Beginning with verse 129, reading through verse 136, and then we will review what we covered last week under the subject of the lawful approach to God, and then examine the subject of the throne of God as it relates to the second commandment. For we are now in the process of a study of the second commandment, wherein God forbids us to make any image or likeness unto himself and unto heavenly things and earthly things to be used in the way of worship. In Psalm 119, beginning with verse 129, he says, Thy testimonies are wonderful. Therefore doth my soul keep them. The entrance of thy words, having reference to the law, giveth light, it giveth understanding unto the simple. I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for thy commandments. Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name. Order my steps in thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me." And since we are going to deal with the subject of God's dominion in the second commandment, I want you to note particularly the prayer of the psalmist in that verse, order my steps in thy word. direct my way by thy law, and let not iniquity have dominion over me. Deliver me from the oppression of man, so will I keep my precepts, or thy precepts. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant, and teach me thy statutes. Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they in society general, keep not thy law. Now, we have noted that the second commandment forbids and prohibits the making and usage of images in the worship of God. Therefore, we saw in our last study that in analyzing the second commandment it strictly forbids the literal usage of idols and images in his worship. Now, we noted also, however, that the law does not forbid engraving, picturing, or artwork in general, for we find all this in the tabernacle that was used by God as the meeting place with his people. But these things could not be used as a mediation between God and man, and so could not serve as any help in worship. We need no aids in worship other than that which God has given to us in his word, in baptism, and in his supper. Therefore, we are forbidden to have pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ in view of the fact that if we knew what he looked like, the very most we could do is picture his humanity and could never portray the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is very God of very God. Then not only does the second commandment forbid the usage of idols and images, but it shows to us positively, and this is what we're interested in now, that we can approach God only on God's terms. In other words, God himself lays down the rules whereby we may approach him in worship, in service, and in obedience. Therefore, we are not left to our opinion. God is not concerned with our opinion. Custom and tradition cannot enter into the picture. but God himself absolutely and unconditionally ordains the way in which we are to make any approach to him in the way of worship and service. Then further we note that if God has ordained the way that we are to approach him and has literally forbidden idolatry, so he has attached to the second commandment a very literal promise of blessing and cursing for the keeping and breaking of that law. Now we saw that these promises of God pertain not only to the spiritual realm, but to the material as well. And I have tried to impress upon you over and again that there is nothing evil, per se, in material things, because God has created all things and declared them to be good. Now, false philosophers from ancient Greece to the present time, who are in opposition to the word of God, practice a form of dualism, and so they tell us that sin is not breaking God's law, it is not rebellion against God, it is not that which we do in disobedience to God, but rather sin is something out there in a world of chance that we're caught up with and can't do anything about, such as that matter is evil, and things are evil, and our environment is evil. And so the way to escape from this evil is to renounce the usage of things and to withdraw from the world and become inactive and think only upon spiritual matters. But our Christian faith is very practical. It not only regulates our spiritual life, but also our physical and material life as well. When God makes us promises in his Bible, he makes us promises that are very literal. that if we are obedient to him as his covenant people, he will bless our land so that there will never be any shortages in our crops and the land's yield. In other words, if we were an obedient people in this country today, to God's law, there wouldn't be any talk about an energy crisis or any shortage in that realm. God says, I would make one crop touch another. There would be more than you could use. He promises us health. He promises us peace. And he promises us that if we obey his second commandment as his people in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, that ten men would be able to stand up against thousands who might try to invade and so would guarantee us victory in all of our wars and success in all our undertakings. However, in the same chapter, Leviticus chapter 26, where the blessings are attached to the law of God as well as the cursings, he points out that when we go contrary to his law that he will start decreasing our population, he will cause us to be barren, he will cause our name to fade from the earth, and our material blessings will wane, we will enter into want, there will be every kind of deprivation, and we will be ruled over by evil. Now this is the curse of God if we are not obedient unto him. Then further, we are shown in the second commandment that the prohibition of idolatry and the abstinence from idolatry guarantees social health. That is, if we are true to the law of God in keeping that law, Our society will remain healthy as well as ourselves and our property. The reason for this is idolatry constitutes treason against God. Now you know that treason at one time against the nation was the one crime that a person would be put to death for almost immediately. But we think nothing about treason against God. Yet the Bible teaches us that treason against God is a capital offense and deserves death. And we know that whatever is our highest order to which we give our allegiance will be that which we consider treason to be the highest crime against. Now, if we have relegated God, that is, if we put God back over here into a dark corner, into a second position, and we have exalted the state above God, or we have exalted man above God, then we will consider breaking man's laws and the state's laws and treason to government and treason to man to be more serious than treason to God. The Bible teaches that the highest crime is treason against God, and that is constituted in idolatry, and can be summed up in the modern-day hippie slogan, which is the philosophy of humanism, where man is exalted to the place of God, do your own thing. Because whenever you take the attitude, do your own thing, you're saying, I am not under God's law. I am not obligated to God. I am my own law. I am not under any kind of regulation. I am not under any kind of restraint. All I am to do is my own thing, that which pleases me, that which I legislate as a law for myself. Now, such an attitude as that will soon bring about suicide, the destruction of a people and their society. We don't do our own thing. We do God's thing. And God has set forth in his law word what that is. Now, we have noted that idolatry is defined in a broad sense as covetousness. Let me again read the statement. For example, in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 5, we read, No covetous man who is an idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. And in Colossians chapter 3 verse 5, covetousness is again identified with idolatry. So in a broad sense, covetousness is idolatry. Now what is it to covet? Do you have any idea what it is to be guilty of covetousness? You remember I said last time that one Roman Catholic priest who had served in the priesthood practically all of his life said that out of all the crimes that were ever confessed to him, no one had ever confessed being guilty of the sin of covetousness. What is it to covet? To covet is to desire what's not ours and then to take illegal means to get it. Now it's not wrong for you to want something better in your life if you take the proper means in life to obtain them through hard work and application of your abilities. But covetousness is desiring what's forbidden you. And then, if not what is forbidden, you being discontented with your estate so that then you reach out with unlawful means to take it. This is why the Bible says the love of money, not money itself, but the love of money is the root of all evil. How many crimes are committed every day simply out of the love of money? Almost every crime that is committed. goes back to some extent to a love of money. It is not the having of money, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Now when God says, you will worship me and serve me according to my will, or in the way which I command, which I regulate, then that is forbidding covetousness. For covetousness is the attitude, I want my own way. I want to do my own thing, and I want to do my own thing when I want to do it. I don't want anybody else's regulations upon me. And so covetousness is basically setting ourselves up as gods, determining to have our own way, doing things our own way. And so when God says, you will approach me in my way, in the way that I outline, and that's the only way that I will accept you, we refuse this and go out and try to set up other ways. Or Rush Dooney says, idolatry involves any and every attempt by man to be guided by his own word rather than God's law work. It's any and every attempt of man to guide himself, to direct his life by his own word, by his own pronouncements, by his own will, rather than by God's will as set forth in his law. Therefore, God says you'll not have any idols. Man says, but I want my idols. I can worship God better with my idols, and so he makes his idols, and God says I refuse that. as breaking my law and brings his judgment upon us. Now, one thing that we're going to learn if we come under God's blessing, and that is that we're going to do God's will. Now, if we don't, then we're going to incur God's displeasure and God's disfavor. I want you to turn now to 1 Samuel, where we have a very important verse of scripture that deals with this subject. 1 Samuel chapter 15. This is where God is rejecting Saul as king over Israel. And in verse 22 we read, And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Now, whenever Samuel went in against Agag and his company, God says, don't take a thing that belongs to you. Don't take a thing. Kill everything. But Saul kept the best of the flock and the best of the herds, and even preserved the king. And when God rebuked him, he made the excuse, well, when I saw that this was the best, I wanted to use it for a sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel says, what's better, obeying the voice of the Lord, or disobeying in the name of sacrifice. You see here we can use worship and a pretense of worship to disobey God with. So Samuel goes on to say in verse 22, Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. And here's the reason. For rebellion going against God's law, God's will, going against established authority, wherever that authority might be, if it's God-ordained. Rebellion is as the sinning of witchcraft. That means then every time we rebel against divinely established authority, whether it be in the church, the home, in the law of society, wherever that authority is established, We are practicing witchcraft. We've renounced God and taken up with Satan, and that's rebellion because Satan is the arch-rebellious one, the one who rebelled first against God. So it's the practice of witchcraft. Now this is significant because the word translated witchcraft is the Greek word pharmakos, from which we get the word pharmacy. which has to do with drugs. And wherever there is a rebellion against authority in a society, you can study it in history, a breakdown of authority, there is the development of rebellion and revolution and anarchy, there is at the same time the rise of the practice of Satanism, the worship of Satan, and the indulgence of drugs, the usage of drugs. And this is what God is saying. Rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. It will bring with it all of the evils of witchcraft. And stubbornness, hard-headedness, is as iniquity and idolatry. Therefore, to be stubborn, to demand to have our own way, is covetousness rather than bowing to God's way. Again, Rush Dooney made this statement, and I think it's significant, and I want you to pay attention to it. Many parents, and this is talking to me and some of the adults, many parents are sinfully patient or indulgent with their lawless children. And we think that this is a virtue in parents. We say, my, they have so much patience, they're so gentle and sweet. But it's a sinful, patient indulgence with their lawless children. or husbands with wives, and wives with husbands, in the fond hope that God will miraculously change the wayward one. He'll save the fatted ram for a sacrifice. I am in continual prayer, they will assert, adding that all things are possible with God. But this is a fearful arrogance and sin. Indeed, all things are possible with God, but we cannot live in terms of what God might do, but only in terms of what his law word requires for the moment, for the present time. To wait on conversion or move in hope of a sinful substitute, however much piously disguised for obedience to God and the acceptance of reality under God. Such a course is not to make our hope the law word and God's law word of none effect. We are not permitted to call our stubbornness and rebellion anything other than sin. When we refuse in under excuses to bow down to what God reclines as his ordained order of obedience as implied in the second commandment, then we must call it what it is, sin. Now I'm going to share with you a statement that was made not by a preacher, but by one of the leading authorities in law in England, Sir Patrick Devlin, in his lecture in the jurisprudence of the British Academy in 1951 on the subject of the enforcement of morals. Now here is a lawman, a man that deals with law, not with the pulpit, who tells us what is absolutely necessary for right doing, for correct morals, and how we might know right and wrong and then enforce it. Sir Patrick Devlin said, a man who concedes that morality is necessary to society. A man who agrees with us and admits that morality, right living, right doing, is necessary to society must support the use of those instruments without which morality cannot be maintained. In other words, if we admit that morality, righteousness, right living is necessary to society, then at the same time we've got to support the use of the right instrument or ways of maintaining this morality. And what does he say this is? He says the two instruments are those of teaching, which is doctrine. And he has reference to what I'm doing right now, expounding the Word of God, indoctrinating from the Word of God. and also concerning the law, what it requires and forbids, and of enforcement, which is the law. Not only must we teach or indoctrinate, but we must enforce. It's no good to teach that something is right and then allow it to be trampled underfoot. There must be enforcement. He goes on to say, and this is highly significant, if morals could be taught simply on the basis that they are necessary to society. If we could just simply teach that morality is necessary to society, there would be no social need for religion. It could be left as a purely personal affair, if it's only necessary. A man could pick and choose for himself. But morality cannot be taught in that way, because every man would have his own standard of morality, you see. What would be right in my eyes would be wrong in yours. There's some things I don't like which are not wrong in themselves. But if I were setting up the laws, I'd probably forbid them, you see. And so on. So he says loyalty is not taught in that way either. No society has yet solved the problem of how to teach morality without religion. So the law must base itself And he's talking about the law out there in government that regulates our lives. Law must base itself on Christian morals and to the limit of its ability to enforce them, not simply because they are the morals of most of us. nor simply because they are the morals which are taught by the established church, because what's accepted by the most could be wrong, what's taught by the church could be wrong, unless we have an infallible standard, which is the word of God. So he says on these points, the law recognizes the right to dissent, but for the compelling reason that without the help of Christian teaching, the law will fail. The law will fail. And you can mark it down to the extent that we have compromised and surrendered our Christian faith. To that extent, our morals have failed. And we can look at the morals of our present-day society and use this as a barometer or a measuring stick and see to the extent how we have allowed Christianity to slip from our lives. is not being taken seriously, that the law of God is not being taught, and certainly is not being enforced. Well, I believe that if we were to get into a discussion of the subject of the throne in the tabernacle, that this would involve more time than is permitted. So let me do two things. First of all, give you once again a statement of principle as set forth in the second commandment, and then a brief description of the tabernacle, which is going to be our source material for the next study to illustrate how God must be approached in the way he ordains, that he commands. Again, the only lawful approach to God is thus the way he provides, and that way is summed up in the person of Jesus Christ. Any other way is idolatry, even when presented in the name of the Lord. Therefore, when God says, you shall not be guilty of idolatry, you shall have no idols, because I am your God alone." By that he is saying that you cannot approach him through anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. For Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and men, and he alone has opened the way so that we can draw near unto the Lord Jesus. Now the most beautiful illustration of this, and I want you to turn to the book of Exodus for this second observation in preparation for the next study, Exodus chapter 25. The most beautiful illustration that we must approach God on his terms, the way in which he ordains us to do so, is set forth in the tabernacle that was built by the children of Israel and used to approach God through in the wilderness, the tent of meeting. And in the book of Exodus, chapter 25, in verses 8 and 9, concerning that tabernacle, we read, And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. All right, God says, I want you to make me a sanctuary, that I might dwell among you, that I might be in your midst, that you might approach me. So what I want you to do is to call the congregation into a business meeting. Appoint a committee and draw up what you think will suit the people best. And then when you've drawn up this outline, bring it back to the people and let them vote on it and see if they like it. And if it pleases the people, because you know this is a democracy and we've got to do things in a democratic spirit and please the people, then you can build me a sanctuary. Is that what God said? No, that's not what God said. He said, you will build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among you, and in verse 9 he says, according to all that I show you. You won't have one word to say about it. You won't have one vote in the whole matter. You won't make one single decision about what that tabernacle will look like, what it will be made out of, and so on. But you'll make it according to all that I show the after the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern or the blueprint, literally, of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it." Therefore God says, I'll give you the blueprint and you'll make the tabernacle after that blueprint and then I'll dwell in your midst and you can approach me. This is what the second commandment is setting forth, that in our worship, in our obedience In our service, everything we do, in our approach to God must be built after His blueprint. You'll not make any graven images. You'll not make any image or anything after your imagination in this matter. You'll follow my blueprint. Now let me give to you what that tabernacle looked like. First of all, visualize a city block shaped like a football field. A city block, a great big city block shaped like a football field. Now around this great big city block, visualize a fence made out of pure white linen that stands eight feet high, that has posts that holds it up, made out of an incorruptible or a wood that will not rot. and that has a base made out of brass, and then visualize that this great big courtyard has only one gate, one door. And it always faces the east toward the rising of the sun. That is embroidered beautifully with blue thread, with red thread, and with purple thread. And so the white And the purple and the red and the blue show the righteousness of Christ, the blue the heavenly nature of Christ, the red the blood of Christ, and the purple the kingship of Christ. And this color is all over that tabernacle. Not only that gate, but as you go inside, because now as we go through that gate, there is a great big barbecue pit called an altar. called a brazen altar because it's made out of brass. It has a grate on it, and at each corner it has a brass hoard. And there on that pit, animals are strapped down, and some are burned completely up, others are barbecued and fed to the priests. But that's the altar of sacrifice, and that symbolizes the cross of the Lord Jesus, made out of brass because brass is always the symbol of God's judgment. Now as you walk from that brazen altar, you come to a water fountain. It looks like a bird bath, and it's made out of solid brass. And there's water in the top, and there's a spigot at the bottom, or a faucet, and it's kept filled with water, and here the priests wash their hands and their feet. Now as you look beyond that, you see a little building. that has walls made out of white linen, but this time the posts that hold up those walls are overlaid with gold. And this little building has two rooms in it, one a little bigger than the other. And as we step into the first room, there are three pieces of furniture in there. On the right side, as we are facing inside the room, is a table made out of gold. with twelve loaves of bread on it for each tribe of Israel. On the left is a candelabra made out of gold with seven lamps on it. And then right in front of us is another box made out of gold with hot coals of fire where incense is dumped on it and this incense rises up with a sweet smell and fills the whole room. Then there is a heavy drapery that hangs down that separates this room from the next room. And as we step into that room, it's called the most holy place. And only the high priest could go in there, and that once a year, and with the blood of sacrifice. Now, if anybody else went in there, God would kill them. And in that room was God's throne. It was called the mercy seat. This was a chest about the size of this communion table, made out of gold. And it had a lid on it made out of gold. Now that chest was called the Ark of the Covenant. And that lid was called the Mercy Seat. And on each side were cherubim made out of gold that looked at one another and bowed down. And the glory of God in the fire settled right down over that Mercy Seat. And that's where atonement was made. Now this was God's blueprint. That was God's blueprint. And that's where God would meet with the people, and that's where God ruled over the people, because that ark was God's throne on earth. His throne for his kingdom on earth. And if you had set up the most elaborate building in all the world, God would have knocked it down. Because that's the only way, he said, you can approach me. And any other thing would have been idolatry, would have been breaking the second commandment. Now the Lord willing, we're going to look at that throne inside and then we're going outside and look at that altar and see how that illustrates for us the Lord Jesus Christ and his absolute rule over us and how spiritually applied to go any other route to God is adultery, to break the second commandment. Take a Bible dictionary or a good encyclopedia and look up the tabernacle and look at a picture of it. And then when we come back together, we will further consider the subject of the second commandment, how it forbids idolatry and positively demands that we must approach God only in the way he has ordained it. Our Father, we pray that Thy Spirit will bear witness with our spirits to the truth of thy word, and give us a love for thy law. We pray that thou wilt use this thy law as an instrument to bring about conviction in the hearts of those that do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior. We pray that thou wilt bless us through this day that in all things our steps will be ordered of the Lord, and that we, O Lord, will acknowledge thee in all our ways. Keep us from covetousness, and idolatry, stubbornness and rebellion, witchcraft, as we seek to obey Thee in all things, through our Mediator and Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, our Lord.