Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, good morning. Want to welcome those that are live streaming and I want to welcome those that came this morning. Travel through that little bit of a snow.
[00:00:09] A little bit slippery this morning, but we've just been praying for your safety. And aren't you glad that this is the first day of spring?
[00:00:20] I actually read that on the calendar this morning. You may not be aware that we've been actually working as a church family to bring a refugee family. That was approved by the United States nation's High Commission Council for Refugees. We've been at this for over five years. It just takes a long time. But the good news is they're about ready to come to Red Deer. We're probably weeks, just a number of weeks away, maybe a month or so. So what we need from you now, we've had money set aside. But how many know it's not just money they need, they need actually friends. They need people because when you get here, they don't have driver's license. So they're going to need rides, they're going to need rides to the doctor, rides to the shopping, that kind of stuff. And so what we're going to do is have an interest meeting. And you want to help someone that's new from another part of the world. These are beautiful Christians. They speak English, they were translators, they're highly educated.
[00:01:17] It's a beautiful family of five.
[00:01:20] So we're welcoming here and they've been following us online now for quite a while, so they feel a part of our church family.
[00:01:28] So if you're interested in helping us, doesn't mean you're signing up if you come to the interest meeting. But at least we'll tell you some of the things we'd like you to do. It's on March 31st. That's a Wednesday night, March 31st, at 7 o' clock in the fellowship hall. So if you'd like to help us, that would be.
[00:01:46] It's Thursday night. Sorry, I got Wednesday, March 31st.
[00:01:50] My mistake.
[00:01:52] Okay, Thursday night. Thank you, Patty. You're right. The last day of the month.
[00:01:57] I'm going to have you stand. Well, it says Wednesday on my notes. That's part of the problem. It's a little confusing.
[00:02:04] Anyways, let's pray this morning.
[00:02:07] We're going back to the book of Jeremiah. And how many know this book has been actually quite challenging to actually speak and also receive. So I believe God wants to speak into our lives this morning. Father, I just thank youk this morning that yout're such a gracious God and That in spite of all the antics that we do as your kids, you don't give up on us. You love us with an everlasting love. And Father, I really believe today that you want to expose things in our lives that are hindering us for really moving forward in our relationship with you. And many times we seek meaning, purpose, significance and security in things other than you. And it's always disappointing.
[00:02:51] So now I pray today that you would expose these things in our lives so that they could be shattered and that we would learn to trust you and you alone as the one who's going to take care of us no matter how young we are or no matter how old we get. And we thank you for that. In Jesus name. And God's people said amen. Amen. You may be seated. Pat, do you want to hand me that advancer thing there? I think it's.
[00:03:17] So where does our hope come from?
[00:03:22] Where.
[00:03:23] Where are we putting our confidence?
[00:03:26] Where are we giving our life's energies? I always think that's really a crucial question.
[00:03:32] Many today would say that we're living in a godless age, but that would be true in a very narrow sense.
[00:03:39] What we mean by that, if we were Christians, we say, well, people aren't trusting in the true and the living God. They don't know who Christ is.
[00:03:47] The reality is that we're living in an age filled with gods.
[00:03:53] The scriptures call them idols, and they're everywhere.
[00:03:57] And, you know, they're not just in countries that, you know, you can actually see them, but they're also in a country like Canada. And we are as much guilty of idolatry as many of the countries that actually fashion them. And you can visibly see them.
[00:04:12] The tragedy with an idol is instead of carrying our burdens because we create them, we have to carry them. Isn't that interesting? But when you and I surrender to the true and the living God, as we're going to hear today, he's going to carry us.
[00:04:27] And I love that about God. He is able to help us in life's challenging moments, the darkest moments, the most difficult moments, the most perplexing moments.
[00:04:39] In Jeremiah chapter 10, we find one of the most powerful chapters in the Bible dealing with an issue called idolatry. And simply put, idolatry is a false system. It's a substitute for what God is and wants to accomplish in our lives. Walter Bruegerman says the root of idolatry is to try to find ultimacy within the world of our own control and production. In other words, if you, it's about what we do. It's all dependent on us. And, you know, when we get to that place, that's a very challenging place to be, where it all depends on you and I. And when we get there, we let ourselves down, Many things let us down, and we're deeply disappointed.
[00:05:22] In Jeremiah 10, we discover the reason why Israel was about to experience devastation in exile. Because when you put your faith in an idol, it leads not only to destitution and devastation on a personal level, but can even have it on a national level. And over the course of human history, many nations have succumbed to idolatry to the point where they have been crushed nationally. And we can see that in ancient cultures, real spiritual freedom comes from knowing the true and the living God, the person of truth. Jesus actually revealed himself. God came, became human, became a man. And then Jesus said to his disciples, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
[00:06:09] We get life, we get truth. We find the right course and direction in the person of Christ. So why do we create false gods?
