Fact or Fiction

Well, with school closing, and I noticed on the news, they talked about school closings and, or not closing, but ending for the year, makes you go back and think to your childhood days.

And I know our grandkids sent a picture of their last day of school, and I thought, wow, here I am. It's been, who knows how long since I was in grade school. But it still makes me happy when summer vacation comes along, even though I don't have a summer vacation, per se. But you go back and you think about your time in school. And, you know, I don't think much about my time in high school or even college anymore. But as I've been thinking about, oh, some things that have gone on and the truth of God, there is, you know, one class in particular in the first couple years that I took in college that has stuck with me.

This is during the time when it used to be that you would go to college four years, and the first two years you took a lot of general education courses. A lot of them seemed like you were just taking the same thing you took over in high school. And one of the requirements, one of the requirements was a literature class that we had to take.

And I didn't mind literature in high school too much. I find it kind of interesting to read the novels and to hear how you draw themes and the symbols out of what the authors had written. But I can't say that I enjoyed my college literature course at all. The professor I had was very liberal, and I'm sure I've liberalized him even over the years, but I think he would be even very liberal in today's society.

So I wasn't particularly fond of him. I wasn't particularly fond of the selection of materials that we had to read during that time. It was a lot, a lot of symbolism in drawing things out and reading things in that I just couldn't get into, but I got through the course and got the grade I needed. But there is one thing that I remember out of that course.

One thing I remember out of that course, and it's not something the professor would have wanted me to remember. One of the things that we read, and the only thing I remember that we read during that college course, was a book or I guess it was a book called Dante's Inferno. Dante's Inferno. Anyone ever read Dante's Inferno? It's quite a graphic description of what life in hell would be like. Hell as the world thinks of hell. And it talks about an ever-burning fire, and there's, if I remember, seven or eight or nine different stages of hell people progress through as God punishes them and tortures them to have them come to the realization of the sin they've committed, and then they can move from one level to another.

Dante himself was an Italian, and so he based a lot of his beliefs or that Bible, or not the Bible, on his book on Catholic dogma. It was quite a sensational thing to read, but I knew the truth, and I knew that the Bible doesn't talk about an ever-burning hell and a God that would torture us forever and ever and ever. So as I read that, and I listened to what the professor had to say, what I remember out of it is thinking people have taken this book written in the 13th century, the 13th or 14th century, the 1300s, and they have taken what this author has written, and they have made it their truth.

They now believe, and we have, still the theory of a, or in the world, a theory of an ever-burning hell where people's lives are absolutely miserable. Now, Catholic dogma believed in a hell and then a purgatory, none of which are biblically founded. You can't find that anywhere in the Bible. But Dante, as you go back and look at what he has done, he was trying to create a story out of it. It had a lot of fiction in it as well. And what he wrote was not just from the Catholic doctrine. It turns out he borrowed a lot of the myths and legends from Islam and other religions of that time to concoct this story that, even today, when you read the reviews online, they say it's one of the classic pieces of literature of all time.

And it shaped a lot of thinking and it shaped a lot of ideas over the years, and that's still with us today. And what I remember is we've got a whole bunch of people in the world who believe, who took this fictional book, who took this idea of something that had a little bit of truth in it, but an old lot of opinion and a whole lot of adding extra ideas into it, and they believe it today.

It became truth, and so much of the world believes this, and it's because of a book that was written so very, very, very long ago. You know, that same thing is still with us today. You know, it hasn't been too long ago that we've had books written about Jesus Christ. With Him is the prime character, and people will lend their opinions on Christ. And one of them that was out, well, maybe 15, 10, 15 years ago, talked about Jesus Christ, and somehow something had been suppressed.

I never read the book. I've just heard what it's about, and I don't ever intend to read the book. But somehow, truth has been suppressed, and that Jesus Christ really was married to Mary Magdalene. And so you have this doubt that's there, and this whole sensational story that came about, that came out of someone's mind, a few names, you know, that we've all heard of, Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

And yet, there's so many in the world today that would say, yeah, Jesus Christ probably was married. Totally wrong, totally false, no basis for that in the Bible at all. And sometimes we find that fiction becomes fact in people's minds. How many historical narratives have we read? Our views of World War II, our views of Nazi Germany, are shaped by the movies we've seen, right? And the books that we've read, where someone has put a historical narrative together, and all of a sudden we listen to those things, we read those things, and they are based.

They are based on fact, but they have all this other stuff added to it, and then our mind sings, so that's the way it was. How many stories have you read? How many movies have you watched that say, based? Based on a true incident. But then it has some fact, but a whole lot of fiction mixed into it as well.

