The Big Ten: Israelite Idol

The Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:4-6

“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 the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. 

One of the things I love to do is to play games. I especially love strategy games. But one of the hardest things about strategy games is learning the rules. Once you know the rules, you can figure out how to play the game.

God gave his people rules to live by. We call them the Ten Commandments. The first five of the Ten Commandments help us know how to love God. The final five help us know how to love one another. 

We are now on the third sermon in our series on the Ten Commandments. First we looked at God and who He is, the all-powerful God who loves His people enough to give us rules. Last week’s sermon focused on the first commandment: We shall have no other gods before Him. Today we focus on the second commandment.

“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 the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. 

God created us with the need to worship Him. We have an innate desire that only Yahweh can fulfill. But because of the universal human longing for a god one can see and know through the physical senses, the people of Israel were tempted to worship idols. We can see through scripture that even as Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from God, down at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses’ brother Aaron was leading the people. But listen to Exodus 32:1.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” And so Aaron built a golden calf for the people to worship. They desired a god they could see and touch. 

But God is unique and unrepresentable. An idol cannot adequately represent Yahweh. God made this rule to preserve His own uniqueness and to protect His glory. Sometimes people do not understand why God would prevent his people from making idols or worshiping something else. They think of God as petty or egotistical. When they hear “God is a jealous God” they wonder “can’t God take it?” 

The reality is, God made these commandments for our own good. Think about it. Who alone can save? Only God can save. An idol is impotent. It is powerless to save. Listen to this passage from Isaiah 45:20: Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save. 

Or how about Jeremiah 11:12 The towns of Judah and the people of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to whom they burn incense, but they will not help them at all when disaster strikes.

This is why God commands His people not to worship idols; because only God can save. Why invest in that which cannot help? Why follow after that which cannot save? Why spend your life on something worthless, something made by human hands? 

Isaiah 44:13-20 tells us about a carpenter who makes an idol. He takes a tree that God caused to grow in the forest, a tree that can be used for fuel for burning. He uses the same wood to build an idol. The wood is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.

Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!”

They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say,“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

Do you see how silly this is? How pointless it is? Out of the same piece of wood he cooks his food and also makes an idol? Such a person feeds on ashes. Instead of God’s wonderful banquet set before him, he eats the ashes. We cannot save ourselves — neither can something we build save us.

But that’s not all. Not only can idols not save, but also, we become like whatever it is that we worship. The goal of Christianity is Christ-likeness. But when we worship idols, we become like the people of 2 Kings 17:15, of whom it says: They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. Or Hosea 9:10, where it says, [the people of Israel] consecrated themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the thing they loved.

One of the problems we have is that we can try to define idolatry as only worshiping a physical idol. But the Bible demonstrates that idolatry extends beyond the worship of images and false gods. It is a matter of the heart. Colossians 3:5 tells believers to Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature:  sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

Did you see that? Greed is idolatry. Why is that? Greed is wanting something that you don’t have. Why do we want more? Because we think that more will satisfy. If only I have more money. If only I have a nicer house. If only I had… It is looking for satisfaction where only God can satisfy. At its heart, idolatry is putting something else in the place where only God belongs. God created us to enjoy His presence, but we cannot adequately enjoy his presence when we are looking to everything else to satisfy our longings.

The truth is that nothing else will satisfy. No matter how much you get, you will never be satisfied with anything short of God Himself. So, many of us are guilty of breaking this commandment. The good news, though, is that where the Bible talks about idolatry, it always presents the opportunity for repentance and return. To serve other gods is to forsake God; to eliminate idolatry is a sign of return! God invites idolaters to turn from idols and serve the living and true God.