[00:06:20] What's so attractive about idolatry? And before you rule out the idea that we're not idolaters, before you think as Christians, you know, pastor, you're speaking to the wrong crowd, I want to just point out to you that Jeremiah was speaking to the people of God, number one. Number two, I'm going to suggest to you that Israel always struggled with idolatry. As a matter of fact, when God called them out of Egypt and told them to go into the promised land, one of the things he said to them was, do not embrace the idols and shrines that are in the land.
[00:06:54] Destroy them, get rid of them. Don't follow them. Don't go in that direction. But they didn't listen. And Israel, throughout her entire history, not only worshiped God, but they also worshiped the idols of the land. And eventually their relationship with God got so distorted, so confused, that the idols became the primary means of their security, significance, and trust. And eventually it brought them down and they were exiled. So we're going to look at three aspects of our relationship today to idolatry. And the first one is the creation of false gods. Why do we create idols? You know, when we refuse to worship the true and the living God, we default by virtue of our human need to create a false substitute.
[00:07:45] We do, and you go, we just don't do this on our own. This life. We begin to look around us and we begin to see how people are coping with life.
[00:07:54] Now I would even argue that you and I Grew up in a home where even our parents had idols in their lives. And we didn't even realize that that's what they were. And by, you know, I won't say by osmosis, but we kind of learned by observing how they were, you know, doing life, we began to fall in some similar patterns, and we just assumed that. That that was normal.
[00:08:16] But we need to begin to identify what are these things. And I would just say to us, whatever we embrace as what's extremely important to us, the strategies that we're using in order to help us through this journey called life apart from faith in Christ, those become idols to us. And we're warned against such a terrible strategy, and we're encouraged to look to God and as our ultimate source of help.
[00:08:43] Now, as I've already said, the prophet is speaking to us, God's people. And I believe that one of the reasons why people embrace idolatry is because we're afraid.
[00:08:55] We're afraid of what the people around us are thinking about us. And so we end up succumbing to the value system of the prevailing culture. And that's why we create idols. How many realize that in our world today, our system is broken? Anybody figured that out yet? It's extremely broken, and it's more broken all the time. And when we embrace culture's idols, we end up falling into the brokenness of this culture.
[00:09:25] So I believe that you and I will be disappointed if we're trying to find meaning, significance, and security in what this society has to offer us.
[00:09:35] Take a look at our text this morning. It's found in the tenth chapter of Jeremiah. We'll begin in verse one. It says, hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. Now, let's apply this to our lives. I mean, we can go back in time to the early century. They were destroyed by Babylon in 586 BC. That's a long time ago.
[00:09:56] Let's bring it to the 21st century. Let's apply these words into our lives this morning.
[00:10:02] Hear what the Lord says to you, people of God.
[00:10:07] What is he going to say to us?
[00:10:09] This is what the Lord says. Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by the signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. Okay, so what is he saying? He is saying, don't embrace the nations is the word ethnos in the Greek language. It means the ethnicity. Don't embrace what? What the peoples around you are embracing. That's what he's telling us.
[00:10:36] Don't embrace the value system of the culture in which we're living in. Do you think that's relevant today? Don't embrace it. It's a challenge. We have to identify God's value system. God's culture is a lot different than our current culture. And so now he wants us to identify the distinctions and differences between what God has to say and what God values and what the society is saying and what the society values and. And more and more, we're beginning to see that there's a clash of values, but we have to identify them. He says, now, listen. Don't learn their ways.
[00:11:12] Now, what did Israel do? She embraced the ways of the culture around her. And the very reason why God displaced those nations in the first place was because of those values. But now Israel has embraced them. And by the time you get to the day of Jeremiah, God has to displace his own people from the land of promise. How many say, what a tragedy.
[00:11:32] Isn't that sad?
[00:11:33] And so that's what happens in our lives. You know, if we embrace what the society is embracing, we will end up in the same addictions, the same brokenness, the same relational mess that so many people's lives are in right now. We will just fall into that pattern. As a matter of fact, here it says, don't be terrified by the signs in the heavens. What were these guys doing?
[00:11:57] Most of these ancient peoples worshiped the stars.
[00:12:01] They worshiped the zodiac, they worshiped the signs, and so they were involved in astrology.
[00:12:10] Do you think that's relevant today?
[00:12:12] Oh, you know what? I get the newspaper, and in the newspaper, there's always. And every newspaper I've ever gotten for as long as I know, there's always a section that has your horoscope.
[00:12:25] And there are people who read that and believe in those things. They believe that their fate, their destiny, is tied to the stars.
[00:12:34] And sometimes people get so into this kind of stuff that they feel that they have to look at that before they'll even go out because they're afraid of what the day might hold. He says here, do not be terrified by what that is being said. Don't do that. Don't go there.
[00:12:52] That's not how you and I live. You and I walk by a quiet confidence. You and I walk by faith. We're walking with God. And if God be for us, who can be against us so we don't have to live with that kind of fear? And a lot of the reasons why we start building idols is it's driven by your own sense of insecurity.
