Ezekiel and this will be our passage that we're looking at as we're going through the book of Ezekiel the word of the Lord came to me son of man set your face toward the mountains of Israel and Prophesy against them and say you mountains of Israel hear the word of the Lord God Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills to the ravines and the valleys behold I even I will bring a sword upon you and I will destroy your high places and Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken. And I will cast down your slain before your idols, and I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around the altars. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste, and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out. And the slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Yet I will leave some of you alive. And when you have among the nations some who have escaped the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive. How I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me, and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils they have committed for all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them. Thus says the Lord God, clap your hands and stamp your feet and say, alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword, by famine and by pestilence. He who is far off shall die of pestilence. He who is near shall fall by the sword. he who is left is preserved shall die of famine thus I will spend my fury upon them and you shall know that I am the Lord when they're slain lie among their idols around their altars and on every hill high hill on all the mountaintops under every green tree and under every leafy oak wherever they offered pleasing aroma to all their idols, and I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste in all their dwelling places from the wilderness of Riblah, then they will know that I am the Lord." Well, let's start off right away here and just get into it. No long introductions for this sermon. I want to deal with idolatry. And I'm going to ask the question, what is idolatry? Seems like a basic question. It's a fascinating question, and it gets to the heart of our story in Ezekiel 6. So it's important to look at it. I'm gonna give you three kind of ways that Christians in since the Reformation have answered the question. So the Heidelberg Catechism, question 95 famously asks, what is idolatry? And here's its answer. It is instead of the one true God who has revealed himself in his word or along with the same to conceive or have something else on which to place our trust. Here's Martin Luther in his larger catechism, he said something similar. Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is your God. Trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and idol. And more recently, Timothy Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, gives this definition. He says, an idol is anything more important to you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give, what only God can give. Now, look inward and ask yourself if there's anything in your life that might be like that. I think many Christians these days are comfortable with these definitions, but as definitions that are referred to as what I would call abstract idolatry. The New Testament certainly speaks this way when it says things such as greed is idolatry, we read that this morning, or the greedy person is an idolater in Ephesians 5. Jesus seems to imply the same thing when he talks about serving God or mammon, which is often translated as money. The apostle seems to link the same thing to our bellies or our appetites, and yet this isn't even the first or the most fundamental idea behind idolatry. Luther's comment comes as he's discussing the first commandment. Now, of course, that isn't really all that helpful, because as a Lutheran, he sees what most Protestants identify as two separate commandments as being one big commandment, just like Rome did. So let's think about someone else. A. A. Hodge, who's in our tradition, asks the question, what is idolatry? And he asks it as he explores the Reformed and Jewish breakdown of the commandments. In other words, under the actual first commandment. And yet Brian Rosner, in his academic article on idolatry, says, on numerous occasions, the nations failed to keep the second commandment. And thus, he says, idolatry belongs to the second commandment, not the first commandment. Now we know the question is obviously important, but where exactly does idolatry fit in the Ten Commandments? I think there's a lot of confusion on this. As I said, Martin Luther, following the Roman Catholic tradition, saw the first commandment, and you shall not make a carved image as being one big rule against idolatry, focusing on what your heart trusts, whether it's God or something else like money or power. Calvin and the Jewish tradition split these into two commandments. The first is about worshiping only God, and the second is about not making idols to worship. Now my own study, which is inspired by Moshe Klein, suggests that the second commandment is actually the heart of a beautifully structured unit, a chiasm that starts with God's identity, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of Israel, and centers on forbidding carved images and ends with his jealous love, thus putting all of this together as a whole. We're gonna look at that at Sunday school, by the way, if you're interested in more. This literary pattern shows that idolatry is first and foremost about making physical images. It's not first and foremost about abstract desires like coveting, which comes later in the 10th commandment. Now this matters because it directs us to what I will call concrete or literal idolatry. This is the form of idolatry that the Bible so fiercely condemns, and yet which few Protestants even want