It’s easy to think, “Well, I’ve never bowed before a golden calf. I’ve never kneeled before a shrine.” But idolatry isn’t just about tangible images; it’s about worshiping God in ways He hasn’t commanded. Every time we sit through a sermon and let our minds wander, playing with our phones during worship, or when we’re treating His holy Word as just another TED Talk. When we neglect the reading of Scripture, we are choosing our own version of Christianity. And in doing so, we’re crafting an idol—not with our hands, but with our hearts.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. – Exodus 20:4-6
When the Lord commands, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image,” He is not being unclear, vague, or slippery with His words (Exodus 20:4). There is no fine print. No hidden loophole. No invitation to play interpretive gymnastics. He speaks plainly and directly because He wants us to understand Him without confusion. When God says we are to make no image of Him—Father, Son, or Spirit—He means exactly what He says. It’s straightforward. No carved image. No painting. No representation.
And if that wasn’t clear enough, God Himself practices what He commands. Nowhere in the Bible do we find Him sanctioning or providing an image of the divine nature. No portraits of the Father. No etchings of the Spirit. Not even an artist’s sketch of the Son while He walked this earth. Think about that: the same God who crafted the universe, who filled the heavens with stars, who formed man out of dust, and who conquered death itself—if He wanted an image of Himself, He could have easily given us one. He could have had a perfect, holy rendering commissioned for every age and eye. And yet, He did not.
Even in the first century, when Jesus lived in a world full of portraits and sculptures made to honor emperors, philosophers, and generals, we have not a single depiction of Him from life. The God-man, the most important person in human history, chose to live without leaving us a visual representation. Why? Because God does not want us to worship Him according to what we think is best. He wants us to worship Him according to what He has commanded.
Jesus Himself made it clear: “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (John 20:29). He is the same God who withholds visual depictions so that we might learn to trust His Word alone. And yet, some of us might still think we can improve on God’s design.
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In a world where impurity is not just tolerated but celebrated, we are called to be different. We are called to be a people marked by purity, both individually and collectively. Let us strive to live out this calling with intentionality and commitment, supporting one another in our pursuit of holiness. As we do, we will not only honor God but also become a powerful witness to the world around us, demonstrating the beauty and freedom of a life lived in obedience to His commands.

Purity in an Impure World
When Scripture commands, “You shall not commit adultery,” it’s speaking to far more than just the physical act of genitals colliding. This commandment opens the door to an entire world of innocence and purity, calling all of God’s people to a life that is perfectly spotless in every aspect. In a culture where moral boundaries are increasingly blurred, it is crucial to understand that adultery, as defined by Scripture, goes far beyond mere physical infidelity.
The Deception of Minimizing Sin
Consider the infamous attempt to downplay the seriousness of adultery, like when William Jefferson Clinton famously declared, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Such efforts to obfuscate, redefine, or minimize sin stand in stark contrast to the unyielding clarity of God’s Word, which leaves no room for such ambiguity or philandering.
Adultery, according to God’s standard, includes every unchaste thought, action, and inclination that mars the purity He demands from us. The Westminster Larger Catechism wisely instructs us to maintain “chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior and to preserve this purity in both ourselves and others.”
A Call to Holy Living
This command is more than a prohibition; it’s a divine mandate for you and me to cultivate a life of holiness. It challenges us not just to avoid sin but to actively guard, nurture, and promote purity in every aspect of our lives and those around us. In a world that often celebrates moral compromise, God calls His people to rise above, to shine as beacons of righteousness, and to uphold the sanctity of chastity with unwavering commitment.
Vigilance in Every Area of Life
This holistic approach to chastity demands vigilance in every area of our lives. Our first line of defense begins with ourselves—guarding our thoughts, safeguarding our desires, and taking deliberate action against anything that might lead us toward impurity. It means avoiding situations that tempt us, censoring the media we consume, and refusing to laugh at or entertain sin. As John Piper famously observed, we often laugh at the things God hates. Even shows that seem mild by today’s standards—like Friends—promote a laissez-faire attitude toward sex, which is contrary to God’s law. How much more vigilant should we be today when the media we consume is far more explicit?
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A Christian repents murdering others with their attitude and sass and picks up the cleaver to begin murdering the sin that caused it. A Christian is the one who picks up the bayonet and goes to war, as Romans 8:13 says, not one who continually succumbs to their hostilities and rage. Here is what I am saying, dear Christian, the good and the sweet confidences of our Christian faith (the assurance of salvation) are not for the sluggard and slothful but for those who are waging an all-out war against their sin.

You shall not murder. – Exodus 20:13

The Murder of Disordered Passions
Embedded within the command “thou shalt not murder” is the understanding that it reaches far beyond the mere prohibition of physically taking another person’s life. The Westminster Larger Catechism in question 135 elaborates on this brilliantly, stating that

“the duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies, lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes and by subduing all passions, which tend to the unjust taking away of any life.” – Westminster Larger Catechism Q135

This catechetical exposition highlights that murder is not just the bloody and homicidal result but actually begins before the knife is drawn, before the gun is aimed and before the bomb is thrown. As the catechism teaches, murder begins with disordered passions. Before a person will ever dream of performing a sinister coup de grâce, their heart will have executed that person a million times through anger, malice, bitterness, jealousy, envy, and even a million micro-annoyances.
We are All Serial- Killers
For this reason, the commandment not only calls us to be innocent of grabbing the Tommy gun and mowing down our adversaries and not only innocent of planting claymores in our enemy’s tomato garden; it also calls us to a life of inward purity of heart. We are called by God to mortify our sinful passions and to beat them into submission so that anger no longer walks unchecked within our serial-killing hearts.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us full license to speak, think, and interpret this commandment in this way. He intensifies the understanding of what murder is by exposing the pickled and festering root lying dormant underneath it. And that, Jesus tells us, is good old-fashioned anger.
For instance, in Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus says this:

“21 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” – Matthew 5:21-22

Contrary to many popular opinions of who Jesus is, He did not loosen the standard. In fact, he ratcheted it up so that even the sweetest, pillowy-handed grandmother can be considered (in some ways) on the same level as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffery Dahmer. Like those fiendish men, she has a pile of bodies that she has dismembered with a thousand glares, hacked with ten thousand razor-bladed comments, and buried with a million mental weapons like agitation, frustration, bitterness, and resentment.
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The only work that can be described as holy, is to come and meet with God, fellowship with His people, worship Him, rest in His provision, and dine at His table. This is the most joyful, critical, and holy work that any of us could ever do, which is why the commandment is so clear in what it commands.

8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it, you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. – Exodus 20:8-11

A Call to Remember
The fourth commandment begins with the word remember because it is all too easy for us to forget it. Even more, it is all too easy to forget that the command concerns a holy day and that we are to keep it as sacred by the word of Almighty God.
The word “holy” means to be set apart; it means wholly different, distinct, and extraordinary. If we are going to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, our approach to this day must be fundamentally different from any other day in the week.
He Gave You Six Days
According to the command, we have six days to accomplish our labors; we have six days to work in our vocations; we have six days to work in our homes—to catch up on the laundry, to make meals, and clean the home; we have six days to mow our yards; six days to pay our bills; six days to attend events.
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The titles of God are not mere labels; they are revelations of His nature, declarations of His character, and signposts for His authority. Taking God’s titles in vain means taking His name in vain and taking Him in vain. Using them in a way that diminishes their significance, misrepresents His nature, or treats them lightly is a violation of this third most holy command. 

