LORD, there is no one like you! For you are great, and your name is full of power. - Jeremiah 10:6
Left to his own devices, man is like a blind person alone in a thick forest on a starless night. Governed by his own instincts, he couldn’t be more confused.
Man is confused about God. How confused is he? He reads his future in the stars. Then he cuts down a tree, carves out an idol, dresses it in finery, and nails it to the wall to ensure that it will not topple over. Then he worships it! There it stands “like a helpless scarecrow in a garden” (10:5), and in front of it stands man—a hopeless suppliant in a quandary. You don’t need to be very smart to recognize that is not very smart. Man knows instinctively that God is the Creator, nevertheless he goes ahead and adores the things that he himself has made rather than the One who made him.
If it be protested that modern man would do no such thing, one need only look at the devotion lavished upon automobiles and computers, medicine and technology, to see that even today man tends to look for saving grace in his own handiwork. We might be tempted to say that man today is not so stupid as to distrust the Lord and trust what has repeatedly failed him. But knowing the frailty of politicians, man still looks to them to solve his problems. And aware that the stock market is driven by such shaky dynamics as fear and greed, man still looks to it for his security. That’s confusion!
Fortunately, God does not leave man to his confusion. Jeremiah reminded his contemporaries, “Lord, there is no one like you” (10:6); and when Christ came he said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t be stumbling through the darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (John 8:12). Christ in his earthly life unerringly cast light on who God is and what he is really like.
At the same time, Christ banished the darkness in men’s minds concerning their true condition, and he revealed unmistakably that man is both precious and perverse, both fallen and forgivable, reprobate but redeemable. When a man knows this, he finally gets his bearings, and he steps out into life knowing God and knowing himself, understanding where he came from and where he’s going, recognizing that the Lord is master and he is servant. He becomes bent on following the Lord rather than on meandering in the morass of his own mistaken ideas and destructive desires. That’s a whole lot better than living in perpetual confusion.
For Further Study: Jeremiah 10:1-16
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Men, Copyright ©2000 by Stuart Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Stuart Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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