Series: The Big 10
(based on a series by James Merritt)
“AUTHENTIC WORSHIP”
EXODUS 20:4-6
OPEN
We continue on today in our series of messages on the 10 Commandments called “The Big 10.” As we begin, I want to ask you: What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say the word, “idol?” Perhaps it’s an image similar to these: (5 images of idols).
The second commandment deals with idols. What is an idol? How do we know when we’re worshiping an idol instead of the one true God? If we find we’ve been worshiping an idol or idols, how do we get back on track to worshiping Jehovah God? We’re going to answer those questions today as we look at authentic worship.
Ex. 20:4-6 – "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.
The second commandment has an unusual history. Roman Catholics and Lutherans don’t see it as a separate commandment but rather an extension of the first. In order to keep the number of commandments at 10, they divide the 10th commandment in half. Number nine becomes “you shall not covet your neighbor’s house” and number ten is “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.”
A large majority of church members in the 21st century might consider this the easiest commandment to keep because how many of us actually have an idol made of metal, wood or stone displayed in our homes and bow down to worship it before we leave for work?
The second commandment deals primarily not with the worship of idols but with worshiping any image created to represent the one true God. Commandment number one is about who we worship and number two about how we worship.
Our word “idol” comes from a Greek word that has as its root the meaning of “to see.” When you look at its usage in both the Old and New Testaments, the word idol has at its essence the meaning “the way I see things.” The problem with our human nature is that we rely on our sight.
Could it be that we’re guilty of breaking this commandment because we’ve substituted a lot of things for the grandeur of God? God cannot be accurately portrayed by any single image. God’s holiness and transcendence cannot be captured or represented in a single piece made by any human hand. God is saying, “No image you can construct, no matter how beautiful or majestic, can be true to my nature.”
IDOLATRY EXPLAINED
Acts 17:29 – “Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill.” Augustine defined idolatry as worshiping anything that ought to be used and using anything that ought to be worshiped. Idolatry is an attempt to represent a supernatural God in a natural way. It’s representing a spiritual God in a material way. It’s a lot easier to worship a small god you can see than to worship a big God you can’t see.
When you worship God with an image or picture, it’s like having a picture of your family and loving the picture instead of your family. It’s like spending time with the picture instead of family. You’d be prioritizing the picture above your family.
In scripture, we read about how God mocked the idols that people bowed down to and worshiped.
Is. 44:14-17 – “He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. 15 It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. 16 Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire." 17 From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, ‘Save me; you are my god.’”
Ps. 115:4-8 – But their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. 5 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; 6 they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; 7 they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats. 8 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.
How different is our God than an idol made of wood or stone. Ex. 20:1-2 – 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.” God says, “I saw your plight, I heard your cries for help, and I came to deliver you.” He sees, he hears, he feels, and he delivers.
At the end of Moses’ life, the children of Israel stood near the entrance to the Promised Land. Following their 40 years of wandering because of their sin and rebellion, Moses recites the commandments that God gave to his people decades before. He also gives a little more detail in the transmission of this particular commandment.
Deut. 4:12-19 – 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, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. 14 And the LORD directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. 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. 19 And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars--all the heavenly array--do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.
Our God is the living God who speaks his will to our ears and our hearts. We worship God not by fawning over statues but hearing and heeding his word. You didn’t see a form but you did hear a voice. The Bible is God’s voice speaking to us today. Let us hear it and heed it.
IDOLATRY EXPOSED
A little boy is sitting on the floor in his Sunday school class furiously drawing something on a sheet of paper. The Sunday school teacher asks the boy, “What are you drawing there?
The boy replies, “A picture of God.” The teacher chuckles and asks, “ How can you do that when no one knows what God looks like?” While still drawing and without looking up, the boy said, “They will when I’m done.”
Remember what the second command is all about. It’s about worshiping the right God in the right way. We have trouble with that. We want to make God into something that meets our vision of God; our view of God. Because of that, we end up worshiping wrong images of God.
Here are some wrong images in our minds and hearts.
1. The Man Upstairs god. You hear an interview with an athlete and the commentator says, “Great play! Great move!” The athlete responds with, “Yeah. The ‘man upstairs’ helped me.” God isn’t the man who lives upstairs. He’s not someone whop just lives one floor above us. If that’s how we see him then we’re saying that God is not that big of a deal.
2. Uncle Sam god – This god’s motto is, “America – love it or leave it.” He endorses anything the USA wants to do, buy, sell or fight.
People who view God this way believe that if you’re a good Christian, you’re a good American. Worshiping this god means that your values and actions are determined by your concept of nationalism and reputation of country instead of purity and justice. There is nothing wrong with patriotism. Just don’t make your patriotism your image of God
3. Santa Claus god. Santa Claus god is basically a heavenly ATM. Just pop in your Christian card and he will give you a mansion, a Mercedes, a Rolex, fancy clothes and jewelry because he wants all his kids to be filthy rich
4. Doctor god. Doctor god wants everyone to be well. Nobody ever has to be sick. Dr. God says that if you’re sick, it’s your own entire fault. It’s something that you’ve done wrong. He wants everybody well.
