The Spirit of Baal

You know, sometimes when we read through the Bible, especially the Old Testament, it seems strange to us, almost incomprehensible, how the people of ancient Israel, when they saw God's miracles, when they had such a history of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, they believed in them.

They believed that was their history. You know, if we asked you today what is the history of your nation, you would go back to George Washington and what we call the fathers of the country. You believe they existed. You believe they wrote a constitution. You know that they did that. That's true history. Those people knew about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Some of them were taken out of slavery in Egypt, and they experienced that, and they passed it on to their children and their grandchildren and their children and their children.

And you have hundreds of years of history, all through the time of Judges and Saul and David and Solomon, and then the divided kingdom period. And all through that time period, God sends them leaders, he sends them prophets, and he does miracles. And yet they keep worshiping pagan idols. And he thinks, how could they do that? What was so attractive? What was so attractive? That there were people who worshiped in Solomon's Temple. Now, what did you think about that? Solomon's Temple. The Levitical priesthood, they started singing, doing sacrifices, having services on the Sabbath, and they didn't think anything about the next day going and participating in a service for some kind of pagan deity.

How could they do that? We think, well, what primitive people they are. What caused them to be attracted to idolatry? What caused these people, in the absolute proof of God, to still be attracted to idolatry? Today I want to talk about one of the most important of the pagan gods in the history of ancient Israel. Now, first of all, I want to show you a picture of this God and how impressive His idol is.

Take a second to get it up here. So you can see why they were so enamored with the power of this God. Can you see it? I don't know if you on this side of the room can see it or not. See that? It's not a clear picture. This is an actual statue from Canaan. It was the Canaanite God that we call Baal. I think in Hebrew it's Baal. But in English it's usually pronounced in the English version of the Bible.

It's Baal. This is Baal. That's it. That's how impressive. That's not a very big statue, by the way. It's a very small statue. There are other statues of Baal. They look very similar. This was it. This was the primary God that you will see mentioned throughout the Bible that they followed. What made this so impressive that people gave up the worship of the true God to follow and bow down in front of this, build altars before statues like this, offer sacrifices, keep the holy days of Baal, and do the practices of Baal?

How could that be? I'm going to talk a little bit about Baal. I'm going to go through the history of Baal, not everything in the Old Testament. You'd be surprised how much Baal is mentioned in the Old Testament. But I want to talk about why they were attracted to worshiping this God. And then I want to apply it to some lessons today. We think these are primitive people, barbaric people. How could they do this? We would never have done this. There's the spirit of Baal. You know, the last six months, well, first that's the Passover.

When I gave us our... Remember, the Scripture that we're really working off of in Philippians this whole year. And part of it is the Spirit of God. So I'm going through the fruits of the Spirit. I've gone through two sermons on trying and testing the spirits. I talked about the spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah. Where are you talking about the spirit of Baal today, as part of this series of related sermons that we've been going through?

You and I have to choose between two spirits, two attitudes of life. Now, Baal simply means master or lord. Baal is used much more in the Bible than you know, because it's usually not translated Baal. It's usually translated husband, because he was considered the lord of his household, the master of his household. So many times you'll see Baal, you'll be looking through the Bible and you'll see the word husband or just man. You know, sometimes we'll talk about a man's house.

It's... He is Baal of the house. He's the master of the home. So a landowner could be called Baal. He was the master. He was the lord of his house. Or a husband, the head of a family could be called Baal. So Baal was a very general word. So you have to think of it in terms of the word today that we use lord. Now, you go through the Middle Ages, you know, there were actual lords in Europe. There were people who had titles of lord. You know, this is lord so and so. I think the title of lord is still used in England today. So it's a general word for a master.

We might use the word today boss. It's denoted that you had possession. You had authority over something or someone. So you could use the word boss today and have a similar meaning to Baal. Now, Baal then could be attached to any deity because he became the lord. He became your master. So you will see Baelim, which is a plural, or I think in Hebrew it would be ba'alim, if I'm close.

Caidanite, interesting, the language Caidanite and the Hebrew language have a lot of similarities. Ancient Caidanite and ancient Hebrew have a lot of similarities. So that would mean a plural form. So you even see the Bible where Bails are talked about, lords, and talking about all these different gods. So you could have the lord somebody, and it would be Baal something else. Baal was used to denote a local god. In fact, you'll see throughout the Bible where their names of towns are Baal-Pior or Baal something else. And that means Baal ruled that town. There was a master there. In Caidan there was one god that became known as Baal. He was sort of the Baal, the master.

And so even though the word can apply to a lot of different gods, there's one predominant god that it refers to, or pagan god, throughout the Old Testament. In fact, it's interesting, Beelzebub, which is mentioned in the Old Testament and the New Testament, means Lord of the Flies. He was the Lord of the Flies. And you will see a number of Bails with something attached to it, you know, to denote. There was a very specific god or application. The Canaanite god Baal was a very specific god, and he's the one that the people of Israel were attracted to, and the one that they really looked up to and became part of their religious cult for generations after generations.

Baal worship would keep reappearing throughout their history. If we look at Hosea, now we're in the Sabbath Bible studies, we're going through the minor prophets. And next month we start the Book of Hosea. We did an introduction last month, or this month in January, or December, in January, we'll actually go through and start through the Book of Hosea. Hosea, even writing late in the history of Israel, Hosea prophesied during the time that Israel fell and then over into the time of Judas still existing.

