Are You Contrary to the Second Law?

Now that we know by whose authority the Ten Statements were given, let us now look at how to revere His authority and worship Him in spirit and in truth.

This brings us to the second law/statement found in Exodus 20:3-6.

NKJV

“You shall have no other gods before Me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Literal Translation

Another Mighty One will not exist for you before My face. You will not make for yourself a sculpture or any resemblance which is in the heavens above or which is in the land below, or which is in the water below the land. You will not bow yourself down to them, and you will not serve them, because I am Jehovah your Mighty One, a zealous Mighty One, visiting the twistedness of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and upon the fourth generations for the ones hating Me. And showing respect to thousands for the ones loving Me and for keeping my laws.

It seems like this is a no-brainer! Only an uneducated and primitive individual would worship a statue or picture, right?  I wish this were the case, but sadly this is too high of a bar to expect of our fellow man–yes, even in this modern era.  This idol worship is prevalent in all religions of this world, yes, even among many who consider themselves Christians.   

We humans have a natural need to worship someone or something greater than ourselves. It is wired into us. There has never been a society of any significance in history whose religion was atheism. It wasn’t until the “enlightenment era” in the mid to late 1800s that atheism began to gain traction.  “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:22‭-‬23, NKJV).  The point is that atheists do believe in a higher power, and that higher power is mankind. Rather than be made into God’s image, they try to make God into their image.  We are made in the image of God, not the other way around.  “And He said to them, 'Whose image and inscription is this?' They said to Him, 'Caesar’s.' And He said to them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’”  (Matthew 22:20‭-‬21, NKJV).

Because we are physically minded we generally seek something physical to worship. 

When the Israelites were rebelling against the Most High in the wilderness, He “...sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived” (Numbers 21:6‭-‬9, NKJV).  Nearly 750 years later, King Hezekiah “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan” (II Kings 18:4, NKJV). 

This bronze serpent had no healing power of and by itself, and yet the people had long since forgotten their Creator and had started worshipping this piece of bronze for the simple reason that they could see it. It was physical.  I’m sure the people that worshiped this serpent on the pole must have justified doing so because to them it would represent healing, not because they were that fond of snakes.  Was this acceptable to God? What if the pole that the bronze serpent clung to was a cross?

There are many obvious violations of this law in our modern world, especially with the eastern pagan religions, but there are also numerous less obvious ways that even we can be guilty of succumbing to idolatry.

Religious Symbols

The cross is a symbol associated with pseudo christianity that many sects literally kneel before and worship. They carry it around their necks as a good luck charm or affix it to the top of the pyramid steeples that crown their church buildings. 

The cross, though often thought to be a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, is nothing more than a common murder weapon employed by ancient Rome. Thousands of people were crucified by the Romans, just as thousands of people have been slain by the sword. If Christ had been killed with a sword, would that be the image that would adorn so many religious ceremonies today? What about gallows or a spear?

Entertainment

The company Marvel has for some time been resurrecting the ancient pagan gods of millennia past into comic books, and now more recently into movies. Thor, once dead to all but the readers of the ancient Viking sagas, is now alive and well in the minds of school children–portrayed as a devilishly handsome dude with a good sense of humor and a big hammer, but an immortal god, nonetheless. And then there are Loki, Zeus, Hercules, Odin, Horus and dozens more. Our children learning about these pagan gods is no different than children in ancient times learning about them. The only thing that has changed is that the method of entertainment has evolved from telling stories and reciting chants to sitting in front of a screen and soaking it up. 

Church Government

There are plentiful churches that admonish their members to “Follow the church! Even if the church is wrong, it would be sinful to disobey the church.”  Or, they claim that the church is the final authority even when contrary to the Bible. Or, there are those that claim salvation can only come through a church organization.  This is idolatry in its most remarkable fashion.   

Money

Physical riches, and the pursuit of them, can definitely become an idol for us. If an individual is unwilling to jeopardize his career for the sake of keeping the Sabbath, then said individual is counting money as more important than his Creator. 

Fear

The false god of fear reared his ugly head in remarkable fashion during the recent plandemic.  How many churches did we see close their doors for over a year? Some of them will never reopen! All this was caused by either an unmerited terror of a new strain of the flu (and a lack of trust in the power of God), or the abject terror of defying peer pressure! Pastors who are supposed to protect their flocks found themselves taking orders from the wolves, and worse, following them! 

We must be on guard to never let the fear of anything come in between us and our Father!  “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 8:38‭-‬39, NKJV).   

Images 

Paintings or figurines of hippie Jesus seem to be widely accepted by pseudo christianity, despite the fact that the second law explicitly forbids the making of an image in the likeness of anything that is in the heavens. This includes the Almighty and His Son (Psalm 2:4).

There is a reason that no portrait or likeness of Yeshua has survived to this day. And why Mt. Sinnai was completely engulfed in clouds and smoke when the law was given.

“Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire,... the likeness of any animal that is on the earth or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air,... And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage”  (Deuteronomy 4:15‭, ‬17‭, ‬19, NKJV).

  

Now let us return to the latter half of the second statement.

 

 “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” 

Put simply, you will reap what you sow!  Our King deserves all of our love and adoration, so for us to have an idol, either literally or figuratively, is most irksome to Him.  The way this life is designed, there are usually consequences for our actions–consequences that are commensurate with the offense. Sexually transmitted diseases are a great example of this!  

It is interesting to consider all the blessings that are bequeathed to people who are doing their best to follow the moral law established by the Creator, versus the suffering and disparity that so often clings to a culture of decadence!   Such traits of a society do indeed affect following generations in a profound way!  

In conclusion (though there is a great deal more that could be said on this subject), let us always be on guard in our personal lives to never let anything become an idol, nor seek any physical symbol to worship!   “Jesus said to him, ‘Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’”  (John 20:29, NKJV).