Ten Words Transfigured - Exchanging the Glory of God

Happy Father's Day to you dads. Pastor Jason will be back next week, so he will pick up our series in Joshua next week. But for this week, I want to take us back to the book of Exodus.

We're going to be in Exodus chapter 20 today. Exodus 20. Exodus 20. This is the first time in the Bible that we see those famous Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

Moses originally called this passage the Ten Words. God spoke these words to his people after he delivered them from Egypt, before he led them into Canaan.

And as he spoke them, he was entering a covenant with his people, often called the Mosaic Covenant, after Moses. This covenant was a solemn promise.

God was promising to be his people's God, to bless them and keep them. And his people were promising to be God's people. To worship and obey God.

The Ten Words, they were a foundational part of the Mosaic Covenant. But what about today? How do those Ten Words apply to Christians today, who are under the New Covenant in Christ?

Well, there are two voices that have helped me get closer to answering this important question, and neither one of those voices are in my head, I promise.

I have props this morning. So, the first voice comes from this book, The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church, by Dr. Averbeck. We had Dr. Averbeck here a few years ago to speak to us.

Dr. Averbeck in this book argues that all of the Old Testament, including the Ten Words, still apply to Christians, but in New Covenant ways.

And those ways are made really clear in the New Testament. And the other voice, the other book is this, Mere Christian Hermeneutics, by Dr. Van Hooser.

And Dr. Van Hooser argues that the transfiguration is the best picture of how all this works out in the New Covenant. He says that Jesus transfigures the Old Covenant.

He transfigures the Old Testament. And that means that Jesus continues them and shines his light on them. So, all that wrapped up, to kind of summarize those two books in just a sentence, the Ten Words still apply to Christians today,

but they apply in a transfigured sense that is made clear in the New Testament. So, as we study the Ten Words today, we need to work to understand what it meant when those words were given back in Moses' day.

And then we need to look to the New Testament to see how the Ten Words have been transfigured in Christ. So, we're going to try to do that this morning with the second word.

The second word is found in Exodus 20, verses 4 through 6. Exodus 20, verses 4 through 6. It says, 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

Exodus 20:4–6 Exodus 20:4–6

or that is in the water under the earth. 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 fourth generation of those who hate me,

but showing steadfast love to thousands of generations to those who love me and keep my commandments. Would you pray with me once again this morning?

Heavenly Father, we pray that you would speak to us as we come to you to receive the food of your holy word. We pray that you would take your truth and plant it deep in us.

We pray that you would shape and fashion us in your likeness. It's in Jesus that we pray. Amen. So let's start this morning with the second word as it was given in Moses' day.

The second word started with a command. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness. So what's going on here? Does God really dislike art projects?

Is God upset with things like Mrs. Barb's kids' crafts and our kids' ministry on Sunday morning? Oh no. Well, we can get a little bit closer when we see that the Hebrew, when we read Hebrew scholars and they tell us that the word translated carved images here,

it usually refers to objects that have been made out of wood or stone. So maybe God is just really against whittling or sculpting. Maybe that's it.

Well, we need to keep reading. And as we do, we see that it says that they shouldn't make images out of anything that is in heaven above or that is in earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

And that's referring to all the things in the natural world. So maybe this is it. Maybe God just doesn't want natural images, nature images.

Maybe God just really hated the ancient version of Bob Ross. Maybe that's it. Well, we still need to keep reading. And in verse five, we get a little bit more clarity.

It says, you shall not bow down to them or serve them. And that's language about worship. So if we take all those things together, we see that God was telling his people with the second word to not make any images of the natural world for worship.

Not to make any images of the natural world for worship. And there were a few practices that were common in Moses' day that God was taking aim at here.

The first had to do with deification. Deification. People deified or made gods out of things in the natural world. They saw things like the sun, things like the Nile.

They would see the way that they were needed to sustain life. And so they would worship them as gods, as if they had some kind of power within themselves.

And they would do that with people too. In Egypt, Pharaoh, with all of his power and wealth, he was worshiped as a god. But God wants his people to know that these things were not worthy of worship.

There was nothing divine about these things in and of themselves. They were merely created things. A creator made them. A creator designed them and assigned a purpose to them.

