01/29/17—Highland—Meute
The Story: “The Beginning of the End” Chapter 16
Isaiah 53: 6-11; Luke 16: 10-13
Pearl: You cannot divide your loyalty to God.
Function: To present that Israel and Judah were destroyed and the people taken into exile over their idolatry and lack of singular devotion to Yahweh and so to motivate worshippers to fortify their singular devotion to Jesus Christ.
The fundamental flaw or besetting sin for the nations of Israel and Judah was a “dilution of devotion” to Yahweh!
1. The majority of the Kings of Israel and Judah catered to the divided loyalties of the people and permitted the setting up of altars and sacred places which were devoted to the gods of other nations.
a. The temple of Yahweh and the land was polluted with vessels and altars of tribute and devotion to Baal, Asherah, Molech, Astarte, Chemosh, Milcom, and all of the host of heaven.
i. People worshipped the sun, the moon, and the constellations of the solar system.
b. The Lord God, Yahweh, who had done such wonderful things for them in the past from deliverance from Egypt to entering into the Promised Land was made to share the devotion of the people with other gods who were not gods.
2. The people insulted the living God by wandering away from singular devotion to him. Recall the first commandment. This was the first requirement of the living God for his people: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:6).
a. It was the first commandment upon which all else rested. It was the starting point for the Lord. He demanded singular devotion of his people.
b. He tolerated no other gods.
3. I can only imagine that the people had various ways of justifying what they did. They did not reject Yahweh, their God; they continued to worship him. But they allowed other gods to occupy some space in their lives. It was a logical result of their intermarriage with other nations (which God warned them against).
Divided loyalties often spells disaster. Hundreds of years later Jesus would say “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13).
1. Our family vacations every other year with Nancy’s family on a lake in Virginia and we do a lot of water skiing. Water skiing for a week every other year means that real spectacles take place on the water.
2. I can speak from experience that if you don’t keep those skis on the same course, that is, if you allow the edges of the skis to cut into the water in opposite directions a dramatic splitting of the legs takes place resulting in a wipe-out to the delight of all family on-lookers.
a. It is physically impossible and quite disastrous to divide the direction of the two skis into two differing directions.
3. The northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah both tried to satisfy more than one god in their loyalties and disaster struck!
You cannot serve more than one God. The living God demanded from the beginning total and complete devotion, tolerating no other competitors. The people had to make a choice! In the same way you have to make a choice today!
I said last week that this was the lowest point of The Story—it is the lowest point in the relationship between God and his people.
1. In 722 B.C. Israel was invaded, destroyed, and the survivors were taken into exile by the Assyrian Empire.
2. In 586 B.C. Judah was likewise victimized by the Babylonian Empire.
3. The whole plan of God (Upper Story) was to live among and with a people of his own who would relate to him alone in a land provided by God for his people. The whole plan was to be this nation among the nations with whom the Lord would relate and the relationship of God and people would be such a beautiful reality that the other nations would be attracted to the one living God, Yahweh.
a. God was faithful to the plan in every way. He was faithful to the covenant.
b. God’s people were unfaithful to the plan in most every way. They were unfaithful to the covenant.
4. Think of some of the pictures of a bombed out Aleppo, Syria and the destruction and despair in that land. Such was the case with Israel and Judah. Many thousands were killed—men, women, children, and animals. Many were captured and taken into captivity in foreign lands.
a. God’s people were beaten down. They were strangers in a strange land.
It was all because they lost their bearings. They gave up their singular devotion to the Lord God.
You cannot give singular devotion to God and also to someone or something else. You have to make a choice.
In terms of diluting devotion to the Lord, not a whole lot has changed in the progress of history on down to the present. Singular devotion to Jesus Christ becomes diluted by many competing idols. There is no shortage of idols among us today. Contemporary idols are any number of things which absorb our energy, intelligence, imagination, and devotion.
1. I will not give a listing of things which might be idols today. The Spirit is very good and effective in bringing to your awareness the things which you allow to divert you from the Lord.
2. As you become aware of anything which causes your devotion to the Lord to become anything but number one, you will then need strong resolve to do what is required.
a. Josiah was a king of Judah who was among the best. He instituted significant reforms and corrections to the national practice and brought great pleasure to the Lord. But Judah was already destined for destruction. Yet there was a bright and beautiful rally under Josiah’s ministration.
b. Get a feeling for the passion for reform of Josiah as I read from II Kings 23: 1-27 (Read from passage).
3. The Holy Spirit in you will provide the resolve and the passion to make the necessary adjustments so that your devotion to Christ is not diluted.
4. It begins with your resolve to worship only one God—the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the people found themselves as strangers and aliens, slaves to a new Empire. They began as slaves in Egypt. They were delivered and given a new land. But they departed from God and his ways and so were allowed to become slaves and exiles once again. God does not force you to worship him. But if you flee his goodness and grace God allows you to do so and you experience the consequences.
1. As God’s people languished in exile the Lord did not forsake them even there. Isaiah, the great writing prophet, wrote of God’s plan to lift up and exalt his people once again.
a. In perhaps his most famous of passages (Isaiah 53) he described the nation of Israel as a “suffering servant” who would one day be exalted and restored.
i. “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
ii. All we like sheep have gone astray…and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all…
iii. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth…
iv. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich…” (Isaiah 53: 6-9, selected).
2. This was a description of the nation of God’s people—a suffering servant of the Lord—due to the idolatry of the people.
3. If these verses sounded somewhat familiar…well they should! In so many details of this description of Israel Jesus Christ became this ultimate “suffering servant” on whom the Lord would “lay the iniquity of us all.”
So in the place of deepest despair and exile, there is hope.
The world of the people of God was turned upside down. Their lives would never be the same. The kingdom was in shambles. Yet God would provide a restoration. God would provide a new day. He was still their God. They were unfaithful to the covenant. God is never unfaithful to his covenant.
You cannot serve more than one God! You have to make a choice. Every day you have to make a choice! Hear the word of the Lord: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; I gave my beloved Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life, you shall have no other gods before me” (Combination of Deuteronomy 5: 6, 7 and John 3:16).
