You Shall Not Make or Worship Graven Images

Thank you, Mr. Simmons. Okay, how many of you actually know The River of Dreams by Billy Joel?

Okay. Boy, you're old. You can't remember that song. It's a man searching for some spiritual meaning instead of a sort of a gospel style. It's a great song. I mean, it's not something you'd say in church or the church event, but if you like that kind of stuff. By the way, I want to remind everyone that we are going to begin the Dixon Bible Study this Wednesday night. So that'll be a monthly Bible study on the second Wednesday of every month. And it will be at the Dixon Senior Citizen Center, 206 West Walnut Street in Dixon. If you want to come early, be there at 6.30 and bring some snacks. Give everybody a chance to talk a little bit and eat some snacks or whatever, and then we'll start around 7 o'clock. So hopefully that'll be an activity that we looked at Dixon, and people said they wanted a Bible study there. And there was, I think, 28 or 30 people that said they would like to regularly come. So hopefully we can get a good crowd there and spend once a month at least getting into the Bible a little bit and have some fellowship too.

If you do an internet search on the Ten Commandments, you will find attempts by atheists, New Agers, scientists, even some Christians to write a more up-to-date Ten Commandments. Because they consider the Ten Commandments sort of out of date, you know, written by an ancient god, maybe a mythical god, or maybe god did write them, but you know, they just don't apply today. There was a survey done a number of years ago on, you know, at the time for a New Ten Commandments, who would you suggest should write them? And by far, the person that was selected, the number one person to write a New Ten Commandments, was Oprah Winfrey. People thought that she would be the best qualified to write a New Ten Commandments. Now, of course, we believe that the Ten Commandments are part of the Word of God.

So we see them as having profound meaning. A couple weeks ago, I started a series of sermons on each one of the Ten Commandments. And we went through the first commandment. We showed why the Ten Commandments are relevant. And we went through that first commandment that says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You show I'm no other gods before me. We went through and showed how that is the basis of all the commandments. The God in Israel makes a statement that says, I am the God. No other gods. And therefore, that statement tells us an awful lot of what He requires. You show I'm no other God before me. It requires belief. It requires loyalty to Him. It requires trust. It requires obedience. So that commandment alone is huge. And it's from that commandment that you build all the rest of them. Because if He can't claim, I am the only God, and why are His commandments any better than anybody else's?

So He makes that statement, creates the foundation for the Ten Commandments. The next one, which we'll go through today, deals with, then, how He wishes to be worshiped. Now, let's just remember that word worship, because we're going to go back to that in a minute. That word is very important. How He wishes to be worshiped. How He wishes to be respected as the God. I am the God.

Next commandment, here's how you are to relate to me. So let's go to Exodus 20. Wow! How important this must be. I read a lot of articles this week. Every time I had a little chance, I went and looked up on the Internet people who wanted to write a new Ten Commandments, what they would say. It was interesting how there were numerous sites I found, especially by agnostics and atheists, who said that the thing about the first four commandments is that they are so... this deity that would say this is just so arrogant. What kind of arrogant being would say these things? That you can't make a picture of me. So they saw this as arrogance. Then I kept thinking over and over again, this will be interesting, because someday you'll have to stand before God. That would be an interesting discussion. I don't think they'll have much to say.

When you're resurrected and you appear before the God, you said, oh, he's arrogant. So let's look at what he says in the second of the commandments. You shall not make for yourselves a carved image, any likeness of anything that is inhabit above, that's earth beneath, or this is the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. Now I'm going to stop there, because at the end of the sermon, we'll go through the last part of this commandment. What's really important here is, he says, you shall not bow down to them, nor serve them.

People have read this second commandment and taken it to the extent, well, you can't even take a picture. You can't even carve a bust of someone else. You know, it's wrong to have a bust of George Washington in your house, because that's a graven image, it's a carved image. But the thrust and the meaning behind this commandment is, it has to be involved in bowing down and serving. Bowing down and serving. So why would God do this? Why would God say, look, when you worship, you can't make an image of anything, including me.

You know, this includes images of God. So why would God do this? Well, there's two main reasons. The first one is, is that God forbids the use of idols in the worship of Him because of His uniqueness. I'll let you think about that in a minute. Think about that in a minute. He forbids the use of idols, of images, in the worship of Him because of His uniqueness. Have you ever been to the Sistine Chapel? How many of you have been to the Sistine Chapel? Okay, a few. I've seen pictures of it, but actually being there, it's amazing. Especially a few years ago, when they found out there was centuries of soot on it, and they didn't realize it.

