Dumb Idols Don’t Speak

A boy once asked his mother for a bicycle. She replied, “Maybe if you pray, God will bring you one.” So he knelt and prayed, “God, if You give me a bike, I won’t sin for a year.” The boy then walked outside and saw his mother’s statue of the Virgin Mary. Suddenly, he felt guilty because he couldn't avoid sinning for that long. Instead, he grabbed the statue, hid it in his toy box, and declared, “God, if You ever want to see Your mother again, give me a bike!”

Some God-fearing people own replicas of Mary, Jesus, or other characters in the Bible. It’s one thing to honor the Lord or departed saints. It’s another to bow down to statues that have no power. The Bible calls that idolatry. 1 Corinthians 6:9, Ephesians 5:5, and Galatians 5:20 say that no idolaters will inherit the kingdom of God.


It amazes me how some people can worship idols or figurines that are just plain ugly. Not far from my former home church and a friend’s place in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, there’s a building once occupied by another church that I visited a time or two. It’s since been converted into a Buddhist temple. All over the property are statues of Arahats, a title given to Buddhist “saints.” I’ve also been in Asian businesses with Buddha statues on display. It reminds me of this paragraph written by the late Norvel Hayes in his book “Worship”:


“If I was going to worship any other god besides Jesus, I think I could find somebody that looked a little better than Buddha. I mean, if you are going to be deceived, you might as well be deceived in a nicer way. How people can ever worship him is beyond my understanding. I guess they do it because their parents taught them to. Everything produces after its own kind.”


Jeremiah 10:8, 18:15, and Jonah 2:8 call idols “worthless.” They don’t speak themselves, but they can open doors to demonic spirits assigned to them. Zechariah 10:2 in the New Living Translation says, “Household gods give worthless advice, fortune-tellers predict only lies, and interpreters of dreams pronounce falsehoods that give no comfort. So my people are wandering like lost sheep; they are attacked because they have no shepherd.” I knew a woman in Florida who had idols in her home. A friend and I convinced her to do some spiritual housecleaning. We took those idols and destroyed them in a bonfire.


Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” People who had visions of the Lord testified to how beautiful He is. However, He wasn’t pleasant to look at during the crucifixion. Isaiah 52:14 says, “Just as many were astonished at you, so His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” He took the punishment for our sins so we won’t have to suffer for eternity. 


Don’t be led astray by dumb idols. The alternative is so much better.


“You know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” - 1 Corinthians 12:2-3

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