Second Word of love

Exodus 20:4-6

 

This week we examine the second commandment in our eleven part series.  Though most people take this commandment and mix it with the first one; this is an entirely different law.  It is not the same commandment stated twice, it’s just that the subject within the two is of the highest importance.

 

"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; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I The Lord your God am a jealous God, 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." (Exodus 20:4-6)

 

This is where He really lays out the law about idolatry.  He wants to be worshiped, not anything that you imagine he looks like.  You should not attempt to pray to a statue saying that it is him.  It is not to say that religious art is bad, worshiping such items will constitute idolatry.

 

There have been many a phenomenon mainly in the catholic faith where statues will bleed or cry, and then there is a tremendous surge of people praying to said statue, because the spirit of whoever is there.  This is idolatry, and it is totally against God’s law.  We cannot imagine what God or even Jesus looked like.  We should not try, any time someone says they see the face of God or Jesus in an inanimate object, is idolatry.

 

Then God goes on by saying, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”   This is to say, I am number one and I am going to stay number one.  His meaning of Jealous is to protect his status as God.  Pastor Carlton Harris went back to his original metaphor of a groom and his bride this week.  He equates Gods jealousy to that intense feeling a groom feels when he wants to be first in his bride’s thoughts.  No one else should come between them and take her away because she is his and he is hers.

 

So God has such an intense love for us his bride, and he wants to stay top priority, and placing a drawing or statue in front of her, takes the time away from God as he wants it.  It is as if your spouse would rather speak with and interact with your portrait on the wall than with you.

 

Then it also said that for this jealousy, he punishes those who hate him.  Not only does he punish them, but five generations are punished.  This does not mean that the children will be punished for the sins of the father… but many of us have had parents that have tried to spear us from some consequences of their actions.

 

So God is jealous because he is guarding what is his, so he does not want you to create something in his image, because that binds him to something earthly.  God is so much more than that, and he is not made by any material thing.  NO one has ever seen the face of God, we should not pray to an idea of him.