They came in and took the soot off, and the colors are so bright, everybody was shocked. But you know, the centerpiece of that painting, or the ceiling of that huge chapel, is what's supposed to be God reaching out and touching Adam's figure to create Him. Very dramatic scene. The problem is, is that how God wants to be seen? This white-haired old guy. Is that how God wants to be seen? How does God want us to see Him? And why does He say, you can't make an image of me? Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy 4. Now, the context of what we're reading here is, God is reminding Israel what it was like when they were at the bottom of the Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments.

Remember how we talked about that last time? What it was like for those people? That He gathered around this mountain and on top of these boiling black clouds and lightning coming out, and a place is shaking and there's fire. And they hear this voice. It absolutely terrified them to be in the presence of God. It was absolutely terrifying. They finally went to Moses and said, you have Him talk to us. You are talking to you and you come to us. This is too frightening. This will kill us. So it's in the middle of Him reminding them what that was like that we pick up in verse 11.

That you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire in the midst of heaven, with darkness and cloud and thick darkness. And the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, but you saw no form. You only heard a voice. In other words, God did not let you see a form on purpose. You only heard a voice.

So He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, the Ten Commandments, and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. Remember, I said that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of the Old Covenant. And when we get to the New Covenant, they're the foundational response that we're supposed to have to God. Now, it's a whole lot more than that, but you have to start with something. So this is what we start with. And the Lord commanded me at that time, Moses says, to teach you statutes and judgments that you might observe them in the land which you cross over to possess.

Take careful heed, He tells them, to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you in Horem out of the midst of the fire. He says, take careful heed to remember God deliberately did not give you any concept of what He actually looks like.

Lest, verse 16, lest you act corruptly and make yourselves a carved image of the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that's on the earth, or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth. And take heed. This is even interesting where He goes here.

Lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them. See the serve and bow down to. Worship and serve, which the larger God has given to all the peoples, and of the whole heaven is a heritage. This is where astrology comes from. Ancient people saw the movement of stars and said, those must be living beings.

They move. You can watch them. During the night, they move. Of course, the earth turning into a concept. So therefore, if those are living beings, they must have impact on our lives because those are supernatural beings. So if I know what time of year I was born in, I know who my stars are.

So that's where the horoscope came from. So he tells them, be careful because you're even going to look at the stars and say, oh, those must be God or gods. Those must be living beings up there.

Now we understood, and we'll go through in a minute, why human beings are attracted to idolatry.

Idolatry is a strong attraction within human beings, and there's a reason why. And he tells them here, be careful because I didn't appear in any form. All you saw was fire and smoke.

That's all I showed you, and deliberately. Now, we just read the word worship.

What do you think of when you think of the word worship?

In English, we usually think of praise. You worship God, you give Him praise. But in Hebrew, that word doesn't mean that at all. So we usually use worship and praise as a sort of synonyms, and Hebrew, they're not synonyms. Worship literally means to bow down. It's used many times as a person literally spread out on the ground, face in the dirt. They are worshiping. In the ancient world, when the king would walk by, everybody would get down on the ground. If you stood up, the king would have you killed. To worship. And this is what the Second Commandment is all about. Remember, we read it. It says, bow down and serve. Who do you bow down to and serve? This is what this is all about.

So he says these images you build, they're supposed to represent God, and you bow down and you serve that image. He says it's unacceptable to him. He deliberately has not shown himself to human beings, and that cannot be done. So it cannot be done.

And there's a reason for this. God's uniqueness and his power, his goodness, he requires, remember the First Commandment, I'm the only God, he requires that we prostrate ourselves before him. He requires that we worship him. We bow down to him. Praise is a different idea. Praise is a different idea. That we worship him. In Isaiah, chapter 4, it's interesting, Isaiah makes the comment, he says, to whom will we liken God, or what likeness will we compare him to? And here's the point that God is making. If God is omnipresent, if God is in the heavens, which he is, at his throne, and yet David said, I can go to the deepest part of the ocean, he is there. How do I create a picture or an image or a statue of somebody who is like that? How do we create an image of a being that hears every one of our thoughts at the same time?

Who hears all the prayers of the... Every human being on the earth could pray to him at the same time that he would hear and process all of that. Explain that! Look how many times God has appeared to human beings and simply asked simple questions like, how does the earth stay in place?

How does it stay in place? How does this work? Explain this! And of course, we have no answer.

The point is, God says, you can't make a likeness of me because there's nothing like me. Here's what idolatry does when we try to create an image of God.

Idolatry degrades the spiritual and awe-inspiring nature of God. It degrades God. It brings him down to like us. Now, we're made in the image of God, and there's a lot of ways that we are like God. But we can't say, God looks exactly like us either. You know why? He's not physical. So what's that mean?