[00:13:12] And our own fears that we embrace some of these things in our lives.
[00:13:17] He says, for the practices of the peoples are worthless. They have no value. They cut a tree out of a forest and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold. They fasten it with a hammer and nail so it will not fall over, won't totter.
[00:13:34] I mean, the God that they're creating can't even hold himself. Up you go. There's a little mockery here.
[00:13:42] Anybody see that? You know, I've been in cultures where they actually carried their gods.
[00:13:47] That's because the gods can't carry them.
[00:13:51] It's a very powerful distinction. Look at verse five. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field.
[00:13:57] What is a scarecrow? Scarecrow is dead. He's trying to scare the birds away. Sometimes, you know, I've seen birds land on scarecrows.
[00:14:06] Their idols cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot walk.
[00:14:11] Do not fear them. They can do no harm, nor can they do any good.
[00:14:15] Wow.
[00:14:16] The tragedy of idolatry is that it's so misguided.
[00:14:21] They're human inventions. The gods we create are fashioned to meet needs in our lives which they cannot meet.
[00:14:31] So we're creating these things in our lives to somehow help us, but they never help us. They're actually a burden to us.
[00:14:38] Now, I know that some people are going to come back and say, well, yeah, but, you know, these idols, they just represent something.
[00:14:46] And I know that there's a whole realm of the demonic and how they work through these idols. But let me just point out something.
[00:14:54] Can this really be what God looks like?
[00:14:57] Now, we can imagine a worshiper who used such idols replying, that's an unfair comment.
[00:15:03] We don't worship such idols. They are no more than helpful symbols of the gods we worship.
[00:15:10] Follow this logic.
[00:15:12] True enough. But this passage is not written to convert such people. Its purpose is to confirm the prophet's own people and their commitment to the one who, in the words of verse 10, is the living God, the God who is ever active.
[00:15:27] How can a dead, lifeless piece of wood or metal be an adequate symbol of such a living God?
[00:15:35] You see, the problem with you and I, and we don't just do this with images. We do it in our minds. This is where the real danger is. We have a picture in our mind of who God is.
[00:15:46] I want to shatter that picture a little bit today, and I'll tell you why. Because my picture of God and your picture of God is still incomplete.
[00:15:55] God is bigger than our picture.
[00:15:58] God is beyond our comprehension. God is the God whom the universe cannot contain, and he's eternal in nature and he's infinite. So how can someone like you and I, who are finite, fully grasp the magnitude of the God in which we serve?
[00:16:17] We cannot.
[00:16:19] It's beyond us. Now, how many here can honestly say that there's been moments in your life where you've, you know, you thought you understood the ways of God, and then all of a sudden, God does something and you go, that does not compute.
[00:16:31] It's outside of my scope of understanding. As a matter of fact, I would say it's inscrutable. I don't get it. There are things that have happened in my life. I look back, I'm still scratching my head. I got no idea why that happened. Anybody else relate to that?
[00:16:47] It's beyond my pay grade.
[00:16:50] God is bigger than us. So we have to be careful, because one of the things we want to do is put God in our box.
[00:16:56] We want to create God after our understanding and our image of what God should be like. And when he doesn't do what I want, then I'm upset. But really what I've done is create an image.
[00:17:08] I've created an idol. I've created a false substitute for who the true God is. And it's always going to get me into trouble. I'll always be disappointed by that image. It's wrong. And that's, I think, what Davidson is trying to get across to us.
[00:17:22] I think one of the problems we have as postmodern people is that we deny that idols exist in our society.
[00:17:28] Richard Keyes in an article. There's a book out called no God but God. And it's a number of articles written by different biblical scholars. It's edited by OS Guinness and Robert Seale. And he says in there on his chapter the Idol Factory, the whole premise of his piece paper is simply that you and I are great at creating idols. And then he starts arguing how we go about doing it. And I think it's very fascinating. He says, if we do not understand the nature of idolatry, we'll never be able to recognize it or to guard against it in our lives and in our communities. We just won't see it. We just don't think they exist until we understand what it is. But then John comes along in the New Testament at the end of his first letter, and he says these words, dear children, keep yourself from idols.
[00:18:19] Obviously, this is a very interesting text in light of the fact that John had both Jewish and Non Jewish believers he's writing to. But how many know the Jewish people? They know about idolatry. They were exiled because of it. So why is he telling us to keep ourselves from idols? Because it's very simple for us to create them.
[00:18:38] So what really is idolatry?
[00:18:42] Well, Keyes goes on to say, to speak of an idol in the biblical sense assumes that first of all there is a true God, of whom the idol is a counterfeit. I always like that if you have counterfeit money, there has to be the real stuff.
[00:18:56] So if people are counterfeiting God, there has to be the genuine, is what he's saying, the natural human response to the true God after the Fall, in the beginning, this is our natural response to God is rebellion and avoidance. Isn't that interesting?
[00:19:13] And the reason we do this is because we really don't want to be accountable to God. We don't want him to really control our lives. We want to do our own thing.
