Ten Commandments for Today
07/21/2002 - Accept No Substitutes
What comes into your mind when you think about God? I asked you that question a few weeks ago when we were doing our Three in One series on the Trinity. But because the answer to that question is so important, let me ask you again.
What picture do you get when someone mentions God or when you're praying to God or singing to God? For some it's the image of an old man with long white hair and a flowing beard sitting in a rocking chair. That's a very common image of God. We form it in childhood when anyone who is bigger than us or stronger than us or smarter than us is also older than us too. And so we think of God as being this old man. And that picture gets reinforced when we learn Bible stories and the teacher tells us that God did these wonderful things a long, long, long time ago.
Some people picture God as a stern judge in a black robe who sits on a courtroom bench with a gavel in his hand ready to sentence us without mercy. He's not the kind of God you want to get real close to. That snap shot of God is often formed in those of us who grew up in very authoritative homes or who attended very authoritative schools or churches as children.
Others view God as this cosmic cop who hides along the side of the road with a radar gun, setting speed traps for unsuspecting motorists along the highway of life. He's the kind of God who gets his jollies out of making life miserable. "Go ahead make my day!" The kind of God who gives you that sick feeling you get when you get pulled over and see the flashing red lights in your rear view mirror. Not that I've ever been pulled over. But Jennifer tells me that's the feeling she gets every time she gets pulled over!
In his book The Knowledge of the Holy A. W. Tozer writes, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." It really is. Our view of God will determine how we live our lives, who we live our lives for, and what we will ultimately become. Because we will become like the god we worship.
This morning we continue our series called Ten Commandments for Today with a look at the second of the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20. If you have your Bible meet me at Exodus 20:4-6, 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 parents 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.
Last week we began this series by introducing the Ten Commandments and I wanted you to see how these commandments were given to us by a loving heavenly Father who understands how life works and wants to spare us from the pain and the suffering and the mess we can make out of our lives when we violate these unchangeable moral laws of the universe.
The Ten Commandments are not an arbitrary set of rules that God dropped down from heaven to frustrate us or to steal our fun or to make life hard and unbearable. No. He gave them to us because they're true. They're not true because God commands them. God commands them because they are true.
Remember when you were back in your high school chemistry class and it was lab day and your teacher warned you never to mix this chemical with that chemical and then add this solution. Because if you did it would go BOOM and your parents would be buying your high school a brand new chemistry lab. That chemical reaction was true not because your chemistry teacher said it was true, but because that's what truly happens when you mix certain chemicals whether the teacher tells you that or not. In the Ten Commandments God tells us that life can be volatile, life can be explosive, life can blow up in our face, if we mix the wrong chemicals and violate God's commands.
Which is why Cecil B. de Mille, the great Hollywood producer who made the movie The Ten Commandments , once said, "No body breaks the Ten Commandments. Instead we are all broken on them." They're like the law of gravity. You can't break them without getting hurt.
The Ten Commandments come to us from a God who loves us, from a God who's delivered us from bondage, like he delivered Israel from the bondage of Egypt, from a God who carries us on eagles' wings. A God who says to each one of us, "Do you want to be my treasured possession? Do you want my extra special care as my son or my daughter? Do you want to be a kingdom of priests? Do you want to be intimate with me, to have a relationship with me, to talk with me as a friend talks to a friend? Do you want to be a holy nation? Do you want to be different and enjoy a quality of life unmatched anywhere in the world? The kind of life that causes people to scratch their heads and say, 'You mean you can really live that way? You mean it's possible to have a life that good?'"
And in Exodus 19 the people say, "Yes we do! Show us how to live." And in response God thunders from the mountain the Ten Commandments. The first commandment found in Exodus 20:2-3 says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Last week we talked about what it means to put God first in our life, above everything else. Because God deserves nothing less and because he's the only God who will come through for us when our whole world caves in. Every other god will fail us. They're not worthy our worship.
Then he says in verse 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. Now at first glance the second commandment sounds a lot like the first, but it's not. It's very different.