Yahweh was that creator. The sun, the Nile, the earth, the sea, Pharaoh, everything that exists, God created them. And God upheld them by the power of his word.

So with this second word, God was telling the Israelites they were not to worship created things. People should not deify nature.

The second word also addressed misrepresentation. Misrepresentation. You know, back then, people had all these gods, but they couldn't see them.

And so they would carve or sculpt or draw something to represent their preferred god. It was always something from the natural world. A little person that they would carve, an animal that they would paint, something like this.

The image itself that they made, that wasn't a god, but it represented a god in a special way. The Egyptians, in Moses' day, did this all the time.

They did it with this false goddess, Heket. Heket was supposed to help people with childbirth. And so, the Egyptians, they wanted to make an image of Heket, a representation of Heket.

So they were like, what represents Heket? What really resembles childbirth? And they landed on frogs. Frogs. So, Heket was represented with carved frog images.

Maybe some of you moms are looking for help for a future delivery. You can just look to the frogs, is what the Egyptians would say. But with the second word, Yahweh was telling his people, they shouldn't make God into a frog.

They shouldn't make God into anything for that matter. Nothing they could make would accurately represent God. God said that clearly over in the book of Isaiah.

To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness compare with Him? An idol? A craftsman casts it. A goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts it for its silver chain.

He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.

Yahweh was uncreated, eternal, limitless, a living God, a speaking God. No lifeless image made by human hands could represent Yahweh. In fact, it would misrepresent Yahweh, making Him

into something less than what He is. God's people were not allowed to misrepresent Him. Now that might make us wonder, what about all the images that God used for Himself in the Bible?

Just think of all the images that God used in the book of Exodus alone. The burning bush, the pillar of cloud and fire, the tabernacle that will come later, the Ark of the Covenant, the storm out of which God was speaking this second word to His people.

What made these things okay? Well, first, those things weren't created by man. They were either supernaturally created by God like the burning bush or the pillar of fire or the storm, or they were created out of the mind of God and that they were dictated to His people like the tabernacle

or the Ark of the Covenant. Also, those things didn't really represent God. They communicated the presence of God. They reminded people of the power of God, but Yahweh was always beyond them.

He could not be reduced down to these images. Yahweh wanted to be known and experienced by His people, but it had to be at His initiative and in the forms He established.

The second word meant that God's people could not make images that misrepresented God. Now, with this in mind, we might ask ourselves, is it ever okay to make an image of God?

Was it wrong for Michelangelo to draw God reaching down and touching Adam's finger? Is it wrong for people making the Chosen series to ask an actor to portray Jesus?

Are these things wrong? Well, I'd say even after studying this passage, I don't have a hard and fast answer. I would say I think I'm more okay with the Chosen example because Jesus did take on humanity, so it seems like depicting Him is working with the form that God gave us for Him.

It seems a little bit more dicey to me to do that with images of the Father. We don't see God taking on images in that form. But either way, I think everyone needs to be very cautious with this in mind.

Very careful not to depict God inappropriately or lead people to worship the images of Him that we create. God's people must not misrepresent God.

But the second word wasn't just about deification and misrepresentation. It was also concerned with manipulation. Manipulation. People often tried to make images in order to manipulate the gods

they worshipped. Old Testament scholar Douglas Stewart explains, he said, ancients assumed that the presence of a god or goddess was guaranteed by the presence of an idol.

If you fed a god adequately and regularly, that god would bless you. Bless you in return with the abundance of crops or fertility of cattle.

And this practice allowed worshippers to take a sacrifice to the god or goddess of their choice virtually any time of the day, any day of the week, at any location nearby, any place they happened to be.

an act of manipulation to get whatever they wanted whenever they wanted from their idol. That was not how Yahweh was going to be worshipped.

That would not work with God. It would be foolishness to try to gain that kind of power over the sovereign creator of the universe. People must flee from this kind of temptation to manipulate God.

With the second word, God was telling his people, making images in order to deify false gods or in order to misrepresent or manipulate the true God, this was not permitted.

And in the middle of verse 5, God gave his people a reason why. It says, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Now, we have to be careful here.

Jealousy is really complicated. There is a bad kind of jealousy, a jealousy that is a vice. J.I. Packer helpfully describes it. He says, Vicious jealousy is an expression of the attitude, I want what you've got and I hate you because you've gotten it.

