Passage: Exodus 20:4-6

The Big Idea

The first command tells us who to worship; the second tells us how. God forbids any man-made image to represent Him, because He is Spirit, and nothing we make can capture His glory or guarantee His presence. Anything we lean on in worship besides God Himself, whether a place, a song, an object or a feeling, becomes a substitute. But God has given us His own image: Jesus Christ. We worship in spirit and truth by looking to Him, and as we do, He carves His image into our hearts.

Man-Made

People have produced amazing things: cars, phones, cameras, robots, airplanes, clocks, the printing press. Art too: paintings, sculptures, buildings, music, poems, movies.

What do they all have in common? They were made by people. Some were inspired by nature, greed, compassion or convenience, some even by God. But every one was made by flesh-and-blood humans. None came down from heaven.

They all have flaws. And they can all be worshiped.

That’s because each is an image of something good, something with a function or beauty we easily recognize as praiseworthy. So we focus on it. We honor it. We get excited about it. We bow to it. We serve it, spending time talking about it and money getting more of it, or our lives wanting the ones we can’t afford.

That’s where the second commandment comes in.

The Command (Exodus 20:4-6)

God commanded Israel not to make for themselves a carved image or any likeness of anything in the sky, on the earth or in the waters below, and not to bow down to such things or serve them. He is a jealous God: the sin of those who hate Him echoes down to the third and fourth generation, but He shows faithful love to thousands of those who love Him and keep His commands.

The first command declares who we worship: no other gods but the LORD.
The second tells us how we worship.

We’re forbidden to make any visible representation of God, or any man-made idol.

This isn’t a law against art, songs or stories.
It forbids using anything as an image to represent God. When we do, we end up worshiping and serving something made by human hands.
Worship must not be tied to things made by the flesh.
Worship must not be merely an interaction with something you can see and understand.
Worship can’t depend on an object or image instead of God Himself:
“I can only worship God in this place.”
“…with this song.”
“…with this instrument, these clothes, this picture, this sculpture, this stained glass, this sound system.”
“…in this building.”

Even beautiful things in nature or heaven, angels or animals, can’t be allowed to draw our worship away from God Himself.

Instead, we’re called to worship God in spirit and truth, by faith, not through things our senses can grasp.

Why?

The point is to keep us from becoming merely religious: to strip away fakeness and imitation, and our tendency to latch on to something other than God Himself.

“I am a jealous God.” We might say zealous. He’s passionate for you, and He will not let you be cheated out of knowing who He really is.

He isn’t a chicken, even though Scripture compares Him to a hen gathering her chicks under her wings (Matthew 23:37).
We don’t bring a thousand chickens into church and sing to our great chicken-like God. (Unless we’re talking about the fried chicken at the church potluck. Then I’m in.)

God is passionate about you knowing Him as He really is. And however hard you try, you can’t know Him truly through what you can see and touch.

He is Spirit. He’s invisible. He isn’t part of creation; He’s over it. He’s the Creator.

A Voice, Not a Form

“The LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deuteronomy 4:12).

God has no physical form, but He has a voice.
Are you looking for an experience with God you can sense, or are you satisfied hearing His Word?
It would be nice if feelings and sights were guaranteed. That’s what the world offers. Go to a movie, and you’ll probably see something and feel something; that’s the point, and it’s easy to keep going back for the stimulation.
But God won’t be put in that box. Nothing we create guarantees an encounter with Him: no location, no song, no effort.

“God always meets me at that church, or in that city, or when I sing that song or read that book. God accepts me when I do __, when I wear ____, when I raise my hands like this or bow like that, when I close my eyes, look very serious or get very excited, when I serve overseas, wear the right bracelet or only listen to Christian radio.”

The truth is, God doesn’t respond to any of that as such. It’s all man-made.

What does He respond to? Humility and faith. Invisible, internal, spiritual. Not man-made.

Spirit and Truth (John 4:19-24)

The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “Sir, I can see You’re a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say Jerusalem is the place to worship.” Jesus said, “Believe Me, woman, a time is coming when you’ll worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. … A time is coming, and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.“

Worship in spirit and truth is the opposite of making a carved image:

Unseen vs. seen
Faith vs. works
True vs. fake
Real vs. merely religious
Spirit vs. flesh

God is seeking true worshipers, not fakers. He wants real relationship, not imitation religion. He forbids anything man-made from becoming the basis of our worship, and wants only what the Spirit supplies.

