February 3, Jeremiah 2
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?” - Jeremiah 2:5
Do worshipers take on the attributes of whatever they worship? God chastised the Israelites for going far from him to go after worthlessness. In their pursuit of worthless idols, they themselves became worthless.
How could that have happened to a people who were once the prized possession of God, the ones he described as the apple of his eye?
The leaders of God’s once-treasured people led the departure from God. Instead of leading God’s sheep in paths of holiness and righteousness, they failed to seek God themselves and passed it on to those they led. The people were, just as the Israelites of Jesus’ days on earth, “sheep without a shepherd.”
The Israelites of Isaiah’s day had made a foolish and fatal mistake. They exchanged the true and living God who saved them from their enemies and gave them their land for idols that were not gods at all. They had enjoyed glorious blessings as God’s chosen ones. But they exchanged their glory for something that did not profit them. The word in the original text for “did not profit” is the same as the word for “worthless,” mentioned above. The pagans around them were guilty as idolaters, but the Israelites were doubly guilty. They forsook God who made them, and put idols they made in God’s place. God told them it was like swapping a free-flowing, life-sustaining fountain for a useless leaky cistern they fashioned for themselves. They forgot God.
When they turned away from God to idols, they became guilty of adultery in two senses of that word. They were spiritual adulterers, having left God who graciously espoused them to himself. And they were also guilty of physical adultery, defiling themselves with the filthy, vulgar indulgences of pagan worship.
God showed them a series of images that revealed what they had become. They were freed slaves who had volunteered to be enslaved again. God planted them as his choice vine, but they became a wild vine that produced
poisonous fruit. They had defiled themselves with dirt they could not wash away. They were controlled by lust, like wild animals. When God pleaded with them through the prophets, they would not listen. When he warned them, they refused the warning and proclaimed they were determined to do what they wanted to do. They were like a thief, caught in the act. But they still maintained their innocence. They were so blind that they could not see or acknowledge their sin.
It’s sad to read these descriptions of God’s apostate people. But instead of only shaking our heads at their shame, do we need to examine ourselves? Do we forget God when things are good, and only cry out to him when calamity strikes? Do we make a bad swap like they did? Do we forsake God to go after our own will or another alleged source of life and fulfillment? Do we exchange the blessing of God’s salvation in Christ, thinking we can do it ourselves and need no help?
We started this essay with the idea of worshipers becoming like the one they worshiped. In Israel’s case, their choice of worthless idols made them worthless. But there’s a positive, beautiful picture of that process in the Bible, too. In 2 Corinthians, Paul wrote that God’s new covenant people in Christ who are gazing at the Lord “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” As we grow in holiness to become holy as he is holy, John wrote that one day “we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.” My friend, nothing this world has to offer is worth missing that! Let’s not make the same foolish errors the Israelites made.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—February 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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