John 6:14-15 (The Idolatry Of Nation)

The Shepherd's Church

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All right. Well, like I said earlier, welcome to everyone who is here. I want to begin with the theme that we've been going with this morning, which is the kingship of God, but I want to go at it from a different angle.

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I want to talk about idolatry. When we think about idolatry, we often think about physical objects such as wood, or stone, or precious metals.

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Those of course are idols, bowing down and worshiping those physical things. But when the Bible talks about idolatry, it talks about something much larger and much more all -encompassing.

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When the Bible talks about idolatry, it talks about this, and it should be there, it is. Anything that you're putting your hope and your trust in that is not

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God. Anything that you love more than God, anything that you think about, dream about, or obsess about more than God, that is the essence in the heart of idolatry.

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Now, it's difficult to diagnose in our own hearts. Because it tends to disguise itself.

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Idolatry can be kneeling down in front of a golden statue or having an over -preoccupation with your bank account.

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Idolatry can be worshiping an icon or an image, or it can be worshiping a celebrity or an icon in culture.

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It can be as obvious as loving Buddha, Krishna, or Baal, or it can be as subtle as loving your children more than God.

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Idolatry is a pernicious, sneaky sort of sin that disguises itself and robs you of your joy in God.

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It can even be something as simple as idolatry of the nation. Loving your country, being a patriot more than God.

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You see, there's a normative love for God that's good. We all should love our country. There's never been a country in all of human existence that has survived very long when people hated their country.

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There's never been a country, and, you know, we will see how America goes, but there's never been a country where if your government hates the country, that it's gonna survive for very long.

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There's a normal, good love of country. But there's also a disordered love of country, a perverted love of country.

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You see, patriotism is a good thing. But when it becomes an ultimate thing, then it's when it ventures into idolatry.

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What happens when your love for country supersedes your love for God? What happens when you're more concerned about the state of the nation than the state of the souls of men and women who are dying apart from Christ?

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What happens when we begin to live like our politics and our parties and our policies are the thing that's gonna change the world when

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God has promised that He's the one who's gonna change the world? God's already given us the means by which this world is gonna be changed, and it's not politics.

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It's by preaching, singing, hearing, and doing the gospel of God. It's by making disciples of all the nations.

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It's by evangelizing. It's by the gospel. Of course

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He's gonna use nations. Of course He's gonna use countries. Of course He's gonna use presidents.

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He has in the past. But when we inordinately love those things, we've fallen into idolatry.

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When we disproportionately think about the nation, we've fallen into idolatry.

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When we excessively trust in those things, we've fallen into idolatry. When we have more pride in being an American than being a

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Christian, we've fallen into idolatry. And when this happens, the

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Bible says we love the creature more than the creator, and we have exchanged the truth about God, His power,

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His dominion, His authority, everything for a lie that has no power. When we do that, we're robbed of joy, we're robbed of love, we're robbed of patience, peace, and kindness.

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Idolatry steals from us, even though we think that we're clinging to good things.

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Jesus said you cannot serve two masters. You will love the one and you will hate the other. He doesn't say that you'll love both at disproportionate degrees.

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He doesn't say you can love both God and money. He says you will love money and you'll hate God. You will love your family, and yet you will hate

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God. You will love comfort and you will hate God. You will love the nation and you will hate God.

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Whatever idol you want to throw, Jesus doesn't accept divided loyalty.

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It's like a weed. Its seed gets dropped in rather innocently, then all of a sudden it grabs roots, starts growing down, starts choking out everything else, and then before you know it, the only thing you have left is weeds.

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That's what idolatry does. It's so slow, so simple, and so easy for us to replace

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God with seemingly benign, good things.

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This is exactly what was happening to the people of Judah 2 ,000 years ago in John chapter six. So what

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I want us to do today is I want us to see how the people of Judah had an idolatry of nation, how they loved their nation more than they loved

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God. The second thing I want us to see today is I want us to see how that sort of temptation affects the church today, and it's rampant in culture right now.

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And then the third thing I want us to see is how the power of the gospel will set us free. So let's pray, and then let's explore the text.

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Lord Jesus, there's so many good things that you've given us, so many gifts, and yet while the stars in heaven always praise, while the planets always stay in motion and never disobey you, we're the only creatures that take good things and turn them into gods.

