The 10 Commandments Series Introduction

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Now we are in a series called ‘Ten Commandments’, and I’d like to begin by again, bringing us through what the Ten Commandments are. I hope you remember the actions and you can follow me along. (Pastor showing the hand actions to remember the Ten Commandments). So Commandment number one, ‘You shall have no other gods’. Commandment number two, ‘You shall not bow down before the false images’. Commandment number three, ‘You shall not take the name of God in vain’. Very good. Commandment number four, you need to rest, so ‘Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy’. Commandment number five, ‘Honor your father and your mother’. Commandment number six, ‘You shall not kill’. Commandment number seven, two shall be together, so ‘Don’t commit adultery’. Commandment number eight, your thumbs are chopped off, reminding you, ‘Thou shall not steal’. Commandment number nine, four is not five, five is not four, ‘You shall not bear false witness’. And commandment number 10 is ‘You shall not covet’. Very good. You remember the ten. Well at the end of this commandment series, if there’s one thing you can walk away with is that you can recite the Ten Commandments together.

Understanding the Second Commandment

Last week, we looked at the first commandment, ‘You shall have no other gods’. That means we are to serve, to worship this one true God, to be loyal to Him. Why? Because He is the only creator, the only sustainer, the only judge of all the world, and the only Savior. So you shall have no other gods, because all other gods are no gods. Today we’re going to turn to the second commandment, which says ‘You shall not make any carved images’. I’d like us straight away to dive into this command. It says here, ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, the birds and so on, or that is on the earth beneath, animals or men and women, or that is in the water under the earth, fish and sea creatures. Don’t make any image from anything that you see.’

Basically, you shall not bow down to them or serve them. Now, when you look at the second commandment, you might think of the second commandment as an extension of the first commandment. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? It’s just further elaboration of the first commandment. Well, this is the natural question you should ask. “Is this a repeat, an extension of the first commandment?”  The first commandment, again I remind you, is ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. The second commandment is, ‘You shall not…You shall not make for yourself a carved image.’ Seems to be very close. Seems to be very similar. Seems to be just some more explanation of the first. Well, if you were to google, you will realize that the Catholic Church and the Lutherans, at least worldwide, they put these two together as the first commandment. In other words, to the Catholics, this will be commandment number one, and commandment number two is ‘You shall not take God’s name in vain.’ So just now what we did, Commandment number one, no other gods. Commandment number two, bow down. They say, “No, no, no, that’s also commandment number one.” The Bible verses are still there, but the way they number it is different. Then you ask, “Then how do they have the Ten Commandments?” If number one and two combine, you only have the nine Commandments. But the Bible clearly speaks about Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy number four. The way they resolve it is, the last commandment, ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife’ is number nine, and ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s house’ is number ten. That’s how they bring it back to ten. But the question remains, is these two, are these two verses speaking about a similar thing or a different thing?

Well, the majority of Protestants and the Jews view the first verse as Commandment number one and the second statement as Commandment number two, meaning that they are separate and distinct. Why? This I think is the reason why. The first commandment ‘You shall have no other gods before Me’, deals with who you are to worship. No other gods, just Yahweh, this one true God who has called myself “I Am that I Am”. This God is the only God you worship. ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. But the second statement ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image’, deals with how you are to worship this one true God. Or, if this is still not clear for you, I would say that the first commandment deals with the problem of worshiping the wrong person, and the second commandment deals with worshiping a wrong picture of the right person. Or if I may put it even more simply for you. The first commandment deals with the problem of addition, no other gods, but the second commandment deals with the problem of subtraction, because anything you liken God to, reduces God, diminishes God, makes God less than who He is.

