The Dead End of Man's Hands Text: Psalm 115:4-8
Introduction: The Law of Spiritual Gravity
There is an iron law that governs the spiritual world, and it is as inexorable as the law of gravity. You cannot defy it, you cannot negotiate with it, and you cannot escape its consequences. The law is this: you become like what you worship. This is a principle that runs through all of Scripture, but it is laid out for us with a brutal, mocking clarity here in Psalm 115. What you bow down to, you become. What you set your heart upon, what you give your ultimate allegiance to, will shape you into its own image.
Our culture is in the state it is in because of all the true worship rendered to false gods, and all the false worship rendered to the true God. We are surrounded by the wreckage of this spiritual law. We see men and women shaped into the image of their idols every day. Those who worship money become hard, metallic, and cold. Those who worship sex become debased, animalistic, and empty. Those who worship power become paranoid, cruel, and grasping. And those who worship the state become servile, mindless, and bureaucratic. They worship deaf, dumb, and blind idols, and they are becoming deaf, dumb, and blind themselves.
The psalmist here is not engaging in polite religious comparison. He is conducting a spiritual autopsy. He is laying the lifeless idol on the table and dissecting it for all to see. He is showing us the sheer absurdity, the laughable impotence of the gods that men fashion for themselves. And in so doing, he is showing us the tragic absurdity of the men who worship them. This is not just a polemic against ancient, primitive paganism, the worship of wooden statues in forgotten temples. No, the human heart is an idol factory that is never shut down, and it is always turning out new models. Our idols are more sophisticated now. They are ideologies, philosophies, political saviors, and technological promises. They are made of pixels and policies instead of silver and gold, but the principle remains precisely the same. They are the work of man's hands, and they are dead.
The central issue of your life is worship. It is not a question of whether you will worship, but only what you will worship. And what you worship will determine what you become. This passage forces us to ask the question: what is on the throne of my heart? Is it the living God who made the heavens and the earth? Or is it a dead thing that I have made with my own hands?
The Text
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
They have eyes, but they do not see;
They have ears, but they do not hear;
They have noses, but they do not smell;
As for their hands, they do not feel;
As for their feet, they do not walk;
They do not make a sound with their throat.
Those who make them will become like them,
Everyone who trusts in them.
(Psalm 115:4-8 LSB)
The Idol's Pedigree (v. 4)
The psalmist begins his diagnosis by looking at the origin and substance of these so-called gods.
"Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands." (Psalm 115:4)
The first thing to note is their material. "Silver and gold." This is not scrap wood or cheap pottery. The idolater spares no expense. He gives the very best of his material wealth to the construction of his god. This is because idolatry is always a costly business. Men will pour their fortunes into the service of their false gods, whether that god is a golden calf, a political campaign, or a new wing on the corporate headquarters. The idol demands your best stuff.
But the second phrase completely demolishes any value the first might have had. They are "the work of man's hands." This is the fatal flaw. The creature is attempting to create its creator. The thing made is pretending to be the maker. It is a profound and ludicrous role-reversal. A man goes into his workshop, and with his own tools and his own strength, he fashions a god. Then he comes out, bows down to the thing he just made, and asks it for help. Can you see the insanity of it? The idol is downstream from the idolater. It cannot have more power, more wisdom, or more life than the one who made it. And since the one who made it is a finite, sinful man, the god he makes is less than nothing. It is a monument to human arrogance and stupidity.
This is the pedigree of every false god. It is man-made. It is a projection of our own desires, our own fears, our own ambitions. We create gods in our own image, and then we pretend they have authority over us. But a god you can control is not God at all. A god that fits in your pocket or on your dashboard is a toy, not a deity. The true God is the one whose hands made us, not the other way around.
A Catalogue of Impotence (v. 5-7)
The psalmist now walks us through a full sensory inventory of the idol, showing its utter lack of life and power. It is a relentless, satirical dismantling.
"They have mouths, but they do not speak; They have eyes, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear; They have noses, but they do not smell; As for their hands, they do not feel; As for their feet, they do not walk; They do not make a sound with their throat." (Psalm 115:5-7 LSB)
This is a systematic mockery. The idol is a counterfeit of a living being. It has all the right appendages, all the external features, but none of the corresponding function. It is a perfect picture of dead religion.
They have mouths, but they do not speak. You can cry out to your idol all day long, like the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, but you will get no answer. There is no word of comfort, no word of guidance, no word of rebuke. There is only silence. Our God, by contrast, is the God who speaks. He spoke creation into existence. He spoke the law from Sinai. He spoke through the prophets. And in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, the living Word. We worship a God who communicates.
They have eyes, but they do not see. The idol cannot see your plight. It is blind to your suffering and your sin. It is a dead stare, carved from stone or cast from metal. But our God is the one whose "eyes are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good" (Proverbs 15:3). He sees everything. Nothing is hidden from His sight. He sees you right now, and He knows you completely.
They have ears, but they do not hear. The idol is deaf to your prayers. Your petitions and your praises fall on deaf ears. But the Lord's ears are open to the cries of His people (Psalm 34:15). He hears every prayer, every sigh, every groan of the heart. He is the God who listens.
The list continues with noses that cannot smell the incense offered to them, hands that cannot feel or save, and feet that cannot move to rescue. It is a picture of total, pathetic paralysis. The idol is a cosmic mannequin. It is all form and no function. It is a black hole of worship, where all the energy, all the devotion, all the sacrifice of the worshiper goes in, and absolutely nothing comes out.
The Idolater's Doom (v. 8)
This is the climax of the argument. This is the punchline, and it is a devastating one. The psalmist turns from the idol to the idolater and pronounces the terrible sentence that is the law of spiritual gravity.
"Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them." (Psalm 115:8 LSB)
Here it is. This is the terrifying end of the road for every idolater. You become what you worship. If you worship a blind idol, you become spiritually blind. If you worship a deaf idol, you become spiritually deaf, unable to hear the voice of God. If you worship a mute idol, you lose your own spiritual voice, unable to praise God or speak His truth. If you worship a lifeless, powerless, inert block of matter, you become spiritually lifeless, powerless, and inert yourself.
Notice the two categories of people this applies to: those who make them, and everyone who trusts in them. This covers everyone. It covers the theological architects of the idolatry, the ones who craft the false philosophies and build the corrupt institutions. And it covers the ordinary person who simply puts their trust in these systems. Whether you are the high priest of Baal or just a regular citizen who thinks Baal might help with the crops, the result is the same. Trust in the dead thing, and you will share in its deadness.
This is why our secular culture is so spiritually dead. It has systematically made and trusted in idols of materialism, scientism, and hedonism. And as a result, it has become like them. It has eyes, but it cannot see the glory of God in creation. It has ears, but it cannot hear the truth of His Word. It has a mouth, but it can only speak nonsense, redefining reality and calling evil good. The worship of dead things produces dead people in a dead culture.
The Great Reversal
But thank God, the psalm does not end here. The rest of the psalm is a call to trust in the Lord, who is the polar opposite of these dead idols. He is the living God who made heaven and earth. And the law of spiritual gravity works in the other direction as well.
Just as those who worship dead things become dead, those who worship the living God become alive. This is the gospel. We were all idolaters. We were all becoming like the dead things we served. We were blind, deaf, and dead in our trespasses and sins.
But God, who is the antithesis of the mute idol, spoke into our darkness. He said, "Let there be light," and shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). He gave us ears to hear His call and eyes to see His beauty.
The Apostle Paul tells us that as we worship the true God, the process is gloriously reversed. "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18).
We become like what we worship. As we gather Sunday by Sunday to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, as we sing His praises, hear His Word, and come to His table, we are being changed. We are being de-petrified. The life of God is flowing into us, making us more and more like our Savior. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another.
The choice before you is stark. It is the choice between two destinies, two transformations. You can continue to fashion and trust in the dead idols of this age, the work of men's hands, and become like them: empty, lifeless, and silent before a holy God. Or you can turn and trust in the living God, who sent His Son to die for idolaters like us. You can behold Him, worship Him, and be transformed into His glorious image, from one degree of glory to the next, world without end. You will become like what you worship. Therefore, choose life.