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. 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.”
It goes without saying, I love my wife, Marilyn, very, very much. We were married in 1969 and I am more in love with her today than when we married – 42 years ago.
But tell me…how do you think she would like it if she saw my billfold lying open on my chest of drawers some morning and noticed a picture of another attractive woman alongside her picture? Do you think she would shrug her shoulders and say, “Well, this is nice. Mike has found some new friend.”? Or do you think it more likely that she would walk into the bathroom where I’m shaving and say, “Michael, who is this?!”
And how do you think she would like it if she learned that this other woman and I had indeed developed a bit of a relationship: That I turned to her when I felt a need for support, affection, and encouragement? Do you think that might bother my little lady somewhat or a whole lot?
- Could you really blame her if she took the picture and tore it into a few hundred pieces and demanded that I never see the other woman again?
- Could you fault her for feeling jealous, hurt or angry over her having to share my love and devotion with another person?
- Do you think she would continue to believe me when I whisper in her ear that I love her with all of my heart?
- Do you think she would have any reason to feel a little nauseous toward that image in my wallet?
These are obviously absurd questions. You can’t love a person and at the same time be tolerant of other loves. You can’t love someone and be indifferent about that person having an affair. No, my wife has every right to expect and even insist that I keep myself for her and her alone. And you know what? I want to live up to those expectations. Again, I love her as well as need her. Our relationship is the most important earthly thing I have. The idea that there might be “someone else” would be an unbearable thought to both of us.
Because of my love for her, and my vows to her, you will only find her picture in my wallet. I am and always will be Marilyn’s man.
Yet I believe this to be the very spirit of the second commandment. The Lord God is our God, provider, redeemer, protector, deliverer, and Lord. He has saved us at no small cost to Himself. As such, I believe He is telling us to never put anything or anyone in His place. He wants to be the only God-picture that I have in my heart.
Does this strike you as being a little too restrictive? Too legalistic? Too much for the Lord to expect or require? Of course not. He is our God.
Listen. I think I hear Him saying something like, “Do you have any idea how much I love you; how much you mean to Me? Please…don’t put any other pictures in your billfold alongside Mine. Don’t carry any other images in your heart. Don’t turn to any false god for comfort, stimulation, or heart satisfaction. Here I am! I am able to meet your every need.”
This leads me to the question…
WHY DO YOU THINK WE HAVE THE SECOND COMMANDMENT?
Last week I talked to you about the First Commandment. As you may recall, it says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3). Again, the Second Commandment says in part, “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….” (Exodus 20:4-5).
They sound strikingly similar; don’t they. In fact, the Catholic church and some Lutheran denominations combine the two into one commandment. They then split the Tenth Commandment into two in order to end up with ten.
However, the Second Commandment is by no means a mere repetition of the first. Rather, it is a commandment unto itself.
The first forbids us to have any other gods besides the One True and living God. The second, taking it for granted that there is no god but the one true God, forbids the creation and worship of anything that is supposed to be a represent-ation of God.
To a casual observer, what could possibly be wrong with having some visible representation of the invisible God? I mean, we could have a sculpture of God here, a painting of Him over there, a mural depicting Him on the ceiling as well as a variety of icons out in the foyer. How could such things be bad? Obviously, many people see nothing as being wrong with that.
David Clayton, artist, has no problems painting Jesus as a man. However, he says that his “instincts run against the idea of portraying God the Father in a painting…. Even when I was a child I always thought that the white-whiskered God looked more like God the Grandfather, than God the Father.” I agree with Mr. Clayton. When I look at Michelangelo’s fresco, in the Sistine Chapel of God giving the spark of life to Adam, (again, top center) I can easily see God the Father as really being God the Grandfather. Can’t you?
So, do you have a problem with painting, drawing, portraying, or in any other fashion, projecting a supposed image of God? I do. I will give you several reasons why:
1. God is a spirit being; He is not a man or a woman.
This is an important point. The fact that the Bible presents this truth time and time again suggests that maybe God doesn’t want to be portrayed as a human being.
Imagine a picture of a monkey. Cute little critter, isn’t she? Now imagine the same monkey again. However, this time I am going to make one subtle change. I have a place for you to insert your name under the face of the monkey. Can you do it? The monkey isn’t nearly as cute now, is it? In fact, the picture has now come to be seen as being both offensive and insulting.
