Understanding the 2nd Commandment

Well, thank you again, gentlemen. And once again, to all of you, happy Sabbath. Looks like it's sunny outside. That's always a beautiful thing. Well, recently I gave a sermon on the importance of the Ten Commandments and their history, even before God spoke to ancient Israel on Mount Sinai, as revealed in Exodus, Chapter 20. And afterward, I had someone come up to me and ask me if I could cover each commandment in more detail. And he gave me some food for thought, so I've been thinking about that. Actually, I covered the first commandment in March of 2011, and a sermon is still on the UCG site, entitled, Preparing for the Holy Days, the First Commandment. Again, that was given in March of 2011. So I'm going to count that as I covered the first commandment. Today, what I would like to do is read, and for all of us to look more closely at the Second Commandment. And actually, it's a great segue, I think, into the Fall Holy Days. So we're going to cover the Second Commandment today. However, in order to get there, we'll just go ahead and turn to Exodus 20, if you will turn there, please. And we'll read its introductory remarks and the verses that lead up to the Second Commandment.

Again, Exodus 20. And we will begin in verse 1. And it says, and God spoke all of these words to refresh our memories from the sermon I gave on June 18th. And it was entitled, The Root of Our National Problems. Just a refresher that the book of the law of Moses was placed beside the Ark of the Covenant. But the tablets of the Ten Commandments were placed inside of the Ark. And why? Because they are the heart and the core of God's value system. The Ten Commandments reveal who and what God is and what it takes to have an intimate personal relationship with God. That's why it is so important. In contrast, the law of Moses was intended for very special people during a special time in history. And the New Covenant obviously is different than the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant had physical promises, physical blessings or curses. The New Covenant is spiritual. It offers eternal life. It offers spiritual promises. All right, let's take a look now at verse 2. Now this phrase, that I'm the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, is used over 125 times in Scripture. Why? Well, it's because God gives His grace before He reveals His law. First, He brought Israel out of slavery in bondage. And then later, He revealed His moral law on Mount Sinai to keep them from going back into a different type of bondage, the bondage of sin. God's law is important, but in the past, some have implied that an individual must be obedient first before they receive God's grace. And that is not a valid biblical concept. God gives His grace first, and then He gives us an understanding of His law. God called you, He shed His grace on you before you understood even how to have a relationship with Him. So now the first commandment. Verse 3, You shall have no other gods before Me. Now that's a powerful statement because they were surrounded by a world of artificial false gods. When they lived in Egypt, the Egyptians had all kinds of gods to represent virtually every aspect of the sky and animals on earth. And there were gods everywhere, and the land that they were going to go into in Canaan also had many, many gods. So this is an important statement. God says, You shall have no other gods before Me. This is actually the backbone of the other nine commandments, because it's meant to get us to inquire within ourselves about the most meaningful questions in life. Is there really a god? That's a question we all need to ask and answer ourselves. Everyone on earth, everyone living, needs to ask that question of themselves. Now, the Hebrews knew the answer because they lived through miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle. They had no doubt that there was a god. Another question that this inspires is God omnipotent, meaning does He have universal power, authority? Is He all forceful? Is He unlimited? Something else. This first commandment is intended to get us thinking about, does what God states have any importance or relevance to Me? That's another important question that this commandment is intended to get people thinking about. Why did God create humankind, including Me? What does God require of Me, if anything? Does God have any requirements? Does God have an instruction manual for Me to live by? So that's the idea of the first commandment, is to spark these thoughts within the human mind when you realize that you shall have no other gods before the true, ultimate, awesome creator of the universe. All right, Lao, let's go down to verse 4.

