Exodus 20:4-6
Exodus 20:4-6
Last week we began our journey through the Ten Commandments.
We started with the first commandment, where God tells us that we shall have no other gods before Him.
We saw how that first commandment is fundamental to all the others because it lays the foundation that God is supreme and that nothing is to compete with Him for our affections and worship and admiration.
As Christians, we are to worship Christ alone, with our whole lives.
This is where we find a parallel between the Israelites of the Old Testament and ourselves: Just as God delivered the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and idolatry and told them to worship Him alone, Christ Jesus has delivered you and I from spiritual slavery to sin and our own various forms of idolatry and has called us to worship Him alone.
Not so we can earn His love and favor, but because we already have His love and favor.
Why are we studying the Ten Commandments? Aren’t we past that now that we are in Christ? Didn’t Jesus come and fulfill the law for us through His sinless life and sacrificial death? Aren’t we no longer under law but under grace, as Paul says over and over again in the New Testament?
Paul said to Timothy:
2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV): 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
And when he said that, he would have had to be referring to the Old Testament scriptures, because that’s all the scripture they had at that point!
So the Old Testament is relevant for us as Christians! We just have to know how to apply it.
As Christians, the Ten Commandments apply to us in 3 primary ways:
They teach us what God is like and what His perfect moral standards are for humanity.
They show us our desperate need for our Savior, Christ Jesus.
They show us how to live in order to bring God glory.
Those three points are very important because they form the interpretive grid through which we see and understand and apply each commandment.
So the questions for us, as we approach each commandment are:
What does this particular commandment tell me about what God is like, and what pleases Him?
How does this particular commandment show me my need for the Savior?
How does this particular commandment teach me to live for His glory?
Exodus 20:4–6 (ESV):
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.
This second commandment is, in some ways, a derivative of the first…
If the first commandment is about worshipping the right God… the second commandment is about worshipping the right God the right way.
The first commandment forbids that we worship a false God; The second commandment forbids that we worship the true God falsely.
In essence, God is saying, ‘not only are you not to worship other gods; you are also not to worship me in the way you would worship other gods. Don’t apply pagan worship practices to the way you worship me.’
Or, to say it another way: It’s not just about who we worship, but also how we worship.
Westminster shorter catechism summarizes it like this: the second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His word.
A rather jarring example of the breaking of this commandment is found in Leviticus 10.
As I mentioned last week, Aaron and his sons were anointed as priests to lead God’s people in proper worship of the Lord. The process was laid out very precisely for them to follow.
But one day, two of Aaron’s sons named Nadab and Abihu decided they were going to go off script and worship the Lord the way that they saw fit instead of the way God had commanded.
Leviticus 10:1–3 (ESV): 10 Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’ ” And Aaron held his peace.
So God is very serious about being honored and worshipped rightly.
Which is why He gave the explicit command in verse 4… as we go back through, phrase by 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.
Unlike the gods of the pagan nations around Israel (including Egypt from where they came), God would not tolerate being represented by anything in His creation. Nothing in the sky, the earth or the sea. That pretty much covers all of it.
The pagan gods were represented by images of animals or various other created things. God says, “not me”. After all, He can’t be represented by a created thing because He’s the Creator! He transcends all of creation.
5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God,
Jealousy doesn’t get much positive press in our day… and that’s because when we talk about jealousy we’re typically talking about envy.
For example, when we desire something that rightfully belongs to someone else.
That’s the bad kind of jealousy.
But there is a righteous kind of jealousy too––a kind of jealousy that is rooted in love.
For example, if a husband sees his wife being seduced by another man… should he be jealous? YES. In that case, not only is it right for the husband to feel jealous… it is essential! He must feel jealous… for her affection… for her loyalty… for her love. It is what love requires of him.
In the same way, God is jealous for our affection because He loves us. And our love rightly belongs to Him alone. In fact, throughout scripture, one of the primary metaphors God uses to help us understand His relationship to us as His people is as a husband who loves His bride.
And what’s more, He says there will be consequences for those who commit spiritual adultery and run after carved images instead of worshipping Him the right way:
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
In other words, ‘if you run out on me and commit idolatry in this way… that sin will be punished as long as it continues, even down the family tree.’
This is a powerful warning.
Some people read this and think it’s unfair. How could God punish children for the sin of their fathers? But don’t overlook the last statement: it’s for those who hate him. In this case, the children are just as hateful towards God as the parents!
Remember: God never punishes the innocent.
Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV): 16 “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.
So we know that this commandment is not suggesting that God will punish innocent people for their parent’s sins…
The point is, rather, that when idolatry is passed down from one generation to the next, the punishment for that idolatry will also be passed down.
