Deuteronomy 5:8–11

Second, they were not to make any image or material representation of any unseen power. God is "in heaven above," and anything claiming to be an image of Him is forbidden. There are many other powers, both invisible and visible, and they were to make no representations of these either. All the idols of the nations are strictly forbidden.

But you have left out the second and divided the tenth. That second one says, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath." And you have made carved images and set them up in all your churches, in your streets and roads, wherever you can.

Here lies the solid ground of the appeal against idolatry. They saw nothing. God did not show Himself to them. He did not take any bodily shape from which they might form an image. He gave them His word, His holy commandments, so plain that a child could understand them... So there was no need for them to imagine what God was like. This was the very sin they were so faithfully warned against. They were called to hear God's voice, not to see His shape — to obey His commandments, not to make an image of Him. Superstition tries in vain to honour God by making and worshipping an image. Faith, on the contrary, lovingly receives and reverently obeys His holy commandments.

Any image of Him that man invents can only come from man's imagination. So it challenges the One who can be known only by revelation, and who otherwise cannot be found out. It is impossible for man's thoughts to get beyond himself. So the image of God he devises can only be a reflection of himself in some way; but this is the debasing of God to man's own likeness.

The second commandment is tied to the first. It forbids making images of any created thing, whether in heaven or earth or in the waters (v.8). Bowing down to such things or worshipping them is an insult to God. Israel did this in the case of the golden calf (Ex. 32:1-8), but God is rightly jealous of His own glory... It is always true that our children will suffer because of our disobedience to God. This does not touch the question of eternal salvation. Any one of the children may still call on the Lord and be saved. But their parents' wrongdoing will still mark their lives on earth.

Idolatry takes various shapes. So it is not a question of the shape of the thing, but of the thing itself; not the outward form, but the root or principle of it. We read that "covetousness is idolatry," and that a covetous man is an idolater. That is, a man who wants more than God has given him is an idolater. He is guilty of the very sin Israel committed when they made the golden calf and worshipped it... Whatever commands the heart is the heart's idol, whatever it may be — money, pleasure, power or anything else.

God is jealous over His glory and will not give it to another. That only underlines that the Son is one with the Father. All the images man might make can only provoke Him to jealousy. But here is "the image of the invisible God." He is jealous for His Son, "that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father."

He is jealous because He cannot allow any rival to have a place in the hearts of those He loves. He must have the whole heart, because He alone is worthy of it, and He alone can fill and satisfy it forever.

Do you not see, love takes the form of jealousy if there is the smallest rival to it? In Old Testament times, the nearest thing to the Christian revelation of love is this: God is a jealous God. You remember Solomon's Song says that love is as strong as death. Do you know what follows? It is that jealousy is as cruel as the grave.

Bowing down to such things or worshiping them is an insult to God. Israel did this with the golden calf (Ex. 32:1-8). But God is rightly jealous of His own glory. If the fathers are guilty of such iniquity, God will visit the results of this on the children to the third and fourth generation (v. 9).

God is here indicating how He deals with men on earth in His holy government. When it is a question of His judgment for eternity, God will deal with the dead "according to what they had done" (Rev. 20:12-13). There is no thought of a child bearing the sin of his father.

What we get in Exodus 34 is not sovereign grace bringing a soul to eternal life. It is governmental power, and we may see it at work every day around us. If a man wastes his fortune, or ruins his health by intemperance of any kind, his children suffer for it. This is an invariable principle.

He has Himself assured us that He visits "the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation." But then comes a clause that is badly needed, guarding what would otherwise be misread: "of those who hate Me." Elsewhere the Lord rejects, in the strongest terms, the proverb Israel had taken up from just such a misreading: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" (Ezek. 18). He not only says it, He swears it: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, and the father shall not bear the iniquity of the son. And the repentance of anyone will turn his doom aside.

These words have often stirred up painful and even rebellious thoughts in people who have never been taught, mainly because almost everyone misquotes them. Books and speakers in general say that the Lord visits "the sins" of the fathers on the children. That is not what the Word of God says.

And still this image of jealousy is what threatens us all. It stands, you could say, right at the entrance when we would come near to God Himself. And it need not be a visible or open image to do this. What a warning there is for us here! We are trying to have a god shaped by our own thoughts, and such a god always stands against the true God. So "covetousness," the apostle tells us, "is idolatry"; and we know this can be found in people who are correct on every other point.

