   The deceiver of old knows how to entice man to sin.

 

Satan has proved himself to be a capable deceiver, liar, and murderer from the beginning of time with no need to change his MO. Some may think they are being spiritual when they say things like: “I don’t want to give Satan credit for sin.” Let’s think this through.

 

We are solely responsible for our own sin. That is true. But Satan also knows how to tempt us in the weakness of our flesh. This is why Jesus told His disciples to watch and pray that they may not enter into temptation because the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. This is also why we are to walk by the Spirit so that we do not gratify the desires of the flesh. We know that God does not tempt anyone to sin. James says that each of us is tempted when we are carried away and enticed by our own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.  Man’s flesh is depraved—willfully, stubbornly, resistant to God’s will. This stubborn rebellion works in tandem with Satan’s seductions causing man’s flesh to jump at any chance to rebel against God. While believers have been redeemed, they still live in bodies of flesh—flesh that is being sanctified bit by bit by the Spirit of God living within them. Because we are alive spiritually, having been born again by the Spirit of God, believers don’t have to sin any longer (they are free to choose righteousness), but unbelievers can only choose sin.

 

So how is Satan tied to idolatry specifically? If dumb idols (Isaiah 44:9-20; Jonah 2:8; 1 Corinthians 8:4, 12:2) are nothing, what’s the connection?

 

What is behind every idol? A demon. Sacrifices made to idols were and always are sacrifices to demons. 1 Corinthians 10:14-22—Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise people; you then, judge what I say. Is the cup of blessing which we bless not a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is the bread which we break not a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf. Look at the people of Israel; are those who eat the sacrifices not partners in the altar? What do I mean then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but I say that things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than He, are we?

 

Man, in his sinful flesh, does what he wants to do according to his natural desires. Doing things his own way rather than God’s prescribed way reflects a selfish, self-focused heart. That is the kind of heart God destroyed in the Israelites in the wilderness.

 

Alice had left the Catholic Church and was now trying to witness to and disciple her friend Susan who had committed her life to following Christ but still could not understand why she could not stay in the Catholic Church. She loved how the sights, sounds, and smells of the Roman Catholic Church captivated all her senses in worship. Susan said to Alice, “Come to church with me for a while, and afterwards we can get together to talk about what was wrong with the mass.” I warned Alice this was not a good idea; in fact, it would be sin for her to do so. However, Alice agreed and went to church with Susan for about a month. As promised, afterwards they got together and talked about it. After the first month, Alice approached Susan, Bible in hand, and told her that there was no way she could go back to the Catholic Church using Scripture to show why this was the case. Specifically, she used the verse in the above passage. Susan not only saw the truth from Scripture but said she was being convicted watching Alice so uncomfortable during Mass. With that she, too, left the Catholic Church for good.

 

Alice knew she could not take communion again in the Catholic church, but she believed she could stand against the false teaching. “Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” In order to resist temptation, we must realize that we are vulnerable because our flesh is so weak. If we think we can stand against temptation, we will not guard against it, and we can easily fall.

 

Christians participate in the Lord’s Supper or Communion. Communion speaks of unity and fellowship with Jesus. The Lord’s Supper was instituted by Christ as a memorial meal shortly before He was crucified. The Lord is honored by the Church each time they remember His sacrifice on their behalf in the communion service. In the same way, pagan banquets, given in the honor of idols, spoke of the unity with demons who took advantage of misdirected worship. (More on the RCC Mass later.)

 

Paul said, “I do not want you to become partners with demons.” Some versions say sharers or partakers. This is the word koinonia for communion in 1 Corinthians 10:16 and fellowship in 1 Corinthians 10:20.

 

Deuteronomy 32:16-17 says: They stirred Him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. Pagan gods are associated here with demons.

 

Leviticus 17:7 also connects the dots for us of how idols are connected to demons: “They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot.” Again, demons are associated to pagan gods in this verse.

 

Demonic activity is associated with false religion and false gods. We know that Satan longs to be worshiped. 1 Timothy 4:1 says: Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.

 

Revelation 9:20-21—The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.

 

For the Christian, demons are nothing. In other words, demons have no power over us to deceive. We must be aware, however, that idolatry is participation with demons. Even today, in some supposedly “Christian” denominations we do see people bowing down to idols made by man. Even though believers are rarely seen bowing down before images or idols made by man, we must remember, before we are quick to judge others, that Colossians 3:5 says immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed amount to idolatry as well.

 

We can clearly see that idolatry is a heart issue, and that is why we are warned to guard our hearts. (See Matthew 12:34, 15:18-19; Mark 7:21; Deuteronomy 4:9; Proverbs 4:23.) 1 John 5:21 tells us: Little children, keep yourselves from idols!