Useless Idols

1 Samuel 12:20-21 – “Do not be afraid,” Samuel replied. “You have done all this evil; yet do not turn away from the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless.

Exodus 32:30 – The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

Jeremiah 2:5,11 – This is what the Lord says: “What fault did your ancestors find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves…Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols.

Jeremiah 16:19 – Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in time of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, “Our ancestors possessed nothing but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good.

Exodus 20:3 – “You shall have no other gods before me.

Application:

• ·         Moses so identified himself with Israel that he made his own death the condition for God’s destruction of the nation.
• ·         Jesus Christ, the great Mediator, offered Himself on the cross to make atonement for His people.
• ·         No rivals to the Lord can deliver or guarantee security.
• ·         Idolaters are no better than the idols they worship.
• ·         Judah’s practice of substituting idolatry for the worship of the Lord was incredible.
• ·         No deity, real or imagined, is to rival the one true God in Israel’s heart and life.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV