SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Today is Sunday, August sixteenth, two thousand and fifteen.
SPEAKER_00: And God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He was all last week.
SPEAKER_00: He is today, and he will be in the week ahead.
SPEAKER_00: God is good.
SPEAKER_00: God is gracious.
SPEAKER_00: God is patient.
SPEAKER_00: God is merciful.
SPEAKER_00: God is holy.
SPEAKER_00: And God is in control.
SPEAKER_00: He is the only one who does exactly as he pleases, and the only one of whom it can be said what he pleases is always and only good.
SPEAKER_00: That's the God that we serve.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to ask you to open your Bible and turn with me, if you would, to Exodus chapter 20, verses 4 through 6.
SPEAKER_00: As you know, we are looking at the tender commandments, the tender words or messages from God to us.
SPEAKER_00: Please turn in your Bible and follow along as I read.
SPEAKER_00: Reading from the ESV, you may have a different version.
SPEAKER_00: There's that Bible in the pew in front of you, page 61, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: And uh let's pay attention to what God said.
SPEAKER_00: And God spoke all these words, saying, and I'm beginning in verse one, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not bow down to them and 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 fourth generation, but showing steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
SPEAKER_00: To kind of get us uh thinking a little bit this morning, I'd like to ask a question.
SPEAKER_00: How do you like to think about God?
SPEAKER_00: How do you like to think about God and how do you not like to think about God?
SPEAKER_00: Uh if we had the time and we don't, I would ask you to fill in the blank and we'd sit around and we'd kind of share with one another.
SPEAKER_00: But just think that through for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: How do you like to think about God?
SPEAKER_00: There may be certain aspects of God that is particularly significant or precious to you.
SPEAKER_00: You may love the phrase Abba Father, that intimate, personal, paternal relationship.
SPEAKER_00: You may be impressed with the concept of the good shepherd who leads us beside the still waters.
SPEAKER_00: You might like to think about God as the creator and the sustainer of all that is.
SPEAKER_00: You might like to think about God who says to us, Neither do I condemn you, but go and sin no more, says both to us.
SPEAKER_00: You might like to think about the God who is the great I am, and we've worshipped and thought about various aspects of God.
SPEAKER_00: And how do you like to think about God?
SPEAKER_00: These are actually not good questions.
SPEAKER_00: I think you'll see what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: How do you not like to think about God?
SPEAKER_00: What is there about God that you tend not to focus on, that tends to disturb you, that tends to bother you?
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to think about God as being judgmental or jealous, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to think about God who at sometimes has instructed his people to destroy cities and peoples and tribes, what we would call ethnic cleansing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to think about God that way, quite frankly.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to think about God perhaps as someone who demands obedience, submission.
SPEAKER_00: What an awful thing.
SPEAKER_00: What that does in my heart is the same thing that does in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to be told what to do.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to have to obey somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to think about God who is controlling, who is superintending, or horror of horrors, predestining, determining it ahead of time the things that happen.
SPEAKER_00: Now the fact of the matter is that all of these things that we've talked about are aspects of biblical truth about God, some of which we're drawn to, some of which we want to push away.
SPEAKER_00: I said, these aren't really the right questions.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm pulling a fast one on you in a certain sense this morning, because this is not the way we are to approach God.
SPEAKER_00: I like this about God, and I don't like that about God.
SPEAKER_00: We are not to create a God of our own liking, a God of our own making.
SPEAKER_00: We are not to imagine a God that we agree with.
SPEAKER_00: We are to worship and serve the God that is, not the God that we want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the second of the tender commandments is all about.
SPEAKER_00: Worship God just as he truly is, not just as you want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: Worship God as he truly is, not just as you want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: I hope if you don't get anything else out of our time together, that uh you will be able to be focusing on that.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just walk through and think about the second of the tender commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Tender because God kindly, generously, graciously, with benevolence, with our best interest at heart says, do this and don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way life works.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way that seems good to a man, but the end of that is death.
SPEAKER_00: Go this way, don't go that way.
SPEAKER_00: Tenderly, he says, do this and don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about the second of the tender commandments.
SPEAKER_00: But how do you count to ten?
SPEAKER_00: Now, that may seem like a foolish question.
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm really asking is, how do we understand these ten words from God, the decalogue, the ten words?
SPEAKER_00: How do we divide them up?
SPEAKER_00: And you may be surprised to find out that there are different traditions, different groups who see ten different commands here.
SPEAKER_00: Most uh Jewish scholars, and we are the heirs of the revelation that God has given to the Jews, most Jewish scholars focus on the idea of ten words or messages, rightly so, and often consider the first word, what we would call the first commandments, uh to be I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavely, full stop.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first word from God, as many Jewish people would understand it.
SPEAKER_00: So then what happens to the rest?
SPEAKER_00: Do they come up with eleven?
SPEAKER_00: Uh no.
SPEAKER_00: The second commandment, as it's understood in many Jewish circles, is verses 3 through 6.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, that that could make sense.
SPEAKER_00: But they come up with 10.
SPEAKER_00: In many Roman Catholic and in some Lutheran traditions, they number the Ten Commandments differently.
SPEAKER_00: They consider the first commandment to be verses 1 through 6, and then in order to get to 10, they divide up what verse 17 into two separate commands.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not a silly way of doing things, but it's just actually interesting to say, because how we divide these up helps or puts us in a direction of understanding what God is really saying there.
SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of Protestants and of evangelicals agree with me, which always makes me feel good.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I agree with them.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom far beyond what I have.
SPEAKER_00: And I go through this not to give you a lesson in hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, or history or something, but to just make clear that at least the way I'm sharing with you about the tender commandments.
SPEAKER_00: The first of the tender commandments that we saw last week has to do with the priority of God.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me.
SPEAKER_00: There is no one else in your life who is to be number one.
SPEAKER_00: It's a question of priority.
SPEAKER_00: And we said God must have the first place, and everything else has some other place.
SPEAKER_00: God is number one, and everyone, everything else in our life falls under there in some other way.
SPEAKER_00: The priority of God in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas what we're looking at today deals really with the issue of idolatry, of worshiping and serving God.
SPEAKER_00: Both the form of our worship and the object of our worship.
SPEAKER_00: There are two dangers for us worshiping the wrong God or worshiping the right God in the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: And both of those are enveloped in the verses that we have read, verses four through six.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we may think that idolatry is not a big deal to us, and we would be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: But we're not focusing particularly on idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: We think of idolatry in certain ways.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to understand that idolatry really is a big deal to God, and that it really is a problem for us.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of ways we could look at that, but it's just interesting to note that in the in the Old Testament in particular, there are 14 different words for our one-word idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: And that may be coincidental, but actually our vocabulary expresses how we see the world.
SPEAKER_00: We learned that as uh Jane and I as we went overseas and learned other languages.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that there are 14 separate words for idolatry, and we just have one measly little word that we don't think has much to do with us, is a reflection of the way we see the world.
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that there's many words for idolatry reflects how God sees the world.
SPEAKER_00: We uh lived, as you know, for many years overseas.
SPEAKER_00: We learned Flemish or Dutch, we are fluent in Dutch, and it's very interesting how many different terms there are in the Dutch language for a canal.
SPEAKER_00: A canal.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we just have basically one word for a canal, but in Dutch it's a sloot or gracht or a canal or a bake or a strom.
SPEAKER_00: They have many words for rain.
SPEAKER_00: Reichen, stortrechen, rechen by, uh, moltreichen.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've ever been to the Low Countries, you know there's lots of canals and there's lots of rain.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a big part of the way they see the world, and their vocabulary is rich.
SPEAKER_00: God's vocabulary is rich when it comes to our dollar tree, and ours is impoverished.
SPEAKER_00: And that says something about us, and it says something about God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have many words for diets.
SPEAKER_00: That's apparently pretty important to us.
SPEAKER_00: The Atkins diet, South Beach diet, Scarsdale dialet, Ornish dialet, cabot soup diet, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Phil's diet, lemonade dialet, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and list goes on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00: And apparently dieting is very important to us.
SPEAKER_00: We have a rich vocabulary in that.
SPEAKER_00: And all I really want to say is that this issue of the second commandment is very important to God.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to get in touch with how God views idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Lord willing, we'll simply walk through these verses and I'll try to apply them for us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Exodus chapter 20, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything.
SPEAKER_00: Did you hear that?
SPEAKER_00: A carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not do that.
SPEAKER_00: Any carved likeness or image of anything above, here, and below.
