Exodus 20:4 “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or 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:”
The second commandment deals with making a graven image to worship as a god. In Bible times, it was a common thing to have a graven image of the god you worship. Remember in Exodus 32 when Moses took more time to get the commandments than the people expected, and they became anxious and wanted Aaron to make them gods? This makes it very obvious that while in Egypt they had been exposed to the images and worship of false gods. How quickly they forgot the goodness and protection of their God. It took a lot of guts and selfish stupidity to step over the grace that had brought them out of Egypt. God had protected them from the plagues and allowed their enemy to suffer. They had been a first hand-witness to how God reacted to those who didn’t follow Him.
Exodus 32:1 “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”
They chose to disobey and make an image of what they supposed God to be like. They had been exposed to the gods of Egypt and now they want to incorporate some of their ways of worship into the worship of their God. Sounds a lot like America.
Exo 32:2-5 “And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.”
Now the intent was to make this to represent the one true God. As you see, Aaron said they would have a feast to the LORD. In Hebrew, this meant Yahweh, the self-existent or eternal one.
In America, we don’t pool all our jewelry together and melt it down into an image we can touch. No, we are too sophisticated for that. But, we can still be guilty of breaking this commandment today while attending evangelical churches. In our day and time, we violate this commandment much of the time by imagining God the way we think he should be. For instance, some chose to believe God is a God of only love, that he would not allow anyone to go to hell. After all, in our way of thinking, love would not act that way. They have failed to read the parts of the Bible that reveals him as a Holy God. His holiness defines how He can love! Our God hated sin so much that it cost Him the crucifixion of His Son. If love were his highest attribute he could not have allowed His Son to be punished for our sin. That puts a big hole in the “love only,” God of their minds.
I know a church where they believe, in their services, God comes down in his glory to meet with them. They have an image of what looks to be a cloud hovering above and relate it to the wilderness journey where a cloud went before them in the day, and a pillar of fire by night. Of course, those who were skeptical have found this to be a manipulation of tech equipment, but many have followed and believed. Because they believe it is God, they now place an almost god-like attribute to their leader. He accomplished what he wanted, a big following of people!
We are never to imagine God as anything more than what his revealed word tells us. The Lord has a right to reveal himself anyway he wants to, after all, He is God, but he has chosen not to reveal His Spirit in visible form. You can find the passage to support that in Deuteronomy 4:15-31. We are not to attempt to make anything of the invisible unknown picture of God. Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, but not God the father. It is his prerogative to reveal Himself any way he chooses. To violate this commandment is still a sin. It also affects how we will worship him. As I said before, to attribute something to him that is not revealed in scripture is the same as creating an image. God is a spirit, and as Jesus explained to the woman at the well, we must worship him as the Spirit.
John 4:23-24 “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
