Sermon
Two!
Publisher transcript
Transcript
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We're in a series on Sunday evenings looking at the Ten Commandments.
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God calls them the Ten Words here in verse one, and we're doing them one by one every
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single Sunday.
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And tonight we're on the second commandment.
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We read it.
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It was verse four to six.
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It's all about worship.
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This command I should say.
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Now at St. Columbus we have a confession of faith that the leaders subscribe to, the West
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Westminster Confession of Faith, and in it there's a larger catechism, and in the larger
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catechism the larger catechism takes every single one of the commandments and asks two
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questions of every single one of them.
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It asks what is forbidden in this commandment and why, and then it asks positively what
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is being commanded here.
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So the catechism, the authors of it in the 17th century thought that in every single
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one of the commandments it's not just something being forbidden even though it is negative.
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There's also positive things being commanded.
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So it's a helpful frame for a sermon outline.
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So let's do it.
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What is forbidden in the second commandment and why?
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What is being implicitly commanded and why?
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And then how can we grow in our obedience?
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Now there's lots of things to talk about with this commandment that I'm not going to.
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So I'm not going to talk tonight about the sacraments.
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Some of you people who are interested in that will know why you're interested in it.
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And I'm not going to talk tonight about images of Christ of Jesus.
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We just don't have time.
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So we'll have to lay that aside, but I'd love to talk to you afterwards about it if you'd
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like.
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But let's think about first what is forbidden in this commandment and why.
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Now command number one, I'm the Lord your God and I brought you out of the land of Egypt
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on Eagle's wings, he told us in chapter 19, don't have any other gods before me.
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So Derek looked at command number one last week and it means that God alone is God.
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He's the real God.
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There is no other God except God, the God of the Bible.
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And they had been living in a land of Egypt where Egypt had tons of gods, all sorts of
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gods.
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And every ancient Near Eastern people group is organized around a pantheon or polytheism,
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lots and lots and lots of gods.
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And so this is addressing that directly in command one.
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There is only one real God.
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Don't have any other things that you treat as gods before the real God.
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All right, that's command one.
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Command two, God not only cares about true belief that he is the real God, but also about
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true worship.
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So you can't just approach God any way you want.
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That's what the second command really is all about.
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The Egyptians approach their gods in tons of different ways.
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They've just come out of slavery in Egypt.
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They've seen that.
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You can't approach modern person.
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You cannot approach the living God any way you want to.
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Because when you approach God on your terms, not his terms, you're actually constructing
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a God, not approaching the real God.
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That's really the heart of this second commandment.
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Now there's an assumption here.
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And the assumption when he tells us how to worship, don't make any carved images.
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That's the wrong way to approach the true Lord.
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There's an assumption.
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And the assumption is you could frame it as we frame it in our century.
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What makes us human beings different from the animals?
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And in our age, people will say, of course, it's that we have the capacity to master a
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controlled nature.
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We have the capacity for scientific and cultural and technical advancement.
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We can build an iPhone.
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And that makes us drastically different from the animals all around us.
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Now the Bible says that's true.
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That is one of the ways that you're different.
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But the more fundamental way that you are different, that human beings are different
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than the animals, and it's right here in the second commandment, is that we are homo-religiosus.
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We are religious humans.
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That's the most fundamental difference between us and everything else in the world, is that
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we are fundamentally, our human nature is to be religious.
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And so as soon as human beings are born and society starts to get formed in shape, as
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soon as people can think and can feel, they start to worship.
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We will worship anything.
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We'll worship anything we can see, anything we can touch, anything we can't see.
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We are fundamentally religious people.
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We have to worship.
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We need to worship.
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We can't help but worship.
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It's who we are.
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Really the question of our age, the sociologists have started to say this more and more and
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more, but the question of our age is not how do you fit religion in a scientific age, but
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how do you fit science in a religious age?
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And the reason we ask it like that is because whether it's the Iron Age or Bronze Age,
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Stone Age even further back, or the Industrial Age or the Scientific Age, religion is more
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fundamental.
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Religion is more important to human beings than any of it, no matter what age we live
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in.
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Now, we see this because every single ancient Near Eastern culture, like Egypt, where they've
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just come from, is organized around very visible objects of public religion.
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So there are going to be temples in ancient Egypt.
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And everybody knows that that temple is the centerpiece of their life.
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Everything is structured around the temple.
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But all the way to the New Testament, Paul goes up, Marcel in Athens, and he sees that
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religious objects are the fundamental thing that everybody structures their life around.