[00:19:21] So sin has a way of predisposing us to want to be independent of God and to be laws unto ourselves, to be autonomous. We want to be able to do our own thing. Thank you very much.
[00:19:38] True, I think there's a tension in our lives between at times God's will and my will.
[00:19:47] And we don't really notice it when we're in agreement with God because we're fine, we're doing his will. But then there's moments in our life where all of a sudden what God says and what we want diverge.
[00:19:59] And that's when the real struggle starts happening. What are we going to do here?
[00:20:04] That's about being obedient or disobedient. But that's really what idolatry is all about.
[00:20:09] So that what we want to be is able to do what we want without bowing down to God's authority. And I believe that authority is a huge issue all of our lives. We struggle with it.
[00:20:20] We struggle with authority. We struggle with that concept because we're not that surrendered. We think we are, but we're really not.
[00:20:29] We don't just eliminate God. We erect in his place, substitutes.
[00:20:34] And the biblical writers call these counterfeits idols. And idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God's existence or character. I've already said that Israel never denied God. But Elijah comes along and says, how long are you going to halt between two opinions? If God is God, worship him. If BAAL is God, worship him. So Jesus later on comes along to his generation and says, you cannot serve God and mammon you'll either love God or love money is what he's saying, because there's a tension there, and you got to decide where your security is going to be.
[00:21:11] You see how many know that?
[00:21:13] Here's what we're taught in our culture, you know, save all this money for retirement. I don't think it's bad to save money. But I'm going to tell you, if that's what your hope is, you're going to be disappointed, because now look what's happening. Some people thought they had it, they're on a fixed income. All of a sudden, boom, inflation starts happening and it could get a lot worse.
[00:21:31] So if my confidence and security is in money, I'm going to be deeply disappointed.
[00:21:38] But if my confidence and security is in God, and I recognize him as my heavenly Father, and I know the scripture that says, I've never seen the righteous forsaken, nor a seed begging for bread, then I say to myself, you know what?
[00:21:54] I'm his child.
[00:21:56] And I want you to go back in your mind with me to when you were about 8 years old. For most of you, I'm not going to say all, but probably the vast majority of you. And at 8 years old, you didn't even think about where your meal was coming from.
[00:22:08] You didn't worry about those things. You didn't worry about any of the economic necessities because you had someone in your life, a guardian, a mother, a father, somebody in your life supplying those needs in your life, and you didn't think two seconds about it. Isn't that true?
[00:22:23] Now, I'm not telling you to be irresponsible. What I'm trying to tell you is if your confidence is in your heavenly Father and that you're his child, then you can have that deep assurance that God is going to take care of you no matter what age you are. You can be young, you can be old, God will take care of you because you are his child.
[00:22:43] Or you can sit down and say, I don't have confidence in that pastor. That seems like pie in the sky stuff. I'm going to go over here and make sure I'm do all this stuff. And I'm going to live with anxiety and stress and try to figure it out. And then all of a sudden my business goes sideways, and then we have a pandemic and then we have this going on. You see, that's what happens when we have our little idol factories going over here and they always get smashed. And it's so frustrating.
[00:23:12] Goes on to say, it May well come in the form of. And now he's going to describe what idolatry is. It comes in the form of an over attachment to something that is in itself perfectly good. It's usually not evil.
[00:23:25] The crucial warning is as soon as our loyalty to anything leads us to disobey God, we are in danger of making it an idol. I'll give you some examples. Oh, you know, I know I shouldn't be in this relationship with this non believer, but I'm in love with this person rather than not putting myself unequally yoked to a nonbeliever. The Bible says don't do that, don't. So now I have a choice. Will I do what God asks? Will I do what I want?
[00:23:55] And when I put that person and I go with my emotion, I'm putting them ahead of God. What have I done?
[00:24:05] I've created an idol.
[00:24:07] That's an example. I could just keep going down how we do this over and over and over again in so many different ways.
[00:24:14] An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity. Could be ministry. I, I actually had to, you know, shatter the altar of, I mean, the idol of ministry, where ministry becomes everything we can have. You know, the Pharisees. This is amazing to me. You know, these people knew the word of God, but they put their understanding of scripture ahead of, ahead of really who God was. You say, how do you know that, Pastor? Well, because they were confronted with the person of God in the person of Jesus and they literally were at odds with him because their interpretation of scripture was so limited, it didn't fit what Jesus was doing.
[00:24:57] How many know you could actually be crucifying Jesus because you're embracing an idol? That's why idols are so dangerous that it even can climb into a religious thing where I put my religious experience, experiences above truly who God is, or I put my understanding of scripture above who God is. And you know, I can find myself actually thinking I'm advocating for God when in reality I'm crucifying him because I've embraced an idol. It's that subtle idols will inevitably involve self centeredness, self inflation and self deception.
[00:25:35] The psalmist recognizes the danger of self exaltation as idolatry when he writes in the Psalms, Psalm 115 and verse one, not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.
