Dennis Tuuri

We move on to the second word or second commandment. The scripture reading is that commandment found in Deuteronomy involving the description of the jealousy, and it seemed appropriate to reference the text in relationship to the jealousy of God. Numbers chapter 5, the second half, verses 8-10, deals with the so-called ordeal of jealousy in the Old Testament.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, nor 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 and serve them. Then the visiting of the fathers as upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. The woman’s thigh will swell and her belly will swell. She won’t be able to bear children.

Lord God, we thank you for the clarity of your word. We pray that you help us understand it today and see what it means. The text says blessing and curse increasing in relationship to this so-called ordeal of jealousy.

There were in the pre-Christian world, in the ancient world, lots of trials by ordeals. Even in the medieval world in certain times, there were trials by ordeals, right? So if you’re a witch, we’ll throw you in a lake, and if you drown you’re a witch. If you float to the top, you’re not a witch and you’re free. Or we’ll put a great big stone on you, and we’ll tie weights to you as we throw you into the lake. Or we’ll put a really big stone on top of you. And if you can survive that trial by ordeal, then you’re okay.

Come to the ordeal of jealousy. There’s no ordeal involved, right? There’s just drinking some water with a little bit of the temple dust on it. And that water also had curses of the law inscribed and scraped off and put into the water. The thing that determines what’s going to happen to the woman has nothing to do with the cup. There’s no harm going to come to her from the cup of water. It has to do with the personal actions of God in relationship to his word, which produces the effects of curse upon those who are in necessity of it.

So the jealousy of God—properly, the husband is jealous, and the question is whether it’s a proper jealousy or an improper jealousy. This kind of reveals churches and specifically so: the Lord God is jealous for us, and he knows our heart.

Converting to Eastern Orthodox Anglicanism—we don’t invite everybody to this table because the ordeal of jealousy was for situations where they didn’t know for sure if the woman had committed adultery or not. We don’t know what you’ve done this week. We don’t know if you repented of your sins this week, or if you’re trusting in the merits of Christ or not. We don’t know if, when you take this cup and eat this bread, you’re doing so with a smirk on your heart, or one of those three men with an attitude toward God of Catholic disobedience, disrespect, whatever it is.

Taking his children—the children particularly, young people and us older ones—if we come to the Lord’s table, we’re the bride. We’re coming to the wedding feast. We’re coming to the meal that he prepared. The reform of the CRC came to this table with that kind of idolatrous attitude of rejecting God and his word. He has stated that God says this cup, as the Catholic church will affect, is an issue for us here in church that we should address correctly by looking at this particular word—the second word, the second commandment.

The only thing that can replace having conversations with people—chastising are leaving church members of these other groups. Now, let me say that there are serious, unrepentant, sinful hearts. As we come to the table of the Lord, may we do so trusting in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ for our relationship to the Father. May we come to this table properly, confessing our sins, loving him, desiring to serve him in the power of the Spirit according to his word.

God says if we come in that way, these words are a great blessing for us, not to our death, but rather consequences will be fruitful.

This is one of the few commandments that says warnings and judgments in the way that only to three and four generations down. Paul said that I received from the Lord, which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “Take. This is not just this is my body which is broken.” A particular picture that’s consecrated, it’s been made in a particular way. God, we thank you for this bread. We thank you for our inclusion in it. We have the icon here made in a particular way—the church of Jesus Christ—so that divinity comes to us.

We thank you for the goodness of this bread. We thank you there’s nothing in this bread that would cause us harm, that would destroy us or make us sick. And it is good.

The second commandment has to be kept. Pray also, Lord God, that you would indeed mediate if there is any heart that’s disrespectful or scandalous toward you, that you would reveal it through indeed promising to do what you told us by your word. They have this very meal ministered sickness unto us.

Kind things for those who come to this table—things that will actually be fruitful—make us whole. Bless us, Father, as we partake of this bread. Give us the grace of your Holy Spirit in the basket so that it forms this mystical connection.

There’s a voodoo doll that sort of looks like a person, and when I poke the voodoo doll he hurts. See, so it’s kind of a doorway, an entrance. And in these idolatrous churches that use images in this way, that’s kind of what’s going on. These things are not just artwork to be thought of. Interestingly, you do bow down to them, which is specifically prohibited by this commandment. You do venerate them, kiss them, etc. And that’s because they’re seen as touchpoints, mediation points between us and God, or us and saints who then mediate God to us. So that’s kind of what it’s about in a general sense here.

