Worshipping invisible powers

The reason that “gods” is plural in Genesis 3:5 is because it’s equally available to Adam and Eve. When you hear people always talking about egalitarianism and “everything’s equal,” that comes out of that message from Satan to Eve:

[4] And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
[5] For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

That’s saying, “You can have the character of God. You can have it; he can have it.” We’ve got all these little gods out here that all think they’re God and they worship and serve the creatures—themselves--more than the Creator, says Richard Jordan.

Eve could look out and see all those fallen angels; creatures in the angelic realm. Why would you stop and be like one of them when they were already made in the image and likeness of God?

They had the image of God because that’s how they were made. They didn’t need to go become something. That’s the difference between law and grace. It goes all the way back to the very beginning.

All those gods, they’re fallen, they’re in darkness. They’re called stars.

Job 15: [14] What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
[15] Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.
[16] How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?

Mankind is not clean but, look, the heavens aren’t clean either. There are creatures in the heavens that are fallen and are as filthy and vile as you and I are. The kingdom of darkness extends ALL the way out through the creation.

Now, the reason that’s problematic for Israel is you go to Deuteronomy 4:19: [19] And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.

Moses writes Deuteronomy and you have to get this in your mind—to understand Genesis you have to appreciate the perspective from which it was written. Moses wrote Genesis, but he didn’t live during the time of Genesis. Moses didn’t write anything until after the exodus.

He’s carried Israel out of Egypt, they’ve gone through the wilderness, and they’ve been out there for all those years and now 40 years later they’re ready to go into Canaan and he writes Deuteronomy.

So, during the time he’s trying to train Israel, the nation, to go into the land, He writes Genesis, then Leviticus, Numbers, Exodus and Deuteronomy.

The word “deuteronomy” means “second giving of the law,” and that’s why there’s a lot of things in Deuteronomy that are just rehearsals from what he wrote back in Exodus and Leviticus.

He wrote Leviticus before the wandering, and Deuteronomy after the wandering. Back in Leviticus he’ll say, “You do this and God will do that, and you do that and He’ll do this,” and in Deuteronomy it’s sort of like he says, “You did this and God did that—told you.”

When Moses writes Genesis, he’s writing to these Israelis over here who’ve come out of Egypt, who are in the wilderness, and he’s explaining to them who they are, where they came from and how they got in the mess they’re in.

Israel’s going to go into the land of Canaan and dispossess the Gentiles in the land; throw them out, get rid of all the stuff they’ve got and then establish God’s kingdom.

Well, who are those Gentiles? Where did all that stuff they’re doing come from? They were doing some pretty bad things. Abominable things. Go to Leviticus 18 and 20 and you’ll say, “Man, what kind of culture was that?!” Well, that was the culture they got into; that’s what darkness produces in society.

You go back in Leviticus and read about all the sexual perversion. Moses said, “Stay away from it.”

Do you know the largest purveyor of information on the internet is pornography? Moses took Israel into a land where that stuff was just as pervasive as it is in our day. And he wants to explain to them how it got that way.

So when he writes all this stuff in Genesis, if you can appreciate the fact that he’s writing it, not just for the first time anybody ever read it, but for people who know a bunch of this stuff and he’s explaining where it came from. This stuff begins to permeate Israel.

They’ve spent 40 years facing some of this stuff and it’s already begun to seep in and be EMBRACED by the Israelis.

From Deuteronomy 4:19, you see what somebody’s doing. They are going to look at that stuff in the heavens and worship and serve them. Now, we call that idolatry. THAT’S what the pagans were doing.

They were worshipping the sun, the moon and the stars. But they weren’t just worshipping the physical sun, the physical moon and the physical stars; they were worshipping the powers associated with them.

The rulership, the message, the sign language—the teaching. It's that issue of worshipping and serving. What did Job say about the heavens? Is that a good place to get your message? Is that a good thing to worship? Is that a good thing to serve?

By the way, when he says “worship,” there’s a worship in connection with the powers of heaven. They’re worshipping the invisible powers that these bodies (sun, moon, stars) were just the signs of.

There’s something behind them that they’re a symbol of. That’s why in religion, what did God tell them? “Thou shalt have no graven image.” You’re really worshipping where the image came from, because an image is the expression of a thinking process. There’s a spiritual force behind the making of that image—and then they serve them. There’s always religio-political acts of service connected with this worship.

To be continued tomorrow