Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Seeing Is Not Believing (Part I) The Second Commandment follows
naturally from the First since there are no other gods. Don’t make and worship a
substitute. God is unseen and intends to keep it that way. Here is how we will deal with
this Law: Explain the text... The command of God The
character of God The consequences Today I want to walk through the
verses and attempt an explanation. 4"You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of
what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. As we get ready for Commandment number
two, turn to Judges 17. An interesting episode, in the Bible, is recorded in this chapter
of Judges. Here, we are talking about an individual and his religious bent, not many
generations at all from Moses and from Joshua. In other words, not far at all from when
the original Ten were handed down. This man would have considered himself to be a
believer. 1Now there was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was
Micah. You have to appreciate what is going
on here. “Hey, Mom” (my paraphrase), “you know that eleven hundred pieces
of silver, which were taken from you when you left your purse in the shopping cart? About
which you uttered a curse in my hearing?” "The
eleven hundred pieces of silver which were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse
in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; I took it." And his mother said,
"Blessed be my son by the LORD." 3He then returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his
mother, and his mother said, "I wholly dedicate the silver from my hand to the LORD It is to Yahweh. Let’s be real
clear about whom we are talking and who is the ultimate object of the religious expression
here. She is deliberately naming the God of Israel. She is dedicating the silver to
Yahweh. for my son
to make a graven image and a molten image; now therefore, I will return them to you." This is not Micah borrowing a pagan
deity. That is not what is happening here. This is Micah, who is a believer in Yahweh,
saying, “This is who He is, this is what He looks like. This is what He represents.”
The graven image, the molten image, the little statue, the little icon is, to him, a
representation of the God of the Bible. This is not pagan in its purest sense. He is
trying to represent God with silver. 4So when he returned the silver to his mother, his mother took two
hundred pieces of silver and gave them to the silversmith who made them into a graven
image and a molten image, and they were in the house of Micah. They have a graven image and a molten
image of Yahweh. That is their religion. 5And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household
idols and consecrated one of his sons, that he might become his priest. After all, if you are going to be
religious in your home you might as well do it right and be thorough about it. So he not
only got himself a little representation of Yahweh, the God of all, he found himself a
couple other idols and he set himself up a shrine. He is ready to be religious. He is
ready to express his faith and if we miss verse 6, we miss it all. 6In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was
right in his own eyes. That is powerful for even those, who
profess faith in the only true God. Doing what is right in his own eyes is going to take
him only further down the wrong road. 7Now there was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah, of the family
of Judah, who was a Levite; and he was staying there. Levites were that tribe, descendants of one of the sons of Jacob. Levites were the priestly tribe. A priest in this economy represented the people to God. A priest was a mediator. They wanted a mediator, someone who can do it right, someone who can put the pieces together and make sure God is in touch with them. He is being careful. He is being thorough. The New Testament says there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. 8Then the man departed from the city, from Bethlehem in Judah, to
stay wherever he might find a place; and as he made his journey, he came to the hill
country of Ephraim to the house of Micah. He is out looking for a job, a
position. He is looking for something to do and a place to live. 9Micah said to him, "Where do you come from?" And he
said to him, "I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to stay wherever
I may find a place." I’m not sure how he did that. He
must have had a little ceremony, a little dedication time, made it religiously official. and the
young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah. Here’s Micah’s thinking. We
now have a window to his heart and mind: 13Then Micah said, "Now I know that the LORD [Yahweh] will
prosper me, seeing I have a Levite as priest." “I have covered all my bases.
Surely now, Yahweh will do me good.” I don’t think you need me to tell you that
Micah’s motivation was anything but God-centered. It is all about him, his religion,
his spiritual life, his doing, his priest, his icon, himself. This is his attempt to use
the LORD, to use Yahweh, to create religious security for himself. That’s what he
wanted. He wanted to feel spiritually secure
so he set himself up this way and verse 6 is interesting -- deliberately inserted right in
the middle of this story to remind us that this is somebody, who is doing what is right in
his own eyes. In other words, he is wrong. He is absolutely wrong. He has combined Yahweh
with an idol. If we were to read the rest of the
story (we won’t), it does not have a happy ending. Micah is not seeing clearly. Isn’t
it interesting that even though he had some access to the Scriptures, he does not seem to
be keen on them. But he does have an idol he can see and he does have a priest, a real,
legitimate, pedigreed Levite he can see and he is still wrong even though he can see it.
