Idolatry

Jeremiah 10:1-16

Main Idea: God is nothing like idols.

1. Idols Are Worthless (10:1-5).
2. Idols Are Nothing like God (10:6-16).

As the crowds began to gather around the mountain, any observer would be struck by the massive diversity. The bad were there—those people who had abused others, abused themselves, and abused the system. Yet the religious were there, the long robes with ornamental decorations speaking to the nature of their gravitas. They were important. Their presence made this event important. But the vast majority who gathered on that hill in first-century Palestine were commoners. These were the people who had given their time and energies to the act of living. They worked; they took care of their families and depended on one another to make it from one generation to the next. Their presence, the presence of the everyman, made this event so shocking.

At the crest of the hill was a man who was one of them and none of them. He looked like any of the other men in their early thirties. You would have a hard time picking him out of the crowd. Yet this man claimed to have the most distinguished bloodline of anyone who ever breathed this planet’s air. He claimed to be the Son of God. More specifically, he claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. No one would care that this commoner made audacious claims; it would simply be gossip to run in the background of their otherwise boring lives, except for the miracles. He was healing the sick and walking on water and doing things that aroused suspicion that this local boy had actually emigrated from an otherworldly place.

He had no enemies, but he was the enemy of those with religious authority. The reason is simple: he was there to tear down one of the most revered national treasures—the religious system.

You see, at the close of the Old Testament and before the coming of Jesus in the New Testament, a group arose called the Pharisees. What distinguished them is that they took the law that was given to Moses and they added to it. They modified it in some extreme ways. The result was that the faith of their fathers was only accessible to those who had means. Only the wealthy had the leisure to study the law, know the law, and therefore keep the law. Religion had become elitist. But it’s worse than that. Religion had become their idol.

So on this day Jesus preaches the most famous sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. During this sermon he pits his new ways against this religious system. In this new kingdom Jesus is after one thing: the heart. This was encouraging because those who were broken over their sin, those who were pure in heart, were now qualified for the kingdom. Those who mourned were comforted, and the meek inherited the earth. This was the new way. It was good news for all, except for those who made religion their idol.

Jesus has always been, and always will be, tearing down idols. In the Sermon on the Mount, he tore down many idols.

Those who worshiped their own nationality, he warned that the salt might lose its savor and be useless (Matt 5:13). Those whose idol was money, he encouraged to lay up treasure in heaven (Matt 6:19-21). Those whose idol was their spiritual reputation, he warned not to pray and give just to be seen (Matt 6:1-6). Those whose idol was comfort, Jesus encouraged not to worry; God would take care of them. Before Jesus made a whip and cleaned the temple, he verbally assaulted the idols of their hearts, and of mine.

Jesus is after anything that steals my affection, anything that I hold as precious. Whether it is a reputation, a status, a friendship, or an approval, anything we think we can’t live without, that is the thing God is most interested in showing me that I can. Once we realize God is all we have, we learn he is all we need. Perhaps it’s trite, but nothing is more true than the reality that God is still allowing things in our lives that cause our idols to seem, well, idolatrous. We praise him for that. Not only is he doing that years after he came to earth; he was doing that years before.

God was very concerned with the idols that existed during the time of Jeremiah. Jeremiah makes two profound statements about idolatry in this passage, and his discussion raises two preliminary questions: What exactly are idols, and why are idols so attractive?

What Is an Idol?

An idol is an image. But it’s not just any image. It’s an image to which deity is attributed. It is considered worthy of worship. So when we think of idolatry, we immediately think of people in pagan, maybe ancient cultures, who bow down to a god. The idol is made of wood, metal, or stone, but they worship it as if it is worthy of all their worship and adoration. It is a material thing, but it is treated as if it were much more.

This is where Christianity comes in and explodes the idea of idols. All material things were created by Jesus, they were created through Jesus, and they were created for the glory of Jesus. All material things were given to us for our enjoyment. In that enjoyment we are to redirect our worship to the one who created them. This is the purpose of material things. When those things garner the kind of affection that is to be given only to God, those things, knowingly or unknowingly, become idols. Any good thing can become a bad thing when we give it affection that God alone deserves. The material world is not inherently bad. Rather, we taint the material world when we demand that it bear the weight of our affections. It was not designed to do this. Eventually it fails. We rightly enjoy creation by enjoying its Creator. This is the created order and the only way life is right.

