We are continuing a series. We started it last Sunday. It is entitled Written in Stone. Can we all say that together? Written in Stone.
And if you weren't here last week, and this is the first time you're seeing this, this is a series through, if you haven't been able to guess it, the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments. And I'd encourage you, if you missed last week, I'd encourage you to go back and tune in at some point. You can do so through social media, through our website or whatever. And I'd encourage you to go back because I gave a little bit of an introduction about the Ten Commandments in general.
And I said this, that the Ten Commandments are probably the most influential words ever written. And I'm not just talking about for the church, not just talking about for us, but actually in history. I mean, if you look back, you can see, and I did a lot of this last week, the Ten Commandments have really been woven throughout our legal system, our justice system, and throughout our world. It's been something that even if you're not a believer, these things are good principles for us to live by that has helped us in society, specifically American society, live and govern and things like that. And so today, this is week number two, so we'll be looking at the second commandment.
And so I'm going to read the first six verses of Exodus chapter number 20.
So you can turn there, Exodus chapter number 20, verses 1 through 6. It says this, And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Now, real quick, just to give you a little bit of recap here, is that Moses is up on Mount Sinai, the law. He's receiving specifically the Ten Commandments here. And while he's up there, remember, God had delivered the nation of Israel out of Egyptian bondage that they had been in. They are only a few months removed from that moment. if you remember the nation of israel fell into egyptian slavery and bondage and they were in that for over 400 years and so after 400 and some years god leads them out of there through remember the 10 plagues and and they rush out of there and you got the red sea parting and all those great stories and then as they head into the land of canaan which is the promised land god calls moses his leader.
He calls him up to Mount Sinai, and he gives him the Ten Commandments, only a few months after this moment where God had delivered them out of the house of bondage. Verse 3, here was the first commandment we looked at last week. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. And then in verses 4 through 6, we find the second commandment that we are going to look at here today. It says, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. and showing mercy into thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Last week in the first commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me. If that commandment, because these are very closely linked together, and I want you to know that as a preacher, it's sometimes hard to kind of come up with, I could have put the first couple of commandments together because they're very closely intertwined.
But as I was studying this, there are some differences. And I want to kind of point that out because as you read verses 4 through 6, you might quickly say, isn't this exactly what he said in the first commandment? The first commandment was, thou shalt have no other gods before me. If that commandment was about worshiping the wrong God, then the second commandment is about worshiping God in the wrong way.
So if the first commandment is about worshiping the wrong God, the second commandment is more about worshiping God in the wrong way. The first commandment was saying this, Only worship Me. And the second commandment is saying this, Only worship Me in this way.
Okay, so there's your difference here, because the thing is, is we are all worshipers. We were created to worship. You were created to worship. Every single person on the face of the planet, they were created with this desire to worship. But the problem is, and this is why he had to give the Ten Commandments, is because the problem is we worship the wrong God, and God tells us to worship only Him, okay?
But then also, He goes a little bit deeper here in these verses in the second commandment, and He expounds and says, but not only this, you need to worship the right and the one and true God, you need to worship Him in the right way, in the right, right way. And so today, I want to kind of dissect these verses, 4 through 6, about the second commandment and how we go about worship and how do we worship. And so first, I want you to see the nature of the second commandment. In other words, just what is this commandment really saying? What is this commandment teaching us How is this commandment even relevant to us here today And what can we learn from it So when you look at this and he says here thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, that means a carved, made up, created type of image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
And he goes on in the next verse to tell us, don't bow down thyself to them, those carved images that so often the nation of Israel would worship and don't serve them. Here's what the second commandment, and I had to kind of dig to really get this and try to help you understand what this commandment is saying, and here's what I think the second commandment is all about and what the scripture is saying. The second commandment is prohibiting us to create anything. that means with your hands or with your heart that would either reduce or replace god in your life so when you look at these verses what what i think god is telling moses is this moses not only first commandment do you need to worship me and only me but god is saying this I don't want you, in fact, you're prohibited by law to create anything or to carve anything, to make up anything with your hands or with your heart that would both reduce God and replace God with your life. And when we look at this, I think it's easy for us to look at this and say, well, I don't have a problem with that because I don't have any carved images.
But a lot of times we might not be carving images, but we create images with our hearts. And that's what we can learn from this. And so I want to expound a little bit on this definition to get you to understand what I think this is saying.
So what does it look like to reduce God? When we say that this is, you know, God saying, hey, don't create anything that would reduce or replace me. What does it mean to reduce God? How do we go about that?
Well, I think what you have to understand is that I think what God is trying to communicate to Moses here is this, is that there is nothing that you can create, there is nothing that you can carve, there is nothing that you can find that will ever come close to the splendor, glory, and majesty of Almighty God.
So what he's saying is this, if that be true, that we can't create anything that comes close to Him, We can't create anything that reflects His glory. We can't create anything that reflects His majesty. Then what He's saying is that any idol that you create with your hands or with your heart will essentially reduce Him. Because it will always be lesser than Him. Because anything that you create falls short.
