Honey I Shrunk the Lord

Honey I Shrunk the Lord

Exodus 20:4-7

Rev. Charles S. Mims

(Exo 20:4-6 KJV) 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: {5} 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; {6} And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Several years ago, the Walt Disney Company produced a film entitled "Honey I Shrunk the Kids." This film was about a hapless, hardluck inventor who came up with a machine that would shrink objects, then allow them to be 'reanimated' or enlarged back to their original state at the push of a button. What a concept! Imagine the savings we would have on shipping products and at the airlines when luggage could be shrunk down to microscopic size, placed in the hold and enlarged when they reached their destination. Imagine the benefits of such a device. Unfortunately, this device was fraught with problems from the outset. In the film, it turns out that in testing and working on the device, the inventor inadvertently managed to shrink his children. Now admittedly, that doesn't necessarily sound like a bad idea, to shrink your family, but in reality it doesn't work very well. This inventor had to go to his wife and admit, "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!"

We have been talking about revival, indeed even felt the beginning stirrings of revival in our church last Sunday. As we travel along the road to revival, we must follow the rules. If we are to achieve revival, the will of God is an important part of the equation, yet we begin to get mired down in what ifs and how comes when we talk about the will of God. God gives us the first concrete evidence of His will through the Ten Commandments. These are the rules for us to live by, and if we are to experience true revival in our lives, we must remember the rules.

Unfortunately, for many of us, the Ten Commandments have been reduced to the Ten Suggestions, and are treated as optional when it comes to the conducting of our lives.

A church member went to his pastor, Phillips Brooks, to tell him he was going to the Holy Land. He said that it was his intention to visit Mount Sinai. "In fact," the man told the minister, "I plan to climb to the top of that mountain and when I get there read aloud the Ten Commandments."

Thinking this would please Dr. Brooks, the church member was surprised to hear his pastor say, "You know, I can think of something even better than that." The man responded, "You can, Pastor? And what might that be?"

Brooks replied rather bluntly, "Just this. Instead of traveling thousands of miles to read the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, why not stay right here at home and keep them?"

But it seems that many in our nation have decided that the Ten Commandments just are not valid. Ted Turner called them outdated and archaic, the ACLU declared them off limits in public buildings, the live easy, do what you want liberals call them too restricting, God calls them "The Law." If we are to receive revival in our lives, we must live by the rules. It is not an option. We cannot discard the Ten Commandments because we find them difficult to abide by, we cannot trash them because they don't match our enlightened sense of modern morality. For you see, it is not our views of morality that count, it is not what we think of morality that matters, but instead it is what God says about morality that will make a difference in the end. And God's thoughts on moral and ethical behavior are laid out in the Ten Commandments.

The current debate in America rages on about morals and ethical values. We live in a confusing time for our country, and what we need today is absolutes. We need firm anchors that we can say will never change, and the Ten Commandments provide that solid rock. These rules to live by may serve as a compass guiding our way through all the garbage that our society throws our way. They may serve as a thermometer measuring the intensity of our relationship with Christ, and as a mirror of our own lives. We do have some black and white absolutes, and the very first one of them was Thou Shalt have no other god's before me.

The second commandment appears to be very similar. Indeed, they both deal with idolatry, but they are vastly different. The first commandment dealt with prohibiting worship of a false god, the second deals with prohibiting worshiping the true God in a false way.

The Requirements of this commandment

This commandment teaches us some specific ways in which we should not worship God. The first thing it tells us, is that we should not make material images of God. This command quite clearly and explicitly forbids us from making and then worshiping an idol. Our God is a jealous God and He will not tolerate us worshiping anything other than Him.

This means that we cannot melt down our golden jewelry and fashion a calf, a dove, a seagull, or even a cross and then worship it as a symbol of God. We are also forbidden by this commandment to make mental images of God, and worship them. The pagan cultures of the Israelites era worshiped many different gods, whom they conjured up in their own minds. This is the one thing that we are more likely to do ourselves.

Martin Luther once said, "Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry."

The Reason for this commandment.

You probably by this time are scratching your heads and wondering why in the world I titled this message "Honey I Shrunk the Lord." Well, it is simple. When we make and worship idols, whether wood and stone or idols conjured up in the deep recesses of our own imaginations, we shrink or limit the Lord. We effectively place God in a box and happily allow him to reside there.