It's one of the marks of our society, is that people will mix fact with fiction. It's even hard to have some people listen to fact anymore. If it wasn't what they want to believe, they just discount it.

Well, God isn't one who deals with fact and fiction. He wants us to deal with fact. Fact only. Now that forms our beliefs. But you know, the mark of the world in the literature, in fact, in mixing fact and fiction, isn't anything new. It was way back there at the beginning of time. When Adam, when Satan, the serpent approached Eve, he came to her in Genesis 3 and he said, did God tell you that you shall not eat one of the trees of the garden? Well, he had a fact and she said, yeah, that's what he said. And as the conversation ensued, we have the conclusion where he says, well, you won't surely die if you eat that. And Eve believed it. Eve believed it. And she separated herself from God and Adam later followed because she believed the lie. She believed what the serpent said rather than trusting in God and sticking to the facts and the Word of God.

Still happens in the world today, but you know, we don't worship a God who deals with fact and fiction. The Bible isn't fact and fiction. The Bible is fact. The Bible is truth. God is truth. You can write down a few scriptures, Hebrews 6, 18, and a verse that you'll read next week in the Bible reading program, 1 Samuel 15, 29, says, God doesn't lie. When we hear His Word, it is truth. We can bank on it. We can bank on it. And we should bank on it.

And we should bank on it alone and get to the point where we are looking and believing pure truth. Jesus Christ is pure. God is pure. God is perfect. And what He's looking to do with us is to make us pure and perfect too. That we are people who live by every word of God, every word of God. That we don't mix fact and fiction. That we don't mix truth and error. That we know His Word and we stick to it. You know, as you read through the Bible, and you see what God is doing with us, and you see what He was doing with His people back in the Old Testament time, Israel, it becomes very clear what God would have us do. Because ancient Israel was a nation. They were a group of people that God called out.

And as He began to teach them, as He brought them out of Egypt, how to be the people He wanted them to be, He gave them some interesting and some pretty direct commands that they should follow. And we can read through those stories, and it's very interesting, the story of the Exodus. It's very interesting to see what Israel did after they left Egypt. But there's a lot of spiritual principles in those stories that we read, even in 1 Samuel as we are reading through that.

Let's go back to Exodus 34 and see what God told Israel, or instructed them as they were coming out, and as they were beginning to live the way of His life, and He was going to mold them into the people that He wanted them to be. A nation that would be a light to the world, a nation that would be an example of His way of life, a nation that He would bless, a nation that He was going to lead to the Promised Land.

That was what He wanted, but Israel had to do their part as well. Exodus 34. This is the event of Moses coming down from Mount Sinai the second time with the Ten Commandments. The first time He came down, He came down and they had built a golden calf. He went back up and God wrote the commandments in stone again. In Exodus 34, verse 10, it says, God said, Behold, I make a covenant. As we read through this, let's read the stories that He said to Israel, but realize those same words are for us today. God has made a covenant with us, and we've made a covenant with Him as we have committed to Him and committed our lives to Him.

Behold, I make a covenant, and before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth nor in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Eternal. It is an awesome thing that I will do with you. It's an awesome thing that God is doing with us today, individually and collectively. Observe, verse 11, when I command you this day, Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

Well, Israel was a physical nation, and God dealt with them on a physical basis. And as He was going to take them to the Promised Land, there were all these other groups of peoples that were out there that God was going to drive out from them.

They had to be displaced for Israel to be in the Promised Land. Now, as we read this, let's not think about the Amorite, the Jebusite, the Gurgashite. Let's think about the things in our lives that have to be put out before God can lead us to the Promised Land, because we all have those Gentile thoughts, those Gentile attitudes, those Gentile parts of us that God has to weed out.

Maybe it's addictions, maybe it's a wrong attitude, maybe it's a belief in something that you can't find in the Bible, you just don't want to hold, you just don't want to let go of it. Maybe it's a matter of not submitting to God with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, but just giving part of it to Him, the part that we agree with, forgetting that we must agree with God, and not Him with us. So as we read this, think about those things, the big things in our life that have to be displaced.

We can't do it by ourselves. The Israelites couldn't displace the Amorites, the Hittites, the Parazites, the Jebusites. God did it for them. We can't overcome the weaknesses, the sins, the faults, the attitudes, the problems that we have. God does it. But we have to take action on it. Take heed, He says in verse 12, to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going.

