NOTES for Jer 10:1-25

How easily people today turn aside onto pagan paths, paths that had long since been discredited! And even if superstitions different from the ancient ones now come to the foreground, this changes nothing.

Suppose modern people are less afraid of heavenly omens; nevertheless, they eagerly seek answers to every question in the signs of the zodiac. People still turn to idols for counsel, only now not to those made by craftsmen and artists, but to those whom the media have made into idols.

The thought that none of the wise people of the earth can be compared with God still does not fit in the minds of many people. Yet any human wisdom, if it is genuine, is only a reflection of His wisdom. But a reflection of sunlight is not equal to the Sun.

At one time a very profound writer said that if it were proved to him that truth was outside Christ, he would rather remain with Christ than with truth. But here we face a false dilemma, for truth is not simply with God; as the prophet proclaimed, the Lord God Himself is truth. Therefore every human substitution, when His commandments are replaced by attitudes cooked up in an earthly kitchen, and the Creator's place in the heart is taken by perishable idols, means not simply worshiping someone instead of Him, but a direct refusal of truth.

And this is not the self-deception that the poet called "uplifting us" and contrasted with "low truths." No, when we turn away from the Source of life, we choose death.