The Second Commandment
opening song: Glorious day (chorus)
Call to worship:
pastor bobby owens
Colossians 1.15-20
song:
Come praise & glorify
Historical reading:
pastor andrew loginow
Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 50-52
song:
Christ or else I die
Confession & Pardon (w/ 10 commandments):
pastor michael champoux
song:
Doxology
song:
His mercy is more
Sermon:
dr. alex loginow
The 2nd Commandment
Exodus 20.4-6
Introduction
I’m pretty sure I could drive from Detroit to Louisville blindfolded. I’ve made that trip a lot; especially when Bethany and I first started dating and she still lived in Michigan while she was finishing high school and I was going to college in Kentucky. Whenever you’re making a familiar drive there are certain landmarks that break up the trip. One of those landmarks for me is between Dayton and Cincinnati – there is a church on the east side of I75 with a giant statue of Jesus. We used to call the statue “touchdown Jesus” because his arms were lifted in the air like he was calling for a touchdown.
Dr. Al Mohler once described this Jesus statue as “ugly as it is big.” Somewhere between 12-15 years ago the statue was struck by lightning. You can draw your own conclusions about that. The statue was subsequently rebuilt and now we call it “hug it out, bro Jesus,” because now Jesus’ arms are extended straight out. The new statue also now has a lightning rod on the top of Jesus’ head, because, you know, live and learn.
The 2nd Commandment has been a bit of a lightning rod for the 2,000-year history of the Christian church. For hundreds of years Christians have created images of Jesus Christ in paintings, statues, and other forms of art. Since the Reformation Protestants have debated whether or not these images of Christ are a form of breaking the 2nd commandment. How are we to think about artistic depictions of God, in general, and Jesus Christ specifically?
The 2nd commandment builds on the 1st in that it calls us to think through the very nature of the one true God. Who is this one true God? Can he be seen? Beyond that, how do we rightly worship the one true God in light of the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ?
The 2nd Commandment
The 1st Commandment reveals the one true God whom we are to worship. The 2nd Commandment reveals how we are to worship him. We saw last week that before God gave his people the Decalogue he reminded them that he redeemed them from slavery. He is the one true God who created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1-2) and he is the one who redeemed them. After that God gives the 1st Commandment – you shall have no other gods before me. God commands his people to worship him alone.
But God does not leave the manner of worship up to his people. In the 2nd Commandment YHWH instructs his people you shall not make for yourself a carved image…you shall not bow down to them or serve them. The Lord’s ban of images for worship is not arbitrary. It is grounded in the very nature of who God is. The God we worship, the one true God, is the God who speaks.
The self-revelation of God is the very basis of our epistemology. Epistemology means “theory of knowledge.” So what I’m saying is the only way we know anything, and specifically anything about God, is because God told us. We only know God because God spoke. As Francis Schaffer once said, “God is there and he is not silent.”
Throughout the Old Testament God always communicated with his creation through speaking. Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth by speaking – and God said, “Let there be light and there was light.” God spoke to Adam; God spoke to Noah; God spoke to Abraham; God spoke to Moses. Scripture also reminds us that it is God’s grace that he condescends to speak to us. Immediately following the account of the 10 Commandments in Deuteronomy Scripture says, For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived (Deut 5.26)? God’s people are the ones who have heard God’s voice and lived. They did not see God; they heard God.
Not only does Scripture tell us that God’s self-revelation is primarily audible, not visual, but the Bible also stresses the discontinuity between the pagan idols and the one true God. God is creator; everything else is creation. God is uncreated. God is not a physical being.
In contrast, the pagan idols of the ancient Near East were created by men. These idols have physical form because they are creation. These idols are seen and not heard. God was heard but not seen.
1st Kings 18 tells us of the epic showdown between Elijah and the worshippers of Baal. The worshippers of Baal spend hours cutting themselves and calling on their god to answer them to no avail. Elijah them mocks them asking, “where is your god? Is he asleep? Or maybe he’s using the bathroom?” Elijah knew what Psalm 121.4 tells us, Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The absurdity of idolatry is no clearer in Scripture than in Isaiah 44.13-17.
The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”
Man makes a god and then says, “Deliver me.” God delivers us and then says, “Worship me.”
The 2nd Commandment not only speaks to the nature of God but also one of his characteristics, namely jealousy. God is the one true God; he has redeemed his people and he demands their exclusive worship. Often times we think of jealousy as petty, or immature, or controlling, but God’s jealousy is holy. Just like I have a holy jealousy for my wife.
I’m jealous for my wife. No one else is allowed to kiss my wife. I’m not petty for feeling that; it’s holy. The same is true for God’s jealousy. He is the holy creator and the only one worthy of worship.
Exodus 20.4 forbids images of God in 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. No created image accurately represents God because he is immortal, invisible, God only wise. In verses 5-6 the Lord warns that idolatry is sin and leads to death. Those who embrace idolatry bring death on the third and fourth generation after them. But those who worship the one true God will be blessed for 1,000 generations.
