Burning Our Idols — E.A. Johnston

God's Holiness and the Fear of Christ

There are a lot of misconceptions today about who God is. Godless religious society refers to him as the man upstairs. But sadly, many in the church view God this way as well. Many have shrunken God down to man's size.

They put God on man's level. Like the Baptist pastor I heard one day tell his congregation, I can't wait to get to heaven. And the first thing I'm going to do when I get there is walk up to Jesus and grab his hand and shake it for all he's done for me.

That's what the old boy said. I guess that seminary-trained pastor never read the passage in Revelation where the apostle John has an encounter with the risen Christ and he falls down as dead. No, he's just going to walk up to Jesus like he would a deacon in the hallway of church and glad hand him.

Jesus' Warning Against Sin

We tend to put God on our level today because we think God is tolerant towards sin. We think God won't punish sin. But Jesus never taught a sin in religion. Rather, he said, go and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you.

Hezekiah's Call to Cleanse the Temple

The title of my message today, friends, is Burning Your Idols. And we will be in the book of 2 Chronicles in chapter 29. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. In chapter 29 of 2 Chronicles, we find the religious reforms made by King Hezekiah and the ensuing revival which followed among God's people.

We will begin in reading verse 5, which states, Hear me, ye Levites! Sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.

Repentance as the Cleansing of the Heart

I will pause here, friends. Here, in this striking passage of Scripture, we see King Hezekiah as he gathered his religious leaders together to instruct them to do two things. Number one, clean the temple of its idols.

And number two, clean the altar of their hearts in repentance. We get a sense of this in verses 15 through 16. And they gathered their brethren and sanctified themselves, and came, according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the Lord, to cleanse the house of the Lord.

And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it to carry it abroad into the brook Kidron.

Burning Idols at the Brook Kidron

I will stop there. This is what the people of God did. They searched the temple to find unclean idols, and then brought them out, took them to the brook Kidron, and burned them there. They sanctified themselves, and God brought a mighty revival under King Hezekiah because he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.

Searching the Heart Under the Holy Spirit

We need to do the same to search our hearts under the bright spotlight of the Holy Spirit to see if there is anything grievous to God in our lives, and then turn from it and break from it in repentance.

We must hunt out our idols, and through heartfelt repentance, forsake them entirely, take them down to our brook Kidron, so to speak, to our meeting place with God, and burn them there. Hezekiah did this willingly.

When God Burns Idolatry Through Affliction

But sometimes we are so hardened in our sin that God has to step in and take drastic measures to get the job done His way because we are unwilling to part with our idols. Sometimes you have to burn something out of a man.

God had to burn idolatry out of the Jews in the days of their captivity. They never touched an idol again after that. There is a story about the monkey and the nut. It seems the best way to catch a monkey in the jungle is to set a heavy glass jar on the ground that is wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, like a big glass jug.

The Monkey and the Unreleased Nut

In that jar you drop a nut, not just any nut, but a nut that monkeys like to eat. Trappers do this all the time. They set the trap with that nut and the jug, and along comes a monkey. He will see and smell that nut and go to investigating, and then his desire will make him squeeze his paw into the top of that jar and grab the nut in his palm.

But he can't extricate himself from the jar because he won't let go of the nut, and the only way to get his paw free again is to let go of the nut and pull himself free. But he gets caught by the trappers as he cannot drag around that heavy jug around the jungle, and he won't let go of that nut.

The Bondage of Self-Will and Sin

Some of us are like that monkey because of our self-will and self-rule in rebellion and sin. God will have to lock us up in such a prison of affliction that the only way we're going to squeeze out of there is to let go of the nut, so to speak.

But we won't do it. We are more stubborn than that monkey. We want to hang on to our idols, even if it means great hardship and trial. God cannot tolerate sin and rebellion in a follower of his. You will either burn your idols willingly, like King Hezekiah did, or God will have to burn them out of you.

Willing Surrender or Divine Discipline

If you're a child of God, friend, he will employ the means necessary to make you break with your idols. You will either burn them willingly or he will have to take drastic measures to burn them out of you.

The Inevitable Breaking of Idolatry

He will get the job done one way or another. You can't fight against God and win. You will be broken on both sides and get rid of those idols or there will be hell to pay.