The miserable result on the sinners' own natures is described with
pregnant brevity in verse 15. 'They followed vanity, and became vain.'
The worshipper became like the thing worshipped, as is always the
case. The idol is vanity, utter emptiness and nonentity; and whoever
worships nothingness will become in his own inmost life as empty and
vain as it is. That is the retribution attendant on all trust in, and
longing after, the trifles of earth, that we come down to the level of
what we set our hearts upon. We see the effects of that principle in
the moral degradation of idolaters. Gods lustful, cruel, capricious,
make men like themselves. We see it working upwards in Christianity,
in which God becomes man that men may become like God, and of which
the whole law is put into one precept, which is sure to be kept, in
the measure of the reality of a man's religion. 'Be ye therefore
imitators of God, as beloved children.'

In verses 16 and 17 the details of the idolatry follow the general
statement, as in verses 9 to 12, but with additions and with increased
severity of tone. We hear now of calves and star worship, and Baal,
and burning children to Moloch, and divination and enchantment. The
catalogue is enlarged, and there is added to it the terrible
declaration that Israel had 'sold themselves to do evil in the sight
of the Lord.' The same thing was said by Elijah to Ahab--a noble
instance of courage. The sinner who steels himself against the divine
remonstrance, does not merely go on in his old sins, but adds new
ones. Begin with the calves, and fancy that you are worshipping
Jehovah, and you will end with Baal and Moloch. Refuse to hear God's
pleadings, and you will sell your freedom, and become the lowest and
only real kind of slave--the bondsman of evil. When that point of
entire abandonment to sin, which Paul calls being 'sold under sin,' is
reached, as it may be reached, at all events by a nation, and