Numbers 33.52 drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places.

Ezekiel 16.17 You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.

The word idols in the above verses is tselem:
6754. tselem, tseh´-lem; from an unused root meaning to shade; a phantom, i.e. (figuratively) illusion, resemblance; hence, a representative figure, especially an idol:—image, vain shew.

Well we know that God doesn’t like idols. People have been making idols for centuries. Gold, wood, whatever us used by people to make an image of what they think God looks like, then they worship that idol because it looks like or maybe even IS their god. The thing is, all of these idols fall short of the glory of the One True God. No wooden or golden statue could contain what He is.

But there is one idol that can.

In Genesis 1:26 it says “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:”

wouldn’t you know that the word image is TSELEM!

God, who is without sin, and purely worships the only thing worthy of worship, makes an image, or an idol, of Himself, the One True God. He is the only one capable of making an idol that can properly reflect Himself, and what he makes is not wood or gold but flesh-Man.

And why are idols made? To bring glory and worship to the god they represent.

Revelation 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Makes me think about how I’m going to react the next time some little neighborhood kid hangs on the back of my van while I go down the street, or throws a bunch of rocks at my gate. He’s not the perfect image, but God made him so hopefully he would be that image in a redeemed state someday.

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