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We're the only creatures that take the gifts that you've given us, and we worship them instead of worshiping you.

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Lord God, would you bring a

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Holy Spirit kind of conviction to our hearts? Not for shame, not so that we can feel beat up and feel like a failure.

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You were beaten up and murdered for us on the cross. That penalty's already been paid for. Lord, I pray that the repentance that you would bring to our life and to our hearts is one that would cause us to lay down our idols and look to you and find peace and love and joy and satisfaction in you and you alone.

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Lord, I pray these things in your name, amen. So we're only gonna be in two verses today.

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This is a transition section in John chapter six. What came before it is Jesus fed the 5 ,000. Now we're in verses 14 and 15, right before he walks on water.

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That'll be next week. This is what it says. Therefore, when the people saw the sign which he had performed, they said, this is truly the prophet who has come into the world.

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So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself alone.

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This is God's word. Now I want us to begin with the reaction of the crowds who possess this thing that I'm calling an idolatry of nation or a nationalistic idolatry.

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The text says, when they perceived or when they saw the signs, they perceived that he was the prophet and they took him by force to make him king.

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Now to understand this passage, what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to dive into some context. We're gonna have to dive into the context that we've been talking about in John six.

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We're gonna have to dive into the Old Testament context so we can understand what prophet they're talking about. Why would they seize

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Jesus to make him king? We're gonna understand those things. And then when we understand those things, we will understand the passage and we'll understand why these people were operating through idolatry.

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So let's begin with the immediate context. What have we been talking about? The Exodus. John is being very careful to show that Jesus is the

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God of the Exodus. Remember, his ministry begins at Passover, his public ministry. Passover is when the

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Exodus began. And then you see Jesus right after Passover going head to head with the tyrant leaders in the city just like Moses went head to head with the

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Pharaoh. You see Jesus leading a group of people out of the city just like Moses led a people away from Egypt.

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You see Jesus walking past a sea just like Moses and the people of Israel walked through the sea. You see

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Jesus leading them through the wilderness, taking them to a mountain, teaching them the law of God, healing them, and then feeding them multiplied bread.

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All of the elements of the Exodus are here, but Jesus is showcasing that he is not just the one who is equal to Moses.

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He's not just the one who is greater than Moses. He is the one who is God in the flesh.

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He is the one. Moses never multiplied bread. Moses prayed and watched and bread fell down from heaven.

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Jesus steps up and he does what only God can do and he takes five loaves and two pieces of fish and he feeds 20 plus thousand people.

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Only God can do that. And Jesus is showcasing to us that he's God. He's revealing that he's the one who's gonna lead his people out of slavery, spiritual slavery.

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He's showcasing that he's the one who's going to lead his people to the promised land. Again, in the

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Old Testament it's so interesting that the people follow the smoke by day and the fire by night.

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The Holy Spirit's also in times communicated as smoke and as a fire.

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And after we're saved, we follow the Holy Spirit where it's the promised land where we're gonna spend eternity with God. The story's there and John is teasing it out.

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Jesus is showcasing that he is God. Now, that wasn't just on Jesus's mind and it wasn't just on John the

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Gospel writer's mind. It wasn't a novel concept. Actually, this exodus expectation was on everybody's mind at this time.

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Everybody was thinking about it. I bet if you went to the dinner tables at night, you would hear dads talking about,

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I can't wait for the exodus to happen. I can't wait for God to free us again. If you were to go on the fishing boats, you would see in between cleaning out their nets, they were talking about the downfall of Rome and the downfall of Caesar and how

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God is gonna raise up a prophet just like Moses to free the people. Around the kitchen sinks, mothers, different women in the neighborhood were talking about the day when their daughters would marry important men in the

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Messiah's new kingdom. These were conversations that they were having and who could blame them?

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This was concentric or central to their hopes and dreams as a people, as a nation, as a people who were blessed by God.

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And they were looking at all the clues. There's interesting clues, things that you and I don't notice that they were noticing. For instance, in the original exodus, they were in the land for 400 years, 400 years where God was silent.

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They were in the land and then after 400 years, God removed them. Guess how long it had been in Jesus' day since God had spoken to a prophet?

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400 years. Malachi was the last book of the Old Testament. It had been 400 years, exactly, since God had spoken to the prophet

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Malachi. So the people were saying, just like in the Old Testament when there was 400 years where they waited for deliverance, we've waited 400 years and we're gonna see the deliverance of God.