Anything that you create falls short. In fact, you can say this, that anything you worship other than him falls short. You see, the problem is, remember, I said that we're all worshipers. We all worship something. We all, you know, in the Old Testament, they worship all these different idols.
And we looked at those. We looked at Baal. We looked at Astra. We looked at the god of Dagon. We looked at Molech.
We looked at all these different gods, the Greek god of Mammon, whatever. And so we looked at all these different gods, and here's what I want you to know. Yes, they carved things, and they had these figures that they would worship, but they would look to those things for things like financial prosperity. They would look to these gods for family, for protection, for security, and for safety, for provision, for all these different things. and they would look to these false gods, these carved out images, in order to get those things in return.
And what we find in society today is that a lot of times we reduce God when we look to our career so that you can receive money or when you look for safety or security. and what we do is we look to our family, we look to people, we look to money, we look to career, we look to popularity, we look to all of these different things, and what we do is we begin to put those idols on the throne of our heart. And what God is telling us and forbidding us is not to put any of those things on your heart, and here's why. It's because when you put anything other than God on your heart, you immediately reduce him. Because what God can do in your life is greater than anything any idol can do in your life.
So any idol you put on your life, it only reduces him because the idols that we put on our life, they can't compare to the majesty and splendor and glory of our God. Does that make sense? And so he forbids us from doing this. In fact, Isaiah 40 verse 18 says, Isaiah the prophet, he asked this question, I thought this was good, he said, to whom then will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare unto him? In other words, like, we can't create anything that actually accurately reflects who God is, and reflects his splendor and his glory and majesty.
You can't do it. There's nothing that we can create or make or carve that would ever come close to him.
So anytime you make anything an idol other than God, and anytime you worship anyone other than God, or create something other than God, you immediately reduce him.
So he says don't do that, but then he also, I think he's saying, don't create anything that replaces him.
So what does it look like to replace God? What does that look like?
Well the pagan people in Canaan worshipped false gods which is why the first commandment was given But now what they had done is they had replaced the one true God in the nation of Israel with all these other creations that were man And so they would create these things so that they could get safety. They would create these things so that they could get provision. They would create these things and look to them for protection and for security and different things like that. and God's saying, no, no, no, no. I'm supposed to be that for you.
In other words, you want safety? Look to me for that. You want provision for your family? Look to me for that. You want security in your life?
Look to me for that. You want provision? Look to me for that. And he says all these, he's like, no, everything you're looking for should be found in him.
So when you worship him, don't create anything because it reduces him and definitely don't replace him. In fact, Psalm 115, he actually warns us about what happens when we replace God. Look at what he says, Psalms 115, verses four through eight. The scripture says this, their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. And then he goes on in verse five, he says, they have mouths, but they speak not.
Eyes have they, but they see not. In other words, here's what the psalmist is saying, is that all these fake idols, we think that they will give us what we're looking for, but they can't. In and of themselves, they can't give you what you're looking for because all these false idols that the Old Testament, that they were looking at in the nation of Israel, they're not real. They speak not. They're not God.
They would look to them as, you know, these fake idols had brought them out of the land of Egypt and all these kind of things. And the psalmist is saying, wait a second, none of those idols can accomplish what you're looking for. Then he goes on in verse 6, and he says, they have ears, but they hear not. Right? Noses have they, but they smell not.
Verse 7, they have hands, but they handle not. Feet have they, but they walk not. Neither speak they through their throat. Verse 8, he says this, they that make them, listen to this, they that make them are like unto them. you know what the psalmist is warning us is this is that eventually when you make an idol in your life you eventually become that that's what he's saying he becomes you say what is what does that mean or whatever you become senseless just like the the fake idol that you created right and that's what he's saying so there's this strong warning that when you trust or when you make something in your life to try to become, you know, get something from it or to try to provide for your family and stuff and you make something an idol, God is saying that you will eventually become that.
Now, there is an example, we're not going to read a whole lot, but remember the nation of Israel, when Moses was getting the Ten Commandments, Exodus 32, and you can remember this, he's up on Mount Sinai, the nation of Israel, they kind of quickly, they're like, you know, where's Moses? And they start freaking out, They're like, where is he? And so what do they ask Aaron, his brother, to do? While they wait for Moses, they ask Aaron, right? This is shortly after they received some of the law.
And so it's just amazing to me. And so here they are, you know, Moses, he's up there. And this is why God forbids these things. And so they go, the nation of Israel, they can't wait for Moses. They're impatient.
So they go to Aaron, Moses' brother, and they ask him. And they're like, hey, can you make us a molten calf? And you can read about this in Exodus chapter 32. And so Aaron should have said to them, no, absolutely not. God forbids this.
And we're supposed to worship the one true God of Israel. And so we're not supposed to do that. But you know how Aaron is. Aaron wouldn't do that. And so Aaron said, hey, bring me all of your jewelry, bring me all of your earrings.
And here he goes in carving this molten calf. And you say, how in the world could they do such a thing? Here's what I'll tell you. There's a principle here that I think is really good for all of us to learn. In Egypt, in fact, Jeremiah talks about this briefly.
