Exodus 20a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

If we were part of a large southern plantation and our little two and a half acres plus our house
was part of a larger plantation, and the owner of the huge plantation said to us, “Go off on
vacation and I’ll take care of this house for you, you can depend on me” it seems to me that our
faith in him would depend on some knowledge we had of him. That’s plain and obvious because none of
us would dream of committing our home and our garden to somebody that we didn’t know; it’s
impossible to have faith in somebody whose track record you have no idea of. And I think that’s one
of the values of the ten commandments.

Having faith in God depends on us knowing what his nature is. And the ten commandments, even though
they’re not our daily relationship with God, in other words, our daily relationship with God isn’t
built on them, it’s built on the life of Jesus in us and our response to that life, yet the ten
commandments do clarify for us what God is like and what his nature is. So it does give you the
feeling he’s not dumb, for instance. He’s not going to roll the tanks over us; he’s not going to
roll a train over us. He’s not a dreadful tyrant that is insensitive to us and he’s not a dishonest
person. He’s not a crooked person. He’s a person who says, “Thou shalt not steal.” He’s a person
who says, “Thou shalt not kill.”

So in a sense the ten commandments are very important to us because sometimes the life of Jesus in
us is attacked by other spirits and sometimes it waivers a little. It’s so good to be able to look
to something as solid as the Bible and see, “But wait a minute, this God that I trust, this is what
he’s like. Whether I feel he’s like that or not at this moment, this is what he’s like. This is
the kind of God he is.” And so the ten commandments, in a sense, are still important to us because
they show us what God’s nature is and they’re a way of holding back Satan’s lies when he says, “You
can’t trust him.” We can look to this dear word and we can say, “Yes, yes we can. Because not only
does he say these things, not only are these the commandments he’s given us for centuries, but this
is the way he has acted with people down through the years.” So it’s very reasonable to be asked to
have faith in somebody whom you know like that and it’s maybe good to remember that about the
commandments.

Now the one we’re studying is the second commandment and you’ll find it in Exodus 20:4. The first
commandant is verse two and it goes, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.” The second one is in
verse four, and this is the one we’re studying today. “You shall not make for yourself a 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; 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 upon 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.” And we need to trust the Holy Spirit to speak to each of us today and
apply this to our hearts, because God is the one who creates us and sustains us, and who will
receive us to himself at the end of this life. What this commandment is talking about is things that
you substitute for God, that’s really what a graven image is. And it’s maybe good to see that
they’re not just talking about statues.

Every group has its things that other people can knock down; the Protestants have plenty of them,
the Catholic Church had its statute of the virgin Mary and all that kind of thing and we Protestants

used to look at those and say those are graven images. The Bible isn’t talking about likenesses
that various artists have drawn. We used to say in Protestantism that you can’t draw a picture of
Jesus — you should never attempt to do that. I don’t know what we did therefore with the work of
the old masters, we just blotted them out.

But we used to think those images were a sacrilege and that it was a sin to try to draw a picture of
Jesus, because who could ever draw a picture of Jesus? Well, everybody agrees with that; it’s
impossible to draw Jesus in all his fullness, but it’s important to see that the second commandment
is not concerned with sculptures, or paintings of Jesus, or attempts to represent some of the wonder
of God. The emphasis of the commandment is obviously on making them and worshiping them. Verse
five, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” So it’s not a case of anything that is in
heaven above, because that would prevent all sculpture and all painting. You couldn’t paint an
ocean because that’s in the earth, you couldn’t paint the sky because that’s in the heaven above,
and you couldn’t paint a fish because that’s in the water under the earth.

So it’s not referring to a sculpture or painting but it’s referring to making a likeness of
something and then bowing down and worshiping it in the place of God, or treating it in the place of
God. And maybe its good to see what they worshipped in the Old Testament, because it actually is
not so strange as you may think. One of the things they worshiped was the whole business of Baal
and ownership. Ba’al in Hebrew actually means “I own” or “I have.” And it’s important for us to
see when they made a stone idol and called it Baal, it wasn’t the idol they were worshiping, it was
the spirit of ownership and possessions. I often think that we are very quick to look down on the
pagans who worship Baal and yet we fail to see that what they were worshiping was their possessions.

In other words, instead of depending on God for their security, they were actually depending on the
land they owned, or the cows, or the cattle they owned. And when Andrea read that piece in Isaiah,
it drew out the foolishness of the fact that the workmen used part of the wood to light a fire and
to cook a meal and to warm himself, and he used another part of the wood to make as his idol and
worship it. But in a sense we are just as foolish when we depend on our possessions and the things
we own for our security. And what I think we need to lie low under the Holy Spirit on is to what
extent is our peace of mind, and we’ve touched this so often — but it does seem to me it’s where we
live so it’s what we should face — how often does our peace of mind in business depend on the
accounts receivable or the money in the bank?

