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Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!
Our choir had a strong lead -on, a strong lead -on eternal, and that undoubtedly is the desire of every believing Christian, that our God would lead us, and yet there are strange gods in the land, gods that are not a part of the New Testament record, gods that confuse and are confusing. And people know, in the name of the one true eternal God, many different kinds of gods. It is not a new problem. It was first mentioned in the Old Testament in Ephesians chapter 35. I shall preach on chapter 34, and I am going to reverse the order today. God said unto Jacob, Arise, Go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God, the Lord unto thee. For now fled from the face of Esau thy brother. Then Jacob said unto his household, And to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you. Be clean, and change your garments. Let us arise, and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods, and all their earrings which were in their ears. Jacob hid them unto the oaks, which was by second. And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them. And they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. God had called his servants back to Bethel. He led his people, as was right, to go with him. The providential care of God was such that God gave them an ensured safety because of his judgment that fell upon the city's round about, but did not fall upon him ensuring a safe passage to his destination. But one of the reasons that God was able to bless, and protect, and care for them, is that they exclusively followed, and trusted in Jehovah God. In order to be able to do so, praise God, people had worshipped, had to be forsaken, and exposed, and... And it is a problem that is rampant in America today. The failure of science, and education, and so -called free morality and materialism, to satisfy the needs of America, has left our people scared to death. A spiritual vacuum has developed. Americans are afraid. We are worried. We are an insecure people. Everything in which we have trusted, everything that we have told would provide security and peace for us, has failed. The panacea that it has promised, has not come to pass. It has not produced what it purports to propose. Americans are supposed to be the most satisfactory, and most satisfied, and most efficient, secure nation in the world. But we are anything but that. This, accompanied by the obvious absence of genuine gospel preaching, has created an atmosphere that has made America wide open. A sitting duck, a rife plum, ready to be picked by every kind of heresy, Easter religion, pot -smoking theology, and ideology that you can possibly imagine. Heresy is abroad in the land. People are godly enough like crazy. Easter religion is on the move, and college students are being swept into it by the hundreds. The Jesus movement in California is in serious danger unless they stabilize in the ultimate experience of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that Christ established, they will go off in a thousand heretical directions. We are vastly in danger that those seven devils, worse than the one, will come in to the vacuum that has been created by a lack of gospel preaching and a lack of the promise sufficiency of the world's provisions. Consequently, I want us to examine briefly some of the basic fallacies that there are in all of the ideologies and religions and philosophies that are pouring in on us from around the world. We're not in less than a hundred yards from the front door of this church. Every, every day, young people, believing everything but the word of truth parade and display their wares. Our religion is a study of approach to God. But when we approach God, there are many dangers involved. I would suggest to you that in our relationship to God, that all of the fallacies of heresy and Eastern religion and all of the cults and sects can basically be put down into five categories, all pertaining to man's approach to God. Society is replete with them. They are indeed strange gods. They are not a part of the New Testament Rutgers. They are not a part of the faith once delivered to the saints. They are exposed and they need to be forsaken. There are five basic fallacies. Number one, regarding the nature of God. Two, regarding the word of God. Three, regarding the Son of God. Four, regarding the Spirit of God. And five, regarding man, the creation of God. Let's briefly examine them. I am saying simply to you that most of the heresies and cults err in at least one or more of these. And this is the heart of erroneous tradition not mentioned in the word of God. And there is, first of all, there are, first of all, strange gods regarding the nature of God himself. It can be categorized thusly. There is, first of all, atheism. The philosophy which merely suggests that there is no God. Man is his own God. And the absence of God makes man able to set up those statutes and desires and actions that best fit himself. And so men create paper gods. They create human gods. They create gods that are the product of their own thinking. The Bible says, refusing to acknowledge God in their thinking, they have turned themselves to reprobate minds. The problem, the false god of deism, would simply suggest that there is a God, but that he is not involved with or interested in the affairs of mankind. to be left alone, that God is not interested in what we do, that God does not care. Albert Feitzer, contemporary liberal theologian, has suggested that on the cross, Jesus Christ expected the apocalyptic descent of the kingdom of God, and when it did not occur, he died in frustration, that he was not the savior after all, that God did not care for him, that he was not interested in the