26 Bible Verses about False Worship

Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord's house. Right there at the entrance to the Lord's temple, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the Lord's temple, facing east -- they were worshiping the sun toward the east!

The houses in Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled by dead bodies just like this place, Topheth. For they offered sacrifice to the stars and poured out drink offerings to other gods on the roofs of those houses.'"

He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshiped them.

They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God; they made two metal calves and an Asherah pole, bowed down to all the stars in the sky, and worshiped Baal.

They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. These are things they adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground.

You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.

So Jacob told his household and all who were with him, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have among you. Purify yourselves and change your clothes.

"'You must not make for yourselves idols, so you must not set up for yourselves a carved image or a pillar, and you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down before it, for I am the Lord your God.

Little children, guard yourselves from idols.

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below.

As they drank wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

You know that when you were pagans you were often led astray by speechless idols, however you were led.

Has a nation ever changed its gods (even though they are not really gods at all)? But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, for a god that cannot help them at all!

For all the gods of the nations are worthless, but the Lord made the heavens.

Then those living in the towns of Judah and in Jerusalem will go and cry out for help to the gods to whom they have been sacrificing. However, those gods will by no means be able to save them when disaster strikes them.

The rest of humanity, who had not been killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so that they did not stop worshiping demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood -- idols that cannot see or hear or walk about.

Jeroboam appointed his own priests to serve at the worship centers and to lead in the worship of the goat idols and calf idols he had made.

So they must no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat demons, acting like prostitutes by going after them. This is to be a perpetual statute for them throughout their generations.

They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known; to new gods who had recently come along, gods your ancestors had not known about.

They sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons.

A drought will come upon her land; her rivers and canals will be dried up. All of this will happen because her land is filled with idols. Her people act like madmen because of those idols they fear.

Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. You brought before you the vessels from his temple, and you and your nobles, together with your wives and concubines, drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone -- gods that cannot see or hear or comprehend! But you have not glorified the God who has in his control your very breath and all your ways!

So since we are God's offspring, we should not think the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and imagination.

They are worthless, mere objects to be mocked. When the time comes to punish them, they will be destroyed.

What good is an idol? Why would a craftsman make it? What good is a metal image that gives misleading oracles? Why would its creator place his trust in it and make such mute, worthless things?

Now the Lord delivered King Jehoiakim of Judah into his power, along with some of the vessels of the temple of God. He brought them to the land of Babylonia to the temple of his god and put the vessels in the treasury of his god.

He built temples on the high places and appointed as priests people who were not Levites.

There is danger not only that this business of ours will come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as nothing, and she whom all the province of Asia and the world worship will suffer the loss of her greatness."

The Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the temple of Dagon, where they positioned it beside Dagon.

May the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to worship, and he leans on my arm and I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this."

They abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God; they made two metal calves and an Asherah pole, bowed down to all the stars in the sky, and worshiped Baal.

The inhabitants of Samaria will lament over the calf idol of Beth Aven. Its people will mourn over it; its idolatrous priests will wail over it, because its splendor will be taken from them into exile.

However, Jehu did not repudiate the sins which Jeroboam son of Nebat had encouraged Israel to commit; the golden calves remained in Bethel and Dan.

Now you are declaring that you will resist the Lord's rule through the Davidic dynasty. You have a huge army, and bring with you the gold calves that Jeroboam made for you as gods.

Jeroboam appointed his own priests to serve at the worship centers and to lead in the worship of the goat idols and calf idols he had made.

The Israelites again did evil in the Lord's sight. They worshiped the Baals and the Ashtars, as well as the gods of Syria, Sidon, Moab, the Ammonites, and the Philistines. They abandoned the Lord and did not worship him.

The king ruined the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, that King Solomon of Israel had built for the detestable Sidonian goddess Astarte, the detestable Moabite god Chemosh, and the horrible Ammonite god Milcom.

I am taking the kingdom from him because they have abandoned me and worshiped the Sidonian goddess Astarte, the Moabite god Chemosh, and the Ammonite god Milcom. They have not followed my instructions by doing what I approve and obeying my rules and regulations, like Solomon's father David did.

They abandoned the Lord and worshiped Baal and the Ashtars.

Samuel said to all the people of Israel, "If you are really turning to the Lord with all your hearts, remove from among you the foreign gods and the images of Ashtoreth. Give your hearts to the Lord and serve only him. Then he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines."

Then Michal took a household idol and put it on the bed. She put a quilt made of goat's hair over its head and then covered the idol with a garment.

(Now Rachel had taken the idols and put them inside her camel's saddle and sat on them.) Laban searched the whole tent, but did not find them.

While Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole the household idols that belonged to her father.

Now this man Micah owned a shrine. He made an ephod and some personal idols and hired one of his sons to serve as a priest.

