A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Exodus

Introduction--Part 1
Introduction--Part 2
Arrival at Sinai
"You shall have no other gods before Me"
"You shall not make a graven image to bow down to it"
"I am a jealous God"
The myth of the "Generational Curse"
"You shall not take My name in vain"
Jesus as the "I AM"
Taking God's name in vain (Part 3)
Making oaths in God's name
"Remember the Sabbath" (Part 1)
"Remember the Sabbath" (Part 2)
"Honor your father and mother"
"You shall not murder"
"You shall not commit adultery"
"You shall not steal" (Part 1)
"You shall not steal" (Part 2)
"You shall not bear false witness"
"You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor's"
"God has come to test you, that you may fear Him"
Treatment of slaves
Statutes concerning murder
Statutes concerning fornication, sorcery, bestiality, and usury
Treatment of Widows and Orphans
Statutes concerning idolatry, obeying authority, perjury
"You shall keep the feast of Passover" (part 1)
"You Shall Keep the Passover" (Part 2)
"You Shall Keep the Passover" (Part 3)
Bear your neighbor's burdens; let your land lay fallow; I send My Angel before you
The First Covenant (part 1)
The First Covenant (part 2)
The First Covenant (part 3)
The Tabernacle, The Priestly Garments
Replicas of the Tabernacle and the Priestly Garments
Consecrating Aaron and His Sons (part 1)
Consecrating Aaron and His Sons (part 2)
Consecrating Aaron and His Sons (part 3)
Ransom Money, Incense, Anointing Oil
The Calling of Bezalel and Aholiab
Picturing the Tabernacle
The Sign of the Sabbath
Aaron's Golden Calf
The Golden Calf (epilogue)
Two New Stones, The Sins of the High Priest
Finishing Exodus

A Survey of the Old testament Law--Aaron's Golden Calf

Let’s just kinda recap what has happened so far. In Exodus 20, God calls Moses up the mountain, and gives him the Ten Commandments. He takes them down, announces them to the people, and they cry out, “You go talk to God, lest we die!” So Moses goes back up the mountain, and from Exodus 21 through Exodus 23, Moses receives the commandments that the people were to obey, and in Exodus 24 the people cry out “All that the LORD has said we will do and be obedient!” And God establishes His covenant with Israel. God reveals the specifications for the Tabernacle and all its furnishings—the altars and the lampstand and the Ark of the Covenant and the tent itself—basically, He tells Moses, “This is how I am to be worshipped.” He then gives Moses the sign/token/pledge of this covenant, the 7^th-day Sabbath. And then in the very last verse in Exodus 31, we see how the covenant was put in writing. I love this verse. Exodus 31:18—When He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God.

And now we now get to one of the most well-known events not only in Exodus, but in all of Scripture. It is an event that really doesn’t require much explanation. But it does contain several applications to our own lives. And this passage gives us a term that is used even today when we talk about people’s ideas of God and who He is and what He is like. I am talking of course about the golden calf. Now, keep in mind, back in Exodus 24, when the covenant was being established, that Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, "All that the LORD has said we will do, and be obedient" (Exodus 24:7). That was now several days ago. One of the commandments which the people swore that they would “do and be obedient” was Exodus 20:4—“You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” What is the command? No graven images. Remember that. No graven images.

Exodus 32:1-6—1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." 2 And Aaron said to them, "Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." 3 So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, "This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!" 5 So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD." 6 Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. 

What was the commandment? No graven images. What did the people make? A graven image. That’s how stupid and stubborn we human beings are. Now, in this whole mess, who should have known better? Aaron. Aaron was up on the mountain back in Exodus 24:9-10—9 Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. But, what Aaron did was not too much different from what another fellow did a few hundred years earlier. Another fellow received a command from God to not do something. His wife did what she wasn’t supposed to do, he saw her do it, and he thought it looked OK and said, “Hey, why not?” Any idea who I’m talking about? Genesis 2:16-17—16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." What happened? Genesis 3:6—She took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. That’s how stupid and stubborn we human beings are. We hear what we’re supposed to do, and not supposed to do, we go on our merry way and do what we want. 

