Daily Worship

Worship God, not our hands’ creations

Pete Phillips June 02, 2025 0 0
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Exodus 20:3-6 (NIVUK)

3 ‘You shall have no other gods before me.

4 ‘You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Worship no strange god, don’t make images of them, don’t bow down before them. I wonder about this verse sometimes. Does God think we haven’t heard verse 1 and so goes on to verse 2 and 3 and 4. And then reminds us that we worship him, not little gods of our own making.

He’s pretty insistent on it.

We like to tinker. We have creative minds. We are made in the image of the creator. Are we prone to breaking even this commandment? Do we creators make idols for ourselves that we put before God. Do we make images of them that we live by. Do we idolize them? Our wealth, our fame, our reputation, our holiness, our devotion, our family, our kids, our home, our cherished creations. Is the very fact that we are made in the image of the Creator the reason for this commandment to come so close to the top of the list? Because our God knows how much he loves his creation – enough to allow his Son to die for us. Because our God knows how much we love that which we fashion and create – enough to allow it to become the focus of our own worship, our own devotion, setting God aside. Creating a strange god in God’s place?

 

A prayer based on Habakkuk 2:18-20:

 

God, I know you, the maker of all things.

You ask why we fashion our little god, our idol

Why we its maker shape it, form the material, cast the metal – a teacher of lies.  

For a maker trusts in his own creation 

And we fashion our speechless idols! 

Oh the folly of one who says to a man-made thing, “Alexa, awake!” 

To a glass phone, “Arise!” 

Can it teach? 

Look at it, overlaid with gold and silver, 

and yet no breath, no ruach, no spirit at all in it. 

Have you forgotten your God, who dwells in his holy temple? 

Let all the earth keep silence before him. Amen.