Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey, New Life. Gillette Church, we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:25] Good. Good morning, New life.
[00:00:28] Happy that you guys are here this morning. Welcome to everybody in the room and also hello to our friends and family online at Church 307.
[00:00:39] Today we are going to be in the second week of the Stone series. So second week means that we are on the second commandment. We're making our way through the ten commandments. And so today we're on to number two.
[00:00:54] And so have you ever maybe taken a picture of something and it was never quite as good as what you saw in real life? I think about this when every time I take a sunset picture, like, I always want to take a picture, it's so beautiful, all the different colors. And then you look back on your phone and you're like, this doesn't really compare to, like, what I was actually seeing. It's just kind of like this orange blurry blob on my phone. Right?
[00:01:23] And so the second commandment is all about how God desires to be represented. And so as I was thinking through this and how sometimes our images fall short. And so I was thinking about this and the sunset picture, but also I thought of this TikTok trend, and maybe you've seen it and it's like a date idea. And so you sit across from the person and you have like a canvas, right? And you're going to paint a portrait of the other person. And inevitably, one person is always a better artist than the other. And it's probably that person's idea that wanted to do this in the first place. Right? And so then at the end, there's the big reveal.
[00:02:08] And so, you know, one goes and then the next goes. And some of them, as you can imagine, just aren't really what you would expect them to be. And so here are a couple favorites that I see. Sorry. Okay. Just put it by your soda shirt.
[00:02:26] Okay, Go ahead. I'm so sorry. Oh, no.
[00:02:31] I'm so sorry.
[00:02:34] I'm nervous.
[00:02:38] I.
[00:02:44] Here's my point.
[00:02:45] I'm not a favorite. Pins.
[00:02:50] I'm favor.
[00:02:53] So. All right, let's do the review. All right.
[00:03:00] She hates it.
[00:03:02] I tried my best.
[00:03:03] This is.
[00:03:05] Am I going to be offended? No. No. All right, ready?
[00:03:11] Sam? I have a butt.
[00:03:15] Beautiful girlfriend. Guys, aren't those good?
[00:03:20] Me and my husband would never do this TikTok trend. Because we are equally horrible at art, and it would just be bad. But I love that last one. She's, like, super offended that he drew her with a. Or painted her with a butt chin. And I think it actually more looks like a beard than a butt chin. So I would have been offended too. But that is what we're talking about today, about how when we create images, they always fall short. And so we are gonna be in Exodus 20 today. If you wanna open your Bible, if you have it with you, it's the second book of the Bible, and we're making our way through the Ten Commandments. The second one is a little bit of a longer one. So we're gonna read through the whole commandment and then kind of go from there. And so it says, you must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or. Or on the earth or in the sea.
[00:04:12] You must not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children. The entire family is affected, even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands.
[00:04:41] And so I'm gonna take. We're right at the beginning, but I'm gonna take just a quick little detour, because when we read through that, there's maybe some parts that really stuck out to you. And that's because I think our eyes in our culture, like, we look at the negative a lot. And in your version of the Bible, your translation, it might have even said punishing the children for. For three to four generations. And that can kind of hang some people up. And we don't have time to go too much into it. But I want you to see the comparison. And so it says, for those that hate him, these are people that have decided they are not following his way. They reject God, punishment for three to four generations. But instead, look at the comparison. That he will lavish unfailing love. He is promising faithful love for a thousand generations for those who love him. And so the comparison is huge, right? Thousand generations compared to three to four. And when the Israelites heard this, this, like, punishment was not, like, surprising to them. That part probably didn't even, like, stick out to them. The part that was surprising was how a God would promise for a thousand generations this blessing of un. Faith or faithful love for a thousand generations. And so don't get hung up on that part. I just want you to see that we serve a faithful and generous God. He is so generous for those that call upon him. And so we are going to be focusing more on idols today. And so if you grew up in church, maybe you're very familiar with what an idol is. I did not grow up in church. And so when I just. If someone would just say idol, the first thing that pops into my head is American Idol, because I was early teens when American Idol came out. And so we were all watching it. But that is not, of course, what we're talking about today. An idol in the Bible is idolatry, and idols are a problem for a large part of the Bible. And so idol in Hebrew means pestle, and that just means a manufactured, carved image.
[00:06:59] And so even your Bible might say graven image. So an idol is the same as an image, and they're talking about a tangible image that back in ancient times, this was very common.
