Chuck Larsen

Idols always prove useless in the day of calamity. Jeremiah pointed that out to the Israelites with a tone that carried both warning and a touch of sharp wit. He knew a day of reckoning was coming and that their gods of wood and stone would be helpless. In Jeremiah 2:28, he writes, “But where are the gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise if they can save you in your time of trouble, for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.” Jeremiah is mocking them not only for the emptiness of their deities but also for their impotence. They cannot do anything. It was not unusual for each town or village to have its own gods. They were everywhere. But it did not matter how many there were. As Mackay points out, “But surely because there are so many of them, their numbers will make up for any lack of power on the part of one. However, no matter how long the string of zeros you add or multiply together, the result never changes from zero.” The math of idolatry never improves, no matter how enthusiastically it is practiced.

Even so, the Israelites continued to multiply gods in the land. They became less trusting and more trying. They were people of many religious expressions but with no focus on the one true God. They certainly were a nation with attention deficit disorder, unable to focus attention on the important issue at hand. Unfortunately, our nation has its own version of this spiritual distraction. We collect substitutes for God with the enthusiasm of hobbyists collecting baseball cards. Yet in spite of the many deities Americans might serve, they all prove to be as worthless as zero. No matter how many there are or what is done with them, they always result in the same answer: zero. Dearman says, “What makes idols worthless? The short answer is that they are not divine, and they cannot save! Idols are a substitute for the real thing; they may be attractive and appealing to people with heightened religious longings. Idols offer theological rewards, but they cannot save.” More activity and more devotion to more things do not create security. Such confusion often produces the opposite.

Into this landscape of spiritual arithmetic steps Jesus. He spoke to the woman at the well about the futility of drawing water from empty sources, offering instead “living water” that truly satisfies (John 4:10). To reject that living water is to reject the offer of life that only God can grant. The New Testament reminds us, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21), and also declares, “Salvation is found in no one else” (Acts 4:12). Where idols add up to nothing, Christ brings fullness. Where lifeless gods remain silent, He speaks words that endure beyond calamity and beyond the limits of human arithmetic.

Jeremiah asserted that the Israelites had become like wild animals. They had lost their ability to reason and to control themselves. They gave themselves over to the naked lusts of the flesh and were simply slaves to their appetites. As Davidson says, “The people are hooked, like a drug addict, aware of the possible dangers in the situation, yet unable to stifle the craving for another shot.” God had cared for them when He delivered them from slavery in Egypt. He fed them, gave them water, and even preserved their clothing and shoes for forty years. Yet Jeremiah calls them back to God’s care in Jeremiah 2:25: “Keep your feet from going unshod and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners, and after them I will go.’” I recently watched a documentary about the painkiller Oxycontin. Those who became addicted often suffered this same fate. They knew it would ruin their lives but could not stop. During our time, many city streets are filled with people who cannot abandon their addictions, even when their shoes are quite literally worn out.

Jeremiah, speaking for God, explains that running after the pleasures of the flesh results in nothing but worn-out shoes. Solomon made this case clear in Ecclesiastes. He had everything and found it meaningless, a “vanity of vanities,” like trying to catch the wind. When it is all over, you have little to show for it except “wasted days and wasted nights.” We are all born with fleshly passions and desires, and giving ourselves to them without restraint results in slavery, not freedom. They will not let us go. As Mackay observed, “Judah is seen to be willfully intent on pursuing its own perception of what is for its good, having rejected the service of the Lord. But it was not freedom they had achieved; rather, they were trapped in an even greater slavery.” Even those of us who pride ourselves on self-control sometimes discover that our appetites are stronger than our good intentions. A man may swear off sweets in the morning and befriend a donut by noon.

Yes, like a modern addict, many felt their situation was hopeless. Wiersbe writes, “… they despaired of being saved. ‘It’s no use!’ (2:25, NIV) was their excuse. ‘It’s hopeless!’ They sounded like confirmed alcoholics or compulsive gamblers who cannot break the habit, or like the invalid at the Pool of Bethesda” who had given up hope (John 5:1–9). I have agreed with such gloomy self-assessments at times, yet the New Testament presents another view. Jesus approached the man at Bethesda and restored him. He also declared, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Christ remains the God of hopeless cases. As Wesley wrote, “He breaks the power of canceled sin / He sets the prisoner free.”