We don’t like hearing that. We want to bring something to the table. We want control. We want to feel worthy of being in His presence. It even seems wise.

Paul says people who thought they were wise became fools, trading the glory of the eternal God for images of mortal humans, birds, animals and reptiles (Romans 1:22-23).

When we start making images, we become foolish.
We can’t make an image of God, so we make something less, something we can understand, something on our level.
And we miss the glory.
Our images are all flawed. But we cling to them, afraid to give them up, because the Spirit is invisible and unfamiliar, and the image is something we can see. So we choose the flawed image.

The Most Common Idol: Ourselves

The image we cling to most today is humanity itself. We look at people and think, “Pretty awesome.” Celebrity culture, idols on stage and screen.

Yet humanity is the most corrupted part of God’s creation. We’re the only creatures on earth who resist God’s will. That’s sad, because He made us to be His image-bearers in this world.

God created humanity in His own image, male and female (Genesis 1:27).

But the fall into sin turned a perfect image into a corrupted one.
We’re no longer compatible with the original operating system. The glory of God is separated from us, like software that won’t run on the old machine.

Paul says that if our gospel is veiled, it’s veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they can’t see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).

Believing faith is the upgrade that brings us back into God’s glory.
The real connection with God Himself, not the knockoff of religious effort.
And God gave us His own image after we ruined the first one. Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).
We don’t have to make an image, because God has supplied one.
We relate to Jesus.
We talk to Jesus.
We put our hope and trust in Jesus.
He’s our image of God, the perfect representation, the Son of God (Hebrews 1:3).
Not a carved image, but the Image who carves His own likeness into our hearts.
Not man-made, but God-given. Why settle for less than perfect?

In fact, we’re commanded not to settle for less than Jesus.

Review

The command: never use anything man-made as an image in worshiping God. That’s idolatry, even if we mean to worship the true God. Images are what we fix our attention on and attach our hopes to.

We break this command whenever our attention and hope rest on anything other than our invisible God:

Focused on a religious object or a painting?
On a pastor? A worship team? A song?
On a building?
Hoping in our denomination? Our plans? Our strategies?

We can’t idolize any of it.

The New Covenant gives us Jesus as our image. We can look at Him, look to Him, connect with Him and worship God by worshiping Him.

Before Jesus came, God’s people had no form to look at, only a voice. Now we have a face: Jesus, the radiance of God’s glory. Looking at Jesus in faith is how this command is fulfilled in us.

We fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and now sits at God’s right hand (Hebrews 12:2).

Where do we look if we’re looking to Jesus? To heaven.
Can we do that while staring at something on earth?
Lifting our eyes to Jesus in humility and faith is a spiritual reality, not a physical one.

The one part of Jesus we can see

There is one part of Jesus we can see and touch today: His body, the church.

Jesus said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these My brothers, you did for Me” (Matthew 25:40).

Our love and service for God’s people is a real form of worship.
You can’t ignore the people around you and become a super-spiritual saint. It’s impossible (1 John 4:20).

To the Third and Fourth Generation

“…visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me.”

When we live as fake, religious Christians instead of real spiritual people, we raise little disciples of fakeness.
Our children learn from us that God is an idol who has to be impressed, and that can lead them to resent Him. Instead of a God of mercy and reality, they only know an image that demands more and more.
But when we worship in spirit and truth, humility and faith mark our lives. We aren’t faking it or trying to impress; we’re trusting what He says and receiving His mercy and grace.
Then our children learn what God is really like. They don’t have to impress Him. They can come humbly, knowing He sees all their sin, and call on Him in truth. And His steadfast love reaches to a thousand generations.

Grace Takeaway

In the New Covenant, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. We’re set free from trying to impress God with man-made things, and free from placing our hope in the things of this world. Instead, we set Jesus, the true image of God, in our hearts, and His light transforms us into His likeness from the inside (2 Corinthians 3:18). God isn’t far away anymore. We’ve been brought near through Jesus, and we’re invited to be truly satisfied in Him today.

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The Second Command: No Carved Images