A Disgusting Culture (Part B)

How is it that you're ruining the societies you live in? You're burning down the house on your own self. Well, as was the case with King Omri, one of the wicked kings of the north, he burned down the house on himself. What a picture of humanity shaking the puny fist against God. Out of control lusts, which accommodate their sexual fertility rights of the Canaanite religion. In other words, this is good for humanity.

We have to take part in these rights so that we get rain and so that the crops will grow. 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. Now here's Pastor Rick as he continues teaching through Isaiah chapter 53 on this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Revelation directly links ancient Babylon with spiritual harlotry and the abominations that flow from it. And on her forehead, as opposed to those with the mark who sigh over the evil of the land, this brazen institution on her forehead, a name written mystery, Babylon the Great and the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.

She influenced the planet. I will add concerning the mystery of lawlessness, as Paul phrased it in his letter to Timothy, when you look at evil and you say, this makes no sense. It's so dumb.

Who would do this? Well, you're looking at the mystery Babylon, that there are spiritual forces involved. And if you have not the protection of the Holy Spirit, you are very susceptible to the influences of hell on very large scales. Anyway, the inflaming, verse five, inflaming yourselves with gods under every green tree, slaying the children in the valley under the clefts of the rocks.

See, a disgusting culture. There's no other name for this. Just a brief one, every green tree. Deities in that ancient world were regarded to or thought to, some of them reside in different trees, like the oaks or the cypress tree or a cedar, you know, they insist these meaningless, baseless ideas about deity. The inflamed, inflaming yourselves with gods under every green tree. They were passionate about their idolatry. They were engrossed in it. And the accompanying sexual immoralities that were granted by it. That's why they didn't like the God of Abraham, the God of Moses and Aaron. Too many restrictions.

He's too uptight. Well, then where are you getting these children from your harlotries and your adulteries? How is it you're ruining the societies you live in? You're burning down the house on your own self.

As was the case with King Omri, one of the wicked kings of the north, he burned down the house on himself. What a picture of humanity shaking the puny fist against God. Out of control lusts which accommodate their sexual fertility rights of the Canaanite religion. In other words, this is good for humanity. We have to take part in these rights so that we get rain and so that the crops will grow. This is paganism.

Paganism essentially is the worship of created things. Well, we're seeing this with this, you know, climate control group. They're absolutely out of their minds thinking that we're all going to be wiped out. God said, I'm not going to flood the world again and I'm going to give you a rainbow as a promise. And when I see the rainbow, you see the rainbow and you should know we're on the same page. But they scoff at these things. We don't. And we come along and we say, you know, I disagree with you.

I think your science is junk. I think you're lying. We find that they've been busted. That doesn't stop them because the wicked have no shame. You think they'd say, yeah, you know, you got me. I was inflating the numbers.

I was corrupting this stuff. I get more grants from the university when I come up with junk like this. And speaking of the universities, Harvard, look at them. Supposed to be the smartest people in the world. And look who they put as their president. This is a disgusting culture.

And Satan's at the bottom of it. And we have to say, well, what is my response? And it's a culture that's disgusting. Very simple. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.

That's all. Don't drink what they're drinking. Don't say I'll have what they're having.

Say I reject what they're putting into themselves. I've got something better. So rampant also in Jeremiah's day and the prophets document these things. Nothing new under the sun. Does there need to be? Well, there will be when Christ returns. But until then, God says you've got their number.

I've given it to you. There are no new numbers coming. There's nothing new under the sun. As it was in the days of Moses, so it will be when the Son of Man returns.

You should be a step ahead of them. But don't harden your heart too much. Manasses can be saved. Slaying, it says here in verse 5, slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks.

This is literal. It must have turned the stomach of Isaiah, not only to write it, but to have to be aware of it happening in his beloved promised land amongst the people of God. At least that was their opportunity. All the righteous would have been sickened. The righteous remnant in Judah at this time would have been sickened by this ancient version of Planned Parenthood. What a diabolical name Satan has made out of what sounds to be so promising. Yes, I want to plan my family.

I want to plan my future for my children. Sure, come to us. We'll kill you all if we can. It's a disgusting culture. And we get people that say, oh, you can't say that. You know, where I come from, there's a word that a lot of people discourage their children from saying, and rightfully so with children.