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He says, I see that you are very religious.
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That's the thing Paul says.
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I see that you are religious people, just like everybody else that's ever existed.
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And I see that you have a statue right here at the center of your city to the unknown
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God, that that is the thing that gathers you.
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The God that, in case you missed one, here's the one that you know you've missed, the unknown
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God.
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You see, he's saying everybody's religious and we all actually structure our lives around
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something that we worship.
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And it's always been that way.
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It was just that in the ancient world and in the pre-modern world, it was much more
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visible.
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Temples were the mark of the city center.
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And it's really always been that way for all of human society.
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Now you can see why then in verse four that God addresses the form of worship by referring
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to these three orders of existence.
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You shall not make for yourself a carved image to worship God or any likeness where?
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That is in heaven above, earth beneath, or the water under the earth.
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So he talks about this three tiers of existence.
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And the reason he does that is because he's saying in the ancient mind, there are three
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domains of creatureliness.
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The heavens where the birds live, the earth where the animals live, and the seas and the
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waters underneath the earth where the monsters, the sea creatures live.
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And he's saying that in Egypt, in Babylon, in Rome, in Greece of the first century, they've
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taken creatures and birds, animals, trees, flowers, plants, and they've taken them and
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put them in the temples.
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And they've taken them to the markets and the priests have blessed them.
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And you can go buy one and you can take it to your house.
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And you can form a shrine at your house.
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And you can use it as a mediation point for communicating with and getting benefits from
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the divine.
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This is the normal order of life for almost every human being in all of history.
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Now you can come to this and say, oh boy, you know, I don't struggle with that.
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I don't struggle.
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I don't ever find myself in the marketplace looking for icons made of whales to put in
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my home to mediate the divine.
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But it's very important to know that this actually is the default position of humanity,
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that most human beings have gone this way throughout all the years.
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Now you say that's not something I struggle with, but is it?
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Is it?
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So even in the midst of Christianity, we can begin to drift.
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This happened many, many times throughout the centuries.
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In some sense, the Reformation had a big emphasis on the fact that even Christians can drift
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towards worshiping God through images of birds or creatures or whatever else it might be,
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any creaturely thing that we can craft out of wood or stone.
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And so he's coming and he's saying here, very important, the true God rescued you on Eagle's
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wings.
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There is no other God like him.
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He is not a creature and so you cannot worship God in the form of creatureliness.
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He's invisible.
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You can't see him.
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That's just not the way you can approach.
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Now two caveats.
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One where maybe you're here tonight and you've grown up in the free church of Scotland.
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We're a free church, a Scotland church.
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Many of you haven't.
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Some of you are Presbyterian historically.
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Some of you aren't.
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Some of you are just coming in and exploring Christianity and that's great too.
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But for our free church folk, our Presbyterians are people who have wrestled with this in the
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past, one of the things to say here is that this command does not mean that you can't
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have images in worship.
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It actually doesn't mean that.
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You say, whoa, are you sure?
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Well, if you just look around the room, you can see things carved out of wood.
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Things on the banisters here carved out of wood.
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There's pulpit right behind me carved out of wood.
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John Fram says that even if you take a church and you empty the room and you paint all the
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walls white, you're still communicating something by representational art.
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It's actually impossible.
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It's impossible not to have an image in a church, in a worship space.
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The key here in this passage is God is saying, never try to make an image of God.
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Don't ever try to image God himself.
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You can't do it.
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You cannot image the invisible God.
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Number one, number two, never try to take an image, something carved, something built,
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something in the creaturely domain at all, and use it as a medium to interact with the
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divine, with God.
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That's the simple thing.
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He's not saying you can't have an image.
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He's not saying you can't have images.
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He's saying never use it and think that's God.
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That's what God looks like and never use it as a point at which you can meet the holy,
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a point through which you can come to the mountain.
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Here's how we can both drift as Protestant Christians or use things well.
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One of the ways you might can drift into the fault here that he's talking about.
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When I was growing up, I would be at church any time the doors were open.
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That was my family life.
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Maybe you grew up that way.
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You're the first person to get there.
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The last person to leave and one of the things that your parents and the elders, the deacons,
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whoever else says to you is, do not run, do not run, child, through God's house.
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Never run through the house.
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This is the house of the Lord.
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Don't you know that?
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So it's a Monday night and there's nobody in the building and you're running down the
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hall.
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What are you doing?
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This is the house of the Lord.
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Now, that's a slight drift because you're saying that this building has become a medium.
