what false worship looks like

They exchanged the glory of God

for the image of an ox that eats grass.

They forgot God, their Savior,

who had done great things in Egypt,

wondrous works in the land of Ham,

and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.

Psalm 106:20-22

Psalm 106 is a song that sings about the history of failure. It recounts the sinful failures of the nation of Israel, beginning at the Exodus, all the way through the Babylonian Exile. As it looks at the way Israel abandoned God, it gives us insights and warnings into our own tendencies toward false worship. We may think ourselves too sophisticated to worship idols or carved images. That is probably our first step into idolatry.

Israel exchanged God’s glory for a “made thing”. They made an idol. It represented something in creation. False worship always pulls the focus away from our Creator, and in unhealthy ways, onto His creation. When we expect a created thing to satisfy us, we are caught in the downward spiral of idolatry.

Israel also forgot God’s salvation. God had just delivered them from slavery in Egypt when they made the golden calf. They began to ascribe to their idols of comfort the salvation that God had brought them. And in that way they were thinking they had saved themselves. They had a god they could manage and control.

And finally, God’s people had forgotten God’s works. The miraculous signs of Moses, the deliverance across dry land at the Red Sea, the destruction of Egypt’s army... all this faded into common background noise in their glamorous pursuit of a false gold god. Idolatry ruins us and robs us of God’s power at work among us. We are satisfied with too little, with what our senses can see and be tingled with rather than with the extraordinary, amazing work of God that is beyond our ability to fully understand.