In John 4:24 Jesus says to the Woman at the Well, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” Indeed, God IS Spirit. The same as you would resent being pictured as a monkey – thinking that such a picture is beneath you – so it is that God does not want us to picture Him as a human being.
No one who truly knows God, no one who is living in daily communion with Him, needs a picture to help him or her to pray.
Notice Romans 1:21-23 (New Living Translation), “Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.”
Sadly, today, we have fashioned God into our own image, rather than ours into His.
2. Every attempt which has made to represent God in any way has resulted in a false picture of Him.
When God gave His people the Second Commandment, He did so knowing that even though the people were a religious people, they really didn’t have a clue when it gave to really knowing what God was like. Anything that they would make to represent Him
would be a false representation of Him. As a result, anyone who looked on the image would get some false notion about the Lord.
Do you remember the childhood puzzle where you had to locate the various things that were wrong in a picture?
- Maybe the rabbit had a tail like a kangaroo;
- An airplane had only one wing;
- A spider had but seven legs?
Well I want us to think back to some supposed pictures of God that we have seen. As you think about the pictures, I want you to try to pick out some of the ways that the artists incorrectly depicted God.
- Again, He is seen as being a man. Remember, He is a Spirit.
- He is seen as being old. As an eternal spirit, He does not reflect age.
- Adam is given life by way of a touch from the finger of God. Is that how Adam came to life? The truth is, God breathed into Adam and Adam became a living being.
- God and Jesus crowned Mary. Please show me chapter and verse where that is found in the Bible.
- God is limited to a certain place in space. The Scripture declares that he is omni-present. In other words, He is everywhere present at the same time.
- God is seen as looking at as well as upholding the Cross. We know, though, that God looked away from Jesus as the Lord hung there for you and me. As a result, Jesus cried out that even God had forsaken Him.
Now please do not take me wrong. I am not meaning to be critical of these masterpieces. I am simply trying to make the point that it is impossible to properly illustrate God. You can’t. I can’t. No one can! He defies definition!
3. Each picture reveals a god that is limited in some way.
- The essential fact of God is that He is limitless.
- He is eternal.
- He is self-existent – in other words, He is not a created being.
- Then too, there is no limit to His power.
Limitlessness lies at the heart and center of the thought of God.
The very moment that someone tries to make an image of the Lord, he denies the very essence of God. Notice Isaiah 40:18-25 with me. I will read it from the New Living Translation, “To whom can you compare God? What image can you find to resemble him? Can he be compared to an idol formed in a mold, overlaid with gold, and decorated with silver chains? Or if people are too poor for that, they might at least choose wood that won’t decay and a skilled craftsman to carve an image that won’t fall down!
Haven’t you heard? Don’t you understand? Are you deaf to the words of God— the words he gave before the world began? Are you so ignorant? God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him! He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them. He judges the great people of the world and brings them all to nothing.
They hardly get started, barely taking root, when he blows on them and they wither. The wind carries them off like chaff. ‘To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?’ asks the Holy One.”
Then too, I must read Isaiah 46:5-11, again from the New Living Translation, “To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal? Some people pour out their silver and gold and hire a craftsman to make a god from it. Then they bow down and worship it! They carry it around on their shoulders, and when they set it down, it stays there. It can’t even move! And when someone prays to it, there is no answer. It can’t rescue anyone from trouble.
“Do not forget this! Keep it in mind! Remember this, you guilty ones. Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me. Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Every-thing I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish. I will call a swift bird of prey from the east— a leader from a distant land to come and do my bidding. I have said what I would do, and I will do it.”
- Notice now, murder is wrong, primarily because it takes from another person what was given them by God—life itself.
- Lying is wrong because God is a God of truth.
- Adultery is wrong because God is a God of faithfulness.
And so on.
I could go down the line and show how each commandments relates back to God in some shape, form, or fashion. The same holds true with this the Second Commandment. Making a image of God is wrong – for it by its very nature minimizes God and presents Him as something less than what He really is. Simply put, the second commandment deals with not so much who God is, but who God is not.
