Idols always prove useless in the day of calamity. Jeremiah pointed that out to the Israelites with a tone that carried both warning and a touch of sharp wit. He knew a day of reckoning was coming and that their gods of wood and stone would be helpless. In Jeremiah 2:28, he writes, “But where are the gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise if they can save you in your time of trouble, for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.” Jeremiah is mocking them not only for the emptiness of their deities but also for their impotence. They cannot do anything. It was not unusual for each town or village to have its own gods. They were everywhere. But it did not matter how many there were. As Mackay points out, “But surely because there are so many of them, their numbers will make up for any lack of power on the part of one. However, no matter how long the string of zeros you add or multiply together, the result never changes from zero.” The math of idolatry never improves, no matter how enthusiastically it is practiced.
Even so, the Israelites continued to multiply gods in the land. They became less trusting and more trying. They were people of many religious expressions but with no focus on the one true God. They certainly were a nation with attention deficit disorder, unable to focus attention on the important issue at hand. Unfortunately, our nation has its own version of this spiritual distraction. We collect substitutes for God with the enthusiasm of hobbyists collecting baseball cards. Yet in spite of the many deities Americans might serve, they all prove to be as worthless as zero. No matter how many there are or what is done with them, they always result in the same answer: zero. Dearman says, “What makes idols worthless? The short answer is that they are not divine, and they cannot save! Idols are a substitute for the real thing; they may be attractive and appealing to people with heightened religious longings. Idols offer theological rewards, but they cannot save.” More activity and more devotion to more things do not create security. Such confusion often produces the opposite.
Into this landscape of spiritual arithmetic steps Jesus. He spoke to the woman at the well about the futility of drawing water from empty sources, offering instead “living water” that truly satisfies (John 4:10). To reject that living water is to reject the offer of life that only God can grant. The New Testament reminds us, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21), and also declares, “Salvation is found in no one else” (Acts 4:12). Where idols add up to nothing, Christ brings fullness. Where lifeless gods remain silent, He speaks words that endure beyond calamity and beyond the limits of human arithmetic.