If simple communication is far from simple, how much more difficult is it to communicate about something that is complex? How do we communicate God to each other and to our world?

This is what the Second Commandment entails.

The First Commandment tells us who to worship: the one true God. We saw last week that if God is our priority we must believe God to be supreme, sufficient and sovereign in our lives. There are no other options, no other contenders to God as our one and only priority in life.

The Second Commandment focuses on HOW we are to worship. How do we communicate the God we are to worship? The First Commandment tells us not to worship false gods, while the Second Commandment tells us not to worship God falsely. We must communicate the true God, truthfully.

How we worship deals specifically with our communication of God. How we order our life communicates a lot about the God we worship. The trouble is we often send confusing messages to those around us and to ourselves when we construct idols.

The trouble with the Second Commandment is that we do not properly understand it. We read it as an extension of the first and so, we think, "I'm clean on this one. I don't have a problem with Commandment Number Two. I've never melted down my jewelry to fashion a god. I've never gone to my shop and carved an image of God. In fact, some of you are probably saying, 'You know, I even flunked shop class; I couldn't carve the bark off a stick without endangering my life; and if I could do it, I surely wouldn't bow down to it. So this is going to be an easy week for me.'"

When we see the word "idols" we picture an animist, someone who carves a hunk of wood and bows down to it, thinking that a hunk of wood is now god. With typical shallow perception, we think such a person is ruled by rather inferior superstitions. We mistakenly think it is both quaint and far removed from how we behave.

In cultures where images are used in worship, the use of the image is deliberate, enabling the worshiper to have direct contact with god. With contact there is control. The idol becomes a means of manipulating the gods into service. False worship rejects God's design for the worshipers insist on having a direct connection with their deities. There is a localizing, a taming of the powerful deity through the image. God is here, within my reach, my grasp, god will be responsive. There is the idea of direct access, of imminence, of being close by. The presence of the deity is limited as it is either contained in the object or that the object communicates what is necessary to know about that deity.

The prohibition here is not against making representations of false gods, but making an image of the true God.

This is a warning not to limit the eternal, omnipresent God to a single point.

This is a warning not to limit the Creator by making a creation of Him.

This is a warning not to limit that which is living and picture Him as an inanimate object.

Rome’s great scholar, Marcus Varro, who wrote more than 600 books on a variety of subjects, insightfully commented on this limiting of God when he wrote: "They who first introduced images of the gods removed fear and added error."

And that is exactly what we do either through physical media or with our own imaginations: create an image of who God is, what He is like. When we set about the task of creating God in our image, we domesticate God, placing Him on a leash, treating Him like a well trained pet whenever we seek to limit His presence to areas in our life we deem our own, out of His reach, none of His business.

How do we treat God? Do we understand His transcendence, of one who is not located in either a piece of wood or somehow stuffed into my heart, or the dusty pages of Scripture? Are you awed by God's transcendence? His "otherness" from us? That we can not locate Him on earth, in the sea or even confine Him benignly in heaven?

The First Commandment says, "no other gods." The Second says, "No self-determined and self-willed worship of the only Lord God." Which is to say, "If you stand with your back to idols, you still have to learn to bow properly before the only true God."

Some see verse nine limiting the prohibition against images so that one can create a picture, either mental or metal as long as they don’t bow in worship. But our conception of God is worship, whether we do it on Sunday morning or in the privacy of our home.

If idols limit God's presence, making Him here and not there, it also limits His potential, His power, for an idol will say 'God is this and not that!" When it comes to the infinite God, an image will conceal far more than it will ever reveal. The greatness and majesty of God can not be confined in a painting or a sculptor.

A little girl who was in her room drawing with crayons when her father came in to see what she was doing. He looked at the picture and asked, 'What are you drawing, honey?' And without looking up the little girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God, Daddy.' The father thought for a second and said, "But, honey, nobody knows what God looks like.' Undaunted his daughter replied, 'They will when I'm finished!

The father was right. God is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional being who cannot and must not be represented by a single image. Our images of God will always end up reducing God in some way.

