[AI translation] On the last Communion Sunday, I said that God willing, and we are alive, we will take up one of the next words of the Ten Commandments each month on Communion Sunday. So here we come to this second part of the Ten Commandments, as the charter of the covenant between God and man, which is now being read. Thou shalt neither worship nor honour them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God..." (Exodus 20:4-5) And I am also glad that this is so, because it is a kind of summary of last week's evangelization in this Word, in this second commandment. Last week, night after night, His glory appeared among us, His word was spoken, His message of grace, His voice of call, His redeeming power, was heard in awe and yet with encouragement! We saw Him, we knew Him, we heard something of Him again, more than before. They had an experience of our Lord like the people there in the wilderness before the giving of the law, there too after a great experience of God, the Ten Commandments were spoken. Now, too, His law is spoken after a precious, great, rich experience of God, whereby, so to speak, God normalises His relationship with us, our relationship with Him. It's just the second commandment, the one that says: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... Thou shalt not worship or honour them".I would say that this is a direct continuation of the second commandment. There the Lord admonishes us that He is the only true God, that we should have no other gods, no idols outside of Him. And here he warns us that we humans are so weak that we are able and willing to make an idol of even the one true God! Not by literally breaking the Second Commandment and making ourselves all kinds of painted and carved images of God, of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit, oh no! We are long past that, and our Reformation heritage strongly objects to any such attempt. We sin much more perilously against the Second Commandment! It was only when I was preparing this sermon that I realised the meaning of this commandment. We do not make up carved pictures of God, illusory pictures of the Spirit-God, but we form for ourselves all kinds of individual ideas of the one true God and worship that: our own idea of God, our own particular God.
The Second Commandment says: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth" - make no likeness of God! Now: this is our perilous sin, that the god we imagine ourselves to be: is like unto the true god. Similar, but not the same, not Him, not the same god! Only similar! Perhaps deceptively similar! We have an image of God that has elements of biblical reality and fantasy. For example, let me give you just one or two typical cases. I recently visited a family. On the wall in the room, there was a life-size picture of Christ: a picture of Christ before Pilate by Munkácsy with his hands tied.
a beautiful reproduction of Jesus in a handcuffed figure. It was touching in today's world to have such a beautiful large painting on the wall for all to see as they entered the room. One would think what faithful worshippers of Christ the inhabitants of this house are, this life-size image always reminding them of the Lord, always before them as a symbol of salvation. In contrast, the members of the family are famous throughout the neighbourhood for the fierce quarrels that rage between them. They would drown each other in a spoonful of water. The words of the apostle James come to mind, "For where there is envy and strife, there is war and all evil deeds." (James 3:16) In that house, there, before the life-size image of Christ.
Let no one misunderstand me! It's not the problem, it's not the idolatry, that there is such a painting on the wall, it's that this painting is a symbol: it symbolizes the sad reality that the members of this family who go to church bind the hands of Christ in the same way as it is shown there in the painting. It reminds me of Jesus' sadness in Nazareth, where he could not perform any miracles because of the unbelief of the Nazarenes. He is a symbol of the Jesus of our own making, who cannot interfere in our lives, in our family troubles, who is only a touching memory, a venerable statue, but not a living and working reality in our faith, not the real Jesus Christ, but an idol like Him. Yes: unbelief, pretended faith, traditional faith, thick-necked faith, that is, unbelief binds the hands of Jesus so that he cannot work miracles. It is also a carved picture - not the painting on the wall, but the fact that for a Christian family Jesus means so little, that they make Jesus into a Jesus who has no power to intervene in the life of the family. The real Jesus could not be made to pray to Him and then go on hating his brother. Nor could one take communion and continue in sin.
If I asked you now if you believe in Jesus Christ, you would most certainly say yes, of course I do! But then how can you go on living your life as if you did not believe? How then can you tolerate the impure, murderous impulses within you? How can you then continue to deceive your spouse in thought or deed? How can you then continue to drive away your unborn child? How can you then continue to cherish in yourself vile, satanic thoughts and impulses, to make others bitter? If you believed in the true Jesus Christ, the real one, the Saviour Lord, you would not be able to do all this!
The real God is so awesome, so mighty, so holy, so good, that the whole of man's being is awakened when he meets Him, and the idols, the vanities, the vices of our lives are broken down in His presence. You know the first thing that tells us whether we are really standing before the one true, living God, or only before an imaginary God? By the fact that in the presence of the true, living God, oh, how sin can hurt, oh, how wretchedly man's own wickedness, unbelief, treachery can oppress the soul. He has no one else to blame.
Brothers and sisters! I tell you from experience: until one reaches a completely broken depth of repentance, no matter how much he says he believes in God, he does not believe in the true God, but has carved out for himself a god, a godless one, a Jesus, something like the Lord God, something like the Lord Jesus.
