The REAL meaning of the 2nd Commandment

Are you carving idols and
breaking the second commandment?

I bet you are and you don’t even know it. We’re
gonna dive into the ancient Hebrew and find

out the real meaning of the second commandment.
And find out just how relevant it is for today.

I’m Jim Staley with Passion for truth ministries,
and welcome back to the real meaning of the

commandment’s series, where we’re going to be
talking about commandment number two. This is a

very serious topic because if we don’t understand
the true meanings of these commandments,

then we might be offending God
all along, unintentionally. So

let’s dive in and find out exactly what the
second commandment means. Let’s read it first.

Exodus chapter 20, verse four, through six, it says this, you shall not make for yourself a

carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that’s in the earth beneath,

or that it’s in the water under the earth.
Before we go into verse five and verse six,

I want to talk about verse four, and really
unpack this because the first two commandments

are connected to one another. Right? So the
first commandment was, I am the Lord your God,

and you shall have no other gods before me.
We learned that that literally means judges,

You shall have no other judges before me because God says, I’m the only judge. So how do we relate

this to the second commandment? Because most of us feel like we’re not serving other gods. But we

learned that we do let other people judge us and we even let our past still be over our head. And we

try to impress people that we don’t like and don’t even know we’re breaking the first commandment by

doing that. So is it possible that we could be doing the same thing in the second commandment?

I submit to you the answer is yes. Because
as we walk through the second commandment,

we’re going to learn that is far more relevant for us today than what we originally thought,

because most of us are going to interpret the second commandment as, “hey, I’m not carving little

wooden idols. I’m not serving other gods.” But the question becomes, what’s God’s original intent?

What is the purpose and meaning behind what He’s saying? So in the original context, in Israelite

times, in ancient times, yes, the issue was
they would take and mold little ‘teraphim’,

it’s what it’s called. And we’ll talk about
that in just a minute the little household gods,

they would decorate them with silver and gold and
carve them and, and what have you, and most of

them are about the size of your hand or smaller,
many of them were actually the size of a palm of

a hand so they can put them in their pockets.
So let me explain what teraphim actually are.

And you’ll see just how relevant the second
commandment is, for today. The Teraphim

are small carved images to look at, to rely on to
trust to gain confidence from, independency from,

what they would do is they would carve these
household idols, and they would place them

either like on their fireplace mantel or have
a special place, like a shrine where they would

place these images that represented different
gods over that particular topic. For example,

they would have a God of thunderstorms or god
of the sun, or a god of the harvest, right?

And then every god in between the god of the soil,
the god of hunting, and if they wanted success

in a particular area, they would rely on or pray
to that particular god, they would even take

that teraphim, that idol, put it in their pocket,
almost like a good luck charm. And they would use

that in connection while they’re harvesting while
they’re plowing and so on and so forth. Every

time they wanted success in a particular area of
their life, they would beseech these idols and

they would begin to create a dependency on this
particular teraphim. Not today, you might say,

well, we don’t really do that. But we do in a lot
of different areas where we put our trust and our

dependency in something that is not God, Yahweh
related, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is

a jealous God. He says, he says he does not want
us to turn our dependency, our self worth our

identity, and hand it over to anything or someone else. Anytime someone has the ability to influence

you to such a degree that it is affecting your identity, and who you are in your self-worth,

then you’ve replaced God with that person
breaking the first commandment. And now because

we’ve created the idol in our life, the absolute teraphim that we are absorbing appreciation and

value from higher than we are from him. Then we’re breaking the second commandment; well this gets

serious ladies and gentlemen, because the power
of the living God only works through those who

keep His commandments. We know that from scripture
that we prove our love by keeping His commandments

turned to First John chapter five, verse
three, and you’ll see that as plain as day

right in the New Testament, not from the Old Testament. The New Testament is absolutely

just the Old Testament revealed, as much as the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed. So

in first John five, three, it says, For this is
the love of God, that we keep his commandments,

and His commandments are not burdensome. This is absolutely the only way for us to prove

our love for God is to keep His commandments. I’ve got six daughters. And the only way that I know

that my children love me is if they do what we ask as parents; if they disrespect us, if they’re

rebellious. If they don’t do what we ask, then that is an indication that they don’t love us.

And so to create love, we create a symbiotic relationship where they’re receiving from us,

we’re receiving from them, and everybody grows as a result. But if we go back to even the

story of Rachel, we’ll see the dependency on these idols in ancient times, if you remember

the story of Rachel, and, and Laban, her
father, and how when she left the house,

with her husband, Jacob, and everything that they had, after 21 years of being in his household,

and they left. What did Rachel do? The daughter of Laban took the household idols, Jacob didn’t

know it was a total secret, and she hid them, remember, underneath the pillows in her tent,

and then when her dad came along, freaked out that someone had stolen the idols, because

to steal them out of the household idols was in the ancient culture’s mindset to remove the ability

for success. There is no way to be successful in anything, from relationships to the harvest

to their work, or career, it didn’t matter, there was no way to have success. This is their mindset.

And Rachel was so angry at her father, that she wasn’t taking the household idols for herself.