Lest it be a snare in your midst. Don't make agreements with them. Don't go in there and say, well, we can learn from them. We don't want to. We don't want to drive it out completely. They're welcome to stay with us. God would say the same thing to us. Don't make covenants with those ideas. Don't say it's okay if I just have this little sin or this little difference between what the Word of God says and what I say or want to say or want to think.

Take heed, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you're going. Lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, cut down their wooden images, for you shall worship no other God. For the Eternal, whose name is jealous, he is a jealous God. He wants us to obey and serve no one but him. He doesn't want to share our lives with another God of our own devising. He is God, and we have none besides him. He is a jealous God, and he says we shall worship no other God.

Nothing that would take away our interest, belief, that would alter our belief. Sticking to his word, sticking to him. And he says, destroy all those altars. Destroy, clean the landscape, is what he was saying there. Verse 15, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land. And they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you, and you eat of his sacrifice.

Ah, if you keep those there, if they hang around, if you just kind of entertain them, and it's like, ah, keep them close. Well, he says, don't let it become a snare. And verse 16, and you take one of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods, and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.

And he concludes in verse 17, you shall make the loaded gods for yourselves. No idols. No idols, no matter what shape they are. Whether it be economy, whether it be our bankroll, whether it be our ideas, whether it be our own selves, that we can hold up as idols before God. Things that we believe, even though we can't find them in the Bible, but it is kind of a nice thing to just kind of think we have this special little belief that we can't support from the Bible. You shall make no molded gods for yourselves. Idolatry.

No idols. No one before God. Give it all to him. Yield it all to him. He says, get rid of all those beliefs, all those things that you came into to the church with. All need to be undone, replaced with. Replaced with the truth of God.

The things that we talked about during the days of Unleavened Bread. Put out the old, put in the new. Get rid of the old beliefs. Believe what God would have you believe as recorded in his Word. And then in the next several verses here, the rest of chapter 34, he talks about keeping the Sabbath day. Keep the Sabbath day. Keep the holy days. In that he tells the Israelites, this is how you relate to God. Get rid of all the idols. Yield to him. Keep the Sabbath. Keep the holy days.

They help us to know God and to stay close to him as we do that with our heart and mind and soul. Over in Deuteronomy 7, Moses, you know, repeats to Israel, if you will. The same thing that he was said in Exodus 34, as he's reminding them of what they are going to do as they enter the Promised Land. A people about to cross over, just as we are a people about to cross over to the time when Jesus Christ will return and set up his kingdom.

Over in Deuteronomy 7, if you read through the first five verses, you find that he repeats the very same things we read in Exodus 34. Remember, Jesus Christ said, live by every word of God and the principles that we read in the Old Testament we would put in our lives as well. Just not the people being put out, but the ideas and the other things that inhabit our land and our minds. And in verse 6, he says what he wants to do with the people, what his goal is with the people of Israel. You are a holy people to the eternal your God. Your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.

And a special treasure upon the face of the earth. The same thing he tells us in 1 Peter 2.9. You are a special people. You are a royal generation. The same thing that he tells us. Today, he's not working with just the physical nation of Israel, but he's working with the spiritual group of Israel. That includes all races, all tongues. Paul says in Galatians 3, there is no Jew nor Greek, there is no slave nor free, there is no male or female. God calls us and he is working with us when we allow him to bring us out and to make us his people.

And when he makes us his people, his goal is that he wants us to be in the kingdom. He wants us to be there.

But the path along the way leads us to perfection and superiority and tearing down the altars, getting rid of the high places, displacing those things that are ahead of us, that are around us, and replacing them with the things of God.

If we go down a little bit in Deuteronomy 7, verse 16, he continues to talk to the people of Israel about what they will do. It says, It says, Now that can sound harsh and that can sound cruel.

Now remember, God wanted Israel to be pure and he was telling them, if you entertain the people there, if you have mercy on them, you will event they will be a snare to you.

Now you know of known people over the years. And you know one thing that I found interesting?