SPEAKER_00: Um and he just says, don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to try to unpack that and see what that means for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the focus here is on physical idols.
SPEAKER_00: The term that he's using here is a carved image, a fashioned image, uh, something that we make, in this case with our hands, something that becomes our God.
SPEAKER_00: Exodus 34, verse 17 says, You shall not make cast images, molten images.
SPEAKER_00: This says carved images.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Leviticus 26, 1, don't make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Don't place a carved stone in your land to bow before it, for I am the Lord your God, and goes on.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's more to idols than just that, but what's the problem with that?
SPEAKER_00: Um, again, let's try to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: Those who have thought hard and long from a biblical perspective about the problem with images and physical representations of God have done some helpful thinking, and in effect, they're saying the problem is that any physical representation of God is also a misrepresentation of God, because there's things about God that are lacking in any particular physical expression of that.
SPEAKER_00: Any image, any painting, any statue, any whatever.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to make note of and perhaps turn to Acts 17, uh, where we will see this really pretty clearly.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul is in the city of Athens and he's talking about what is all around them, and that is uh images and uh and idols.
SPEAKER_00: And so in Acts 17, verse 24, um he says, uh, starting verse 22, Paul standing in the middle of the Areopagus says, Men of Adams, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
SPEAKER_00: For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, uh I found many idols.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on, verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: The God who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.
SPEAKER_00: God does not live here in this building.
SPEAKER_00: God lives in the temple of our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a holy place in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: It may be very meaningful, but this is not.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts are the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything.
SPEAKER_00: Um, for he himself gives to all life breath and everything.
SPEAKER_00: And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live, and he goes on, and he says down in verse 29 uh being then God's offspring, we ought not to think of the divine being as like gold or silver or stone or an image born by art and the imagination of man.
SPEAKER_00: When we do, we're misrepresenting something important about God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Isaiah chapter 40, we're not going to turn to it, but if you're taking notes, that would be a good reference to go and look up because almost the whole chapter is given over of what?
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know?
SPEAKER_00: Have you not heard?
SPEAKER_00: That's not our God.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is up here.
SPEAKER_00: We have this great and glorious God.
SPEAKER_00: And no physical representation of God does God justice.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, stay away from it.
SPEAKER_00: He says to us, stay away from it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Romans chapter one, uh, very important at many, many different levels, uh, but uh touches clearly on this matter of um how we view God and how we represent God.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 18, where we read, for the wrath of God is re that's one of those things I don't like to think about God as, about you.
SPEAKER_00: The wrath of God, the Bible is very casual about it, very uh not casual, very uh ready uh to see God as he is, not just as we want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: The wrath of God is revealed among heaven uh from heaven against all unrighteousness of godliness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_00: For what can be known about God is plain, for he has shown it to them.
SPEAKER_00: The invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since creation.
SPEAKER_00: For all the verse 21, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
SPEAKER_00: Um the problem uh with idols is that they inherently veil God's glory and leave out certain aspects of uh who God really is.
SPEAKER_00: And God says uh don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: They dishonor and they mislead.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's behind all of this.
SPEAKER_00: We do not have a God of our own making.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're not inclined to form little statues and set them around places and bow down and worship them.
SPEAKER_00: But my friends, the guy in the mirror and the person in your mirror is inclined to want a God that we want, not the God that is.
SPEAKER_00: And you may say, oh no, not me.
SPEAKER_00: Um I would urge you to reflect on that.
SPEAKER_00: What do you not like?
SPEAKER_00: How do you not like to think about God that is revealed in Scripture?
SPEAKER_00: This is speaking to us as well.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Deuteronomy 20, verse 5, the first part of verse 5, let's look at that.
SPEAKER_00: Um we read, You shall not bow down to them or serve them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at the rest in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But what he's talking about here is there is a danger as we worship.
SPEAKER_00: Things that are given to us or useful as helps or aids to worship.
SPEAKER_00: If we're not careful, they become, or they tend to become, an object of worship, where we get focused on the means to worship rather than the end of worship, which is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this has been a problem throughout all time.
SPEAKER_00: Uh certainly in the history of the Christian church, we see all kinds of realities there.
SPEAKER_00: Church liturgies, which are meant to help.
SPEAKER_00: And if, and we have a church liturgy here, by the way, we just don't call it that.
