Idolatry and Demonism; 1
Corinthians 8:4
Idolatry in human civilization
1) The development of idolatry, Romans 1:8-25.
In Romans chapter one we see a historical summary of
what took place after the flood, i.e. idolatry as we know it. That is not to
say there weren’t some forms of idolatry prior to the flood. Romans 1:18 NASB “For the wrath [divine judgment] of
God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” In some translations there is a
comma after the word “men.” This indicates a certain interpretive decision that
has been made by the translator that we don’t agree with because it indicates,
however subtle the indication is, the idea that all
men suppress the truth in unrighteousness. What that relates to is the
Calvinistic doctrine of total inability as opposed to the concept of total
depravity. Total depravity means that man in every area of his being is
affected by sin. Total inability means that there is no area in man’s makeup
where he has any ability whatsoever, including expressing positive volition.
What happens is they take the phrase “suppress” as a gnomic present. Grammar
merely tells us that it is a present tense. There are ten or twelve shades of
meaning to a present tense. If it is a gnomic present it means that this is a
universal principle that is true in each and every situation. That would mean
that every single human being at the moment of God consciousness suppresses the
truth. That is negative volition. However, we think it is a historical present
because as we go through the subsequent verses it explains what took place
after the flood and so it is talking about the fact that God’s wrath is
revealed from heaven against men who suppress the truth as opposed to those who
don’t suppress the truth. There shouldn’t be a comma there.
Not all men suppress the
truth; there are some who do not suppress the truth. These people are positive
at God-consciousness through the non-verbal revelation of God which we call
general revelation. Psalm 19:1 NASB “The heavens are telling of the
glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work
of His hands.” Romans 1:19, 20 is going to reiterate that principle, that every
single human being as they grow up looks out at the creation and at some point
recognize that there is someone higher and greater than them, and this text
says they know there is a God. Some will say they want to know more about that
God and some will say they don’t want to know anything about that God. Those who
don’t want to know anything about that God suppress at that point what they
know in unrighteousness, and God’s wrath is revealed against them. But for
those who express positive volition God in His justice will make sure they get
the next amount of information which has to do withy salvation. That is how we
solve the problem: What about the heathen? The heathen or those who never heard
have an opportunity at God-consciousness to express positive volition or
negative volition. If they express negative volition then God is not bound to
get them the gospel—He may but He is not bound to. So they will go the rest of
their life and never hear the gospel and they will never have a chance to
reject Christ, but rhe reason they are never condemned is because they never
believed in Christ, and they never believed in Christ because they suppressed
the truth in unrighteousness at the first opportunity they had and they
continue to be negative for the rest of their life. If anyone is positive then
God is going to keep them alive long enough until somehow and in some way He
will get the gospel to them.
Romans 1:19 NASB “because that which
is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” There is something inside the soul of every human
being that is, like a radio, tuned to God’s frequency so that everyone knows
internally that there is something inside them whereby they know that God
exists. There is an internal witness and there is an external witness, a
subjective witness and an objective witness. [20] “For since the creation of
the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have
been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they
are without excuse.” How do we see invisible attributes? This is not talking
about physical sight, it is talking about mental
knowledge, mentally seeing a truth. There is a testimony; it is evident that
there is a creator who is omnipotent. There is even non-verbal evidence of the
Trinity. There is enough evidence there to hold every single human being
accountable before the throne of God. [21] “For even though they knew God, they
did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they
became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was
darkened.” “They knew” is referring to
those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They had absolutely
irrefutable knowledge in their soul that God exists. At some point in the life
of every human being they know without a shadow of a doubt that God exists, and
then they have to decide: are they going to go with that knowledge, or are they
going to reject it? The vast majority of creatures suppress the truth in
unrighteousness. Part of the judgment of God is that their thinking is darkened
and hardened because of their negative volition. As a result that hardening is
going to continue throughout their life and God may even intensify it as He did
with Pharaoh, but Pharaoh is the one who initiated the darkness because of his
negative volition.
