The Living God and the Lumber Gods Text: Jeremiah 10:6-10
Introduction: The Great Reality Check
We live in an age of profound make believe. Our culture is saturated with sophisticated idolatries, but because they are not made of wood and stone, we imagine ourselves to be enlightened. We have traded the village idol for the digital icon, the carved image for the carefully curated self image. But the sin is precisely the same. Idolatry is not fundamentally a problem of metallurgy or carpentry; it is a problem of the heart. It is the exchange of the Creator for the creature, the infinite for the finite, the living God for a dead thing.
Jeremiah is writing to a people who were neck deep in this kind of foolishness. They were trying to be syncretists. They wanted Yahweh on Sunday and the Baals on Monday. They wanted the security of the covenant and the titillations of paganism. They were trying to sit on two chairs at once, and as a result, they were living on the floor. God sends Jeremiah to deliver a brutal reality check. He doesn't just suggest that idolatry is a bad idea; he mocks it. He exposes it as the height of absurdity. It is an exercise in cosmic stupidity.
The central contrast in this passage, and indeed in the whole Bible, is between the living God and the dead gods. It is the contrast between the God who speaks and the universe leaps into existence, and the gods that have to be carried around in a procession. It is the difference between the God who is, and the gods who are not. We must understand that this is not an abstract theological debate. This is intensely practical. You become like what you worship. Worship a dead idol, and you become spiritually dead. Your mind becomes wooden. Your heart becomes stone. Worship the living God, and you come alive.
Our text today is a declaration of God's utter uniqueness and a scathing indictment of the alternative. It forces us to ask the question: who or what is on the throne of our lives? Is it the everlasting King, or is it some finely dressed piece of wood?
The Text
There is none like You, O Yahweh; You are great, and great is Your name in might. Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? Indeed it is Your due! For among all the wise men of the nations And in all their kingdoms, There is none like You. But they are altogether senseless and foolish; They are in a discipline of vanities, it is mere wood! Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, And gold from Uphaz, The work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith; Blue and purple are their clothing; They are all the work of wise craftsmen. But Yahweh is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation.
(Jeremiah 10:6-10 LSB)
The Incomparable King (vv. 6-7)
Jeremiah begins this section with a thunderous declaration of God’s absolute uniqueness.
"There is none like You, O Yahweh; You are great, and great is Your name in might. Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? Indeed it is Your due! For among all the wise men of the nations And in all their kingdoms, There is none like You." (Jeremiah 10:6-7)
This is the foundational statement of biblical reality: God is in a category all by Himself. The phrase "none like You" is a constant refrain in Scripture. It establishes the Creator/creature distinction, which is the bedrock of all sane thinking. There are two kinds of reality in existence: God, and everything else. The distance between them is infinite. To forget this is to begin the slide into every kind of folly.
Notice the basis of His greatness: His name is great "in might." This is not abstract power. It is power that does things. It is the power that spoke the cosmos into being, the power that parted the Red Sea, the power that flattened Jericho. God's name is not a mere label; it is the summary of His character and His works. His name represents His reputation, and His reputation is one of omnipotence.
Because of this, a certain response is required: fear. "Who would not fear You, O King of the nations?" This is not the cowering fear of a slave before a tyrant, but the awestruck reverence of a creature before his magnificent Creator. It is the only rational response to reality. To not fear God is to be out of touch with how the world actually works. It is like not "fearing" a freight train when you are standing on the tracks. Jeremiah says this fear is God's "due." It is what He is owed by right of being. He is not just the God of Israel; He is the "King of the nations." All kings, all presidents, all potentates rule by His permission. He is the ultimate sovereign, and every knee on earth owes Him allegiance, whether they acknowledge it or not.
Jeremiah then throws down the gauntlet. He looks at all the accumulated wisdom of the pagan world, "among all the wise men of the nations," and all their political power, "in all their kingdoms," and he concludes that there is no one who can even be placed in the same sentence as Yahweh. Their wisest philosophers are fools next to Him. Their mightiest empires are dust motes. This is a totalizing claim. It is an absolute repudiation of all pluralism and relativism.
The Pathetic Alternative (vv. 8-9)
Having established the infinite greatness of God, Jeremiah turns his attention to the idols, and his tone shifts from adoration to withering sarcasm.