affairs of mankind. He further perposed upon us the preponderant supposition that God is either not a loving God, or he is not a powerful God. Because if he was a loving God, he would have wanted to stop Golgotha, but he couldn't. If he was a powerful God, then he is a mean God, because he would have stopped it, but he couldn't. And so you see, when we go into a deism which simply separates God from man as an uninterested affair observer in the affairs of man, rather than the most intrinsic part in the warped roof of life of human society, we come up with all kinds of strange gods. The problem of humanism, humanism suggests that man is God. There is a philosophy very widely taught in this world today. Once God was a man, a man like Azariah, but God came from Adam in the Garden of Eden. And because of their preoccupation with such, this particular unfounded, unchristian, unscriptural, unbiblical cult says that when Adam existed, it was God who came into the Garden of Eden with Eve, one of his many wives, and there elevated himself up and became a God. We, too, shall one day not worship God, but be a God ourselves, worshipped by our fellow man, and follow their teachings. And so basic erroneous concepts regarding the personality of God are at the crux of much of human error. Strange gods that people believe. Then there are, secondly, strange gods regarding the nature of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Jesus the Christ. They suggest, first of all, that he was not historical, that he did not live. Suffice it to say that there is more reason to believe in the historicity of Jesus Christ than of Abraham Lincoln and or George Washington. Those who would suggest to us, regarding the person of Jesus Christ, that he was not God incarnate in human flesh. That he did not become a man. That he was not the virgin -born Son of God. That the deity of Jesus Christ is something only to be accepted by fools. That is not really important. Now there is a very subtle temptation in modern theology to get us to believe that it really doesn't matter. That whether Jesus Christ was born of the virgin or not is not important. I suggest to you that the important thing is not Mary's premarital status. The question was, who is the father of Jesus Christ? And they say that his father was a man, a Roman soldier, that makes him not born in a supernatural way, not conceived of the Holy Ghost, but another man. And they say, we can believe, we can worship Christ, we can be saved, and still not accept the miraculous incarnate virgin birth. Untrue. Untrue. Jesus Christ denounced that theory. Jesus said it is not possible. Read the second chapter of John and you will discover that they believed on him, they followed him, they accepted him, merely because of what he did. This strange record is mentioned in the scripture, that though they believed in him, he did not commit himself unto them. The reason was, they believed only what he did. They did not believe what he was. And Jesus, because of their failure to comprehend and accept and confess and believe on the deity of the incarnate Christ, Jesus did not commit himself unto them. They believed in him, but he didn't believe in them, because they believed what he did and rejected what he was. Then there are those false gods among us who teach us that Jesus was a good man, perhaps the son of God, but he was not the perfect man. He was not God in the flesh. He was not the ultimate. He was just one of many, but I remind you that if he is not the way, then he is not a way at all. For did not our Lord himself say, they that have seen me have seen the father. I am the bread of life, come down from heaven. I and the father are one. No man cometh unto the father, but by me again. There is no name under heaven given among men, no other name, save the name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved. So Jesus Christ said, I am the son of God. I am God in the flesh. I am the only begotten father, a son of the father. Now, if he was not that, if he did not do that, if that was not true, then he lied. And if he lied, he was sinful. And if he was sinful, he could not be the perfect substitute for my sins. And so I am lost without a savior. It is not irrelevant. It is no side issue. It is not unimportant. It is the crux of the gospel. It is the heart of the thing. It cannot be disbelief. Jesus Christ did not claim to be a prophet of God. He is the only founder of a, of a major religion that said, I am the father or one. No man cometh unto the father, but by me. Now he either lied or he was lunatic. He either deceived men or he was crazy because he obviously believed it, for he healed it with his own death on the cross. And historians have never accused him of being either a liar or a lunatic. And the obvious conclusion is to me that he was the son of God. But there are strange gods abroad, strange philosophies that suggest him to be but another man, that it is not really all that important. There are strange gods in the land regarding the word of God. They are simply fourfold. There is, first of all, the subtle teaching, the strange gods, that the word of God is not accurate. It is not correct. It is simply not God's word. They forget such things as the fact that the Bible said 4 ,000 years ago, he hangeth the earth upon nothing, that science was wrong. When it thought the earth had foundations, science was wrong. The Bible was right. They forget such things as the fact that the scripture says he sitteth upon the circle of the earth, that the Bible taught the earth was flat. When before, uh, uh, round, when before Columbus, they thought it to be flat. They forget the fact that the Bible says the morning stars all sing together. Now we know that the heavenly bodies give off phonetic vibrations. And with highly scientific, sophisticated listening devices, it is possible to point these devices toward the stars, and not by looking, but by recording the sound. Give differential, uh, between, differentiate between the stars. The morning stars, the heavenly bodies, literally two things together. There are those who erroneously and fallaciously totally discredit the word of God. Ah, but there is another subtle attempt. There is another satanic approach to the word of God, another strange God among us. It is a philosophy that says the Bible is not the complete word of God. If some say it is not, it is inerrant, it is not a reality. There are those who say that it is not even, uh, that it only contains the word of God. That is that it is not complete. That some of it is, and some of it isn't. There is no question about the fact of John 3 16, that God told of the world he gave his only begotten son, and believing on him, we find faith. They accept that, but they raise question as to the validity of a miracle, and the account of creation, and the Genesis record. Well, now I raise the question, if some is true and some is not, how can they be guaranteed that 3 16 of John is, and Genesis is not? I suggest to you that we have as much reason to believe that John 3 16 is not true, and Genesis is true. And so what do we believe, and what do we not believe? What do we stop, and what do we accept? There are problems of strange gods among us, listen closely, who believe the fact that the Bible is true, but that it is not complete, that there is more beyond that. And it is just a subtle temptation of Satan to take away from the word of God as to add thereto. There are those strange gods in the land who teach us that 100, 200 years ago an angel came down from heaven and had a record, had a vision, and gave us on great tablets of stone new information in addition to the word of God. Or they believe the gospel, but they don't mean by gospel what you believe. They believe in salvation, but they don't mean by salvation what you mean. They believe in being saved, but they don't mean being saved the same way you believe in being saved. Now they say that it is not in contradiction to the word of God, it is just in addition thereto. Well it may not be in contradiction, but if it is in addition thereto, which it is in contradiction, then it also develops a problem of being in opposition to what the scripture says. In that it is new, it is more. Now it is either the same or it's something different. If it's something different, then it's not the faith once delivered to the saints. If it's the same thing that the scriptures say, then it is unimportant. It is unnecessary. So it is either untrue in contradiction, or it is unnecessary one of the two. But they hold it up in equivalent with the Bible, and even surpass it thereto. Now the Koran, the Talmud, many other books are accounted to be scriptural truth as well. But many of them contain such ridiculous statements, as the earth is made of seven layers. A layer of sugar, a layer of honey, and on and on it goes. And that the earth is held up by elephants. And every time there's an earthquake, it is because one of the elephants moves. There are no such ridiculous teachings in the Word of God. There are no such preposterous claims taught by the scriptures. The faith once delivered to the saints, saints contains and knows nothing of such preponderance. Then there is, there are problems in relationship to the Spirit of God as well. The Word of God, the Person of God, the Son of God, and the Spirit of God. And there are strange gods among us. I would suggest to you four of them. First of all, there is the approach that would exalt the Holy Spirit. The Bible knows nothing of that. The Spirit of God is not to be honored. Churches are not to be named after Him. We are not to be Holy Ghost people. We are to be Jesus people. We are not to be known as the focal point of our denomination. The very crux, the cornerstone, the test case, the crucible of our faith is not to be in our relationship to the Holy Spirit, but it is to be in the relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. Without question, the Bible speaks of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Without question, the Bible speaks of people through spoken tongues. But I would say clearly to you that the Apostle Paul put it down. He said it was relatively unimportant. The least of the gifts. That he had more trouble, more immorality, more church splits, more free human fussing and fighting out of that crowd than any bunch in all the world. Now, do not misunderstand me. I do not deny any gift of the Spirit. But I am saying that when you exalt it, when you make it the test case, when you make it the crux of a denomination, a group of men, or a Sunday school class, neighbor, you're off the track. Religion is Jesus business. The Holy Spirit wants to hide. He is timid. He is quiet. He exalts Jesus. He promotes Jesus. He honors Jesus. And that that exalts the Holy Spirit is not of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit of God is Jesus' love. Jesus is thought. Jesus is honored. I sat on the plane by a man, a preacher from a certain denomination, last week coming in from Amarillo, where I flew up to preach last Monday night. And next to him was a man to whom he was witnessing. This man, this fine man, was a backslidden man, if anybody ever was. If anybody ever needed Jesus, he did. If anybody, if he'd ever been saved, which I seriously doubted, and needed the Lord, he did. And for 45 minutes, he told him that what he needed was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He needed a talking tongue. He said, man, if you ever get that, that'll solve all your problems. Now that was the focal point of his theology. That was the heart of everything he