I was reminded of a Rolling Stone song from “Exile on Main Street,” which goes way back, but the words have stuck in my head for lots of several decades. It’s not really a song. It’s just sort of a little weird thing they do, but kind of a song. But the lyrics—the part of the lyrics say, “You don’t want to walk and talk about Jesus. You just want to see his face.” So, you know, “I don’t want to talk about Jesus. I want to see his face.”

Now, part of that you know we can sort of understand from one perspective—we are representatives of Christ and we do touch people’s lives—but from another perspective it really represents what’s specifically forbidden by this commandment. We don’t get Jesus by seeing. We get Jesus by hearing. He’s the Word of God. And so this distinction between sight and hearing is what this second word is all about. We have very specific things that are prohibited here in this verse or in these verses.

Last week I talked about the tattooing verse, and what I tried to say is there’s something very specific that’s prohibited there too, right? That was tattooing or cutting yourself in mourning in a particular context under Torah, which had boundary markers between Jews and Gentiles. Now there’s application points that come out of that, but I can’t give you a law about properly relating to goatees and tattoos.

I got a question this week from a fellow that happens to have one of each, and he wanted to know: what was I trying to say? What was that sermon about? He says, “Are you trying to say first of all that we should discourage tattoos, goatees, fauxhawks, etc., or that if we ourselves sport any of these, we cannot take a hard line with our brethren on any of the others?” So, what is it?

Well, it isn’t neither of those really. It’s that the scripture—I don’t think you have a point in law to make with somebody who has a goatee, a fauxhawk, or a tattoo. I don’t think there’s a specific prohibition against that. But what there is all kinds of other things that come into relationship with that. What is the effect upon the community? What’s the effect upon your permanence? There’s nothing wrong with a goatee or a fauxhawk. I don’t think they were specifically prohibited in terms of mourning, right?

You may like them, may not like them. You may think, well, where they came from or didn’t come from. But remember, there’s a genetic fallacy in logic that says just because a thing began here doesn’t mean it’s wrong. If it began in paganism, it doesn’t mean it’s still a pagan thing to do. The temple, beautiful metallurgy involved, the center of the city, beautiful musical instruments designed to be used in it. You know what their genesis was of each of those three things? It was pagans. It was the ungodly line. It was the bad line. It was the apostate people that first developed cities and metallurgy and livestock farming, which we eventually would also bring into the temple. And musical instruments. The genetic fallacy says, “Well, they’re pagan stuff, so we can’t use them. Tattoos are pagan. Mohawks are pagan.” I know that that doesn’t work.

It’s a fallacy in logic and it’s a fallacy in a biblical ethical system because we know that certain things that pagans develop, God specifically used them and used crooked sticks to bring about glorious music, beautiful buildings, cities, and representations of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So that doesn’t cut it—that they were pagan.

Now, I do think that there’s a general thing. So what I tried to say last week is there’s a very specific prohibition that doesn’t apply to almost anybody anymore, if at all. There is some tattooing for mourning going on, but not much. But beyond that, that doesn’t mean that whatever we can do we should do. It means we’re supposed to have wisdom about doing it, you know, noting its impact upon other people, noting its impact upon our family, noting its impact on the culture in general. Is it a good thing for Christians to be tatted up or not? I would say that probably most of the time—I mean, not the best of things—but that’s a wisdom call.

And so I didn’t want to provide, you know, specific prohibitions. I so often that’s what we want. But we want to understand God’s word and what it specifically says, and then rely upon the Holy Spirit, getting us up, having us think the right thoughts, asking the right questions. Not only can I do it, but should I do it? And what’s my proper motivation? And if you do those things, I’m not too concerned about what you end up doing, as long as it’s not in violation of God’s word. I’m happy. And I think we all should be happy, because that’s what it’s all about—understanding God’s law, what it gives us freedom to do, and then using our liberty not to disrupt community or to not be as effective as we could be for each other, but to try to do things that way.

Well, the same thing’s true with one last thing about tattoos. Of course, the problem with tattoos as opposed to goatees is your beard will grow back. Tattoos are pretty much permanent. And so, you know, with kids and stuff, you know, we should give them a great deal of caution before we allow that to go on, because it’s a kind of permanent thing. And if it’s made in a young state, our children should know that Christian sanctification is maturation. And to take something that they decide to do in their teen years, for instance, and make it have an effect upon them for the next 30 years—not a good idea usually. Your mind’s going to change. You’re going to have different thoughts in a few years. So avoid permanency.

