Exodus 20c – Manmade Idols

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We’re studying the life of faith as we find it outlined in the history of the Israelites and we’ve
reached Exodus 20. Exodus 20 is important because it contains the 10 commandments and we’ve reached
the second commandment which is found in Exodus 20:4, it’s the commandment about idols, “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.” One of the important facts we
saw about the commandment was that it doesn’t end there or otherwise it would mean you couldn’t make
a picture or you couldn’t make a statute because it says, “You shall not make for yourself a graven
image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above.” But that’s not the whole commandment.
The whole commandment is in verse 5, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.”

So an idol is not just something that looks like fish or a bird, or a person, it’s not just a
photograph or a picture, but it’s a picture or photograph or image or likeness that you bow down
to and serve, that you serve instead of God and that’s why the commandment goes on, “for I the Lord
your God am a jealous God.” That is, “I want you to worship only me.” “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 what we said was
that God is the one who made us and who sustains us and who will receive us at the end of this life,
and if you treat anything as doing that besides God, then that’s an idol to you.

You remember how we looked at the way the Israelites had Baal as an idol and how Baal stood for
ownership and we said you could often look to your possessions to sustain you instead of God, and in
the sense that you did that you were worshiping an idol. And you remember, how we said it comes
home to you when you begin to get that tightness in your stomach as the bank balance goes down
because you can proclaim all kinds of devotion to God but the proof of the pudding is in the eating
and if the tightness is in your stomach because your bank balance is going down, it means, really,
you’re trusting your bank balance to sustain you and of course, God is the only one who sustains
you. He is the one that is behind the bank balance, and behind the money, and behind the job that
brings the money, and behind the energy in your body that enables you to do the job.

So we looked at several of those idols and then also last week , we saw that it was possible to look
to another idol; the fossilized, frozen revelation of God to some other man or woman in the past.
Sometimes it was possible to look to even a good page in Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest
where you got real light and saw, “Oh, that’s true what he said is true.” And it’s possible with
what is strictly a fossilized frozen image of a past revelation of God to a man in the past to
depend on that idol, and to get your inspiration from that.

And if you say to me, “Sometimes I see something and I wonder why didn’t I see that before, and it
gives me strength for the day.” Well, it’s good if it gives you strength that comes from God,
because it throws you right through to God and you say, “Father, I see that what you said to
Chambers you’re saying to me this moment” so you’re getting your strength directly from God. Where
it’s bad is when you get a little bit of mental or emotional inspiration from the fossilized frozen
image from that past revelation of God to Chambers.

That’s the danger of meditation; where you meditate on a thing or an it, and almost like the
spiritualist or like the Christian scientist, or like the Hindu, or the Buddhist, you get

inspiration from that, or the transcendental meditator, you get inspiration from that thought and
you get a kind of lift from that thought so that thought has become an idol to you. You’re getting
from it what is meant to come from God alone. What we saw last week was the important thing is —
God is here; he is present right now. The Holy Spirit is within you and he is able to give you life
from God, not a thought from the tree of knowledge, but actual life from God himself.

What’s so deceptive about it is that the thought appeals to our mental appreciation of things. It’s
in a way sight, we can see a thought, we can express a thought, and we can say, “Oh boy, I got great
help from that.” And indeed, we can call that thought up whenever we choose and we saw that last
Sunday, that an idol was someone that was under the control of man itself. It was made by the skill
and imagination of man and so, often a thought can be called up to our imagination when we care to
and it can give us strength. In that sense we’re masters of it and then in that sense it is not our
master.

You remember that we read some verses where the Bible said very clearly, “An idol cannot see or
hear. An idol of stone cannot deliver.” And that’s the thing about a thought; a thought can’t
actually deliver you. It can give you inspiration, you can use it to help you a little, but it
can’t deliver you. And of course the greatest thing of all is — it can’t convict you and bring you
out from darkness. A thought is only what you can see with the light that you have, so it can’t do
much for you beyond that.