He's not physical.

He's not. I'm made out of stuff. How about you? I'm not made out of stuff.

How do we make an image of the great God? When we look into the New Testament, we always find the Spirit of the Ten Commandments taught in the New Testament. You want to see the Second Community of it brought down to its core purpose. Let's go to John 4. John 4.

Verse 23. Jesus Christ is saying this. John 4, 23.

But the hour is coming when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. Idolatry tries to bring God into the physical world. And yet we are to see God in the spirit. He is spirit.

So bringing God into a physical image is to degrade who He is. It's degrading. Now the second reason, of course, idolatry is wrong, is obvious, and that God forbids idolatry because it represents false gods.

You know, using what we think of idolatry, that's what we think of.

The creation of false gods. When you go through the Old Testament, the prophets will mock people for worshiping idols. I mean, absolutely make fun of them. It's sarcastic.

And you know, if you go through the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, you go through the minor prophets, just about the number one sin you will see, Israel and Judah indicted for time and time again, is idolatry. The worship of false gods. Remember, Israel and Judah didn't give up the worship of God. They simply mixed it with other forms of worship. They believed all gods or different gods, mixed it all together. Look what David says. David's very typical of this statements that are made here. Let's go to Psalm 115. About idols themselves. Psalm 115.

I'm going to pick it up in verse 3.

Psalm 115 verse 3. But our God is in heaven. He does whatever He pleases. Now, that seems like a strange statement until you read the rest of what He says. Our God, He exists in heaven. He goes and says and does whatever He wants to do. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak. Eyes, they have, but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Dozes, they have, but they do not smell. They have hands, but they do not handle. Feet, they have, but they do not walk. Nor do they mutter through their throat. That verse is very interesting. Those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them. He says, if you trust in an idol, you're just like the idol.

Deaf, dumb, blind, and dead. That's a strong statement. He says, that's what it is to worship an idol. It is to be deaf, dumb, blind, it is to be dead. The indictment against idolatry in the scripture is remarkably strong. So then why do human beings worship idols?

Why? What draws human beings to the worship of idols? Well, let's look at some of the reasons why.

Idolatry is the attempt to fill a spiritual need. See, you and I, we were all designed to have a relationship with God. It's designed in our spirit. It's designed in the brain itself, the way the brain functions. We are designed to have a relationship with God. There's parts of the human brain that are different than any other animal brain and has to do with our experience of spirituality. We are designed to have a relationship with God. But what happens if you don't know God or know nothing about God? What happens when you have no Bible, no contact with God? You will create something to try to fill that void. So human beings create gods.

It is an attempt to deal with the dollies that there is something spiritual. There's something beyond the physical realm. There's something beyond me. And how do I connect with that? And idolatry is an attempt to do that. And it's very strong. Idolatry is a powerful force. Most of us, you know, I probably know what this room came from, a truly idolatrous background. Well, maybe some of us did. We'll talk about that in a minute. But idolatry has a power over the people that's hard for us to understand. It's because it fills a void to go pray to that idol, which is a representation of their gods.

They don't say the idol is the god. The idol is a representation. And the idol has magic in it. It's magic because it represents their god. It has power in him. And so it gives them mysticism, it gives them mysteries, it gives them secret knowledge. It's filled with superstition. Mainly idolatry is filled with emotion. I have made a connection with the spirits, the spirit world, the gods. Another reason is it really is an attempt to answer the unknown questions of nature. I mean, you and I have some scientific knowledge that has not been available for the overwhelming majority of human history. They did not know what caused the Nile River to flood every spring.

Since it happened, somebody had to make it happen. Just like the sun coming up every morning, somebody had to...he's a god. Look at him. He shines, we feel his warmth. It's a god. What happens when he goes away? Well, if you lived in Egypt for hundreds of years, every morning, the first thing the Pharaoh had to do was come up and give a prayer. And the sun would come up. And everybody would be like, oh, I'm relieved. Because he would have to pray for the god to come back. How do you explain it? You don't know the earth is round. You don't know we're spinning around the sun. They have no knowledge of that. So how does the Nile River rise? Because the Nile River had to rise every year, deliver silt so they could grow their food. So how did that happen? Some god had to make it happen. So there's a god of the Nile. There is somebody out there doing all this stuff. There has to be.

And so it is an attempt to answer the unknown questions. How does this happen? They would study. Why does the moon come up, go across the sky, and disappear in the morning?

You know, if I sit a rock down, that doesn't happen. It must be alive. It must be. It has movement. So the science of the day created the gods. Because they had no other explanation. So it's an attempt to deal with the unknown aspects of nature. Also, and this is a very powerful force in most idolatrous systems. Not all pagan systems had this, but most did.

