Second Commandment

Introduction

Most of us are people that learn by doing. We love to be able to touch and see, feel and hold. When you go and buy software, there is this big cardboard box. You think, wow. And you pay a few hundred for it. But you open it up, and there is one CD and a little booklet telling you how to install it. Why do they do it? They do it because, if we are going to invest, we want it to be substantial.

We also love proof for things. We want something tangible, handlable.

People of course have wanted something similar with God. And because of our sin, the desire to have something they can see, touch, feel spills over into their thinking about God.

Now originally, God did make something that mirrored himself. That was us. We are made in God’s image and God’s likeness. You want to have a photograph or an image of God, look in the mirror. That shows our great value.

But sinful people can’t look on God. And we have trouble seeing the image of God in each other. So we go and make images and idols and worship them.

Exodus 20:4-7 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. ⁵ "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…

The ancients, of course were more crude in their idol making. They wanted statues to which to bow down. And so Isaiah points out the stupidity of this.

Isaiah 44:15-17 ¹⁶ Half 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." ¹⁷ But the rest of it he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for thou art my god."

The early Christians lived in this sort of environment too. They were bound by a fear of idols, and the demons that lay behind them.

1 Thessalonians 1:9 – 10 how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, ¹⁰ and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.

In many places in our world this sort of organized worship of images still persists. India, for example. Or the ancestor worship that is tacked onto Buddhism. However, we are a little more sophisticated in our worship and service of tangible things. Most of us and so crude to worship statues or pictures. But we still want a god that we can see, touch and feel.

What are our modern gods?

Kim Hawtrey makes a list for us. Entertainment. We worship on the couch. Sport. The hallowed ground is the SCG. Merv Hughes and Warney – people bowing down in mock homage. Why do we have shows like ‘Australian idol’? You’ll say, it’s just a name. But behind the name there is something fitting. Or beauty. We put our women on the treadmill, expecting them to look 30 when their fifty. Family. Ooohh, how can I say this.

An idol of course, is always a good thing perverted. An idol is a good gift of god put in it’s wrong place.

We are material beings. We need food, shelter clothes. God has made us to eat, drink, make love, exercise, to live in family life. God has made up music, and singing. God has privileged us with modern media and communications.

But idolatry is twisting these things and wanting to put them on a pedestal where they do not deserve to be.

My three gods were cricket, band, and being a lawyer.

Colossians 3:5 ⁵ Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

The bible talks about our greed as idolatry. I think we will always be tempted to want to see the stuff we worship. But we live in the time where we are called on to not see, and yet believe.

John 20:28-29 ²⁸ Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" ²⁹ Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."

1 Peter 1:8-9 though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, ⁹ obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

The mature Christian way to worship the true and living God is to worship without seeing. We are people who worship having heard but not seen.

Jesus is the true image of God.

Colossians 1:15-16 ¹⁵ And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.

1 John 1:1-2 ^NAS What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life-- ² and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us--

Some Christian denominations do a good job of mimicking idolatry. They will say, pictures are the books of the learned. And Jesus truly became a man, therefore, we can make pictures of him as aids to worship. We aren’t worshipping the pictures, we worship the one that stands behind them. In fact, the Buddhists and Hindus say the same thing.

But the images we make of Jesus will always be inaccurate. Notice how many billabong surfy Jesus’ there are. The long blonde hair, the lovely neat beard, the soft blue eyes, the fair skin.

Whatever pictures we make of Jesus are always inaccurate. No, if you want to see what Jesus looks like, you look at a Christian.

2 Corinthians 3:18 - 4:1 ¹⁸ But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Christians are remade into the image of God. On the outside they are fading away, but because they have the Spirit of Christ, they are on the inside renewed day by day. So the way to see what God is like is to go to church – not the building, but the people.