Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,
a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.
It's our hope that these sermons will draw you
more into the life of following God, Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. Please consider coming and
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Instagram and YouTube. We hope you enjoy this
sermon. God Bless. Oh Lord, teach us your ways,
guide us in your paths. May your statutes, your
commandments, your law be sweet to us like honey,
more to be desired than gold. Would we be like
the one who sells all to find you, the pearl
of great price, to have life abundantly, life
with you, to know the Father through the Son.
God, we're thankful that you've given us your
word, and we pray, Lord, that today we'd hide
it in our hearts, that we would find in it life,
life everlasting. Amen. When Melissa and I first
started, when we first went on a date, we were
living in Richmond, Virginia, and I was leading
a campus ministry down there, Reform University
Fellowship, and she told her parents that she
went out with this guy named Peter Rowan. They
googled. They were wise parents and they did
what parents do in that scenario, right? They
Google Peter Rowan, Richmond, Virginia. And what
they found, I'd only lived there eight months
by this point. It's not like my faith was going
to come up, but a face did come up. And it was
because the great bluegrass musician Peter Rowan
was having a show there just in a couple of months.
And so they googled and that's what they found.
And I don't know if any of you know this musician.
But he's got big white hair. Currently he's 83
years old. And he looks nothing like me. Now,
thankfully they were correct in not thinking
that was me. But what if, you know, what if for
the rest of their lives they treated me like
they first saw me in that image, right? They're
constantly asking me, how's the concert? Why
do you have so much hair? You look pretty good
for 83, whatever. Or you know what they could
have done? They also could have found out, I've
mentioned this before years ago, that the little
boy on the front of the YouTube boy album and
war album, his name is Peter Rowan too. I was
not destined for music fame, but I thought I
was at one point. And maybe they saw that. They're
like, well, he's just a little kid and they all
treat you like a little kid. You know how sometimes
that's what happens is that people kind of get
this picture of you and they simplify you. They
kind of take you as this static kind of dynamic
is that that's how you are and that's how you
will always be is how they kind of picture you
right there. And it's just this kind of way of
almost dehumanizing you, right? They don't engage
with you as an actual person. In a way, that's
kind of how we engage sometimes with the Ten
Commandments. We have these ideas, we have these
images in our minds of what they are and how
Christians use them. or misuse them. We see them
as this list, right? A couple weeks ago I talked
about this, this list of do's and don'ts, primarily
just a list of do's and don'ts that we use in
order to gain God's love. And oftentimes what
we do out of that is we simplify them into a
checklist that we can follow, that we can manage.
So we come to the second commandment and we say,
oh, do I have carved images of the cat God Bestet?
which is one of the gods of Egypt that the people
were saved out from when they were in slavery
in Egypt. And we think, no, check. Or we think,
have I ever taken out my gold earrings and taken
off my gold rings along with my whole church
community and thrown them into a fire for a cow
or something to come out and danced around it?
No. Check You know, we kind of we kind of treat
the commandments often as this list that we go
odd do's don'ts look at me and We know that this
kind of approach the commandments flattens them
right and What it also often does is it creates
Pharisees and hypocrites of us? People who look
down our noses at our neighbors and yet our hearts
are far from God And don't hear what I'm not
saying. I'm not saying that conversations around
crafted images of gods or god don't have their
place. They most certainly do have their place.
There are some cultures that are full of carved
images and people that bow down to them and in
some ways we are right to join in with the psalmist
who wrote Psalm 115 and laugh in a way. They
have eyes but they don't see. They have ears
but they don't hear. Hands but they can't touch
and feet but they can't walk. But it's not like
there aren't millions of people that actually
do have those, right? It's undoubtedly true for
countless folk. And in many times, in many situations,
and maybe completely, images of Jesus can be
no better. There are people that venerate those,
actually bow down, right? But if we flatten this
text, Not only will we tend towards the direction
of checking off stuff, right? Check listing hypocrisy,
but also we will fail to heed the heart commandment
that is here. And when we do so, we will flatten
God. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount
that we actually miss the commands. If all we
read is, do not murder and think, well, I haven't
literally taken somebody else's life. And we
miss the commands if we think we hear it say,
do not commit adultery. And we think, well, we
haven't done that. Jesus says, actually, they're
not just matters of outward performance and outward
actions that they are in fact matters of our
hearts, right? Say we have the second commandment
and what does the second commandment say? Some
of you are familiar, but let me read it to you.
