It was an exciting week at our house. Our tadpoles changed into frogs this week, so we’ve all be reflecting on the wonder of metaphorphasis. You see, with four boys in our home we don’t have pet dogs and cats, but we end up with iguanas, skinks, lizards, and most recently a corn snake and frogs.
When you really think about it, the idea of having a pet is a funny concept. We’re the only creatures in the world that domesticate animals. From ancient times when humans first started breeding cattle and sheep, we’ve found more and more ingenious ways to harness animals for our own pleasure and comfort. We create zoos, even circuses. Yes, human domestication of the animal world is a wonder to behold.
But this wonderful ability to domesticate things loses its wonder when we try to domesticate God. In many ways the history of religion is a history of people try to find ways to put God on a leash, to pound in a stake in the ground that will hold God in one place. Humans have tried virtually everything to try to create a low maintenance god, a god who demands little and offers much.
We’ve been in a series through the 10 Commandments in the Bible called LANDMARKS FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM. Last week, in looking at the first commandment—to have no other gods before the true God—we saw that nothing’s more important in life than having the right God in the right place. No relationship, no cause, no job, no house, no lover…nothing’s more important than knowing God and putting him first. Today we come to the second commandment, the command against making idols, or as the old King James Version puts it, "graven images." In looking at this second commandment we’re going to answer four questions: What are images? Why is God against them? How do we know if we have one? And if God forbids images, how can we know anything for sure about him?
1. What Is An Image?
Let’s look at the second commandment together:
"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. 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, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Deu 5:8-10 NIV).
In the ancient world, everybody used images and idols in their worship. But here God tells Israel not to make, bow down to, or worship any image thought to represent God, whether it’s a bird or a star, a snake or a fish. The Hebrew words "idol" and "form" in v. 8 describe any sort of manufacturing, whether chiseled from stone, carved from wood, or cast in a mold (NIDOTTE 3:645).
Now in Judaism and also in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches this command is simply seen as part of the earlier commandment to not have any other gods. So Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy don’t see this as a separate commandment. But I think this second commandment deals with something very different than the first. This second commandment calls us to break our idea of God out of our puny, little boxes.
When God gave the first commandment, in one broad, sweeping statement he declared there’s only one true God, in contrast to all the false gods worshiped by various people. Other gods have already been ruled out in the first commandment. So this second commandment tells us that in worshipping the one true God, we shouldn’t make, bow down to, or worship any images in our devotion to that one true God. So this command is about how we worship the one true God, not about worshipping other gods. The first commandment eliminates all false gods, so only the true and living God remains; the second commandment eliminates every false way of worshiping of that true and living God (Douma 35).
The reason given for this command is that the Lord—-the Hebrew word here is God’s Old Testament name Yahweh—-is as a "jealous" God. Now we immediately feel uncomfortable with God being jealous, thinking that this means God is stalking us, his eyes green with envy. Undoubtedly the Hebrew word for "jealous" describes an intense emotion (NIDOTTE 3:938). One Jewish Old Testament scholar translates it, "I, the Lord, am an impassioned God" (Tigay 65). But it’s not the jealous envy of a stalker that’s in view here, but the zealous passion of a spouse. This is God’s way of saying, "I will have nothing less than your full devotion, and you will have nothing less than all my love" (Miller 76). This is the zealous passion a husband feels for his wife, that they’ve entered into an exclusive, relationship, forsaking all others, and violation of that sacred bond causes a legitimate, passionate jealousy. Only in this sense is the God of the Bible a jealous God.
When people wrongly worship the true God with false images, that sin has implications for future generations. Worshiping the right God in the wrong way is passed on, to the third and fourth generation, so that our children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren experience the shock waves of our disobedience. As parents, our view of God is the most significant contributor to how our children view God.
But this passing on of sin isn’t absolute because it’s clarified by the phrase "of those who hate me." Only those generations who hate God will to experience the weight of their parents’ sins. Those who love God, who reject the distorted image passed on by their parents in favor of the true God presented in scripture can break this cycle.And of course our sin is no match for God’s faithful love. Though our sins may send shock waves to the third and fourth generation, God’s loving faithfulness sends even more powerful shock waves, even to the thousandth generation. God’s grace far exceeds his wrath (Tigay 67).
