Jeremiah (1-31) 10:6 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 10:6

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‘Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O LORD.’ The word translated ‘inasmuch as’ is the Hebrew word ‘from’, and it indicates the cause of God’s greatness. He is great because there is none like him. His name is great – his name is the revelation of himself by which we know him – all the names of God are meaningful. This assurance that there is none like him brings rest to the seeking soul. When men seek some good on earth, they go on looking for what is better than what they already have, until they are sure they have made a comprehensive search. The one who knows God knows that his search is finished. He has found the God who is not to be compared with any other. He is not just a little greater than others; he is infinitely greater. In him are immeasurable riches, so that even man with his unquenchable thirst for truth and life, can be satisfied. The Lord is great in any and every sense – in years, in knowledge, in size, in power. No idol in the world can be compared with him; the human mind cannot fully grasp his greatness. These idol worshippers would never dare say that about their own gods. How absurd to wilfully pick a pygmy god in place of the most holy, kind, and knowing, Almighty God. There is no wisdom or revelation to touch what was revealed to Israel. The idolaters didn’t agree; they could not verify the existence of their gods; they contradicted each other. Their gods did not help them as nations. Yet Israel who had the God who is high above, who gives deep revelation, was ready to exchange him for a lie.This is one of the many passages that lifts up the attributes of God and we need to study them more. How can we worship God without grasping his attributes? If we try, we slip into ‘me, me, me’ modes of worship – what has God done for me? How much more we would desire him and love him, if we studied his attributes, instead of the name of God being an empty name! You say, ‘I want to know God’ – consider his attributes; they are all you can take in here below.His attributes are his qualities; they describe him. More than that, they are his nature: he is loving; he is love. They are not just aspects of him. We must never think, part of God is his justice. They are not distinct faculties belonging to him – as with us. We have parts that may not work well together, but all of God’s attributes operate in harmony all the time. His aseity (his self-existence) is all of him. His eternity is all of him. We are shown them in parts to help us grasp them. Perhaps that will not be necessary in heaven. It may be that we need no longer think of them as separate attributes.Jeremiah worships God, and he does so by drawing attention to his attributes. He compares God’s wisdom with the greatest of human wisdom – human wisdom is nothing by comparison. Every man is groping in the dark and making little progress. ‘For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe’ (1 Corinthians 1:21). He compares God with man-made gods as represented by their idols. ‘But they are altogether brutish and foolish: the stock is a doctrine of vanities.’ The word ‘brutish’ refers not to violence but to the intelligence of them. Their level of knowledge is awful and low. Jeremiah is being trenchant. ‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I can think of nations which are not brutish.’ Yes, but that is the benefit of gospel even to those who have largely neglected it. The word ‘stock’ refers to the trunk of the tree out of which the idol was carved. It is used here to stand for the idol that is formed out of it, and for all the system of false worship that went with it. ‘Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz.’ Tarshish was a city of Spain with which Israel traded; no one knows where Uphaz was. The best of human craftsmanship is put into the making of idols. The most expensive of materials are used. It is a combined effort by men to improve on God, to replace him with a god of their own devising. Aesthetic beauty is what the creators of false gods strive for, because this is what human beings find so impressive and attractive. The idol will be accepted as real, because it is such a work of art, and of human skill. How could anyone not worship something so marvellous? But this ends up being an exercise in man worshipping himself and his own ingenuity. It steals praise which belongs exclusively to the true God, the living God. The gods of the nations are fabrications, dreamed up by a corrupt human imagination. They did not create the world, and they have no power to reward their adherents. They are dead themselves, and are incapable of giving life to men. They belong to a world which is passing away. The King of heaven reigns over all the earth, and nothing happens except by his will. The idols have no authority or power to do anything.‘But the LORD is the true God’ – he is the only one with reality; the idols don’t even claim to be. He is alive himself, and the source of all life. The idols could not even give themselves shape. The Lord has an everlasting kingdom, but idol gods kept changing. We have one everlasting God. He cannot fade or fail. What was it that started five minutes ago? – not the true God. Pagan gods were not creating gods. Some were supposed to, but not out of nothing, and the personal gods mainly had no claim to a part in creation. They were fallible not infallible. They could not be directly communicated with. They constituted a great mystery. You couldn’t speak with them. Some forms of paganism had their priests, yes, their shamans; but even these had limited communication. It was hard to understand what made them tick. Judah forgot that their God was personal; he could be known, and yet they changed him for the unpredictable gods of the nations. God is always predictable. There was no intelligent communication with the idol gods. Their standpoint had to be figured but by the complex events of life. But the God of Israel spoke in clear understandable words. He gave his people an intelligent rational revelation.

