I invite you to turn this morning to the book of 1 Kings, the book of 1 Kings in the Old Testament. You're looking for a page number, it's 1 Kings 18, and we are reading from page 381 in your pew Bible, 381, we're going to be, as we work through each commandment, looking at a particular narrative and occurrence where these commandments are directly addressed and also exposed as broken so that we would have a good understanding, especially when we look at the whole picture of what the Lord is doing and showing us and his intention that we would turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, receive cleansing, and walk now in his law out of gratitude. You'll notice, you'll remember, of course, we read earlier from Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And here's the commandment this morning we're treating. You shall have no other gods before me. And we're going to look at this morning, 1 Kings chapter 18, beginning at verse 20 and read to verse 40. This is the word of the Lord. So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people and said, How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only am left, a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. Let two bowls be given to us and let them choose one bowl for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood. Put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bowl and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you shall call upon the name of your God and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God. And all the people answered, it is well spoken. Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose for yourselves one bowl and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your God, but put no fire to it. And they took the bowl that was given them, and they prepared it, and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, Oh, Baal, answer us. But there was no voice and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon, Elijah mocked them saying, cry aloud for he's a God. Either he's musing or he's relieving himself or he's on a journey or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until blood gushed out upon them and as midday passed they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation but there was no voice no one answered no one paid attention and elijah said to all the people come near to me and all the people came near to him and he repaired the altar of the lord that had been thrown down elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of jacob to whom the word of the Lord came saying, Israel shall be your name. And with the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two seas of seed. And he put the wood in order and cut the bowl in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood. And he did do it a second time. And he did it a second time. He said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time and the water ran around the altar and filled the trench also with water and at the time of the offering of the oblation elijah the prophet came near and said oh lord god of abraham isaac and israel let it be known this day that you are god in israel and that i am your servant and that i have done all these things according at your word answer me oh lord answer me that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have turned their hearts back. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. And Elijah said to them, seize the prophets of Baal and let not one of them escape and they seized them and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there may the Lord bless the hearing of his word well the glory of the Lord as we have been studying in the book of Exodus the glory of the Lord has just appeared on Mount Sinai and if you were standing there years ago and saw what chapter 19 described what do you think you would have said? Everything has gone black. You have a fire display going on. Lightnings are everywhere. It's thundering. Everything is quaking. Everything is shaking. Mount Sinai itself was trembling. Exodus 19 tells us that not only is Sinai trembling, the people are trembling. Their bodies are shaking before the presence of the Lord. But what is going through their minds, I'm wondering. You get sort of an indication of that right after the reading of the law. But we could sum it up with what the Bible has often presented when God's people were confronted with His holiness and God's people finally, again, began to really consider who this God is and how great and magnificent He is. The question that always seemed to come out in Israel's history was, How can anyone stand before the Lord, this holy God of Israel? I don't believe people think much about that anymore today. I don't believe people take God very seriously today. There's been a lot of loss of what we call the glorious transcendence of God. What we mention would call the inseparable gulf that separates the creature from the Creator. gone we've made him one of us and i was struck last time that when when hebrews describes this event on mount sinai and it describes the reaction of the people and how it all went it did not describe this in a really positive light it was a death terrifying experience so much so that Israel and Moses were deathly afraid, Moses himself crying out in fear, and Israel saying right after the receiving of the law, don't let, they don't say this, don't let the lightning stop, don't let the thunder stop, don't let the quaking stop. They ask one thing of Moses. Don't let him speak to us anymore, lest we die. just His voice. I thought a little bit about that this week. Exodus 19 was just the preparation for