There you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, that cannot see or hear or eat or smell.  Deuteronomy 4:28

You Will Serve – Israel’s occupation of the Promised Land is completely conditional.  Their election as God’s people is completely unconditional.  God chooses and obligates Himself in the election of Israel, but Israel must obey if they are to occupy the land.  Keeping these two covenant arrangements separate is the key to understanding the difference between Law and Grace.  Disobedience brings exile, not replacement.

Moses warns the people as strenuously as he can that obedience is absolutely essential for blessing.  In the middle of his warning, he suggests some of the consequences of disobedience.  One of those consequences seems quite strange to our ears.  Moses says that if God’s people disobey Him, they will be cursed into worshipping false gods.  In other words, idolatry is not only the cause of curses.  It is also the punishment for disobedience.  Idolatry is a two-edged disaster.  It removes us from God and it guarantees that we will be cursed into serving gods that can do nothing.

The Hebrew verb avad covers both work and worship.  It describes toilsome labor, joyous activity, service to others and service to God.  When work is done in alignment with the King, it is the wonderful fulfillment of honoring God with one’s unique design.  But the same word is also used to recount the frustrating toil that accompanies being out of alignment with God in both work and service to Him.  In this verse, Moses says that as a result of disobedience, God’s children will be forced to toil on behalf on idols.  They will find nothing but frustration when they pray to and serve gods of wood and stone. We all know this is true, don’t we?  But did you know that God causes idolatry among those disobedient to Him?  Why would He do such an apparently counter-productive thing?

The answer is found in the act of parenting.  Does your child have an uncontrollable appetite for cookies?  If instruction and warnings do not curb his hunger, perhaps a forced feeding frenzy will.  I have friends who will never touch Tequila again.  Why?  Because at one point in their lives, they had too much.  The results were sickening (literally).  They were cured through their over-indulgence.  If God wants His people to see the utter stupidity of idolatry, is there any better way than forcing them to serve gods who can’t do a single thing for them?  It won’t be long before the people recognize their foolishness and abandon the practice.  For Israel, it only took about 1000 years to learn this lesson.  Not too long at all, considering the eternity that God was preparing for them.

Hopefully, you and I will learn this lesson before we die.  It’s not as easy as it appears.  Disobedience is both individual and communal.  It is certainly obvious that on a national scale we no longer serve the living God.  We worship idols of paper and possessions.  When times get bad, we cry out to them.  In fact, we go on feeding frenzies, offering them more and more in hopes that they will be appeased and grant us prosperity.  But they do not hear.  Perhaps God has decided to make us serve these empty, man-made objects so that we will, at last, see our foolishness and return to Him.  Perhaps.  Of course, it could be that we just need to drink too much of the world’s version of Tequila and get really sick in order to realize that money, power and possessions are gods we can do without.

Topical Index:  idolatry, avad, curse, Deuteronomy 4:28