It releases a lot of sexual freedom. There is a lot of sexual freedom in idolatry. In fact, you will find throughout history, many pagan religions have sexual activity as part of their worship service. So there's all the sexual freedom that's allowed. And then it is also an attempt to control the gods. Because if I bring the right sacrifice, say the right words, do the right dance, the rain god will make it rain. Because I don't know where rain goes from, but if it doesn't come, like it didn't come last year and two of my kids died because we couldn't grow food. You see what I mean? So the rain god was mad at us. So if I do the right things, do the right dance, the rain god will make it rain this year. And when it rains, he's happy. In fact, in many cases, the idea was they have no choice if I do the right things. The gods must do what I want them to do. So it's an attempt to control these powers that they have no relationship with. There is not a concept of relationship. There's a concept of they have power. I don't, and I've got to somehow either appease them or control them. So there is a great emotional need for idolatry. If you have no concept of God, you will create an idol. You will create some god, because you're designed to have a relationship with God. And if you don't know God, you'll make him up. Especially when you look at life's conceit so arbitrary. Where does a tornado come from?

Must be somebody makes those things someplace. Sends them on. See what I mean? You say, yeah, I would. How do you know that? Because you do all kinds of things about weather that nobody knew 150 years ago. That's why you know it. For most of you in history, they didn't know what makes that. I don't know. Somebody's got to make it. See, the gods and the goddesses. Now, I think it's a pretty fair assessment that none of you have statues to Zeus in your basement.

We're not going to set up a statue to a feta or something here. But we have to be careful, or we can't sort of water down this, this commandment. I don't mean water down so much in practice, although even in practice, but because of our attitude towards it. You and I don't deal with idolatry all the time. We sort of ignore this commandment. And think about it. How often do you think about don't bear, don't create images? Not very often. You think about the other commandments more often because they're more apropos to your life. And yet we have to be very careful that we don't break this commandment. Now, so let's go through three ways you can break this commandment. And they're obvious, and yet we need to explore. Maybe somehow we have compromised and not even know them. The first one is the use of any image to represent God. Now, we went through that. The use of any image to represent God. What I'm about to say is not politically correct, but it is what the Bible says. There is, even in Christianity today, a taking of the Scripture and softening it because they don't know how to answer the hard questions. So there's a compromising with Scripture because they don't know how to answer the hard questions. Does God love Hindus? Yes. Does God honor their religion? It's just another way to Him. How many times you... All religions are just all similar paths to the same God. No. The commandments against idolatry means that Hinduism and Buddhism and most of the religions of the world are unacceptable to God.

Totally, completely unacceptable to God.

Like I said, that's not what we hear all the time. Well, that seems harsh. It's what God says. So either the Scripture is true, or this Bible is what we live by, or it's not.

Let's look at something. Because I said, well, yeah, you and I are going to do that. We're not going to go, you know, become new agers and sort of worship Mother Earth. Okay, we're not going to do that. Well, but at the same time, do we have the same attitude towards idolatry that God does? I could do Deuteronomy chapter 7. I know this is the Old Testament, but I'm going to tie it into the New Testament a minute here. Deuteronomy 7. Because people say, well, that's in the Old Testament. We live in the New covenant. No, no, no, no, no. You know, we're constantly looking back and forth and seeing the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. Deuteronomy 7.25. Now, what God is telling here, He's telling the Israelites, when you go into the Promised Land, you're going to find all kinds of beautiful temples. And these temples are going to have these amazing statues, and they're going to be made out of wood and stone, beautiful stone. They're going to be carved. They're going to be all inspiring. And many of them are going to be covered with gold or silver, or both. So what are you going to do when you go into those temples? Here's what He says. Verse 25, you shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire. You shall not cover the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. The word abomination there is very important. In Hebrew, it means detestable. It means loathsome. It is something you absolutely hate. Now God expresses here some emotions. Now God's emotions aren't like ours. In fact, He doesn't sin with His emotions. We do. Of course, He's not wired up to physical reactions to emotions like us either. So He has control over His emotions, but He does express them to us. And He says, you have to understand, creating an image of Me degrades Me. I despise it. I hate it. It makes me...it's detestable. This is a strong word, and He's telling us how He feels. Interesting, isn't it? But God says, this is what I know is right and wrong.

Let me explain to you how this makes me feel.

