YouTube video sermon
Exodus 20:4-6
Let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Exodus 20. A few weeks ago, we began a new series on the 10 Commandments, and this week we’re up to number two. As you’re finding your place, let me read to you a rather strange obituary.
Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community. The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.
Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded.
Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he still was a crusty old man and was considered a positive roll model for millions.
Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, three children: John Dough, Jane Dough and Dosey Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart. The funeral was held at 350 for about 20 minutes.
Now, the reason we find this slightly humorous is because we all know that the Pillsbury Doughboy isn’t real. He didn’t exist. We know he wasn’t a real person, so we can laugh at something like this. But the children of Israel – living thousands of years ago in the land of Canaan – were surrounded by gods and goddesses that were represented in images and statues that didn’t exist. They weren’t real. They were made up. They were imaginary.
In fact, the prophet Elijah makes fun of these imaginary gods when he had his famous showdown on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). Remember that? The people of Israel can’t decide whom to worship, so Elijah and the prophets of Baal agree to a little wager. We’ll both prepare altars and put bulls on them and whichever god/God responds is the One and Only True God.
So, the prophets of Baal go first and they cry out to Baal from morning until noon, but there’s no answer. Then, at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kings 18:27). Baal isn’t real. But Yahweh… The LORD God… The one and only true God that’s revealed to us in the pages of sacred scripture is.
Last week we were reminded that God takes idolatry very seriously. He wants to have first priority in our lives, and yet, truth be told, He often struggles to make into our top 5. He’s somewhere down the line behind careers, and family, and entertainment, and money, and sex, and our own sense of importance, and all sorts of other stuff. So, we were challenged to remove all of those things, and once again recognize Him for who He is – the Almighty God – our Redeemer and Lord.
Today, we’re going to consider the second commandment. Follow along with me:
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. 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.”
“Our Father and our God, we do now bow our wills to You. We bow our will, and we are submitted to what Your Spirit might say. And we pray, that in spite of the vessel that You’re using, You would speak loud and clear about who You are and how You are to be worshiped. We love you; and we want, and we need to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so we pray that You would teach us, and that You would feed us. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
If the first commandment says that God has to be worshiped exclusively, then the second commandment tells us that God has to be worshiped correctly. If the first commandment tells us whom to worship, then the second commandment tells us how to worship. If the first commandment is against false gods, then the second commandment is against false worship of the true God. You see how these first two commandments go together?
This morning, I want us to consider three things. Number one: the prohibition – what does this mean? Number two: the problem – why do we fail? Number three: the proclamation – how are we to see God?
The Prohibition
Some of you grew up in churches with lots of images, and I know that I’m speaking to people today who have come out of denominations or even completely different religions that include statues and images and icons. So, I want to be sensitive to all of that, and at the same time I want us to understand the unvarnished truth of this commandment.
Naturally, the first question that people have is, isn’t it OK to have art? What about engravings? What about drawings? After all, the Bible says that God gave Moses pretty strict instructions on how to build the tabernacle. You remember on the veil in the tabernacle were drawings of cherubim and angels. They dwell in heaven. Or what about the menorah – the seven-branched candle holder – there were knobs and flowers? The ephod that the high priest wore had engravings of cherubim. And what about the mercy seat – the lid that covered the ark of the covenant? It had statues of two cherubim with their wings outstretched towards the center.
Did God violate His own commandment? No, and here’s why. First, none of those things represent God. And second, according to Hebrews 8 and 9, the tabernacle and everything that was being done there was an earthly drama, a human depiction of what was going on in heaven. It was a worldly representation of a heavenly reality.
So, here’s the synthesis of it. Here’s the bottom line. Here’ the irreducible minimum. This commandment refers to worship. Look at the first part of verse 5, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” This commandment, although it has connections with art, really isn’t about art. It’s about how we worship. The commandment is saying this: God is Spirit, and nothing in the material world could ever represent Him adequately.
So, the idea here is not art. But I’ll say this. If art leads to an image in your mind of who God is, then it’s wrong. Any image that we look to in order to know God or be drawn closer to Him is wrong. And if you have a statue or a picture or some other type of image that’s supposed to be a representation of Jesus in your home or here at this church that you get in front of and bow down to and worship, then let me tell you DON’T DO IT. It’s not the art, it’s the adoration. It’s not the drawing, it’s the devotion. It’s not the picture, it’s the piety.
