Make No Idols
Exodus 20:4-6
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Good morning,
Last week we began a new series, God’s Top Ten, on the 10 commandments and we started out by giving an overview of some important facts about the 10 commandments. Namely that
The 10 commandments
were part of the Old Covenant with Israel vs. the New Covenant with Christians
never saved anyone
(Paul tells us in Galatians 2:16 that “by observing the law no one will be justified”)
But we learned that the 10 Commandments do convey some eternal principles that help us know how to love God and People, what Jesus called the 2 greatest commands that all the other commandments hang on.
So the 10 Commandments are something important for Christians to learn and know if we are going to best be able to express our love and gratitude for the Lord.
This morning we are going to continue on in our study, so if you would turn with me to Exodus 20,
Slide
We are going to look at the second commandment this morning, we are going to see that the first and second commandment are closely tied, yet different.
If I had to give a simple overview of these first 2 commandments it would be that
The first commandment, about not having other gods,
is about who we worship.
The second commandment, make no idols,
is about how we worship
So let’s jump right in this morning and read and see what exactly the second command is telling us and why and what application this might have in the life of a follower of Christ today.
Exodus 20:1-6
1 And God spoke all these words:
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Pray.
Ok, so the first commandment says, “Have No Other ‘gods’
And the second command starts out, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”
Now as we read this we need to ask,
Is the Lord prohibiting the making of things that represent something in heaven or on earth or of the sea?
No prohibition for artistic purposes
No, it does not prohibit making representations of things in heaven or earth or the sea for artistic purposes.
In fact, we find in the Old Testament that God actually gave instructions to make things that represented things in heaven and on earth.
When Moses was meeting with God and receiving the 10 Commandments and the other laws, God also gave instructions for the tabernacle. We see the incredible detail that God gave for the tabernacle in Exodus 25, while Moses is still on the mountain speaking with God.
And here are some of the instructions he gives Moses concerning the tabernacle and the things in it.
Exodus 25:17-18, 31a, 34
17 "Make an atonement cover of pure gold--two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. 18 And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover…31 "Make a lampstand of pure gold and hammer it out… 34 And on the lampstand there are to be four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms.
Now Cherubim are heavenly beings and almond flowers are something that are found upon the earth.
Now given that God tells Moses to make these representations of things in heaven and on earth, we can see that the command is not meant to prohibit the making of representations of things in heaven or on earth that are artistic in nature.
The command reads, "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; (Exodus 20:4-5)
The command is about not making an idol used to worship God.
We see the Apostle John repeat this command for Christians as well.
1 John 5:21
21 Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
So What is an Idol?
An Idol represents God and is used to worship Him
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Now , it is in the first command that God prohibited having any other ‘god’ that we worshiped.
So the second command doesn’t so much prohibit making idols to false gods; that has already been prohibited by the first commandment.
In the second commandment God is saying don’t make an idol that represents Me, the one true God, to help you worship Me.
Why is that?
Why does God not want us to make an idol to help us in our worship of Him?
Slide
You would think that anything that helps us worship God would be ok.
Well, we will find that what we think will be helpful and what actually is, are 2 different things.
One reason that God does not want us to make idols to worship Him is that
An Idol limits our understanding of God
When we create an idol to represent God, we do that out of our own understanding and once we have that idol, we have limited God in our mind to the understanding we had when we made or created the idol.
Once we do that we have begun on a road of limiting the truth of who God is.
I want you to listen to what Paul says in Romans about how people who limit and suppress the truth about God, are limiting their ability to understand God better through the ways He has made for us to understand Him.
He says in
Romans 1:18-23
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
The people began allowing their own understanding of God to over rule the truth about God and they created idols and images that cemented that limited understanding of God so they ended up worshiping false gods.
It is through the things that God has created in this world that He has displayed his glory. When we look at the vastness of this universe and gain a glimpse of the truth of God’s greatness, we grow in our understanding of His eternal power and His divine nature.
