Jeremiah 10:6-16, PRBC 9/27/09 PM service

Lord's Supper and the Opening Reading from Jeremiah 10

Lord's Supper.

Two weeks ago, when I was leading service, I went up to him and I was sharing with him some Jeremiah chapter 10 on the subject in a book a number of years ago, and he said, well, you know, you ought to preach that section.

And then he started thinking, he said, well, I have a team preaching in the same book, but we are going to continue. I just need to let him know where he will be. So turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 10 beginning in verse 6.

We'll remind ourselves of the preceding material as well. If you recall two weeks ago, this is a section where the prophet is speaking to the people and he is engaging in satire. He is engaging in mockery of idolatry.

If you want to see parallel passages to this, look at Isaiah chapters 40 through 48, where the prophets mock the idols of the people. The idols of the people would be those creations of their own hands.

And here we have another section of that. I'll begin reading at verse 1. We'll be focusing, we'll look farther down, but I'll begin reading at verse 1, and then I will go through verse 16. Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel.

Thus says the Lord. Notice that is, of course, the term Yahweh.

Do not learn the way of the nations, and do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens, although the nations are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples are delusion, because it is wood cut from the forest, the work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool.

They decorate it with silver and with gold. They fasten it with nails and with hammers, so that it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, and they cannot speak.

They must be carried, because they cannot walk.

Do not fear them, for they can do no harm, nor can they do any good. There is none like you. You are great, and who would not fear you, O king of the nations? Indeed, it is your due. For among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you.

But they are altogether stupid and foolish, and their discipline of delusion, their idol is wood. Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of a craftsman with the hands of a goldsmith.

Violet and purple are their clothing. They are all the work of skilled men. But Yahweh is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation.

Thus you shall say to them, The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens. It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens.

When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and brings out the wind from His storehouses.

Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are deceitful, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of mockery. In the time of their punishment they will perish.

The portion of Jacob is not like these. For the Maker of all is He, and Israel is a tribe of His inheritance. The Lord of hosts, Yahweh of hosts, is His name. And so you'll notice this entire section is tied together for the people of Israel by the concept of the true God versus the false gods.

Apologetic Defense of Monotheism Against Mormon Claims

And what has attracted my attention to this text, of course, over the years, has been the ministry that we did long ago, and really continue to do through Written Form especially, but especially the ministry that we had amongst the Mormons.

Because there is a need to provide an apologetic defense, believing that there is one true God, the Creator of all things. You would think that we would not need to defend that, that basic monotheism would be a given.

The case was asserted by my opponent that the Jews were not monotheists. And, in fact, they were deeply infected with a love of pagan religion. Well, in the sense that they would frequently go into apostasy against God.

That's exactly what Isaiah said about these false gods, that they would abandon the one true God of Israel, who had revealed Himself from the beginning as the one true God, and as the one who created all things.

Now, I know that I've mentioned this before, but I have to repeat it for your edification, that that was a radical message in its day. That in the day, even of the days of Moses, going all the way back to the earliest portions of the scriptures, the idea that God, your God, was the only true God, and that He had created all things, was a radical and revolutionary concept.

In those days, in that part of the world especially, you had gods of the nations, and you would have gods who would be a god over a particular nation,.

And even then you might have multiple gods.

You might have sort of a major god over a nation, but then you might have a god who's especially powerful in regards to the production of crops, another the fertility of your flocks, the weather, whatever it might be.

But these would be gods who had limited influence. The idea that your god would rule and reign over another people,.

Well, that would be considered, well, offensive.

That would be something that would be offensive to other people, because they had their gods, you had your gods, we could all get along real well if we were just polytheists. In light of the rise of monotheistic, unitarian Islam, there are those saying monotheism produces wars.

We should be polytheists, where you just accept everybody else as gods. And that's how things were in the Roman world, the New Testament. The mystery of religions would allow you to believe in all sorts of gods.

If you came to one pagan temple and gave your sacrifices, and did your worship of one god, they didn't have any problem at all. If the next day you trotted on down the road to the next temple, and did the same thing for another god, no problem, that's okay.

Some people think that, in fact, my opponent was misled on this just yesterday. He said, well, didn't all those gods think that all those religions back there think that their religion was the one true religion?

