Last week we focused on the first commandment: “You Shall Have No Other gods Before Me.” Last week, we focused on the “what” of worship: You Shall Worship Only God Himself. This week, we focus on the “how” of worship: You Shall Worship God the Right Way.
The first commandment implicitly excludes all idolatry. Yet, what is implicit in the first commandment is explicit in the second commandment.
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. 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, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:4-6).
“Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16 beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17 the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, 18 the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. 19 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:15-19).
Idols belong in the magazine, National Geographic and in the movies of Indiana Jones, not to us. Americans are not into Buddha statues surrounded by flowers and incense. Every one of us has a battle raging within us over what we love most – God or something else. Idolatry is not the stuff found only in the pages of National Geographic magazine. Instead, idolatry occurs whenever we believe that true satisfaction can be found in anything other than Jesus Christ. Idols are all around us.
Can you spot them around you? Financial security. Hip clothes. Fame and reputation. Power and control.
1. Idols Are Built for Control
“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” (Exodus 20:4). The commandment is deliberately comprehensive: “heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” God, through Moses, goes way out of His way to communicate that He commands no idols. There are to be no idols whatsoever.
An idol can be the worship of other gods or the worship of the one true God by forming a physical idol of Him. God doesn’t say, “There shall be no art in my house” but “There shall be no image in my likeness.”
Idols were built for control. Let me show you how.
The words, “You shall not make…” strike some as odd or even offensive. By nature, we enjoy making things. Many of you enjoy making things. There is pleasure in building something. We make a house so we can live in it. We build a boat so we can sail it. Yet, we cannot make a god so we can worship it.
What’s wrong with an image of God? When you build a house, you have the means to control the house. When you build a boat, you have the ability to control when the boat sails and where the boat sails. When you create an image, whether by wood or by an image on the computer screen, you attempt to control God. You control what you build. One reason you might want to control your god is that idols are easier to manipulate than God. You control what you build because it’s easier.
Oftentimes, in ancient days they would provide food for their gods. The people's obligation to their god was to simply bring their god something to eat. They were to appease their gods. While feeding the idol was important; being holy was not. When God reveals the Ten Commandments, He tells us, “There is a certain way to live and there is a certain way not to live.” God cannot be controlled as an idol. He doesn’t want you to place food in front an image of Him and live any way you, please. He doesn’t want you to place money in the plate and be dishonest.
During the Old Testament, idols were placed all over the land of Israel. You’d find idols on hills and under trees (Deuteronomy 12:2; 1 Kings 14:23). Unlike the idols, God required that all of His people come together at one time and at one place. God required His people to come to one central location. This was inconvenient, as it required the sacrifice of your time and your money to worship God on the Sabbath. Idols removed the sacrifice of worship as you could worship wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted.
You control what you build because it’s more convenient. You control what you build because it’s easier. You don’t control God; God controls you. This also includes invoking God’s name as if you can manipulate Him via superstition. An image makes the incomprehensible God comprehensible. You are to never create an image to represent God. Why? “Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16 beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17 the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, 18 the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth” (Deuteronomy 4:15-18).
He is the God who is Heard but not seen. God is invisible by nature. God is spirit. So Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel would be violation of the Second Commandment.
Only God can make an image of Himself – “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). Only God can make an image of Himself – “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Again, He is a God who is Heard and not seen. When the Ten Commandments were given, God did not allow the people to see Him. He only allow them to hear Him. This is still in effect today: “…faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ…” (Romans 10:17). When we worship, we gather not around a picture; we gather around a Book. God hasn’t given us images to worship but a Book to read. When someone says, “We need an image for the people cannot read…” Then we are to teach them to read. God has divinely chosen to communicate through the written word not the image.
We are idol factories. We manufacture idols like we are assembly lines at a factory.
Seven Questions to Identify Your Idol
1) What do you enjoy the most? 2)What do you spend the most time doing? 3) Where does your mind drift when you don’t have anything to do? 4) What do you spend your money on? 5) What makes you angry when you don’t get it? 6) What is it that causes you depression when you must do without? 7) What do you fear losing the most?
2. Idols are Needy
When the Apostle Paul visited ancient Athens, he went to a place the Athenians called the Areopagus. The Areopagus was the ancient world’s equivalent of today’s Oprah Winfrey Show (Acts 17:21). When Paul arrived, he told them about his observations from his brief tour of their city, Athens. He mentions the altar set aside to an “unknown god.” He takes this “unknown god” of theirs as an opportunity to communicate the truth of the One Known God. While the citizens of Athens were religious, they worshipped the wrong God and they worshipped idols. Their gods needed them. Yet, the God of heaven needs no one or no thing: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25).
Much of idolatry was geared toward feeding the gods something they either wanted or needed. When a person gave the god something it needed, then the god would be obligated to give them something they wanted or needed. This was quid pro quo. Nothing like having God obligated to you.
