The Foolishness of Religion1
Note: This is my meditation Christmas morning that turns out to be a call to consider for 2026. Our children are all hosting their families after our gathering on the Eve for a brief meditation by considering Christmas meditations of four Patristic, exchanging gifts, dinner and Christmas Eve service together. We will do likewise with my daughter’s family over New Year’s weekend.
Jeremiah 102
Introduction
Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you!
The vocabulary of this chapter presents a stark contrast that is as instructive today as it was when Jeremiah penned his message to Israel. Here is a summary of this contrast:
The Word which Yahweh speaks vs delusions3 (1 & 3)
The wisdom of God ((6-7) vs They are stupid and foolish (v 8)
The true God (10) vs all the work of skilled men [those who create the belief systems] (9)
The God who created the heaves (12) vs the gods who did not create the heavens (11)
The eternal God of integrity (11-14) vs the deceitful molten dead images (14)
Conclusion: The Maker of all vs the creator of nothing
- Note, The Judeo-Christian tradition is not a religion. Religion is any system of belief that competes with Christianity. Those systems include all alternative explanations of existence including evolution, atheism, agnosticism, and any form of psychology that adheres to anthropology other than that revealed in Scripture. Here is my variation of someone’s attempt to demonstrate the difference between the function of religion and the function of Judeo-Christian way: The Judeo-Christian understands that God, the creator, reaches down from heaven to reveal himself and rescue His creation. While religion is His lost creation realizing that it needs a way to make sense of its existence, find assistance to navigate existence, and a way sustain itself after the inevitability of death. Even atheism so functions by denying God and deifying man. ↩︎
- Scripture text: New American Standard Bible 1995. ↩︎
- Note the repetitive use of delusion and stupid. Do you think that the Lord is attempting to make His point? ↩︎
Outline
Exhortation
2 “Do not learn the way of the nations,
And do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens
Although the nations are terrified by them;
Rationale
- They make it up based on their delusion (speculation)
3aFor the customs of the peoples are delusion;
Critique: Dependent Upon Existent Materials
- They use what God made to create the competition
3b Because it is wood cut from the forest,
The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool - They create vocabulary to give it credence.
4 “They decorate it with silver and with gold;
They fasten it with nails and with hammers
So that it will not totter.
[In our world, it is fancy language, social research and diagnostic terms, footnotes, and bibliographies to fashion our gods].
The Net Results Then and Now
- Nothing like a verbal picture for an illustration.
5 “Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them,
For they can do no harm, (They cannot harm God’s reality)
Nor can they do any good.” (They cannot improve on God’s reality)
Conclusion by Contrast
- Contrast of Being—This is the Lord
6 There is none like You, O Lord;
You are great, and great is Your name in might.
7 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. - Contrast of the being of gods (whether Buddas, chairs of universities, or drugs, alcohol, sex, food, people, cars, you name it)
8 But they are altogether stupid and foolish
In their discipline of [b]delusion—[c]their idol is wood!
9 Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish,
And gold from Uphaz,
The work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith; ) [best efforts]
Violet and purple are their clothing;
They are all the work of skilled men. - Conclusion of the contrast
10 But the Lord 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.
11 Thus you shall say to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.”
Now Here Is Reality
- This is God’s World.
12 It is He who made the earth by His power,
Who established the world by His wisdom;
And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens.
13 When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,
And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth;
He makes lightning for the rain,
And brings out the wind from His storehouses. - All other gods are empty mockeries.
14 Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge;
Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols;
For his molten images are deceitful,
And there is no breath in them.
15 They are worthless, a work of mockery;
In the time of their punishment they will perish.
16 The portion of Jacob is not like these; - And here is why.
For the Maker of all is He,
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;
The Lord of hosts is His name.
The Outcome of Exchanging God for Idols
17 Pick up your bundle from the ground,
You who dwell under siege! [Prepare for judgment]
18 For thus says the Lord,
“Behold, I am slinging out the inhabitants of the land
At this time, And will cause them distress,
That they may be found.” [Judgment that you may find redemption]
Jeremaih Owns His Culture
The only hope for any culture is for judgment to begin with the house of God. So observed Peter a little more than six hundred years later: “For it is time for judgment to begin [a]with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (I Peter 4:17).
19 Woe is me, because of my injury!
My wound is incurable.
But I said, “Truly this is a sickness,
And I must bear it.”
20 My tent is destroyed,
And all my ropes are broken;
My sons have gone from me and are no more.
There is no one to stretch out my tent again
Or to set up my curtains.
21 For the shepherds [leaders] have become stupid
And have not sought the Lord;
Therefore they have not prospered,
And all their flock is scattered.
22 The sound of a report! Behold, it comes—
A great commotion out of the land of the north—
To make the cities of Judah
A desolation, a haunt of jackals.
A Plea for Assistance to Repent
23 I know, O Lord, that a man’s way is not in himself,Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps.
24 Correct me, O Lord, but with justice;
Not with Your anger, or You will [j]bring me to nothing.
25 Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not know You
And on the families that do not call Your name;
For they have devoured Jacob;
They have devoured him and consumed him
And have laid waste his habitation.
Conclusion
As we approach yet another year, this chapter would make an excellent New Years eve or first Sunday passage for consideration. In fact, if I were the pope over the combined denominations and the collection of all the non-denominational churches, I would want to issue a decree that this passage with some similar outline be preached to every congregation. I would then mandate that all gatherings be required to break into small groups to discuss a strategy of individual and corporate repentance. However, then I would remember that Jeremiah Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel and Daniel along with Jeremiah had been preaching this and similar messages repeatedly from 650 to 530 only to have their message fall on mostly dull, even dead ears (Jeremiah 5:21).
Nonetheless, the preaching of a call to repentance is what the Lord’s people have been called to do, some will repent, though fixing a denomination or a nation it will not. But it will bring salvation to souls and refreshing to believers, peace on earth in individual hearts and it will also sweeten the hope of Jesus’ return and the ultimate establishment of the eternal kingdom.
So, my friends, meditate on Jeremiah 10. Repent and proclaim the need for repentance and thereby enjoy peach within your heart will the demise of the idolatrous world spirals downward.