But during that time, they had a problem. Let's go to Hosea 2. Hosea 2. Look at what it says here in verse 16. God is talking here, and He's telling Hosea to tell the people of Israel these things.

And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, that you will no longer call Me My Husband. You won't call Me that anymore, and no longer will you call Me My Master.

Interesting, if you look in your margin, the Hebrew there is Belai. You're not going to call Me Baal anymore. I'm not going to go by that name anymore. This is a prophecy that goes into the time of after the return of Jesus Christ and the time of Messiah. Verse 17, For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, and they shall be remembered by their name no more. The name of the Lords. You can see how the plural is used here. God says, I'm going to take away the name of the Lords, of these masters that you follow, these gods that you follow, and that name won't be applied, and Baal won't be applied to me anymore, either.

So the Baals. The Baal of the Canaanites was Baalzebul. Baalzebul simply means the Lord Prince. So he was the Lord Prince. Very interesting history of the Canaanite god of Baalzebul. Baal was the son of the great god that nobody could define. He was El.

The Canaanite word for just generic god, you know, you and I use God. I've used the word God to refer to this statue I showed you a little bit ago. We don't have to look at it anymore, but it's not a god, right?

We know who the G god is. So we use God in a general sense. You know, if I was writing God in reference to Baal, it would be a small G, right? Big G means the god. But we know the word itself can be general. In fact, how many times have you said, you know, somebody is because of their family members, or a husband or wife, and because they're following that family, or that husband, or that wife, or their job, or whatever, and so maybe they stop keeping the Sabbath.

Well, that person doesn't come to church anymore, and they don't keep the Sabbath because of their job. Well, they just made a god out of that job. They made that an object of worship. That's a proper use of the word, but we know that when that person says that, they don't mean the god. El, in both Canaanite language and Hebrew, was a general term.

And you will find throughout the Old Testament, El referring to pagan gods. You will also see it referred to as the true god. Think of, now, I mean, you can, I know that if you thought this through, all of you could immediately, I mean, not immediately, but it wouldn't take very long to come up with, oh yeah, there's like El Shabbai, the god almighty. You know, if we wrote that in English, we would write big E, E-L. In fact, when you see El Shaddai in English, the E and the S are capitalized. Why do we do that in English?

Because we're saying this is the god. But when you see El used in English in a reference, just general sense, it's always a small E, E-L. Well, Baal of the Canaanites was the god, or was the god's son, of this sort of mysterious god that nobody understood, the El, the great El that nobody knew. But people could understand Baal, because Baal manifested himself to others, because he was the god of rain and fertility, and so many times he's called the god of thunder, or the god of the clouds. He was the one that made everything grow. He's the one who gave you life.

Without Baal, you could not have life. His symbol was a bull. Now, I just think about how many times in ancient Israel's history they worshiped bulls. You'll see that all through their history.

Now, the bull that they worshiped when it came out of Egypt had to do with Egyptian mythology, so it wasn't about Baal. It was about something else. But when you get into where they actually settled into Canaan, you'll see that they worshiped the bull all the time.

But Baal had a sister, Anat. Anat is very important, too, because she is the goddess of sexuality and war. I thought it was interesting. They put those two things together. But she is the goddess of passion and war, sexuality and war. In fact, one time, Baal got in a battle with the god that rules the underworld, and the god that ruled the underworld killed Baal. But Anat was able to resurrect it. And so, on a regular basis, once a year, in the springtime, at the time of fertility, they would worship the resurrection of Baal, the son of El. You see some strange things here, some similarities. They worshiped the god, the son of the mysterious god, who died and was resurrected by his sister, who was also his wife. That was sort of strange. He also had another wife, Ashareth, better known as Astarte. Now, Astarte is a word that you all know, you may not know it, because the English version of that is Easter.

The English version of Astarte is Easter. And, once again, she had a lot to do with spring fertility. So, the whole cult of Baal had to do with fertility, sexuality, growth, rain.

Sometimes his symbol was mating animals. That was the symbol of Baal, in addition to the bull.

The Baal worship had begun in ancient Israel in earnest already at the time of Judges. Let's go to Judges 2. Because after this, I want to then go through some of the elements of Baal worship. Why it was attractive. Why would these people who knew God be attracted to Baal worship? Judges 2.

We don't think much about Baal. And, once again, it's a generic term at times. So, different Bails in the Bible may not be the Canaanite God. Most of the time it is. Most of the time it is. And, most of the time, it's actually translated husband. Judges 2.11. The children of Israel did evil on the side of the Lord and served the Bails. Plural again. Many gods, and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them. And they bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal. Now, this is singular, because Bails, yeah, they had other gods, but this was the singular God, the great God that they worshiped the most, the son of El, who died and was resurrected. And, the asterisks. Asterisks, interesting, is plural. That has to do with these goddesses. And the goddesses had a lot to do with, in fact, some people have tried to tie in some historians, asterisks or estarte with Aphrodite, the Greek god of love and the Roman god of love and sex, their goddesses. So, this had a lot to do with love, sex, fertility, and this was the cult that they worshiped.

It was a pretty interesting system of worship. Well, look at four elements of Baal worship that we see in the scripture. Four elements of Baal worship that we see in the scripture, because this is why they were attracted to it. You think, these people have to be nuts.

Well, you know, Satan knows how to attract human beings.

And these were the four elements that attracted ancient Israel to Baal worship. The first one was that Baal worship was extremely sexually permissive.