Beyond a Rigid Literalism
There is a kind of rigid literalism when it comes to this command that says, as long as I do not take the name of the Lord God in vain, then I have honored this commandment. So long as I do not say the word God, followed by the word Damn, or insert a curse word after the name of Jesus, then I am all good and honoring the law. But that, my friends, is reductionism at its finest.
As we have seen in the Ten Commandments, a world of application is under the surface. For instance, in the command to honor father and mother, there is a much larger application that applies to all elders and all persons in authority over us. In that command, you dishonor your father and mother when you are combative with your elders at church, or when you refuse to listen to a boss at work, or mouth off at a police officer who pulled you over. You disobey “father and mother” whenever you disregard the authority structures God has sovereignly placed in your life. My point in sharing that is that the application of the fifth commandment is much broader and more comprehensive than a rigid literalistic reading.
Understanding that there is also an expanded application here on the third command. For instance, the Bible is not saying you can disparage God all you want, malign His character, doubt His promises, or eschew His acts of creation and providence, so long as you do not say a curse word with His name. You could use your mouth to utter all sorts of godless atrocities, to speak about the character and work of God in every vile and venomous way you so choose, so long as you do not say the GD word, and you would be golden. That line of thinking is tremendously absurd.
The Meaning of God’s Name
In the Bible, God’s name encompasses more than the letters GO and D. When the Bible speaks about “His name,” it includes all of His attributes, character, and being.
For instance, when the Lord passes by Moses and proclaims His “name” in front of him, He says: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful, and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” The text explicitly says that God passed by Moses, hiding in the cleft of the rock, announcing His name. When God announced His own name, His superlative and perfect character was included as well. His perfect and holy attributes fall under the banner of His name, so if you doubt His love, you doubt His name. If you reject His mercy, you reject His name. If you provoke God to fury, despising His patience, then you do nothing short of taking His name in vain! To malign, doubt, reject, or disagree with His character is to take His name in vain. His name represents all of Him! Therefore, this command says we cannot take any of God in vain. We must not allow vanity into any part of our relationship with God because His name represents all of Him!
This is why when Psalm 8:1 says that His name will be proclaimed in all the earth, it means God Himself will be proclaimed. That is why when Psalm 20:1 says that the name of God will protect you, it means that God Himself will protect you! His name is synonymous with Him! This is why Proverbs 18:10 says that the name of the Lord is a strong tower.
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The imperative of Exodus 20:4-6 is not saying: “Make all of the images you like so long as you do not worship them.” Instead, the passage forbids us from even making unsanctioned images in the first place. Because God knows how quickly our hearts will leap into worship, He has not only forbidden the worship of idols, but the making of them. He not only has forbidden us from worshipping Jonathan Roumie and Jim Caviezel, He has forbidden these men and us from casting the most precious image of God in their human and finite likeness. 

Nore: In this series, I take our law homily from our church gathering each week (The law homily is where we read from the law of God and let His law examine our hearts so that we can be a tender-hearted and repenting people), and I post them here for your edification.
“You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. – Exodus 20:4-6
Introduction
In a world saturated with images and icons, where visual aids are touted as essential for enhancing our spiritual experience, we are confronted with a crucial question: What does God require of us in worship? Or to say it a different way, in our well-meaning attempts to relate to the Almighty, are we inadvertently defiling our worship?
The Westminster Larger Catechism speaks to this very question. It instructs us that one of the duties required in the second commandment is to “keep pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath instituted in His Word.” What the catechism is saying, is that the only way to know whether our worship is proper and true, is to consult with the Word of God, since God has perfectly revealed how we are to worship Him within the pages of Holy Scripture. 
If you are familiar with the theological phrase, the Catechism draws from and builds upon a concept known as the “Regulative Principle of Worship,” which is a foundational concept in Reformed theology and worship. The Regulative Principle asserts that God instituted the acceptable way of worshipping Him in the Scriptures and that anything not commanded in the Scriptures concerning worship is strictly forbidden. We may only do what God has commanded when it comes to worship. And if God has not explicitly commanded something, we have no permission to do it in worship.
The Fury of God Toward’s Images
As previously mentioned, God explicitly dictates how we are to worship Him. We do not have the liberty to offer any ritualistic act we fancy and expect He will respond with joyful pleasure. He is not like the doting mother who puts every sub-par scribbling prominently positioned on her fridge. He has revealed what pleases Him, which is worship conducted in accordance with the Scripture. If we deviate from Scripture, and do things God has not sanctioned, we do not invite His pleasure, but instead His wrath.
Take Cain, for instance. He arrogantly assumed that he could present whatever withered vegetable he wanted, thinking God would have to accept it. The text tells us that He brought “some of the fruits” of the ground, whereas his brother brought the very best of the flock for his sacrifice. In this, God had great regard for Abel and his offering. But, for Cain, God did not have regard and eventually put him under a life and world-altering curse.
Remember also the Israelites, who in their foolishness, fashioned a golden calf and declared, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). They even had the audacity to call this idol Yahweh, thinking they could worship the true God through a graven image. Rather than God praising their effort, or awarding them a participation trophy for trying their best, God responded with swift and torrential fury. God commanded the Levites to go all throughout the cam slaughtering their kin, resulting in three thousand deaths. The people might have thought, “What’s the big deal? We’re still worshiping Yahweh, we are just doing so with a visual aid to help us connect with Him better.” But God did not grant any validity to their line of thinking.
Consider one more example: Nadab and Abihu. These men were of the priestly order; they were Aaron’s sons, and they were given specific instructions on how to bring holy fire into the sanctuary of God. Unfortunately, Nadab and Abihu presumed upon the grace of God. They downplayed His holy prescriptions, presented fire in an unregulated way, and God responded to them, by raining fire on top of their heads (Leviticus 10:1-2). And as the ashes of his dead sons still smoked, God told Aaron not to shed a tear about it, since there boys dared to provoke the fury of God (Leviticus 10:6).
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To combat fear, we must trust and confide in God’s character and promises. Scripture is replete with God’s promises to be with us, provide for us, protect us, comfort us, care for us, resource us, redeem us, sanctify us, and bring us into eternal glory. Hoping in God means knowing His promises and relying on them daily.

