Christ, The Former of All Things

Turn with me to Jeremiah, chapter 10. The prophecy of Jeremiah, chapter 10 with me this morning.

There's a passage in the Old Testament that is quite a striking one. It's perhaps one of the most glorious in the whole

Bible. But in addition to the beauty that we will see in it here in just a moment,

I believe it's also very applicable for the times we're living in today, particularly one verse that will be in view.

But I want to give you the context along with it. So Jeremiah, chapter 10, and we will start in verse 10.

And read along with me for just a moment. It says, But the Lord is the true

God. He is the living God and an everlasting king. At his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation.

Thus shall ye say to them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.

He hath made the earth by his power. He hath established the world by his wisdom and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.

When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.

He maketh lightnings with rain. He bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures. Every man is brutish in his knowledge.

Every founder is confounded by the graven image. For his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

They are vanity and the work of errors. In the time of their visitation they shall perish.

The portion of Jacob is not like them, for he is the former of all things.

And Israel is the rod of his inheritance. The Lord of hosts is his name. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day.

Thank you for bringing us together, bringing this just amazing church family full of unity and full of peace and just full of refreshment of each other's fellowship and company and presence.

We thank you for the special grace of us being able to gather each and every week and enjoy those things together.

We thank you for a moment to get to proclaim your word together as well. We ask that you bless this part of the service, that you bless the words spoken today, and, of course, we thank you very much for the words of your scripture that we get to look to for guidance and for wisdom and for edification on this day.

Again, we ask you to be with us for the remainder of the service, and we ask these things in your name. Amen. Now, before diving into this a little bit more,

I want to set this up a little bit. When we start from the beginning of human history, what we see is the rejection of personal communion with God.

This is what we were created for. This is what the garden was created for and why Adam and Eve were put there together so that they could commune with God in full intimacy forever.

But they rejected that, and that rejection created a partition between God and man.

This is something that the veil that would later be in the temple represented. The holiness of God had been violated, and there was a partition between God and man at that point.

And after this came the rejection of belief that he was even there anymore or had ever been there at all, despite the fact that the heavens are declaring his glory all the time.

You have the handprints of God everywhere, not the least of which was his image bearers themselves.

But despite this, man continually moved further away from God rather than desiring to know how that partition could be removed.

And of course we know that it was, and we know that it was by the work of Christ that it was, but the point is the desire to understand that or whether or not that was even possible was forgotten and left completely ignored.

And then of course, with that being the state of humanity at that point, came the logical conclusion of a disbelief in God, and that was the adoring of the graven image, which of course is nothing more than a derivative of the wicked imaginations of man coupled with the misused material from the creation that the creator put there.

So you have man taking that which God created out of nothing and using that to fashion things that they decided to adore over the creator himself.

This is idolatry, and this is the primary sin being rebuked by Jeremiah in the passage that we just read.

It has a stranglehold on mankind for all of human history. And something really important to remember is that from the point of idolatry entering the picture all the way to present day, it has never ceased from being abominable in the eyes of God, and that's regardless of the covenant we find ourselves in, it's regardless of the dispensation that we find ourselves in, and that's going to be something important to remember as we move through some of this, so keep that in mind.

But we get to Jeremiah 10, and here the prophet, building upon the words of God in the preceding verses leading up to where we began our reading this morning, the prophet adorns the true

God, and he does so with very descriptive praise specifically to the effect of contrasting

God with the graven images of man, and he does so in some of the most polarizing language that would have been in his vocabulary as we saw in those verses 10 through 16 there.

From verses 6 through 10, Jeremiah, in the form of a dialogue with God, makes what is essentially a universal call for all of mankind to fear the

Lord. This isn't unique just to those that profess belief in him. All of the world, all of those that have been brought to life by his very power are called to fear him.

Whether or not that's obeyed is another question, but it is a universal call. What happens, though?

Well, you get to verse 10, and you see that, excuse me, rather in verse 8, you see that in the dullness of their hearts, they turned to wooden idols, and more than that, they even called upon their most skilled craftsmen to plate the idols with silver and dressing themselves up in this priestly apparel.

What they're doing is they're literally using all of their creative gifts and skill to mock the one who equipped them in the first place.

And you see that in verse 9. They're bringing their craftsmen, they're bringing their skill sets, they are creating these little wooden idols, but then using their crafts and their skill and that which the

Lord has equipped them with to just fashion it more and more into this abominable image.