Exodus 32:7-8—7 And the LORD said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!'” Look at verse 7. When a parent catches their child doing something wrong, and they call the other parent, how do they refer to that child? “Do you know what YOUR son did today?” God tells Moses “These are YOUR people.” And we’re gonna talk more about that later. For now, notice something else. This is a very clear example of the omniscience—or “All-Knowingness” of God. While God was speaking all these words to Moses, what’s going on down at the bottom of the mountain? They’re making the golden calf. They're drinking and carousing and doing all sorts of wickedness. Does God see what the people are doing and even hear what they're saying? He’s speaking to Moses up here—and seeing the idolatry going on down there. And that is one thing we don’t often think about when we think about how God sees everything. We try to turn our eyes away from wickedness don’t we? When we see something filthy on TV, or see some of the magazines at the checkout, we stop and look away, right? We don’t watch pornography. We don’t engage in the sinful things that go on in the world. consider not only the wickedness that goes on in public—let alone the most bizarre stuff that goes in in the places that are hidden away in the darker corners of the world. Those places where the people think no one sees them—God sees it all. Hebrews 4:13—And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. He has seen all the wickedness I used to do before I knew him. And believe you me, I don’t even want to think of what He saw. And yet He is not tempted by seeing it, He is not corrupted by seeing it. He is offended by fact that it takes place. He looks on it all and will judge it all one day. Just as He will do here. 

Exodus 32:9-10—9 And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! 10 Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation." He presents to Moses a proposition that must have sounded very appealing to his flesh. But it’s not so much that God is tempting him—I really think this is a place where God is testing Moses to show Moses the weight of the office God has called him to. Keil and Delitzsch—

“God puts the fate of the nation into the hand of Moses, that he may remember his office as mediator, and show himself worthy of his calling. [By placing] the preservation or destruction of Israel in the hands of Moses, coupled with a promise, which left the fullest freedom to [Moses’] decision…this constituted a great test for Moses, whether he would be willing to give up his own people…as the price of his own exaltation. And Moses stood the test. The preservation of Israel was dearer to him than the honour of becoming the head and founder of a new kingdom of God. True to his calling as mediator, he entered the breach before God, to turn away His wrath, that He might not destroy the sinful nation.” 

Besides, it wasn’t as if the entire nation of Israel was participating in idolatry. And if God had wiped out all the people, He would have taken out the innocent with the guilty. And we see Moses' plea, his mediation, in Exodus 32:11—11 Then Moses pleaded with the LORD his God, and said: “LORD, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” What did God call these people in Exodus 32:7—“Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt.” But here, Moses shows that he understands just who these people belong to, and who really brought them out of the land of Egypt. God said to Moses, “These people belong to you.” Moses says, “No, LORD, they belong to you.” Exodus 32:12-14—“12 Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, 'He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'" So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people. Moses knew the real reason why God does every single thing He ever does—and that is His glory, His name. That is what prayer is all about. It’s not about getting what WE want. It’s about God. This event is the basis of some of the most long-debated questions in all of theology.

First, “Can we change God’s mind?” Second, “Does God change His mind?” Third, “If God does not change His mind, and if we can't change His mind—then why pray?” Well, we need to understand one basic principle about prayer. And that is: Prayer is not about changing God’s mind—it’s about changing our hearts. And I don’t think it’s as if God was telling Moses, “I am going to wipe these people out,” so much as He was telling Moses, “Give Me a reason why I shouldn’t wipe these people out.” Moses understood the reason for prayer, and he knew that the honor and glory of God’s name was to be upheld even if it meant having to put up with these stubborn, stiff-necked people. Did God know Moses what Moses was going to pray? Does God know what we’re going to pray? Does God know what we need when we pray? Matthew 6:8—“Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” Yet what do many of our prayers sound like? “God do this for me” or “Lord do that for me” or “Lord I need help with something else.” Who and what is the center of that kind of prayer? ME and my needs. Should ME and my needs be the center of our prayers? Who and what should be the center of our prayers? God and His glory and His name. In the “Model Prayer” (Matthew 6:9-13), what is the first thing we should pray for? Matthew 6:9—“Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.” Right after the commandments against having other gods or making graven images, what is the very next commandment? Exodus 20:7—“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” This, by the way, another commandment the people broke, giving the name of God to the golden calf (Exodus 32:4-5).

Moses understood this. He remembered the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac and Israel. And he knew that if God did indeed wipe the people out, the pagan nations would have great reason to blaspheme His name. When the prophet Nathan rebuked David for his transgression with Bathsheba, the main point of his rebuke was not that he had committed adultery and killed one of his soldiers. Yes, he did rebuke him for those things. But listen to 2^nd Samuel 12:13-14—13 So David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die." The child died because David gave the enemies of God a reason to blaspheme. This sounds very cruel to us, doesn't it? It was David that sinned—why should this child, who had not committed such a sin, bear the penalty for his father’s sin? Keil and Delitzsch— 

“As his sin had given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme or ridicule his religion and that of all other believers, the child that was begotten in adultery and had just been born should die…on the one hand, so that the father should atone for his adultery in the death of the son, and, on the other hand, that the visible occasion for any further blasphemy should be taken away: so that David was not only to feel the pain of punishment in the death of his son, but was also to discern in it a distinct token of the grace of God.” 

We will see the same thing here shortly—that even though God will not destroy them for this sin, they will be punished in a very visible and very memorable manner. 

Exodus 32:15-19—15 And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. 16 Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. 17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, "There is a noise of war in the camp." 18 But he said: " It is not the noise of the shout of victory, Nor the noise of the cry of defeat, But the sound of singing I hear." 19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses' anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

A couple things here. First, think back to the very first verses of the chapter. Where was Aaron? He was right in the middle of the rabble and riff-raff—and in fact HE was the one who fashioned the golden calf! Where is Joshua? He’s up the mountain a ways off. Was he in the middle of the wickedness? No. Was he kind of milling around the scene, checking things out? Was he trying to see how close he could get without crossing the line? And yet there are those who claim to be Christians who will date or even marry those who are not followers of Christ. Some will simply get as close to sin as they can, thinking they won’t cross the line into sin. Can't say I haven’t done that a time or two. But what do you always hear them say? “I can handle it! I'm strong enough!” or you’ll ask them, “Are you sure you should be doing that? There’s gonna be a lot of temptation with that.” And you hear these famous last words—“I would neeeevvvvverrr do that!” When you hear a Christian say something like that, get ready for some bad news. The sin that every Christian will fall into is the one they say “I would neeeevvvvverrr do that!” Because that statement is filled with one thing and one thing only—and what is that? Pride. Pride in their own flesh. Proverbs 16:18—Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 29:23—A man's pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor. Mark 7:20-23—“20 What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within and defile a man.” Notice how Jesus lists pride among all these other sins that defile a man. And He says that pride will indeed defile a man. So when you hear a Christian say, “I would never fall into that sin”—get ready, because they're about to. Because they're speaking out of pride, which lives in our flesh, and their flesh will make sure it gets its way.

Now, we’re gonna talk for a minute about the Ten Commandments movie. Of course, the way they depicted this scene was quite a bit tamer than what it actually looked like. And we should be very glad for that. This was a drunken orgy, and not many people—if any—had a shred of clothing on. And the scene was much more depraved than what we see on the screen. But does anybody remember what Charlton Heston does with the stone tablets? He throws them at the golden calf, and they make this huge explosion, and the earth opens up and swallows all the idolaters? Well, it makes for fascinating cinema—but bad theology. Which doesn't really make much sense when you have the script right in front of you. What actually happened was Moses slammed them to the ground and they shattered—a quite literal metaphor for how the people “broke the Law.”

 

Now, look at how the people were punished. God did not destroy the people, lest He give the pagans a reason to blaspheme His name. But, Exodus 32:20—Then [Moses] took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it. In other words, he made them take their sin into themselves, that they may get just a taste (for lack of a better word) of how abominable their sin was to God. Now, keep in mind, this would not have been a swift process. They would have heated up a large fire, cast the idol into it, and would have had to watch it melt and watch it get beaten down, spread on the water before they drank it. And this was a symbolic act on Moses’ part, teaching them that sin is not something that is exclusively external—that sin pollutes the inner person.  Proverbs 19:28—A disreputable witness scorns justice, and the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity. Job 15:15-16—15 If God puts no trust in His saints, and the heavens are not pure in His sight, 16 how much less is man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water! But, if we are in Christ, our “inner man” is not dying and decaying—it is being refreshed and renewed every day by God Himself. Romans 7:21-22—21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 2^nd Corinthians 4:16—Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 

Lastly, we’re gonna see just how foolish we human beings really are. Exodus 32:21-24—21 And Moses said to Aaron, "What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?" 22 So Aaron said, "Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23 For they said to me, 'Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.' 24 And I said to them, 'Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.' So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out."Aaron is saying a couple things here. First, in verse 24 he makes this miraculous declaration--“Moses, it was amazing! You wouldn’t believe it! I took their gold and I randomly threw it in the fire, and—**POOF**—this fully formed golden calf just jumped right out!!” 

