Ten Commandments Series: No other Idols. Movie Clip Welcome Interesting to note the negative response my sons have to rules: What we can t stay up all night, eat all the sugar we want, ride our scooters without helmets and play in the middle of the road? Well If I wanted you to have all your teeth rot out, be a zombie and drop out of school and get a major head injury and be killed in a pedestrian accident I wouldn't come up with any of these rules Rules are for Joy, Protection and because I love my sons There is a major misconception about the 10 commandments, that God is some kill Joy. He s actually a loving father who wants to save, love, give, see his children posses a Joy that nothing in this world can take away. Ten Commandments- Set Free to Live Free, Chris did an incredible job kicking off this series, He did a great overview and history leading up the 10 commandments and talked about the First Commandment- No Other God s Before Me I ll give a quick recap: Important that we understand that the Ten Commandments come AFTER God has already saved and rescued His people. And God spoke all these words, saying, I am that Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (Exodus 20:1-2) In this context, God has already loved, God already served, God already set free. Not about obeying him so that he will love you, it s about him loving you and helping you obey. Not about God saying do these things and I will adopt you, its saying I have adapted you so do these things. Same is true today for Christians today. When put your faith in Christ you are completely justified.you are saved from the punishment of sin. There is no more condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. We have been set free, HOWEVER, God gives us commandments throughout the OT and NT, to help us live free. He doesn t just save us from the punishment of sin but also wants to deliver us from the power of sin. 1 of 7
One of the greatest lies of the devil is that God is robbing us of something if we submit and obey him. I.e Eve in Garden. The lie is God is holding something good back from you. IT s the lie behind every temptation. Why the pre marital sex, affairs, why the drug abuse, why the greed or stealing. It s the lie behind all these things. We think God doesn t have my best in mind, God is keeping something fun, exciting, and thrilling from me so I am gonna go get it. His commandments are not after our begrudging submission, but rather for our joy. He says don t kill people, don t commit adultery because those are such painful and hurtful things he doesn t want us to be on either end of one of those circumstances. As Chris mentioned last Friday Commandments are only as good as who they are from. I have never meant someone who is excited about new IRS tax code or new office policy. Those commandments are not sweet on the lips like honey :)Why? You can t separate the law from the lawgiver. Commandments are different when they come from a heavenly father who loves his children rather than from a Pharaoh who wants to destroy his slaves. As we read the Ten Commandments, we have to have the mindset that they are for our joy. So as we study the Ten Commandment over the next weeks, remember the big picture that it is all about Jesus. The laws primary purpose is to show us our sin and reveal to us the need for a savior. None of us live up to the Ten Commandments. All of us fall short. Secondly, Jesus comes along and completely fulfills the law that we can t live up to. He lived a life of complete obedience and perfection when he was on the earth for those 33 years. He was the spotless lamb. Then dies as the savior which we all need. Pray Handouts This brings us to Exodus 20:4 6, where we deal with idolatry. If you grew up in sunday school you hear the word idolatry and you immediately think of the golden calf, God s people bowing down and worshipping statues. Around here you don t see that happening much the closest is If you ve been to a local restaurant lately you ve maybe seen the golden cat So you might be thinking we have advanced past this idolatry problem, I don t have any golden cows I can t relate to someone 3000 yrs ago. Idolatry and Idols is anything that we place as an object of our worship. Anything that we go to find peace, joy, protection, security and love apart from God. Let s do this. Let s look at worship in our culture. If you imported a Hebrew from 3,000 years ago to a college football game Pic of fans where people were dressed up like animals, had their 2 of 7
faces painted, slaughtered an animal and barbecued it as a sacrifice at the tailgate party and saw them all dressed the same with their arms outstretched trying to affect the outcome of a game like pagan priests who are doing some sort of mantra, would you not assume that they would think that it was a religious gathering? OK, we ll move on. Malls and shopping centers are now temples, pic of shopping center it s where we go to improve our life and our image. It s where we go to worship with our wealth. That s why the biggest, most expensive places are shopping malls. Let s keep going. Sometimes we look at one person as a functional savior. We do this around politicians and election years. picture of campaign We put someone up to save us, to be our functional savior. We cheer for them. We vote for them. All of that can be acts of worship or idolatry. We have gone so far that we have made idols of the little square things that we carry everywhere we go We have made technology an idol Pic of Steve Jobs. We find ourselves going crazy for to the ipad, iphone and latest gadget. Here s what s interesting about idols: Idols lie. They make promises that they cannot deliver. How many of you have looked at alcohol and thought, Yes, that is the path to freedom? That is the path to freedom. How many of you find that alcohol actually results in slavery? If you drink too much, you re enslaved by it. That politician will fail, that new wardrobe, will go out of style, that