Now, the next verse. Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, in other words, any of these statues into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing. Now there's the question. Do you and I utterly detest, utterly abhor idolatry? I mean, we're used to it. I'm not saying you go around tearing down people's statues, but you understand what I'm saying. You understand what God is saying. I want you to hate it, because it degrades me. It degrades Him. It degrades our God. Now, Muslims believe they're against idolatry. They hate idolatry. So when they go into a place where there's people with idols, they kill all of them and tear their idols down. No, He's not telling us to do that, okay? But what we're seeing here is, the reason they say that, He might have been telling them to do it in ancient Israel when they went into the promised land. In the New Testament Church, He didn't tell them to do it at all. You know what He told them to do? I go tell them it's wrong, which tends to get you all beat up. So instead of conquering the idolaters, we're supposed to let them beat us up. We're supposed to go tell them, nah, this isn't right. This is what God wants. But it's the reaction. Do we hate it because it degrades our God?

There's one thing to know. Oh, yeah, idolatry's wrong, but I don't participate in that. No, do we hate it because it degrades our God? Look at Acts 17. Paul, of course, is fascinating. A man who grew up in a Jewish society inside the Greek world, was trained outside of Judea, ends up in Jerusalem. So this man, as you see in his writings, he was educated in Greek writings. He knew both of the worlds. He knew both worlds. He had seen lots of idols in his lifetime, but he goes to Athens. And Athens is the intellectual sort of capital of the Roman Empire. It's the philosophical capital of the Empire. It's where there's every kind of religion you can think of. Because the Romans didn't care who you worshiped as long as you paid them taxes. Just worship whoever you want. They mixed religions together. We went to Pompeii. It was amazing because one of the buildings that survived Mount Vesuvius, right in, you know, the Roman, the Italian Peninsula in the middle of the Roman Empire, is a little altar in a temple to Isis. An Egyptian goddess. See, they mixed them all together.

They didn't care. They believed in all the gods. It's just the Roman gods were better. That's all. That's good to worship all of them. You don't want anybody mad at you, even if it's a not-important God. So here he is in Athens, and he sees all these statues and all these idols to all these different gods. It looks what it says in verse 16 of Acts 17. Now while Paul waited for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.

It was uncomfortable. It was sad. It made him angry.

So let's take this another step. This gets a little uncomfortable now. Let's take this a step to, in our society, oh wow, I'm glad I don't live in a society where there are lots of idols.

If you understand the statues and the worship of Mary and the saints in Catholicism, it is idolatry.

It is idolatry.

Remember I'll be talking about when I first came here, we were doing a program on saints. Remember I talked about it? We were doing a Beyond Today program on saints. We talked about Fulton Sheen, Cardinal Fulton Sheen, which I remember seeing him as a kid on television, one of the most famous American Cardinals. The Vatican wants to make him a saint, and they can't because two diocese are fighting over his body. You have to understand why. Whoever gets his body gets to chop him up.

You know, in every Catholic church there's an altar. You know what's underneath that altar? A box. You know what's in that box? Pieces of saints. If you can get his finger and put it in your church under your altar, you can go to your altar, pray to Fulton Sheen in heaven, and he will go to Jesus and intercede for you. Now, if you don't have a piece of him, you may not go. But if you get a piece of him, he'll go pray for you. This is serious. It is very...you know, you say, well, you're making that up. I want you...if you don't believe it, I want you to look up saints, Fulton Sheen, but don't go to the Catholic church. Okay? Go to their site and let them explain. It's a doctrine. If you can't get his finger, get a baseball cap anymore or a piece of his clothes, because then he may pray for you. That's why there's a church in...oh, it's in southern Italy, that if you go into the church, there's a dark room. If you put a little money in the box, the electricity comes on, and in that box is the decayed head of a woman. Absolutely decayed, horrifying. It looks like a horror movie. And you kneel down, you pray to her. Now, the reason the head's there is because Rome wanted the body because she's a saint. So they cut her head off, put it in this church, and put the body in Rome, and you can go to a church in Rome and see her body and pray in front of her body because she'll hear you. That's idolatry, pure and simple. You have to understand how steep Catholicism is in idolatry. It's absolutely central. Now, what they'll say is, well, that's not worship. We're not worshiping Him. We're asking Him to go to Jesus for us. Really, you want to go to Mary. My kids were young. One day I said, uh, why is it that we don't go to the Catholic Church? And they said, well, we don't know. I said, well, good. We'll go to our Catholic Church. So I took Him to the gift shop and showed Him how to buy a little, you know, for a dollar, a little prayer to the Mother of Heaven. Now, we went to the Catholic Church and they watched people come over and put money in the box, light a candle, kneel down in front of Mary, and just cry their hearts out and read the prayer.

