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Exodus 20:4-6 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image — 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 nor 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 fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments”. This is how the New King James Version of the Bible reads on the second commandment. You may have a version that mentions graven images instead of carved images. The point is that we are not to create ANYTHING in the likeness of God. He created us, not the other way around.
The people of God know the 10 Commandments and keep them because they love God and want to be obedient to His laws as they are all good, designed for our benefit, and to promote love and peace between us and all others. The second commandment is not a suggestion but instead is a very clear and serious directive to keep us safe and protected from spiritual idolatry. Any image created or made by a human to represent God is wrong. We must not try to draw God, make a statue of Him, share pictures of what we think He looks like or what the world dictates He looks like on Facebook or anywhere else for that matter. Who are we to do this disobedient act? How can we even create any image of God as He is so perfect, so far above any physical design or thing? It is impossible for us to do this accurately — God tells us there is nothing like Him. This instruction is so important because it goes against our natural carnal human nature and tendencies of wanting a symbol to look at, bow down to, worship, speak to, cry or weep before, and to serve.
For God’s called out ones, no big or small framed pictures of a long haired Christ looking effeminate on our walls, tables or cabinets, no statues of Mary holding the infant Jesus, no pagan rosary beads or golden jewellery of the body of Christ on the cross handed down from great grandmother or father, no pagan saint cards to use as bookmarks in our Bibles, no candles burning before any deities or effigies — nothing should be seen in our homes as a physical piece of worldly goods to symbolize our Creator. Are we unwittingly attempting to bring God into the physical realm where we live? He is not physical, He is a supernatural Spirit and supremely divine worthy of great awe and respect. If we break the second commandment we are not only guilty of sin, we are degrading our Almighty Father and His beloved Son into a finite object that is so far below and beneath the worship they are worthy of.
God is unique, there is none like Him as the Bible says in Isaiah 46:5-10 “To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal and compare Me, that we should be alike? They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god; they prostrate themselves, yes, they worship. They bear it on the shoulder, they carry it and set it in its place, and it stands; from its place it shall not move. Though one cries out to it, yet it cannot answer nor save him out of his trouble. Remember this, and show yourselves men; recall to mind, O you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure”. There is no absence of clarity here, no double meanings, just marvellous wisdom from God.
In our hearts and minds we need to instead be full of His Word, from the Holy Bible, rather than from any so-called image of God. God has made this abundantly plain and clear for very good reason. There is no ambiguity, no confusion, yet people are oblivious to their breaking of this commandment. Could we, even we in God’s Church — God’s people, be guilty of this? Has the devil deceived us into thinking a picture of Christ is harmless, even a good thing? Satan would gleefully love it if we slipped up to not notice that we are sinning if we join in with worldly ways such as these. We must connect the dots between what God says and shun what the rest of the world is doing in ignorance for we are surely not ignorant and are being judged now. It is now high time to judge ourselves through self examination over the next several weeks before Passover, to determine if any idolatrous symbols remain either unnoticed or inadvertently tucked away out of sight but still in our possession, and then purge them out along with any leaven we need to remove according to God’s instructions for the Festival of the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Remember that we have been rescued from the world through divine miraculous intervention by God Himself like the Israelites fleeing Egypt by the hand of Moses and Aaron (Psalm 77:20). We must not make any images to worship, for who are we to fall into the trap of declaring or suggesting what God may look like? Think about what the Israelites did by making a golden calf to worship while Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments. This did not end well for some of the people (Exodus 32:1-35, 1 Corinthians 10:5-14). We must be ever vigilant and not let our relationship with God be defiled and end in spiritual death. Meditate on the words from Psalm 115:1-8 “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Your name give glory, because of Your mercy, because of Your truth. Why should the Gentiles say, “So where is their God?” But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; eyes they have, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear; noses they have, but they do not smell; they have hands, but they do not handle; feet they have, but they do not walk; nor do they mutter through their throat. Those who make them are like them; so is everyone who trusts in them”. The folly of fools is spoken of throughout Psalms and Proverbs. How many scriptures can you find?
While all of the above may be starkly obvious, what about the less obvious? It would be strange and quite improbable for any of us to make or have a golden image of a calf. More likely we would be perhaps guilty of wearing or owning a golden cross like the one given to me when I announced to my (lapsed) Catholic family that God had called me out of the world. Their intentions were for good, however they did not understand, but I did. We all crave a connection to something and having an image to pray to and worship gives a feeling of comfort in our attempt to connect to the spiritual world. God knew this as He created us...hence the loving instruction of the second commandment. Idolatry was the single biggest problem involving sin by the Israelites throughout the whole of the Old Testament by joining in or combining their worship practices with those of foreign pagan gods (Deuteronomy 9:16, Nehemiah 9:18, 1 Kings 12:28, 2 Kings 10:29, 2 Kings 17:16, 2 Chronicles 11:15, 2 Chronicles 13:18, Hosea 10:5). Only problem is it is demonic. There is an underlying power behind these idolatrous practices of using images made from wood and stone, or from materials found in nature and it involves demons whether you accept this truth or not. Yet this demonic power is no match for God’s power. God knew making carved or graven images to worship would be powerfully attractive to humans. We can pass this test to resist and overcome. The jewel studded gold cross on the necklace I received was disposed of quickly but my family never knew as I did not want to hurt their feelings. More importantly God’s feelings — His supremely unselfish and perfect love for us should always be reciprocated as we override our will of trying to please people. To cause God to be jealous is something we should never do. Psalm 78:58-59 warns us “For they (His people) provoked Him to anger with their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their carved images. When God heard this, He was furious, and greatly abhorred Israel”.
To summarise, historically God’s people craved and made visual images in their false worship of God. They relied on these images to bring them closer to God and forgot what they had told Him (via Moses) at the base of Mt. Sinai “We will do all that you say” (Exodus 19:8, Exodus 24:3, 7, Deuteronomy 5:27-29). The people were fearful of God and that is why they told Moses to speak to God on their behalf (Exodus 19:8 and 20:19). God was specifically and deliberately purposeful in only allowing the Israelites to hear his voice rather than see His form. It would have been such a dramatic supernatural event to witness unlike anything else and we may have been trembling through fear too if we were to witness God’s glory firsthand as they did. Furthermore, Psalm 68:8 shows us “The earth shook; the heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God; Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel”. And so, the golden calf became a stumbling block to them as the people engaged in sinful, degrading and offensive idolatrous worship. Their repeatedly sinful and unfaithful ways, despite repeated warnings from God, resulted in separation from God and eventually they went into captivity in strange lands by those who did not know the true God nor did they want to know Him by changing their pagan ways (Psalm 78:38-39). Please read Deuteronomy 4:1-40 as it is incredibly important to absorb, and reflect on with earnest reflection as part of our learning.
God reminds us of the golden calf incident in the New Testament which is such a powerful example for all of us to learn from. It is mentioned summarily in the book of Acts 7:37-43. God is saying to His people in our time NOT to worship Him like this with false images as it is detestable, He despises it, absolutely hates it as it is a sin which goes against the second commandment. Instead we worship God as He has lovingly asked us to with honour, giving Him glory, bowing our knees with no image in mind as we engage and communicate with Him as He desires. We are to worship Him in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23-24). Today we hear His voice from our Bible through His God-breathed and inspired written words. We need to be patient until the time when we will be changed and see Him as He is. Until then wouldn’t you want to please, praise, and glorify God always by keeping the second commandment along with all the rest of them? Let us humble our hearts and be teachable in order to show God how important His instructions are to us.