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A mediation point for the divine and that's not what it is.
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The house of the Lord is the people of God, wherever they might be gathered.
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Or you say, you know, I wear it.
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It's a great thing to wear a cross.
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A cross helps you to remember to pray.
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There's all sorts of things like that that might help you to remember to pray.
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But when you start to treat it in a way that it's magic, it's divine, that's superstition.
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That's what's being forbidden here.
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So there's all sorts of ways that we can fall into this command.
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Now here's the why and we'll close the first point.
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What's forbidden?
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Don't ever try to create an image of God.
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Don't ever try to use any object in the creature-led domain through which God is mediated.
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His presence is mediated and use it for worship.
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Why?
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Let me just say quickly, two things about God, one thing about us to give the why.
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And he tells us the first thing, I've already said it.
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You can't do that because God is free.
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He can't be bounded.
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God is invisible.
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He can't be imaged.
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God cannot be captured in any way.
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And so to bound God through any type of creature-ly thing is forbidden because it actually tries
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to limit that which cannot be limited.
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Right?
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That's the first thing.
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The second reason is he tells us right here, he says, don't do this because I am jealous.
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And when I was growing up, I heard a celebrity on television.
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I remember this so vividly as a child say on a talk show, I used to be a Christian, but
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whenever I read that God is jealous, I had to leave the faith behind.
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I couldn't follow a God who says I'm jealous.
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Now, what does God mean?
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He says, you can't do this because I'm jealous.
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I'm jealous of you and for you.
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And even more importantly, he's saying here, I'm jealous for my own glory.
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Now the word jealousy here is a marriage term.
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You look at the way this word in Hebrews used all across the Old Testament and almost exclusively
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it's used in the context of marriages.
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And so God has already said, I bore you on eagle's wings in Exodus 19, if you were here
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two weeks ago, you are my family.
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You're my children.
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You're my sons and daughters.
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And now he takes the metaphor to another level and says, you're also my bride and I'm your
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groom.
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And so he's saying here, whenever you give worship to something in the creaturely realm
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that's created, you are actually robbing me of the glory that I'm owed.
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God deserves to be worshiped.
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He deserves to be glorified.
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And he's saying, he's saying in other words, anytime you use an image, something carved
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to worship me, it's as if you are committing adultery against me.
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That's the language of the Old Testament.
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And so every single act of idolatry is an act of adultery in the grand image that God is
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the great groom and the church, the people of God are his bride.
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And so he says, I'm jealous for my glory and I'm jealous for you.
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And so don't give it to a piece of wood.
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Don't give it to a piece of stone or to the cross on your neck or to the church building
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or to anything else in all of creation, give me the glory I'm due.
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Think about it like this.
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If you're married, if you're married, you get up in the morning and you get ready.
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Maybe you leave the house for work, perhaps one of you does.
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And you're getting ready to leave and your spouse is about to walk out the door, the
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wife, husband.
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And before your husband, your wife asks for a kiss.
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You know, you're leaving for the day and you're going to give your wife a kiss, your
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husband a kiss.
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And they say, don't leave without giving me a kiss.
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And so you say, oh, yeah, sure, no problem.
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And you pull your wallet out of your pocket and you open up your wallet and you pull a
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picture of your wife out and you peck the picture and you say, all good.
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And you walk out the door, right?
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You've actually stolen from your wife, your husband.
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You've stolen the love that is due to them by relationship of the covenant marriage.
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And he's saying, I'm jealous for your love.
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I'm jealous.
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Don't give it to a piece of wood or a statue or anything else in all of the creaturely domain.
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Don't kiss a picture when your spouse is standing right in front of you.
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It's the exact same idea, except on a much grander level.
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Now, those are the two reasons from God's perspective.
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One for Mars.
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The reason why that this is forbidden is because you don't try and image God at all ever in
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this world.
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Not only because God is invisible and cannot be imaged, but also because God already has
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been imaged.
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You see, back in Genesis chapter one, God created the Garden of Eden.
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And he put first, first, he put, he put all sorts of things to remind you of himself.
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So it's not that we don't think God's presence is mediated through anything in the world.
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No, we say like Calvin said, creation itself is the theater of God's glory.
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You don't need images because God says, go out and look at creation and there's my power.
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I speak, I speak through the stars, through the sun.
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I speak deeply into your consciousness.
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I am with you.
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He reveals himself already in the things that have been made.
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And he did that most acutely in the Garden of Eden.