Now, this certainly isn't something that mankind has grown out of. We see it from architecture to the way businesses are structured and operated to civil rule to the arts.

Men and women across all categories throughout time have constantly been cursing God with their unique gifts rather than using them to His glory.

And of course, this is the great call from the Apostle Paul to all believers in whether we eat, whether we drink, everything that we do due to the glory of God.

This is something that was abandoned by mankind at large long ago and that Christians, of course, need to be pursuing.

We have the gifts, we have the unique callings, we have the unique skill sets. We use them to glorify

Him, not ourselves. And certainly, God forbid, use them to create false gods, graven images.

But then you get to verse 10. And the prophet starts to turn the mockery on their heads, those idol worshipers, those that are fashioning the wooden idols, plating them with silver, worshiping them instead of the

Creator. All of their actions are an attempt to mock God and to be an abomination in His eyes.

So what does the prophet do in his passion, in his zeal, under inspiration? He turns the mockery on their heads.

And we see echoes of quite literally every cataclysmic prophecy in Scripture with the statement when he says that none of them, none who partake in such abominable acts will be able to endure

His just indignation. On the Day of Judgment, all of that, all of the abominations, all of the attempts to mock

God will, of course, be brought to a screeching halt and none will be able to stand at that time.

In verse 11, Jeremiah declares that the chief end of the false gods that these men worship is total destruction.

Just one really quick note here in verse 11 that I find really interesting. You're going along, you're reading the prophecy of Jeremiah, of course, written in Hebrew.

And you get to verse 11, and that singular verse is written in Aramaic. And if you read it, it makes sense.

What does he say in verse 11? Thus shall you, talking to the people of God, thus shall you say to them, the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.

So what is Jeremiah doing? He is telling them, he is instructing them to say these words in the language of their captors, those in Babylon.

When they try to tempt you to bring you to their false gods, you repeat these words, and he says it in their language.

And then he goes right back to Hebrew in verse 12. So that's just kind of an interesting little side note there.

But that's what he's doing. He is telling them the chief end of these false gods is total destruction.

And then the polarity between God and these gods so -called is brought into sharp focus in verses 12 through 13 as Jeremiah starts unfolding the truth of God as creator and sustainer.

Look at verses 12 through 13 with me one more time. It says, He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.

When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.

He maketh lightnings with rain and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures. What a contrast. Again, the polarizing language that Jeremiah uses here couldn't have been clearer.

It couldn't have been more of a polar opposite. And so he is doing this once more to bring into focus, no, this is the

God that is the creator and the sustainer of everything. Now, what is the prime character trait of those who would ignore such reality, who would ignore this

God, the one that created everything, that which literally brought the material from which every other

God is made out of, what would cause them to ignore this? What is the prime character trait of these people?

He says, Every man is brutish in his knowledge. So the prophet is talking about the brutishness or the stupidity, the dull -heartedness of man in his meager knowledge of things.

That is a character trait of these types of people. There is a brutishness about them.

There is a stupidity about them that is quite literally blinding their eyes from the true creator.

But then continues on, and he says that every founder or literally refiner, in other words, like a goldsmith, those that would have been refining the metals, getting them ready to fashion these false gods with, he says every founder or every refiner is put to shame by the graven image that he makes using his

God -given skill set. And that's in verse 14. Again, the irony is just, it's literally shocking because it takes a remarkable amount of skill set, a remarkable amount of knowledge, not to simply be the refiner, but to also be able to construct these idols, these graven images, in the way that would have been pleasing to the eye and that would have attracted others to come and follow and choose that particular god over the multitude of other false gods that they would have had.

And so the irony is that it takes a great amount of skill, a great amount of gift, in order to construct something that you then turn and mock the one that gave you all of the skill in the first place with.

And that's what's happening here. These false gods, the graven images, that man has always had a tendency to worship, will all perish at the time of their punishment or visitation, as we see in verse 15 there.

And this is true because they are the work of errors, or literally they are the work of mockery, is the way you could translate that, and are themselves undiluted vanity.

It's as vain as a thing could possibly get, a graven image, something that mankind worships derived from the creation and from his own mind.

It's vanity wholesale. But this is all just the setup. All of these verses leading up to verse 16 are the setup for Jeremiah's climactic sentence for this little section of scripture we find here.

