CHASING IDOLS THEN AND NOW ~ A Study in Jeremiah

What do you suppose is the number one answer to the question: “Why should God allow you into His heaven?” I’ve heard answers like, “I’ve tried to live a good life. I’ve tried to be a good person.” “I’m hoping the good in my life outweighed the bad.” Perhaps you know those who have gone to church all their lives whose lifestyles look just like that of the world, but who honestly believe they are Christians and are ‘okay’ spiritually speaking. You know the ones…right alongside graphic gestures, lewd poses, and vulgar profanities, is a Scripture reference on their social media pages. Or in the middle of some gyration they are pointing their first finger up to the heavens to supposedly “give God glory”. Those who hope they will go to heaven when they die need to answer other questions: Who gets to set the standard for good and bad? Who decides between what is good and what is evil? Who gets to judge that? Why?

 

If this one tries to leverage his ‘good’ against the ‘bad’ of others, he will run into another problem if he knows anything about the judicial system even in our own country. The guilt of one person does not influence the innocence or guilt of another. (At least it is not supposed to!) Pointing to the crimes of someone else as more severe than yours does not erase your guilt before the judge.

 

I once confronted a loved one with these words: ‘Are you a Christian?’ The response? “Yes! You know I am, why?” My response? “Your actions are manifesting something quite different, and I need to know whether I need to come alongside you as a sister in Christ (in exhortation and edification) or to evangelize you.” I think it was a wake-up call to this person. Having said that, this bad behavior characterized this person…it was not unusual behavior. I knew this person rather well. In other words, I wouldn’t go up to a Christian who was having an unusual meltdown and say the same thing. I remember an occasion when I was reacting sinfully in a certain situation. I will never forget another sister sending me a lengthy email. Her first words to me were, “This is not like you…it’s uncharacteristic of you. What’s up?” I loved that!

 

So, there are those who have no idea what it is to be a Christian, but this is their claim, nonetheless. Then comes the religious person who really appears to be religious—on the outside. She is a little more difficult to discern. Like the rich young ruler, the moral person has been raised in the church having attended to all religious duty, has never questioned her status before God, and her life looks righteous enough to enable her to fit right in with the church and true believers. She even speaks “Christianese”—yet of this one the Lord would still say, “Unclean.” This one rarely makes a mistake, so she sees no need to ever confess her sin or ask for forgiveness. She also hates to be challenged on anything. We know what Jesus will say to ‘moral’, nominal Christians on judgment day because He told us: I never knew you: depart from me, you workers of iniquity. He never ‘knew’ them in an intimate way. He never had a relationship with them.

 

If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth… (1 John 1:6). If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8). If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:10)

 

Proverbs 30:12—There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes yet is not washed from his filthiness. Proverbs 16:2—All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives. Jeremiah 17:9—“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jesus said to the Pharisees in Luke 16:15—“You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.”

 

God said His bride was defiled (unclean, polluted, impure). Defile is the word tame’. It means to be foul, especially in a ceremonial or moral sense (contaminated). To defile or pollute self. She had been sanctified, set apart as holy unto the Lord, yet she had defiled herself. This is how God saw her.

 

Back in verse 20 we see how Israel, God’s wife, saw herself in her marriage. She saw herself as a slave. Going through the motions of worshipping God, her heart was far from Him. She did what she was told to do but had no concept of why she was doing any of it. She was not worshiping God from the heart but out of duty. She was ‘religious’ but had no personal relationship with God. Trying to keep a set of rules without love is going to make anyone feel as though one is enslaved. It’s Prison 101! Eventually, Israel, by choosing to follow after other gods, believes she has gotten free from her oppressive taskmaster of a husband. Is not this the same type of reasoning that was going through Eve’s mind in the very first sin that caused the Fall? Is there something better? Is God holding back something good from me?  The Law is always oppressive to our flesh. Religion is a list of do’s and don’ts that are based upon trying to keep the law in order to be right with God.  

 

In 2 Corinthians 6:14 believers are told not to be unevenly yoked with unbelievers. “Unevenly yoked” applies to marriage as well as to all spiritual enterprises. A yoke is a wooden bar that joins two oxen to each other and to the burden they pull. If two beasts of burden were unevenly yoked, instead of working together, they would be at odds with one another.

