They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.
This verse concludes a passage in Psalm 135 describing the idols worshipped by surrounding nations — objects carved from wood, stone, gold, or silver. The psalmist's warning goes beyond noting that idols are useless: it says that people become like what they worship. The makers of idols and those who trust in them will gradually take on the qualities of those idols — deaf, blind, speechless. This isn't just a theological statement; it's an observation about how devotion shapes a person over time. What you pour your deepest attention and trust into slowly forms you into its image, whether that image is hollow or full of life.
Father, I don't want to be shaped by hollow things. Open my eyes to what I'm actually worshipping with my time, my anxiety, my striving. I want to be transformed by something truly alive. And slowly, steadily, make me look a little more like you. Amen.
You become what you worship. That's not just ancient theology — it's something every parent who has watched their child become consumed by the wrong thing already knows. The person who gives everything to their career slowly loses the ability to see anything else. The person who lives for others' approval eventually can't find their own voice. The idol doesn't save you. It gradually makes you into its own image — hollow where it's hollow, blind where it's blind, unable to hear the things that matter most. Flip it around, though. If you become what you worship, then setting your deepest devotion on a God who is fully present, who hears, who speaks, who sees — that shapes you too. Slowly, stubbornly, you start becoming someone more present. More attentive. More alive to what's real. Every choice about where you place your deepest trust is quietly making you into something. The question isn't whether you'll be shaped by what you love. The question is what you actually want to become.
What does the psalmist mean when he says the makers and trusters of idols will "be like them"? What kind of gradual transformation is he describing?
If you look honestly at who you are becoming over the past year or two, what does that reveal about what you've been giving your deepest time and devotion to?
If you become what you worship, what does that mean for someone whose primary devotion is to themselves — and do you see that pattern playing out in your own life or in people around you?
How might what you worship most deeply shape the way you treat the people closest to you — what you're able to give them, and what you hold back?
What is one specific, concrete change you could make this week — in where your time or attention goes — to redirect your devotion toward something that actually makes you more alive?
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
2 Corinthians 4:4
And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
Revelation 9:20
He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.
John 12:40
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Exodus 20:4
They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed.
Isaiah 44:9
Howbeit then , when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
Galatians 4:8
Those who make idols are like them [absolutely worthless—spiritually blind, deaf, and powerless]; So is everyone who trusts in and relies on them.
AMP
Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.
ESV
Those who make them will be like them, [Yes], everyone who trusts in them.
NASB
Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.
NIV
Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.
NKJV
And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them.
NLT
Those who make and trust them become like them.
MSG