So what we're going to do during the rest of this sermon is just break down those few verses into phrases so that we can absorb and understand and appreciate what God is saying here. First of all, God is free from the limitations of time, space, and matter. He's spirit, and he cannot possibly be represented by anything made of matter. To God, the idea of people doing that is so repellent that we're going to see that he likens it to being hated. He likens idolatry to people who hate him. There are a lot of sins in the world. There are a lot of sins mentioned in Scripture, but you will find very few sins in which God gets more emotional about, in which God takes more personally, is more offended by than the second commandment and committing idolatry. For some people, they say that this Scripture forbids any artistic likeness of anything on earth or heaven or under the sea, like statues or paintings or embroidered images. Some will not even allow their picture to be taken because they believe that their own image in a photograph violates this commandment. But in context, that's not what this commandment is talking about. It's talking about taking a figure of wood or metal cloth or stone and using it as an object of worship. And I'll prove it to you. All of the artistry and images created for use in the tabernacle included images of caribim on the linen curtains within the tabernacle. None of that violated this commandment because those things were not being worshipped. All right, so the Bible does not condemn making statues or having a painting in your home or embroidered images. The catch is, and the key, is that nothing in heaven or earth or under the sea should we ever use to represent the awesomeness of the great God. That's a very important thing that we understand. From the Believer's Study Bible, here's what they say about verse 4. Quote, They say a few sentences later, quote, So, again, what we're talking about today is very serious. God takes idolatry very, very seriously. Throughout the Scripture, He refers to it as harlotry. He says, in essence, Imagine that you're married to someone whom you love dearly and you have an intimate relationship with that person. You find out that that person is a prostitute. God says, That's how I feel when people commit idolatry. That's how much it hurts me. It offends me when people commit idolatry. Turn with me to Deuteronomy 4, verse 15. So we want to go to the book of Deuteronomy here and see where God wanted people to understand that He cannot possibly be represented by anything made of matter. It diminishes His glory. It's a personal affront to Him. Deuteronomy 4, verse 15. And the warning that He gives here, unfortunately, went unheeded, and this is exactly what they did. They went to worship other gods and to serve them. Deuteronomy 4, verse 15. Take careful heed to yourselves.

Take heed. The things that you see in the sky were created by that awesome creator. God, they're a gift, something that we can look up and enjoy on a starry night. In verse 20. They were oppressed. God brought them out through miracles. And there had to be times through that whole experience when they, too, were terrified, seeing the plagues fall upon the Egyptians. And brought you out of the iron furnace out of Egypt to be His people and inheritance as you are this day.

So God is saying, therefore, because I did this for you and because you saw no form when I spoke to you out of Horeb, you should not ever even think about taking anything made out of matter and using it in any way, shape, or form to worship or represent me. God gave His law to His people so they could worship Him in spirit and in truth, not with material things and false gods.

Let's go to John chapter 24 and verse 24. John chapter 4 verse 24, a scripture that we are familiar with because we've read it here in services and times in the past. A comment that Jesus made to a Samaritan woman.

The Samaritan woman was like many people I know today. You do your thing, I'll do mine. Well, you Jews have a temple and you worship God your way and that's okay. But we Samaritans, we worship on our own Mount and we do it our way. We shake it to the left where you shake it to the right, but it's all okay because it's kind of on the grand path to whatever. And Jesus says you can't worship God that way. John chapter 4 and verse 24, God is spirit.

It's not about mountains. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The very Bible notes say this about verse 24, quote, we must worship in spirit and truth. The English word worship was originally spelled worth ship. W-O-R-T-H-S-H-I-P, worth ship, and means to acknowledge the worth of the object worshiped.

We should acknowledge God's worth in spirit in contrast to material ways and in truth in contrast to falsehood. A very powerful statement made by Jesus Christ Himself. Notice how unique the Creator God of Scriptures reveals Himself to be. He says, you never saw a form of Me. He says, I am spirit. Humanity worships God's it has made and God's it can see. That's what people do. The Creator God is eternal.

