Word of Salvation – Vol.23 No.13 – December 1976

 

No Graven Images

 

Sermon by Rev. J. Postma, B.D. on Ex.20:4-6 (L.D. 35)

Readings: Matthew 15:1-9, Lord’s Day 35

Psalter Hymnal: 184; 156:1,3,4 (after Creed);
431:6,8 (after the Law); 252; 200:7,9; 493

 

We are told in the first commandment that we are to serve and trust no other gods beside the One who has redeemed us in Jesus Christ, since beside Him there is no other.

But God in His mercy has also instructed us in the second commandment how we are to worship Him, who has no equal, who is zealous for His honour, and zealous that His children show their love and obedience through living only by His Word.

“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 waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…!”

What a marvellous promise is given to those unworthy children, who out of thankfulness for their salvation, worship Him only in accordance with the way provided in His Word, the Scriptures.  Steadfast love is shown to “thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

But what a terrible threat is also made in this commandment to those who in self-will think they can worship God as they please.  To them there comes God’s serious warning: “I will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.”

That promise and that threat is also the way by which God binds the heart of the New Testament congregation to the absolute necessity to worship Him in accordance with His Word.  In our worship of Him, no images like the heathens nor false thought images devised by man, are to help us in that worship.  Only His Word is to instruct us, and in that Word God is near.

How relevant was that word which God spoke for the salvation of Israel that stood at Sinai.  For in Egypt from which they had been delivered and in Canaan to which they were going, the nations honoured their gods by means of images borrowed from the created world.  In those images the heathen wanted to bring their gods near, to see them with their eyes and touch them with their hands.

That which Adam in his unfallen state knew was lost to them.  For Adam unfallen, had no need of images of God.  For He lived in that close covenant fellowship with his God and Father.  God was near to him and he to God.  Adam had no need to draw God near to himself, to make Him visible and touchable, as if God were far away.  For God was near to him already; they spoke with each other; there was a fellowship of love, of covenant faithfulness.  In His Word God was close to Adam and in Adam’s faithful word response he stayed close to God.  There was no need of an image for God was near to him.  Adam was created by God in His image, which enabled him to have fellowship with God.

But sin changed that; it broke the fellowship and then there came in the world outside the community of faith, in the community where God’s Word did not rule, the tragic image worship, the false way to bring God near, as described in Romans chapter 1.  A worship in which the glory of the immortal God was exchanged for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.  There came image worship with the result of absolute moral perversion.

So it was in Egypt from which Israel had come, and so it was in Canaan to which God was leading her.  In that religious climate God warned His people that they were not to bow down and serve images as a means to worship Him.

Why was God so strict?  First, because such images, no matter how well intended would inevitably deny God’s glory, dishonour Him, even apart from the moral perversion that always followed.  Already in the first commandment God had told them of His absolute uniqueness.  Isaiah later spoke to the children of Israel; “To whom then will you compare me that I should be like Him?” (40:25)  The whole of Isaiah 40 teaches us that His glory is so great, so exalted, that nothing can be compared with Him.  Any image devised by man only does Him an injustice.  It insults Him and brings His judgment; only His Word can teach us what He is like.

And secondly such images would be a gross denial that in His covenant God was near to His people.  In the words, “I am the Lord your God”, God had established His covenant relationship.  He had told them that He was their Father and they His children.  Therefore no images are to be made by you.

Shortly before Israel entered the Promised Land, Moses once more reminded the nation how God had revealed Himself at Sinai: “Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but saw no form, there was only a voice… Therefore take good heed to your- selves.  Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb and 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…!” (Deut.4:12ff.)  Moses reminded them that they did not see His incomparable majesty.  He only made Himself to be heard.  Therefore Israel’s worship of God was not to be like the nations, using images, but it was to be a faithful, obedient listening to the Word of God.

Images of animals and men would dishonour God, but they were also absolutely unnecessary.  For God had made a gracious covenant with them.  He had drawn near to them.  The endless unbridgeable gap between them and God had been bridged by God, by the giving of His Son, of which the blood of reconciliation, shed in Israel’s sacrificial service gave such a constant witness.

