- “Graven images” grow out of an idolatrous heart
- Israel created this image because they were scared. They didn’t trust God … They weren’t satisfied with Him, and felt like they needed something besides Him (or in addition) to, to protect them.
- Now, granted, they made an image that reflected God, but the whole thing was an attempt to guarantee God’s protection. Their real idol was a need for guaranteed protection, and they thought they needed that more than they needed God.
○ This is idolatry. You make an idol out of something whenever you consider it so fundamental to your life that you do not see how you could be happy and secure without it, so you prioritize it even above obedience to and faith in God. You’ve got to have it, in addition to God, in order to be happy and secure. Or as Seth puts it, You sub God out of the first chair in your life. Your wife gets the first seat then God. Your kids get the first seat, then God.
○ And you make a graven image when you conceive God in a way that guarantees that He’ll give you what you want.
○ (Did you get that? REPEAT)
- I told you that psychologists say that when we re-imagine people to be a certain way it is a way of control … we feel like we need them to be a certain way, and so we try to manipulate them into being that way …
- It’s the same with God. We need God to be a certain way because we need something we think He can give us more and we’re not willing to just to be content with Him …
- For example:
○ We feel like we have to have money and prosperity to be happy, so we invent a God that will guarantee that to us. This is called the prosperity Gospel and produces books like Your Best Life Now.
○ We really need to see ourselves as good people, so we invent a God who is angrier at the kinds of sins other people struggle with more than He is with the kinds of sin we struggle with.
○ Or, we really need sexual freedom, so we invent a God who is ok with it. We really want to have pre-marital sex, or we don’t want to tell our friends who practice it that they are wrong, so we re-imagine God to be morally permissive, because we are.
○ We really need family stability to be happy, so we invent a God who guarantees it!
○ Or, …
■ A lot of people really want to be out of their marriage and married to, or sleeping with someone else. They don’t see how they could be happy without that.
■ Now, the Bible says very clearly that adultery is wrong, and that you shouldn’t get divorced, unless there is a very specific set of criteria that are met (and, there are criteria) … and, if not, Jesus said (Matthew 5:32), it’s considered adultery. That is clear.
■ So what these people do is they say, “Well, I know God wants me to be happy … and so even though the Bible says this, I know God is OK with me leaving my wife and marrying this other woman.” Even though the Bible could not be clearer that this is immoral and sinful and wrong … it’s that they want to be out of their marriage, married to someone else so bad that they are willing to redefine God’s word to get it! Their desire for a new marriage is an idol that causes them to re-define God.
A graven image grows out of an idolatrous heart.
- “Graven images” distort the real God
- Instead of seeing God for who He is, you end up seeing Him as your idolatrous, dysfunctional screwed-up heart wants Him to be.
○ God becomes simply a reflection of yourself and a reflection of your idolatry.
- Now, your God may have elements of truth in it, but you’re not seeing the whole thing.
○ For example, here, the bull here symbolized God strength, which was true, but had no representation of His holiness.
○ the image of the bull depicted some true things …
- But, … God can never be reduced to a static figure or a single attribute … He is a being complete in all of His holiness and perfections.
○ He is almighty in strength and perfect in holiness.
○ He is fully just and infinitely loving.
○ He is transcendent above the heavens and also close and intimate in our hearts.
- That’s the problem with a graven image of God. It shows you only one dimension of God, never all of Him, and that ends up distorting who God actually is.
○ For example, if you drew a picture of God, would you draw Him smiling or frowning? If you drew Him smiling, you might capture His goodness and Fatherliness, but not His wrath against sin. But if you drew Him frowning, you might capture His wrath against sin, but you wouldn’t show His grace and forgiveness.
○ If you draw Him towering above the heavens, you obscure the fact that He is as close to us as our souls and shares intimately in our pain. But if you show Him as a friend by your side, you obscure the fact that He’s the God of infinite majesty and worth and unspeakable holiness.
○ That’s the problem with pictures of God … they conceal more than they reveal.
- There is only one place you can see a picture of God.