The number one idol that competes for God’s affections in your life is you. You are your best and first idol. You are more loyal to yourself than anyone or anything else. Many of you are Christians who want to be used of God, but there is one desire that is powerful for all of us than His fame. And that’s applause. Admiration.
God’s fame and your pride are in a death battle. The start of worship isn’t the songs we sing, it’s about who and what we love the most. Your idol is needy. It always requires your constant attention and it pulls you from God.
3. Idols are Influential
“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, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments”
(Exodus 20:5-6).
Not only does God give us this command – no idols whatsoever – but He also includes an explanation. The explanation tells us the seriousness of this command. This explanation shows God’s seriousness when it comes to idolatry. It also shows something of God’s character. The Bible says God is jealous. But this is not one-sided jealousy. God is both jealous to avenge those who are disloyal to Him. And He is jealous to bless those who are loyal to Him. His zeal is equal on both sides. Much like your spouse, God is jealous you remain loyal to Him. No wonder, God used the prophet Hosea to illustrate what worship is. When Hosea’s wife was unfaithful to her husband, God said, “Your worship of other gods is like Hosea’s wife.”
When speaking of idolatry, the Bible speaking mentions “fathers” and “children.” God is not saying He will punish innocent sons for the sins of their fathers: “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16).
Allow me to tell you the story of three generations. Three generations – three men from the pages of the Scripture, who are not well-known in our day. Once upon a time, there lived a great king named Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26:1-5). He became king when many of you first learn to drive, age sixteen. Uzziah ruled for fifty-two years. He was a good and godly man as he sought to please God. But one day Uzziah was filled with pride. He entered the Temple to burn incense; only it wasn’t his job to burn incense – this responsibility belonged to the priests.
“Azariah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the Lord who were men of valor, 18 and they withstood King Uzziah and said to him, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God” (2 Chronicles 26:17-18).
No matter Azariah’s motive; he worshipped God in the wrong way. King Uzziah had attempted to worship God in the wrong way. When these eighty priests confronted him, he became angry. And in the midst of his anger, God struck Uzziah with the dreaded disease of leprosy in the middle of the Temple.
“And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. And Jotham his son was over the king's household, governing the people of the land” (2 Chronicles 26:21).
Here was a righteous king and godly father who ended his life with pride and anger and embarrassment. Then his son takes over – Jotham. Jotham became king at the age of twenty-five years old. He was a godly man as he reigned on the throne for sixteen years. Watch carefully as the Bible describes Jotham’s worship experience as follows: “…except he did not enter the temple of the Lord…” (2 Chronicles 27:2b). Perhaps the son said of his father, “Dad had trouble down at that church, and he quit going. I don’t see why I should go to church.” Perhaps Jotham said to his children, “Let’s go down to the lake today and have a picnic. Bring your Bibles along because we’re going to have Sunday school down by the lake. We don’t have to go to church to worship God.” Jotham was a good king but he deliberately chooses not to go to the house of God. We have a father with FALSE WORSHIP and a song with NEGLECTED WORSHIP.
Let’s see what becomes of the third generation: “And Jotham slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David, and Ahaz his son reigned in his place” (2 Chronicles 27:9). “What was Ahaz like?” you ask. “And Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God and cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God, and he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and he made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 28:24).
Can you believe that? Uzziah was a good and godly king but misused the house of God. His son Jotham loved God, but had no use for the house of God. His son Ahaz worshipped idols and nailed the doors shut to the Temple. This is the story of the three generations of kings. But the story isn’t over. That’s not all Ahaz did.
Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done, 2 but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, 3 and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel” (2 Chronicles 28:1-3)
According to Jewish rabbis, Molech was a hollow bronze statue in the form of a human with the head of an ox. Children were placed in an idol and it was heated from below. Drums were pounded to drown out the cries of the children. The grandson of good king Uzziah participated in human sacrifices in order to worship Baal! What a tragic picture of God’s warning in 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…” (Exodus 20:5).
Uzziah loved God but worshipped Him in the wrong way. Jotham loved God but had no use for the house of God. Ahaz hated the house of God and God Himself. Ahaz worshipped idols, nailed the doors of the Temple shut, and sacrificed his children to demons.
A Pastor and a Young Mother
A young mother asked her pastor, “When should I start training my child in the Bible? When is she old enough? Should I start around five?” Her pastor replied, “No, that’s too late.” The young mother responded, “Should I start when he is three years old?” Again her pastor replied, “No, that’s too late.” Somewhat startled, the young mother responded, “Should I start then when he is one year old?” Again her pastor replied, “No, that’s too late.” The young mother then asked, “Just when should I start?” “With his grandparents,” the pastor concluded.
Worship has the power to change you like no other activity you are involved in. Worship has the power to bless you.
