Measuring God
I pour the silver coins from one hand to the other, considering the cost with each chink of metal against metal. I finger one cool disk, rub a thumb over Washington’s curls and pigtail.
And I wonder.
How many of them would it take?
What’s the market price?
Is this really the best time to build?
DIY Worship
Micah — not that Micah — proved himself a resourceful fellow.
To put together a little homegrown, do-it-yourself worship he would need to stock the household shrine and procure himself a priest.
But he didn’t live in the Levite part of town. And the nearest house of God was, well, inconvenient. So he cobbled together his own house of little-g gods complete with carved images and cast idols, and installed his own son as a priest.
He had a stand-in for God, a stand-in for His house, a stand-in for a priest, and a stand-in for His people.
The writer of Judges punctuates the telling, reminding us that “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” (Judges 17:6)
Everyone did as he saw fit.
Micah thought he had it right.
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Not that Micah
There was a prophet, Micah, who spoke of days coming when men would rest securely, each in the tranquility of his own home.
From Micah God’s people would learn of their coming destruction for rejecting and replacing Him with little-g gods. And they would also discover what God truly desired was that they would love mercy, do justly and walk humbly with God.
This same Micah foretold of one coming Messiah who would stand as Shepherd and who would be for His flock a living, breathing, tangible peace.
But there was another Micah. The one of whom the writer of Judges told.
This Micah was not that Micah.
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Wrestling
These do feel like days for grappling.
For reaching, touching frayed hems. Hands return with threads, but the garment floats free.
I don’t take hold.
How I fight when the Word dances around me. When it taunts, and teases.
It shimmies before me, smirking. My eyes dart, head weaves while I track its frolicking.
My arms flail, and I embrace but air.
I want my hands around it. I want it tight in my fist. Locked down.
And I am learning, reluctantly, that I will not grasp it. I will not hold it.
For if I can contain it, I will smother it. I will press life out of it.
I will form it to me.
Indeed, if I can grasp it, it simply cannot be as great as it is.
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How the Road to Hell Is Paved
I’m disappointed.
It’s not like I didn’t see it coming.
I’ve read the accounts before. And I peeked ahead more than once this time around to make sure that as as I was piecing this out unexpected events didn’t blindside me.
But the ending ambushed me anyway.
And now I’m disappointed.
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Defending the Defenseless
The men of the town demanded of Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.”
But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” So that day they called Gideon “Jerub-Baal, ” saying, “Let Baal contend with him,” because he broke down Baal’s altar. (Judges 6:30-32)
He was probably still wearing his street clothes when he slipped into bed that night. He’d stolen through his bedroom window like a teenager sneaking in from a bonfire and keg.
He hoped the noise and smell of campfire wouldn’t wake his dad.
Pulling the blanket up over his head, he clamped his eyes down and tried to appear as though he’d been sleeping for hours.
Gideon held back the urge to scratch his nose, wishing his eyelids would stop fluttering. Those things always gave away a faker.
His bones ached from the stillness when the sun started to stretch shadows across the room.
And then he heard them.
The men had come. They were storming around out in the yard.
Angry men.
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Burn!
That same night the LORD said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the LORD your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.” (Judges 6:25-26)
If my kids and I were talking about Gideon, they might say something like this:
Dude! Seriously? God told Gideon to tear down the other god’s stuff and then chop it all up and use it for firewood?
Burn!
After I finished lecturing them about calling their mother Dude, I might notice how clever they were to say something like Burn! Not just because Gideon was going to burn the old idol stuff up and they think fire is cool, but because he was going to burn the old idol stuff up with his sacrifice to God.
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Does God Smell?
There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. (Deuteronomy 4:28)
Why do your feet smell and your nose run? (Answer: You were built upside down.) Is your refrigerator running? (Answer: You’d better go catch it.) Are you rolling on the floor yet? How about this one: Does God smell? Maybe not so funny. When I ask a question like that you can probably correctly assume I live in a house full of junior high guys. Of course, I’m not asking if God has an odor. I’m asking if He has a sense of smell. Can He smell? I wonder.
Moses is still talking to the people here before they cross the Jordan into the land God promised them. He continues his warning against creating and worshiping idols and goes on to describe what will happen if they do, that they will be destroyed swiftly and that the very few who do remain will be scattered and will begin wherever they are to worship gods made by man out of wood and stone.
Little-g gods made out of stuff that cannot see, hear, taste or smell.