Extremely sexually permissive. In marriage, out of marriage, homosexuality, it didn't matter, anything went. Now, I want you to think about when ancient Israel left Egypt, right? They leave Egypt. They have seen God do all these grand miracles, including open the Red Sea, and they walk through it. They go out and they come to the land of Moab. And the land of Moab would not let them pass through. But there wasn't Moab, Balaam. Now, we talked about at the Eastside Bible study here, what was it last week? We talked about Balaam, because he's mentioned in 2 Peter. We went on through 2 Peter. So, Balaam is a false prophet, but he has power. He's able to tap into the spirit world, into the demonic world. So, the king of Moab, Balaam, goes to him and says, I want you to come and bring a curse on these people. And God comes to him and says, you can't curse those people. Now, he knows who God is. And he goes to Balaam and says, I'm sorry, but the God of Israel will not let me do that, but will give you lots of money. Okay, let me figure that away. So, he decides to do it.

He's on his way to do it. He's riding a donkey, and the donkey just goes crazy.

And that appears in front of him an angel with a sword. And his donkey talks to him. He was so used to talking to things that weren't there. He has a conversation with a jackass.

And doesn't seem to think it's too strange.

Finally, he goes to Balak. Let's go to Numbers 22. Numbers, chapter 22. So, now we're going to act back even before the time of Judges. Numbers, chapter 22, verse 36. Numbers 22, verse 36. Now, when Balak heard that Balam was coming, he went out to meet him at the city of Oab, which is at the border of Armonon, the boundary of the territory.

Then Balak said to Balak, did I not earnestly send to you calling for you? Why did you not come to me? Am I not able to honor you? Now, Balam was smart enough to say, well, me and my jackass were talking, and I decided not to come. And Balam said to Balak, look, I have come to you. Now, have I any power to say to you anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that I must speak.

He says, I don't have any power to do this. The great God won't let me do it. Now, Balam didn't give up his belief in other gods. He probably said, well, El has told me I can't do this. I never looked up the word God here. It's probably Eloim, which is what? A derivation of El.

I can't say for sure that's what it is, but I would get that's what it is.

He says, the great God won't let me do this. Your gods have no power over this god. So Balam went out with Balak, and he came to Kirjath, Huzoth. Then Balak offered oxen and sheep, and he sent some to Balam and the princes who were with him. So it was the next day that Balak took Balam and brought him to the high places of Baal, that from there he might observe the extent of the people. The name of this place is Baal-Pior, the master of Pior, that region of the world.

This is probably the same deity that the Canaanites worshipped. Moab's close enough. This is a primary deity. It's probably the same one. Or it has the same powers. It's a similar god, and it's probably the son of El, and it has a lot to do with fertility, and it's their master. Remember, Baal is their master. He is their lord that they follow. Just as God says, I am the Lord, I am your master, Baal worship all had to do with this god being their master. What's interesting in chapter 23 is that Balak says, okay, I want you to go out and curse these people, and Baalam gets up and gives a blessing on the people. He says, I'm not paying you to do this. He says, yeah, well, you can pay me all you want, but God's going to kill me.

So if you read through the passage, finally, Baalam sits down with Baalak and says, ah, uh-uh, we can fix this. There is an easy way to do this. I don't have to curse them.

Basically, we'll let them choose between Yahweh and Baal. Instead of calling on Baal, who has no power against Yahweh, what we'll do is let the people choose. So let's go to chapter 25. Chapter 25 verse 1, Now Israel remained in the Acacia Grove. The people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel. They were joined to him. He became their Lord. What attracted Israel to Baal? It was a drunken orgy. It was the absolute permissiveness of Baal. We can worship the God. They were joined to him. They actually accepted his existence and worshipped him. It's the biggest party in the history of the world.

Millions of people all getting together at one time and having a great big drunken orgy.

Wow! This God gives us rain, fertility, good food, a great land, a great place to live, and we get to party, party, party. Man, Yahweh has all these rules.

All these rules we can't get drunk. We have to stay with our wives forever.

Yes, we like Baal. Now, they didn't give up worshiping Yahweh because Yahweh gave them benefits too. I mean, he opened the Red Sea for them. That's pretty good.

It was the permissiveness, the freedom, the sexual freedom that attracted them.

The second attraction the Baal had, Jeremiah 7. Now, we're jumping way ahead in Israel's history to the time of Jeremiah. So, we jump ahead hundreds of years. We get to the time of Jeremiah.

I'm going to read this little bit of a long passage here, but I want you to get the full flavor of what Jeremiah is saying. The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord sang, Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there His word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah, who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord. Now, this is after the fall of Israel, and it's the time of Judas right before their fall. So, Jeremiah is speaking to Judah, and if you read through the book of Jeremiah, of course, he lived into the time where they were destroyed. And he's telling these people, That is the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.

Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.

Do not trust in these lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord of these. We have the temple of the Lord. It was Solomon's temple, with his gold and his splendor, one of the great wonders of the world. People came from all over the world just to see Solomon's temple. It was still there. Every day there were sacrifices, every Sabbath there were services, every one of the feast days, the Passover, the days of Unleavened Bread. Sukkot, it was kept there. People came, they worshiped Yahweh, they worshiped God.

We are the temple, we are the temple, we are the temple.

For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, the first thing is the way people treat each other is atrocious.

