So next is chapter 20. You have the giving of the Ten Commandments. The Lord, He hasn't given them the law and the tablets yet. Remember that. He's not given that to them. He's given them the oral law. He's given it to them. You remember when Moses was given the tablets and he's coming off the mountain. You remember what he did with those tablets? He threw him down and broke him. So but now he's given Moses has given them The law and when they hear this they're gonna agree to it But look at what it says here in Exodus. This is the second commandment Exodus chapter 20 verse 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or 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, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say... Now I'm going to go to Exodus chapter 20, same chapter, in verse 22. Now in verse 22, I want you to look at what he says. And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and thou shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen, and all places where I record my name will I come unto thee, and I will bless thee. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon. Now, let's go to another verse here, Leviticus 26, 1. Ye shall not make you no idols, nor graven image, neither rear up to you a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land to bow down unto it. For I am the Lord your God. So let's look at what this law forbids, okay? I just want to jump back here real quick. What the law forbids, the law forbids, first of all, any graven image, and that's any image, of course, that you make, that you've put a tool to it, you've graven it, you've put some kind of tool to it, and you've made something. Any kind of image of anything. And it describes it here. Anything of heaven above earth beneath anything in the water under the earth So any kind of image or any likeness now likeness could be any kind of depiction of art It could be a painting any likeness even of God or anything that all that is forbidden In this what it's talking about here Anything that's used for worship, okay and And that would include a picture of God or Jesus that's used towards worship. All of that would be forbidden under the terms of this commandment. Okay. And so, and here's another passage I want you to notice here, but notice though, I want you to notice there in this passage here, look at verse 22. And the Lord is reemphasizing this commandment at the end of the commandments. He's reemphasizing the second commandment. That's how important this is to God. Where did God tell the children of Israel that He spoke to them from? From heaven. Notice that He's re-emphasizing, I spoke to you from heaven. Now, when you go to Deuteronomy, I want you to listen to what God told the Israelites in Deuteronomy chapter 4. Listen to this. This is Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 12. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire, He heard the voice of the words but saw no similitude only her he heard a voice and He declared unto you his covenant which he commanded you to perform Even ten commandments and he wrote them upon two tables of stone and the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments That you might do them in the land whether you go over to possess it Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves For ye saw no manner of similitude on the day the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire, lest ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is in the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flyeth in the air. the likeness of anything that creepeth upon the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth. And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto the heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the hosts of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations unto the whole heaven. But the Lord hath taken you and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance as you are this day. Furthermore, the Lord was angry with me for your sakes and swore that I should not go over Jordan, that I should not go into that good land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for inheritance. You notice what God is telling Israel. God is saying that when I spoke to the nation of Israel and I gave you the commandments, I spoke to you from heaven. And he's making sure they understand this. Did anyone see God when he spoke to them? Did any of the children of Israel see what God looked like? They just heard his voice. God's reminded them over and said, nobody saw what I look like. I made sure none of you knows at all what I look like. You never saw any form of me. You have no clue what I resemble. None of y'all do. And for that reason, do not make any image because you don't know what I look like. And if you make any image of anything that resembles me, you have corrupted yourself. And that's what God is making this point here. You never saw form and you never saw any likeness. Now, let's go to the New Testament. Look what Paul said. In the New Testament, Paul said this in Acts 17, 16. Now, while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Here you have a city that's wholly given to the worshiping of idols. And look what Paul said later in this chapter. He said, For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's device. You know, there is nothing that we can make or describe or any work of art that man does that depicts who God is or the Trinity is. Now, I've seen people make, like in the New King James Bible, there's a symbol there, the triquetra, and they say that's the Trinity. That is not the Trinity. In fact, that's an old witchcraft symbol, that's what that is. There is no symbol that describes the Trinity. There is no symbol of that. And that's what this verse is