ipad will become outdated, Your team will loose. You are let down, left emptier then before. This is the great theme of the Exodus that sin enslaves us and God sets us free and our idols lie and promise something that only God can deliver. I want you, with me, to look at all of your life and all of our culture and all of the world through these two lenses of idolatry or worship. What is worship? Great theologian said Worship is the continuous outpouring of all that I am, all that I do, and all that I can ever become in light of God. Here s the big idea: Everyone worships all the time. Atheists are worshipers. Buddhists are worshipers. Agnostics are worshipers. Christians are worshipers. People who are living are worshiping. Everyone who s living is always worshiping, pouring themselves out for someone or something. That s what we were made to do. That s what we always do. The only difference is who or what we worship, when or how we worship. The question is not, do we worship? The question is, is our worship to God or is our worship to something other than God, idolatry? A great philosopher, said this, The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry. 3 of 7
Exodus 20:4-6 4 You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. He says it this way in Exodus chapter 20, verse 4 and the context, is this God has set his people free from slavery to Pharaoh as a nation of a few million. He s gathered them together for a family meeting where he s a loving father, going to give some advise for his rebellious kids. They re meeting at the base of Mount Sinai and through Moses, Ten Commandments are given by God. The first one we looked at last week. How many Gods are there? One. And this week we re going to deal with how to worship that God. The first two commandments are the most important, that s why they come first and they establish everything else that God is going to teach us from the Ten Commandments and the rest of Scripture. Who we worship and how we worship and both are significant. It s not enough just to have the right God, you need to worship the right God in the right way, otherwise you can have Jesus as your God and be living like your lost, committing idolatry and living in the slavery of sin. So it s having the right God and worshiping the right God the right way. He starts with a negative, No idolatry. And he says it this way, You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth underneath or beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Here s what he s saying: Don t worship anything, anything up there, anything down there, anything around here. Nowhere are we to find something that becomes for us the object of our worship. And idolatry is this, it s trying to bring God near to us and trying to bring us near to God so finding someone or something that helps us get close or, at least, feel closer to God. And in so doing, it opens the door to the demonic because Satan is glad to give you counterfeit signs, wonderers, miracles, experiences, emotional highs to deceive you. God says, Do not be deceived. There s one God, worship me alone and don t think that anyone or anything else will get you closer to me, When I say worship, think of where your time goes, where your talent goes, where your treasure goes. Think about what you pour your life out to. Think about what consumes the majority of your time. Two reasons we are not to worship idols, created things. 1. WE ARE THE IMAGE OF GOD 4 of 7
Number one, we do not worship an image because we are the image of God. See, they were worshiping images and they were not to worship images, they were to be the images of God who worshiped God. It says it this way in Genesis 1:27 when God first made Adam and Eve. God created man in his own image. One of the Ten Commandments is don t worship an image and here God says, You re my image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. This morning you got up and you looked in a what? In a mirror? You get up and you look in the mirror and the mirror does what? Reflects you, OK? God is Spirit and God made us to be his mirrors, to bear his image, to reflect his image. That s what worship is. Worship is reflecting the goodness and the glory of the God of the Bible. So when we love, when we forgive, when we seek justice and truth, when we are generous, we are reflecting something of the character of the God who made us, that s what worship is. So he says, Don t get an image to worship, be the image that worships. 2. JESUS IS THE IMAGE OF THE GOD The second question is, OK, if we re not to worship images, we re created in the image of God, then what is the object of our worship? Who or what do we reflect? Where do we go? Well, we go to Jesus. We do not worship an image, but rather Jesus, who is the image of God. And this is an important verse in Colossians 1:15 on this issue of worship versus idolatry. Paul writes that Jesus, is the image of the invisible God. So in the Ten Commandments when he says, Don t make an image. He says, You are the image of God, and the image of God is perfectly reflected in Jesus. That s why Jesus can say, If you ve seen me, you ve seen the Father. It says that he is the radiance of the Father s glory. No one is a more perfect worshiper than Jesus. God cannot be seen anymore clearly than in Jesus, that s why we don t look to created things. We don t look to nature. We don t look to animals. We don t look to other people because if you want to see what God looks like, look at Jesus. There is always a flip side with the commandments. He ll say, Don t commit idolatry, so the answer is worship. He ll say, Don t commit adultery, so the answer is be faithful to your spouse. The flip side to the second commandment is worship the Creator, not the created. What I want to do now is I want to look at our functional, actual worship. Some of you may come in here and say, I m OK. I worship Jesus. You may think you worship Jesus, you may be a Christian, but let s examine your worship and see whether Jesus really is the object of your worship. Exodus 20:5, You shall not bow down to them or serve them. he says here, it s two things: submission and service. So who do you submit to? What rules and authority in your life? And for many if it s you, you worship yourself. The created thing you 5 of 7