the giving of the law. If Hebrews tells us that they couldn't even endure the order of the preparation for the giving of the law, how are they going to endure the commands itself? That's the effect of this. They had already, something had gone wrong, Something had gone bad by the end of Exodus 19, before the law was even handed to them. And that's what we're looking at here as we were putting this together. The purpose for which the law was given, the primary purpose was for transgressions, Paul says. What does that mean? Well, when Paul says the law was added for transgressions, it was to make known things about themselves and to make known things about the Lord. and as Paul would describe in Romans 7, had the law never said don't, I would have never known anything about me. In other words, had the law not said thou shall not covet, I would have never known I was covetous. I would have never known it to this degree. You see, I believe one of the greatest undercurrents that goes on as we go on through time and we've heard the law read over and over and over is that it becomes sort of old hat. And we begin to take a little bit of confidence and some pride in who we are as a people. We look at our lives and we begin to think, well, you know, in general, I'm a generally good, upstanding man. I love God's law. And then you get people to their deathbeds and more than a few pastors have dealt with people in Staten Church all their life who have no confidence on their deathbeds. What a strange thing. And that's why this morning, as we embark on this study of the Ten Commandments, studying the weight of the law in its primary intention with the goal that the Lord has here is so helpful for us again to look at and to be refreshed in. And I say today, this is where we've come in our study of the law of God. The purpose of the law kills you. The primary purpose of the law is to kill you. Do we understand that? The primary purpose is to put an end to you. The primary thing happening in Exodus 19 and 20 is a display of God's holiness, a display of his grandeur, and the people finally being confronted of this, and there's no more playing fast and loose with God after this. It has the intention of killing you, burying you, and raising you up with Christ. That's what God's intention is. To make you brand new. And it's not the law that does that. So then the grace of God is understood in that God gave the law with a certain intention. To the end that your present existence in the old Adam would be killed. and that that desperate situation that we're all in in life because of our first father Adam would come to an end and that we'd be raised brand new in the new and last Adam dominated now as we live out the course of our life by the principle of love that's why Paul says love fulfills the law in which Galatians says now when you live this way you're walking in liberty so my goal now then is sort of introduction here is to walk you through the 10 words they call them the 10 commandments of god that you would understand their meaning that you would understand how far reaching the demands are how christ placed himself under these himself to fulfill them for you and that now you can walk uh according to the command of god with a forgiven life a washed life walking in the newness of life and now having the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in us that's where we begin returning to the context here we have a sense in exodus 19 and i'm coming to first kings 18 here in a moment we have a sense in exodus 19 that everything has gone wrong moses has come down to inspect and warn the people to stay far away from God. And right here, right here, the Holy Spirit puts the Ten Commandments in the midst of this. He wanted it ordered right here. And you'll see the bracket of what happened in preparation and their response right after. The Holy Spirit was telling us something in the placing and the ordering of this. And then we come to verse 1 of chapter 20 where we read, And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and here comes the first. You shall have no other gods before me. If we're open here, maybe you've always felt a little bit disconnected from that commandment. I mean, I've struggled with how to connect the problem of Old Testament idolatry with my own life. I think that's exposing. And I'm going to show you that in a minute, that we struggle with that. It was really plain for Israel, wasn't it? Every nation had gods that they worshipped. There weren't too many atheists back then, by the way. Everyone had gods that they worshipped. And a lot of them came with real pocket-sized handheld idols that they could pull out and worship. We call those today cell phones, by the way. Israel was used to this. When God sent the frogs swarming on the Nile, there was Hecate on their home mantles, a little frog god that they bowed down, they washed every morning and cleansed. The Moabites had Chemosh. the Ammonites had Milcom everywhere Israel knew was an idol and the gods of the nations were all over the places everywhere they went and you walked very carefully when you came into their regions you didn't do anything that would offend their gods we might be tempted to think that it was simply easier for Israel when God said put away your idols you might think I thought, I thought as a kid it's got to be easy Just remove those little Buddhas from your doorstep. Good grief, get them out of here. It was much deeper. The same struggle you and I have of addressing the problem of idolatry, Israel had. What do I mean? Well, Israel, and we know, we should know at least, idols are nothing. We just sang out in the psalm, they