Jeremiah 10:10 But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king.
Frail Substitutes
What if we lost electricity for a day? Well, no big deal. We wouldn’t have lights, air conditioning, or heat, but we could get by. What if we lost power for two days? What if there was some calamity that could produce a loss of power for a year? The dependence we have upon electricity goes down to the very details of life.
We often easily dismiss the ancients because they didn’t have electricity and the use of modern technology. We think ourselves much better and more knowledgeable than they were. While there have been many technological advances since the ancient Egyptians, they are the ones who had the ability to construct the Pyramids. I couldn’t even make a pot of coffee if I lost power for a day! So the words of Jeremiah 10 are very poignant when you realize that both ancient peoples and modern man have the tendency to depend on substitutes for the living God. We can supplant Him with an idol or with a dependence on our own abilities.
God calls an idol what it is. In verse 3, He calls an idol “a tree,” and He speaks of people who would cut down a tree, and then take it to a craftsman who would fashion it into an idol. They covered it with silver and gold, and nailed it down so it could not be moved. Of course, as upright as it stood and as beautiful as it was, it couldn’t walk around, answer, or talk. God told His people not to fear those gods or to learn the ways of the people who replaced the living God with idols.
In verse 8, God calls their idols “the stock,” a tree that is removed for a certain purpose. Then He calls idols “a doctrine of vanities,” or an empty teaching. In verse 14, God calls an idol a “graven image.” An idol is created by a person, and the men who make these gods are confounded by the gods they have made. Verse 15 says, “They are vanity.” In other words, idols are empty; they are “the word of errors.” All the skill and workmanship to create idols was an empty practice.
We need to see substitutes for God as God sees them. We need to see idols for what they really are. Then we need to see God for Who He really is. Verse 10 says, “But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king.” The reason God is the true God is because He is the only living God. My iphone is a wonderful tool, but it is not God, and if I lost electricity, I would lose any help it could give me. We need to see how temporary, fragile, and inferior our substitutes for God are.
Today, whatever your need, remember that the living God, the everlasting God, the sovereign God is the only God worth depending upon. We can thank God for the electricity that we have and the technology we enjoy, but we need to remember that God alone lasts forever.