Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: Deuteronomy 12:29-14:2

Theme: There are threats to true worship, and Moses would have God’s people avoid them.

Date: 04/03/21 File name: Threats_to_Worship ID Number: OT05-12

“Spectating” has become the most popular entertainment event in America.

Americans love spectating — watching an event, and sometimes even vicariously living their lives through what they are watching.

This has been true for a long time.

Twenty-five years ago, the National Commission on Civic Renewal, a private organization headed by former Education Secretary William Bennett, produced a report entitled, "A Nation of Spectators."

The report lamented then that Americans are increasingly dropping out of civic organizations, to disengage from public involvement, and to be increasingly satisfied in watching others “do their thing” whether it’s entertainment, or sports, or politics.

We’d rather watch than engage.

Unfortunately, Americans have brought this mentality to church.

We’ve become addicted to entertainment.

We want to see a “good show” — even in worship — and so we come to church expecting worship to be an inactive experience instead of an interactive experience.

We’ve become a people uncomfortable with participation.

This is not a new problem.

More than 100 years ago, Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, compared worship to a drama with actors, prompters, and audience.

His complaint was that people have been cast for the wrong parts.

He wrote that in this play we call “church” the worship leaders have become the actors, God is the prompter, and the congregation the audience.

Kierkegaard called for a recasting.

The real actors should be the worshiping congregation, the worship leaders should be the prompters, and God should be the audience.

In the early half of the 21st century, our spectator mentality remains a threat to true worship.

But there have always been threats to true worship.

Moses was deeply concerned that nothing should deprive the people of God of the blessings offered by pure worship of the True and Living God.

Once they had settled in Canaan, Israel would be susceptible to pagan influences which would seek to seduce them.

If they were not careful in separating themselves from the pagan practices of Canaan’s inhabitants, they would be tempted into spiritual adultery.

They had already flirted with spiritual disloyalty once when they created and worshiped the Golden Calf.

As a precaution against possible apostasy, Moses warned Israel of the snares to which they must be alert when it came to their worship.

There are threats to true worship, and Moses would have God’s people avoid them.

I. UNDESIRABLE CURIOSITY IN OTHER RELIGIONS IS A THREAT TO TRUE WORSHIP

““When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, 30 take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that

I also may do the same.’

31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.

32 “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do.

You shall not add to it or take from it.”

(Deuteronomy 12:29–32, ESV)

1. God’s warning here is explicit do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?

A. CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT AND ENSNARES THE BELIEVER

1. God commanded that the shrines of the Canaanites were to be destroyed

a. even the people themselves were to be annihilated

2. to us — who have been raised in a pluralistic society where respect of all religious beliefs, and even those with no beliefs is a basic creed of our society — that seems harsh and unjustified

a. why did God declare such an extreme judgment upon the prior inhabitants of the Promised Land?

1) 1st, the Canaanites were an extremely wicked people who made other pagans around them seem virtuous by comparison

a) one Canaanite group, the Amorites, are mentioned all the way back in the book of Genesis

“As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.

16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.””

(Genesis 15:15–16, ESV)

ILLUS.

In the Book of Leviticus (Lev.

18:24-28), Moses writes that they are such a vile people that if the land in which they reside could vomit them out it would.

2) 2nd, God knew that it was still possible for the Hebrews to imagine that there was something of value in the pagan religions they would encounter

a) after all, what if the Israelites reasoned that their God was not the only god around?

b) why take a chance of “offending” that gods of a people you’ve just conquered?

b. such curiosity might lead to inquiry, and inquiry might lead to interest, and interest might lead to experimentation, and experimentation would lead to adoption of pagan beliefs

ILLUS.

I had been a Christian only a couple of months when I went off to college in Kirksville, MO.

I was spiritually immature, and ripe for the enemy to come in with falsehood.

One day while at the Laundromat, I noticed a religious tract lying on one of the folding tables.

With nothing to do while my cloths washed I began to read it.

It told how archeologists had discovered that the great Mezo-American empire — the Incas, they Mayas, and the Aztecs — were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.

They had reached the Western hemisphere on papyrus boats, and had established enclaves among the peoples already here.

The tract also told how Jesus Christ had appeared to them in the New World after his resurrection, and instructed them in the faith of the Church.

I was fascinated.

Even then I loved history, and was fascinated by archeology, and these were things I’d never heard of before.

Why had I never learned this in 10th grade world history?

I was intrigued and read through the tract several times.

I took the tract with me and showed it to a Christian friend who had befriended me at the Baptist Student Union.

I shared with him my excitement at this new truth I had discovered about the Christian faith.

Clay literally gasped in horror.

The tract that had so fascinated me was from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

My curiosity had been peaked by what I now know is a pseudo-Christian cult that has beguiled and snared countless true believers.

This dear Christian brother immediately began me on a crash course in Biblical orthodoxy, and Baptist beliefs.

1) it’s a part of my testimony I usually leave out simply because, fifty years later, it’s still a little embarrassing to confess to — that I would be so gullible

3. this is one of the reasons I cringe when I hear, usually well-meaning Christians, soft-peddle the gospel when they say, “We’re all trying to get to the same place.

There are many roads to it.

You’re on your road to heaven, and I’m on mine.”

a. well hooey ... you all know what Jesus said about roads — there are only two, and only one leads to eternal life, and it’s the one Jesus is at the end of

b. religion will not get anyone to heaven

1) only the shed blood of Jesus Christ can save a person from their sin

2) only an acceptance of Christ as Son of God, Savior will take a man to heaven when he dies

c. religion is man’s attempt to reach out to some god he has invented

d.

Christianity is God reaching down into the miry pit, and pulling man out of his sinful predicament

B. THE ANSWER TO UNDESIRABLE CURIOSITY IS TRUTH

1. Moses sought to deter the Hebrew’s undesirable curiosity in pagan religious practices by giving them an example of the depravity of Canaanite worship

“You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.”

(Deuteronomy 12:31, ESV)

2. Moses is referring to what we now know as the Cult of Moloch

ILLUS.

Moloch was an Ammonite god who’s image was depicted with the body of a human, but the head of a bull.

In their temples, the Ammonites erected life-size images of their God cast I bronze as though seated on a throne with its hands outstretched as it to hold something.

The back of the idol was hollow so that a fire could be built inside.

During their worship, the idol would be heated until it was red-hot, and then a baby would be placed upon the lap of the idol.

The priests drums, so that the people might not hear the screams of pain, and so that their hearts might not be moved.

Even Greek and Roman historians of that day were appalled at this.

Hebrew prophets are universal in their condemnation of the practice.

a. for these kinds of abominations, the Canaanites were judged by God, and destroyed

3. but Moses’ warning against undesirable curiosity fell on deaf ears

a. 500 years later, Israel was taken into captivity and exile by her enemies for participating in these awful pagan practices

C. CHRISTIANS NEED TO STAND FIRM IN THE FAITH AND AVOID UNDESIRABLE CURIOSITY IN OTHER RELIGIONS

1. curiosity in pagan, satanic, and new age cults, and religions have led many believers astray

a. the use of spirit-channeling, crystals, chanting and Eastern meditation have all made their way into the lives of professing Christians