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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Scott Mayer

False System of Worship

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day of worship, that we can all come together and praise your name.

Lord, I ask that you come and speak through me today and speak your words and let the ears and the eyes of everyone in this room be opened.

Send your guardian angels to be and to guard this building as we discuss this very intricate topic of worship.

So it works really well to start out with discussing a little bit of the scientific side of what's going on inside of our brains.

The only reason we really, really wanted to start out with the whole advertising business in the last talk, was to just seal it inside of your head.

They spend billions and billions of dollars trying to affect each and every 1 of us.

This is so calculated, it's so studied, they know that this works.

But what happens when the devil gets ahold of this same information?

Now, we all have a wonderful opportunity to come together and to worship.

We don't know how much longer that we are actually gonna be able to openly praise God, worship together like this, and you know, this day has been predicted that it will come to an end.

We know that the end of the war that is happening here on this earth is going to be about worship.

But have you ever sat there and asked yourself the question, why do we all worship?

Why is it that Each and every single 1 of us has this need inside of us to worship.

Why did God create all of us with this deep desire?

And if we know that the end of the war is going to be about worship, and we know that the war began over worship, isn't it extremely important to understand what is true worship?

What is it, what does it mean to have true worship?

Well, if you turn to Matthew 4.10, this is Christ speaking to the devil when he was tempting him.

Then said Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

So coming out of the words, or the mouth of Jesus himself, is saying that, listen, God is the only 1 that deserves our worship.

In fact, Later on, Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well, and she's asking him about worship, and hey, you know, like, the Jews say we should worship over here.

But the hour cometh and now is, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

We know that God is the only 1 that deserves our worship.

The spirit, of course, is that non-physical part of you, that seed of your emotions, your character, and your soul.

And as Brandon pointed out in the last presentation, our character is what's under attack.

Watching and focusing time after time on evil characters, don't we take them on, just like the advertising industry will show you a bag of chips enough time and you'll go out and buy their product?

So our characters, our spirits, are what's under attack.

You see, Cain thought he was worshipping God.

He only said, I'm gonna worship God in this way.

I'm going to take the fruits and the things of my labor, and I'm going to worship God in this way, and I'm going to show God what I've done.

And of course, what was the result of that?

A false system of worship that Cain had set up here, and all of a sudden, he murdered his brother.

If you look at the Israelites coming out of the land of Egypt, And they were at the Mount Sinai and Moses was up in the mountain getting the 10 Commandments.

And because they all had this deep need and desire to worship something, someone, anything, they all started to complain to Aaron and said, please make us a golden calf.

So they set up this false system of worship and when Moses came down and realized what his people had gotten themselves into, a huge apostasy arose out of this.

Remember the story of Balaam and his donkey?

Do you remember why Balaam was asked to come and curse the Israelites?

You see, the Israelites had just come out of wandering, and they were just standing on the edge of Canaan.

And they were looking into Canaan about ready to take over the land and all of the Midianite kings were looking at these people that they had heard stories of for many many years that they were going to come and possess their land and they were scared out of their minds.

And they had heard that Balaam here, whoever Balaam would curse would be cursed, and whoever he would bless would be blessed.

So they said, Balaam, please come curse these people because we know that if they have God on their side, There's absolutely nothing that we can do to them.

So, Balaam, at their request, went to go curse them, but remember, he could only bless them 3 times.

So the kings told Balaam, look, if we see your face again, we're going to, that'll be the last day that you live.

And Balaam went home and he thought about it, and he thought about it, and he was so in desire of the money, he came back to the Midianite kings and he said, you wanna know how to beat the Israelites?

You see, as long as they are in true worship with their God, there's absolutely nothing you can do to them.

You could send every last person in your army against them and they would be defeated.

But I'll tell you what, if you get them to worship anything other than their God, they will fall prey to your devices.

And all of a sudden, God's favor will leave them, and they will be open prey to you.

So they said, well, great, how do we do that?

At Balaam's request, they said, throw some festivities, throw some parties, let the Israelites just witness how you worship your gods and they will all start to fall prey to spiritual idolatry.

They started throwing parties, they started sending just a few Midianite women into the Israelite camp, not enough to be noticed, and they started becoming friends with the men, and they started taking them back, and before long, the idolatrous practices were being brought into the Israelite camp, and Israel fell into a false system of worship.

And it wasn't long before Moses finally realized what was going on and God gave Moses the decree to annihilate anyone that was involved in this idolatrous practice.

Can you imagine your own people having to go out and slay your own people because of their following after other gods?

So they were standing on the edge of the promised land.

This is my picture of the promised land here.

A warning of worship was issued in Deuteronomy 12, 30, and 31.

It says, after they had been destroyed before you, Be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their God, saying, how do these nations serve their gods?

You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their God, they do all kinds of detestable things.

They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.

So God here just said don't even watch how they have their worship service because after enough time you will fall prey to their their worship style.

Perhaps the most memorable when you think of a system of false worship, is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego here, and Nebuchadnezzar's golden idol.

Now, if you remember why Nebuchadnezzar came up with this golden idol, He had been given the dream here where he was told that Babylon was going to be taken over by the Medes and the Persians and so on and so forth down the history of the world and Nebuchadnezzar in his arrogance said no no no no no Babylon will always stand And I know this is an artist's rendition of portraying the idol in an arrogant stance like this.

But there's something that I really wanna point out to you.

We have many, many different systems of false worship set up today, many different ones.

But there is a system of false worship set up today that has striking similarities to this story.

Does anybody want to take a guess of what system of false worship we have today?

Almost kind of even in the same sort of stance here.

You see, the Oscars is the cream of the crop.

They're giving each other these little tiny statues in recognition of their merits or things that they're doing, right?

Look at the Oxford Dictionary definition of worship.

To treat someone or something with reverence or adoration appropriate to a deity.

So it's even stating that worship is only appropriate to a god.

Or number 2, honor given to someone in recognition of their merit.

So by a definition, Do you know what the Oscars is actually called?

The Oscars ceremony, by a worldly definition, is in a sense a worship service.

Now the Oscars is typically the second most watched show each year.

Almost 40 million people watched the show in 2007.

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False System of Worship

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