“God’s Glory in Salvation” Part 2 March 11, 2018 AM

The Hidden Cost of Idolatry and the Visibility of Sin

We heard before long that all of their horses had died. That they had got up that morning to take care of their horses before they came to church and they went out and all their horses were dead. And they didn't know what had happened, they felt like somehow they had done something wrong, they hadn't taken good care of them, so on.

But they found out what happened, that there used to be, there used to be a factory in a general area. It had long since operation, it stopped its operations, but there had been chemicals that they had allowed to leak out and they had disposed of in the ground and that they had done so illegally and secretly and over time this had seeped into the well water in the area around them and they were trying to feed and water their horses and their horses died because of these chemicals.

Pollution very often can be hidden for a time in our own day. We may look at, we may hear stories, in fact I know some of you are dealing with this right now, that companies not dealing with their chemicals properly polluted the land and and chemicals are headed into the well water in your area.

That happens and it's hidden for a while and then it pops up. But there is no secret polluting of God's land, is there? There's no secrecy about it. God saw all of it. God saw all their immoral rituals.

God had not lost count, he had not lost track of the bodies. He calls them carcasses. He does not call them sacrifices, they are mere carcasses. How many beasts had been slaughtered for the sake of these false gods?

How many children? God had not lost count. What do we learn from this? That we cannot hide our sins from God. We cannot hide our sins from God. Many companies have a risk-reward equation. How it's risky but I think we can get away for it for this amount of time, we'll make this much money and then when we get hit with the fines we can pay for it and move on.

Because they have that much time to operate in secrecy and do things in that way then they can make all the money they need and the fines are nominal compared to the profit they make for doing things in the wrong way.

Do you know that people, individuals, you know why corporations do that? Because individuals do that in their own life. The risk-reward equation is the same for all of us as sinners that often we are thinking, well can I get away with it?

What are the implications of it? Is it worth it to me despite what the consequences might be? And so we have that similar mindset and yet the truth is we may be able to hide sin from one another but the truth is that you and I lay naked to the soul before the eyes of Almighty God at all times and in all places.

And we tend to forget that. Proverbs 15 3 says, the eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good. Hebrews 4 13 says, there is no creature hidden from his sight but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

That thought, the reality that God sees clearly, sees us clearly more than we can see ourselves, is the kind of thought that sends us running. It should send us running to Christ. Jeremiah 17 is going to remind us that the heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick.

So we can deceive ourselves and say we're fine and we can make excuses and say well I'm not as bad as so-and-so and we have a way of justifying things and dealing with things and yet the truth is that God sees us for who we really are and that thought should send us running to Christ which is what the preacher to the Hebrews does in Hebrews 4 14.

Therefore, therefore, based on the fact that God sees who we really are, therefore, since we have such a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession, let us hold fast to Christ.

The Punishment of Idolatry as Exile and Divine Judgment

The pollution of idolatry is obvious to God. It's obvious the Jews did not hide it from God. So notice the punishment of idolatry. I wonder if you noticed in verse 18 that he says, I will first doubly repay their iniquity and their sin.

He says first meaning first before the salvation, before I bring them out of exile, before I give them salvation, verses 14 through 16, before that I will judge and I will doubly repay them for their iniquity and their sin.

What does it mean that he doubly repays? Does this mean he goes overboard, that he does too much? Is he like we are as parents that we let things build and build and we go off and go too far? No. God's not unjust.

He doubly repays in this sense that he is going to punish them double what they're used to. And he has been punishing them. He has been giving them famines and he has been turning them over to their enemies and he has been doing all sorts of things to frustrate their efforts but they're not responding.

They're callous and so he's going to doubly repay now. He's going to grab their attention. Whatever it takes, he's going to get their attention. He's going to doubly repay them. It's double because it's more severe.

They're going to be exiled. They're going to be carried away from their land. Notice verse 13. I will hurl you out of this land into the land which you have not known. This is exceptionally severe for them.