SPEAKER_00: But we have a certain way that we do things.
SPEAKER_00: We always do it pretty much the same way.
SPEAKER_00: That's our liturgy.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a reason for that that's actually thought through.
SPEAKER_00: Patrick and the pastors, we we talk about that, we think about that, we interact with the elders about that.
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain reason why we but we have our own liturgy.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, uh that gets in the way of worshiping God.
SPEAKER_00: Um, church architecture, uh, cathedrals.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've had the opportunity to be in a great and glorious cathedral in Europe.
SPEAKER_00: I find it a wonderfully horrible experience.
SPEAKER_00: It's horrible because I look at the stuff around and I start getting angry and I think about the second commandment.
SPEAKER_00: And yet at the same time, that very structure, especially these beautiful Gothic cathedrals where you're just drawn to look up, all of the lines go up, and that's very intentional.
SPEAKER_00: They were designed that way to make you look up and see God.
SPEAKER_00: But if we're not careful, the buildings that we're in become something which, instead of just being a means to an end, if we're not careful, we worship and serve the buildings rather than the buildings serving the reason what we're here for.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a danger for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Or icons.
SPEAKER_00: I have a good friend whose son is a priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what you know about Orthodoxy, but they use icons, pictures of the saints, pictures, not the saints necessarily, pictures of the church fathers.
SPEAKER_00: And these are they're intended as a way of showing respect for those who have gone before, those from whom we have learned, but they become something more than that.
SPEAKER_00: So icons become something that one bows down to and kisses.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know what's going on in the minds of an Orthodox believer, but uh somehow or another I think there's a problem there uh with a means towards worship uh becoming the focus rather than it simply being a means to a greater end.
SPEAKER_00: Uh crucifixes, same kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: If I uh had brought in here a large crucifix, not an empty cross, but a crucifix with a picture of Christ uh or a statue of Christ on it, and perhaps with blood or red dripping down, or if I brought in here and set up a bunch of icons around, and you came in this morning, uh, you would probably need to find yourself another pastor pretty quick, uh, because you would have all kinds of problems, and probably rightfully so.
SPEAKER_00: Um so aids to worship get in the way.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to I want to look at a biblical example that is of incredible significance for us.
SPEAKER_00: I want to look, turn, if you would, please, to Numbers chapter 21.
SPEAKER_00: Numbers 21.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever have to do that as you're turning the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Go through.
SPEAKER_00: I do it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I was just flipping through here and I saw Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_00: Now is Numbers before or after Ezekiel, and then Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I can find numbers.
SPEAKER_00: A very important passage of Numbers 21 verses 4 through 9.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got the right text up there.
SPEAKER_00: Here we have Israel in the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: They were impatient, they were stiff-necked, they were rebellious.
SPEAKER_00: So, verse 4 from Mount Hor, they set out by the way of the sea to go around to the land of Eden, and the people became impatient on the way, and the people spoke against God and against Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Why have you done this to us?
SPEAKER_00: You ever hear yourself, God, why are you doing this to me?
SPEAKER_00: And then they give their complaints there's no food, there's no water, we loathe this worthless food.
SPEAKER_00: So God gave them something to help them.
SPEAKER_00: He gave them an aid to see him and to see some important things about himself.
SPEAKER_00: Then, verse 6, the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died.
SPEAKER_00: That's another picture of God I'm not really excited about.
SPEAKER_00: It just happens to be there.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a purpose for this.
SPEAKER_00: And the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, we have spoken against the Lord and against you.
SPEAKER_00: Pray to the Lord that He will take away the serpents for us.
SPEAKER_00: Often, not always, but often the trials in our lives are to shake us up, to get us in tune with what God is trying to do and say.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're so stubborn or so cold-hearted or hard-hearted that it takes great adversity.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not the only reason we experience it.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what was happening here.
SPEAKER_00: And so this was God's purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to Moses, verse 8, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, so a serpent of bronze, actually, and everyone who has bitten when he sees it shall live.
SPEAKER_00: So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the pole.
SPEAKER_00: And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you may scratch your head and say, What in the world is this all about?
SPEAKER_00: You might tend to dismiss it unless you've read John chapter 3, where Jesus says, just as the bronze serpent in the wilderness was lifted up on a pole, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to him, repent, and turn to him.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying that to us.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to him, for that is the way of salvation and life.
