The Folly of Lifeless Gods Text: Psalm 135:15-18
Introduction: You Become What You Worship
The central business of human existence is worship. There are no non-worshipers. The only question is what, or whom, you will worship. Every man, every woman, every society is being shaped, molded, and conformed into the image of the object of its worship. This is an iron law of the universe, as inescapable as gravity. You become what you behold. You will resemble what you revere.
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 misplaced adoration. We have bowed down to the idols of sexual autonomy, and we have become enslaved to our lusts. We have worshiped at the altar of mammon, and we have become a people consumed by covetousness and debt. We have adored the god of the State, and we have become a nation of servile dependents and petty tyrants. In every case, the worshipers have taken on the characteristics of their god.
This is precisely the point the psalmist is making in this blistering polemic against the gods of the nations. This is not a dispassionate observation from a religious studies textbook. This is theological warfare. The psalmist is holding up the gods of the pagans to the light of God's reality and showing them to be pathetic, ridiculous, and, most importantly, impotent. He is mocking them. And this holy mockery is designed to do two things: first, to vaccinate the people of God against the spiritual pandemic of idolatry, and second, to expose the sheer lunacy of worshiping anything other than the living God who made heaven and earth.
The argument here is a direct assault on the fundamental axiom of paganism. The pagan believes he can control his god, that he can manipulate reality by fashioning a deity he can manage. But the psalmist reveals the terrible boomerang effect of this project. You think you are shaping the god, but in reality, the god you shape is shaping you. And since the god you have made is a dead thing, it is making you dead.
The Text
The idols of the nations 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,
Surely, there is not any breath in their mouths.
Those who make them will be like them,
All who trust in them.
(Psalm 135:15-18 LSB)
The Worthless Materials and Human Origin (v. 15)
The psalmist begins his critique with the raw materials and the manufacturing process.
"The idols of the nations are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands." (Psalm 135:15)
The first thing to notice is that these gods are made of stuff you can find in the ground. They are composed of created things, silver and gold. This is a frontal assault on their claim to divinity. The true God is the uncreated Creator. He is spirit. He is transcendent. He is not made of anything, because everything is made by Him. But these so-called gods? They are just expensive matter. You can melt them down. You can put a price on them. Their value is determined by the commodities market, not by their intrinsic nature.
But the critique goes deeper. They are "the work of man's hands." This is the ultimate absurdity. A man digs some ore out of a hill, refines it, melts it, and pours it into a mold of his own devising. He carves and polishes it. And then, in a crowning act of folly, he bows down and worships the thing he just made. The creature is worshiping a work of his own creation. The potter is worshiping the pot. This violates the most basic distinction in all of reality, the Creator/creature distinction. God made us in His image; idolatry is the insane attempt to return the favor, to make a god in our image. But a god you can make is a god you can control, which means it is no god at all. It is a projection of your own desires, a ventriloquist's dummy for your own lusts.
A Catalogue of Deficiencies (v. 16-17)
Next, the psalmist details the utter impotence of these idols by listing their sensory failures. They are nothing but a bundle of infirmities.
"They have mouths, but they do not speak; They have eyes, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear, Surely, there is not any breath in their mouths." (Psalm 135:16-17 LSB)
The idol is a counterfeit man. It has the apparatus of communication and perception, but none of the function. It is a perfect picture of dead religion.
They have mouths, but they are silent. You can cry out to them in your distress, but you will get no answer. You can ask for wisdom, but no word of guidance will come. Our God, in stark contrast, is the God who speaks. He spoke the universe 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. When we pray, we are not talking to a wall. We are addressing the living God who hears and answers.
They have eyes, but they are blind. They cannot see the plight of their worshipers. They cannot see the future. They cannot behold beauty or justice. They are sightless. But our God is the one whose eyes "roam to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him" (2 Chron. 16:9). He sees every sparrow that falls. He sees every secret sin and every quiet act of faithfulness. Nothing is hidden from His sight.
They have ears, but they are deaf. They cannot hear the prayers, the praises, or the curses of men. They are oblivious. The prophet Elijah mocked this very thing on Mount Carmel, taunting the prophets of Baal. "Cry aloud," he said, "for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened" (1 Kings 18:27). It was savage sarcasm. Of course Baal could not hear; he was a non-entity. But our God hears the cry of the afflicted. His ear is attentive to the prayer of the righteous.
Finally, there is no breath in them. Breath is the sign of life. The Spirit of God, the Ruach, is the breath of life. These idols are lifeless, inert lumps of metal. They are dead. Our God is the living God, the source and sustainer of all life. In Him we live and move and have our being.
The Idolater's Curse (v. 18)
This brings us to the terrifying conclusion, the punchline of this divine joke. This is the spiritual law that governs all of reality.
"Those who make them will be like them, All who trust in them." (Psalm 135:18 LSB)
Here it is. You become what you worship. If you make and trust in a god who cannot speak, you will become spiritually mute, unable to speak the truth or offer true praise. If you worship a god who cannot see, you will become spiritually blind, unable to discern truth from error, good from evil. If you adore a god who cannot hear, you will become spiritually deaf, your ears stopped up to the voice of God. If you give your allegiance to a dead thing, you will become dead yourself, lifeless, inert, and useless.
This is the judgment of idolatry. It is not just that God will punish you for it later. The act of idolatry is its own punishment. It is a spiritual suicide. You are conforming yourself to a nullity. You are hollowing yourself out. This is why our secular, idolatrous age is filled with people who have eyes but cannot see the consequences of their ideas, who have ears but cannot hear the wisdom of the ages, and who have mouths but can only speak gibberish, propaganda, and lies. They have bowed down to deaf, dumb, and blind ideologies, and they have become just like them.
The Gospel Contrast
The polemic of this psalm drives us to the glorious contrast offered in the gospel. We do not worship a dead idol; we worship the living God. And just as the idolater becomes like his idol, the true worshiper becomes like his God.
We worship a God who speaks, and He fills our mouths with His praise and His truth. We worship a God who sees, and He opens our blind eyes to behold the glory of Christ. We worship a God who hears, and He unstops our deaf ears to hear His voice and live. We worship the God who is life itself, and He breathes His own Spirit into our dead souls and makes us alive together with Christ.
The apostle Paul says it this way: "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 by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). This is the Christian life. It is the process of de-idolization and re-formation. We turn from the dead things we once served, and by beholding the face of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures, by worshiping Him in His church, we are being changed. He is making us like Himself.
The choice before every human being is stark. You can take some created thing, some silver or gold, some ideology or appetite, and fashion it into a god. You can bow down to it and serve it. And if you do, you will become just like it: blind, deaf, mute, and dead. Or, you can bow down to the Lord Jesus Christ, the living God who became a man to rescue idolaters like us. You can behold Him, trust Him, and worship Him. And if you do, He will make you like Himself: full of life, full of light, and full of glory, from this day and forevermore.