Seeing is not necessarily believing. Doesn’t the Bible say we walk by
faith, not by sight? And doesn’t the Bible say faith comes by hearing the Word of
God. When Moses and the prophets sought to inspire faith in their hearers they began with
the word, “Listen.” Jesus concluded His parables and His teaching with -- if you
have ears to hear, be listening because look out for what you can see. Seeing is not
believing. We want to take a careful and accurate
look at this Second Commandment. I believe if we do that it will clarify our seeing. It
will clarify our view of God. It will help us to see Him clearly. It will help us to know
Him and to worship Him and to enjoy Him. We
just want to take a close look at these verses and try to ferret out from them the details
we need to see. The Command of God The Command is, “You shall not
make for yourselves an idol or likeness of what is heaven above or on the earth below.”
The Second Commandment naturally follows the First. The First Commandments says, “You
shall have no other gods in addition to Me because there are no other gods in addition to
Me. I have no rivals. There is no room, no extra power to go around. I am it! Deuteronomy 6:4 -- I, the LORD your
God, Yahweh your God, am One and you need to be devoted to Me in a single, unified
purpose. Love the LORD your God with all you have, all your heart, soul, mind, and
strength. I am One. Worship and honor Me that way. There is no room for another. So don’t
try to represent Me with anything that you can see. There is a dynamic to that, but first
we need to understand that there are no other gods, so don’t make any. “You shall not make for
yourselves.” A word needs to be said here that will apply to many of the Ten
Commandments, not just this one. You will notice as you read through the Ten, that they
are phrased from a negative standpoint. You shall not make graven images. You shall not
murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not, shall not, and shall not. There is a
reason for the fact that it comes as a prohibition command rather than as a positive
command. The reason for that is because God knows the natural inclination of the human
heart. The Bible says in Romans 5, that we
are naturally ungodly sinners, enemies, weak and helpless before God. We will naturally,
that is, in our flesh, apart from the moving of the Spirit of God upon our spirits, go
directly opposite of where God wants us to go. It’s just automatic and it’s just
natural. You can see it when you are raising children. You can see it in adults. You can
see it in the Christian community. You can see it in the pagan community. It’s
universal. So the Commandment is you shall not make these images. The other side of that commandment
would be “You shall maintain.” That’s a positive, not a negative. “You
shall maintain an understanding and a worship of Me that does not include images.”
That’s the positive command-- maintain worship. Keep your worship sanctified. The
negative: You shall make no idols, no graven images. That is because the human heart is
naturally inclined to go in opposition to God. The Ten Commandments serve us from
several different angles. Remember, they do reveal the character of God, a God who is
holy, a God who is removed, a God who is separate, distinct and unique. He is a God, who
is in His own class and in His own world. He is a God, who dwells in unapproachable light;
in other words, He is a God, who cannot be seen. That is His nature and this Commandment
reminds us of that. God cannot be seen. Any attempt on the part of people to
see Him reduces Him and brings Him illegitimately and falsely into our world, the fallen
one, where self reigns. He will not have it. The
Ten Commandments reveal God’s character and because that is His character they reveal
His will. That is His character. He is unseen, in a different world, a different plane, so
far ahead and above us that we cannot come to Him this way. That’s His character.