And we went out and they said, that's sad. I said, yeah, that's what I wanted you to understand. It's sad. It's idolatry. It's idolatry. But see, Jesus will listen to His mom. He might not listen to you, but He'll listen to Mom. So go talk to Mom.

And then she'll go to Him.

I don't know. I find that detestable. I don't hate the people. Anywhere that Paul hated the people in the Athens. He went and talked to them, ate with them, right? It is a detestable thing. It degrades God. It degrades God. It is detestable.

The second point, then, now, obviously, you know, we see that first point. We cannot compromise with our belief that idolatry is detestable. Now, when I say idolatry, remember, this has to do with bowing down. This has to do with worship. I said the statue of Mary. You know, I can open a book and there's an artist's rendition of Mary, you know. I know the wrong with that. I'm not bowing down to it. I'm not worshiping it. A picture is not wrong. You know, who was it? Michelangelo that did the statue of David? Beautiful. I'm not worshiping it. It's just the statue of David. Well, when you set that up and you use it as a part of your worship, you've got a real problem now.

You've crossed the line that you cannot cross. The second thing is that we have to be careful mixing paganism into the worship of God. Paul deals with this really strongly in 1 Corinthians, a church that was so pagan. There's very few Jews in it, and they have all kinds of problems, the most messed up church probably in the entire early part of the church.

They have all these pagan practices they're bringing into the church. And he takes this a step. Now, by the way, you will find this in the Old Testament, a couple places in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, it is made so clear. I want to go to that passage. 1 Corinthians 10. 1 Corinthians 10. He's talking about the Passover. A couple places in 1 Corinthians he talks about the night that Jesus took and was betrayed. He took the bread. He took the wine and how important this is. And so let's pick up in verse 14 so we get the thought because this thought is going to run now for a number of verses. He says, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. Idolatry is a problem in this church. So he says, flee from it. I speak as two wise men, judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless is not the communion of the blood of Christ. The bread we break is not the communion of the body of Christ. For we, though many, are one bread and one body, we all partake of the one bread. So here's the first part of his argument. When we eat the bread and we drink the wine representing the blood and the body blood of Jesus Christ, are we not in communion? Are we not in relationship with Christ? In other words, this is part of our relationship. When we take that bread, we are acknowledging who Christ is, the power behind this. This is a symbol of something beyond a little, you know, symbol of wine. So he says, this is a communion.

Now with Christ, it's a relationship. Verse 18, Observe Israel after the flesh are not those who eat of the sacrifices or takers of the altar. You know, when the Levites did the sacrifices, they then were allowed to eat some of those sacrifices. It was part of their worship. It was they were coming before God, and they were sacrificing to God, and there was a power behind what was going on, and they received a blessing.

Interesting two arguments. Where in the world is he going here?

What am I saying then? Say, that was the first. Where is he going? Well, it's what? Okay. Israelite, pre-sacrificing. We take the Passover service. What in the world does that have to do? What is he going? So he actually asked the question. What am I saying then? That an idol is always an idol. Remember what we started at the beginning of the thought. Get rid of idolatry. So this is all part of an argument about idolatry. He says, what am I saying? That the idol is anything? Or what is offered to idols is anything? Remember, he got it quoted right here from what we read David said. Oh, idols can't see, they can't hear, they can't feel, they're dead, they're pieces of wood.

Isaiah says the same thing. They're just chunks of stone. That's all they are.

So he's just repeating what we've already seen in the Old Testament. Rather, verse 20 though, rather, that the things with the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table, the table of demons. What Paul says is that that pagan world, that idolatrous world underneath of it is a power. Just like underneath the taking of the bread and wine is a power of God. Underneath Israel doing these sacrifices was the power of God. Underneath idolatry is power, but it's not God's power. Underneath idolatry is the power of demons.

God, Satan is the God of this world. That's what Paul says. And he needs it. And the religion of the world underneath them is the power of Satan. This is why he says, do not make images, because you're going to begin to tap into and go into a power that's not mine. I am your God. First commandment, second commandment, worship me. Throw yourself down before me, submit it to me. And it's not about praise yet. It's about submission. Throw yourself down and submission to me. And don't make anything to represent me. Don't degrade me in any way.

Because you go down that path and someday the power under your religion will be demons.

Wow. Idolatry becomes a real interesting problem now, doesn't it?

