Word of Salvation – Vol.47 No.44 – November 2002
Do Not Make a Likeness of God Other than Christ
Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk
on Lord’s Day 35 (Q&A 96-98 Heid Cat) & Exodus 20:4-7
Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 4:15-31; Hebrews 12:18-29
Suggested Hymns: BoW 153; 138; 92; 527
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The best way to distinguish the second commandment from the first is to say that that first commandment is about whom we must worship and the second about how we must worship. The first commandment says, “Do not worship any other gods, for there is only one true God. Worship only Him.” The second commandment says, “Worship this one true God only in the manner that He has prescribed in His Word.”
There is nothing in the whole of creation that comes even close to the being of God, whether you look for it in the sky, or on the earth, or in the waters of the sea, rivers or lakes. Therefore, you can’t use anything or any creature from anywhere in the world to help you worship God. As Creator, God is above His creatures and He is independent of them. God is unique. Therefore, to point to something in creation and say, God is something like a man, or a woman, or an animal, will always do Him injustice.
As soon as God’s being is compared to a mighty mountain because of its grandeur, or to the sun because of its warmth, or to a bull or a lion because of their strength, then something goes missing from His majestic holy character. I mentioned a human being, animal, mountain or the sun, because there are religions that understand their god to be like that. But the true God who made heaven and earth will not stand for that.
The only person who has the perfect image and likeness of God is His Son, Jesus Christ. He has a representation of God in a different way than Adam and Eve did before they fell into sin. Adam and Eve were creatures of the Creator. But Christ is equal to God. He is God! When we learn of Christ from the Scriptures, then we can say, “Now I know something of what God is like’. Christ is very unique. Yes, He was born of Mary, but that’s only true of His human nature. Christ is not a created being, for He has always been. Like God, He is from everlasting to everlasting. The Bible says, “No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” (Jn 1:18)
Therefore, the second commandment really says that we should look to Christ in order to know who God truly is and what He is like. Christ helps us to serve, praise, honour and obey God in a manner that pleases God. And that’s what worship is all about – relating to God in a manner that pleases God. The second commandment, then, instructs us how to worship the one true God. It says: DO NOT MAKE A LIKENESS OF GOD OTHER THAN CHRIST.
1. Why We Need this Commandment
We all know that God is spirit and therefore it is impossible to have a visible representation of God. For some, especially children, this is hard to understand. Most children have asked their parents at some stage, “Mum, Dad, can you show me God?” We try to help our children by explaining that some things that exist are invisible. We might point them to invisible things like electricity, radio waves and electronic signals, to help them understand that God is real even when we can’t see Him. The Lord Jesus pointed Nicodemus to the wind and said that God the Holy Spirit moves about invisibly, like the wind.
This invisible, spiritual God says that we must be careful that we worship Him only as He has commanded in His Word. But that kind of worship seems difficult. How do you worship God whom you cannot hear, see, touch, smell, or taste? When God spoke to Israel out of the fire at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, then the Bible says that the people saw no form of God of any kind (Deut.4:15). Yet, they were very much aware of His presence. The mountain shook, there was smoke and fire, thunder and lightning, and a cloud hung over the mountain (Ex.19:16-18).
There are also times we can be very much aware of God’s presence. It might be God’s power in the forces of nature. At Pentecost the church was aware of God’s presence in the fire and wind. But when God showed His presence to Elijah at Mount Horeb, the same mountain where Moses earlier on received the Ten Commandments, then God was not in the great powerful wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but He was in the gentle breeze (1Kings 19:11,12).
Knowing that God is present is a work of the Holy Spirit. God is here right now, for He said that where two or three are gathered in His Name, there He is in the midst of them (Mat.18:20). But we don’t see Him; we can’t reach out and touch Him.
From time to time there is a film that pictures Jesus in a blasphemous way and Christians cringe because it is offensive to them. But Christ must also feel insulted when a supposedly good film about Jesus is made for the purpose of getting to know Him better. Would the Lord of heaven and earth, who did mighty miracles, who arose from the dead, revealed the secrets of the kingdom of heaven to the disciples, ascended to heaven to be seated at the right hand of His Father and crowned there with glory and honour, who alone could open the scroll that contains God’s will and purpose for the ages – would that mighty eternal Christ, who added human nature to His Person, ever say to a human actor, sinful like all other men, “Thank you for playing me, that was really good! You tried to look compassionate and stern at just the right times. And the special effects to simulate the miracles I did were just great.” Do you think God would ever say that?
Human reproductions of Jesus, the Son of God, are always terribly inferior and they cannot possibly glorify God. It won’t do to say that it’s alright for an actor to act out Jesus who was also human. The fact is that films made about Jesus for the purpose of evangelism are not promoted as mere stories about a man called Jesus. They make Jesus films in order to help people to see Jesus as God.
