Description
FIRST & 10 SERMON SERIES
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
JANUARY 10, 1999
ED YOUNG
Last week we launched a brand new series of talks on the Ten Commandments called FIRST & 10. Why? Because at the first of the year we think it is vital, it is paramount, for us to get a read on the ten directives, the priorities for successful living. In our first session the commandment was pretty straightforward. It was easy to grasp. God said in the first precept, you will have no other gods before me. We talked about selfism, and possessionism and knowledgeism and all the other isms. We understood that we are to prioritize God as God. We are to worship Him as the true and living Lord. If we don’t, if we put any object or any personality in the slot reserved for God we are going to be disappointed in this life and in the next. In other words, the other gods, little g, don’t have the octane, the RPMs to help you and to help me when we need it the most.
So I understood right up front the first commandment and I think you did too. But the second commandment, the one I am going to talk about today seems a little bit archaic and irrelevant in our high tech time.
Let’s read it together. You can follow me on the side screens. Exodus 20: 4-5. “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.” I don’t know about you, but I have not had the burning desire this week to melt down my wedding ring or to carve some image on my garage and bow down and worship it. “I can dig this may have been necessary 3,000 years ago and how your people may have struggled with this one. But right here in 1999? Come on, God.” And some of you are thinking while I am explaining this, “Oh, boy, this will be an easy week for me. No problem. I can run through my mental calendar. Let’s see, I have an appointment on Monday, and Wednesday is pretty rugged. But Friday, I can spend at the golf course if the weather is OK.” Others here who are single are saying, “This is pretty cool. I can check out some eligible candidates to date. This will be nice. The second commandment. I don’t have a desire to make anything or mold anything or melt down anything or carve something and then bow down and worship it.”
But before you go off in never, never land listen, because this second commandment comes dangerously close to the warning track of your life and mine. It gets up close and personal to some serious junk that we are carrying around. This commandment challenges us, confronts us and really gets in our face.
During this series we said that we were going to use one grid to explain the commandments. We will look first of all at the meaning of every commandment. What does it really mean? Then we will follow the meaning with the mentality. What was God’s rationale? Let’s get in God’s psyche, let’s get in His thoughts to see why He came up with the commandment. And then we are going to study the implications, the so whats. Or you could look at that grid and say the what, the why and the how.
We have just read the second commandment. Let’s think about the meaning of it. What does the second commandment mean? What was God driving at when He said you shall not make for yourself a carved image? What is all that about? God is simply prohibiting the worship of anything we make, mold or imagine. And God was driving at this because God knew and knows in His sovereignty that anything we use to try to mirror the majesty of our Maker is going to fall miserably short of communicating the totality of God’s being. So God is saying, don’t minimize the majesty of your Maker. Don’t even go there. Don’t even try to make something, mold something or think something up that communicates the essence and the nature of God because it will not and cannot work. That is what this commandment means.
To show you what I am talking about, let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever seen the Grand Tetons? If you have seen the Grand Tetons in person, lift your hand. I am talking about the beautiful mountain range in Wyoming. Keep your hands up, be proud of it. OK, if you have never seen the Grand Tetons, raise your hand. Look at the hands going up. Now the Grand Tetons can be seen on the side screen. We have a picture of them, gorgeous mountains. That is for those here who have not seen the Grand Tetons. But I have got one even better for you.
I have seen the Grand Tetons. This summer I stood in Wyoming and saw those majestic mountains bursting through the bold blue skies. I am going to make you a model of the mountains, of the Grand Tetons with this Playdough. It is going to work great. This is for all of you folks who have never seen the Grand Tetons. Here I go. Let me do it right here. You know I majored in Fine Arts for awhile at Florida State University. (Molds and shows the audience a Playdough mountain.) What do you think? I mean, what a representation of the Grand Tetons! You are saying, “Ed, I think that you sipped too much Starbucks this morning. Give me a break. You cannot even attempt to mirror the majesty of the Grand Tetons with Playdough, so go ahead and put the Playdough back in the canister.”