Therefore His will is, don’t try. Don’t even think for a second that we can
reduce Him to an image of silver or platinum. It will not work. The Ten Commandments reveal His
character and His will and because of those, they show us our need. It should go something
like this: I am not to try to envision God in any sort of graphic sense. That is
difficult. But what has He given us? In Moses’ day He had given us a lamb to see. He
had given us a sacrificial system to see. He had given us enough of Himself and His
character and His nature to see to realize this is who He is, this is what He is like,
this is what He wants. He wants my heart. He forgives through sacrifice. We know plenty by
what He has given us to see, but He has not given us Himself to see -- except for Jesus. The Bible says in John’s gospel
that no one has seen God at any time. That is His nature. So He sends us His Son in the
exact image of His likeness (Hebrews 1). God in human flesh comes from His world to ours,
and we kill Him, underscoring the unfathomable difference between His world and ours. That
is what this commandment is touching on. If God wants to be seen, He will put Himself in a
form we can grasp, understand, and relate to. He will initiate that visual contact and it
will not be God in His purest form. Don’t you do it. Don’t you
initiate it because when you, people, us, Micah, you pull this stunt and you immediately
reduce God to your level and that’s not where He belongs. Don’t do it. We look
at that and say He is a great and awesome God. I best fear Him. I best embrace Him. He
holds Himself out to me in mercy. You shall not do this. Do not make, He says, an image, even a
likeness it says in some translations “or a likeness” or “and a likeness.”
It could be that the two words are saying the same thing, the second by point of emphasis.
Do not make an image. Don’t even make a likeness. Don’t even begin to go there
with God or anything of what is in heaven above or on earth below or in the water below
the earth. Do not worship them. In others words,
do not begin even to think in terms of an inward devotion or loyalty to anything you can
see that would represent Me and certainly do not serve them. Don’t enter into any
sort of outward behavior that would show what really is on your heart. Isn’t this
what Micah did in both cases. He set about to worship and to serve an image of God he
could actually see. Don’t do that. Don’t even let it start on the inside, the
Bible says. It will find its way to the outside and you will, as sure as we are standing
here, you will misrepresent Me if you try that. Indeed, Micah did. Do not represent Me with anything in
the sky. This was common back in the ancient days and still is today in certain parts of
our world in an attempt to explain the phenomena of nature which is beyond the control of
people. They will substitute stars, birds, things in the air and attach god-like status to
them. We would say that is idolatry. God says do not do that. Do not liken Me to anything
in the sky, not a bird, not a star, not the sun, not the moon. Egyptians did that. The
Canaanites did that. Everybody did that; don’t you do that. Do not even think I am
going to be like that because I am not. There is to be nothing from the sky,
nothing from the earth, no beast, no animal. Do not try to represent Me with anything with
four legs, like a calf. That is the category. They couldn’t wait for Moses to come
down from the mountain. Aaron was getting nervous. A golden calf was assigned god status. There is certainly not to be any sea
creatures and nothing in the water under the earth. It is interesting how the ancients
perceived the ocean. The expression would be “under the earth” because when you
go to the ocean -- in their world it would be the Mediterranean Sea, which standing on the
shore looks a lot like an ocean -- if you are standing on the sea and begin to walk into
the water you realize that the earth goes down, down, down. So that water must be much
deeper, deeper, deeper, so the expression “the waters under the earth.” It goes
below where the land is. In their world, the last frontier was
the ocean. They would understand that the people on ships, the Phoenicians and the
merchants would go to sea. They were considered very brave because it was unknown
territory. We don’t know what lives under the ocean. We can’t see it. We will
catch a fish now and then but we understand there are bad things there, like sea monsters
and dragons and other scary denizens of the deep. So it was a very mysterious world and
because of that, Leviathan, Rahab, and some of the ancient
personages of pagan history
could take on a status like gods, because they were so big, so mysterious, so scary, and
so powerful. God says do not. Do not create an image, even a likeness. There are a couple reasons for that.