Is when people align too many times when it's someone who believes and someone who doesn't, too often, too often, the person who doesn't believe the truth. That seems to win out. And God knew that that was going to be the case with Israel. Don't let them be a snare to you. You be stronger than that, Israel. You be stronger than that. And God would tell us, you be stronger than that. You stick to the truth. When God calls you, you know that it's the truth. You stick to it and you live by it. You don't let TV, Internet, evangelist, friend, family member give you another idea that's apart from the Bible and let that lead you away. You stick to the trunk of the tree, as someone much wiser than me used to say. Stick to the trunk of the tree. Stick to the tree of life. Stick to the truth of the Bible. And don't buy into fiction and cleverly devised fables, as Peter classified them as well. But he says in verse 16, destroy these. And he would tell us, you destroy those thoughts. You destroy those wrong attitudes. You destroy those wrong ideas that have no basis in the Bible. But a basis in a world that's mixed or marked with mix with a mixture of fact and fiction. Destroy those. Don't leave any semblance of that. Use God's Spirit to completely wipe those out. Psalm 51, David, remember what he says? Purge me with hyssop. Purge me. Get rid of those thoughts. Let them be replaced with the purity that comes from God's Holy Spirit and the knowledge of Him. Verse 17, if you should say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I just possess them? And we can look at ourselves sometimes and think, I can never overcome that. That's ingrained. That's been there from the time I was a little kid. How do I ever get over that? God says, don't be afraid of them. Same thing he told Israel when they were crossing over the Red Sea, you don't be afraid. It's not us who's going to overcome it. It's going to be God's strength that does it. Remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt, the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which He brought you out. So your God will do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid, and He will send the hornet among them until those who are left who hide themselves from you are destroyed. He will purify you. Even those things that we don't realize need to be weeded out of our lives today. He will show us those eventually because He was looking for 100% commitment. He is looking to 100% purify us and make us ready for His Kingdom. If we rely on ourselves, it will never happen. We don't know all the things that God has yet to weed out of us, but He will show them to us. And He will have us ready if we yield to Him, if we yield to Him and become His people. You shall not be terrified of them, for your God, the great and awesome God, is among you.

You know, as we read that, and Israel was going to war with physical people, it shouldn't be escaped on any of us that we are all in warfare on a constant basis.

It tells us in Ephesians 6, let's go back there. You can keep your finger there in Deuteronomy 7. We'll come back there in a second. But over in Ephesians 6, in verse 12, Paul tells us, We don't wrestle against flesh and blood like ancient Israel did, but we wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That's what we wrestle against daily. Don't ever think we're not in a state of warfare. We are. God is looking for us to take the same action and to make the commitment that he expected of ancient Israel, but he expects us to make the commitment to put to death those members or those things and those ideas in our lives that lead us from God. And he gives us, and he tells us in that chapter, what the weapons are. It's not machine guns, not bows and arrows, but the Word of God, but the Spirit of God, but prayer and the other things that he mentions in that chapter.

Back in 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10, Paul tells those of us who live in an age where fact is a large part, or fact, fact, and fiction is a large part of our education and society. 2 Corinthians 10, verse 3, he says, So we walk in the flesh, we don't war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds, those mighty nations, the Jericho's that seem impossible to conquer.

And they are impossible to conquer without God. Those strongholds, those things in our mind that we just hold onto, and we just don't want to let go of them.

Mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, the pure truth, the pure fact.

Notice, exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. That's a tall order. That's a lot that we have to do. That's a lot of commitment. That's daily battle. That's daily commitment. That's daily focus on what God has called us to and where He is taking us.

But He will bring down those strongholds, those arguments, those things that we can have among ourselves that exalt ourselves above even the Word of God.

That we believe, that we might allow to take hold. God will tell us in Deuteronomy 7, don't have a soft spot for those things. Measure them against the truth of God, and if they don't measure against the truth of God, displace them, eliminate them.

Follow what He has to say. Let's go back to Deuteronomy. Continue on with what He says about the battle that we are in as He works in us to create us individually and collectively His people.

Now what He wants us to be. In verse 22, Deuteronomy 7, says, One of the things that when I counsel people for baptism is we don't become perfect the minute we come out of those waters of baptism.

We're claimed. God has forgiven sins. He's washed those away. We've told Him and committed to Him, put to death those members, and He forgives our sins. But we still have work to do. We still have to make the choice. We still have to make the decision. We still have to resist. We still have to engage God and His Holy Spirit and not fall prey to those same old kergeshites and hivites and Jebusites in our lives.

We have to displace them. We have to replace them with what He gives us. And He does it little by little over the course of the rest of our lives.

And so one of the fictional parts of baptism in many of the churches in the world today is when you're baptized, that's the end. You're saved. You've reached what God wants you to do. No, baptism is a very good beginning. You've come to where God wants you to be, but it is only the beginning.

The rest of your life you have to commit to God. The rest of your life He drives out those things little by little until we become who He wants us to become. Even those things that are hidden from us. It goes on to say in verse 22, You will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. God's very wise. We let Him work in our lives the way He wants. But your God will deliver them over to you and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. He will deliver their kings into your hand. You will destroy their name from under heaven. No one will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. As long as you rely on God. But if we look to ourselves, they will destroy us. If we begin to think we have the answers, we know more than the Bible. Well, those things will destroy us. Verse 25, You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it. For it is an abomination to the Lord your God. Verse 26, Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing. Don't mix fact with fiction. Don't be enamored by the things of the world. Don't go into your own attitudes, your own pet ideas. Measure them against the Bible, and if they stand, then you stand with it in God. But if it doesn't measure up to the plain word of God, the only source of truth and fact in the world complete and 100% fact in the world today, discard it. Discard it like God said, get rid of the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Perizzites. Get rid of it. Serve only Him. Serve only Him. He was clear with Israel, and it was a physical thing. He said, I'll drive these people out from before you used. Have to rely on me. But you know what? Israel just didn't do it. Let's go back to Psalm, Psalm 106. In this chapter, we find a summary of the people of Israel. Let's pick it up in verse 34. As God inspired these words about Israel, words we don't want written about us. But Israel, they are recorded. Verse 34, they didn't destroy the peoples concerning whom the Lord had commanded them. He told them, do it. They didn't. But they mingled with the Gentiles. Let those ideas in. They let those people there. They wanted to tell us more. How do you worship your God? What do you think about this? How does this happen? They mingled with the Gentiles and learned their works. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. And the land was polluted with blood. Thus they were defiled by their own works. God wanted to make them a pure people. They defiled themselves by the choices they made. And they played the harlot by their own deeds. Verse 40, therefore, the wrath of the eternal was kindled against his people, so that he abhorred his own inheritance, and he gave them into the hand of the Gentiles, and those who hated them ruled over them.

Don't let that be written about any of us here. Don't become snared and snared by anything of the world. Know the Bible. Understand it. What you believe, what you hear, you measure it against the truth of God. And you take it to him, and you let him perfect you and remain committed to that road of perfection and purity that he wants us on, and that he will bring us on until the return of his son Jesus Christ.

Fact and fiction. Let me talk about another part of this. Let's go back to Luke 2. I'm going to read a few verses here for you that you'll think are unrelated to what I'm talking about, but I'll explain it here in a second. Luke 2 and verse 1.

So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And they were greatly afraid, and the angel said to them, Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, and this will be the sign to you, you will find a babe, wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.

Very familiar story. A story that several read once a year.

When my older son, not Patrick who you know, but my older son was nine or ten years old, we were doing a Friday night Bible study. And we would pick out portions of the Bible to read and talk about each Friday night.

And this was our selection on one Friday night to read about the birth of Christ and the facts concerning it.

And I watched Eric, and as we read this, his eyes were kind of, had just a look about them, and now I was done, and we were talking about it. He goes, that's in the Bible? That's in the Bible?

And it began to dawn on me as we talked. We had done a very good job, a very good job of teaching them about the Christmas and the paganism and the reason that we don't celebrate Christmas.

And all the extra things that have been added to it that had nothing to do.

But there was some truth in Christmas. There was some words that are associated with it. And he had just discounted the whole thing in his mind. Everything is garbage. We don't need to pay any attention of it. That's in the Bible?

A classic case of truth. Truth mixed with error. Truth mixed with paganism.

Our job as people of God is to be able to discern truth from error. When we read things that we would say, oh that's true, that's in the Bible, but the rest of this stuff is not. So we can't possibly be of God because God is 100% truth. Christmas can't be one of God's holidays because it's mixed with paganism and symbols that you don't find in the Bible.

The story is true. The timing of the year is wrong. The story is true in the Bible, but it's a false holiday because it's mixed with error. Religious error.

The same thing with Easter and the other holidays that you can read. The same thing that you might do when you listen on the Internet to someone else speaking of another church and say, oh, he knows something of prophecy. Listen to it all. Is it mixed with error? What did John tell us? We've read the verse several times in 2 John.

Test it. Is the doctrine of God? Is it of the Bible? If it's not, it may be interesting. It may be well presented. It may be like Dante's Inferno. But if it's not truth, take it for what it is and don't believe it.

This has been a hallmark of the world, too, mixing religions. Let's go back to the second Kings.

Second Kings, after Israel was displaced from their land because they just didn't obey God, they wouldn't do what he said. They didn't pay attention to him. They became ensnared with the people around him, and he took them out of that land.

When he did in 2 Kings, the Babylonians, or I don't remember exactly who it was who conquered, I guess it was Assyria who conquered Israel, they came into the land of Israel and they had all sorts of problems. They had beasts killing people and they know they needed to do something because the God of this land, as the Assyrians would say, needs to be honored. Let's pick it up in verse 20-24 here of 2 Kings 17 and see what happened even back then that we could be writing about our lives today. The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cutha, Ava, Hamith, Sephravaam, placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities. And it was so at the beginning of their dwelling there that they didn't fear the God of Israel, the Eternal. Therefore he sent lions among them which killed some of them. So those people who displaced Israel spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations whom you have removed and placed in the cities of Samaria don't know the rituals of the God of the land. Therefore he sent lions among them and indeed they are killing them because they don't know the rituals of the God of the land. So the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Send there one of the priests whom you brought from there, let him go and dwell there, and let him teach the rituals of the God of the land. And one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the true God. However, every nation, how he taught them what they needed to do, however, you notice in verse 29, However, every nation continued to make gods of its own and put them into shrines on the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities where they dwelt. And then it tells all the gods. They were told, this is the law of the God of this land. And they listened to it as long as it had benefit to them, but they still held on to their other gods. They didn't thrive them out of their lives. So they had them worshipping in part the true God of Israel, the God of the Bible, the God that we worship. But they were holding on to these other gods as well, and they would make their little gods and have them there. And so you had a religion that was partly true, partly mixed with error and falsehood. We drop down to verse 34. We see this that it happened, a mixture of truth and error that began then that continues to this day. To this day, they continue practicing the former rituals. They don't fear God, nor do they follow their statutes or their ordinances. They don't fear God. They haven't given all their heart over to Him. They don't even follow their own religion completely. They kind of disregard it as well. They kind of make their own religion. Nor they don't follow the law and commandment, which the eternal commandment of the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. And so we have the same thing today.

We have religions that are a mixture. They will look at the Bible. They'll say they believe in Jesus Christ, but they don't do what He says. They'll acknowledge the birth of Jesus Christ, not that we're ever commanded by God to make that a holy day. But then they mix it with their own gods. And the world we live in is a mixture of religions, a mixture of beliefs. It's not pure. It's not perfect. It's not of God, because God is not of mixture. God is not a God that would have His truth polluted the way the world pollutes. And at the end of the age, when we read about the beast power and a God that says that their fathers didn't know, as He mixes religions, as He mixes beliefs, as He tries to be all things to all people, He denies the truth of God. He denies the God of Israel, the God of the Bible. And He uses His own ideas and mashes them or puts them all together, much like Dante did in the Inferno. Let's take some of the Catholic beliefs, let's take some of the Islam beliefs and put them all together in a sensational story that a lot of people will like. The truth that we believe is the Bible. That's the rock. The God we believe is a God of perfection and a God who doesn't add to or take away from anything that He puts in the Bible. He gives us the words to live by, and this is what we must know. This is what we must live by. This is what we must have spent our time in. And this is what we must believe, because if we don't believe, if we're consistently searching and thinking, oh, this and oh, that and whatever, you might want to ask God, help me believe. Help me believe you, God. Because if we don't believe Him, then we will keep searching and we will keep doing the things that the world does that has always been apart from God from the time of Adam and Eve.

I'm not going to turn. We'll be reading through 1 and 2 Samuel. You've read through the book, the 1st and 2nd Kings before. You remember how God would pronounce a judgment, if you will, on the kings of Judah? And He would come to people like Hezekiah, and He would say, this is a, you know, Hezekiah did what was good and right in my eyes. And Hezekiah was one of them. He said he did more than any of the kings before him. He went through the land. He cast out all the high places. He cast out all the altars. He got rid of all those things. And He purified the land for God. He said the same thing of King Josiah, who was young, but then he learned the law. And he went through the land, too, and he purified it. And God said, well done, Josiah. You got rid of all of them. Other kings, God, would say they would do good and right, but you would see in there, but they still left the high places. They did good what was good and right, but they still left the altars. They did what was good and right. However, what kind of person do you want to be? Because God is working with us to be kings and priests in His kingdom. One of those people that God would say, well, they did what was right, but they would never let go of this. They would never cast that stronghold out of their minds.

Or do you want to be one of those people that God says, like Josiah, and like He said, the Son of Jesus Christ, well done. You yielded yourself to me totally and completely. You didn't allow your own affections to affect what you put out of your life. You didn't allow your own pet little theories to stay and hang around and be a snare to you. You put them out. You measured yourself. You measured your beliefs, and you learned the Bible.

You lived by every word of it, and you didn't become ensnared by this falsehood or this doctrine that's out there in the world that is filled with things that aren't part of the Bible at all.

That's the type of people we want to be.

Over in John 17, we could look at it in the lesson of Israel. God might have said, Well, I had them wander in the wilderness for 40 years, and when I took them into the Promised Land, they became enamored with the Gentiles. They would listen to them. They would seek out what their gods wanted them to worship their gods, and they applied it to me.

You might say, God, why didn't you take us when you call us and put us in a commune somewhere? Why didn't you just have us live only with you? Why didn't you have us live only with you so that we couldn't become ensnared? John 17, verse 5, Christ's Prayer.

John 17, verse 15, he says, I don't pray that you should take them out of the world. I don't pray that you take them out of the world. I want them to live in the world. I want them to live there, and I want them to learn how to obey me even in the course of their everyday lives.

I don't pray that you would take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. That should be one of our prayers, that God would not, as he says in the model prayer, lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Let's go back to Judges. Judges 2. God gives us the reason. He wants us living in the world.

It would be very easy if we all were in the middle of the desert someplace, and we all saw each other every day. We all worshiped the same God. We didn't have any TV. We didn't have any internet. We didn't have any friends. We didn't have any co-workers that believed different things. We would be immersed in that. But would we become the people that God wanted? Israel had that for 40 years. But then when among the nations, what did they do? They gravitated toward them. How do you worship? Your gods will do the same. Judges 2 and verse 20.

Do you know what God wants to know about us? Will we keep His ways or will we not? Will we be strong and will we stand up? And when our co-workers say, Come on, you can just do that on Friday night, right? What is it? We're not working. We can just do that on Friday? Come on, do this with us on Sabbath. Or whatever it may be.

Will we stand with God or will we cave? Will we develop the character that no matter what, we follow God as He perfects us? Israel didn't do that. Over in Judges 3, the next chapter here, it says, even though God warned them, in Exodus 34, Moses reminded them. Joshua would remind them. But in verse 5, it says, The children of Israel, they dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Parazites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. They never let go of those ideas. They never let go of it. Part of it was like, we still kind of believe that. We still kind of want those things around us. And they took their daughters to be their wives, gave their daughters to their sons. They served their gods. So, the children of Israel did evil in the side of the eternal. They forgot God, and they served the Bails and Asherahs. We don't want to ever serve the Bails or the Asherahs. We don't want to have those things hanging around us and let them build up in our minds that we would forget God, that we would depart from Him, that He would take His Holy Spirit away from us. As He did with Saul, you'll read next week in 1 Samuel 16, verse 4, when He disobeyed, when He simply wouldn't do what God had told Him to do.

God has called us to do things exactly the way He said, and exactly the way He's recorded in this inspired book you have on your laps, Deuteronomy 12, verse 29. When the Eternal, your God, cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you, that you don't inquire after their God, saying, How do these nations serve their gods? I'll do likewise. You shall not worship the Eternal, your God, in that way.

For every abomination which He hates, they have done to their gods. They even burned their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. Don't add to it, and don't take away from it.

There's no reason to go out on the Internet and say, How do these people worship their God? Well, you know what? I think God would like it if we did that too. Worship Him exactly the way He says in the Bible. Don't add to it. Don't take away from it. Yield to Him. Don't mix fact with fiction. Don't mix religion.

True religion with error. Don't mix good with evil. As many do.

You all know people in your lives. You would say they're very good people. And I've met very good people in my life. People that put me to shame in some of the areas of service that they do. If we take some, I guess, international figures, one of them that would come to mind is Mother Teresa. She gave her life to serve the poor. And so people chronicle her as, look how good is in her heart. Another one I hear about is Billy Graham. Look at Billy Graham. He's a good guy, right? And they may do a lot of service. You may have had an aunt or an uncle who was much more service-oriented than you. I can name people in my family who were just naturally outgoing, service-oriented. If you saw, if they saw a need, they just filled it.

And they were good in that regard.

But they didn't have the truth of God. Let's go back to James 1.

