WWUTT 2384 The Foolish Bow to Idols (Jeremiah 10:1-25)

Judah continued to rebel against God by worshiping false gods. And God points out their foolishness to them for bowing to idols that they made with their hands instead of exalting

God who gave them everything. When we understand the text. This is

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Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Jeremiah, we are up to chapter 10.

This is a little bit shorter chapter, so we might be able to get through the whole thing today. God is going to continue his rebuke against Judah because of their idol worship and he will punish them because of their sin.

Now in the midst of this chapter, there is a verse which is a very commonly twisted verse.

You might pick it up when I read through it, but if you don't grab it, I'll explain it to you here in a moment. Let's begin by reading through the first 10 verses.

Hear the word of the Lord. Hear the word that the Lord speaks to you,

O house of Israel, thus says the Lord, learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them.

For the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an ax by the hands of a craftsman.

They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field and they cannot speak. They have to be carried for they cannot walk.

Do not be afraid of them for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good.

There is none like you, O Lord. You are great and your name is great in might.

Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? For this is your due. For among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you.

They are both stupid and foolish. The instruction of idols is but wood.

Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Euphaz. They are the work of the craftsmen and of the hands of the goldsmith.

Their clothing is violet and purple. They are all the work of skilled men.

But the Lord is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting

King. At his wrath, the earth quakes and the nations cannot endure his indignation.

So as I said, this chapter can be divided into two parts. We didn't really read through all of part one here, but part one goes verses one through 16, and it's describing once again the idolatry that Judah has engaged in.

You may have noticed the contrast there in even the two parts of the 10 verses that we read.

You had the description of the foolishness of the Jews and how they would worship these idols that they themselves made.

They even fastened them down so that they cannot go anywhere. Who are you to think you can bow to this thing and ask of it and it would give you anything?

It is just calling out the foolishness of the Jews, rejecting the Lord, their God, who has given them everything, and then bowing to these things that they made with their own hands and who give them nothing.

And of course, this is contrasted with the greatness of God. Verse six, there is none like you,

O Lord. You are great and your name is great in might. After this first part, which is the first 16 verses, then in verses 17 to 25,

God promises judgment upon Judah because of their disobedience, because of their rebellion, and they chose the foolish way, which will ultimately be to their destruction.

It's kind of like it says in Proverbs, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

So let's come back to the beginning here. This is God speaking through the prophet

Jeremiah, hear the word that the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel, thus says the

Lord, learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them.

And then verse three, for the customs of the peoples are vanity. So you have these pagans that are trying to look for signs in the stars, astrology, right?

They're trying to read the stars, the planets, and they will see in them omens of death and destruction, and they will be filled with all kinds of conspiracy theory.

If you'll remember back to our study in the book of Isaiah, God said through Isaiah, do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy and do not fear what they fear nor be in dread, but the

Lord of hosts, him shall you fear. Let him be your fear and your dread.

So the people in that context, though, that was talking about Israel here.

God is saying, don't be like the pagans. But as God is speaking to those faithful through Isaiah, speaking to those faithful who did truly fear

God, he was saying, don't fear what the people are going to fear. There's going to be all kinds of different conspiracy theories, and they're going to be looking at the nations and how they're moving.

And this people is coming against us, and we can't trust our neighbor over here. And so there's going to be all kinds of theories that are going to be swirling about.

Maybe the king is in cahoots with this king, so on and so forth. Don't fear what they fear. It's perfectly relatable in our present day and time, because there are all kinds of conspiracy theories going on, especially since COVID.

It's like interest in conspiracy theories has just amped up since then.

But we cannot fear what people who don't fear God fear. We must fear the

Lord. As Charles Spurgeon said, fear God and nothing else. So with regard to the pagans around them, now that's just regarding Israel and Isaiah.

But this with regard to the nations, learn not the way of the nations. Don't be dismayed at the signs of the heavens.