Ron Mehl in his book The Tender Commandments writes: I have a mental picture of the back lot at Paramount Studios. If you’re on a tour, you can see the street of some little town, with the stores and courthouse and shops and churches. But they’re only false fronts. They look great in a movie but if you tried, for instance, to go into the dry goods store, you’d walk through a door into the sand and weeds. There’s nothing there. No store. No dry goods. No people. Nothing but a dusty, garbage-strewn back lot. There’s nothing to eat, no place to live, no place to stay, no place to worship. It’s empty.
What’s really depressing is that you walk down one of the streets, and everything is just like you remember it on TV or in the movies. But then when they drive you around the corner, you see that it’s all make-believe. There’s nothing behind those building fronts but trash. They’ve thrown everything back there, because nobody ever sees it—rusted-out cars and barrels and the collected junk of many years.
The world’s false images set up the same kind of deception. They promise one thing, they call to the emotions, they look so desirable, they weave a beautiful dream, but when you get into them, you end up with a big handful of nothing.
In effect God says, “Do not attempt to liken Me to anything, because every effort of that kind must result in failure….”
IMAGES ARE NOT PROHIBITED
As with any command or rule, there will always be those who will take the order to some legalistic extreme. The early Puritan fathers interpreted the Second Commandment to mean that any likeness to anything in heaven above or earth below was forbidden. As a result, they looked at every form of art as being idol-atrous.
Along this line, I have known of Christians who, because of this commandment, would not have their own photographs taken, and who refused to have a picture of any sort in their houses! Is this what God had in mind when He wrote this command on tablets of stone? I think not. Immediately after the giving of this command, the Lord gave instructions concerning the contents of the Tabernacle.
As we know, in the Holy of Holies, we find the two images of the cherubim which overshadowed the mercy-seat. Then too, the veil was beautiful with its pictures of the cherubim woven into it.
Later in the wilderness, God commanded Moses to make a serpent of brass. Solomon’s Temple was generously ornamented with images of flowers, palm trees, pomegranates, oxen, lions and representations of cherubim. I do not see Christianity at odds with true art. As I have told you several times, I love church art and architecture. I see nothing wrong with religious art including paintings as well as sculptures. My hobby is photography.
Here at New Life we have stained glass on our baptistry. We have a number of beautiful banners as well as other tangible symbols of worship. However, none of these items include an image of God. Then too, none of these items are meant to become objects of worship in and of themselves.
C. A. Roberts in his book, A Life Worth Living points out that “Idolatry takes place whenever a person allows an object intended to be a means of worship to become an end within itself. Whenever an aid to worship becomes an object of worship—that is idolatry.
Criticize the ancient Hebrews—not because they worshiped in a Temple . . . but because they came to worship the Temple.
Criticize the Christians of the Sixth Century—not because they erected statues- . . . but because they came to worship the statues.
Criticize the Catholic Church of the Twentieth Century—not for using images as aids to worship- . . . only when the images are considered absolutely necessary to worship.
Criticize Protestants—not because they have built beautiful buildings for worship- . . . but because they have worshiped what they built.
So, if you have questions about a piece of art, ask yourself:
- Do you have to have that item in order to worship?
- Or, even more importantly, have you come to make the item an object of worship?
- And has that object of worship – whatever it might be – become a god (an idol) to you? If so, get rid of the thing. Do not pass go; do not collect $200!
THE GOLDEN CALF
Of all the stories in the Bible, the most important one for understanding the Second Commandment is that of the Golden Calf found in Exodus 32. The incident takes place shortly after the Ten Commandments have been given. The Golden Calf is the Bible’s classic case of idolatry.
Now to the biblical account. God had called His servant Moses to meet with Him on Mount Sinai. While there God gave the brother the two tablets which contained the Ten Commandments as well as a long list of additional commandments concerning rituals, civil laws, and the Sabbath.
Little did Moses know that while God was giving him the commandments on the mountaintop, the people were breaking them at that very moment in the valley. Suddenly God says to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’” (Exodus 32:7-8)
Moses had disappeared into the darkness more than a month earlier with no sign that he was ever coming back. Exodus 32:1-4 (New Living Translation), “When the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron. ‘Come on,’ they said, ‘make us some gods who can lead us. We don’t know what happened to this fellow Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt.’ So Aaron said, ‘Take the gold rings from the ears of your wives and sons and daughters, and bring them to me.’