The five men who had gone to spy out the land of Laish said to their kinsmen, "Do you realize that inside these houses are an ephod, some personal idols, a carved image, and a metal image? Decide now what you want to do."

He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal he had built in Samaria.

So they took a bull, as he had suggested, and prepared it. They invoked the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, "Baal, answer us." But there was no sound and no answer. They jumped around on the altar they had made.

So in this way Jacob's sin will be forgiven, and this is how they will show they are finished sinning: They will make all the stones of the altars like crushed limestone, and the Asherah poles and the incense altars will no longer stand.

These people continually and blatantly offend me as they sacrifice in their sacred orchards and burn incense on brick altars.

Although Ephraim has built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning!

When Israel joined themselves to Baal-peor, the anger of the Lord flared up against Israel.

You have witnessed what the Lord did at Baal Peor, how he eradicated from your midst everyone who followed Baal Peor.

They worshiped Baal of Peor, and ate sacrifices offered to the dead.

When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the wilderness. I viewed your ancestors like an early fig on a fig tree in its first season. Then they came to Baal-Peor and they dedicated themselves to shame -- they became as detestable as what they loved.

The sin we committed at Peor was bad enough. To this very day we have not purified ourselves; it even brought a plague on the community of the Lord.

He accepted the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molten calf. Then they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."

When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; you had quickly turned aside from the way he had commanded you!

even when they made a cast image of a calf for themselves and said, 'This is your God who brought you up from Egypt,' or when they committed atrocious blasphemies.

They made an image of a calf at Horeb, and worshiped a metal idol.

At that time they made an idol in the form of a calf, brought a sacrifice to the idol, and began rejoicing in the works of their hands.

You must not give any of your children as an offering to Molech, so that you do not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord!

They built places of worship for the god Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that they could sacrifice their sons and daughters to the god Molech. Such a disgusting practice was not something I commanded them to do! It never even entered my mind to command them to do such a thing! So Judah is certainly liable for punishment.'

You will pick up your images of Sikkuth, your king, and Kiyyun, your star god, which you made for yourselves,

But you took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the images you made to worship, but I will deport you beyond Babylon.'

The king ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech.

At that time men will throw their silver and gold idols, which they made for themselves to worship, into the caves where rodents and bats live,

And also on that day," says the Lord who rules over all, "I will remove the names of the idols from the land and they will never again be remembered. Moreover, I will remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.

They will no longer trust in the altars their hands made, or depend on the Asherah poles and incense altars their fingers made.

"So the time will certainly come when I will punish the idols of Babylon. Her whole land will be put to shame. All her mortally wounded will collapse in her midst.

I will remove your idols and sacred pillars from your midst; you will no longer worship what your own hands made.

The king ruined the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Destruction, that King Solomon of Israel had built for the detestable Sidonian goddess Astarte, the detestable Moabite god Chemosh, and the horrible Ammonite god Milcom.

"Moab, you trust in the things you do and in your riches. So you too will be conquered. Your god Chemosh will go into exile along with his priests and his officials.

You have the right to take what Chemosh your god gives you, but we will take the land of all whom the Lord our God has driven out before us.

Woe to you, Moab. You are ruined, O people of Chemosh! He has made his sons fugitives, and his daughters the prisoners of King Sihon of the Amorites.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

You know that when you were pagans you were often led astray by speechless idols, however you were led.

With regard then to eating food sacrificed to idols, we know that "an idol in this world is nothing," and that "there is no God but one."

The rulers of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate. They said, "Our god has handed Samson, our enemy, over to us."

The Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the temple of Dagon, where they positioned it beside Dagon.

They placed his armor in the temple of their gods and hung his head in the temple of Dagon.

Gather together and come! Approach together, you refugees from the nations! Those who carry wooden idols know nothing, those who pray to a god that cannot deliver.

Such idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field. They cannot talk. They must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them because they cannot hurt you. And they do not have any power to help you."

Even by saying these things, they scarcely persuaded the crowds not to offer sacrifice to them.

For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought a great deal of business to the craftsmen.

After the city secretary quieted the crowd, he said, "Men of Ephesus, what person is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is the keeper of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image that fell from heaven?

When they heard this they became enraged and began to shout, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!"

But the crowd began to shout, "The voice of a god, and not of a man!"

So when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!"

But they were expecting that he was going to swell up or suddenly drop dead. So after they had waited a long time and had seen nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.

Their idols are made of silver and gold -- they are man-made.

There you will worship gods made by human hands -- wood and stone that can neither see, hear, eat, nor smell.

To make a contribution one selects wood that will not rot; he then seeks a skilled craftsman to make an idol that will not fall over.

So since we are God's offspring, we should not think the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and imagination.