David Hand, in his book The Improbability Principle, describes natives of the South West Pacific island, who had very little, if any, contact with the modern world and its many technological advances. During World War 2, they were mesmerized by Japanese and later Allied soldier's uniforms, their marching in perfect order, the construction of airstrips, and the hand gestures in directing the landing of incredible flying ships bringing all kinds of exotic goods. The Japanese and later the Allied soldiers shared some of their “cargo” with the natives – Coca Cola, canned food, clothes, basic medicine, and other assorted desirable yet unfamiliar common items.
When the war ended, the mysterious visitors left for good. The natives were disappointed, but they believed the planes would return if they would mimic the actions of their heavenly visitors. Then they could get more fascinating gifts and healing medicines.
So the South West Pacific island natives built a control tower out of rope and bamboo, a runway out of straw, and made “clothes” resembling the military uniforms they observed. They carved and wore simple wooden headsets and exactly mimicked the landing hand-gestures on their airstrip.
These patterns of beliefs and rituals have become known as “Cargo Cults.” The faithful believe if they simply follow the pattern and motions of their technologically superior visitors, they will get the same results. (David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle, Scientific American / Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014, page 17; www.PreachingToday.com)
We laugh at that idea, but it’s really no different than when people go through the motions of religious activity, expecting God to show up with His gifts. All too often, people substitute religion for a real relationship with the real God. It’s so easy to do, and It is something the Second Commandment warns us about.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Exodus 20, Exodus 20, where we have the Second Commandment, which shows us how to keep our relationship with God real.
Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (ESV)
If you want to maintain a real relationship with the real God, then…
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.
Do not replace God for things you think look like God. Do not create images in your mind, or otherwise, that attempt to represent God.
The word “idol” in the Hebrew is literally a “carved image.” In Bible days, people didn’t take photographs, but they would often carve images of people and things in wood or stone. Well, God says, “Don’t carve any images of Me. Don’t make any pictures of Me.”
Why? Because no one has seen God at any time. No one knows what God looks like. No one has God all figured out.
Rob Bell once said, “The moment God is figured out with nice, neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
God is not like anything in ALL of his creation. He is not like anything in heaven. He is not like anything on earth, and He is not like anything in the sea. God is holy! That means He is wholly other, and there is nothing in all of creation to which we would even dare compare Him, so we shouldn’t even try.
If you want to keep our love for the Lord strong, then accept no substitutes for the real God Himself.
Dave Davila was part of a very close-knit family in East Moline, Illinois. Then at age 24, he left his family to take a job in Chicago. Family gatherings just weren't the same without Dave. So his mother took a digital photo of him, had it blown up to his actual height – 5 foot 8 inches – and mounted it on heavy cardboard.
They call this life-size picture “Flat Dave,” and there he causally stands, with hands in his pockets and a blue button-down shirt hanging untucked over his khaki shorts.
At first, Flat Dave just showed up and stood quietly by at family gatherings. Then word spread throughout the community, and he became something of a celebrity in East Moline. “Complete strangers want to pose with him,” says his brother Dan. He also says, “I think Flat Dave's actually better looking.”
Sometimes that makes things awkward for the real Dave – the one the family now calls “Thick Dave.” He describes being in Chicago talking to his mom on the phone when she says, “Hold on, I've got to load you into the van.” “It's a little weird,” he says. (Rex W. Huppke, “Meet Flat Dave. He's a Real Stand-Up Guy,” Chicago Tribune, July 2, 2006; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s what happens when you make substitutes for God Himself. At best, it is awkward and weird. At worst, it is absolutely destructive to any real relationship to the real God. In fact, it is destructive to ALL your relationships.
And yet, it is so easy to do. Before you know it, you find yourself substituting religious activity for a real relationship with the real God. For those of us who work in the church, we must be careful that our work FOR the Lord doesn’t replace our relationship WITH the Lord Himself.
Some people substitute drugs and alcohol for God, looking for relief and rest from their pain that only God can bring. Others drown themselves in their work, their relationships, or their money, all of which are good things; but when they become substitutes for God, they create more problems than they ever solve.
Whatever the temptation, be careful not to accept any substitutes for God Himself. Be careful not let anything in all His creation take His place in your heart and life. Instead…
EMBRACE HIS PASSION FOR YOU.
Accept his zeal to be close to you. You see, God is passionately committed to a relationship with you and me.
Exodus 20:4-5a “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God… (ESV)
The Hebrew word for jealous denotes strong emotion and zeal. Zeal for someone else’s property is often translated “envy.” Zeal for one’s own mate is often translated “jealousy.”
When you pursue images of God, rather than God Himself, God feels like a jealous husband, whose wife has gone after other lovers. In other words, God is zealously and passionately in love with each one of us.
Paul Copan put it this way in his book, Is God a Moral Monster. He says:
The Bible frequently describes God as a jealous lover especially when we're rummaging around the garbage piles of life and avoiding the source of satisfaction. It’s like the comic strip where a dog had been drinking out of a toilet bowl. With water dripping from his snout, Fido looks up as if to say, “It doesn't get any better than this!” Instead of enjoying fresh spring water, we look for stagnant, crummy substitutes that inevitably fail us.
