You see, all humans are all born with an innate desire to worship something and we see throughout God’s Word, people who worship the sun, moon, stars, animals and other creatures as God or attach the processes of the natural world to a god who controls them such as the seasons or wind, rain and storms.
In ancient Egypt they worshipped many things including the sun and moon, the Nile River and all types of creatures (cattle, cats, dogs, bugs, frogs, etc.). When God came down to deliver His people out of Egypt, each plague God sent upon the Egyptians showed them that He commanded these so-called gods and He used each one of them against them to show them the futility of worshipping that particular god.
In Caanan, people worshipped a male god named Baal and his female consort Asterah. Baal was thought to control the seasons, brought rain and wind and storms. People there killed their firstborn children as a sacrifice to obtain Baals favor to have a prosperous harvest and to have many children, they performed immoral sexual acts before Asterah to please her. God sent Israel to possess the land promised to them and to destroy these idolators.
Today, people think they don’t worship things like these, but they worship prosperity, and we see the argument put forward that if you want to have prosperity and everything you want in life, abort the baby you are carrying. It’s really Baal worship of sacrificing a baby without invoking his name.
In fact, in God’s Word, “Lust of the Eyes” is attuned to idol worship lest we think we’re not idolators.
When Eve looked upon the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and desired it, she was committing Idol worship. She wanted to be like God just as Satan did. She wanted to decide what was good and evil for herself and not depend on God. The Idol she worshipped in her desire and is so prevalent today is Self. Many see themselves as their own god. Self is essentially what an Atheist worships. Those who are their own god believe they can have their own truth.
In the modern dictionary, there are 32 words that begin with “self”.
Self is the original god that was created in Paradise way back in Genesis when Adam and Eve sinned against God and is the new god of modern society and it not only replaces the God of the Bible as the one to be worshipped but short circuits His command to love your neighbor as yourself. You can’t do that if you only love yourself and do only what benefits you.
Perhaps now that we’ve come full circle in worshipping the same god as they did in Paradise, this world system of things is nearing an end.
Come Lord Jesus, come!