The Problem of Misrepresentation

Let me try to illustrate this for you. In Egypt, the ancient gods, they like to combine some animals or animal features to their gods. So from your left to the right, you have ‘Anubis’, the god of death. It is likened to be like a jackal, because jackals are what they find in cemeteries and graves. So ‘Anubis’ is the god of death, the jackal. And then you have ‘Horus’, the sky god, likened to a falcon. And then to your right, you have Ibis, a god that is supposed to be wise, and it has the likeness to, sorry, god ‘Thoth’, and is likened to an Ibis. And then finally, you have ‘Bastet’, which is a cat like god that is supposed to be nurturing and protective. That’s what cats do. So they think that when they add these animal features to their gods, it makes you think of their god as being strong in death, in the sky, in wisdom and in protection. But the Bible tells us to whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with Him?

To whom then will you compare me? That I should be like him, says the Holy One. (Isaiah 40:25)

If you think about it, this is the paradigm. We think that when we combine some great animal to God and who He is, we extol the virtue of God. But the reality is, anything that you say, “God is like…”, you reduce Him, you minimize Him, you subtract from His glory. Because what strength does a bear have in comparison with the strength of God? What strength or what wisdom does an owl have that you can compare with the wisdom of God? Nothing. Anything you compare God to, you reduce the glory of God. So the first commandment is a problem of addition. The second commandment is a problem of subtraction. Because what you do with any image about God is that you misrepresent Him. You misrepresent. There are some people who say, “I need an image to worship.” I tell you whatever image you have, reduces God, cheapens God, minimizes God.

This week, I saw someone post a complaint on Stomp saying that his company received a lot of one star reviews on Google. Apparently, a competitor has paid someone to put a lot of one star reviews on the competitor’s Facebook page or Google page, because there are lots of people who want to misrepresent other businesses. Now this man, of course, one of the staff of this car selling platform, has to respond and react because he doesn’t want his company to be misrepresented. Nobody likes to be misrepresented, not you, not me, not your business. And so it is that God doesn’t want Himself to be misrepresented. So the command is therefore very clear. Don’t misrepresent me by having a carved image of anything else. Don’t bow down to them, nor to serve them.

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I think your response today, “Oh, very good. This commandment very easy. I don’t have any altar at home. I don’t have any shrine at home. I don’t have any ‘ang kong kia’ (idol in Hokkien) at home. I don’t have any idols at home. I don’t have. I’m not guilty of this problem. I’m free from breaking this commandment. I may have other gods that I admit. I have my Birkin bag, my Ferrari. I’m guilty, but this one, I’m free. I’m clear. I’m holy here.” Well, I say to you, you may not have material gods, but I think this commandment also involves mental gods, mental images of God that are unworthy of God. Someone said the second commandment is not just about art or statues or ancient temples. It’s about protecting the relationship from distortion. We must understand that the Ten Commandments are not just what we observe on the outside. It regards our attitudes and understanding on the inside, because Jesus tells us that the first five, four or five Commandments can be summarized as loving the Lord, our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

So how do you honor God in the second commandment in your mind. Or, how can you violate the second commandment in your mind when you have the wrong understanding of God, when you choose your own version, or you design your own god? There’s this lady called Sarah Michelle Geller. Some of you might know from Buffy, the Buffy the Vampire series. She’s an actress. I’m not sure if she’s still acting, but she’s an actress. And years ago, she said this, “I consider myself a spiritual person. I believe in an idea of God, although it’s my own personal ideal. I’ve been to every kind of denomination, Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist. I’ve taken bits from everything and customized it.” People today like design, bespoke, bespoke shirts, bespoke shoes. You also want a bespoke God. You want your own version of God. You don’t want God that is like this or like that. You want it this way. Now, that is actually what the second commandment is against. That’s what false religion is all about. Men choosing to form their own kinds of God. So we are guilty when we say things like, “I like to think of God as…” Really it’s not up to you to think. God has revealed Himself in the scriptures. So whenever we say, “I ignore what the Bible says. And I like to think of God as kind and loving and generous, and that He is never angry.” Well, that’s your bespoke version of God. That’s your graven image in your mind, and that’s not the true God of the Bible. There are some people who say, “I can’t accept that God would actually send anyone to hell.” You heard of that before? They are, I understand the sentiment, in a sense, because we just find that so painful, so cruel, and we wish and we after a while, will that God will not send anyone to hell. But even though that’s what you like, that’s not who God is, not how He has revealed Himself. And I think if we speak like that, we create a false representation of who God is. “I can’t accept that God will actually give pain and suffering and sickness to Christians”. That is a kind of idolatry, by the way. Or maybe “I don’t want a God who will not accept, who will not accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. I can’t accept that about God.” Whenever we speak like this, we entertain thoughts that are unworthy of God.

