Worship the Omnipotent, Not the Impotent

Worship the Omnipotent, Not the Impotent

¹⁶ Do not let yourselves be led away from the Lord to worship and serve other gods. DEUTERONOMY 11 tev

Idolatry promotes false worship. Just as water and oil do not mix, no one gets restored by mixing true worship with false worship.

¹ The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. ² Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 1 TIMOTHY 4

Commandment No. 2 calls for God to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Essentially this is the message: “Wise up! Stop making God your No. 2 priority in life. Do away with self-worship. Stop kneeling before an idol. Do not rely on it to bless you. Do away with sorcery. Do away with fanaticism, materialism and other obsessions. Why? Because idolatry is of the devil. It’s a malpractice and a waste of time, effort and money. It does not benefit anyone at all. Better welcome God into your heart.” 

²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. JOHN 4

Death to Idolaters?

Some churches teach us to put idolaters to death. That is Old Testament practice.

² If a man or woman living among you. ³ …has worshipped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars of the sky ⁴ …and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Isra’el, ⁵ take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death. DEUTERONOMY 17

²⁰ Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed… ¹⁸ Do not allow a sorceress to live. EXODUS 22

²⁷ A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads. LEVITICUS 20

⁵ Put to death any interpreters of dreams or prophets that tell you to rebel against the Lord… Such people are evil and are trying to lead you away from the life that the Lord has commanded you to live. They must be put to death in order to rid yourselves of this evil. ⁶ Even if your brother or your son or your daughter or the wife you love or your closest friend may secretly encourage you to worship other gods… ⁸ Do not let any of them persuade you; do not even listen to them. Show them no pity, and do not protect them. ⁹ Kill them!  DEUTERONOMY 13

The New Covenant has deferred the practice. God has chosen to sit on His throne of grace, not on His throne of judgment.

⁷ If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at the adulterous woman. JOHN 8 [10]

Inasmuch as all of us are sin-bearers (Ecclesiastes 7:20), no one among us is qualified to throw the first stone. Only the Son of Man is.

¹⁵ He had the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. HEBREWS 4 nlt

Yet He is not in a hurry to put idolaters to death. He wants them restored, not condemned.

⁹ He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 PETER 3

The instruction is to do away with idolatry—the practice, not the idolater.

⁶ This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices! EZEKIEL 14

³ If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the Philistinians. 1 SAMUEL 7

³⁰ I will judge you, each one according to his ways… Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. ³¹ Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. ³² For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live! EZEKIEL 18   

¹⁸ Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods… Make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison. DEUTERONOMY 2

What if the idolater does not heed God’s call?

Well, then, you may destroy his altar and church house (Numbers 33:52, Exodus 23:24, Deuteronomy 7:25-26 and 12:2-3) but do not touch his person. It is not for us to pass judgment on him. Honor God’s decision to give him time to be enlightened and to mend his ways.

At the end of the day, the dead that does not mend his ways will stay dead. He will be sent to his Second Death (Revelation 21:8) in accordance with his own choosing.

³ You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did at Ba’al Peor. The Lord your God destroyed from among you everyone who followed the Ba’al of Peor, ⁴ but all of you who cling to the Lord your God are still alive today. DEUTERONOMY 4

¹⁰ Those who hate the Lord your God He will repay to their face by destruction. The Lord your God will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate Him. DEUTERONOMY 7

¹⁶ They made God jealous with their foreign gods and angered Him with their detestable idols. ¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons, which are not God—gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, and gods your fathers [ancestors] did not fear. ¹⁸ You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth… ²² A fire has been kindled by My wrath; one that burns to the realm of death below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains. DEUTERONOMY 32 

⁴ I will stretch out My hand against Judah and against all who live in Jerusalem. I will cut off from this place every remnant of Ba’al [the god of Sidon], the names of the pagan and the idolatrous priests— ⁵ those who bow down on the roofs to worship the starry host, those who bow down and swear by the Lord and who also swear by Molech [the god of Ammonites that required child sacrifices], ⁶ those who turn back from following the Lord and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of Him. ZEPHANIAH 1

Wise Up!

² How long. O men, will you turn My glory into shame? How long will you love delusions and seek false gods? PSALM 4

⁸ You must not do as you have been doing. Until now you have been worshiping as you please. DEUTERONOMY 12 tev

⁴ We know that an idol can do nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. ⁵ For even if there are so-called gods—whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many gods and many lords)— ⁶ yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Y’shua the Messiah, through whom all things came and through whom we live. 1 CORINTHIANS 8

God speaks the truth—rely on Him to point the way back to the kingdom. Lucifer does not speak the truth and does not want anyone to regain life—do not rely on him.

What can be so difficult in making the shift when the Spirit is there to help?

⁸ It is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only. LUKE 4

²⁹ Hear, O Isra’el, the Lord our God! The Lord is one [echad, unique, incomparable, unrivaled, without equal or similitude]. MARK 12  

⁵ To whom will you compare Me or count Me equal? To whom will you liken Me that we may be compared? ISAIAH 46

³⁴ Has any god ever dared to go and take for himself a people from another nation and make them as his own, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt? Before your very eyes He used His great power and strength; He brought plagues and war, worked miracles and wonders, and caused terrifying things to happen. ³⁵ The Lord has shown you this, to prove to you that He alone is God and that there is no other. ³⁶ He let you hear His voice from heaven so He could instruct you; and here on earth He let you see His holy fire, and He spoke to you from it. ³⁷ Because He loved your ancestors, He chose you, and by His great power He Himself brought you out of Egypt. ³⁸ As you advanced, He drove out nations greater and more powerful than you, so that He might bring you in and give you their land, the land which still belongs to you. ³⁹ So remember today and never forget: the Lord is God in heaven and on earth. There is no other. DEUTERONOMY 4 tev

⁶ The Lord brings death and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and raises up. ⁷ The Lord sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; He seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. 1 SAMUEL 2

The name of God in the Old Testament is YHVH.

¹⁰ [YHVH] is the true God, the living God, the everlasting King. JEREMIAH 10 cjb 

⁶ I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. EXODUS 3

¹⁰ Before Me no other God was formed, nor will there be one after Me. ISAIAH 43

⁹ I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like Me. ISAIAH 46

¹⁷ [YHVH] your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome… ²¹ He is your praise; He is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. DEUTERONOMY 10 

The name of YHVH today under the New Testament is Y’shua.

⁵ The Messiah… is God overall. ROMANS 9

⁸ Messiah Y’shua is the same [God] yesterday and today and forever. HEBREWS 13  

Footnotes

[1]  Eastern Orthodoxy and some Protestant churches also use the same justification for their graven images.

[2]  Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker (Metro Manila: OMF Literature Inc., 2000), p. 39.

[3]  John Avanzini, It’s Not Working Brother John!  (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Harrison House, 1992), p. 33. 

[4]  Joyce Meyer, A Leader in the Making (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Harrison House, 2001), p. 224.

[5] The Bondage Breaker, p. 41.

[6]  William Gracian, Find Real Happiness (Manila: Worldlink Marketing Corp., 2005), p. 44.

[7]  2 Peter 2:19. Our god is not what we say we worship but what we serve. Our god is what we give our lives over to.—John W. Ritenbaugh.

[8]  St. Theresa of Avila, The Way to Perfection, E. Allison Peers translation editor (New York: Image Books, 1964 ed.).

[9]  Adulterous woman: Veiled reference to idolaters and other spiritual adulterers.