Well, this commandment again has specific things it prohibits and then there’s some things that people think it prohibits that it doesn’t really prohibit. So what we want to do today is look very carefully at the particular words—a couple of them specifically—and how this argument unfolds as you read through the Ten Words.

Now, you’re just reading the responsive parts. I think we’re going to have you do a unison reading of the Ten Words for the next few weeks. So you’ll be reading them yourself. You’ll notice that the second and fourth words are long. Now, the tenth word is kind of long too, because it lists all the things you can’t covet. But there’s a similar structure between the second word or commandment and the fourth word. It seems like there’s a specific commandment given, and then an articulation of what that commandment means in specifics, and then there’s blessing or—in the case of the second word—curse and blessing attached to it.

So there’s a form there that I think we can see evidently in the fourth word, and that applies to the second word as well. And that’s going to be how we talk about this. We’re going to go through the particular structure of how I think it’s properly seen in its development. And so on the outline, then, the first outline point is the basic command here. The basic command in the fourth commandment is what? “Remember the Sabbath year to keep it holy.” Well, that basic command then is articulated by some specifics.

So we have a basic command here. I think given in the first phrase of the second word, and it says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image.” Okay. And the header I put on this on your outline is “Don’t replace God’s carved word with your images.”

What does that mean? Well, the interesting thing about this is the word here that’s translated “carved image” in the first verse—this carved image, that is an unusual word. It’s only used a limited number of times—maybe a couple of dozen times in the entire Bible. And in the Pentateuch, it’s only used, I don’t know, five or six times. And it’s a word that is the same word that’s used in another part of Exodus and Deuteronomy where Moses is told to hew out the tablets that God writes upon. Okay.

So a carved image, a graven image, a carved image—a “pesel” in the Hebrew. And I’m probably slaughtering the Hebrew pronunciation, but “pesel,” rather, in the Hebrew—is what it’s talking about. Don’t make a “pesel.” And if we knew, if we were getting this in the original language, and Hebrew was our language, we’d know that the other places where “pesel” is used—you got Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, both use the same word. And both in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the other places it’s used is to refer to the Ten Words—the tablets that were “peseled,” or “peseled” rather, that become a “pesel,” and God’s word is on them. Okay.

So what is it talking about? It seems like the association would be set up if we understood these terms—between not making a substitute for the “pesel” that he has already told us about, that was these carved tablets on which words of God were written. The tablets weren’t pictures. They weren’t images or forms in that way. And this commandment will go on to say that this “pesel,” this carved image, is this form or a drawing—drawings of, you know, people or, you know, whatever it is—fish. So you know, you know, that cross is kind of it’s an image of something, something in the world. It’s a visual representation of something.

Now, the text doesn’t say you can’t have any visual representations of things, but it says they can’t be—they can’t replace how God mediates himself to us, which is through the written word that’s contained on those tablets. Okay? So the prohibition here is not to take some kind of representation and have it be the mediator between us and God, replacing his written word, or even, you know, helping the written word, seeing it on the same caliber as the written word. No, you can’t do that.

So the basic commandment is don’t mediate your relationship to me through a picture, an image, an icon, whatever it is. Don’t replace my verbal word to you with a visual representation. A picture in this case is not worth a thousand words. A thousand pictures can’t accomplish what the word of God, what one word of God accomplishes. Okay? So that’s the idea here—the centrality of the word of God in our relationship to him.

And when we move away from a Protestant church with its emphasis on the word and move into worship that is vision-based—icon, statue, whatever it is—we are in violation of this word. Okay? That’s what it’s talking about.

And so, you know, people talk about liturgy. And so, you know, what’s going on is people like liturgy that leads them to want even better liturgy, and they end up with Roman Catholicism after they go through covenant renewal worship. Well, that’s a complete misunderstanding. Liturgy—the service of the church in worship—is a dialogue of words back and forth between God and us, right?

He calls you here. You sing his praise. He says, “Confess your sins.” You confess your sins. He assures you that you’re forgiven. And you sing back praises to him. Right? And then he gives you his word, and you respond by consecrating what you have and wanting to have the Holy Spirit take that word and transform your life through it. You offer yourself and everything you do to God in the tithe. And then God speaks more words to you. And with that tithe, by the way, you also bring up prayer, which is a series of words to God.

And then God—and then the Lord God—uses the words of scripture at this table, this particular action, but it’s words. It’s an action that’s defined by the words. And we then respond by partaking of that. And again, we get a commission, a word, and we sing forth his praises, and we go out with a benediction—more words. Liturgy, whether you call it high, low, or in between, biblical liturgy in worship is dialogue. That’s what worship is.