From this description of the first commandment we find the answer to our first question. What is an image? AN IMAGE IS ANY PHYSICAL OR MENTAL BOX THOUGHT TO CAPTURE GOD’S ESSENCE.
In the ancient world, everybody used idols and images in their religious devotion. The worshipers didn’t really think that the idol was identical to the god they worshiped, but they did think the idol gave them special access to that god. Imagine the supernatural world as being like high voltage electricity: if you touch it, it might kill you. The idol was thought of as being like a transformer that gave the worshiper access to the high voltage electricity without the danger of being electrocuted (Douma 38). The image was thought to draw the presence of the god being worshiped to that place (Tigay 48).
So this commandment is not condemning religious artwork. After all, in the Bible God’s temple is decorated with ornate carvings and beautiful statues. The early church used artwork and later stained glass to communicate the great stories of the Bible to people who couldn’t read. So Christian art doesn’t violate this commandment.
This commandment is concerned with our attempts to box in God’s essence into a physical or even a mental image. According to Romans 1 the making of idols begins in the mind, and out of the fallen human mind comes forth all kinds of false images of God. Any time we have a box—-whether it’s in our minds or something we make with our hands—-and we think that box contains God, we’ve violated this commandment.
Now at this point I need to address the veneration given to religious artwork called icons within the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church. In the Eastern Orthodox church, the first thing a worshipper does when walking into the church is light a candle, put it on a candlestick next to the icon-stand, and then bow before the icon, make the sign of the cross, and kiss the icon (Cavernos 30-35). Although the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches split over the use of icons 1,000 years ago, statues and images play a similar role in the Roman Catholic church today. Now to be fair, both the Roman Catholic church and the Orthodox church make a distinction between VENERATION on the one hand—-which is given to icons and images—-and WORSHIP on the other hand—-which is reserved for God alone. But the second command is to not even BOW down to such images because such devotion inevitably leads to worship. Both the Roman Catholic church and the Orthodox church teach that this command to not make images refers only to images of false gods—-that’s why they included with the previous commandment. So in Roman Catholic and Orthodox theology, images of the true God are thought to be appropriate; only images of false gods are ruled out by this command.
But whenever we create a physical or mental box thought to capture God’s essence—-even a beautiful icon or statue--we violate this commandment.
2. Why No Images?
Now that brings us to the question of why God is against images. Aren’t images simply aids to worship? Don’t they help us reflect on the beauty and majesty of God?
Let’s backtrack a bit in Deuteronomy to see why God forbids the making of images: Earlier in Deuteronomy God said, "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, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape…"(Deuteronomy 4:15-16 NIV).
When God revealed himself from the mountain through Moses to Israel he didn’t appear in any form. That’s because God’s essence is invisible, awesome, majestic and transcendent, so even the deepest sea and the tallest mountain can’t capture God’s essence. Instead of appearing in a form, God spoke. The only way God could be represented to us was through language, and by excluding everything except language, God was kept free from all human attempts to impose limits on him (Craigie 154). The other deities worshiped in the Ancient Near East appeared in various forms, but only the God of Israel spoke. God speaking became the basis for God revealing himself in a book, a collection of inspired, authoritative writings that we have today in our Bible.
Making any sort of image would misrepresent God’s invisible nature and cause people to have a distorted view of God. This is why God is so passionate—-even jealous—-to protect our view of who he is, because no created image can adequately express what God is like. God is passionate for us to know what he’s really like.
Why does God forbid images? NO HUMANLY DESIGNED IMAGE CAN ADEQUATELY CAPTURE WHAT GOD IS LIKE.
In his classic book on the attributes of God, A. W. Tozer once wrote, "What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us" (9). An image always leaves out as much as it reveals, and by boxing in God with an image we always obscure God’s glory and greatness. The chasm between Creator and creation is infinite, and nothing in all of creation can adequately capture what by definition is infinite.
In my spiritual journey from being an atheist to becoming a Christian, I passed through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. When I walked through those doors, I didn’t believe there was a God, and God used AA and NA to move me from atheism to theism. But the God I was introduced to in the 12 step program was "God as I understood Him." After coming to realize that God was real, I also began to realize that a God I understood was no God at all, only a projection of my mind. I needed the God who was above human understanding, the God who made me and who could deliver me from my addictions. That’s part of what led me to become a follower of Jesus Christ after 9 months of sobriety.Images always limit God, resulting in a finite, domesticated God rather than the awesome God of the Bible.
