"HARDENED HEARTS"
Intro. We have just seen the 5th and 6th trumpet judgments in which hell was opened and invaded the earth, and 1/3 of the earth's inhabitants were killed. You would think that in seeing the horrible consequences of sin that people would be repenting of sin and crying out to God. But what is the case?
I. THEY WOULD NOT REPENT FROM THEIR SATANIC WORSHIP.
A. You are worshiping and serving either God or Satan.
1. Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters, you cannot serve God and Mammon." This is true, but it is also true that you are serving God or Mammon.
2. If your life is not being governed by Jesus Christ, then Satan is controlling your life.
a. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, said, "In times past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that even now works in the children of disobedience."
3. Jesus said, "He that is not for Me is against Me."
4. You are either following God's truth, or Satan's lies.
5. Turning from God is always a double action. A person never just turns from God, he is turning to something else.
6. God wants the first place in your life. He wants your love for Him to exceed all other loves.
a. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
b. When Jesus was asked which was the greatest of all the commandments, He responded, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all of your soul, heart, strength, and mind."
c. With so many their love for the world competes with their love for God.
d. The Bible tells us, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, for he that hath the love of the world in his heart, has not the love of the Father.
B. In the Bible times, Satanic worship involved the worship of idols.
1. This is referred to as the worship of the works of their hands. for their idols were made by their hands.
2. What people seem not to realize is that Satan is behind all of the worldly attractions.
3. Moses wrote:
DEU 32:15 Jeshurun waxed fat, then he forsook God [which] made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. He provoked God to jealousy with strange [gods], with his abominations he provoked Him to anger.
DEU 32:17 He sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom he knew not, to new [gods that] newly came up.
4. David said:
PSA 106:37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
5. Paul wrote the Corinthians:
1CO 10:20 But I [say], that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
1CO 10:21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.
6. It is one or the other, if it is not one, it is the other.
II. THE WORSHIP AND SACRIFICES TO THE IDOLS WAS AN HONEST CONFESSION OF WHOM YOUR GOD ACTUALLY WAS.
A. Today people are not really honest. They like to deny that their god is Molech or Mammon.
1. Just because you do not have an idol before which you pray and offer sacrifices, the truth is that pleasure is your god, or power is your god.
2. A person's god is the master passion of their life.
a. If pleasure is the main pursuit of your life, then you are a worshipper of Molech.
b. If education is the greatest passion of your life, then you are a worshipper of Baal.
c. If the desire for power controls your life, then Mammon is your god.
d. If your sexual desires control your life then you are a worshipper of Ashtoreth.
B. If a man does not believe in the God who created him, then with his head, he creates his own god.
1. Note that in our text, the worship of idols is also equated with the worship of devils.
2. Paul in
Romans 1 speaks of how the wrath of God is going to be poured out on those who when they knew God did not glorify Him as God, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened, and professing themselves to be wise, they actually became fools.
C. The prophets noted how blind to reality the worshippers of false gods really are.
1. David noted:
PSA 115:4 Their idols [are] silver and gold, the work of men's hands.
PSA 115:5 They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not:
PSA 115:6 They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not:
PSA 115:7 They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.
PSA 115:8 They that make them are like unto them; [so is] every one that trusteth in them.
2. Isaiah noted:
ISA 44:9 They that make a graven image are empty headed, they witness against themselves. The idols that they make see not, nor know; they should be ashamed those who make their gods, and mould their graven images, which are totally unprofitable. The smith beats on it with his hammer, and with the strength of his arms, he fashions it. The carpenter stretches out his ruler, he marks the lines on it and then he fashions it with a plane. He makes it to look like a man, according to the beauty of a man; that he may place it in his house. He cuts down cedar trees, or the cypress or the oak, because of their strength or he plants an ash, and God sends the rain that nourishes it. He then takes part of the tree and burns it in the fireplace that it might keep himself warm. He will use part of the tree for fuel in the oven to bake his bread. Then part of the wood he fashions into an image and he falls down before it and declares,
"You are my God." He has burned part of it in the fire; with a part of it he cooks his meat, and is satisfied: Then he warms himself by the fire and says that he has seen the light. With the remaining wood from the tree he makes a god, an image, and he falls down before it and worships it, and prays to it, and says, deliver me, for you are my god. They just do not reason or seek to make sense of their folly, for God has shut their eyes, that they cannot see; [and] their hearts, that they cannot understand. And none stops to consider and they seem to lack the logic and understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten [it]: and shall I make the rest of it an abomination? shall I fall down to the trunk of a tree?
D. If you do not worship the true and living God, the Creator of this universe, then you are under the influence of Satan's power, who has blinded your eyes that you cannot see the truth.
E. It is possible to harden your heart too much and so often to the gospel that you go beyond the ability to repent.
1. We read of Pharaoh at the time of Moses hardening his heart against the commandment of God, until he came to the place that God made stiff his heart.
2. John speaking of the Pharisees said, "Therefore they could not believe." It was no longer they would not, but they could not.
3. Paul wrote to the Romans, "Do you think that you can live in rebellion and sin and escape the judgment of God? You have despised the richness of His goodness and patience, and seem not to realize that the goodness of God was intended to lead you to repentance. Through the hardness and the impenitence of your heart, you have only stored up to yourself the wrath of God that shall be revealed in the day of His wrath and righteous judgment."
III. WHAT WERE THE THINGS FOR WHICH THEY WOULD NOT REPENT?
A. Their worship of devils.
B. Their murders.
1. Their worship of power their right to control their own bodies.
2. Their right for abortions on demand.
C. Their drug addictions.
1. The worship of pleasure.
D. Their fornication.
1. The Greek word is porneia, from which we get our English word pornographic.
2. The word means illicit sexual activity.
3. The worship of sex.
E. Their thefts.
F. It should be noted that all of these sins are forgivable. Jesus made the way for forgiveness possible by dying for your guilt. But repentance is necessary, the Bible says, unless you repent you will perish. But to harden your heart over and over to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, can bring you to the place where you cannot believe or repent. God said that His Spirit will not always strive with man.
Verse-Reference
Square — [Jhn 1:1 KJV]
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Use SBL Abbrev.
