The god-makers Club (Part C)

What is left for a person to believe after they reject the truth? Well, you say it's true to you, but it's not true to the person you're preaching to. That's an unbeliever. That doesn't receive Christ.

Why isn't it not true? What is there about Jesus Christ to reject? I mean, I can understand rejecting churches, I can understand rejecting some Christians, but I no longer understand rejecting the message. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Isaiah chapter 44 is the text Pastor Rick will be teaching from today on this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. I had very few Christian enemies until I became pastor.

Now I've got stacks of them. This reoccurring dream, I go to this stadium filled with thousands of people. They're all the people who used to come to the church.

Okay, I don't have that kind of dream, but I sometimes think that way. And it's not that they're, you know, less Christians or out of love with Christ or anything. It's the war we're in.

This is how it is. But a pastor and a congregation cannot let leaven in. And if somebody says, well, I just want to put a few Watchtower pamphlets on the back table, you see, there might be some places that call themselves churches would let that kind of behavior. Christianity does not leave room for Christians to disagree with Christ. If you disagree with Christ, you know, by default, you're wrong. You might feel it now. Now, let's be fair. We can feel it like, Lord, I know you're right, but I sure feel you're wrong.

Because, you know, we're trapped in this carnal body, and our emotions will try to take over the ship, and we have to fight those things. Christianity declares that other gods are not divine, but are products of hell's influence. They are fictitious imposters, and Isaiah hated them. And he's going to get to that if I ever get to it. And so, verse 7 now, and who can proclaim as I do? God speaking. Then let him declare, let him declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people, and the things that are coming, and shall come, let them show these to them. So God says, tell the future. That's a criteria of being divine.

You can't, can you? Or you get one guess right and you think that is, how did the Hindu cow become sacred? How did somebody, you know what, we're not going to eat that anymore. We're going to worship it.

How did that happen? How did Allah become the source of defense? We've got to defend our God. You've got the wrong God if you've got to defend your God. My God defends me. And if he decides not to, then he makes a martyr out of me. Then the New Testament is very clear. If you're going to suffer, you suffer in righteousness, not because you're a bozo.

Peter makes that very clear. How do the New Agers justify evolving into deity? Well, we are just the age of Aquarium, whatever they come up with, and they just make stuff up and demand you respect them and accept it and mingle it in. We're seeing this with those who worship their sexual conduct. It's not enough that you tolerate them.

You have to celebrate them. And when you don't, they'll try to get you to lose your job, try to starve you to death or hurt you in some form. This is the work of the devil. And so when Isaiah says these things, who can come along and say, ah, that's not so? Verse 8, do not fear nor be afraid.

Have I not told you from that time and declared it? You are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? Indeed, there is no other rock.

I know not one. Now, of course, the New Testament applies this rock to being Christ that was with the Jews in the Old Testament. How dare God be God and disallow anybody else as God? Who does he think he is? This is what we face. If fake gods want the respect that the true God has, then let them distinguish themselves.

Let them start telling the future, and they can. Now, Satan hates this because he can never be equal with God. He tried, but it failed. But he has managed to sell this hatred to opponents of the Scripture. And there, you know, a person can say they believe in the Bible and actively work against it. Those who are opponents of the Scripture, they too hate that the only true God is the only God. As though there was some law somewhere that says, no, there are, you know, like a vending machine.

You just put your coin in, and you select which one you want, and out it pops. Verse 9. Those who make an image, all of them are useless, and their precious things shall not profit. They are their own witnesses.

They neither see nor know that they may be ashamed. They're their own witnesses. In other words, they sit there as a dust collector on your shelf. That's their proof of deity.

That's it. They can collect dust, and they have to be carried around. Or the bird droppings have to be moved off of them. Yeah, they make these giant buddhas.

Somebody's got to clean that thing. This is idolatry, and again, the God makers find no problem with it. You can understand why whole nations go for this. What you then struggle with is when they're confronted with solid Christianity. That they persist. Anyway, such has been the case with the missionaries.

We've had many missionaries in history that have done just incredible work. Mao, the Chinese monster, the Communist Chinese, I should specify that, the Communist Chinese monster, he purged the land of Christianity, and the darkness that is in China, spiritual darkness, is pretty bad. Anyway, verse 9, coming back to this, worshipping created things creates a judgment.

These are little catchy phrases that I made up myself, but they're true. If you create your God, you have created judgment for yourself. Such worship was absurd and blasphemous to Isaiah. Idolatry is as modern as it is ancient. It doesn't go away, because they don't make little, you know, grotesque statues that somehow are no longer idolatrous.

Revelation 9, speaking about the Great Tribulation, that is still future. But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of their works, the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons and the idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And so, the created elements, whether it's in the mind or in the foundry, wherever you are, they're idols, if you make up things about God, and they come from demons. And God says, you're worshiping demons. You think you're worshiping a righteous God, and you're not. And Paul deals with this difficult issue in Romans 3 and 4, because the question, well, what about the person who's never heard the gospel?