worship is the person you greet in the mirror every morning, because you re the highest authority in your life and you decide what s right and wrong. It can be practically anything Who or what do you submit to and who or what or where do you serve? Where does your time go? Where does your money go? Where does your heart go? Historically why idols are so popular. They re permissive. Oftentimes with idolatry, you drink all you want. You eat all you want. You carouse all you want. There are no limits. It s very indulgent. It s very desirable. Follow your heart and just do what ever feels right Idolatry is where you can be in control. That you can tell the god or goddesses or spirit realm what you want and you can manipulate them to get what you want. Who doesn t want to be in charge? Who doesn t want to be in control? In addition, idolatry can be so fancy. The temples around the world are glorious, they re beautiful, and this is the case historically as well. The lighting, the color, the architecture, it s magnificent? We can live to chase that experience. There s nothing cooler than a concert. Remember Pearl Jam and U2 at the Aloha Stadium 50,000 people, music pumping, everyone singing along and dancing and I thought to myself this is like a giant worship service the only problem people it appeared that most were worshiping the band, the experience, or who knows what For some there s nothing more exciting than a sporting event. There s nothing more intriguing than the perfectly set up mall where the worshipers walk around and tithe to their gods and goddesses. It s super popular. Festivals, holidays, you get dressed up, kind of like we do, parties, celebrations and traditions. We have to be discerning, Idolatry can take anything and draw us in holidays that compel us toward drinking too much, eating too much, dressing up, pretending to be someone we re not, maybe even taking on the image of a created thing like an animal or a bird, going out and cavorting and carousing, and everybody likes it. All these things, It s very convenient. It s very simple, not like the God of the Bible who makes you examine your heart, repent of your sin and learn some things. It s not like that. You get what you want. All you gotta do is just be a little bit spiritual and then you get what you want. Here s the deal: we re all going to have idols. They re going to show up. John Calvin, said that the human heart is an idol factory. We re going to make some. But don t obsess over this. The answer is not to make idol hunting your idol, but to make Jesus the object of your worship. The way out of idolatry is worship. You re made to worship. We re all going to worship. So if we worship Jesus, that sets us free from the idols and sin and it liberates us to live the life that God intends for us, the one of true freedom. 6 of 7
He says this, For I the LORD your God am a jealous God. Idols are not jealous. Idols will let you worship anyone, everyone and everything because behind them are Satan and demons and as long as they can enslave you, they don t care how it happens. But the one true God is jealous and he loves to set people free. Love is very exclusive. God doesn t say, Well, you can have me and other gods and other goddesses and other religions and other spiritualities. God says, no, no, it s like a marriage relationship. God s like a groom. His people are like a bride and idolatry is adultery. If my wife brought a boyfriend over for dinner, it would be anything but indifference that would be experienced in my home, all right? Because love is exclusive, and love is passionate, and love is jealous, and love is like a marriage. And God is like a husband, and his people are like a bride that he loves. Imagine, ladies, on your wedding day, walking down the aisle to your fiancé with your boyfriend, OK? If he didn t have any emotional reaction, he should never be your husband. He doesn t care. God is a jealous God like that. Number two, there are consequences for idolaters, that God will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. How many of you, this makes sense? We hear the analogy like mother like daughter, like father like son. If you read this, you say, Well, so the one generation sinned and God punished three or four generations? That s not the full picture. You re inferring that the third and fourth generation weren t just like their parents. He says, All those who hate me. He was taking about parents who hate God who raise kids who hate God, who raise grandkids who hate God who raise great grandkids who hate God, and that s not a life of flourishing. That s not a life of freedom because that s not a life of faith. It leads to death. But here s the good news: But showing Steadfast love, patient love, gracious love, a father s love to thousands of generations. Isn t it beautiful that the punishment will go three or four generations, but the blessing can go to a thousand? It tells you that God is really happy to pour out grace. God is really happy to change families. Love God, keep his commandments because God wants to bless you, and he wants to bless your kids, and he wants to bless your grandkids, and he wants to bless your great grandkids. For how many generations? A thousand generations. This is the Father heart of God. He loves his children, and he loves his children s children, and he loves his children s children s children. You and I don t have an adultery problem; we got a worship problem.. And if we would worship God, then that would fix all your other problems. And God wants that freedom for you, and God wants that freedom for your family, and God wants that freedom for your legacy. Pray 7 of 7