"It’s All a Conspiracy" Part 1

Let's turn to the Lord in prayer now. Father, we come before you. We just thank you for the truth that we have already heard today as your word has been prayed and sung, as your word has been read and shared among us.

Lord, I pray that you would guide us now as we take a very close look at your message for us about your son. In Jeremiah chapter 11, I pray that you would strengthen our trust in you, that you would give us a confidence in you that truly resolves into a peace that passes all understanding.

We recognize your righteous hand triumphing over every conspiracy of man. I pray that you would help us to be honest and ready to deal with the sin that is in our lives. That you would grant to us repentance, turning us from that which is destructive and that which profanes your name.

Give us a desire, give us an increase, a love for your son Jesus Christ. We ask these things for his sake. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah. We'll be in Jeremiah chapter 11.

Jeremiah 11:9-23 and the Conspiracy of Idolatry

We're going to be looking at verses 9 through 23. And during our time in this passage, I trust that as we consider the success of God's righteous purposes, and we consider the failure of man's rebellion, that we will come to the conclusion that it's all a conspiracy.

Would you please join me in my standing as I read God's holy word. Please now hear the word of the Lord. Verse 9 of Jeremiah 11. Then the Lord said to me, A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refuse to hear my words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, Behold, I am bringing disaster on them which they will not be able to escape. Though they will cry to me, yet I will not listen to them. Then the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go and cry to the gods to whom they burn incense, but they surely will not save them in the time of their disaster.

For your gods are as many as your cities, O Judah, and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to the shameful thing, altars to burn incense to Baal. Therefore, do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry of prayer for them, for I will not listen when they call to me because of their disaster.

What right has my beloved in my house when she has done many vile deeds? Can the sacrificial flesh take away from you your disaster so that you can rejoice? The Lord called your name a green olive tree, beautiful in fruit and form.

With the noise of a great tumult, he has kindled fire on it, and its branches are worthless. The Lord of hosts who planted you has pronounced evil against you because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done to provoke me by offering up sacrifices to Baal.

Moreover, the Lord made it known to me, and I knew it, and you showed me their deeds. But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter, and I did not know that they had devised plots against me saying, Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, let his name be remembered no more.

But O Lord of hosts who judges righteously, who tries the feeling in the heart, let me see your vengeance on them, for to you I have committed my cause. Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the men of Anathoth who seek your life, saying, Do not prophesy in the name of the Lord so that you will not die at our hand.

Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I am about to punish them. The young men will die by the sword, and their sons and daughters will die by famine, and a remnant will not be left to them.

For I will bring disaster on the men of Anathoth the year of their punishment. You may be seated. May God bless this reading of the word. He was in earnest. His eyes were steady on mine. He was intense.

He was even compassionate.

He was passionate.

And he was an excellent proselytizer. 9 -11 was a huge conspiracy, he said. Mr. Bush knew all about the terrorist plans and let it happen. His intention was to facilitate a state of war so that he would be re-elected, so that he would make certain profits, so that he could obscure other illegalities that he was engaged in.

In fact, the president had fired a missile upon the Pentagon. There was no fourth plane. And he had seen the movie. He had read the book, and he had scanned the websites. And he wanted me to know the insider's knowledge about what really happened.

Maybe you've had a conversation like that. You sat with someone who was trying to share with you their conspiracy theory. Thinking that you needed to know what they knew. Conspiracy theories abound. And as popular as many of them seem to be, there are other conspiracies that we do not have to look very far at all to discover.

God reveals them in his word. And these conspiracies are actually, I think, more fascinating and more interesting than those proposed by Michael Moore, Dan Brown, or Hal Lindsey. And I think these theories are actually true.

And they're actually vital for our everyday lives. And I think as we look at the text, we're going to find four conspiracies. I don't know if we're going to get to all of them today. But there are four conspiracies intertwined in our passage.

Two of them display man's insurgency against God. And two of them display God's righteousness triumphing over the rebellion of man. And I think what our passage says to us, in essence, is that the word, the word which men hate in idolatry, God establishes in righteousness.

That's a comforting thought, and one that should be well applied in our lives. We begin with the first conspiracy, and that is that of idolatry. We find references to idolatry throughout our text. In fact, God himself calls it a conspiracy.

I have a difficult time believing conspiracy theories. I know that many of them are interesting, and they offer you a different look at the world. A common world view. And there's an attraction to them in that you are being invited to partake in secret knowledge.