It is an infantile resentment springing from unmortified covetousness which expresses itself in envy, malice, and meanness of action. That's bad jealousy.

Selfish, envious, loveless. But there is a good kind of jealousy. A selfless, ardent, protective love. A zealous love. We can call that virtuous jealousy.

jealousy. And that's the kind of jealousy that God has. God has this kind of virtuous jealousy for his people. God loves his people with a selfless, protective love.

He is zealous for what is best for them. He's committed to his people like a faithful husband is committed to his bride. And like a faithful husband, God wanted his bride to faithfully love him.

But in violating the second word, they would become unfaithful. By worshiping false images, they would be giving their love to another. By misrepresenting God in false images, they would be creating a caricature of God.

By trying to manipulate a false image, they would be withholding their trust from God. God's people must not create images for themselves because God is jealous for his people.

God is also jealous for his glory. God's glory, his magnificence, his holiness, his power and beauty. God wants his glory to be honored. It's fitting for him and it's good for us.

When we worship the Lord in his glory, we fulfill our ultimate purpose. we experience true delight and joy. But in creating images for worship, the Israelites would dishonor the glory of the Lord.

Deifying images would be an attempt to share the glory of the Lord with creation. Misrepresenting God with images, that would be an attempt to reduce his glory, to make God something less than he is.

and manipulating God with images, that would be an attempt to usurp his glory, claiming authority over God. But God's people must not mishandle God's glory in these ways.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung said it well. He said, every man-made representation of the divine will be so far less than God as to incite his jealousy.

Any attempt to bridge that chasm is not only an attempt at the impossible, but an affront to the unparalleled majesty of God. God is virtuously jealous for his glory.

God is virtually jealous for his people. And in verses five and six, the Israelites were told that God's virtuous jealousy, it's like a double-edged sword.

It would result in two different things for two different groups of people. Let's read that. It says, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of generations

to those who love me and keep my commandments. So those two groups identified here, those who hate God, those who love God. who are those who love God?

Those who have the greatest emotional connection with God? Those who write God the most love letters? Well, not here. In verse five, those who love God are those who keep God's commandments.

Those who obey God. So then, who belongs to that other group? Who are those who hate God? those who disobey God. God isn't talking here necessarily about an emotional hatred, but a functional hatred.

To disobey God is to hate God. So how is God's jealousy worked out differently between these two groups? Well, for those who hate God, they experience God's jealousy in the form of judgment.

God would not be indifferent to their hatred. He would not let their disobedience go unaddressed. God said that their iniquities would be visited upon them and on the generations that followed after them.

Now, that didn't mean that children would be judged for the disobedience of their fathers regardless of what the children did. We're told this really clearly in other parts of the Old Testament.

One example is found in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 18. Now, suppose this man fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done. He sees and does not do likewise.

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself.

The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. So, what is going on in our passage? Well, the generational language used here, it was about a pattern of disobedience.

A father would be judged for his disobedience and in his disobedience he would be setting a pattern of disobedience before his children. And if his children continued in that pattern, they would also be judged, even to the third and the fourth generation.

the pattern of judgment would continue for as long as the pattern of disobedience continued. Dads, I think on this Father's Day, I think it's a really good thing for us to feel the weight of what God is saying here.

As dads, God has given us a special position of leadership in our kids' lives. They are meant to learn from us. They have a God given desire to follow after us.

That means we have a sacred calling to hand down patterns of Christian faithfulness. And we have a sacred warning here not to hand down patterns of disobedience.

That would be to set our kids on a trajectory toward hatred of God, a trajectory toward the judgment of God. So that's this one group, those who hate God.

But what about the second group of people in the passage? Those who love God and keep God's commandments. How would they experience God's jealousy?

Well, in our passage, God promised that he would show them steadfast love. That is an enduring, zealous, faithful, covenantal love. God promised that for those who obey him.

And he promised that this steadfast love, his steadfast love, would last. It would last for a thousand generations. It would never run out. As God was entering this covenant with his people, he wanted them to understand that obedience

was very important, and that disobedience was very serious. to disregard the terms of God's covenant was to hate God and would result in the judgment of God.

But to obey God's commands, that was an observable act of love for God, and that would lead to blessing and hope for generation after generation.