to talk about, unless maybe they're talking about Roman Catholic statues of saints. The second commandment, as we think about it, zeroes in on crafting images to worship other gods, like the golden calf or Solomon's high places. Now, I've never seen anyone craft an idol to look like their stomach. Have you? But listen to the following verse because we're gonna return to it. It says, then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. The Ten Commandments move from God's transcendence, the first and second commandments, to our human hearts at the end through coveting. But at its core, idolatry starts with physical objects made to represent supernatural beings that pull us away from the true God. This literal idolatry is what God's people were constantly warned against, and it sets the stage for understanding why God is so passionate about this. Let's dig deeper into what these idols really were in the ancient world to see why they provoked his jealousy. In the ancient world, idols weren't just sticks in the mud, as one of you in this room likes to call them. They weren't just lifeless statues as we modern folks might think, they were believed to be, quote, the flesh of the gods, physical bodies housing divine or demonic spirits. Augustine noted this centuries ago in The City of God. In Egypt, priests crafted cult statues from gold, wood, or stone. which is materials like those found in part of our passage today because of their shining brilliance and it was thought to capture the God's otherworldly power. Gold was literally their flesh. Through secret rituals, these statues were then consecrated, inviting a god or a demon to dwell within them, much like a Hindu temple trustee recently said about a temple that went up in New York City. He said, these deities are not statues anymore, they are live gods after they performed a ritual. The ancients saw these idols as real conduits to supernatural beings, not as mere symbols, which is why they offered sacrifices and prayers to manipulate their favor. John Frame explains this as a sacramental union where the idol wasn't just a picture, but it carried the sanctity of the God itself, demanding worship or veneration. In the Bible, these idols are linked to real spiritual beings, demons, or rival Elohim like Chimash or Molech. This wasn't a superstition of ape-like people. It was a worldview where physical objects connected heaven and earth, housing an invisible entity. Israel was forbidden to make such images because they invited demonic powers into God's sacred space, betraying his covenant like an unfaithful spouse. This literal idolatry was no small matter. It was spiritual adultery with real consequences. But here's where it gets even more sobering. The ancient Hebrews weren't just warned about golden statues. They were told to, quote, utterly detest and abhor the gods, because worshiping them meant uniting your heart with a demon, not just a carving. The prophets mocked these things as worthless or dung, but they never denied their spiritual reality. In fact, Paul says pagans sacrifice to demons when they sacrifice to idols. This is why God's jealousy burned so fiercely. Israel wasn't just chasing abstract desires of their hearts, but they were aligning with rival spiritual powers, putting them right into his holy city. And that brings us to Ezekiel 6, where God confronts at first, quote, the mountains of Israel and their high places, declaring judgment on this very kind of idolatry. Now we read the text earlier for the law, so it's at least a little bit in your head. But let's kind of just get a brief overview. Ezekiel 6 further develops the first large narrative of the first 11 chapters. He was called in the divine council setting in the first three chapters, given his ministry. And then he was told to carry out a series of sign acts through his body. These acts would embody the coming disaster upon Jerusalem and the terrors of war through a prophet who would act them out every day on his front porch while saying absolutely nothing. But in Ezekiel 6, the prophet is given his first command to finally prophesy, to say something. So chapter six and seven give us two distinct messages. Today is God's judgment against idolatry of Judah. The second in chapter seven will be a discourse on the very soon coming day of judgment. Now they are related, like two sides of the same coin, but they're distinct enough to warrant, I think, each their own sermon. So today we're only going to look at chapter six. This chapter is a simple ABA structure, that's really all there is to it, with interestingly, the good news coming in the center. So he talks about judgment on idolatrous places, and then he goes to the remnant of God, and then he goes back to judgment and the desolation that's coming upon Israel. So the chapter begins with these important words, the word of the Lord came to me. Now we've seen this before, it means that a physical manifestation of the second person of the trinity, the word of God, is coming to Ezekiel. He then gives Ezekiel his divine duty for this chapter, and this is what it is. He says, son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them. I don't know about you, but I think this is very strange. Prophesy against mountains? What did they do wrong? The only other prophet that's told to do this is Micah. When he prophesied to the northern kingdom 100 and some odd years earlier, Micah said, hear what the Lord says, arise, plead your case before the mountains. Let the hills hear your voice. Hear you mountains, the indictment of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. And what we discover is that in both places, both prophets are going to target idolatry. So why should these words be directed at the mountains? Well, we get a hint of the answer in verse six, where God will lay waste to Judah's, quote, high places. But it's in verse 13 that this really becomes clear. It says, you shall know that I am the Lord when their slain lie among their idols around their altars on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to all their idols. You see here that Israel has erected idols and altars on every high hill and on all the mountaintops. Therefore the mountains are witnesses to their crimes against God. They've seen exactly what Israel is doing. They know and they can bear witness. And thus Ezekiel is to speak to them even as Micah once did. But again, why mountains? Well, you can only begin to understand the answer to this once we move from the abstract sense of idolatry of the heart to a more concrete idolatry of actual statues and idols and altars. For these things were created to worship fallen supernatural Elohim, the gods of the nations. Before getting to that, it will help if you recall your Greek mythology, because I think that's the story that most can still remember. Recall that the Greeks had a pantheon of gods who lived on top of what? Mount Olympus, right? It's a mountain. 12 deities. Traditionally, they are Zeus, the king of the gods, and Hera, his queen, Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Demeter, Apollo and Athena, Ares and Artemis, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, Hermes and Hestia. Always pair of male and female, which is interesting. Olympus was their home, but also the place where they deliberated in the Greek divine council. Homer said that they lived in the heavenly realm above the physical mountain. Each dwelt in their own palace built by Hephaestus on the mountain of many peaks. So they're on Olympus. With Zeus, who is described as having the grandest of all the homes and he was given the seat of authority. It was from Olympus then that the gods deliberated over human affairs. This makes Olympus what scholars call a cosmic mountain. Richard Clifford explains what that is. He says, in cultures which have a heaven, earth, and hell, the mountain's center is the axis along which the three cosmic areas are connected and where communion between them becomes possible. In other words, it's a link between heaven and earth. We find this, of course, throughout the Bible. Eden is a cosmic mountain, as we will actually see in Ezekiel 28. So is Ararat, where Noah and the ark was. So is Sinai. So is Zion. So is Calvary. Basically, any mountain where God chooses to make his abode and meet with man is a cosmic mountain, because heaven is coming down to earth. and they're connecting with each other. So it's the cosmic mountain idea which explains why Israel would go around on all the various mountains raising altars and idols. Because in doing this, they were creating places where they could commune with God or worse, with the gods. Let's continue reading by going to the first thing Ezekiel was told to say. Say, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys, behold I, even I will bring a sword upon you and I will destroy your high places. The key idea here is to now verbalize that razor hair sword sign act from last week. Remember where he used to cut his hair and then just start chopping up crazy like mad all this hair? He's gonna now, verbalize this in this chapter. God is coming to destroy Israel with the sword. But what will he destroy? It says the high places. We need to take another step away and go back to Israel's deep history to understand this better. Yes, high places link directly to mountains as we have seen. However, there's something more we need to know. I was really kind of stunned by reading this this week. In the entry for high places in the dictionary of the Old Testament historical books, we learn rather surprisingly that, quote, prior to the monarchy, so prior to Saul and David and Solomon, high places were considered legitimate worship spaces and received no condemnation in the Bible, neither for their existence nor for their use. Isn't that interesting? I think it's rather stunning. I dare say most of us think that the problem was high places themselves, but apparently this was not the case until the days of the monarchy, particularly the building of the temple. You see, until the temple was built, God had no house. But once it was built, this became the place of his residence on, of course, where? Mount Zion. And so now it's a permanent cosmic mountain of the Old Testament. When Solomon built the temple, he said, the Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. I have indeed built a house for you, a place for you to dwell in forever. As Solomon finishes his prayer, we learn that, quote, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offerings and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the house. That's a theme that will be taken up here in coming chapters in Ezekiel in a very important way. Solomon continues, for I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. This was in accordance with the prophecy in Deuteronomy 12, where it says, but you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make it, or him dwell there. There you shall go, and it's prophesying the temple in Jerusalem. Now because God had not established a permanent place to dwell until the temple, high places as such were not condemned so long as one was worshiping Yahweh on them. Of course, worshiping the gods has always been condemned wherever that happens, as the first and second commandments teach. But now let's return to Solomon for a moment. Recall that Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, quote, on the mountains east of Jerusalem. That's in 1 Kings 11, verse seven. Later on in 1 Kings 23, 13, it says this. Another king and the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem to the south of the Mount of corruption which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Milcom the abomination of the Amorites or Ammonites now this verse adds Ashtoreth and to the list of gods, but in this case, it's King Josiah who's defiling their altars by destroying them, meaning that Solomon had defiled these sites by building them in the first place, as the text even tells us that he did this so that he could appease his many foreign wives who made offerings and sacrifice to their gods. Now it has long puzzled me that Solomon could dedicate the temple and say literally this, he says this, oh Lord, God of Israel, there's no God like you in heaven above or earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart. How can he say this and yet do what we all know that he did? Early on, Solomon continued to sacrifice and he made offerings at high places. First Kings 3.3, this is before he built the temple. And it doesn't even say it was wrong. And he even loved the Lord when he did it. But because the monarchy was centralizing power in Jerusalem, this was no longer going to be acceptable. And so it was becoming a gray area. But later we see the Lord becomes very angry at Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord and he went after other gods. How do you reconcile this? The whole shift from God being the only creator to the worship of the gods is a subtlety of deception of the seriousness of entertaining the gods in Israel. Not necessarily worshiping them, but simply housing them. On one hand, you can think of Solomon this way. He's just made for Yahweh this great palace akin to something like Zeus had on Olympus. No one denied that Zeus was the top dog or God, depending on if you're dyslexic. See what I did there? God, dog. The dyslexic flee, I don't believe there is a dog. Come on. Solomon knew that God made all things. On the other hand, he knew about the existence of other Elohim too. And he very likely believed that they were not rivals to the Lord. It's important here to note the language of the text. Ashtoreth is the abomination of the Sidonians. Did you catch that? Chemosh is the abomination of Moab. Milcom or Molech is the abomination of the Ammonites. Listen to what they're not. Molech is not the abomination of the Sidonians. Ashtoreth is. Ashtoreth is not the abomination of Moab. Chemosh is. Why? Because these are the gods that were allotted to the nations at Babel apparently. These gods belong to those individual nations. The other nation's gods may have put up with rival worship but not Yahweh, not in Israel. Yahweh takes Israel to be his treasured possession. Israel must not worship the gods of the nations around them because Yahweh has covenanted with Israel and he is the creator of all things. To bring their worship into Israel is to test their own marriage fidelity. It would be like inviting a really pretty girl to live in the room next to you and your wife in your house. Indeed, isn't this exactly what Solomon did, both physically and with idols? How many wives did he have? 300 and 700 concubines? In my estimation, it's reasonable to think that Solomon justified what he did along rather pragmatic and political lines, saying something like this. Look, I'm not erecting any altars to these gods on Zion. That's Yahweh's mountain. I wouldn't dare blaspheme God. But hey, they're part of the divine council, so why not venerate them? As a good Roman Catholic might say about Mary and their saints that they put into statues on every high hill where they build their churches. Solomon continues, plus these gods are the gods of my wives. I wouldn't want them to have to lose their cultural identity just because I made a political alliance with their fathers. And just like that, Solomon instituted state veneration of the gods on high places, which weren't condemned anyway. And all this quickly turns into all out idol worship because that's the nature of the human heart. Let's finally get back to Ezekiel, verse four. Your altar shall become desolate, and your incense altar shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain before your idols. There's three words I wanna look at here. The first we have is the mitzvah, which is the altar. This was a structure for offering sacrifices. And in Ezekiel, they were at the high places, the bamot. Yahweh had altars, but so also did the gods. The second word is hamanim. It's an incense altar. It may derive from the deity Baal Hamon, worshipped in Carthage, from the verb khaman, to be hot. Or it may derive from khamah, meaning to protect. These appear not to be little incense altars, but some kind of a chapel above the larger altar complex that somehow protected them. And finally, you have the gilulim, which are the idols. Now, importantly, the word idols here is not the same word used in the second commandment. That's the word pesel, a graven or carved image. This word means something more like a detestable thing or literally a dung idol, probably playing off Ezekiel's cooking his food over human dung in the last section. This is Ezekiel the priest's favorite word, gilulim. He's using it 39 of its 48 appearances in the Old Testament and it often appears with the verb defile. These are objects that ritually defile a place because they are inherently unclean and Ezekiel may deliberately be associating idols with dung because it's a colorful if not crude way of getting the point across of how detestable they are to God when you are in covenant with him. In the verse then, God is going to make the altars become desolate. That is, no one will remain to practice their pagan worship there. The chapel's protection will become broken. The slain will be cast down before the idols. Think about that image for a minute. The slain will be cast down before their idols. It's a rather horrific way of depicting the truth of idol worship. They're like dead people bowing before dung idols. Verse five simply repeats this, I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Instead of living people breaking covenant and pegging altars, there will only be a collection of bones to perform the rituals and bow at the feet of the statues. And again, verse six intensifies the point. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste, and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out. Now I wanna say something here, because all of this comes straight out of the Torah. Leviticus 2630, part of the larger covenant curses, If you want a really depressing read, go read The Covenant Curses out loud. It's quite a thing to do. This verse says, I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols and my soul will abhor you. That's not Ezekiel, that's Leviticus. And all this wraps up in verse seven, the slain shall fall in your midst and you shall know that I am the Lord. The point of the coming disaster is to make God's people realize that he told them all this centuries ago, very explicitly in the covenant curses. All Ezekiel is doing here really is just going back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy and saying that the time has now come for these curses promised by the Lord back in the days of Moses to come to pass. That's how they will know. God already told them, even as he's telling them now that these things will happen and very soon. Now I want to skip ahead to verses 11 to 14. This will allow us to see the other slice of bread that encompasses the central meat of the chiasm of the chapter. And like any good sandwich, it's basically bread cut from the same loaf as the other piece. And so thus says the Lord in verse 11, clap your hands and stamp your feet and say alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword in famine and pestilence. This is another kind of sign act. Clap your hands and stamp your feet. And as you're doing that, I want you to say this. Well, this comes straight out of Deuteronomy 27. It says, And of course, we've seen how Solomon erected abominations to the gods in the high places east of the temple. The abominations are the idols that house the gods. The sword, famine, and pestilence is all predicted in the covenant curses as well. Leviticus 26, again, I will bring a sword upon you that shall execute vengeance for the covenant. And when I have broken the staff of your bread, 10 women shall bake bread in a single oven and you shall eat and not be satisfied. This predicts the sword and famine for covenant violation, including idolatry. And Deuteronomy 28 just continues it, and the verses list pestilence and sword and famine, just like Ezekiel is doing here. The verse 12 intensifies it here. He who is far off shall die of pestilence, and he who is near shall fall by the sword, and he who is left and is preserved shall die of famine, and thus I will spend my fury upon them. Verse 13 reiterates what we saw at the end of verse seven. You shall know that I am the Lord when their slain lie among their idols around their altars on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, under every leafy oak, wherever they offer pleasing aroma to their idols. And then verse 14 finishes the chapter. I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste and all their dwelling places from the wilderness of Riblah then they will know that I am the Lord. And again, we find this in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy where God promises to make, to lay waste to the cities and sanctuaries and make them desolate and a waste. Now just a note here, the wilderness of Riblah refers to the Negev which extends south of Jerusalem to the farthest borders in the very south of Israel. Beyond the Riblah, refers to the area north of Mount Hermon in today's Syria, meaning that this whole thing becomes a merism, a figure of speech, a rhetorical device that indicates the totality of Israel and Judah is doomed. They're toast. That's what the last verse says. Now, Heizer did a podcast on this chapter, and his primary teaching point in his podcast is that Judah's idolatry is especially state-sponsored worship at the high places near the temple that was the trigger for the exile, fulfilling Leviticus 26's curses. These cultic installations represent intentional covenant violations as the leaders knowingly worshiped other Elohim, defiling Yahweh's sacred space in Jerusalem on purpose. Unlike private idolatry, this institutional apostasy provoked God's severe judgment. All of this, of course, is terribly depressing and devastating. But in our story today, we thankfully have good news. Ezekiel doesn't always give this to us. This good news sits amazingly right in the middle of our two slices of bread, which sandwich the beginning and end in God's judgment. But there in the middle, like the delicious, creamy filling of an Oreo cookie, We have three amazing verses of God's mercy towards something called elsewhere the remnant. It says, yet I will leave some of you alive when you have among the nations some who escape the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive. How I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me, and over their eyes they go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed for all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them. Now, upon an initial reading, you might not think this is all that wonderful. But the only way you could do that is by not truly appreciating what human depravity and sinfulness against God, especially those in covenant with him, truly deserves, nor the actual beauty of the thing that we call repentance. Let's deal with both repentance and the remnant before we bring this home to our own situation today. Appearing over 80 times in the Bible, the word the remnant refers to what is left of a community after it undergoes a catastrophe. The Old and New Testament use several words for this, and the theology appears in many of the prophets, including Ezekiel. Its first appearance in terms of a word in our book will be a question from the prophet to the Lord. In chapter nine, Ezekiel will say, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem? But though this definition sounds mostly negative because of the indivisible association with the catastrophe, in many instances the word becomes quite positive. Because remnant, like the seed of a tree that has been cut down, will survive and become the basis of renewed hope in life. This is where repentance comes in. Repentance is, according to the meaning of the word, a turning. The Hebrew word shuv literally means to turn or to return. It's both physical and metaphysical. Ezekiel will say in chapter 33, turn, turn from your evil ways. That's repenting. The Greek word neo is similar, meta means change, neo comes from the word mind, so it's literally changing your mind. A transformation in thinking that leads to a change in behavior and direction. Even our English word repent comes from the Latin word repenitere, Re meaning again, and penitere meaning to regret or be sorry. So you're repenting, you're literally being sorry again. You're changing your mind from evil to good, from Satan to God. So this turning is itself a gift of God. And how many people think that? Not many in our day do, but in Jeremiah, Ephraim pleads, restore me and I will return because you are the Lord my God. In Lamentations, the prayer is restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return. In Joel, God calls his people to return to me with all your heart because I am gracious and compassionate. In the New Testament as well, Peter explains how the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit and the people conclude, oh, so then God has granted even the Gentiles repentance that leads to life. Paul tells Timothy to gently correct opponents, hoping that God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth. And Peter, with the apostles, declares that Jesus was exalted to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Repentance is a gift of God. The remnant idea also presupposes that God has deliberately saved a handful of people. Those were the few hairs that were left in Ezekiel's cloak. And so the word then becomes associated with divine election and salvation. In Romans, Paul says, Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved. You see, salvation and the remnant go together. A couple chapters later, the remnant of Israel transforms into the church. So too, at the present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace. All of this is encapsulated in the center of our passage. God will leave some alive. It will not be an accident or a coincidence or a oops, the Babylonians couldn't quite get the job done. This is an act of divine sovereign grace. Those who escape to live among the nations of the world, to tell about what happened, will then become broken over their own whoring. This is because they will have heard the word of God, that God swore and brought to pass. He told them what and why, and then it happened. They are without excuse. And then they will see that God himself has been broken because of it. It's the image of a lover long putting up with his adulterous wife but having no other recourse than to finally send her away because all she does is continually mock him in her adultery. He's heartbroken and devastated because his whoring spouse just didn't care in the end. And in fact, actually sending away, that's the language of exile, isn't it? It's also the language of divorce. That's exactly what Abram did with Hagar. He sent her away. And yet this is also the captivity language. And so this is why God refers to the captivity as divorcing Israel and Isaiah and Jeremiah. And remarkably, it's right here, as they behold God broken because of their sin, that the remnant will internalize what has happened to them. They will become loathsome in their own sight for the evils they have committed. They will be humbled. They will confess their sin. They will repent. And this, my dear friends, is the grace of repentance. For though it feels a terrible burden to admit what you've done, at the end of the day, repentance is a turning back to God. And this brings me to my ultimate point about how Israel's captivity still affects us today. The subtlety of Solomon's treachery was justifying his worship of other gods while claiming loyalty to the Lord. You hear that? He justified his worship or erecting of the idols of the gods while claiming loyalty to the Lord. He broke the second commandment, which always leads to breaking the first. How much more for people who, like sheep, know nothing but going astray? State-sponsored idolatry was Solomon's sin. Now, yes, individuals were guilty, but Israel's leaders bore great responsibility for leading the people into the proper worship of the one true God. True, because he alone is faithful to his covenant. For their sin, the people were punished. For the sin of the leaders, the people were punished. because the leaders represented them before God. Now, somebody might say, well, that's not fair. How could God punish somebody for what the leader did? Well, it is fair because all the people had turned to their own ways. But beside that, representational covenants are the way of the world, even in America, where our founders set up a government with elected, what are they called? Representatives. This is why, when they get out of hand, Jefferson argued it's the people's duty to overthrow that government and start anew. My point is, if you reject representation in judgment, you can't have it in salvation. The good news is that we have a covenant representative, the Lord Jesus, who perfectly obeyed God's covenant and offers eternal life though you've done the opposite. His unfair representation becomes your life if you trust in God's promise. For application today, some argue nations should legally condemn idolatry and permit only the worship of the one true God. I actually think this is tempting. We saw it happen in the Reformation, and even in America's founding where state religion echoed Christianity, but I think we need to think about two things here. First, believe it or not, Believe it or not, I'm gonna say something, I don't know what you're gonna believe me or not. God never condemns Gentiles for worshiping false gods, did you know that? Think about that. Now, he mocks them relentlessly in the prophets for doing it because fallen angels are powerless compared to the Lord and they bear some blame in this since God gave the nations to them. But what he universally condemns is his covenant people worshiping other gods and committing spiritual adultery. Here, Solomon's sin resurfaces in the New Testament. Idolatry is more than just statues or demons, though it's never less than that. Idolatry is greed, covetousness, anything your heart trusts more than God, anything absorbing your imagination more than Him, seeking what only God can give. I find it interesting that even those things tied to fallen beings, mammon, Plutus, Dionysus, Aphrodite, and Eros, those are all embodiments of those things, but still we can't blame anyone but ourselves. It's easy to justify sin by saying, you haven't made an idol. I don't have any idols in my house. I'm not an idol worshiper. And at the same time, it's also plenty easy, as we've seen, of even making a literal idol, like Solomon, and saying, I'm not worshiping another entity, even though that's the definition of what you're doing. Be it at a high place to Baal, or a statue to some saint, or Mary, it's identical. This means that the church, not the state, which is the institution today that's in covenant with this God of Ezekiel, must once more proclaim the evils of idolatry, including the worship of other gods, the incorporation of their forms of worship into our own worship, and even the more abstract means of idolatry that we've discussed. As you can see, the Lord takes this sin very, very seriously. Solomon thought he could honor Yahweh while tolerating other gods, believing that they were lesser in Yahweh's divine counsel. But this led to outright idolatry later on, dragging Israel into spiritual adultery. Today we face the same danger, not just in abstract idolatry, like greed or power or self, but in literally a shocking return to actual pagan worship in our countries. The erection of temples to Zeus and Odin. They're here now. The gods are returning with a vengeance. The New Testament warns us, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry, urging escape from demonic worship like Israel's high places. Colossians 3.5 commands us, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, linking heart sins to the same betrayal. In America and even in our churches, we're sprinting back to pagan gods. literal statues, rituals, spiritualities. As I prayed earlier, bringing the goddess into the worship of the Lord in some of these denominations. That along with abstract idols like wealth and status that consume our hearts. The church, God's covenant people today must reject both forms of idolatry. Proclaiming Jesus as our mediator who perfectly obeyed offering life through his grace. We owe him our fidelity as his bride. Like Ezekiel's remnant, we are called to repent. turning from every high place, whether a statue or a heart's desire, to trust only the God who jealously loves us. Will you heed his call? Or will you, like Solomon, justify your idols until judgment wakes you up? Lord, I pray that you would instill in our heart a fear for you, a fear for your holy name, a fear for your jealousy. Jealousy even comes up in the Ten Commandments. An understanding of what it means that you took your church and your people and each individual that calls you the Lord. You took us to be your bride. We are married to you. We owe you our, not only allegiance, but our fidelity And when we turn, whether it be to gods of the nations, as some have done, or gods of our own hearts, we commit idolatry. We start to house inside of our hearts things that we shouldn't. And we give room for the world and the flesh and the devil to come in and create havoc. I thank you that the good news is that your people live on this side of the cross. And Paul often talks about these lists and he says, these are what you once were, these are what you once did. And he tells us to move forward in faith. And we know that your spirit gives us the power to overcome, even though it's clearly not perfect. And we continually fall into sin, but that's why we need to keep looking to the gospel and to Christ. Because at the end of the day, it's really about what he did for us, being completely faithful to the covenant. faithful to his Lord God to the very end, obeying him in all things. And when we look to what Jesus did, and we know that power of the gospel, then this becomes for us life. And I pray your Holy Spirit might put all of these things into our minds today, the proper understanding of the gospel, that it alone can lead us to the change of heart. The repenting is good news, and it comes from you. It comes from the gospel, and I pray that you might Allow it to start here with each person that's here, including myself, with the idols that we have committed and things that we put before you on a daily and hourly basis. Help us with these things. Purge us, give us comfort with the gospel and do all the things that we need for you to do for us today as we've come near to the means of grace. Your purpose here is to feed us and to show us yourself and allow us to worship you and it will change us if we do it through faith and we ask that we would in Christ's name, amen.