False Images and the Word of God
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
In 2012, Cecilia Giménez, an 82-year-old widow and amateur painter, attempted to restore Ecce Homo, this is a hundred year old painting of Jesus crowned with thorns in her local church in Borja, Spain.
Here is what the painting looked like originally:
SHOW PAINTING 1
Moisture on the walls of the church had damaged the fresco to look like this:
SHOW PAINTING 2
The authorities suspected vandalism at first, but then determined that the shocking alterations had been made this woman.
The authorities said she had acted on her own.
But Ms. Giménez later defended herself, saying she could not understand the uproar because she had worked in broad daylight and had tried to salvage the fresco with the approval of the local clergy.
“The priest knew it,” she told Spanish television. “I’ve never tried to do anything hidden.”
The tragically failed restoration went viral and her attempt was met with mockery and scorn.
Images of the botched fresco swirled around Twitter and Facebook, inspiring a slew of memes and parodies now found on the Internet.
So you are probably wondering how it looks now. Here it is:
SHOW PAINTING 3
No kidding, this is how it looks right now.
Originally there was talk of pressing changes and they even hired a restoration artist to see if it could be fixed, but it could not be restored.
But, two years later, the village has reassessed their attitudes.
The viral images and memes gifted the rural town with free publicity—150,000 tourists from all over the world came to see this painting.
They paid a dollar to see it, bought pens and mugs with the face on it.
A much-needed bolstering to the sleepy local economy ensued with restaurants opening and local and neighboring museums reporting the highest rates of visitation from the spill-over of tourists.
“The impact of Ecce Homo has been really great for businesses,” said a restaurateur who has done well enough to open a second restaurant.
“Sadly, everyone heads to look at a painting that, frankly, is ugly.”
However “ugly” the fresco may be, Ecce Homo is stamped on the town’s lottery tickets and nearby vineyards use the image on wine labels.
It’s even in a Spanish film in which thieves attempt to steal it and an Opera called “Behold the Man”.
Sermon
Sermon
Today we are going to be in Exodus 20.
We are continuing our series on the 10 Commandments by looking at the 2nd Commandment.
Let’s start reading in Exodus 20:1
1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “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.
5 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,
6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Before we look at this commandment today I want to remind you that
keeping the 10 Commandments will not save you.
Someone could keep all 10 and still go to hell.
Technically speaking someone could break all 10 and still go to heaven if their faith was in Jesus.
I believe King David will be in heaven, but he commited adultery, bore false witness, and had Uriah murdered.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
God’s grace is a gift that we receive by faith, that is how we are saved.
It is crucial for us to understand then, how to relate to God. Jesus has purchased our salvation but we must accept His gift.
So lets pray and we’ll get started
PRAYER
Last week pastor Matt talked to us the first Commandment.
You shall have no other gods before Yahweh.
The second commandment is closely related to this commandment.
In the first commandment, God is dealing with who to worship.
The second commandment deals with how to worship.
Point #1: The second commandment forbids false worship.
This commandment is not forbidding artistic expression.
SHOW PRECIOUS MOMENTS
Please do not go home and destroy your precious moments collection!
Unless you are worshipping them, then smash them with a hammer and through them away.
There are two different things that it forbids false worship.
4 “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.
The Hebrew word for image means idol, and image of man or animal.
This word forbids worshipping false idols for the other gods mentioned in the first commandments.
So the commandment forbids false worship of false gods.
But there’s more here. Look at the next phrase:
4 “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.
The Hebrew word means likeness or resembling of anything in all creation.
There is a different emphasis we must not miss.
Not only is the false worship of false gods forbidden, but Yahweh must not be worshipped falsely.
Yahweh must not be worshipped using an images or an other likeness either.
SO the commandment forbids false ways to worship the True God Yahweh as well.
We see both of these ideas in
15 “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire,
16 beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female,
Moses is reminding the Israelites here that they didn’t see the form of the Lord at Horeb when He spoke to them they only heard His voice.
This is the authorized way to create images of Yahweh, you can think of it as verbal imaging.
In Exodus 32 the Israelites made a golden calf.
4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”
The word Lord here is the same word Yahweh.
Whether the people fully understand it or not, Aaron is saying this golden calf represents Yahweh.
Here is the problem.