“Then 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 have no other gods before Me.’ – Exodus 20:1-3

As we reflect on the first commandment, we must understand what it truly means to have no other gods before our God. This commandment is not a mere suggestion to avoid placing idols above God in a hierarchical list. Instead, it demands the total eradication of idolatry from our lives. We are to bring no idols, unclean desires, rogue emotions, or sinful affections into His presence. Given that all of reality falls under “His presence,” this commandment calls for the complete and eternal abolition of idolatry.
This understanding teaches us how to approach our thrice-holy God. We cannot enter His presence boldly with our idols in tow, expecting grace to abound despite our blatant disobedience. Instead, we must approach Him in purity, with undefiled allegiance and perfect loyalty—a feat impossible without the justifying work of Jesus Christ. For those justified by faith in Christ alone, we must also embrace the necessity of repentance. To enter and commune with our King in an idolatry-free manner, we must abandon our petty idols and refuse to carry them even a step further. Why? Because He is utterly holy!
The Idol of Fear
Today, let us focus on one of the most pervasive and insidious idols: fear. Fear must be mortified so we may live abundantly unto God and in His presence (Romans 8:13). When we fear anything other than God, sin festers within our hearts, eroding our faith and destroying our trust in the Almighty. Fear indicates a lack of confidence in God’s sovereignty. If we truly believed that God controls all things, what would we ever have to fear? Unchecked fear leads us to question God’s goodness, doubt His promises, and indict His character and love for us.
Fear drives us to disobey God’s clear commands, avoiding where He calls us and neglecting His directives due to the anticipated cost of obedience. It erects idols of self-preservation and control, preoccupying us with our circumstances and making us functional narcissists.
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Contentment is the antidote to coveting. It is a state of heart and mind where we rest in God’s provision and plan for our lives. It acknowledges that God, in His infinite wisdom and love, has given us exactly what we need and that we require nothing more. 

