Do Not Make Images of God
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-6
I. You need to worship God in the right way.
A. In the first commandment God tells us, “You shall have no other gods before me.” You must worship the right God. Now, in the second commandment, God goes a step further. You need to worship the right God in the right way. You can’t worship God in any way that you choose. If we worship something we have made that is made to look like something in God’s creation and call that created thing God, we are lying about God. We are not worshiping God for who He truly is.
B. Israel sinned this way by worshiping a golden calf Aaron had created. Aaron and Israel called that calf the LORD (see Exodus 32:4). This golden calf diminished the real God. It turned God into something much smaller than He really is. Too many people today worship a god of their own imagination. Don’t worship the god of your imagination, a god made in your image. Worship the right God, the God of the Bible, in the right way.
II. You need to worship the jealous God for what rightly belongs to Him.
A. God calls Himself the jealous God in vs. 5. We usually think of jealousy as bad. But it is envy that is bad. Envy is craving something that belongs to someone else. Jealousy is good in that it protects what rightfully belongs to you. God regularly describes Himself in the Bible as a jealous husband. He must be jealous for you and for your love or else He would no longer be the loving and faithful husband He is to His people
B. How might we provoke God to jealousy today? Israel made God jealous by worshiping something they had made – a golden calf. We can also worship manmade things and turn those things into our god by giving those things the affection, the time, and the money that only God deserves. We can turn our phones into an idol along with our computers and our TVs. Other manmade things can also be a god to us. Have you turned a good thing into a God thing?
III. You need to worship God in Jesus.
A. People have a hard time worshiping our invisible God. But there is a good reason for us not to make any images of God. We don’t need to make an image of God because God has already made one. Genesis 1:26-27: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” There is one human being who reflects God perfectly. Colossians 1:15: “(Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Worship Him!
Application:
We break the 10 commandments because of idols in our hearts. What idol do you need to kill?
Sources:
The Bible
Books by Tim Keller, Kevin DeYoung, J.I. Packer, Jen Wilkin, and Philip Ryken.