So Exodus chapter 20, and we'll
read from verse 1. And God spake all these words,
saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt
have no other gods before me. 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 unto the third and fourth generation
of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them
that love me and keep my commandments. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. The Lord God had told the children
of Israel that he was their God by creation, he was their God
by covenant promise, and he was God to them by personal deliverance. He had shown himself to be their
creator their protector and their deliverer. And these are the
grounds upon which all believers owe allegiance and obedience
to God. We, as men and women and boys
and girls who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we believe
that we have been created by God, We believe that we have
been promised salvation by God in the everlasting covenant of
grace and truth and peace. And we believe that we have been
delivered from all judgment and condemnation for sin by the saving
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord, the triune God, is
one God. And these children of Israel
were told that they were to have no other God, that they were
to worship no other God, or they were not even to bring any other
God into the presence of the one true and living God. So we have seen already in this
little study how that God has presented himself as the God
of his people upon a number of grounds and he has commanded
that they should have no other God before him. And now the Lord
gives a second commandment and he expands upon the exclusive
worship of himself. by prohibiting the making or
manufacture of images. And that's what this second commandment
is principally about. The Jewish people, the children
of Israel, were told, 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. This commandment and that which
follows after it, the part which follows after it, which we will
come to in a moment, this speaks about there being a prohibition
on making images. And this is a prelude to idolatry. So once again, the Lord is here
speaking about the fact that there is to be no idolatry. There is to be only the worship
of the one true God, and there is to be no making of images
in order to worship God. The people of this world have,
in the history of religion and worship, often made images, and
we discover that there are images in the form of birds or animals,
and this is because people imagine that this is what God might look
like. but no idol was to be used to
represent God and God was not to be worshipped according to
a man or a woman's imagination of what he might look like. God is to be worshipped only
as he reveals himself in the Bible. So this is the principle
that the Lord gives to us in this second commandment, that
the people were not to make any graven images. Now, let me just
mention that that is not a ban on all forms of art or crafts. I know that many of us like to
work with our hands and to make things and to create things and
these, in a sense, by definition, are graven images. They are the
image of something else which we have worked upon, which is
what a graven image is. But the point that the Lord is
making here is that there was to be no things made, there were
to be no graven images of anything else, whether it be art or craft
or whether it be a painting or whether it be sculpture, whatever
it might be, there was to be nothing like that used in worship. The ban is on worshipping God
with anything that has been made with our own hands. If we worship
something, we make, then we bring God down to our thoughts and
we lift ourselves up. If we worship something that
we have constructed, then we no longer have and awe and reverence
for the wonder and the majesty of God because we are concentrating
on something that we have done for ourselves. And we boost our
own standing and we diminish our view of God. And that's the
point behind these graven images. God, we're told in the Bible,
is a spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. and spiritual
worship does not need an image, and truthful worship cannot supply
an image. No one has ever seen the triune
God. We have seen the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ took the
body of a man. But no one has ever seen the
triune God. So no one can truly imagine what
God looks like, or indeed construct an image to appear like God. And to do so is being disobedient
to God's law. We discover in the Bible, and
indeed from history and from archaeology, that graven images
were common amongst the nations that lived around about the children
of Israel. The Egyptians, where Israel had
previously been, they worshipped birds and animals, and they made
statues of them, and they placed these statues in their temples. The coastal nations around about
the Mediterranean, the Philistines and the Syrians and the Canaanites,
they also worshipped fish and sea creatures. Dagon, for example,
amongst the Philistines was a sea god. And some worshipped the
sun and the moon. Others worshipped angels or demons. and God prohibited his people
from following their example. So that to show this commandment, or to see this commandment in
its proper context is to realise that what God is saying is that
we are not to bow down to any of these created images. and
that bowing down is used to show that it is worshipping or failing
to have due reverence for God that is in view here with respect
to the graven images. There is to be no serving these
images by bringing them sacrifices or bringing them gifts and there
is to be no worshipping of them. The Lord tells his people in
the second part of these verses that he is a jealous God. And
this is why there is to be no images brought before God. Jealous is an interesting word. It can mean envious. And usually envy is not a good
quality. Certainly in sinners, to be envious
is not a good quality. But the word jealous can also
mean protective. And it's in this sense that we
see the word being used here. When we talk about God being
a jealous God, it means that he has a great protectiveness
for his people because of the love that he has for them. And this is what we mean by the
word jealous. So while we might be told that
we've not to be jealous of what other people have, the meaning
that is used here is that God is protective of his people because
of the love that he has for them. He has a love for his people.
He has a love for his purpose amongst his people and he has
a love for the Lord Jesus Christ who would someday come in human
form to save sinners. So that God was here laying down
the ground rules for his people, the Old Testament Jews, the children
of Israel, that would enable and allow God to protect them
and hedge them in and preserve them and safeguard his people
amongst them. so that they would not be allowed
to go the way of other nations because God would jealously protect
and keep them by bringing punishment on disobedient individuals and
any of their families at that time. And that's what the Lord
goes on to say with respect to punishment for breaking this
second commandment. The Lord says he will visit the
iniquity of all who disobey his commandment. He will visit, he
will come with a punishment upon any who break this commandment.
It's a threat of punishment for wrongdoing and to show how seriously
God takes sin. He promises to bring punishment
not only on the idolaters or the people who make these images
personally, he describes them as hating God because they've
made and they've worshipped these images, but he says he will also
bring judgment on their children as well, even to the third and
fourth generation. so that the shame that came upon
the person who made an image and brought it into the presence
of God to worship it would affect that person's family for many
years to come. Their children and their children's
children and their children's children's children for all these
generations. And this may, in a sense, seem
a little bit unjust. Why should children suffer for
their parents? But of course, if we think about
it, we realise that this still happens today in our own society
and under our own legal system. If a man or a woman breaks a
law and is sent to prison for the crime that they've committed,
it's not just the person who suffers, but the family that
has been left suffers. Whether it's because they've
been left without their father for the duration of his prison
sentence, or they've been left without their mother for the
same reason. That the whole family suffers,
and sometimes that can be a problem not only for the immediate family,
But because of the troubles that come on that family, it has a
repercussion down even to the next generation and the generations
beyond. So we can see that there is a
pattern in the way in which the Lord speaks here that is still
replicated in our own times. so that what parents do and what
grandparents do has a consequence for the generations following,
whether that be good or whether it be bad. And that's true under
the law of God and it's also true under our own legal systems
today in our countries. Later, the Lord would actually
alter this by under the terms of the gospel
so that it would simply be those who were guilty who would carry
the consequences of their sin. But the Lord next says that he
will be merciful to all those who serve and obey him. Those who obey God from the principle
of love. He will bless their families
or their generations because they are worshipping God properly
and he says he'll bless them to a thousand. It should probably
say in there a thousand generations just as it says generation in
the verse above because what the Lord is talking about here
is that his benevolence, his goodness, his blessing will flow
to those who have a love for the Lord. But I wonder if you
noticed with me as we were looking at these verses that the disobedience
is said to be a consequence of hating God. And that obedience
is equal to loving God. And this shows us that these
10 commandments are not just about outwardly doing something. but it is about an inward feeling
and desire after the Lord as well. True worship is about attitude
and not just about form or ritual or ceremony. Let me put that
another way. True worship comes from the heart
and comes from the soul of a man or a woman or a boy or a girl. And this helps us to better understand
the importance of these 10 commandments. When the Lord Jesus was asked,
what is the greatest commandment? He said this, he said, thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
with all thy mind. Showing us that true worship
is a spiritual activity. Now I want us to note that because
it helps us to understand what the Lord is saying to us about
worshipping in spirit and in truth. The Lord, when he mentioned
worshipping in spirit and in truth, was speaking to a woman
or the woman of Samaria, the woman at the well in John chapter
four. And he told that woman that true
worship requires spiritual life. It requires like a fountain or
a spring of water that dwells in a person's soul and springs
up to life. That's what true worship is.
It means that we have a new heart. It means that we have faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. So that true worship is spiritual
worship and it's worship in accordance with the revelation of God and
the Word of God. and we call that change, that
spiritual life conversion. Sometimes you'll hear people
talking about being converted and that's what they mean. They've
been given this spiritual life from God. It's a spiritual work
of God in a person's life, in the life of men and women and
boys and girls to enable them to worship God spiritually. Now you might say to me, I've
never made an image and bowed down to it. And I'm sure you
haven't. But it's not the act, but the
attitude that matters. That's what the Lord is telling
us here. It's not the movement of bowing
down as much as the motivation of our heart that brings us to
God in the first place. What is it that motivates us
to desire to worship God? Because all worship must flow
from love, and love is something that God must give us. It's a
gift of divine grace. It's produced in a heart that
has been converted, a heart that has been changed by God the Holy
Spirit. So that none of us are able to
fulfil these laws, but by a heart of love towards God, by loving
God, we find that we find the righteousness of God and we find
God's peace and God's blessing given to us even although we
cannot, of ourselves, fulfil God's laws and commandments. Naturally our hearts are full
of sin. Naturally our minds are contrary
to God's will and we don't want to worship Him. Actually, we'd
much prefer to be the ones worshipped. And it is only when God the Holy
Spirit changes and converts and quickens our spirits that we
have the power to worship God properly in spirit and in truth. Some people will go through their
whole lives worshipping in churches, attending church services, singing
hymns, listening to sermons, following all the religious rules
and practices. but they will never truly worship
the Lord in their hearts. It is the Lord that enables us
to worship Him. It is the Lord that gives us
the grace that we might offer Him in return, faithful obedience,
and by which we may give true service to Him. And all spiritual
enabling comes by God's grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Which
is why we no longer emphasise all these rules of the Ten Commandments,
but rather point sinners to trust in the Saviour. who has dealt
with our sin on the cross, and who by his life of perfect obedience
has opened up a way of life and acceptance for sinners like you
and me, and given us the opportunity to worship God truly, the one
true God in spirit and in truth. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today.