Eastgate Service: Trusting God

Scripture: Jeremiah 10:1-16

Jeremiah 10:1–16 NIV

1 Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. 2 This is what the Lord says: “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. 3 For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. 4 They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. 5 Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” 6 No one is like you, Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power. 7 Who should not fear you, King of the nations? This is your due. Among all the wise leaders of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you. 8 They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols. 9 Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Uphaz. What the craftsman and goldsmith have made is then dressed in blue and purple— all made by skilled workers. 10 But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath. 11 “Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’ ” 12 But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. 13 When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. 14 Everyone is senseless and without knowledge; every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. The images he makes are a fraud; they have no breath in them. 15 They are worthless, the objects of mockery; when their judgment comes, they will perish. 16 He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the Maker of all things, including Israel, the people of his inheritance— the Lord Almighty is his name.

What do you trust?

What do you do when you feel scared, angry, or frustrated by things that happen? It is easy to feel those things when we have bad situations in our lives, like a doctor’s visit that doesn’t go well or an interaction with a neighbor that doesn’t go well. We can feel that even when bad things do not happen to us. Sometimes, it makes us upset when we see other people suffering or even hearing about it on the news.

I’ve known men who would religiously wear lucky hats or shirts when watching ballgames. They were convinced that those clothes would somehow make their team win. Other people have necklaces or other pieces of jewelry they would believe gave them good luck. Casinos are full of people with all kinds of trinkets and odd habits that they think will give them success at gambling.

People all over the world believe that drinking or eating certain things will make them feel better about life. And if we are honest, we all probably have something we do or someone we lean on when we get upset. People have always been like this, and long ago, God sent the prophet Jeremiah to teach His people to trust in Him and not in things that we will lose or that will let us down.

Scarecrows

God told his people that the things they put their trust in, the things they looked to for comfort, were like scarecrows in the field. They might look tall and scary, but they were just clothes hanging on straw. They weren’t even real people.

Sometimes, the things we put our faith in turn out to be nothing at all. Like our phones. I get phone calls from people all the time telling me that they can get me money back for taxes and I get letters and emails that tell me I owe money for things I never bought, trying to scare me into paying them money. But like God told the Israelites, many of these things are not real, and they are just there to try to scare me into doing something I will regret.

I must remind myself that not everything I hear on the phone or see written down somewhere is always true.

Idols

God told His people that they put their trust in things that other people made. He said one person would make a beautiful figurine out of metal and another would make clothes for it. Then, they would fall in love with the thing they had made and begin to worship it, building their lives around it. While I don’t know too many people who spent their lives worshipping objects like that, I know many whose lives are built around a career, a sporting event, or perhaps even their children playing sports. It is a lot of fun and excitement until the day they cannot play anymore, and they don’t know what to live for.

We can worship money, fame, or power, whether we have them or wish we had them. We can spend our lives chasing after other people who have those things, just trying to be close to them ourselves. But in the end, all these things will fail us. The real tragedy of the human condition is not that we have such a tendency to do bad things. It is that we are so easily fooled into trusting the wrong things and the wrong people.

Jesus is greater than everything else in life. He will never take advantage of us or lead us astray. He is our Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for us to prove how much He loved us. Then He rose from the dead to prove that nothing could come between us, not even death, could hold Him back.

Pay Attention to Jesus

How can we trust Jesus more and not be pulled away by the rest of the world? We have to pay attention to HIm.

We cannot trust something we ignore. It can be hard to see God some days, but we can’t see electricity. However, we trust it and pay attention to when it works or doesn’t work. We can’t see the wind, but we can see out the window when it blows storms through town. It is the same with God. Even if we cannot see Him, we can always see the effects He has on our lives. Instead of trusting in ourselves or the things we feel like we can control, we can pay attention to the ways God takes care of us, even when we don’t have control. Like King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 3

Proverbs 3:5–6 NIV

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

When we pay attention to Jesus, we will see Him more at work in our lives and learn to trust Him more. And as we learn to trust Him more, we will see Him more. Then, as we trust and see Him more, we can thank Him for all He does to care for us.