What is destructive in your life? Or to ask it another way - What is making you as a Christian unfruitful? Today we look at the second commandment in this ten commandments and we read together in Exodus chapter 20:4-6. It says this:
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.”
There is a story about four brilliant brothers who were geniuses and they decided to study in the sciences and equip themselves in the various sciences of our day. One day, after many years of study the eldest brother said to his other brothers, I have discovered a way to take the stem cells out of a bone and form tissue from that and form bones from that stem cell. The second brother said, well that's wonderful because I have found a way to form muscles and sinews and I can help you and I will add to your discovery. The third brother said, well it's wonderful because I have found a way to form skin and fur and hair and we can cover that animal that we, that you create. Then the fourth brother said, well would you believe it all my studying has enabled me to find a way to give that spark of life to that creature that you make. So the four brothers decided well they're going to put into practice all that they've learned. They went out into the wild and found a suitable bone and they went back to the laboratories, and they worked and they worked and they formed each brother doing his part of the process and they formed a lion and as this lion came to life, the lion turned and ate all four brothers and then ran off.
That sad story is a lot like idols. You see that's what happens when we as human beings create an idol. What we create devours us, our goals and dreams can consume us to the point of destruction. Our possessions and property can turn and destroy our whole lives unless you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. The Kingdom of the invisible God who says to us that you are to make no idols. This God who cannot be seen and who allows no representation of Himself, for our invisible God commands that no copies be made of Him. We need to look at this.
The first thing we need to see is that idolatry is forbidden by God. Well an idol is an image of something. Usually an idol is carved or it's moulded or it's painted to create a likeness of that invisible thing and this likeness may be of anything, whether it's of God in heaven or one of the creatures He's made or even down to an atom. It's anything that represents our Creator and it is something that would destroy us and that idol is then worshiped. You say: “Well ,why is an idol forbidden?” Well simply because no likeness could possibly be adequate to represent all that God is. Remember God is all-powerful. How do you represent the omnipotence - God is all present? How do you represent omniscience and God is all-knowing? How do you represent that? For God is Spirit. You can see His work. He is like the wind. Where he blows you can see the trees move. Things change in this world but you do not see him and so God is Spirit. You say how is that possible?
Well one of the scientists that have helped me to understand this is a physicist by the name of Hugh Ross. Hugh Ross uses the example of different dimensions. He writes that in the last probably 30 years in physics, we have discovered that when all matter was created at the beginning of time, there were at least 10 dimensions when matter was created. Today, when we look through our telescopes and we measure in our laboratories, there are only four dimensions still in operation. Effectively it's height, width, depth and of course time is the fourth dimension. Now Hugh Ross says that those four dimensions is the world in which we live. We live in a four-dimensional world and our lives exist there. God who created the ten dimensions must be eleven or more dimensions Himself. God is all-powerful, all-knowing and so He created this world. He is invisible to us though He is right there and you say well how is that possible?
So Hugh Ross says, imagine for a moment that you are a programmer and you program a computer game on your computer screen. On your computer you program this game with characters that move around your screen and they can do all sorts of things and you can tell them what to do and they can perhaps respond to your commands but they exist in a two-dimensional world. They have no depth in a sense, they have no substance or volume as we would say. Well now imagine as the computer game programmer and creator that you wanted to reveal yourself to those creatures, so you spoke to them and they maybe didn't like your voice or ignored it. So you drilled a hole in your screen. It would ruin the screen but imagine for the illustration sake that you drilled the hole and put your finger through. If those creatures looked at your finger, what would they see? They'd see a disc or a circle in their screen. Now if they try to represent you and draw you and say we met our creator the programmer that made us and they drew a circle, you would be quite offended that they would create a circle to represent you, in all of your multi-four dimensionality and they simply have a disc to show who you are.
Well if God exists in more than four dimensions then He can be right here. Right as close as our nose and we could not see Him because He is in many dimensions and that is a wonderful encouragement that He can be with you and with me wherever we listening to this program and He can meet with us and be all powerful, listen to all the prayers of the millions of us and know and care for us all individually because He is so great and so multi-dimensional and we are locked into these four dimensions of height width and depth and time and we move through time together. That's our God and so to make any other god would be an insult to Him.
It's a little bit like a daughter who gets tired of her loving mother and murders her mother and then takes a mannequin or a dummy from a shop front window and takes it home and puts it in her lounge and dresses it in her mother's clothes and says to all her friends that come and visit, well meet my mother and the mother sits there all stiff and starchy. What a mother that would be. It would be an insult to the mother and it would be murder. Idolatry is an attempt to murder the living God which we cannot do and it's a failure to understand His magnificence and His greatness. The idolatry is forbidden.