So it’s important not to treat a thought as an idol, or not to treat past revelations to other men
or woman as idols. And if you say to me, “Well then is it bad to read Oswald Chambers?” No, it’s
great to read, but always to read with your eyes on the Father, “Father, you showed this to Oswald
Chambers, what are you saying to me today? Holy Spirit, what are you saying to me?” And then it
seems possible that the Holy Spirit can give that breaking revelation that “breaks the thing wide
open” kind of revelation that is t light from heaven to you. So it’s important, even when we talk
to one another, that we thank God for what he said through the other person, but go to God himself
and say, “Lord, you have life for me here. Not just light but you have life.” And so often that’s
another thing that a thought can do; it can give you light, but it can’t give you life to work in
the light, to walk in the light. It’s interesting that it’s easy to end up, even in reading a
spiritual book, with burdens upon you.

You feel, “Oh, I should do this.” But there’s not the rising life of God that rises above, and the
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has saved us from the law of sin and death. The law of
sin and death is, in a way, knowledge. It convicts, it brings home to you where you’re failing and
where you must walk, but it’s death because it doesn’t give you power to walk that way. Whereas,
when you worship God yourself, and especially the dear Holy Spirit, when you treat him as a real
person and you expect him to give you life, he gives you life as well as light.

So, it’s good to see that difference and this morning I sensed that God wanted us to look at another
idol that we put in his place and it’s found in the New Testament lesson in Romans 1 and it’s one
that we talked about before but it’s good to look at it in the light of the commandment not to have
idols and it’s found in Romans 1:25. Just before that in verse 23 is a clear expression of idols,
“and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or
reptiles.” Then we see the particular idol that we’re talking about this morning in verse 25,
“because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather
than the Creator, who is blessed for ever!” The creature is not those things in verse 23, the
images resembling birds, or animals, or reptiles but rather the images in verse 24, “Therefore God

gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among
themselves.” It’s human creatures; worshiping human creatures, “because they exchanged the truth
about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
for ever!”

None of us have much trouble with the thought that Colleen created me, or Sandra created me, or Dan
created me. None of us have any trouble with that, because obviously they didn’t create me. Now if
you were an Elvis Presley, or if you were somebody that was managed by some other brilliant PR man,
I’m sure you would have a battle over whether they created you. I know that everybody thinks that
Prince has great talent, but Prince, or somebody’s whose image is greatly enhanced by clever public
relations men, I don’t know if they would think maybe they had been created. I’m sure some of them
have real trouble with identity in that way. But most of us don’t have great trouble that way; we
don’t worship each other with the idea that we created each other.

It’s the second thing that the Creator does that, it seems to me, is the challenge in treating each
other as idols and that is, God sustains us. It’s important for us to see that God has all kinds of
mysterious reasons for giving us physical bodies and putting us in the physical world. But one
obvious one is by this means he taught us that there is such a thing as a personal relationship, and
he gave us each other so that we could learn things about personal relationships. But we took those
personal relationships and instead of seeing them as illustrations or tutorials or as illustrations
of our relationship with him, we treated those relationships as the whole purpose of our lives and
we substituted them for our relationship with him. It’s very easy to worship the creature rather
than the Creator in the sense of treating each other as the people who sustain us.

Now, we have talked about that in past years especially in regard to wedding ceremonies, in regard
to the woman feeling “This man will keep me company in my old age, this man will look after me, will
protect me. This man will supply me with money, with material needs.” And the man on his part
looking at this woman and thinking “She will wash my clothes, prepare my food, take care of the
family, watch over the house, and will treat me as lord and master.” We’ve talked about that, and
we know about that side of things. But it seems that there is a far deeper way in which, either
inside marriage or what I think is more important, outside marriage, it is very possible to treat
each other in the place of God as idols in that we depend on each other’s love, or each other’s
attention, or each other’s care and then, when the other person doesn’t give us that, we are cast
down.

I can certainly see it in my own life how easy it is to worship the creature rather than the
Creator, to treat other people as idols in place of God in the sense that you depend on them and
their attitude to you and their friendship and their behavior and maybe their mood, and how their
love is expressed to you or isn’t expressed to you. You treat that as the sustaining factor in your
life that keeps you either up high and happy, or kind of middle, or worst of all, down low because
in subtle ways you’re putting that person and their attitude to you, and the way they’re affecting
your life, in place of God who is without shadow of change; who never changes, who is constant love,
who is constant joy, who is constantly patient with you, who is constantly faithful even when you’re
unfaithful. And in place of that wonderful God and in place of his fatherly love for you and his
sustaining affection and care and provision, you put in his place a fallible human being like
yourself.