And so, this is what makes them somewhat engaging. But all of this can also be said of the cults. And I think the reason why I find conspiracy theories unconvincing is sometimes the people who share them with me.

Perhaps I don't find the person trustworthy in their everyday life. Or perhaps I've never known this person to walk the gentle slopes of common sense, so I doubt they have the skill to scale hyper-rationality.

But when God says there's a conspiracy, we better pay attention. He says a conspiracy has been found. There is a conspiracy among the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have conspired together to proliferate idolatry.

They have conspired together to provoke God. Let's consider, first of all, the proliferation of idolatry. The children of Abraham should look up at the night sky and see the stars and remember the promises of God.

That he would bless Abraham and give him as many descendants as there were stars in the heavens. But they have come to the point now where they look up into the sky and they see the stars. And they think of all the gods they should worship.

They worship the queen of heaven and they worship the stars and they worship the pantheon of gods in Canaan. Primarily worshipping Baal. What has happened? What has brought them to this point that they are so consumed with idolatry?

First of all, it's a matter of ancestry. God says they have turned back to the sins of their forefathers in all of their idolatrous ways. They have turned their back on God and they have turned back to their forefathers who worshipped the golden calf.

Who worshipped Baal and Asherah. Who sacrificed their children to Molech. They have turned back to the ways of their forefathers. No matter how severely God had judged the previous generations. This people, they have turned back.

It's a matter of ancestry. It's a matter of culture, we might say. That they have been brought up in it. And because it was something handed down from great grandfathers and grandfathers and fathers. It has become something that is so entrenched in their lives.

That it's everywhere in their society. Not only is it a matter of ancestry. But this proliferation of idolatry is only sustained by its accessibility. Verse 12 and 13. God, when he foretells of the vengeance that is going to fall upon his people.

He makes note that the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are going to go running and crying out to the gods. To whom they have been offering incense all this time. And the pitiful irony is that these gods will be able to do absolutely nothing to help them.

They are dead gods. They have eyes that do not see. Ears that do not hear. Noses which cannot smell. Mouths which cannot speak. They have legs that cannot move. Hands that cannot do anything. Throats that cannot even make a sound.

They are dead. And they cannot help those who worship them and cry out to them. Even though there are a lot of them. Jeremiah says, your gods are as many as your cities, oh Judah. And there are altars lining every street in Jerusalem.

You cannot walk down a single street of Jerusalem where there is no idolatrous altar. It is accessible. This gross pluralism. Worshipping whatever you want, however you want. Has brought them to this critical point of disaster.

And it is accelerating them into further sin and destruction. The acceleration can be understood when you look at the end of verse 13 and the end of verse 17. And you see that God's complaint against Judah seems to be consolidated in their worship of Baal.

This heinous, shameful, vile thing that you worship Baal. It was the chief sin of Israel throughout their history of coming into Canaan, the promised land. That they worshipped the chief god of Canaan.

And they maintained this secret idolatry at times. Sometimes it was the public law of the land to worship Baal. And it has continued even to this day. And that chief sin has led to the proliferation of many more sins.

They don't worship just Baal. They worship as many gods as they have cities in their land. The chief sin, the besetting sin they have not forsaken has led to many more sins. And has accelerated their condition.

God calls all of this a conspiracy. A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. How does God view our sin? How does God view our way of thinking about sin, relating to sin, excusing sin?

How does God view it? Would he say that in any way we are involved in a conspiracy? Think about it in terms of the text. It's a matter of ancestry. They're turning back to the gods that their forefathers worshipped.

Something that's been handed down generationally. So much so that it's a matter of familiarity. This is the way our family does what we do. We get involved in a conspiracy to sin when we begin to make excuses for our sin based upon our past.

If you only understood what I've been through. If you could understand my family history. Then you can understand why I do what I do. Anytime we make an excuse citing our past. Excusing our present sin.

This is a conspiring to continue to sin. We look for those who will agree with our interpretation of our past and its validity on our current sin. That they will be complicit and compassionate upon our unique condition.

Perhaps our alcoholism is generational. Thereby we excuse drunkenness. Perhaps our uncontrolled anger is learned from our parents. Perhaps our materialism is an evidence of our past unresolved issues and current anxiety.

We psychoanalyze ourselves and we excuse ourselves in current sin because of our past. A matter of ancestry. A matter of multi-generational issue. Perhaps we conspire in that way. Perhaps we conspire to sin by making excuses due to the accessibility of sin in our culture.