And as A. W. Tozer would say, “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him, and these thoughts will not, will not come from the Scripture. These thoughts that are unworthy will come from our own fallen imaginations and deductions.” So Moses gives us, number one the command. The command here is to guard against images, material ones or mental ones that we form according to our own fallen thinking and imagination, rather than to bow and to serve the God who has been revealed to us in scriptures.

Generational Curse and Jealousy of God

The second thing I’d like us to observe is the caution, because God continues to say,

…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…(Exodus 20:5)

Now I stop here because this already starts to conjure something in your mind. “Oh, I’m sick today. Is it because my grandfather in China last time did this?” Because that’s what the verse would say, right? When you break the second commandment, when you bow down to idols, God is jealous. He is a jealous God. I’ll explain what that means later. And he would visit the iniquity of the fathers who hid him on to the children, to the third and fourth generation to the grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren. So some of you might be thinking, “I’m sick today. I have problems today. Is it because God is visiting the iniquity of my ancestors onto me today?” That’s a very difficult question to answer, because this verse seems to teach that. But let me show you another set of scriptural verses. For example, in Deuteronomy 24,

Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin. (Deuteronomy 24:16)

Ezekiel number 18,

The soul who sins shall die. 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, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18:20)

What I think the scriptures are portraying here or presenting here is that there are scriptural verses that say your sin can impact others, and there are some passages that say your sin will be dealt with on you and not on others. I think we just have to accept that tension and that ambiguity, that it is not always possible for us to know why things happen the way they happen in our lives. But what I want to assure you as a follower of Jesus Christ, is that in Christ, you are blessed and therefore no more under the curse. Now that I think is true for the believer, that may not be true if you are not a believer, because it is only in Christ that we are blessed and not cursed. So we can’t always calculate so sharply. “I got Covid because my ancestors sinned.” No, you got Covid because you were near someone with Covid. But the fact remains, I think that God gives a warning here. I can’t calculate all the time. I can’t know precisely all the time. But I know that this is true, not every time, sometime in my life if I’m not a believer.

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But if I’m a believer, I don’t think I’m going to be under the curse of my ancestors. I think that’s what we need to know about this topic of generational curse. I leave it here, maybe in your CGs, you may want to discuss more. I’ll meet with the CG leaders. I meet them every Tuesday night. We can discuss more about that. But I think it is important to recognize that God is sending a very strong warning here. If you choose to misrepresent me and bow down to these misrepresentations of myself, I will judge you, and the judgment is severe. It will go even to the third and fourth generation. I think that’s the point. So Tozer again, he says, “No sin is private. It may be secret, but it is not private. Sin is three dimensional and has consequences in three directions, towards God, towards yourself, and towards society or community. It alienates from God.” Now we know how severe idolatry can be in God’s eyes, because Israel sinned against God in a golden calf. When they received the Ten Commandments the first time,

The people at the bottom of the mountain began to fashion for themselves this golden calf and say, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:8)

Same God, but misrepresenting him as a form of a calf or cow, and God struck down many in a plague that day. So this is a severe warning. Why? Well, because these are the works of those who hate God. You might think, “Oh, you’re so devout to construct something to worship God.” Well, God tells us that when you construct something to worship Him with, that is an act of hatred. You don’t really love God. “Oh, but idols, a lot of work, you know, a lot of craftsmanship, a lot of workmanship”. No, no, no, no, no. God says that’s a work of those who hate him. Because, again, we know the logic in Romans chapter 1. Instinctively from the creation of the world, we know there’s a creator. We know that there is God. We may want to suppress it, but actually, deep in your heart, you know that there is God. But because of our sin and our wickedness and our love for sin, we will not acknowledge God.