Copan goes on to comment:
A wife who doesn't get jealous and angry when another woman is flirting with her husband isn't really committed to the marriage relationship… Outrage, pain, anguish – these are the appropriate responses to such deep violation. God isn't some abstract entity or impersonal principle… We should be amazed that the Creator of the universe would so deeply connect himself to human beings that he would open himself to sorrow and anguish in the face of human rejection and betrayal. (Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? BakerBooks, 2011, p. 35; www.PreachingToday.com)
Our God is a jealous God in THAT sense. That means He passionately desires a real relationship with you, and it absolutely breaks His heart when you choose to pursue other lovers, other substitutes that will fail you in the end.
Please, don’t do it! Instead, embrace His passion for you. Hold on to that jealous love God has for you, and accept no substitutes for a real relationship with the real God. For if you do, then you will…
EXPERIENCE HIS PROTECTION.
You will keep your family from the harmful effects of sin. You will guard them from destructive behaviors which could plague them for 3 or 4 generations.
Exodus 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me… (ESV)
It almost sounds like God punishes children for their parents’ sins, but that’s not the meaning of the word “visiting.” The Hebrew word for visiting literally means to “oversee” or to “take note” of something. So what God sees or takes not of is that the sins of the fathers are passed on to the children to the third and fourth generations. And you can bet there is no joy in His heart as He watches this happen time and time again with families.
The sad thing about sin is that it not only negatively affects you. It negatively affects your children, your grandchildren, and even your great-grandchildren.
For example, alcoholism is a curse, which affects many families for generations! Many young people are ensnared in its shackles, which also ensnared their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. If that’s a problem for you, please get help, if only for the sake of your children and grandchildren. Sin is pernicious, harming families for generations!
Philip Yancey talks about a friend of his whose marriage has gone through some rough times. His name is George, and one night George passed a breaking point and exploded. He pounded the table and floor. “I hate you!” he screamed at his wife. “I won't take it anymore! I've had enough! I won't go on! I won't let it happen! No! No! No!”
Several months later George woke up in the middle of the night and heard strange sounds coming from the room where his 2-year-old son slept. He went down the hall, stood outside his son's door, and shivers ran through his flesh. In a soft voice, the 2-year-old was repeating word for word, with precise inflection, what his daddy had screamed at his mommy months earlier. “I hate you… I won't take it anymore… No! No! No!”
George realized that in some awful way he had just passed on his pain and anger and unforgiveness to the next generation. Philip Yancey comments, “Apart from forgiveness, the monstrous past may awake at any time from hibernation and devour the present – and even the future.” (Philip Yancey, “Holocaust & Ethnic Cleansing,” Christianity Today, August 16, 1993; www.PreachingToday.com)
Please, don’t let it happen to you and your family. You don’t have to be a victim any longer. With God’s help, you can break the generational curse of sin on your family. Just love the Lord your God with all your heart, and accept no substitutes for a real relationship with the real God – not drugs, not alcohol, not work, not religious activity, not anything!
Embrace God’s passion for you, and experience His protection for your family. Then…
ENJOY HIS PROMISES FULFILLED for a thousand generations to come.
Benefit from God’s loyal and faithful love, which lasts forever!
Exodus 20:6 But showing steadfast love to thousands [i.e., to a thousand generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
God demonstrates steadfast love (the Hebrew word is hesed) to those who love Him. The word for God’s love here is rich in meaning. It speaks of a God who keeps his promises to us. It speaks of a God who is faithful and loyal to us, not because He HAS to be, but because He WANTS to be. He is faithful and keeps His promises to us, not out of obligation or duty, but freely, because He really does delight in us.
Again, I remind you that God is passionate about a relationship with you. And for those of you who choose to enter into a relationship with Him, you find that He remains fiercely loyal to you and your family for a thousand generations. My friends, that’s nearly 40,000 years! Thank God that the effects of sin last only for 3 or 4 generations, but the demonstrations of God’s love last for a thousand!
That is what happened to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. When they chose to enter into a relationship with God, through faith, God promised to bless them and their descendants forever!
Even when God had do discipline the children of Israel for their rebellion and idolatry, even when God had to send them into captivity in Babylon for their refusal to repent, even when God had to scatter them among the nations for their rejection of His Son, His love still pursued a relationship with them. In fact, God is still pursuing a relationship with the children of Israel, more than 4,000 years after He made his original promise to Abraham.
Jeremiah 31 says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
You see, God will never give up on His people!
Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name: “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” Thus says the LORD: “If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:35-37).
God is going to continue passionately pursuing His people until the sun ceases to shine and the vast regions of space are explored. And what’s true of the children of Israel, is also true of you and me who choose to enter into a real relationship with the real God. He will never stop loving you no matter what!
So I urge you: accept no substitutes for a real relationship with the real God. Instead, embrace His passion for you, so you can experience His protection and enjoy His promises fulfilled for a thousand generations to come.
Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I'm running away.”
“If you run away,” said the mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”
“If you run after me,” said the little bunny, “I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.”
“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother, “I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”
“If you become a fisherman,” said the little bunny, “I will be a bird and fly away from you.”
“If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said the mother, “I will be a tree that you can come home to.”
“Shucks,” said the little bunny. “I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.” And so he did.
“Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny. (Margaret Wise Brown, The Runaway Bunny, 1942)
God says the same thing to you: No matter where you go, I will pursue you to the ends of the earth. So you might as well stay and be His forever. If you haven’t already done it, I urge you: trust Christ as your Savior from sin. By faith, enter into a real relationship with the real God, and put away whatever it is that has become a substitute for Him in your life.