don't speak, they don't talk. Isaiah keeps saying it, they don't speak, they don't talk, they don't answer, they don't help. when god said put away the idols was he just saying get rid of the figurines in the house it surely included that oh it was much deeper it was much deeper the same struggle that you and i have of addressing the problem understanding the problem israel had it was complicated what do i mean israel knew idols were nothing why in the world then were people giving so much attention to them if they're nothing it's because of what was always associated with the idol paul makes that point in first corinthians to every false god there was attributed something very real something everyone saw a power i mean when israel went to that when moses and aaron went to the nile and pharaoh is out early in the morning doing devotions to his god the nile god a need remember that song that pharaoh sang that we have we found that the lord oh all men who uphold the need fear ye the majesty with his son the all the lord is made by making verdant the two banks so it is verdant art thou verdant art thou verdant art thou and we looked at there was your first 7-11 Nile song. They were praying to him. They were associating the Nile with real power, this God having real power over the Nile. Paul made the connection with the celebration of the supper in Corinth that what they were actually sacrificing to and what they were doing there was connecting them and offering to demons. Clearly something was behind it. So when they were praying to these idols, they're associating that power and behind the power and the idol was a real belief in what the idol could do. They believed things. There was a power attributed to the idol. It had the power and it had real sway over people's lives. It had real power over people's lives. We have to understand that. Why? Because they believed and they gave devotion and they bowed and they sang and they worshiped them. They believed that the idol could do something even though it couldn't. It enslaved the whole person. Now Israel had watched God systematically kick over every single idol of Egypt. We studied that. And here it comes, right in the midst of this, the very first commandment God puts down, you shall have no other gods besides me. Very important. You're getting some kind of indication as to the problem of idolatry and what it looks like in the command itself. I want you to notice that. In all cases of idolatry in Israel's history, it wasn't that they went on denying that the Lord existed. It wasn't that they stopped and said the Lord is no more. But they lived placing alongside of God and His glory another God. They were taking a God of the nations and putting it before his face. This is how the commandment reads. They were positioning the God besides him and the word there emphasizes even a position before him. So some translations say besides or before. You get the clear sense of what's going on. This is something where they have believed in the true God and they've set up another God next to. There's one scene in Israel's history that really gives us a strong indication of the power of idolatry, how real the problem is, and what it looks like, and that is 1 Kings with Elijah on Mount Carmel. It's a fascinating scene, a tragic scene, when we look at it and stand back from it. Here is all of Israel bowing down to the chief God of the Old Testament that was set alongside side of the true and living God who is it Baal that is the chief rival that Israel set up in first kings you have presented to us the worst of all kings in Israel's history King Ahab and the presentation of him begins that it had linked Ahab's reign with the sins of Jeroboam who remember had set up two idols in parts of the nation so that people didn't have to any longer come up to Jerusalem. What we read is Ahab, it says that he took for his wife, he walked in the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nabot. He took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went in and served Baal and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. In Samaria, there was devoted a temple to Baal. You know who Baal was? He was the storm god. He was the god of fertility, the god of lightning, the god of fire, the god of rain, specifically rain. he replenished the earth. His ability to control fertility in the earth and control the weather obsessed people. You see a connection today? When the sun's heat scorched everything, they believed that Baal was angry. When the rain came, they said that Baal was coming again in pleasure to give life upon the earth and be beneficent. So what does God do? Stops the rain. Stops the rain. They are in, at this point in Israel's history, one of the severe covenant curses, drought. But who was angry? Baal or God? Who was God? Elijah calls for this fascinating showdown on Mount Carmel, and he calls for the 450, isn't that something, 450 prophets of Baal. To give you some perspective, that's probably what we have sitting here today. Go get them. And then go get the 400 prophets of Asherah. We read that Elijah came near to the people and said, how long? This is the great question that I want us to focus on today. Verse 21. How long will you go limping between two different opinions. If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, follow him. And the people did not answer him a word. Isn't that something? The word here, falter, means to totter or limp. How long will you go limping between two opinions? This is the word that the ESV translates as it's good and right. How long are you going to go back and forth here? How much longer are you going to keep