God is Sufficient

Most of us have never worshiped an idol - not in the way that we imagine worshiping an idol might look like, not in the way that we worship the Lord. We have never made a graven image and bowed down to it and burned sacrifices and offered a portion of our lives to it in exchange for its kindness and favor. 

Certainly, we do this with all kinds of things without a conscious awareness of it, but we have not made shrines in our homes for the express purpose of worship. 

So it's hard for us to understand how very different from other gods the God of Israel really is. 

The world has always had its multitude of gods. Gods for everything - for the heavens, for fertility, for farming, for building a home, for raising kids, for the water, for the wind, for whatever. And it doesn't matter what god you're talking about, there is one basic rule: 

You have to keep coming back and feeding it. 

You're not allowed to forget these gods. You're not allowed to neglect them. You're not allowed to go too long without sacrificing to them or they get angry. Really, they get hungry and being hungry makes them angry. Yes, the gods of the nations have, for thousands of years, been...hangry. 

If you don't feed them, they don't eat, and if they don't eat, then they can't act like a god and do whatever they're supposed to do with whatever they're supposed to do it with. The fertility gods cannot create you a baby if they're hungry. The gods of the harvest cannot grow a seed if they haven't eaten themselves. 

So in worship of these gods, there's this constant pressure, this constant balance, this constant searching for what you can feed them and how much and how often and how much to their liking so that they can be the gods they are supposed to be and you can get what you want to get from them - their favor, in whatever arena they propose to be god over. 

Therefore, when the God of Israel comes and says that He doesn't need our sacrifices, that raises eyebrows. When He says our sacrifices are not His food, but our surrender, that's revolutionary. When we get to forget Him, ignore Him, neglect Him, reject Him and He still gets to be God, that's unheard of. When He does not depend on us, it makes it harder for man to know what to do with that. 

Because, well, we have always thought that we controlled our gods, but the Lord makes clear that we do not control Him. 

He's God. He's God with or without us. (He prefers to be God with us.) He doesn't need anything from us (Acts 17:25). We don't have to feed Him. We don't have to appease Him. We don't have to cater to His ego. He's just God. 

So very different from all of the other gods.