Liturgy in churches that use icons and images is not word-based. It’s vision-based. It isn’t liturgy at all, properly speaking. It’s not liturgy from a biblical perspective. You’re not going for higher liturgy. You’re going for no liturgy if it’s just you and God and your thoughts in response to a particular picture, icon, statue, or whatever it is. Okay?

So this word is used of God’s word. And because of that kind of setting up the imagery here, that’s the basic commandment: God has given us words. We are tempted to make pictures. The law preaches to our weaknesses, right? I mean, it’s given here because this is our tendency—not to bow down to a statue as if it is God, but to bow down to a statue as if it can help us focus and think about who we are in relationship to that God. And that’s what God says, don’t do that.

Don’t do that. The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church and even Anglican churches—they’re essentially Pelagian. What do I mean by that? They start with man. Man initiates the dialogue, and he initiates it here in what’s prohibited by making a visual representation to allow him to worship God.

You know, R.G. Rushdoony, he said that, you know, the whole point of the Protestant Reformation was “who’s sovereign? Right? God or man?” And so the Roman Catholic Church lapses into, because of the way it worships, into a view of life really that is Pelagian—that’s focused on man’s work, our initiation through image as opposed to God’s initiation through word. And because of that, you know, it’s a difference between silent liturgy that’s mostly visual and spoken liturgy that has some visual components to it. After all, we do have eyes when we get together.

So this very first word—it’s important for us to understand. I’m going to start a Bible study—a week from this Thursday—for certain people that want to come to it. And one of the things we’re going to learn is when you study the Bible, word studies are real important. You know, you just read “carved image” and you think it’s like every other occurrence where it’s talking about, you know, idols, but it’s not. It’s a very specific term being used to set up an association with the way that—only other way that term is used in the Pentateuch, and in Exodus and Deuteronomy specifically—with the laws. And it’s set up to give us then this contrast between God’s graven tablets of words and our physical representation of images. And spoken liturgy as opposed to silent liturgy, etc.

So the basic command is: don’t replace God’s word with your hand-created pictures or images or statutes. Or I suppose we could say also with your own law—to set up a law apart from God’s law, to set up a word apart from God’s word—is also technically a violation of the first phrase of this commandment.

Now the commandment goes on to give more detailed instructions. So the details are added here: “Any likeness of anything that is in the 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.”

Okay, a couple of things here. It doesn’t say you can’t make a picture of God, right? Doesn’t say you can’t draw Jesus. In fact, the specific thing that’s prohibited is that men will normally not use actual images of God as mediation points. The icon on the front of the order of worship is Mary. Yeah, Jesus is there, but the representations usually are something other than God. That’s what the normal temptation for man is.

And it doesn’t say you can’t draw pictures of Mary or fish or sun, moon, and stars or crosses or whatever it is. You can have statues. You can have things like that, but you can’t use them as a substitute for God’s word. And very specifically, you can’t bow down to them. You can’t worship through them. Okay? You can’t try to—if you in your service, you come together and either in your mind or literally get up here and bow down to this image of the cross and think that you’re going to be better connected to God by prostrating yourself to that cross. That’s what’s being forbidden here.

Not the construction of crosses, not art in worship. The temple had all kinds of pictures of things in it. That’s not what’s being prohibited. What’s being prohibited is not pictures of God. And it isn’t even referenced here. What’s being prohibited is pictures—man-made images of any sort, two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or whatever—man-made images that we then worship and bow down to and serve them and think we can serve God by serving the particular image.

Now, here again, very important: if you were to study this text out, and if you had a good commentary you’re looking at, or just, you know, if you had a word help, you’d see this word “likeness.” So what’s prohibited in the details is this “likeness.” And then it says, “Well, you know, the triple-decker universe is talked about.” So you can’t bow down or worship this idea of “likeness.” What is that? What is this word “likeness”?

Well, turn in your Bibles, if you will, to Numbers 12. Numbers chapter 12, verse 6. Start reading there.

Then he said, “And you know what’s going on here is the rebellion of Miriam against Moses, and you know they want to be like him. They don’t want him to be in control anyway. But that’s the context. But then it says that God said, “Hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. I speak with him mouth to mouth, even plainly and not in dark sayings. And he sees the form of the Lord.”

