The Sin of Idolatry
Last week, elder Jermaine preached the first sermon in our new series dedicated to the Ten Commandments. His sermon dealt with the First Commandment in which God makes it clear that we are to have no other gods before OR even besides Him; and today, we’re going to take a close look at the second commandment. So open your Bibles with me to Exodus 20. I’m going to read the first commandment as well because it will be relevant to our message today.
Exodus 20:1 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.
As SDAs, we often hear how the Catholic Church has dropped this particular commandment which prohibits the making and worshipping of idols... But, did they literally remove this commandment from the official Catholic Bible? Is it nowhere to be found in their catechism? The answer may surprise you: it is actually found both in their Bibles and in their catechism. But where this commandment is obviously missing is in their summarized version of the Ten Commandments that is used for memorization.
Catholic Version of the Ten Commandments.
I am the Lord your God: You shall not have strange Gods before me.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
Honor your father and mother.
….and they split the last commandment about coveting and made it number 9 and 10..
So, where is the second commandment? The answer is that they believe that the commandment forbidding idol worship is merely an elaboration of the first which prohibits having “any other gods” before Yahweh. That’s why they don’t include it in their summarized commandment; they believe it falls under the heading, “you shall have no other gods before me.” Again, they didn’t actually delete verses 4-6 from the 20th chapter of Exodus from the official Catholic Bible; you can look it up, this inspired prohibition against idolatry is still there.
And, I’ll have to admit, if I were to look superficially at these precepts, without the aid of the rest of Scripture, I think it would sort of make sense that what we call the second commandment forbidding idolatry is merely an expansion of the first. But this is God’s Word, not to mention His Moral Law, and I’m not about to be content with merely a superficial reading of it; and we do have the rest of Scripture to help give us the proper context and perspective; That said, I’m pretty confident that we protestants do have the commandments numbered correctly; but personally, I don’t believe it really matters how we number the commandments, what matters is that we have an intellectual and spiritual understanding of what they are saying, and that we obey them.
That’s why we are doing this series—because we realize that God’s Moral Law is a transcript of His Character, and His will for my life and your life. And to understand and live in harmony with these holy precepts is, in a sense, to understand and live in harmony with God; as well as our fellow man.
I think I need to pause right here and remind us that, when it comes right down to it, as Jesus Himself said, there are really only two great commandments, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself…but in our sin-contaminated state, we can’t fully understand what love actually is, so God had to dumb it down for us..That’s why we ended up with ten Commandments rather than only two. And notice also, that the two greatest commandments are both positive in nature, not negative..
So let’s take a closer look at the second commandment of the Decalogue and see what it is and is not saying.
Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol ( heb:“peh-sel” which means “graven image shaped or fashioned ‘as a god’ or “representing a god.” ) 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....”
Once again, the Catholic Bible still contains this commandment, although they don’t consider it to be a separate commandment. And yet, it may as well have been cut out of their Bibles because they are neither teaching nor obeying it—in fact, they continually promote the breaking of this commandment...(statues of Mary, the saints, crucifixes, shrines, St. Christopher pendants, the whole rosary bead ritual)....Catholicism has always been and is still today full of idolatrous practices..
Illustration: Story in the news just this week about a nun, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster in Missouri who died 4 years ago and was exhumed in order to be moved to a new shrine of honor as she was the founder of that monastery.... They say her body hadn’t decomposed at all even though she was not embalmed and was buried in a simple wooden casket. This is called incorruptibility in Catholic circles and is said to attest to the holiness of the individual. Anyway, word got out, her body was put on display, and now thousands of people are flocking to that small town to see her, touch her hand and offer prayers, have their rosary beads touch the ones she still holds in her hand, and many visitors even take a small amount of the dirt from her grave home with them….
In Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome visiting worshippers have kissed and touched the feet of the bronze statue of Peter so many times, that it has literally worn off his toes! People are trekking thousands of miles from all over the world just to be near this idol and many other idols or relics—presumably, in order to receive some sort of healing or blessing from them. The church still insists that these statues, images, people, and even some pictures are merely used as “worship aids” or tangible objects through which they ultimately worship God...therefore they are not breaking the commandment that prohibits idolatry. But they most certainly are!
Exodus 32:1-6 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(Elohim), 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.”
The Israelites were so accustomed to the polytheistic idol worship they witnessed during their 400 years with the Egyptians, they felt the need to have a “tangible” god in front of them in order to focus their worship of the Living and True God.. (Hebrews 11:1 says “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see..”)
You may recall the bronze serpent made by Moses at the direction of God (Numbers 21). After the death of Moses the Israelites began burning incense to this bronze serpent and continued until it was finally destroyed by Hezekiah (2 Kings 18) The people very well may have considered themselves still worshipping the Lord, but even if they were sincere in that belief, they were still breaking the second commandment..
Sometimes the line between true worship and idolatry can become quite hard to see, depending on a person’s religious or ideological background.
I think most of us here today understand that we are not to have a little statue of Jesus set up in our living room with candles around it; we are clear that we should never bow down to or worship such an object. But, does the second commandment prohibit Christians from having crosses on our walls or pictures of an artist’s conception of Jesus in our homes? Well, if you are bowing down to these things or ascribing to them some sort of divine attributes, then absolutely—repent and get rid of them immediately; but if they are merely objects of art that remind you of the love and mercy of God, then no, there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, God even commissioned carved images and embroidered images to be made to decorate His earthly tabernacle—not be worshipped or venerated.
So, how are the first two commandments different? The first commandment clearly established Who we should exclusively worship, the second deals with how we should worship..
Jesus discusses this very issue with the woman at the well in John 4. Listen to what He says.
John 4:23,24 “Yet 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.”
2 Corinthians 4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
The Almighty God cannot be reduced down to some image, whether literal or imagined, that we can carry around with us and treat as some divine good luck charm. The Bible says that God and His ways are beyond finding out. We’ll spend eternity learning more and more about Him. But for now, by loving God and through His Holy Spirit, living in obedience to His commandments, we are being remolded and reshaped slowly but surely into His image.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. It’s interesting that James, in chapter one of his epistle, compares the Law of God to a mirror... It is by earnestly and honestly looking into the living Word of God, submitting to the instruction of the Holy Spirit, that we are transformed..
All too often we pick and choose which of God’s commandments we obey and which ones we ignore; we pick and choose which of His holy principles we find in His Word to apply to our lives and which ones we neglect; and by doing this, I believe we are committing spiritual idolatry. We are trying to mold and shape our “conception” of God to fit our image... and that “preferred, altered image of God” automatically becomes an idol that we worship in place of the true and living God. I hope you understand what I mean..
There used to be a saying that was quite popular years ago; it was a question, What Would Jesus Do? This is great in theory, But more often than not, the question was really, “what would MY version of Jesus do?”......
In the midst of the current evil LGBTQ movement, I’m seeing more and more deceived people insisting that even God is transgender. This whole movement claims to be about love and inclusivity, but it’s really about prideful rebellion against and intolerance of the Word of God. (Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death.”)
Romans 1:25,26 “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts......
John 14:15 Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”
1 John 5:3 “This is love for God: to obey His commandments.”
Exodus 20:5b for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God (Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters, he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.”) , 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.
2 Corinthians 8:12 (NIV84): 12 For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
Luke 12:47,48 the servant who knew the master’s will and did not do it will be beaten with many stripes; but the servant who did not know his master’s will and did not do it will be beaten with few stripes.
Ezekiel 18 tells us that “the soul that sins is the one that dies..”
John 4:23,24 “Yet 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.”
[appeal, close]