You shall not make for yourselves a carved image
or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above or that is on the earth beneath or that
is in the water under the sea. I know it keeps
going, but I'm going to stop there. I want to
say first, what this cannot mean is that we can't
have sculptors, Ted. Sorry. It's very hard to
say that what this means is that we can't have
sculptures even in worship settings. Okay, let
me justify that statement now. 15 chapters later,
if we were just to kind of turn in the book of
Exodus, 15 chapters on. Moses gathers together,
he instructs the whole gathered people, gather
together. I'm going to read this list. Gold,
silver and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet
yarns and fine twin linens, goats hair, tanned
ram skins, goat skins, acacia wood, oils, precious
stones. It's longer, I'll stop there. And he
then calls all the skilled craftsmen led by Bezalel
who, all of you Bible trivia people will remember
is the very first person in the Bible who is
said to be filled with the spirit of God, a sculptor,
a craftsman. He gathers all this fine material
and all these skilled craftsmen. Why? For the
sake of creating things that represent things
of heaven and things of earth for the tabernacle,
the place of worship. You may remember, you all
remember that if you went inside the tabernacle,
the linens that were finally crafted out of all
that yarn that was collected was in the image
of cherubim. Right, y 'all remember that? Okay,
if you don't. Maybe you remember that the Ark
of the Covenant had two cherubim with their wings
coming out, hovering over the Ark of the Covenant.
An image of something from heaven. Maybe you
remember... Tim I'm gonna walk away from this
all of you online I hope that you'll just build
a picture this on in your minds Maybe remember
that actually at the hem of the high priest garment.
There were two things One was pomegranates. Okay,
I have no idea why But there are pomegranates
a fruit of this earth an image of pomegranates
and bells Pomegranates and bells and then you'll
remember that there was a lampstand there in
the place of worship and the lampstand was fashioned
with branches some people connect that with the
tree of life these are all images of eden in
a way i'm not going to go into that though you've
heard me say it at some point more in more detail
what i'm suggesting to you is that what this
commandment can't mean is that images or any
likeness of anything in heaven above or on the
earth beneath or in the waters under the earth
have no place in worship It would just be contradictory
within the same short chapter frame, right? I
can't mean that. So what does it mean? Well,
I cut off our text. So what does it say next?
What does it say? It says, you shall not bow
down to them or serve them. You cannot make an
image to worship or to serve. which is to say
in a way that any image that we make of God or
even the God, not just God's, but the God, as
to say, this is God, is going to give us something
that is a false God, invites into an idolatrous
engagement with God himself. And this is a prohibition
because there is always a problem with projecting
a false idea of God. And that false idea of God
always also affects our relationship. So what
did Psalm 115 say? But those who create them,
those who worship them, become like them. You
become like what you worship. And what I want
to suggest to you today is that this image creating
does two things, okay? It flattens God and it
flattens others. Okay? It flattens God and it
flattens others. And we are all prone to do it.
Nobody's off the hook. Nobody gets to look down
their noses. The prohibition to make an image
to worship or to serve. Wait, I'm sorry. Hold
on a second. Let me get back here. All right,
hold on. All right. I think I found my spot.
Hold on. So this prohibition to make an image
to worship or to serve is followed up with these
words, right? It says, what specifically, for
I the Lord am a jealous God. He says, you can't
do that because I'm a jealous God. And I'm gonna
get to this, but this jealousy is a proper jealousy.
God is jealous for us to actually know Him rightly,
actually desires to be known by us. And for,
for us to be in relationship with Him, which
is to say that His jealousy is for us to know
Him fully, to love Him properly, and also to
worship Him rightly. And all acts of creating
a God or even images of the God are a way of
flattening Him. What do I mean by this? I mean
that to create an image, whether physical or
in our minds or in our hearts, to worship and
to serve, okay? To worship and to serve, an image
to worship and to serve will never ever contain
the true God. You cannot do it. It's not possible,
okay? It will always flatten God into something
other than His fullness. And therefore we will
not worship Him or know Him or serve Him for
who He truly is, which is what He desires, He
longs for. And I think that this flattening idea
makes, in some ways, it's not a hard idea to
get if you're thinking of the idle bestest, that
cat god. There's no way god can be contained
in a cat image. We laugh at that. That's kind
of silly. And so in some ways, I think because
we do that, we think this command is a little
bit irrelevant to us. But I think when we start
to think of, okay, all of the different images,
not just sort of outward, but also inward and
in our hearts are to a degree flattening of God,
then it makes it completely relevant to us. It's
not just relevant to Christian traditions that
say venerate idols, but relevant to us or icons,
but relevant to us. So I want to suggest to you,
that this flattening of God has all kinds of
relevance to us, and that we flatten God in all
kinds of ways. And I just have a few ways for
us this morning, okay? One way we flatten God
is that the images that we have, the primary
image that we have of Him is similar to us, okay?
We make Him into our likeness, right? We are
not made in the image of God, He is made in the
image of us. So, it's true, God goes before his
people as a cloud by day and a pillar in fire
by night. And he actually says, I'm going before
you, right? There's images of things, earthy
things that kind of represent God. In John chapter
three, Jesus actually refers to the snake that
was lifted up as an image of him being lifted
up, right? But the truth is that we tend to make
image of God an awful lot like ourselves. We
make God to think like us, to... love like us,
to hate like us. So he loves the things that
we love. He loves our causes. Our causes are
his causes. And our image of him is often our
image of ourselves. Of course, there's horrible
ways this has been taken in history. You can
think of an Arian Jesus. What was done in the
name of an Arian God? He loves us. Which means
he's not really like you. Some particular race
owns him as their own, but we do this too. We
as individuals do this too. Isn't it so often
the case that God becomes the God of the Republican
cause or the Democratic cause? And let me just
suggest to you, if God agrees with you in everything,
you have flattened God massively. If He agrees
with you in everything, something's amiss, okay?
And that's for all of us. You're worshiping and
serving another God. I'm just saying that we
project an image of our own making onto God.
And often we find that the God of our making
is an awful lot like us. He's so similar to us.
We flatten Him in this way. And what I'm not
saying is God did not take on flesh and dwell
among us. That is true. But our temptation is
for us to make him into our image, not for us
to be made into his. Okay, so that's one way.
Another way we flatten God is we have kind of
a static dynamic with God. And this is kind of
what I was getting at the beginning, where you
kind of go, oh, this is who you are. This is
who you will always be. I have this picture in
my mind of you, and this is the fullness of who
you are. And we can't imagine him being any different.
And so we go through his word and he cannot challenge
us because we already had this idea of who he
is and how he communicates and how he acts. There's
no challenge to us because he's static. Now oftentimes,
you know, we have the God who's only and always
one way. He's only and always only accepting.
Or let's put it on the other side. He's only
and always, he's always austere. It's very serious.
But it's only one thing. It's like a carved image
that is static. It's not dynamic. It doesn't
have depth of being. And of course, this static
idea that we have in our own hearts moves out
into our own lives because those who worship
them become like them. So we think in order to
be like God, we must only ever always be accepting
or we must only ever always be very austere.
And you know plenty of churches that fit into
those categories. A third way we flatten God
is that we just have a simplistic understanding
of Him, an overly simple way of engaging with
Him. I'm going to talk about the elephant in
the room, or the images in the room. When I was
studying for this sermon, of course I had to
come up here into our sanctuary, right? Because,
of course, our mothers and fathers in the faith
in this church, our historic church that's been
here since 1862, it's the first church of our
neighborhood. And it's actually, our church is
actually the only church in our neighborhood
that was, is still worshiped in the congregation,
by the congregation that founded it. Kind of
interesting history. But I have, well, I have
no desire to not be grateful for the gifts that
we have been given. And I have no desire also
to be overly critical. And yet, and while I'll
say this too, part of me just wants to evade
the whole subject, but as I sat here and I'm
thinking of the sermon, I'm looking around and
I thought, at the very least, I can say that
we have a very simple depiction of Jesus in our
stained glass and up here. We've simplified him.
If you look around, he always looks so gentle.
There he looks a little green. There he looks
a little, I'm not sure what's happening in that
one. He's a little disappointed maybe. But meek
and mild. Have any of you ever gone into a church,
a church building? And you saw a stained glass
window of Jesus taking out the whip and tossing
the tables over in the temple and driving out
the merchants. I have not. Have any of you walked
into a church and you looked around and you saw
Jesus cursing a fig tree is the image of unbelief
and the rejection of him. I have not. No, we
tend to want to take Jesus meek and mild. And
we simplify him. You know, it's a flattening
out. It's a simplifying. Or maybe we make Jesus
to be the God who wants purity. He's got a lot
of passion, power. But you know what I'm saying?
We simplify them. Our images of God, our external
images and the images that we make in our hearts
are always and can only be simplistic. The fourth
way we flatten God is by making him, I'm gonna
say into the Stepford God, okay? Some of you
have probably heard Tim Keller talk about this,
because I did. He talks about the book, The Stepford
Wives, and maybe some of y 'all saw the movie,
okay? But the story goes like this, Joanne Eberhart
and her husband and her kids, they move from
New York City and they go to Stepford, Connecticut.
And what happens is that she's kind of amazed
and she's also really perplexed by the women
that are in this town because as she gets to
know them, she learns that the women, the wives
in this town of Stepford, Connecticut, they don't
have any interests of their own. They don't have
any thoughts of their own. They don't have any
desires of their own. They don't have any loves
of their own. They do housework, they care for
their families, and they agree with whatever
their husbands say. And of course, this strikes
Joanne as odd. Wouldn't it strike you as odd?
And it wasn't just because this isn't just some
big critique of tradwives, right? That's not
what's going on. But it strikes her as odd because
it's so two -dimensional. These aren't real people.
Of course, as the story unfolds, she finds out
that there's a good reason for this because the
women are not real people. They aren't, right?
Instead, the wives, the true wives were replaced
by robots built in an image of the wives. Turns
out that some of the men in Stepford were savvy
with computers. And what were Jess? animatronics,
right? I don't know why. Somehow the music team
was talking about animatronics before the service.
I was like, I'm going to use that word in my
sermon. What a weird word to also be talking
about. Anyway, and they combine their skills
and they're able to make this robot wife who
just does what she's told. And so when finally
you decide, you know, you get this robot wife
made to be like your wife and you do away with
the real one. Now what I'm suggesting to is that
so often actually what happens with our flattening
of God Is not only just to make him somewhat
too similar to us or too simplistic Or static,
but really a lot of times what we're doing is
we are controlling You do my bidding right The
God that we come and we offer something to and
we say, you know, I'm offering this to you so
that blah, blah, blah, blah. You do my bidding.
Make God out to a Stepford wife, false God. Talking
about wives invites us back to the idea of jealousy.
I said that God is jealous in this passage. That's
what it says, for I'm a jealous God. And he's
jealous for us to know him fully and to love
him properly and to worship him rightly. And
you will know if you know your Bibles that oftentimes
this jealousy of God is related to the jealousy
between a husband and a wife, marital jealousy,
which is say proper jealousy. There's a proper
affection and a proper knowledge that is due
in that relationship. And if you think about
this with me, the same flattening of God is what
harms so many of our relationships. because those
who worship them become just like them. So the
flattening of God always invites us into a flattening
of others. It always moves out relationally.
How we engage with God is how we often will be
invited to relate with others. So we want the
other to be just like us, similar to us. Some
of you have heard because I've done people counseling
with you that I kind of I kind of joke around
but not really That you are probably gonna get
into a fight about where the serving utensils
go in your kitchen You know, they go to the right
of the stove No, they go in a little canister
next to the stove to the left Right and as silly
as it is that is a lot of marital disputes And
what's happening, of course, what happens, of
course, is that we're like, you know, if you
just saw the world as I saw it, if you were just
me, we'd have a great marriage. Similar, right?
We engage with the others. You just need to be
like me. And we also treat our spouses as though
they are just static, that if they treat us one
way, They're going to definitely do it again.
So we don't extend grace. We don't have much
curiosity for the dynamism of another person.
And we know this as humans, we are dynamic. We
have different moods and different emotions and
we have different responses sometimes to the
exact same event. There's a liveliness about
it. Of course there is. We're made in the image
of the living and true God. Of course there is.
And yet we do this to one another all the time.
And of course, we simplify one another. We are
more focused on the image that we have in our
minds of the other than actually engaging with
them and all of their complexity. It's so common.
So common. And of course, also what we do in
our marriages and so many others is that we just
want to control others. We do that with God,
but we do that with others. We don't want just
a yes sir God, but we want a yes sir wife. We
don't want a honeydew God, we want a honeydew
husband, right? Just do the list. Just do the
list. I mean, jealousy is a hard word for us
because I think most time what we think of it
as is negative. We think of it, maybe we think
a bit of it like the 10th commandment, not coveting.
Jealousy is more connected with our ideas of
coveting, maybe more negative. But in the Bible,
jealousy is often positive. And it's positive
here, which is to say there is a good and right
jealousy because there's a good and right relationship
that we're invited into with the Lord. A desire
to be known and to be loved and to be in a living
relationship. It's right for Husband to desire
the soul affections of his wife It's right for
a wife to be angry when her husband is giving
Undue attention to another woman does that is
right has good Um think about this idea how awful
would it be for a husband to be sitting on the
couch With his wife kids have gone down or whatever
They're sitting there, and he turns away, and
he's just looking at his phone. And she says,
what are you looking at? Well, I'm looking at
pictures of you. And in that instance, she'd
be like, well, I am right here. Like, you can
literally look at me. I'm here. And it's not
just that but of the photos that he's looking
at he's photoshopped You know just a little bit
more into his life And his wife is right there
Is she not properly jealous? Absolutely 100 %
And of course y 'all we know that those do not
just have to be physical images though that I
think illustrates the point We have all kinds
of ideas that we think this is you And we're
not even open to the dynamism of a real relationship.
You see, we are all, all of us, tempted to create
images of God. And I know that y 'all are not
tempted to, like probably none of you are actually
making idols, but you are. We are in our hearts
and in our minds making images of God that do
not contain the fullness of Him. We're always
flattening Him. And it's always affecting how
we relate to others. So of course the commandment
does move, right? Doesn't it? It moves to saying
that this is a great iniquity. You visit the
iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth
generations. We should say it's a gross injustice.
It's a wickedness. And this affects our relationships.
If we're not willing to receive God as He reveals
Himself, the truth is that we will not receive
others as they are revealed to us. Slowly, gently,
over time. And as we're not known and loved for
who we are, and as we do not know and love others
for who they are, we will often treat them in
these same kinds of ways, right? Ways that we
can control. Ways that just fit our liking. A
family in the ancient world would often live
together, not just the mom and the dad and the
kids, like we often do it, but often it would
be like the grandparents. And a lot of times
you'd actually have up to like the third and
fourth generation living together. You know,
all these people living together. And what is
the text saying? This is going to be detrimental
because you learn to relate to others, even as
you relate to me. And this will create such harm.
Matt, I don't see Maya here anymore. Matt, one
of the best things that you can do for Everett
is to receive him as a gift from God with curiosity,
seeking to love him as he grows and changes,
right? And accept him and hold him and receive
him that way, but receive him as a part person
that's outside of you, that can affect you. And
that's one of the best things we can do for all
of us. And they will create actually so much
of a healthier family life and societal dynamic.
And instead what we do, right? And so what we
do is we make the God into our image and we simplify
him and we think he's static and we use him.
And so what we do is we say, if you're not following
this and this and this, I can write you off.
God's a Republican and we can treat our political
rivals as devils. Is that not what happens? If
God's a Democrat, then can't we speak about our
political rivals however we want? We all know
this happens all the time. But it's not just
out there, it's here. Because it's in our hearts
and our minds. If God is willing to do our bidding,
then why not our kids? Let's force them to do
it. The way you will treat those made in the
image of God, It's often how you treat God. Flattening
God always flattens others. So what's the cure?
Just really quickly. Two suggestions, okay? The
first, I want to encourage you, brothers and
sisters, dive into the Word of God. Isn't it
wild how complex the Bible is? And that's part
of why it's so hard to read. You've got poetry.
And old poetry, poetry is hard enough in the
20th century, 21st century. Now you're talking
millennia ago. It's hard. You have poetry, you
have history, you have wisdom literature, and
of course, the gospels that tell us about Jesus.
But then we have letters that are written in
different kinds of ways than we write. I mean,
it's apocalyptic stuff. It's so big and so expansive,
and there's such a big fullness to it. And interestingly
here, the command, there's not a command, there's
not a commandment. and the Ten Commandments that
says, thou shalt not read, right? No, you're
invited to dive into the Word and see the various
ways that God presents Himself as a pillar of,
you know, fire, cloud, and the cross, these images,
right? But of course, the second is, don't just
dive into the Word, but live with the Word made
flesh. I mean, that's wild. That's what Jesus
is called. The word made flesh. And what we heard
in John 14 is if we see Jesus, we've seen the
Father. We've had the fullness of the revelation
of God put before us in Jesus. How can I not
include in this sermon? Look, this is about images.
Look to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of
your faith. Gaze upon Him. He's the image of
the invisible God, the fullness of God made revealed.
Not a flattening of God, but the fullness of
God is found in Christ. If you look to Jesus
as he's revealed in the Word, there's no way
you can say that he's just like you. You can't
look at God and say, oh, he's just so simple.
I can guess what he's about to say or do next.
It's always surprising us. Certainly not a step
for God. No way. In fact, what happens is in
the scriptures, most of the time, the people
that thought they knew God had flattened him
so much that when he was standing right there
in front of him, they rejected him. Instead,
brothers and sisters, look upon Christ because
there you will see the true God who is worthy
of all of our worship and who is worthy to bow
down to and to serve. Let me pray. Lord, pray
your guidance upon us as we seek to follow your
ways, though we want to walk in them. In our
best, we want to walk in them. Sometimes we We
want to reject it and push it aside, or we confess
that. We want to walk in your ways. God, I pray
that we this morning would look to Jesus and
find in Christ the fullness of your breath and
your beauty and your glory, that we'd fall down
and worship and serve the image of the invisible
God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Thank you
for listening to Second City Sermons podcast.
We hope this sermon has encouraged you to worship
God and to celebrate the gospel of Jesus. Please
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