And he deals with that very, very nobly, how, you know, God's going to do the right thing. Anyway, the so-called sophisticated modern man really thinks that because they don't fashion statues out of something and bow down to them, that somehow they are not idolaters. Anyway, 2 Chronicles 16, there, so what would happen is they would fashion, they would get the wood or whatever, just take wood, and they'd fashion it into a god, and then they believed one form of idolatry is that the god would then inhabit the idol, and that god would be in that idol. Of course, the naysayer comes along, well, that's what the Jews did with the temple. That is not what the Jews did with the temple. Solomon makes it very clear. This temple, Lord, who can make you a temple?

Nobody. However, could you just meet us here, though? Well, did that mean that God could not meet the Jews anywhere else apart from the temple?

Absolutely not. God could meet, he met the righteous anywhere. In fact, he abandoned the temple when they abandoned him.

But not the righteous people. He continued to work with them to give them prophecy, to bless them, or to use them. 2 Chronicles 16, verse 18. His Solomon, dedicating the first Jewish temple, he says, But will God indeed dwell with men on earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built.

And there he just continues to express his desire that God would use the temple as a point of contact. Especially, you know, and illiterate people would benefit from such an event, or people that weren't that well schooled. Speaking in tongues, for example, you know, it's mostly the formally educated Christians that are naysayers when it comes to tongues. So, in the old churches, many of the stained glass in the churches and in the sanctuaries told the Bible story. There would be the, you know, the nativity scene and the crucifixion. Much of that was for people who were illiterate.

Many of the peasants, you know, what are they working out in the fields or working in, you know, wherever they were working, mines, whatever they were doing. And those things helped them understand the preaching that was given to them. Well, there are people, intellectual and non-intellectual alike, that can speak in tongues and have that form of expression of their adoration for God. I believe in all the gifts of the Spirit. I just do not believe in the unbridled display of those gifts as is often practiced. If you are so serious about tongues, you can speak tongues in your home anytime you want.

You just can't interrupt the service. Then you'll need the gift of healing. So the ushers told me, I didn't come up with, you know, okay, coming back to this. Anyway, John chapter 4, Jesus said to her, If you're a woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father God as Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. And the Jews understood that, those with the righteous ones, but she didn't understand it and he laid it out for her. Let's just move on to verse 10 since we've got so much here to go. There's so much. It's shooting ducks in the bathtub. Once you come to know Christ, it's so easy to see it.

But before coming to Him, it's just you're in a fog. Verse 10, who would form a god or mold an image that profits him nothing? Well, it's God's question. Who does that? And man's answer. A lot of people.

The imposters. Men do not hate their ideas about God. They tend to hate God's ideas about God. And that's why they don't want to receive the revelation. Acts chapter 19, Demetrius, you know, he was saying, hey, we make our money for making these statues of Diana and other gods that we have.

Because in Ephesus there are other gods too. And Paul has come here and he's turned everything upside down for us. And they wanted to kill Paul for doing this.

They're very serious about worshiping their images. Verse 11, surely all his companions would be ashamed and the workmen, they are mere men. Let them all be gathered together, let them stand up, yet they shall fear, they shall be ashamed together. Again, the prophet, he hated these idols. He hated that people actually believed in these things. He's addressing primarily the Jewish people of his day who had become apostates into idolatry. Of course it applied to the Gentiles too, but his ministry was to his people. And he says, you know, it's a death, a spiritual death knell seeing their utter shameless behavior.

To him it was just stupid, but to them it was, they had forsaken the true god. Verse 12, and he's going to hit this a little bit. The blacksmith with the tongues works one in the coals, fashions it with hammers, and works it with the strength of his arms. Even so he is hungry and his strength fails.

He drinks no water and is faint. The craftsman stretches out his rule, he marks out with chalk. He fashions it with a plane and marks it out with a compass and makes it like a figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man that it may remain in the house.

Jeremiah rails on this too. So he's pointing out the blacksmith is a feeble being. He gets tired, he gets hungry and faint, and yet what gives him the right to make a god? He is, I mean how do you, part of a thing can't be, you know, greater than the thing itself kind of a thing. Verse 14, he cuts down cedars for himself and takes the cypress and the oak, he secures it for himself among the trees of the forest.

He plants a pine and the rain nourishes it. Isaiah said you're just working with created things. The madness of an inferior understanding of the superior being.

He's stunned by their senseless adoration. Verse 15 he continues about those in the God makers club who require existing, who created materials to create their gods. Verse 15, then it shall be for a man to burn, for he will take some of it and warm himself. Yes, he kindles it and bakes bread.

Indeed, he makes a god and worships it. He makes it a carved image and falls down to it. Verse 16, he burns half of it in the fire. Hope he gets the wrong half in the fire, or the right half.

Because the other half, anyway. Verse 16 continuing, with this half he eats meat. He roasts and roasts and is satisfied. He even warns himself and says, I am warm.

I have seen the fire. Verse 17, and the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, deliver me, for you are my god. So he's just like, this is crazy. He didn't have that word.

