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[0:00] Well, if you turn with me to the passage in Deuteronomy 13, and perhaps also just have your finger there in 1 Corinthians 10. The text for our next three studies together comes from 1 Corinthians 10, verse 14.

[0:20] Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. But our focus is going to be in Deuteronomy chapter 13 for these weeks, so let me explain.

[0:34] At the heart of the Christian faith is the worship of the one true God. And therefore, the clear understanding that all other gods are false gods.

[0:49] Now, immediately, that is, of course, very politically incorrect today. Because exclusiveness is out in our modern secularized world.

[1:00] In is inclusivity and pluralism. All religions really are equally valid. That's what the secularist thinks. But if we want to take the Bible remotely seriously, then there's simply no avoiding this fact.

[1:15] We may not like it, but the God of the Bible at least insists upon it. And therefore, all through the scriptures, there are warnings about the exclusivity that is central to the worship of God.

[1:31] Because the essence of sin, as far as the Bible is concerned, is not broken rules, but broken relationship. Sometimes we don't realize that.

[1:43] The heart of sin in the Bible is the breaking of that relationship between God, our Creator, and ourselves as his creatures. And that relationship in the Bible is likened to marriage.

[1:55] Actually, it's the other way around. Marriage, in fact, is an illustration, is a reflection of that far greater and more fundamental relationship between God and his people, between Christ and his church.

[2:08] That's why we have marriage. A living relationship to us. A living illustration to us of God's love for us. And according to the Bible, therefore, sin at its heart is adultery.

[2:23] It's breaking faith. It's cheating and abusing and spoiling in the most hurtful and most destructive of ways, that most precious and beautiful of love relationships.

[2:35] That's what sin is. Sin at its heart is a vicious and callous and cruel crime against God's faithful, beautiful love.

[2:48] Long before it's ever a crime against God's faithful law. So behind all law-breaking is love-breaking.

[2:59] And that's what idolatry is. It's spiritual adultery. It's giving the love that we ought to give exclusively and only to God, our Creator, the maker, the sustainer of our lives, the lover of our souls.

[3:13] It's giving that love to an interloper. To someone or to something that we have been seduced into thinking is more beautiful and more satisfying and more exciting and more fulfilling than the God who made us for himself, to love him and to cherish him exclusively forever.

[3:35] That's how Paul puts it in Romans chapter 1 when he describes the essence of humanity's original sin. He says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and they worshipped and served the creature, the created things, rather than the Creator.

[3:56] That is, he says, we seek our meaning, our identity, our sense of self-worth, our sense of happiness, our sense of fulfillment, our salvation, in other words.

[4:09] We seek that in something or in someone other than in God. And that thing, that person, that cause, that ambition, whatever it is, that becomes what you truly, deep down in your heart, what you truly worship.

[4:25] It takes the place of God in your life, whether you realize it or not. It becomes your idol, the lover of your soul.

[4:37] But Paul says that is a tragic self-deception. The thinking, he says, became futile. The foolish hearts became darkened.

[4:50] It's self-delusion. And it leads to self-destruction, because it leads to worshipping and serving mere created things instead of the Creator himself. But created things can never save us.

[5:04] Mere things can never possibly satisfy us and fulfill us and give us significance and give us meaning and give us all the desires of our heart, because we are made to find that in God's heart.

[5:15] And the anxiety and the drivenness and the dissatisfaction of our world today is more than eloquent testimony to that.

[5:26] These things can never save us, but they can enslave us. We serve them, says Paul. We become controlled by them.

[5:38] They rule our lives with their demands, with their expectations, with their possessing power. Yes, you see, idolatry is alive and well in 21st century Britain today, just as it's always been.

[5:52] We're awash in our society with our personal idols and with our corporate idols. For some people it may be political idolatry. Now, I suppose at a time of change and general election and new government and so on, that's a real danger, isn't it?

[6:06] Some people can invest so much trust, so much hope, so much expectation in party politics and so on, that it can come to dominate and control their life. It becomes their idol.

[6:18] Somebody actually just this very week put it that way to me in almost exactly those words. Politics have become their idol. For many people today, it's the beauty and fashion industry.

[6:30] It's these things that consume your money. Vast tithes and offerings given gladly to that idol in return for just the right look, just the right body image, just the thing that's going to give you everything that you want.

[6:48] For some of us, it's idols of the family, the achievements of our children that will give us significance or a sense of achievement. Or perhaps it's the perfect marriage partner or the perfect career or the right prospects in life.