We know this is true with images of people. If you wished to know my wife and I were to whip out my wallet and show you her lovely picture – that would be something. It would tell you she has a nose, 2 eyes, a mouth and blonde hair... and that she is exquisitely beautiful. But if I never introduced you to her, if I said this picture is my wife, you’d wonder about me. How much more with God?

We all need our minds reprogrammed when it comes to our concepts of God. The vast majority of our snapshots are produced from our own mind. Imagining God in our heads can be just as real a breach of the 2nd Commandment as imagining Him by the work of our hands. How often do we hear, "I like to think of God as the great Architect..." or "I don't think of God as Judge, just Father." What then happens to our mental images? They become metal images. The problem is not in the creation, but in the conception.

Our conception, our picture, as well as that thing which we create from it is by nature reducing God, limiting His potential. So, both psychological and physical images of God are by nature reductionistic. They can only convey to us a slice of the whole. They can only give us a truncated, single shot image of God.

What is your snapshot?

Is it the mental image of God as an Angry Judge, pounding His gavel, and shouting out the sentence of condemnation: GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY. Such people see God like a Celestial Clint Eastwood who is always saying 'Feel lucky, Punk? Go Ahead. Make my day.' Their only image of God is a God of Wrath and Justice. And so they spend their lives either running from Him or cowering before Him in crippling fear.

Then there is the image of God as the safe, old Grandfather in the sky. He can be somewhat fumbling and forgetful, a little weak, wimpy and sentimental. Such people usually see a big difference between the harsh God of the Old Testament and the meek, mild, and soft-spoken Jesus. They choose Jesus - the accepting, forgiving, pale Galilean. These people will often refer to God as The Man Upstairs, or use some equally cavalier nomenclature.

Even religious things can become substitutes for God. Whether it is a cross or a crucifix, a statue or a picture, a relic or a creed, it must never be invested with God-like qualities. The problem is not in what these things depict, but what they fail to depict. Nothing made with human hands can ever adequately depict the holiness, majesty, and the transcendence of God. His character is beyond adequate depiction. Someone has said that it is as absurd as, "asking a scholar to explain the history of the world in one sentence, or a sculptor to make a replica of Mt. Rushmore on a single grain of sand, or a musician to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with a referee's whistle."

I agree with Dr. Laura Schlessinger who writes, "One could read the Second Commandment as follows: ‘Do not make yourSELF an idol." We idolize our individual FEELINGS....we make and base major decisions on how we FEEL rather than on what God says. We worship happiness and self-esteem at all costs....we care more about personal rights than God-given responsibilities. We worship how we look....we especially bow down to our careers. In fact it is often not until the first heart attack that men realize that they work to live not live to work.

You see, whenever anything other than God becomes the absolute focus of our attentions and activities, that is idolatry. Nothing in our lives — especially not SELF — should make God take a back seat....nothing should interfere with our relationship with Him.

What are the consequences of limiting God’s presence and potential? To so limit God through a tangible object or a mental image is to set aside the Covenant, to demean the God who brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. God’s response, though, seems swift and harsh. Why this reaction?

Because when we form our concept of God, when we become the creators and God the creature, created in our own minds or by our own hands, then we've rejected the very Covenant itself.

Notice the language: I am the LORD your God. This reminds us once again who started this whole process off. We worship God not because He is the creation of our imagination, but because He has revealed Himself to us as the Lord who brought us out of the bondage of slavery. We do not approach God in any other way than that which He prescribes in His Word.

In Scripture there is a one-to-one correlation between idolatry and adultery; both raise up competitors for the love of the Lover. The language used here is the same language as a marriage relationship, and to create an image of God is at its heart, chasing after another spouse. God's jealousy is not seen as intolerance but exclusiveness. God’s love is exclusive because it springs from first God’s own uniqueness as well as the uniqueness of His relationship to us, His people.

What verse 9 tells us is that our idolatry will affect not only us, but our families as well.