But then, He lays out a glorious promise that far outweighs the warning:
6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
This is one of the greatest numerical contrasts in the whole Bible: three or four against a thousand!
‘My wrath is this big… my love is THIS BIG’.
In other words: The blessing of true worship is infinitely greater than the curse of false worship.
This captures the heart of God so beautifully.
He says, draw near to me and I will draw near to you.
Be faithful to me, and I will be faithful to you––A thousand times over!
So that is what the second commandment says…
Now, if you’re really tracking with this and taking it seriously, there should be one big question storming your mind:
You go, ‘ok, I get it. God is serious about how He is worshipped, and He is jealous for our affection. How do I make sure I am offering God the right kind of worship?’
To answer that question, you have to understand something about the nature of worship under the New Covenant.
Turn with me to John 4.
In this chapter, Jesus has his famous conversation with the Samaritan woman, also known as the Woman at the Well.
It starts off as a conversation about her life and some of the brokenness she’s experienced, but after she perceives that Jesus is more than just a mere man, she asks Him a pivotal question about worship.
John 4:19–24 (ESV):
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
So she’s asking Him a question about forms of worship.
Where? How?
Listen to Jesus’ answer:
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming
That means a new era is about to dawn…
when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
In other words, the specific locale… the specific external forms… will no longer be the issue…
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Up until this point in redemptive history, ever since the law was given, worship had to be expressed through very specific external forms. You get the forms wrong, you get worship wrong.
See exhibit A: Nadab and Abihu.
But now, Jesus is saying, it’s no longer about the forms of worship, it’s about the heart of worship.
Because now, we don’t go to the temple to worship; we are the temple for worship.
We don’t go to a priest so they can offer worship on our behalf… Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:9 that we Christians are a royal priesthood.
We don’t just carve out time to go to a specific locale and offer our sacrifice to God; we live as a sacrifice to God with our whole lives! (Romans 12).
We don’t just try in vain to obey God’s law as this external standard that is being imposed on us… we love to obey God because He’s written His law on our hearts! He’s given us NEW hearts!
This is what was foreshadowed in the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi… where God chastises the priests because they’re just going through the motions without any real heart for God. That’s how the Old Testament closes! So it’s no wonder that when Messiah finally shows up on the scene, we find Him reordering our worship.
With the New Covenant, Jesus has brought us into a new reality in which we can worship God truly, from hearts that love Him.
This is why the author of Hebrews can say that the New Covenant is so much better than the Old… because it is enacted on better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)
So that is the reality we are under as people who have been adopted into God’s family by faith in Christ.
So the remaining question is…
Now that we are heart-level worshippers through our faith in Christ… are there any specific practices that God prescribes for us when it comes to worshipping Him under the New Covenant?
The answer is, yes. There are several.
New Covenant worship involves Fellowship
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to… fellowship.
Fellowship is the sharing of life together. It involves mutual encouragement and using our various spiritual gifts to meet each other’s needs and build up the body of Christ.
We talked about this in detail a few months ago when we went through 1 Corinthians 12-14.
It’s epic that part of the way God wants to be worshipped is by His people intentionally hanging out!
New Covenant worship involves The Word
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching…
Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people…
In 1 Timothy 4:13 Paul tells Timothy, a young pastor, to devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
2 Timothy 4:1–5 (ESV): 4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
New Covenant worship involves Prayer
1 Timothy 2:8 (ESV): 8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;
Acts 4:24 after Peter and John are released from prison, they gather with the believers and pray together with one voice.
New Covenant Worship involves Singing
Colossians 3:16 (ESV): 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
In our day we tend to equate worship with singing. Worship is much more than singing… but as it turns out, it is not less than singing.
New Covenant worship involves Communion
1 Corinthians 11, Paul reminds the church that Jesus said, “do this in remembrance of me”.
New Covenant worship involves Baptism
Matthew 28- Jesus said our process for making disciples must include baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:41 Those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3000 souls
New Covenant Worship involves Giving
Paul instructs the church on giving as a part of their worship… 2 Corinthians 9:6–7 (ESV): 6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
New Covenant Worship involves Obedient Living
Romans 12:1–2 (ESV): 12 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
This includes continually repenting of sin and re-setting our course on the ways of Christ.
We don’t just worship the right God; we worship the right God the right way. From hearts that know and love Him.
How’s your worship?
Do you understand God’s standard?
Do you understand that He alone sets the terms of how He will be worshipped?
Do you understand that you’ve continually fallen short of that standard? That we desperately need the forgiveness that only Jesus can offer?
Do you understand that once you have repented and placed your faith in Christ that He is calling you to worship Him with your whole life, and in the other ways mentioned?