Freed | Idolatry - Ralph Castillo
Church of the City New York
COTC NYC
4.8 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Pastor Ralph Castillo continued the FREED series with a teaching on freedom from idolatry. Drawing from Jeremiah 2, Pastor Ralph traces God's grief over a people who abandoned Him for lesser things. The passage is startling in its intimacy. God isn't issuing a legal verdict, He's asking a relational question. "What happened between us?" He speaks in the language of a wounded covenant, the devotion of youth, the love of a bride. Idolatry, in God's framing, isn't just disobedience, it's betrayal. The quickest route into it is simply forgetting who God is and what He's done.
The text calls us to respond to idolatry the way God does, appalled, heartbroken, undone. Jeremiah 2:13 gives us the clearest picture of why. God is a fountain of living water, and our idols are cracked cisterns that can barely hold what they promise.
The sermon concludes by saying that in God's wrath, He remembers mercy. Like the father in Luke 15, He doesn't wait for us to close the whole distance, He runs.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | tonight's teaching text comes from Jeremiah chapter two verses one to 13 and it says the word of the |
| 0:12.9 | Lord came to me saying go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem thus says the Lord I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, |
| 0:24.3 | how you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first |
| 0:30.6 | fruits of his harvest. All who ate of it incurred guilt. Disaster came upon them declares the Lord. |
| 0:39.2 | Hear the word of the Lord, |
| 0:45.9 | O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, what wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and went after worthlessness and became worthless? |
| 0:52.3 | They did not say, where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in |
| 0:57.5 | the wilderness in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, |
| 1:02.7 | in a land that none passes through where no man dwells. |
| 1:06.8 | And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruit and its good things. |
| 1:11.5 | But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination. |
| 1:17.0 | The priest did not say, where is the Lord? |
| 1:20.6 | Those who handled the law did not know me. |
| 1:23.5 | The shepherds transgressed against me, the prophets prophesied by bail, and went after things that |
| 1:28.8 | do not profit. Therefore, I still contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your children's |
| 1:35.0 | children, I will contend. For cross to the coast of Cyprus and sea, or send to Qadar and |
| 1:42.0 | examine with care, see if there has been such a thing. |
| 1:46.0 | Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? |
| 1:51.2 | But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. |
| 1:56.1 | Be appalled, oh heavens, at this. Be shocked, Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have |
| 2:02.7 | committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hoot out cisterns for |
| 2:09.0 | themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. This is the word of the Lord. |
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