Images reduce God, diminishing his majesty, turning him into a celestial Santa Claus or the man upstairs. Images distort God, twisting his character qualities, resulting in an unfaithful reproduction instead of the real thing. Some of you had parents with distorted ideas about God, and like the second commandment says, they passed on those twisted caricatures of God to you, and now whenever you try to pray or worship God those distorted images haunt you. Until you shatter these false images, these are the very images you’ll pass on to your children, their children, and their children’s children.
Can you see why God is so passionate about this? No humanly designed image can capture what God is like.
3. How Do We Use Images?
Now when we first read the second command, it’s easy for us to think, "Well, I’ve never bowed down to an image, so I guess I’m okay." But when we get to the principle, that image making is trying to box in God, we begin to realize that each one of us tries to domesticate God with false images. We may be more sophisticated in our image making as postmodern people, but we struggle with images nonetheless.
The most famous example of Israel breaking the second commandment shows us why we’re so susceptible to image making. I’m talking about an incident from the Old Testament book of Exodus when Israel made and worshiped a golden calf. This incident occurred after God had given Israel the 10 commandments, but Moses went back up to the mountain to receive more laws. Because Moses was gone for so long—-forty days to be exact—-the people started to panic. So even with the second commandment they cornered Moses’ brother Aaron and demanded that he make them an image of god. Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna says, "What they demanded was some material, visible entity that would fill the spiritual void created by Moses’ absence" (217).
Let’s pick up the story:
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, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD [Hebrew: Yahweh]." 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 (Exodus 32:4-6 NIV margin).
Now what I read is probably a bit different than what some of you have in your Bibles. Some Bible translations render v. 4, "here are your gods" (plural) and some render it, "Here is your god" (singular). The Hebrew could go either way because it uses the word elohim here, which can be translated singular or plural, depending on the context. But since Aaron only makes one idol, since he identifies this idol with the God who had just brought them out of Egypt, and since he identifies the golden calf with the Hebrew name Yahweh in v. 5, I take v. 4 to be talking about one god, not many gods (Sarna 224 n. 138). This is also how the New American Standard Bible takes this verse, as well as most Jewish translations of the Old Testament.
So the incident with the golden calf doesn’t violate the first commandment—-they had the right God—-but it violates the second commandment—-they tried to worship the right God in the wrong way.
Now the calf was a symbol of power in the ancient world. Aaron probably figured he was giving God a compliment when he made an image of a calf, because it symbolized power. After all, God had just dramatically defeated the Egyptian armies, miraculously parted the Red Sea, and appeared on Mount Sinai with amazing demonstrations of power. But the calf obscured as much about God as it symbolized, because not only was the calf a symbol of power, but it was also a symbol of male sexual potency (Hughes 46-47). Back then the logo for Viagra would’ve been the golden calf.
Their false worship of the true God started innocently enough, with burnt offerings, fellowship offerings, and a ceremonial meal, but by the end of the day it had become "revelry," a word for sexual perversion. They lived up to (or down to) the image of God they had created.
When Moses came down the mountain, he became an iconoclast (an image destroyer) because he destroyed the golden calf. The golden calf represented God on their terms (Durham 422).
How do we tend to use images? WE MAKE BOXES FOR GOD WHENEVER WE TRY TO USE GOD TO FURTHER OUR OWN AGENDA.
Image worship is trying to worship God on our own terms. It’s "self willful" worship of the true God, where instead of bowing our will to God’s will, we try to domesticate God and put him on a leash for our own agenda (Douma 37, 40).
In his wonderfully challenging book "The Trivialization of God," Christian author Donald McCullough says, "[Israel] did not think they had abandoned the God who saved them…But they re-fashioned God to fit their expectations and to service their desires. They reduced God to a more manageable deity" (15).
Friends we tend to do this all the time. We turn God into an endorsement for our favorite cause. Or we re-shape God into a deity who’s only function is to make us happy, healthy, and wealthy. This tendency we all have is what leads Donald McCullough to say, "The worst sin of the church at the end of the twentieth century has been the trivialization of God" (13).