And it's the contrast for the main subject in view. So he's talking about the graven images.

He's talking about the brutish men that are so haughty and so arrogant that they believe that they are doing this without some form of repercussion coming later, as if the day of their visitation won't come upon them.

He says all this simply as the setup, simply as the buildup to verse 16. And look at it once more with me.

This is our key verse here. The portion of Jacob is not like them, in other words, the graven images.

He's not like them, for he is the former, or maker, or fashioner of all things.

And Israel is the rod of his inheritance. The Lord of hosts is his name. Now, I wanted to give the surrounding context and kind of work through it a bit because it really magnifies the significance of our primary text for this message, which is verse 16.

There are a number of things that this verse implies for us today, for all believers throughout time.

And understanding it in the context that it was originally given, of course, will help in our application of it today.

Now, the first thing to establish here is that we as Christians living in the 21st century are in fact up against the exact same battles, the exact same enemies, and the exact same temptations as Jeremiah and the people of Israel were thousands of years ago.

The form takes different shape throughout time, and of course, that's the trickery of the devil. Solomon tells us that there's nothing new under the sun.

The devil wants to make us think everything is new, and if it's new, we might as well try it.

And then you fall into the same trap that those thousands of years prior fell into. But in reality, it's all of the exact same thing, just simply refashioned, repackaged by the devil himself.

Many of those people, of course, in the time of Jeremiah, very sadly succumbed to the idol worship that was so prevalent at the time.

And sadly, again, I believe that we're witnessing a very similar problem today, hence the application and the relevancy of this verse.

Now, I understand that we don't walk around seeing the types of hand -hewn idols on all the street corners like Jeremiah may have seen in his day.

Walking around, you see people worshiping in groves and bowing down to trees, and you have their little idols. It would have been a scene that would have been very alien to us.

And so I realize in that sense, we do see some very important differences as well, and I would say the differences are actually quite frightening, because if anything, it makes the idolatry more subtle than it used to be.

So we don't typically see what Jeremiah would have seen in his culture. Now, if you go to Africa, you go to sub -Saharan

Africa, you go to places in Asia, places in South America, maybe you would, but again, we're talking about our immediate context here in the

United States. And so just because we don't see the same form of idolatry in idols that Jeremiah would have recognized, that doesn't mean that idol worship is not all around us today, even in our geographical location, because it is, it's with us.

And recognizing this both in the lives of those around us and perhaps even our own lives is the point of all of this.

So just to lay a building block for this before I go much further, one important truth that materialists and even the so -called

Christian ones, that one trap that they would like for all of us to forget is that despite what they may say, every single culture, every nation, and certainly every individual has and carries with them a particular set of commitment to a faith, to their faith.

So in other words, there is no secularist nation. It's kind of an illusion, because in reality, while you say, well, you got all your religions down here that are kind of keeping people tame, pick and choose which one you like the best, and we'll roll with it, because at least it's keeping everybody kind of in subjection to a higher moral standard.

In reality, though, we're all just kind of floating around through space, and everything is ultimately meaningless, but we just kind of got to keep moving through.

That is materialism. There's nothing spiritual. There is nothing that exists that isn't material in some way, shape, or form.

That is kind of the materialist dogma there. And so they would try to convince people that you can get to a point, you can, ironically, transcend to a point where you no longer have to have faith in some kind of made -up deity, in their words, and then you're at the top of the totem pole with us.

That's the trap. That is what they would have you believe, but despite that, they themselves have a set of faith commitments built upon something.

It's built upon something they have faith in. There's not a person alive that doesn't have faith in something or someone, even if that someone is themself.

But typically, it's more than just that. A number of factors could come into play that make up any given person's faith and their commitments to a particular faith.

Due to man's fallen nature, all too often, what we will find is that these faith commitments are made toward an idol of some kind, a false god.

And in following these idols, and what's interesting, we see this in verse 2 of Jeremiah 10 as well, but again, this is still something that happens today, but when people start following these false idols, it'll quickly bring chaos at the first sight of trouble.

The moment that things start to get a little bit murky, a little bit tricky, a little bit scary, all of the sudden, they realize these gods can't offer the supernatural peace that is available to the followers of Christ, the supernatural peace that Paul talks about in Philippians 4.

And all of this is why, as the great Francis Schaeffer once said, every Christian should engrave this verse onto their hearts.