The first commandment forbids us from worshipping other gods. The second commandment forbids us from reducing the one true God to an idol. The first commandment says worship God exclusively. The second commandment says worship God correctly. The first commandment is all about whom we should worship. The second commandment is all about how we should worship. And God says, "No idols, please. No carved wood, no chipped stone, no poured metal into a form. No pictures, no portraits, no relics, no statues. Accept no substitutes for me."
At that time Israel was surrounded by nations who represented their gods with enormous statues, shiny metal images of gold or brass studded with expensive gems. They housed their gods in magnificent temples that could be accessed by thousands of people at one time. Archaeologists tell us that all throughout history, in every culture around the world, there's evidence of idol worship. There's something inside every one of us that wants to reduce God to an object or to a person or to a thing that we can see and feel and touch and worship. But God says, "No. Don't do it. I love you. I know what's best for you and representing me in the form of some image is not in your best interest. It's not a good thing."
In the book of Deuteronomy God gives the Ten Commandments a second time. This time it's to a whole new generation that's about to enter into the Promised Land. The generation that had received the original Ten Commandments had all died off in the wilderness. And in Deuteronomy 4:15-18 God says, You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb (another name for Mt. Sinai) out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, 17 or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, 18 or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below.
Drop down to verses 23-24, Do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. 24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
This image thing is big for God. In Deuteronomy he's saying, "When I spoke to you from the mountain you heard a voice, but you saw nothing. I could have revealed myself to you in an image, but I didn't. So make sure you never go beyond that."
By now you might be thinking, "Okay. What's with this image thing? I don't worship idols. This is an easy one for me. I'm not going make any images of God. I'm not artistic. I'm not handy. I flunked shop class. I never took ceramics. I can barely carve bark off a stick without getting hurt. I don't have statues in my house. I don't bow down to images. I'm clean on number two. I've got this commandment under my belt." Well maybe you do. But maybe you don't.
Maybe your images of God aren't metal they're mental. Maybe they're like the images that we mentioned at the outset, images of God as an old man, or as a stern judge, or as a cosmic cop. Another image that's very popular in our culture today is that God is "the man upstairs." He's cool with what I do. He really doesn't care all that much about how I live. He doesn't mind. And when my life is over he'll swing open the gate of heaven and say, "Come on in. Everything's fine." That image of God is lethal and it will fail you big time someday. God is not the man upstairs who chuckles at our disobedience and says, "Whatever!" God does mind.
Some of us are holding on to old, yellowed snap shots of God that somebody gave us twenty years ago when what we need is a full photo album of pictures of who God really is. He's a just judge who does take sin very seriously. He's a loving Father who wants the best for us. He's a nursing Mother who cares for us like no one else in the universe. He's a faithful friend that we can talk to and rely on. You see what comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. Which is why we need a full understanding of who God is. What comes into your mind when you think about God? Be careful of the mental images that you carry around with you.
Some of us grew up with tangible images of God. Our worship was defined by icons and relics and objects and statues and crosses and all sorts of symbols of God. Is that okay? What does God think of that? We don't worship them. Instead, they just help us to concentrate and focus our thoughts on God. What's the big deal?
Is there anything wrong with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and that masterpiece of God reaching out and touching the finger of Adam to give him life? Is there something wrong with Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting The Last Supper ? What about pictures of Jesus hanging in our homes? Or crosses and crucifixes? Don't they help us remember Jesus? Are they included in this commandment?
The second commandment is not prohibiting artwork and creative expression in our worship of God. The Bible itself is full of a wide variety of images and analogies that picture our great God. Creative expression of God is to be encouraged. Instead, the second commandment is warning us of the danger of reducing God to a single image, saying "This is my God," and then worshiping that image as God. That's exactly what the Israelites did in Exodus 32 when they reduced God to the image of a golden calf and worshiped it as God.
Let me give you two reasons why God says don't make an image out of me. The first reason is because images reduce God. Every image of God shrinks him. God is Spirit and to take him out of the realm of the Spirit and bring him into the realm of likeness in any form reduces God. It always makes him less than he really is.
