Foreword:
The following exerpt is taken from The Ten
Commandments by Arthur W. Pink
(BAKER BOOK HOUSE, 1994 GRAND RAPIDS, MI)
In this blog series I will work through this very
important article a paragraph at a time – asking my reader comprehension style
questions at the end. In our day, when people who identify themselves as
Christians are so sensitive to any accusation of legalism that they tend to
swing all the way out to antinomianism (that is lawlessness), it is perhaps now
more than ever that we ought to prayerfully re-examine the Ten Commandments –
and few do it better than Arthur Pink (1886 - 1952). I found
this article to be very convicting as I first worked through it. And, lest we
think we the church are not in need of this labour, let us be reminded that
those whom Jesus will reject on the last Day even though they did many mighty
works in his name, were accused by our Lord of not just having no intimate
relationship with him (‘I never knew you’), but also that they were accused as
workers of lawlessness by our Lord. The Law of God does not save, nor does it
keep one saved – none the less we are called to obedience to it who are saved –
but enough of me – here is Arthur Pink…
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT PART I
"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: 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" (Ex. 20:4-6). Though this second Commandment is
closely related to the first, yet there is a clear distinction between them,
which may be expressed in a variety of ways. As the first Commandment concerns
the choice of the true God as our God, so the second tells of our actual
profession of His worship; as the former fixes the Object so this fixes the
mode of religious worship. As in the first commandment Jehovah had proclaimed
Himself to be the true God, so here He reveals His nature and how He is to be
honored.
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ...
thou shalt not bow down thyself to them." This commandment strikes against
a desire, or should we say a disease, which is deeply rooted in the human
heart, namely, to bring in some aids to the worship of God, beyond those which
He has appointed-material aids, things which can be perceived by the senses.
Nor is the reason for this difficult to find: God is incorporeal, invisible,
and can be realized only by a spiritual principle, and since that principle is
dead in fallen man, he naturally seeks that which accords with his carnality.
But how different is it with those who have been quickened by the Holy Spirit.
No one who truly knows God as a living reality needs any images to aid his
devotions; none who enjoys daily communion with Christ requires any pictures of
Him to help him to pray and adore, for he conceives of Him by faith and not by
fancy.
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any
likeness." It is a manifest straining of this precept to make it condemn
all statuary and paintings: it is not the ingenuity of making but the stupidity
in the worshipping of them which is condemned, as is clear from the words
"thou shalt not bow down thyself to them," and from the fact that God
Himself shortly afterwards ordered Israel to "make two cherubim of gold of
beaten work" for the mercy seat (Ex. 25:18) and later the serpent of
brass. Since God is a spiritual, invisible, and omnipotent Being, to represent
Him as being of a material and limited form is a falsehood and an insult to His
majesty. Under this most extreme corruption of mode-image worship-all erroneous
modes of Divine homage are here forbidden. The legitimate worship of God must
not be profaned by any superstitious rites.
1) Can you in your own words exaplain how the second
commandment is reciprocal or harmonious or how it logically follows from the
first? Can we extract other practical reciprocations from other qualities of
God? For example concerning these two commandments we could say:
-
Since God is the only God it makes sense to not
worship anyone or anything else.
Now complete the following sentences and also think of
other examples:
-
Since God is almighty it makes sense to …
-
Since God is ominpresent it makes sense to …
-
Since God knows everything it makes sense to
…
-
Since God is merciful it makes sense to …
-
Since God is etc etc …
2) “This commandment strikes against a desire … to bring
in some aids to the worship of God … things which can be perceived by the
senses.” Can you think of examples wrongly used by the Roman Catholic Church
and the Orthodox churches to aid worship? Examine your own church and your own
personal worship – are you doing anything like this? How does 2 Corinthians
5:7 (for we live by faith, not by
sight) strengthen this conviction? What physical elements that can be sensed or
perceived are scripturally mandated (or allowed) by God (Luke 22:19 and Romans 6:4)?
3) Are statues then totally forbidden? Are all paintings
idols? When does a statue or painting become an idol? Consider the bronze
serpent – if you read Numbers 21:4–9, what does God instruct the Israelites to
do? But in 2 Kings 18:4 hundreds of years later we see what they had started to
do:
"[Hezekiah] removed the high places and broke the
pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent
that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made
offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan)."
Instead
of worshipping the God who saved their ancestors, they were worshipping a thing
that God used to save them. The bronze serpent was meant to be a type of Jesus
and point to him (see John 3:14) not itself to be worshipped! Some people treat
their Bible like this. The reformer John Calvin wrote that the human
heart is an idol factory. Today millions will bow down to, pray to and even kiss the feet of statues of
Mary, the saints or even Christ on the cross. Are such people breaking the
second commandment? Do we need to take the Gospel to such people?
4) “Since God is a spiritual, invisible, and omnipotent
Being, to represent Him as being of a material and limited form is a falsehood
and an insult to His majesty.”
Consider the account of the golden calf (Exodus
32:5cf) – what qualities does a bull have that the people might have felt
matched Yahweh? What qualities does gold have that the people might have felt
matched Yahweh? Why did these all fall far short, or try make finite the
infinite and in the end grossly insult the living almighty God of creation? Do
we ever do something even slightly similar to this in our own daily walk or
worship? Pray that God would help you to obey the apostle: “ Dear children,
keep yourselves from idols”. (1 John 5:21)
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