[00:07:13] They would carve or chisel out of stone, carve out of wood, these idols that they would then either deify or that they believe that they had access to a God through. Through them. And so they would worship and sacrifice for this idol so that this God would have sway over their life, right? Like they were trying to gain favor through these idols. And so this was very commonplace. And.
[00:07:40] And so God is. God is telling them that you do not need to create an idol to bow down to or worship. And so we need to remember where we're at in the story.
[00:07:52] The Israelites, you know, had just been rescued out of Egypt. And so while they were in Egypt, they saw all the plagues, right, that God did in Egypt, and they saw the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, walked through on dry land so that God could rescue them. And they saw how God provided for them in the wilderness so that they could eat. They saw all these miraculous things about a God who was providing for them and. And rescued them. Yet not long after, they heard these ten commandments, they heard them, and Moses was up on Mount Sinai, and they started getting impatient. And so they were begging Aaron to help them fashion an idol so that they could worship. And I used to just really struggle with that. Like, there's no possible way that they would go through all of that and see how God worked through all of that. Yet they wanted to worship a golden calf that they created. They melted down their jewelry and made this golden calf. And that's a very common story, and it's actually, like, repeated throughout the Old Testament, like this is a really, really big deal.
[00:09:03] But it's just. It's hard for us to wrap our head around them. Like, surely they didn't believe that this golden calf is who just rescued them out of Egypt. And as I was looking into it more, we can see that they wanted to worship the God who rescued them through from Egypt, but they wanted to do it through a tangible item. And so they wanted this idol so that they could have something to focus their worship on.
[00:09:31] And so that's what we're talking about today, this image or idol. And so you might be thinking, well, you know, I think I got this second commandment down pretty good. I don't have a golden calf in my living room that I bow down or worship to. And so I'm good, right? But stick with me because I think there is still something that we can learn from this today.
[00:09:54] And so if I asked you to think of just one word to think to describe God, think about it, what it would be in your head. You don't have to say it out loud, but try and narrow it down to one word. What one word describes God for you?
[00:10:12] Do you have it?
[00:10:13] My guess is that none of you would have said limited, right?
[00:10:21] How about contained or restricted?
[00:10:27] No, like, we know that God is not like that. We know that he is almighty. We know that he is the creator of of all things. He is above all things. He has authority. He is eternal.
[00:10:41] Things that are hard for us to wrap our head around, right? Like, for me to think about eternal. Like, he is the alpha and the omega, beginning and end, and the end goes on forever and ever and ever and ever. And that's really hard for me to wrap my head around. But we know if we know truth, we know that God is not limited.
[00:11:05] But when we create an idol or we create an image of who God is, that always limits God.
[00:11:14] And so God is telling them, do not make an image of me because that image cannot represent me to the full. It will always fall short.
[00:11:25] Just like these images, like the funny TikTok video. Just like those images fell short of who the real human being was across from them. But even if you were the best artist in the world, it would still fall short. It would still not encompass the true reality of who God is.
[00:11:45] And so when we are talking about creating an image and creating or thinking about who God is, we tend to limit God. And that's because when we try to imagine God, when we try to perceive, we always use our own life experiences. Like, it's just human impulse to Come at it from our perspective, right? And God's perspective is not our perspective. And so when we try to make God or we try to make God manageable on our terms, we try and constrain him. We try to put God in a box. We. We think about, well, I think I've learned this and I've heard this or I've experienced this. And so God must be this way and he must do that. And we try and predict what God is like, or we have expectations of what God is like, but that is not from God. That is us trying to perceive who God is. And every time that we do that, we are limiting God.
[00:12:48] And so what are ways? There's a lot of ways that we limit God.
[00:12:53] Maybe. Do you limit God to this room?
[00:12:57] Are you limiting God to a Sunday morning? Or are you bringing him into the rest of your week?
[00:13:02] Are you limiting God to the person that has the microphone or a platform? Or are you letting God speak through you where he has placed you at the right time? Are you listening to the Holy Spirit and being obedient to what he is calling you to do? We limit God. God is not limited. He is unlimited. But we are the ones that limit God.
[00:13:28] And so even though we are not manufacturing, maybe like a tangible idol, we tend to manufacture an image in our mind, right?
[00:13:39] So how do you see God?
[00:13:42] And I bring this up because the, the way that we see God directly affects how we relate to.
[00:13:51] So how do you see him?
[00:13:53] Do you see God as like an old man with a really long beard floating up on clouds?
[00:13:59] Do you see God as a really harsh judge?
[00:14:06] Do you see God as someone that you are just constantly striving for the approval of?
[00:14:12] Maybe you see him as a genie. Like, he's just there for when I have those emergency prayers and he's there to make my wishes come true.