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Everybody was thinking about it. Everybody was talking about it. They began to see a pattern.

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But unlike the people of Israel in the Old Testament who were just subject to Egypt, Jesus' people were subject to two different governments.

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In fact, Rome and Edom. And I'll explain to you what I mean. At the time that Jesus burst upon the scene,

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Judea was called a client state. And what a client state means is that they were one of the fortunate provinces in the

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Roman Empire that were allowed to have their own king. Many places were not allowed to have a king.

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Rome directly and aggressively ruled those places, but not Judea. And you would think that that's a blessing.

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We get our own king, we get our own sort of pseudo -semi -government, but it wasn't a blessing at all. It was actually a real slap in the face of Judea.

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Because king, King Herod, that was the king of Judea. He was not a Jewish man. He had no

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Jewish descent, no Israelite heritage. He was an Edomite, which is in fact an incredible slap in the face of Judea if you understand the history, which is what we're gonna go in.

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It'd be like George Steinbrenner buying the Red Sox. I think that's a culturally appropriate example.

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It'd be like Kim Jong -un being elected to the Senate. It would not happen. This stunk of irony for the people of Israel, and we have to understand why.

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So what's the origin of this? Well, if you understand that in the Old Testament, Israel was founded by a man named

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Jacob. He was the first Israelite. His name was changed to Israel. His 12 children became the 12 tribes of Israel, and he was the grandson of Abraham, the one who was blessed, the one who

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God gave a child in his old age. He was the son of Isaac, who had two children, which is where this entire feud begins.

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Isaac had twins. One was named Esau, and the other one was named Jacob. When Esau was born,

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Jacob was hanging onto his ankle as Esau came out. They were competing even in the womb.

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They were rivals, and it never stopped. When they grew up, Jacob, through craftiness, stole

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Esau's blessing, or his birthright, because if you remember, the firstborn son always gets the most stuff.

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About 2 1⁄3 of the father's property goes to the firstborn son. The younger son kind of gets the shaft, as it were.

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So Jacob, making a bowl of red lentil soup, Esau comes up hungry from a long day out in the fields, and he says, give me the soup or I'll die, and he says, give me your birthright.

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What good is my birthright, he says, if I'm gonna die of starvation? You can have it, and he gives away his birthright.

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That was part of his blessing. Later on in Esau's life, his dad was on the verge of death,

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Isaac was, and this came the time where he was gonna give him the property blessing. This is gonna be where he spoke over him.

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They didn't have written contracts like we do today, or wills and testaments. They would speak the blessing over their sons, and the sons would inherit the dad's belongings.

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So Jacob's mother caught wind of this, and she dressed him up like Esau.

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She put goat's hair on his arms because he was a hairy man. He went in with his gruffest voice.

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His dad said, is that really you, my son, Esau? Yeah. I'm assuming that's what it was like.

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We know, we don't know. But then his dad blessed him. He stole his brother's blessing.

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His brother got back with tasty soup that his dad had ordered. The blessing was gone, and he was furious.

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Esau was so angry that he pledged that he wouldn't sleep until his brother was murdered. Again, Jacob's mother,

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Rebecca, heard about this, and she sent him away, at least until his brother had cooled off.

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He didn't realize that he was gonna be sent away for decades. Now, I bring this up because this ongoing rivalry between Jacob and Esau is a prominent feature of the

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Old Testament. Jacob's descendants became the people of Israel. We know that. Esau's descendants became the people of Edom, and they hated each other.

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Now, as you know, Jacob's people went down to Egypt for 400 years. When they got back, though, that's when the rivalry hit new high or a new low, whichever way you wanna look at it.

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In Numbers, we see how all of this started to become really bad.

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The people of Israel were wandering around in the wilderness. They were starving. They were thirsting to death. They were thinking that they were gonna die.

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They bumble up to the land of Edom, where they're like, that's our relatives. That's our ancestors' brother.

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Of course, they're gonna welcome us in. Of course, we're gonna exchange hugs. We're gonna have soup by the fire.

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It's been long enough. We can have soup now. We're gonna fellowship. That's what they were thinking.

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That is not what happened. Look at what happened. From Kadesh, Moses then sent messengers to the king of Edom.

