Worship God in truth

“What profit is the idol when it’s maker has carved it, or an image, a teacher of falsehood?  For it’s maker trusts in his own handiwork when he fashions speechless idols.  Woe to him who says to a piece of wood ‘Awake,’ to a dumb stone ‘Arise!’.  And that is your teacher?  Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver and there is no breath at all inside it.  But the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.”  Habakkuk 2:18-20

            Even though the Israelites were commanded to worship God and God alone and were in theory monotheistic, they often, in practice, worshipped other gods.  If Yahweh wouldn’t do things the way you wanted Him to, if He wouldn’t “bless” you, perhaps the gods of the Philistines or the Amorites or the Babylonians would.  As they lived among other cultures they often collected a few idols, incurring the judgment of God and leading to exile.  They not only “casually” worshipped, they at one time went so far as to build a large metal idol, light a furnace in his belly and lay their infant children into his red hot hands to insure good fortune.  That’s serious idol worship!

            I know a man who built a boat.  He literally spent years crafting this boat, dedicating weekends and evenings to its completion.  He took sick days from work to build it.  He missed soccer games and piano recitals, and even convinced himself that he was building it so that his family could spend time together out on “their” boat.  Finally the boat was finished.  Every detail was perfect.  It was a thing of beauty.  Now his time is consumed by its upkeep.  When there is a storm he worries about it slipping its moorings.  Weekends are spent keeping it water tight and free of barnacles. 

This sounds like serious idol worship to me.  He fashioned a boat with his own hands, sacrificed his family, time, and money to it, and is consumed by it.

Like the prophet Habakkuk, we wonder at the logic of such a thing.  Yet many of us worship a god of our own making.  We call it by God’s name, but we have fashioned it from a philosophy that makes sense to us.  “How could a God who is love send people to hell?” we ask, and so we abandon the parts of God’s nature we don’t like or understand.  We create a benign, comfortable god, a pal with whom we go through life sharing warm fuzzy experiences or ignoring.  This is a god of our making, one like us, who demands nothing, with whom there is no cost.  He is made in our image.  This is not the God of the Bible.

God must be worshipped in truth.  We must study to show ourselves approved unto God, and worship Him in the fullness of His nature; love and holiness, wrath and forgiveness.  We must remember that we are the creation, not the Creator.  We must cast aside our idols, both physical and philosophical.  Our God is a jealous God, and won’t share our worship with any other.

“The Lord is in His holy temple; Let all the earth keep silent before Him.”