The second commandment is all about having a cheating heart. Last we looked at the first commandment. In that commandment God makes it clear that we are to have NO OTHER GODS! Having other gods is cheating and disobeying the first law of God. I would remind you that Jesus came at this commandment from a different approach altogether when asked which commandment was greatest.
He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul.”
"Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. 5You must never worship or bow down to them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god! I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations. 6But I lavish my love on those who love me and obey my commands, even for a thousand generations. Exodus 20:4-6
1. A Rule to live by. Verse 4 This commandment touches our everyday activities, relationships and commitments.
"Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. 5You must never worship or bow down to them...”
God gave the Jews a very direct command here. He knew their propensity for following false gods.
Talk about Israel and their lust for other people’s gods and make the point that we have a tendency to do the same in today’s world.
2. A Rationale to learn from. Verse 5 God makes it very clear that there is a one way to live and it is His way. Not doing it has some definite consequences.
“...for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god! I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.”
I will talk about consequences for not obeying the commandment at the end of the sermon. Understand that this is a principle which God is trying to help us understand. It is really a statement about influence.
Your actions today as a parent, grandparent, and sibling or even as an individual on others is far more reaching than most of us believe or like to think about.
If you are not living consistently for God or you are just living for yourself you are influencing others to do the same. Your kids are going to turn out just like you.
3. A Reward to look for. Verse 6 All God wants is our love, devotion and worship and He will love us back when we focus on Him.
“But I lavish my love on those who love me and obey my commands, even for a thousand generations.”
This is a beautiful contrast to the way God is often portrayed. I can feel the love of God as He dictated these words to Moses.
Now I want to shift gears and look at how this practically affects our lives. Things we give our lives to:
Lifestyles of the rich and famous
Rock stars, movie stars, sports heroes, teen idols have worshipers who bow down before them. There’s a funny commercial out that points to a larger truth. In the commercial several guys are getting dressed in the locker room when Michael Jordan walks in. He pulls out some underwear from his gym bag, puts it on the bench, and all the guys stare. In unison their eyes focus on his red underwear and then back to their own white briefs. (No one ever asks why Jordan’s pulling out underwear in the first place. You’re not going to put clean underwear on before you go workout.) Cut to the next scene sometime later. All the guys are getting dressed and each one has on new red Hanes underwear briefs. Jordan walks in again, but this time pulls out polka dotted underwear. The guys are shocked and all looking at one another like what are we going to do now?
The commercial was about emulation. They wanted to be like Mike. There’s nothing wrong with liking what someone wears or their hairstyle and trying it for yourself. But that’s not emulation. Emulation is when you copy another person and try to be that person. Children, teens and adults often follow this practice. Why? They want what that other person has. They want the respect or the admiration or the sex appeal or the power or the money. There are probably dozens of reasons. They copy the behavior of the people who appear successful with the hope that their life will get better. It’s an attempt to make life more manageable by copying another person. The star has a god-like status. The emulation is the worship.
It is thinking that somehow you need to be just like everyone else. We have bought into this so far in this country that it is scary. Let me ask you today. Why do you do the things you do. Who controls what you wear and how you act or talk. Is it somebody who is looking out for your spiritual welfare?
The truth is way too many of us emulate the world and its values. We copy, ape, mimic, talk, act, joke, and function just like the world. The fact is ladies and gentleman, this book and Christianity in its purest forms, in its most serious historical moments, is all about being counter-culture. Christians don’t and didn’t lose their lives historically because they spent their lives and money trying to emulate the rest of society.
“Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. 15If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. 16But they were after a far better country than that--heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.”
Another altar that is exceedingly popular in our culture is the altar of touchy feely.
Touchy Feely
If I didn’t know any better I’d think that God himself has been transformed into a special feeling who reveals himself in goose bumps and warm-fuzzies. Have you noticed that you can say or do almost anything in our culture and, if you appeal to the authority of your feelings, you can get away with it?
The idolatry of “feelings” becomes evident when we revere and bow down to our feeling state as the ultimate authority and our ultimate identity. Laura Schlessinger, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life, p. 40
Christians often avoid commitment and faithfulness with the mantra, “I didn’t feel led.” I’ve even heard of believers who felt that God wanted them to do something sinful. They say this despite the fact that the Bible, God’s written word to us, soundly condemns it. If you’re feelings ever tell you to do something that doesn’t agree with the Bible, it is not God speaking to you. It’s your feelings. Beware of making them into your god.