But in Egypt, there was a God. We didn't look at this God last week. but there was a god, the god of Apis, I think is his name, and this god was the bull god, in other words, it was this carved image of a bull, and Egypt, that's what they would worship a lot of times, and here's what's interesting, isn't it interesting that they asked Aaron to make a golden calf? They had spent 400 years influenced in Egypt by a polytheistic culture with all these different false gods. And now they get out of that and they're going into the land of Canaan.
And the first thing that they do is they make a golden calf. Why? Because I think a lot of times we go back to what's familiar or what's culturally normal or culturally acceptable. Because they had lived in Egypt and they had seen this false god and all the different gods that they had when they get out of it and they're kind of left on their own for a little bit. here's what they find is they're like, man, we're going to go right back into what we were just saved from.
And isn't that true of a lot of Christians? We go back into the things that we have been delivered from. We go right back and allow the idols that we have been freed from. And what the Christians do today is we immediately, when we're kind of left and we don't get an answer that we want or God sends us through a valley moment, what do we do? We go back to what's familiar to us and we run right back to the things that he freed us from the things that christ died to free you from you go back to what is comfortable for you and that's what the nation of israel was doing in exodus chapter number 32 and so he goes on as we look at this idea why is this so important and he mentioned something he says because God is a jealous God because God is a jealous God now this is the only commandment where God you know gives a commentary about himself in the commandment so this is God speaking and he gives a commentary about himself the word jealous is mentioned six times in the Old Testament, every time you look at its usage, it is always about God.
And when we think about the word jealousy, you think in our English language, because it's a negative term, right? Nobody's excited about being jealous, right? You don't get celebrated for being jealous, okay? No, it's something negative. But here in the Old Testament, it's actually a positive term.
The word can be translated zealous. When you see that God is jealous, I want to show you why this is, is because he wants your affection. Listen very carefully. God is not jealous of you. God is jealous for you.
So when we think about jealousy, we think, man, we're jealous of what somebody else has. We have nothing for God to be jealous of us about, okay? You provide nothing. You give nothing. And here's what I want you to know.
He's not jealous of you. He's not jealous of any of us. He's jealous for us because with us, we're jealous of what other people have. And here's the difference between God's jealousy. God's jealousy is jealous over the things that actually belong to him.
That's you and me.
So he's not jealous of you or anything you have to offer. He's actually jealous for you and over you. It's like your kids, you know, you want your kids love. You want your kids affection. You want your kids affirmation, right?
It's like when you correct your kids and you want to just, you imagine yourself like it's just going to be great and they're going to look at you and say, man, thank you, dad. I've never thought of it that way. That's really good. And so, and that's what you kind of envision in your mind when you kind of have a hard conversation with your kids and it doesn't go that way. And then, you know, you have a small group leader at church and or a teacher and they say the same thing you've been saying and your kid's like man I've never heard that before and you're like what really here's the thing the reason that bothers us as parents is because we are jealous over our kids we're jealous for our children and that's what that's what we find here God is jealous of us he wants your affection he wants your relationship he wants your love so when you replace that with something else God hates that because he's a jealous God.
But then you see the warning of breaking the second commandment here. You see, there's a warning in verse five. It says, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them for I, the Lord thy God am jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Listen, many will teach you that this verse says that if you disobey the second commandment, that there's a generational curse put on your family and your children and grandchildren and things like that. Here's what I want you to understand.
That's not what this verse is teaching. In fact, you can look deep into it. We don't have time, but the book of Ezekiel talks about this and expounds a little bit about this. Here's what the warning is, is this. And this is where we get the application.
The warning is not talking about a generational curse if you break this. It's talking about a generational consequence. a consequence and this is why it's important so when you when you you know break this commandment that this could literally affect the future it doesn't mean they have to do the same thing because the gospel frees us of that so the curse is gone we can actually through jesus we don't have to commit the same sins as our our fathers and our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers but what it can do is it can send some consequences down the family tree if you forget and neglect this commandment. And that's what he's saying. That's why I like to say that every decision that we make today affects the story that you're going to tell about your life tomorrow.
Because we have to understand that the decisions and choices that we make today, it has consequences for our story and our life tomorrow. But then in verse 6, the promise.
So he gives us this warning about the generational consequences if we break this. but then also he gives a promise in verse 6, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Here's what the promise is for you and for I. It's love and it is mercy. You see, we get love and mercy if you keep this.
So when we look at this commandment, remember, It's forbidding us to create with our hands or with your heart anything that would replace or reduce God in your life. And the warning for us to be reminded of is this, is that if you do that and you create things in your life, here's what I'm going to tell you, is this, is that it could affect generations after you through consequences for breaking this command. but if you as a family unit as a dad as a mom as a grandfather if you commit like hey we're not going to create anything with our hands or with our hearts that would replace reduce reduce God we are going to keep him and on the throne of our life and there's a promise that mercy and love will follow you mercy and love will go before you and the same consequence that could happen you could send a consequence down to your family of mercy and love from Almighty God because you have committed. Listen, we're all worshipers. The question is, who are you worshiping?
God says, me and only me. And how are you worshiping? Don't create anything with your hands or with your heart that could ever reduce or replace him in your life. Can we bow our heads for prayer?