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Thus your brother, Israel, has said, you know all the hardship that has befallen us, that our fathers went down to Egypt and we stayed in Egypt a long time.

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And the Egyptians treated us and our fathers badly. But when we cried out to the

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Lord, he heard our voice and sent an angel and brought us out of Egypt. Now behold, we are at Kadesh, a town on the very edge of your city.

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We are your territory. Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through field or through vineyard.

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We will not even drink water from a well. We will go along the king's highway, it was a very common route at that time, not turning to the right or to the left until we pass through your territory.

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Edom, however, said to him, you shall not pass through us or I will come out with the sword against you.

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Again, the sons of Israel said to him, we will go up by the highway and if I and my livestock do drink any of your water, then we will pay its price.

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Let us only pass through on our feet, nothing else. But the king of Edom said, you shall not pass through.

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And Edom came out against him with a heavy force, with a strong hand.

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Thus Edom refused to allow Israel to pass through his territory, so Israel turned away.

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This unfortunately led to a bitter precedent between these two nations where they hated each other from here on out.

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The prophets prophesied the condemnation and the downfall of Edom. And you can hear the

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Israelites. The prophets also prophesied Israel's downfall, but they probably missed those verses, but they were cheering as they were reading the downfall of Edom.

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Now imagine the people who are living in Jesus' day who are being doubly occupied. They're being occupied by a pagan

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Gentile nation called Rome that gave them no freedom, no sovereignty, no privileges at all.

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And to add insult to injury, there wasn't a king of David sitting on the throne in Jerusalem, there was a king of Edom.

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That backwards nation that wouldn't even accept their own relatives all the way back in Numbers. Rome, whether they knew it or not, had chosen the most spiteful, salt in the wound sort of candidate for office that you could ever choose.

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They had chosen the one who had betrayed them all those years ago, they'd put him on David's throne, they'd put him in David's palace, they'd put him in David's city, and they'd put him in charge of Jacob's people.

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This was a slap in Israel's face. Now, we're gonna add even more insult to injury on this just to show why these people were hoping for a king, why these people were hoping for an exodus.

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Just to add even more insult to injury, there was an incredible tax burden that was being placed on the people.

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If you were a faithful Jew, when Jesus came onto the scene, 10 % of your income right off the top would have went to the temple.

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So you can pay for the building, so that you can pay for the officers, the priests, the Levites, and all of that. In addition to that, you would have tithed animals, you would have tithed spices, you would have tithed livestock, you would have tithed crops, so that the numeric value associated with that was probably another 10 % of your income, so now we're at 20%.

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That's normal. That's a decent tax. It doesn't stop there. Because they were doubly occupied,

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Rome also had a piece of the pie, so they added another 1 % tax, which doesn't seem that bad until you realize that that was just the starting point.

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On top of that, they added custom taxes, import taxes, export taxes, toll bridge taxes, sale taxes, property taxes, special taxes, war taxes, building taxes, and basically a tax called whatever we want.

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When you get to the point of adding all this up, 15 or 20 extra percent, so now you're at 40 % of your income gone.

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On top of that, the Romans were really good at spite, they hired Jewish people, your own brothers, your own sisters, your own dads, your own friends, to be tax collectors, to take your money away from you.

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And the way that those tax collectors got paid was that they had to overtax you in order to get their own salary, so they became heavy -handed.

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They price gouged you, they frauded you, say another 5 % to 10%, so now you're at 50 % of your income gone.

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Now, because you're doubly occupied, you're also responsible to pay taxes to the king,

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Herod, who lived a drunken party lifestyle, who had a standing army that you had to pay for, and who had a love for expensive things, especially expensive building projects.

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40%, of your income would have went to Herod. But to make you pacified, so that you're happy giving away all your money, he gave you the world's greatest building, it's arguably was the

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Herodian temple. People from all over the world came to Jerusalem to see the beauty and the splendor and the majesty of the temple.

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So while you were giving all your money away for a fancy building, at least you could look up and see it. It's kind of what happens in megachurches today.

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Just kidding. It felt like slavery. 70, 80, 90 % of your income gone.

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You're starving to death. You're identifying with the wandering wilderness people who had no money, had no food, and had no water.

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Your life was miserable. I don't know if you've seen pictures from Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea, where taxes can creep up that high.

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It's miserable. The people were hungry for something different. They wanted a king.

