LAW HOMILY: Remaking God

Every week we go through the law of God. We wanna understand what God has to say to his people. We wanna understand the truth. We wanna understand how to obey him because we do not believe that we are saved from obedience.

We believe that we're saved for obedience. So with that, we're gonna be in the second commandment this week. This is what it says. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

The Jealous God and the Second Commandment

Which kind of includes all reality there. You shall not worship them or serve them for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me but showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.

God is a jealous God. He says it right there in the text. And you know what? That's actually good news for us that God is a jealous God. It's good news precisely because we have misunderstood the meaning of the word jealous.

We think of jealousy as a kind of coveting. We actually conjure up images of wanting what belongs to someone else. We think jealousy is a near synonym of envy. That to be jealous is to want something that doesn't belong to you, to be angry and to be sore about it, to have our guts twisted and kind of mangled up knots for something that we want that doesn't belong to us, but belongs to someone else.

But that's not what jealousy means. Jealousy means having a white hot desire to protect what already belongs to you. Jealousy is an emotion to keep something pure and undefiled not a five finger discount what belongs to someone else's stuff.

For instance, a husband who cares deeply about safeguarding the purity of his wife from any evil man who would try to take it. Well, he's jealous over her which is a good thing because she's his. He's jealous over her because he loves her.

And this is hilarious, of course because how many times have you heard someone say ain't nobody want a jealous husband as if it's a bad thing that a man would care very deeply about safeguarding the purity of his bride protecting her and assuring that she is vouchsafed.

Well, in the same vein, God is a jealous God. He's jealous, not over the things he wants but over the things he has. He's jealous over his people because they belong to him. That's why it's good news.

He would not be jealous over you if you did not belong to him. We in that way are trusted to his care and he lives to bless his people and to keep them safe from every threat which is why he tells us not to make any images of anything in heaven above or in earth below which again is everything.

He tells us that because he wants us to reserve in our minds and in our hearts, the only pure image of God which is the one that's revealed in Holy Scripture. We understand God the Father through Holy Scripture.

We understand the Holy Spirit through Holy Scripture. We understand the son through Holy Scripture. There is no sanctioned image of God outside of what is given in Holy Scripture. Now, you can ask yourself the question, well, you know, is images of Jesus really that bad?

Well, also remember that paintings and sculptures were around at the time of Jesus. They could have drawn him. They could have made a sculpture of him to show us what he looked like. God didn't want that.

Peter even says, or Jesus even says to the disciples, blessed are you who never see and yet believe. There's a blessing that comes from not seeing an image of Christ and still believing, still believing that he's the son of God.

Jesus himself being God in the flesh could have commissioned a sculpture of himself so that all of us would have had a visual representation of what he looked like, but he didn't. He didn't because he is revealed perfectly and fully in Scripture in a way that cannot be added to or taken away from.

Therefore, when we make images of God, we are actually violating this command and God is so jealous over us that he won't allow us to do it. That's why this command is the longest command out of all 10 because God cares so deeply about it.

Now, there's another way to make images that we've talked about before, which is just as equally as bad. Yes, you can have a statue of Jesus that you bow down to and that's bad, but you can also have a picture of Jesus that is not accurate to who he is in the word.

For instance, you sin, but you don't think it's that big of a deal. What are you saying about Christ? You're saying he's a savior who doesn't care about our sin. Or when you look in the mirror and you say, how could God love me?

What are you saying about God? That God has limits to his love and you found the exact formula by which God can't figure out how to love you? This God who has infinite love, he can't love you through Christ?

All of our sinful behavior, all of our idolatrous behavior is making some claim about God and we are casting God in an image that the Bible has not described. He's loving, he's righteous, he's holy, he's compassionate.

If our view of God is not those things, we've made a false image out of God. And God is jealous for us because he wants us to know him rightly. Because what? If we know God rightly, we have life, we have peace, we have hope.

So when you listen to this command and when you think about this command, don't only think about it as a prohibition, what I can't do. Think about it what you can do because you are owned by God and loved by God.

These are the things you can do so that you may know him better. And when we fall short of that, let us pray and let us repent and come back to the throne of grace because he who confesses his sins, God is faithful and God is just to forgive us of our sins, amen?

Confession, Repentance, and the Thone of Grace

So let's pray and let's ask God to forgive us of our sins. Lord, most of us this week have not bowed down to a statue. Most of us this week probably not hung a depiction of Christ on our wall, maybe we have.

But Lord, I think the far more common way to break this command is to act in a way that is inconsistent with who you are. How many of us have doubted that we were saved, which is doubting you? How many of us have doubted that you could ever love us and forgive us, which is doubting you?

How many of us have sinned sort of freely without conviction, without desire for repentance or with a kind of numbness and apathy, which is saying something about who we think you are? All of it is creating a kind of Jesus in our mind that's more palatable to our flesh or more consistent with our doubts or more in alignment with our fears than the Jesus that is revealed in scripture.

Lord, help us with every member of the Trinity to get what we know of you from the Bible and to have our lives actually shaped in accordance with that vision instead of the vision that we carry. Lord, forgive us of these things.

Forgive us of the sins that are inconsistent with who you are. Forgive us of all the ways that we fall short of your glory. And Lord, forgive us as we are certainly a needy people in need of grace continually.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to this homily on the law of God from our Covenant Renewal worship this past Lord's Day. We publish these messages each week because we believe that God loves his law and far from throwing it away, we believe that the death and resurrection of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will actually help us learn to love and obey God's law.

Christ, the Spirit, and Loving God’s Law

And that's our prayer for you, that as you chew on these expositions each week, that you would both learn to love and come into alignment with the law of God. And we pray that you would do that by the Spirit's power through the finished work of Christ and to the glory of God.

And with that, God bless you.