If you do not oppress the stranger, the father, the liss of the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place or walk after other gods to your heart. But we come to the temple, we worship in the temple, we worship God. What more do you want? We keep your holy days, we keep your Sabbath. Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot ... verse 7 says, "... then I will cause you to dwell in this place in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit.

You steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know." Well, you know, at least you know Baal. He people are so superstitious, you just worship anything. And then come and stand before me in this house.

He says, then you come to me after you do all these things in this house, which is called by my name and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations. We are delivered to do all these abominations. It's a question. As the Tanakh translates, it's a Jewish publication, society's translation. So, are we safe? We are safe to come before you. God's loving, He's merciful, and it's safe to come here. You have to put your steel, and you lie, and you cheat, and you commit murder. You live in this violent society you've created, and then you show up at the temple and say, it's the temple of the Lord. We are His people. We are His people. We are His people. And so we're safe here. If you read the rest of this, He says, but you're not safe. You're not safe because of the rebellion against God. Acts 19, He says, do they provoke me to anger, says the Lord? Do they not provoke themselves to the shame of their own faces? He says, people are afraid that I'm going to get angry, God said. He says, shouldn't they be more ashamed of themselves? They're worried about, well, God may get angry at us. Nah.

Because they don't even feel any shame in what they do. Therefore, thus says the Lord, God, behold, my anger and my fury will be poured out on this place. O, may it be on man and on beast, on the trees of the field, on the fruit of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched.

That's a pretty strong statement. People who worship God who burn infants to Baal. Baal worshiped by the time of this time in Judas history, right before their fall, was so accepted because it was synchronized into the worship of God. You know, that's why you and I don't keep Christmas. That's why none of us have something like this in our homes. Like I said, fortunately, this is empty. That's why you and I don't have a Christmas tree. Because it's syncretism.

What we do is we mix these things together and pretend and believe it's the worship of God.

Boy, aren't you glad we're not like these primitive Israelites? Sometimes we look at these people, we condemn them so easily, not realizing that we live in a world that does the exact same thing. Do you and I not live in a permissive, sexually permissive world? Do you and I not live in a world that takes the worship of God and paganism and mixes together and says, it's okay? Well, this is no more than Baalism. You would feel quite comfortable if you lived in Judah at this time, in many ways it was no different than the world you and I live in. They were very prosperous. People were basically happy, going about their business.

People believed they were worshiping God while worshiping Baal. And in syncretism came a sense of lawlessness. A sense of lawlessness. It's very interesting. One of the things the church has to guard against at the end time—could you read Matthew 24?—is lawlessness. The world will become so lawless it will just begin to break the people of God down to where it gets to the place where lying and stealing and cheating becomes somehow acceptable, you know, at the fringes of who we are. That's what happened in Judah. How they treated each other as the people of God was unacceptable to him. How they treated the alien of the stranger was unacceptable to him. How they oppressed the fatherless and the widow was not accepted to him. They also, on the side, sort of worship God or worship Baal on me. He was their master. So, Baal worship was sexually permissive. Secondly, Baal worship promoted syncretism. It didn't say you shouldn't worship Yahweh. Just like people today say, well, that's sort of nice that you keep those holy days.

Well, you know, my pastor told me—I've actually had people tell me this—my pastor told me that Jesus went to church on Saturday. Isn't that interesting? To be a Baal worship is exactly what you would have said. Well, that's nice. But there was a lot of attractiveness to this, and what it did is it broke down the obedience to God's law. They said they obeyed God's law, but they didn't. A third point is in 2 Kings 21. Let's look at 2 Kings 21.

Because Baal worship just led to absolute depravity within the nations of both Israel and Judah.

2 Kings 21. Yeah, these primitive people. We're so glad we're not like them today.

We're so sophisticated.

2 Kings 21. Verse 1.

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Hepzibah. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations who the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel, who were the main nations or groups of people that they drove out, the Canaanites.

He rebuilt the high places which He had the kai His father had destroyed, and He raised up altars for Baal and made wooden images Ahab did or king of Israel had done. Ahab king of Israel had raised up a huge altar to Baal. I was going to read that scripture and I thought, well, that just overkill.

But He did. You know, you go look it up. The Canaanite god of Baal, they started to worship a lot of gods, but this was the Lord that they followed, the son of them who died and was resurrected.

He also built altars in the house of the Lord. Why don't you think about what that means there?

In Jerusalem, what was the house of the Lord? It was Solomon's temple. He built altars to Baal in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, in Jerusalem, I will put my name.

And He built altars for the host of heaven and the two courts of the house of the Lord.

Verse 6. He made his son pass through the fire, practiced sous-saint, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritualists at mediums. And he did much evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. And he even set up a carved image of Asherah, the sheet that he had made in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his son, in this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever. A star day keeps showing up, these goddesses of love and sexual power.

Baal worship had lots of religious rituals that made you feel good.

They made you feel good about yourself. You know, you might have a little statue of Baal in your mantle, in your house. You know, the one I showed, his hands are of a funny angle. Well, some of the old statues they found he has a lightning bolt in one of them, okay, because he's the god of rain and thunder that causes your crops to grow. Well, you'd want him there so you could pray to him and give him offering when he needed some rain. It felt good to go do the rituals.

I mean, they seemed very similar to the ones of Yahweh. You would bring a lamb and you would sacrifice the lamb, but you didn't have to come for all this sin stuff, you see. You never went before Baal and said, Oh, Lord, O, Master, O, Baal, I have sinned before you. I have committed adultery. I have wrong thoughts in my mind. I have hated my brother. You see, Baal didn't care.