He can't be seen. So the first commandment deals with whom we worship. It deals with the object of the worship, the true God. The second commandment deals with how we worship, the right way of worshiping the one true God revealed in the first commandment. Both of them address the subject of worship. All right, let's go back now to Exodus. Go back to where we were. Exodus 20, verse 5. And we'll go into some bits and pieces of these verses to look at them a little bit more closely. Exodus 20, verse 5. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, serving them meaning as an act of worship.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. The word jealous here comes translated in English as jealous is from the Hebrew word kana, spelled Q-A-N-N-A, pronounced kana. And it means to be provoked to envy. An act of idol worship is deeply offensive to God because it's disrespectful. It attempts to diminish his omnipotence, and it offends him. The eternal has created all matter, and for people to merely form matter, anything, stone, wood, metal, cloth, whatever, to simply mold it or create it into an image and call it a representation of God and to worship it is insulting. It's provocative to God, he says. This is why in numerous times the worship of idols, again, is referred to as an act of adultery or harlotry by God in the Scriptures to ancient Israel.

It's that serious of a personal offense to God. I'm going to read verse 5 from the translation God's Word for today. It says, again, this is verse 5, this translation, quote, Never worship them or serve them, because I, the Lord your God, am a God who does not tolerate rivals. I punish children for their parents' sins to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. End of quote. Personally, I don't believe that most people have any idea how insulting and appalling false worship is to God.

I don't think most people get it. They certainly don't understand the gravity of how this emotionally affects God. The Scriptures, again, condemn many different types of sin, but the creation and worship of false gods brings out the most intensive condemnation directly from God himself. This is important for us to realize and understand, because right now, so far, we're talking about simply the letter of the law, the physical way that one can commit idolatry. In a few minutes, we're going to talk about the spiritual application, which applies to all of us.

In Malachi, Malachi said, chapter 3 and verse 16, For I am the Lord God, I do not change, therefore you are not consumed. God's tolerance for sin never changes. And what was said then about the sin of idolatry and how much it offends God, that hasn't changed. Fortunately, His abundant mercy and grace and forgiveness upon our repentance also never changes. So let's make sure we understand the fullness of this second commandment.

Let's go to Exodus chapter 32, beginning in verse 1. Exodus chapter 32 and verse 1. Some people might think because of the wording that God is limiting this to someone making an image of a false God, you know, Dagon or Esther or some other pagan God that was in Egypt or among the Canaanites.

That God is limiting His commandment to just that. But that's not understanding the full richness of what God means. But it's revealed here in Exodus chapter 32 and verse 1. It says, Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, Moses had been up there 40 days, having a conversation with God, God revealing the very Ten Commandments to him, the people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, Come, make us gods that shall go before us.

For as this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Maybe he's lost up there. Maybe a lion ate him. But he's been gone for a long time now. We're getting a little antsy here. So make us some gods. In verse 2, And Aaron said to them, Aaron's no help, Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, your daughters, and bring them to me.

So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool. And he made a molded calf. Then they said, This is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.

This isn't some pagan god. This is a material representation of the true God that just brought us out of the land of Egypt. Now, I'm not going to go into detail about God's response, but I'm sure you know that neither God's response nor Moses' reaction when he came back to the camp was very positive. As a matter of fact, Moses was so furious. He took the stones, threw them on the ground, and broke the Ten Commandments. And before he came back, he had to talk God out of eliminating the nation from earth.

That's how deeply offensive idolatry is to God. Without the intercession of Moses, Israel could have been wiped out, and God would have started all over again with Moses and his wife. Because you know what? God's got all kinds of time. It's we who were limited, but he's got all kinds of time to get his will done for things to be fulfilled. But you see, even though they could have said that, well, this is to represent the true God, Yahweh, the one who brought us out of Egypt, God says, no way.

That's a personal affront to me. You've diminished my glory. And who and what I am by taking something made out of matter. How embarrassing. How shameful. How belittling to me. Taking something made out of matter and saying, oh, this represents the true God. So obviously God and Moses were not pleased. So the second commandment not only applies to people creating images of pagan gods to worship, but also applies to people creating an image, an idol, or to worship anything and call it as a representation of the true creator God revealed in the Bible.