This is why YHWH forbid Israel from intermarrying with pagan women. God did not command this because he is racist and he didn’t want good Jewish boys marrying gentile girls. God warned his people of intermarrying because they would end up worshipping the pagan gods of their foreign wives. This is what happened to King Solomon.
But long before King Solomon’s reign Israel broke the 2nd Commandment. In fact, while Moses was on the mountain with YHWH Aaron fashioned a golden calf for the people and they worshipped it as if it was YHWH. Their rebellion yielded them God’s wrath. God didn’t give his people an image of an animal or man. God gave them his word.
Pastor Andrew led us in our historical reading this morning from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Question 52 gives us three reasons why God gives us the 2nd Commandment – (1) Because God is sovereign; (2) because God owns his people; and (3) because God is zealous for his own worship. God is sovereign over all things and specifically his people. God has the right to determine how he is worshipped. God has revealed himself not through an image but through his word.
Jesus Followed & Fulfilled the 2nd Commandment
And the New Testament reveals to us that it was the Word of God who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1.14). His name is Jesus and he both followed and fulfilled the 2nd Commandment. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the 2nd Commandment because he is the true image of God. Philippians 2 tells us that he was in the form of God. In our call to worship Pastor Bobby read from Colossians 1 where Jesus is called the image of the invisible God. God never gave his people an image to accurately portray him because Jesus is the only accurate depiction of the image of God.
And just as we saw with the 1st Commandment, Jesus of Nazareth is not only the fulfillment of the 2nd Commandment, but Jesus the only human in history who ever followed the 2nd Commandment. Jesus is the only man ever who has truly viewed God properly. Through his obedience of the 2nd Commandment, Jesus kept the law and was able to stand before God as the spotless lamb. This active righteousness is what Jesus Christ offered up to God as he paid the penalty for the sins of his people on the cross. And Jesus’ active righteousness is the reason why death could not hold him down and so on the third day Jesus walked out of the tomb as the resurrected image of God.
So the clearest image of God that we have is the word picture given to us in Scripture of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is in the Bible that we are told of Jesus. Scripture is where we are told of the person and work of Jesus Christ. We do not see Jesus; we are told of Jesus.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Heb. 1.1-3).
The image of God that we worship is the picture painted for us of Jesus in Scripture.
That leads to the logical question – what about pictures of Christ? We’re all familiar with renaissance art depicting Christ from Da Vinci and others. I went to Bible College with a guy who looked just like the depiction of Christ we see in medieval European art. His name was Tony; he had long hair and a beard. He actually pastors in Cleveland now. One time a bunch of guys were throwing a football around in the J bowl and Tony dropped a couple of passes and one guy yelled out, “Don’t throw it to Jesus, he can’t catch!” People called Tony Jesus, not because he looked like the actual Jesus of Nazareth, but because he looked like medieval European Jesus.
Here’s the deal, the argument for artistic depictions of Jesus is that Jesus was an actual man seen by actual men. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life (1 Jn. 1.1). That being said, God, in his providence, did not leave us any pictures of Jesus. And I’d venture a guess that when most westerners think of Jesus they think of a European man with long blonde hair and blue eyes. That is not what Jesus looked like. Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew; Jesus had dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.
So while the debate will rage on, I will give you my two cents – I do not believe that artistic depictions of Jesus of Nazareth are inherently wrong. Jesus is an historical man. Kevin Osborn shared a profound thought with a group of guys at church about the beauty of different artwork depicting Jesus in his humanity – white, black, middle eastern, etc. There is beauty in people recognizing that Jesus is like us because there is a sense in which he is; Jesus is truly human. People identify with Jesus in his humanity and they should.
By the same token, if we are thinking of these depictions when we worship Christ we are breaking the 2nd Commandment. These images of Jesus, especially the European Jesus so many of us in the west thinks of, like the statue off of 175, are not Jesus. The only image of Christ God has left us is the word picture given in Scripture. We ought not use Leonardo Da Vinci’s Jesus, or Mel Gibson’s Jesus, or any other visual of Jesus and use it in worship.
It is only the Jesus given to us in the Word that saves us. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ revealed in the Bible is the good news that reconciles God and man. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15.3-4). It is not the picture of a meek European man that changes hearts, but it is the gospel of Christ revealed in Scripture that raises dead hearts.
The 2nd Commandment & the Church
And so as we consider how we are to follow the 2nd Commandment at Christ Community Church in 2023, the first thing we must say is that it is only through faith in Jesus Christ that we can obey the 2nd Commandment. If you are not a Christian you must repent of your sin and place your faith in Christ alone. To repent means to turn from your sin and to turn toward Christ. To repent means to confess that you are a sinner who deserves the wrath of God through eternal conscious punishment in hell.