Bring an offering. I'll send you some rain. Bring an offering and before you're going to have a good wheat crop this year. It was like paganism is all about bribery. It's about bribing the gods.

Baal didn't care if you did all those other things.

I'll just give you wealth and good stuff and you'll have a good time.

Yahweh, man, he just doesn't like to party. My people love to party. I give them good things.

You better worship Yahweh on the side because you don't want to get mad because then he loses his temper and he burns down cities and brings hail storms and all that kind of stuff. For good times, call Baal. For good times, call Baal. But the ritualism of it made you feel religious. This is very important for us, by the way. We can do a lot of things that make us feel religious but have nothing to do with truly worship of God.

They've been able to actually... I'm going to do some research on this sometime. It's fascinating. They've actually been able to find the part of the brain that experiences religious experiences.

I saw an interview with two doctors who have done this research. One said, I have found... I have proved God. He designed our brains that we are going to have a relationship with Him. The other doctor said, I have proved there is no God. All religious experiences are just a function of the brain. It came to two different conclusions. But what they did find is that in our brain is a need to have religious experiences. It's hotwired into us, which makes us different than any other animal. That alone is an amazing thing. You and I are designed to worship something greater than us. It's in our brains. If that doesn't prove God, I don't know what it does. We are designed to worship God. If that isn't fulfilled in the proper worship of God, the need is so great we will make up something to satisfy the needs of that part of the brain.

In other words, when you sacrifice in Hinduism, and you bring that sacrifice before that altar, that sacrifice of wheat, because they're vegetarians, and you bring that before that sacrifice, and you give a prayer to that God or goddess, for a few seconds you have the exact same experience as if someone was worshiping the true God. That's scary, isn't it? It shows you what Satan could do. That's what Baal worship did. You felt very good. That's what's scary about Phariseeism. That's a different subject here, but that really is what's scary about Phariseeism.

And Phariseeism, you could do the right things and feel very good, and have a terribly wrong attitude.

God judged their attitudes very harshly. It's the thing about why it feels some of you used to keep Christmas. My memories of Christmas are all good, but over the years I've distanced myself so much from it. I don't have any emotions attached to Christmas anymore, but I have to admit.

The other day, Kim and I went to visit someone, and she saw this department store. She said, Gary, I haven't been in that department store for years. Can we take ten minutes and walk around and look around? Well, I found out why after I got in there, because I always fall for everything. She thought my shoes looked pretty bad, and I needed a new pair of shoes. So anyways, we go into the department store, and there's a Christmas music play, and I walk around singing Christmas songs. I didn't even always dawn it! I thought, there's still an emotional attachment to that. That's how Satan gets to us. It hits that part of our brain that leads to worship God, and gives it a substitute. Bail worship was the perfect substitute. It let you feel religious and have no rules. The result was lawlessness. I mean, you look at the second kings, you look at what we read here, you look at what we read in Jeremiah, what's it produce? Lawlessness.

But you feel good about it.

What we see here, too, is the fourth reason people are attracted to it.

There is a spiritual connection through sorcery, consulting of spirits, witchcraft.

You know, that's huge in our country today. You know, 20% of everybody in the United States today claims not to have any religion at all, but most of them claim to be spiritual.

So they have no problem with the idea of witches and witchcraft and sorcery as being real. They have no idea the problem with that at all. They think it's real. And, you know, in this context, too, it says he let his child pass through the fire, like Moloch and other gods and goddesses of that region. They actually participated in child sacrifice. Boy, aren't you glad we don't participate in child sacrifice today? Aren't you glad we're not primitive like that?

We have four things. Bail worship was sexually permissive. Bail worship promoted secretism with other religions, which produced lawlessness. Bail worship had rituals that made people feel very religious. And bail worship involved a spiritual element of consulting spirits and sorcery and witchcraft and even child sacrifice. So different than the world we live in today. I want you to think a minute. We live in a remarkably sexually permissive society. The society we live in today believes that if you tell people that they shouldn't have sex before marriage, you are oppressive and you are evil. If you say that gay marriage is against God, you are guilty of a hate crime. That's what our society says. They would sit right in with bail worship. You've got to love each other. Free love. Bail worship was probably the first hippie. Oh, I'm glad we're not like those primitive people. They lived in a religiously syncristic society. What have we lived in for the last month with Christmas? What is it when we take ... we get so used to it. One of the things that I really like about this hall, we don't have a cross to deal with. Well, there's one here, but we're able to hide it. We're able to hide that cross. Using the word cross isn't wrong. Cross is in the Bible. But using it as a symbol, there's a problem. Why? Because it's tied in with paganism.

It's tied in with paganism. But it seems okay. It feels okay. I mean, he died on a cross. Well, it could have been a cross like that. You know, it could have been a stake. It could have been a cross like that. There's a lot of different things that the Romans used. It could have been a scaffold. There is a thing that there were three of them. They found out now that the Romans were so efficient. Sometimes they just don't use scaffoldings so they can nail 50 people of it in time. So you just carried your crossbar up, and there's a scaffolding up there. They just nailed you to wherever there was a hole in the place. It could have been a cross, just like the cross, as we see today. It could have been. But you know, to use it as a symbol in our worship, that somehow we need that, is a ritualistic need for a symbol. Well, foreshippers would have understood that.

I'm glad we're not primitive like them.

They needed witchcraft and pole reading. They were fascinated with sorcery.