Again, it is deeply offensive and insulting to Yahweh for people to do this. That's one reason we avoid the use of images in our worship here. We don't have images like the cross, or fish symbols, or stained glass, or pictures of saints. Because even if it starts out innocently, eventually it leads to individuals praying to them or kneeling to them in their worship to use them as a bridge between them and the true God.

And I've had relatives, I had Catholic relatives who would pray to pictures of the Virgin Mary, or pictures of Jesus Christ hanging on a wall. I think I've told you before I went to a Greek Orthodox funeral, and after walking through the room with incense, and we're all sitting there coughing and choking, because the whole room fills up with this putrid-smelling incense, then he pulls out the brass cross.

Now, all right everyone, get in a single file line and come and kiss the cross. Where does that come from? And all the faithful would all come up and kiss the brass cross. So, we shouldn't think that what we're talking about is something that happened way back in ancient times and ancient Israel, by no means. Even through the letter of the law, this is something that still exists today. People take an image, they kneel before it, or they pray to it, thinking that somehow it represents, it is a conduit between them and their relationship with God.

It's also, by the way, why you don't see images of Jesus or the Father in any of our church literature. Let's take a look now at verse 5, the second half of the verse. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. It's God who says, when you do this, you know what you're saying to me? When you commit idolatry, you're saying you hate me.

That's how offensive this action is to the true God, the Creator, as revealed in the Bible. So I want you to notice that God views idol worship as so disgusting, he defines it as literally hating him when the action is done. There's a cumulative effect of sin over generations. I want to explain what he means by this. He says, visiting the iniquities of the fathers on the children of the third and fourth generation. As families copy, and children grow up in families, they see their parents doing certain things, and they copy what their parents do.

And this can be confirmed by any psychologist, so we'll tell you that most alcoholics come from homes in which one of the parents were an alcoholic. Most people in our prisons were physically, emotionally abused as children, so that was passed on to them. So they thought that behavior was acceptable within our society and ended up spending time in prison. These are repeated from generation to generation. Family dysfunction just goes on and on and on until someone has the courage and boldness to stop it. In his or her own generation.

He says, it stops with me and stops now. People are punished by repeating the sins they see as children. That's what this scripture means. They are punished by repeating the sins they see as children and duplicating them. However, God does not curse future generations because of the personal sins of their fathers.

Each person is responsible for their own sins. Let's understand this clearly. Let's go to Ezekiel 18 and verse 1. Ezekiel writes, The Proverb meant that the fathers commit evil and the children are cursed directly by God because of the father's evil. That's what that Proverb meant. Verse 3. God says, we are all responsible for our own sins. Verse 20. Let's pick it up there.

But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all of my statutes and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live and not die. Verse 22. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him because of the righteousness that he has done. His repentance in God's eyes, His humility in God's eyes, has opened the door for sin to be forgiven, and he shall live. So again, when we look at that verse 5 and Exodus chapter 20, I want us to understand that visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the third and fourth generations is not a curse from God on the children because of their father's sins. It's the cumulative effect generation after generation of people ignorantly repeating the sins and errors that they saw as children. So I think that's an important thing for us to get. All right, let's go back now to Exodus chapter 20. A slight deviation there, a little sidebar. But let's go back to Exodus chapter 20 and verse 6. Look at the more positive aspect of this verse. Exodus chapter 20 and verse 6. But showing mercy to thousands, many translations, by the way, sing to thousands of generations rather than thousands of people, the original context could have very well meant to thousands of generations, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. The word mercy here is the Hebrew word kesed, and it means kindness, good deeds, merciful kindness, pity. So God says, for someone who loves Me and keeps My commandments, I will show mercy, pity, compassion on them because of their attitude. God's grace can reveal to someone their sins, can open our eyes, take the blinders away, and upon repentance God can forgive us of those sins. And when an individual begins to love God and live by God's law, as most of us experienced when we were first called, and when we were studying and praying and coming to Sabbath services and learning more about God's way of life, that brokenness can begin to be healed because of God's loving mercy. This is why the Eternal can show merciful kindness to anyone who grows up in a perverse culture, and He can bless them. Some of the best kings of Judah, their fathers, were wicked scoundrels, yet they were very good kings because they made a choice to break that dysfunctional cycle that they had seen in their families. And many of us have made the same choices when we were called into God's truth. So with this understanding of the Second Commandment and God's intense judgment on it, perhaps we now can have a better appreciation of a Scripture that we read when we talk about idolatry or we talk about not copying the ways of others. It's in Deuteronomy 12 and verse 28. So with this background, I hope we can appreciate maybe a little more profoundly God's warning and instruction here in Deuteronomy 12 and verse 28. Because I have to tell you that a large part of the Christian world violates what God says here.