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And then at the center of the Garden of Eden, he said, there, he said, you don't make an
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image.
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There already is an image.
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And on day six, remember, he said, the image of God is humanity, male and female.
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That's the image.
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Now the image is not God.
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And so you don't worship the image, but there is an image.
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And he said that human beings are actually that which you can look at in this world and
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remember a faint analogy of the glory of the triune God built in the corporate humanity,
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revealed in corporate humanity, that human beings are the image of God.
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You don't need an image.
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There already is one.
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It's the closest thing you can get to helping you remember what God could be like and never
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worship the image, but know that there is an image.
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And so you don't need any more images.
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Actually one of the ways the Old Testament develops this is that in Ezekiel 18, Ezekiel
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18 says this very acutely.
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It talks about how the nations, as they focused on carved images, idols throughout the centuries,
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more and more and more lost their focus on the real image.
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And this happens across the Old Testament.
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Derek mentioned this morning, one of the most difficult things to read about in the Old
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Testament is that the more and more and more idolatry through images took over a society,
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the closer and closer and closer they drew to human sacrifice as one of the ways of worship.
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You see, the more and more and more you forget that there already is an image and you create
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images, the more and more and more you mistreat the real image of God, which is human beings.
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And so in Ezekiel 18, it says that you've replaced humans with idols and you've forgotten
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about the poor.
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You've actually been so focused on a statue and trying to get what you want from the gods
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that you don't ever think about the people who are suffering all around you when God
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says, look at them.
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Go and give them a drink of water and boy, have you loved me, have you served me.
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That's one of the fundamental costs of graven image idolatry throughout the Old Testament.
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Now that's what's forbidden.
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That's why, secondly, what is commanded.
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This is the implicit side.
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Let me give you four.
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The first two, I'll just list.
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What is being positively commanded here?
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I think it's this.
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One, remember, you are fundamentally religious.
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You have to worship.
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That's the first thing he's telling us implicitly.
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The second thing he's telling us implicitly is come to worship to worship God, the real
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God.
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It's as simple as that.
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He's commanding us here that when we come to worship and we gather together, come to
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worship to worship the real God, the God of the Bible, the God of the Lord Jesus Christ,
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the Triune God.
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Come and worship nothing else.
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Give your worship completely to the God that has saved you.
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That's the second thing.
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It's that simple.
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God alone is worthy of worship.
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Worship has this idea of worth built into it, worthship.
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What is worship?
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Worship is nothing but giving that which it is due.
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Giving worth, giving value, ascribing honor to something that deserves it.
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God is the only being in all of existence that is truly deserving of worthship.
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So, come to worship to worship the one who is worthy of worship.
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That's the implicit command here.
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Third, now a little more detail.
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Third, the implicit idea here is when you do that, you have to be okay with living by
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faith not by sight.
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He's saying, don't make any graven images of God, oh, I know you want to.
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You see, it's default, human nature, to try to find images of God, to bring God down,
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to bound God in some way.
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Why?
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Oh, we want to.
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And he's coming and saying, you've got to actually be okay to live by faith, not by
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sight.
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You see, they wanted graven images.
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They had been trained by Egypt for graven images.
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And what they got instead in this passage is graven words.
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God engraved words into stone for them, but they wanted an image.
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And they would run at the golden calf not long after this.
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And that's us too.
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We want an image, but what we've got is words.
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Why?
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It's never been harder to face this, I think, than now.
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We live in an age of image more than ever in human history.
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If it was hard for Israel, it's harder for you.
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Because most people in the modern world are not words people.
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They're image people.
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We read less books than ever.
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We look at things more than ever.
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We want sight, not faith.
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We want image, not word.
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Why?
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Why are images so appealing?
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Peter Lightheart points out that with images, why do you want to graven image of God?
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Because an image is something that you can control.
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You can fashion it.
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You can shape it.
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You can move it around.
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You can bring it anywhere you want to bring it.
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You can smash it.
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You can rebuild it.
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You can add things to it.
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You can restructure it.
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You see, it's saying you can never approach God by sight, by image, because that would
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train you to think that you can control the God who can't be controlled.
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He is good, but he's not safe.
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And as soon as you try to image him and bound him, you've tried to control him.
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And exactly the reverse is the truth, that God is the one who sees you, the image.
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You never see him.
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Meaning he has total control over you.
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You're bounded.
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He decides.
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You never do.
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You can't bound him, but he has bounded you.
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You can't image him, but you are his image.
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And it doesn't work if you flip it around.
