Idolatry
195From Marathon and On
3 Jun 2024
37:02¶ 114
“Yes. You are who you worship. You become like the one you worship. The psalmist’s comment about idols is, “They that make them are…”
36:20¶ 112
“I remember how you learn about the covenant and the structure of the covenant and biblical theology and this and that, and then you…”
36:51¶ 113
“I think that’s something in modern Christianity that you really have to take a lot of time to explain nowadays, where your entire identity…”
191Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel
29 Apr 2024
11:35¶ 31
“Although, let me put in a good word for Veggie Tales on the fiery furnace. A lot of the Veggie Tales versions are very…”
12:19¶ 32
“There are a lot of us who would prefer chocolate to gold, and bunny over golden calf or an obscure statute or obelisk or…”
12:40¶ 33
“Nebuchadnezzar is operating in terms of idolatry, but the idolatry is that of ancient Babel. The power, the hope, the virtue of the state,…”
186The Worldview that Shaped Western Civilization
25 Mar 2024
32:33¶ 116
“And since the non-Christian world has no transcendent God, they necessarily have to find their source of values within an imminent creation, that is…”
36:00¶ 131
“Because that’s ultimately what you end up dealing with. You’re looking at a finite god, a finite reference point, something that cannot and does…”
26:32¶ 89
“Liars? Oh sure, you shouldn’t lie. We know that. We tell our children not to lie, but it’s not that big a… yeah, it…”
185The Law on Mount Sinai
18 Mar 2024
25:28¶ 89
“We often speak of idolatry and there are two types of idolatry. The first idolatry is what Adam and Eve initially faced in Eden,…”
28:09¶ 98
“Exactly, because this is about making images, and there’s a couple ways you can do this. You can literally make an image. You can…”
28:46¶ 99
“In the ancient world they didn’t think that their gods really looked like bulls, mermen, Ibis-headed two-legged men or whatever. They knew that these…”
170Marriage and Culture
31 Jul 2023
11:33¶ 31
“The danger in our age is – I was going to say that we make marriage an idol. I suppose some people do, but…”
11:58¶ 32
“I know that there’s a very strong tendency to deny the possibility that marriage can be an idol, because in the broader culture it’s…”
12:49¶ 33
“I think there are a lot of people who do that – our favorite punching bags in Moscow, for instance – but it’s a…”
157The Handwriting on the Wall
20 Feb 2023
8:46¶ 29
“The interesting thing for me though is when he comes to name the gods, he doesn’t say Bel and Marduk and whatever else, Ishtar,…”
9:20¶ 38
“He’d been through Babylon University. He had passed his Comparative Religion classes. He knew the names of all of these gods. He doesn’t care.…”
9:34¶ 39
“On one level, yes, there are demonic forces in the background, but in terms of the statues they’re just pieces of iron, of gold,…”
148Through Fiery Trials
12 Dec 2022
16:45¶ 55
“Since the whole issue of the gods has been dragged in, they’re acknowledging it. “You keep making this point. It’s not been an issue.…”
23:39¶ 84
“God is not a cow. He is not a giraffe. He is not the sun. He is not the Milky Way. He is not…”
24:45¶ 91
“No, you won’t because now you’re coveting and now you’re obsessing and now you’re putting your little art project ahead of God’s clear words.…”
144Broken Cisterns
14 Nov 2022
2:00¶ 9
“As God looks at Judah in its decline, its last days, he says, “You’ve got two problems going on here. First, you’ve forsaken me…”
4:13¶ 13
“So you left me and you went after this thing that doesn’t work. It’s adding insult to injury. You’ve rejected me and then you…”
2:37¶ 10
“This is the first two commandments. The first commandment is to worship God alone, and the second is nothing else. They’re not really two…”
132You'll Know It When you See It
22 Aug 2022
18:44¶ 70
“So men are changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. Speaking of evolution, they started by…”
19:13¶ 71
“Men, in not being thankful to God, did not stop being worshiping creatures, but they turned their worship toward the creation, and step by…”
9:29¶ 33
“They didn’t want to treat him and regard him as God. Yes, they may acknowledge his name. They may chalk him up as one…”
115The Idol State
25 Apr 2022
15:27¶ 48
“This is central to why God forbade idols, because once we see them we accept them as reality, and then we do the next…”
18:22¶ 59