Jeremiah 10, verse 16. I want to read you a quote from him commenting on this verse.

This is Francis Schaeffer. He says, quote, there is a phrase in the book of Jeremiah that Christians should engrave upon their hearts.

The portion of Jacob is not like them, the idols made by men, for he is the former of all things.

Jeremiah 10, verse 16. This is the root of the biblical doxology. Unto him, not unto it.

God is not like those idols made of wood and stone, nor is he like those gods that are merely the extension of men's minds.

He is the personal God who was there as the former of all things. He is our portion, and he was before all else.

And that's Francis Schaeffer in his book, Genesis in Space and Time. Our God is not a contrived vapor of the human mind.

That was kind of his point there. It doesn't matter whether it is a physical, material, wooden idol over here, or a figment of your imagination.

It's an idol all the same. And unlike either case, that is not how our

God actually is in his being. He is, in fact, the former of all things.

And that God is our portion as Christians, as believers. The portion of Jacob, that is our

God. He is the personal God who was there, who has always been there, will continue to be there, and as, again,

Francis Schaeffer would often say, is not silent. He has spoken. He speaks in real time through his creation, the heavens declare his glory, and, of course, we have the scriptures themselves, the very word of God.

But like I mentioned at the beginning, this passage is far more relevant today than most might think, considering the fact that this verse is nestled into a very specific

Old Testament context. But, again, where do we find ourselves?

We find ourselves in a place where humans deal with the same battles, the same temptations, today.

Now, there are differences between the lost world and believers. The lost world will indulge the sin, while Christians, at varying degrees, wrestle against them as part of the sanctification process.

So there is a very important distinction there, but the temptations are all the same. It's important to remember the final exhortation from the

Apostle John in his first epistle. So we're talking, he's already an older guy. Many of the other apostles may have already passed away.

This is well into the writings of the New Testament. And the very last thing he says at the very end of 1

John, one of the most beautiful epistles we have, he says, little children, talking to Christians, keep yourselves from idols.

That was his last exhortation. And so Christians in all generations have had to learn to keep themselves from idols.

And, of course, one of the first keys in doing so, in keeping yourself from an idol of any kind, is recognizing what the idols of the present day are.

If they're not the hand -hewn idols that you might have seen in Israel at the time of Jeremiah, what are they?

Now, some that we see that are prevalent today and yet did have a scriptural warning against would be things like coveting.

We learn in Colossians chapter 3, Paul says that coveting is an idol, very interestingly enough.

We learn, of course, that money can easily be an idol. Jesus says you cannot serve

God and mammon. And then, of course, Paul, later in 1 Timothy, at the very end of it, actually, says that money is the root of all kinds of evil.

And so money can be a temptation to displace God in the life of any person, certainly an unbeliever, but a

Christian as well. In other words, their focus becomes more on the gifts of God rather than the

God himself. It's a form of worshiping the creation over the creator, at least giving them your attention.

And another one that Jesus talked about, and it's a tough one because it's one that is easily, easily one that any given

Christian could fall into, and that is family. And so it's fascinating to consider the ease with which any person, any well -meaning

Christian could stumble across the idolization of, let's just say, a spouse.

I'm reading a book right now by a guy named Harry Hager. Is that Johnny's dad's name?

A lot of you know Johnny, one of Dave's best friends. Basketball, the basketball days, he was part of the dynasty and amazing guy.

I've never met his dad before. And what's funny about it is I had never heard much of his dad until recently when

I asked Dave. I heard a lot about his mom, Pat, who was an amazing musician. You remember Johnny? He's the guy that can ride a unicycle while playing the violin, and he's just like, he's a polymath, quite literally, and he's the eye surgeon as well.

So, you know, he does all these amazing things. And I had heard a lot about his mom because his mom played a big role in his musical abilities, but I had never heard stories of his dad, interestingly enough.

Well, the other day, as always, I'm rummaging Dave's bookshelf and looking for things to take home, and I saw something with the last name

Hager on it, and I recognized the last name, and so I grabbed it, and I knew that Johnny had written a book, but it wasn't the one that Johnny wrote.

So I pick it up. It's Harry Hager, and Dave goes on to tell me about Johnny's dad. And, again,

I did not know this before, but he's an incredibly solid guy, very much in line with kind of the foundations of our beliefs here in this church, solid doctrinally, solid theologically, strong man of God.