She was basically, totally corrupting and
(what’s the word?) cutting him off at the knees,

destroying his destiny from his perspective,
by stealing what his good luck charms were

or what he was depending on. And she
almost got killed over it. Because Jacob said,

whoever you find them, these idols with, will kill them. And luckily, she was smart enough

to move her way around there where no
one ever found out. Today, my friends,

we don’t have household idols, but we have things that we are so dependent on for our success

in life. For instance, today, the terrafim would be called Facebook, would be called Instagram, how about

someone that spends too much time on YouTube or social media?
It can even be a spouse that we put

so much dependency on for value, that God is not even hardly in the picture. You see, I love this

definition right here. An idol is anything that we depend upon to meet the deep needs of the heart,

love, security, worth, or significance. It is
anything that we utilize in our life to meet the

deep needs of the heart. You see, there’s nothing wrong with having your spouse meet the needs

of your heart, and the value and appreciation. It needs to be there.
But the deep needs, the

foundational needs, the needs that supersede everything else. In other words, with everybody

else is gone. And they don’t give you any value appreciation, the foundation stones of your heart

that your life is dependent on, those are met by God Himself. And see, that’s why when your

spouse doesn’t meet your needs, you can absolutely live a fulfilled life because the Messiah himself

came, bled, died, rose again, for
your foundational needs to be set.

He is the foundation stone. He’s the
Rock from which we build our house.

John Calvin said it this way:
“The human heart is an idle factory.”

I believe that with all my heart, mind,
soul and strength, our hearts are just

built for idolatry. It’s not that the ancient
Israelites or the people of the East,

ancient East, were just, you know, some sort of archaic people who would carve little idols,

and worship them. But we have the exact
same motive today. We just call them different

names. You see, I’ll prove it to you take the
phone away from your teenager or junior higher,

and see what happens to their countenance as it contorts to the strangest of shapes.

What about you, maybe you’re on social media so much that if you fasted from it for a week,

you wouldn’t even know what to do. Because today, people are relying on the value that they received

from the things that they put online, the
perception of their own reality that they

put online. That’s what they’re receiving, how many likes they get, how many shares they get,

how many views they get, determines the value of who they are as a person, that is idolatry,

because it fills the deep need of the heart of value that Yahweh is only supposed to be in.

When He sent his only begotten Son to die, He did so at the greatest extent, and the greatest risk,

it is our responsibility to keep
Him in that superior position,

when we’re in the highs, and when we’re
in the lows, and everything in between.

So now let’s take a look at the last part
of this verse, because we’ve only really,

truly gone to the first part. So let’s go
through the last part. Exodus 20, verse five,

says, You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them, For I the LORD your God am a jealous God,

visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children to the third and fourth generations of

those who hate me, but showing mercy to 1000s to those who love me and what, keep my commandments,

do you see that blessing, and love and everything that we want the prosper

victory, the breakthrough victory in our life is totally dependent on keeping His commandments.

And we’re only on the second one. And we’re discovering that the majority of believers out

there are breaking them, and they don’t even know it. They believe that God is centered in their life.

But if you really had the ability of God
could map out your life and put it on a graph,

the most important things in your life, would they be Him? Because of the deep recesses of

your heart, what are they fed by? Why do we care so much about what people think about us,

and we don’t really care what God thinks about us, because we refuse to do the very things.

He’s asking us to do Bible things, in Bible ways. We’re redefining the Bible to fit around

the lifestyle that we live. What I want to focus on here is this whole back half of the second verse

of the second commandment is all about the children. It’s all about the next generation.

This is all about the next generation. What we do as parents, parents listen up. This is critical,

especially with a father of six daughters
and a granddaughter. Yeah, all daughters,

all females in my house, for sure, even my
dog is a female. But when you as a parent,

are in idolatry, whatever your value is, you’re
automatically teaching that to your children

and your grandchildren. You can’t get away from it. It’s default. It’s automatic. God built it

into the system for children to follow in the ways of their parents. It’s difficult for them to break

out of those molds that way, that’s why when you see a parent that is angry children will typically

be angry when parents are abusive children will be abusive. When parents fall into addictions,

children will volunteer addictions,
because the teraphim that you carve,

you are putting in the children’s pockets. Let me say that, again, the idols of your life,

that are fulfilling the deep recesses of your
heart, you are putting those idols inside,

inside the pockets of your children. They
may not know it, but they’re holding on to

the value system that you created.
Is your value come down to how well

you keep God’s commandments and the details? Or does it come down to the love and image of the Messiah

because you got to have both? It’s not
about just keeping God’s commandments.

And it’s not just about the image
of God, it’s the image of God

is completely dependent on how well you
keep His commandments, through faith by

the Spirit of the Living God. It is spirit and
in truth and there’s nothing else in between.

There’s no credit on judgment day for just walking in the Spirit but breaking his commandments,

and there’s no way to keep his commandments and not walk in the Spirit. They’re all the same.

So brother and sister listen carefully as
we walk through these commandments and discover

the real meaning. What we are really trying to do is set up the next generation for success.

And in order to do that, we have to be successful. First, knowing what the commandments are,

so that we can make intentional moves, to keep them and put them on the doorposts of our house

and on our gates, I feel led to pray today.
Father, thank you so much for your word,

I pray that you would keep the idols of our
hearts far from us and that we would repent,

Father, for the addictions that we have with our phones, with the internet, and with a value system

that’s been corrupted by society today. I pray that we would remove those value systems and put

you back in the center place where you need to be. Father, I pray that you would, across this land,

reorganize, reestablish and restore
you as the only God, the only Elohim,

and the only one that we worship and depend on for everything. Amen. If this video has blessed you,

I encourage you to watch this video, and this video is well, and make sure you subscribe to our

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here at Passion for Truth. Until then, I’m Jim Staley, and I’ll see you in the next video.