2)
The essence of
idolatry is rejecting the creator-creature distinction. They are now assigning
to something in the creation the role of creator. Think about the big bang. You
go back to five seconds
after the big bang and there is this explosion taking
place, and there is matter, energy and light. Well what is there ten seconds
before that, five seconds before the big bang? The is
still matter and energy. Something is there; it is not a creation, ex nihilo,
from nothing. There is something there and whatever that is, that matter or
energy, is eternal. So you are taking something within the created order and it
becomes the creator. In many ancient religions they, too, had an evolutionary
concept. We say that evolution is time plus chance equals complexity; they had
chaos. In the beginning was chaos and the gods generated the earth, but the
earth is made from prior existing materials. In other words, there is always
something from within the created domain that is elevated above creation and
identified as God. That is the essence of idolatry—taking anything in the
created realm, something concrete or something abstract such as an idea, and
elevating it to the position of God and exchanging the God of the Bible for
that idea.
3) Idolatry, then,
is taking something within the creation and elevating it above the creator.
This developed in the ancient world into concrete idols, physical
representations of gods and goddesses. In the New Testament the emphasis on
idolatry is more on abstract idols such as intellectual concepts, values,
ethics or knowledge. Knowledge in and of itself can become an idol; you
exchange that for the worship of God. Doctrine in some
Christians become an idol. You are so caught up in learning doctrine you
forget the doctrine is a means to an end, the end of spiritual maturity and
glorifying God. You are so caught up in the process of learning, and that is
what the problem was in Corinth,
that it is just academic knowledge. But under this point where something in
creation is taken and elevated, one of the things that happened after the flood
is that demons, fallen angels, are elevated to a position of gods and
goddesses, and these demons were the unseen reality between the physical
representations of these gods and goddesses. For example, in Leviticus 17:7 NASB
“They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which
they play the harlot. This shall be a permanent statute to them throughout
their generations.” There is the recognition there that in going to the groves
and to the Baals that when they were offering a
sacrifice to that idol there was indeed a spiritual reality there and it was a
demon. So idolatry has a spiritual dimension to it, but it is just a demon.
Deuteronomy 32:17 NASB “They sacrificed to demons who were not God,
To gods whom they have not known, New {gods} who came lately, Whom your fathers
did not dread.” So we see that one of Satan’s attempts to destroy civilization
was to get them to worship demons and demon forces. Psalm 106:37 NASB
“They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons.”
4) Modern idolatry, that is the idolatry that has developed in the
post-flood environment had its roots in the antediluvian invasion of the human
race. So this goes back to Genesis 6:3 which explains
the reason for the world-wide flood at the time of Noah. Genesis 6:1 NASB
“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and
daughters were born to them, [2] that the sons of God [angelic
creatures] saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives
for themselves, whomever they chose. [3] Then the LORD said, “My
Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh;
nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” [4]
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also
afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore
{children} to them. Those were the mighty men who {were} of old, men of renown.
[5] Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the
earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually.” Noah and his sons would pass on the stories
to their progeny of what it was like before the flood. Some of their
descendants are those who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and so
what they do is to go back to these stories about these “heroes” before the
flood, and there is probably other demonic activity going on on the earth at that time, so they develop and construct
mythologies and religious system and gods and goddesses on the basis of those
stories. So Satan is developing his own counterfeit religion and his own
counterfeit idols. That is how postdiluvian idolatry developed.
5) Idolatry in the
Old Testament is primarily associated with physical idolatry, but in the New
Testament it is primarily associated with mental idolatry. Quote from Kenneth
Hamilton: “Just as polytheism continued in an underground form in the Middle
Ages, and lives on today in modern cults of witchcraft and Satanism, the
imagine of western man was never fully Christianised. The modern idolatrous
imagination still refuses to believe that the promises of the living God are
sure and that His grace is sufficient for all our needs. It sill looks to other
powers and other authorities for support and guidance, transferring to them
what belongs to the creator alone. The modern world upon closer inspection is
filled with idols. There are historicisms”-- these are ideas, like Marxism and
socialism. If you are into a philosophical system that is not biblical you are
into an idolatrous system – “like Marxism that mimics God’s sovereign plan and
seeks to explain all things by historical, political, social, economic and
military causes alone. There are naturalisms, like evolution, that mimic’s
sovereignty and omnipotence and seek to explain all things by natural, physical
laws.”