That is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? That is kind of a stretch. Who would do that? Yet, a lot of us play the same game and do the same thing with God. We take objects, we take thoughts, we take things and we kind of take our hands out and do the Playdough deal to mirror and make the majesty of God. God is saying, put your Playdough away. Put some of your presuppositions away. Put some of your images away. Put some of your objects away because these fall miserably short of the true image and character of God.
You know the crucifix has been a symbol for millions and millions of Christians down through the ages. People love to wear the crucifix. And the crucifix is a beautiful piece of jewelry. However, it falls miserably short of communicating the true focus of Christianity. The crucifix is a cross with Jesus hanging there, His head down, His body limp. It shows us that Christ died on the cross for our sins, yet it leaves Jesus on the cross. It doesn’t communicate the fact that Christ was buried for three days and rose again. It doesn’t communicate the fact that Christ is ruling and reigning in heaven. It doesn’t communicate the fact that He is a constant companion, that He is here with us, that He is leading us and guiding us and showing us the way. Oh, no, no, no. The crucifix falls miserably short of mirroring the majesty of our maker. Anything that we make, mold or imagine in an attempt to communicate the true essence and nature of God is coming dangerously close to breaking the second commandment. Because image is everything. Inage is everything.
God’s chosen people, the Israelites, didn’t get into trouble when they worshipped in the temple. They got into trouble when they began to worship the temple. The sixth century Christians didn’t mess up the with the second commandment when they had statues and ornaments and decorations in their churches. They broke the second commandment when they began to worship the statues and the ornaments and the decorations. Don’t you see? It is so easy, isn’t it, to try to make something or mold something or imagine something that mimics and reflects the image of God. It doesn’t really work. Yet, in our finiteness, in our humanity, we want something that we can touch and feel and experience.
I love photo albums. I mean, I really like to thumb through album after album. If you ever come to our house, man, we have photo albums dedicated to each child. I even have a photo album dedicated to each fish I have caught. We love photo albums. And I am sure that you have photo albums because photo albums capture those Kodak moments, you know. Something bugs me about photo albums. I hate incomplete photo albums. We have a couple at our house. It is our desire to take a bunch more pictures and fill them up, to have photo albums that are packed. Don’t you know when you are looking through a photo album and two or three pages are looking good and sweet and fine and all of a sudden the others are just blank.
In a real way, large blocks of us are carrying around incomplete mental photo albums of the image of God. And some of us are carrying these images in our minds that someone gave us a year ago, five years ago, fifteen years ago. Some of us are carrying around one dimensional, blurry, black and white pictures of God. And we think that is the true nature of God. We think that is His majesty. However, some of these images that we have carried around, that even I carried around years ago, come dangerously close to the warning track of our lives. They come dangerously close to breaking the second commandment. I will say it one more time, God prohibits us from making something, molding something or imagining something that reflects the totality of His being. He knows that we cannot do it in our finiteness, with our limitations.
I want to run through some of the popular images that we have in our incomplete photo albums of God. The first is Grandpa God. Good, old Grandpa God. We love Grandpa God. We would rather alter God than allow God to alter us. And Grandpa God is popular. He is forgiving. He is benign. He is kind. He is grace-driven. He is as comfortable as a Lazyboy chair. It doesn’t matter what you do? It doesn’t matter how far you fall. Grandpa God always says, “Come here, come here.” He perches us on His knee and says, “It’s OK. Everything is cool. I still love you. You are still great. Don’t worry about it. Just get up there and live life.”