What does that mean? This is the same word. This word is only used nine times. The word that’s “likeness” in the second word or second commandment, the word “likeness,” is used nine times in the Hebrew. And here’s one of the occurrences of that word. Moses saw the likeness or form of God. But notice how he saw it. He saw it because God spoke with Moses mouth to mouth.

The form that God uses—God’s form that he represents himself in, that he mediates himself to us with—is not visual. We think of form as always being visual, but it’s not visual. God’s whole point is that Moses saw his form as God spoke to him mouth to mouth—words. Okay, this is referring back to Exodus 33.

So turn to Exodus 33. You might remember this part of the Bible, maybe you don’t, but it really sort of brings together both of these words we’re talking about and gives us quite a bit of instruction about them. God, you know, Moses wants to see God. He wants to see God’s glory.

Verse 18 of Exodus 33, he said, “Please show me your glory.” He wants to see this visual representation. He wants to see Jesus’s face, not hear his words. God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.” So his response is, “Well, you’ll see my goodness, you’ll see my glory through the proclamation of my name, through words—is what God is telling you here.

And that’s what God—that’s what goes on to happen. He says, “You cannot see my face, verse 20, for no man shall see me and live.” So it’s not—you know, God mediates himself to Moses, his form and likeness, his glory, his goodness, through his spoken word, not through seeing a visual image of God. Okay, that’s what he says.

Now it’s interesting because then verse 23: “I will take away my hand and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the first one. Now so what happens here is God—Moses: “I want to see your glory. I want to see you.” And God says, “Well, you’re going to see me, not as a visual image, but in the words that I speak to you.” And I’m going to do this thing. And after the next few verses, he will actually do it. And we’ll look at that. But notice this is the immediate context for verse 1 of Exodus 34.

The Lord said to Moses, “Hew”—that’s that word “grave” and “image”—”two tablets of stone like the first ones. And I will write on these tablets.” So now we’ve got like 20, a couple of dozen occurrences of the “hew” word or “pesel” word. We’ve got nine occurrences of the other word. And now they’re both coming together in a particular text that relates God’s “pesel,” his graven image—which is not an image, it’s words—and he relates that to the idea of form that’s picked up in the second word.

So God goes on and this is what he does. Drop down in chapter 34 to verse 5. “Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.” And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and to the children’s children of the third and fourth generation.”

This is what Numbers referred to when God said, “I’m going to speak. I’ve spoken to Moses mouth to mouth, and he saw my form.” Same word. This form that we’re going to make sinfully of a visual representation—God says, “Moses saw my form. And if we look at where he saw God’s form, the form of God is revealed in this sermon that the Lord God gives in words to Moses as he passes by him.”

Okay? So it’s the same thing we’ve been talking about. When God wants to reveal himself to us, he doesn’t do it visually. The mediation is the word. This is the second commandment, yet it has primary emphasis upon the Word, Jesus Christ.

One last text I want you to turn to: Deuteronomy 4, beginning at verse 12. And this really emphasizes this point—this distinction between words and pictures. Okay? Words and pictures. That’s what this is all about as a way to worship God, as a way that God uses to reveal himself in the context of worship.

Verse 12 of Deuteronomy 4: “The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of his words, but saw no form. That is, no visual representation. It’s the same word. But that wasn’t the kind of form I showed you. He’s saying, ‘You only heard a voice.’ So he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform—the Ten Words. Remember, that’s the proper translation—Ten Words. And he wrote them on the tablets of stone.”

And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments. Word after word after word after word here—emphasizing the word of God, language, speech, speech, speech, speech, speech, speech, written words, written words, written words, written words. That’s put in contrast to the idea of trying to see God by way of some sort of picture or visual representation of who he is.

So Deuteronomy 4—remember this: the word is only used a couple of times, this word for “form.” And this is where we have to go to help understand what it means here. And what it means is it’s going to be used in a way that’s distinct from the way God desires to reveal himself, which is by means of words.

Verse 15: “Take careful heed to yourself.” So first of all, he says, “This is how it works with me. The only form of me you’re going to get is words. That’s how I mediate myself to you. That’s what your worship should be all about. And you’re going to be tempted, because you’re fallen human creatures, to do it by images.”

What happened to Eve in the garden? Right? We had the word of God giving a specific commandment, and we had the seeing of Eve. And she put sight and vision over the word. That’s the nature of the first sin, right? Now, she was listening to the word of the devil. I know that. I know there’s words involved. But the emphasis upon Eve’s transgression is that she sees it and makes a determination of something based on sight.

