Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5Thou 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; 6And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments —
Exodus 20:4-6
The second commandment is a prohibition against idolatry and that it is very wrong. So
far, we have learned the following:
First, idolatry is wrong because it uses human reason to describe God on its terms;
Second, idolatry leads to the worship of creation, rather than the Creator.
Third, it is a deficient and substandard form of worship.
Fourth, idolatry makes God jealous, preventing us from receiving the full benefits of His
love, grace, and salvation. We continue:
Idolatry is not limited to man-made statuettes and figurines. Colossians 3:5 says that
covetousness is idolatry, and in the absence of the fruit of repentance, will be judged
accordingly. ‘Covetousness’ is condemned in the 10th and final commandment, too. It
means to be greedy, to eagerly desire something that legitimately belongs to another. A
good example is David ‘coveting’ Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, or Ahab coveting Naboth’s
vineyard.
Remember that often times the ‘idol’ is not evil in itself. Mountains, trees, rivers, gold,
silver, clay, are morally neutral. It is when we put a higher value of these things or any
thing above God Himself – and make them an object of worship – then idolatry kicks in. In
other words, if your focus, life, and devotion is on anything else beside the living God, you
are in danger of idolatry.
Even though today we don’t face gods with such names as Baal, Chemosh, Molech, and
the like as they did in the time of the Bible, we still face the same issues that ancient Israel
did. Pride is to worship the false gods of sin and self. Covetousness worships the false god
of money and materialism. Sensuality worships of false god of pleasure. John wonderfully
summarises these normal human idols in I John 2:15-17:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. 16 If any man love the world, the
love of the Father is not in him.For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth
away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever
The three pitfalls include:
1. Lust of the flesh;
2. Lust of the eye;
3. The pride of life
When indulged, they are the false gods that compete with the living God. Eve learned the
hard way that letting these imposters get in the way of her walk with the true God, was a
ticket to death itself. In Genesis 3:6, these three gods came before the Lord.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food (lust of the flesh), and that it was
pleasant to the eyes (lust of the eyes), and a tree to be desired to make one wise (pride of life),
she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
The end result was death itself. Romans 6:23f echoes this sentence: the wages of sin is death
Wisdom decrees we avoid idolatry like the bubonic plague. As John concludes his epistle
of I John, he says in the very last verse 21: Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
Amen.