What is the power behind what's going on? Well, my son was in college. He had a course in comparative religion. He was assigned to go to a Hindu temple. So he came to me and he said, hey, would you go to a Hindu temple with me? And I said, sure. He said, oh, good, because I want to go by myself. So we went. We found a Hindu temple and we went. There was going to be some ceremony that night. So we went in early and the priests were there. And obviously, when we walked in, we weren't dressed in Indian style clothing from India. So they knew that we somehow weren't where we knew to the Hindu temple. So someone came up and asked us, well, can we talk to one of the priests? He's doing a comparative religion class. We'd like to get some ideas about Hinduism. And he said, oh, no, you don't want to talk to the priest. They don't know that much. He said, you want to talk to a philosopher? And he said, here. So sitting on this nice big room, sitting on the side of the chair, was this old guy. He looked like a hundred years old and he was asleep. And he woke him up because he said, here's our philosopher. He's written books about Hinduism. He teaches people about Hinduism. So he woke up and he said, there's some men here that want to learn about Hinduism. Oh, he got excited. He took us off into a little private room. And he spent a long time teaching us about Hinduism. And the whole point of Hinduism is to find the God within you.

It is to go through life until you discover the God that is within you. If you don't, you die. You've got to come back again. Of course, if you're really bad, you might come back as a donkey next time. But, you know, hopefully you eventually find the God that is within you. And the three people that he's ever the most profound Hindus was Buddha, which wasn't a Hindu, Jesus, and Mother Teresa. Jesus said, I'm the son of God. He said he discovered the God within him. That's what we're supposed to do, discover the God within us. So it was a very interesting, you know, my son's trying to write this down. He's trying to make sense out of it. I'm asking questions. My son isn't asking anything. So I go, well, I'm going to ask him. So we're having this great conversation. I suppose I went over about a half hour to finally said, well, what do you do for a living? And I said, oh, I'm a Christian pastor. You know, it was mean. I should have probably softened it. He got up and didn't want to talk to me anymore. But I was afraid he couldn't get to his chair because he's starting to stubble about. So I got him over to his chair and sitting back down. He went to sleep. So by this time, they're starting the sacrifices. So we got to go in and watch the sacrifices. And, you know, there's all these people sitting on the floor, talking, sharing, children playing, eating food. It is a joyful celebration. There is a feeling of joy and togetherness. It's wonderful as they watch with this, you know, around them where you have all these different gods and goddesses, you know, the elephant God. It was a Sheba that has the sixth or eight arms, you know. They're all there and they're sacrificing to them. They take... Now, of course, they don't sacrifice meat. So there's some flowers and vegetables they throw on them. And then they take pictures of what looked like milk and orange juice. They were pouring the juice and the milk all over them and they were putting the sack... doing all these incantations. My son kept saying, come on, let's get out of here. I said, no, no, no. What? Man, this is really... this is really strange. Watch this. You know, and everybody... some carrots come out and they sacrifice the carrots and... Let's get out of here. So we get outside and we're doing some kind of candlelight ceremony that we have to walk through. You know, we get in the car and he says, man, there's demons in that place. He said, yeah, it's idolatry, Chris. There's a power behind it. And those people are attracted to the power because they don't know God. They get a benefit. That's why they go there. They get a benefit. They try to fill their spiritual void.

They begin to realize that the mixing of these things cannot happen. You cannot mix communion with Christ and communion with demons. And that is why we don't keep Christmas and Easter. That's why. It's wonderful. There's great feelings involved with it. It brings families together. It makes lots of money.

But you can have the communion of the two, which is what is an attempt to do.

The last point, then I'm going to go back at the very closing and go back to Exodus 20 and just look at the rest of that verse that we never finished. This is a whole other subject. This would be another sermon, so I'm just going to touch on it. If we can disobey this commandment by not hating idolatry, we covered that, or by mixing idolatry with our worship of God. Now, we have to be very careful about that, too, by the way. It has to do with worship. It has to do not with praise, not with... it has to do with bowing down. Who do you serve? This is what this is all about. Who do you bow down to, and who do you serve? The reason I say that is that I see churches that because pagan temples would have instruments, they won't have any musical instruments, or they won't even have music in their church. Music is bad because pagans did it. No, this is about bowing down and serving. Remember, that's what it's about. Bowing down and serving.

So, when we get to where we are now, where we're not in danger of worshiping idols, the question comes up. We can have a form of idolatry because anything that we make more important in our lives than God is idolatry. You and I might not have false gods and goddesses that we worship, but how about the false god of materialism, or status, or work, or pleasure?

We live in a society where pleasure is a false god. The only purpose in life is to have fun. Fun is part of life, but there's more to life than that.

We can have false gods and we don't even realize it. It's possible. I've seen people make idols out of their husband, or idols out of their wife, or idols out of their children. Anytime you say, I must please my child, knowing that you're going against God, what have you done? You have elevated that person, that thing, to a more important thing.

