The Second Commandment: Following God His Way

This sermon was preached for Capital Pres Fairfax on Palm Sunday, June 22, 2025, as a part of our sermon series “That You May Live: The Ten Commandments.” The Ten Commandments are foundational for loving God, loving our neighbors, and finding the freedom and life we long for. This Summer we will study the great blessing of God’s law as it reveals his perfect character and empowers us to live lives of freedom and integrity. This week we focused on the second commandment. A recording of this sermon will be available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved 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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Ex 20:2,4-6)

We’re a few weeks into our sermon series on the Ten Commandments. Today we’re covering the second commandment. One of the main ideas we’ve repeated through this series is that order matters. It matters that Israel is given the law after they’re freed from slavery. That shows us that the law isn’t a way to earn God’s favor, it’s a gift of God’s favor. God didn’t give the law to Israel in Egypt and say “If you keep this, I’ll deliver you from your enslavers.” He delivers them first and then gives them his law. 

The Ten Commandments are all an active, ongoing part of Israel’s exodus from slavery. They’ve been removed from their enslaver physically; now God is removing them spiritually, psychologically, and societally. And order matters in the Ten Commandments too. 

We have to start with the prelude because it answers the question “Who is God?” He is the Lord—the sovereign self-existent “I AM,” the eternal Creator. Not only that, he is the Lord “your God”—the God specifically of Abraham and his promised descendants. He is relational. Lastly, he is the one who works salvation for his people. The Lord is the great deliverer. By his own self-revelation he cannot be known apart from the redemption he brings. God’s answer to the question “Who is God?” is the basis upon which all the ten commandments stand. 

The first commandment answers the question “Who gets to be God?” Who gets to decide how the world works? Who is worthy of worship? Who is meant to be the center of our lives and affections? God tells us: only himself. The command to have no other gods before him is as relevant to us twenty-first century Americans as it was to fifteenth-century-BC Israelites. Neither we nor they have any right to dethrone God. They might have wanted to place Baal or Asherah or another pagan deity on God’s throne. We are usually inclined to place our jobs or our spouses or ourselves on it. God graciously and firmly forbids all alternatives. Because of who he is, he alone can fill the role of God. He alone can give us the security and meaning we need. He alone can satisfy our thirst for beauty and glory and transcendence. He alone can hold the weight of our worship. If we try to worship anyone or anything else, the weight of that glory will inevitable fall back on us and crush us. 

The second commandment presents us with the question “If the Lord is God alone, how are we supposed to relate to him? How do we know him? How do we worship him? How do we follow him?” The answer it gives is simple but so crucial: we do all those things his way. We are to know God the way he wants us to know him. We are to worship God the way he says he wants to be worshipped. That’s our big idea this morning: God leads, we follow. Following God his way leads us to freedom. We’re going to explore that in two points. First, we’ll see the futility of following God our way. Then we’ll see the freedom of following God his way. 

The futility of following God our way 

When we try to worship God our way it leads to futility. You might be thinking, “That seems like a pretty broad conclusion, gathering a lot from a commandment that seems pretty narrow in its focus.” How do you get all that from “no graven images?” And what the heck is a graven image in the first place? 

Let’s start with that last question—what is a graven image? Here are three “P’s” to help us understand: picture, presence, and power. 

First, a graven image is a picture. It’s some kind of representation of the deity, taking something from our own world and experience and using that as a symbolic picture of a god. Israel had just left Egypt, so think of all the physical representations of gods in their culture. Anubis, god of the dead, had a jackal head because jackals typically scavenged around graves. Horus, god of sky, had a falcon head because falcons fly. An image communicates what that god represents, it makes the god tangible, relatable, even manageable. 

Second, a graven image is about presence. The graven image was meant to house the god it represented. Ancient Near Eastern cultures had ceremonies which invited the god to come fill the image someone had made. They’d pray for its eyes and ears and mouth to be opened, for the image to share in the god’s life. 

Third, a graven image was meant to contain power. It was designed to be a conduit to tap into divine power. Do you want to ensure your crops will grow? Do you want to make sure your firstborn is a son? Do you want to win the next battle you fight? All you have to do is render the right service to the image, and the god will take care of the rest. 

That’s what an image is—a picture of a god, which houses its presence and hones its power. All this might sound foreign to you, as if graven images are something only relevant to people “out there” or people “back then.” Out there: Foreign cultures. That’s something you have to worry about in India or Japan, but not here in America. Back then: That was relevant for our pagan ancestors, but we modern Westerners don’t have to worry about carving images. 

Friends, you need to know, graven images are something that we have to deal with in here and right now  In here: People of God, this is very much an “in-house” discussion. You can claim the name of Jesus and still get this wrong. When Israel forged the golden calf, they weren’t trying to worship a foreign god—they called the bull “Yahweh.” They got the “who” right, at least in name, but they got the “how” wrong. Right now: our images don’t look like a golden bull because that was a product of ancient Israel’s culture. Our graven images are products of our culture. 

