February 20th, 2025
I will pronounce my judgments on my people because of their wickedness in forsaking me, in burning incense to other gods and in worshipping what their hands have made.
I wonder if you've ever really thought about the endless amount of distractions that pervade the human life on a daily basis. Minute to minute, and hour by hour, we are constantly involved in some kind of preoccupation that captivates our minds and even grabs hold of our hearts. This might be one of the greatest weaknesses of all human existence; we are wildly susceptible to the sin of idolatry. Some of us may retaliate and say that we've never worshipped an idol or bowed down to an image of another god. However, that doesn't necessarily mean we haven't offered our hearts to other created things on this earth.
In the beginning, God formed mankind in His own image and placed within them a large capacity for affection, love and passion. He cultivated that deep desire in us so that we might look upon His face and throw ourselves down before Him in a worshipful offering. Essentially, God was to be the ultimate recipient of our all our affections, all our love and all our passions. These desires were given so that they would be exclusively used for bringing glory to our Creator. Therefore, we were created to worship Him and Him alone. However, even from the garden of Eden, humans have somehow chosen to love something other than their Heavenly Father.
Jeremiah in our reading today, speaks a divine declaration to the people of Israel. They forsook the Lord and participated in worship practices that glorified other gods and idols made by human hands. In this passage, God pronounces the serious offence of worshipping something or anything other than Himself. He has never played around with this one deviation. It is the repeated fall of all human history since the fall of Adam and Eve. This one law is even written in the ten commandments; "thou shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3-6). There is divine judgment for living an idolatrous lifestyle without repentance. The Lord our God would not tolerate nor allow us to be given over to the false worship of false idols, no matter what they may be.
We now contemplate the life of a 21st century believer. We are surrounded by a surplus of material things, created with our own human hands. The sin is not that we possess certain things. The sin is found when we discover our own addiction and worship of these created things. So much so that these things and activities have effectively side-swept our own time and devotion for Christ. How deeply are we fascinated by the things of this world? What is it that seems to catch your gaze every day and pulls you in so far that you forget about the Lord your God? An idol is whatever we depend on, whatever we trust the most, and whatever we fixate on for our happiness and fulfillment. This might be our careers in which we are obsessed with our work. It could be a person in your life that you idolize and prioritize more than God. It could be your money that captivates you and possesses you. It might be our phones, the media we binge or the leisure activities we use to numb ourselves and escape. It might even be that we idolize ourselves and worship our own bodies and our own thoughts as though we are the gods of our own lives. Make no mistake today, if you are not bowing your knee to Jesus Christ, your knee is most certainly bowed to something whether you realize it or not. Search your life today, where are your idols?
Our Lord Jesus spoke and said that we absolutely cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). Your mind, your heart, your strength, and your soul cannot wholly and completely love many things at once. You must resolve today that you can only prioritize God above all else. That in all things He would have the first and foremost place in your life. Truly, all that you are and all that you ever have should be laid out before Him to protect yourself from the sin of idolatry. Who deserves our worship today? Who deserves our utmost attention? If it be anything other than Jesus, we have tragically misplaced our devotion. We must answer the question today. Where are these idols hiding and what are we going to do about it?