Let me give you an example right out of the Bible. Let me refresh your memory, because it’s a story that happened in Numbers 21. The children of Israel were in the desert. They’re murmuring and they’re complaining. And God sent snakes into the camp to bite them, and they started dying. So, God tells Moses to fashion a brass serpent and put it on a pole and lift it up. And as people look at the brass serpent they’ll get healed. That’s the cure.
Now somebody might say, “Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t God say not to make any images of things in heaven or on earth or under the earth? And yet, right here God is telling Moses to make a serpent. What’s up?” Yes, but notice that they are only told to look at the serpent. There’s no worship. There’s no praying to the serpent. There’s no lighting candles in the presence of the serpent. There’s no parading the serpent up and down the aisles of the congregation, or singing to the serpent – only looking at the serpent.
But did you know that the people of Israel didn’t throw the serpent away? They kept it. It became a sacred icon. And as years went on, they didn’t look at that icon the same way they once did. They looked at it superstitiously. And we find it again in 2 Kings 18:4, where we’re told, “King Hezekiah broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it and called it Nehushtan.”
See what was happening? The symbol became the substitute. They weren’t looking at it by faith any more. It wasn’t just a symbol of what God did in the wilderness. They were worshiping the symbol. The symbol became the substitute for God. And that can happen with the cross and crucifixes, too. People have crosses and crucifixes and look at them superstitiously. “I forgot my cross today. I’m not wearing it.” “OK, so what?” “So, what? It’s my lucky cross.” See, they’ve given it a value that was never intended. I’ve met a whole lot of people, and even churches, who get hung up on having a cross, but they don’t live under the cross. They don’t preach the cross.
Listen to the words of George MacLeod. He said, “I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as the steeple of a church. I’m recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles but on a cross between two thieves, on a town garbage heap at a crossroads of politics so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek. At the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. But that’s where He died. That’s what He died about. And that’s where Christ’s men ought to be and what church people ought to be about.”
Is our worship of the One true God, the LORD God Almighty, being guided and directed by and to images and idols? We can find ourselves worshipping the God of the Bible, but doing it incorrectly. According to the second commandment, that’s just as sinful as worshipping false gods.
The Problem
Why are people driven to break this commandment? There are a few different problems that would push people toward the use of idols and images. Number one is peer pressure. Israel was leaving Egypt who worshipped idols and they were headed into Canaanite territory, another nation that worshipped idols. Naturally, they would hear somebody somewhere saying, “Hey, here are our idols. Here are our gods? Where are yours?”
In fact, that’s exactly what Psalm 115 addresses. Listen, “Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield” (Psalm 115:2-11). Do you hear the longing for an idol due to peer pressure, and the psalmist reminding the people not to go there?
Number two is personal loss. When a person makes an image, they’re making a statement. They’re saying, “No longer do I have the conscious awareness of the presence of God. I now need an image to remind me of God.” And casting that idol is a desperate measure to recover that which was lost.
You see, anybody who lives in communion with God doesn’t need a reminder. It’s not like you’re walking into the house one day and you see your idol, “Oh yes, God. I’m glad I saw that, because I had forgotten.” See, if you live in communion with Him and He’s a reality in your life, you don’t need a reminder. Friedrich Jacobi, in the 1700’s, a German philosopher, said “Where idolatry ends, there Christianity begins. And where idolatry begins, their Christianity ends.”
Think about it like this. I know it’s a silly illustration, but that’s what I do – offer silly illustrations. How would you feel if somebody said, I
want to spend some time with you, and they came to meet you and sat down to talk with you and pulled out their phone and took a picture of you and then just looked at that picture the entire time?
You’re standing there and you’re watching this person carrying on a conversation with a picture of you, while you’re in the room. Wouldn’t you feel a little put off? “Hey wait. I’m right here. You want to talk to me, don’t talk to that picture. Talk to me. Have a relationship with me. You don’t need that image.” As silly as that sounds, that’s exactly what’s taking place when we pull out our Bible bookmark that has a picture of Jesus on it and gaze at it and begin praying or speaking to it. He’s in the room. Better than that, He’s in you (if you’re a believer).
