All year long we’re going to be talking about The Father, but you can’t do a subject like that justice without offering some contrasts. In the case of Jehovah, there is nothing and no one like Him in all of existence. Everything is a contrast. Which makes the sin of idol worship so particularly offensive…

For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go.
Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
(Jeremiah 10:3-5)

Consider how silly it is to worship an idol: It starts with a guy who thinks a chunk of wood, carved into the image of a bunny rabbit is a god that can help him when bad things happen. So he cuts down a tree, and carves the log into an image, working it with his hands and with his tools. He’s doing all the work, mind you. He took the ax to the tree. He chopped the tree into pieces. He chipped away at it into the shape he wanted it to be.

After the image is covered in silver and gold, it is finely polished and ready to go. The idol is then placed on the mantel of the home, and secured in place with nails to ensure it doesn’t fall over when there’s an earthquake or something. We’re not talking about a simple piece of decoration or a sentimental trinket made by a first-grader. We’re talking about an object that receives veneration. This thing is worshiped, but what is it, really?

It’s a log!

It’s a hunk of wood someone worked hard to make into the shape of a rabbit or a man or a man with a rabbit’s head, etc. It can’t move. Literally, it can’t move because someone nailed it to the mantel. How can that help?

How is the idol greater than the man who brought it into existence? I’ve said in sermons recently: If I cut the tree down, and if I carve the log into an image, and if I cover it with gold, and if I polish it until it shines, and if I place it on my mantel, and if I nail it down so that it won’t fall over when trouble comes…aren’t I the god, at least between the two of us? That thing should be worshiping me!

Of course, it can’t worship me because it’s not alive. I’m not really God because I can’t give life to a dead thing, but neither can a dead thing give life or help in any way. It just sits there. That’s all it can do. It can’t speak to you. It can’t go and do on your behalf. And yet there are countless people that fear these things, because they believe a dead log is a god that can help and hurt. It can do neither. Why should I worship it?

Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O LORD; thou art great, and thy name is great in might.
(Jeremiah 10:6)

There is nothing comparable to Jehovah. There is no star in the sky, no carving of wood, nothing as majestic, or as infinite in power as the one true God who made all things. The whole universe itself cannot compare; He holds the universe in the palm of His hand, for crying out loud (Isaiah 40:12). For ages, men have looked up at the sky and vastness of the cosmos and failed to grasp what was beyond the stars. In their folly, they worship the creation instead of the Creator. But we know what they don’t: We know there is, beyond the azure blue, a God concealed from human sight, who tinted skies with Heavenly hue, and framed the worlds (and all that are within them) with His great might.

~ Matthew