And he wrote a book, and I took it home, and I've been reading it, and it is about his journey as a widower after the passing of his wife,

Miss Pat. And in the opening chapter of this book, he talks about that it wasn't until the death of his wife that he realized she, in a very real sense, became an idol in his life.

And, interestingly enough, that idolization of his spouse actually impeded upon his grieving process.

I want you to think about this for a second, because, as we know, if there was, what more important thing is there in the physical realm than your spouse?

And so, obviously, there is a biblical emphasis that should be there. Husbands are to love their wives, as Christ loved the church.

And yet, even that, if it displaces God, in other words, if that becomes kind of the prime motivator of all of our things above Christ himself, even that can get messy.

And one of the results of which, in the case of Brother Harry, is that after she passed away, it actually made the grieving process of that loss even tougher because of that reality that he was living in.

And so, again, we think of idols, and we think of it in the context of the second commandment. Don't make into the engraven image.

And that, obviously, is true. When we think of idols, we think of the wooden idols and the silver idols and all these types of things.

But the New Testament kind of takes the principle of that second commandment and it applies it to things that we can't necessarily see.

The Apostle Paul calls our bellies a god, in some cases. Coveting, which is something that happens in our heart, can be an idol.

Jesus says that unless you are willing, and I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit because I don't have time to talk about the doctrine behind it, but if you aren't willing to hate even your spouse, your kids, your parents, if they try to take you away from me, if you're not willing to leave them for my sake, you can't be my disciple.

So, all of these things can become idols in the life of a Christian. And, again, like I said before, it's fascinating to consider how easy it is for any of those things to become an idol, even for the most well -meaning

Christians. Or, if it's not something like a spouse, even kind of a sentimentalism that's tied to our desire to stay in our comfort zones, and in some cases, do whatever we can to stay within that comfort zone even to the detriment of the person himself.

I mean, as it relates to comfort zones, kind of doing whatever you can to stay comfortable, even when the world itself around you is screaming, no, it's time to move, it's time to do something here, think about the words, quote, they have healed also the hurt of my people, superficially, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

And so people can easily make a false sense of comfort an idol to the point where they are ignoring that which

God is displaying right before them, saying, it's time to move, it's time to act. Now, obviously, when it comes to idols of the present day, you could include obvious things like sports, work, entertainment, hobbies.

Some idolize their rules. Some idolize not having any rules. Some people idolize education.

They idolize reputation, et cetera, et cetera. You could just keep going on. All of these things, by the way, when you look at them, are not bad in and of themselves, at least a couple of them.

A couple of them may be a little questionable, but most of them are not bad in and of themselves. In fact, they are gifts of God.

The whole book of Ecclesiastes, the point of it, is that the reason why all is vanity is because you are dealing with people that are taking the gifts for granted, separate from a relationship with the

Lord. In that case, it absolutely is all vanity. There is nothing good. Absolutely nothing under the sun that could possibly be good separated from the one that gave all of it.

Any of these things, any of the gifts of God that are intended to glorify Him ultimately, all the way down to sports and business and entertainment and education, all these things, the moment they become the sole focus of a person or, even more scary than that, a society, which we see in the case of many of these, we are in a bad position.

We're in the same position, in fact, that the Israelites that Jeremiah was unleashing this pretty sharp polemic against, we find ourselves in that very same spot.

The point is, is because of the fall, humans have become prone to idolatrously entangle themselves in all that is good and God -given.

Remember, the stuff isn't bad. The stuff isn't the problem. The problem is the hearts of man. The problem is this tendency to move toward that thing and to desire it more than the shepherd, more than the one that gave it to us.

And even as believers, because of the fact of the fallen nature, yes, even we still live in corruptible bodies, we have to guard our hearts with regard to the

God -given gifts that we receive and ensure that we are using them to His glory and not accidentally, and I do mean that genuinely, in some cases, accidentally stumbling into the trap of caring more for them than for the gift -giver.

So this is a battle, even for Christians in the 21st century, just like it was a battle for the ancient

Israelites. But the antidote against falling into such sin is exactly the same.

It has never changed because the answer to that particular temptation, to that particular sin, is a personal being in whom is no variance, is no change.

Our portion is the former of all things. We literally possess Him because as the

Hebrew word entails, when it says our portion, He has made Himself an award for His people.

So the Hebrew word there, halak, it can literally mean an award from God. And what's amazing about it is the award is from God and the award is

God Himself. Because what is our portion? Our portion is the former of all things. So it's an award from God and the award is

God Himself. And so if we ever find ourselves with the feeling that we just can't live without this thing or without that person, we couldn't survive, we couldn't do anything without them, what happens is it becomes time for the child of God to reorient himself or herself back toward the only one that could possibly ever fulfill every need and the only one that has ever deserved our adoration and the fullness of our desire.

Now, that is not to say that we are to become the pietistic monk on his knees in the temple that's neglecting his family, that's neglecting his community, that's neglecting being any form of a contributing factor.

To society, that's certainly not what we need to do. It's to say that unless the Lord sits on top of our order of love, something we talked about in a recent

Bible study on Wednesdays, unless He sits on top at the pinnacle of our order of loves, everything will become a disoriented mess at some point down the pipeline.

Even if something as important as our own spouse becomes the greater love over Him, remember what was the great problem with the church of Ephesus long after the days of Paul's letters to them, after the days of Paul writing to Timothy, you get to the book of Revelation chapter two, you have

Jesus walking among His churches, writing letters to them, and one of them was Ephesus. And He goes on and praises them for a great work that they have done, but He says,

I have this against you, you have forgotten your first love. And so this is something that even the best of them can fall for.

This is something that even the best of them can fall into. So given this reality, given the temptations these things can be, given the fact that this is a trap that even the best

Christian can fall into, what is our consolation in such a circumstance?

What do we do if we identify an idol in our lives, or how to avoid even the subtle idolatries in the first place?

How do we not get there? How do we avoid that from the beginning? Our consolation, as I've said before, is the same as it's always been.

The portion of Jacob is not like them, not like the graven image, not like the false idols, for He is the former of all things.

The Lord of hosts is His name. That is our consolation. That is how we can pull ourselves out, and I say pull ourselves, and you know what

I mean, I speak as a man. It is by God's power, it is by God's strength, like I said in Sunday school this morning with the

Apostle Paul. He is the one that strengthened me. He is the one that enabled me.

And so how is it that we can go above and beyond such a situation?

It is that the portion of Jacob is not like any of the idols that we could fall for ourselves. He wasn't like the ones in times past that were physical and that you could see and that people made with their hands, and He is certainly not like the ones that we can contrive in our minds today and that we can easily fall for.

And so with that in mind, I have three final thoughts that I want to leave you with that relate to this very passage, this key verse of Jeremiah 10 .16,

that which Schaeffer said, every Christian should engrave upon their hearts. And the first is this.

Who is the former of all things? Well, at the end of that verse, it says the Lord of hosts is His name.

But what's incredible about it is that we actually carry, let me say it this way, the namesake of the religion we walk within,

He is the former of all things. It is Christ Himself that is the former of all things.

In the context of Jeremiah 10, and even in the verse itself, again, it says the former of all things,

He is identified as the Lord of hosts. In other words, Jehovah, Yahweh. But here's what's interesting about it.

The writers of the New Testament frequently and with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, with no hesitation, they ascribe this name to Jesus Christ Himself.

And I want to show you that. So turn with me to Psalm 102, because I want to show you an

Old Testament context first that we will in a moment see quoted in the

New. And why is this important? Well, again, we can't separate ourselves too far from the days of Jeremiah.

Temporally, yes, we're thousands of years apart from it. But in another sense, perhaps even a more real sense, we are right there with Jeremiah.

We're right there with Him. We are serving the same God He served. And you could even say He was serving the same

God we serve, because He may not have understood the revelation of Christ just yet. He lived in space -time.

He was limited to that. We live on this side of the cross. And so we have far more blessings than Jeremiah even had.

And yet we worship the same person, the same person as the former of all things.

Look at Psalm 102, and take a look at verse 25. It says,

Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands.

They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment, as a vesture.

Shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

Now, I'm giving y 'all just a snapshot at the very end. We don't have time to go through the whole psalm, but let me tell you this.

The entire psalm is written about Jehovah. So you begin at the very beginning of it, and it's talking about Jehovah, the

Lord of hosts. The same one in view in Jeremiah 10 .16. The whole psalm is written about Jehovah.

When you get to verses 25 through 27 there, the psalmist begins speaking of the unchanging and eternal nature of Jehovah.

And the way that he does it in this writing here is he does so by contrasting him with the creation, which does change.

So he uses the creation of the creator to contrast the two.

And this is one of the most common ways that God throughout the Bible demonstrates his uniqueness compared to everything else.

He is creator. Everything else is creature. And so that's what the psalmist is doing here.

He is the former of all things, to put it back in Jeremiah's words. Now, that's the psalm.

Take a look at Hebrews 1 now. Turn with me back to the New Testament, at Hebrews 1, and begin with me in verse 8, and this is incredible.

It says, But unto the Son, He, that is the Father, saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.

A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.

Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

And thou, Lord, in the beginning, hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands.

They shall perish, but thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as death of garment.

And as a vesture shall thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.

Does that sound familiar? That's a quotation of the psalm we just read. Now, here's just an interesting note.

You can look at the Old Testament psalm in Hebrew and this quotation in the book of Hebrews, and you see the striking similarities right off the bat.

It is a blatant quotation. What's even more amazing is if you compare the

Greek behind all of this to what you call, what we would call the Septuagint, which is the

Greek translation of the Old Testament. So there's your psalms, there's the first five books of Moses, all of the prophets, all of it is in Greek.

If you compare Psalm 102, verses 25 through 27 in the Septuagint to this passage in Hebrews, it's identical.

And so, number one, you have one of the most significant proofs of the deity of Jesus, just first and foremost.

One of the greatest ones that we have, and this is because first, the Father himself is addressing the

Son as God. So the Father calls the Son God, and that's in verses eight through nine. But then in verses 10 and following, in the rest of the verses we read, it continues the same theme with the

Son being the one that is addressed, but it's with a psalm about Jehovah being applied to him in the process.

So Jesus Christ is identified as Jehovah. This is one of a number of examples we could look at. We could look at John chapter 12.

Obviously, this place right here in Hebrews, there's one in 1 Peter as well, where you have an explicit attribution of the name of Jehovah to Jesus Christ.

And this is one of the most striking ones. And so what this means is that the writer of Hebrews, under the inspiration of the

Spirit, he had zero problems with making such an application to Christ.

The apostles saw Christ as the former of all things, that which

Jeremiah saw and spoke of in Jeremiah chapter 10. Now, of course, Paul elsewhere attributes creatorship to Jesus as well.

In other words, Jesus Christ being the former or the maker of all things in very clear terms, and I'll just read this quickly, but in Colossians chapter 1, 16 through 17, he says, for by him, talking about Jesus, were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and for him.

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Again, you just see this doctrine of the creatorship of Jehovah in the

Old Testament being built upon and given to Christ himself.

And so that's the first thought I want to leave you with today, is you remember and engrave, as Schaeffer told us to do, engrave

Jeremiah 10, 16 on our hearts. Remember that Christ is the former of all things, the one that we serve, our namesake.

The second thing is that all authority has been given to that person, to the person of Christ.

So now turn with me to Matthew chapter 28. And this is all extremely important, extremely applicable as we fight this battle of temptations in this life.

And in the context of today's sermon, yes, we're talking about idolatry of different forms. How do we protect ourselves from it?

What do we do if we stumble into that particular trap? What is the way out?

Well, the answer, once more, is the same as it was for Jeremiah. So now we know that Christ is the former of all things, what kind of power does he exhibit exactly?

At the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, we find this out, and we'll start in verse 18. So Matthew 28, last chapter,

Matthew 28, look in verse, start in verse 18. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, all power, or you could also translate that authority, all power, all authority, is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the

Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo,

I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. And so what does this do? What it does is it makes the lordship and the kingship of Jesus eminently practical for every

Christian. It's not just, like I said in Sunday school, it's not an academic reality, it's not an intellectual reality, it's not something that we can kind of consume and it sits within us now, and we're like, okay,

I get it, this is kind of the end of the story, it all makes sense, of course, he has all power and things of that sort.

But what about the practical side of it? He is not only the lord of our hearts.

He is not meant to be a king in an individualistic sense. He doesn't get to be one choice in the pantheon of gods in the multitude of religions that you can choose from to then have in you, to have that inward peace and that spiritual health that so many pursue that we've talked about in Sunday school recently.

That's not how it works. He doesn't get to be just the lord of your heart. This means, as we read his very words here at the end, that he also, and I will say this, it is true that he's the lord of your heart,

I'm not negating that, but he also has the power over our lives and if we are his, then he imparts his own power in such a way where we can conquer any enemy on any front, especially if it's the enemy of idolatry in any form whatsoever, in any form that we can think of.

