The Israelites came out of Egypt worshiping the gods of the Egyptians. They settled into Canaan, and almost immediately started worshiping the gods of the Canaanites. Which is why God had to begin the Ten Commandments by saying, “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Ex 20:3-4). Every other culture in the world at that time made statues of birds and animals and fish, and carved images of the sun and moon, and stars. And that’s what they worshiped.
Why do people worship idols? To get blessing, protection, and success. But those aren’t the only reasons. Often, we worship things just because they’re flashy and interesting. That’s why God followed up the Ten Commandments by saying, “You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold” (Ex 20:23).
Many of the carvings and sculptures and statues that the Israelites were drawn to were made out of gold and silver. Which means they were really shiny. They caught your eye! And God is reminding us all how much we worship shiny things.
- We worship shiny new cars, and shiny new houses and apartments. We know they’ll make our lives so much better.
- We lust after shiny new iPhones & Galaxy phones. We can’t wait till our contract is up so we can get the next thing.
- We can’t peel our eyes away from all the flashy movies and TV shows we watch, and then we worship the glittering celebrities on those shows. We want to live like them.
- We worship dazzling sports stars on the field, and surfers traveling the globe.
- We get on our laptops and we can’t stop looking at all the nice glossy pictures our friends put on Facebook. Look! He’s deep-sea fishing off Molokai! Look! She’s on an Alaska cruise!
- We want to get flashy jobs and positions and promotions. They make us feel important and successful.
- We want to get close to flashy powerful, influential people who might be able to get us those shiny jobs and positions.
Many people in our culture would say it makes no sense to bow down and worship a shiny little statue, but we do the same thing every day. We worship whatever seems most shiny at the moment.
God had something else to say about the flashy things we worship: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths” (Ps 135:15-17).
He’s saying that the sparkling things we worship are nothing compared to him. They might be glittering and impressive, but they’re useless. They have eyes, but they can’t see everything like God can. They have mouths, but can’t speak wisdom like God can. And here’s the worst part: “Those who make them become like them, and so do all who trust in them” (Ps 135:18).
You become what you worship! The more you worship flashy blind idols, the more blind you yourself become. Which attracts you to those flashy things even more. It’s a never-ending cycle.
Which is why it was so momentous when Jesus came to earth and started healing blind people. He healed physical blindness to symbolize the fact that he came to heal our spiritual blindness. He said, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (Jn 12:46). He died to heal our blindness and take us out of the dark as our savior, and he rose from the dead to shine a light from heaven and guide us as our king.