Tuesday March 10, 2015 “Exposing the Cultural Idolatries

that Block the Covenant”

Idolatry is built into the woof and warp of all human culture, through our worldview, language, religion

and history.

It is especially embedded in the attitudes, customs and habits of our family life

These are modeled and inculcated in each generation, intentionally and not

Formal instruction and education are added later on to the initial cognitive and

value infrastructure

Children observe intensely, perceive, remember, reason (not always accurately) and conclude, making choices based on a

rudimentary value system

What they perceive in early life is normal (the norm) and “normative” for them

All that happens around them IS for them “the way life works”

Racism, Sexism, Classism, the sexual taboo, a consciousness of an invisible (benevolent or fearful) God, are embeded early in life

They are inculcated unconsciously by the spontaneous, behavior of their role models

The fight/flight/ignore instinct develops at a very early age

The idolatries imbibed during our upbringing damage each individual’s

personality, distorting our idea of love and authority, hence our significant

relationships and ultimately the very social fabric

That is how the “sins of the fathers” are passed on to their children to the 3rd and the 4th generation of those who do not

know God

The antidote to Idolatry is the Covenant:

An effectual, transformational relationship with God, with rules,

promises and consequences

The Covenant is really a marriage proposal. God adopts a people for Himself, to whom He is “married:”

To Israel in the Old Testament (Jer 2:2, 3:14, 31:32; Isa 54:5,6 and 62:4,5;

Eze 16:8; Hosea 2:19,20; etc.) To the Church in the New Testament

(Eph 1:22-23; 5:23,24,25-27, 32; Col 1:18, etc.)

There are numerous references to the

“adultery” of God’s people (Jer 3:1, and 6-13)

when they turn their back on Him

The Apostle Paul also uses the marriage language saying that he has bethrothed us to Christ (2 Cor 11:2,).

The best human representatation of the Covenant is

our Marriage in Christ

Christian Marriage:

A three-way Covenant, a man, a woman and Christ

covenanted to love one another exclusively for life

replicated in a new generatio of Covenant keepers,

set free by God’s grace to live freely under God’s law

The Covenant is God’s remedy to sinful man’s “marriage”

(adherence, attachment, worship of) to wordly values,

enshrined in our cultural idolatries

Unredeemed, unrenewed, unreformed, untransformed cultures

are Pagan (or semi-Pagan) contaminated by

the values of this world, opposite to God’s values

They enshrine idols, harboring ideas that are contrary to the

Law of the Lord

They are so universally accepted that they are sometimes hard to

spot by the natives of that culture

Our Latin American Case

We must identify the idols in our cultures in order to denounce,

renounce and counter their effects with a culturally

contextualized Gospel of Grace

Cherished idols are the enemies of God

They block the possibility of making full Covenant with Him

Moses could not deliver the tables of the law

to an idoltrous Israel