And so the fact that he says, all power, all authority is given unto me in heaven and on earth becomes a very practical reality for the

Christian that asks the question, how do I conquer? How do I overcome?

How do I win the many battles on multiple fronts? Like I've said many times recently, how do you do that?

If you think about it in terms of real militaristic strategy, it's not a good thing to be, you know, encircled by a number of different enemies for there to be multiple fronts to fight.

It divides your army, it divides your concentration, it divides your efforts and you're now having to fight multiple rather than your focus and concentration being on a single one.

We can name three right off the top of our heads. We have the world, we have the flesh, we have the devil. So there's three fronts that the

Christian has to fight and that is not easy. How do you do that in practical terms? How do you actually fight on three fronts at a minimum as a

Christian? And the answer is that he has authority. He has power in heaven and on earth, not just in our hearts and it is by his power that we are strengthened, that we are enabled to fight all of these battles.

And then he says in verse 19, Go ye therefore. Now how many times has dad said what is the therefore therefore?

It's an incredibly important word. We have to always keep in mind why is that there?

Think about what he said. He didn't just say go. He didn't tell us to go do some stuff and then leave it at that.

He said therefore go. And what is the therefore calling back to? The reality that all power has been given to him in heaven and on earth because of that reality.

Therefore, because of that, go. And so the therefore here is very important because it's a direct reference to his power which was given to him in heaven and in earth and that's the power behind our discipling, behind our baptizing, as he puts it in the immediate context here, our teaching, and of course it is the power behind our fight against all of the enemies that could come shooting at us at any point.

And we can't forget the way that the entire gospel ends. Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the world as Brother Ron included in his prayer just a little bit ago.

And here's the final thought. So number one, Christ is the former of all things. Number two, he has all authority.

It's been given to him over heaven, over earth, all of it. And thirdly, to kind of tie it in just a little bit with our sermon from last week, this reality of him being the former of all things and him having all authority and all power, it's the basis, it's the foundation for our faithful works.

So again, we're talking about the most practical terms at this point. This is why we can do everything that we talked about last week.

Remember, in the words of Peter, give all diligence, add to your faith. Or I should say, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue.

How do you do that? How exactly do you do that? Well, of course, we talked about how last week as well.

But if it could possibly be reduced to one singular subject, it would be because Christ is the former of all things.

That is how a Christian even has the capability to add to his faith. Our namesake is above all and has formed all.

He has made all. And this is why I believe that this amazing passage all the way back from the book of Jeremiah is just as relevant, is just as applicable to us today.

Not only because we as Christians are the heirs of the Abrahamic promise and therefore we get to take part in the portion of Jacob.

Isn't that amazing? Isn't that miraculous? But we are still surrounded by the same demon -influenced gods that the heathens of Jeremiah's day worshipped.

We're still surrounded by them. It's the same enemy. And so we look to the words of Scripture to see what is the reprieve from all of this.

What is our consolation as we've said before? And we see the answer right there in Jeremiah 10 -16.

So we must remember our portion and that unlike all of the figments of man's imagination that are worshipped more fervently than the actual creator himself, he is still the former of all, the maker of all, the fashioner of all.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day. Thank you for bringing us together. Thank you for giving us the opportunity once more to open up the pages of Scripture and to be edified by them, to grow in them, to abide in them so that we can be sanctified as you have told us.

That is the primary instrument of our sanctification is your truth and your word is truth.

So we thank you for one more example of the practical application that it holds.

We thank you for yet another example of the harmony within the whole of Scripture and the various ideas that your prophets spoke of and that your apostles built upon later and that all can be applied in a modern 21st century context so long after all these things were written and yet they still hold the exact same imminent application that they did all the way back then.

We thank you for that. We thank you for the grace of your written word that we have. And of course we ask that through your strength, through your spirit, through the grace that is within us, you continue to teach us these things and instruct us and help us recall to mind all of the principles that we learn as we study your words so that in each and every day and in every situation we find ourselves in, we can and we do apply it in a way that is pleasing in your sight and in a way that brings supernatural peace into our lives so that we can enjoy that which we have been called to.

We thank you once more for being with us today. We ask you to continue to be with us for the remainder of our time together. Bless the meal we're about to have.