Every one of us in this room, is by nature, a god-maker. In Genesis 1:27 we read “God made man in His own image.” But ever since the fall, we’ve been trying to return the favor by making God in our image.
That's the whole point of the second commandment. Worshiping the right God isn't enough. We must worship the right God in the right way. The first commandment forbids worshiping a false god. The second commandment forbids worshiping the true God falsely. The first commandment is all about who we worship. The second is all about how we worship. And the how really matters. Simply put, we’re commanded here, to not come to God on our own terms, but on His.
Here's what makes this commandment sharp for a room like this one. None of us walked in tempted to bow before a carved statue. We don’t melt down jewelry to fashion a calf. We do something far more sophisticated and far harder to see. We build a version of God in our minds, decorate it with the attributes we find appealing, and then bow to that instead of God. Our image is invisible, which makes it more dangerous, not less. A golden calf can at least be smashed. A calf built in our own imaginations, crafted out of our own assumptions is much harder to smash, but it must be!
Two things are forbidden in the second commandment: making an image for worship and bowing to that image; construction and veneration. That’s what the second commandment is all about, taking God on His terms, not on our own.
Exodus 20:4-6 says, “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 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 on 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.”
There is a lot to work through here. So, I’ve made a few headings to help us work through this. See first…
The Pattern
Before we get to why God commands this, let’s begin by moving ahead to witness how quickly Israel breaks this commandment. In Exodus 32 (not that long after this moment here) Moses is up on the mountain, Israel doesn’t know when or if he’ll return, and the people begin yearning to worship. As wonderful as that seems, it turns sour real quick. The people bring their gold to Aaron, ask him to make an image, he doesn’t refuse, he puts the gold in the fire, and fashions it into a calf. But notice a crucial detail. They didn't ask Aaron to fashion them a new god. They desired to worship the LORD who saved them from Egypt. That’s great! The problem was that they just wanted to worship Him in their way, on their own timeline, and in a form that made sense to them.
Once the calf is finished Aaron said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD” (Exodus 32:5). He doesn’t announce a festival to a foreign god. He names the calf after the LORD Himself and calls the people to worship Yahweh through it. That’s precisely the sin of the second commandment in its purest form. Not swapping gods, but reshaping the true God into a form the people could see, control, and dance in front of.
That’s the human pattern to see. It was Israel’s pattern at Sinai, and it’s our pattern now. Many of us won’t go after a false god, but we’ll sure settle for a false way of worshiping the true God. We’re idol factories, every one of us…not because we’re unusually wicked, but because we are unusually impatient with a God we cannot see or control. If this generation of Israelites that was redeemed out of Egypt could drift this fast, so can we.
The Reasons
Let’s go back to the second commandment. In Exodus 20:4-6 we find the second commandment, and we find reasons why God gave this commandment.
Reason 1: God is a jealous God.
This is the first reason the text gives us as to why God gave the second commandment, is that God is a jealous God. Which means, God won’t have His people bowing down to anything that is not Him because God will not give His glory to another.
Many people take offense at God being a jealous God but it’s good news that God is a jealous God. To say God is jealous God is like saying I’m a jealous husband. I won’t share my wife any of you here, or anyone in this world. The alternative is dreadful, unloving, and wicked. I won’t share Holly with anyone, out of all the women on the planet God has told me this one is my wife, and all the others are my sisters. Not only will I not share Holly with anyone else, I will go to great lengths to protect her from what is harmful to her. This is the joy and privilege and calling of every husband. So, every husband who isn’t a jealous husband doesn’t really love his wife.
To an infinitely greater degree, God is a jealous God who loves His people with an exclusive love. He won’t share us with anyone, and He will go to great lengths to protect us from harm. Because He is this jealous over His own He commanded them to not make any image of Himself or anything in existence (heaven above, earth beneath, water under the earth) for the purpose of worshiping. Thus, as His people, let us obey His command and give God no cause to be jealous.
