A Great Question from God to Begin Your Week

I was reading in Jeremiah this weekend and came across a great question from God to help begin your week – actually to help us begin our week together even. In this text, God has just called Jeremiah to ministry. God explains His message He desires for Jeremiah to deliver to Judah, the southern tribes of Israel. I think this question helps us as well.

God speaks through Jeremiah to Israel.

God begins by explaining to Jeremiah that He enjoyed His relationship to Israel in the early years. The covenant relationship between God and Israel was special. God then, through Jeremiah, asks this very specific and helpful question.

Notice how God poses his question. He asks what deficiency, fault, or wrong their ancestors found in God that they would go far from Him. Essentially, God viewed them walking away from Him as a statement of dissatisfaction, discontentment, and disloyalty. In other words, Israel walking away from God was a statement by them about God’s greater character.

Then notice how God continues: [They] have followed idols, and have become idolaters?

Let me ask the same question in a couple different ways:

• What can a dead, lifeless idol provide for you that the Living God in covenant with you cannot?
• Why would you serve your idol instead of remaining faithful to your God by covenant?
• What imperfection in God does your idol ameliorate?

Why is this helpful to us?

The progression implied in the question is very helpful to each one of us as we begin our week.

Notice the progression: 1) You find fault in God, 2) Turn to a God-replacement, a false god, an idol, and then 3) You become an idolater.

This question reminds us that when we turn to idols, we essentially say that God is not enough. There is something wrong with God. The Living God fails us so we are turning to an idol.

Whatever you idolize, then, becomes your god. You will serve some idea or thing rather than the Living God of the Universe, You transition from worshipping God, the One you claim is your God by the covenant made with you on the cross and granted by God to you through forgiveness, to become loyal to another false god.

The result? You become an idolater. An idolater.

See how this is a great question to begin our week? Is it possible that we also have left God and turned to some worthless idol for our satisfaction. Are we loyal to someone or something different than God? Could God send the same message to us?

As we begin our new week, let’s work together to worship the One true and living God as we walk in Christ by the Spirit together. And, if we notice we have transitioned to serve ourselves by serving something else, may we see it for what it is – idolatry. As we do, may God grant us the courage and conviction to repent of idolatry and turn back to our Living God by covenant.