Oh, it's everywhere.

What can you do?

When women prostitute their bodies for attention. When immorality and sexual immorality and perversion is the way that TV shows and movies and all manner of entertainment is sold. What can you do? It's just everywhere.

Can't avoid it. Do we make excuses? Do we conspire to sin? We can also conspire in sin in the same way. Not just ancestry and accessibility but also when we begin to adjust our morality according to the accelerating wickedness of the world.

When we surf just above the surface. When we surf upon the wave of the ever changing and declining depravity of man. We conspire to sin. Getting caught up in talking about what was acceptable in which generation and these are regionalisms and cultural things.

You know Paul when he was counseling Timothy. He warned Timothy that evil men and imposters would proceed from bad to worse. Deceiving and being deceived. Now he didn't leave Timothy there and say good luck with that.

He then instructed Timothy to continue in the truth which he had learned from his youth. It was the truth of the Holy Scripture in particular the Old Testament that Timothy grew up with. The Old Testament scriptures which were wise, which were sufficient to lead him to the wisdom of Jesus Christ.

To lead him to salvation in Christ. So Paul says to Timothy, Timothy things are going to go from bad to worse. But you stick with the truth of the scriptures which lead you to Jesus Christ. Why is that important?

Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. And we conspire to sin when we begin to talk about it in relative terms rather than putting our attention upon Jesus Christ. I've been struck recently by a passage in Colossians 3.

It just doesn't get out of my head very much. On any given day, I don't know why I am thinking so much about it. But it seems to me very relevant at this point, Colossians chapter 3 and in verse 1. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on things that are on earth. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

I think that answers every conspiracy to excuse and thereby continue in sin. It washes away ancestry. We died and now our life is hid with Christ in God. So what is my ancestry to me? I died. It washes away the issue of accessibility.

Keep seeking the things above where Christ is. Not only where Christ is, but your life is hidden with Christ in God. Your life is not wrapped up in the world. Your life is wrapped up in Christ. And holiness and righteousness and joy and all the fruit of the spirit is what is most accessible to us.

It answers the issue of acceleration. Because if we're seeking the things which are above and we consider Christ and that he will soon return. That we're headed for glory. This is our trajectory in life.

And it's no mistake that just after this remarkable four verses that Paul then says, Therefore, put off the sin and lay hold of the new life that is being renewed in you according to the image of the one who created you.

Let us not conspire to proliferate sin in our lives or the lives of others by making what I think are very common excuses. Common in Jeremiah's day and they're still common in our day. Let's turn our attention, as Paul says to Timothy, to the unchanging truth of Jesus Christ.

That's to whom we must be conformed. Now, secondly in this conspiracy of idolatry is the fact that these men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are provoking God. In verse 17, the Lord takes Judah's sin personally.

He takes it personally. Verse 17, The Lord of hosts who planted you has pronounced evil against you because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah which they have done to provoke me by offering up sacrifices to Baal.

It's a remarkable thing that on the whole, when people sin, they do not think to themselves, I'm going to stick it to God. This is not the primary thought in their mind. The primary thought in their mind is something different.

It's, I'm going to get mine. It's, I'm going to take revenge. They wronged me, I'm going to wrong them back. It's, oh, I don't have anything to do with that. It's about self-preservation. It's about self-exaltation.

Sin is primarily about the life directed at self. And yet God takes it personally. Why does God take it personally? Well, in the verse you hear, I planted you. I planted you. Now, I have lots of plants in my garden.

When I plant them, I pray over them and ask God to give me some fruit for all the labor that's going to go in it. And I'm praying that they're going to last long enough and grow faster than the bugs can eat them.

So that I can get some fruit from it. And if I don't get any fruit from what I planted, I am going to be very disappointed. And God has planted Judah to produce certain fruit for his glory. And when they live for self and give no fruit at all, he takes it personally.

He takes it personally whoever sins against him because he has made us. He has given us breath. He has made us in his very own image that we would glorify him. And if we live for self, God takes that personally.

In particular, there are two provocations in the text. Two reasons why God gets angry about what they're doing. The first is that they reject the word. They reject the word. In verse 9, God speaks about the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

That they refuse to hear my words. In verse 12, he speaks of the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem who are idolatrous. Now, if we pay very close attention, we will recognize that Jeremiah is echoing a pattern of language from verses 1 -8.