Our whole country is fascinated with sorcery. You can't watch a movie or television show, in which there isn't something about sorcery or witchcraft. I mean, it's just there.

Sometimes it's so prevalent, I don't even notice it, because it's just in everything. We're just fascinated with it.

Most of the time it goes over our heads, because we're not fascinated. Shoot me. But for many people, it's real. And aren't you glad we don't sacrifice our children to bail? No, we just do it in a clinically clean, nice environment, so that it seems okay.

Aren't you glad we're not like those primitive people?

Aren't you glad we're not like them? 1 Kings 18.

Here's a message that Elijah gave to those people that is a message to our world today.

And we have to remember this message ourselves, so that we don't slowly sort of slide into this, not because we want to, but because we just get overwhelmed with it. The longer you try to obey God in this deteriorating environment, the easier it is to slowly slide into it, because it's a little compromise every day.

Verse 19.

God tells to Elijah, Now therefore send out, or Elijah tells the people, Now therefore send out and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the 450 prophets of Baal, and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table.

He had Jezebel, of course, with the queen of Israel at the time. Ahab was the king.

So Ahab said, For all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together in Mount Carmel.

You think Baal worship was sort of big at this time?

He says, bring them all together.

Verse 21 is what's so interesting, what he tells them.

Now Elijah came to all the people and said, How long will you falter between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow Him. But if Baal, follow him.

See, it wasn't that they were denying God.

They were just worshiping both.

He said, look, if Yahweh is God, let Him be your Lord and Master. If Baal really is your Lord and Master, let Him. But don't play both ends here.

Become fully pagan or become fully following of God. But don't be both. Don't be both.

Then Elijah said to the people, I alone had left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. Now if you go and ring through here, it's fascinating. Of course, what happened?

He says, go get some bulls and let's have a contest. That's interesting he picks bulls.

He could have picked lambs, but he picked bulls here, which remember is the symbol of Baal.

He said, now go and build an altar and call on Baal to bring down fire.

And if he can do that, boy, then we have to admit he's a god. And so they build an altar. They put the bull on it and they pray and they chant. Now one of the things about Baal worship is they like to cut themselves and tattoo themselves. This is one of the reasons why if you have a tattoo, you're not rebelling against God. But it's one of the reasons why we say you shouldn't get a tattoo.

I guarantee you if you were the service, you would probably have a tattoo someplace. Okay, well that's your past. So you show your tattoo, we're not going to say, stone him. Okay, it's not an argument. But why is it that we say people shouldn't get tattoos? There's a number of reasons. One is our body is given to us by God. Now we can, yes, we're allowed to make her bodies look nice. We're allowed to wear nice clothes. Yes, women, you can wear jewelry. But tattoos are a real fine line here. They're a real fine line.

They used to get tattoos for the dead. You notice how many people have tattoos for the dead now?

Notice how many athletes are covered with tattoos. And they'll tell you, this is for my mother, she died. They get tattoos for the dead. That's directly forbidden in the Scripture. Okay? Directly forbidden.

That you can't get a tattoo for the dead because there was some worship connected with them.

These people cut themselves, beat on them. They were a bleeding mess. Yes. If I hurt myself, God, they will now respond. See, it's all about bribery. It's all about hurting yourself. If I pay pittance, there was no real concept of sin. That's what's interesting. That's the reason people come into the church and so many of you still today struggle with, well, I've done something wrong. God wants me to suffer, right? How bad should I suffer before He forgives me? How many times has God said, I know you don't suffer, just truly repent, and don't do it anymore, and you don't have to suffer. No, no, we have to have suffering. Why?

Well, because we're not as sophisticated as we like to think. Sometimes we come from backgrounds that are very similar to Baal worship. God wants us to cut ourselves and hurt ourselves, and then He'll take us. And after they danced for hours and cut themselves and prayed and sang songs and felt very religious and then collapsed, He said, Huh! He must be asleep. Yell louder.

They all must be asleep. That's okay. He's probably tired. Oh, he caused it to thunder and rain and all the stuff he has to do. You probably just need to wake him up.

Of course, Elijah takes, builds an altar, puts a bull on it, builds a big ditch around it, has them soak the whole thing down with so much water that the ditch fills up with water. It's impossible for that thing to burn. And then says, God, would You show these people that You're God? The fire comes from heaven and burns the whole thing up. I mean, the bull, the wood, the stones, the water. They're just a big crater. God says, Here you go. What He amazes me is God doesn't say anything. God is so different than us. I know what I would have said. Scared? I would have said something. Want to see something else?

Or, Who do You people think You are? God doesn't say anything. It's amazing how He doesn't have to impress us. He's not compelled to impress us. Elijah said, Get me some swords and some men. He killed all 450 of the priests of man.

How long will you halt between two opinions? We've come out of this, but it's going to be hard not to go back into it as time goes on. It's going to be hard. I don't mean we'll all just walk into it. I mean, we'll slowly walk into it. We'll just get around the edges. What happens is, as our edges decay, we begin to drop God's standards.

Now, I don't mean we just all run out and commit adultery. I mean that the fringes begin to decay. As the world wears us out. It's interesting that Daniel talks about the people of God and how they are worn out. The world wears us out. I could hardly think for hours after I saw that story that morning about what happened, that man went and killed those children. I didn't even know what to feel. You know, part of me was so angry at the man, you know, and then it's like, but what can you do? He's dead. And it's, well, should that even be my response? How can those people be helped? How can we stop it? You can't. Human nature being human nature. But the deterioration of the society we live in.

