Worship God Alone

O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit. Jer 16:19

The Lord is His People's Fortress

The man whose strength is the Lord is able to bear what would crush other men. He who gave Samson strength to bear and carry away massive gates, gives to His servants strength to bear weightiest troubles and heaviest sufferings. See Paul’s recital of his sufferings; yet he afterwards talks of “these light afflictions,”

Yet the Lord gives to His people protection. He is their “fortress.”

This Divine fortress is impregnable. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Yet it may be asked, Have not thousands of God’s saints been slaughtered by persecutors? What is the Book of Martyrs out a record of God’s slain ones! True; but the Divine fortress is for the protection of souls, not of bodies. The exposure of the body to peril on the one hand, and the safety of the soul on the other, are clearly indicated by our Lord’s words, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.”

Further, He is “their Refuge in the day of affliction” In the evil day we hasten to Him as soldiers to a fortress when hotly pursued, or as vessels to a harbour when the wind blows a gale. When “tossed with tempest and not comforted,” we have found the Lord “a refuge from the storm and a covert from the tempest.” And this refuge is open still to every troubled saint and every penitent sinner.
[Rev. D. Pledge: “Walks with the Prophet Jeremiah.”]

“The Gentiles shall come unto Thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit. Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?”
The result of God’s judgments on the Jews will be that both the Jews when restored, and the Gentiles who have witnessed those judgments, shall renounce idolatry for the worship of Jehovah (Fausset).

Their repentance. “Shall come.” They had followed the devices of their own hearts—its failure “profited them nothing.” Trusting in gods made by their own hands could not profit them; for, “Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?” a contradiction in terms. They repent of their folly, and come to Jehovah—the only true God.
(a.) Repentance is necessary to our acceptance by God. A man must realise the folly of his sin, and, turning from it with his face toward God, must make confession of his transgressions in order to their remittance. “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Act_2:38).
(b.) Must be with the heart. Sincere. “Our real existence in the sight of God consists in the inner and not in the outer life” (Farrar).

Their confession. “Our fathers have inherited lies and things wherein there is no profit.” Idolatry in all its forms; not only gods of wood and stone, but all the idols of our own heart, our own imagination—e.g., the love of riches. All idolatry must be renounced, and a confession made unto God that we have abandoned them. The essential element of confession is that it be spiritual and true. To a right confession we must have--
(a.) A knowledge of our own hearts. If this is possessed, the heart will be laid open to God for its purification. There is only one way of getting a heart and mind pure, and that is by confessing to God its present impurities—imploring Him to create in us a clean heart.
(b.) Faith in God. In His willingness to hear, in His power to do. Their faith was strong; they acknowledge that, apart from God, all is vanity and lies. The world promises much, but when those promises are chased and caught, you have in your hand nothing better than “vanity and lies.”

Their acceptance. This we infer, because “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (Joh_1:9). Wherever the contrite heart is, there is the forgiving God. The Gentiles shall come—they are coming, and by the power and attraction of the Cross. The Gospel has many victories yet to achieve. The Saviour said, “And I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto Me.”   [Achilles Taylor]

 Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?  Jer 16:20
Idolatry God-Making

​One great besetting sin of ancient Israel was idolatry, and the spiritual Israel are vexed with a tendency to the same folly. Remphan's star shines no longer, and the women weep no more for Tammuz, but Mammon still intrudes his golden calf, and the shrines of pride are not forsaken. Self in various forms struggles to subdue the chosen ones under its dominion, and the flesh sets up its altars wherever it can find space for them. Favorite children are often the cause of much sin in believers; the Lord is grieved when he sees us doting upon them above measure; they will live to be as great a curse to us as Absalom was to David, or they will be taken from us to leave our homes desolate. If Christians desire to grow thorns to stuff their sleepless pillows, let them dote on their dear ones.
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It is truly said that "they are no gods," for the objects of our foolish love are very doubtful blessings, the solace which they yield us now is dangerous, and the help which they can give us in the hour of trouble is little indeed. Why, then, are we so bewitched with vanities? We pity the poor heathen who adore a god of stone, and yet worship a god of gold. Where is the vast superiority between a god of flesh and one of wood? The principle, the sin, the folly is the same in either case, only that in ours the crime is more aggravated because we have more light, and sin in the face of it. The heathen bows to a false deity, but the true God he has never known; we commit two evils, inasmuch as we forsake the living God and turn unto idols. May the Lord purge us all from this grievous iniquity!

"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be;
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee."
Charles Spurgeon