That crazy word. What do you say to this behavior? He finds it outright stupid and beneath man. Men make up gods and resent that someone points that out to them.

They resent, how dare you say I made up my, well then show me some proof. Give me something that I can say that is distinct from human influence. The greatest element we have, well several of them, one of them is prophecy. The other one is the nation Israel. Just the nation Israel is a living prophecy to attest to the trustworthiness of scripture.

There's nothing like it. We who love the Lord, we become pro-Christ, of course. We're not going to be in the corner of idolaters and say, well you know, they really don't mean any harm. Yeah, but the Satan behind them does. To damn their soul and anybody else he can evangelize. And that's why our heart breaks when we have children that go to churches, learn the gospel, go out into the world and become apostates.

This is real stuff. So verse 8, they do not know nor understand for he has shut their eyes so that they cannot see in their hearts, so that they cannot understand. How do you reach them? I think we're only going to get to verse 21. I have a deep suspicion that's as far as we're going to get.

How do you reach them? They do not know nor understand for he has shut their eyes. That doesn't blame God.

Points out a process that belongs, a reality, a process that is a part of reality. So first we start with the New Testament answering these questions. 2 Timothy 2, Paul says, speaking of how to pastor and how to be a Christian, in humility, correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth. So Paul injects there, he says, listen, I don't understand at all. But I understand this much. If salvation is going to come, it's going to be because of God.

But it's not going to be without our participation too. And that's what he's saying to Timothy there in chapter 2, verse 25. God will support a willful decision of man to reject him by turning that man over to delusion at some point.

God says fine, Romans chapter 1. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. It's not only here, it's repeated in others through John chapter 3, verse 19. This is the condemnation that has come into the world that men love darkness because their deeds are evil.

John 5.40 and 5.42, Isaiah will get to it again by the time we're done with Isaiah. What is left for a person to believe after they reject the truth? Well, you say it's true to you, but it's not true to the person you're preaching it. That's an unbeliever that doesn't receive Christ.

Why isn't it not true? What is there about Jesus Christ to reject? I mean, I can understand rejecting churches. I can understand rejecting some Christians.

But I no longer understand rejecting the message. Well, verse 19. And no one considers in his heart, nor is there knowledge, nor understanding to say, I have burned half of it in the fire. Yes, I have also baked bread on its coals. I have roasted meat and eaten it. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination?

Shall I fall down before a block of wood? So he's trying to reason with them. He started out, come, let us reason. Though your sins be red as scarlet, they can be made white as snow. And here he is, he's just trying to, how do you do this?

How do you go, I'm going to chop down that tree over there. That's going to make a nice god. It's the same stuff he was up against, we're up against. Otherwise, intelligent people have a complete lapse of logic and reason when it comes to spiritual things, if they are determined to do it their way, or to like some other person's way, more than what God has revealed. And so difficult for the God makers, it is so difficult for the God makers to see that their gods are just like them, created defective beings. God didn't create man defective, he became defective.

Psalm 115, verse 8. Those who make them are like them, so is everyone who trusts in them. Yeah, because man cannot introduce original thought. There's always an influence to everything man does, which caused Vladimir Lenin very much confusion, because he felt that man just made up God, and the question was, well, how could he make up God if he's never seen God?

That goes against your own logic, and he couldn't answer that question. And the reason why man believes in God and is able, because God has made himself available to man, but so has Satan. In verse 20, he feeds on ashes, a deceived heart has turned him aside, and he cannot deliver his soul nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand? Satan the deceiver, and the only protection against the deception of Satan is Jesus Christ. Revelation 12, 9 says, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. Deuteronomy 11, 16. Right out the starting gate, Moses tells the people, take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. And the Bible is laying all of this out throughout. It's like a hologram, not a picture.

You can cut it in half, you still have the whole picture, the window may have been reduced, but the whole thing is still there. Maybe you've gone to one of those restaurants that has out on the counter a little offering to their gods. A little cup of water, a pineapple piece, a chunk of pineapple, a piece of meat. And it's the same thing Isaiah is saying. If your God was real, I think he would have eaten that, or left you a note. It doesn't matter, we do laugh at this stuff, but Satan's not laughing.

He's very serious. Proverbs 18, 2. A fool is no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart. They want to hear what God has to say.

He wants to do it the way he wants to do it. Well, Abraham came out of idolatry when everybody else did not. Which means that this is doable. And to this day there are peoples in these cultures that come out of this stuff when they hear the gospel. And that's where we come in.

Well, we're going to have to do a part two next session, beat them up some more. It's just ducks in a bathtub, but it has to be dealt with. I hope you younger Christians, I hope it's not wasted on you. Oh, I pray it's not wasted on you.

Let's pray. Our Father, it is so clear to we who believe, we can't miss it. And yet we live in a world where people don't want any parts of it. Those who try to scoff politely and those who get very, very zealous, animated against these truths. There's a real devil, but there's a more real God to us. And so may we stay the course. May we persevere and not lose hope. May you use us. May you find us vessels that you can fill and pour from us these truths.

We ask you in Jesus' name, Amen. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.