knew to say. That was the most important thing. Not so. It is the least important. It is not the most important. There is a strange God among us that would make the focal point, the crux of our experience and our religion, the Holy Spirit. It would exalt the Holy Spirit. But there is another strange God that has subtly pervaded Sabbath through many years. And that is the approach that would ignore the Holy Spirit. Ignore the Holy Spirit. And I do not know which are the most fallacious. I do not know which do the most harm to exalt him or to ignore him. I fear sometimes that one of the biggest problems among our churches is that we cannot seem to bridge the gap between being an orderly church, a well -ordered church with a good image of worship and honor, and yet have an outlet and an opportunity for people to worship God with the whole heart. I feel sometimes that we feel we must get back to normal. We cannot let ourselves go too much. We have to ride those wild horses. We have to honor that power. We have to direct that power. But the Bible says, Love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, all thy heart, that's the seed of the emotion, and all thy soul. And so we must be able to bring the totality of the whole man into harnessed relationship for worship and adoration of God. And Baptists must find the way. For you see, when we squelch the God -given desire to enjoy the Lord, one of two things is going to happen. That new convert is either going to be squelched and frustrated, and he's going to dry up and blow away, or he will be so frustrated that he'll find relief for the joy that is within him out there in some fanatical group. It is of utmost importance that we do bridge the gap and find the happy medium to meet the spiritual need of the whole man, that man might truly enjoy the Lord. The old -time religion, the faith once delivered to the saints, which makes men love God and love everybody, or we shall suppress ourselves right out of business. There is a subtle temptation to exalt the Holy Spirit, to ignore the Holy Spirit. Likewise, there is a temptation to misinterpret the Holy Spirit. There are strange gods among us that commune with the dead. They get messages from beyond the grave, and they are all of the Holy Spirit. And every idea they have is just of the Holy Spirit. Well, the Bible says not everything that comes and claims to be and appears to be is. The Bible says we are to try the Spirit. The Bible says that spiritism and teances in which we attempt to commune with the lies beyond the grave, listen, the Bible niches nothing of that. He says if any man, even if an angel from heaven comes down and teaches any other gospel, let him be accursed. This Bible is a hard book. This Bible is a strict book. It doesn't leave us in question. And when men come, when they have new ideas and these strange gods are taught, instead of going off and following them, instead of tolerating them, instead of embracing them, in the name of religious tolerance, the Bible says they are to be exposed, they are to be forsaken, they are to be condemned. Any man preach any other gospel, let him be accursed. He is another, another, under the judgment of Almighty God. Now, try the Spirit. Not everything that goes by the name of Spirit, especially in Spiritism as such, is of the Divine Holy Spirit. There's a difference. There's a difference. Ah, now hear me about this. There is another subtle temptation among us, and that is to bypass the Holy Spirit. To usurp the Holy Spirit. Astrology and witchcraft. You would be amazed at the Baptist people. It is no passing matter. Dr. Newport, John Newport, says, that in, professor of philosophy in Southwestern Seminary, that in scores of homes of leading, prominent Baptists all across Fort Worth, and it's no better in Houston, he finds books of astrology, people digging for the future, frustratedly, trying to find out what's going to happen tomorrow. Nonsense. I can show you two places, and I know some of you will want me to. In the Word of God, where they are condemned in the Old Testament, they were even put to death. You see it is the job of the holy spirit to lead us into the future jesus said when he the spirit of truth shall come he will guide you into all truth you say preacher they're right they're accurate let me tell you something i can take any 12 of you born in any 12 different months i can write down 300 things about you what will happen to you what you ought to look out for what kind of person you are and i can put them all in a hat and juggle them up and let each of you draw out 30 and many of them if not most of them will be right for most of you they say well the astrology doesn't claim to be always right it's mostly always right i can be mostly always right too in the same way the bible condemns it the bible rejects it it is a sin under god to bypass the holy spirit the answer to tomorrow as well as the answer to today and all of the guidance you need is in the spirit of god in the word of god well in the fifth strange god that is among us is the god that has strange ideas about the creation of man of god man there are three basically erroneous concepts one is that man can do less than he was intended to do that he cannot know god at all that he is incapable of knowing god that there is no way to bridge the gasp uh the gasping yawning chasm the second erroneous philosophy the other false another false god that is among us is the god that would suggest that we do not need to know god we do not have to have god that man is his own god the absence of god is created of man a little god that develops every kind of do -it -yourself religion the third erroneous god in this area is the god that entrusts man and calls upon man and depends upon man to be able to do more than he was able to do and