The problem is not the created things; it’s what we make of them. The heart of the problem is the heart.

Why Are Idols So Attractive?

Jeremiah is addressing actual idols. They were physical, material objects created by men to be worshiped by men.

The issue was international peer pressure (Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations, 185). All of the other nations were worshiping idols (v. 2). How could Israel be the lone monotheistic culture? This seems strange to us, yet think of the pressure we are under: to achieve, to own, to consume. We may not bow the knee to a pagan idol, but we bow our hearts before the gods of sports, leisure, food, clothes, achievement, and consumerism.

Perhaps a way to understand this is to imagine its opposite. Imagine you have friends who are very sharp. They decide that they will stop consuming things and live simply. Their clothes, their food, their material possessions all start to reflect that they are not living for this world but for the world to come. How would that make you feel? The truth is, it would make us feel a little uncomfortable. Their actions would expose the fact that this world is not all that it should be. It would also expose the fact that it is much easier to go with the flow of this life than live for the next. The temptation to give our hearts to something else is very real.

Jeremiah’s words are penetrating. There are two things we need to know about idols. First, idols are vain.

Idols Are Worthless

Jeremiah 10:1-5

The Oklahoman inside me wants to say, “They ain’t real!” because, well, they ain’t. Idols are vanity; they are meaningless. This is shocking because they look so good. Jeremiah describes them in verses 3-5.

They are attractive. They were, in their ancient context, quite dazzling. We think of them as monochromatic and predictable. The ancients idols represented the most dazzling creation using the highest technology available to them. Idols were stunning. And stunningly stupid.

Jeremiah describes them as scarecrows (v. 5). They had no propensity for evil or for good for the very reason that they had no power. They did not exist as we would like to imagine them. They were at once beautiful and hollow. People might as well have been worshiping the air. They were just that empty.

It’s been said that an addiction is anything we cannot live without that is smaller than us. In the same way, an idol is anything that receives affections that belong to God alone. This is tricky because we are created to love. All things that we have been given can deserve some affection. However, that thing is a conduit. The affection goes through that object and back to God. This potential is what gives meaning to life, things, and relationships.

The hollowness of idols is not a foreign concept. It’s not difficult for us to imagine the adolescent girl who is crushed by the weight of unrequited love; the relationship was an idol. We can relate to the young man who made his boss’s approval his idol when, all the while, his boss had no integrity and was using him. We can imagine the young man whose torn ACL tore apart his dreams of playing professional sports. Sports were everything so now life is nothing.

Again, this is tricky because relationships, work, and athletics are all gifts of God. Yet the gifts have a design: they are nothing without the designer. Everything God gives us has value because of God. I really enjoy my family. At the end of the day, I see that the reason they have so much goodness is because God placed that goodness within them. When I engage them, I should bow down and worship God. If I did not know that God is the giver of sports, work, food, and relationships, then I would have nothing to which to direct my affections but the object itself. Ironically, when I worship something it loses its meaning. It’s like cotton candy. When we touch cotton candy, it disappears. This is why people are increasingly disenchanted with the American dream. The blessings are not the end, but rather they lead us to our end: to worship God.

The psalmist echoes the same contrast in Psalm 115:3-8 when he writes,

Our God is in heaven

and does whatever he pleases.

Their idols are silver and gold,

made by human hands.

They have mouths but cannot speak,

eyes, but cannot see.

They have ears but cannot hear,

noses, but cannot smell.

They have hands but cannot feel,

feet, but cannot walk.

They cannot make a sound with their throats.

Those who make them are just like them,

as are all who trust in them.

Notice that phrase, “Those who make them are just like them.” Nothing subtle about that. Those who make idols out of scarecrows become like scarecrows. The deafness of the idols is transposed on the heart of the person who deifies them.

The idol has no value, and as such it is nothing like God.

