“Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name. For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.” (Psalm 86:8-10 NIV)
Up in the hills, deep into the trees,
On the altars of ignorance were burned,
Wood, animals, children, as stomachs turned,
Making idol sacrifices instead of bending knees,
Praying to the One True God, who does marvelous deeds.
From the beginning and still now, people exercise the inherent desire to worship something and when they find something they think works, that thing they will worship, forgetting that there is One God who created all things and without Him, nothing was created.
Before we had the means to explore and examine our environment, we attributed events to certain other “circumstances” giving credit to the sun god, the rain god, the fertility god, the garden god, the angry god, the happy god, the moon god, the good luck god, the bad luck god, the pretty god, the ugly god, the god of hair, the god of baldness, the god of the fat people, the god of the skinny people, the water gods, the fire gods–and I’m sure there are many more like “the lottery god” (dream books), but all of these gods are manifested into carved, shaped, molded things that are made by the hands of man. Every symbol and image that people use to worship and give some magical attribute– (by way of explaining events) was made by man or machines in our times. Now, if we made the things, what makes us think the things we made are greater than we who made them?
The Psalmist understood that with all the carved statues of trees or monuments of stones and worshipped as gods that among all those gods, there was but One, who was the greatest–the One who did marvelous deeds–the One all nations would worship. And then–as now–they had a name for all the gods. When Paul was speaking before “the learned men” he referenced all the gods who were represented and the “unknown god.” He explained to them who the unknown God was and why He was unknown to them.
Now, if the statues and monuments could have created themselves without the benefit of man’s involvement–I’d say worship them. If they could create themselves there is a great likelihood they could actually help somebody. But there’s the rub–they were made by people and then the people decided–what they made, had power.
Think about the things children make out of paper, Popsicle sticks and other materials and then allow their imaginations to soar–giving the things they made power. The things empowered their imagination, but they had no power of themselves.
Our God–our awesome God–who no one created since He has no beginning and definitely no end. He created the universe without any help from man–the sun shines during the day without man’s help, the moon makes it’s way to shine at night without man’s help, the earth turns on its axis, without man’s help, so why would we continue to believe that any “thing” made by the hands of man has any power?
Among the gods that people worship–their jobs, their spouses, their money, and some even their children, there is only one God who does great things and even though we are ridiculed about our belief in the “invisible God” it makes more sense to worship Him, than anything we make or manufacture to worship. Our God is the only self-existing God who needs no thing to prove His existence; He is the only wise God–the One who was wise enough to do all He has done without consulting any of us. He alone is worthy of our praise.
You alone are worthy, O God, of all our praise and adoration!
maryhallrayford 