No wonder then, that God’s anger came upon His people, when they chose to worship the God of Israel in their own way, at the foot of Sinai.  The occasion of the golden calf is well known to us.  The intention behind that bull calf was to make the invisible God visible in their midst, and to honour His power by the figure of a bull calf, a symbol of strength.  Was that representation not a proper one, for who was mightier than their God?  Nothing but the best was good enough for their worship, so they willingly gave their gold.

But to God it was an insult, this self-willed worship, it almost brought the total destruction of God’s covenant people.  It insulted His majesty and it was a rejection of His Word in which He had come near to His people and made covenant.  It led to idolatry and corruption.

Later when the Kingdom was divided after Solomon’s death, Jeroboam established the self-willed worship of Yahweh at Dan and Bethel by way of the erection of the golden calves.  He wanted to serve the Lord, but in his own way.  What a tragedy!  That self-willed worship paved the way for the Canaanizing of Israel’s worship; the replacing of Yahweh by Baal; and Judah readily accepted the customs introduced by Israel (2Kings 17:19).

That image worship led to horrible idolatry, to the forsaking of God’s commandments, with the result that they were cast out of the land (2 Kings 17).  The disobedient children of the old covenant learned that God keeps His Word.

But let us go a little further in understanding this commandment.  For us to worship God in any other way than He has revealed in His Word, is an abomination to Him, it provokes His anger.  True we use no images as Israel did and as Rome still does, but how easily we make the mistake of worshipping Him in thought images contrary to His Word.  That too, is forbidden in this commandment.

The Catechism also refers to the history of Saul and Amalek (1Sam.15).  As God’s anointed king he was to serve God by executing God’s justice against Amalek for its cruel treatment of Israel when they came out of Egypt.  All of the Amalekites and their animals were to be destroyed.  That was the service, the worship God required of Saul.

A terrible task; God’s enemies were to be completely destroyed!

But on the ground of all kinds of beautiful and apparently pious considerations Saul did not carry out his task in the way God’s Word had commanded.  He did destroy the people, but Agag and best of the sheep and cattle he refused to destroy.

Then the Lord’s anger began to burn against His office bearer who appeared so pious and mild.  The Lord spoke to Samuel: “I repent that I have made Saul King; for He has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments.”  Apostasy, that is what God called this self-willed worship and service.

The Catechism uses this example to explain the second commandment: that we are not to “worship (the Lord) in any other way than He has commanded in His Word.”

In the days of His flesh how angry was the Lord at the Pharisees and Scribes who by their man-made rules by-passed the demands of God’s law to love Him and their neighbour.  In Matthew 15 we read… “For the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.  You hypocrites!”

Their thought-images of God were far removed from the way God had revealed Himself in His Word, therefore their worship was vain, said the Lord Jesus.  It was useless and empty; underneath their piety, their claim that they honoured God, they were in fact haters of God, and therefore God’s judgment came upon them, in accordance with the words of the second commandment.

And now that Christ has come, this commandment is even more serious.  In Him God’s image has been perfectly revealed.  In Him God has drawn near to us full of grace and truth.  In Him we have seen the glory of the Father.  In His obedient life and death we have learned what worship God requires of us.

Now we, by faith in Him, who gives us grace for obedience, are to serve the Lord only in accordance with His Word.  By faith in Him we must all be determined to hate and flee from all tendencies to serve God on our own terms.  Nothing else is to be our rule than God’s living Word, not only in our formal worship, but also in the practice of our daily life.  For how easily we make graven images of God in our mind and worship, caricatures of God, always with disastrous results.

We do that, even though we do not put it in so many words, when we think that because we are God’s covenant people, whose sins are forgiven in Christ, we do not need to be so careful how we live.  For God sees us in Christ, in His mercy.  As if our transgression of God’s commandment is less serious than that of the unbeliever.  But then we forget that just because we are His covenant people, God will judge us more severely if we wilfully or carelessly break His laws for it means that we treat His grace cheaply!