But then let’s apply it to each of our own individual lives; how much does our peace of mind depend
on the reserves that we have? I think several of us here have found it hard, but yet have been
grateful to God, for taking one thing after another and taking it out from under us so that we no
longer had that reserve to depend upon. And yet probably the truth is that after all the
possessions are gone, and after all the things we own are gone, there can still be a creeping little
attitude of idol worship inside us that even when it has nothing, still thinks, “Yeah, but finally
you depend on this or that rather than God for your security” and while we do that we’re still
worshiping an idol. Even worse is we’re not worshiping God and therefore we’re actually cutting
ourselves off from the greatness of God himself.

That piece that we’ve mentioned before about Smith Wigglesworth always comes home to me and I’ll go
over it quickly; a very wealthy man came to him for advice and Wigglesworth had bought a house that
he couldn’t pay for and he didn’t have the money to pay for. He counseled or prayed for the man,
and a real change was worked in the man’s heart and he was so grateful he said to Wigglesworth,

“What can I do for you? Can I do anything for you?” And Wigglesworth said not a word and yet it
would have been so easy because the amount he needed was so small, I think it was something like 100
pounds sterling that he needed, but it was so small it would have meant nothing to the wealthy man.
But he said not a word because he did not worship the idol of money, or the idol of a house or of
ownership, but he worshiped God. And it seems that only to such will God give all his own
blessings and open his arms.

It’s come home to me increasingly now, because it’s so obvious that if God is going to do something
with us beyond ourselves it’s going to have to be his action; it’s going to be him bringing the
people he wants. And if we cut ourselves off from him and his resources, or we stop him throwing
upon us his blessings we’re lost; there’s nothing. And yet he will only give his blessings to those
who actually worship him and who do not worship their own things or the things they depend on for
security, so it’s good to see that.

Another of the idols that they worshiped in the days of the Israelites in Israel was Ashtoreth.
Ashtoreth was the god of lust or desire. And the [health issue with] cholesterol issue was good for
me because – and we’ve talked about this before — it’s surprising how you can get caught up not
just with lust and sexual stuff and all that, though that has its moments, but with treats. It’s
surprising how you can depend on treats; on the satisfaction of little desires that you have for
your happiness. And it seems that every time we do that – I was going to say we coarsen our spirit,
but we certainly coarsen our relationship with God; we lose something fine in our relationship with
him. And it seems that when we do that — okay, we don’t have a stone idol and all that sort of
thing, or we don’t have a huge muffin made of wood in our bedroom — but it does seem that in some
way life coarsens and our quiet trust with God, and our direct line to him is somehow twisted. So I
don’t think you need to have a material or wooden or stone idol to be thought of as an image
worshiper or idol worshiper. It seems that it’s a much finer thing than that; it seems that it’s
looking to anything instead of God for the things that he alone can give.

There are some good pieces in Psalms 135 –there are many statements in the Bible about idols, but
it seems that that is one that is particularly direct. Psalms 135:15, “The idols of the nations are
silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not, they have eyes, but
they see not, they have ears, but they hear not, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Like them
be those who make them! – yea, every one who trusts in them!” And you found that in your own
personal experience: when you worship your possessions or your money, or you depend on them rather
than God, or you depend on your little treats rather than God, you find that God’s voice no longer
is present in your life.

“They have mouths, but they speak not, they have eyes, but they see not.” These things, any image
you put in place of God, have no ability to communicate to you something from outside yourself;
they’re just a reflection of yourself, so your life goes kind of dead inside. I think that’s what
happens when we’re not living on the razor edge of God’s provision, but instead trying to get on
what we think is the broad road of our own provisions. Yeah, you’re secure, or you seem to be, but
everything is dead in your life, there’s nothing coming from outside. Your life is not exciting,
it’s not interesting, there’s no dynamic to it because “they have mouths, but they speak not, they
have eyes, but they see not, they have ears, but hear not.” Images and idols have not the power of
the living God to communicate something new into your life so your life goes dead. And actually,
you see in verse 18, “Like them,” in other words dumb and blind and deaf, “Like them be those who
make them!” You become the same; your life dies and you become more and more an unentity, more and
more a deaf, blind, dumb thing that has no life of its own. “Yea, every one who trusts in them!”

So in a way the more you depend on idols instead of God the more uninteresting as a person you
become. I remember one book that meant a lot to me when I was still kind of a liberal in the
Methodist church, was J. B. Phillips, Your God is Too Small. It’s really a good book and he points
out that many of us don’t have stone idols but we have wrong ideas of God; we have ideas of God that
we worship, we don’t worship God himself. We worship ideas that we’ve either created ourselves, or
we’ve collected them from other sources, or we’ve allowed them to form in our minds through not
using our own intelligence and he says a lot of people labor under those.

And one I remember him talking about is – a group of school children were asked who is God? And one
little kid started the composition, “God is an old gentlemen living in heaven.” And it seemed that
it wasn’t so bad, it was nice to think of him with a beard and very wise and all that, but I think
so often we think of him as not only an old gentlemen, but one who is kind of nodding and is not
quite in the middle of what we’re doing and has other things that he’s interested in and doesn’t
quite understand our circumstances. I think it’s good to know God isn’t that.