"But they are altogether senseless and foolish; They are in a discipline of vanities, it is mere wood! Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, And gold from Uphaz, The work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith; Blue and purple are their clothing; They are all the work of wise craftsmen." (Jeremiah 10:8-9 LSB)
The contrast is stark. God is great in might; the idols are "altogether senseless and foolish." The word for senseless here is related to the idea of a brute beast. Idolaters have the spiritual intelligence of cattle. They are engaged in a "discipline of vanities." The word for vanity is hebel, the same word that echoes through Ecclesiastes. It means vapor, breath, emptiness. Idolatry is the study of nothingness. It is majoring in emptiness. And what is the curriculum? "It is mere wood!"
Jeremiah exposes the entire process as a sham. You take a tree. You cut it down. One part you use to warm yourself by the fire. The other part you carve into a shape, and then you bow down to it. The raw material is mundane, but the process dresses it up. You import expensive materials, "beaten silver from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz." You get the best artisans, "the work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith." You dress it in royal colors, "blue and purple." You spare no expense. You get the best "wise craftsmen" to put it all together. And when you are all done, after all that effort and expense, what do you have? A very well-dressed piece of wood.
This is the anatomy of all idolatry, ancient and modern. We take a created thing, a gift from God, money, sex, power, approval, technology, and we overlay it with our own ambitions and desires. We gild it with importance. We dress it up in the royal robes of ultimacy. We pour our time, our energy, and our devotion into it. But underneath all the gold plate and purple cloth, it is still "mere wood." It is a finite thing that cannot bear the weight of our worship. It cannot save. It cannot hear. It cannot act. It is a vanity, an emptiness. And as the psalmist says, "Those who make them become like them" (Psalm 115:8). They become empty, senseless, and wooden.
The True and Living God (v. 10)
After dissecting the deadness of the idols, Jeremiah brings us back to the glorious reality of the one true God.
"But Yahweh is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation." (Jeremiah 10:10 LSB)
Here is the great "but" of the passage. In contrast to all the fakes, "Yahweh is the true God." The word "true" here means faithful, reliable, genuine. He is not a counterfeit. He is the ultimate reality upon which all other reality depends.
He is the "living God." This is the critical distinction. The idols are dead matter, assembled by human hands. God is life itself. He has life in Himself, and He is the source of all life. This is why the central sin of idolatry is necromancy. It is trafficking with the dead. It is turning from the fountain of living waters to hew out for yourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). To worship an idol is to be in love with death.
He is the "everlasting King." The idols are fads. They have a shelf life. The kingdoms that worship them rise and fall. But God's kingdom is eternal. His throne is not subject to elections or coups. He has reigned, He is reigning, and He will reign forever. His dominion is an everlasting dominion.
And this King is not safe. He is not a tame God. "At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation." The idols are utterly passive. You can mock them, spit on them, knock them over, and they do nothing. But the living God is a consuming fire. His wrath is not a petty tantrum; it is the settled, holy opposition of a perfectly righteous being to all that is evil, corrupt, and rebellious. When His indignation is kindled, the very foundations of the created order tremble. The nations, with all their vaunted power and wisdom, are utterly incapable of withstanding Him. They are like dry grass before a wildfire.
Conclusion: The Choice Before Us
Jeremiah lays before us a choice that is not complicated. It is the choice between everything and nothing. It is the choice between the living God and the lumber gods. It is the choice between the everlasting King and the temporary trinket.
Our sophisticated age scoffs at the idea of bowing to a wooden statue. But we have our own idols, and they are far more insidious because they are idols of the heart. We worship the god of self-esteem, the god of sexual autonomy, the god of material prosperity, the god of political power. We take these good things, created by God, and like the ancients, we overlay them with gold, dress them in purple, and give them the worship that is due to God alone.
The result is the same. Our culture is becoming senseless and foolish. We are engaged in a "discipline of vanities." We have men who think they can be women, we have leaders who think they can create prosperity by printing money, and we have a generation that believes meaning can be found by looking inward at their own empty hearts. We are becoming as dead as the idols we serve.
The only way out is to return to the great reality check of Jeremiah 10. We must confess that there is none like Yahweh. We must acknowledge Him as the living God and the everlasting King. And we must fear Him. This means turning from our idols, whatever they may be. It means tearing off the gold plating and the purple robes and seeing them for what they are: mere wood. It is to confess that they are nothing and that He is everything.
The good news of the gospel is that this everlasting King has made a way for idolaters to be forgiven. The wrath that makes the earth quake was poured out upon His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. He endured the full measure of God's indignation so that we, who have bowed to every piece of wood imaginable, might be reconciled to the living God. He is the true God, and He has given us true life in His Son. The choice is stark: cling to your lumber, or bow to the living Lord.