Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—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; 5 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, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” NKJV
This Commandment deals with man’s tendency towards a counterfeit reality. Man’s ego wants to think that one can comprehend the fullness of Our Heavenly Father and put HIM inside a box. If the ego can limit Our Heavenly Father in any way then man thinks he can control the outcome. In a few short days after having been given the Ten Commandments, the children of Israel had already seen fit to break this Commandment:
Exodus 32: 1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
Here we have an interesting picture in the progression of Exodus:
In Exodus 20: Moses is given the Ten Commandments and all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking.
In Exodus 21-22: Various Laws are given.
In Exodus 23: The three annual feasts are established. The Angel Peniel was given the assignment to lead them to the Promised Land (but in Exodus 33:2-4 Peniel was replaced by Michael).
In Exodus 24: The seventy elders had partially ascended up the mountain and had seen the majesty of Our Heavenly Father. “10 and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. 11 But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank.”
In Exodus 25-28: The instructions concerning the Tabernacle and its contents were given.
In Exodus 29: Aaron and his sons were consecrated for the ministry of the priesthood.
In Exodus 30: Instructions concerning the Altar of Incense, the ransom money, the Bronze Laver, the Holy Anointing Oil, and the Incense were given.
In Exodus 31: Artisans were selected to build the Temple and its contents. The Sabbath Law was given.
Now, the 2nd Commandment was broken in Exodus 32. That didn’t take long. People have a need to place their trust in someone or something. Deep down, they know that there is a greater power than what they possess. Our Heavenly Father made it quite clear that there are no other gods and that HE is the Almighty. Our ego wants to exalt itself above Our Heavenly Father just as the devil wants to exalt himself above Our Heavenly Father. The moment you create a counterfeit god, you create division between yourself and Our Heavenly Father. Your power and authority are lost and death and destruction take over.
Creating a god is man’s attempt to define the undefinable. Our Heavenly Father IS the Creator and HE defined all. HE is Divine and any attempt to assign divinity to the created is the ultimate deception. To serve anything, whether a carved image, a doctrine, a concept, a substance, is a move away from reality. When you assign power to false authority, you will become depleted of Love and ultimately your fruit or lack thereof will be the result. The 2nd Commandment was given to alert us of the potential of serving a counterfeit reality.