Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its width six cubits. He set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. And King Nebuchadnezzar sent word to gather together the satraps, the administrators, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. (Daniel 3:1-2)

False Gods

By 1590, the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi exercised control over all of Japan. On one occasion, he commissioned a colossal statue of Buddha for a shrine in Kyoto. It took 50,000 men five years to build, and Hideyoshi himself sometimes worked incognito alongside the laborers. But the work was scarcely completed when a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in 1596 brought the roof of the shrine crashing down and wrecked the statue. In a rage, Hideyoshi shot an arrow at the fallen colossus. “I put you here at great expense,” he shouted, “and you can’t even look after your own temple!”

Nebuchadnezzar built a great image for the people to worship, but three Hebrew young men defiled the king’s order to bow and worship his image. God rescued the three Hebrews from a burning furnace, and the Holy Spirit included the story in the revelation to remind me of the one true God. The image made by Nebuchadnezzar has long been gone to the dustbin of history, but the faith of three young Hebrews lives on. The Hebrews embraced true religion and served the true God who made heaven and earth. False gods have no power; so why would a man worship such an image?

False religion has one central theme that labels it false. It is predicated on the idea that when man creates a god, it has power and a mind. What men cannot see is that the god they worship is nothing more than a creation of their imagination. The creature creates a god to become his creator and master. Isaiah, a prophet of the living God, illustrates the futility of man creating his own god when a man who goes into the forest and chops down a tree. He uses part of the tree to make a fire, cook his food, and stay warm. It takes the remainder of the tree, makes a carved image, and falls down to worship it.

The futility of creating a false god is the god cannot speak or understand. A man will fall down before an image and pray to it for deliverance. The god does not have eyes that see or hearts that know. If a fire ravages the image, man must rescue the idol. In a storm, the man must deliver his god from harm. Idols cannot save themselves. Isaiah asked, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

Worshiping idols is a large part of religions throughout the world still today. To the mind of many in the Christian religion, the worship of idols and images is a blasphemy to the character of God. Any Christian faith that embellishes their religion with images is a false religion. Idol worship does not have to be bowing down to an image of stone, gold, or silver. In the minds of many followers of Christ, bowing down to an image is the last thing to be considered. However, idolatry is not always image driven.

Anything more important than our relationship with God is an image of idolatry and our totem. Paul said that covetousness is idolatry. What is covetousness? Seeking after the riches and materialism of the world. Covetousness is an inordinate desire for all the good things in life that bring no happiness. We make money, our homes, possessions, prestige, and pleasures the gods of our lives. The heart worships these things. Like all idols, we must care for them; they don’t care for themselves. And then a funny thing happens: we leave all our gods to someone else when we die. False religion. It’s false.