This had never been part of their punishment before and so it's doubly severe. It's also doubly severe because it's not just because of them. It's also because of their forefathers. Because of Manasseh.

In verses 11 and 12, it is because of your forefathers. It is because your forefathers have forsaken me. Not only their forefathers but also them. Verse 12, you too have done evil even more than your forefathers.

So it's a double payment because the time has come to judge the whole nation for the sins not only of them which are very great but also for their forefathers which are also great. So he doubly repays them.

That's the punishment and the punishment precisely is exile. He will cast them away. Verse 13 says that he will send them into the land that they have not known neither you nor your fathers and there you will serve other gods day and night for I'll grant you no favor.

No favor, no grace, no blessing, no approval and he sends them off into a foreign land to do that which they had been doing in their own land which was worshiping idols. There's a time to cast away stones and God is throwing all of the stone-hearted stone idol worshiping stones out of the land.

He's casting them all the way. Idolatry always ends up this way. In idolatry we cut ourselves off from God but we end up in total exile as the end. We see that Judah was cut off from God. They were cut off from their own family members, families, and society.

We see our unraveled in verses 1 through 9. This is all part of the judgment. Everything that would be complementary to the image of God is utterly unraveled in their lives because they're worshiping idols and God's punishment on idolatry is to give them more idolatry.

Turn over with me to Romans chapter 1 where we see that this is what God says here. Romans 1 verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. What is this wrath of God? Well notice verse 23. Why the wrath of God? They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

They exchanged the worship of the one true God for the worship of idols. This is why God's wrath is upon them and this is now the expression of God's wrath upon them. Verse 24, this is the way his wrath manifests.

Verse 24, therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. That's the way his wrath is expressed. Why? Again, verse 25, for they exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. So God's wrath is expressed by turning them over to do the things that they had wanted to do in rebellion to him. Again, verse 26, for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. And then we have a description of homosexuality among the women and the men.

Verse 28, and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper and then we have a list of all sorts of sin. So we must beware.

Judah's punishment for idolatry was to be given over to idolatry and in the wrath of God we see that this is the case. For those who do not see fit, they no longer have God in their knowledge, they don't care to think about God anymore, God says, wish granted.

And that is the wrath of God. In some ways we may begin to rethink the state of our nation. Yes, it's true that sin and denials of God and sexual immorality and the destruction of the family and all this will bring the wrath of God, but according to Romans 1, this is an expression of the wrath of God.

To be given over to these things is an expression, not the only one, but an expression of the wrath of God. Do we say, I don't want to live for God, I don't want to think about God, he can't control my life, I'm gonna live my life my way, and God says, wish granted.

That is indeed a severe judgment. He says, I will grant you no favor, Judah, therefore this is the case. I suppose we should recognize the opposite, the other side, that when God does grant favor, when God does grant favor, he gives us the desires and the life that he wishes for us, and that is a life in Christ as we are being renewed in the image of God.

The Gathering of Stones and the New Exodus of Worship

So as a time to cast away stones, we see the pollution of idolatry and the punishment of it, but also want to note the places in which this idolatry is happening. This expression is in verse 16. These stones are cast away, the stone hearted have become like their stone idols.

They are dead, they are useless, and these stones are cast away, and where are they cast away? To pagan lands, we see in verse 13, to places that they have not known. There they're going to worship their idols day and night, but when it comes time to gather stones together, from where are they gathered according to verse 16?

It seems they are gathered from water, presumably rivers, where it was known that that's where the industry of fishing was done in their time, and also drawn from the mountains and the hills. That's where he's going to gather them from.

What Jeremiah is saying in this prophecy, that's where they were cast away to. Why the water? Why the rivers? And why the mountains and the hills? Why is it there that they have been cast, so that from there that they are regathered?