[00:25:50] It's not self exaltation, it's exalting God because of your love and your faithfulness. Do you know what happens the longer you walk with God, at least this has been my experience. The more you recognize your brokenness, your need for God, the propensity and the predisposition to create idols in our lives and to trust something as well as God, something else. And God wants these things down because these are the things that bring us down. And actually, there's a reason why people backslide.
[00:26:23] You know, for years, I couldn't figure it out. Why are people leaving? Why are people backsliding? What's going on here? Maybe we haven't done a good enough job of instructing them or discipling them and all the rest of it, but sometimes it's just simply they've allowed idols to be created in their hearts, and they have chosen the idol over the true God.
[00:26:43] That's why it's such a dangerous thing to be creating idols and not address them in our souls.
[00:26:50] So the nations say to Israel, where is their God? Because, you see, Israel had no visible manifestation of who God was. As a matter of fact, when the Romans conquered the Jews and went into the temple, they opened the thing to take a look and see what kind of an image would represent their God. You know what they found?
[00:27:11] Nothing.
[00:27:12] Because there's no image that could actually be fashioned that could somehow represent the magnitude, the greatness, the goodness, the love, the power of almighty God.
[00:27:25] Real simple. God says, you shall have no graven images before you.
[00:27:30] But when you think about idolatry, sometimes we think, well, it's no big deal, Pastor. Well, it is a big deal. Think about it. Because the first commandment is that we're to love God above everything else.
[00:27:41] And when you and I create our own little gods or a substitute for God, what are we doing is we're violating the first commandment, which is the greatest commandment.
[00:27:52] And like I point out to people, when you break the greatest commandment, you're committing the greatest sin.
[00:27:58] So we can't just say that this is not a big deal. It's a great big deal.
[00:28:03] Goes on to say, our God is in heaven. That's their response. He does whatever pleases him.
[00:28:09] Their idols are silver and gold made by human hands. See, Jeremiah 10 and Psalm 115 are the same things going on. There's a contrast between the false and the true.
[00:28:20] They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear, noses but cannot smell, hands but cannot feel, feet but cannot walk. Nor can they utter a sound with their throats. And those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. And what does he describe Something that is dead, something that has no ability to do anything.
[00:28:42] It's false.
[00:28:43] And when you and I put our trust in those false things, it leads to our death.
[00:28:49] It leads to brokenness. So we see this contrast between the nature of the true God and idols in Jeremiah, chapter 10, verse 6. No one is like you. Lord, you are great. Your name is mighty in power, who should not fear you. King of the nations, this is your due. Among all the wise leaders of the nation and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you. There's no one like you.
[00:29:13] I want you to know the God of the Bible is the God of all nations.
[00:29:18] He's the God of the universe. He's the maker of heaven and earth.
[00:29:24] They are senseless and foolish. They're taught by worthless wooden idols. Hammered silver is brought from Tarsh, is gold from Uphaz. What the craftsman and goldsmith have made is then dressed in blue and purple, all made by skilled workers.
[00:29:37] This is human invention. And it's got value. In their sight. They're putting value to it.
[00:29:45] But God is going to hold us accountable.
[00:29:48] But the Lord is the true God. This is one of the great verses in the Bible, Jeremiah 10:10. But the Lord is the true God.
[00:29:55] He is the living God. He is the eternal king. When he is angry, the earth trembles. The nations cannot endure his wrath. What is he saying? God is the judge of all humanity.
[00:30:06] Tell them these gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the heaven and from under the heavens. See, they were created by man.
[00:30:15] God is the creator of humanity.
[00:30:18] But God made the earth by his power. He founded the world by his wisdom. And he stretched out the heavens by his understanding. We're still trying to explore this stuff. We're still trying to get what God did. It's so much beyond our comprehension. When he thunders the waters and the heavens roar, he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. You go, why is he telling us a weather report?
[00:30:43] Well, the answer is real simple. Because the gods in the land of Canaan, baal, they were the storm gods, they were the weather gods. They were the ones that promised fertility in an agricultural society.
[00:30:57] He said wrong. It was actually God who does all this.
[00:31:01] Everyone is senseless and without knowledge. Every goldsmith is shamed by the title. The images he makes are a fraud. They have no breath in them. In other words, they're dead. They're lifeless.
[00:31:12] They're worthless. They have no value. The objects of mockery. When their judgment comes, they will perish.
[00:31:19] He who is the portion of his Jacob is not like these, for he is the maker of all things, including Israel, the people of his inheritance. The Lord Almighty is his name.
[00:31:32] Powerful stuff.
[00:31:34] I love these texts.
[00:31:36] Richard Keyes says the message of the Bible is that just as idols deceive us, so they also eventually disappoint and disillusion us.
[00:31:47] His social historian, Daniel Bernstein, in his book the Image, says, never have people been more the masters of their environment as today.
[00:31:55] Yet never has a people felt more deceived and more disappointed as today.