My uncle Johnny was an authority on Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. He loved to tell how the famous pilot shot down eighty enemy aircraft during the First World War and how he built a working model of the red Fokker triplane to fly at airshows across Florida. On April 12, 1918, Richthofen was pursuing a Canadian pilot with such intensity that he flew too far into enemy territory. Eyewitnesses said he was flying dangerously low, completely absorbed in the chase, and never realized where he was until he was shot down. Focused desire clouded his awareness, and it cost him his life. Jeremiah describes a similar tragedy in the life of faith. People chase what they want with such concentration that they lose track of where they are. Possessions, pleasures, and positions become the horizon, and the warning signs slip quietly past.

That blindness is exactly what Jeremiah confronts in Israel. After likening them to an adulteress, a corrupt branch, and an irremovable stain, he challenges their denial: “How can you say, ‘I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done” (Jeremiah 2:23). Their behavior told the story plainly enough. Jeremiah goes further, comparing them to animals driven by instinct rather than reflection. “A restless young camel running here and there, a wild donkey used to the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind” (Jeremiah 2:24). Gingrich notes that Judah did not need to be wooed by false gods; she pursued them eagerly. The picture is embarrassing, intentionally so. Desire unrestrained becomes self-parody, and sin advertises itself long before it admits its name.

The New Testament speaks with the same clarity about misplaced pursuit. Paul warns that “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” (Romans 8:5), and such focus narrows vision until nothing else registers. Jesus describes it more sharply: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Slaves do not choose their direction; they follow their impulses wherever they lead. Israel ran after idols the way the Red Baron chased his target, unaware of the danger until the fall came. Christ enters that story as the one who restores sight and altitude. Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away” (Second Corinthians 5:17). In Him, the chase is broken, awareness returns, and the soul is lifted out of reckless pursuit into a truer sense of where it belongs.

Sin is not shallow. It runs to the bone and settles into the assumptions we carry without noticing. Its danger lies in its invisibility; it hides under the skin and rarely announces itself with a warning label. Over time it also bends our vision, so even honest self-examination feels like looking through fog. Paul told the Corinthians that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” so that truth could stand plainly before them and still not be grasped (Second Corinthians 4:4). Jeremiah faced that same blindness in Israel. After comparing them to an adulterer, a corrupt branch, and an unremovable stain, he exposes their denial: “How can you say, ‘I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done” (Jeremiah 2:23). The problem was not a lack of evidence but a lack of sight.

Commentators help us see how deep the blindness ran. Dearman locates the “valley” as Hinnom, infamous for idolatry and child sacrifice. Davidson observes that addiction to evil reshapes values until nothing seems wrong. Mackay adds that the people defended themselves with appeals to orthodoxy, the temple, and functioning religious systems. In other words, the checklist looked impressive while the heart wandered freely. That feels uncomfortably familiar. It is easy to confuse activity with faithfulness and to assume that correct forms guarantee a clean conscience. Jeremiah insists otherwise. Their practices differed little from the pagans around them, even though they wore better vocabulary and stood closer to holy furniture.

Jeremiah presses them to “know” what they had done, not as new information but as honest assessment under the covenant. Mackay notes that facts were available; discernment was missing. I remember my wife’s years at Assure Women’s Center and a young woman convinced she needed an abortion to fit into a prom dress. She spoke confidently about unborn souls floating in never-never land, waiting for assignment. The logic was creative, if nothing else. Jeremiah had already answered such thinking: God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). The New Testament sharpens the light. Jesus declares, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34), and Paul reminds us that self-deception is a skill easily learned (Galatians 6:3). Christ does not merely expose blindness; He heals it. As Paul writes, “God… has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (Second Corinthians 4:6). That light is steady, revealing what we might otherwise rationalize away.