Don't fear the stuff that they say that you need to fear. The way that might play out in our world today, you've got the naturalists, the environmentalists who are saying climate change, the earth is heating up, the earth is cooling down, the polar ice caps are melting, the earth is going to dry up, you know, whatever it might happen to be, whatever doomsday scenario that they are painting.

The Mother Earth is mad at us. That's essentially what they're saying. They may not come at it from like Gaia or speaking in religious tones or context, but that's really what it comes down to.

It's just like the pagans of old who would say that the God of the trees is mad at us or the

God of the rivers, and that's why it's overflowing. You still have pagans today, even within our culture, who are making the same kind of claims, raising the same kind of alarmism.

Don't be dismayed at their signs in the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are vanity.

Don't fear what they fear. Same point as in Isaiah, but here through Jeremiah and talking about the pagans that are around them.

Now, the same warning was given in the book of Deuteronomy, where before the nation of Israel was sent into the promised land to conquer it,

Moses had addressed them and said, don't go after their customs. Don't look at what they're doing.

Listen to their ways, adopt their traditions, fear their gods, don't follow them, but you are to keep your focus on the

Lord, your God, and obey his commandments and his statutes. And here we see that Israel, Judah has clearly fallen away from that.

And God points out the foolishness of these new practices that they have adopted. Continuing in verse three, a tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.

They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

Now, where have you heard this before? Surely you've heard this verse taken out of context and applied to something cultural today.

What is it? Do you recognize it? A tree is cut down from the forest. It's worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.

They decorate it with silver and gold. I think it's a Burl Ives song is what

I'm singing there. Yeah, a Christmas tree. So those anti -Christmasites who will say that those of us who celebrate

Christmas are doing something pagan, they'll take this verse out of context, Jeremiah 10, 3, and 4, and they'll say that this is about a

Christmas tree. And we're doing with a Christmas tree what Jeremiah said we ought not to do.

Now, this doesn't have anything to do with a Christmas tree. A tree is cut down in the forest.

It's worked with an axe in the hands of a craftsman. It's taking a piece of that tree, shaping it into an idol.

That's simply what it's saying. They decorate it with silver and gold because it doesn't stay wood like that. They overlay it with silver and gold plating.

Now it looks pretty. It's beautiful. So it's a God who sees me that I must fear.

It may not even necessarily be pagan, something pagan that's going on in the culture that we are being told that we have to fear.

You know, even among people that we might otherwise call conservative, they can get into some conspiracy theories too and say that we need to fear these things.

We have to be careful with the information that we hear. Ultimately, our eyes need to be kept on Christ.

And we need to do what pleases the Lord, pursuing holiness, as God has called us to be holy.

And part of that holiness, part of being set apart from the world, certainly we don't adopt the practices of the world.

We don't behave as pagans, but we also shouldn't be believing the same things that unbelievers believe.

Definitely not being in dread or in fear of what it is that they fear. We shouldn't be in pursuit of those things that they are in pursuit of, like these idols.

And as it's gone on to describe this character, they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

They decorate it with silver and gold and they fasten it down. It can't go anywhere. How is this puny little

God going to help you with anything when it can't even help itself? It can't even walk around. Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field and they cannot speak.

They have to be carried for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them for they cannot do evil.

Neither is it in them to do good. They are completely neutral. Really all things considered, it is neither good nor bad.

It's bad that you bow down to it. That's what makes it bad. The apostle

Paul even said this with the Corinthians, that an idol is an empty thing. We know that an idol is an empty thing.

So there's nothing within that idol that really can do neither good nor bad to you.

And so in the context of the Corinthians, like why is it such a big deal then if the meat that I'm eating has been sacrificed to one of those false gods, if it's an empty thing anyway, there's nothing in that.

My meat is not defiled, it can't really harm me. And then the principle, the point that Paul draws out of that is if somebody who does think that an idol is something, they think that that idol really is spiritual, a false god or something like that, and they see you eating meat that was sacrificed to it, well, you could defile their conscience.