[00:31:59] For never has a people expected so much more than the world has to offer or could offer.
[00:32:06] Isn't that true today? I think one of the greatest problems in our culture today is an expectation.
[00:32:13] Our expectations are unrealistic from one another and from society. It really is true.
[00:32:18] You want to expect something, I think you got to go to God. He's the only one that ultimately can deliver. But let me move on to the second aspect, the consequences of worshiping idols. When we trust in what is false, it leaves us destitute. It leaves us in a state of death. As a matter of fact, death is simply that separation between ourselves and God against each other. Verse 17. God says, Here, gather up your belongings to leave the land, you who live under siege. In other words, you're going on a trip.
[00:32:49] I'm kicking you out of the land, basically, for this is what the Lord says at this time. I'm going to hurl out those who live in this land. I'll bring distress on them so that they may be captured. What is he basically saying? Hey, when you create false substitutes, you're going to lose out? That's what he's basically saying. When we live to fulfill our agenda rather than God's will and purposes for our lives, we're going to lose out.
[00:33:13] And I'm going to tell you, that's been what I've observed over all these years. Idols promise much, but they only deliver bondage and brokenness in our lives.
[00:33:23] Before we bewail the tragedy of idolatry from afar and look back and say to ourselves, how stupid can you Jewish people be?
[00:33:32] Before you say that, we better take a look in the mirror. Philip Reichen says to identify your own idols and ask questions like what things take the place of God in my life?
[00:33:43] Where do I find my significance and my confidence?
[00:33:48] If it's not in God, then it's in something else. And if it's in that other thing, whatever it is that's an idol. What? Things make me really angry. Angry. Anger usually erupts when an idol gets knocked off the shelf.
[00:34:02] Well, this is an image of myself, or this is whatever it is that gets you upset. Maybe you feel like you're losing control.
[00:34:11] You're losing control.
[00:34:15] Once the idols on your shelf have been identified, see them for what they really are, recognize that they're like the scarecrow in the melon patch, man made impotent, false, and worthless. And then scorn them the way Jeremiah scorns the idols of his day. In other words, say, okay, now that I found out what it is, I got to laugh at this. This is a joke.
[00:34:34] I think I'm in control. Ha ha ha. That's funny. No way, right?
[00:34:41] I think I'm so great.
[00:34:43] Not really. I'll mess up. Just give me time. It'll happen. I'll end up on my face. Whatever the idol is in our lives, acknowledgement of our true condition is needed.
[00:34:54] Jeremiah 19. Woe to me. Because of my injury, My wound is incurable. Yet I said to myself, this is my sickness I must endure. My tent is destroyed. All its ropes are snapped. My children are gone from me and are no more. No one is left now to pitch my tent or to set up my shelter. It's almost as if the land itself is saying, everybody's leaving and I'm stuck here. No one's here to help me out now. In fact, not everybody was taken out of the land. The poorest of poor stayed. It was just the leaders, and the people who built the infrastructure were taken out of the land. And so the land was now in a servile vassal condition under the power and authority of Babylon.
[00:35:35] That's exactly what happens. We can be left there in our own lives. How many people today, when they look at their lives, maybe they live to be popular, Maybe they live to be accepted, or maybe they live to have a good time. But all of a sudden, in the party, life got addicted to alcohol and drugs. And now the alcohol and drugs are controlling their lives and are destroying them in the process.
[00:36:01] That can be an idol.
[00:36:03] Here we see the attitude of acceptance. The challenge is to identify the real issues to our soul.
[00:36:10] And I think it's important that we gain that kind of godly wisdom that I think is succinctly said in the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And, you know, if you go to cr, I'm sure, they're saying the Serenity prayer because this is so important and I think you don't have to be in C. Hard to be saying these things. God, there are some things that are beyond my capability and I just need to rest.
[00:36:37] We live in a culture today that says we can change anything. No, we can't.
[00:36:42] We can do anything. No, we can't.
[00:36:44] We can only do what God allows and we can only do what God is asking us to do in order to succeed. That's what we need to be doing.
[00:36:54] Man is not the master of his own destiny. I like what Robert Davidson says here. This could be a terrifying thought. Unless, as verse 24 assures us, that we're in the hands of a God who may indeed have to discipline us, but who can be relied upon to do so not irresponsibly nor unjustly.
[00:37:15] If this be so, then the response to tragedy is prayer, which is accepts our human limitations and frailty and reaches out to a God who can be trusted even in the darkest hour. And I love that because I'm going to say something to all of us here. The longer you live, the more you realize you're going to run into areas where you come to the end of yourself. You're going to see people come to the end of themselves and you're going to end up in a dark hour. And that's when you need to know the true God, not some idol that's going to get you through. The primary reason why nations flourish or falter, some of you will relate to this is because of leadership. Leadership is an important key. And maybe that's one of the reasons why God tells us to pray for leaders.
[00:37:57] Because if the leaders do the wrong things and people follow leaders, people are going to be doing the wrong thing.