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And any attempt to do so is actually to try to control or construct a God that doesn't
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actually exist.
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He says, you've got to be okay with faith, not by sight.
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And so the Holy Spirit works in our hearts in the New Covenant era by speaking, by speech,
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through the word.
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Why are we a word-centered religion?
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Why do we have preaching?
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All because we cannot control God.
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He controls us.
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We can't image God.
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We can't bind him.
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He images himself in us and binds us.
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That's all.
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We have to be okay with faith, not by sight.
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Fourth, finally, maybe most importantly, the fourth implicit thing that's being commanded
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to us here is to realize that because we are religious people by nature, we're always going
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to worship.
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We're not only going to worship explicitly in corporate contexts, surrounded and gathered
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around something, whether it's the temple of Athena or the word of the Lord.
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Not only are we like that as human beings, but also worship is built into our daily existence,
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our 24-7 existence.
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We never stop.
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We're always worshiping.
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It's not only about the corporate gathering.
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It's also about being awake to how often you worship outside the space of the gathered
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church.
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The gods of Egypt, the gods of Babylon, the gods of Hinduism, they're all crafted gods.
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You say, that's not really my problem.
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That's not the thing I'm struggling with.
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The second commandment doesn't hit me that hard because I'm not prone to something like
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this.
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Let me ask you, do you craft gods that you can control in your ordinary life and bring
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them with you into the space of worship?
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Have you brought gods that you've created, idols of the heart, into worship with you
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tonight?
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David Foster Wallace, I've used this quote several times in this pulpit.
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He gave the very famous Kenyan College address some 15 years ago now, I think it was.
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I'll give you the very famous quote in just a moment, but nobody ever reads what he wrote
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before the famous part of the quote.
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Listen to what David Foster Wallace, the philosopher, says to these graduates in their final day
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in university.
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He says, well, let me frame it.
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Think about it.
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You can be a Christian, you can be a Christian tonight and say, I don't struggle with icons.
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I don't struggle with little gods.
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Maybe you're not a Christian tonight and you say, I don't even recognize the category
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of idolatry.
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It's not a category that makes sense to me in any way, shape, or form because I don't
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believe in the God that you're talking about.
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Listen to what he says.
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It's a bit of a long quote, so you'll have to focus.
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He says, a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is,
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it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.
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For example, everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I
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am the absolute center of the universe.
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The realist, the most vivid and important person in all of existence.
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We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially
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repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us deep down, that we center our universe
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around me.
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Now, Abraham Kuiper a century ago, he said this.
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He said that the God, the icon, the idols that we structure our world around.
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Remember, Egypt had a God, the God of the Sun, right at the center of the city.
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The unknown God right at the center of Athens, and Athena right at the center of Ephesus.
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And you say, well, what's the God, what are the crafted Gods that we're all gathered around?
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Here's what Kuiper says.
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He says, in the modern world, there is no longer a graven image at the center of the
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city, but instead it's just me.
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It's just the eye, the ego.
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It's the great eye, no longer a big statue, no longer the Egyptian God or the Babylonian
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God's, it's individualized self-actualization.
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It is that I live in my world, and my world centers on me.
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And so you think about it.
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If society is not demanding, society no longer demands that you turn and bow before a great
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statue at the city center, then the default position of humanity is that you will naturally
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serve the master that is most immediate, most near you, most often, and that is your own
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mind, your own heart, your own consciousness.
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And so Wallace then says this, the famous part.
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He says, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.
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There is no such thing as not worshiping.
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Everybody worships.
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The only choice we get is what we're going to worship.
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And if you worship something that is not true and transcendent, then pretty much anything
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else that you worship is going to eat you alive.
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If you worship money and stuff, if they are where you tap real meaning, then you will
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never have enough.
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You'll never feel like you have enough.
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It's true.
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You worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly.
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And when time and age starts showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally
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plant you.
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Now here's the real key, the real secret of the Second Commandment, and we'll move to
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the final thing.
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God deserves your worship, but he does not need it.
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But you need to worship the real God, or you will fall into despair.
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God commands your worship, he deserves your worship, he doesn't have to have it.
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He doesn't need it.
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But you desperately need to worship him, or you will slowly but surely fall into deep
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despair.
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You see, anytime you fail to worship the real God, ultimately you will move and drift
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towards the default position of putting your trust and your hope in your own self-justification,
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in some way, shape, or form.
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And when you try to justify yourself through performance, or through prodigality, or through
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anything else, you will fail and you will fall into sadness.