There’s a third problem, and that’s the problem of an invisible God. We just have a hard time relating to a person we can’t see. We’re visual people. Samuel said man looks at the outward appearance; God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). How do you have a personal relationship with a person you never see? Remember the H. G. Wells story “The Invisible Man?” The story is that a guy, through science, discovers how to make himself invisible, which sounds really cool at first. You can be in places and listen to conversations, find out what people are doing, push things around in the room. Sounds pretty fun.
After a while, the invisible man discovers it’s not so fun, because he discovers people don’t trust somebody they don’t see. So, Isaiah says, “Verily, you are a God who hides Himself” (Isaiah 45:15). Moses said, “Lord, just show me your glory. I’ve seen your acts. I’ve heard your words. I’ve seen the thunder. I want to see you.”
That’s why every Christian has a deep longing for Jesus Christ to return. That’s our hope – one day we’re going to see Him face to face and be totally changed. No longer will we have to live by faith, but we’ll be able to see Him. We won’t have to hold on to a promise in Scripture and say, “I can’t see it, but I believe it.” We’ll see Him. Titus 2:13, “Waiting for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” So, the bottom line is people want a God they can see and touch. And one day we will. Until then, we walk by faith and not by sight of idols and images and statues.
The Proclamation
We’ve seen the prohibition and some of the problems. Now let’s consider God’s proclamation. It’s found in the second part of verse 5 and verse 6 “…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.” So, if we’re not supposed to create images or idols, then how do we see God? We see Him in His attributes and in His character.
Leading up to the first commandment, God described Himself as the God who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of slavery. That’s redemption. Now, God is describing Himself as a jealous God. That’s rivalry. God will not have you and me – His children – crafting some sculpture or idol that tries to rival Him. It just won’t work. It’s the kind of jealousy you’d expect from a husband towards his wife. In fact, that’s exactly who God is – He’s the Bridegroom and His people are the bride. He’s protective of those He’s redeemed. Isaiah 42:8 says, “I am the LORD; that is My name; My glory I give to no other, nor My praise to carved idols.”
The second thing we see is His justice. Now let me tell you what these verses don’t mean. Listen carefully, because you’re going to be prone to misunderstand me. The last part of verse 5 doesn’t mean that God will punish children for their parent’s sins. This is not a generational curse. Children and grandchildren aren’t punished for their parent’s and grandparent’s sins. However, that doesn’t mean that they won’t be impacted by them. They won’t be punished for them, but they will be affected by them.
If I murder someone and I’m found guilty, my children don’t go to prison. I do. They aren’t punished for my sin. But, they are affected by it. God says that those who create idols and images and bow down to them and serve them are setting their families up to follow in their footsteps. And notice that those who are guilty are those that hate God. His justice will be served on all who refuse to see Him for who
He is.
And we conclude with one final divine characteristic of our great and mighty God. His steadfast love. You just have to love God’s math. He shows steadfast love to thousands of those that love Him and keep His commandments. Just three or four generations of justice, but love to thousands. Do you want to leave your family a legacy? Then teach them to worship the One true God (commandment 1) and worship Him in spirit and truth – without the aid of idols and images (commandment 2).
When all is said and done, although we’re all longing for the day when we’ll see Jesus face to face and we’ll experience the unveiled majesty and beauty of the Father, the truth is, we don’t need any idols or images. We have Him. If you have an authentic, vibrant, daily communion with the Lord Jesus through His Word and in prayer, then the Holy Spirit will give you all the assurance you need.
Jesus said, “This is life eternal, that they might know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Jesus said, “[He] who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). What a tragedy to embrace a picture and to miss the Person, to sit at a shrine and to miss the Savior, to worship a statue and fail to know Christ. And if that wasn’t enough, Jesus also gave us His table. Bread, representative of His body. Wine, representative of His blood. And all of it in remembrance of Him – not to be worshipped.
Our God and our Father, we thank you for the way that your Word speaks with such clarity, challenging even the prevailing misconceptions of our day, the things that filter into our minds even within the framework of church, the silly ideas we tolerate, the things we embrace that diminish your glory and misdirect men. Grant that we may be content and confident in worshipping You – the One and Only living God – in the way that You reveal Yourself: in the person of Jesus Christ, who bore our sins in His body on the cross of Calvary. And now may grace and mercy and peace from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be the abiding portion of all who believe, today and forevermore. Amen.