They themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how you turned
to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven
whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
Now let me just stop and mention this part where it says how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God.
Now when the Bible says that they turned from God to idols, obviously what he's referring
to there is that they turned from false gods to the true God.
That's why it says that they turned from God to idols to serve the living and true God.
See the living and true God is being contrasted with what?
The idols.
Because the idols are not living and they're not the true God.
How many times throughout the Old Testament did God rebuke the people for worshiping idols,
for having graven images, molten images, and he said they have eyes but they see not, they
have ears but they hear not, they have feet but they cannot go, they must needs be born.
Somebody has to carry them around because they can't walk.
Somebody else has to make them and fashion them and set them up.
He says they are all laid over with gold and silver and there is no breath at all in the
midst of them.
He says these are the dumb idols that the Gentiles have been carried away with.
But he says to them you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God as opposed
to what?
A dead idol, a false god, a god that is not a real god because there is only one true
God.
Now what's funny is that a lot of people will try to point to this verse and say see this
verse is a verse that says that you have to turn from your sins to be saved.
Here's people that turn from their sins to be saved.
But wait a minute, that's not what this verse is about.
This is a verse talking about people worshiping a false god in the form of an idol to the
true God, the living God.
But they'll try to take a very loose interpretation of idols here.
Well you know your car could be an idol, your bank account could be an idol.
And look, truly covetousness is idolatry in a metaphorical sense, in a very symbolic sense.
But here we're not talking symbolically.
We're talking about literal idols here.
When he says you turn to God from idols, he's talking about a literal idol, false god, a
little statue that somebody's going like this.
I mean think about it, in India today it's filled with idolatry.
Over a billion people are worshiping little statues, little idols.
And they're burning incense and they're offering sacrifices and so forth and doing rituals
and prayers before idols.
You know we have a huge demographic of people right near here that are worshiping an idol
of a woman.
And they have this goddess, this female idol that they build little shrines to and pray
to and burn incense to and her name is Mary and she can't save you.
And they need to turn from that idol and stop trusting that idol to save them.
Or they'll have an idol of some blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white dude, right?
And they'll bow down to that idol and they think that that idol will save them if they
do enough works.
No, they need to turn to the true and living God and no one's ever seen the true and living God.
No man hath seen God at any time.
That they're worshiping idols.
Hey, this is God.