If you don’t know the full story go read Exodus 32-34 this week but Moses comes down destroys the first tablets and then when he goes back to Yahweh look at what Yahweh does:
6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.
The Lord shows Moses here how he is to be imaged, through verbal imaging.
Moses realizes this, so he quickly bows his head toward the earth and worships.
So let’s look at the next section of our text in Exodus 20:
5 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,
6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
SO here is
Point #2: God is Jealous for His glory and His people.
What does it mean God is a jealous God?
How are we to understand jealousy as it relates to God?
The Hebrew word means jealous or zealous and when we talk about God we must not misunderstand it to mean He’s suspicious, distrustful, or wrongly envious.
There are three ways we should understand God’s Jealousy:
The demand of devotion only to Him
He is God, who created all, and Lord over all, He has graciously rescued Israel from the Egyptians.
8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
2. An anger against all who oppose Him.
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the Lord. In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.
3. The energy He uses to free His people.
We saw this a few weeks ago in
18 Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.
19 The Lord answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.
When we say God is Jealous our culture kicks against this idea.
But God is Jealous and He has every right to be! He is owed complete devotion and allegiance.
That being said I think it’s easy for us to miss the point. God isn’t just Jealous, He is also Love. He gives love its definition and we see that in verse 5 and 6.
Look at 5 and 6 again:
5 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,
6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Don’t miss the contrast here
To those who want nothing to do with God who want to worship their own god of their own making he visits the iniquity to 3 and 4 generations,
meaning that each generation who choses to reject Him, He keeps visiting their iniquity
but to those who love Him and worship Him as He deserves He shows steadfast, enduring love to thousands.
This word for steadfast love is one of the best words in the OT for the grace of God.
It appears some 248 times.
3 or 4 compares to thousands, there is no comparison to God’s love for His people
These words of love and hate have to do with loyalty not just emotion or feeling.
The second commandment forbids false worship.
God is Jealous for His glory and His people.
If we can’t use carved images and the likeness of created things to represent God then what can we use?
Point #3: We image God though the Word of God.
We talked about one earlier.
An authorized way we can image God is through verbal imaging.
We can use the Word of God, the Bible to point toward who God really is.
God has made it so that we can use Scripture as a guide to properly worship Him.
We can properly express our love for Him.
A second way we can image Him is through our lives.
I am not talking about getting a Forehead tattoo with Yahweh on it.
SHOW FOREHEAD TATTOO
This guy sold advertising space on his head for one month.
Snore stop paid him over $37,000 to have this on his head for one month.
I worked for an electrician who asked me how much money it would take for me to get a tattoo of the name of the company on my bald head.
I told him a million dollars and it was a done deal.
You can tell by my head that he didn’t go for it.
We were each made in the image of God.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
We each are image bearers of God, sin tainted this image.
We were made to image our creator, but after the fall, we began to focus on our own image, our own thoughts and desires.
This is why Jesus came, to show us the perfect image of the Father.
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Jesus is the exact representation of God’s real being. He isn’t a false idol or a created thing.
No Jesus is the creator.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Jesus show us how we can love the Father.
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,
This is exactly what Exodus 20:6 says:
6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Also look at the apostle John
3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.
4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,
5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:
6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
You see, we are forbidden to make idols and images of God because we were created for Him, for His glory.
So now in Christ we see the full picture of God’s glorious love and kindness.
We end where we began in Ephesians 2, its worth reading the whole first part:
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked,
No longer reflecting God’s glory
following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,
This is Satan, Behind every false god, Satan is there
the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
we weren’t carry out God’s will but our own, imaging ourselves not God
carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Here’s the good news, He didn’t leave it there
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
his steadfast, enduring love
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
the perfect image of God
7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
showing us steadfast love for thousands and thousands, forever and ever.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
We aren’t suppose to make images to worship
We are the Images
We were made to worship
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Which side do you find yourself?
Are you worshipping images of your own making? Are you trying to make God look like you think He should look?
Or
Are you following His commands? Walking in the way He wants you to Walk?
Are you letting God be God?
God is clear here in Exodus 20:4-6
There are only two ways we can go:
We either worship sin
Or we worship God
There is no middle ground
If you aren’t a slave to God
Then you are still a slave to sin.
προσευχωμεθα
Communion
Communion