[00:38:03] Like priests, like prophet says, like priests, like people. The people follow the priests, people follow the false prophets. People followed the kings who were leading them in the wrong direction.
[00:38:15] So what were they supposed to do? Jeremiah says the shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the Lord. In other words, they don't consult what God has to say. Think about this now. If you were an Israeli king, you had a mandate to know the covenant that God had established between yourself and the nation. You were responsible as a steward to make sure that you, as the king, led the people in keeping God's covenant requirements.
[00:38:41] That makes sense. Most of them didn't even read it, didn't even think about it, could care less about it, did their own thing, enriched themselves at the Expense of people. And God judged the whole nation.
[00:38:52] How tragic. It says so. They do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.
[00:38:59] How sad is that?
[00:39:01] Let me move on to the third aspect of idolatry. That's the consternation of the godly in an idolatrous age.
[00:39:12] What are we to do in a time of despair? What do we do when we just see everything falling apart? How many? Say to yourself, it seems to be getting darker and bleaker as the days go by. Anybody notice that? Anybody see that? And sometimes it can create a sense of depression, despair. It could create a loss of hope.
[00:39:32] Follow what I'm saying. So how do we handle all of this?
[00:39:36] How do you handle it when you know things are going in the wrong direction? What do you do?
[00:39:40] What do you do when you're a godly person?
[00:39:43] Pray. That's right.
[00:39:46] How do we respond when people turn their backs on God and look to human inventions and determine their future directions?
[00:39:54] Lord, I know that people's lives are not their own.
[00:39:59] It is not for them to direct their steps. Well, first of all, we can have a confidence that God is in charge.
[00:40:06] Step number one, my hope is not in what human beings around me are doing. My hope goes higher.
[00:40:12] I think God is in control of the planet still, folks. Some of you might say, well, he's not. It looks like he's falling asleep or something, because there's a lot of crazy things going on. But I think God's totally in control and I'm not going to lose sleep over things because God is running the planet. Thank you, Lord.
[00:40:28] Now he says, discipline me, Lord, not only in due measure, not in your anger, and you'll reduce me to nothing. What is he really trying to say to us? Well, simply being that when you and I are in relationship with God, God will discipline us as a good father.
[00:40:47] But what we don't want is that we start sinning against God. And God disciplines us in a punitive way and he allows the sin in our life to destroy us. That's what we don't want. That's, I think, what he's arguing about or pleading for here. John Thompson says the reference may be to the destiny of man, which is outside of his control, however much he imagines in his pride that it lies in his own power.
[00:41:11] Interesting thought. You know, we think that I can do whatever I want. I go, no, you can't. There's a limitation that's set.
[00:41:18] God will stop you when he's had enough of it. You'll just put it to an end. Richard Key says, one of the problems that we have as human beings, it goes all the way back to the fall. Remember when God said to man, you shall have dominion over all the creation.
[00:41:33] That's a call for responsibility, a call to be responsible under God's authority. But when we reject God, we move from dominion to domination.
[00:41:42] And then we start controlling people. We start controlling things.
[00:41:46] The one side or on the other side. Instead of trusting God, we become overly dependent. We start grasping and clutching onto things, ideas, institutions and people.
[00:41:57] And then we start embracing things that are unhealthy. Those become idols.
[00:42:02] The chapter ends with a very interesting prayer, and I want to close with these thoughts. It's an imprecatory prayer. You go, what's that?
[00:42:10] It's not a nice prayer. It's usually a prayer that's saying, God, take them out, please.
[00:42:16] You know what I mean?
[00:42:18] Do something with these guys. And here's Jeremiah's final words. Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the peoples who do not call on your name. For they have devoured Jacob. They have devoured him completely and destroyed his homeland. Now, some people think that's just, you know, cathartic. I'm getting this venom out of my system. So I'm telling God, deal with these guys.
[00:42:42] Could be. Or it could be simply God, I believe that you're going to judge everything anyway. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pray that you'd bless and help these people turn around, because if they don't, God, I know what's coming down the pike for them. They're going to be destroyed.
[00:42:59] And that, you know, you say, well, I could just say nothing. And they get it. They get their just desserts.
[00:43:05] Aren't you glad God didn't give you and me our just desserts? How many here are saying, I'm glad God didn't give me my just desserts? So I think you and I need to be careful before we pray these imprecatory prayers. I think we need to pray for God's mercy on people and know in the back of our minds that when someone treats us ill and they don't want to, you know, they just continue to do that. We can let God handle it because, you know, God will deal with people. And there comes a point where God says, enough is enough.
[00:43:34] So let's stand as we close today, because I believe that as we're living in this idolatrous age, we might say to ourselves, well, you know, I'VE never made an idol. Neither have I worshiped one.
[00:43:48] But upon reflection, that may not be true. And I was reading something that Herschel Hobbes wrote, and he says this.
[00:43:56] You know, he said, I've traveled all over the world and seen all kinds of human devices in images made very primitively and very sophisticatedly that were actual idols that people worshiped.