Second, but more importantly, what else is he trying to do? look at verses 22-23. Who is he blaming for his actions? “You know the people! They MADE me do it—It’s THEIR fault!” And again, we go back to the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:11-13—11 And [God] said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" 12 Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." 13 And the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." Who does Adam blame for his sin? The woman. But also, he blames God, the One who gave him a wife. “The woman YOU gave me…” Who does Eve pin the blame on? The serpent. Remember the Flip Wilson character Geraldine Jones? What was her famous line? “The devil made me do it.” The devil doesn't MAKE us do ANYTHING. Our sin is our own. And by reading Aaron’s foolish reply, don’t we get a glimpse of our own foolishness when we dismissed our own sins for so many years and blamed them on someone else? We see it all around us today. A person commits a horrific crime and they blame society for it. Or they blame the fact that they were raised in the projects by a drug-addicted mother and an abusive father. But there are plenty of people of all races who grow up in such circumstances who don’t give themselves over to a life of crime. Otherwise, this city would be full of serial killers. Notice though, with Adam and Eve, that God holds each one of them accountable for their own sin. “Adam, did eat from that tree? Eve, what did you do?” And even Aaron had to drink the water that was littered with the gold from the calf he made. 

Exodus 32:25-28—25 Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, "Whoever is on the LORD's side—come to me!" And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. 27 And he said to them, "Thus says the LORD God of Israel: 'Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.'" 28 So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day.

Everyone who did not commit himself to the LORD God, but instead sided with the idolaters, was killed. Period, paragraph. No mercy. God said, “If they want they to worship their calf, then let them die.” Ezekiel 18:20—The soul who sins shall die. Were the Levites to spare anyone? They could not say, “Well, I know Yitzhak is still on the side of the idolaters, but he’s my cousin and I just can't do it.” What did we say was the most important thing to God? His name and His glory. God tells the sons of Levi, “Let these people be an example of what I will do to those who blaspheme against Me and worship other gods.” And I dare say, if any of the sons of Levi did not carry out these orders, they would have been counted as being among the idolaters, and would have been, more than likely, slain with the sword as well. In fact, listen to these words of our Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew 10:34-37—“34 Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to 'set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law'; 36 and 'a man's enemies will be those of his own household.' 37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” And listen to this one last verse from Exodus, Exodus 32:29—Then Moses said, "Consecrate yourselves today to the LORD, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother." Sound familiar? Think Jesus’ words might have reminded the Jews of a certain event in their history? Methinks.

More next time.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law-"I am a Jealous God"

We saw last week that not only does God prohibit us from making idols to use in worshipping false gods, He also prohibits us from making a statue and claiming that the statue represents God. Because, if we do that, we are actually creating another god and worshipping that god. And it’s not just statues we have to worry about making—there are all kinds of things we are in danger of worshipping if we’re not careful. Exodus 20:4-6—“4 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; 5 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 3rd and 4th generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Whenever we create something and claim that it “represents God” we are committing idolatry. A person who practices idolatry is an idolater. Any time we create an image and say “This is what God looks like” we are changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like corruptible man and we are worshipping the creation rather than the Creator. It’s not a harmless practice; it carries with it grave consequences, and we see these consequences in Romans 1:22-25—22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Notice that—because people tried to make an image of the perfect, sinless, holy, invisible God using imperfect and sinful and visible stuff by way of their imperfect and sinful and wicked and visible hands, God will actually give them over to uncleanness. Right now, although it may not seem like it, God has His hand on all of creation, holding it back from being as wickedly sinful as it could possibly be. If He didn’t then all of creation would destroy itself. But for the one who tries to make an image of God and worship that image, He will pull His hand back from restraining those people and He will let them plunge into whatever depths of wickedness and sin they want. And believe me, that is not a good thing!


That said, it is possible to worship something that is not a statue and that we don’t think of as an idol—but that really is. That is this thing called “stuff.” We all like “stuff.” We all want “stuff.” We drive by billboards; we read ads in magazines and watch TV commercials that drill into our heads, day after day, the fact that we need more “stuff.” And don’t get me wrong; it’s not the “stuff” that’s bad. But, if we’re not careful, “stuff” can become our god, and we will wind up devoting so much time and effort to our “stuff” that the “stuff” takes the place of Almighty God. 1st Timothy 6:9-10—9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Paul does not say that money is the root of all evil; he says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. There is a difference. Money is like a torque wrench—is a torque wrench evil? It’s a tool. Money is not evil—it’s a tool. But, how we look at money and how we use it is where we run into the danger. If we want a clear picture of how the rest of the world values “stuff” more than they value the things of God, we could take a trip on a Sunday morning during the summer and drive up to Norris Lake or out to Cherokee or Douglas, and find all kinds of people enjoying their “stuff” rather than enjoying the fellowship of believers and hearing the word of God. And many of those will be professing Christians.


I also want to point this out: there’s a reason the name of the show is “American…IDOL.” Something to think about. Those people that go on that show are saying, in not so many words, “I want to be an idol!” I remember seeing a picture in a magazine once, and I call Heaven and earth as my witness, it was a picture of Gloria Estefan, at one of her concerts, and this fellow managed to jump up on stage, and he’s on his knees, and he’s getting ready to bow down, and the caption read like this: “Johnny Jump-up worships his idol, Gloria Estefan.” Something to think about.


Which, oddly enough brings us to this little passage where God says “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.” First, He is jealous for us. I want us to see why it is so important that we have a firm understanding of the Scriptures. Because if we don’t, it doesn’t take much to send us spinning in the wrong direction, and doing a death spiral into Hell. I'm not going to say that Oprah Winfrey is there, but she is on that path, and it is my hope that she sees that before it’s too late and she perishes. I hope that one day she will see the truth, and come to know God for being the Almighty and loving God—and Jealous God—that He is. We’re gonna see a clip from her show in which she explains how she got started down the road to her New-Age…… mystical……spiritual……whatever you want to call it beliefs and how she quote-unquote “reconciles” those beliefs with her beliefs about Christ—her false beliefs about Christ.



A couple of things I want to point out—did you notice the girl on the phone with her? Just smiling away and not questioning one iota of what Oprah was saying; just full of glee and fawning admiration. Oprah is a religion. Make no mistake, there are many who worship this woman. But, more than that, did you notice how Oprah thinks that God is jealous OF her? TIME OUT!!!!! What would make a person think that God is jealous OF that person? Do we have anything that God cannot create? He created this whole universe, we saw that over the last couple weeks. He didn’t ask for input on how He should do the creating—He did it according to His own will, and His own counsel. What could possibly make God jealous OF us? Well, that’s the thing. God is not jealous OF us—He is jealous FOR us! We do have one thing He wants—and that is our devotion, our worship. He will not share us with another god. We either worship Him and Him alone, in a way that He desires and which brings glory to Him—or we might as well not try to worship Him at all. He is jealous FOR us. In fact, one of His names is ‘Jealous’. Exodus 34:12-14—“12 Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. 13 But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).” God is telling Moses, “The land you're going into—the people are pagan, they are wicked. And I want you to destroy every single shred of their heathen practices. Right down to the dust! Utterly and completely destroy it! Don’t leave anything standing; I won’t have it!” If this were today, He would have said something like, “Just carpet-bomb the whole place! Blow it to smithereens.”


What that means for us now we see in 1st Corinthians 8:5-7 (NASB)—5 For even if there are so-called gods…6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father…and one Lord, Jesus Christ…7 However not all men have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. These Corinthians were coming out of pagan religions, where meat would be sacrificed to idols, and after the sacrifice that meat would be sold in the market. Some of the new Christians would be afraid to buy that meat and eat it, since it had been used in a pagan ritual, and their conscience would be troubled if they ate that meat. However, there were some more mature Christians whose conscience wasn’t affected one way or the other. But what happened was, we see in 1st Corinthians 8:10-12 (NASB)—10 For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? 11 For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined…12 And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. In other words, the weak brother—that is, the new Christian—isn't quite sure of what do about this meat that was offered to idols. So he sees the more mature Christian eating this meat and the young Christian says, “Well, I guess it must not be that bad,” so he too eats the meat.


But what happens is, because he isn't mature, he falls back into his old ways and eventually returns to worshipping idols and winds up in Hell. And who does Christ hold accountable? The mature Christian. So, what is Paul’s solution to this? 1st Corinthians 8:13 (NASB)—Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble. That is, if by me exercising my liberty to eat that meat, I cause my weaker brother to drift back into worshipping idols—then I will never eat meat again! I will cut it off, so that the person worships God and God alone! Because God is a jealous God, and He is jealous for us.