doing this? I mean, couldn't we pose that to many Christians today? How much longer are you going to keep doing this? How much longer are you going to keep flirting and holding on to Baal? In fact, positioning him above the Lord in your life. How much longer? Here they are in the capital and the temple devoted to Baal. Baal didn't exist. But the reality of rain and the power of bringing rain did. And who are they attributing it to? bale every time the rain came down they praised bale think of the spirit that dominated the discussion and think of the spirit that dominates the discussion over weather today anytime something tragic happens on the news and some great weather uh we have a tornado ripping through or we have some great storm that rips through a hurricane everyone says mother earth was in her fury today i remember i think i've said this before but when i lived up in humboldt county not a place anyone should live by the way um there was a lady who lived in a tree her name was butterfly another warning always she married the tree and this was big mtv got a hold of it, and this was the MTV generation and my generation, and everyone watched this woman have a marriage ceremony to the tree. And she lived up in that tree over a year, I think. People brought her food. She was married to the tree. Elijah makes a great challenge. Let's see who the true God is. It's really tragic this even has to happen, isn't it? Let's see who the true God is. crowds upon crowds of people begin to head up for the show. Imagine it. They're all walking up Carmel. There come 400 prophets of Baal, 400 of Asher, 450. You've got almost 1,000 prophets, false prophets up there. One prophet of the Lord. Corrupt King Ahab being probably carried up as royal ensemble. And I stop and I think to myself, What in the world happened to the people of the Lord, the people of God, that they could even have come to this place? Here's what's sad. They didn't even see it. Look at the power of idolatry. Look at the power of idolatry. From morning until noon, they are saying, O Baal, hear us. no one answered no one helped they leaped about the altar which they made they limped about it what do we have here look at this think about this hours and hours at least six hours of dancing elijah's standing there and then elijah starts to mock hey if you don't think there's laughter in the kingdom of god he starts mocking he's going to the bathroom and i'm saying that nicely He's relieving himself, maybe. This is a fascinating section of Scripture. Six hours, morning until evening, until the time of the evening sacrifice. Elijah then walks up to the altar and there's one phrase that hurts here. Then Elijah began to repair the altar of the Lord. On the top of the mountain was an old run-down altar that years ago God's people used to go up and offer to him. Completely thrown down. And I would imagine Baal's altar was beautiful. Previous generations had worshiped there. You know, if we're honest for a moment, isn't that what we're a little bit concerned about here? Got a younger generation. So many wonderful young people and they're responding to the gospel here. But don't we worry about those tottering? Don't we wonder sometimes if our young people following all the gods of this age, if they see it, and if they're ever going to stop at some point, what happens when this generation that has worked so hard and the older people have worked so hard to build something here, will it be that in future generations this will be a rundown ruin? Wasn't that your concern? Sure it is. And you want to tell the young people, You're tottering, man, you're tottering. You're limping between two opinions. It's time to make the decision. God had done so much for them. Delivered them from bondage, given them the land, protected them from their enemies, given them kings, placed His name in them, and now they're divided to think that Baal is God? Are you kidding me? Elijah says, come near. O Lord God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are the God in Israel. That I'm Your servant. That I've done these things at Your word. Answer me, O Lord. Answer me that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God and that You have turned their hearts back. Isn't that something? You have turned their hearts back. Then, right then, the fire of the Lord comes down and it fell and it consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and it licked up the water that was in the trench and when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, the Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God. They probably just kept saying it. Instant revival. Now I'm returning to my question. Do you understand the power of idolatry? Do you understand the essence and the domineering force of idolatry in your lives do you understand it here it is the essence of idolatry is to divide your heart in two it's to divide your heart today many people deceive themselves by finding churches that won't press their lives and probably look a lot like the altar of Baal beautiful so that they can still hold on to the sins that they're committing and come to worship to a place where no one will question them and they don't have to be pressed about their life. I've seen this all the time in my 12 years of ministry. And they'll still say the Lord exists. But there's Baal. There are competing multiple loyalties. And that's why the prophets were constantly coming and saying, the preachers were constantly coming and saying, choose you this day, This day, this day, this day. Whom you're going to serve. Who are you serving? You can't be lukewarm. Jesus vomits out of the mouth those who are