In verses 1 -8, where the focus is on Jeremiah preaching the word of God to the people, we hear about the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. We hear about the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem.

And these are the people and the places where the word of God was preached. Jeremiah went to these people and preached the word to them. He went to these places and preached the word in these places. And these are the very same places that God says are involved in a massive conspiracy of idolatry.

And I think there's a connection that we need to recognize. That everywhere and to everyone where the word was preached, there were the bastions of idolatry. The word of God was preached to the idolaters and the places of idolatry.

And they rejected the word because they wanted to keep their idols and maintain their idolatry. There is a direct correlation. The more we believe in the word of God, the less we have anything to do with idols.

And the more we reject the word of God and can't stand certain parts of the word of God and push it out of the way, the more idolatrous we become. Jeremiah is not preaching to absolute pagans. They still offered sacrifices in the temple.

They still talked about the Bible. But they rejected portions of the Bible. And they were rampant idolaters. They rejected the word of God. And rejecting the prophet's words means rejecting the one who sent the prophet.

And God takes it personally. He is provoked. Secondly, the other provocation which falls in line with this is the breaking of the accord. The breaking of the agreement. The covenant. Notice verse 10. They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear my words.

And they have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant. She is called his beloved and yet now she can no longer be in his house because of such vile sin in her life.

She is so vile in her unrelenting adultery that she is no longer welcome to God. She has denied her wedding vows. She has taken up the covenant. She has annulled it. She has ignored it. She has tossed it away like a spoiled heirloom discovered in the corner of her attic.

Meaning that neither the nation of Israel or the nation of Judah wanted to live as God's people in God's place blessed under his rule. They were done with living as the image of God. They were not interested in cohering to who he was.

They weren't interested in mediating his goodness so as to manifest his glory. They didn't want to live in the image of God. All day long he held out his hands to a stubborn and rebellious people and they spat on his grace.

They conspired together. They stood firm. You're asking too much Jeremiah. You go too far Jeremiah. You want us to get rid of this and this and this. Who are you to say this to us? We are going to stand firm and hang on to our way of life, to our idols and they reject God.

They provoke God.

What about us? What about us?

How do we view God? How do we view God? Do we allow the culture around us to inform our understanding of God? Or are we willing to sacrifice the popular understandings of God to take hold of who God has revealed himself to be in the scriptures?

This is always an important question. This is a perennial sanctifying question. You know, as Paul says in the Spirit in Romans 3, there's just no fear of God before our eyes. That's humanity. There's just no fear of God, no reverence.

You know, I don't fear my dog.

I really don't.

And the thing about the normal dog, you don't have to know the breed of the dog. How often do we speak of our dog? She's a mutt. Or it's a mutt. We don't have to know the breed. We don't have to understand what the dog is communicating when it takes its various stances and does something with its tail and its legs and so on and so forth.

We don't have to understand what the dog is all about in that moment. All we have to do is say something nice and pat it on the head and it's just happy to be there.

Right?

We give it treats and it'll do tricks.

Right?

And this is how our culture has reinvented God. On the whole, God is expressed in terms of a dog. He's just happy to get whatever attention we'll give him. No matter what. This is the vision of God given to us in today's popular culture.

This should not be anything close to what you think about when you think about God. The God of the Bible. Let us be sure that we are not conspiring in idolatry by settling for a nice, placating, appeasing kind of a God that's more like a dog.

Let's not conspire in idolatry but hold firm to the eternal, glorious, triune God. A righteous God of holy love that we find in the scriptures. Now the second conspiracy is that of murder.

The Conspiracy to Silence the Prophet

Murder.

And the transition I think is fairly natural. Rejection of God's message in holding firm to idolatry necessitates the rejection of God's messenger. And so we have the men of Anathoth. This is Jeremiah's hometown.

Jeremiah's hometown. Which is full of priests. And they are conspiring to kill him. Notice the method of their conspiracy. It's in secrecy. Verses 18 and 19. So there's no justice here. There's no public appeal.

The men of Anathoth are not trying to bring Jeremiah to trial. They are devising plots in secret. Because that is where sin flourishes. Sin flourishes in secret and in the dark. It cannot flourish in the light.

You say, well I see a lot of public sin today. But it's still covered over in euphemisms that say this is alright and safe and fine. And still in the darkness. And we have here men coming together to secretly plot to kill Jeremiah.

