“God & ‘No-Gods’” – FBC Morning Light (4/17/2024

Well a good Wednesday morning to you. Today in our Bible reading we're in 1 Chronicles chapter 16, Psalm 96, and Psalm 29. I want to zero in on Psalm 96 here in a couple of verses, but before we get there, about 20 years ago my wife and I had the privilege of traveling to Singapore and Malaysia.

It was a missions trip and was speaking for a missionary at a family camp and in the church and so forth. It was in Singapore. That church held a family camp up in a mountain in Fraser Hill, they called it, in Malaysia.

Well one of the things that struck me there while we were visiting in Singapore was like first morning I got up. We got in after traveling for 24 hours, arrived in Singapore and went right to the hotel.

The church was part of this hotel, it was an interesting setup. Anyway, and just crashed. We got up in the morning, it was fascinating, went out the front door of the of the hotel and just to the left of the door there was this box that had glass on it and it was on a pedestal, probably, I don't know, maybe two feet tall by a foot wide, you know, rectangular box with a glass, with window, a glass.

And inside that box there was a plate with fruit on it and a little statue. And I'm like, what's that all about? And I got with a missionary, I said, what's that all about? He said, oh you're gonna find those all over the place in Singapore and in Malaysia.

Those are those are little shrines to Hindu gods that the thinking is they're gonna offer this fruit to the gods and that'll bring good fortune and so forth to them if they will do that. And I was like, okay, thing of it is, that fruit never got eaten, at least not by a god.

I don't know if somebody traded it out the next day and then ate the orange that had been there the day before or what, but nevertheless, there was no god that ever ate any of that fruit. So that was striking.

And then while we were there in Singapore we went on a little sightseeing thing and went to an area that is a like a almost a collection of Buddhist temples. It was a whole, a great big Buddhist park, if you will.

And it was really sad, almost dark and oppressive. All the buildings were meticulously kept up and beautiful in certain ways, but in the center, the center focal point of each building was a statue of the Buddha.

And people would take off their shoes and go into these buildings very quietly, very reverently, as if it's some great sacred space to the god that they really don't consider to be a god, I guess, Buddha.

And I thought, how tragic that Buddha isn't going to do a thing for them. And then later we traveled up into Malaysia, crossed the bridge from Singapore into Malaysia into a city called Yahore, and we stopped there for a meal, and across the street from where we ate there was there was a Hindu temple.

And it was fascinating to see the roof of this temple. It was a pyramidical shape, and yet there were layers and layers of these figurines attached to the roof. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Again, I asked the missionary, what's the deal with that?

Those all represent different Hindu gods. I thought, hmm, how sad. How sad. Why? Well, because of what we read here in Psalm 96. It says, verse 4, the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods.

And all the labor of the missionary where he worked in Singapore, it was successful, and God used him to plant a church, and it's a good church today, and many people have come to faith in Christ. But by and large, the island nation of Singapore is in gross darkness, and Malaysia, likewise, deep darkness.

Why? Because they're bowing down to all these gods that aren't gods, and they're not fearing the one God who is above all these no-gods. The next verse says, for all the gods of the peoples are idols.

They're all idols. Anything that anybody else, anything that anybody worships, other than the one true God of the Bible, they're worshiping an idol. Which is to say, they're worshiping a no manufactured product of their own imagination, and maybe their hands.

But look at this great contrast. Verse 5, all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. The Lord made the heavens. This, of course, is appealing to the reality that God is the creator of heaven and earth, so all the stuff that people will accumulate and gather together as raw materials to form and manufacture their gods, they're using stuff that the one true God made.

Isn't that interesting? Isn't it sad that people can be so duped, so misled, so blind and in their darkness, to think that the bringing together of some gold material and fashioning them into some kind of a statue, or carving a piece of wood into something that looks fantastical, that is a god.

No. No. The gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Therefore, honor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Oh, aren't you glad that you worship the one true God who is the maker of heaven and earth?

The God who is above all so-called gods, above all the no-gods of man's fabrication. Let's praise him. Let's honor him. Let's adore him in the beauty of his holiness. And so our Father and our God, we do thank you today for who you are.

We thank you for your power, your greatness, your majesty, and your beauty. We thank you that we have the glorious privilege of worshiping and serving the one true God. Bless these thoughts to our hearts today, we pray, in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Wednesday. May the Lord bless you in it.