lukewarm. The churches, remember? Elijah says it. Choose. This day. Our Heidelberg is so good on the first commandment. Why should you shun idolatry? It says that I should sincerely acknowledge the only true God and trust in Him alone. Look to Him for every good thing humbly and patiently. Listen to this. Love Him. Fear Him. Honor Him. Here it is. With all my heart. And then it speaks of idolatry as having or inventing something in which we trust in place of or alongside of the true God. There it is, right? In the root and in the commandment itself. The point is, nothing comes before him. But here were God's people aligned with who? Baal. I'm convinced that the reason we have a problem detecting idolatry in our own lives, and I speak to me, is because it's so pervasive and so prevalent we don't even see it. it's so common, we don't even see it. I mean, how could these people dance around Baal for hours believing he could answer? One pastor said this, idolatry is the most discussed problem in the Bible and one of the most powerful spiritual and intellectual concepts in the believer's arsenal. Yet for Christians today, it's one of the least meaningful notions and is surrounded by ironies. Perhaps this is why many evangelicals are ignorant of the idols in their lives. Contemporary evangelicals are little better at recognizing and resisting idols than modern secular people are. I love this. There can be no believing communities without an unswerving eye to the detection and destruction of idols. That last emphasis is really important. If life is to happen in the Escondido URC for the future and today, it will be accompanied with a detection and a destruction of idolatry in your lives. So where do we find it? Where is it, Pastor? I'm amazed that the New Testament comes to us into 1 John. And the very last words of 1 John, his great concern in the book is capitalized right there. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. You say, what do you mean, John? What is it? It's that craving for happiness apart from Him that we're all pursuing. You know this. It's the woman at the well who had five husbands and was in denial about it. And she kept jumping from husband to husband to husband to husband. We look at her and think, well, that's not us. We've all been married. And if you have, maybe some of you have been divorced. Think about those who've been married, never been divorced, think we're doing well. No, no. That is an exposure of spiritual idolatry. We jump. We jump. We jump from the new thing to the new thing to the new thing, finding satisfaction it doesn't matter what it is it doesn't matter what it is it's the consuming quality in all of us it's it's that which seeks to find satisfaction and after we've consumed what we went to go get we're going to consume again something else it's the drive for in our country success to overcome odds well let me give you a real practical this spirit is everywhere rocky balboa. Nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you get hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what your worth, that spirit is everywhere. You know that spirit. It's the maxim, if you set your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. It's the drive for success and plenty to achieve happiness now. It's the pursuit that is going to make America great again at all costs. It's all around you. It's all around you. And it's in you. It exposes itself when things go bad and your life is exposed and you don't like it and you get mad at the person who's exposed it. It's the one of approval. It's the one to be something great. It's the spirit that says we can be all that we can be. It's the craving in us that we're going to go do what we want to do and nobody's going to stop us. It's the endless pit of consumerism. It's often disguised as a hobby to which we have given most of our time in this life to accumulating and accumulating. We've vested major portions of our life. We've lost sleep over it. We've given ourselves to it, to get, to get, to spend, to achieve. You know the Spirit. It was presented early to you in the Bible as Babel. When they said, come, let's make a name for ourselves and build a tower that can reach the top to the heavens. We want a name. We're going to do this. We are powerful and that was the idolization of man right there presented to you and God recognized that pursuit for independence and God recognized that pursuit to conquer anything that stands in our way to go get and God knocked it back. I just watched the movie Everest the other day. A story of these people who are going to go climb Mount Everest. Nothing wrong with that. Well, maybe. So they can get to the top and say, we've done it. It's the conquering power that we have achieved and find some kind of self-identity and fulfillment with. To go to the highest place on earth that no man can go and say, I did it. Behind all curiosity is a power that you are seeking to be filled with and by. It's presented and offered to you in the way of happiness alongside of the true God. You don't deny the true God. But really, your heart is half-devoted. You view God, as people do today, as a cosmic dad with a big wallet in the sky who's just going to take care of you while you pursue your great dreams. The Bible gives you many ways to describe this. The Bible says people who want to be rich ensnare themselves and fall into foolish lusts. 1 John says the system of the world and its values. If anyone loves the world, its system, its values. I mean, look who it praises. It praises all the rappers and thugs. It praises those who are the most vile. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that's in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, that's not from the Father, but it's from the world. In other words, all that we pursue, whatever craving, whatever lust, whatever pleases our eyes in pursuit of greatness is called the pride of life. You can say to your gold, Job 31, you can say to gold, you are my confidence. And Christ said, you can't serve God and mammon. Philippians 3 says you can make your belly your God. Colossians says, Put to death your members, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry and so is sexual morality. You can sum it all up this morning. Idolatry is what Jesus said. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Is there anything in your life that is preventing you from putting him first? To turn from these useless idols to the living God. Have I done my job with the law? Has the law killed you today? Has the law done its work? It should have. It should have. Elijah's cry is just as relevant today. Why are you limping and tottering between two different opinions? And now you understand why Paul would say the law was your tutor to bring you to Jesus. How so? Isn't his life beautiful? I ask a lot of people what Jesus did for them and I usually get this sort of standard good answer. He died for me. You know what? I can't seem to get into people's heads. He also lived for you. He also lived for you. And if you want to see it, just open up Matthew 4 in the wilderness when he is being tempted by the devil, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. When he is being tempted in his hunger to idolize something and even by the end of it, bow the knee to Satan. And he overcomes it all. And overcoming the drive of his will was to remain absolutely obedient to the Word of God. And what drove him? What drove him? It was the purest, highest expression of love ever seen by a man on earth. He loved God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength and never once turned. You want to know what the first commandment is commanding you ultimately? That you love him with a pure, complete, undivided heart all your days. Getting to the essence of the first commandment is not just to pull away an idol. It's a choice to fall down in the face of temptation and sin and say, I choose this day to say no, and I'm going to love the Lord and never turn back. I'm going to be satisfied every morning with you. I'm going to treasure what you love. I'm going to do what you want. I'm going to seek your will earnestly. and when I'm faced with the greatest amount of stress and pressure and feel like giving up, I'm not running to that addiction anymore. I don't put anything else alongside of him. And now you understand when Jesus put himself under the law to fulfill it in love, in your place, that all of your confidence must be turned to him when he never once bowed his heart to an idol. who may ascend the hill of the Lord, who may stand in his holy place, he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to idols, nor swear by what's false. And in him, you find life. Having died with him, having been buried with him, having been raised with him, being washed, completely forgiven, never to have any of those sins held against you for being an idolater. He now sets us apart, gives us His Spirit that the rest of our lives, having been born again by the Spirit of God, would be driven to pursue Him with an undivided heart. The new life means I'm going to put down the idols and I'm going to begin to taste what it is to love the Lord. I love what the Heidelberg says. Even though we can't keep them, God commands us, Heidelberg 44, with all purposeness and sincerity of heart, by his power, by his grace, in sanctification, we now begin to live, not only according to some, but all of God's commandments. If Christ gave himself for me, and Christ gave himself for you, and that God sees us completely righteous in him so that there's no judgment for idolatry, which we all deserve, then isn't it a privilege now? Isn't it a privilege? to now in the course and the rest of your life to fight against idolatry. If he asks that, then I should. That I would begin to taste joy and satisfaction. Look how miserable people are in their pursuits of idols. They're not happy. That I would begin to be satisfied in him until that day when this mortal puts on immortality and never being tempted again to put anything else besides the Lord. I'll be able to, in glory, in eternity, love Him with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. By His grace, we can taste that now. Let's give Him thanks. Heavenly Father, we should always say together, because we will be saying in the whole course of our lives, we're idolaters. And we ask for forgiveness for our idolatry today. It has so gripped us. It's been so prevalent. It's been so strong. when Elijah asked Israel, why are you tottering between two opinions? Well, that's us. As the law has done its work, as it has killed us, as it has confronted us, today we turn our hearts in true faith to Jesus. Thankful that He never bowed down His soul to an idol or swore by what is false. And now having changed us and washed us and made us brand new in Him, Would You give us the strength, would You help us by Your Spirit to flee from idolatry? To not tamper with it. To recognize it. To be convicted by it. But that in this fight to never take our eyes off Him who fulfilled all righteousness so that on our deathbeds we can be absolutely confident that You have dressed us in the rich robes of Christ's righteousness and that this day all who believe in him nothing can separate us from his love may then we keep ourselves from idols in jesus name amen