5. Lovey-Dovey god. This is probably the most popular conception of god in our nation today. Lovey-dovey god never sends anyone to hell. He doesn’t care whether you believe in Jesus or not. One way to god is as good as another. He doesn’t care if you’ve trusted in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ for your sins. He doesn’t care if you believe if the Bible is word of god or not. He doesn’t care whether you obey him or not because he’s Lovey-Dovey god . Lovey-Dovey god is going to take everyone to heaven.
The problem with all these gods is that there is nothing in any of them with which you can compare the one true God. Any false image of God makes the Infinite God, finite; the Invisible God, visible; the Omnipotent God, impotent, the Ever-present God, local; the Eternal God, temporal; the Heavenly God, earthly, the living God, dead; the Spiritual God, material. It is impossible for us to rise above the object of our devotion.
Jesus faced people who tried to change him into their concept of the Messiah. When he told the disciples that instead of reigning as an earthly king over a physical Israel, the Messiah would be crucified, Peter rebuked him.
Mk. 8:31-33 – He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”
We are constantly tempted to worship something that is less than God and in the process we become less of a person than God designed us to be. What we’re doing is reducing God to a manageable size. If I can keep God in my pocket I can manage that. There’s a certain amount of control there.
Eph. 4:6 – [There is] One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
There’s nothing small about that. There’s nothing about that God that I can control.
IDOLATRY EXCHANGED
1800 years after God gave this second commandment, the apostle John would write in1 Jn. 5:21 – Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. There are two prohibitions in this second commandment: don’t make any images and don’t bow down to any images. What do those prohibitions mean?
The term “don’t make” literally means “don’t carve.” It contains the idea of fashioning something out of earthly materials to represent God. God is specific, He rules out everything – everything that swim, flies, crawls or walks – nothing in the sky, on the earth and under the waters. Nothing should represent the Creator that is a part of his creation.
Does that mean we shouldn’t do anything artistic with paints, wood or stone? In scripture, religious art was permitted. It was abundant in the tabernacle and the temple. Art is one thing. Idolatry is another.
Here’s the thing: images are powerful things. Some pictures are indelibly marked in your brain. (Images on screen: D Day, kiss in Times Square, JFK’s assassination, landing on the moon, World Trade Center 9-11)
Why would God give us this command? God’s nature is uncreated, unmatched spirit. It’s impossible to limit him to any two- or three-dimensional form of any kind. God is not like anything we have ever experienced in any physical sense. His nature is even beyond our imagination.
Why shouldn’t we try to develop images of God that we can worship? Reason #1 is that it lessens God. God knows if we try to create an image, it cheapens his grandeur. A picture is never the same as experiencing the landmark. (Mt. Rushmore, Golden Gate Bridge, Grand Canyon). You can’t truly appreciate something you haven’t experienced. You can see pictures of Mt. Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Grand Canyon but it’s a whole different thing to experience them in person. What God is saying here is that he is more than meets the eye.
Reason #2 is because it limits God in some form or fashion. The Bible describes God the same yesterday, today, and forever; the Ancient of Days; Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, God of the ages, all-sustaining and totally self-sustaining, sovereign and without equal.
Is. 55:8-9 – [God says] “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.”
How do you take a limitless God and reduce him to a limited image without destroying his greatness? Any image we make of God limits him and he has no limits.
Reason #3 is because it localizes God. Any time you have a statue of God, the natural conclusion is that when you’re near the statue, God is present and when you’re far away from the statue God is absent. We tend to treat church buildings in a similar manner. We think when I’m in the church building God is near but when I leave the church building then God is far away. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Ps. 139:7-10 – Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
God isn’t local. He’s not limited to a particular place or time. God is not limited by space. He is everywhere at all times.
Reason #4 is because it reduces God to a particular time or culture. Here’s a popular image of God: an old man in white robes with a beard floating in the clouds. I think some of that stems from Michelangelo’s depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel. For some reason this image of God is very Caucasian. God is not the Caucasian God. He is the God of all peoples.
Every year the US Postal Service offers a Christmas stamp with one of the classic pieces of art from history – Mother Mary with the infant Jesus. Does she resemble a young woman from the Middle East? She looks more like a Caucasian woman from the Renaissance period in Europe. These images tend to bring God down to a time and place much like old carpet and outdated colors in a house.
There are dozens of Jesus dolls, action figures and bobble heads. Nothing demeans the magnitude of the Christ like a repulsive nodding head that moves all the time.
So, should I worry the next time I see a picture of God or Jesus? Should I turn my head away or gouge my eyes out? Of course not!
The majesty of the Sistine Chapel artwork by Michelangelo was created as a work of worship to relay the glory and majesty of God. Pictures are used in Sunday school classes to
teach the stories of Jesus. These are simply tools to communicate the Gospel.
In the church where I grew up, there was a beautiful stained glass window that sat right over the baptistery. It resembled this picture. (Show picture). It came from the congregation’s first building and was set in the wall behind the second building’s baptistery with artificial lighting. Every time you walked into the worship auditorium, your eyes went right to that image.