Let’s consider a few examples of how we can make graven images of God in our own way, following those three “p’s.” We still make pictures of God in our own way. We create our own impressions of God which come out of our own context and suit our own preferences. Sometimes this can be literal. If you’ve ever been inside a Mormon church (a ward), you’ll see pictures of Jesus all over the place—and it’s very much a product of its culture. That Jesus is 6’2” with porcelain white, smooth skin; blue eyes; light brown wavy hair; a long but well trimmed beard. That’s more a reflection of the worshipper than the God they claim to worship. And to be clear, Jesus was a first century Jewish middle-eastern man. 

But more than that, our images of God tend to be impressions of his character. We zoom in on parts we like to the exclusion of other parts we don’t like. Maybe we zoom in on God’s love but ignore his wrath, or maybe we zoom in on God’s wrath against people who sin in all the ways we don’t. That’s how we make a picture of God. 

When it comes to presence, there are all kinds of things we can do to “feel close to God” on our own terms. Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t go to church, I go hiking on Sundays,” or “I don’t need the Bible, I just listen to that little voice in my heart.” There are ways we can do this with a more sanitary, “Christian” facade. We decorate our homes with Bible verses and devotionals, we bring home trinkets from summer camps, we buy nativity creches from the Holy Land. Are those things wrong in and of themselves? No, not necessarily. But if we believe that those objects make us closer to God, we’re treating them like idols. 

When it comes to power, we try to use things to try to make sure our faith “works.” Here’s one way to gauge this: What are the things you do give your prayers a little “boost”? You might be afraid that God won’t hear or answer your prayers in the way you want, so what do you do to give your prayers a little extra “oomph” to get God’s attention? Wearing a cross necklace? Praying a particular direction? Using particular phrases with repetition? Maybe feeling the right emotions with enough fervor? 

We’re not so different from the people out there and the people back then. We’re just as tempted to follow God our own way by crafting images. 

So what’s the problem with graven images? If our hearts seem hard-wired to try to relate to God through making images, why does God ban them? Well it’s worth noting before anything else, they simply don’t work! They don’t deliver on any of those P’s. A few months ago a friend of mine went on a trip to Zion national park, when I heard he was going I told him to take pictures for me. After the trip, he sent me a few but added the disclaimer “These pictures don’t do it justice.” A picture couldn’t possible capture the glory of the park. How much more true is this with the infinite, eternal God! Images of God inevitably shrink our perspective of God’s character, they zoom in on just the parts we care about and crop out parts we’d rather ignore But in doing that, we end up losing the true God of the Bible. 

Trying to capture God’s presence also misrepresents God. A graven image is an attempt to house God on our own terms, to focus his presence for our own purposes. That’s built on the belief that God can be contained and controlled, but he can’t. Israel learned this in 1 Samuel 4. They carry the ark of the covenant into battle to use it like a lucky charm because they know if God is with them they’ll win the battle, but God refuses to be caged and used like a weapon. He withdraws his presence and Israel loses the ark for a time. 

And of course, graven images have no power. God draws attention to this all through the Old Testament. Idols are just big blocks of wood and stone and metal, even if they called them “Yahweh.” Isaiah 44 illustrates this so well. 

The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (Is 44:13–17). 

You see the foolishness in that? Why would you take the same wood which serves you as kindling and serve it as a god? If we created the graven image, if we control it, then it can’t do anything for us. It has no power.

But the far more serious problem is that graven images destroy our relationship with God. Think about it like this. I’ve got a picture of me and my wife on the lock screen of my phone—a lot of people have pictures of them and their partner on their lock screen. Imagine if one day you noticed your significant other had a new lock screen picture of them kissing another person. You say “Uhhh, hello? Who is this?” And I say “Oh, that’s you!” You say “That is not me, that person doesn’t even look like me!” And they say, “Well they represent you! Whenever I’m with her I feel so close to you! I’ve been struggling to feel connected to you recently but this person helps.” 

What would that do to your relationship? What level of confusion and betrayal would you be feeling? That’s what images do with God. The reason we build these images is because we feel distant from God, we’re not comfortable relating to him in the way he wants us to. It doesn’t matter how pure our intent is. Images replace and dishonor God.  By taking the relationship into our own hands, we actually drive a wedge between us and God—it’s self-defeating. 

That’s the futility of following God our way. We make an approximation of God which suits all our own preferences, a god in our own image, and we destroy our relationship with the real God. Order matters! If you’re only willing to engage with God on your terms, if God has to conform to your expectations, you’re making yourself God over him. You’re making God follow you, and by definition displacing him as God. 

The freedom of following God his way 

That’s not the way to freedom. That’s not what you were created for. We were created for God to lead and for us to follow. And Scripture really does mean that. 