Some of us have another image of God in this incomplete photo album. Candyland God. Do you remember the game, Candyland? I still play that with my kids. It is a classic game. The Candyland God is an image of God in heaven just pouring out blessings and giving us all of this stuff. This is perpetuated by a lot of the televangelists you see. This erroneous doctrine says that God is a Candyman and that all you have to do is have faith because God wants you to be rich. He can’t wait to give you boatloads of cash and a Mercedes Benz. God wants that for you. “Just have faith, and give me the money.” The Candyman God can, because He mixes it with love and wants everyone to be rich.
We have another image of God, the Man Upstairs God. You know, the man upstairs, my buddy, the God that kind of hangs out, who is ready to come bounding down the staircase of heaven when I give Him a 911 call during my microwave prayer. “God, I need you. God, I am in trouble. God, I have been left in the lurch. God, please come and rescue me, take care of me. Come on, come on, God.” And we love to have this detached deity, this sequestered savior up there, don’t we?
There is still another image that we carry around in our incomplete photo albums. The Supreme Court God. The Supreme Court God has that long, black, flowing robe and carries around a 40-pound gavel just waiting for you and me to come up on the radar screen of rebellion. He just cannot wait to lift His gavel up and say, “Guilty, guilty, guilty. You are punished. You messed up. I will discipline you.”
Let me bring up one more image that we carry around. The Emotional God. God is an Emotional God. And you say to yourself that you haven’t really worshipped or met with God unless you have had a tear run down your cheek or a lump in your throat or a chill down your spine. You say you have to feel it, have some kind of knowledge in your senses that you have been with God.
Many of us get these images of God from our parents. If you grew up in a home that was pretty much guardrail and guideline free, you see God like that. “Hey, man, everything is OK. Don’t worry about it. Your language, hey. The places you go. No problem. Immoral lifestyle, don’t worry.” We love to have a God who we can control and alter and if we grew up in homes like that, we think of God like that.
Conversely, if you grew up in a home that was legalistic and ritualistic with lots of rules and regulations, you see God like that. Yes, yes, yes. God does have grandfatherly characteristics. He does forgive. He does forget. He does perch you and me on His knee when we have messed up, when we have fallen into the seas of sin. He does say, “It is going to be OK. I forgive you. Come clean. I receive you and welcome you.” Yes, God does have grandfatherly characteristics.
God is also a God who blesses us. He really does. And I know people that He has blessed in incredible ways, some even financially. Yes, God blesses that way but more often than not, God blesses us in ways that money and things and possessions can’t even touch.
God is also ready for our 911 prayers, ready to rescue us. He is ready to come into the situation when we have had a death in the family or when we are coming across a career move or a marital problem. He is ready when we have fallen into the deep depths of sin. Yes, God is ready to come down, to help. That is one aspect of God.
God is also a judge. He is. And God will discipline those He loves. God will allow us to face the consequences and the repercussions of our rebellion. God is also a God of emotion. And we are going to see that in a couple of moments. God gets angry. God gets sad. God even gets jealous.
So, we serve a 3-D God, a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional God. Don’t ever make the mistake of carrying around just one or two pictures of God. And here is what our agenda is at the Fellowship Church. Our major focus is to give all of you a packed photo album of God. We want you to understand the totality of His being. And let me show you how we do that just from a corporate format. The Bible says that we are to worship together regularly, intentionally and strategically. So up here, through the music, through the drama, through videos, through the teaching, we want to give you as many snapshots of God as possible. And let me show you how we accomplish this.
Beginning in August we did a series called CORPORATE MAKEOVER. For ten weeks we looked at what God says about work. We discovered that God thought work up. And work is a blessing. We are made in the image of God and we are made to work. And our work, check this out now, can become an act of worship. Isn’t that cool? I don’t care what you do. I don’t care how menial you think it is or how big you think it is, your worship can happen in the marketplace. From there we went into a series on the local church, ON PURPOSE. There is no doubt about it. God is so crystal clear on this one. That entity which is the most near and dear to the heart of God is the local church. Look around. The local church. This is where God is going to deal and move in a supernatural way. And we discovered that God is the strategist behind the church.