So that's the second word, given. We can see that this word was much more than a simple prohibition against graven images. This word was about honoring the glory of God.

It was about appreciating the jealousy of God, and it was about understanding the importance of obedience to God in the Mosaic covenant. But what about that second word, transfigured?

How does this second word apply to new covenant Christians? Well, I think we see the answer in the New Testament warning about exchanging the glory of God.

I'm taking that from the Apostle Paul, as he describes the unrighteous in Romans 1. He says in Romans 1, 22 and 23, claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling

mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. He continues in verse 25, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. Exchanging the glory of God. Exchanging the truth of God for a lie. That sounds a lot like the second word to me. Exchanging the glory of God.

God. So we could say that the second word has been transfigured in the sense that Christians must not exchange the glory of God. Christians must not exchange the glory of God.

Well, how might we be tempted to exchange the glory of God today? Well, we can exchange the glory of God when we worship other things as God.

we talked about this a lot when we looked at the first word, so I don't want to stay too long at this point, but it is worth noting. In Moses' day, people worshipped other things as God, and they did that with things from creation.

As we think about that today, I think there is one thing from creation that you, each one of you, are especially tempted to deify. You don't deify the Son, I don't think, you don't deify a river, the St.

Joe River, we're not going to deify that. You don't even deify frogs, I don't think, I don't hope. Here's the thing from creation that you do deify, it's yourself.

I know that about you because I know that about me. We deify ourselves. We deify ourselves when what we feel means more to us than what God's word says.

We deify ourselves when we pursue our desire in spite of God's prohibitions. We deify ourselves when our preferred habits become more important to us than our devotional practices.

These are examples of worshiping ourselves. These are examples of exchanging the glory of God for an image of yourself. We can deify ourselves even today.

But we can also exchange the glory of God when we misrepresent God. Misrepresent God. The Israelites misrepresented God by carving him into images that were beneath his glory.

Today, we probably don't use a hammer and a chisel to misrepresent God, but we might use our words. We can try to carve God into images beneath his glory with our words by describing the character of God in ways that conflict

with how God has been revealed to us in Scripture. A couple examples might be helpful. We can do this when we try to carve God into a non-judgmental God.

We can craft a God that doesn't really have rules, doesn't really care if people follow them. we can get really selective with Bible verses and construct a God that is only merciful, a God that is overly permissive, but the Bible tells us that God is perfectly merciful,

and he is also perfectly just. He has rules, and he expects his people to follow them, and he does judge those who refuse to obey him. A non-judgmental God is an image of our own creation.

It's beneath the glory of the true God. Another example of this comes to mind has been in the news lately, an attempt to carve God into a non-binary God.

The idea that God encompasses both genders. He is equally male and female, and he is somehow supportive of people choosing their own gender identities.

That's nonsense. That is absolute nonsense. God is not a man, he's not a human man, but he has revealed himself using almost exclusively male language.

He, him, king, redeemer, that's a gendered title, father, son, spirit, all male language. The only exception, the only exception to this is language of birth pains or language of a mother hen, but these images are

clearly used intentionally to show that God is a father who still has compassion on his children. And furthermore, God assigned to each of us a gender, and he wants us to honor his biological design for us.

To carve God into a female male, or androgynous, or a trans-affirming God, this is an absolutely sloppy misrepresentation. A last example of misrepresentation that I want us to think about is one that I've

been encountering even in our town, and that is the attempt to carve God into a non-Trinitarian God. This is especially prevalent amongst oneness Pentecostals.

I have nothing against Pentecostals. I disagree with their view of the gifts of the Spirit, but I'm talking about oneness Pentecostals. Oneness folks emphasize the oneness of God.

They deny the Trinity, and they believe that God merely appeared in three different modes over the ages. It is true that the Bible never uses the term Trinity, but it clearly speaks of God as triune.

To define God as non-Trinitarian is to deny a first-tier doctrine of the Christian faith, and it is to carve God into something he is not. It's a blatant attempt to exchange the glory of God.

We have to resist the temptation to exchange the glory of God by carving God into something that he is not. We must not misrepresent God. God.

But we can also exchange the glory of God when we try to manipulate God. Like the ancient Egyptians feeding and pampering their gods to get what they want.

How might we, how might you try to manipulate God today? We can do this when we go over a transaction ledger with God. God, I've been faithful.