When you and I place our trust in something or someone else other than God, we limit God. We have reduced, or shrunk our idea of who God is. You see, it is in our nature for us to make a god of our own choosing. We want God, but we want Him on our own terms and not His. So in order to meet our own limited expectations, we reduce God by restricting His nature. We shrink Him in our minds into something that we can understand, something that can grasp. When we make idols, it is an attempt to reduce God into something that we can hold on to, something tangible that we can relate too. God by his very nature is beyond our understanding, and comprehension, yet we try to pretend we have him all figured out.

When you and I bow down before an idol, we shrink our concept of where God is. Psalm 139:7-10 says:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Does this sound like a God that can be reduced to a piece of molten metal or a chunk of carved wood? I say to you NO! We cannot shrink God down to trinket that we can place in our pocket or leave on a shelf and genuflect as we walk by. Our God is so vast, so omnipresent, that we cannot contain Him.

But, not only does worshiping idols shrink our concept of who God is, and shrink our concept of where God is, it also ultimately leads to judgement. Exodus 20:5-6 warns us explicitly of the consequences of breaking the second commandment:

{5} 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; {6} And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

When we worship idols, we reject God, and God will surely punish us for that rejection. Israel's history is littered with the stories of their rejection of God Let me ask you how is it that this morning in churches across our land there are homosexuals in the pulpits? Why does abortion continue to thrive? Why can our Senator, Bob Graham go to church on Sunday morning, and vote not to override the veto on the partial birth abortion ban on Friday? Why? Because we have rejected God. We have stripped God of his uniqueness, and of his Holiness, and we have reduced Him to some sort of benevolent leader to help us out when we find ourselves in trouble. We have bought wholesale into the lie of humanism that God is too loving to punish us for our sins. And a lie is exactly what it is, and that lie will ultimately bring judgement down upon us. Yes us! Not just those 'heathen out there' as we like to think of them, but indeed even those of us lining the gilded pews in sanctimonious, Pharisaical, self-righteous, holier than thou bliss. We shall surely be judged. Judged because of our own flirtation with the ways of the world and our own rejection of God's sovereign will.

Our Response to the Second Commandment

We must respond to the commandment that God has given us. He has given us a prescription to avoid His wrath, and we find laid out for us in verse six of our text this morning. If we wish to avoid God's wrath we must love Him, and keep His commandments. We must clean house this morning. It's time for a workday in the temple of God. I don't mean this building that you worship in, I mean our own bodies and lives. We need to take the idols in our life, and throw them upon the fire at the mercy seat of God.

And don't look at me this morning and say "But preacher, I don't have an idol" because we do. We may not carry a graven image around, we may not worship a calf made of gold, but we can, and we do worship idols each and every day. Jer. 2:5 states

(Jer 2:5 KJV) Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?

Another way to translate that is that they worshiped worthless things, and became worthless themselves. We find ourselves placing things before God that are less important than what our priorities should be. Listen, anything we put before God is an idol whether we care to call it so or not. Some of us put our family before God, some of us put our job before God, a great host of us put our enjoyment before God. Any or all of these things become idols that take the place of God. They in effect, become God for us. If we are to find revival in our life, we must throw out the idols.

The idol of choice today, it seems, is the idol of the almighty dollar. We base our decisions on morality and values upon economics. We base our worship and adherence to God's commands upon economics. Some of our churches focus solely on money issues to the point that it is the central point of worship in the congregation. Let us recall how Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor if he were to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus didn't tell him that because a rich man cannot receive salvation, but rather because Jesus knew the man's heart. He knew that the man loved money more than anything, and that it would be a stumbling block to him. We must throw out all the idols.

When we do, God will show mercy upon us. But not only must we throw out the idols, we must worship God only! We must give our highest adoration and our highest order of love to God and God alone. We must admit to God that we have been placing idols in front or in place of Him, and repent, then give him your full allegiance.

Folks, we have begun talking about Revival. Indeed, I'm certain we felt the beginnings of revival in our services last Sunday morning. If you and I want to fan those embers of revival into full flames we must start with ourselves. We must evaluate our lives, and pronounce judgement upon our own actions according to God's Holy word. If we are going to experience full blown, life changing, revival we are going to have to live by the rules. Those rules are found in their simplest form in Exodus chapter 20. We have before us a blueprint to guide our life. The first commandment was to have no other God's before God, and the second is not to participate in idolatry. Are we following these two commandments of God? They are essential to our relationship. Let us make the necessary changes to make things right with God.

Some of this message was derived in part from portions of messages preached by Pastor Rex Keener and Pastor Tom Dooley. Click on their names to view thier messges on this subject. This notification is provided to you in the interest of integrity. If you use all or part of my work, then post it on the web, a similar notice on your page would be appreciated.

Rev. Charles S. Mims