In this wearing out process, we can slowly begin to see these things that sort of the spirit of Baal, which is satanic, it's the Satan spirit, can become sort of attractive to us. We can have our cake and eat it, too. We can have one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God.

Because it's too hard. So the standards drop. The word standard is interesting. In one of my pastor updates here a couple months ago, I talked about standards. I talked about how the standard, the word literally means a flag. It's a flag or a banner. And it's an Anglo-Norman word that had an original meaning and then it moved into something else. And it's used both ways today. The standard was the flag that armies used. You know, you wonder why all these armies had flags. You see in the old, you know, people don't run into battle today carrying flags, but you look all through the Roman times, the Middle Ages, up until, well, even in the First World War, they were doing it. They were all running around with flags. Why did they run around with flags?

Because your units and the confusion of what was going on had to have a standard, a place to go when it got too confusing. So you had the standard. You know, when in high school, they had the color guard, right? They marched with the flag. But you really didn't want to be the color guard in the war because that's who everybody tried to kill. There was a reason. When you killed the color guard, what did they do? They protected the standards. They protected the flags. When you shot the color guard, the flags fell down and nobody knew what to do with the confusion. You know, you read during stories of the War of 1812, and some guy jumps up with his sword and says, rally around the flag, boys! Well, they actually said that! As corny as that seems, why? The units had come apart. You run to the flag. You run to the standard. If you enjoyed the Middle Ages, the standard was the king's flag. And whenever the king went, wherever he went, there was something he was supposed to do was bring justice. So he would come into the village and we set up his standard, his flag, and everybody would come. And there was one thing that the king had, a set of scales. So he would come and say, I think that these coins have been minted, you know, that the local coins have been given out by the local fiefdom.

You know, his coins really aren't an ounce. And guess how is the only way you would know?

There would be a measurement. So standards became known as the measurement. It was the flag you went to for proper measurement. So if you knew what was right and wrong. So all through the Middle Ages, the king would come or the king's emissary and they'd set up tents and they'd put up their flag. And people would come to the banner, to the standard, and they would find what the standards are. So you have this two meaning of the word standards. It's the banner, it's the flag you rally around in confusing times, in times of war, times when the whole unit's coming apart.

And it is the place you go for the king to give you his standards, because only the king knows what justice is. Isaiah 49. Here we have a messianic prophecy. Isaiah 49, verse 22. Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will lift my hand in an oath to the nations. This is a promise from God to all peoples. So what is he promising to do here? And set up my standard for the peoples, and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. When Jesus Christ comes back, he comes back with standards. He comes back with battle flags. He comes back with an army and white horses, and they bring those battle flags, and they're gathered around them. And he sets himself up in Jerusalem, and he sets those flags down. Then he tells the world, come here, and I will measure. I will measure what is right and what is wrong. I will give you standards where there is justice, where people get rights, the rights given to them by God, where things are done fairly. That's never going to happen to you and me in this world, and we try to learn it ourselves. But it is going to happen.

There's no concept of that in Baalism. None whatsoever. Baalism is a simple concept.

Feel religious and do whatever you want. Feel religious and be able to do whatever you want.

Because Baal the Magnificent only wants you to party and have a good time, and be happy, and have fun.

Yahweh, on the other hand, man alive, he's got laws and rules and regulations and punishments, and he's just not a very fun guy.

Well, look at just briefly now. These four elements. Just wrap this up. Four elements of Baal worship, the spirit of Baal that permeates our society, and see how much we've let these standards droop. Oh, we haven't dropped them. We're holding the flags, but they just sort of droop down. Maybe they're not held high anymore. It's hard to hold high these standards in society, because when you hold the standards of God up in Baal society, what do you get? Ridicule. You people just don't know how to have fun. This is just silliness.

Beyond today's production meeting this week, where we get around for an hour or two every week, we just get on Skype and we discuss our scripts that we're writing. I'm writing one of the days of 11 bread. One of the things that came up, because we're always thinking, how would the audience see this? One of the guys said, Gary, the average person would think you're being silly.

Bread, 11 bread, yeast. The average Christian is going to listen to what you're saying and say, it's silly. How do you reach them? I sat there for, I don't know, it seemed like forever. They said, I don't know, because it does seem silly to the carnal mind.

How do we tell them this isn't silly? But see, that's what it seems in Bales' world, where you feel religious but do whatever you want. I mean, come on, what a silly ritual to eat a lemon bread for seven days and take all the leavening out. What a silly ritual. You and I don't think it's silly. We receive a blessing from God for doing that in our minds.

And you think Christmas is silly?

I'm leavening yeast?

That seems silly to them. So it gets hard.

The first one is the sexual permissiveness. We may have not dropped the standards. Very few people in the Church are committing adultery. Occasionally someone will. Occasionally someone commits for in occasion. They're forgiven of that when they repent and we move on.

Sometimes that is actually easier to deal with than the sort of fringe drooping of the standard.

Sometimes we drop the standard and you pick it back up. Sometimes we drop the standard and say, well, God doesn't love me anymore. No, we want you to pick the standard back up.

See, we're all standard bearers. We're all color guard in this group.

So sometimes we drop the standard. We pick it back up. It's dangerous to pick it back up because they just shoot you again. That's what it is to be a color bearer. That's who we are as they're calling. Sometimes we drop the standard. It's easier to deal with than compromising when drooping the standard. It's the pornography. It's the movies with the explicit sex things that we just sort of... we'll get through it... that we let come into our minds. It's the soft edges that we just let the standard just sort of draw, fall.

