Dummies
Deuteronomy 4:27-28
“And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.”
Do you remember in 1 Corinthians 3 when Paul expressed his frustration to Corinthian believers for their infantile appetite for God’s Word, bemoaning the fact that they’re still sipping on milk rather than eating meat? While Paul explicitly used that analogy in reference to the Corinthian’s sinfulness, I think it also expresses a deeper principle about the range of meaning in the Bible. There’s an infinite God behind these letters, if His infallible will is the object of these pictures, then the Scriptures are an unending buffet, with rows and rows and rows of nourishing meaning,and a spread too vast for our brief lifetime to span.
To me, the milk of Deuteronomy 4:28 is the ego-centrality of idolatry: “you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands.” That’s the point we can’t miss, that men love to worship themselves. We craft little dummies from the stuff of nature, in our own image, and sit them down on our laps as it were, and speak vicariously through them, and even bow to them, because we’re all gods in our own minds. Oh, how grave the injustice of our pride! How terribly tragic our blasphemous ambition! Can’t you hear God weeping through the letters of Deuteronomy 4:28?
Yes, but He’s laughing, too. That’s the meat of this picture, I think. There’s irony in these words: “They don’t see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.” Because these are descriptions of human senses, not divine ones. God, Who is Spirit, doesn’t have eyes or ears or a mouth or a nose like we do. So, this is a reminder of how ridiculous idolatry is! Not only do idols fall well short of the standard for immortality—idols aren’t God—they fall well short of the standard of mortality—idols aren’t even men! Oh, how silly we are to waste our God-given faith and reason on senseless, heartless, motionless dummies of our own making!
We deserve more than wrath for our insanity, friend! We deserve mockery too.