Idol worship isn’t harmless. It is abominable. It is demonic. Indeed, the worship of idols is the worship of fallen and malevolent principalities and powers.

To be up front about it, my main point is that false worship is dangerous because false worship is demonic. And we know this because the Bible teaches this.

When the Israelites neared the time of conquest, Moses (nearing his own death) provided the Israelites a song which God gave to him for them. Sometimes called the “Song of Moses,” its content is from Deuteronomy 32:1 to 32:43. It’s long. And its content highlights truths about the Lord as well as truths about the nation’s tendencies and history.

One aspect of Israel’s history was the failure to worship God rightly. Even at the base of Mount Sinai, the Israelites engaged in idolatrous worship (Exod. 32). In the generations after Moses, further episodes of idolatry would take place. The eventual exile (by the Babylonian army) would be the result of covenant curses upon the wayward people who had, among other things, polluted their worship through their adamant and rebellious activity of idolatry.

Something we don’t hear the Lord telling the Israelites is, “I know that when you worship idols, you’re really worshiping me, since I’m the living God and since those idols don’t really exist.”

Idolatry is abominable. Worshiping “strange gods” provoked the righteous anger of the Lord (Deut. 32:16). But is it because those gods actually existed and were stealing God’s glory? The Song clarified that an idol “is no god” (32:21).

The horror of idol worship isn’t that Baal or Molech or Asherah actually existed. Rather, idol worship is rooted in deception—demonic deception. Though the gods of the nations were not real, the demonic powers that deceived and manipulated the nations were—and are—real.

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