17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” – Exodus 20:17

The Evil of Coveting
Coveting is a vile sin that festers in our hearts, often hidden yet ever-destructive. It is a cancer that eats away at our souls, leading us down a path of ruin, misery, and despair. For instance, consider the many ways we transgress this command.
When you see your neighbor’s truck, with four-wheel drive, a towing package, and sitting on an 8-inch lift kit, you feel sorrow that you cannot afford what you have coveted. When you look across the street at your neighbor’s home and feel envious that his house has more room than yours, a better layout, or bigger bedrooms, then you have coveted. When you look at how supportive a friend’s wife appears to be, or how handy so and so’s husband is, or how much Joey Bag of Donuts makes at his job, or how many children Sally Homemaker has, or because of the fear of missing out you bolster your record and your accomplishments to fit in with the Joneses, whenever you look with longing upon who someone is or what they posses, while at the same time looking with resentment upon who you are and what you have, then you have coveted. When you see the wealth, blessings, clothing, power, success, or status of others, and it makes you green with envy, bitter about yourself, or frustrated toward them, then you have plunged into the world of coveting and have sinned against your God.
In this way, coveting is not a harmless thought that you harbor quietly in the deepest, murkiest recesses of your mind; it is poison and cancer to the soul, and you must not entertain it for a moment.
Consider the many forms of coveting that plague our daily lives. You see a colleague receive a promotion and feel resentment and jealousy, wishing it were you instead. You hear of a friend’s vacation and feel a pang of envy, thinking, why can’t we afford those trips? You scroll through social media, coveting the curated lives of others, their perfect families, and their endless joy, and you feel the sting of pain knowing your life does not look like that; all of this is coveting.
It is important to remember that coveting is a gateway sin that leads to further sin. It breeds dissatisfaction with what you have, bitterness, and anger at God, who is sovereign over all things.
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Living truthfully and promoting truth is not legalism. It is a manifestation of our love for the God of truth and our desire to see His truth permeate our lives and communities. By being truthful, we emulate God’s nature, contribute to the building up of a godly community, and shine as beacons of His grace and truth in a world marred by deception.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. – Exodus 20:16