Those who break this command invite God’s wrathful visitation. See that in in v5? Those who craft an image invite God to visit them in wrath, and deal with them as their sins deserve. Nadab and Abihu experienced this in Leviticus 10 with their priestly sacrifice. They offered unauthorized fire that God hadn’t commanded and knew God’s justice. So too, those who obey this command invite God’s merciful visitation. See that in v6? Those who are content to take God on His terms, as He has revealed Himself to us, will know His mercy.
Reason 2: God is Spirit.
In John 4 Jesus tells the woman at the well that “God is spirit” (John 4:24). This means God cannot be seen, He is invisible. So, the moment someone fashions an image of God, they not only haven’t captured the essence of God, they’ve traded God for something smaller. Isaiah 40:18 says it like this, “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare Him with?” This is why Paul, when preaching to the philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts 17, told them that God is not like gold or silver or stone, or an image formed by the art and imagination of man (Acts 17:29). Paul’s point was that no carved thing, however beautiful, could ever rightly image forth the true and living God.
Reason 3: God is majestic beyond capture.
When the apostle John beholds the Lord in Revelation 1, the words he uses to describe aren’t words that describe a face. Instead John uses the words like lightning, thunder, fire, the roar of many waters. Glory that can be painted or carved isn’t glory. Romans 1 agrees as it says sinful humanity, claiming to be wise, traded the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal creatures, birds, animals, and crawling things (Romans 1:22-23). When this happens the tradeoff always runs downward. Every image we substitute for God, however sophisticated, shrinks Him. That’s the real danger of the second commandment. To make an image of God is not merely disobedience, it’s a downgrade.
Reason 4: God has already provided His own Image
Israel didn’t need a carved image to worship God. God gave them His Law, prophets, priests, and kings to teach and lead His people. More so, in the fullness of time God would provide His own image. The true image of God would come in the Jesus Christ the Son of God. Colossians 1:15 calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” Hebrews 1:3 calls Christ “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.” Israel was commanded to not make an image because God would, one day, supply His own, in the Person of His Son. Indeed, to see Him is to the see the Father (John 14:9).
These then are all the reasons standing behind the giving of the second commandment.
The History
Israel wasn’t the last community to face this temptation, every generation of God’s people has always faced the temptation to craft an image of God, we are god-makers by nature remember? It’s worth walking through how God’s people throughout the ages have handled and mishandled this commandment, because the mistakes are and lessons learned are deeply practical.
The Israelites should have known better. Egypt, and every one of the pagan neighbors, filled their worship with images of all kinds. In that context God called His people to be different not only in who they worshiped but how they worshiped. This was the call, but Israel didn’t always get this right. The golden calf incident shows us as much.
Similarly, the Church has not always gotten this right either. From roughly the fifth to the fifteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church filled its cathedrals and monasteries with statues and images of all kinds. Mary, the saints, and more. Now, Roman Catholicism taught, and still teaches, that the people should not worship these images, but should venerate them. They see a difference in those words, but we do not. To venerate is to revere, to honor, but it’s also to adore, to worship. This is problematic to say the least. It gets worse. To support their teaching on their images, Roman Catholicism has reordered the Ten Commandments to do away with the second. They fold the second commandment into the first and then split the tenth commandment into two just so they still have ten. This isn’t an accident. It’s an example of tradition being prioritized over Scripture to justify sinful practice.
As much as I wish the Reformation cleaned all this up when it first broke out, it didn’t settle the question. They disagreed about the use images, specifically, images of Jesus and His cross. Many of them banned all images from worship. They would argue like this: 1) no image of Christ is neutral, 2) every artistic interpretation is wrong somewhere, and 3) we’ll end up worshiping the image because we’re prone to idolatry, even if we’re unaware of it. But others allowed images to fill the sanctuaries still, if they weren’t used for the purpose of worship.
The best answer to the use of images, to me, would come in the second generation of the Reformation, in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). There the second commandment is treated thoughtfully while still permitting the use of images. We read it earlier before, hear it again.
Q96: What is God’s will for us in the second commandment? A: That we in no way make any image of God, nor worship Him in any other way than has been commanded in God’s Word.