Second, He is jealous for our worship. He doesn’t want us worshipping other gods—He wants all our devotion and all of our worship to be to Him—as well it should be! After all, He is God! Joshua 24:19-23—19 Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve the LORD, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. 20 If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you, after He has done you good.” 21 And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the LORD!” 22 So Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD for yourselves, to serve Him.” And they said, “We are witnesses!” 23 “Now therefore,” he said, “put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD God of Israel.” To put it in context, Joshua is reminding the people of Israel about all the good things God has done for them—brought them out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea, destroyed Pharaoh and his army—reminds them of how they were always surrounded by people who worshipped pagan gods, and yet God was still with the people of Israel. But he also reminds them of the times when they strayed from God, served other gods, and that even now they weren’t right with God. And he tells them, “You can't worship God! He won’t put up with you trying to serve Him while you're still worshipping idols!” And he pretty much lays down the gauntlet, saying “put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD God of Israel.” These people were swearing an oath that they would worship God and God alone, and Joshua tells them, “OK then, you are your own witness, it has come out of your mouth!” What he’s saying, in other words, is “Put your worship where your mouth is!”


It is completely irrational to worship idols. Are idols able to do anything? That scene in “The Ten Commandments” when God sends the Angel of Death to kill the firstborn in Egypt, and Yul Brynner lays his dead son in the arms of that big statue? And for however many days, just keeps calling on that god, “Oh, great Anubis, give life to my son!” Nothing! Because there is only one God who can do ANYTHING. There is only one God who can truly be called “The Living God”—which is what He is called nearly 30 times in the Bible. Psalm 42:2—My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Jeremiah 10:10—But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. 1st Timothy 6:17—Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God. What happens to most people who win the lottery? What happens to all that money? As it says in Proverbs 23:7—Riches make themselves wings and fly away toward Heaven. “Jimmy Joe Crabshack won $137M in the Tennessee Lottery, and now he lives in a run-down trailer after blowing it all on…” Those people worshipped and served their riches and their human desires rather than serving the Living God. When we choose to worship someone other than God—and that includes worshipping our own self—we take the glory that belongs to God and we give it to another. Hebrews 10:31—It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. You could run afoul of any pagan god you could imagine. You could do everything to displease Allah or Buddha or whatever other false god you can think of—and nothing will happen to you because of it. BUT—we should take every precaution to not stir up the Living God to anger.


Because when God is angry—and His anger is always under control; He doesn’t just fly off the handle into a blind rage—considering how powerful He is, do you really want to be on His bad side? He doesn’t want to destroy anyone, Ezekiel 33:11—“As I live,” says the Lord GOD, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” He does not want us to die in our sins and spend eternity in Hell. He will send us there if He has to, but He doesn’t want to. He is jealous for our worship so that we may live eternally with Him. The apostle Paul expresses the same sentiment in 2nd Corinthians 11:2-3—2 I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. 3 But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Paul is saying “I don’t want to see you serve anyone but Christ. And I will do everything I can to see that Satan does not deceive you the way he deceived Eve.” That should be our attitude toward each other. We know how Satan is; we know how smart and how powerful he is. But we know someone who is even smarter and infinitely powerful, and will come to our aid when we call on Him—and He will help us because He is jealous for us, and does not want to see us worship another. I, for one, am glad that God is jealous FOR me! OK, so He is a jealous God. Next week we’ll take a couple minutes and talk about the rest of verse 6, and the MYTH of the “generational curse.”


Jesus Christ is Lord. Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law------ "You shall not make any graven image"

Before we get to this commandment, I want to talk a little bit more about the 1st Commandment. God and God alone is worthy of our worship because God and God alone is God. We saw that He created all things through His mighty hand and through His Word—that Word (big-‘W’) that took on the form of human flesh and walked the earth and whom we know as the Lord Jesus Christ. It that idea that must be made clearest when one preaches or teaches. Even this pitiful little blog has, as its purpose, to make known the truth of God and salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. One way to determine if a preacher or teacher is faithful to his calling, that,

“When we have gone from them, there must be no beauty in us that makes them long for us, the only remembrance must be, ‘That man was true to God’”
(Oswald Chambers, If Thou Wilt Be Perfect, p.31).