The way we worship has an impact on our offspring. In essence the effects of our sin is projected upon them. They will be affected by our decisions. If I live indifferently to the things of the Lord, if I continually give in to every suggestion of the flesh, if I have a love affair with materialism and acquiring things at any cost, if I chase after empty, hollow images for the rest of my life, then my children and their children will do this as well. If God does not have the proper place in my life then the repercussions will be felt from generation to generation.

He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, until the knowledge of the Gospel is completely lost for them. No, God does not punish the children for their father's sins. But the sin of hating God and departing from His Word is a sin that runs in the line of generations, even becoming magnified.

Have you ever considered what effect you are having on your children concerning their image of God? By your actions, your words, what picture of God is being created in their minds? What idols are you passing on? What false perceptions are continued, maintained, promoted by how you respond to them, your spouse?

Some of you may look at your own family line and see how this has happened. The sins of the fathers and mothers are visited on the children. Their divorce, their anger, their immorality has left an impression. Then comes the obvious question: "Am I doomed to repeat these sins?" It seems as though that is what is taught here.

While this command forbids our creating idols of God, it also instructs us to worship God in the ways in which He has prescribed. We must recognize that God the Creator is transcendent, mysterious, and inscrutable, beyond the range of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of which we are capable; hence a summons to us to humble ourselves, to listen and learn of Him, and to let Him teach us what He is like and how we should think of Him.

Our minds must be constantly transformed, our hearts continually reshaped, so that we repent of the images we create and allow God’s Word to, through our whole lives, tell us who He is.

This process is "Word" centered. While we may live in a visual age, a time when image is everything, we must recognize that God has spoken and we must listen.

In the previous chapter, God reminded the Israelites as they prepared to enter, that He, the LORD, spoke to them from the fiery mountain, and through the smoke He spoke to them. They did not see a form, but they heard His voice. God’s speaking, God’s Word, did not stop on that mountain. John begins his Gospel by telling us that God’s Word took on flesh. Jesus Christ, is the image of the invisible God. When Christ, the Word, took on flesh, John tells us that it was then that we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

It should be no surprise then when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well in Sychar that He took her back to this command.

She was of a race of Jews who had departed from the Word God handed down on Sinai. Their worship was tainted, having rejected God’s provision when they married unbelievers. God, in His jealousy, punished the children for the fathers’ sin. Their hatred continued. But by that well on that day, God’s compassion was stretched out once again. Jesus reiterated the necessity for those who worship God to do so in the way in which God alone prescribes: "A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Standing before that woman was the only One who could ever express to her God’s grace, God’s compassion, God’s truth. All she needed do was to transfer her trust from herself, from the images of God she maintained all those years, images formed through the hardships of her life, through the lies received and adopted for so many generations, and place her hope and trust in another, Jesus Christ.

That is the promise of Deuteronomy 5:10

While the punishment may last a few generations, the powerful Gospel promise extends for all time; for a thousand generations, God’s love will be shown.

There is no need to live in fear, knowing that we have and continue to worship other gods, that we create false images of the true God day and night. As John Calvin said, "Uur minds are idol factories." But it is idolaters such as us who hear the pronouncement of divine love.

But what at first seems to be God saying, "I’ll love you if you love me," is much more than that. God promises to show love (hesed) to thousands of generations. That word is the covenantal love, the unconditional love which God has for His people. It is the compassionate mercy God gives to us because of the work of His Son on our behalf.

This mercy is what we need, for we are all idolaters; we all run after gods that are safe or snapshots of the god we like the most. But despite our willingness to false worship, we have a mediator who has redeemed us and will show us His mercy.

True worship springs out of and always looks back to what God has done for us in Christ, in the death, the burial, the resurrection for our sins, so that we are then able to know God, to worship Him as we should. The benefits of this worship far outstrip the judgment of false worship. God's favor found in the Covenant stretches far beyond just a generation or two; it goes on and on and on. It's time we see the foolishness of our idols created in our own minds and seek to worship God, not by our pleasures, but as revealed in His Word.

Our final hymn is one which at first glance may strike terror, but rather it should comfort.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise.

In light, inaccessible hid from our eyes

Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,

Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.