One is because it is absurd. Turn to Isaiah 44. The reference in Isaiah is clearly to
pagan idolatry and it is where the Israelites would eventually go after they had
consistently broken the Second Commandment generation after generation. They are going to
end up here in Isaiah 44. They will go into exile for it. They will pay for this. There is a passage in Isaiah 44,
beginning in verse 12 that simply underscores the absurdity of creating an image as they
did. 12The man shapes iron into a cutting tool He first makes his own tool! What is
interesting through the course of this whole thing is that man, whoever he is, is the
creator. He has taken God’s place. So first he makes the tool. Sometimes you have to
have a tool in order to make a tool, in order to get a job done. This is what he is doing.
and does
his work over the coals, fashioning it with hammers and working it with his strong arm. He
also gets hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and becomes weary. He is going to get hungry and is going
to have all kinds of problems until he gets his god made because then God will help him.
Right? This is part of the irony. It is supposed to underscore the absurdity of what is
happening here. He gets hungry, his strength fails, he gets no water and becomes weary,
but he’s the creator! This is not the God of the Bible who creates. 13Another shapes wood, he extends a measuring line; he outlines it
with red chalk He works it with planes and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like
the form of a man, like the beauty of man, so that it may sit in a house. We are going to make ourselves a tool,
with the tool we are going to make ourselves a man, and we are going to let the man sit in
our house. This sounds an awful lot like Judges 17, only now in wood. By the way, when they did these things they would
make gold, silver, or whatever in foil form. They would beat it and beat it until it
became foil. Very frequently, like in the case of the golden calf, it was in all
likelihood not a solid gold calf. It was a wooden structure like you do with paper mache
and then was covered with foil. He wants it to sit in a house. He may
even give it a special chair. 14Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak
and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain
makes it grow. He cuts this tree down, half goes in
the fire to keep him warm. The other half goes in the house to worship. You figure out the
irony there. That is the point the prophet is making. He makes a god out of half of it and
worships it. He burns the other half to keep himself warm. he also
makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven
image and falls down before it. 16Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as
he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, "Aha! I am warm,
I have seen the fire." God does not want this. It is patently
absurd as the prophets point out repeatedly, particularly Isaiah. Secondly, the idol is
nothing but Yahweh is a Person. What an idolator does, whether it is in pagan idolatry or
in an attempt to represent the God of the Bible, in any graven form, is make an end run
around the Personhood of God. He is a Person. He has a will. He has an intellect. And He
feels. The Character of God Do not do this, He said, because I,
Yahweh, your God, am a jealous God. He is a Person with feelings. He is a self-described
jealous God. When I used the word “jealous,” we are not talking about juvenile
emotional feelings. We are not talking about someone who is just kind of always suspicious
and mistrustful and catty and clingy. No, we are talking about one who is zealous; that
is, enthusiastic and emotionally passionate about protecting what is precious to Him. God’s
jealousy is all about protecting His investment. An investment is something into which
we have put time, effort, energy, resources, something to which we are attached. Jesus
said your heart always follows your investment. Where the treasure is, there will your
heart be also. What has God done? What is His passion for these people? For one, He
created them. If you think that is easy, try it! He went to a lot of trouble to create
people and provide sustenance to keep the world turning and the sun doing its job, and the
water cycle going and all things right down to the molecular level. All these things are
charged by the power of God. Stuff we cannot begin to think we can do, He has done. Out of all the races of people He
chooses a man, Abraham, and from that man through miraculous intervention time and again
He built a nation and miraculously preserved it. The nation was in Egypt for several
hundred years until God decided He was going to pull them out. He did that through a
series of ten plagues. Those plagues were no small thing! God invested, He focused, He
acted, He felt, He moved, He created, He changed, He worked. He exercised patience with
His people and judgment on their enemies. He delivered them and set them up. None of that
is a small thing. Not because of their righteousness,
the Bible is very clear about that, but because He made a promise and He intends to keep
it. He is being true to His word and it is to our benefit that He is. He is engaged, so He
is jealous. He is saying, “I have gone to all this trouble” (I am couching this,
obviously, in human terms) “and when you think you can reduce my great character to
