23:20
¶ Behold, I send an Angel before thee,
to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have
prepared. 21 Beware of him, and obey his
voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name
is in him. 22 But if thou shalt indeed
obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine
enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. 23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and
bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the
Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. 24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor
serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them,
and quite break down their images. 25
And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and
thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. 26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be
barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. 27 I will send my fear before thee, and will
destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine
enemies turn their backs unto thee. 28
And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite,
the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. 29 I will not drive them out from before thee in
one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply
against thee. 30 By little and little I
will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the
land. 31 And I will set thy bounds from
the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the
river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou
shalt drive them out before thee. 32
Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they
make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a
snare unto thee.
Here is an important doctrine regarding
what an angel is, a spiritual representative, the presence of someone, in this
case God. God’s name is in the angel.
Isaiah
63:9 In all their affliction he was
afflicted, and the angel of his presence
saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them,
and carried them all the days of old.
Judges
2:1 And
an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to
go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your
fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
Verse 24 reinforces God’s disgust with
worshipping gods, little g, and idols. They are either figments of man’s
imagination or devils.
Deuteronomy
32:17 They sacrificed unto devils, not
to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your
fathers feared not.
Do not think that because you don’t
worship Thor or Kali that you are not worshipping a false god. Any time you
think, “an education will make me successful,” or, “having that man or woman
will make me happy,” or, just constantly wanting something other than what you
have you are creating idols, not much differently than ancient people. You are
one step away from giving your dependence on education, sex, or material
possessions a name, an identity to worship.
Anything we place as more important than obedience to God and
faithfulness to Him is an idol. We are to do right, to do our best, and to
trust God only for our success and happiness. Education is a good thing,
intimacy between a husband and wife is an honorable thing, and we need food and
shelter but we must not depend on them rather than God.
For instance, in regard to wealth, Paul
warns Christians;
1Timothy
6:6 ¶ But godliness with contentment is
great gain. 7 For we brought nothing
into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and raiment let us be
therewith content. 9 But they that will
be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is the root of all
evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and
pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
And Jesus admonished His disciples using
the Syriac word for the personification of money.
Luke
16:13 No servant can serve two masters:
for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to
the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
With regard to sex as an idol the ancients
had goddesses like Ishtar, the goddess of immigrants and prostitutes, a version
of which we have in the harbor of New York City also called the goddess
Liberty, popular among the Enlightenment thinkers like James Madison, the
so-called Father of the Constitution, along with Providence, a reference to a
vague universal power but certainly not the God of the Bible. The Greeks and
Romans of Paul’s time had Venus and Aphrodite, goddesses of sex, who were
worshipped in temples like those of Acro-corinth in Greece with short-haired
priestesses, the reason why the Corinthian Christians demanded that their women
have long hair which Paul approved while stating that it was not an issue in
other churches. See 1Corinthians 11.
Idolatry is and has been one of the prime
sins of man against God throughout history. This has been the cause of the
perverted, sexualized religion of the ancient world and the decadence of
mankind. Idolatry results in sexual perversion and it is the byproduct and
result of idolatry.
Romans
1:19 ¶ Because that which may be known
of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God,
they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools, 23 And changed the glory of the
uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and
fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24
Wherefore God also gave them
up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own
bodies between themselves: 25 Who
changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For
this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did
change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the
natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men
working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of
their error which was meet. 28 And even
as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a
reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder,
debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of
evil things, disobedient to parents, 31
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection,
implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing
the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death,
not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
In that passage we can see why society
decays and who is responsible for it’s decay. God gives delusions and permits
our more decadent natures to take preeminence.
Whether our idol is the flag or
Constitution, which Mormon Joseph Smith convinced patriots was divinely
inspired by God, or whether it is money, sex, or education idolatry is one of
the prime reasons that American Christianity is so powerless to impact a dying
world in any way other than providing humanistic drivel to control a
congregation under the guise of fundamentalist, right-wing or liberal,
left-wing preaching.
Thou
shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but
thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.
God is promising these physical, literal
Hebrews coming into a physical, literal land blessings and prosperity and
protection and the written words of God are a vital part of those blessings.
Joshua
1:8 This book of the law shall not
depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that
thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then
thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
While Christians were not promised an
earthly country we would do well in life to honor these admonitions and
warnings that God has given. Idolatry will destroy your walk with God and make
you a caricature of a person of faith to the unsaved, a cartoon, a joke. You
cannot uplift an idol in one hand and God in the other without looking stupid,
a hypocrite, or just plain evil.
Even though Christians do not have a
country on this earth the historical principle laid down in Romans, chapter
one, applies to nations as we know them. Let me give you a brief religious
history of America to show you how idolatry can be poison. America’s self-worship as idolatry has its roots in the country’s
earliest times. The good thing,
which was the belief and faith that this new land was to be a nation set apart
by God for a divine purpose was a common thread preached throughout. However, a
specific millennial belief, that Christ would set up a kingdom on earth without
being present Himself to last for literally a thousand years or with the
millennium as just representing a long time was the standard, evangelical
Christian view until the 20th century. This is called
Postmillennialism, with Christ returning at the end of the thousand years. With
a few exceptions it was believed that Christ would rule through His church. But
there was no doubt that America would be the location where this period would
begin. Men like John Cotton, Ephraim Huit, Increase Mather, John Davenport,
John Eliot, Samuel Sewall, Cotton Mather, and Joseph Morgan preached an
imminent millennium and Eliot, combining the fervor of what was called Fifth
Kingdom Monarchyism prevalent in England, was especially hopeful that the New
Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation would descend upon America itself. (9)
Sermons were preached before Congress that said that America was the Promised
Land and that the events of Revelation would take place here before we
converted the world and established Christ’s kingdom for Him. (10)
An actual, historical Kingdom of God was expected, with the
millennium, a thousand years of Christ’s reign through His church, coming soon.(11)
Jonathan Edwards, the Congregationalist preacher so important to the series of
revivals in 1700s America called The First Great Awakening, viewed the
millennium not as Christ physically returning to save a ruined world, but a
gradual process where righteousness and the control of Godly men became
prevalent as Christ ruled through His church.(12)
Millennial ideals were also preached during the time of and after the
American Revolution pointing more and more to America’s God-chosen role in the
bringing in of Christ’s Kingdom, linked to evolutionary progress. President of
Yale College Ezra Stiles said;
It may have been of
the Lord that Christianity is to be found in such greater purity in this church
exiled into the wilderness of America, and that its purest body should be evidently advancing forward, by an augmented natural increase and
spiritual edification, into a singular superiority, with the ultimate
subserviency to the glory of God to converting the world.(13)
The nineteenth century was an era in secular and religious thought of a
progress that was inevitable.(14) In Protestant evangelical faith, Postmillennialism,
that mankind would create a millennial kingdom without Christ’s physical
presence, was, “the commonly received doctrine,” of the century.(15) The
documents, the speeches, the sermons are available for you to read, mostly
free. Don’t take my word for it. During this period this doctrine was the
intellectual compromise between the devastation of God’s judgment on the world
portrayed in the book of Revelation in the Bible and the evolutionary theory of
constant movement upward to better and better times, and a utopia.(16) Liberal religious
thought in collusion with the growing atheism of science brought about a
weakening of the hopeful, religious viewpoint of a coming golden age created by
Christians dependent upon their own righteousness but it was the nightmare of
the Civil War and the calamity of World War One that drove the nail into the
coffin and, “it became a relic of a lost world.” (17)
But, at
the time of the Civil War’s commencement most evangelical Christians in America
believed that the United States was God’s Promised
Land and white, Anglo-Saxon Americans His chosen people, destined to bring
in a ‘golden age’ of peace, prosperity, and righteousness as Christ ruled the
earth for either a literal thousand years or for just a long period of time,
represented by the word millennium, through
His church. Lincoln himself referred to America, not Christ, as the last best
hope of earth.(18)
It was not unusual for nations with a
state church to view themselves as God’s chosen people. England, Russia, and
Germany were notorious for this view. German sermons during World War One even
likened the German Army to the Holy Spirit moving in the world and ‘God With
Us’ in German was on the belt buckles of soldiers. Glorification and even
deification of the state was one prime motivator in the half-century of war.
President Woodrow Wilson’s mentor at Johns
Hopkins University, Richard Ely, put the thought of the elite and great
planners whose government was God’s agent on earth or His replacement even like
this;
Now, it may
rationally be maintained that, if there is anything divine on earth, it is the
State, the product of the same God-given instincts which led to the
establishment of the Church and of the Family. It was once held that kings
ruled by right divine, and in any widely accepted belief, though it be
afterwards discredited, there is generally found a kernel of truth. In this
case it was the divine right of the state.(19)
But worshipping the state as a “Christnation,”
as the Redeemer Nation of the world, was America’s undoing. With the leadership
making government God’s agent on earth rather than God’s people and with the
common Christian expecting that we could create a perfect world without Christ
physically present we had this great religious expectation that was blatantly false.
That’s why today so many think that they
are electing a pastor or a messiah when they vote for a president and then try
to Christianize their candidate if elected to make him look like something he
is not. It all boils down to state-worship.
World
War One, the Jazz Age, the automobile, the sexual revolt of the 1920s, the
triumph of evolution in science, the growing importance of the Entertainment
industry all figured in to God’s judgment on the nation for its idolatry. As an
example, where women who wore makeup were derided as ‘painted city women’
before the war, with strong suggestions of immorality, the demands by boys
returning home that their women look like French girls has resulted in the fact
that Christian women wouldn’t dare leave home without makeup on today. In
addition, the lax morals produced by boys and girls being able to go off alone
in a car and listening to Ragtime and Jazz watching Hollywood movies glorifying
decadence was a chilling reminder that something was very wrong in America. We
had the Great Depression, remember? Then, another devastating war and a
so-called Cold War for 50 years pounded away at our families and our
institutions. Look at today. Do you not doubt we are under God’s judgment? Look
at Israel in Kings and Chronicles. Don’t you see America in every page? Ancient
Israelites, like Americans, believed that they were special and by virtue of
their exceptional place in God’s ordained world they deserved peace and
prosperity, both of which were taken away over time for their idolatry.
Fundamentalism came about in the early
1900s because America, under God’s judgment, appeared to be descending into
chaos and darkness. The King James-only movement
came about in 1964 because fundamentalism had gone crazy with regard to its
denial of the Bible we had in front of us. The problem, fundamentalists wrongly
assumed, was non-Christians polluting God’s country. The actual problem was
Christian idolatry and not venerating God’s word above our ambitions. This is
how idolatry, in this case, worship of one’s country as a god on earth, can do
horrible damage.
We are held to the same standard as
everyone else and we have been found wanting. I refer you to the passage I
quoted earlier from Romans, chapter one, again to find out why things are the
way they are.
But, it must be said, unlike the Hebrews
assuming control over an area of land the promise to Christians is an eternal
inheritance. We don’t get a utopia here, a millennium without Christ’s physical
presence, but we can get an awful mess.
It is interesting in Verse 28 how God
promises to use creatures to drive out the inhabitants of the land He has
promised to the Hebrews slowly. God has used many naturally occurring events as
weapons. Remember the plagues of Egypt?
Compare what ancient Israel was to be with
what America was to be to see a difference dispensationally. Israel was not to
permit idolatry in its borders and was to drive out the idol-worshippers lest
they pollute the Hebrew religion, which their existence did, as we can see by
reading the Bible. America is a pluralistic nation with many different
religious traditions or no religion at all. We cannot remove everyone from the
land who does not believe exactly what we believe or how we believe, no matter
how much you would like to do that. The Hebrews didn’t do that either, but it
was their apostasy that garnered them God’s wrath.
I think it is important to realize that
every Christian now is a type of the nation of Israel then, as the children of
Israel then were a type of every Christian today. Our land is a spiritual land
and our Canaanites are our sins. God promises us that He will drive out our
sins if we obey Him as He promised the Hebrews He would drive out the wicked,
child-sacrificing, bestiality practicing, temple-prostitute patronizing
Canaanites if the Hebrews obeyed.
But, having said all that, I would go on
to say that if Christians themselves would repent and turn from their sins and
obey God in the best way they know how, believing His word, they would not be
deceived by lying, gutless, and corrupt politicians and their land would not be
given over to the perversion, violence, and decay that is so prevalent. God
honors obedience, not obedience as defined by some fundamentalist whack-job
preacher or evangelist who just wants to control them but obedience and
righteousness as defined by the Bible. The problem with America is not
homosexuals, left-wing demagogues, drug-dealers, or liberal judges. The problem
with America is the faithlessness of Christians who regard the Bible as a type
of Emily Post’s book on etiquette to be observed if convenient and who regard
God as more of a concept or idea than a real, living entity who controls every
aspect of reality from their living room to the edges of the universe.
(9) David E. Smith, “Millenarian Scholarship in America,” American Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 3
(Autumn, 1965), 539. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710907. (accessed 10.28.2015), 539.
(10) Fountain E. Pitts, A
Defence of Armageddon or Our Great Country Foretold in the Holy
Scriptures In
two discourses, Delivered in the Capitol of the United States, at the request
of several members of Congress, on the anniversary of Washington's birthday,
1857, (Baltimore: J.W. Bull
Publishers, 1859), 90.
(11) Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s
Millennial Role (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 29.
(12) Ibid., 30.
(13) Ezra
Stiles, “The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor,” in The Pulpit of the American Revolution, or,
The Political Sermons of the Period of 1776, John Wingate Thornton, ed.,
(Boston: D. Lothrop & Publishers, 1876), 405, 472.
(14) Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, 52.
(15) Henry Boynton Smith,”History of
Opinions Respecting the Millennium,” The
American Theological Review (Boston: Charles Scribner & Son, 1859),
642. https://books.google.com/books?id=hWrUAAAAMAAJ&vq=millennium&pg=PA642#v=snippet&q=millennium&f=false (accessed 11.14.2015).
(16) James H. Moorhead, “The Erosion of
Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought, 1865-1925,” Church History Vol. 53, No. 1 (Mar.
1984), 61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3165956 (accessed 11.14.2015).
(17) Ibid., 77.
(18) Jean H. Baker, “Lincoln’s Narrative of American Exceptionalism,”
in We Cannot Escape History: Lincoln and
the Last Best Hope of Earth, James McPherson, ed., (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 42.
(19) Gary M. Pequet and Clifford M. Thies, “The Shaping of a Future
President’s Economic Thought: Richard T. Ely and Woodrow Wilson at “The
Hopkins,” The Independent Review: A
Journal of Political Economy 15, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 262, 266.
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