One of the reasons God gives us for why we shall not make images is because he’s already made one. In the very first chapter of the Bible we’re told that God created humanity “in his image.” Humanity is God’s sanctioned picture of himself in creation—and we have characteristics that our graven images could never reflect. Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 10 puts it well. 

Q. 10. How did God create man?

A. God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

Think of the ways humanity serves as an image of God. Consider the three “p’s” again. We are a much better picture than a graven image. Our living God has made a living image; we are dynamic, responsive, and relational like him. The unity and diversity of trinity is reflected in the unity of our human race and the diversity of gender. Even the way we know God is similar to the way we know other people. How do you know a person? You have to meet them; there has to be some real, meaningful, personal encounter. The person has to choose to reveal themself to you. They have to share their character, qualities, story, tastes, etc. And then you have to engage in relationship, responding with your own revelation and investment. For us to know God, he has to reveal himself to us—all the more because God is a spirit! On top of all that, our character was meant to reflect God’s character. God made us to be righteous and holy. In all these ways God gave creation a picture of himself in humanity. 

When it comes to presence, God created us to be filled with his Spirit. God breathed the breath, or the spirit, of life into Adam and Eve’s lungs. Paul describes Christians as a temple of the Lord. Humanity was meant to represent God in creation. And that comes with power. God created us with a mission. We were commissioned to go forth and multiply, spreading God’s image and glory over all the earth. We were to have dominion over the creatures, sharing God’s good order. And were were commanded to work and keep the garden sanctuary of God in Eden, creating beauty as we enjoyed fellowship with God. 

That was God’s intent for us, but because of sin, we’ve ruined ourselves as image bearers. We don’t reflect God’s character in how we live. We’re not righteous or holy, we’re wicked and self-serving. We’ve become ignorant of who God is. As Romans 1 says, we exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. We’ve crafted graven images to try to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts, but as we just said, it’s a futile endeavor. 

The good news is, God wasn’t willing to leave us in rebellion. Just like he did for Israel in Egypt, God takes the first step. To redeem his image bearers, God sent his Son Jesus into the world. 

Here’s the beautiful thing about the true and living God: we never would have come up with the gospel. A god of our own creation would never humble us so severely as to die in our place. We don’t see our sin as all that bad, so we can’t imagine God as all that good. The good news is, Jesus sees us clearly. He knows how helpless we are, how enslaved we are, how entrenched we are in the futility of this world. By taking on flesh he perfectly fulfills God’s vision for his image. Colossians 1:15-22 tells us how. 

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. 

Hebrews 1:3 echoes this succinctly: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” See how we find all three “p’s” in Jesus. 

A picture of God: in all the ways Jesus lived, he perfectly reflected the will and character of his Father in heaven. The presence of God: never had God been so locally present in the world as when Jesus walked the earth. God took on flesh as a real, living man. Jesus came to dwell with humanity literally. He was born like us. He worked and slept alongside us. He shared a table with men and women, eating and drinking alongside them. The power of God: Jesus came with the mission of God to rescue sinners from themselves, to correct our hearts, to help us get the order right again. 

By the power of his death and resurrection Christ has reconciled us to God. And then, when we put our trust in Jesus, when we become his follower, he fills us with his Holy Spirit and redeems us as true image-bearers. Now God dwells in our hearts, now we have hearts which love him the way he wants to be loved, now we can live lives that reflect his righteousness and holiness, now we are free to live the lives we were created to live. That’s what it means to find freedom in following God his way. His way is the way, the truth, and the life. 

Conclusion

The principle taught in the second commandment is crucial to every aspect of our relationship with God. In all things, God leads and we follow. Think through the ways this impacts our knowledge of God, worship of God, and obedience to God. 

Knowledge of God: Do you trust God to reveal himself to you in his Word? Do you need to “fill in the gaps” with other sources? Do you want to ignore some parts of God he reveals? 

Worship of God: When you come into worship, are you more focused on what you get out of it, or what you give to God? What does Scripture teach us about how God wants to be worshipped? 

Obedience to God: Do you attempt to twist God’s law to make it easier for you to follow? How does the Sermon on the Mount challenge us to follow God the way he wants to be followed? 

Pick one of the things listed above and commit to following God the way he wants to be followed. In the coming week, pay special attention to how you are knowing, worshiping, or obeying God. Ask God in prayer, “How can I do this in a way that honors you?” 

I’m sure you still have lots of questions, and as much as I’d love to keep preaching for another thirty minutes to answer some of those questions, I know we’d all like to eat lunch before 2pm. I’d encourage you to write your questions down and bring them to our sermon series Q&A at the end of the summer. I’d be happy to chat after the service as well. But friends, remember that order matters. God leads, we follow. And when we follow God his way, we find freedom in the beauty of the gospel.