I said, no, that's the exact opposite. They allowed for all sorts of things. The pagan mystery religions didn't have any problem giving a pinch of sacrifice on the altar to Caesar.

Who cares?

We can have Caesar in our pantheon, and we've got this god here and that god there, and it's okay. No worries. But that's why the Jews were so detested. Because they come along and they say, our god is Yahweh.

Oh, great, Yahweh, nice to meet Yahweh.

He'll be over in your part of the world,.

And we'll have our bales and our ashtrays here.

No, no, no, no.

Yahweh created the world. So, the understanding of who... And so, I'm going to describe Christmas trees. I'm not sure where they got that, because this is talking about, yeah, it's wood cut down from the forest, that's true, and it is decorated with silver and with gold, but it's fastened with nails with hammers that will not totter, and they, that which has been made, cannot speak.

They must be carried because they cannot walk.

We're talking here.

And Isaiah includes the same kind of mocking the man who would cut down a tree, and he'd cut the wood up, and he'd take a part of the tree, and he'd put it over here, and he'd start to make his... He goes over here and takes the rest of the tree, and he burns it and cooks his food on it.

And the scriptures are like,.

Don't you see there's a little bit... The same tree for your food, you put it up, and you decorate it, and you nail it down so it doesn't fall over, and you ball it back on before... It is satire of the foolishness of worshiping that which is clearly created.

It came forth from the created order. That is the essence of idolatry. Now you might be saying right now, aside from odd religious groups, well obviously the giving of worship, the giving of anything that is due to God alone.

To that which is...

These hideous idols, you've probably seen pictures of some of these idols, and in fact they often seem to be exceptionally repulsive, which would make sense when you think about it. Because what was the life of these people like?

No modern medicine, plagues that would sweep through, total inability to control the growth of crops. One year you might have good crops, the next year you're ready to die. And so, who's in control of these things?

Something beautiful or attractive? No, generally they would view these gods as being very repulsive and ugly in essence. You may have seen these idols in pictures in textbooks.

When you were in school.

And you might go,.

Well, I suppose we go down to some African nations or down in Central America or South America or some islands out in the Pacific, we would still find people bowing down to idols like this. But we've pretty much gotten rid of all that, haven't we?

But the reality is we live in a very, very... And the secularism, which attributes to the natural realm, creation itself, is just as much foolish idolatry as bowing down before... Think himself extremely wise.

Do not change the foolishness. Saw this yesterday. Opponent kept bringing up the argument of Richard Dawkins, best known atheist today, field of expertise in biology and attempts to address philosophy.

And he attempts to address theology and history. He makes gross and obvious blunders. But I saw a man who, he has brought up the argument of the flying spaghetti monster. And he likes to liken the Christian god to a god that someone might make up, a flying spaghetti monster.

What evidence do we have the flying spaghetti monster does not exist? And he uses this to mock various arguments that have put forth the existence of God. And my opponent brought that up. And some of his followers in the audience could not help but cheer at the very mention of flying spaghetti monster.

Can you imagine what it's like.

To be someone who breaks out in spontaneous applause and cheers at the mention of the...

...of twistedness.

What kind of... ...you have so... ...is a sad thing. In Jeremiah chapter 10, found themselves in a situation, remember, by this time, the 70 years have begun. Some have already been deported. The Babylonians already have political control.

And there is a point in time where finally Jerusalem itself is wiped out. But there is a period of time where they have political control before the destruction of Jerusalem. Jeremiah is one of those prophets saying, bow your neck to them and submit to them or you will be completely destroyed.

And so the Babylonians have come in and, of course, they are promoting idolatry in the land. And once a political system establishes itself that has religious overtones, you find out who the true believers are.

And who the...

...well, it's sort of like... ...you know, when you're tea...

...you know, you can look back...

...he's gone off to someplace else, well, you're just a bandwagon fan. Well, worship God, when things were good in Israel, you see a change in the majority views, you bring in these idols, and, well, it looks more powerful in our God because they've helped people to overcome.

Our God, look at now, we're submitted to these foreigners.

And doesn't that mean that Yahweh.

Has sort of abandoned us? Or maybe He can't fight these other gods? Lots of things go through the mind. And so what we have in this section is we have Jeremiah bringing the people of Israel to see who the true God is.

And he gives us some description. Notice he says, after this description of the false gods.

In the first five verses,.

There is none like you.

You are great.