telling you. It says man cannot make anything. God will not accept that. He rejects that. Any graven art that we make is idol worship. God doesn't want that. He wants us to stay away from that kind of stuff. And so God will not and cannot be worshipped by any of man's devices. Anything we create or carve or design or any kind of little statue, anything like that is absolutely defilement and wicked in God's eyes. He does not want that. We're not to make those things. We're not to have those things like that, any kind of depictions. You know, I don't like little statues. I personally don't like little statues of Jesus. I don't think we should have them. I just don't think it's right because first of all, and I don't want to upset anybody, but this is me. I'm just telling you, I don't think the Bible says we should have... None of us knows what Jesus looks like. None of us do. And I guarantee you, when we see Jesus, he's not going to look anything like the pictures we see he does. I'm just sure of it. I don't think we should draw pictures of Jesus. I believe that this is exactly what this verse is talking about. We shouldn't be drawing pictures of Jesus. I just don't think we should. So we go back to this chapter, Exodus 22, and notice what it says. He repeats the command, and he's telling us that he spoke from heaven, that this oral law was given. And notice in verse 23, Ye shall not make unto me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. Notice what people do here. They make these gods, and they're not making other gods to worship. They're not making other gods that they're worshiping other gods. They're making gods that they're trying to worship our God with. They're trying to enhance their worship of Jehovah. Do you see what I'm saying? In order to worship God, because they can't see God and they don't know what he looks like, they make a statue or an image of something they can see, and they're saying it enhances their worship of God. And so the Lord says, ye shall not make with me God's of silver. Neither shall you make unto you gods of gold. Don't make any kind of God's name. Don't make any kind of statue that represents me. Don't do that. That's what he's talking about here. That we're not to do that. Okay? That's what it's talking about here. And so, so you think about in the Bible, in the Bible, God has given us divine revelation. He has revealed himself through his word. He's revealing himself through the scriptures. Right? But what does man do? Man takes divine revelation and changes it into what an image is. Image is imagination. That's exactly where that word comes from. We take image and it becomes man's imagination. So we take God's divine revelation and we change it into man's imagination. And so we're leaving what the Bible is all about. We worship God by faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. We're not to worship God by sight, we worship God by faith. I'm not going to read it, but in 2 Corinthians 5-7 it says that. We walk by faith and not by sight. Hebrews 11-6 again tells us, for without faith it is impossible to please Him. We can't worship God and we can't please God without faith. So God revealed Himself not by what we see, but what we can't see. So we have to trust God, not by what we see, but what we can't see. So do you remember when Elijah was on the mountain and he made that altar? And they made those altars. I'm just throwing this out there as a fun fact, but when they made that altar to Baal, and they said, oh, Baal, hear us. Oh, Baal, hear us. And those 450 prophets of Baal had that altar. Remember, Elijah made an altar, too. And with stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. But notice, these stones were on the mountain. Do you remember when God said you can't use stones hewn by hand? You had to use just regular stones. And that's exactly what Elijah did. He made an altar to God, but he just took stones that were on the mountain, not stones that a tool had ever touched. Because God said, if you make an altar unto me that had been hewn with stone hands, that is a polluted altar. So that's what that says there. So I just want to remind you that God is very serious, very, very serious on how we worship him. And we should take this very, very seriously. So let's go to the New Testament. Notice, though so many people practice idolatry, the very last thing in 1 John that John told the church, the very last thing John said in 1 John 5, verse 21, little children, keep yourselves from idols. You know, if it wasn't important, do you think John would have said it? Little children, Keep yourselves from idols. See, we all think that, well, boy, that's such an old pagan practice. But it's not. It goes on all the time. Keep yourself from idols. 1 Corinthians 10.7 says, neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them that it is written, the people sat down to eat, to drink, and rose up to play. This is talking about the children of Israel. He repeated the second commandment in Exodus 20. He repeated that commandment specifically for them, and what did they do? He wasn't up there 40 days. Moses wasn't. And what'd they do? They built a golden calf. How quickly are we like that? How quickly do we forget? 1 Corinthians 10, 14, wherefore my dearly beloved, what's it say there? What's that say in the bottom? Flee. Flee. Idolatry. What does that word flee mean? And it's not talking about little bugs. I don't like them. But what's that mean? Run. Quickly. Get out of there. Stay away from those things. flee idolatry. That's a pretty serious warning there about fleeing idolatry. Look what it says here in Colossians. Let no man begal you the reward in voluntary humility and worshiping of angels. Do people worship angels? They do. They do. Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. Look at verse 23. Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body, and not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh. Yeah, people will worship angels. And a lot of them are worshiping fallen angels. That's what they're worshiping. Yeah, but people do. They worship angels. But we have God's word, and God has revealed himself in this world. So let's go back to what God said in Exodus 25. Now notice what he said here. Thou shall not bow thou thyself to them, nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God. Now what did God say he was? He was jealous. He was jealous. You know what that means, that word jealous? I'm going to tell you something. A lot of people think Having a jealous spouse is bad. You want a jealous spouse, don't you? Don't you want someone that's kind of a little jealous over you? I do. Yeah, you kind of want that. You don't want someone that don't care. Yeah, she's with somebody else, I don't care. You don't want that. You want a jealous spouse. You want someone that... You know, God's a jealous God. What that means is He won't tolerate you being with another God. He won't tolerate it. He won't put up with it. He won't, he won't, he won't be second place. That's exactly. He won't have a rival. He won't be rivaled. He won't have that. Okay. That's exactly. Notice what he says. I, the Lord, thy God, am a, am a jealous God. He is a very jealous God. So I want to show you some verses here, but look how, look what it says about God being jealous. Exodus 34, 12, take heed to thyself. Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, whether thou goest, lest it be a snare into the midst of thee. But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves. For thou shalt worship no other god for the Lord, whose name is Jealous." He's a jealous God. Did you know that one of the names that God has for himself? Capital J. Jealous. He's a jealous God. Deuteronomy 4, 23. Take heed unto yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he hath made with you and make you a graven image or hath the likeness of anything which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Deuteronomy 5 7 thou shalt have no other gods before me thou shalt make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is an earth beneath or that is in the waters beneath the earth thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation them that hate me and showing mercy to the thousands of them that love me and keep my commands what you have here Deuteronomy if I'm not mistaken what you have going on here is is the Lord is repeating the law to the generation of Israelites that are about to go into the promised land. That first generation, they're about all dead now, and that second generation is getting ready to go into the promised land, and He's giving them the word. Deuteronomy 6, 4, Ye shall not go after other gods of the gods of the people which are around about you, for the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be killed against thee and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. Sounds pretty serious, don't it? Isaiah, look at Isaiah 42, 8. I am the Lord. That is my name and my glory will not give to another neither my praise to graven images. Okay, so that's pretty serious. Let's go to Deuteronomy 7, 5. But this shall ye deal with them, ye shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves, burn their graven images with fire. Verse 25, the graven images of their gods ye shall burn with fire, ye shall not desire the silver or the... Now notice this, this is interesting. You shall not desire the silver or the gold that is on them, nor taken of thee, lest thou be snared of them, for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God. Neither shalt thou bring the abomination to thine house, lest thou be the cursed thing be like it. But thou shalt utterly detest it, thou shalt utterly abhor it, for it is a cursed thing. The gold that these gods are made of. What did God say to do with it? Are you to keep it? Get rid of it. Even the gold is corrupted. God said, just destroy it. Get rid of it. He hates it. He detests it. Deuteronomy 12.3, you shall overthrow their altars, break down their pillars, burn their groves with fire. You shall hewn down the graven images of their gods and destroy the names of them out of that place. So that shows you what a big deal it is. And notice again what God calls these images in Ezekiel. I didn't write it down, did I? And I sure didn't. I skipped one. In Ezekiel, you can look at this later, but in Ezekiel chapter 8 verse 3, Ezekiel chapter 8 verse 5, God calls these images, images of jealousy. That's what he calls them, images of jealousy. Those little idols, they just anger him so much, he calls them images of jealousy. He just detests them so much. Yes ma'am. I was going to go into this new hair salon and I went in and sat down and I had never been in there before and they had this little fat man up there. Little Buddha up there, uh-huh. And I turned and left. Little image up there, they had their little God, didn't they? Yeah? Okay, so I want you to notice what this says and I'm just going to show you what the Bible says. This is exactly what the Bible says. Thou shalt not bow down myself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. What does God call it when you have idols? Now, you can say you love God all day. But what does God call it when you have idols? You hate him. That's how God takes it. That's how God takes it. You hate Him. Now that's not what I say. That's not what I'm saying. That's exactly what God said. When you have idols, God takes it as you hate it. That's what He said. When we allowed idols to come into the U.S. and people to serve their own idols and gods, that was the downfall of the U.S. It