The worship of God must be based on the living preaching of His Word of truth, not on some distorted, visible representation of Him in some portrait, play or film. Think about it: would any of you dare to play the part of the holy Lord Jesus Christ and then at the end of the day pray, “Thank you Lord, for helping me act you out to the audience”? God could rightly ask, “Who do you think you are?”
But how then can God be worshipped if no sinful person on earth can visibly represent Him in any shape or form? Well, the Lord Jesus said this, “True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (Jn.4:23,24).
In the past the church has often made a mess of this kind of spiritual worship. In trying to worship Jesus, believers of the past got hold of all kinds of visible things in order to remember Him by. Apparently God’s Word and the sacraments were deemed not sufficient. They collected so-called holy relics, which consisted of bits of wood, supposedly of the cross. Some claimed they had the nails that were used to crucify Jesus. Others claimed they had parts of the crown of thorns. In the course of time there were hundreds of these bits and pieces. John Calvin once scoffed, “If all the pieces of the cross which could be found were collected into a heap, they would add up to a good shipload.”
Now we can smile about these mistakes from the past, but are we and our children entirely free from such mistakes ourselves? What about parents who picture God to their children as though He is a stern policeman who gives you a ticking off every time you break the rules? Or God is spoken of as though He is always kind and sympathetic but hardly someone who is able to help with diseases like AIDS or cope with space technology. Or God is referred to as one whose main task is to give laws, and woe to you if you do not obey them. Or God as one who is only interested in loving you and it doesn’t matter so much if you make a few mistakes. He will bring you to heaven in any case.
With these modern day examples there are no relics you can touch or see, but there are mental images of what God is supposed to be like. And they do not come from the Word of God but from man’s own imagination.
Ignoring God’s clear warnings, Israel took over the idol worship of the pagan nations in Canaan and it resulted in their exile to a foreign land many years later. In the Middle Ages the church bowed down to statues of saints and were instructed in the faith by icons of Jesus. You can still see these things in some Roman Catholic churches. The authors of the Catechism were familiar with such things and they judged them as breaking the second commandment.
In Protestant churches of today we may not have those visible things around anymore as aids in worship. But what we now face is this: people worship God in ways intended to satisfy their own needs or fulfil their own selves. The focus of worship has shifted from God to man.
Is this our temptation today? That we seek from the worship service a fulfilment of our own needs as we see them? Someone said that: “Addiction to self is the biggest threat to the western church… It is living for your own happiness, seeking life the way you want it, looking for comfort any way you can get it.”
Applying these remarks to worship and in particular to those who say that they don’t need to attend church twice on Sunday, the person I am quoting went on to say:
“I find myself asking, ‘Your need? Who said anything about your need?’ Worship is what we bring to the Lord of life! Worship is the product of our desire to honour the Lord who has given us grace! Its focus is His worth, not our need. But in today’s church… the values of society have started to determine what we do in worship. So the focus of worship shifts from what God deserves to what we want… Christian commitment is sacrificed on the altar of self worship.” (T&S, Jan/Feb 1999)
In our first point, then, we have looked at why we need the second commandment.
2. Jesus’ Whole Life Was a Worship of God
For Christ, worship did not merely consist of going to the temple. And worship for us is more than just going to church. Jesus’ whole life was a response to God. Now God’s Word says that we are to have the same mind as Christ, having the same love, and be one with Him in spirit and purpose (Phil 2:2).
Elsewhere in Scripture this same attitude as that of Christ is described as the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Christ possessed all these virtues and it characterised the way He served and glorified God. All that was His worship of God. It was not just the praying He did to His Father in solitude in the quiet hours of the night. His worship of God involved what He did in the course of every day.
We can learn from Christ when we examine our worship of God. Let’s have our mind on Christ, let’s be thinking of God, as to who He is and what He has done for sinners in His love and mercy. As we worship God, then let’s remember that He has given us His Spirit so that the Spirit’s fruit may be in us. Let’s not try to worship God with thoughts in our minds that the church is not doing anything for us or our children. Or having critical thoughts of others. It takes real effort to remember that our minds are to be like Christ, and our relationship to the Father is to be like Jesus’ relationship to the Father. Our minds can very quickly be thinking of what we want and what we think we need. Instead of our focus being on Christ and the Father, it remains stuck on ourselves and thus you have the makings of false worship.
Remember the second commandment is about how we worship God, so what do we expect from the worship services? So often it seems to depend on the things that influence and control our everyday lives. But if it is the glory of Christ and the holiness of God, then our worship will honour Him. Our aim and purpose must be to please God, as it was with Christ. Let’s try our utmost as the people of God to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, for Christ was not like that.