○ Colossians 1:15, “For He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God,” (image = icon)”
○ Hebrews 1:3, “ The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being
- We see the real God in the stories of Jesus … all of them, together, show you who God is.
- This brings up a question … What about pictures of Jesus?
○ The problem with pictures of Jesus … is like all graven images, they show 1 side of Jesus but not all of His character. It’s been interesting to see how the pictures of Jesus have changed …
■ 1950’s Jesus … a meek and mild, pale faced … delicate looking man with a mysterious glow around His head who always looked like He’s about to burst into tears.
■ Then there was 60’s Jesus, who manages to look like a hippies-flower-child, non-conventional, free-spirited … with this ethereal look in His eye like He’d just taking a hit on the Prince-of-Peace pipe
■ Then there was 70’s Jesus … who always looked like a well-proportioned body-builder with beautiful long Ferrah Fawcett hair …
○ There are elements of truth in all of these … but they don’t reveal the real God-man.
■ I heard of a guy one time who grew up in Harlem explaining why he didn’t become a Christian as a teenager. He said he saw these pictures of Jesus in churches and thought, “That guy wouldn’t last 1 second on the streets of Harlem! Worship Him? I could take Him.”
■ Even pictures of Jesus on the cross only show you one side of Him … they show His humility and His love, but not His majesty and power.
○ I wouldn’t go so far as to say all pictures of Jesus are wrong … but I’d say you should be careful. Even movies like the Passion … or shows like The Chosen, I think Jonathan Roumie is a good-looking man and I think he’s a great actor … but is he really sufficient to show me what God’s face looks like? And I’m not talking about the shape of His nose and eyes … I’m talking about seeing how He looks at people; His eyes of tenderness and compassion … His loving anger at sin; His passion for His people. I don’t think it’s always wrong to have an artistic depiction of Jesus, I would just say to be careful.
■ Christianity was unique among religions in the ancient world in that it was a religion of word … the pagan world was filled with big, impressive statues of “God;”
- the Israelites didn’t have statues (look at this picture of the arc of the covenant. Two angels are on the lid with their wings wrapped around what is called “The Mercy Seat” It’s a depiction of Gods throne on Earth. And look at it. It’s empty.
- … after Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus’ Apostles’ didn’t run around the world building big glorious statues of Jesus or cathedrals that boasted His size … (in fact … there is a correlation between the mercy seat and Jesus’ empty tomb—with angels seated on either side of the empty spot)
■ No, what the Apostles did is they went around preaching … Christianity is a religion of word … the preached word.
■ God reveals Himself in words because pictures and images can never contain Him. Pictures and images conceal more than they reveal.
■ You want to know God? Think on Scripture; memorize Scripture; meditate on Scripture.
III. “Graven images” corrupt our behavior
- Important lesson here … they worshipped this depiction of God for less than a day and they were involved in a full scale orgy. Perhaps that is because they only focused on the power of God, and not the beauty of His holiness.
- Real, healthy spiritual growth comes from seeing and knowing God … All of Him, not part of Him.
- If you focus on only 1 dimension of God, but not all … then you’ll grow in a deformed way.
- For example …
○ If your god is holy and just but not compassionate and gracious, then we tend to be judgmental.
○ If your god is gracious, but not just and holy, then we tend to treat sin, things He finds to be an abominations casually as if they are just a suggestion …
○ If your god is not fully sovereign, then we tend to get worried and stressed out when something goes wrong.
○ If your god is sovereign but not loving and compassionate, then we become an angry Christian who argues all the time about theology but rarely tells anyone about Jesus.
○ If your god is a god of justice but not the God of steadfast, fatherly love who gave Himself for you at the cross, then when things go wrong in our lives we assume that He’s mad at us.
○ If your god is not beautiful and all-satisfying, we’ll find we serve him half-heartedly … but we won’t desire Him with all our heart (you won’t seek Him on a day to day basis) … and you will continue to struggle with attraction to the things of this world and sinful pleasures.
○ If your god is a god that guarantees prosperity and your best life now, then when things go wrong in our lives you’ll lose your faith.