If idolatry is forbidden, why do idols exist? Well the paradox of idolatry is seen in idolatry in one sense, there is nothing more ridiculous than worshiping a piece of wood. That wooden idol cannot help you one bit it is useless and it needs to be cleaned. If a bird flies over and drops its blessings on that idol's head, you have to clean the idol's head. If it gets all suit over it because of incense burned to the idol, you have to wipe that idol down and if you cover that idol in precious gold or silver, then thieves will break in and steal that idol that is supposed to be helping you. As ridiculous as that picture looks on the one hand, it is a paradox that anybody even makes an idol and yet on the other hand in another sense idolatry is understandable because idolatry happens. As a process over time in which the idol becomes divine in the minds of the people who made that idol. Yes God is unseen, God is invisible, God is a Spirit and His power is invisible and it is hard to conceive in our material minds that He has no image and that there can be no image to remind us of Him. This unseen God tells us that we are not to make an idol in His image. He commands no copies. What do people do? They first make an image to remind them of God then they look at the image for long enough and over time bit by bit the idol ceases to represent God and it begins to take the place of God.
Let me give you some biblical examples. Remember when God was leading His people through the desert, at one stage, when they complained and grumbled against God, God sent snakes among them to bite them and when those snakes bit them they began to die and Moses prayed for them and God said, all right I will provide something that will save them if they are bitten by a snake and He said to Moses, go into the workshop and formed a bronze snake around a pole and so they wove or bound a bronze snake around a poll, and the idea was that Moses was to raise this pole in the presence of the people and anybody that had been bitten by a snake was to come and look up to the pole and pray and say God forgive me my sins, cleanse me and heal me from the snakebite. By their faith in God, as they looked to the snake God would heal them of that snakebite and a miracle would take place and the pole was to remind them to look to God. Well that worked and many people were saved as they looked to the snake on a pole, to remind them of God who forgives and heals. However, we know that over time, bit by bit, that snake on a pole became an idol. In actual fact, it took a hundred years during the reign of king Hezekiah. Hezekiah found the people worshiping idols and he found them bowing down to this pole with a snake wound above it and he crushed and destroyed that pole because it was no longer a symbol of God healing the people. People were worshiping the actual snake and they had forgotten what God meant by that.
The same thing happens, well-meaning people carve a statue of Jesus and they put it on a cross and it's in the church to remind people of Jesus dying on the cross. They make crucifixes and crosses with Jesus on the cross and they hang it around their neck and it's meant to remind them that Jesus died for them. However, little bit by little bit, over time that symbol becomes an idol and that crucifix will keep them from danger then they no longer looking to Jesus who is represented on their crucifix but they're looking to the crucifix. It's the case of worshipping the object and not the person that the object points to. Idols are very real.
What are the dangers of idolatry? Well firstly, idolatry makes a means of worship into an end. An aid to worship. Something to help us to worship becomes an object of worship. We've seen that in modern Christian days with the worship wars where people have said this style of worship is the only way to worship God. No, a song or a tune is not the only way. There are many ways. But the point is that it's God that we worship. We are to read God's Word and trust that God will speak through His Word to us and lead us day by day in a relationship with Him. Wherever a means becomes an end, it becomes idolatry.
Think of your cell phone as an example. How many times has that cell phone been a great means to help you to communicate. To call for help in an emergency. To get you in contact with family and friends. Today you can even video call them and it's a great help. However, when that cell phone is something you cannot live without, when you leave it at home by accident and the whole day is ruined because of a cell phone then that cell phone is becoming an idol in your life or mine. Another type of danger from idolatry is when, idolatry substitutes the thing for the person. For instance, when a lifeless idol is put in the place of the living God. When the most important thing in your life is not God, then that thing that is more important than God is an idol. Anything which you are willing to give your whole life to, your time to, your thought to, your strength to, is an idol. Whenever things are more important than people then that has become an idol. Remember God made people in His image but when things become more important than people, we're in great danger.
We say, “Well I'm not like that”, “I'm not primitive”, “I don't worship idols that demand my children”. Well think about it, if your career is destroying your family life and your children are crying out Daddy read to me, Mommy you never come home till nine o'clock at night; then your job your aspiration to get richer and your desire to succeed, has become an idol to you. That job, that thing that you are putting before your precious human beings in your own home, has become an idol. That is destroying you and your loved ones. You see the same happens in industry, in the workplace when machines, things become more important than the people that operate those machines. When machines are valued above the laborers, then there's a big problem. That's why we see so many labour disputes and conflict between workers and management. Machines have taken the place of human beings and those machines become more precious to the owners of that factory than the very people that are made in the image of God are to them. They become then just machines that operate machines to the owners of that company. That's idolatry. That's when it destroys people.
In the home for instance, people say I want a home. What makes a home different from a house? Is it the furniture that we put into a house that makes a home? Is it that we have more furniture than our neighbours or bigger cars than our neighbours or better holidays or a bigger TV or a better computer? Well when a life is based on things it's idolatry. When we lose sight of the living God. When we have all the things that open and close in this world but we can't sit with our own loved ones and have meaningful deep conversations and live day by day with them in harmony, then we have got idols in our lives. Idols that are destroying us from the inside out. They are eating us alive like the lion that caught the four clever brothers. Our invisible God commands that there be no copies of Him.