From there we moved onto another series, a real popular one with Y2K looming on the horizon. We talked about THEE END. For three weeks we saw how God is the author, the perfector and the finisher of our faith. We saw how God is in control and that we have read the last page. We have seen the genius and the nature of God as it results in pointing to the final days on this planet.
From there we jumped into a highly controversial series called THE UNTOUCHABLES. We talked about abortion, homosexuality and racism. In that series, we saw the Lord, Himself, standing with love, standing with grace, but standing firm in the seas of relativism. We saw what the Bible says about these issues against the backdrop of all of the rhetoric and the political spin doctors and pundits out there. Now in this series, called FIRST & 10, we are going to see the genius of our Father God and all of the parameters and the principles and guardrails that He gives us for successful living. Don’t you see the different pictures and images of God that you have gotten here since August? I have not even touched on our First Wednesday corporate worship. I have not even talked to you about the Connection Classes, the Commitment Classes and the Home Teams. I have not even gone to the Women’s Ministry and the Men’s Ministry. I have not even told you about Children’s Church and Preschool. Everything that we do here is a photo album deal. We want you to get a fully packed photo album of the nature and character of God. That is our agenda.
So that is the meaning behind the second commandment. Now, let’s go to the mentality. What was God thinking about when He thought this one up? What was God thinking about when He said you shall not make for yourself a carved image? I will tell you what was driving Him. I will tell you about His mentality. It is found in Exodus 20: 5-6. And this is going to shock you because we are going to talk about the fact that God is jealous. “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God….” Let me stop right there. This word jealous means that God will defend and protect His priority, his slot, in your life and mine. That is how much God loves us. God sees us chasing after something else; our golf game, our wardrobe, our cars, our career, our money. These things can become gods or images. So God will defend and protect and do whatever it takes to keep His slot reserved for Him and Him alone. He is a jealous God. Well then, we go into something that is real sticky. “…visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.” Oh, oh. Some are saying that they are checking out here and choose to worship another god. “…but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.” Every time that God talks firmly, He follows it up with love.
But let’s talk about the iniquity deal. Let’s say you go see a psychologist, and I highly recommend Christian psychiatrists and psychologists. Christian psychiatrists and psychologists use the authority base of the Bible. When they do so, I am all for it. Psychologists will sit you down and talk to you. They are trained to do that. Let’s say I am talking to my man, Thomas. I know Thomas, right there. Thomas Cross. Raise your hand, Thomas. Thomas is a good friend of mine, been here for a long time so I can pick on him. I will not embarrass him. I would not embarrass anybody here.
Let’s say I am a psychologist and I am talking to Thomas. “OK, Thomas, you played pro basketball and you have done this and done that. You have been in New York. Well, Thomas, let me talk to you about your past, your family of origin, your grandparents, maybe some other people way back there in your past who influenced you. Because in a real way, Thomas, you are who your parents and your grandparents and your great grandparents were.” What am I doing? I am involving him in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy says that all of us to a large extent are kind of wired up the way people were in our past. This is no new deal. God said this three or four thousand years ago. And here is the great thing about this text. I will run through it one more time. “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.” Yeah, I have got tendencies and you have got tendencies that have been given to us sinetically from our parents, great grandparents and great, great grandparents.
Well, the good news is that you and I can break the cycle of sin. We all have unique tendencies that others don’t have. Some of us here have a tendency to fall into exaggeration and lying. Others of us have a tendency to fall into lust and promiscuity. Others have a tendency to fall into materialism. It is about time to stand and break the cycle of sin. You say to yourself, “Why do I do this? Why do I have this tendency?” You were born a sinner, you were born with the bents but some of it too, the destructive habit and sin pattern, came to you from your parents, grandparents and great, great grandparents. That is why Jesus said in John 14, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” That is why God said at the conclusion of the fifth verse, “…but showing mercy to thousands to those who love Me and keep My commandments. So, if we love God, we are going to keep His commandments. We are going to break these negative cycles of sin.