All the people took the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded it into the shape of a calf. When the people saw it, they exclaimed, ‘O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’”
I have found that one of the greatest trials the child of God can face is simply the trial of waiting. David had problems here as did Sarah – Abraham’s wife, as did Judas and a whole host of others. The children of Israel had suffered the horrors of slavery, and had been through the twin trials of the escape from Egypt and the journey into the forbidding wilderness. But now they simply had to wait; wait for their leader to return, wait for someone who had merely been gone too long. The people failed the test of patience.
When Moses did come back down from the mountain, he could not help but hear the party and see the wild dancing. Then something else caught his eye – Israel’s new god — the Golden Calf.
As I stated earlier, the Israelites were a religious people. They knew better than to do what they were doing. Nevertheless, they offered bunt offerings and peace offerings to their god and then they even gave their idol a name. Do you know the name of the Golden Calf? YAHWEH or Jehovah. You heard me right. Notice Exodus 32:5-6 (The Living Bible), “When Aaron saw how happy the people were about it, he built an altar before the calf and announced, ‘Tomorrow there will be a feast to Jehovah!’ So they were up early the next morning and began offering burnt offerings and peace offerings to the calf idol; afterwards they sat down to feast and drink at a wild party, followed by sexual immorality.”
Last week, I told you that the Lord had brought the people out of Egypt for the purpose of worship. They were to worship Him. And now they had polluted that worship and in turn offered it to another god – an idol – a graven image!
In the process:
- The Israelites had abandoned an invisible deity for a visible one,
- A God that was beyond their control for one they had invented and could now parade through their camp,
- The One True God for a lump of gold.
God, for his part, became so angry with the people that He tells Moses that He is going to kill every last one of them. In the process, He would build a new nation out of Moses. Moses refused the offer and the Lord allowed the people – at least some of them – to live. Three thousand people, though, were put to death that day.
The point? The Second Commandment is not one that we should take lightly! Don’t give the worship that is due God to some lesser being; to some false image.
There is the old legend of the nightingale and the peddler. In need of food, the nightin-gale traded one of his beautiful feathers to the peddler every day for a worm. This went on until the nightingale had lost most of his feathers. One day, aware that he could no longer fly if he lost all his feathers, the nightingale said to the peddler, “I’d like to reverse the process. Let me now trade back to you some of my worms for feathers.” But the peddler replied, “Oh, no, you do not understand. I don’t trade feathers for worms; I trade only worms for feathers.” And the nightingale could no longer fly!
Every time we break one of the commandments, we trade a feather for a worm. Event-ually, there comes a day when we have traded too many feathers for worms and the Spirit within us can no longer fly. We no longer feel the joy of being in God’s presence. We are alienated from the Lord.
AS I COME TO MY CONCLUSION, I want to show you some really neat pens. As you can see, I have five of them here. The thing that sets these pens apart from most is that they are Mont Blanc pens. Each one of these would go for maybe $225 in a nice pen shop.
- Now I want you to notice that each of the pens has the letters Mont Blanc written on them.
- Each pen really looks like a Mont Blanc pen; is heavy like a Mont Blanc pen.
- Finally, each pen writes like a Bic – if it even writes at all!
You see, these are not really Mont Blanc pens. They are cheap knockoffs. Imitations. If I remember right, these cost $5 a piece in on the streets of Casablanca. For that matter, you can buy counterfeit Mont Blanc pens all over the world. And to be sure, it is hard to immediately tell the difference. You need a trained eye and a bit of experience to be able to tell the real from the fake.
In like fashion, there are millions of gods in the world today. Gods who masquerade as the living God and seek your time, your life energies, and your allegiance. But when life begins to cave in around you, these false gods will be of no real value to you. They will be as worthless as one of these pens.
Again, the Ten Commandments are a love letter to us from God. As such, God has written and warned us about the cheap imitations, the knock-offs, the phony-baloney gods. The Second Commandment tells us, don’t go there; don’t follow some useless idol. Save your time and your money. The commandments serve as God’s red light system. Stop!
So, as there is room for only one woman’s photo in my wallet, there is only room for one God in my life. What about you? Whose picture do you have in your wallet?