Who would not fear you, O king of the nations? Indeed, it is your due. For among all the... ...certainly viewed themselves in that way, and in all their kingdoms there is none. So notice, what's the first assertion?

The uniqueness of their God. You see, when the Babylonians come into Israel, they find many idols of Yahweh.

And so when the people...

...to defeating other evangelists. The Asherah, the grove, they got some other stuff, but Yahweh is unique. Beaten silver is... ...the UPC symbol.

You know, made in China.

That's where these idols... ...hands of a goldsmith. Violet and purple are their clothing. They are all the work of skilled men. Doesn't matter how pretty the idol is, it's still the creation of man. Notice the contrast.

Yahweh is the true God. He is the living God. The everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation. Contrast. He's not created. He is a true God. He is the living God.

He's not a dead piece of wood, covered in gold and silver, and wrapped in purple and fine linen. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation. And it was at this point, the information that I want to share with the pastor, comes into play.

Because I think this is truly an indication. Look at verse 11. I don't know what kind of translation you have, but I'm reading from the New American Standard this evening. In the New American Standard, verses 1 through 10 are in poetic form.

But verse 11 isn't. In the New American Standard, in verse 11 there is a note. So in verse 11,.

It says,.

Thus you shall say to them, The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens. The rest of it is written in what the children of Israel,.

And what are they,.

Will perish from the earth and from under the heavens. Now, another example of how,.

Look, this is an Aramaic,.

And it's not Hebrew.

Isn't that exciting? Just for just a moment. This is so clear,.

So obvious.

They're making stuff up. ...knowledge of what was really going on, and what the people believed. And for many, many centuries, Christians have preached through this, and maybe didn't even recognize.

I mean, think about it.

For how many hundreds of years, most Christians in the world had no knowledge of the Hebrew language at all. Didn't even know this verse was offered in the Aramaic language, so that it would provide a direct response to the people that were inviting Israel to engage in idolatry.

That's a very... So concerned that he gives his people the very answer that they're to give when they're invited to idolatry, in the language of the people that are doing it. For how many centuries did the Christian church exist in majority without it?

But what's more, Christian church forget and not know ceased to exist. There's generation after generation of Christians that got, at best, a ten-minute sermonette. That's why the stained-glass windows came into existence.

That was the only way you could do teaching. ...come to understand, in our modern time, what had been forgotten for a long time. You may hear about the skeptics and others, this demonstrates the Bible is wrong here, and then, you know, a few years later, people will look at things in the Old Testament, well, there's no evidence of that, and then, you know, the Pool of Siloam, it was mentioned in the Gospel of John, and all these things that have been discovered over time to have been extremely accurate and things like that.

It just takes time. But skeptics like to grab hold of these things. In reality, as we have discovered these records, we start finding out what these people believed about God. And they were their God's king.

They were made out of pre-existing matter. ...one of the most popular swords and weapons, and they would fight with one another, and you'd cut one God up in the creation before the creation, and there were swords, and means of battle, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Well, look at verse 11. The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth. That is a perfect description of the gods of the peoples around Israel, especially those who were conquering them at this time.

...was from this. And so notice then, the Creator of some things. If your God self-designated the earth, He made the earth by His power. He established the world by His wisdom. Notice He's not using things outside of Himself.

Power and wisdom, those are internal things. Those are part of His exercise of His will, His being. By His understanding, He stretched out the heavens. Notice how He's avoiding any kind of idea that God used something else to create the universe.

Power, wisdom, and understanding are internal to God, and not external to God. When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth.

He makes lightning to the rain. This is the God of creation. He brings out the wind from His storehouses. So God is in control of all things. He controls the forces of nature. Many of the gods were subservient to the forces of nature.

No, God, as the Creator, controls all these things. And then He returns again. ...in light of this. Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge.

...put to shame by his idols,.

For his molten images are deceitful.

...in them.

They are empty. They are a part of the creation. He doesn't make Jacob or James, but Israel is the tribe. His whole choice of Israel was to...

It's not based upon...

You might be sitting inside...

...and say, Ah!

Creation without any reference to God at all.

We can banish...

...by stabbing Him in the back. Look out for... ...not seeing yourself as a servant of Christ. Whatever your job is, whatever your context is,.

Yoke...

...empty words. So just as God cared so much for... ...God has given to us with such clarity...