You will have noticed that the second commandment speaks of God’s jealousy. That’s best understood when you think of God as the Husband and the church as His Bride. Husbands will be rightly jealous if their wives begin to flirt with other men. Now we who are husbands are far from perfect and may carry some of the blame if our wives were to entertain thoughts of what it would be like to live with another man who is more loving and considerate than we are.
But God is the perfect Husband for the church. The church knows that and, of course, God knows it, too. So He has every right to be jealous when the people of His church go after other gods. He may well say, “Why are you my people seeking satisfaction and fulfilment from other creatures or things when these can never in any way do the same for you as what I can do for you?” Yes, false worship, or worship of other things or creatures arouses God’s indignation like nothing else will.
But when the second commandment speaks of God’s jealousy, then in the same breath it mentions God punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him.
What do you think that means? Well, it does not mean that children are punished for the sins they did not do but their father did. It means that children are doing the same sins as their fathers and they are, therefore, punished as well. Why would children commit the same sins as their parents? It’s simple! Children learn to see God through the eyes of their parents. That’s why it is so important that we give the right teaching about God and the right worship of God to the next generation. When a father consistently does not worship God in that Christ-centred way we mentioned before, then his children are presented with a pattern of false worship. These children, when they are adults, will then pass on that false worship to their children.
There are sad examples of this from Old Testament times. King Jeroboam was probably the worst because more than twenty times the book of Kings repeat this statement, “…the sins Jeroboam had committed and had caused Israel to commit.” His sins, done by many a king after him, were the cause of God cursing Israel with the exile (see from 1Kings 14:16 to 2Kings 23:15). Jeroboam’s sin was the same as Aaron’s at the time of the exodus (Ex 32). It was the worship of golden calves (1Kings 12).
Israel did not mean to say that these golden calves were now their gods. But they did think that God’s power could be suitably represented by these golden calves, for calves or young bulls were regarded by the Canaanites as symbols of power and fertility. But after a while, as is the case with all images, they become idols. People no longer see the images as a means to remember God by, they become God for them.
Aaron and Jeroboam got Israel to look for ideas as to how to worship God and they got their ideas from the pagans around them. From where do we get our ideas? The church must ever stay alert and not drag in ideas and worship practices that have their origin in the pagan culture around us.
Thankfully, this principle of children copying their fathers also works in a positive way. The apostle Paul was a spiritual father for Timothy. And he wrote to him these words, “What you have heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you – guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us” (2Tim.1:13,14). Yes, a pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus, can endure for a long time among one’s children’s children.
What a wonderful thing it is that the second commandment also speaks of God’s mercy. It does that when it mentions God showing His love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments. We see here that if anyone breaks with the pattern of false worship by putting away their idols, then God will show His love again. Repentance and a return to worship in spirit and in truth, restores us to a right relationship with God.
Whenever there was a king in the history of Israel and Judah who broke with idol worship and led the nation back to God, then God was wonderfully quick to show His compassion and grace. God is like that, slow to anger and abounding in love (Ps.86:15).
Yet, we must not under-estimate what God is saying in the second commandment and put our own spin on what it may mean. In Old Testament times God killed people who failed to follow His instructions meticulously on how to worship Him. We read, for example, about the deaths of Nadab and Abihu. They were Aaron’s sons, and priests like their father. They were instructed to worship God at the tabernacle in the prescribed way and when they did this differently they were killed (Lev.10). We are astonished, if not a little upset with God, when we read this. Is God that picky?
In the New Testament, God’s requirements for worship have not changed essentially. The passage which we read from in Hebrews 12 ends with these words, “…worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (vs.29).
Remarkably, in the New Testament, God has not given us detailed rules on liturgy as He did under His old covenant with Moses. Why would that be? God has not changed. He is as pure and holy now as He was in Old Testament times. Are we, the people of the new covenant, the covenant of grace, inclined to a better obedience than believers from the old covenant? I doubt if any of us would want to say that.
The reason for less rules from God on worship is not that we can be more relaxed about worship – it’s because He has come to us in Jesus Christ. The only way we can stand in the presence of the holy God, and not be consumed by His fire, is because of Jesus. If our faith is firmly fixed on Jesus, our Saviour and Redeemer, then God will accept our worship of Him.
With all the emphasis, therefore, on Christ, instead of on many rules, let us make sure our worship is Christ-centred. Not our likes and dislikes in the centre, nor what gives us satisfaction and fulfilment, but the honour and glory of Christ. Sadly worship has become a controversial issue and we fight over the things we want to see and do in worship. It has even driven friends and families apart. But it remains true, what we do today will have good or bad consequences for the next generation and the ones after that.
Let us then be reminded that God is holy and the only acceptable way to worship Him is in Christ. We always must ask, “Is what we do to the honour and glory of God?” Reverence and awe, says the letter to the Hebrews, must be part of our worship. And they will, when we focus on Christ, on all that He means to us, and what He has done for us, sinners.
Amen.