Therefore, even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. And as a result, God gave them up to their foolish hearts and how it is darkened, and as a result of the darkened foolish hearts, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal god for images. (Romans 1:21-23)

The Danger of Idol Worship

So the fashioning of idols is the result of those who refuse to acknowledge God, who refuse to bow to the true God, so they create other gods. And again, Deuteronomy 4 tells us,

beware lest you act corruptly…(Deuteronomy 4:16)

So God says idol worship, fashioning of idols is that of wickedness, filthiness, corruption.

There’s again, I saw some story on Stomp again. It’s always interesting what goes up there. And it speaks about this man, 59 years old, who sold his three room flat to finance himself to the tune of $163,000 to give to this lady, surname ‘Huang’ in China. They have been chatting online for a year. They got so intimate as to call each other husband and wife, even though they have never met and he was absolutely smitten with her that over the course of the one year, has been transferring various sums of money to different bank accounts because he believed Huang is exactly who she looks like in the photo. But one day reality hit, and he believed that all these photos are stolen from the internet anyway. It’s not the real person that he’s been speaking to. Today, you may be worshiping an idol. You think that’s God, but actually someone is right behind it, manipulating you, controlling you, duping you, and you don’t even know. And that’s what Paul is saying,

The food offered to idols. Is it anything? Or that an idol is anything? (1 Corinthians 10:19)

I mean, it’s just a wooden block, a metal block. Is it anything?

No, but I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.(1 Corinthians 10:20)

So idol worship is dangerous because behind it is an unseen enemy who is seeking to control, to manipulate, to influence you. So idol worship is a manifestation of a wicked, corrupt heart. It is energized and fueled by a demonic force, and that, I think, is why God tells us he must judge this sin because He is a jealous God. You know, when we see the word ‘jealous’, we think about an angry boyfriend who is very upset with his girlfriend being with someone else. We think of that petty little man who loses his temper. But when we look at the Bible and understand how jealousy is applied to God, it’s not about a God who is petty and just throwing tantrums all around but it is a manifestation of the steadfast determination of God against evil and wickedness. God is jealous, jealous of his own name. Why? Because man is created for God. Man is created to know God. Man is created to be satisfied in God. And if you corrupt the image of who God is, man will not find his satisfaction in the glory of God. And it is this desire to bless humanity that God must act fiercely to guard his glory and his honor.

Take care lest you make a carved image… (Deuteronomy 4:23)

For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (Deuteronomy 4:24)

Over and over again. God speaks about his jealousy again, not because he’s petty, but because it is ultimately for the good of the people to find their joy and satisfaction in Him.

You know, Singapore is a very unique country in that we really do not tolerate defamation against our political leaders. Our political leaders do not hesitate to sue. Some may look at that as, “Oh, our political leaders are very petty, or they are very money minded. Whenever it can sue, sue so it can earn money.” Well, that may be some thinking of some quarters, but I read some articles that remind us of this reality. I saw some years ago, PM Lee wins a defamation suit, was awarded this amount of money against Terry Xu and so on. Our leaders sue people who defame them. Some of you may say, “Oh, that’s because he wants money.” Really? Then the press secretary will say as usual, “PM Lee intends to donate to charity the damages he has been awarded.” He did not sue so that he can be richer by $210,000. He did not sue to be rich. And when the judge delivered the sentence, the judge said, “The defamatory remarks do not merely attack his personal integrity, character and reputation, but that of the Prime Minister, and damage his moral authority to lead Singapore.” Why do our leaders sue? Because the leaders and the office of leaders in Singapore cannot be misrepresented. If you do not sue, the integrity of the nation is at risk. That’s how I understand it. Every leader seeks to protect the office that he represents, not because of petty grievances, but because the office is important. God defends his reputation. He is serious about it because man needs to trust in His name, and if he is to be defamed, to be misrepresented, it will not be for the good and for the flourishing of humanity. So I see that God allows for no misrepresentation. He calls everyone not to misrepresent Him. And he tells us that there is a severe judgment if you should misrepresent Him, because God will guard His name. So do not hate Him, and do not malign Him, slander him or defame Him.