Feelings make great followers, but exceedingly poor leaders. If you depend on your feelings as your guide to life you’ll never be disciplined because your appetites will always have the loudest voice. You’ll never develop Christian character traits like self-control or sacrifice or commitment or even genuine love. Those attribute often require that we go against our feelings and to do the right thing.
Take some advice from Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer:
Feelings come and feelings go
And feelings are deceiving;
My warrant is the Word of God,
Naught else is worth believing.
Don’t let feelings be your guide or your God. If you want direction follow the God of the Bible and his clear commands.
Self
Self-esteem, self-fulfillment or whatever you want to call it is perhaps the biggest idol we hold onto these days. In a nutshell it is the pursuit of happiness. I knew a Christian who told me that he left his first wife because he wasn’t happy. He said he believed God wanted him to be happy. Whatever happened to the covenant that we made before God and friends? Do the words for richer and poorer, better or worse, in sickness and in health mean anything?
Let me say that the only place you’ll find the pursuit of happiness as a God-given right is in the Declaration of Independence, written by a man who was a deist. Don’t reduce God to your personal happiness. In fact, if the thrust of your life is to go after happiness you’ll find yourself more and more unhappy. Concentration camp survivor and author Victor Frankl wrote:
“…happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to be happy.” Victor Frankl quoted by Laura Schlessinger, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life, p. 48
Happiness doesn’t come from the pursuit of it. It ensues when we have a relationship with God and walk in his ways. The Psalms declare this truth:
Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, Who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Psalm 128:1-2
Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the LORD, you righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. Psalm 97:11-12
Stimulation
This is the primary way that we attempt to deal with life in our day. We bow down to the gods of entertainment and amusement. All our cares vanish in the haze at the click of a mouse or remote control. There’s nothing inherently wrong with stimulation unless it becomes a form of escapism. Excess stimulation can lead to addiction. Addiction, which comes in many forms itself, is clearly idolatry. You attempt to make life more manageable through substances or practices. Pornography, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sex outside of marriage, are just some of the religious rituals found at the altar of stimulation.
There are many altars that we bow down to in these post-modern times, but I’ll conclude with one that hits close to home:
Country Club Faith
In the church, we tend to make God too small. Jesus becomes our ticket to heaven, our “get out of hell free” card, our power of crisis intervention, but not the one who’s the example we earnestly try to follow. As I said, last week, if your commitment to Jesus Christ does not extend past the doors of the institutional church walls, what you call faith is really a farce. You’re either radically committed to the God of the universe or you’re bowing down to the idol of your own agenda. Which is it?
“Hypocritically, professing belief, performing rote rituals, calling oneself a member of a religion without attempting to follow holy prescriptions, participating in church … with a “social” country-club fervor – these can all be an evasion of holy duty, yet another form of idolatry, as practicing the “religion” becomes its own end point.” Laura Schlessinger, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life, p. 60
It may not seem like such a big deal to have a manageable God, but there are grave consequences.
The Grave Implications of Graven Images
1. Idolatry produces a false relationship with a false god.
J.I. Packer has noted that images dishonor God because they obscure His glory, for they are attempts to create something that reflects the Creator. A false image of God results in a false relationship with a false god.
James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life, p. 14
Don’t make a manageable god. Worship the God who is big enough to help you manage yourself. Your eternity is literally depends on it.
What fools they are who carry around their wooden idols and pray to gods that cannot save! Isaiah 45:20 (NLT)
Our attempts to make life and God more manageable end up destroying us. As we saw last week, false gods and even images of the true God that are inaccurate or too small will devour us. They cannot save. They only destroy.
Another consequence of making a manageable God is that it…
2. Idolatry negates individual responsibility
We live in a culture where individual responsibility is a vanishing trait. We act as if our hang-ups are gods when we ascribe power to them. You’ve no doubt hard the excuses: “My behavior wasn’t my fault.” You can rob, rape or murder and too often someone will find a behavioral disease to blame it on or maybe it was your lack of self-esteem. That would be your parents fault. Scientists are diligently searching for the genes that lead to alcoholism, homosexuality and even adultery. What if they’re found? Will we then say that they’re bigger, badder, and stronger than God? If we use them as an excuse for deviant and destructive behavior that’s exactly what we’re saying.
