Jeremiah 10:11-16 – The Grace to Worship Whom We Know
11 Thus you shall say to them: “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.”
12
He has made the earth by His power,
He has established the world by His wisdom,
And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion.
13
When He utters His voice,
There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:
“And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain,
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”
14
Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge;
Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image;
For his molded image is falsehood,
And there is no breath in them.
15
They are futile, a work of errors;
In the time of their punishment they shall perish.
16
The Portion of Jacob is not like them,
For He is the Maker of all things,
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;
The Lord of hosts is His name.
Hawk Nelson declares back to God in "Count on You," "You give me a front row seat to Your faithfulness."
Before we can, with him, confess that privileged position to God, He must make it clear to us. What's more, inveterate forgetters and conformists that we are, He must continue to remind us. For, we blend in. We readily take a position at the back of the line, mouthing generalities about God rather than drawing near to He Who has made Himself known to us.
This is His initiating, insistent point in Jeremiah 10:11-16. The nations, He holds up as Exhibit A, worship what they don't know, as Paul will echo on Mars Hill in Acts. Their dull hearts and minds without knowledge respond with a sense of obligation to Something Out There greater than themselves. This Something doesn't respond to their craftsmanship, doesn't even give them the reinforcement of knowing their efforts approach the reality.
The God of the Bible, however, presenting Himself as Exhibit B in this short-lived contest, IS efficacy. He set up the whole juxtaposition, as He points out again. He MADE this day for comparison's sake, that His people might realize and declare His glory. Differentiating from a sense of darkened, fear-based, should, God calls and quickens His people by name. The force pervasive enough to enact Creation also assigns Himself the glad title the portion of Jacob.
Even the intermediate display of His glory in the nation of Israel is an overflow of His personal acts in the life of one man. He revealed Himself to Jacob and imbued that life with a significance that comes from a front row seat to His faithfulness. He reenacts that today with reassuring continuity and with endearing individualism. For each of His own, He is our portion – and relishes the role.
Realizing or re-realizing this, our hearts are a little less dull, our minds a little less cloudy. We awaken to personal epiphanies, declaring with Jacob that God was in this place, and we knew it not. We go forward, as he did, to use our influence and bequeath our blessings, trusting our legacy to One we know to be far more Personally invested in us than the nations could have hoped. Sure of this, we can declare He is Lord of hosts without diminishing our sense of His Presence with each of His own.
12
He has made the earth by His power,
He has established the world by His wisdom,
And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion.
13
When He utters His voice,
There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:
“And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain,
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”
14
Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge;
Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image;
For his molded image is falsehood,
And there is no breath in them.
15
They are futile, a work of errors;
In the time of their punishment they shall perish.
16
The Portion of Jacob is not like them,
For He is the Maker of all things,
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;
The Lord of hosts is His name.
Hawk Nelson declares back to God in "Count on You," "You give me a front row seat to Your faithfulness."
Before we can, with him, confess that privileged position to God, He must make it clear to us. What's more, inveterate forgetters and conformists that we are, He must continue to remind us. For, we blend in. We readily take a position at the back of the line, mouthing generalities about God rather than drawing near to He Who has made Himself known to us.
This is His initiating, insistent point in Jeremiah 10:11-16. The nations, He holds up as Exhibit A, worship what they don't know, as Paul will echo on Mars Hill in Acts. Their dull hearts and minds without knowledge respond with a sense of obligation to Something Out There greater than themselves. This Something doesn't respond to their craftsmanship, doesn't even give them the reinforcement of knowing their efforts approach the reality.
The God of the Bible, however, presenting Himself as Exhibit B in this short-lived contest, IS efficacy. He set up the whole juxtaposition, as He points out again. He MADE this day for comparison's sake, that His people might realize and declare His glory. Differentiating from a sense of darkened, fear-based, should, God calls and quickens His people by name. The force pervasive enough to enact Creation also assigns Himself the glad title the portion of Jacob.
Even the intermediate display of His glory in the nation of Israel is an overflow of His personal acts in the life of one man. He revealed Himself to Jacob and imbued that life with a significance that comes from a front row seat to His faithfulness. He reenacts that today with reassuring continuity and with endearing individualism. For each of His own, He is our portion – and relishes the role.
Realizing or re-realizing this, our hearts are a little less dull, our minds a little less cloudy. We awaken to personal epiphanies, declaring with Jacob that God was in this place, and we knew it not. We go forward, as he did, to use our influence and bequeath our blessings, trusting our legacy to One we know to be far more Personally invested in us than the nations could have hoped. Sure of this, we can declare He is Lord of hosts without diminishing our sense of His Presence with each of His own.
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