[00:14:20] Do you see God as a distant God? Maybe it's super impersonal distant and quite honestly, probably don't even think about him that much.
[00:14:29] Do you see God as more than just loving? Do you see him as holy and just?
[00:14:38] You know, oftentimes God is called our Heavenly Father. And when we think of that, when we think of Heavenly Father, for a lot of us, that puts a picture in our head because we tend to transfer our experience with our earthly Father onto our Heavenly Father.
[00:14:55] And even if we had the best dad on earth, he does not compare to our Heavenly Father.
[00:15:05] But also, if you had a not so great dad here, that doesn't really match with the characteristics that we learn about God.
[00:15:13] It's easy for us to transfer what we know about our dads onto our heavenly Father.
[00:15:20] And so this directly affects how we relate to him. And we have this relationship. And so how we're seeing God affects that relationship. Do you see him in a way that he's the first person that you want to run to when something's going on? Is he the first person that you want to talk to about it?
[00:15:43] Is he someone that you are scared to tell things to? Are you kind of like running in shame and want to hide because you see him as a harsh judge instead of a loving father that wants to be there for you and to help you? All of these ways is how we limit God. We are limiting God by our human perspective, by experiences that we have walked through, and honestly by thinking about God in ways that are not truth. Right?
[00:16:16] And so God is telling the Israelites and telling us that you do not need to create an image to represent Me. It is always going to fall short. And so imagine if we flipped that. Imagine if we believed that he was bigger and better than anything that we could even think. We ask, imagine bigger than that. How would that change our lives?
[00:16:39] I believe that we would have increased faith. Like we. If we truly believed that God was bigger and better, the Creator of all things, and that he was in control, how would that change our life? We would have increased faith. We would be praying for miracles because we would believe that he is still a God that does miracles today.
[00:16:57] We would come to him expectantly because we know of what he can do. He has shown us what he can do. And so maybe it's something that we don't feel like we can trust Him. And so we're carrying around a lot of things that he's asking us to surrender, but we aren't trusting Him. He's a big enough God. He can take it. He can carry it for us. We don't have to do it alone.
[00:17:23] Maybe it's wrestling with doubt of things. He is a big God, I promise you. He can take your doubt, bring it to Him.
[00:17:33] And so how we see God directly affects how we relate to him and our relationship with Him.
[00:17:40] And God gave this commandment saying, you don't need to create an image to represent Me. And the reality is it's because he already created an image to represent him.
[00:17:52] And that is you and me.
[00:17:55] It says in the very first book of the Bible that God created humankind and he created them in his image. We are created in the image of God.
[00:18:08] And so imago dei, right? And so that's why we believe that life is sacred. This gives us intrinsic value, inherent worth, and this is why we believe that life should be protected from the womb to the tomb. We protect life because we are made in the image of God. This is why we believe that no race, no gender, no status is less than we know that we are created in the image of God. We are made in his image. We are his likeness.
[00:18:41] And so as we are his image bearers, we get to represent Him. He created an image that represents him, us.
[00:18:52] And so just like how we see God affects how we relate to him, our lives also reflect what we believe about who God is. As we are called to be his image bearers, how we see him shows up in our life.
[00:19:12] It shows up with how we are treating other people, how we go about our day today.
[00:19:18] This is reflecting God's character. And so we are called to be his image bearers. And that might sound a little daunting and you don't know where to start. And so in the New Testament, they are asking Jesus, out of all the commandments, which one is the most important?
[00:19:38] And he kind of gives them a two for one deal, right? He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:19:50] And so that's been shortened up to love God, love people. And I love that. That's the mission, right? Love God, love people. And so as we go throughout these ten Commandments, you're going to see that those two statements summarize the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments have to do with loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.
[00:20:10] And then the last six have to do with loving your neighbor as yourself. And so Jesus summarized the ten Commandments with that statement.
[00:20:19] And so as we go out throughout this series, you can see that, but also for this, the way that we want our life to reflect God is through loving him with all our heart and loving others as ourselves. And so when we interact with the world with love and mercy, we are showing a reflection of who God is to them. You might be the best picture of who God is to somebody. And as his image bearers, that is what we are called to do.
[00:20:52] And we, we still live in a fallen world, right? Like, I'm not saying we're the perfect image bearer because we still have sin and there is forgiveness and mercy and grace that covers that for us. But since we live on this side of the cross, we get the perfect example. God created the perfect image bearer. For us to have a picture and true reflection of who God is.
[00:21:19] And that person is Jesus. Right? Jesus came to earth as fully man, like us, fully human.
[00:21:26] But not only that, he is fully God. Jesus. Jesus is God. And so he does not have sin that is marring his image of reflecting God. He is not only the image of God, he is God. And so if we are wondering what is the character of God, we get to look at Jesus. Jesus is the perfect reflection in the New Testament. Philip is asking Jesus, just show us the Father, just show us the Father.
[00:21:59] And he says, don't you know that seeing me is like seeing the Father? He is the likeness of God. He perfectly represents who God is. And he doesn't have sin marring that image.
[00:22:14] And so we still serve an invisible God today. And we get to know who God is because of the word of God.
[00:22:26] You know, we did a word series not long ago, and we know how important the words are. And words are important for God, too. He used words to create the world. He used words to speak life into existence. And he used words as he spoke the ten Commandments from Mount Sinai. He used his voice. And we know that Jesus is the word of God. And so we. We have a lot of examples of who God is. And so we get to dig in and learn Old Testament, New Testament, same God unchanging of who God truly is.
[00:23:10] And Jesus said that there'll be coming a time where we get to worship in spirit and in truth. And we are living in that time. And so we don't have to go to a temple to worship. We don't have to go and do certain rituals. We get to live in a time that we get to bring our worship to Jesus. And in spirit and in truth. That means not my idea of who God is, not what I think I saw on Instagram of who God is. We're talking about who God has revealed himself to be. We get to know the truth of who God is, and then we get to reflect who God is to the world around us.
[00:23:55] And there's just one more part that I want to talk to you about.
[00:24:00] The second commandment is a long verse, and there's just some few parts. I feel like this commandment just in general gets a lot of people hung up. And you might have looked at it when we were reading through it, but it was, when God calls himself a jealous God, does that stand out to you? A jealous God. Oprah famously said that she could never follow God. She left traditional Christianity years and years ago because she couldn't fathom following a jealous God. And that's because we tend to see jealousy in, like, this negative connotation, right? We see it kind of as like petty or envious. And that's not what God is talking about here.
[00:24:43] God is talking about being passionate. He is passionate. He is a passionate God. And I would go a step further and say he is passionately protective, okay? And so he is passionately protective of what is His. In Isaiah 42:8, it says, I am the Lord, that is my name. I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with carved idols. And so God is passionately protective of what is His. And he is the author, he is the Creator. He is above all things. And so he gets the glory. Only he gets the glory. He is passionately protective of his glory. But not only that, he is not interested in lifeless statues, in rituals.
[00:25:37] He wants a living and breathing relationship with you.
[00:25:43] And so he is jealous for you.
[00:25:46] He is passionately protective of us, of our relationship. He does not want a single thing to come between us and Him. He is jealous for you.
[00:25:59] And as we're thinking of the Ten Commandments Pastor C.J. showed us last week, the Ten Commandments is a wedding scene, right? And so keeping with that theme, if we went to a wedding and there was the bride and the groom, the wedding party, and the bride was just like outrageously flirting with a groomsman, we'd be like some raised eyebrows, right? What if the groom's response was just, eh, shrugged his shoulders? Right? Like we would be concerned that you are not concerned, right? We want you to be passionately protective of this relationship. And so that is a picture of who God is to us. He is a jealous God. He is jealous for you. He is passionately protective of this relationship that you have with Him. He doesn't want anything to come between it.
[00:26:51] And so as we go today, I want us to really take inventory of who. Who we are believing God to be. And not just be listening on Instagram or not just be listening, like, dig in, dig into the word of God. He has shown us who he is over and over and over again. And he is unchanging. He does not change. And so we can believe his word is true.
[00:27:17] And we aren't just doing this for our benefit. We want to know who he truly is for our relationship with Him.
[00:27:24] And we want to be faithful image bearers. We want to reflect and represent him in a true way. And so that's my prayer for this week, that we would truly see who he is not let our experiences our perceptions get in the way of that that we would see the truth of who God is Let's pray Heavenly Father we just thank you we thank you that you are bigger and better than that we anything we can imagine Lord we can't even wrap our head around all the things that you are we thank you that you created us that you're the author of life that you are eternal and that you are not limited God we thank you that you are an unlimited God that can do all things and Lord out of all those things you want a relationship with us we thank you that you are are jealous for us and as we go out and are your representatives Lord I pray that we would bear your image well that we would bear your image with truth and that we would be faithful in that and that we would be your light because of it. We thank you for all these things and pray this in Jesus name amen.