At that point, we make our own idols. A job. I've seen people make education. Oh, I'll start obeying God as soon as I get my degree. Education? I think being educated by God is more important than getting a degree. I have a degree. I like degrees. I like education. But the problem is, are we creating an idol?

See, we create idols in the modern world and don't even realize we're doing it. Houses, boats, cars, possessions. We make them an idol. Matthew 6. Matthew 6. Part of the Sermon on the Mount.

As we get through this, when we get to the very end, you'll see why this has to do with the Second Commandment. Let's look at verse 19. Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, and there's thieves, and do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Now, He's not saying, just give God more money and live like a permit. He's saying, He is where your heart is, how your priorities, how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you spend your possessions, how you spend your energy.

Verse 22, The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. You know, what you bring into your mind is what He's saying here. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in your eye is darkness, how great is that darkness? And then verse 24 is where He brings this down, the point He's making down to its point. No one can serve. Remember what this all about worship. It's about who do you bow down to, and who do you serve? Because that's the term that's used in the Second Commandment. Do not serve them, do not bow down, do not worship.

No one can serve two masters, for either you will hate the one or love the other, or who will be loyal to the one who despised the other. You cannot serve God and money. Let's see, we can fill in that word with anything that we can come up with that we put as more important than God. Do we worship at the feet of Walmart?

Who is our master? Some of you probably feel like your credit cards are your masters. It's because they become your masters.

You said it, Pete? It's our masters. Who do we serve? Who do we bow down to?

Let's go back to Exodus 20 now and wrap it up with the last part of this Commandment.

By the way, I don't recommend that any of you go to a Hindu temple. I had a grand time. My son came away during this upset. I just, I was fascinated by the whole idolatry of it. It's like, wow! Look, I mean, it's one thing to talk about. It's not a thing you can watch it. It's not a thing to see it. Verse 5 says, you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. Okay? So here's the, now he switches subjects, it seems like, and throws in a sentence that has nothing to do with this Commandment.

But it has to do with all the Commandments. He says, for I, the Lord your God, I'm a jealous God.

If you're the only one, you would be. Now we know Christ is in here in the picture, too, but you understand what he's, the way this is worded. I, the Lord your God, I'm a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers above the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my Commandments. Think of where this is in the context of the Ten Commandments. I am the only God. I am the Lord your God. You're going to have to believe in me. You're going to have to trust me. I am your salvation. I'm the only hope you have. Therefore, my second Commandment is, you have to worship me by not degrading me. You have to worship me by not degrading me, God says. So you can't make images of me or pretend I look like something or I'm like this or I'm like that. I am God. That's enough. Look at what I've created. That's enough.

And he says, if you do that, what's that show? That you love me.

And people say, well, the Ten Commandments, Jesus came about love. Those Ten Commandments were about love. Right in the middle. It wasn't that we're not even in the middle. We're in the first part of the Ten Commandments. He says, you know what this is about? God says, it's about loving me. You want to degrade me? He says, now here's what happens. For those who won't, people who won't keep any of these Commandments, specifically the first two where we're starting here, he says, you know what will happen? I'll show up the next generation, the next generation, the next generation, and your family will be living the same failures over and over and over and over again. You will never get any better. Nothing will ever change. But for those who turn to me, who do this, he says, a thousand generations later, I'll show up, and there'll be some benefits somewhere from what you did. See, this all has generational effects. Generational effects.

And so here he starts with, I'm the only God, don't degrade me, and if you love me, you won't. And for those who hate me, they will. Isn't it amazing? Right there, he says why he's saying this. It has nothing to do with, I'm vain, and I just love to watch you people grovel. It has to do with, do you love me? Because if you hate me, this is what will happen.

And it's right there. It seems like it's an addendum to the second commandment, but it's not. It's part of it. The second commandment is about, what do you worship? What do you bow down to?

Who are you in subjection to? Or what are you in subjection to? Who establishes the priorities of your life? That's what the second commandment is all about. And you thought it was just about Zeus. Or Horus, or Isis. No, it's about loving God, not degrading God. You have been called by God to remove all the idols of your life. Now that includes representing Him.

Now, we're not going to put up any crucifixes. We're not going to try to have pictures of God the Father. We're not going to try to represent Him in those ways. It also means removing the obvious false gods. We're not going to accept Hinduism or Buddhism or the New Age movement or anything as an alternate way to God. It is not. Because underneath of it is the power of demons, not the power of God. And three, you and I have to continue to fight the idolatry of materialism and fame and pleasure and all the other things that we put between us and God.

Because instead, now this is a whole other sermon, we're going to end what really would be the beginning of really what we need to talk about. Because instead, you have been called to worship God in spirit and truth.