So it would be better for you to just not eat the meat than to cause your brother to stumble. But the point there being made by Paul, nonetheless, includes the understanding that an idol is empty.

It's nothing. I remember my dad, when he would travel around and do preaching, he was an itinerant preacher when

I was growing up. So I listened to my dad a lot. As far as like any other preacher goes,

I listen to my dad more than anybody else, even the pastor in our own home church. But I remember him giving this illustration, he put a mic stand on the stage and he took his suit jacket off and he hung it on the mic stand.

And he said, there's there's an idol right there. It's just an empty suit. There's nothing in it at all.

God is pointing out this very thing to Judah right here to show them their foolishness.

You actually trusted in this thing instead of the living God. And then we have that idol contrasted with the greatness of God beginning in verse six.

There is none like you, O Lord, you are great. And your name is great in might.

His name precedes any of these idols. I mean, the idols have to be ascribed a name by these people that worship them.

But God revealed himself to his people and told them what his name was.

I am Yahweh, the covenant name that they know him by. In fact, as we read there in verse six, there is none like you,

O Lord. That's the name Yahweh. There is none like you, Yahweh. You are great.

Your name is great in might. Who would not fear you, O king of the nations? For this is your due.

For among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you.

And who is it the Jews are going after? The gods of the pagans around them. They are both stupid and foolish, it says in verse eight.

The instruction of idols is but wood. A wooden instruction from a wooden figure.

Verse nine, beaten silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Euphaz. They are the work of the craftsmen and of the hands of the goldsmith.

Their clothing is violet and purple. They are all the work of skilled men. These are made in your image.

You made these things. They can't give anything to you. You are the one that made them.

But the Lord is the true God. Contrasting again in verse 10, he is the living God and the everlasting king.

At his wrath, the earthquakes and the nations cannot endure his indignation.

That should be enough to make Judah tremble. But they do not. And so what is the indictment that God brings against them next?

Verse 11, thus shall you say to them, the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

As God means to consume the earth, so he will consume those false gods that were made of the earth.

Verse 12, it is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.

I teach a Bible class at a Christian school and I just recently went over with my students creation.

The creation account, as we have it in Genesis one, how God just spoke things into being.

He just had to speak a word and it came into existence and saying to them, have you, have you just not stopped and pondered how incredible that is?

Like you've heard it read to you. Maybe you've grown up in church, you're attending a Christian school, so you've heard it so many times you don't even think that much about it, but God just says it.

And out of nothing, something appeared because God has the power to do that.

He made the earth by his power, established the world by his wisdom.

Verse 13, when he utters his voice, there is a tumult of the waters in the heavens and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.

He makes a lightning for the rain and he brings forth the wind from the storehouses. All of these things still guided by God's sovereign hand.

Verse 14, every man is stupid and without knowledge. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols for his images are false and there is no breath in them.

Where did we get our breath from Genesis chapter two, God breathed life into the man that he had made in his image.

But with these idols that man makes in his image, man cannot give it life.

Man has no power to do so. Man is sinful and corrupt and he brings forth death.

And so he creates an idol that will ultimately be the symbol of his destruction.

When God's wrath is poured out on the ungodly who worship the false gods instead of the true

God. You're probably familiar with the quote from John Calvin who said that the heart is an idol factory and it's producing idols all the time.

It is so easy for us to look at something else and our heart desire it, covet it, lust after it.

And we end up worshiping that instead of God. Our yearning, our purpose, our motivation is entirely in possessing that thing.

And that becomes our idol, the thing that we think that we have to have in order to live, in order to survive. I can't make it.

I cannot even breathe if I don't have this thing. God is the one who gave us our breath and with the breath that we've been given we blaspheme

God instead of glorify him. And we deserve judgment if we persist in this.

As verse 15 goes on to say, they are worthless, a work of delusion. At the time of their punishment, they still perish.

Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob, for he is the one who formed all things and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance.

The Lord of hosts is his name. Israel is the tribe of his inheritance.

Israel belongs to God, but they went after other gods that they had not known, who had not delivered them and given them nothing.

And so for this ridiculous foolishness, God is going to bring judgment upon them.

And that's what we have in the second portion, verses 17 to 25, God describing the kind of judgment that he is going to bring upon them.

Gather up your bundle from the ground. Oh, you who dwell under siege, because there's going to be a siege that will be laid against Jerusalem.

For thus says the Lord, behold, I am slinging out the inhabitants of the land. At this time,

I will bring distress on them and they may feel it. Now, if you'll remember when God sent

Israel into the land, he used them to drive out the pagans because the pagans wickedness, their sin was a stench in the nostrils of God.

And the Lord was going to use Israel to be the instrument of his judgment against this wicked people.

Well, now it's being said that that as God had to use Israel to drive the pagans out of the land, the

Canaanites and everybody else. So God was going to use a pagan nation to drive Israel out of the land.

You are going to feel it, God says. Verse 19, woe is me because of my hurt.

My wound is grievous. But I said, truly, this is an affliction and I must bear it.

This is Jeremiah responding to the promise of judgment that God is going to bring upon his people.

My tent is destroyed and all my cords are broken. My children have gone from me and they are not.

There is no one to spread my tent again and to set up my curtains. Verse 21, for the shepherds are stupid and do not inquire of the

Lord. Therefore, they have not prospered and all their flock is scattered.

The people who are responsible for leading Israel, they don't go to the

Lord. They inquire of their false gods. Verse 22, a voice, a rumor.

Behold, it comes a great commotion out of the north country to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair of jackals.

This is the promise of the Chaldeans or the Babylonians that are going to come against them. Verse 23,

I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.

Correct me, O Lord, but in justice, not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing.

Pour out your wrath on the nations that know you not and on the peoples that call not on your name, for they have devoured

Jacob. They have devoured him and consumed him and have laid waste his habitation.

So this is a prayer for a future expectation, that though God is going to use this pagan nation to come against Israel, may

God also bring his judgment against those nations that do not call upon him. For they oppressed and destroyed your people,

Israel. They have devoured Jacob. So as repayment, may

God's judgment fall upon them. And that certainly will happen and we'll see that later on in the book of Jeremiah.

But in the meantime, my friends, we must not flirt with these things that may captivate our hearts and draw us away from God.

Be careful of those things. And if there is anything in your life that appears to become an idol, put it to death.

As the Apostle Paul said in Colossians 3, 5, put to death what is earthly in you. Our idols may not be carved engravings that we overlay with silver and gold.

It may be certain desires, lusts of our heart, passions of the flesh, wealth and popularity or gaining status at your job.

Something to that effect. Or coveting your neighbor's stuff. You see your neighbor living better than you do and so you think that you need to have his life, his opportunities, his family's better than mine.

And you're falling into a very wicked pattern that is ungrateful to God and claiming that you know your way better than God does.

Proverbs 3 tells us to not lean on our own understanding. In all our ways acknowledge

Him and He will make straight our paths. Our understanding is corrupt.

Our emotions are fleeting. We bounce all over the place. But God is steadfast and true.

He is the same yesterday, today and forever. And He will forgive those who come to Him in repentance.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here and we pray and ask that you would forgive us our sins.

Yes, we certainly see a lot of idolatry that's going on in the culture all around us. There's only so much of that we can do anything about.

We need to be out there sharing the gospel. But with regard to our own idolatry, we must put that to death and handle it today.

Lord, our hearts are idol factories. Fill our heart with your Spirit so that we may seek after the things of God, that which is pleasing to you, exalting your name and giving you the glory that you alone are worthy of.

You sent your Son to die on the cross for our sins, to rise again from the dead. Whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

It is in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. This has been When We Understand the

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