It is also a carved image, a self-made idol, when I accept only certain parts of what God has told me about himself in the Bible. So when someone says I accept, worship, believe the God who says it: "Don't worry, I'll take care of you, but I can't accept the God who says, 'Repent and repent!' I'll gladly believe in the God Who comforts and caresses, But I don't need the God Who accuses and afflicts. I need a God who gives and blesses, but I don't need a God who takes and judges! I believe in the Christ who taught me and died, but don't tell me about the Christ who rose again and will come again to judge! Of God I accept only as much as is good for me, fits me, does me no harm! I have enough of God, I need no more! I don't need that God, Who meddles in my affairs, My amusements, my pleasures, my pleasing sins. I don't need that God any more, Who dares to disapprove of anything in my life, Who judges me, Who burns me with His holiness, Who asks for repentance, Who exposes me, Who will not tolerate any sin in me. Can't you recognize your own carved image of God? Is it not you? Don't you believe in God, Jesus Christ, in such a way that you are not so much embarrassed by Him?! Have you not thus made an idol of the living God? "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, or any likeness of him that is in heaven," saith our fundamental hymn. Do not even make for yourself an imaginary god out of the one true living God, for that is a deadly calamity!
As with mushrooms, good mushrooms and poisonous mushrooms are deceptively similar, but it makes a difference which one you eat. One nourishes, the other kills, harbouring deadly poison. Beware, for if your god is only similar to the living God, but not the same, you are in mortal danger! Because with such an imaginary god, with such a carved image, one's life goes on quite well for a while, one feels almost happy with it, until one's life comes to a crisis. For example, you get sick and you beg to the dear good god you believed in, and that god doesn't hear you, doesn't answer you, doesn't help you! Or you see the unfolding of world history, the terrible suffering and destruction of innocent masses of people, and you can't reconcile what is happening with God's justice and love. Always, again, the bitter pain arises: if there is a God in heaven, how can he condone this or that? The whole idea of God that you have made up, carved out for yourself, begins to crumble, to crumble. Some cynical, diabolical question grins in the secret depths of your soul, defiantly, insolently: well, do you still believe in a God who is so good and so just? And your faith begins to waver, your doubt begins to rise: perhaps it is not all true! Well, I would not say, "Just believe strongly", but I would ask people who have lost their faith or who have been shaken, quietly and seriously: have you ever really believed in God, or just in a god you have imagined? Is it not the case that you only thought you believed in God, when you only believed in your own idea of God? God has not failed you, but your idol of your own making!
But even greater harm comes from replacing the living God with the God of our own imagination. When we worship and serve what we have created instead of the Creator, when we turn God's truth into a lie, the whole moral life is derailed and a flood of all kinds of terrible sins breaks out (cf. Rom 1:25). If you carve for yourself an image of a god who does not take your sin and his own holiness deadly seriously; whom you can pay off with a few civic virtues, human goodness, decency; who does not take your conversion, your rebirth, seriously; yes, if you carve for yourself such an image of a god: then thou hast gambled away thy salvation, thou hast forfeited eternity, and shalt not escape damnation, however ardently thou mayest love and serve this god of thine own conception.
Do you already feel what danger God protects you from, when he asks, warns, speaks to you: Beware, O man, do not make for yourself graven images, for by them you will bring a curse, destruction, damnation, judgment upon yourself, and even upon your descendants.
It is said of Pascal that he always carried a small piece of paper in his coat pocket on which was written, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the true God, not the God of philosophers." He wanted to remind us that every thought, every idea of God, however profound, beautiful or moving, is a terrible and disastrous mistake if it is not the idea of the Bible. Your own thoughts and feelings will only lead you to a God who will sooner or later turn out to be an idol!
The God of Whom we can not only form an image, but not even an idea of ourselves: this God has Himself given us an image of Himself. He took on human form, became flesh, dwelt among us, and the world could contemplate his face, his precious image, his form, his movements, his suffering, his death, his resurrection! Jesus Christ is "the reflection of the glory and the image of the reality of the invisible and unimaginable God" (Heb 1:3a) He who has seen Him has seen God the Father (cf. Jn 14:9b) Any talk of God apart from Christ is a deception and a lie! Anyone who doubts God's love - because this love is nothing like our thoughts and our idea of love - should know that God's love is expressed in the suffering and death that Jesus undertook for us. Whoever cannot discover the power of God in this devilish world will know that God's power for us is only manifested in Jesus' allowing himself to be killed and in Jesus' rising from the dead. The wisdom of God - so often contradicted by the history of the world - can only be seen in the folly of the cross of Calvary, the stumbling cross on which Jesus died so that we might not perish!
That God exists at all, that He exists, who He is and what He is like, can only be known in one way: in a very real encounter with Jesus Christ. The only real encounter with Jesus Christ is in a real encounter with Jesus Christ. Stop believing in carved images, in a God of individual imagination! From now on, believe - but really believe - in the God who came down to us in Jesus, who died for you so that you would not perish. Who conquered death so that your life would not end in the grave. Who also loves you with an everlasting love, and Who now speaks to you and takes you in His hand to form in you, in your life, in your movements, in your words, to carve out the image and likeness of God, to make you like Himself, to make your whole being like Jesus!
Amen
Date: 6 October 1957.