Racheal

      Racheal

Human beings, who do not look for security in the Lord, will do anything to feel secure—overlook any fact, believe any illusion, and refuse the force of any threat. This carnal security, this seeking security in this world, rather than in God, is a deliberate avoidance of God and a refusal to seek our welfare “under His wings.” (850)

Several things are true of carnal security. (1) It is always rooted in unbelief in God and His Word. (2) Carnal security is an illusion of security that we convince ourselves is real, and therefore, is shallow and easily shaken. (3) Carnal security, rooted in self-deception and avoidance of God, produces stress, nervous tension and fears of all kinds. (4) Carnal security makes us vulnerable to calamities, which suddenly and surprisingly come upon us because, being blindly secure, we have done nothing to prepare ourselves for them. (5) Those who seek security in the creature rather than in God often convince themselves that peace and security can be bought with money, that wealth makes one invulnerable to those things that
plague the lives of lesser people. (851)

Tempting or testing God is considered by God to be idolatry, a transgression of the first commandment (Deut. 6:14–16). (853)

It is also to presume that God is accountable to us, which is to set ourselves up over God. (853)

God’s work is to be done God’s way....This using of unlawful means, i.e., in ways and means not commanded by God in the Bible, to accomplish God’s agenda and to bring God glory, is a breaking of both the first commandment and the second commandment—of the second because it is a using of means not commanded by God in the service of God, and of the first because it is a failure to give the one true
God the total surrender of our lives and agendas in total dependence upon the direction of His Word. (855)

Using unlawful means is taking God’s work into our own hands. It is determining how God is to be served by our own wills, rather than by His revealed will. (856)

We break the first commandment when we place our trust and confidence in lawful or unlawful means by which we carry on our lives in this world before God....Unbelievers, and even believers on occasion, trust in everything from their own ingenuity and ability to survive and succeed to various of man’s institutions, such as the civil government or the church, to political alliances, as was the case with Israel in Jeremiah’s day, trusting in Egypt for security (Isa. 31:3; Jer. 17:5–6)....It is secular humanism rather than Christianity, whoever is guilty of it. (856)

Unbelievers love everything but the one, true and living God. They love themselves, money and pleasure rather than being “lovers of God, holding to a form of religion, although they have denied its power.” (857)

Paul warns us of a zeal for God that is “not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2), which is a zealous concern to perform all the right duties so as to justify ourselves before God, to establish our own righteousness with Him, to make points with God so as to earn His favor.
We are also warned of a mistaken zeal for God’s glory as is seen in Joshua’s requesting of Moses to forbid the young men from prophesying in the camp; and in the priests and scribes being displeased with the children in the Temple crying “Hosanna” to the Son of David; and in the apostles who rebuked the little children who were being brought to Jesus. (858)

We can also see a superstitious zeal in the Baal worshippers who cut themselves with knives, while calling on him, in order to get his attention and win his favor. ...
Contentious zeal often troubles the church, which is the manifestation of a “party spirit,” or in people arguing over “foolish and unlearned questions,” which are at best curious and useless, and which “gender strifes.”
And then, a kind of zeal exists which we can call a temporary zeal, a flash in the pan, short-lived, but bright, momentary, spasmodic, but not lasting and genuine. (859)

Someone who is “lukewarm” is in a worse condition by far than one who is “cold.” For this person is not only entirely without a spark of spiritual life in Christ, but blatantly lives for this world and its seductions, in open defiance or hardened apathy to the doctrine and the church he once professed to embrace. The scribes and Pharisees were “lukewarm.” (860-861)

Christ’s letter to the Church at Sardis is a warning about the fatality of over-confidence and apathy in the things of God, and the fatality of being anesthetized to spiritual needs and responsibilities by our absorption in the pleasures and profits of the evil culture around us. The putting of one’s culture before God is the essence of this “deadness” that Christ found in the Sardis church. (862)

The prophet Ezekiel unmasked the hypocrisy of the religious and civil leaders of Israel that came to him by speaking the Word of God to them which exposed the fact that they were setting up idols in their hearts and putting in their own lives stumbling-blocks of iniquity. They may have pretended to come to the prophet for a
Word from God, but in their hearts they were cut off from God and had, along with all the false prophets, turned their back on Him. Ezekiel identifies them as corrupt idolaters and incorrigible backsliders. (862-863)

Putting the stumbling block of iniquity before their own faces, implies a deliberate rejection of the Law of God, which should always be set before their face for their constant obedience to it (Prov. 3:21, 23), and a replacing of that Law with the inclinations and impulses of their evil hearts. (863)

This phrase in the Larger Catechism’s answer to question 105 is directly aimed at the practice in the Roman Catholic Church of worshipping and praying to dead saints and angels because of Rome’s belief that we need their heavenly intercession and mediatorial assistance, which belief flies in the face of the statement of 1 Timothy 2:5, that the only Mediator between God and men is Jesus Christ. (867)

(1) The Bible nowhere commands us to worship or pray to saints and angels; nor do any examples of such worship and prayer exist in the Bible. The Angel of the Lord was worshipped, but only because He was a pre-incarnate appearance of the Son of God. (2) Consistently throughout the Bible saints and angels repudiated worship or prayer that was directed toward them with holy abhorrence (Matt. 4:10; Acts 14:13–15; Rev. 19:10; 22:9). (3) Rome’s saint- and angel-worship is but baptized paganism, and like all other, it tends to degrade the worshipers. Hence, the importance of the prohibition of idolatry. Nothing but infinite perfection should be the object of religious worship. The reverence and admiration which worship implies invest every quality of the object worshipped with sanctity.… The worship
of an imperfect object is therefore the deification of defects... (867-868)