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The Importance of Knowing God

But finally, I have time just to come nicely to the third point, and that is the comfort. The comfort in this commandment is this. God instead will show steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments. And that is seen later on in the Bible. There’s a King Ahaz who broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. So it’s very interesting. Hundreds of years ago, Moses made a bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness so that when all who are bitten by the snakes can turn to that bronze serpent and be healed. Well, they did not destroy this bronze serpent, but they kept it. And after some time, people began to worship this bronze serpent. They began to think that this bronze serpent is God, or represents God. It’s not what God intended it to be. It became an idolatrous worship. And the Bible tells us that when Ahaz did it, he did it right because he trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. He held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses, including destroying these idols. And the Bible tells us the Lord was with him, and wherever he went, he prospered. So God showed love, steadfast love to those who love Him in keeping these commandments.

I’d like you to see the core of this second commandment that there is a very big difference. There are only two kinds of people in this world, those who hate God and those who love God. Those who hate God don’t bother to know God for who He is. They want their own designer God. They want their own version of God. They bow down to all kinds of images. But those who love God don’t do that. They seek to know God for who He really is. And so I say, to worship falsely is to dishonor God, but to know Him is to love Him. This commandment, as we have been looking at the Ten Commandments series, it’s not just saying, “Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this.”

The Positive Aspect of the Commandment

I want to end off with this positive note. This commandment is saying, instead of don’t do this, do this. What is the thing that I need to do? The thing I need to do is to know Him. The second commandment urges me to love God with all my mind. And loving God with my mind is to know God with my mind. And how can I know God with my mind? Some of you may say, “Oh, I’m going to go to Maldives, sit under the coconut tree, and I’m going to think about God.” I tell you, you will not know God. You only know suntan. You don’t know God by imagination or deduction. God can only be known by revelation. You know the story of the six blind men and the elephant I’ve told you before? I’m not going to repeat it. The blind man, touch, touch, touch. He only touched the tusk. He only touched the trunk, he only touched the tail, and he thinks that an elephant is just a trunk or a tusk or a tail, limited. You can’t know God because you’re blind, or you can’t know the elephant because you’re blind. So we can’t know God by ourselves. The only way you can really know God is by revelation. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself. It was not written to just reveal things, although it does. But ultimately, the Bible is written to reveal God, to reveal who He is, His character, His works, His wonders, His ways, His will. And so I say to you, to worship God is to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman,

You worship what you do not know, but we worship who we know….They that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth, and God seeks such to worship him. (John 4:22-23)

The Role of Worship and Service

Worshiping is not just attending service. Worshiping is saying, “God, I want to know you in the pages of Scripture”. I see a dangerous trend actually in Gospel Light. I’ve said that a few times already. I see a trend where people today come to church and for you, your worship is to serve, and you never, or you hardly join in a worship service. It’s actually I’m preaching to the choir. You’re already in worship service. I’m talking about people who are not in worship service. So maybe you got to get that word around. I really appreciate many of you hard in ministry, serving here, serving there, doing a lot of things. But please do not neglect the study, the thinking, the learning of God in the pages of the Bible, because real worship is not just doing things to know Him, is to love Him. You know, Mary and Martha. Martha was doing a lot of things, but she was so stressed out. And when Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus, Jesus says,

Your sister has chosen the good part, that which will not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:42)

But, but, but Martha would say, “Mary ‘zo bo le’ (do nothing in Hokkien) leh.” She has chosen the good part. I’d rather you seriously, I’d rather you not serve but come and soak, come and learn of God, come and know Him than for you to be doing a lot of things and not know him, because after a while, you will forget why you do what you do. You will burn out. You will be stressed. You will be upset, and actually you are not serving or worshiping God. You’re just maybe keeping up an image. I do not want to be too judgmental, certainly, and there are many reasons why people may not be able to attend worship services, but I do think that if you want to love God, it involves the worship and the knowledge of God. That’s the second commandment. It’s right up there.

