6-28-20 Grace-Benson & Vail Sermon

June 28, 2020 Grace, Vail Sermon Deuteronomy 17:1-7 God Takes Idolatry Seriously What internal reaction did you have this morning when you heard me read from Deuteronomy 17? “If you find a person worshipping another god, you are to stone that person to death. You are to purge the evil from among you.” What did you think? Is that a harsh way to deal with people? Is that any different from some of the terrible government regimes that have seized power and executed anyone who disagrees with them? Or the extreme religious groups that execute people today?

Those are natural first reactions to those words. Today I’d like to respond to those objections in a way that acknowledges; these words were delivered at a different time and different place, to a people in a different situation that us. We are not to stone people to death if and when they worship other gods than the God of the Bible. Yet, the main point of these words still applies to us today. Main point is this: God takes idolatry seriously. God wants you to be appropriately ruthless in dealing with idolatry when you see it in yourself and in others.

Let’s first explore, why the command to stone, to kill, to purge? God was speaking to the people of Israel after they came out of Egypt before they went in to the promised land. In most places in the world, God has not commanded that his revealed word be the basis of national government. But for Israel at that time, he did reveal directly the way they were to set up national policy and law.

Remember, they had been a nation of slaves, with no ability to form their own laws. They just had to abide by the law of the Egyptian government. They were heavily influenced by the Egyptian religious system and culture. They were headed into a land, the land of Canaan; where a whole bunch of other cultures and law structures and religious systems were waiting. It would have been easy for the Israelites to mix together some Egyptian law and religion, some Canaanite law and religion, and some of their own heritage mixed in. That would have been natural.

But God had other plans for them. They were to be the one nation on earth during that time period that would have his laws be the law of the land. He established holidays and festivals, and a religious worship system with priests and sacrifices; he detailed so much of how everyday life should go: what to eat, how to deal with various illnesses, what building materials to use; it was all spelled out. And the main reason for all those detailed laws was this: They were the nation with the promise of a Savior for the whole world who would come from them. God was allowing them to be the bearers, the protectors, and the proclaimers of the message of eternal salvation. God knew that if they lost their trust completely in the God who would sent a Savior, there would be no one proclaiming a message of grace, and rescue, and faith in the coming Rescuer.

So, he allowed and commanded the death penalty to be the punishment for idol worship. God still allows the death penalty to be used by governments today. Whether or not you support the death penalty, God has given governments the right to use the death penalty, obviosuly he doesn’t want it to be used for every crime. In the case of Israel at the time of Moses, he commanded that it be used.

Important question that still applies to us: Why is idolatry that bad? What is it? What does it do? Idolatry is worshipping any God beside the God of the Bible, today we know as God the Father, God the Son Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Worship means to consider as ultimately worthy. The words bow down to and serve are included. Bowing down to someone or something is a way of saying, you are greater than me. You have a right to tell me how I should act and believe and do. You are more important than me. I will serve you, I will do what you say and want rather than just making up my own mind about what I want.

Worshipping the true God in that way is hard for any of us. We all are very skilled at creating idols. The sun, moon, and stars were a temptation for the people in Moses’ day. That’s probably not an issue for you. But we often put our ultimate trust in things like our ability to purchase. Our ability to find good medical treatment, our ability to secure a home and money that we can live off of. Our ability to network with people to get what we want. All those things can easily become the places where we put our ultimate trust.

Idolatry deals with 2 questions: Where do I expect good to come to me? And: where do I turn to help? Very often we answer those 2 questions with something other than God. We don’t look to him to expect good to come to us. When we need help, we go inside our own bank of human solutions and try them out before we even think of turning to God in prayer and in trusting.

Now, things like money in the bank, abilities to solve problems, access to good medical care, those aren’t necessarily idols. They are good things in themselves. We make them idols when we elevate them in our hearts and minds from good things given by God to ultimate things which apart from God are the place of ultimate trust.