Idols Are Nothing like God

Jeremiah 10:6-16

Here we have the main idea of the chapter. It’s found in verse 6. Simply stated, God is nothing like these false idols.

Derek Kidner describes this chapter as a polemic and a psalm (Message of Jeremiah, 56; Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations, 183). A polemic is a strong verbal rant against a wrong. A psalm is, of course, a song. Jeremiah has just dealt a blistering blow against the false idols, calling them out for what they are. The next section compares these idols against the living God.

The song is majestic (vv. 6-10). Unlike the weak idols, God is great, he is wise, he is the true God, and in his wrath the nations quake. The idols are beautiful and powerless; God is invisible and all-powerful.

This is the irony. The God who made all beautiful things is himself invisible. God created all beauty (Gen 1–2), yet God commands us not to create beautiful things to worship (Exod 20:4-6). The beautiful things he created are to be a stimulus for worshiping him (Ps 104). Idolatry is twisted ignorance inasmuch as the creation becomes the object of worship. Idolatry aborts the natural flow of worship through things to God. The material world is then a stimulus for worship.

Perhaps the best way to understand this is by reading Psalm 104. The psalmist praises nature for its glory, but the praise is in transit. It is praise that is moving up to where it belongs, to the Creator. This is how a God-fearing person relates to the universe.

Yet God has done something more profound. It is more profound than his material creation and sets him far apart from the false gods: he created his own people. Jeremiah writes,

Jacob’s Portion is not like these

because he is the one who formed all things.

Israel is the tribe of his inheritance;

the Lord of Armies is his name. (10:16)

The phrase Jacob’s Portion is a title for God that is only used here and in 51:19. “Jacob” was a synonym for the nation of Israel. So while nations had land and monarchies, the real portion, the real inheritance of Israel was God himself. Similarly the psalmist writes,

Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing;

you hold my future.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. (Ps 16:5-6)

This reminds us of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:5: the humble will inherit the earth. Jesus’s words do not tell us from whom the humble will inherit the earth, but it is implied of course. God is the one who gives everything to those who humbly trust him. When the Lord is our portion, we really need nothing else. We especially do not need scarecrow idols that look nice but have no power.

Conclusion

Remember the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz? He was perplexed because he did not have a brain. Oh, what he would do if he only had a brain!

In the end the scarecrow and his friends go to Oz. Of course they find that the wizard is an imposter. In the book he gives the scarecrow a brain, which proves to be fake. As the tale unfolds, the scarecrow finds that he already had all the brains he needed. He really did not need more brains. Rather, he needed confidence in what he already had. This then is another irony in the story. All the brains he needed were within him. The scarecrow becomes a metaphor for personal empowerment.

What we need cannot be given to us by the false gods of this world. What we need cannot be given to us by ourselves if we are only personally empowered to receive it. No, what we need can only be given to us by God. A God who is not distant but personal, a God who is not contrived but real, a God who is not pretense but authentic, a God who is not hiding but is actually granted to us—he is our portion. The things we idolize will continue to take from us until we realize how empty they really are. They are especially empty compared to the God who is our portion.

If Jeremiah could say God is our portion, how much more can we say he is ours, since “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” calling us to abide in him and he in us (John 1:14)? He is our Portion. He lives in us, and we live in him. Therefore, every idol of my heart should be consumed in the white-hot heat of my love for him.

I stand with a heart on fire for him and hold all things as conduits to his praise, knowing always that these things do not have the power to hold me.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount teach us about how he views idolatry?
2. How does Jeremiah define idolatry? How should we define idolatry today?
3. How do idols steal our affections?
4. Jeremiah made two profound statements about idolatry in this passage. What were they?
5. What are some contemporary manifestations of idols, and why are they so attractive?
6. According to Jeremiah 10, what attracted Israel to her idols?
7. How is Jeremiah 10 a polemic and a psalm?
8. How should we understand the idolatry in Jeremiah 10 in light of Genesis 1–2; Exodus 20:4-6; and Psalm 104?
9. How are idols nothing like God?
10. How are idols meaningless?