The image is probably not what Jesus really looked like. It simply drew our minds to Christ. I knew when I walked into that building that whatever happened there was about Jesus. I’m pleased that they’ve moved it to the new building and it’s prominent in the welcome area.
All of these things are tools. They draw us to the greatest story ever told. They’re like memorials to the events of biblical history. God gave us a lot of memorials,
We know as Americans how powerful memorials can be. Here’s the Iwo Jima memorial. It
draws our attention to the price paid for a tiny strip of land in the South Pacific. All those who died at that particular time are memorialized every time we see it.
God did the same thing for us because he knew we did well with pictures. He gave this memorial of the Ten Commandments at the base of Mt. Sinai, the Passover meal and dozens of others.
To us he’s given baptism which memorializes the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He gave us the celebration of the Lord’s Supper that reminds us of the death and suffering of Jesus Christ.
But here’s the problem: if we become more enamored with the memorial than the God of the memorial, we are in danger of breaking this commandment. But if God has given us the memorial, if God has ordained beautiful artworks to point us to our memory then we should use them as tools to direct our hearts toward God.
The first prohibition was “don’t make.” The second prohibition was “don’t bow.” That term “bow’ in the original language literally means “to show respect for.” Authentic worship means that we show the deepest respect to God and for God.
There’s a temple in Kyoto, Japan called The Temple of the Thousand Buddhas. Inside are 1,000 statues of Buddha, each one slightly different than any of the others in the temple so that the worshiper can go in, find an image of Buddha that looks most like himself, and worship that one.
I’m not at liberty to recreate God in my image and worship only those aspects about him that I find pleasing. I can’t discard the image of him as ultimate judge because it’s not a warm and fuzzy experience to me.
I’ve got to let God be God. He is who he is in all of his splendor and glory. It’s not a smorgasbord. I can’t pick and choose what I want him to be. I have to worship him in all of his glory, splendor and nature.
Here are some photos of people for you to look at. (4 photos) It might surprise you to find that they are all photos of men named “Michael Luke.”
Some of them look reasonably intelligent. You might even like some of those guys better than you like me. You might think they’re better looking or more intelligent but don’t substitute them for me. I don’t want them filling any of the areas of my life.
You wouldn’t want someone to do that to you and God doesn’t want you to do it to him. You who you are and God is who he is. You accept him as that. How offended do you think God is when we create him in our image and we worship what we think he should be instead of who he is?
We need to exchange our wrong concept of worshiping gods created in our image into authentic worship of our glorious, majestic and holy God – the only true God. Our worship fails to be authentic when we fail to give God the credit that is due him.
Why do we try to shape God into our image? Because we think it’s easier than being shaped into his. Idolatry is just a subtle form of self-worship
God says something very interesting at the end of this commandment. Ex. 20:5b-6 – “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.”
God – jealous? The Bible speaks multiple times about Jehovah God being a jealous God. There are people who would point to those passages and say, “I knew God had a flaw! Who wants a jealous God?!?”
The meaning here is more along the concept of zealous – that God is zealous; passionate to protect his character and nature so that people can respond to him in complete truth with no misleading, partial or hidden truths.
There is both a curse and a blessing with this commandment. The curse is that the sins of the father would be passed along to the third and fourth generations following. And we immediately say, “Wait a minute! What kind of god is this?” We read it as if he is a sadistic god sitting on cloud in heaven heaving lightning bolts at us for something our great- grandfather did.
We have to see this curse in its historical setting. In Bible times, it wasn’t unusual for four generations to live together in the same household and therefore have greater opportunity to influence and affect one another.
God doesn’t punish the children and grandchildren because of someone else’s sins but the sad consequences of ancestral sin can be passed from generation to generation. Children and grandchildren can suffer for what their parents and grandparents have done.
This curse is not so much about God’s punishment as it is about human nature. If you grow up in a family where you were abused, odds are greater that you will be a child abuser than not one. A child of an alcoholic or a drug addict has a greater chance of becoming an alcoholic or drug addict themselves. It’s not because God is punishing you. It’s simply how human nature works.
But take heart! It doesn’t matter what situation you’ve grown up in, God can make you into the person he wants you to be if you’ll just let him transform you by the power of faith in his
Son and the work of the Holy Spirit within you.
Take note: the blessing is 250 times greater than the curse. That’s how God works. If you’ll follow his plan, then there will be many more blessings than there could ever be curses.
God’s plan says, first, “Put me first,” followed by “worship me for who I am.”
It all boils down to focus – it’s authentic commitment and authentic worship. When God is first, everything else falls into place
CLOSE
When we think of God, what image should come to mind? Jesus. He is the only image we should worship. I don’t mean a statue of Jesus or a representation of Jesus. I’m talking about the Jesus of Scripture.
Col. 1:15 – He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Jesus wasn’t made after the image of God or even in the image of God. He is the image of God
Jn. 14:8-9 – Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
We don’t know what Jesus actually looked like. It’s not how he looked physically. It’s that he manifested the divine personal nature of God.
God at Sinai gave us a voice. At Bethlehem, he gave us a face. We have God’s self-portrait. What other image do we need?
(based on materials by Tom Ellsworth, Rick Atchley, Jack Cottrell, and James Merritt)
