Where do we turn for truth?

Where do we turn for truth?

Jeremiah 6-10

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.”

                  Where do we turn to discover truth in a confused culture? The age of information has become the age of deception, in which the greatest deceiver is ourselves, as we find the information that supports and affirms what we want to believe. But this is not a new phenomenon. In the time of Jeremiah, the people were still giving lip service to God, but they were redefining God and his law to fit their own sinful desires. When we read through the prophets in general and Jeremiah in particular, we are struck by the depressing nature of their prophecies. Jeremiah is often referred to as the “weeping prophet” for his message is one of impending judgment. The people of Judah continued their descent into sin while giving lip service to God. They would go to the temple to make sacrifices while continuing to worship Baal. In 7:23-24, God confronts Israel with their hypocrisy. Throughout the Mosaic law, God called Israel to worship him exclusively and to obey his commandments. If they were faithful to the covenant, God promised blessings, security, and prosperity. However, instead of listening to God and seeking his counsel, they turned inward to themselves and lived according to their own wisdom (7:24). When God sent prophets to warn them and call them back to obedience, they refused. Instead of turning back to God, they continued headlong in the pursuit of their own wisdom (8:6). 

                  While we look back and condemn the folly of Judah and Israel for embracing the empty worship of idols (chapter 10), we follow the same practice. We read the Bible but pick and choose what we want to obey and what fits our “modern morality,” while rejecting the instructions we find “offensive.”  We affirm the love of God, but deny his justice and righteousness. Idolatry is not the complete abandonment of God, but the recreation of God in our image. While we condemn Israel for the folly of their worship of idols of wood and stone, we embrace the worship of the gods of our imagination and reason. Idolatry is not just the abandonment of the God of the Bible to worship another religion; it is the distortion of God to recreate him into the God of our reason. When the Bible confronts us with our sin, we attribute it to the cultural biases of the past. In our modern morality, we are more enlightened, and in so doing, we boast of our wisdom and might. The greatest threat to us is not the deception of false religions, but the deception of our own hearts and the deception of our own pride. 

                  In response, Jeremiah challenges us to abandon our own wisdom and counsel of our own heart, but instead focus on the wisdom and counsel of God. Instead of conforming God to our perspective, we are to conform our understanding of God to his law, in which he has revealed himself. The measure of success is not in our wisdom, accomplishments, or wealth; the measure of success is our understand of God and living according to his law (9:23-24). How do we avoid the deception of today as well as the deception of the past? We do so humbly and completely obeying the voice of God and living according to his commands and moral law (7:23). Which voice are we going to listen to: the voice of our own reason, or the voice of God?