something you can make, that is blasphemous. That is a slap in the face to Me. I am
jealous and do not think it will go unnoticed.” “I am a jealous God and
consequently there is a price tag. You start down this road,” He says, “look
out.” The consequences of our relationship with idolatry can be either good or bad. 5"You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD
your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the
third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, The ConsequencesGood consequences and not so good
consequences. Let’s discuss this business of visiting iniquity. We need to be
reminded of this. What this is not saying is that children will go to hell for their
parents’ sins. That is contrary to what the Bible clearly teaches in more than one
place. Children will go to hell for their own sins. Parents will go to hell for their own
sins. Each individual will answer before God. We need to know that eternal punishment is
not in view here. Oftentimes we get confused on that
score. God is going to send the nation of Israel in a juggernaut of conquest into the land
of Canaan; many Canaanites are going to die. That is not a reflection on their eternal
state. He is punishing a nation. He is taking them out. They will be no more. That is in
time and in history and there is nothing said about the eternal well being of these
individuals. That is not in view. It is good to remember that throughout
Scripture, in both the Old and the New Testaments, temporary judgment is not the same as
eternal condemnation. Let’s be a little bit careful about that. It does not mean
children will go to hell for their parents. What it does mean is that when the true God,
Yahweh, the God of Israel, is substituted or when He is misrepresented by idolatrous
parents we can expect that way of life, that attitude to be adopted by the next generation
and the next and the next and the next. We cannot get far at all in the book of
Deuteronomy without continual reminders to parents to be sure your children understand.
The reason when the children of Israel finally crossed the Jordan River into the land of
Canaan, when the toes of the priests touched the Jordan River and the flow stopped and
they all marched across on dry land -- that was not the end of the adventure. God told Joshua to have twelve big
stones set out there in the middle of the river so they would even be visible during high
water, so the kids would ask why those rocks are out there. The parents would be able to
say, “That’s because our God is so wonderful. We don’t get to see God. We
don’t have an image of Him, but He has done that. He cannot be reduced to an image.
That’s unthinkable. He is holy and exalted but He did this for us and that is our
memorial.” Joshua made very clear that is so your children and your grandchildren
will know. If they do not, expect not only the sin, but the consequences of the sin to be
perpetuated from generation to generation. I find it fascinating in Genesis 15,
when God is talking to Abraham hundreds of years before Moses. He said the day will come
when I am going to send you into the land of Canaan and you are going to be my instrument
of judgment upon those wicked people. But that will be 400 years down the road. There were
many generations of Canaanites, Amorites, whatever you want to call them, who continued in
their ways, generation after generation after generation of pagan idolators, until
judgment arrived with the armies of Israel. Yes, the children were paying for the
sins of the parents from the standpoint of their national identity, their corporate
standing. Do we know how many went to hell? No, that is God’s business, but we do
know that God stepped in and judged them. There is an interesting and deliberate
contrast struck here when he talks about visiting iniquity on the one hand, three and four
generations, but then when He says showing loving kindness let’s go to thousands.
That is by design. That is God’s way of saying, “I take no delight in the
punishment of the wicked. Where My heart really is, is in the blessing of My people and in
showing loving kindness. I am a God who is slow to anger and abounding in compassion and
loving kindness and mercy and loyal love and we will take that to the thousands. It is an
exaggerated contrast for effect. It is just as Paul says in Romans 5.
He is talking about sin and how sin was introduced by Adam and spread throughout the race
and how damaging and debilitating that sin has become and its curse upon humanity. Paul
says what Jesus has done completely sets it on its head. No matter how dark it is, just
make a light and the darkness flees. It is like that with sin as opposed to grace. Where
sin abounds, he says in Romans 5:20, and it is everywhere, grace overwhelms it. Grace wins
because that is God’s character. God wants Moses and the Israelites and
you and me to understand that. God’s gracious character is showing loving kindness to
those who love Me and keep My commandments. A little rule of thumb for saints; that is,
believers, genuine, true believers tend to beget believers. And that is a good thing. We are trusting we will be able to pick up where we left off in a week, hoping that we will remember the holiness, the other-worldliness of God. That is why He cannot be represented and we need to worship Him for who He is, for where He is. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |