Commandment 2 - Stay Close to the Real God
The Ten Commandments were God’s gift to the
Hebrew people. They had been delivered from
slavery in Egypt and were headed to the Land God
had promised them. God was in fact leading them
by day - a pillar of cloud – and by night – a
pillar of fire.
Remember God never gave us a command that was
not for our protection or our provision – or
both! Now when we look at the second
commandment, it almost seems redundant. Another
way of saying the same thing. But it is
different:
You shall not make for
yourself an idol in the form of anything in
heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the
waters below. You shall not bow down to them or
worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a
jealous God, punishing the children for the sin
of the fathers to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate me, but showing
love to a thousand {generations} of those who
love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus
20:4-6, NIV)
We need to put God first as we
studied last time. But we need to be sure the
God we put first is not something less than the
Almighty, All-knowing, Creator of all things.
There is a god we
want and there is a God who is – and they are
not the same God. (Patrick Morley, Devotions
from the Man in the Mirror)
The Hebrew people were living in an utterly
pagan land. The Canaanites of that land had
rejected the revelation of God and were
worshiping and serving false gods – the gods
they wanted not the God who is. They had gods
for rain and good crops, they had gods for
fertility and good sex, and they had gods for
whatever their heart desired. So the LORD God
gave them this commandment: you shall not make
idols for worship … for I am a jealous God.
The Danger of Idols – Limited
Q: What’s the basic problem with making an idol
– a physical representation of God?
Consider if I
gave you a handful of clay and told you to make
a representation of Mount Rushmore. You might
be able to make something that resembled the
four carved faces on that mountain, but it would
not come close to the grandeur and immensity of
the real Mount Rushmore. Moreover if you took
the Play-Dough image and used it to show people
the greatness of Mount Rushmore, would they be
impressed? Of course not.
When we make an idol of God, we put God in
a box. You can’t put God in a box but
that’s what we are trying to do when we make an
idol. God wants you to walk with Him by faith
because
“nothing is impossible with God”
(Luke 1:37, NIV).
When you worship the god you want rather than
the God who is, you always end up with something
less than the real thing. Your
faith will be shallow at best and your god will
be worthless in the long run.
Sometimes Christians fall into this trap. You
have studied the Bible so long that you think
you have God pretty well figured out. Do you
think you have God figured out? We don’t know
what a woman wants and yet we think we have God
figured out…
The Danger of Idols –
Consumed
Q: Do we still need this commandment today – I
really don’t think any of us here make little
statues of metal, stone, or clay to worship?
Our idol may not be a physical object of
religious ritual, but we have plenty of idols
today. Some of you came here today with an
idol. Consider this definition of an idol:
An idol is
anything you will sin to get or sin if you do
not get -- or sin to keep. (Jay Adams)
We can make idols out of anything in our lives.
What are some examples of things that become
idols in our lives today (things we will sin to
get or sin if we don’t get or sin to keep)?
You’ve all heard stories of the man who worked
so hard at his job that he lost his family. Or
the man who lusted after another woman, left his
wife, moved in with his lover only to be spurned
as she did the same thing to him. Your idol –
whatever it is – will consume you. It will
leave you empty inside and probably
empty-handed. Your idol will mold you
into its limited, worthless image.
So God does not want you to serve an inadequate,
limited representation of Himself. Nor does He
want you to be consumed in the serving. He
knows that if you put Him first – the real
“Him,” the one true and living God who loves and
saves and protects and provides – you will
receive His very best for your life. He
will mold you into the image of His Son, the
LORD Jesus.
Q: Can you phrase this command as a positive
statement? Stay close to the real God!
Don’t let anything get between you and the God
who is.
Q: How do you get rid of an idol?
-
Smash it up:
You must get rid of an idol completely. If
you simply put it away, it will be there for
you to take back up again.
-
Replace it: You
must put something in place of the idol you
removed. In this case, the replacement
for any idol is genuine worship of the LORD
Jesus. This means you serve Him and
Him alone.
Q: What are some ways we can avoid idol worship
and worship the God who is?
-
Humble yourself
before the God who is – this means knowing
who He is and who you are in relation to who
He is…
For everyone who exalts
himself will be humbled, and he who humbles
himself will be exalted. (Luke 18:14, NIV)
-
Must reprogram
our minds and thought patterns with God’s
word.
”faith comes from hearing the
message, and the message is heard through
the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17, NIV).
-
Learn about who
God is by listening to other godly men talk
about how God has worked in their lives.
”As iron sharpens iron, so
one man sharpens another”
(Proverbs 27:17, NIV).
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