just shows you how terrible God looks at this sin. How much it offends Him. How offensive this is before the Lord. And what people do is they have idol worship, but again, they will use it and say that it's part of worshipping God. And that's in the Bibles. Here's an example. In Judges 17.1, there was a man in Mount Ephraim whose name was Micah. He said unto his mother, this is Judges 17, 1, the 1,100 shekels of silver that were taken from thee, which thou cursed and spake also in mine ears, behold, the silver is with me. I took it. And his mother said, blessed be thou, the Lord. You little thief, you're so blessed. My son, and when he had restored the 1,100 shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated the silver unto the Lord from my hand for my son to make a graven image. What? and a molten image, now therefore I will restore it unto thee." She had that money, and what was she going to do with that money? Make a graven image, and who was she going to dedicate it to? To the Lord. What did the second commandment say? It clearly said don't do that. Yet he restored the money to his mother, and his mother took the 200 shekels of silver and gave it to the founder, who made thereof a graven image and a molten image, and they were in the house of Micah. The man Micah had a house of gods, made an ephod and a teraphim, and consecrated one of the sons who became a priest. And in those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that was right in his own eyes." Wow. So, I'm about done now. I just want to show you about Jesus. Now, who's Jesus? Look who Jesus is. And whom the God of this world hath blinded, the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine to them. Who's Jesus? He's the image of God. Oh, there is an image of God, but it's not an idol. It's Jesus. Jesus is the image of God Colossians 115 Who is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of every creature, you know, Jesus is the image of God Hebrews 1 3 who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the world at word of his power When he hath by himself purged our sin sat down the right hand of the majesty on high You know, we don't need images We already have an image, and it's Jesus. Jesus is our image. He is who we're looking to. Jesus is the image of God for us. And by the way, do you know what Jesus does for all of us? But we all, with open face, beholding as a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Romans 8, 29, For whom he did foreknow, He did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might become the firstborn among many brethren. You know, Jesus is the image of God, but guess what? As we grow in the Lord, guess what the Lord's doing for us? He's making us to be in the image of His Son. Do you see how it's working? How images, idols, pollute all that. It corrupts all that. God's working already. He's making us to be like His Son. And so we don't need images. Now, I want to show you something. Here's the Ten Commandments. King James Version, Ten Commandments. Y'all look at that. I'm going to give you a quiz on that in a second, okay? Y'all look at that real good. Y'all in the parking lot. I'll have to bear with me just for a second, but y'all look at that just for a moment. I'm just going to ask you a quick, while you're looking at it, I'm just going to run your mind through it. What is the sixth commandment? Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill. What's the seventh commandment? Thou shalt not kill. What's the tenth commandment? Thou shalt not kill. What's the ninth commandment? Thou shalt not kill. Eighth commandment? Thou shalt not steal. What's the third commandment? Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Okay, you all know what the second commandment is. Now, the first commandment, you know you're not to have any other gods before me. Second commandment, no graven images. You know the fourth commandment is the Sabbath day. The fifth commandment is to honor your father and mother. Okay? Let's just kind of... Okay. We're going to go... We're now going to flip over to the Catholic Ten Commandments. That's what they believe. And it's different. Not the same. You have to memorize them, but I want you to tell me what's different about them, okay? Denise knows the answer, you can't tell. Okay, you ready? And Brandon, you may know too, you better not say nothing if you do. I'll keep my mouth shut. Okay. How are these different? You got it. Do you all see the difference yet? Whoa, that's right. Something's missing. So how's their 10? What'd they do? So there's 10 though. What'd they do different? They took out number 2, the graven images. How'd they make it 10? What'd they do? Right. They took number 10 and they split it into two. Now why would they take the number 2 commandment about no idols, why would they take that out? Why would they do that? What are those priests doing there? They are bowing down to Mary, the statue of Mary. That's called idol worship. That's called a graven image. You see that? What do you think the Lord thinks about that? Let's look at this one more time. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God." Very clear, isn't it? You're not to make them. So this is what they say about it. Does God prohibit any image or representation of the divine? Here's what the literal translation of, you shall not make for yourself an idol, is unacceptable. Why God allows the fabrication of images provided that they are not identified with God himself and not worshipped as such. So they say, well, when I read what they say about it, they said, you can't take what it says literally. You can't literally take what it says. So they just literally take it out. You can't literally take what it says, they literally take it out. That's pretty much what they do there.