In Psalms 139:1, he is no old gentlemen that doesn’t understand us or doesn’t know where we’re at
and sometimes it’s so easy to think, “If God really understood, he wouldn’t put me through this or
that.” But Psalms 139:1, “O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down
and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying
down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou
knowest it all together. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. Wither shall I go from thy
Spirit?”

Not that old gentlemen who doesn’t know where we are but, “Whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the
wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be
night,’ even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as
light with thee.” And then the reason for it of course is, “Thou didst form my inward parts, thou
didst knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful.
Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was
being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed
substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as
yet there was none of them. How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of
them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.”

So the whole idea that maybe God doesn’t quite know where we are or doesn’t quite understand what
we’re doing because he’s an old gentlemen living in heaven is just not true. Yet I think that often
we worship a god who is smaller than God himself and I don’t know how you think about it, but it’s
easy to catch yourself thinking as if God cannot see your thoughts; you have a little thought and
then you think, “Now, shall I let him know?” Well, he already knows. It’s so easy to make God
smaller than he is and to think of him as somebody who is not quite with it and doesn’t quite
understand you. Actually, he knows every word before it’s on our tongues.

So an “image” is not just a stone idol, but any idea of God that is smaller than God himself. J. B.
Phillips has about seven or eight more examples, but another one is that God is a managing director;
that is, he looks after Jupiter, Mars and the Milky Way, but — wait a minute — he has no time to

look after a little speck like me. So you comfort yourself with the idea that God is just concerned
about the main waves and cycles of history and the movements of the nations, and maybe of the
important people, but he doesn’t really know every moment of my life. Yet Jesus says it so clearly
in Matthew 10:29. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the
ground without your Father’s will.” Two sparrows, you could buy them for a penny in those days, and
yet not one will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. He knows every detail of
everything. Jesus went on in verse 30, “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear
not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” So God is not just a managing director
who doesn’t care about what we do, he knows what we do and it’s important to him.

There is one other thing that we are especially tempted to do in making images and it’s in
Deuteronomy 4:15-19. “Therefore take good heed to yourselves. Since you saw no form on the day
that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by
making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the
likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air,
the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water
under the earth. And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the
moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them,
things which the Lord your God has allotted to all the people under the whole heaven. But the Lord
has taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his
own possession, as at this day.”

It’s possible to take things that God has allotted to us and to worship them instead. I think it’s
important that books have their right place in our lives, that Christian Corps has its right place
in our lives, that Watchman Nee has his right place in our lives, Hudson Taylor, China, missions,
radio; but that place is not God’s place. And it seems important that we don’t take ideas or things
connected with God and make them more important than him. And it seems so good to have teaching
that we share among us, but I can see how that teaching can keep you from the liveliness of God if
you guide your life by that teaching rather than him himself.

So it’s good to see no image, no idol, nothing in place of God; not even his dearest thoughts, not
even the dearest servants of his, not even the greatest books that we’ve read, but him himself.
When we worship him, then we share his life and his liveliness instead of the deadness of the images
or the idols. So I’m wondering — should we not spend a few minutes listening to the Holy Spirit
and asking him, “Holy Spirit, am I worshiping anything besides you?” I thought it was good when –
Peggy — this happened with different people, but I think it was especially when Peggy around the
time when her father was getting married that I thought she took a definite step. and I suppose she
only can confirm this, but I thought she took a definite step away from ancestor worship. I know
that founds funny, but I think it’s possible for all of us to say, “Who are my brothers and sisters”
and answer like Jesus, “Those who do the will of my Father, those are my brothers and sisters.”

Yet way in the back of our heads is the thought, “Yeah, but if this whole thing collapses I can go
back to my…” We used to joke in England about the newly married couple; she was always going back
to her mother and that was the threat, “I’ll go back to my mother.” And of course it showed that
she never really left her mother. God brought that out too; that you must leave your father and
mother and cleave to the husband or the wife.

It seems very easy to condemn idol worship and to condemn ancestor worship and yet it’s easy to end
up in ancestor worship — appearing to trust in God alone but really keeping the thought in the back

of your mind, “Well, if everything fails I can go back to my family and they’ll look after me.”
While you still do that you’re still in a sense regarding them as the final catch-net — as the
final salvation — as the ones who will be there when everything else has broken down, and
therefore, in a sense, still putting them in the place of God. So it would be good, as we let the
Holy Spirit search us, to ask him, “Holy Spirit, is there anything I’m depending upon in this life
rather than God himself? Is there any idol that I’m relying on or trusting in rather than God?”
Because to that extent we’re blinder, or deafer, or dumber than is God’s will for us and we’re
lacking his life and worst of all we’re rejecting him and defying him. And finally, it’s him only;
he’s the one who made us.

Let us pray.