It's because throughout Jeremiah, the river, precisely the river Euphrates, has been expressed again and again as the source of idolatry. That the people of Judah are taking their buckets and going all the way to the river Euphrates to fill up a bucket of water, and they come all the way back down to their land and dump it in a leaky cistern.

And that's the expression of their idolatry. And so the river is a place of idolatry, a source of idolatry, and what about the mountains and the hills? It's the high places that they go to, to offer their sacrifices.

These are two places, the rivers and the mountains, the water and the hills. These are the two places that have been depicted again and again as the places of idolatry. God says, I'm going to cast you away into lands you have not known, and when he talks about gathering them in, it's from the water and the hills, from the rivers and the mountains.

These are the places of idolatry, and I don't want us to miss the point. God's fishermen and hunters would gather together these souls, these people of the New Exodus, and they would gather them out of the places of idolatry.

Meaning, there is no return from exile without an escape from idolatry. There is no return from exile without an escape from idolatry. As long as idolatry persists, the exile persists, and there is no salvation without the true worship of God being planted firmly into the life of a person.

Salvation begins with worship. There are many people who would love to book a flight to paradise so long as they could stuff their idols into the overhead bin, but true salvation is an escape from idolatry.

Salvation begins with worship, true worship, which displaces and eliminates idolatry as warmth displaces the cold and as light eliminates the darkness. And so there's a casting away of stones, there's a casting away of stones so that there may be a gathering in of stones together, and that's the theme of salvation that we have in our text.

We have a promise here of a New Exodus, a New Exodus, and we should see the superiority of this New Exodus in verses 14 and 15. So listen to the way that this is expressed. Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no longer be said, as the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

So it was a common saying that when we think about the Lord, when we when we invoke the name of the Lord, what we think about the Lord God who brought us up out of Egypt, and that was a common way of expressing themselves.

But now a days are coming, God says, when that expression will be laid aside for another expression which will totally eclipse the first. Here's the new way of saying it, but as the Lord lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where he had banished them, explanation, for I'll restore them to their own land which I gave to their fathers.

So the New Exodus will, in power and in glory and in effectiveness, will so eclipse the first Exodus that they're gonna lay aside the old way of saying it for the new way of saying it. Do you see it? The New Exodus will be so much better, so much more glorious, that the old one will be in, the old one's glory will be totally eclipsed.

Now let's be honest, let's think about the first Exodus, the old Exodus. You know, the one with Moses and Aaron and Miriam, with a tabernacle that had the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant with a mercy seat.

The old Exodus with Joshua, with the plagues, the mighty plagues were placed upon Egypt. When all Egypt was plundered, when God satiated the thirst of his people with water from a rock and satisfied their hunger with bread from heaven, when he parted the Red Sea and he parted the Jordan River, when he led them by pillars of fire and cloud, he gave them the Ten Commandments and all Mount Sinai smoked with the power and the glory of God.

That Exodus. So when we look at verse 15, are we to be thinking about the New Exodus in terms of merely Ezra, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel? Are they so great and greater that they eclipsed the old Exodus? Was the rebuilt temple and its empty Holy of Holies greater than what they had in the first Exodus?

Was the return from Babylon full of glory and power like the return from Egypt? Can anything from the days of Nehemiah to the days of Judas Maccabeus even compare? No. To where should we look for the glory of the New Exodus?

As many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are yes. Jesus himself says he is greater than the temple, greater than Solomon. He is the fulfillment of Moses the lawgiver. He is the final high priest.

He calls himself the temple. He actually is the Ark of the Covenant. He carries the covenant in and of himself. He occupies the throne, the true mercy seat. He is Yeshua who brings us into the new creation.

He is the rock. He is the bread come down from heaven. He is God with us. He is our Passover and our redemption. His person and work alone eclipsed the first Exodus with a new one. And that kind of salvation changes the praises of the people, doesn't it?