That is, when we listen to someone teaching or preaching, they have done their job if, instead of saying “Oh, what a wonderfully talented and gifted man he is”, the people walk out afterwards with all their thoughts being what they just learned about God and God’s glory. That is the truest mark of a teacher of God. I found a little pamphlet called “The Godhood of God,” by A.W. Pink. Mr. Pink was a very dedicated teacher and preacher of the Bible, and when you get done reading anything he wrote, you will have a better sense of who God is, and the last thought you will have will be about God and God’s glory. Well, listen to what he says in the section entitled ‘The Absolute Godhood of God is Seen in Creation’—

“With whom took He counsel in creation? Whom did He consult when He determined the various and manifold arrangements, adjustments, adaptations, relationships, equipments of His myriad creatures? Did He not do everything after the counsel of His own will? Did He not decide that birds should fly in the air, beasts roam the earth, and fishes live in the sea?...Did He not determine to create the exalted seraphim to stand before His throne throughout endless ages, and also to make another creature which dies the same hour it is born? Was He not undisputed Sovereign in all His creative acts?...Why should God take counsel? Could man add to His knowledge, or correct His errors?...God never consulted man about a single member of His body, or about its size, color, or capacity; instead, ‘God set the members everyone of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him’ (1 Corinthians 12:18).”

Amen! In fact, the only duty God gave to Adam was to name the creatures. But He did not ask Adam’s advice concerning how big the earth should be or how many stars there should be or how long a day would last. God said, “This is how it’s gonna be.” PERIOD. He didn’t ask our advice about these things. He did it—and that was that. And that is the God we worship. One whose knowledge and wisdom and power are infinite—but even more than that, the beauty of His Holiness is perfect.

To say that God is “holy” is to say that He is completely separate from His creation—and that there is nothing to compare Him to. Some people try to say that “God is like…” or “The love of God is like…” or anything about God “is like…” There is nothing that is like anything about God. His love is not like anything we could imagine. His power is not like anything we could imagine. His wisdom, His justice—nothing about God is like anything we could imagine. No one is holy like God is holy.

In the gospels, Jesus commands us, saying, “The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31). Notice something. We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. The love we have for our neighbor should be equal to—in fact, greater than—the love we have for ourselves. But, when Christ talks about the love we are to have for God, what does He compare that love to? Nothing! He does not say “You shall love the LORD your God as you love…” anything else! Because the love we are to have for God should be infinitely greater than the love we have for anything. We should even count the love we have for our family as being worthy of throwing in the dumpster compared to the love we have for God. John 12:25—“He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” The apostle John tells us, in 1st John 2:15—Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. We are to value and cherish God more than even our own life. But we don’t always do that. It’s easy to make other things our ‘god’. We put other things ahead of God, and we would rather serve those things that to serve Almighty YHVH. And that is actually a subject we will discuss more next week, in part 2 of our look at the 2nd Commandment.

That said, let’s move on to that 2nd Commandment. We are in Exodus 20, and let’s go ahead and read Exodus 20:4-6—“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.” The command here is quite simple—do not use statues of anything in worshipping God. The people had just come out of Egypt, where they saw all kinds of statues and pillars that had been built to honor their various little-‘g’ gods. And they very well may have in fact been forced into carving and erecting these things. So God obviously does not want the people making statues to worship pagan gods. But God is also prohibiting them from using statues—period. Not just to set them up as idols in the worship of false gods, but God was also telling them to not use statues to worship Him either. We see a couple passages that offer proof of this.

The first is in Exodus 32. Setting the stage. God is still speaking His Law to Charlton Heston, and before He can even finish giving it Edward G. Robinson has already convinced the people that God has forsaken them. They say, “God has forgotten us, Moses is dead for all we know. Let’s make our own god!” Exodus 32:1-6—Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.” Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.

Their thought was, “Yeah, we know that YHVH brought us out of bondage—but that was then, this is now. And we’re all about the here and now.” Aren't we all? God does something wonderful and miraculous for us, and what do we find ourselves saying not too long after? “What has He done for me lately?” Not only that, we are a visual people. We need results we can see. We don’t want to have to simply believe something is so—or is going to be so. “Show me! Prove it!” And that’s what the people do here. Now, they weren’t forming a statue and making a new god—they were building this thing, and saying “This is YHVH! This is the god that brought us out of Egypt!” And God sends Charlton Heston down the mountain to put a stop to it. We’re gonna talk about this incident some more when we get to this particular passage. But we can already see that God is forbidding us from making any kind of carved image and saying “This is God!” For one thing, it reverses the order God wants. Man was created in the image of God—but we create a god in the image of man. Whenever we reduce God down to a statue or trinket, we are fashioning an imperfect image of the perfect God from imperfect materials. And we are fashioning a visible image of the invisible God.