The idolatrous power we ascribe to our circumstances or genetics are merely an attempt to relieve us of the guilt of violating God’s standards. It makes him more manageable. That line of reasoning might work on this side of eternity, but when we stand before God to give an account, I don’t believe it will work.
Don’t make a manageable god. Worship the God who is big enough to help you manage yourself. The true God calls us to individual responsibility, not lame excuses.
Another insidious implication of idolatry is the fact that it …
3. Idolatry impacts descendants
Look at the rest of the second commandment.
“I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations. But I lavish my love on those who love me and obey my commandments, even for a thousand generations.” Exodus 20:5b-6 (NLT)
If you study this sloppily you might think that God unjustly punishes the children for the acts of the parents. In my opinion, this is a misunderstanding and possibly a mistranslation of the text. The Hebrew is vague. It doesn’t say that God punishes one person for what another person does. We do know that God is just. He punishes people for their own sins, not those of someone else. Elsewhere the Bible makes this clear:
“Parents must not be put to death for the sins of their children, nor the children for the sins of their parents. Those worthy of death must be executed for their own crimes.” Deuteronomy 24:16 (NLT)
“The child will not be punished for the parent’s sins, and the parent will not be punished for the child’s sins.” Ezekiel 18:20 (NLT)
The point of this portion of the commandment is that God will punish the children for the sins of the parents if they commit the sins of the parents. God is saying that if you engage in idolatry, if your god is too small, your children and grandchildren probably will too.
Unless you get it right they’ll likely repeat your mistakes and sins and suffer the same devastating effects. They will attempt to follow your pattern of managing life and God. Why? Kids learn who God is through their parents. Parents etch the image of God on the hearts of their children. If your God is an idol, guess who’s going to carry around that same image?
There’s a picture of this pattern in 2 Chronicles 26. King Uzziah was a man who believed in God, but he worshiped him improperly. He didn’t take God’s holiness seriously and tried to offer an incense sacrifice, himself. It was the job of the priest. Uzziah was struck with leprosy because he tried to manage God. His son Jotham grew up and became King. He loved God like his father, but never went into the Temple to worship as God had prescribed. He was afraid of the leprosy. I guess he worshiped at the lake or the golf course or the mountains. He had an inordinately harsh image of God. He managed him by not getting too close. Next came Jotham’s son, Ahaz, a detestable king who hated God and authorized pagan worship practices in the nation. He even offered his first born son as a sacrifice in the fire to the success god, Molech. There are grave consequences to an improper image of God.
Don’t make a manageable god. Worship the God who is big enough to help you manage yourself. This is the surest way to keep your kids from falling into your mistakes and sins and suffering the same consequences.
4. Idolatry suppresses spiritual growth
In the final analysis, idols reflect us. We project our nature onto God rather than have him restore his nature in us. If our God is not truly God, we’ll never rise above ourselves.
If you examine your life and can clearly see that you’re not becoming any more godly, let me suggest that your God is not big enough. If you still cave in to the same sins that have plagued you for years, maybe your God is not big enough. If people wouldn’t describe you as growing in Christ-likeness, maybe He’s not the God you’re following. Maybe it’s the manageable, user-friendly god who merely reflects your own sinful image. Spiritual growth, Christ-likeness only happens as we bow the knee and come face to face with the true God.
Personal story
Those who worship idols are disgraced – all who brag about their worthless gods – for every god must bow to him. For you, O LORD, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. You who love the LORD, hate evil! Light shines on the godly, and joy on those who do right. Psalm 97:7, 9, 10, 11 (NLT)
Don’t make a manageable god. Worship the God who is big enough to help you manage yourself.
Archaeologists testify that throughout history there have been idols in every culture. Man is created with a need to worship, but when that pursuit for divine communion is misguided, idols are formed. Every idol reminds us of our need to worship. May we remember that there is only One who is worthy of worship. “Accept No Substitutes,” Rick Warren, Saddleback Church.