[7:02] For some of us, it's just the idol of autonomy, of being able to be free and in charge of our own lives, to live the way we want without anybody else interfering. For some, actually, for Christians, this is a particular problem, it can be their ministry, their service.

[7:20] That becomes their idol. It can be their church. It becomes what they live for, what owns them and drives them. Often, you see, it's not actually necessarily a devotion to bad things in and of themselves.

[7:35] My friend Tim Keller likes to put it this way, it's making good things into ultimate things that's really at the heart of idolatry, he says. It's building your life, your meaning, your sense of identity and sense of self-worth on anything, even a good thing that isn't God.

[7:53] Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.

[8:05] Sin is primarily idolatry. And here's the point, you see, as believers, we still sin, don't we?

[8:18] At least this one does. And we're still drawn and tempted and we're prone to idolatry. We're prone to violating the preciousness of God's love to us in Christ.

[8:33] Now, all marriages need protection against idolatry, against destructive anti-love that can destroy that marriage relationship. well, how much more does our exclusive love relationship with the Lord need protection from spiritual idolatry?

[8:54] John Calvin, the great reformer, who said, our hearts are perpetual factories of idols. and that's very, very true. And that's why the Bible again and again from beginning to end warns us in these words that Paul warned the church in Corinth, flee from idolatry.

[9:18] Now, way back when Israel was on the brink of the promised land on the plains of Moab, Moses warned the people then just as Paul warned the church in Corinth. Be very careful, he said, there must be no idolatry in your life when you enter the land.

[9:34] For the Lord your God, he says, is a consuming fire, he's a jealous God. Flee from idolatry. That's why in Mount Sinai when God gave to Moses the Ten Commandments, you'll see them there in Deuteronomy chapter 5, the very first command begins like this, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery, out of the land of Egypt.

[9:57] You shall have no other gods before me, Deuteronomy 5, verse 8. And the second commandment, you shall have no idols of any kind.

[10:10] For, he says, I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, a jealous lover, you might say, rightly jealous for that exclusive relationship.

[10:21] I visit the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the fourth generation, as well as the covenant love of thousands of generations and those who love and obey me. Lord, our God is a jealous God, a consuming fire.

[10:38] Now, at this point, you might be thinking, well, thank goodness that we are New Testament Christians. Thank goodness that we are not there as the people that Moses was speaking to. Not under the terror of the law, not under that voice from Sinai that so shook the earth.

[10:54] thank goodness we are New Testament Christians today. Well, hold on a minute. You read your New Testament, you'll find something really rather unnerving in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 25.

[11:09] The writer to the church there in the New Testament says this, if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them from earth, how much less will we escape if we reject him who warns us from heaven?

[11:20] For, listen, our God God of the New Testament made known to us holy in Jesus Christ, our God is a consuming fire.

[11:36] He burns with holy jealousy to protect a marriage relationship between himself and his people. God hasn't changed.

[11:49] But alas, neither have his people changed. certainly true, of course, that as New Testament Christians we do have, praise God, far greater privileges than any of those under Moses.

[12:04] But also we have, as the New Testament makes very plain, because of that, far greater responsibilities. Isn't that right? But we still face the very same temptations, the same dangers of drifting away from the one true God, of true worship of that God.

[12:23] And that's why Paul had to write to such a vibrant and gifted evangelical fellowship as the church at Corinth and warn them, flee from idolatry. Don't be presumptuous, he says.

[12:35] Don't think with all your knowledge and all your gifts and all your experience and all your history, somehow that's going to make you immune from these temptations. Don't think that. Be careful if you think you're standing firm, he says.

[12:48] Beware, lest you fall. flee from idolatry. Flee from that great transgression. And Paul says to them, as we read there in 1 Corinthians 10, he says, one of the ways that you'll flee from idolatry and be kept safe is to be humble and to learn from the past.

[13:09] Learn what your forefathers had to learn. Very important, isn't it, to remember the past and to learn. Whoever it was that said history is bunk, that was just wrong.

[13:20] plain and simple. In the church, countless times it's when history has been forgotten that heresy has arisen. Because we forget that our hearts are just the same.

[13:33] So Paul says to the Corinthians, look back to the Old Testament, look back to the history of God's people. These things, he says, were written down for our instruction to help us not fall into the same sins that they fell into.

[13:48] Look back, for example, to Deuteronomy chapter 12 and 13, as we were doing, where Moses picks up and flashes out in these chapters what the second commandment against idolatry really means.