more than he was intended to do and so every kind of work religion comes along i can do this by my own baptism by my own good life by my own struggling by my own efforts i will go to heaven any new religion eastern western northern or southern that comes along that has as its basis an idea of how man can exalt himself and work his way to god will get a certain amount of adherence why because satan has not paid that's what going back to genesis what was the original proposition with what satan first approached man it was this exalt yourself be of god be wise as god and it appeals to the ego of man to honor himself to exalt himself now listen very closely in a sentence the basic erroneous fallacy of every false god in the land is this the tendency to humanize god that is to pull him down and deify man that is bring him up liberal theology eastern religion spiritism the sex the cult the heresy that is rampant rampant in the land is basically characterized by the age -old satanic attempt to humanize god and deify man let there be no question about it man will not be deified and god will not be humanized there are boundaries there are borders there are borders there are limits set between god and man which cannot be transcixed they are firmly established there was one way there is one media there is one vehicle by which god and man have been able to get together and that is through the god man jesus christ we cannot be overly familiar with god we do not we do not become so familiar with god that we exalt and trot and honor ourselves we do not so become acquainted with god that we humanize him and bring him down and make of him nothing don't forget it he is a holy god and we are sinful people it was jesus christ and is Jesus Christ and is only Jesus Christ that is the eternal ageless one who is God's mediator and he is the only connecting link that we have that we need and that would ever suffice. We will in all of our thinking do absolutely nothing to bring God down. You may not break believe in the laws of God that doesn't matter. You will not defame the holiness of God. God has set his word. He has set his laws and he himself is bound by them and all the struggling and striving will never exalt you to God. Man can do nothing to save himself. God will do nothing to law himself. It was in the loving condescension of Jesus Christ. Fred eagled on the cross that God took eternity in one hand and a sinful world in the other and by the blood of the covenant wherewithal he was sanctified became a holy thing to bring us into the holy of holies before God and save the lost and redeemed poor fallen humanity. And unless we have the accurate comprehension of our own sinfulness of God's holiness and of the deity and the provision of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for us then we do not understand and comprehend the simplicity of the word of God. There are strange gods among us. Every shade and color and size and hue and degree of them. But let it be clearly established once and for all God is God. Let God be God. The Bible says and every man a liar because man is basically sinful and God is totally whole. And let it be clearly understood that the age of ages, the rock of ages, the lily of the valley, the bride and morning star, the rose of terror, and the Lamb of God throughout all of history about which through all of the ages to come the saints shall sing and the hosts of God. And the hosts of God pronounce the glory of 10 ,000 hallelujahs, the center and circumference of history, the darling of the Trinity, the heart of life, the crux of religion, the way of salvation is only always exclusively in Jesus Christ. The name that is above every name before which every knee shall bow shall bow under heaven. There is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. He did not say I am one of many ways. I am the way, the way, the way, the only way. No man cometh to the Father but by me, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, the same yesterday, the same today, the same forever. The song of the ages, the hope of the future, the strength of today. He is the way. He is our Lord. He, the love of the church, the center of history, the hope of heaven, the hope of heaven, the way of life, the door to heaven, the center of heaven, the center of history, the center of future, the center of eternity, Jesus, Jesus. Bear in your mind a constantly fixed, assured solidarity of the fact of the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and the exclusive, ultimate provision of the Christ, the bridge, the gap between holy God and sinful man, and without question repudiate and reject everything that even slightly varies from the faith once delivered to the saints. It is a false God. It is a strange God and must not be embraced by the Christians. Let us stand and pray together. Father, our Father, our Father, help us not to get so ever so hung up in flitting hairs and analyzing philosophy that we do not see it in the context of the overall setting in which it is, and that is that the basic approach and philosophy of Satan behind every error is to exalt ourselves and to become equal with God. Pride, pride, pride at the heart of all of man's erroneous religion. Thank thee, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he nailed our pride to the cross. He cut a coarse grain against it all and said, it is penny. I've done it all. The efficacy of the blood is the only way by which sinful man can approach holy God. Let us keep a right balance of these truths in our hearts and remember that at the center and circumference of it all is Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, wonderful Jesus. We pray and ask and receive and thank and trust thee for all of this in his precious, wonderful name, even Jesus, our Lord. Amen.