Well, go ahead now and pull out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Jeremiah, chapter 2. Jeremiah, chapter 2. And I will read from verses 20 through 37, although the sermon text itself will be on verses 23 through 28. And I see now that you all are using the ESV version. However, my sermon was prepared still using the NIV. So during the sermon, you will hear the NIV. I did not know until just a few minutes ago. So let's pray now for the illumination of God's Word in our hearts tonight by the Spirit. Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We ask God that you would help us to more and more treasure it in our hearts. Lord, may we set aside the cares and the worries of this week so that we might now fully give our attention to learn more about You, who You are, and what You have done for us, Your covenant people. And Lord, may You, by the power of Your Word with the Holy Spirit, cause us to receive Your Word with true faith, to trust in Christ alone for our salvation and for all our Christian living. And help us not only to be hearers of Your Word, but to be thankful doers of it as well. For Christ's sake we pray this. Amen. we'll give here to God's Word from Jeremiah chapter 2. For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds, but you said, I will not serve. Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore. Yet I planted you a choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, The stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God. How can you say, I am not unclean? I have not gone after the Baals. Look at your way in the valley. Know what you have done. A restless young camel running here and there. A wild donkey used to the wilderness. In her heat, sniffing the wind. Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves. In her mouth, they will find her. In her month they will find her. Keep your feet from going unshod and your throat from thirst. But you said, it is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners, and after them I will go. As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed. They, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, who say to a tree, you are my father, and to a stone you gave me birth. For they have turned their back to me and not their face. But in the time of their trouble, they say, arise and save us. But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise if they can save you in your time of trouble. For as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah. Why do you contend with me? You have all transgressed against me, declares the Lord. In vain have I struck your children. They took no correction. Your own sword devoured your prophets like a ravening lion." So far, the reading of God's holy word tonight. Well, go ahead, although it's not in your bulletin, go ahead and also pull out your Psalter hymnals. We'll read one question from the Heidelberg Catechism on the back of the Psalter hymnal, page 48, question and answer number 95. And I'll go ahead and read the question and let's together read the answer. What is idolatry? Idolatry is having or inventing something in which one trusts in place of or alongside of the only true God who has revealed Himself in His Word. Well, may the Lord help us to understand Jeremiah 2 and the sin of idolatry. Well, beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, you remember the Exodus story, right? From Exodus chapter 1 through chapter 15. There you'll remember that the children of Israel cried out to the Lord under the impressive hand of the Egyptians. And God heard the cries of their hearts for help. and He delivered them by destroying all of the false gods of the Egyptians and by then miraculously leading them out of Egypt, parting the Red Sea and walking through the Red Sea on dry ground and then swallowing up their adversaries as they pursued them. And then you'll remember in Exodus chapter 19 that God gathered the children of Israel before Mount Sinai and He entered into that national covenant with them. And part of this covenant, it reminds us of the covenant of works that God made with Adam in the garden, where Adam was essentially told, obey my commands and I will give you eternal life. The eternal life that was symbolized by the tree of life. But because of Adam's fall and the fallenness of all of humanity in him that resulted, Israel couldn't earn eternal life by obedience in this covenant at Sinai, like Adam could in the garden. Rather, they're commanded to obey the Lord in order to have a long life in the land that God had promised to them. And God said to them on that day at Sinai that if you obey My commands and keep this covenant, you will be My treasured possession and will be My holy nation. And then you might remember the people responded by saying and declaring, all that the Lord has spoken, We will do. You can read that in Exodus 19, verses 1 through 8. So Israel agreed to the terms of this covenant. Obedience. To stay in the promised land. And the very first command that God gave to His people in Exodus chapter 20, the next chapter, in verses 2 and 3, was this. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods. before Me. And so God, as Israel's Creator, as Israel's Redeemer, commanded His people to exclusively worship Him and no other God. And if the nation obeyed this commandment and the others, they would remain in the Promised Land and remain as God's treasured possession after they entered it. But if they disobeyed, they'd be kicked out. They'd be exiled from it. So, were God's people faithful to worship Jehovah God alone and not have any false gods before Him once they entered the promised land? Were they faithful in all that God commanded them? Well, we know the answer that the history of Israel that's recorded in the book of Joshua through Esther, it teaches us that the tragic answer to that question is no, sadly. They were not faithful much at all to obey the first commandment. They broke it, and all the others, even repeatedly throughout their history. And you see, all of this forms the backdrop to what's going on here in Jeremiah 2, verses 23-28, where we find that the Lord God of Israel is in the middle of prosecuting His legal case against the people who have broken His covenant. He's prosecuting His case through His lawyer, His covenant lawyer, Jeremiah. And so here God declares that His people are guilty of sin, guilty of breaking the first commandment, not to have any other gods before Him. And then He pronounces the shame of judgment upon them. And so this portion of Scripture here in Jeremiah shows us Israel's sinful example of idolatry. And it points us ultimately, though, to Jesus Christ, who is the only one who perfectly obeyed the first commandment. people. And it also then instructs us to flee from idolatry and to worship the true and living God alone and to trust no other but Him. And so this evening, consider with me these three points from our text. Israel's guilt of idolatry first. Second, Christ's redemption of idolatrous Israel. And third, our duty to flee from idolatry. So Israel's guilt of idolatry Christ's redemption of idolatrous Israel and our duty to flee from idolatry and so let's make a beginning this evening and look at Israel's guilt of idolatry in verses 22 through 25 here the Lord presents his devastating evidence of Israel's guilt and then in verses 26 through 28 he pronounces dreadful judgment upon Israel upon them all and so let's first look here at the beginning verses 23 through 25 but our Lord's presentation of Israel's guilt in our text it begins with the Lord asking his people this question in verse 23 how can you say I am not defiled. I have not run after the Baals. So the implication here is that the Israelites thought that they could fool God and they were claiming that they haven't worshipped false gods. They were claiming that they weren't guilty of worshipping Baal, which was a false god of the pagan surrounding communities and surrounding nations. And so the Lord, He asks with astonishment even, How can you make that ridiculous claim? And he goes on to present the Israelites with undeniable evidence of their guilt before him. Their guilt of idolatry. And he says, See how you have behaved in the valley. Consider what you have done, the text says. In the valley here, it's most likely a reference to the valley of Ben-Hinom. And you can read about that in Jeremiah 7, just a few chapters forward here in the book. Verse 31, it says, They, Judah, have built the high places of Topheth in the valley of Ben-Hinom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, something I did not command, nor did it even enter my mind, the Lord says. So the Israelites apparently had this repulsive history of not only worshiping pagan gods, but they also had this history of even sacrificing their own children to pagan gods that were associated with Baal worship. And we read something of this in the book of Psalms. Psalm 106, verses 37-39. And it's really shocking. We don't want to think about this. But nonetheless, the Word of God tells us this. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons. They poured out innocent blood. The blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. And the land was polluted with blood. Thus, they became unclean by their acts and played the whore in their deeds. We shudder to think about this. It's terrible. It's gross. It's disgusting. It's awful. But rebellious Israel repeatedly broke the first commandment not to worship any other gods and they broke the Sixth Commandment to not murder amongst many other commandments that they broke. So the examples of these sins from Israel's really tragic history, really they're too numerous to list if we were to go through them all. But their guilt is undeniable and the Lord is pointing out to them through Jeremiah, remember what you have done, consider it what you have done. How can you say you are not guilty of idolatry before me and a horrible sin. And they cannot wash its stain from them in God's sight no matter how hard they try. They're powerless to remove the stain. And the Lord continues His prosecution by using the images of a female camel in the end of verse 23 and a wild donkey in verse 24 to describe the Israelites' gross lust for idolatry in His sight. Verse 23 and 24, it says, You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving. In her heat, who can restrain her? So a young female camel in heat is known really to run irrationally and zigzag in all different directions, seeking to satisfy her desire for mating. And the wild donkey in heat It sniffs the wind passionately to search out the place to satisfy her lust. And this is how Israel had behaved. And this is the imagery that God uses to call that to mind here. This is how they behaved. Irrationally going after false gods in every direction, even though they were in covenant with the only true and living God. The very Lord who redeemed them from the bonds of Egypt. They lustfully violated the covenant. And they ran roughshod in every direction over God's law, putting their noses to the wind, sniffing out false gods and foreign gods. And then the Lord, He goes on to describe the willfulness of idolatrous Israel and the ease with which they turned away from Him. The very ease in which it happened at the end of verse 24 and in verse 25. It says, Any males that pursue her need not tire themselves. At mating time, they will find her. Do not run until your feet are bare and your throat is dry. But you said, it is no use. I love foreign gods and I must go after them. So the male camels and donkeys, they had no difficulty mating because the females were so given over to their passion while they were in heat. And so God's people were so prone to bow down to false gods that they were hopelessly entangled in their sinful idolatry. Hopelessly entangled. And