The Church has only one Lord and one faith (Eph. 4:5) and “that one Lord alone has lordship over the faith of every Christian.” 208. ​Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 49. (869)

No human being in family, school, church or state has the authority to make us do anything that is out of harmony with our one Teacher and Father in Heaven, and our one Leader, Jesus Christ, who has revealed His will for us in His written Word. In Christ’s church, all of her members stand equally as brothers and sisters under the one, superior and final authority of the Bible alone. Regardless of his extraordinary godliness, faith, heroism for Christ, and understanding of the Word of God, no man is to be blindly followed, and no doctrine of man is to be received simply because the man who teaches it is greatly respected. (870)

Only God is the lord of the human conscience in all matters of faith and duty. It is subject to the authority of only God’s Word, and is entirely free from all necessity to subject itself to human traditions and human laws. (871)

Individuals and institutions have always tried to encroach upon this liberty of conscience and this exclusive lordship of God over it, by forcing upon it other worldviews, beliefs, practices and regulations, none of which originated with the Word of God, but which originated in the mind and experience of man. No human being on earth has the authority to dictate to the conscience of another human being. (871)

(1) God alone has legitimate authority over the human conscience. (2) The written Word of God is the only rule of faith and practice governing the conscience, by which God maintains His lordship over the conscience. (3) The doctrines, laws and traditions originating in the mind and experience of human beings, which are either contrary to or in addition to the Word of God have no authority to bind the conscience. (4) To permit the conscience to be bound by these man-made doctrines and laws is to betray true liberty of conscience, and to deny that God alone is one’s
Lord. (5) Liberty of conscience under the Word of God, i.e., Christian liberty, must always be clearly and emphatically distinguished from “freedom to sin,” or to do or not do whatever one desires, under the guise of the act being approved or condemned by conscience... (871-872)

Slighting and despising God and His commands is a great evil....It is rooted in self-worship and ingratitude to God for His goodness. To slight God and His commands is to neglect, disregard, to consider of little value and unworthy of notice God’s glorious perfections, gracious offers and righteous commands. To despise God and His commands is to condemn, scorn, disdain, have the lowest opinion of, abhor God’s glorious perfections, gracious offers and righteous commands. (874)

...to resist the preached Word is to resist the Spirit of that Word, who alone can work that Word into the heart. To resist the Holy Spirit is to cut oneself off from the only One who is able to apply the benefits of salvation to him. (878-879)

To grieve the Spirit of God, then, is immense ingratitude to the One whose
indwelling certifies that we are the children of God, and secures our final salvation... (880)

Discontent with God’s will for our lives and impatience with God in times of trouble and affliction are evil responses to the God who loved us and gave His Son that we might have abundant life. (881)

Discontent and impatience with God in times of affliction is unreasonable unbelief and gross ingratitude. It is a questioning of the promise of God, the goodness of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God, and the sovereignty of God. We commit these sins when we take our eyes off the triune God, and become absorbed in ourselves and our troubles. (882)

[A] Fortune--Luck, Chance, Fate:
Since the reason, order and purpose of things that happen to us for the most part remain hidden in God’s mind, and not comprehended by human reason or observation, some things do seem “fortuitous,” when in fact they are not at all. Nothing is more “fortuitous” than the rolling of the dice or the casting of the lots, and yet the Bible says: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the
LORD” (Prov. 16:33). The point is that God’s sovereign providence orders and directs all events even those which appear to be the most fortuitous and accidental. (886)

To attribute to luck or fortune what happens to us is, at heart, a denial of the existence of the sovereign God. It is to deny that the creation is in His hands, and that He does whatever He pleases in, with, and to His creation. (887)

[B] Idols

Praising idols for the good things that happen to us is blatant ingratitude to God. It is a “smack in the face” to Him, a deliberate refusal to admit to His goodness, and an attributing of divine goodness to gods we have made in our image, who are mere figments of our imaginations. (888)

[C] Ourselves

We commit idolatry when we credit ourselves—our wisdom, ingenuity, strength, stamina, good works—for the good things that happen to us. This always happens when we “forget the Lord by not keeping His commandments,” when we enjoy God’s bountiful material blessings on our lives, becoming satisfied with these
material blessings and content in them. When our hearts become proud, and self-seeking, the higher the priority we place on material things, and the lower priority we place on God and His kingdom. (891)

[D] Any other Creature

In their futile attempt to escape the God who is there, unregenerate human beings will attribute power to and worship anything, however irrational, ridiculous or stupid. (892)

We are specifically commanded by God to have no other gods “before Me,” or literally “There shall not be to you other gods upon or against My Face.” (894)

Therefore, to break the first commandment “before His face” greatly aggravates the sin, making it more heinous and abominable because it is blatantly committed before the face of our Lord and Savior in direct defiance to His Law in contempt for His love for us. No sin is more wicked than one that is committed in spite of our conscious awareness of God’s dear Face. So then, God adds this phrase to the first commandment as an argument to dissuade us from breaking it and to persuade us to worship and obey Him in all we do as people living constantly in His sight. (895)

     Racheal