We all worship something

• I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them. They are turned back and utterly put to shame, who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images, “You are our gods.” – Isaiah 42:16–17

In the words of Bob Dylan, you gotta serve somebody. It’s true—we all worship something. The only question is what.

Too often in our human futility, we end up leaning on and ultimately serving crafty little creations of our own invention. Throughout history, mankind’s fundamental problem has been that we keep creating false gods to whom we go seeking false salvation. These idols are simply heart-level substitutes for the real God. Rather than looking to the Lord as the object of our devotion and the source of our satisfaction, we take the good things that He created for our enjoyment and turn them into vain replacements for Him.

C.S. Lewis puts it this way: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[2]

Whichever heart-level substitutes we may rely on, these idols are powerless. They cannot help us. As Isaiah makes clear, they’ve never been able to tell us the future or even help us reflect on the past; neither can they give counsel. They meet our questions with mere silence and unfulfilled expectations (Isaiah 41:22-23, 28-29).

Only the true and living God knows everything from beginning to end. He broke through the silence, foretelling what was to come. He overwhelms darkness with His light. He replaces the “rough places” of wickedness with the “level ground” of righteousness. Although we once turned our backs on Him, He sent His Servant, Jesus, our Wonderful Counselor.

You and I are constantly confronted by idols that call out for our attention and entice us to find fulfillment in them rather than God. What are the ones that call loudest to you? Know that they are lying (though of course they don’t tell you that). God’s word warns us of the shame that lies in worshiping them and leads us on a better way: to find fulfillment in serving and being served by Him.

You gotta serve somebody today. Be sure to make it the living, loving God.