then in verses 26-28, the Lord, He pronounces then judgment on the entire house of Israel. As a thief is disgraced when he is caught, so the house of Israel is disgraced. They, their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets, They say to wood, you are my father, and to stone, you gave me birth. They have turned their backs to me, and not their faces. Yet when they are in trouble, they say, come and save us. Where then are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them come if they can save you when you are in trouble. For you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah. And so the Lord declares that the house of Israel will be shamed, Just like a thief is shamed when he is caught in the act of thievery. And prior to this point in the history of redemption, the nation house of Israel had already been split into two kingdoms for their idolatry after the reign of King Solomon. The northern kingdom, Israel, had already been carried away into exile by the Babylonians or by the Assyrians. And now, as Jeremiah was prophesying against the people of the southern kingdom, Judah was about to be taken captive and exiled by the Babylonians. So everyone among the Israelites, the people, their kings, their officials, their priests and their prophets, everyone from top to bottom, from north to south, are going to be shamed. The southern kingdom's impending doom will complete God's declared dreaded judgment on the entire clan of His people for their idolatrous ways because of their sins before Him. And by turning their faces toward idols of wood and stone, the Israelites turned their back on the God who saved them over and over again from their enemies. You see, God will not share His glory with the idols of wood and stone. His utter holiness demands exclusive worship of Him and Him alone. No others but Him. And so His justice then demands severe punishment on His people for turning their back on Him and pursuing false gods so wantonly. And so now, even though the Israelites may try to call upon the Lord God to save them, yet one more time, they'll do so in vain at this point. God saw right through their gross hypocrisy. His patience had run out, if you will. The southern kingdom was going to be handed over. It's going to happen. In effect, God gave His people over to the bondage of the false gods whom they had constantly turned to. What a terrible tragedy when you think about it. What a terrible tragedy. All of Israel failed to obey God and they all justly and terribly suffered for it. And so the history of Israel's unfaithfulness to God and their shameful judgment that they received, it stands as this ominous example to us of how much God hates idolatry. And if you think that you have done any better than Israel to avoid idolatry, well, we may need to think again. Because as we'll hear in a few minutes, idolatry takes on many different forms beyond bowing down to what is obviously a false god of stone or a false god of wood. But although God revealed Himself as a just and holy and jealous God by punishing Israel for their idolatrous unfaithfulness, thankfully He didn't leave His people to wallow under His wrath forever. But because God had cut a covenant of grace with their forefather Abraham, you remember back in Genesis 15, before He entered into this covenant with Israel at Sinai, because of that great covenant of grace, He didn't utterly cast them away, though He had the absolute right to do so. And through the judgment and the exile that the Israelites received from God that resulted from their disobedience, they were meant to learn that they couldn't keep themselves in the Promised Land. They couldn't remain on their own efforts to be the treasured possession of God. They were meant to learn that by their own efforts, they could do nothing to be pleasing to God. They were meant to learn to trust in the Lord alone. to save them and to preserve them. They were to look to Him. And so the law and Israel's punishment for breaking the law was all meant to point them and to us, to the Savior whom God had promised to send to them and their forefathers all along from the very beginning. And that brings us to our second point. Christ's redemption of idolatrous Israel. You see, later on in Jeremiah's prophecy, the Lord promises His people that He will restore them. He'll rescue them from their sins and He'll send them a Savior. In Jeremiah 31 and parts of 31 and parts of 33, God declares to His people, the days are coming when I will make a new covenant with you. One not like the one you broke at Sinai and I will be your God and you shall be My people for I will forgive your iniquity and I will remember your sins no more. And at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch to spring up who will execute justice and righteousness and His name will be called the Lord our Righteousness. Loved ones, Jesus Christ is that righteous branch. He is the Lord our Righteousness whom God sent to redeem the undeserving people of Israel from all of their idolatrous failures. He is the true Israel. The One who never failed to flee from idolatry and who never failed to glorify God alone in all things. It's Him, loved ones. He is the one who has done it. Galatians chapter 4, verses 4 through 5 says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And that's exactly what Jesus Christ did. He redeemed His people by perfectly obeying the first commandment and not have any other gods before Him. And after He was baptized, you remember, the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted and to be tested. And one of the temptations that He faced was that of worshiping someone other than the true and living God. You remember this in Matthew 4, verses 8-10. The devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And He said to them, All these I will give to you if you will fall down and worship Me. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. So unlike the Israelites of old, our Savior never gave in to the temptation to worship or to trust or to love anything or anyone else. more than His Father in heaven. He never turned His back to the Father as the Israelites had done. Not one time. Not one moment. Not one fraction of a second all the days of His life. He was faithful. He was faithful. And even as He was about to be betrayed, arrested, and crucified at Calvary, even then, even then, the Lord remained faithful. Jesus remained faithful. He didn't turn to anyone else but to God alone for His strength. He leaned solely on the Lord all the way to the end. And Jesus, He glorified the Father, the only true God, all the way to the end of His life on the cross. When Israel failed, where Israel failed to avoid idolatry, where we have failed to avoid idolatry, Christ succeeded. He was victorious. And so He fulfilled this first commandment perfectly for His people in the Old Covenant to not have any other gods before Him. He fulfilled it for His people in the Old Covenant as well as for us today in the New Covenant. And that brings us to our third point tonight. Our duty to flee from idolatry. How does this text apply to you and I today, tonight, right now? Well, this first commandment to have no other gods, which forms the backdrop here of Jeremiah 2, it still applies to us today. But it comes to us not like it did to national Israel in the old covenant at Sinai, which said, do this and you will live and you'll be my treasured possession. No, it comes to us in the new covenant today. It comes to us in Christ. And by it, we learn of our sinfulness. It reveals our sinfulness. The law of God does. And like that schoolmaster that we learn in the book of Galatians, it drives us to look by faith alone to Christ's work of fulfilling that first commandment in our place. The Israelites have broken. That we have broken. And then, this commandment, it also comes to us as a rule of gratitude. A rule of thanks. And it says, do this because Christ has fulfilled it for you and because you now live in God's grace as a result. And so, beloved, it is our Christian duty of thankfulness to flee from idolatry. It's our Christian duty of thankfulness to glorify the true and living God alone and no others. Now, we may be tempted to think that we've done alright with this command to have no other gods. We may say in our hearts, I've never bowed down to statues of wood or stone. I'm not an idolater. I know there are times when I myself, and I know it happens to all of us, where we think, I've done pretty good with that one. But if we're honest with ourselves, though, if we're honest with ourselves, we're really no different than those ancient Israelites. We're also fallen sinners, just like them, who often fail to flee from idolatry and worship God alone perfectly. That's basically a polite way of calling all of us idolaters. We are invariably idolaters left to ourselves. You see, it's a sin against your God that you are prone to commit by nature. Now, that may sound offensive to our ears. We don't like to hear that about ourselves, but it's an uncomfortable truth. But truth, nonetheless, it is. We by nature are prone to be idolaters before our holy God. Even in our hearts, in our actions, Even though we may never literally, physically bow down to a statue of wood or a statue of stone. In our catechism, as we read earlier, it helps us to understand that idolatry is more than just that. In question answer 95, I'll read the answer. Idolatry is having or inventing something in which one trusts in place of or alongside of the only true God who has revealed Himself in His Word. So if we think that we have never done this, then we've not considered the true depths of our sinfulness. The deceitfulness of sin has stung us. The sin in us is deceitful. Our hearts are deceitful and wicked. Who can know it? As one commentator wrote, the reason why we have so much trouble recognizing our own private idolatries isn't because we don't have any false gods. but because we have so many. I believe that's true. The reason why we have trouble recognizing idolatry in our hearts is because we have so many idols and we have become comfortable with them. So ask yourself some of these questions. What do I love? What do I desire? What do I think about when my mind It's free to wander in its thoughts. How do I spend my money? What do I get excited about? What do I trust in when times are good? What do I trust in when times are bad? You see, a false god, an idol, can be anything that we focus on more than God. Hobbies, sports, fitness and health, Our marriages, maybe your career, money, sex, shopping. Even a ministry in the church can be turned into an idol. And yes, it's okay to enjoy these things in life, but only in their proper place, you see. God is to be trusted in preeminently more than any of these earthly things. So behind, though, all of these idols, Behind all of this that we at times go after is the idol of the self. It's ourselves. We too often live our lives trusting in our own efforts, trusting in our own possessions, in our insurance policies, and on and on really the list could go. And it could be a long one. And so we too easily fall into the sin of thinking that by being more holy, God will grant us more favor in His sight. That's one form of idolatry. Or when life circumstances become increasingly difficult or confusing, we may rely on our own resourcefulness to resolve that problem rather than to trust in the Lord first and to go to Him in prayer. Things get tough and we start just doing things our own way, just even forgetting about God because we're so anxious about the circumstances and we just think, well, we can plan, we can scheme, we can get our way out of this without turning to the Lord in it. All of these things violate God's first commandment to have no other gods before Him. And all of us here, if we're honest, are guilty. When we do these things, we, like idolatrous Israel, their example in Jeremiah 2, we are just like them when we do them. We become like the female camel and the wild donkey in heat. We turn our backs to God when we turn our hearts to these idols. But the good news for us today is that the Savior whom God sent to Israel is the very same Savior whom He sent for us as well today. And all of His perfect, all of His active obedience to that first commandment and to the rest of God's law was lived out perfectly in our place. This is why He came. He came to fulfill the law. And He did it. He did for you what you couldn't do for yourself. You cannot do it. You could not do it. You've already failed. It's too late for you in the sense that you have already failed and so you are disqualified by your own merits for heaven and for life on your own. But part of the good news, thankfully, is that God sent His Son then to die on the cross for your sins and to even become an accursed idolater at God's sight. Even though He had never committed that sin. Nor any other. This is essentially what 2 Corinthians 5.21 says. For God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. And so Jesus, the Son of God, suffered for your sin of idolatry. Your punishment for your idolatry, it was meted out on Jesus. It was as if Jesus Himself became an idolater on the cross in God's sight. The Son of God. For God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin for us. Our heinous sins were imputed to Christ. But then through faith alone, though, through faith alone, Christ's perfect shunning of idolatry and His perfect glorifying of God alone, even all of His righteousness that He earned, is credited to our account through faith in the sight of God. You see, that's the glorious good news of the Gospel. Not only are our sins imputed to Christ, but His righteousness. We receive it. It's given to us freely so that we're declared not guilty. And so it's through faith alone that we receive that. And listen to the rest of 2 Corinthians 5.21 For God made Christ, who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That's good news, isn't it? You stop and think about it. Think of all your sins. Think of all your idols. Think of all of your heinous sins, all of your failures. If you've trusted in the Savior, they've been washed away. Even the ones that you think of that just make you cringe and you just feel dirty and gross all over again. And you're disgusted in your heart and shamed in your heart when you think about them. Those two, they are under the blood of Christ, washed away. And God now sees you. He sees you with Christ's perfection, with all of His perfection, all of His obedience, draped upon you in the robes of righteousness. You deserve hell for your sin. We all deserve the wrath of God in hell for our sin. But because of Jesus Christ, loved ones, God has given you heaven instead. That's why we call this message the good news. That's why we're to flee from our idolatry. To turn away from anything that would tempt us to put it in place of God or even alongside of it, equal with God. It's because He's purchased us from our sins and death. We don't belong to ourselves. We belong to Him. So in conclusion, loved ones, turn with me to 1 John 5. And notice how John explains that Christ has come and illuminated our understanding so that we may know the true and living God. So that we may truly know Him as the true God and the One who gives us eternal life. And then notice the last words of his letter as well. 1 John 5, 20 and 21. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true. In His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. And this is how he ends his letter. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Keep yourselves from idols. And so, loved ones, it's only through God the Son that we can know and have fellowship with the other two persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Spirit. And it's this triune God alone that we're to worship through Jesus Christ alone. See, Jesus, He's the only way of salvation. He's the only truth. He's the only life. No man comes through the Father except through Me, He says. And so John ends his letter with that exhortation and command. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. Don't go after false gods in your hearts and in your lives. You see, since you've been bought with the precious blood of Christ, delivered from the bondage of hell, God no longer regards you as an idolater. So don't live like one, loved ones. Don't live like one. Instead, live for God's glory alone. Tear down all of your private idolatries in this life that you've set up in your heart. Stop turning your back to the true and living God in those areas of your life. Turn your face to Him instead. Confess your sins to Him. Flee from those idols. Look to Christ alone. Trusting in the good news. Look to the One who alone has given you eternal life. Those other things cannot give you eternal life. They do not give you eternal life. So tear them down. Tear them down. And in so doing, you bring wonderful glory and honor to the one true eternal God. And this is what we were created to do, to bring Him glory. And it's the glory that He alone and the honor that He alone deserves because He alone has saved you from your sins. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word and we thank You that You, though, Lord, we have failed to obey You, You have sent a Savior to us. We thank You for His righteousness that's been freely given to us and we thank You for the blood that He shed in our place. And so, Lord, we ask that You would help us to turn from idolatry. Help us to learn and discern the temptations in our hearts to seek after other gods. Things that we might place ahead of You. And Lord, help us, Lord, to tear them down. To turn to You. So we thank You, Lord, for Your good news. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.