So prioritize in your life a proper knowledge of God in Scripture. It may be worship service, it may be a Bible study, it may be a care group sharing, it may be your own quiet reading of the Bible. To know Him is to love Him. And the privilege is that as you study God’s Word and know Him and His greatness and His goodness, you will love Him more. And when you love Him more, the beautiful thing is that the second commandment will be then the source and the strength for you to be able to obey the first commandment, no other gods. Why? Because I now know my God more and more, and He’s altogether satisfying and worthy of my worship. I then will not take God’s name in vain. I will take this time to remember the Lord on the Lord’s Day. I will honor my father and mother. I will not kill and all flows from knowing God. How wonderful that would be. I pray for a worshipful church, not one where everybody is running their heads off, doing a lot of ministry and forgetting to worship, but one that understands. Yes, I can have Martha’s hands, but I also want to have Mary’s heart. May we honor this commandment profoundly, deeply faithfully in our lives.

The Role of Repentance and Faith

Let’s bow for a word of prayer together. The second commandment is far from a superficial prohibition of just having statues. It’s a command that urges men and women to truly know and love the God of the Bible. Maybe today you are not a Christian and you have worshiped other gods, or you have had the wrong understanding of God. Basically, the law has shown to you, you have sinned against the God of the Bible. I want to tell you that the law is meant to show us our need for God, and so it’s perfectly all right for you to feel this guilt, because I want to tell you that that’s God’s design, that you may know your sinfulness, your guilt, so that you may now see and appreciate the solution and the cure in the cross of Jesus Christ. So all my dear friends, I want to tell you today, the law shows you your guilt, but the cross shows you your Savior, Jesus.

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Even though you cannot obey God perfectly, Jesus did. And with His perfect life, he gave it up on the cross so that his perfect record can be given to you, and your sinful record will be taken on by Him, and He suffered for your state. So the Bible actually is giving you good news, great news, so that you may repent and believe in Jesus, that you may be saved. And the amazing miracle is that when you repent and believe in Jesus, God not only wipes away your sin, but he gives you a new heart that will love Him and want to obey Him. But it begins with this step, you see. It begins with this step that you’re willing or not to take, to repent of your sin and to believe in Jesus, to acknowledge that you are sinful and you need help. You need to be saved. Look to Jesus that you might be saved.

Final Encouragement and Prayer

And then to all my brothers and sisters in Christ, maybe today you have had other gods, or maybe today you have not prioritized the knowledge of God in your life. Ah, we come today with humility and confession and ask God to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And maybe today is a fresh day that you can say, “Lord, let me worship you. Let me love you, and let me begin with knowing you. Let me be diligent in the pursuit of God in the pages of the Bible,” I pray today deep in your heart, you may choose to make good decisions in your life. This church and the leadership is absolutely committed to help you know God. We have many things, many offerings to help you with. But I think it all begins with your heart. It begins with your desire. It begins with your commitment. In this world, where there are so many commitments, I think there is one that is above every other commitment, and that is to know God. Knowing God and His Son, that is the greatest thing. So maybe, right here, right now, I give you some time to think about your life, to think about the direction, to think about your own knowledge and relationship with God. Maybe you are so busy serving God, you are a little bit like Martha already. Can you hear Jesus saying to you? Come and sit at my feet and learn of me, and then you will realize my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Find rest for your soul. Find rest in your God,

Father, thank you this morning, we can hear Your Word. In this world, in this country, where we all value productivity, work, labour, enterprise. May we today be still. May we today quieten our hearts. May we today, learn to be like Mary, to sit at your feet. Teach us, show us your glory from the pages of the Bible, satisfy our souls and make us more like your Son. Thank you. We pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.