[14:01] And he applies his teaching very clearly to God's people. I do encourage you just later on to read these two chapters, chapter 12 and 13 of Deuteronomy.

[14:12] We don't have time to read the whole of them just now, but if you look at chapter 12, you'll see that it is a chapter all about the exclusiveness and the exclusivity of faithful worship of God.

[14:24] You'll see it crammed with negatives. I'm always saying this, we don't like negatives, do we? But the Bible is full of necessary negatives. Just look at chapter 12, verses 3 and 4, for example.

[14:40] You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.

[14:50] You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. You see, you worship God not in the way of the pagan world round about, in the way that the world thinks, but in the way God says, in his one way.

[15:08] Verse 5, but you shall seek the place the Lord your God will choose. Look down to that last section of chapter 12, beginning at verse 29 that we read, that's headed warnings against idolatry.

[15:22] See what he's saying, when you enter the land, you shall not, verse 30, inquire about their pagan gods, saying how did they serve their gods. That's not enlightened thinking, says Moses.

[15:34] That's not a way to gain fresh insights from other traditions that will enrich your worship. What is it, verse 31, according to God? Well, it's an abomination. These are abominable things.

[15:47] You're not to go that way, says God. That kind of religious curiosity can be lethal, quite literally. No, he says, you are to flee from idolatry, which is what that is.

[16:01] You are to flee all that kind of pluralistic, interfaith, mumbo-jumbo of confusion. It's an abomination to the true God, the Lord of Heaven, who made you, and who loves you.

[16:13] Now, what I command you to do, verse 32, is what you are to do, no more and no less, not to add to it, not to subtract from it.

[16:26] It's very clear, isn't it? It's pretty exclusive. And it's there all through the chapter. Read it later on and see. But you see, because the Bible is full of realism, because God recognizes that although we know the truth, we know how to serve God, we are living in a battle, and it's hard for us, he goes on to show us some of the things that can easily lure us into that so that we can avoid them.

[16:53] God recognizes, you know, that we are in a struggle in our spiritual lives. That should be a great encouragement to us. You know, if you are not struggling, if you don't struggle at all, I'm very worried about you, I begin to wonder whether you really are a Christian believer at all.

[17:08] That's the very first definition of what it means to be a Christian believer. I'm often saying this to people who doubt their own faith and salvation because they find it such a struggle.

[17:18] Go back to Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, and read it later on. The very first definition in the Bible of faith. It is God putting enmity, struggle, into the hearts of his loved ones against the world and the flesh and the devil.

[17:34] It's God who puts you into a struggle against sin. And therefore, the presence of struggle against sin in our lives is the very definition of the seat of faith within us. So be encouraged if you're struggling.

[17:48] I'd be far more discouraged if you're just happily floating along in sin and not struggling. But God knows that real worship, real service, real living for God, because that's what worship is, living for God in every part of our lives.

[18:05] He knows that it's hard. And he knows that there are many, many lures to false worship, many lures to false loves that we face in life, to idolatry.

[18:20] We don't set out to desert God and commit spiritual adultery. Nobody sets out, do they, in their marriage to wreck it by committing adultery. But we are very easily led astray.

[18:34] Because we have an enemy, the Bible tells us, prowling around, always seeking whom he may devour. And he knows how to tempt us. He knows how to trap us. And we need to respect him.

[18:46] It's one of the things that's handled so excellently in that book by William Still, Towards Spiritual Maturity. The devil has a doctorate in human psychology. And he has studied your mind and your heart.

[19:01] He's the sharpest and the most shrewd reader of your psychological flaws and mine, more so than anybody else in this world. And he is ruthless in exploiting them.

[19:13] He will target his temptations. He's not wasteful. He knows how to tie you up and trap you. And he knows how to tie me up and trap me. That's why we have to be streetwise.

[19:25] That's why we have to be alert. Ready to flee and ready to fight. And that's why Moses doesn't just stop at the end of Deuteronomy chapter 12. That's why he goes on to chapter 13 to alert us to some of the most powerful lures to false worship, to idolatry, that we will face in life.

[19:43] Things that will beguile us into deserting the one true God, the Lord, who loves us, and following after other loves, false gods. And the real question at the heart of it is this.

[19:55] Is the Lord, is the Lord really the only God in your heart? Is he your only true love? Is he the one alone that you love with your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength?

[20:13] See, the Lord allows us at times to face lures away to false gods and to false thinking about God, to idolatry.

[20:24] He allows it to test us, to find that out, to find out if the Lord alone is the love of our life. Look at verse 3 of Deuteronomy 13.

[20:36] That's what he says. He's testing us to see whether we really do love the Lord with our heart and with all our soul. The Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

[20:52] Well, is the Lord really the only God to you today? Is he the only great love of our lives?

[21:02] In the spark language of this chapter, let me put it another way. Do we really love God enough to execute the opposition? Because that's the seriousness with which God takes us.

[21:22] It's a bit hard for us not to be squeamish about the kind of demands that we meet in a chapter like this, isn't it? Verse 5, that prophet shall be put to death. But if we feel like that, says C.S. Lewis, it's not, quotes, because of our greater Christian sympathy, but because of our appalling moral apathy.

[21:44] Or as Chris Wright says in his commentary, it's not because we have a greater appreciation of human life, but because we have lost all sense of the awful majesty of God.

[21:57] Well, we all face many temptations that will lure us away from the life of faithfulness to the true and living God. And this chapter, therefore, is very helpful in teasing them out for us. That's why we're going to spend two or three weeks on it.

[22:10] But in the time of today, let's just look at the first one that's given here in verses 1 to 5 of Deuteronomy chapter 13. It's the lure of what I'm going to call spectacular and successful spirituality.

[22:23] It's rather shocking thing that something very spiritual can be a powerful lure to idolatry. It's rather shocking.

[22:36] Verse 1 and 2. Speak of a prophet or dreamer who arrives among you and does signs and wonders, real signs and wonders that do come to pass. Well, there is an amazing power, isn't there, in the glitz and success, of things that are really impressive, especially the miraculous, the signs and the wonderful, whether that's in ancient Israel or whether it was in Corinth.

[23:02] And if you read the letters to Corinth, you'll find that they were indeed dazzled by precisely these kinds of things, as people are today. And sometimes these things really do come to pass.

[23:13] They're not just fakes. Of course, there are plenty of fakes of that nature around today, plenty of charlatans who prey on the naivety of many Christians, who send them money in return for promises of healing and miracles and so on.

[23:27] Anytime you go to the United States, you just need to turn on the television. You find them all over the place. Alas, we seem to be finding it more often here. I was away the other week and I was turning on the TV and found something called God TV and it was just as full of charlatans as any of the ones I'd seen in America, offering to sell green hankies and all kinds of things that would heal all our diseases.

[23:50] There are plenty of charlatans and fakes all around the world today, of course. But sometimes, sometimes movements appear and they really do seem to be something special.

[24:02] And there may be real miracles. Or there may be real success, real church growth, a real sense of a new movement.

[24:13] Great spiritual advancement, great prosperity perhaps, does seem to surround it. There may be global acclaim. Of course, in our internet world, it's very, very easy, isn't it, for great movements to obtain a worldwide following, for Christian leaders to obtain guru status.

[24:34] Something we have to be careful about. But sometimes it happens and so convincing is that whole movement that people will listen to what they say, to anything they say, in fact. Even if it begins to lead away from biblical truth and orthodoxy that you know.

[24:55] That may be very subtle at first. It may be very, very hidden, very surreptitious. But underneath, what it's really saying is what's there in verse 2.

[25:08] Let's go after other gods. Now, we know that happens, don't we? And it's easy to see how. There's a great appeal in something that offers a fresh experience in our Christian life, especially if we've been going through a period where we felt very spiritually dry, where we've had great struggles, we've been downcast and perhaps frankly depressed.

[25:31] And suddenly we have some new great experience of the Lord in our life. Very easy, isn't it, for somebody to take that and say, well, this is the explanation for that and this is the movement that you need to be part of.

[25:49] It's a great appeal, isn't there, to success in the Christian life and in Christian churches, especially if we're ourselves not seeing that kind of growth that we would love to have.

[26:02] But listen again to verse 3. God is testing you, says Moses. Testing your real love and commitment to him. Testing the love of your heart. And you are also to test these things therefore according to what God has taught you in his word.

[26:19] Verse 3 is very clear. The real test is never power. The real test is in the words. It's in the doctrine. It's in the truth. If this prophet or dreamer's words go astray, he says in verse 3, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet.

[26:41] It attests the claims of all of these movements not by their claim to be a new blessing from God, not even by their genuine success and growth, even by real provable miraculous happenings, but by the words of God himself in scripture.

[26:59] It's not miracles. It's not signs and wonders. It's not success, even in God's name, that God honors or cares about.

[27:14] It's verse 4 that God cares about. You walking after him and keeping his commands and obeying his voice and holding fast, cleaving to him.

[27:28] That's the word used in Genesis 2, 24, about the man leaving his father and mother and cleaving, holding fast to his wife in a lifelong bond. That's what God cares about in your life and mine and in the church.

[27:46] See, it's very clear, isn't it? However spectacular, however successful something may be, if it leads you away in any way from that, then according to God, it's not a fresh insight of the Spirit, not a fresh experience from some other religious tradition.

[28:05] What is it? Verse 5. It's rebellion. Rebellion against the Lord.

[28:18] It's spiritual adultery. It's an evil, says God, that's to be purged from the midst. That's very strong language, isn't it? We tend to say to ourselves, well look, what's the harm really?

[28:31] Let's not be negative. We don't want to be negative. We don't want to quench the Spirit just in case. God says it's idolatry. It's rebellion.

[28:42] That's what it's doing. You must flee from it. I wonder what you think of that. See, it's hard for us, isn't it? But we just cannot write this off as being only for ancient Israel, only for people of primitive times.

[28:57] All through the Bible. All through it. Exactly these same words occur. Moses himself tells the people that there will always be a danger from false prophets and false teachers, that there will always be people trying to lure God's people away with attractive and successful alternative ways of being the church of God.

[29:22] And that is exactly true. So it went on. Read Jeremiah the prophet, chapter 23, later on. God says through Jeremiah, don't listen to all these contemporary prophets. They're constantly saying to those who despise the word of God, oh, it'll be well with you.

[29:40] To everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, no disaster will come upon you. That was Jeremiah's day. Very contemporary, isn't it?

[29:53] Of course, you don't need to make the Bible so seriously and literally as that. Of course, God will never judge anyone. He'll never condemn you. God will only affirm you.

[30:05] That's right in the church today, isn't it? Just as it was in Jeremiah's day. Or in Ezekiel's day, Ezekiel chapter 13. Prophets constantly declaring, peace, peace. God doesn't mind your lifestyle.

[30:16] God doesn't mind your religious experiments. But God says, there isn't any peace. Not with me. I'm very angry with you.

[30:31] The Lord Jesus himself. Read it in Matthew chapter 24. He says that there will be such as these right until the very, very end. Even, he says, deceiving the elect.

[30:43] Many in the church of God itself will be deceived by just these kind of things. And of course, all the New Testament letters are constantly warning, aren't they? Constantly.

[30:55] About precisely these kind of things. Movements in the church that offered an advanced spiritual experience. That's what Paul's letter to Galatians is all about. But actually, they weren't advancing it at all.

[31:08] They were undermining it and destroying it. Destroying utterly the true gospel of the grace of God. By adding to it. But it can be very beguiling. It can be very, very alluring.

[31:19] Especially when these things are attended by very exciting happenings. Or all the trappings of success. The trappings of a new spiritual movement.

[31:33] But friends, God says to his people. To Moses' people and to us. God says, be realistic about the subtlety of sin. About the deception that is so easy to take hold.

[31:49] In your heart. And it's so attractive, isn't it? It's so attractive to hear a message that says, Peace. Not a fight. Not a struggle.

[32:00] No need for an ongoing struggle in your life. Day after day after day. With sin and with the world and the flesh and the devil. You don't need to struggle. There can be peace. Follow our teaching. And you can receive this blessing.

[32:12] And all of that struggle will be in the past. And you'll rejoice in a life of victory. And happiness. And glorious new Christian experience. That is very, very attractive, isn't it?

[32:24] A life of immediate fulfillment. Well, it says in Christian service and ministry and in church work. That it will all be spectacular.

[32:36] And if you go this way, there will all be growth and not decline. It will not be hard at all. You don't have to be patient and slow. And constantly building work for the future. It can be marvelous and immediate.

[32:48] Well, let me tell you, as a pastor, that is very, very attractive. Very attractive. Especially if the church just down the road is bursting with numbers. And there's a great buzz.

[32:58] And the world gives it adulation. And there's no opprobrium for being those Bible-obsessed, fundamentalist-type people. All these other swear words that get used today. Very hard, isn't it?

[33:11] For the lure of the idols of success. Not to make you justify. Just a little bit of a departure here and there from the truth. Or just a bit of playing down the more offensive parts.

[33:25] The things that, well, perhaps we can just leave behind or put out of the way until, well, a bit later on. Until later on, of course, never comes. But God says here, I'm testing you.

[33:42] And he says, there's only one judgment that really counts. Verse 4, it's my view. It's my command. It's my voice. There's a lovely verse at the end of John chapter 10.

[33:55] I think it's verse 41. Speaking about John the Baptist. When people were recalling his ministry after his death. And it says this, John did no miracle. But every word that he spoke about this man, Jesus, was true.

[34:10] It's not power or success or glitz that God loves. It's a life that speaks of and demonstrates the truth about Jesus.

[34:24] That's a good test for us, isn't it? What would you love your epitaph to be? I guess very few of us will have an obituary in the national papers.

[34:35] But if you were to have one, what would it be? What would you want it to be? Would it be telling the world of your brilliant success in your professional sphere and your work? Or influence in that?

[34:46] Would it be about the terrific business that you built up? The legacy that you left? Your great public service, perhaps? The money that you've made? Would it be your achievement in music?

[34:59] Or in the arts? Or in science? Or whatever it is? Or would it be a kind of Christian epitaph that you would want? That you did this and that you achieved that? That you pioneered this next thing in the church? That you started a great movement for training or church planting or whatever it might be?

[35:15] Or would we want our collective epitaph, as it were? To be for our congregation? That we did mighty and marvelous things for God? That we grew numbers?

[35:25] That we multiplied services? That we refurbished a building? That we multiplied events? All of these sorts of things. Or would we be content?

[35:36] Would we indeed be thrilled? If all that was said was what was said of John the Baptist? They did no miracle. No sign or wonder to dazzle or impress or burnish their name.

[35:49] That everything that they said about this man, the Lord Jesus, was true. For God to say of us that what he says here in verse 4 is true of us.

[36:00] He walked after me. He feared me. He kept my commandments. He obeyed my voice. He served me. He held fast to me all the days of his life.

[36:13] He fled all idolatry. All spiritual adultery. He kept himself only unto me, for better or for worse. For richer or for poorer.

[36:24] In sickness and in health. To love and to cherish. Until death ended his earthly pilgrimage. Friends, there will be many times throughout your life and mine, throughout our life together as a congregation, when the Lord will be testing us to see whether we truly love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength.

[36:53] And maybe right now, for you, you're in the midst of a time of testing just like that. Just as we close, notice verse 5.

[37:06] Notice what always lies at the heart of every pull to idolatry. It's a drift away from two things. A drift away from the gospel of the work of the cross and a drift away from the challenge of the life of the cross.

[37:20] The New Testament is very clear, isn't it? That these two things always go hand in hand. People will reject the message of the cross because they don't want the demands of the cross. They don't want obedience to God's way, to God's rule.

[37:33] That's why Paul says to Timothy, watch your life and doctrine. Because drift in one always goes with the drift in the other. You show me somebody who is drifting in their doctrine from Christ and I will show you somebody who is drifting in the way that they want to live their life.

[37:49] And that's exactly what we find here in verse 5, isn't it? Rebellion against these two things. The historic gospel, the redemption of God out of slavery, verse 5. Rebellion against the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of slavery.

[38:05] Rebellion against the redemption of God and rebellion against the rule of God. Leaving the way that the Lord commanded you to walk. Rebellion against the Lord who redeemed you to make you leave the way in which the Lord, your God, commanded you to walk.

[38:22] Rebellion against the historic gospel of the cross, Christ's redemption, and against the historic demands of the cross, the rule of Christ.

[38:37] Always the pattern. So friends, don't be lured away from loving the one God alone by the lure of any spectacular or successful or dazzling movements in the church.

[38:52] They'll constantly be here and they'll constantly dazzle many. But no, says the Lord to us, discern. Listen. Listen in the midst of these things for any disinterest at all, any departure at all from the centrality of the message of Christ's redemption, the true doctrine of the cross, and from the centrality of Christ's rule, the true life of the cross.

[39:23] It can be very subtle from within your own heart as well as from others who want to win your heart. But know the true voice of the Lord.

[39:35] Fear Him and keep His commandments and obey His voice. Because anything and anyone who would lead you in any other way, however alluring it might be than that influence, anything else must be executed in your minds if you are to be true to Him.

[40:00] Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

[40:11] The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Well, what better end to our service this morning than to be led to this table which proclaims afresh to our hearts the work of the cross and pledges ourselves once again to the way of the cross.

[40:35]  okay, yes, it is. Let's take a down through this and redirect to the meters that I do I do walk that's to the truth picture and another in it that I work without trying to maneuver because there are