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Anything else can handle the weight of your worship except the true God.
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Now lastly and finally, how can we grow?
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Only one thing.
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How can we grow into obedience?
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It's the maths of mercy here.
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Did you see the mathematics that God lays out here at the end of this commandment?
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He says, as we close, don't bow down to gods that are crafted, don't have idols in your
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life because I'm jealous and I will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children
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to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.
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But I'll show steadfast love to thousands of those who keep my commandments.
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So he says here briefly that it is the default position of humanity to run to craft the idols,
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whether you can see them or they're deep down in your heart.
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And he says that I will punish, I will visit that iniquity, the iniquity of idolatry, the
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iniquity of a father, of a parent, onto the third and fourth generation of those who hate
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me, of those who persist, he's saying, in idolatry.
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Now people come to this passage, a 90 second aside on this, people come to this passage
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and they say, is this teaching corporate guilt that the sins of a parent God will take and
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he will save that punishment for the grandchildren?
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And the answer is no, he's not at all talking about here some substitutionary punishment
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where grandchildren are going to pay the price for the sins of idolatry that you commit today
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or did in Israel.
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We know this because in Ezekiel 18, verse 20, he says, the sons shall not suffer the
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iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.
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So it's not anything like that.
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Instead he's saying a couple things, he's saying one, when a generation, a family, a
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parent, someone in relationships really, really struggles with idolatries chasing after false
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gods in this world repeatedly and repeatedly, it has consequences for everybody around them.
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So the iniquity of a father can be brought down on even the third and the fourth generation
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because sin has consequences and sometimes those consequences really, really ripple out
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and matter a lot.
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And he's just saying, you've got to be aware of that.
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But did you see how he concluded?
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He said, you know, there's consequences for sin down to three and four generations, but
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and here's the translation issue.
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He says, verse six, but I will show mercy, steadfast love to not thousands, but to literally
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the thousandth generation of those who love me.
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You see what he's saying?
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He's saying every single one of us struggles with idolatry and every single one of us can
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say I'm a person who has cost other people in some way, shape or form because of my idols.
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Every single one of us has to be able to say that.
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That's what he's asking of us.
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And he's saying, but yes, your sin has consequences.
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Your idolatries have consequences, but I, you know, three generations, I want to show you
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mercy to a thousand generations.
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You see the math he's saying his mercy is so much bigger than our idolatry.
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He has mercy to overcome all of our sins, to overwhelm our sins.
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And so here's the real secret of the second commandment.
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How he says, you know, I want to take this to a thousand generations of pouring mercy
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down for people who struggle with idolatry.
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How does he do it?
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And he does it all through John 14.9.
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When John 14.9, Jesus Christ turned to Philip when Philip was very confused and he said,
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Philip, don't you know that if you've looked at me, you have seen God the Father.
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So you can never image God, but Jesus Christ did what is absolutely impossible.
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He imaged God Colossians 115.
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He is the icon, Paul says of the invisible God.
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When you look at him, God has been perfectly imaged.
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Jesus Christ has made him known and he says, you know, I will visit punishment on idolatry,
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but I want to show mercy to a thousand generations.
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How he had said in Ezekiel 18, I will not punish the sons for the sins of their parents,
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the daughters for exactly what the parents did.
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I will not, I will not put vicarious satisfaction onto a child for what their mom and dad did,
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or I will not cause a parent to have to suffer in vicarious satisfaction for what their son
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or daughter do.
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Oh boy, but one time he did.
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One time he did.
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One time he put the sins of every father and mother, every son and daughter, the idolatries
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through vicarious satisfaction substitution on one, the image himself, Jesus Christ at
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the cross, at the cross.
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When you say tonight with the hymn writer, cast down, oh God, the idols that hold us
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in their power, the empty God's eye worship.
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When darkness has its hour, we bow, I bow to other masters than Jesus Christ.
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I invite you this week simply to this, contemplate and meditate on the cross of Jesus Christ
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in order to smash your idols and come to true worship.
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Pray.
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Father, we ask that you would reveal to us the idols of our heart tonight.
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Maybe we don't struggle with icons and graven images of wood and stone, but we struggle
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with graven images of the heart.
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And so we ask tonight that you would show us the truth about us, remake us, reshape us,
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help us to see that in Jesus at the cross, at the cross, Jesus has poured forth mercy
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to a thousand generations.
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So we thank you, oh Lord, and help us to live into that tonight.
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We pray in Jesus' name.
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Amen.