Listen to what the psalmist writes.
Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Don’t make things yourself to seek to understand God. Look upon the things He has made and we will continually be growing in our understanding.
Illustration
I was just on a cruise with my family on our vacation.
God’s creation is an amazing thing.
There were days that you would look out in any direction and see no land. You could see for miles and miles and get a small glimpse of how huge our creation is.
When we see the things God has provided for us, no matter how long you have been walking with God, you grow a little more in your understanding of God and his greatness and power.
When we make something ourselves, and our eyes are upon this thing we have made, we miss out on the things that God has given us to be able to see Him better and worship him truly.
He is beyond being completely understood
When we make something to represent God, we are seeking to fit God into our own limited understanding, instead of recognizing His awesomeness and the fact that He is beyond completely understanding.
Isaiah reminds us that God is so much superior to us and His ways are higher than ours that we will never be able to intellectually grasp or handle the true God.
Isaiah 55:8-9
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
An Idol limits our understanding of God because we make an idol out of our own limited understanding.
Not only does an idol limit our understanding, but
An Idol limits our Reverence for God
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It is pretty cool that as you read the Bible more and more, you find that it provides its own interpretation of itself.
I want to read you a section in Deuteronomy 4. This is a great commentary on the second commandment and one of the reasons why we should Make No idols.
Deuteronomy 4:10-18
10 Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, "Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me … 11 You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. 12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. 13 He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, … 15 You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, 17 or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, 18 or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below.
God says I had you assemble before me where you saw no form but you did see my awesome glory, fire that blazed to the very heavens and deep darkness and you heard my voice. I spoke to you out of my fearsome and awesome glory.
This was to help you learn to revere me or fear me.
So don’t create an idol to represent me or it will limit your reverence of me.
That is because when we can create an idol of the Lord in the form of something that He has created, we limit his awesomeness and He is not as awesome or fearsome.
When we do that, we end up domesticating God. We make Him into something we can handle viewing and speaking with and even controlling.
Once we do that, we start viewing the things that He wants us to do as just another option among many, and perhaps as not always even the best option.
Making an idol will limit our reverence for God.
Ultimately,
An Idol limits our worship of God
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It is ironic that something that someone would make to help them worship God, is actually something that ends up limiting our worship of God.
God is a God who will never be completely understood.
God is a God whose awesomeness and glory should provoke a healthy fear within us, so that as we begin to worship Him, we are worshiping the true God, and not some image of a god, some false god of our own making.
That is what happens when we create idols to ‘help’ us worship.
A golden calf
As Moses was still receiving the Law from God, from Israel’s standpoint, it was taking a long time, over a month, so look at how they took things into their own hands in their own understanding.
Exodus 32:1-6
32:1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him."
2 Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me." 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD." 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
Even as they thought that what they were doing was going to be a help to them in worshiping the true God, the idols they made lead them to worship false gods which are no gods at all and it led them astray to commit more sins.
Their worship of God was limited by their creation of an idol.
God wants us to worship Him and to draw us close in reverent fear so that we can be awed as He grows us in our understanding through
the things HE has created and
the ways HE has made
so that we can worship Him in Spirit and in truth.
That is how He wants us to worship Him.
Transition
Ok, so making idols to ‘help’ us worship God doesn’t help us worship Him, but actually hinders us from worshiping Him by limiting our understanding and our reverence for Him.
Well, this is no problem for me, because I haven’t created any idols of gold or in the shape of created things for helping me worship God.
Today, while we don’t make idols made of metal, we do make Mental idols that come in the image of Ourselves
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What happens often in the crafting of these idols in our minds is we take a truth about God and we filter it through the idol we have created, (an idol that looks just like me or you) and out comes how that truth about God is applied in the world.
God is love
For instance, we will take the truth that God is a God of love, which is true.
God is a God of love.
But then we filter that through our own understanding and reasoning.