When we think of the Ninth Commandment, our minds often fixate on the notion of lying. While this command indeed prohibits lying, it also calls us to something far deeper. It beckons us to embrace a commitment to God’s truth in every corner of our lives and society.
The Westminster Larger Catechism, in Question 144, begins like this “The duties required in the ninth commandment are, the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man.” This perspective shows that our duty in a war on falsehood extends beyond the white lies, falsified reports, and dutiful silences. We are called to create and preserve a wholesale culture of truth, where honesty and integrity are so thick, that falsehood, lies, and deception are suffocated.
How To Build A Culture Of Truth
The Ninth Commandment calls us not only to avoid falsehood but also to actively promote truth in our communities. Building a culture of truth involves more than honesty in our statements; it requires us to be advocates of truth in every situation.
For instance, in our daily lives, we must embody truth. Think of a whistleblower who exposes corruption despite personal risk out of courage to uphold truth in a culture of deceit. Similarly, in our workplaces, we should not be turtles who hide in their shells. Instead, we should be influencing the landscape and climate of our vocations so that DEI committees and woke HR departments are not propagating harmful and deceitful cultures that gobble up the righteous and spit in the face of reality. In our families, we should teach our children from the Word so that they will know the truth, see the truth as critical to our lives at every level, and encouraging them how to recognize lies, repent of falsehoods, and how to live in the light of Christ in all things. In social circles, we should stand against misinformation, whether it’s a “harmless rumor” or a damaging lie. As people of the truth, we must require that truth abounds in every thing we touch and in everything we can influence.
Creating cultures of truth also means rewarding honesty when someone might be tempted to lie, celebrating fidelity in marriage, refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns regardless of the cost, and promoting forthrightness in every conceivable dimension. Imagine a garden choked with weeds (falsehoods). Just as a diligent gardener aggressively removes the weeds and continually plants and replants new seeds so that only healthy plants may flourish, we must actively root out deceit everywhere it is found, while also continually speaking truth, promoting truth, and acting in truthful ways in order to suffocate deception out of our world and cultivate a world that aligns with the Word. While that is a tremendous job that none of us can accomplish today, we can begin that work in our lives, in our jobs, and in our homes.
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God blesses those individuals and nations who honor the Sabbath, setting it apart as holy unto Him. We cannot expect revival to come to our hearts, both individually and corporately, if we stubbornly refuse obedience to this clear instruction from our Lord.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it, you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.Exodus 20:8-11
The Importance of the Sabbath with “Many Words”
When a person wants to communicate something, they use words. When they are communicating something simple and uncontroversial, and there is broad agreement among communication partners, fewer words are usually chosen by the one communicating. But, when there is controversy, or when the speaker knows that the listeners are inclined to disagree with Him, the speaker will often use more words, especially if that speaker cares about you coming to His point of view and seeing things the way He sees them. The presence of more words indicates that the audience either has a knowledge gap (where they do not understand the command), a belief gap (where they do not believe the command), or a volitional gap (where they are unsure how they are to apply it). Thus, the more words a communicator uses on a particular idea, the more it allows us to see how difficult that idea is to receive from the listener.
With that, God appears to be relatively terse when giving His ten commandments. The most important statements ever uttered, the foundation of all law, occupy few words on a page. So few, in fact, they could be chiseled onto stone tablets and given to God’s people to remember them forever. In this sense, God did not speak complicated concepts that you and I have trouble understanding. Like Mark Twain, it is not the commandments we fail to understand that haunt us, it is the ones we do understand that have become our accusers.
When God uttered words like: “Do not murder,” or when He said: “Do not commit adultery,” or when He said “Do not steal,” He was communicating straightforward and common-sense commands that any thoroughgoing pagan could rightly say yes and amen to. In the Hebrew, each of those commands is only 2 words! Which lets us know that there should be broad agreement about them. In fact, every society on earth that has ever existed has believed that murder is wrong, that you should not sleep with another man’s wife or husband, that honoring father and mother is the basis for a healthy society, and we could go on and on.
In this way, most of the ten commands are pretty short. Just a few words or phrases. For instance, 5 commands could be sent as a single tweet without upgrading to the blue check mark… 6 out of the 10 commandments only use 85 words combined! That is, commands 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 use only 85 total words to describe the entire foundation of the second table of the law, how man is supposed to relate to man, which should let us know something about them. The way we honor one another comprises simple, common-sense concepts that all societies on earth have generally agreed with. That does not mean we obey these commands, but at least we understand them, believe they are good and right, and struggle along trying to enact government, officers, and laws to uphold them. Only the most morally depraved and insane societies in history, like the one we are living in, have championed death, adultery, and the breakdown of the home. May God have mercy on this godless culture to which we are exiled.
However, regarding how we must relate with God, two commands are relatively short (1 and 3), and two are pretty long (2 and 4), demonstrating simple agreement concerning two of them and a hearty struggle for the other two. Take, for instance, the first command, which is only 5 words in the original Hebrew, and the third command comes in at a whopping 6 words, making them direct, to the point, and obvious statements for all who believe in God. In this way, it should not surprise us that these 2 short commands are much less controversial to the average believer than the two longer ones. This is simply the way language works. When God said, “You shall have no other gods before me.” there is not a single Christian who is genuinely bought and paid for by Christ, who will object! When the Scriptures say do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain – some Christians may disagree on the degree to which this applies (e.g., can we lawfully say “gosh, golly, goodness gracious, etc.), but concerning whether we should honor the Lord’s name as holy – all believers generally agree and will say yes and amen. But when it comes to the second and the fourth commandment, you arrive at the epicenter of Christian rebellion.
What do I mean? I mean that the most controversial of the Ten Commandments, the ones that most Christians are not only willing to disobey but willing to offer a thousand justifications for their disobedience, are the two that are the longest, which should not be a surprise to us at all. The second commandment alone has more words than the entire second table of the law. The fourth command has more words than 9 out of the 10 commandments combined! Why are there so many words in these two commands?
I think the answer is simple. Out of all of the things God told us to do, the easiest for us to rebel against are the laws dictating how we are to worship him. “Do not murder?” oh yes and amen. “Do not kill babies in the womb?” you betcha. But do not make an image of anything in heaven above or earth below… “well… That is not what that means.” We ignore that God gave us these additional words because He loves us and knows our hearts are wicked. He knew that we would have a propensity for misunderstanding, and instead of noticing where God is doubling down and adding increased clarity to assuage our sinful conscience, we double down and make all kinds of excuses, saying these things no longer apply to us. We do it on the command to make no graven images and on the command to make the Sabbath day holy above all other days.
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