The Scarecrow And The Pelican – Very Apt Series

THE SCARECROW AND THE PELICAN – VERY APT

PART 1 - A SCARECROW IN A CUCUMBER FIELD

{{Jeremiah 10:1-5 Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel. Jer 10:2 Thus says the LORD, “Do not learn the way of the nations, and do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens although the nations are terrified by them, Jer 10:3 The customs of the peoples are delusion because it is wood cut from the forest, the work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. Jer 10:4 They decorate it with silver and with gold. They fasten it with nails and with hammers so that it will not totter. Jer 10:5 They are like A SCARECROW IN A CUCUMBER FIELD, and they cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them, for they can do no harm, nor can they do any good.”}}

This passage deals with the worship of worthless idols. Sometimes we shake our heads and wonder at the stupidity of some people. It is as if their heads have gone missing in another mind zone. If you cut out of a tin plate, an image of some “alien looking creature” and placed it on a construction of rocks, and then bowed down to it and began praying to it and bringing offerings to it, I would think you had gone troppo. Yet these “earth worshippers” are not much removed from that. There are some in Australia who nearly worship the flying fox (a diseased fruit bat). The point is, and this is the crucial point, when a man’s mind is outside the control of God, he is capable of the most extreme insanity.

You may think it is incredible that people can make something with their hands and then claim that that object actually made, and controls them. We have been looking at idolatry in the Tuesday night bible study. It still happens in the world today, just as dark as the ancient times. The great disaster with idolatry is that the works of men’s hands can go one step further to the worship of Satan as in the religion of the Australia aborigine. In that case the dark forces of Satan so binds their minds and spirits.

VERSE 2

This speech is addressed to Judah, and the people are told not to learn the way of the nations in the first half of the verse. For Israel throughout its history, that meant the adoption of their idols and value systems. As well as that, the nation of Judah was frightened by cosmic happenings and read into these evil portends and spiritism, something that drove them to idolatry. It is God instructing His called nation, but the Church can equally be addressed, and the church has failed because it has adopted the value system of the world when it made itself Laodocia.

God’s people are to be a separated people, a holy people. We are not holy people when we adopt the music of the world that is often about illicit sex and drugs and the occult. Don’t tell me I don’t know because I hear a bit of it on the Rage program on TV (Australia), broadcast most night on the National tax-funded Government ABC. We can not go along with the world’s way of doing business which is cheating and lying to others, or misleading others deliberately. Too many Christians have learned the way of the nations.

The world’s ways are so strong among Christian young people, and these are dark days and we must faithfully show them what are God’s ways so they don’t follow the standard of the world. Woe betide people in pulpits who do not set out God’s ways and God’s holy standard.

The second half of verse 2 is so modern. Israel was told not to be terrified by celestial signs or disturbances. Why is that? It is because God is in complete control of the heavens. We should all know the account of Jonah with reference to the sailors who saw the calamity of the sea and its resting in peace and who ended up worshipping God. “Even the wind and the waves obey Him.” There are signs today in this world, and disturbing events. Do not be alarmed at ISIS or the Taliban or the evil man Putin or Xi. Do not worry about all these alarmist predictions of massive failures through carbon dioxide, or the Great Barrier Reef dying, or many others that the sensationalist media are trying to ram down people’s throats today. Christians are not of this world and should not be distressed by such events. The Lord was asleep in the boat when all the elements around Him were raging. GOD IS IN CONTROL.