For listen to God’s Word in Amos 3:2 spoken to Israel, that rested in the privilege of His election while it took advantage of His grace and forgot the responsibility to which that electing grace called them.  “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

We do that also when God’s salvation is interpreted as simply for our benefit rather than His glory.  So that we serve God only if it does not take too much time or money or as long as my job or profit is not in jeopardy.  With us free to decide how much we should give of our money, or time or love to neighbour, or how often we come to church or bible study.  And since we think like that we limit God’s rule to the Sunday, to the strictly religious questions leaving His Word outside our work, the union question, our studies, the non-Christian friends we go along with, our politics, our leisure.

How different that false image of God is from the God of the Scriptures, from His salvation and the worship He requires.  For by His holy mercy and grace in Christ He sets us free, not to please ourselves, but to deliver us from ourselves, to make us His obedient children.  Who out of thankfulness for His mercy in Christ, live for Him alone, with all we have, in all we do, in every area of life.

And all too often this caricature worship of God is covered up with all kinds of rationalizing pious sounding arguments.  Like Saul, like the Pharisees.  If we are honest with ourselves we will have to admit that all these attempts are basically nothing else than ways to make it as easy and pleasant for ourselves, ways to avoid cross-bearing in concrete situations.  Attempts to serve God with the minimum of effort and self-denial, for the maximum of gain.

If you do that, then you are busy making an image of God that does not answer to the way God has revealed Himself in His Word.  It always means that we take God from His throne, even though we do not intend to do so; it inevitably means that we worship a god made in our image.  Not the God of the second commandment, who will only be served as He reveals in His Word; whose grace was given for that worship!  Whose mercy is there for every believer, who not wilfully, but out of weakness, despite his desire to please God completely, fails so often.

Let each of us examine ourselves in the light of God’s Word which is our only yardstick, not our opinions.  For the God of this commandment is jealous for His honour.  We saw that earlier in God’s rejection of Saul and in the Babylonian exile that came upon the people of the old covenant.  We have seen that also in the generation of Israel of Jesus’ day who honoured God with their lips calling Him: “Lord, Lord”, but refused to do the will of the Father by obedient faith in the Son given by the Father.  The Kingdom was taken away from them.  They learned that God truly means the curse attached to this commandment.

Let us take this commandment seriously, worshipping God in all of our life, in accordance with His Word, by a living faith in Christ, who alone enables us to do so.  For this commandment affects not only ourselves, but also our children and their children.  In the way of obedience we will receive the blessing promised in this commandment: God’s mercy to generations that love Him and keep His commandments.

That does not mean of course that the faithfulness of the parents can save the children, when the children become disobedient to God.  Or that the children are condemned because of the parents’ sin.  What it does mean is this, that the life and the attitude of the parents is of enormous consequence for the children.

If we as parents are loose and inconsistent in our Christian life, if we serve God on our own terms; that brings not only ruin to ourselves but also to our children, it stands in the way of the Holy Spirit, it hinders the fulfilment of God’s covenant promises to the children whom we love.  For the sin of rebellion is always worse in the next generation.

No, grace is not a matter of inheritance; but neither is our own attitude of no importance with respect to our children.  Let us not deny the children whom we love the most important thing.  Let us instruct them in God’s Word, let us show them by our own life, despite the weakness that still remains within us, the joy and the privilege of bending before that Word, of living out of that Word day by day, no matter the cost.  Then we may look to God for the fulfilment of his covenant promises in their life.  For what a reminder such homes are to our children of God’s mercy; what an encouragement such homes are for the children to give their lives to God also.  That is the way in which this commandment points us.

Let us learn to take everything out of Jesus Christ, who served the Father perfectly, and who by His blood and Spirit has redeemed us also to fulfil this second commandment by His power, out of thankfulness.

So that when the Lord returns, and we see His glory, we may taste the fullness of the glorious promise given with this commandment.  The promise of eternal mercy, to sinners made obedient by Christ.

Amen.