Transcription
[Music] said you have to trust God to rest and put him first. He'll take care of the rest. Rejoice in giving away to bless. No servant can serve two masters. That's true of people, but that's also true of nations.
Israel was dedicated from its birth to serve God's purposes, but early on it found itself torn apart between God and foreign gods, particularly the god called Baal. Or in Hebrew, Baal, Baal, or Baal was the god of increase, prosperity, fertility. The Israelites believed that Baal would make them more prosperous. He'd make their fields prosper. It was that serving Mammon. But Messiah said, nobody can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and Baal.
Now we have evidence by archaeology that they actually tried at first to to combine God and Baal, merging God and Baal together. And you see that in the first, for instance, when when they say when they make those golden calves in the the golden calf in Egypt. When they make the golden calf, when Jeroboam makes it later on, when he breaks off from the from the southern Kingdom, he said they say, behold, this is your God, Israel, or this is the God who took you out of Egypt. They're joining Jehovah with Baal.
Now, it's interesting because that's what a lot that's what a lot of preachers do. They take God and merge him with Baal, with money, with prosperity. God does prosper, but that's not he is not money. So first they tried to have both Baal and God, or money, or prosperity and God together as their two gods. But they, but in the end, Messiah says, you can't do that. You're going to end up serving one and hating the other. And that's exactly what happened.
What happened is as they move forward in this, they end up outright worshiping Baal and hating God. And the more they went to Baal, the more they turned against God until that that become it became despising. It became persecution. They started hunting down the prophets, hunting down Elijah. And Elijah would challenge them on Mount Carmel and said, how long will you go back and forth between two opinions? If the Lord is God, serve him. But if Baal is God, then serve him. Or as Messiah said, you cannot serve God and Mammon. And they couldn't.
And so there, now there was another nation that was also founded for the purposes of God, and that was called America. Founded to serve God, founded dedicated to God at its at its origin. Those who who established it at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay and Cape Henry dedicated this new Commonwealth to be for the glory of God. But America, as ancient Israel, has also found itself between gods. God on one hand, and Baal or Mammon on the other.
From early on, you always had that battle between God and gain. And it was that impulse, that that same impulse for gain that brought that brought multitudes of slaves to this country and put men into slavery. And it's the same thing that's pulled many people from faith. It was that impulse. But that's same, you have these two things with America. But what's happening is it is it has shifted to Baal to the point, you know, it began subtly. That subtly it's materialism. But what happens now in the end, it becomes overt. And America becomes more and more overtly going against God and driving him out and warring against him.
You know, it's it's there. You look at the money, it says, "In God we trust." And yet, and yet in America, we speak of the dollar. Call they call it the almighty dollar. Conflict. If there could be a center of the worship of money, it would be lower Manhattan. Be New York City. It would be the financial district. It would be Wall Street. Standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange is a statue of George Washington with his arm stretched out, as if it was stretching to Wall Street. But it's not. It's it was stretching to a Bible.
From the day of his inauguration, America's founding day, and that day that he gave a prophetic warning, saying basically that if America ever turned away from God, its blessings would be removed. He gave this warning in front of what is now the New York Stock Exchange, the center of this wealth. Two Gods. No man and no nation can serve God or Mammon.
And then nearby, nearby that place, on that same day, the site where they dedicated America to God on Washington's first day as president, was St. Paul's Chapel. The place where they dedicated America. And and right next to that Chapel, they built this gigantic, these gigantic towers called the World Trade Center. You have the Chapel, and you have the towers. The towers represented America's prosperity and America's glory and preeminence among the world. The World Trade Center, the center of it all. And the bottom, you have this little church where America was dedicated to God. Two buildings. And yet the one came, 9/11. The the towers came down. And the thing that was left was that Chapel.
You know, in the Bible, Baal was symbolized by the figure of a bull or a calf made out of molten metal. That's a Biblical sign. When Israel first turned away from God at Sinai, they made a calf out of molten metal, a sign of the nation's turning away from God. And again, when Jeroboam did it, northern kingdom, they did two calves, a sign their turning away from God. So the sign of apostasy was this molten image of a bull.
If you go down to the place where the center of the financial world is, Wall Street, and go down a little bit before, you'll see the image of a bull in molten metal. It's called the Charging Bull. It's meant to be a symbol of America's economic, financial power. But it's a Biblical sign. The sign, it's the same sign of Baal, the sign of a nation having once known God, turning away to money, to increase. The sign of a nation turning to other gods. And that, not that they knew, not that they're planning that, but that's what the sign always was in the Bible. And there it is, right there next to Wall Street.
We have seen this God of Mammon, of America, America's economic power. We've seen it collapse more than once. The failing of the economy, the failing of the dollar. And there are more and more signs that America's days as the leading economic power on Earth is ending. And so it's significant that this was here, was the God Mammon that the nation trusted in. And now, as it turns away from God, and this thing is falling. Jesus said, Messiah said, nobody can serve two masters.
We live in a culture that for a time tried, and now is ending up wholesale abandoning God for the other, as ancient Israel did. We're doing the same. It's the spirit of the age. And it's what spirit that Christians deal with. And some Christians succumb to it. The spirit that radiates through the media, through television, through the through the internet, through all these things, and has permeated much of Christianity. All the more Messiah's words are crucial today. As his people, it's even more critical now because as the culture is so driven by these things, we have to be so much not driven by them, but driven by God. All the more crucial. We have to be free.
[Music]
[Music]
Oh
[Music]