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They wanted their own nation back. They were hoping that a

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Messiah would come and free them from their chains, and who could blame them? Those were physical reasons that they wanted an exodus.

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The occupation, the ruin of the temple, the national embarrassment, all that. There was also theological reasons that they wanted an exodus.

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We said earlier that the prophets foretold of an exodus event. Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, all talk about this coming exodus where the people are gonna be freed from their chains.

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So they were holding tightly to those promises. They were also holding tightly to a promise that God was gonna bring a prophet.

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And that is in Deuteronomy 18, probably the quintessential passage that the people were holding onto.

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It's referenced in John 6. This is what Moses says. I, God, will raise up a prophet from among you like the countrymen, like you,

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Moses, and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

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You see, on the forefront of Moses' thinking was who's gonna replace me? Who's gonna lead this stubborn people after I'm gone?

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Maybe some would have said Joshua, he's the guy. He's the guy that Moses was talking about when he said

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God is gonna raise up a prophet, but Joshua didn't make the cut. Read through the book of Joshua, Joshua failed.

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Maybe you're thinking it's Samson, nope, he failed. Maybe you're thinking it's Gideon, he failed.

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Maybe you're thinking it's Samuel, he failed. Maybe you're thinking it's David, he failed. That's the point.

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All throughout the Old Testament, God raised up men who did not meet this qualification so that we would see that no human being ever kid.

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Only Jesus Christ can meet this promise, which is why it's so incredible that when, in John 6, the people see

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Jesus and they see him feeding them bread multiplied, just like Moses, this is what they say.

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Therefore, when the people saw the sign which he performed, they said, this is the prophet who is coming to the world.

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They're not talking about any old prophet. They're not talking about a Malachi or a John the Baptist or anything like that.

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They're talking about the prophet that Moses was prophesying about, the one that will lead his people out of all of this misery that they were feeling.

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These people were dejected, Roman -occupied, Edomite -squashed, financially crippled, waiting on a new

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Moses -like figure, and here he was, right in front of them. They actually got it right in this way.

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Whereas the Pharisees got it wrong. If you remember in John 1, the Pharisees thought John the Baptist was the

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Moses. This crowd got it right. They didn't get everything right. Let's keep going.

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Verse 14 says again, therefore, when the people saw the sign which he performed, they said, this is the prophet who is coming to the world, and again, before we cheer them on, we need to see how they got it wrong.

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There was a Moses expectation. There was an Exodus expectation, but there was also a Davidic expectation.

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I mean King David. The people expected that a king figure was going to come, and they got this from their

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Bible. They didn't make this up. They weren't thinking that they were gonna get a king just because they were in misery, and that's what they were hoping for.

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It's in the Bible. Isaiah 11 says, from the stump of Jesse, that's David's father, a shoot is gonna rise up, which means that from the death of the

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Davidic empire, when it was chopped down like a tree by Babylon, a shoot is gonna rise up.

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That's Jesus, and he's going to rebuild the entire empire. That's what they were thinking. That's Isaiah 11.

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And their hopes were centered on this promise because for 600 years, their throne had been vacated.

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It had been emptied in the exile of Babylon. It had been occupied by the Medes and the Persians. It had been left barren during the conquest of the

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Greeks through the tyranny of the Seleucids, Antiochus Epiphanes and some of those, and it had left empty through the domination of Rome.

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600 years, no king in Israel. So yes, they wanted a king, but they also wanted to be consistent with Scripture, so they also held on to Jeremiah 23.

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Jeremiah 23 says this, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.

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In his days, Judah will be saved, and Israel will live securely, and this is his name by whom he will be called, the

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Lord our righteousness. So the people were reading this passage in Deuteronomy 18, and they were saying, we're gonna get a

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Moses figure who's gonna lead us out of slavery, and we're gonna get a king. That's what they were thinking. Now, I wanna give credit to the crowd.

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Once again, they got it right here. They understood that Jesus was not just the Moses figure.

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They also understood that singularly, he would occupy both offices and that he would be both the

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Moses and the David. They understood it. Let's see what they say in verse 15.

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So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountains by himself alone.

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They were intending to make him king. It seems like this crowd, at a moment's notice, was ready to put a crown on Jesus as his head and storm the capital with him in order to set up his new messianic government.

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But if you realize that this would have been treason, you can understand why Jesus abandoned this plan very quickly.