“If God is a God of love, then there is no way that He would allow people to go to Hell.”
Therefore everyone goes to heaven.
Well, since everyone goes to heaven anyway, I might as well do what I want here and pursue pleasure. God is a God of love and forgiveness and while we are here on this earth, we might as well eat, drink and be merry, right?
It is because we create idols of God in our image, limited by our own understanding, that we get led astray in our living and we don’t worship the true God.
The reality is, is that God is a God of love. And because of His great love, He sent His one and only Son to pay for the sins of mankind.
And because God is not only a God of love, He is a God who is holy and just and because He is holy and just, He is not able to let sins go unatoned for.
Love does not mean no difficulties
It is our limited understanding that makes us think that love means no hardship or difficulties in life.
Love does not mean that things are always going to be easy for those who are loved.
Raising kids
When we raise our kids, it is not truly loving to give them everything they want and make life too easy for them.
When we do that, we create brats who are self centered instead of mature, growing adults who are able to lead a full and productive life.
God loves us too much to let us go through life without hardship because He wants us to grow and be mature and able to live life to the full as we worship Him in spirit and truth, growing in our understanding of Him and His love and holiness through the things He has created and through our reverence for His awesomeness.
We need to smash the mental idols we create in our minds that look like ourselves and act like we do and instead let God challenge us in our understanding and grow us in our understanding.
We need to recognize that there are hard things in this world that we will not fully be able to understand, but allow God to grow us in our understanding as we don’t try to fit Him into an image that we have little reverence for that will hinder our ability to worship Him.
Not only do idols not help us understand, revere or worship God. There is another reason and I think the ultimate reason that God did not want Israel making Idols. And that is because He was preparing them for the day when He would send the perfect image that would represent Him and help us worship Him.
Jesus is the Image that represents God perfectly and helps us worship God in Spirit and Truth
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Colossians 1:15-16, 19
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. …. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
Hebrews 1:3
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
It is the Son of God, who came and put on flesh and took the name Jesus, and lived the perfect godly life, and sacrificed Himself to make atonement for our sins.
Jesus perfectly lives out God’s love.
Jesus perfectly manifests God’s holiness and justice and mercy and grace.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
It is Jesus who helps us grow in our understanding of God
and bring glory to God
Listen to what Peter tells us in
2 Peter 1:2-4
2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
We glorify and worship the Lord with our life as we grow in our relationship with Jesus and our knowledge and understanding of the Lord.
Knowing and focusing on Jesus helps us worship the Lord through His Spirit and in truth for Jesus is truth.
It is Jesus who can help us grow in our reverence for God.
When we recognize our sinfulness and who Jesus is, it helps us to revere God.
When Peter saw Jesus display God’s glory and mercy and grace in enabling Peter and James and John to catch a huge amount of fish, it helped Peter to recognize His sinfulness and his lack of worth of God’s mercy and it caused Him to revere God more.
Luke 5:8
8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!"
It is Jesus who helps us worship God in Spirit and in Truth
When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, He told her
John 4:21-26
21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. … 23 a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Jesus is the Messiah.
Jesus helps us grow in understanding because
He is the exact representation of His being.
He is the radiance of God’s glory
He is the image of the invisible God
Jesus is the One we can worship in Spirit and truth.
We need to smash every idol, destroy our mental images of God and focus our eyes upon Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.
It is through Jesus that we not only receive salvation, but
it is through Jesus that we worship God to His glory, by the way He has made.
If you have images of God apart from the image of His Son,
images of how God should act,
images of what God should do,
images of an idol made in your image and not His,
then I challenge you this morning to
turn to the only One who can help us understand, revere and worship God, Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray and ask God to help us keep our eyes upon His Son that we will Make no Idols of our own choosing, but will only look to Jesus, the Son of God and the image of His choosing to represent Him and the radiance of His glory.
Pray.
Let’s stand and worship Him in Spirit and in Truth through Jesus as we sing Be Glorified.