The danger of idolatry is very severe. Basically the danger is this: any idol that you serve will overpromise and under deliver to eternally damaging proportions. An idol will promise happiness and success if you trust in it, and it will let you down; its only a matter of time. Any idol will not forgive you when you transgress it. It will heap the shame and guilt on you when you fail it. And it will not pick you up when you are down.

So as an example; romantic love can be and is a very common idol in our culture. The thought goes, if I just found the right romantic partner, I would be so happy. And you think you find one, and things go well for a while, and then you have a fight, and things go bad. The idol of romantic love gone bad will either make you resentful toward the other person. Or it will heap blame and shame on you for messing things up, and probably, it will be a combination of both. And you can end up very depressed and down on one side, or overconfident and always blaming the other person on the other side. But you don’t really find what was promised.

There are all kinds of examples, you can think about other idols and how that works: Money as an idol; demands and does not forgive. Sexual pleasure, or chemical high; they demand and do not forgive. Popularity and power of influence; they demand and do not forgive. Technology and human solutions; political ideas as idols; self help as an idol. All these things that are not bad by themselves, but as idols they overpromise and under-deliver.

The ultimate danger of idolatry is that a person would come to the condition of not being able to meet the true God when he comes one day, without preferring their idol to him. And for such people, who cling to their idol in preference to God, God will say, ok. You go ahead and have money, have power, have technology, but you’ll be on your own. Those good gifts will have their goodness sucked out of them, and all that will be left in hell, is the never ending demand of the idol, coupled with the never ending shame of never having done it right. Always a cycle of contempt, but an insane commitment to trying again, and always failing. Idolatry can become a permanently locked in condition of mind and heart and soul, which will eat away at but never fully extinguish the souls and beings of people who perhaps would have been better off if someone stoned them to death before the problem got that bad. That’s what is at stake. God speaks so forcefully against idolatry because he knows how damaging it is to people that he loves.

There is no God like the true God. He does have something to say about how you are to live.

That should be expected, he’s the maker and designer of human life. He knows best how you function.

He wants to bless you with his commands and his will. But he also places higher demands on himself than he does on any of his creatures. He speaks clearly about the dangers of trusting in anything but him; but he also puts himself in greater danger than anyone else.

Jesus proves that God is to be trusted. God demands perfection, and he did what he demands.

Jesus lived never once bowing down to the sun, never once allowing the latest and greatest technological advances to capture his imagination away from God and his ultimate plan to set things right. Jesus always perfectly trusted, even when he was dying he still said, “My God, My God.” Even as he knew he was being forsaken, he said, “My God.” That word ‘my’ shows the trust he had even then.

Jesus proves that God won’t shame you when you fail him. Instead he let the shame of human failure come to him. Failure to be able to keep yourself alive, that’s the most basic failure we all sense and fear. Jesus didn’t have to let that happen; but he allowed it so that the result of idolatry could be experienced by God and it doesn’t have to be experienced by you. Jesus is the one God who will deliver to you freely the full human life you’ve always wanted. His resurrected body is a preview of what kind of human life is available and coming to you one day as well. A body not able to die again, a body not having to be beaten down by weariness or regret or grief. Perfect human life is what he promises. There is no one or nothing else that can give you what Jesus can.

For that reason, you and I are to take idolatry seriously today as well. No, we’re not to stone people to death; but when you are to take the same kind of attitude about idolatry first with yourself.

Notice how in Deuteronomy 17, Moses said to search out diligently, investigate whenever an accusation of idolatry is made, find out if it is true. Now, imagine you were an Israelite, and you suspected your own child was guilty of worshipping the sun. You would be very tempted to not go there. To not investigate because you might not like what you find. The same temptation happens today when it comes to idolatry in your own heart. A big part of you doesn't want to investigate, doesn’t want to examine: what am I actually, functionally putting my trust in? Is it really God, or is it all these good gifts he has given me? Is it really Jesus’ death and resurrection, or is it my own abilities and insights?

Jesus says, “Go there.” Be an investigator of your own heart. Get ruthless with yourself. If you think the words of Deuteronomy are hard, listen to what Jesus says. This is New Testament Jesus now, not Old Testament Moses. Jesus once said, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away.