SPEAKER_00: But what in the world does this have to do with the second tender commandment?
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to turn, if you would, please, to 2 Kings, Samuel Kings and Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to 2 Kings chapter 18, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: This is now hundreds of years later, the time of young King Hezekiah.
SPEAKER_00: There was a revival going on.
SPEAKER_00: Hezekiah had a personal spiritual renewal.
SPEAKER_00: He was a young king, and so he implemented certain things in the nation.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, he, Hezekiah, removed the high places, those were altars, and broke the pillars, those were objects of sacred worship that had come from the pagan people around them, cut down the ashtraith, which were actually despicable images, and he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made.
SPEAKER_00: The connection with the bronze serpent.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, for until those days when Hezekiah got rid of them, the people of Israel had made offerings to it.
SPEAKER_00: So this aid to worship that was given by God, this help that was designed for good, became an object of worship.
SPEAKER_00: The aid to worship, if we're not careful, becomes an object to worship.
SPEAKER_00: The means become the ends.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to ask ourselves what bronze serpents there may be in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Several things we could say.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to try to limit it to this in this connection.
SPEAKER_00: We're doing, dealing with a lot more.
SPEAKER_00: When we're talking about idolatry, it's not just carved images, it's not just physical representations.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just what we normally think about as idols, but these aids to worship.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I hit the wrong button there.
SPEAKER_00: There are any number of verses in the New Testament that say, what is idolatry?
SPEAKER_00: Well, idolatry is covetousness.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry is chasing after mammon.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry is sexual addiction.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry is arrogance.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry is when anything, anything, good things, some of those are good things, they become our focus.
SPEAKER_00: They control us.
SPEAKER_00: So that we're consumed with these things, like chasing after wealth or success or finding the right girlfriend or boyfriend or finding how to get rid of the wife you've got.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, there's all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: But things become our focus that must not become our focus, because they become, in the biblical sense of the word, idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: If being greedy is idolatry, then being arrogant is idolatry, then being controlling, overly controlling is idolatry, then having a rotten attitude most of the time, so that the people who see you coming groan when they see you coming.
SPEAKER_00: You're consumed by all kinds of other things.
SPEAKER_00: And you and I deal with the issue of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: When we give ourselves over to anything other than God, it has a tendency to become the controlling force in our life and become an idol.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry is a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go on a little bit further and let's look at the second half of verse 5 and verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's already said, you shall not bow down or worship them.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, 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 a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandment.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to say is do we cannot look at these verses and underestimate the importance of this issue, because it goes to the very person of God, the heart of God, and the passion of God.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to approach idolatry with a great distance, that's not me, and God is trying to say, it's you, it's me, we have problems here, folks.
SPEAKER_00: Go this way, don't go that way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've taken on the challenge that I've given, and several of you have let me know that you're working on memorizing, you're working on applying, you're working on coming prepared.
SPEAKER_00: If you came to this passage this morning not cold, but had kind of thought it through, uh, there would be probably issues that would be a little bit problematic.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope you said, I wonder what that means.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, I hope Walt will help me figure that out.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so as we expose the scripture, there's things that are perplexing to us, and I don't have it all figured out.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but part of my job as an expositor is to bring the truth to light and help us understand what it means and help us then know how to apply it.
SPEAKER_00: So, one of those things that is a little bit problematic for us is this idea of God visiting the iniquities of the fathers on the children to the second and third generation.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a problem with that, I don't think you have a pulse this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Um what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: What in the world uh does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I don't think it probably means what we're afraid it means.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not because I'm trying to duck out from under it, but as we look carefully at this passage, I want to direct your attention to Ezekiel chapter 18.
SPEAKER_00: And we're not going to have time to look at the whole passage, but Ezekiel 18, verse 20 is extremely important for us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, uh, Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ezekiel chapter 18, uh, verses 19 and 20.
SPEAKER_00: The whole chapter, the whole chapter is arguing that you are responsible for your own sin, and you are not responsible for the sin of others.
SPEAKER_00: You are not responsible for your parents' sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's a whole chapter saying to us, what we're afraid of in the second commandment may not be what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: But verses 18 and 19 of Ezekiel chapter 18, um, verses 19 and 20, you say, Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of his father?
SPEAKER_00: Now we're jumping into a whole line of thought.
