The Second Commandment by Milton C. Wilcox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 9, 1916

The Second Commandment

By Milton C. Wilcox

The Law of God — No. 7

The Second Commandment

MILTON C. WILCOX

THE second precept in the great decalogue of God, Jehovah, is as follows:— “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor 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: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing loving-kindness [“mercy,” margin] unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.” Ex. 20:4-6, A. R. V.

The first commandment recognizes that there may be those to whom our allegiance is due, those whom some men regard as divine, as judges, rulers, kings, persons who claim divine prerogatives. Certain civil duties may be rendered to them; but God must be first. No worship or homage should be offered to any ruler, to any combination of rulers, or to any government, contrary to the worship of God, or before or in preference to the worship due to him.

The second commandment is equally important. Let us study it:—

1. The commandment does not forbid making pictures, or photographs, or engravings, or statuary, or printing or reproducing such things, any more than it forbids the making of chairs, or bureaus, or sideboards, or sofas, or houses, or churches. The making of these things is not wrong unless the motive, the purpose, is wrong.

God gave directions to his people to build and ornament and embellish the sanctuary. Figures of bells and pomegranates and angels were used for these purposes. See Ex. 25:1-9, 18, 25, 33; 26:31; 28:2, 33; 1 Kings 6:18, 29, 32, etc. The building and carrying of all these was not a transgression of the second word of the ten.

Nor did Ezekiel transgress when he took a tile and portrayed a city under siege, with the necessary things for a siege. And God has especially directed his teachers in the last days to “write the vision, and make it plain upon tables.” Hab. 2:2.

All the above were made to aid worship, or to teach, or to beautify in a legitimate way, but none of them were made to worship. Moses did not transgress when he made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole. Num. 21:9. Nor did the children of Israel transgress when they looked upon it and were healed. But they did transgress when, in later times, they worshiped it, moving Hezekiah’s faithful heart to destroy it, “a piece of brass.” 2 Kings 18:4.

2. No, the commandment does not prohibit the mere making of things, but the making of things to worship. For God must not be so disparagingly limited and belittled. Sooner or later men would transfer their ideas of God to the image, and would invest that with supernatural power, or they would transfer their ideas of the image of wood or stone to God, and thus degrade God in their own minds, and to the same extent debase and degrade themselves.

One of the great blessings of faith is constantly to draw man out after the infinite God, toward the One he can never fully comprehend. That means continued growth, continual enlargement, continual happiness of the highest order. He worships a God infinite in greatness, who can be represented by no art or device of man, by no conception or imagination of man; and looked upon rightly, there is great joy in the thought, if faith will but keep the great fact that the God he worships, infinite in power and wisdom and might and knowledge, is also infinite in love and mercy, in tender, constant care for those who trust him.

It is for this reason, in part at least, that God has connected with this commandment the thought of his loving-kindness, not alone to thousands, but to a thousand generations (see Ex. 20:6, A. R. V., margin, and Deut. 7:9) of them that love and obey. In other words, he abides the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It is not an arbitrary act of God that visits the sins of the parents upon the children; he does not sentence the son for the guilt of his father. God’s thought is clearly expressed in the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” Verse 20. Personally, each one of us shall “give account of himself to God.” Rom. 14:12.

But it is according to the law of heredity that the man who sows the seed of

transgression, in debasing, ruinous habits, may see the harvest in weak-minded, criminal, diseased offspring. Lowell has truly said, “They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.” Oftentimes the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the drunkard are imbeciles or insane. The transgression of God’s law, morally and physically, will be seen in the reaping time, if not in the original transgressor, at least in his offspring. But if the offspring rightly relates himself to God, God’s great grace will perform mighty miracles.

One other thought in this study. To transgress the law, one need not carve or mold or cast a graven image and bow down to it. He may have a pantheon of gods in the temple of his mind. The image concept is in the mind generally before it is made in concrete form. God sees in the soul the cherished imaginings of sins and lusts.

Read it all in Ezekiel 8. God permitted the prophet to see some of the sins that were committed in the dark, in the “chambers of imagery.” Then, too, men worship their farms, their houses, their automobiles, their art, their books, their own handiwork, and are truly idolaters. To whatever object man daily bows, rendering homage thereto, that he worships. He may not make it a caricature of a man or an ox or a goat, but he worships a false god, and is a transgressor of the second commandment of the decalogue.

Thank God, the grace of Christ can save men from every species of false worship, open or in secret.

Mountain View, Cal.