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Not only was Caesar king and Caesar accepted no rivals, but if Herod found out what was happening here, every single person there would have been murdered.

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Herod's father, Herod the Great, killed every single child in Bethlehem, if you remember in the Christmas story, because the wise men told him that a child of David had been born.

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He knew the Edomite Israelite dynamic, and he wanted to kill any rival, because that was a rival to his own throne.

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So Herod would have been incensed about this. He would have been angry about this, and he would have come trying to kill

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Jesus. So that's the first thing. We have Jesus as an adult. The people are trying to put a crown on his head and roll out a red carpet all the way to Jerusalem.

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They're planning an insurrection against the capital. We haven't heard about any of those things recently. So it's surprisingly relevant.

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Jesus didn't approve of this at all. The text says that Jesus withdrew from the mountains.

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He abandoned them. He left them outside of his presence, refusing to participate in this insurrection, because what it said about him, if Jesus would have accepted their interpretation, all he would have ever been was a king in a backwater nation in the armpit of the

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Roman Empire, and that's it. Their vision was far too small for who

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Jesus was. They thought they were giving him the honored position, but yet Jesus is king of the universe.

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He didn't have plans for a political kingdom, because he wanted nothing to do with that, because he was gonna bring a better kingship, because Jesus planned to bring a better kingdom, because Jesus was gonna be a more powerful king than just the king of Israel.

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He was gonna have a kingdom that didn't just cater to the Jewish nation, where every tribe, every tongue, every nation was gonna be able to come to Christ and be able to find healing and hope in him.

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Their vision was far too small. Every generation for the last 2 ,000 years could have access to Jesus Christ.

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It was a timeless kingdom. Because of their idolatry of their nationalism, they missed what

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Jesus was trying to do for them. Their thoughts were far too small, and that's what the root of idolatry is.

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It's taking the infinite God and bringing him down to something that we can manage. They were consumed with their national identity.

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They were consumed with their politics. They were consumed with their freedom. They were consumed with their own sovereignty as a nation, and they missed who

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Jesus was. They were worried about make Judah great again instead of understanding who

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Jesus is, that he's always been great. They missed the fact that they were standing face to face in front of God.

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Instead of saying, dear God, we're so glad that you're here. We've waited a long time.

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What can we do for you? What they were saying is, we're so glad you're here. What can you do for us?

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That's idolatry. They're just like their ancestors of old.

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When being reigned by God, they chose a king so they could be like all the nations.

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In a sense, they were treating Jesus like their tall and handsome Saul, and he wanted none of it. They loved their country, their status, their rank, their nation more than they loved

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God. And that's what I would call an idolatry of nationalism.

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Reducing Jesus down to something as pitiful as a human king. Jesus would not participate in his plan because he loved them too much to define himself that way.

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His kingdom is not about rallies and elections, votes, or even democracy.

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Christ is king. He's bringing a theocracy ruled by God over all the nations. He wasn't gonna entertain their plans because they were frankly far too small.

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They had turned a good thing into an ultimate thing. We begin today by talking about it's a good thing to love your country.

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They were worshiping their country instead of worshiping God. They were resting in a wrong healing.

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They thought that their healing was gonna come through politics. They thought that they could make their nation better through policies instead of understanding that true healing comes when you know the

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Son of God. True healing comes when you're forgiven of your sins, when you're justified and brought into new life with Jesus, not when somebody signs a pen on an executive order.

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They were treating their enemy like it was the ultimate enemy. Rome is not their ultimate enemy. Edom is not their ultimate enemy.

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Satan and his kingdom was their ultimate enemy. Satan, sin, and death. They misunderstood who their real enemy was.

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They looked at their enemy as something so small as the Roman Empire when God in a second could snap His fingers and Rome be no more.

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They were looking at the wrong sort of slavery. They thought their financial burdens were slavery when they had been enslaved with a noose around their neck to sin for their entire life and if they didn't repent, if they didn't turn to Christ, they'd be eternally damned.

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They had the wrong enemy. They had the wrong slavery. They had the wrong healing. They had the wrong shame. They thought because their nation wasn't as good as it used to be, that they had to be disappointed and frustrated and down and look for Jesus to make everything better.

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Nations rise and fall. America's not what it used to be when I was a kid. Nations rise and fall.

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God's kingdom is gonna last far greater, far longer and far infinitely more into the future than a pitiful little place like this.