James 1. And God who is creating in us, if we let Him, purity, or on the road to purity, none of us are there yet in perfection. Christ does say, become perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. In James 1, verse 27, it says, pure. There's the key word. Pure and undefiled. Israel was defiled with the Gentiles. We can become defiled with our own beliefs and the things that we do. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this. Two visit orphans and widows in their trouble. It's a good thing. We should all be mindful of each other. We should all be mindful and do the things of looking out for each other, paying attention to each other's needs, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing those who need clothing. Just as Christ said in Matthew 25, this is pure and undefiled religion to do this and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Love. Love, in agape, love. Love the people. Take care of them and keep oneself unspotted from the world. No false theories. No false beliefs. No mixing fact with fiction or truth with error. Believing in God and believing the Bible 100% and doing what it says 100% and not allowing friend, family, co-worker, TV, Internet, whatever it is, to make you think that what you read cleanly in the Bible, that God has opened your mind to see, that maybe you don't need to do that or you need to add to it. You know, Mother Teresa, no one can fault her for the service that she gave. She didn't know the truth of God. Not her fault. God didn't choose to call her in this time, but she wasn't unspotted from the world. She lived a religion that is very much this world, that is apart from God, that mixes truth with error, fact with fiction, good and evil. The people in my family that I would think of, the people that you might think of, aunts and uncles, you know, very nice. Can't fault any of them, you know. God, they didn't know God. They didn't keep God's Sabbath. They had their own idols. They were very nice people, but they weren't unspotted from the world. They were marked by the world. So they didn't practice pure and undefiled religion. You and I can practice pure and undefiled religion. God expects us to love. He expects us to have that agape love, the first fruit of the spirit in us. And He expects us to be unspotted from the world as He leads us and guides us from that. And as we look at the Bible and use that and Him and His Holy Spirit as our guide, not mixing other theories, other doctrines, reading other things, but then discounting and saying, no, that isn't the truth of God because it doesn't match Scripture. We just said last week, Christ Himself said the Scripture can't be broken if you read something. And it doesn't match with the Bible? Don't believe it! Don't believe it. Follow God. Chapter 4 of James, verse 8. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Clean it up. Clean the landscape. Clean up what you do. Make it in concert with what God says. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded. Purify your hearts. You double-minded. People who serve God, but serve another God too, like they did in 2 Kings 17, that we all may be prone to if we're not watching what we do. Cleanse your heart, hand your sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded.

Back in Revelation 14, we see the people that God is looking for. Verse 1, it talks about 144,000, having his Father's name written on their foreheads, who have not taken his name in vain, but who have followed him.

Verse 4 says, these are the ones who were not defiled with women. They were pure. Over the course of their lives, they yielded to God. They weren't defiled by other religions and other theories. They believed the same thing that Jesus Christ believed. Walked the same way he walked.

Not mixing in Catholicism, Buddhism, even some of the works of Judaism.

But believing God the way God said to live and the way Jesus Christ lived. These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These were redeemed from among men, being fruits to God, first fruits to God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no deceit or no guile. It says in the Old King James, for they are without fault before the throne of God. They followed him explicitly and completely. Explicitly and completely. And over the course of their lives, little by little, God led them to that state he wants us to be in. He does it with us individually. He also does it with his church, the body that he's put us into. He wants us clean individually, and he wants us clean and pure and moving toward that as a body of his as well. Let's look at Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5. Verse 25. As God is giving direction to husbands and wives, in verse 25, he says, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify it.

Remember, sanctify said it apart and cleanse her. Purify her. Wash her. Get her ready. Cleanse her with a washing of water by the Word. Paying attention to what the Word says, that he might present her to himself a glorious church made up of people, individuals who have committed themselves to God and allow him to sanctify them and cleanse them, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. A people and a group of people that work together and yield to God as he gets them ready for the return of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Let's conclude back in Genesis.

Genesis 2.

And verse 9. Out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life was there. We don't read about the tree of life again after Adam and Eve sinned until back in Revelation 22 when we see it in the kingdom, giving life to the nations. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God could have named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil death. The tree of life and the tree of death. But he named it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve and Adam took of defines our world today. It's a world that's made up of good. There's a lot of good in the world today. When you look at the attitudes of some people, there's good things you can say. But it's mixed with evil. It's not the definition of James 1, 27. It's good and evil. Therefore, it is not of God. Now, when we choose the way of good and evil, when we choose the way of fact and fiction, when we choose the way of truth and error, we choose the way of death. There's only one way to life. Only one tree of life. And that's through Jesus Christ, and that's by living by the Word of God. And allowing him to displace everything else out of our lives, except the truth that he has called us to. Eve 8 of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, we live in a world that's that same way today. Don't be fooled by the good of the world. Don't be fooled by the good works. Look at what you believe. Make sure you believe God. Make sure you choose him. Make sure you choose life. You make sure you eat of the bread of life daily, and that you come to know those scriptures and live by every word, just as Jesus Christ said. Eat from the tree of life.