Let me give you one sidebar right quick, one caveat. We have been talking about worship, haven’t we? Sometimes, Christ followers can get so into the methodology of worship that we begin to worship the method instead of the God behind the method. We begin to worship the way we worship instead of the God of worship. Case in point would be, years ago a lot of people in church couldn’t read. So the church came up with liturgy. Liturgy was thought up so that people could memorize scripture. But after awhile the Christians began to worship liturgy. They said that if they didn’t have liturgy, they couldn’t really worship God.
I talk to others who say that they can’t really worship unless they have had communion. I ask you where in the Bible does it say that we are to have communion every time we worship? It is not in the book. Jesus has told us time and time again to go through communion regularly and we think that communion should be practiced regularly. That is why we do it here once a month during our midweek First Wednesday service. But you don’t have to have communion to worship.
Others say that they have got to have the icons of Christianity to worship, the stained glass, the crosses everywhere. Others believe they must stay in one denomination or another denomination or they can’t really worship. You don’t really have to have gear to worship God. Those icons are great and wonderful. But do you see how they can go dangerously close to the warning tracks of your life and mine. They can become the objects of our worship. We can break the second commandment that way.
Still others say that they are unable to worship unless they are able to kneel. Or some say that they have not really worshipped unless they have sung the great hymns of the church or have not really worshipped unless they have lifted their hands. All those things are great. But that does not constitute worship. And sometimes we worship the way we worship at the expense of the true God of worship.
Let me show you something that I did as a third grader. As you know my Dad was a pastor. One day when I was in third grade, after church while people were kind of milling around talking, I raced up and down the aisles as fast as I could go. People were watching me run when all of a sudden, bam, the church lady stood up and said, “Young man, your father is the pastor. Do you realize that you are running in God’s house? I cannot believe it. Where are your Mom and Dad?” Let me tell you something right up front. We are to reverence the church. We are to take care of the church. We are not to trash it. But what she said was wrong. This is not God’s house. God does not live in this house. A lot of us would love to say this is God’s house, this is where He resides, because it is comfortable that way. We could visit Him every other week. We could keep Him in the confines of the church. We want God in this house and we don’t want Him to invade our house. We want to alter God rather than letting God alter us. Don’t you see how so many things can cause us to break this second commandment?
It is fascinating. When I read it a couple of weeks ago I was thinking that this would be a tough one, carving up something, melting down something. We don’t go there. But when you think about it and pray about it and study it, wow.
So we have seen the meaning and the mentality. Now let’s look at the implications of this commandment. Let’s look at the worship aspect of it. How do I worship God as God? How do I prioritize God as God? How do I never, ever fall into the trap of making something, molding something or imagining something that attempts to mirror the image of my Maker? How do I do it in a God ordained way? Two quick ways. Number one. Prepare for worship. We are challenged to come to worship weekly and regularly. We are challenged to orbit our schedules around the schedule of the local church. I sometimes laugh we people say that that does not fit their schedule. Oh, really? Since when do I impose my schedule on God’s church? We do try to facilitate your schedule as much as possible by having a Saturday night service, a Sunday service as well as a midweek service once a month. But we have to say, “OK, God, you alter me, I want to alter my agenda, my schedule around what You want for me. And I have got to prepare for worship. That means prepare like I prepare for a concert or a movie or a game. I have got to prepare for it. I have got to get up early. And I have got to be on time. And yeah, we are going to have some traffic challenges here. That is why in the next three months we are going to have a brand new parking lot with 1,000 more spaces and two more entrance roads. It will be wonderful. The traffic problems will be gone.
But I have got to get up early to go to the Fellowship Church and that is a great thing. God is doing wonderful things here. That means I am up early, I am ready to go. I am getting prepared. Well, how do I prepare in a practical way? I challenge you to do this. Pray. Pray. Before you show up on the weekend, pray for your own life. Say, “God I know you have something awesome to say to me. It could be during the opening song, through a drama, through a video, through something the teacher said. God, I know you have something great for me to hear and apply and do.”