SPEAKER_00: When the son has done as what is right and just and has been careful to observe all my statues, he shall surely surely live.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: But the soul who sins shall die.
SPEAKER_00: It's the one who is sinful, who is under the judgment of God and the punishment of God.
SPEAKER_00: The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, or the father suffer for the iniquity of the Son.
SPEAKER_00: So that couldn't be more clear.
SPEAKER_00: We have these two passages.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do with those?
SPEAKER_00: Well, a basic principle for Bible study.
SPEAKER_00: When you come across something that is difficult to understand, look to a clear passage and see if there's a way.
SPEAKER_00: Let the clear things interpret the difficult things.
SPEAKER_00: Basic principle.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't solve everything.
SPEAKER_00: But what I want to say here is we have a whole chapter that is saying it's not the case that the son bears the punishment and the guilt of the father.
SPEAKER_00: What I really do believe that the scriptures teach is that no one bears the guilt and punishment of sin of another except for one.
SPEAKER_00: There is one person with a capital O, there is one who bears the punishment and the guilt for your sin and for mine, and that's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You will not bear the punishment and sin of another person, but you will bear the guilt and the punishment of sin for your own sins unless you cast them on Jesus, the one who died on our behalf, who bore the punishment instead of us.
SPEAKER_00: There is death for sin.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that that death doesn't have to be ours, that that was poured out on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so we repent, we turn, we turn away from our sin, and we turn to God, and we respond in faith, and we believe.
SPEAKER_00: And our guilt and our punishment, which we do richly deserve, is placed on Him.
SPEAKER_00: And we are free, free, free, thank God, free at last.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the scripture is filled with that.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: I think we need to understand something.
SPEAKER_00: In the world of the Bible, we are not just individual islands where what we do has no impact on anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to view ourselves in the world individualistically.
SPEAKER_00: The Eastern mindset tends to view people organically and as a group.
SPEAKER_00: So the point is what we do does greatly impact for good or ill those around us.
SPEAKER_00: It's like throwing a pebble in a pond, and that pebble goes kerplop, and there's this increasing series of concentric circles that goes out.
SPEAKER_00: A pebble does not land in a still pond without a ripple effect.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a whole boulder that is crashing down in the water, and the waves of our sin and of our righteousness and of our uh the good things that we do, they impact other people.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no clearer example of this than in the home and with your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Your sin has impact on those who are closest to you.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first concentric outgoing circle.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it works.
SPEAKER_00: What we do, how we live, impacts those around us.
SPEAKER_00: Parents either be encouraged or be dismayed because the way we live as parents has a dramatic impact on our kids.
SPEAKER_00: We set patterns for them, and we are setting patterns for everyone around us.
SPEAKER_00: People are watching how we live and how we worship and who we are.
SPEAKER_00: The whole issue of child dedication.
SPEAKER_00: Uh what we're really saying with child dedication is that as parents, we desperately need God's help because otherwise we are totally going to screw this thing up.
SPEAKER_00: Because how we raise them will have an impact on them.
SPEAKER_00: That's a different matter than the punishment of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Uh how we live impacts others.
SPEAKER_00: A jealous God, I don't have time to go through that, but jealousy is a love word.
SPEAKER_00: It's a love word.
SPEAKER_00: Jane and I have been married for 46 years.
SPEAKER_00: If she came into my office and saw pictures of other women on the bulletin board and maybe repeated pictures of a particular woman, or maybe found in my material something of the tender words that another woman had given to me, would she have reason to be jealous?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, because we have a special relationship and a special love.
SPEAKER_00: Jealousy only functions in the concept of love.
SPEAKER_00: God is a jealous God.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us and we are to be set aside for him.
SPEAKER_00: And when we're not, we're committing spiritual adultery.
SPEAKER_00: We're whoring around when we should be focused on God.
SPEAKER_00: And God is a jealous God.
SPEAKER_00: We need to embrace who God is, not how we want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: All right, three simple thoughts of application, and I'd like you to sit here for another two hours and we will get through this.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, I just want to say don't make mental images of God.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about it in your own devotional life.
SPEAKER_00: If you tend to try to make a picture of God because it's helpful for you, I would say just don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: I really think that's what the second commandment is all about.