I have to think that he is contrasting these pathetic idols to the one true God. The big-G God. He wouldn’t be contrasting them with a more high tech idol, made of polyurethane instead of wood or using virtual reality technology instead of stone. It’s either God or god. An idol is an idol is an idol. There would be no point in comparing a pitiful idol with a more hip idol.
So I conclude that he compares the man-made to the un-made. The creation of man’s hands to the Creator of man’s hands.
And by inference, I think we can conclude then that he assigns some attributes to God the Creator that god the created doesn’t have. The created god can’t see, hear, taste or smell. Fair to say then that the Creator God can?
God can see. He can hear. He tastes. He smells.
God smells.
So what?
So what if God smells? What difference does it make if God can smell?
Here’s what I think. I think that our God, Creator God, experiences. He experiences. On a sensory level. He sees. He hears. He tastes. He smells. He feels.
He experiences all there is to experience, and He experiences it in a far deeper, far more complete, far more pure sense than we’ll ever imagine this side of eternity. He certainly experiences far more, and of a much greater quality, than a miserable carved lump of pretend god ever will.
God is personal. He’s not like us. We’re like Him. We share a shadow of His attributes.
He delights. He rejoices. He grieves. He mourns.
God smells. Throughout the Old Testament there is abundant reference to oils, incense, and burnt offerings whose fragrance would be pleasing to God. These scents would delight His senses.
Because He has a capacity to experience.
Because He is personal. He is not a giant machine. He is not the wizard behind the curtain throwing switches and flipping lights. He is not an enormous version of the gods crafted from wood and stone.
He is personal.
He is knowable. He is reachable. He is approachable.
He is embraceable. He is delightable. He is findable.
I’m starting to make up words.
God can smell. God can taste. God experiences our relationship with us as surely as we experience it with Him. He is not the great cold unknown. He is God. Vastly different than cold stone or splintered wood.
He longs for an experience with us.
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Only a Voice
Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. And the LORD directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. But as for you, the LORD took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are. (Deuteronomy 4:12-20)
When God spoke to the people at Horeb, there was a voice. Only a voice. He spoke out of a fire that reached to the heavens while they stood in deep darkness. They heard God. They didn’t see Him.
They heard only a voice.
They knew who He was. They knew He was there. They didn’t need to see Him. And He didn’t want them to see Him.
He wanted them to hear Him. To listen to Him. Not to get caught up in what He looked like, the form that He took.
They were given only a voice.
And it was enough.
Here in Deuteronomy 4, Moses helps the people understand why it was only a voice. Why God didn’t appear to them visibly at the time. In verse 15, he reminds them that when God spoke to them that day, they saw no form of any kind. Folks, he tells them, God did not choose to take on a physical form for you to see. Remember that. Don’t forget it. He didn’t give you a physical form to hang on to, only His voice. Don’t get caught up in the physical form, what He looks like, what shape He is.
Just listen to His voice.
Keep listening, Moses says. Because if the form becomes important, you will begin to seek ways to squish God down into some tiny little created object. Something constructed from your hands and subject to your control. And that’s not God. God won’t be that. So be careful. Be on your guard. Don’t become corrupt. Don’t start making idols – not any kind of idol – because you think you have figured God out and can make Him subject to your whims. Don’t do it. Be careful.
Moses’ urgent warning to the people here still works for me. About the time I think I get God figured out, then I begin to confine an infinite God to a finite shape and form and function. He is then no longer the infinitely unsearchable, yet intimately knowable God who spoke through the blazing fire. He is then only what I make Him, here only to do what I bid Him. And that’s just not God.
There is a way in which we construct idols by worshiping things that are not God and are not worthy of our worship. The way that we make things and people into gods. But there is another way, and I believe it is that way against which Moses warns the people here, that we construct idols by making God into a thing or a person that is within our control. When we construct God according to our own design. When we call ourselves the potter and throw Him on the wheel and form Him into our own desire. And then all our own deficiencies and all the limitations of created things are placed on a God who really has none.
If I can see God as a fish or a bird or a man or woman or an image of any other shape as Moses says in verse 16, then I have reduced God to nothing more than a wooden idol or a stone statue. I have reduced Him to nothing more than checkbook or a 401k or an important position or a human relationship.
And that is not God. He will not be that.
He didn’t reveal His form. By giving us only His voice, He gave us what radio used to give us before television came along. He gave us what books gave us before there were movies. We listen to the words and our imaginations run wild. We hear the voice, and the image is limitless.
His form, His shape, His appearance is left fully to the imagination.
We hear only His voice.
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