The second commandment is very hard to comprehend and to understand. I once had the opportunity to go to the Amish country. Well, we were on our sight seeing and came upon some children that were on their way home from school. The girls in their long light blue dresses and bonnets and the boys in their basic black and white with their hats on. Well, I wanted a picture of those children. So we asked the children if we could take their picture. So one of the little boys said, “Please don’t do that, because that is a violation of the second commandment.” So someone said, “What do you mean?” He said, “That is a graven image that you have created.” Then all the children turned and went on their way. Is that the proper interpretation of the second commandment? If we are to obey the second commandment, must we take down every picture in our home? Does every picture in this church need to come down? What is the meaning of this commandment? It would be so easy to bypass this commandment. The fact of the matter is, is that the second commandment is very difficult to understand. It would be so easy for me to say that this is the one commandment that I would love to say, “Just go and fugure this one out for yourself.” But that wouldn’t be fair would it? So together we are going to have to work on this commandment. In may respects it seems to be repetitious of the first commandment. What is the real distinction between the first commandment and the second commandment? Maybe we will be able to see that today. How do we understand the first commandment compared to the second commandment? I want to give it to you in a nutshell. Are you ready? The first commandment: God forbids the worshipping of other gods. This is my understanding. This includes all of the gods that we looked at last week. Do you happen to recall any of the “little g” gods? Greed, lust, money, work, man, and all those other gods, we are not suppose to worship. We also looked at the fact that the gods back then are still with us today; they just have different names. It is very important that you grasp this… that the first commandment is this: Jesus said “you can’t worship God and man,” it’s one or the other. It’s either this god or that god. You have to decide. You choose. God says, “is it going to be me or some false god?” now that is what we established last week. The second commandment is its not so much how we deal with false gods but how we deal with the one true God. Maybe we still don’t understand that and maybe it still doesn’t make sense. Because the first commandment forbids the worshipping of a false god, the second commandment forbids the worshipping of a God in a false manner. Do you grasp that? God is saying, “I am the God of the universe. I created Heaven and earth. Don’t you dare try to take Me and all of My glory and all of My splendor and bring Me down into some form that you can control. Now that is how I understand the second commandment. Man oh man does that have relevance for us today. Just like a bunch of children playing with a Jack-in-the-box winding it up until it stops or not stopping at all or when it pops up. We want to bring the God of the universe down into this little form that we can control. You know what? God doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all. Now allow me to share three things about this commandment: The prohibition we receive The persistence we show The price we pay First of all, the prohibition we receive. Now this is two-fold, first of all God says here you are not to make an idol. The second thing He says is that you are not to worship an idol. Let’s talk about these just a moment. First let’s look at the work make. The word make is not create, in Genesis 1:1 we find that God created. But in this verse God is saying do not fashion or do not produce a carving. What kind of carving? In the likeness of anything. Do not produce a carving that embodies anything. It’s that simple. Why do people make idols? Why do people make carved images? It’s so that they can have some control over the god that they worship. Do you see that? If you can grasp that, you have grasped the second commandment. They have some sense of control and manipulation over that god that they claim to worship. May I suggest that some people have a control issue with God? If you notice most of the problems that we have today is a control issue. This happens in churches when someone has a problem with this group over here. It is called turfism. The same thing goes on in your place of employment. The same thing goes on with the school that your children attend. The same thing goes on in our homes. Control issues. If we could be honest, we can see that we have a control issue and we can see in Romans 1 17-20 that if we have a control issue with God that we won ‘t win. You’re going to lose.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 02:23:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015