But for the adults, it should be right on our hip, ready to fire whenever we can. And that is the word stupid. When something is stupid, you can't say that.

You have to come up with creative ways to point out evil. No, I don't. I saw these two brainiacs. I think they're political conservatives. I'm not so sure they're Christians. I know one isn't for sure. But anyway, they're having a discussion on what is evil.

I want to throw a shoe at the television, but then I got to pay for the television. You don't discuss what's evil if you don't know it. You let someone take you by the hand and show you. Go on a tour of Walter Reed Hospital and see what happened in war to those men that are stuck in that hospital till they die.

That's just one stop you can make. There's evil everywhere. And sitting down trying to have a discussion over it is almost insulting, as though we're not sure what it is. Evil is one of those things where if you don't know what it is, may you never have to experience it. There are darker parts of human behavior that go beyond criminal.

And this is it. Slaying the children in the valleys under the cliffs of the rocks. Not only is that stupid, it's horrific. They thought this would bring them more success in their life.

Well, we'll offer up the most special thing we've got. Well, they sacrificed their children on stones of altars. Now, they go to clinics to do it under the guise of a woman's rights. Has God rights? Does God have any rights?

It doesn't matter. You cannot reason. You either reach them spiritually or you separate from them. Why would the apostles say, come out, come out, be you separate, when we're supposed to be the ones going to them?

Well, because there are those that was nothing we can do with. There was nothing Isaiah could do with Manasseh. Manasseh did not get saved because of Isaiah. It was a direct intervention of God, sort of like with Paul. He was conquered. He was treated like an animal.

And he came to his senses then. But there are times when we face people that they're irretrievable for us. And the best thing we can do is just not be around them. And, you know, many of those who suffered in the Imperial Japanese concentration camps, prisoner of war camps, they experienced sheer evil in places like Chichijima, where cannibalism was on the menu. So let's not be silly here. Let's understand what we're dealing with in this fallen world and the encouragements that Christ have.

They're not vain. Anyway, the worship of the Canaanite deity Molech is connected with child sacrifice, also Baal. So if you happen to miss out on Molech worship, well, we've got an alternative for you. Jeremiah and Ezekiel are right about them. See what Satan's gods offer humanity or for your children up under the rocks or in some clinic. You teens, when you come across all these names, these fake gods in the Bible, you should come away with this understanding.

You should understand how many fake gods Satan has waiting for you if you take a sip from his cup. You know, you go and you look for higher learning in the universities, I encourage you to go with a chip on your shoulder. You make those professors earn your respect. You don't owe them respect. They're being paid to teach the courses you've signed up for.

You owe them nothing but love, truth, if the opportunity comes. But you go there and say, oh, they're so smart. They're so wonderful. They're so witty and funny. My pastor's not like that.

He likes to use the word stupid a lot. You end up drinking their Kool-Aid. I was so glad when I went to college, I had that Marine Corps chip on my shoulder, and you had to earn my respect. But I can remember two of them, one in accounting and one in business law. Those guys knew their stuff. All the rest of them were frauds when it came to, they were just collecting a paycheck.

Anyhow, all right, I'm back. Just don't go out there thinking that just because somebody's witty and clever that somehow God is not all that. We see it all the time. They attend churches like this, they love their congregation, they love their pastors, then they go to the universities and all the next thing you know, we're the bad guys.

How'd that happen? Kool-Aid machine they got there. Back to Bible study. Archaeologists, they have unearthed practices in the ancient world of child sacrifice in places like Carthage in North Africa, the Phoenician colony, which the Canaanites were Phoenicians really.

They crossed over the Mediterranean, they colonized the promised land, that's what gets its name Canaan, and then there were other areas too, such as Carthage. And they have found ceremonial burial jaws with children in them, that of course they know were sacrifices. Now, you know, one of the things I've noticed about modern Bible commentators is they don't have the unction, the spiritual nerve to say something.

They have to present everything almost like it's a little vague almost sometimes. Like, what are you saying? Do you understand that the Holy Spirit fills people? Can you say that when you write about him? They're just this, I don't want to offend anybody, well the other side might have a good point too. Satan has no good points. He's just evil.

He's very clever, he is very skilled, but we give him credit for nothing good. And if you don't know these things, you're going to get dumbed down. The light will be dimmed. You won't be, you know, you leave out of, you know, you go to university or to the workplace, you're all happy about Jesus, and then you run into Mr. Opposition, the atheist that thinks he's got all of his arguments formulated. Pull out a pistol on him, watch how fast he calls on God. We can't do that. We can't go slamming his hand on a car door just to get him to admit it.

He cries out, oh God, that hurt. Okay. So, well they ridicule us, and I take great pleasure in ridiculing them because I think they're wrong, and I think that they're going to hell if they're not careful, and I don't want them to go to hell. I want everybody to go to heaven, but it just doesn't work that way. Anyway, coming back to this, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are loud in their denunciations against this offering up of children, as we should be also. Whenever we talk about modern day murder of the unborn, you always want to have with that the mercy of God for those who come out of it. If you've been guilty of this, and you've come to the Lord, it's gone. He's forgiven you. Your sins are cast as far as East is from West, and you say yeah, but I have the guilt. So wait a minute now. Paul had a lot to be guilty about before he came to Christ.

The whole thoning of Stephen thing, but he made it work. Here's something that I have found works well against guilt and depression. Do your duty. Do your job.

You won't have time for those things. It's the heart of the hit of moving target. I have found doing my duty, so you wake up in the morning, and I haven't had this in my 40s, you know. I used to find this stuff around. Wake up. I don't want to be here.

I don't feel that way now. Now it's like I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and so anyway, even then my response was, well, I got to get to work and dig into the scriptures, have my devotional time, my prayer time, and be the best pastor I can be, which I've succeeded at doing. It requires a tremendous amount of humility, and I've got it.

Anyway, you who come to church when you don't feel like it, but you're supposed to serve or you know you're supposed to be in fellowship, that's doing your duty. Just keep doing it. You'll get better at it, and Satan will get weaker at harassing you. And a reminder, if Satan can't take you out, he'll be happy to just harass you for your whole life.

Don't give it to him. Verse 6, among the smooth stones of the stream is your portion. They, they are your lot. Even to them, you have poured a drink offering. You have offered a grain offering.

Should I receive comfort from these? The prophet is mocking them. From verse 6 through 13, the pronoun you is feminine singular, because they were supposed to be the bride of God. They were in a covenant with him, and this is the metaphor that he's, he's using here. A metaphor for Judah, the unfaithful wife, and the diabolical mother. That is who she became.

The stones, rounded, all smoothed out because they're in the stream and the kernel, the water smoothed them out. And so, to the stream, let's go. Pick a handful of gods for ourselves, rock stars for ourselves. And he's criticizing their hateful rituals when he says, they, they are your lot.

It's emphatic. You can feel the emotion here. You say, you love them? You love those stones more than Yahweh? They, they are your gods?

Keep them. That's the tone. He's, he's saying you're making the pathetic and the absurd an offering to your demons. Then he says, should I receive comfort in these? Jeremiah said three times, in Jeremiah 5, 9, 5, 29, Jeremiah 9, 9.

He repeats it verbatim. Shall I not punish them for these things, says Yahweh, and shall I not avenge myself on such a nation as this? God is saying this is a disgusting culture. It is made so because they chose to worship false things so that they could enjoy the flesh.

And in the process, they threw me away. So he says, shall I not punish them for these things, says Yahweh, and shall I not avenge myself on such a nation as this? And he says it three times for emphasis. And now, verse 7, on a lofty and high mountain you have set your bed. Even there you went up to offer sacrifice.

There's no shame where everybody can see you. Judah's field and stream of adulterous idolatry against God, which he's going to hit from verses 7 through 9. Remember, these are people sacrificing children. Let's not act like, well, you know, they just took a wrong turn.

Yeah, they did. They took a lot of people with them. Here where it says on a lofty and high mountain, you know, Tibet's, we'll get back to this in verse 13, Tibet's beautiful landscape.

I've not been to Tibet, but I've seen enough watching, you know, documentaries and things like that on them, exposing myself to different places in the world without having to go there and eat their food, because I'm picky that way. Anyway, they've spoiled their landscape, their beautiful landscape, with these Buddhist prayer flags and banners all over the place, used to spread the blessings and prayers. But it doesn't work. Chinese communists coming in, taking over their land for them, demonstrating prayers aren't working there. The system's not right.