We used to say this, but now we say this because there's something greater, something more wonderful. In our deliverance from our idolatry, our worship rises to Christ alone. To the degree that we delight in Christ, to the degree that we jealously redirect glory to him, is the degree to which we are sanctified from idols.

The saving person and work is what brings about true worship. We have to remember that the worship switch in us is hardwired on. We are always made in the image of God. We are always taking in worth and spewing out worship.

We can't turn it off. And there is no cure for idolatry except in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And there is no cure for vanity except in glory. There has to be an end of idolatry if we're going to be delivered from exile.

The Scope of the New Exodus and the Gathering of the Nations

I want us to think about the scope of the New Exodus. It is superior, but it's also superior because of its scope. Verses 19 to 21, Jeremiah says this, Oh Lord, my strength and my stronghold and my refuge in the day of distress.

To you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, Our fathers have inherited nothing but falsehood, futility, and things of no profit. Can man make gods for himself? Yet they are not gods.

And then God says, Therefore, behold, I am going to make them know. This time I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord. So not only will Jews be delivered from idolatry, drawn from the waters and the hills, from the rivers and the mountains, but also the nations, the Gentiles, are going to be gathered to God and they will be confessing the futility and the emptiness of idolatry.

They too will be saved unto true worship. God will make them to know his power and his might and his name. Salvation is of the Lord. Nations are going to come to the Lord. Jews will come to their land and Jeremiah has already said all of that.

It's not a new theme. Jeremiah 3, verses 17 through 18,. At that time they will call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all the nations will be gathered to it to Jerusalem for the name of the Lord, nor will they walk anymore after the stubbornness of their own evil hearts.

In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers as an inheritance. So very much the same thing that Jeremiah says here in chapter 16.

What do we have here? We have the gathering together of Jews and Gentiles into one place so that God's people are gathered into his place to be blessed under his rule. Utter renewal of the image of God.

The gathering of stones together. It's not just Jews. It's not just about land rights. When Isaiah talks about the return, he envisions a holy mountain to which all peoples are gathered from idolatrous exiles and the excluded Gentiles.

They are gathered together into one holy mountain. He says it over and over and over again. Zechariah prophesies of a Jerusalem without walls because there will be an innumerable multitude living there.

The scope of the New Exodus includes all kinds of people, Jew and Gentile, brought into one city, brought into one mountain, which fills the whole earth. The testimony of Hebrews 12 and verse 22 and following, of Revelation 21 and verse 10, and the Daniel 2 verse 35, and again and again throughout the scriptures, the New Exodus is one in which all kinds of people from all kinds of places are gathered together in one city, in one mountain, who turns out to be Christ.

Lo and behold, the land promised to Abraham turns out in Christ, who is his seed, to be the entirety of creation. In Romans 4 13, it says, and the promise to Abraham and his descendants that they would inherit the world was not given to him while circumcised, was it?

Inherit the what? The promise to Abraham was to inherit the Levant, the Canaan, to inherit Palestine. No, Paul says the promise was to Abraham and his seed to inherit the world, because Christ is the heir, Hebrews 1 2 says, and he inherits everything.

So as we're working our way through the prophet Jeremiah, his view is going to get larger and larger as Christ is made more and more clear, and Jeremiah needs this vision of the scope of the New Exodus because he is under great persecution.

He's being targeted. His own family members from his hometown, Anathoth, are trying to kill him. But look at what Jeremiah says when he receives this promise of the New Exodus. He sings praise to the Lord.

Oh Lord, my refuge and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of distress. And he praises God and he worships God as he reflects on the truth that the New Exodus is going to eclipse the First Exodus in all manner of glory because of all those who will be gathered together in salvation.

Salvation begins for seeds and is best experienced in worship. In difficult days, in difficult days, we must look forward to the day where Christ's victory is shown complete. Finally, in verse 16, it would have us think about the servants of the New Exodus.

For some reason, verse 16 will get read negatively as part of God's judgment, but I don't think that's the meaning of the text or the context, and in fact, Jesus reads it a little bit differently than that.