How much are we just set at compromising with the sexual premise of society we live in?

The syncretism. Are we letting God's standards droop by simply syncretizing?

I think it's okay to have a cross as long as it's not a crucifix. And we just let the edges just sort of go.

I think we really... where you see we droop in the standards a lot is on the Sabbath.

Where we just sort of take the Sabbath for granted.

I'm giving a whole... I'm preparing a whole Sabbath or a whole sermon on the specialness of the Sabbath and what it means down to how we approach sundown. You know, are we always pushing up on sundown? Oh, as much fun as I can get in before all the oppressiveness of Yahweh comes along. That's just Baal worship. It's the spirit of Baal. You know, I got a party. Oh, boy, now I have a party. I got to study my Bible and pray and do all this stuff. Now, I'm being a bit facetious, but sometimes we can almost be that far. The edges, the drooping of the standard.

We haven't dropped it, but it's drooping a little.

The idea that just my religious... that third thing, that just my religious feelings... I can create religious feelings. You know, I go, I keep the Holy Days, and that makes me feel religious. It's supposed to make you feel religious. You're designed to get an actual religious experience in when you sing hymns to God. You're supposed to feel that way. But what happens when we replace real Christianity with those feelings? Well, those feelings get to be enough. Going back to the Sabbath analogy, because that one's so obvious, we can feel very good about coming to Sabbath services. We feel religious. You're supposed to.

We like being with each other. We're the family of God. You're supposed to.

And then we leave, and we go out and do whatever we want the rest of the day. And what we've done is we've replaced substance as if the feeling is everything. The feeling is part of what we're supposed to have. It's good. I get it. I mean, just coming to Sabbath services to me and being here with God's people and listening to the sermon and singing together is a boost for me. But if that's all this is, then I'm losing substance. And that standard's grouping.

Then that last point, it was a spiritual religion that was really into witchcraft and sorcery. And we have to be real careful. We can walk along with demonism very easily and not even know it.

We live in a society that's just inundated with it. You can't get away from it. Like I said, I don't think you can watch hardly a movie. You start watching now every movie and television show, and you'll see a reference. I can't say everyone, but you'll see a reference to homosexuality because they're trying to make that good. And you'll see some reference to these other things. And I don't mean just in a fantasy way. I mean in a real way.

People say, well, what's the difference between Harry Potter and Bewitched?

Remember Bewitched? I'm not saying we all should go watch Bewitched, but I know of nobody that became a Wiccan because of Bewitched. There are people who become Wiccans because of Harry Potter.

But where is that line in there? You know, my wife and I were talking about this week. Where is that line? I don't always know. I don't always know where that line is, but we had better at least ask it. We better ask it. We better look at these four areas and say, have I in my life, as a standard bearer of God, allowed Baal to just droop that over just a little bit, where my standard isn't held high anymore?

And that's not something you'd look at your neighbor and ask, it's the—I mean yourself. Am I allowing those things to droop a little bit?

Because how long will they droop until I drop them?

We think those people were so primitive for worshiping Baal, but that same spirit of Satan deceives people today.

So, I want to challenge every one of you, and I'm challenging myself as well. I've thought about this, and this is one of my personal challenges. I do personal challenges every once in a while.

I have a whole bunch of them that I've been thinking about I want to do before now in the Passover. One of my personal challenges that I want to challenge you to do, too, between now and the Passover, is to think about these four standards, explore what the Bible teaches about these four standards, do some personal Bible study this week on the four things we talked about. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament. You know, I never got to the New Testament. All four of those things are mentioned and dealt with in the New Testament, by the way, in great detail. I just wanted to show you how the ancient customs of Baal, so I had to go to the Old Testament to do that. But we've got time to get to the New Testament. The worship of Baal has disappeared. You have a whole other set of gods and goddesses, people of worshiping. Write them down. Write down these four things and write down what are the standards that God wants to be to uphold as a standard bearer of God, as the color guard of our king. That's what we are. We are the color guard of the king. We carry the standards for our king. That's who we are.

And we're in the middle of a battle with the enemy. And guess who he wants to kill?

No new people will ever come.

No one will hear the gospel if he shuts down the television program. No one will hear the gospel if the government figures out a way to shut down the religion on the Internet.

The color guards, the flags will disappear.

You're God's color guard. You walk every day through this battle carrying those standards.

How much are they drooping in your life? If you see as you write these things down, here's these four elements of Baal worship, how they come into my life in an attitude, not in literally worshiping Baal, but in the same attitude that permeates society, then you need to go ask God for forgiveness.

Instead of saying, oh, I let the standard fall, or my standard's drooping, God gives up on me, go ask Him for forgiveness, and He'll help you pick that standard right back up.

He'll help you pick that standard right back up. You just have to go ask Him. You have to admit it.

Then write down what you're going to do between now and the Passover to carry those standards high.

Let's conclude by going back to 1 Kings 18. You and I don't worship Baal. None of us here are in danger of worshiping Baal, but the spirit of Baal still exists because the power behind Baal, which was Satan, still exists.

Verse 21 of 1 Kings 18. Elijah came to all the people and said, How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him. But if Baal, follow Him. But the people answered Him not a word. I hope that your response is not that final. I hope your response is, We will follow God.