What about art? Isn't art an idol? The Muslims of course say, “Yes, anything that represents anything in this world, any picture is an idol but that can't be true”. The Muslims of course, only have patterns in the art, as you look at a Persian carpet. It doesn't have a picture of an animal or a person on it, or a tree. However, we see in the Bible that God does not condemn art. We know in the tabernacle, He commanded that representations be made of angels, Seraphim. We know there were representations of palm trees and pomegranates made in the temple and in the tabernacle. So art is not the problem. It says. Verse 5 puts it: “You shall not bow down to them.” It's when art becomes the focus of your life when it becomes the thing that you worship and bow down to that it becomes more valuable to you. When you buy art that's so expensive and you insure it for so much and you would die if it was gone. If it disappeared then that art has become an idol to you. But art per se, can be beautiful. Art can point us to the beauty of God and the wonders of what God has done. Art can teach us, art can educate us but when it becomes a substitute for God then art has crossed the line into idolatry. We as human beings need to know art is okay. Worship of art is wrong.
What is God's warning? God is a jealous God this passage tells us and He's a zealous God. He will deal with idolatry. God is unique in all the universe. He created everything that exists. He is distinct and separate from His creation. There is no other God and God is everywhere all the time, all powerful. God is the creator. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is one God in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons. God is never lonely or alone. God has a love community Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so God's warning to us is do not make any representation for God. God is against idolatry and it carries terrible consequences to the third and the fourth generation. Somebody asked, why does God only punish to the third and the fourth generation? Because, when we worship idols it usually destroys our family line and by the fifth generation they're crazy, they've lost their minds. Idolatry devours and destroys that's why God was so harsh with idol worshippers when the people of God came into the Promised Land and God commanded that idolatry be wiped out. That God the Father wants a relationship with you personally. A real personal relationship and no image will satisfy you. You need to know the living God.
Examine yourself today. Has some aid or assistance to worship drawn you away from God? Has some picture gripped your mind and has become an idol or some statue or image or something else? Has God's material blessings in your life clouded your vision? Jesus put it this way, how do we become unfruitful as Christians when the worries of this world, the things that we are worried about, that are idols. That wake you up. Occupy our mind. Or the deceitfulness of wealth, when wealth deceives us to worship it and not the living God. We become unfruitful and God's material blessings cloud your vision of the fact that God provides. God gives and He can take away if that becomes an idol in your life. And so do you worship the real living invisible God or are you worshiping the things He has made or you have made but not the living God? When we look at Instagram and all the beautiful pictures, they can become idols in our lives. Do you worship the real God that you cannot see even if you were at the foot of Mount Sinai or are you perhaps worshiping a mannequin a dummy something that is a substitute for God? You see what have you given first place to in your life: that job, that career, that ambition, that thing in your life, that car? That desire can become an idol and idolatry is not dead.
John the beloved apostle warns us in the letter we read at the beginning of the service, we are to have nothing to do with idols and whatever object or thing replaces your first love for God. Anything that takes away all your love for God in your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength, that thing can become an idol. Even your own self where you put yourself in the place of God for God is not an idol. Get rid of your idols. Confess your sin to God. Thank Him for those things that are good and flee those dangers that would cause you to turn your back on God and seek a whole relationship with God. Flee any person that you consider consumes you like an idol. An idol on the media. An idol in your life. Somebody that you can't live without is an idol. The only person in all the universe none of us can live without is God, because in Him we live and we move and we have our being. Flee any idol and anything else that would draw you away from the living God and turn to God to know Him. That's why our invisible God commands you have no idols.
Let us pray together. Oh wonderful God and Father in heaven, thank you for Your warning to us. Help us to be fruitful and bear much fruit for eternity. Forgive us our sins and where we have allowed even a little idol into our life. Forgive us right now cleanse us from all unrighteousness and set us free. If we have been pursuing a career or put anything before You the living God and forgotten how precious people are, if we have neglected people in our own family or people in our workplace, forgive us Lord and help us to love the living God and to love our neighbour as ourself. For we pray this that our lives might be free from idolatry. Help us to be wholehearted in our love for You. We ask in Jesus Christ's name and for His sake we pray this. Amen.
Well, if this message has been of help to you share it pass it on but may God bless you. If I can pray for you do get in contact either, in the comments below or email me at pastordrbc80@gmail.com but may you live your life now glorifying your invisible God and Creator until that day that you stand before Him and with your eyes see Him face to face and you hear from Jesus those words, Well done good and faithful servant enter into your rest for you've kept the faith you've not chased after idols which would destroy you. Praise God and live your life to the glory of God always. Amen