Application

Idolatry always redefines God, as it did with Israel. The idolaters had vindictive gods that needed to be placated, and so did Judah. If Bible believers fall for the Charismatic delusion, it will change their whole view of God. It also alters their view of revelation.

There are two families of God’s attributes: his incommunicable attributes, and his communicable attributes. Six incommunicable attributes are exclusive to him, and cannot be given to any creature: neither man, nor angel. None but him alone can possess any of them. Then there are those which can be reflected to a small extent in us, though in this case they are only present in a very small degree and are corrupted by the fall.

Considering God’s incommunicable attributes, first there is his self-existence or aseity. He is the living God (verse 10). He is alive, personal, conscious. He does not receive life from any other, but has life in himself. He gave Moses the name ‘I AM’ – the verb to be. I exist. I am a living being, a personal, noble God. There is one God, transcendent over all he has made. He generates all life and power in himself. He needs nothing; he is infinite; he has all he needs. Unlike us, he is not dependant on food, care, or shelter. Nothing of him is derived from anything else. Also he is the only source of life. Unlike him, we are made by another.

Secondly, God is a spirit. He is not visible. ‘There shall no man see me and live’ (Exodus 33:20). We cannot see his divine nature. We could only see the human aspect of him. We cannot see the divine essence. It is one of the kindnesses of God that the second person of the Trinity came into our world. He came to die primarily, but also to make the invisible God known to us in a form we could understand. ‘The Word was made flesh’ (John 1:14) – he has entered our nature. We are doubly sure that God is with us. As a spirit, he has no bodily parts or passions. He has love, anger, but he has no passions driven by a body. He is never hungry, he does not need care, he has appetites. He does have love and righteous anger but not low bodily feelings. He is to be worshipped by man’s spirit, because he himself is a spirit. You cannot draw, sketch, or paint God. We worship him in spirit and in truth, believing in him, while not seeing him.

Thirdly, he is infinite. All his attributes are limitless and perfect. There is no end to them. They are never exhausted. He can never run out, nor can he diminish in the smallest degree. We cannot grasp this.

Fourthly, with regard to time, he is eternal, everlasting. He has no beginning, and no end. The Son is eternal, ‘begotten the Father’. It is a great statement but it confuses us. Did he have an origin? No, he is eternally begotten. There is never any growth in God, nor ageing, nor decay. He is not subject to measures or duration. Time is one such measure, but it only measures things that change or die. It measures the human experience, not the divine. Angels are created in time. In many respects they are like us. They will live for ever, but not like God. They are more like us – they live in time without end. In heaven you won’t be like God, who is outside of time. We shall all be gaining in time, while God is ‘the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity’ (Isaiah 57:15). He is not subject to change. He sees all time at once.

Fifthly, he is also infinite in relation to space. This is his immensity. His staggering size (that is really the wrong word) is beyond our comprehension. He is therefore omnipresent. He is everywhere, not just knowing about everything, but his presence fills all things. There is no place where he is not present. We speak in this calm collected way, but this is staggering. There is no limit on God at all, and yet people don’t perceive him. They don’t realise he is there. Only by faith can we know him, believing the Scripture. Angels and men cannot be present in more than one place at a time. An angel come to earth has left heaven. It cannot be in both places at one time. Communion with God is so simple if only we believe his word.

Sixthly he is unchangeable, immutable, otherwise he would not be perfect. God never changes. Why will God send people to hell? Because he is unchangeable and he is holy. He must be faithful to every aspect of his being. God’s opinion, his word, his promises, his purposes cannot change. He is unaffected by any outside force. However this does not mean he is stationary. He is on the move all the time, upholding his attributes, being angry with sin, forgiving sin. In Scripture he is said to change but this is only an expression used to show the unchanging God will go on exercising, for instance, his grace, when people repent. This only means the unchanging God is working out his purposes.

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Jeremiah (1-31) 10:6 Commentary and Bible Study