To place your faith in Jesus encompasses three facets – knowledge, assent, and trust. You must have the knowledge of who Jesus is and what Jesus did. You must assent that these truth claims are true; you must actually believe all of the facts about the person and work of Christ. And finally you must transfer your trust to Jesus alone. That means your only confidence to stand before God is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
After you believe in Jesus, the 2nd Commandment reveals the idols that we struggle with. The 2nd Commandment, like all of the others, has both positive and negative connotations. Negatively, the 2nd Commandment forbids use of any unauthorized images of God for worship. Positively, the 2nd Commandment requires that we view God exclusively through the image that he has revealed to us, namely the image of his Son in Scripture.
To break the 2nd Commandment is to practice idolatry. What we see in the Bible is that the root of idolatry is self-worship; we believe we ought to be God. That is the lie the serpent told Eve – “you can be like God.” Pagan idols were man made. Men created idols, admired their work, and then gave these idols their devotion.
This is image confusion. We create gods/idols in our image so that we’re in control. Our kids have been reading about the ancient Greek pantheon in books from the school library. The Greek gods were petty man-like deities. Read up on Zeus, Venus, and the others. They are gods created in the image of man. They are lust-filled, vengeful, sinful creations.
Idols made in our image give us comfort because when our gods are broken like we are, we’re not accountable to a perfect standard. But that is not the God of the Bible. The one true God is holy. He is perfect in all of his attributes. If the God of Scripture is the one true God then there is a standard we must live up to.
While we may not be tempted to worship Zeus or a golden calf, we create our own image of God that suits our sensibilities. Sometimes this God is lawless, sometimes he is legalistic, but either way our created god falls short of the glory of the one true God. Our culture majors on creating a lawless god made in our image. People will say things like, “I could never believe in a god who would send people to hell,” or “I could never believe in a god who would kill his own son,” or “I don’t believe in a god who’s concerned with what consenting people do in their bedroom.”
What people are doing there is they are taking their own lawless desires and presuppositions and creating a god in their own image. They are rejecting God’s self-revelation in Scripture for their own “god.” But if that’s true then how impotent is God? If God has to agree with your sensibilities, what if your sensibilities change?
On the flip side, many Christians have created a legalistic god in their own fundamentalist image. “I could never believe in a God who would allow people to drink alcohol.” Never mind that Jesus, who was God incarnate, drank alcohol and was notorious for hanging out with drunkards. “I could never believe in a God who would let people get tattoos, or smoke, or dance, or play cards, or watch movies, or let women wear pants, or let women have short hair, or let men have long hair” or whatever silly legalism you struggle with. These Pharisees are doing the same thing that our pagan culture does; they are applying their own self-righteous presuppositions to create a god in their own image.
This problem is inherent to all of humanity because, as we mentioned last week, all people are created in the image of God and so all humans are born worshippers. We either worship the God of the Bible – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – or we worship something else. In the book of Acts Paul makes reference to the “alter of the unknown god.” Humans instinctively know that they are made to worship something.
We also inherently know that we are finite. We are reminded of this with every funeral we attend. That’s why it’s in vogue now in our culture to stop doing funerals all together. People don’t want to contemplate death.
We know inherently that there is something bigger than us. That’s why people want to give their life to a cause. That’s why wealthy people create foundations and participate in philanthropy. They want their life to be defined by something more than mere wealth. They want to contribute to something that will outlast their life. We all know that we have to find value in something that will outlive us. Some people look for it in family, or work, or politics, or religion. But the truth is that eternal value is only found in the one who is the image of the invisible God – the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that cause will only be found in the mission of the Kingdom of Christ lived out in the church. God has ordained that we would see his image primarily through the preaching of Jesus Christ every Sunday at church. Even more important than reading your Bible on your own is that you gather with the church for the preaching of the Word. I’m not telling you to abstain from reading your Bible. What I am telling you is that if you asked God which is more important – reading my Bible by myself or sitting under the preaching of the Word at church – he would tell you that you could never read your Bible alone again and you wouldn’t necessarily sin, but if you neglect gathering as a church under the preaching of the Word, you are in sin.
So how do we keep the 2nd Commandment? We gather every Sunday with the local church around the Word and the sacraments. We see the image of Jesus as he is preached from every verse in the Bible. We see Jesus in the only two sacraments he gave us – baptism and the Eucharist. These are the means of grace that save us and sanctify us. Are you looking for a cause to give your to? Give your life to the mission of the Kingdom of Christ in the local church.
Conclusion
The “hug it out, bro Jesus” statue with the lightning rod coming out of his head is such an apropos image for the 2nd Commandment. The 2nd Commandment has been and continues to be a lightning rod among Protestant Christians. We can continue to debate and discuss the extent to which images, specifically of Jesus, are appropriate. One thing we can say for certain is if you want to see Jesus look to the Scriptures. As the old hymn rightly confesses, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.”