 

God instituted marriage to be a blessing for both parties as they work together to fulfill a common purpose—the goal of two believers is to work together to glorify God. In marriage, God established the order of headship and submission as that which would honor Him and would allow for mutual freedom and fulfillment. Just like many modern-day marriages, Israel had long ago broken off her yoke and tore her bonds (those accoutrements worn by prisoners) declaring that she would not serve Him. Viewing marriage to God as slavery, she falsely concluded that her greatest freedom would be found outside her relationship with her Husband. Throwing off her yoke, she pursues “true freedom” to go after pagan idols. Blind to her true condition, she cannot see that her “freedom” is simply slavery to pagan idols.

 

God through Jeremiah says to His wife: “How can you say, ‘I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley! Know what you have done! You are a swift young camel entangling her ways, a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her passion, in the time of her heat who can turn her away? All who seek her will not become weary; in her month they will find her. (Jeremiah 2:23-24)

 

Israel is in denial, no doubt, trying to rationalize her sinful behavior before God. She claims she is not defiled and has not run after the Baals when she has done it in plain sight before Him! In verse 35 we see that Israel says she is innocent. She says she has not sinned. This is the real problem. Because she is religious and worships God (along with all the other false gods), she believes she has done everything required of her, but she is self-deceived and blind.

 

What was Israel doing in the valley? Jeremiah 7:31 says it was in the valley of the son of Hinnom where they burned their sons and daughters in the fire. This is where children were sacrificed to the god of Molech. (They were warned by God early in Leviticus 18:21 that they were to have nothing to do with this god.) Later in the chapter in verse 34 God calls them out for the blood on their hands of the innocent poor. Child sacrifice and abuse and lack of concern for the poor. The Lord says, “Know what you have done.”  Recognize, admit, confess, discern…what you have done. See your sin for what it really is! You say, “Well, surely, people who sacrificed babies could never think they were right with God, could they?” We may have said that 40 years ago, but not today.

Ryken’s description of the young camel gives us a vivid picture here of Israel’s depraved state: “Literally, the camel is crisscrossing her tracks. The young camel is the perfect illustration for all that is “skittery” and unreliable. It is ungainly in the extreme and runs off in any direction at the slightest provocation, much to the fury of the camel-driver. To sit in a village courtyard and watch such a young camel go scooting through, with some alarmed peasant dashing madly after it, is an unforgettable experience; such a young camel never takes more than about three steps in any direction. To this day the young camel provides a dramatic illustration for anything unreliable. Thus “interlacing her paths” is an accurate description of a young camel—it provides Jeremiah a perfect illustration for the fickleness of Israel.” Pictured as a young camel, Israel could not make up her mind as to which idol she wanted to chase in any given moment. Like the young camel, she just followed her natural instincts.

 

God’s wife is also likened to a wild donkey in heat. A female donkey in heat is almost violent in going after a male. Picking up his scent she races off in search of him. In mating season, she did not wait for the male to come find her out in the wilderness, she pursued him! Characterizing a loose woman of our day, we would say she is ready, willing, and able for all idol worship.

 

The pursuit of freedom to sin with abandon always enslaves. Idolatry, like any drug of choice, promises happiness and freedom, but delivers addiction, and eventually death. Throwing off God’s yoke, the Israelites exchanged a yoke of love for iron chains that only He could unlock. I got a much better understanding of addictions while in prison. It is amazing to see how much we can understand about the dangers of addiction to drugs and alcohol, but have a hard time seeing the danger of following after false gods and idols of the heart. We are no better than Israel, and we should learn from their history. Just because we are not bowing down to idols of wood and stone, does not mean we do not cater to idols we worship on the altar of self. Idols of materialism, humanism, naturalism, environmentalism (and all the other ‘isms’), and self-aggrandizement or the fulfillment of the self. All idolatry is focused on fulfilling the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. (1 John 2:16) Our idolatry is just as enslaving as ancient Israel’s was to them.

  

“Keep your feet from being unshod and your throat from thirst; but you said, ‘It is hopeless! No! For I have loved strangers, and after them I will walk.’” (Jeremiah 2:25)

 

Jeremiah 14:10 says—Thus says the Lord to this people, “Even so they have loved to wander; they have not kept their feet in check. Therefore, the Lord does not accept them; now He will remember their iniquity and call their sins to account.” Isaiah 20:3-4—And the Lord said, “Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign and token against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old, naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 28:47-48, I think, helps us interpret this passage the best. Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

 

The same fate of the northern kingdom of Israel would also be their own if they did not turn to the Lord. How did she respond to the Lord’s heartfelt plea? Did she turn back? No. Resigning herself to her fate, by her own words of desperation she proved her enslavement to idols. “It’s no use. It is hopeless. I have loved strangers, and after them I will walk.”