It’s better to enter life with one eye than with two to be thrown into the fires of hell.” Do you see Jesus’ point? Not that he wants a bunch of blind or one eyes people living with him. But his point is: your eye is able to cause you to sin. Sin is able to cause you to lose your faith connection to him. Losing your faith connection to him means, hell for eternity. Take this seriously. He said the same thing about your hand or foot. He even said in Matthew 18, there are some sins that people do, that it would have been better when they had the thought to sin, instead they took a millstone and put it around their necks and jumped into the sea.

His message is: Sin which cuts off from Jesus is worse than physical death which ends life in this world. Again, he doesn’t want a bunch of millstone drowning cases with him; he wants you to take the danger of sin and idolatry seriously. Start with yourself. Don’t throw stones at yourself, but Paul says in Romans 8, “If you live according to the sinful flesh and satisfy its desires with no care or concern at all, you will die. But if by the SPirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. A kind of death

to sinful idolatrous desire is needed. The good thing is; his death being reapplied and reapplied is what really does it, not our dying; but his death becoming ours. And his new life becoming ours as well.

Start with yourself, but also, have a concern for those around you. True love doesn’t say; do whatever you want; but true love says, do what is absolutely best for your thriving and growing and enjoying life. The opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference. If you are indifferent to whether or not the people around you worship the sun or Jesus or their own wealth or addictions; you don’t love them. To love someone else is to will their eternal and highest good. It can be completely loving to warn someone of the danger of worshipping the wrong thing. It can be completely loving to try to connect them to Jesus.

If you help others investigate their hearts and find the idolatry and put it to death by the spirit so that the life of faith can grow, that is a loving way to treat them. And sometimes, it will require tough love. They may say, no I want this idol. And you may have to be firm with them, not stoning them to death, but trying every appropriate way you can to turn them from their path of destruction to the path of life.

The result is that a stronger relational connection between God and people happens. This is what we were made for. It is good for anyone to be more closely connected to Jesus. The relational glue cannot be something he considers detestable or disgusting. Try that with your friends. Find something they hate, and say, “This is what we’re going to build our friendship on.” We know friendships cannot form like that. Instead it’s when you find things that you both love, then a friendship blossoms. You were made for friendship with God. And the building ground of that friendship is all that is good, and beautiful, and true, and noble, and right, and enjoyable. Think about these things, and the desires of selfishness, pride, idolatry will not be attractive anymore.

You won’t even think about giving God your leftovers. Your life will be summed up as, a walk with God. A friend who sticks closer than a brother through the good and the bad of life. He will never let you down, and always let you in. That’s what you are made for. So, worship him, not the sun, not self-made idols. Bow down to Jesus, and you will not be disappointed. Serve Jesus, and you will receive life to the full that only he can give.

Close with a story: once the Jewish leaders brought to Jesus a woman caught in the act of adultery. In some way, that act of sleeping with a man displays to us that her heart had an idol. Perhaps it was the romantic love, or sexual pleasure. It could have been an idol of self contempt that led her to sleep with the man. The Jewish leaders brought her to Jesus and said, “The law of Moses says we should stone her to death. What do you think?” And rather than echoing what God said to Moses, rather than saying let her off the hook, as if it wasn’t that bad. Jesus wrote in the ground until all the angry men went away. Only the adulterous woman we left. And Jesus said, “Is there no one here to condemn you?”

“No one,” she said. “I do not condemn you either.” Jesus said, then he added, “Go and sin no more.”

Jesus did not demand her blood to purge the evil from her and from the nation. He knew his blood would be the cleansing power needed to purify people from all nations from all kinds of idolatry.

Jesus does not want to see a rain of stones come down on you for your idolatry. Though you have worshipped other gods, your God says, “Come to me, and I will be purged so that the evil can be removed from you.” Since Jesus has gone to the cross, he says to you, “I do not condemn you. Now go and sin no more.”