In Exodus 20 we have history; in Deuteronomy 5 we have not only history but commentary. In the second book, the lawgiver gives moral motives and makes appeals. They would be completely out of place in the first. In the one we have bare facts; in the other, facts and comments — facts and their practical application.

The people caught in the nation's present troubles clearly resent one thing. They think the third and fourth generations were suffering for faults that were in no way their own. They admit their fathers ate the sour grapes, but not themselves. But the commandment says something quite different. In it, those who love God and keep His commandments have His definite promise that He will show them mercy. So they could not come under the opposite rule of inheriting their father's sins.

There are two great principles in God's dealings with man on the earth... In the church God shows the riches of His grace. In His government He shows righteousness and displays His attributes — justice, mercy, and goodness... Exodus 34 does not show sovereign grace bringing a soul to eternal life. It shows governmental power, and we can watch it at work every day around us. For if a man wastes his fortune, or ruins his health by intemperance of any kind, his children suffer for it. This is an invariable principle.

It is always true that our children will suffer because of our disobedience to God. This does not touch the question of eternal salvation. Any one of the children may still call on the Lord and be saved. But their parents' wrongdoing will still mark their lives on earth. If a man is a robber, his children will suffer for it on earth. Yet they can still receive Christ as Saviour and be saved for eternity.

He was and is the eternal God — merciful, gracious, slow to anger, great in goodness and truth. He keeps His goodness to thousands of generations. He pardons iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet He holds no guilty one as innocent. He visits the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the sons of sons, to the third and the fourth generation. This is not His language to the Christian or the Church, but simply His declaration of Himself to Moses the mediator for Israel, so that they should know His governing character and principles.

The law demanded love. That very fact shows that God's own nature desired it, and that nature is love — "God is love." ... How wonderful to know that God shall have what His own nature desired, in righteousness and holiness, through the redeeming work of His Son... What the law could not do, His love has done. "We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love"; and, "We love because he first loved us." God desired and demanded love. But His own love was fully proved in the Son of God on the cross, and so it has produced love in response.

In Scripture a "name" always expresses what God is as He has revealed Himself. So, in connection with the Father, it is the truth of what God is in that relationship. If we want His name to be hallowed, we are asking that it be sanctified in us, by us, and by all who have the privilege of calling on God by this precious title.

The third command safeguards the name of the Lord. The Lord Himself was unseen, but He had made His Name known. If His people used that Name in an unworthy way, they would soon disregard His supreme place among them.

The third commandment forbids taking God's name in vain (v.11). A person may do this seriously or flippantly. One may seriously swear by God that he will do a certain thing, and then not do it. People are so irresponsible that such things become commonplace. Then they use God's name flippantly, and they no longer care how offensively they talk. But God is not mocked. He will judge all who are ungodly — not only for their ungodly deeds, but for "all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him" (Jude 15).

An oath that calls on God's name is a most serious matter. Elijah made such an oath to Obadiah, "As the LORD of hosts lives, before whom I stand" (1 Kings 18:15), and that oath was kept. But men would dare to use God's name often when not even intending to keep their word, which is entirely in vain, and gross evil. We know that people today swear by God with no concern about what they are doing. In fact, the Lord Jesus goes further than the law, by telling us "Do not take an oath at all" (Matt. 5:33-37). By the time the Lord Jesus came, man had been proven untrustworthy. His promises about the future were of no value. It would be different to swear to the truth of something that has already happened, when one knows the facts.

By its very nature, can anything be more empty than professing God's name without regularly turning to His word and obeying His will? Even an earthly law has its penalty if broken. Can men who profess the true God forget how solemn an everlasting judgment is? That judgment is not for ungodly deeds only, but for ungodly words — as if they were independent of God, and their tongues or anything else were their own.

People show less and less reverence for sacred things. That is deplorable, and it is a mark of the last days we are living in. Even professing Christians speak of God as if He were one like themselves (Ps. 50:21). At large evangelistic events it is common to hear people pray to God as if they were on very close terms with the Most High. They approach Him as casually as if He were little more than themselves — in a way they would not presume to address the chief ruler of their land.

The Father's name was always on our Lord's lips, but never in a light way. He taught that prayer, "Hallowed be Your name," and He lived it in absolute perfection. It is the same with keeping vows. No one had ever fulfilled their obligations and promises to God. But He could say, "I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people" (Ps. 116:14).