And again, I want to emphasize that from God's perspectives, people who commit idolatry hate Him. So it's pretty difficult to say, I'm blessed, or God feels, that you hate Him. Deuteronomy 12 and verse 28. Observe and obey all these words which I command you, that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever. That's that commutative, generational fact in a positive way. It can go well with you, and you teach your children good things, and they teach their children good things. And that's passed on from generation to generation. When you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God, when the Lord your God cuts off from before you, the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land. So after you drive the Canaanites out, and now you're living in what was their homes, and you're living in land that's fertile, you can plant crops where they planted crops. And all of this is being given to you on a silver platter as a blessing from God. Then he says in verse 30, Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you, so that you do not inquire after their God, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abomination to the Lord, which he hates, they have done to their gods. From the very start of making a false God, to the way that they worship it, to the way that they diminish the glory and omnipotence of the true God who's revealed in Scripture, and then the other perverse things they do, continuing here, for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. By the way, many of these pagan religions' prostitution was part of the religion. So you worshiped by going into the temple harlot and committing a sexual act. So these are the practices that God says was an abomination. Some would take their adorable young children and to get the favor of their God, they would literally sacrifice, they would burn alive their children as an offering to these pagan gods. Continuing. For every abomination to the Lord, which he hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. And whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it, nor shall you take away from it. So God states that when it comes to rebranding pagan religious practices or rituals, He's saying, oh, we do this to glorify Christ. We do this to glorify the God of the Bible. He says, don't even go there. Don't even get started. And it's because of the Second Commandment that we don't participate in many of the accepted religious practices that's called Christian today that frankly originated in paganism. It's a compromise to the clear instruction of the Second Commandment. There is nothing spiritual or truthful about a Christmas tree. Jesus said you should worship God in spirit and in truth. There's nothing spiritual. There's nothing truthful about a Christmas tree, about going to sunrise services. You know, where the pagans worshiped the rising sun, saying, oh, we do this to honor the resurrection of Jesus. Easter bunnies. Is there anything truthful, spiritual, about the Easter bunny? Dressing like a ghoul for Halloween, Halloween. Nothing spiritual, truthful about those practices. Making the sign of the cross, or what do they call it? Ash Wednesday. Having a priest. Put the sign of the cross by an ash on your forehead so you can walk around all day. None of these things are spiritual, yet they were all borrowed from the way that pagans worshiped their gods. And they were brought in and rebranded into what we call today modern Christianity, and people do these things. And they shouldn't be done. And that's why we are so adamant not to participate in those kinds of religious activities.