I cannot look at you right now and know why you’re sitting there. I don’t know why you’re there. You could be there because you think this is the right thing to do. You could be there because you want to hear the word of God. You could be there because your wife or your husband told you you had to be there. You could be there because somebody made a bet with you that you had to be there. I can’t tell. There’s no way for me to know by sight to discern what’s going on. If I want to know why you’re here, I got to have a conversation with you, right? Words back and forth.

Now, you can still lie, but words will start to give me a lot better understanding of who you are. Eve didn’t want to use the word of God. She wanted to use sight. And that’s the way we are.

He says, “No form, no visual representation—words.” And then he says in verse 15: “Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb. He speaks. He doesn’t show you a visual image out of the midst of the fire. Lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female.”

So see, God says, “My form is what you should be content with. And that’s the preaching of my words by Moses. And he says, my graven image—which is the Ten Commandments, words on a tablet, the inscriptured word, the Bible—this is what I reveal myself to you. The word. The word. The word. The word. The word. The word.”

This is why the reformers thought it was so important to understand the relationship of the Spirit of God to the word of God. They understood the centrality of word in the Christian life and certainly in the context of the formation of that life in worship. And when we think we can get at God through a spirit that’s divorced from his word—no. That’s what we’re—we tend to want to do. And Deuteronomy goes on then to talk about that.

He goes on to warn them. He says in—he goes on to tell them, you know, this is what your danger is going to be: to set up a form that is not according to the true form that I reveal to you, which is by way of words. By way of words.

Okay, so the contrast most is mouth to mouth. The contrast is desiring to see visual images or representations of God—silent representations.

Why do we want that? This is where my Playboy reference might fit in, if you were noticing that in the outline. What’s he talking about Playboy?

Well, this has to do with what we like. As fallen men, we would rather have an image that doesn’t correct us, talk back, or interact with us. We can control images. If we come here today and our worship is primarily veneration of that cross, the cross doesn’t talk back to you, right? You have control of it. We hate a God who controls us in our fallen estate. That’s what he says here in a little bit. He’s going to say, you know, when you don’t—you’re tempted to do this, and you’re tempted to do this because you hate me. And we got to come to grips with that.

Why did he give us this command? Was it necessary? Yeah, it is necessary for us. It’s why it’s there. And the implication is our hatred for God—a God who controls us, that we’re to be properly submissive to the word of—that hatred can find itself in some sort of pious expression of having a silent god that we end up then manipulating and controlling. We’re in control. We’ll control the vertical. We’ll control the horizontal.

That’s what men do with women. Women are really in pornography, in Playboy, etc., turned into objects. Sort of objects, you know, like the Black Madonna in Poland, or by like the object of this Mary icon here, or St. Gregory, an icon of him. These are objects. And what we’re doing in pornography with men—at least, and increasingly with women—is we’re turning the opposite sex into an object, a visual image that doesn’t speak back, because at our heart we want to be God. We want to control, and we can’t control things that have messy communications with us.

You know, communions that engage in this sort of idolatrous worship, and that’s clearly what it is—these communions tend to emphasize monasticism, right? How do you get really holy? You go off by yourself. You don’t talk to anybody. It’s just you and God. See, there’s a pious form of pornography that goes on in idolatrous worship of images where it’s just you and the icon, you and the statue, you and the visual representation. It’s the same thing as pornography.

God hates that. That’s why he says he hates it. He’s a jealous husband because he doesn’t like his wife looking at stuff like that. And it’s the same thing with us. We want to do that.

So these kind of communions emphasize monasticism, silence, vows of silence, where you go off and you actually—you might be with other people, but you never get to say anything, and they don’t get to say anything to you. Now I’m not saying all vows of silence are inappropriate. But I’m saying the tendency is to think that spirituality can be mediated through silence better than it can be mediated through words. It can be mediated through a consideration of the imagery around us rather than the spoken word of God. And God says that’s what he forbids in the second word.

Some of these communions, of course, tend to like celibacy for the same reason. You know what does God say? God says one of the worst things you can do is get married. Sorry, I know lots of marriages are happening and being planned, but from one perspective, it’s one of the worst possible things you can do. You want to be happy for the rest of your life? Don’t make any woman your wife. You can be happy all by yourself, not talking to somebody who’s going to talk back and correct you. You can be happy with the cross, from one perspective—a certain kind of happy—better than you can be happy with a God who brings his word to you and says, “Quit sinning. Knock it off, or I’m going to beat you.”