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Political kingdoms are not gonna heal anything. A powerful government's not gonna fix all of our problems.

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That's why Jesus abandoned this crowd. Because He wanted to showcase to them something totally different.

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Now, I think that there's a spiritual lesson here.

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When we pour ourselves into idolatry, we are robbed of an experience of knowing and having intimacy with God.

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When we love things more than we love Him, we miss Him. You'll know that you're struggling with idolatry not by what you say.

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You'll say, no, I don't love this country more than I love Jesus. I don't love my wife more than I love Jesus. I don't love my kids more than I love

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Jesus. We all say those things. You'll know that you're an idolater. If your life has no peace.

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You'll know that you're an idolater if you don't have love, but you're filled with frustrations. You'll know that you're an idolater if you're disappointed and you're fearful.

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Basically, look at the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians five and do the opposite of those. And that's the symptoms of an idolatrous faith.

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And that's the invitation that Christ would give us to repent. Now, I wish that I could preach this message as a preventative message.

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Like, we never want to get here. But unfortunately, this is where so many people in our nation are at right now.

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Just like the crowds who are putting their hopes in a political king, there's people on the left and the right who are doing the exact same thing today.

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There's people who are celebrating because now we're going to have someone who rules with decency, who restores the soul of the nation.

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There's people who are crushed because their favorite candidate didn't win. We should not ever pledge allegiance to man.

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We should not put our hopes in political candidates or in partisan dreams. That's what this crowd was doing.

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And it was robbing them from seeing Jesus and he abandoned them because of it. The same

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Jesus who abandoned these crowds, I want us to hear this correctly and clearly.

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The same Jesus that abandoned this crowd will leave us to our own devices if we ever try to replace him with an idol.

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You see, we, I'm going to try to read the room. I think most of us here are pretty conservative. I think that most of us can see the wrath of God when it comes to things like homosexuality, abortion, transgenderism, all these things.

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We can understand that. And God is angry at that. God will punish that. We kill 800 ,000 babies a year in this country.

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I don't think a holy God is pleased. But we would be foolish if we think that God doesn't look at our idolatry and also see the disgusting, rotten, filthy rags that it causes us.

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Jesus said that we often miss the plank in our own eye because we're so focused on the dust in someone else's.

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It's easy to look at the other side and say, well, they've really got it wrong. It's not so easy to diagnose the idols of our heart.

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It's not so easy to diagnose the things that are robbing us of joy in Christ. So as we end,

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I want to just ask you a couple questions. Maybe it's not an idol of nation.

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Maybe you're not worried about politics. Maybe you're not consumed with the things that are going on in society right now. What is it that you're consumed by?

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What is it that's taking your focus? What is it that's giving you a lack of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control?

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What is it that's robbing from you? Whatever that is, I pray by the

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Lord's strength in your life, I pray that you would have the courage to lay that down and say, I will not worship that thing anymore.

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I will worship Christ and Christ alone. That, my friends, is where we will find healing, and that is where the world will see true hope.

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The world doesn't need us to parade around trying to be like them. The world needs us to be different, and the only way we'll be different is if we cling to Christ and Christ alone.

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for this passage.

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Thank you for the fact that you showcase to us the things that bother you and displease you and cause you to abandon and leave and walk away.

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And Lord, let us not be 2 ,000 years removed from this

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God. Let us not look at this passage and say, well, I wouldn't have done that.

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We do do that. Every one of us, every one of us have been tricked and duped into idolatry.

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There's been things in our life that have risen in ascendancy higher than you. And Lord, we don't wanna create a new legalism here where we say that you have to do this, this, this, this, and this or else you're not gonna be saved.

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No. But Lord, because we're saved, you are our greatest joy.

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Just like the man who sold everything he had to buy a field that had a particular pearl because it was of great value to him.

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Lord, let us be willing to shed everything, get rid of everything. Whether it's entertainment, if it's relationships, if it's job, if it's security, if it's comfort, if it's whatever, it's not worth it.

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Lord, let us shed those things so that we can be free to worship you. You are the true and better Moses who gives us freedom.

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You are the true King, but your kingdom is different than this world. Your kingdom is better than this world.

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Your kingdom will outlast this world. And Lord, I pray that we would find joy in that kingdom today, even as we will forever in heaven.