Why? Why do they want to kill him? Verse 19. To ever be referenced again in their public life. Verse 21. Why do the men of Anathoth want to murder Jeremiah? Because they don't want to hear the word of the Lord anymore.

They don't like his preaching. They don't like his preaching. And so they are conspiring together secretly to silence Jeremiah. Those who love the darkness hate the light. And loathe all those who would preach the light.

And would expose their evil deeds. And in this way I think that Jeremiah serves as kind of a model. He says he's a lamb being led to slaughter. The religious leaders want him dead. Yet God who judges justly, to him Jeremiah has committed his cause.

This all sounds very familiar because it is a pattern which we find fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jeremiah's ministry foreshadows that of Christ. Religious conspirators also rose up against Christ to silence him.

To end him. Consider the passage in John 8. In John chapter 8 Jesus speaks with the religious leaders. And they say to him, Abraham is our father. Jesus says to them, but if you are Abraham's children do the deeds of Abraham.

But as it is you are seeking to kill me. A man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. This Abraham did not do. He goes on to tell them you are doing the deeds of your father. Your father who was the devil.

Who was a murderer from the beginning. And he is the father of lies. Father of lies. The builders rejected the chief cornerstone. They did not want to have anything to do with Jesus Christ. I find that a challenge in two ways.

One, I think is a warning to the religious. The very religious people of Anathoth wanted to kill Jeremiah. Who was preaching the word of God. The very religious leaders of the Jews in Jesus' day conspired together to murder Jesus.

I think there is a warning here to those who are the religious. To people who have been brought up in the ways of worshipping God. There is a warning here. Many times it is the most churchy of folks who are the most vicious.

And there are attacks on those who preach the scriptures. Many a pastor has been eaten alive by wolves in sheep's clothing to whom they preach Christ. That zealous fanaticism is evidenced in many churches.

Baptists certainly are a perennial example. That is not a testimony of how real Christians act. That is a testimony of how easy it is for folks to get inserted into a religious way of life. And to find a sense of community and affinity with religious folks.

But never know Christ. And to hide their sinful thinking, their idolatrous hearts and their sinful ways of life. To hide it all in religious language and religious activity. So that when the light of Christ is preached from the scriptures and it exposes evil deeds.

Sometimes they repent of their sins and come to faith in Jesus Christ. After winning the 10 year perfect Sunday school award. The Puritans tell stories of when the parson is converted in the pulpit. Preaching Christ.

It happens.

You may be here and you find the preaching of the word to be wholly unpleasant. But for whatever reason you have to be here. Listen, don't allow some image to keep you from repenting and running to Christ.

I have been extremely blessed to pastor Liberty Baptist Church and Sunnyside Baptist Church. Where the word of God on the whole is just valued and upheld. And God is praised through the reading and the preaching of God's word.

I've never had the experience of being eaten alive. But many have. If you hear that going on, don't be complicit. Call them and challenge yourself to be a wise Berean and examine the scriptures to see Christ.

Now the other challenge I think in this. Is that there is a satanic conspiracy to harm the bride of Christ. God has placed enmity between the seat of the woman and the seat of the serpent. There is enmity, there is hostility, there is warfare.

And there is a continual ongoing satanic conspiracy to do harm to the bride of Christ. And to silence the preaching of the scriptures. This can sometimes happen in very blatant ways. It happens in many places across the world.

Where our brothers and sisters suffer daily for their faith in Jesus Christ. And it happens here in our context perhaps in more subtle ways. As certain topics must never be mentioned. As certain themes in the scripture must be abandoned.

And as systematically even within religious circles portions of the bible are violently reinterpreted. So that we may still say we believe in the bible yet avoid any form of persecution. There is a conspiracy to silence the preaching of the word.

And the question that Christ asks his own disciples in Matthew 10. Are we willing to follow him into the teeth of that opposition and that persecution? It's a challenge for us to think about as we look at the conspiracies alive and well in Jeremiah's day.

And how they are still alive and well in ours. Let's close with a word of prayer and a hymn of praise. Father I come before you this morning and I just thank you for your word and the challenge it has been to my own soul.

I pray that you would work this word into all of our hearts. That you would challenge us about the conspiracies that perhaps we are complicit to. And the conspiracies that perhaps cause us to fear. And I pray that you would give us great confidence.

As we consider your supreme power. And your perfect goodness. That even if men hate your word in idolatry. You will establish it in all righteousness. We pray these things for the sake of Christ.

Amen.