SPEAKER_00: Because whatever picture of Christ that you have, whether it's the traditional picture of Christ where he's got this uh be whatever, uh, a blessed view, look on his face and the long curly hair and a sunbeam coming down on him, or whether it's the more contemporary uh Hooks picture of Christ, he's kind of a cleaned up hippie.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, don't go there.
SPEAKER_00: That's not Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We get distracted, it's not helpful for us.
SPEAKER_00: It hides much of who God is and it misleads us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is our example, and he is the image of the invisible God, and everything we know about Jesus is true, but not everything that is true of God the Father is revealed in Jesus at the time of the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: There's just more to it than that.
SPEAKER_00: But I would just say the pictures that we have of Christ, the pictures in the Sunday school rooms, whatever, and I'm not telling you Sunday school teachers what to do or not to do, I'm just saying there's dangers here.
SPEAKER_00: But if you find in your own devotional life that you're kind of screwing up images to help you, they're hurting you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the last thing I want to say is I wonder what bronze serpents there are in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: What aids to worship get in the way?
SPEAKER_00: And I think I can see several around here.
SPEAKER_00: Sacred music is given to glorify God, not to divide people.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't care whether it's the wonderful hymns of the faith with the pipes and the organs, or whether it's that awful drum and these instruments here.
SPEAKER_00: Because everyone here is likely to say, that I like, or that I like, and that I don't like, and that I.
SPEAKER_00: And folks, what are we doing?
SPEAKER_00: Those things which are given to us, that are given to us to help us glorify God, they get in the way for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: We all have personal preferences of sacred music.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you would not even call this sacred.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are doing it for the glory of God would call it sacred.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't really care what you call it or they call it.
SPEAKER_00: I care about what's the purpose of it.
SPEAKER_00: If we are focusing and directing people towards God, the means is not what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00: Go to any other culture of the world and you will not, you will have different worship wars, not the same kind of worship wars.
SPEAKER_00: It's inherent in the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say to half of you, and I'll say it to the other half, I'll just change the images you know, if you walk in here and and and you See that organ, and you know that we're going to end every service with a hymn, and you just kind of your eyes roll and you sigh and everything, then you have a heart problem, my friend.
SPEAKER_00: Because that which is given to glorify God and to worship God, that aid to worship becomes a consuming thing, so that you could hardly walk in here without being irritated.
SPEAKER_00: And when you talk about worship style at faith, then you can go long and hard about why we shouldn't do this and we should do this, as though it's about you.
SPEAKER_00: We are not here for us, we are here for him.
SPEAKER_00: And all of this junk up here is only designed to focus on him.
SPEAKER_00: The other half of the people will come in and they'll see all of this paraphernalia.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if it was good enough for Paul and Silas, it's good enough for me.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's what I'm tempted to say about technology, but but if when we come in and we're focusing and our minds are going to this awful contemporary music, then you have a heart problem, my friend.
SPEAKER_00: If you're always talking about it, when you think about the church, that's an issue, then you have a heart problem because the means, which is a good means, has become an end in of itself.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the same would be true with a whole lot of other things, and there's things in my life, these don't happen to be the things that I make a big deal about.
SPEAKER_00: But there are bronze serpents in the souls of every one of us.
SPEAKER_00: What is there that is intended by a gracious and a good God to stimulate you spiritually, draw you to Him, that if you're not careful, it becomes the focus that consumes us.
SPEAKER_00: That is sin, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: That is sin.
SPEAKER_00: That is idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that Jesus has an answer for all of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: For some people we need, who are here this morning, you need to recognize that unless you make some kind of a change, that change is called repentance, uh, then the way you live will result in death and destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And there's good news.
SPEAKER_00: Come to Jesus, repent, turn to him, believe.
SPEAKER_00: For many of us, that that may not be what we need this morning, but there's issues in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news is that Jesus forgives.
SPEAKER_00: We come in repentance and confession, and we receive grace and mercy, compassion, a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: We receive a new heart at the time of conversion, but we keep renewing our hearts because the hearts are deceitfully wicked, yours and mine.
SPEAKER_00: Just talk to my wife.
SPEAKER_00: She knows all about my deceitfully wicked wife heart.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna pray.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, this is talking to us.
SPEAKER_00: This is not talking to someone else.
SPEAKER_00: This is talking to me.
SPEAKER_00: This is talking to us.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, by your grace, may we respond to your word in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.