The great crime against humanity that Paul recounts in Romans 1 is the crime of reducing the glory of the incorruptible God into corruptible images. In Romans 1:22 the apostle Paul says, Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles ... 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen. Any attempt to squeeze our immortal, transcendent, infinite God into some kind of concrete form always reduces him.
Imagine you just came back from a vacation to Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. And you had seen that breathtaking sight of those four huge faces carved into the side of a mountain. Four American presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, each face five stories high, sixty feet from chin to forehead. And I said to you, "Help the rest of us understand the spectacle of that. Here's a pack of chewing gum, work it over real good, and after it gets nice and soft, take it out and fashion it with your fingers into a likeness of Mount Rushmore so we can get a sense of it's majesty and splendor."
You'd look at me and say, "That's impossible! Chewing gum can't represent Mount Rushmore. It's too big. It's too spectacular. I'd rather make no image, than a lousy image. I'd be better off describing it to you in words." And I'd say you're absolutely right.
The crucifix is a popular image of Jesus today. It shows Jesus dying on the cross. And when we look at it we get a sense of the suffering and the agony he experienced to pay the price for our sins. But the image is limited. It doesn't convey anything of Jesus' divine strength, or his power, or his glory, or his joy. It shows us what happened to him on Good Friday, but not on Easter Sunday. And it certainly doesn't show Jesus ruling and reigning at God's right hand like he is today.
And we say, "Well, give the crucifix a break. It can't convey everything." But that's exactly the point. Images can't convey everything. If we start using images to convey truth about Jesus where do we stop? One symbol can't represent him. We would need an empty tomb for his resurrection, a manger for his virgin birth, a scroll to represent his teaching, a candle to picture him as the light of the world, a staff to show him as the good shepherd, a whip to convey his distain for hypocrisy. Where do we stop? Maybe God does know that it's best not to reduce him to an image of any kind. Don't allow the crucifix to be your only image of Jesus.
The beauty of the second commandment is that we don't need equipment to get to know God. God says, Draw near to me and I will draw near to you. We can come to God as we are, wherever we are. We don't need beads or basins, crosses or candelabras, altars or objects. We can come to God in the car on the way to work, at the office, in the classroom, at home, whenever and wherever we are. "Come to me as you are, where you are," God says, "and I will make myself real to you." That's the freedom the second commandment gives to all of us!
The first reason is because images reduce God. The second reason is because images reduce us. In Psalm 115:2-8 we read, Why do the nations say, "Where is their God?" 3 Our God is in heaven. He does whatever pleases him. 4 But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. 5 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see. 6 They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell. 7 They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. 8 Those who make them will be like them and so will all who trust in them.
We become like the gods we worship. And when we reduce God we reduce what God wants to do in our lives. We were made in his image and his goal for us is to make us into the image of his son Jesus Christ. That's who he wants us to be like.
When I was a kid growing up my idols were baseball players and I had a few players that I really wanted to be like. And I watched them on TV and practiced their stance at the plate and tried to catch and throw the ball like they did on the field. And I would copy their mannerisms. They were my childhood "idols" and I wanted to be like them. God wants us to be like his son. The problem is we want God to be more like us. And that's why we are constantly reducing him by mental or metal images.
When I've done something wrong, committed some sin and I'm feeling the burden of guilt. I don't want to confess and ask God forgiveness. At least not right away. The first thing I want to do is justify my behavior. Get God to ignore his holiness and sign off that what I did was okay. It was no big deal. Everybody does and a lot worse. I try to reduce and get him to live by terms. But God says, "No way. I won't play those games. You can either live with guilt and eventual discipline. Or you can bow your knee and admit I'm right, confess your sin and be forgiven. And I love him for that. I love him that he won't let me talk him into being anything less than he really is. That's the only way I can become what he wants me to become.
God knows how our minds work and that's why he wants us to have an imageless worship. He wants our spiritual life to grow into our understanding of who he really is. "Don't limit me," he says. "And don't limit your growth in me."
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. And has implications, God says, for the generations that will follow. The stakes are high for you and for your kids. Our children will be profoundly affected by the way we view our God. Let's not pass on a yellowed, snap shot of one aspect of God. Let's pass on a full photo album of who he really is. 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.