[review: The Menu said “No Substitutions” - part 1]
     Good morning and welcome once again to the Berean Break, my name is George Sinkie and I am so glad that you have joined us today.  I really hope that you have your Bible handy and also a pen and paper so that you can take some notes and check out what is said this morning.  You should check it out according to the only reliable guide which is the Bible.  We need to check out what anyone tells us and use the Bible as our only guide and standard for what is right and wrong.  As we begin this morning let’s go to God in prayer:

Almighty God in heaven, we come before You humbly this morning.  We thank You for this day in our lives and pray that we can use it to draw closer to You.  As we look into Your word and learn what Your will is — may we conform our lives to the truth.  No matter what we need to change help us to love You enough to change it.  Thank You so much for Jesus and the sacrifice that He made for us on the cross.  And we pray in His name,  AMEN !!

     How do you like your steak done – well-done – medium-rare – or somewhere in between?  What about your burger – ketchup , mustard, pickles, onions, tomato, cheese – plain or the works?  We are so used to going to a restaurant and ordering things our way.  We as Americans love buffet style eating because we can pick and choose what we want.  Rarely, but occasionally, you will find a restaurant that has on its menu “NO SUBSTITUTIONS.”  In other words you get it the way they want to do it and no other way.  I say rarely you’ll find these because most people will not go to this type of place very often.  Now all this having it your way is all well and good when it comes to food.  But as we looked at beginning last week this type of attitude in religion is spiritually deadly.  Last week we began to look at Jeroboam and the changes he made in the Old Testament religion when the Kingdom of Israel divided.  I encourage you to send for the cassette of that lesson so you can listen to these two programs together.  The tapes are free of charge and the address will be given at the end of the program.
     Turn over with me to 1 Kings 12:25-33 and read about Jeroboam with me.  Once we have read this, then we will recap the points we looked at last week.  Read with me now 1 Kings 12:25-33

   25 Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and lived there.  And he went out from there and built Penuel.
   26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will return to the house of David.
   27 “If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will return to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah;  and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.”
   28 So the king consulted, and made two golden calves, and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem;  behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt.”
   29 And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.
   30 Now this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan.
   31 And he made houses on high places, and made priests from among all the people who were not of the sons of Levi.
   32 And Jeroboam instituted a feast in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which is in Judah, and he went up to the altar; thus he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made.  And he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.
   33 Then he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised in his own heart;  and he instituted a feast for the sons of Israel, and went up to the altar to burn incense.

     In the last lesson we looked at the fact that Jeroboam substituted the place of worship that God had commanded.  God had shown in His Law that the Temple in Jerusalem was the place that His people were to worship, but Jeroboam set up centers of worship, one in Dan and one in Bethel.  He told the ten tribes that followed him that these were the places to worship.  It also says that this was sin.  In applying this to our lives today we saw from the New Testament that God established only one church and that church is His temple.  Like Jeroboam, men today have established all kinds of churches — this denomination and that denomination ... their inventers and their leaders in a sense have said God’s way is too hard or too much for you to do, so here’s another way.  But just as in Jeroboam’s day, this is a sin.
     The second substitution we looked at Jeroboam making was that he substituted the priesthood.  Again God had given specific instruction — the Levites were to serve in the tabernacle and later on the temple, with the sons of Aaron being the priests.  Jeroboam appointed whoever wanted to be a priest to the priesthood.  Today within the man-made denominations, man has set up a separate priesthood.  The will of God however teaches that all Christians are a part of the priesthood.  The clergy-laity system of denominations is a sin before God.  God does not present a smorgasbord where we can pick and choose — the choice we get is to obey God or reject Him.

     As we continue to look at this account we see that Jeroboam also substituted the object of worship.  Like the golden calf Aaron made for the people in Exodus 32, Jeroboam made two calves of gold. Read again with me 1 Kings 12:28-29

   28 So the king consulted, and made two golden calves, and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem;  behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt.”
   29 And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.

     The words of Jesus, when He was being tempted by Satan show the error in this.  Read Matthew 4:10

   10 Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’”

     Even with this plain teaching people today still worship Mary, those they call saints, angels and many other objects.  Now I know they may say they don’t worship them, but when you bow down to and kiss the foot or ring of a person that is the biblical idea of worshipping.  These men often expect and in some cases even demand this type of worship, yet we see a couple of examples in the Scriptures.  First in Acts 10:25-26

   25 And when it came about that Peter entered, Cornelius met him, and fell at his feet and worshiped him.
   26 But Peter raised him up, saying, “Stand up;  I too am just a man.”

And also in Revelation 22, an angel, I believe with fear in his voice says to John, Revelation 22:8-9

   8 And I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things.  And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things.
   9 And he said to me, “Do not do that;  I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the words of this book;  worship God.”

I say that he had fear in his voice because this is just the type of rebellion that Satan did to God and was cast out of heaven.  No faithful being, human or angelic, will want to substitute the object of worship God has commanded.

     The final thing we want to look at is that Jeroboam substituted the pattern of worship.  He ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month as he came up with in his own heart.  Look at 1 Kings 12:32-33

   32 And Jeroboam instituted a feast in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which is in Judah, and he went up to the altar;  thus he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made.  And he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.
   33 Then he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised in his own heart;  and he instituted a feast for the sons of Israel, and went up to the altar to burn incense.

Note also that it was like the feast in Judah, but it was not as God commanded.  If you go back and look at the building of the Ark by Noah or the building of the Tabernacle by Moses you will see that it says time and agin that they were to build it according to God’s pattern.  And that they obeyed God and did it His way.  There is a very sobering warning for those who will heed God in Hebrews 2:1-3

   1 For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.
   2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense,
   3 how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?  After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard,

Now this is dealing with salvation, but we must remember salvation is based on obeying the will of God.

     Do we see this same kind of substituting going on today?  Yes.  There is substitution with regard to baptism.  God teaches that baptism is a burial in Colossians 2:12

   12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

The word itself means to dip or plunge under, and yet those who substitute will say that sprinkling or pouring is also baptism.  This is a change in God’s pattern.  Others will say that saved people need to be baptized, but listen to the words of Jesus, Mark 16:16

   16 “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved;  but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.”

A person has to believe and be baptized to be saved according to God’s pattern, note that this also eliminates the substitution of infant baptism because infants do not have the capability to believe.

     We do not have the time right now to look at any more examples of these substitutions, but Lord willing we will spend some time next week looking at the Pattern.
     We have seen that when we substitute our will for God’s will that is becomes a sin.  Sin is what will keep us out of heaven.  And sin is what Jesus died on the cross to deal with.  When a restaurant says, NO SUBSTITUTIONS, they may let you change something, but when God says, “No substitutions,” that’s what He means!

[review: The Menu said “No Substitutions” - part 1]