I will never forget a couple of months ago. I was dealing with something in my life. The first song that the worship team did that morning just cut me like a knife. I just started weeping and said, “God, you are so real. God, you are so right. Thank you, God.” So it could be through a number of things. Pray for yourself.
Also, pray for others. Many, many people who show up here are dealing with some serious issues. Many people here are in the deep weeds. They are struggling with real issues. Pray for them. Pray for many to establish a personal relationship with Christ. Pray for many in their marriages. Pray for many who need healing. Pray for people. This is before you get to church.
If you look through the book of Psalms, you will see from Psalm 120 to 134 this little phrase – a Psalm of ascent. Here is the picture behind it. When the children of Israel would go up to the temple once a year for the Passover deal, they would be climbing an incline. They would sing those songs of ascent. As they were going to the temple they would sing the Psalms and prepare their lives and hearts for worship. Another way we prepare is, we unplug, we disengage, we get rid of the beepers and the alarm watches. We are worshipping God. We do not want to do anything that would disturb God. But a lot of us here have a companion. We take this companion with us wherever we go. It is huge to us. We take it on trips, everywhere. A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a pastor friend of mine and as we sat down he put this cell phone in between us. He spent a bunch of time talking on the cell phone, interrupting our conversation repeatedly.
I have a cell phone. I think they are great. I am all for technology. I don’t know about you, but I have had maybe two phone calls in my life that were important enough for me to lug a cell phone out to eat with someone. I will tell you what you can do. You can bring your cell phone here and have the ringer on if Bill Gates is going to call you. Because if Bill Gates wants to call you, I would love to talk to him too. Or Billy Graham, better than that. If Billy Graham is going to call you, you can have your cell phone on. I would take the cell phone and hold it up to the microphone so he could talk with everyone. Leave your cell phone in the car when you go to church. Prepare for worship. Pray. Be on time. Disengage and unplug and get your heart right for worship.
Also, participate in it. Participate in worship. It is all in the way we sit, the way we listen, the way we sing, the way we take notes. I challenge you to take notes. I remember much more when I write it down. It will help fill out your photo album of God. When you are singing, sing to God. Some people hardly seem to sing. If you know Christ personally, you need to sing because if Christ has saved you and bought you with a price, if He is living inside of your life, if He is guiding you and giving you direction and meaning and purpose, you have got to sing. I don’t care if you are tone deaf. You have got to sing to Him. Now if you are not a believer, you don’t have to sing. We are not going to force you to sing. But if you are a Christ follower sing about what Christ has done. Sing that He is a deliverer, that God is faithful. Be on point. Get ready to listen. Listening is not just hearing. It is taking the words and applying them to your life. Participate in worship. Get ready for it. Get engaged in it. Get involved in it.
Over the Christmas holidays my family and I traveled to Columbia, SC. While we were there, I was hanging out with one of my nephews. He played football for a great Christian school called Ben Lipon Academy. He was showing me a video montage of their team. He is a wide receiver. I was watching it and it was well done, kind of like those NFL films. A great deal. Well, the team did something before every game that really struck a cord in my spirit. They would all get together and put their hands together. Here is what they would say. “One, two, three. Audience of one. Yea.” Then they hit the field. I asked what they were saying. “Audience of one. Yea.” He told me that as Christians they felt they were players playing for an audience of one. Playing for God. Whoa! That is strong stuff.
Check this out now. When we come to church, if we know Jesus personally, we are the players. We are playing, we are worshipping for an audience of one. You are not worshipping for your neighbor, nor for me, nor for some group. You are worshipping for an audience of one.
So when we speak about the second commandment, image is everything. The ultimate image. The panoramic image. The packed photo album image of our great God. Our great God.