Q97: May we then not make any image at all? A: God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Although creatures may be portrayed, yet God forbids making or having such images if one’s intention is to worship them or to serve God through them.
See what they say here? God forbids images if the intention is to worship God through them.
That’s the whole issue, and the Heidelberg Catechism draws the line precisely where it needs to be drawn. Notice what that rules out. It’s not just praying to a picture as if it were God, that’s easy to call out. It’s using an image as a means of worship at all. It’s gazing on an image to work yourself into reverence before communion, or fixing your mind on an actor’s face to help you ‘focus’ in prayer, or choosing an image to do spiritual work for you that God intends His Word and His Spirit to do.
The Heidelberg Catechism isn’t providing a loophole around the second commandment. It’s doing the hard work of explaining the second commandment to us. It’s not asking us if we bow to the image. It’s asking us if we leaned on image to help us worship. If we do, we sin. If an image does the work our faith should be doing, you’ve served God through a likeness He has not provided, that’s exactly what’s forbidden.
The Takeaway
Here’s the takeaway Church. The idolatry we’re most prone to isn’t the kind you can see. It’s the kind you build quietly in your mind. It’s crafting a version of God by what you prefer Him to be like rather than what He actually is. You never touch a chisel. You just decide, based on your judgment, that God wouldn’t really say that, wouldn’t really judge that, wouldn’t really ask that of you. And by the time you’re finished, you’re created a God in your own image… sincerely and warmly sure, but wrongly.
Let’s expand this further. Some of you have built an image of god who only ever affirms you, a god whose highest attribute is niceness, who exists mainly to make you feel better about the choices you’ve made. That god has no jealousy in him, and seems only to be made of the world’s definition of love.
Others of you have built up an image of the opposite god, a cosmic accountant, cold and exacting, who loves you only as much as your performance that week deserves. That god has plenty of severity and no steadfast love.
Neither one is the God of Exodus 20. The text gives us both, jealousy and mercy, judgment and steadfast love running to a thousand generations, see that? The real and true God refuses to be simplified into whatever suits you most.
This is where the second commandment confronts us. Every time we soften a text because the plain meaning is unpopular, we’re making an image. Every time we describe God on our own terms instead of from His Word, we’re making an image. Even our hymns and songs can become a kind of image making endeavor if we choose lyrics for how they make us feel rather than for the truths it says about God. The second commandment isn’t only a warning to sculptors. It’s a warning to preachers, songwriters, screenwriters, poets, and every worshiper who desires to worship god as they prefer Him to be rather than God as He has revealed Himself to be.
Conclusion
Church, what’s the call here in the second commandment? All who come to God and worship God, must do so on His terms, not our own. Do we think we’re wiser than God? Do we know better? No. We must recognize our bent toward crafting god in our own image, and embrace Him as He’s revealed Himself to be.
Question, how has God revealed Himself to us? In Christ. Thus, we must set our eyes of faith on Christ, the God-Man.
In John 4 Jesus encounters a woman by a well. She tries to debate with Him about the proper way to worship, whether it should be on this mountain or in that place, and Jesus cuts through it all by directing her to Himself. Why? Because He is “the glory of God’s radiance and the exact imprint of God's nature” (Hebrews 1:3). The Father is seeking such worshipers and is calling us to come to Him through Christ the Son.
So here's the invitation, Church. As dry wood is prone to take fire, our souls are prone to craft all kinds of images of God. Images that resemble our preferences and partialities. Thus, we need to second commandment. We need the warning of His jealousy. We need the encouragement of His mercy.
The Father is seeking you to worship Him, and He’s already given you everything you need to do so in His own Son. For Jesus is our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend. No soul who comes to Christ, as He is, will be left wanting.
Leave here today and do business with the god you’ve built. Name him. Bring him to this text, throw him down, and let the true God take its place.
When we come to God on His terms, we’ll find Him to be to us, all He said He’d be! And praise God, that’s better news than we could have ever imagined ourselves.