How will God gather the idolatrous to himself in salvation? He will send hunters into the hills and the mountains, and he will send fishermen to the water, to the rivers, to gather in these formerly idolatrous people, to gather in these from the places of idolatry to the place of worship, to gather them from the exile to salvation, from the darkness to the light.

And you think about the gospel of Matthew. Matthew establishes the end of the exile and the arrival of the Messiah's saving work in chapter 1, and then Matthew begins to saturate the opening chapters of his gospel with quotes and allusions from the Old Testament demonstrating that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ promised by the prophets.

And then in verses 13 through 17 of Matthew 4, we have Jesus leaving Nazareth, he came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who were sitting in darkness saw a great light, and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a light dawned.

Quoting from Isaiah in a context where Isaiah was envisioning the gathering together of Jews and Gentiles into one kingdom, and lo and behold Jesus begins to preach saying, repent the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Jesus is bringing an end to the exile and stunningly the exiles are not far off looking across a vast landscape and seeing the distant boundaries of a kingdom that they're trying to get to. But the kingdom has come to them.

Jesus is standing right in front of them and saying, it's time to enter. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven stands before you. What will you do? Repent. It's time to end the exile.

The idolaters needed to be gathered. The lost needed to be sought out. Hunters and fishermen are needed in the new exodus and Jesus went and got some. Next verse, Matthew 4 18, now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.

And he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Well that's a handy-dandy illustration, after all they were fishermen. But you know there's something deeper about that? Jesus comes bringing the kingdom to end the exile of those who live in darkness and the promise in Jeremiah is that God is going to send out fishermen, hunters, those who will seek and save the lost.

And so the servants of the new exodus are those who have already been brought into Christ and so we participate in the new exodus as servants. Stones are to be gathered together. Stones are to be gathered together.

Not dead idle stones but in Christ living stones. First Peter 2 5 says, built into God's temple and dwelt by the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 3 says, not two different kinds of stones with a dividing wall in the middle but that's broken down.

Previously exiled Jews and excluded Gentiles are gathered as one holy temple. Ephesians 2 verses 10 through 22. And since salvation begins with worship, how better to be servants of the new exodus than by being ardent worshippers.

It's when we're idle free that we can free from idols. This is what Paul is writing about in 1st Thessalonians. 1st Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 8 he says, for the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth so that we have no need to say anything.

Paul has nothing to add to the witness, to the testimony, to the power of the gospel proclamation coming out of the infant church in Thessalonica. Why? For these reports, they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for a son from heaven whom he raised from the dead that is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come.

Paul's saying the power of your gospel testimony is because it's clear that our preaching to the gospel to you took effect because you have turned so mightily away from idolatry to worship the one true God that your gospel testimony has all this power.

We have nothing more to add. So as servants of the new exodus, if we are going to be about seeking the lost, if we're going to be about fishing for men, if we're going to be servants of the new exodus to bring people out of the places of idolatry into true worship, then we ourselves be very conscious of idolatry in our own lives, repenting and setting it aside, making it a conversation piece.

Why don't you do such-and-such? Why aren't you this way? Why don't you go here? Why don't you do that? Well, you know, I struggle with idols. I struggle with false worship, and by the grace of God I have been saved to be a repenter, somebody who's turning away from that which destroys my relationship with God, that which destroys my relationship with others, that which destroys my healthy way of relating to the world around me.

I struggle with idolatry, but God is turning me away from it. Make it a conversation piece as we fish for men, as we seek and save the lost. Salvation begins with worship. Praise God for the new exodus.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word. I pray it would encourage us. I pray that it would edify us and move us along so that we may bring more glory to Christ. I pray that you would help us to be very conscious of your work of throwing away stones and gathering them in.

We thank you for the glory that you reveal in your salvation through judgment. We pray that you would help us to be involved with your work. We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen.