The Second Commandment

There's an interesting trend going around at the moment on social media. I don't know if you are social media buffs, if you have Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. But an interesting trend going about and by interesting, I mean absolutely gross. And by absolutely gross, I also mean oddly satisfying. People are finding a weird satisfaction in watching and sharing videos of blackheads and pimples being squeezed.

Great start to the morning. And it gives me the heebie jeebies, makes my skin crawl. And yet, it's fascinating to watch. It's so weirdly satisfying. Now, I reckon there's a few nurses here that are actually in the back row there already nodding and smiling to one another that actually can say yes to that satisfying feeling.

That idea of knowing that there's something grimy and gross and something that's not meant to be there being removed. Something gross and grimy that needs to be squeezed out and cleaned up. Well, this morning, there is perhaps no better analogy for what God is trying to do in the second commandment of the ten commandments than squeezing out things that are gross and grimy. Let's have a read in Exodus 20 where we find the ten commandments and we're going to read from verses four to six, the second commandment. God said, you shall not make for yourself a carved 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.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So far our reading. According to Genesis 1, in the beginning, according to Genesis 1, we were created to worship God. We were created to worship God as our creator. In fact, our passage this morning, I don't know if you picked up on it, but it has very similar throwbacks to Genesis.

Have a look at that. You shall not make an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. Genesis 1 tells us that God created the heavens above, the earth beneath, the waters under the earth, that He separated them all from the formless void that existed before. These similar structures are significant because remember, Moses compiled the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch as it's called. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, Moses compiled.

Exodus, what we're reading now, is found just after Genesis, and the wording similarly here is a throwback to the creation account. Why is there in the second commandment of the ten commandments a throwback to creation? What's going on here? Israel, you have to remember, was a fledgling nation, a tiny nation.

The smallest of all the earth, God says to them. And God had taken them out of Egypt into the wilderness to meet Him. Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was to be met by them there because they had forgotten who He was. Four hundred years of being in Egypt had meant that He was a myth. He was a legend of our forefathers that had gone before.

We, Israel, we were used to the Egyptian god Ra, the god of the sun. Egypt worshipped the sun. Israel had grown up with the god Khonsu, the moon god. Egypt and Israel worshipped Nut, the god of sky and stars. And here comes God, Yahweh, the God who is I Am, and through Moses gives the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible and says, God is greater than the skies and the stars.

God is greater than Ra, the sun god. Greater than Khonsu, the moon god. Why? Because God created all of it. He created them.

They are nothing special. These divine entities that the Egyptians worshipped are on the same level as a human being, creatures created. There is only one God, one creator over them all. Yahweh is the God who holds all authority over heaven and earth and the waters under the earth. But Genesis goes on to explain another truth, doesn't it?

Genesis 3, where humanity falls away from their creator God. Instead of worshipping God, they choose to worship themselves. Instead of God being sufficient for Adam and Eve, they choose knowledge and power over God. Skip forward to the New Testament and the apostle Paul writes in Romans 1:23-25 about the state of fallen humanity and he puts it in similar ways. He says, we exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a lie and we worshipped and we served created things rather than the creator.

We exchanged the truth of God, the glory of God for a lie, and we worshipped created things instead of the creator. That is the state of fallen humanity. And it is on this point that the second commandment is addressed. You see the thing that's wrong with humanity, the thing that is wrong with Israel at this point is that the intended order of our existence and happiness has been reversed. Human beings have come to worship and to serve created things instead of the creator.

And these created things ironically have come to rule over us. The sun which is meant to give us light, we worship. When we come to the second commandment on idolatry, we might be tempted very much to think that this is done and dusted. This belongs well and truly in the Old Testament.

This belongs to the ancient Near Eastern world. But as scripture explains, it's well and truly alive in the human heart. Scholar Richard Keyes writes this. He says, a careful reading of the Old and the New Testaments show that idolatry is nothing like the crude simplistic picture that springs to mind of an idol sculpture in some distant country. The biblical idea of idolatry, he says, is highly sophisticated.

Drawing together the complexities of psychology, the social environment and also the unseen world. Idols are not just in pagan altars but in well educated human hearts and minds. The apostle Paul, he says, associates the dynamics of human greed, of lust, of craving and coveting with idolatry. Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5. He goes on to write.

He says, the Bible does not allow us to marginalise idolatry to the fringes of life. In fact, it is found on centre stage. In other words, why do we lie? Why do we steal? Why do we fail to love?

Why do we break our promises? Why do we live selfishly? The Bible says because there is something in my heart besides God that I believe will get me joy and peace and fulfilment. You see the tricky thing about idolatry for Israel, when they entered the promised land and we know they failed at keeping the second commandment, the tricky thing is they came into a country flowing with milk and honey where the people worshipped the Baals and the Asherah poles. It was fertile.

It was rich. Remember, they were saying people had to carry grapes two men at a time. The vines were just so laden with fruit. Israel wanted that fertility and it seemed to have worked for the people of that land. So why not also worship the Baals to get the fertility, to get the wealth, to get the comfort?

See, really, they didn't worship Baal, they worshipped themselves. Why do we lie or steal? The Bible says because in our hearts we believe in something else apart from God that will give us peace and joy and fulfilment. The second commandment, in other words against idolatry targets the human heart that says although God is good and important, I cling to something that I value equally or even more for my satisfaction. Now pastor Tim Keller that people here know I love quoting has written a lot and preached a lot on this topic.

In fact, this week, I was listening to a sermon that he preached in 1989, five weeks into his planting of the church in New York, Redeemer Church, which is a massive megachurch now. And he was saying the same things that he has written now in his books and his study guides. It shows the longevity of his messages or the need for thirty years of preaching the same thing for people to start getting it. Keller tells a story of counselling a teenage girl in his office one day because she was beside herself with anxiety. And after talking a little while, the reason became clear.

She wanted a boyfriend and couldn't find any dates. Keller thought that he would be able to ease her anxiety by teaching her all the ways in which God has blessed her. All the deep and the lasting riches of God's goodness. The greatest one, he said, obviously, salvation in Jesus Christ. And after hearing it all, she responded with this, what is any of it good for if I'm not popular?

What good is it if I'm still not popular? That girl, Keller says, probably made a mistake that day. She was honest with her pastor. That was a mistake. Because in reality, the more mature you are, the older you are, the more we tend to deceive ourselves.

But if we're honest, we would probably say, there have been moments in my life where I've said, what good is God when I don't have? What good is God if I haven't received? What good is God if this is not? Idolatry is a love of something other than God. It is a replacement of God to make my life happier or more fulfilling and the grim reality is this, that idolatry is not stuck in the ancient world.

It is alive and well in the human heart today. So why is then the idol or idolatry in the list, the big ten list of God? Because idolatry is really the sin beneath all sin. Idolatry is the sin beneath all sin. As soon as our loyalty to anything leads us to downplay God's prominence in our life and causes us to doubt or disobey Him, in that moment we are worshipping something else.

And it can be, the Bible shows us anything. When any finite created thing, whether it's a statue, whether it's a person, whether it is an idea or a philosophy, if that is elevated to the final source of our meaning and our identity, then you have created a god. You have chosen for yourself and made for yourself an idol in the form of something in heaven or on earth or in the waters below the earth. How do you know that you have an idol? If we were to do some soul searching this morning, how do we know that we have an idol?

Well, a good litmus test is to ask yourself this, if this x thing was taken away from me, if this object or this person or this idea was taken from me, you would feel utterly devastated. You would not be able to live joyfully without this thing, then you know that you have an idol. How would you feel if you lost your bank account balance? Some people will be like, phew, I don't have to be overdrafted anymore.

Return to zero, that's good. But how about the security of that bank account balance? What if that was lost? How about if you lost your weekends or your entertainment? How about if you lost control of people's opinion of you if you could not handle or manage that anymore.

I know a girl who identified fashion and celebrity as painful idols in her life. Devastation as a result of losing any and all of these things points us to idolatry. A part of this second commandment and you'll see it is long. There's explanation in this second commandment. Part of this second commandment also points us to the fact of how much God detests this, that He cannot stand for it.

He calls Himself a jealous God. Did you notice that? He calls Himself a jealous God and it is shocking. It is something that sort of hits you if you've never heard this before. It might hit you out of the blue.

How can God be jealous? It's forceful and the Hebrew word originally was just as forceful. It's tied with God's wrath. It's tied with vengefulness. But it has everything to do as we'll see with the problem of idolatry.

In a sermon on the second commandment, John Calvin, the great reformer, wrote that when God is called jealous, without a doubt it simply means that He will not permit His honour to be violated. His honour, His glory is at stake here. Calvin writes, if anyone should take away what properly belongs to God in order to confer it upon creatures, God most certainly will not be patient as to tolerate such sacrilege. God's jealousy is not over us. God's jealousy is over His own honour, His glory.

He is not like some overprotective boyfriend that gets jealous when the girlfriend goes out for a party. He is jealous for His own glory and idolatry is the attempt to steal it from Him. Calvin writes, although the honour of God may not be precious to us or it is precious in part and then we forget it, God's honour is always eternally precious to Him and He will defend it. And this is a righteous jealousy. Human jealousy and envy is linked to the tenth commandment which we'll read about later, coveting other things, things that don't belong to us.

But God's jealousy is about something that is His, His glory, His honour. God will not share that glory with anyone or anything else. And He is jealous for that reason. And then we see the extent of this protection over His honour in what He says will happen next. He says He will visit the iniquity of the father on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

The NIV translated as punishing the children for the sin of the fathers. Now partly, this is a warning for Israel. Remember, the ten commandments happens in the context of a covenant. I will be your God if you will be my people. You will be my people if you obey these things, if you love me with these things.

And the promise is in the whole of the Pentateuch, I will give you this land to live in. I will bless you in this land. You will honour me and worship me as your God in this land. But if you do not, your enemies will overcome you. Your enemies will exile you.

Your enemies will destroy what you have built up, what I have given you. And we know the sad history is that they worship the idols. They don't live a godly life and they are removed from this. And so part of this is fourth, third and fourth generations lose out. Israel sins and exile of seventy years happens.

Three or four generations and then God's wrath and His punishment ends and they return to the land and He has mercy on them. Part of this is prophetic but the other part, I believe, is relevant to all of us. Idolatry can be passed down from one generation to another. Punishment of God that lasts three or four generations, I think, has a lot to do with God handing families over to their own sin. Worship money?

Your son will worship money. Worship status or celebrity, your children will worship too, perhaps even to the third and fourth generation. What you value, which God you place your love and your trust in is passed down with mother's milk. And this is what generational sin looks like. Romans 1:26 says that God can punish, God can bring His wrath upon people by simply letting the natural consequences of that sin run its course.

Romans 1:26 says, God handed them over to their shameful lusts. Having the natural consequences of that choice run its course and I think that is something of what is hinted at here too. So the question as we read these words are what are you emulating for your kids? What habits regarding the God you say you love are you showing to them? Is there anything that needs to be corrected?

Because we were created to worship, we will worship. We were designed for it, hardwired for it. We will always have our hearts yearn for worship whether it be God or an idol. This means we will never stop being able to idolise or worship something. You won't simply be able to stop worshipping sex.

You won't simply be able to stop worshipping approval or comfort. You simply won't be able to turn it off because idols will keep popping up like blackheads on that nose. Or like those whack a mole arcade games that pop up from time to time and you have to whack them down because innately our hearts yearn to worship something. So how do we overcome idolatry? Well, the great comfort of the gospel is that yes, at one time, every one of us, at one time, would have been held ransom by every idol our heart could imagine.

But if you're a Christian, and thankfully because of Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross, you have the power to overcome every idol. You have the power to overcome every idol that comes in life. The good news is that the bondage of sin and idolatry is broken when we believe in the gospel. Paul put it this way. He said, sin shall not be your master.

He couched it in words of worship. Sin shall not be your master because you are not under that old law, he says, but you are under grace. Romans 6:14. By Christ's death and His resurrection, we enter into a perfect relationship with God with full access to His generous love. So much so that we can say with the psalmist of Psalm 34, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. Friend, that joy is tangible. The satisfaction that He can give is tangible. It can be felt. It is visceral.

It is rich. It is deep. God's love is lasting. This love, this satisfaction will never fade. It will not wear out.

It is rich and new every morning. There is a love that invigorates the soul. There's a love that satisfies the thirsty. There's a love that warms the heart. It gives significance and it gives purpose to every life.

This love in Jesus Christ tells us that we are infinitely precious to Him. If we know this, and I mean if we really, really know this, why exchange it for a one night stand? Why exchange this love for a boozy night? Why give up God for the things and the people who will ultimately disappoint? The only way to completely destroy an idol is to squeeze it out with the love of God.

Like those blackhead videos, you need to squeeze out the grime, you need to wash it clean and then you need to fill those spaces with God's love. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, for this reason. You cannot be a vacuum. Vacuums do not exist in the human heart. It must be filled with something.

The question is with what? Just like clogged pores, your heart will get clogged again by rubbish. If you get rid of one, another will come. The only way past an idol is to replace it with the only one who is worth your trust. The only one who is worth your worship and that is Jesus Christ, my friend.

That is Jesus Christ. You are His. You are His and He says to you, make me yours. The way we beat idolatry out of us is to set this message of Jesus Christ at the centre of our hearts. To come back to it again and again and again until that thing is dead.

And so if we realise that this is our situation, if we realise there are things in my life that is taking my attention and my focus and my worship away from God, I'd like to encourage you to do these things. Firstly, repent of that idol. Realise that when you desire an idol, you are saying, Lord, you are not enough for me. This thing, this thing is more beautiful and more fulfilling than you are, God. And so I want to encourage you to repent and say, Lord, this might be good in essence.

This might be pleasing and nice to have, yet I have made it my absolute. And what is it compared to you? What is this compared to you? This does not give me life. This does not give me joy.

It cannot determine my self worth. Only you can. This week, identify and repent and give up these idols, but then secondly, we have to replace them. We have to replace them. And you can only do that by rejoicing in Christ.

So repent of the idol and rejoice in Christ. Reflect on how Jesus has provided you what this idol cannot provide. Remind yourself of the promises of scripture. Psalm 16:11, Lord, only in your presence is there fullness of joys and pleasures forevermore. Only in your presence is there fullness of joy.

Your idols are fading. Those things that you think are saving your life will disappoint. It is only the richness of God's love that lasts. And so we need to pray things like, Lord, when I am tempted to feel anxious, when I'm tempted to clutch at things to comfort myself, to determine who I am and my self worth, I know I don't even deserve anything, Lord, from you, yet I know that you are working in this moment for the good of those who love you. In this moment, you are working for my good as I love you.

Reflect and rejoice in all that Jesus Christ has given you. The more you remember, the more you will replace these idols. And the more you remember, the less power they will have over you. May God reign victoriously in our lives. Let's pray.

Father, we know that you are worthy. You are worthy of our entire heart. Lord, reign in us. Lord, grow a deep deep knowledge of your worth. Grow a deep deep knowledge of your honour and your glory that is only due to you.

Father, we ask forgiveness. We repent. Give us the perspective, Lord, of your Spirit to understand and see the areas in our life where we have not made you our God. And then Father, give us the eyes and the ears and the hearts to see and hear the wonderful blessings that we have. Those blessings in the spiritual realms that we heard of this morning again from Paul.

Every blessing. Every blessing that is ours. Father, give us eyes to see that. And Father, as we gaze upon that, as we calibrate our lives around that, let everything else dim and fade into the background. God, may we find our satisfaction in you.

Lord, may there be such a wonderful joy in our lives. Lord, a joy that only comes from you, a joy that is only found in full satisfaction in you. And God, you know us and you know we are weak, but Lord, we have the spirit of the living God in us and that gives us hope. We can and we will overcome. Continue that work in us, God.

We give you the permission to do that. In Jesus name, amen.