“It matters, and to bow the knee before an idol is to worship the idol, to submit yourself to the idol and the reality…”
23:01¶ 73
“And yet somehow when it comes to pictures of Jesus, pictures of God, we blow past that. “I know that this is not what…”
113Solomon
11 Apr 2022
21:49¶ 79
“Now, all the others could say, “Well, you know, it’s all the same god at bottom,” and given their metaphysics, their philosophy of religion,…”
22:37¶ 80
“God appeared to him twice and warned him about this very thing. The temptation is going to be to worship other gods, because that…”
38:35¶ 137
“So politically it’s easy to see why once you go down this direction, you’re kind of screwed, but I think the question we need…”
95Failure of Levi (Part 1)
6 Dec 2021
11:35¶ 44
“Yeah, this wholly unholy. He’s making it up as he goes, and yet he and his mom are absolutely convinced that they are doing…”
10:34¶ 38
“Remember that 1,100 shekels that she had wholly dedicated to the Lord? Only 200 of it made it into the idols. So much for…”
25:28¶ 108
“First of all we get the priest’s name, and I’m going to talk about that in a second, but they set this shrine up…”
74Joshua the War-Leader
11 Jul 2021
16:13¶ 57
“We’re not told what Joshua was doing during all this, but he’s watching most certainly, and he’s learning that idolatry has consequences – mortal…”
16:31¶ 58
“Again, we need to remember that the Israelites were not replacing Jehovah with some kind of Egyptian deity, which is how it’s often presented.…”
16:58¶ 59
“The calf or young bull was the chief of the sacrifices. If they had made a golden lamb and worshiped it, we would have…”
63Be Ye Thankful
14 Mar 2021
15:30¶ 46
“That’s what Paul begins to describe. Because they were thankless, that left their hearts, the center and core of their personality and being, dark.…”
16:07¶ 47
“There’s a sort of devolution here. They start with images of God, and then go on to birds, which at least fly in heaven,…”
18:13¶ 54
“No, it doesn’t make sense. It’s insane. It’s irrational in the truest sense of the word, and in a sense they know what they’re…”
47Moved with Passion
22 Nov 2020
1:05¶ 5
“Paul also says of covetousness in Colossians chapter 3 that it is idolatry. He’s listing a lot of things that do not characterize, or…”
22:18¶ 68
“Which means that you’ve desired something else more than honoring that person. I think this comes back to the covetousness as idolatry. It might…”
36:57¶ 106
“When God becomes our primary, nay our exclusive desire, then all other desires that can be subsumed within that become legitimate. When I want…”
37Image and Word (part 1)
13 Sep 2020
32:47¶ 105
“What we have to say is that idols are religious pornography. They’re an attempt to replace a real word-based relationship with God with images…”
36:28¶ 119
“He is the self-contained absolute self-sufficient God, and this over against all forms of paganism that would try to make God identical with the…”
37:28¶ 123
“The thing with idols is we do exactly the same thing. The idol is not talking to us. It doesn’t say anything. We made…”
36Polytheism and Pluralism (part 2)
6 Sep 2020
21:17¶ 67
“Oh boy, I’m not that pretentious. But that’s what I John is about, so when you get to the end it’s like a punch…”
21:43¶ 68
“Idolatry is not just a sin of the hands or will. It’s also a sin of the intellect, and it can be done without…”
20:18¶ 64
“Interestingly enough, yesterday – and I think on some other occasion recently – the last verse in I John has come up twice in…”
35Polytheism and Pluralism (part 1)
30 Aug 2020
4:19¶ 18
“Exactly. That’s not what this is saying, either. God has already revealed himself in Genesis, and certainly in Exodus with the plagues and all…”
49:00¶ 161
“First of all, anybody who didn’t leave – and a lot of people left; a lot of the Canaanites fled – but any of…”
50:32¶ 170
“What the Bible says, in effect, is that although all matter is morally – I won’t say neutral, but good; God called it very…”
17Mythmaking
26 Apr 2020
6:42¶ 24
“The Bible spends a lot of time ridiculing the gods of the ancient world, but at no point does it go into a study…”
7:04¶ 25
“It wasn’t because the biblical writers were ignorant of the mythologies. Daniel endured an education in Babylon U. He probably got A’s, or whatever…”
7:35¶ 26
“That’s the Bible’s attitude toward this. Yes, there’s this philosophy that man can be god and things can be god and things can be…”