It actually becomes a very sensitive commandment in this regard, almost for us to appear to be
teaching disregard for each other, and there should never be disregard for each other. There should

be regard for each other for a greater reason and a truer reason than that we depend on each other.
There should be regard for each other because our dear Father loves the rest of us in this room with
all his heart and loves us more than his own life, and we are his heart and spirit, so it’s natural
for us to have the same attitude to each other. But that is true love that wants the best for each
other, that’s trying to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and wanting the very best for
them. That’s not treating them as people who sustain us.

It seems that we need to see more clearly than ever before, that our relationships to each other are
only eternal in that we’re in Jesus together. But finally, the only eternal relationship on which
we depend is God our Father. Our relationships to each other are only illustrations of that or
introductions to that or, in the sense that Jesus is in you, that’s real and I receive it from
Jesus. But it’s important to see that we’re meant to go on from our present relationships with each
other to a deeper and deeper oneness with Jesus and with our Father. And of course, it’s especially
true when you come to the third factor in God’s relationship to us; he is the one who will receive
us to himself at the end.

There is of course a place where it all is plainly set before us, because our dads will never
receive us to themselves in that sense; God is the one who receives us to himself. We don’t know
who of us will die first, or who of us will die last, but we do know that we won’t be in a position
to receive each other. Jesus will be there to receive us and those of us who have gone before the
others will be there behind him waving, but it’ll be Jesus who will receive us. And certainly, if I
had an attitude of dependence to Irene and I died first, she wouldn’t be there to receive me.

So that’s a clear illustration that we dare not treat each other as the sustaining friendship in our
lives. There is only one sustaining friendship in our lives and that is the Father and Jesus and
his Spirit within us, who is our true friend. So in regard to each other, it’s important not to
make idols of each other. And I think where this comes home to me most clearly, and you can work
out your own situation, but where it comes home to me most clearly is what the other person’s
attitude to me is. If it’s good I feel better, if it’s bad I feel worse. And I think that’s a
clear example of treating the other person as an idol, as someone whose attitude governs my
attitude. If you can picture it, it’s like the Father looking down upon us with his hands full of
blessings, with his love beaming down upon us, and seeing one of his little children in the sulks
because her friend has spoken to her harshly. The Father is saying, “But that little friend of
yours will die in a second. I am here as your eternal Father with my hands full of blessings for
you and my love is absolutely unchanged towards you, and I have a wonderful place for you here
beside me in my home, and I have great things planned for you tomorrow. Why are you cast down? Why
are you all disappointed? Why are you all in the sulks? I only gave her to you to lead you on to
me. Look up to me. Worship me as your God. Put away the idols.”

Each of us would need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us light in it because I agree with you all
that it’s a very fine distinction there, because if it ever brings about indifference to each other
it’s wrong, there’s only one attitude that is right to each other and that is great love and great
care for each other. But it seems to me there’s a vast difference between trying to get the other
person to have the right attitude to you because you love them and trying to get them to have the
right attitude to you because you want to be happy and you want to be in their good books, or you
just want things to be happy. One is a very selfish reason and is a dependent reason, and the other
is an unselfish love and is a life that is dependent, not on the human being but on the God who made
us.

So it would be good to ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, please give me light. Reveal to me if I
dwell in a prison at all in this life because I’m treating someone else or some other people as
idols and depending on them to sustain me rather than looking up to you and seeing that you never
fail to sustain.” And then it seems to me it brings us into such a strong position because one can
be down or can be a bit off and the other is steady, instead of when one goes down the other is
affected by it. Instead of that you stay up and you pull the other person up.

So I suppose it’s like the mountain climbers who are chained together, strapped together; if you’re
dependent on the other person and have not a good hold on the mountain yourself, then when they go
down they pull you down with them. But if you have a good hold on the mountain, and your dependence
is on the mountain and your grip is on the mountain or its grip is on you, then even if the other
person falls, you stay steady and you are a rock and they can rectify themselves. So thou shall
have no idols, thou shall make unto thy self no graven image. You will not worship the creature
rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.

Let us pray.