These four words," What mean these stones?”, pose one of the most profound, one of the most troubling questions of this day, as it has throughout the history of the church.  This question, or those questions referring to it, has been asked more than any other since God placed Adam and Eve in the garden approximately six thousand years ago.  Yet many answers given in response to this question are remarkably and increasingly inaccurate, and more dangerously are outright false.

You say, “I have never even heard these words before, no one has ever spoken them to me . . . I have never read them.  And if this were a biblical or religious phrase, wouldn’t the preachers be teaching these words in our churches?”  Or, you may say, “Yes, I have read these words, and they certainly didn’t appear that they were that terribly significant or important.”

Before looking at the relationship between these and similar questions, and the meaning of “What mean these stones?”, . . . as well as what, if any, response we should have to this relationship, we need to understand what God desires and expects from and of His people.

A Relationship That Comes

With Conditions

Through the pages of Scripture, God makes known His attributes to man, and then in turn lets man know how we are to respond to Him through those attributes.  This response is not as man so chooses it to be, but as God has established through and by His word. (This lack of mans’ ability to choose how to respond is not in conflict with the responsibility given to man, through his will in coming unto the Lord for salvation and then being in obedience to His word.)  God has given each of us accountability in our will.  Our choosing, our will, must be in alignment with God’s attributes, for them to be acceptable to a Holy God.  

God has made known to us many of His attributes, which we must understand when we express a desire in coming to the Lord.  He has revealed that He is “the LORD [our] God” (Exodus 20:2); and that “[we] shall have no other gods before [Him]” (Exodus 20:3). 

God wants His people to place Him first, and not just as a positional token.  He has let us know that He is  “a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 6:15; Joshua 24:19), and gives His name as “Jealous” (Exodus 34:14).

The Lord God wants us to know that “there is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4).  Paul writes that “for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him”  (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Through the words of Scripture we see that man seeks after other gods.  If no other gods exist as God is the only God, who or what are these other gods so often mentioned in Scripture?  These gods are, by-and-large, whatever we have ‘created’ them to be.  These gods or idols do not necessitate that they be statuary, medallions, lucky charms, a ‘golden calf’, or a form of  ‘spiritual being’ to be a god. 

These gods are many and varied.  They are typically common within a culture.  When such things move from commonality to a position of primary need to achieve a perceived ‘happiness’, self-worth, primary motivators for our lives, etc., they move dangerously close to idolatry if not crossing the line.   Money, prestige, satisfying personal wants and desires, success, religion, family, misapplied faith, etc, can all be a god.  Typically, these gods are determined by where we perceive our value, our worth, our applied energies and our thoughts to be located.  These gods or idols are anything that we place between ourselves and the one true God. 

Despite the many warnings that God gives us, we continue to lay a path of destruction; we choose not to heed the Word of God.  We give allegiance or loyalty to gods that are not. “Beware,” we are told, “that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.  Or the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you” (Deuteronomy 11:16-17).  

We become indifferent in that God the Father, becomes a lesser God to us.  The Creator of all visible and invisible, states “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images [idols]” (Isaiah 42:8).