Idols Give You False Hope

We as a humans have an innate quality to worship things that give us hope.  This is a good quality but it also is a bad quality. You may be wondering how is it bad, but first let's start with the good.

The good thing about the desire for hope is that it gives us motivation. It drives us to continue in the face of adversity. It allows us to dream even when the dreams seem far fetched. It let us to believe in Yeshua (Jesus) the Christ and understand what Yahweh did so that we could have everlasting life.  God has been trying to have his people love Him,since the beginning of time, but even in the midst of all the miracles the hope we have in Him tends to waiver.

This leads us to the bad quality about worshiping things that give us hope.  In times when it appears that God is silent, we tend to navigate towards things that appear to make us happy. Or, we put things up on pedestals and make them the gods over our lives.  What do I mean by this? Well, I am referring to things such as jobs, money, material things, objects, etc. Anything that takes our focus off the Lord has become our idol and our idols can never save us.

Let's look at Micah in the book of Judges.  In Judges 18:22-24, it says:

(22) When they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men who were in the houses near Micah’s house gathered together and overtook the children of Dan. 23 And they called out to the children of Dan. So they turned around and said to Micah, “What ails you, that you have gathered such a company?” (24) So he said, “You have taken away my [a]gods which I made, and the priest, and you have gone away. Now what more do I have? How can you say to me, ‘What ails you?’ ”

Now, I could go on with my own explanation here, but I think David Guzik does an excellent job of breaking down these verses and shedding some like on Micah's situation in his Commentary Study Guide on Judges 18. He states:

You have taken away my gods which I made: This is powerful irony. Micah had to rescue his own gods. Obviously, his gods should be able to care for themselves. We wonder if Micah saw the foolishness of this. 

1. We each either worship a god of our own making or we worship the true God who made us. But the gods we make are always less than we are. Idol worship is just another way of worshipping self. 
2. And the priest: Micah was foolish enough to have a priest who could be taken away, and it reminds us of how wonderful it is to have a High Priest who cannot change, and who can never be taken away from us. As F.B. Meyer wrote, “Whatever can be taken from us has the mark and signature of man upon it.” Yet Jesus Christ, our High Priest, can never change; will never leave us out of a concern for someone else; and our sins and failures cannot rob us of Him.

Now what more do I have? This shows how empty Micah’s idolatry was. His false gods didn’t bring him any lasting good.

I think the biggest takeaway here is that your idols cannot save you and that they cannot bring you lasting good. Idol worship is only temporary and if you hope isn't in Christ who can save you, then you will find yourself creating new idols to take the place of the old ones.

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