And whenever we try to domesticate God with images, God himself rises up and destroys these false images. When C. S. Lewis’ wife Joy died of cancer, he wrote about it in his book "A Grief Observed." In that work Lewis wrote these words: "My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. God shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not say that this shattering is one of the marks of God’s presence?"
The God of the Bible is a holy, awesome, majestic God, a God who’s passionate for us to know who he is accurately, a God who refused to be leashed or used for our own agendas. This God gives us wonderful freedom in our worship. The Bible doesn’t tell us whether to be traditional or contemporary, whether to sing loud or soft, whether to use an electric guitar or a pipe organ, to do communion once a week or once a month, to meet in a cathedral or basement. The Bible doesn’t prescribe these things because God wants us to worship him freely and creatively, so he’s not set very many boundaries. But in the second commandment God says don’t mess with his image, don’t try to put his majesty on a leash and parade it around as an endorsement like Nike does with celebrity endorsements like Tiger Woods.
True worship is on God’s terms, not ours. And it’s only as we worship God on God’s terms that we begin to see the idolatry hatched within our own hearts, the ways we’ve tried to use God, manipulate and manage him, maneuvering and jockeying for our own agenda.
Yes we make our own golden calves—-worshiping the right God in a self-willful way-—whenever we try to use God.
4. How Can We Know What God is Like?
Now for the Old Testament believer, this is where the story ends. No images, because nothing we make can bridge the chasm between an infinite God and finite creation. But when Jesus came something new happened.
Colossians 1:15, says Jesus "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" (NIV).
According to the New Testament, God himself provides an image of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ. In fact, the word "image" in this verse is the Greek word eikon, and it means "that which is the same form as something else" (Louw and Nida 58.32). God forbids us to make images because we’ll inevitably distort his nature, but God himself took on human flesh in Jesus Christ. God himself provides the only icon that makes Him known accurately. Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human—-the only icon of the invisible God.
Hebrews 1:3 reiterates this idea: "The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven" (NIV).
This is a rich verse, but I just want to zero in on the first two phrases: Jesus as the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of God’s being. God’s glory is his own personal presence, and as long as God’s character as been emanating glory, God’s Son has been radiating that glory (Ambrose cited in Hughes 42). And because of this, God’s Son is the exact representation of God’s nature, the fullness of revelation about who God is to us. God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and from the mountain, setting the pattern for us to have the Bible as God’s word. But in Jesus Christ, God actually became incarnate, dwelling among us, living as the icon of God, to fully reveal what God is like.
So how can we know anything about God? GOD HIMSELF HAS REVEALED A PERFECT IMAGE OF HIMSELF IN JESUS CHRIST.
Since we couldn’t cross the chasm between the finite and the infinite—-and every time we tried we got it wrong—-God himself came across the chasm for us through Jesus. This is why when Jesus’ followers asked him to show them God the Father, Jesus replied, "If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father" (John 14:9). Jesus takes us beyond what God revealed to Moses, beyond the prophets of the Old Testament because in Jesus we hear God’s final word about himself.
Conclusion
The bottom line of the second commandment is this: God is passionate about us worshiping Him accurately and on His terms. If the most important thing in life is to have the right God in the right place, a close second is to make sure we worship this God accurately and on his terms. God is passionate—-even jealous—-that we worship Him, not some second hand image handed down to us by imperfect parents, not an idol constructed by a theologian, not an icon concocted in our own imagination. God wants us to know Him, that’s why he sent Jesus.
In C. S. Lewis’ book "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe," Lewis presents Jesus Christ as the lion character Aslan. When the children first hear about Aslan the lion, they’re afraid, so they ask Mr. Beaver about him. Mr. Beaver laughs and says, "If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly." Lucy replies, "Then he isn’t safe?" Mr. Beaver laughs, "Safe? Who said anything about being safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good" (Lewis 75).
The same is true of God: he can’t be leashed, domesticated, or controlled. Worshiping the God of the universe who’s revealed himself fully through His Son Jesus certainly isn’t safe—-we risk being changed every time we encounter this God in worship. We can’t put him on a leash, nor can we use him to endorse our favorite cause. He won’t be our genie in a bottle, to rub for all our wishes to come true. He’s God, and we’re not. But he’ll love us, and he’ll enter into a relationship with us, because even though he’s majestic and awesome, infinite and incomprehensible, he loves us and he offers us a relationship with him through His Son Jesus.
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