Well, to this point, we've looked at the physical letter of the law. We've looked at literally taking matter and forming it in some fashion or shape and using it to worship the true God, or as a representation, some conduit between us and God, and we're understanding that we should not do that. But there's something else we need to consider, and that is the spiritual application of the law. Who was really good at revealing the spiritual application of the law was Jesus. Right? He said, ah! The law says you shall not kill, but I'm here to tell you that if you hate your brother in your heart, you've already murdered him. That's the spiritual application. Jesus says the law says you shall not commit adultery. Jesus says, ah! But the spiritual application is if you lust after a woman, you've already committed adultery in your heart. There's a spiritual application to all of the commandments, and there certainly is one with this commandment. Let's go to Colossians chapter 3 and verse 2. Paul's going to talk about it. Colossians chapter 3 and verse 2. Paul writes to the congregation at Colossae, set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. In other words, you have a new life in Christ. You have a new creature living within you. People can't see that. God sees it. Verse 4. But when Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. As Jesus Christ begins to descend to the earth, we know there will be the first resurrection. We will meet Jesus Christ in the air, and we will appear with Him in glory as He comes back to earth. Verse 5. Therefore, put to death your members, your body parts, which are on the earth, and these may lead us to fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. So this is the spiritual application of the law. The spiritual sin of idolatry is ultimately a sin of the heart. And idol is anything that we put before God, and that we depend on to meet the needs of our heart. Even love. Some people will do some rather bizarre things to get love. Or security. Some people will do some rather bizarre things to feel secure. Or to feel a sense of self-worth. Some people will take mind-altering drugs or do certain things to feel worthy. Or significance. Some people will say and do perform outrageous acts in order to feel significant and get noticed. And when we seek to find identity and security in something besides God, we have made that something an idol. John Calvin said that the human heart is an idol factory, because there are so many things in this world that we can make an idol of. People often search for peace or identity through their relationships. People use substances. People seek money or entertainment. Addictions are forms of idolatry, as are a host of other worldly enticements that ultimately can never satisfy us. We're trying to fill a hole in our heart with these kinds of things. Only God can fill that hole in our heart. And when we give ourselves to the pursuit of man-made gods, we are breaking the second commandment. Now, God certainly understands and wants us to have goals and desires and passions. And most of us work throughout the day, and that's a minimum of an eight-hour commitment. God doesn't have any problem with any of those things, but he does have a problem when there's anything that becomes so important to us that we place it before God. That is spiritual idolatry. Ephesians 5 and verse 5. Ephesians 5 and verse 5. Let Paul emphasize this fact one more time, all over again. Ephesians 5, 5.

He's talking about being an inheritor of the kingdom of God. For this you know, he says, again this is Ephesians chapter 5 verse 5, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. So the essence here is that the sin of covetousness, which happens to be the tenth commandment that we will in time get to, that that tenth commandment reveals what's really in our heart, what's most important to us. And it's possible that we could be putting our families before God. We could be putting our careers before God. We could be putting a hobby before God. Only we know that. Only we know what lies deep within our hearts and within our minds. Idolatry is clearly serving the self. And the nature of this spiritual idolatry is selfishness, the worship of our self in one way or another. What we want. What we give most of our time to. What excites us. What is a passion. What is something that is so important to us that we put God on the back burner. And that is spiritual idolatry. We must be on our guard and not allow anything in our life to become more valuable to us than God. Again, because it's a personal offense to Him. Well, today we've looked at the second commandment, and it helps us to understand the seriousness of worship toward God. The first and second commandment together talk about the worship of the true God, who He is, how we should be worshipped, and the kind of worship to avoid. But this commandment emphasized how not to worship the Creator God in scriptures, didn't it? It told us what not to do. So this leads us to the next important question that we'll be covering throughout these fall holy days. We now know how not to worship God, so how should we worship Him? Wouldn't a God worthy of worship reveal to people what He wants? Wouldn't He reveal a way that says, these days are mine. I claim ownership over them. This is important to me. This is the time that you should set aside to come and worship me as a community. Wouldn't any great God worthy of worship not only talk about what you shouldn't do, but clearly inform us the right and correct way that honors Him, that pleases Him, that worships Him? Most certainly. And God gives us that answer in Leviticus chapter 23. And we'll be talking more about the proper way to worship Him as we approach the fall holy days. I wish all of you a positive and a very fulfilling Sabbath day.