[00:44:09] But then he went on to say, but there are other things that you and I, maybe we don't have that in this particular culture, but we can have something like intellect as an idol.
[00:44:22] You say, well, when does intellect become an idol, Pastor? Whenever you and I sit upon judgment on. On God and his word and his purposes in history.
[00:44:32] Whenever you and I question and say God, I don't agree with what you did there. What you're saying is you're smarter than God. You know better than God what needed to happen there.
[00:44:42] Didn't we just make our mind an idol where he goes on? Maybe it's our physical appearance, or maybe health is more important to you than inner development of the spiritual man. Because, you know, exercise profits little, a little, but godliness profits much.
[00:45:00] The inner man is going to be eternal. The outer man is perishing day by day.
[00:45:06] Maybe our idol is business or wealth, where we put our business acumen and our work schedules way ahead of getting to know God. And we start neglecting time with God because we've got these things in place.
[00:45:21] That's an idol. I could just keep going down the list. When we put our achievements or our will or our desires above God's plan. When we say, I want my will be done, not God's will. You know, I'm going to speak to some of the younger people in the audience. Listen to me carefully.
[00:45:36] You can sit here today and say, this is what I want to do when I grow up.
[00:45:41] And it may be what God wants, and it may not be what God wants, but here's what I'm going to challenge you to do. I want you to get on your knees and say, okay, God, you created me. You designed me. You have a purpose for me. I'm giving you my whole life.
[00:45:55] And whatever you lead me to do, I'm going to do your will. Even though a lot of people say you can make a lot more money doing this other thing, you have the brains to do this and make this kind of money.
[00:46:06] But God says, no, I don't want you to do that. I want you to do this.
[00:46:10] And I'm going to say something you. If you go after your will, that's an idol and you will worship that. And I can tell you at the end, it's promising you a lot of stuff, but you'll be deeply disappointed by it.
[00:46:26] And I came to that moment in my own life where God spoke to me in Luke chapter 21 of the little widow that gave her two mites.
[00:46:33] And God said to me in that morning devotional, because I was at a crossroads in my decision making process what to do with my life. And God says, I'm not interested in you going there.
[00:46:44] Did you see what she gave?
[00:46:47] She gave everything.
[00:46:49] And I reckon that as more than all the gifts in the world, I want you in your entirety.
[00:46:56] And from that point on, I began to realize that what God was doing was calling me to be in ministry.
[00:47:02] And I don't really have a choice. I remember I was working and I was asked to go into management. And I still remember the day when they approached me about going into management and I said, I'm sorry, I need to go into the ministry.
[00:47:16] And I says, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is not optional, folks.
[00:47:23] That's why you can do 40 years. Because God called me to do this.
[00:47:30] And God is going to call, and that doesn't mean he's going to call you necessarily to be a pastor or missionary.
[00:47:37] He could call you to be a baker, housewife, doctor, teacher, whatever it is, obey.
[00:47:48] Because the other thing is an idol and it'll destroy you.
[00:47:53] And right now, with every head bowed there in our quiet moment, right now, I believe God's spirit is speaking into our lives and saying, I want you to lay this down. Could be a hobby that has taken its place, the place of when you could spend time with God. But you've spent so much time on this hobby, it's robbing you of your relationship with God. That's an idol.
[00:48:18] And you notice the title of the sermon was Smashing the Idols in Our Lives.
[00:48:25] It could be making money.
[00:48:27] Whatever it is in your life, God is telling you, put them down, lay them aside, don't pick them up. Don't embrace the values of this culture. I want you to embrace my way.
[00:48:40] I want you to walk in my will and my purposes.
[00:48:44] I want God's face to shine on you.
[00:48:47] So don't turn your back on God. Don't turn your back on God, because when you do that, God's face is not shining on you.
[00:48:57] I want you to turn to him this morning.
[00:49:00] I want you to bring the things in your life that are impeding your relationship with God right now, it's hindering you.
[00:49:07] I want you to say, okay, Lord, I give them to you.
[00:49:10] And maybe you don't even know what they are yet, but I'm going to pray for you right now that this week God's going to start speaking in your soul and say, this is an idol and I want you to lay it down now. I'm going to pray for the courage to do it.
[00:49:22] Because I want to tell you right now, whatever it is that you think is so significant, it's bringing you what you think is bringing you value that is going to lead you to your death.
[00:49:33] It's going to lead you to loss and devastation and exile in your life, just like it did the Jewish people.
[00:49:41] But today I feel like God is saying to you, turn away from that.
[00:49:45] Come to me.
[00:49:46] I have life for you. You will never regret choosing God and his will over yours. You'll never regret that.
[00:49:57] So, Father, I pray today. Open our hearts. Search them today. Lord, I know that we're great idol makers.
[00:50:05] Lord, help us to shatter the them. Help us to identify them and to lay them aside and to embrace your way and your will. In Jesus name, amen. God bless you as you leave.