Another reason I believe God gave this prohibition is because He wanted the people to be ready for when he would send His image to walk the earth. Which He did about 2000 years ago. Colossians 1:15—[Christ] is the image of the invisible God. Hebrews 1:1-3—God…has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person. 2nd Corinthians 4:3-4—But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing…who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. If I am making some little statue and saying “This is what God looks like” then I am denying Christ because the Bible says that the only thing that “looks like” God is Jesus Christ. But, until God sent His Son, He would not appear to the people in any form, except He would cover Himself in clouds and thick darkness. Which is exactly what Moses tells the people in Deuteronomy 4:11-18—“You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens: darkness, cloud and thick gloom. Then the LORD spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form—only a voice. So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. The LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you are going over to possess it. So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth.” He’s saying, “You saw no form when YHVH spoke to you from the cloud that rested on Mt. Sinai—neither shall you carve anything and say, ‘This is what God looks like.’” Because, as we talked about at the outset, God is not like anything we could imagine—so how could we ever build anything that even allows us to come close to saying “This is what God looks like” since God does not look like anything we could ever imagine.

Think about it like this—suppose someone told you that they were going to make a statue of you, and that it was going to look just like you and they were going to bring it here next week and give it to you. Being humans, we wouldn’t have a problem with it. We’d be thinking that it was going to be some carving made out of wood or stone or whatever. But then they bring it in next week, and what you see is this big, honking lump of half-eaten chicken bones and chewed-up gum and bailing wire and lemon peels and mud. It’s a big ugly disgusting mess. And they look at you and say, “It looks just like you!” We would be appalled! That’s what God says we are doing when we try to make a ‘graven image’ and say “This is God.” Only with Him, it’s on an infinite scale.

Because as much as we would be disgusted with that clump of chicken bones and lemon peels, God is infinitely disgusted with anything we might make and say “This looks like God.” No matter how beautiful it may be in our eyes, and no matter how sincere we may be—there is nothing we could ever make that we could point to and say “This looks like God.” In fact, we have a perfect example of this thought in Judges 17:3—Now there was a man from the mountains of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, “The eleven hundred shekels of silver that were taken from you, and on which you put a curse, even saying it in my ears—here is the silver with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “May you be blessed by the LORD, my son!” So when he had returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, “I had wholly dedicated the silver from my hand to the LORD for my son, to make a carved image and a molded image; now therefore, I will return it to you”…In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Momma was gonna have the silversmith make a molten or graven image of YHVH in the name of her son. She did, and that son served that image. Now, he was serving the image—but was he serving God? No! He was serving this abomination that he called YHVH. Much like anybody does when they set up statues and say “We are worshipping God by giving reverence to this statue!”

John Calvin once said,

“Moses…had no other object than to rescue God’s glory from all the imaginations which tend to corrupt it. And assuredly it is a most gross indecency to make God like a [block of wood] or a stone. Some [explain the commandment as meaning], ‘Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven image, which thou mayest adore;’ as if it were allowable to make a visible image of God, provided it be not adored…as soon as any one has permitted himself to devise an image of God, he immediately falls into false worship.”
(John Calvin, Commentaries, Commentary on Deuteronomy 5:9)

He goes on to say, in that same section,

“They have always alleged the same [excuse] which now-a-days is [present] in the mouths of the Papists, viz., that not the image itself was actually worshipped, but that which it represented…they will immediately reply, that they offer to God that honor which they pay to pictures and statues. But this frivolous excuse comes to nothing; because to erect the idol before which they prostrate themselves, is really to deny the true God.” (ibid.)

Now, let’s say someone were to walk into your garden-variety Roman Catholic church. Not that I'm recommending it! But, suppose we do, what do you suppose we will see when we walk in? Statues. Statues of Christ; statues of…somebody else. Who might that someone else be? Mary! Gotta have our statues of Mary! Hmmm…now, the way your average Roman Catholic will try to get away with this is by saying (A) The 2nd Commandment is only a prohibition against making idols to false gods (we’ve seen already this is not true) and they will say (B) Oh, we don’t worship the statues, we use them in our worship (we’ve seen from Judges this is not true either). But when you ask them, why the Pope bows down to statues of Mary—when the Commandment says “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above [that would be Christ], or that is in the earth beneath [That’s Mary]…you shall not bow down to them nor serve them” they will come back with “Oh, the Pope does not bow down to statues of Mary”—well, below are pictures of John Paul II and Benedict XVI bowing to statues of Mary. We’ll stop right there, and pick up next week talking about God being a jealous God.







Jesus Christ is Lord.
Amen.