Where does this come from? Why do you believe these things? Well, you can ask, but it doesn't mean that they're going to say, you know, that's a really good question. What alternative do you have? And if you present your alternative, well, you've got to confess that you are a sinner. You have nothing to offer God, but he loves you anyway. He's made a way for you to come to him. And you can't earn it.

You have to receive it. And much of humanity doesn't want to hear that. Verse eight, also behind the doors and their posts, you have set up your remembrance for you have uncovered yourself to those other than me and have gone up to them. You have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them. You have loved their bed where you saw their nudity. Well, he's continuing with the theme of the metaphor of the marriage relationship gone bad because of them. This is the pagan invasion into homes, and it was willful shrines for household gods.

Gotta have them. Spiritual infidelity violated the covenant with God. Now Isaiah, throughout his writings, he employs euphemisms, dual meanings, wordplay. There are too many to keep up with. He's got some here in this verse in particular, but it's not going to improve the study if I take the time to point them out.

Get yourself a thick commentary and you'll say, oh, yeah, he was right. And that'd be it. Verse nine, but in his day, it was quite meaningful. You went to the king with ointment and increased your perfumes. You sent your messengers far off and even descended to Sheol. Well, Sheol's the underworld, the spiritual realm. So this is all spiritual.

Again, dual meanings. The idolatrous Jews did influence their kings and the kings loved to be influenced to follow this sorcery. And then when the pressure was on, rather than turning to Yahweh, when, for instance, when the Assyrians came, they turned to their sorcerers and their false prophets. Remember, there were 800 of them on Mount Carmel when Elijah had to deal with them and call fire from heaven on his altar.

The place was infested. If you had 800 prophets, how many followers did you have? For every prophet, how many followers? So the land, you know, when Elijah, how long halt you between two opinions? If Yahweh is your God, serve him. If not, go serve whatever. They didn't answer. They're flat-footed.

Well, let's see how this turns out. Well, it was a big slaughter that day and the prophet mocked them every chance he got because that's what it called for. He wasn't being mean-spirited. They were being mean-spirited by bringing into the land and sustaining practices of religion that slaughtered the newborns.

But yet, the critics will come along, oh, he's being mean, and they do that to this day. Anyway, the alternative meaning to this verse, so verse 9, one meaning is, well, you're corrupting your kings with the sorcery and you're going not to Yahweh but elsewhere. Isaiah's covered that before. But the alternate meaning is that the king referred here in verse 9 is actually the Ammonite god Molech who endorsed child sacrifice because Molech's name means king.

And I think of course Isaiah in the midst of this stuff, there's a word, you know, he's doing his word plays and these double entendres all over the place. Sheol points to the gods of the underworld, seances, things like that, which people think are cute, some people. There's nothing cute about trying to contact demons no matter what you call them.

You may think they're your relatives but they're not. So Isaiah 30 verse 1, woe to the rebellious children says Yahweh who take counsel but not of me, who devise plans but not of my spirit that they may add sin to sin. So God was onto their motives.

Yeah, you're not coming to me. So you know, sometimes we know when someone doesn't want to come to us and ask us, hey, pastor, I would like to do this and that, they don't come to us because they know we're going to take them to the scripture and that's what they don't want. So they make their move and then when it all falls apart, they still won't come to us because they're afraid we're going to say told you so, which we would not do because it's too serious. We're not looking to hurt anybody but we're not going to back down from what God's word says. My point is even Christians pull that little stunt. They want to do what God has forbidden because they want it so much. We understand that.

We're not persecuting them but on the other side we have our duty to perform. Do you want pastors who are not looking to uphold every word out of the mouth of God without a self-righteous attitude? What is the alternative? Well, the Burger King Church, have it your way.

Just anything you want, fine. Long as you put that offering in the box, we'll be here. This is all over the place. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today has been something to remember. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series, go to crossreferenceradio.com. Once more, that's crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. You can also connect with us through YouTube. We hope you'll tune in again next time as we continue spending time reading God's word and learning together. Make a note in your calendar to join Pastor Rick again right here on Cross Reference Radio.