See, marriage is hard because it involves two people in community. And you know, this is why—this is why God commends it to us—because actually, of course, it’s the best thing we could do is to live in the context of community and specifically in a community that finds itself an expression of words back and forth.

Now so that’s the basic idea of the commandment, and then this commandment has some consequences attached to it. Right? Look at these consequences. It’s really rather frightening.

“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” Now, jealousy is a good thing. Our culture doesn’t like jealous. Jealousy is good when it’s properly formed. When God knows that his bride is messing around with other men, he’s jealous properly. His nostrils flare. He gets angry, and his wrath comes at us. Okay? And that’s the proper response of a man whose wife has been unfaithful, or a wife whose husband has been unfaithful. There’s a proper jealousy to this.

The last thing you want your wife to do, or your husband to do, is to discover your unfaithfulness and as a result of that get incredibly angry and wrathful toward you with proper jealousy. God says that’s what he does. He hates this sin. He relates it to unfaithfulness and adultery with other women, with other men. That’s what he’s doing when he calls it a proper object of his hatred, and specifically of his jealousy—of his jealousy. And so there’s a great warning attached to this.

And the warning is: stay in community with me.

Now the implication of that is: remember, worship forms up our relationships. And so a proper application of this commandment is certainly not to be tempted to go to Rome or EO or Anglican Catholicism. But a proper application of this for you young men is to recognize this is the same sort of sin you get involved with when you objectify women and try to control them with your thoughts. It’s the same thing. And men and women: it’s what you fall into when you stop communicating to your wives.

One of the most common marital complaints is just that, right? Silence. “He won’t talk to me. He gets home, he’s tired. I want to talk, he doesn’t want to talk.” Sometimes it’s the other way around. Communication breaks down.

There was an excellent song by Pink Floyd called “Keep Talking.” And it’s just a wonderful representation of a lot of modern marriages that are not being formed by liturgical action with God speaking to us on the Lord’s day and us responding in speech. God trains us to dialogue every Sunday. And he’s getting us ready for the dialogue. He’s the groom. We’re the bride, right, as the church. And he gets us ready every day for living with our brides and living with our grooms in dialogue together. And that’s what he’s trying to protect and empower in this second word, and prohibit violations of it.

So it of course is a difficult thing for us, but it’s proper, and it happens when we’re trained that way in worship.

This Pink Floyd song says, you know, it’s basically a back and forth.

So the man sings, “There’s a silence surrounding me. I can’t seem to think straight. I’ll sit in the corner. No one can bother me. And then he says, ‘I think I should speak now.’ And the chorus of three women respond, ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ And he says, ‘I can’t seem to speak now.’ She says, ‘You never talk to me.’ He says, ‘My words won’t come out right.’ And the female response is, ‘What are you thinking?’ He says, ‘I feel like I’m drowning.’ And the response is, ‘What are you feeling?’ He says, ‘I’m feeling weak now.’ She says, ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’ He says, ‘But I can’t show my weakness.’ And she says, ‘You never talk to me.’ He says, ‘I sometimes wonder.’ She says, ‘What are you thinking?’ And he says, ‘Where do we go from here?’ And she says, ‘What are you feeling?’

And that’s the back and forth ends in that because there is no place to go from here when communication is completely bogged up in a marital relationship.

And when communication is cut off from us with God in proper worship and liturgy—where he speaks his words, where he reveals his form, where his “pesel,” of the covenant, the law of God, the word of God is spoken to us, and we respond to that spoken word with our words—when that’s cut off, there’s nowhere to go from here. There’s no future. There’s no cultural maturation. There’s no marital maturation at that point.

And then the computer voice in Pink Floyd’s song “Keep Talking” says, “It doesn’t have to be like this. All we need to do is to make sure we keep talking. That’s right. You know, I mean, that isn’t quite everything, but if you have that, you have the basis for a successful marriage. And if you have conversation and dialogue in your liturgy where the word of God is being spoken and you’re responding—sometimes using his own words, sometimes using your words to respond to his word—this produces cultural maturation, development. And the failure to do those things means idolatry is at work.

That’s similar to pornography with the objectification of people as objects. And God says he hates it. He’s going to be jealous against it. And look at the dire consequence: “Visiting the iniquity—that’s the culpability for punishment. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.”

You go to Rome, and you engage in idolatrous worship. God says, “I hate it. It’s jealousy, and I’m going to visit the consequences of that upon your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, and your great-great-grandchildren.” You’re messing up your family line for generations to come. That’s how important it is to maintain dialogue and to approach God through the mediation of his word as opposed to through icons, statues, or images.

Can you imagine that? I mean, just think about that. You come to me today: “Well, I’m thinking about doing this or I’m thinking about doing that.” Well, I can tell you, if you do that, your great-grandchildren are going to be messed up. Whoa, really? That’s what the word of God says. That’s what God tells us in this word. That’s how important language, dialogue, conversation is—not just in worship, but in our lives as well.

Keep talking. Keep talking. That’s what God says. And if you don’t, your children are going to be messed up for years.

You know, people go to Rome, and there’s no communion there. First of all, there’s no scripture in the Roman Catholic Church in general. Well, the way you guys know the Bible, the Roman Catholic Church, you typically just don’t have much of that going on because it’s not as important—because the word has been devalued. And secondly, the result of that is not no communion. You got these people who have left reformed faith and become Roman Catholics. And you know what? There’s no communion there. They get on the internet and talk to other reformed people who become Catholics because there’s really no communion in the local parish, supposedly.

People go to mass, they sit there for a while, they go home, they don’t talk to each other for months. Some places it’s different, but in general, that kind of worship destroys community.

And when your children grow up in the absence of community because of your stupid actions of running off to something and violating the clear teaching of the second commandment of God’s word that promises you that if you violate this one, your kids are going to be messed up—those kids end up then messed up. And it’s your fault. It’s your fault.

And because this is point three of the outline—this disobedience, this sort of disobedience, is hatred of God. He says, “If you don’t do this, if you break this commandment, I’m jealous. I’m going to bring punishments not just on you and your children, but because you hate me.”

This is the focal point of what you’re doing. “Those who hate me”—this is the description of whom God is judging. You want to know how to hate God? Stop going to a church where the word is preeminent and go to a church where images are preeminent. And the Bible says, when you do that, you are now hating me—hating God. And because of that, his wrath is kindled against you, and it will have its effect upon your children for generations.

On the other hand, there’s great blessings attached to the other side of it, right? But “showing mercy to thousands of generations.”

Now, God owns the future. We have a church that’s word-based. And thousands of generations from us will be blessed by that kind of community and communion. Why? Because these people—the ones who engage in dialogue and keep the word of God at the center of everything—this obedience is love of God. “I’ll bless thousands of generations to those who love me and keep my commandments.”

So you see, loving and hating is defined by the second word—by relationship to this particular commandment and whether you move in the context of the word of God and the centrality of that in your relationship to him, and then as a result of that, in your relationship to others, whether you move in the centrality of that or not.

This is James B. Jordan’s summation of the second word. He says, “Thus to summarize: In Christianity, God sets up the mediator. God initiates. The mediator is verbal, not visual. We must listen, becoming submissive to the one who’s speaking, and be changed. In paganism and semi-Christianity, man sets up the mediators by making images. The mediators are visual, not verbal, and the mediators are silent. So we’re not changed. We’re in control.”

Now that’s a proper articulation of what these specific commandments mean. Looking carefully at the words that are used, seeing their relationship, and comparing and contrasting with the “pesel” of God—the covenant word, the form of God that actually Moses did see, which was God’s preached word to him.

Faith is faith in that preached word—not in some sort of visual representation.

The second commandment doesn’t say art’s not good. In fact, it frees us up to do art properly, and as a result, our art flourishes. The second commandment doesn’t say it’s not good to have images in the worship service. You can have them there. Don’t bow down to these things. That’s all it says. Okay? The second commandment doesn’t say you should never draw a picture of Jesus. That’s not what it says at all. It says you don’t want pictures of things that you then end up bowing down to, worshiping, and serving.

That’s the proper prohibition in the second word. Those prohibitions properly understood are against setting up nonverbal visual mediation between us and God apart from his word. That’s what brings curses upon us. That’s what brings God’s personal anger toward us. That’s what produces children that’ll be judged by God. That’s what produces a breakdown of marital relationships, a breakdown of community, and stagnation as a culture.

The Lord God calls us to the word. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for giving us that word as who you are. We thank you that you reveal yourself to us in the word. Forgive our sinful tendencies to hate you and express that hatred by worshiping you through something other than your word. Help us, Lord God, to forsake that in our lives, to not be tempted by the sort of idolatrous worship that some are tempted to in our friendships and in our communities that we know of.

Bless us, Lord God, as we seek to communicate with people, to warn them against this great sin, and the great blessings that accrue to those for thousands of generations who engage in proper dialogue initiated by you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.