I've been a faithful churchgoer my whole life. I've read the Bible most days. I've never stolen anything. So it's not right that I should be suffering right now.

This is an attempt to manipulate God. Arguing that God owes you something based on what you have done for him already. We can all do, also do this.

We can also try to manipulate God when we use bargaining tactics with God. God, if you give me that promotion, I'll increase my tithe percentage.

If you make that problem go away, I'll start being more careful with what I watch. If you heal me, then I'll pray more often. But these are also attempts to manipulate God, trying to convince God that we will scratch his back if he will scratch our back.

We can also try to manipulate God by declaring things in prayer. Declaring things in prayer. As if when we pray according to a certain formula, God is required to do what we tell him.

I've declared a raise. I've declared peace. I've declared safety for my kids. So God will do it. God must do it because I have declared it. That's a manipulation tactic.

It's an attempt to exchange the glory of God. God is sovereign over us and he is not bound by our declarations. Christians must not exchange the glory of God, whether that's through manipulation or misrepresentation or false worship.

To exchange the glory of God is to violate the second word transfigured. And returning to Romans 1, we can see what such a violation leads to.

Romans 1.21 says, when this happens, when they exchange the glory of God, they become futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts become darkened.

Verse 22, they become fools. Verse 24, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

Verse 26, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Verse 27, receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. Verse 28, God gave them up to a debased mind.

Verse 32, those who practice such things deserve to die. Verse 18, against such things, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. This sounds a lot like judgment language, doesn't it?

It sounds a lot like the judgment language in our passage. This shows us that God is still a virtually jealous God. He is protectively loving with his new covenant people.

He is righteous, he has a righteous zeal for his glory. Exchanging the glory of God, whether that's worshiping other things or misrepresenting God or manipulating God, that still brings God's judgment.

It is a form of hatred toward God. But thankfully, there is another sense in which the second word has been transfigured in Christ. the second word has been transfigured in that Christians must behold the glory of God in the image of the Son.

Christians must behold the glory of God in the image of the Son. Jesus is the image of God's glory, not made by the art and imagination of man, but sent by God.

That's what Hebrews 1 tells us. Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Jesus is not a misrepresentation of God.

In Jesus, we see the fullness of God. That's what it says in Colossians 1. Jesus is the image of the invisible God and the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him.

When we turn to Jesus, when we bow before him and serve him, we don't exchange the glory of God. Instead, we behold it. That's what it says in John 1.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Christ Jesus.

No one has ever seen God, God the only son who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. By turning from our false images, turning to Christ in faith, we experience God's grace.

A grace that we need in light of God's judgment. In Jesus, we experience grace upon grace. We experience grace for our disobedience, our iniquities, the judgment for our iniquities, the wrath of a virtuously jealous God.

Jesus took all of that upon himself. On the cross, he bore that in his body. He wore that on his head. He died for me. He died for you. He paid it all.

And he rose from the dead, offering forgiveness to all who would repent and believe in him. Judgment taken. And when we put our faith in Christ, his death is counted as ours.

There are no more iniquities to bear. We don't have to face the judgment of God that we deserve. Instead, we get to experience the steadfast love of God.

God's full, covenantal love. His zealous faithfulness. We get to experience it not for three or four generations, but for thousands upon thousands of generations, for endless ages in the new heavens and in the new earth.

That's grace upon grace. God sent his son so that we would exchange the false glory of our false images for the full glory and the full grace of God.

Well, my hope for you this morning is you consider this second word transfigured. I pray that the light of God would shine into your heart and show you where you have set up false images.

I pray that he would show you how those images pale in comparison to the glory that we behold in his son. Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God.

May we all worship and serve him and him alone. I'm going to invite the worship team to come up once again. And as they do, I want to ask you to join me in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a living God. You see us, you hear us, you care for us, you are jealous for us. Father, we thank you for sending your son, the Lord Jesus.

He is your glory, your love made manifest among us. I pray that you would help us to behold you more glorious than any false image that we could craft for ourselves.

show us where we have misrepresented you, God. Challenge us where we have tried to manipulate you and teach us to bow before you and serve you.

Pray that you would make us yours alone. It is in Jesus and through Jesus and for the sake of Jesus that we pray. Amen.