Commandment two The mag makers

Exodus 20:4 `You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness (embodiment) of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, The Lord your God am a jealous God.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image.
God is serious about the image we are destined to become – The telieos. Only one person has achieved that. We are still on the adventure to inherit the destiny for which we were created – to become the teleios created by God before the foundation of the world. Abraham was told to move out from his place and begin the adventure that would bless all the families in the earth. Moses took Israel out of Egypt to bring them through a wilderness and bring them into the promised land – a natural picture of a spiritual reality of the fullness of God within us. Whatever you’re in that you needn’t be, God wants to take you out then through then into. There is always somewhere to go, a better place to be - and our faith in where we have been placed, by the Father, in Jesus is the first action to take, the first step to take. The commandments embody that journey

The inward destructive work of idolatry
Psalm 135:15-18. The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. 16. They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes they have, but they do not see; 17. They have ears but they do not hear; Nor is there any breath in their mouths. 18. Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.

‘For I, The Lord your God, am a jealous God’. This attribute of God's love is his remedy for our idolatry. Godly jealousy, unlike worldly jealousy, so desires the best for us, that it cannot tolerate that anything less be accepted by us. God commits to destroying the self made images in our lives, such as borrowed identities of others or ideologies. So image building is self rejection. The golden calf was a confused concept of what Israel thought to be God himself, not another god (1Corinthians 8:4).

What is our self image?
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image (selem – appearance John 14:9 Psalm 135), after our likeness (dama – manner - active).
Just as Commandment 10 forbids us to covet the things of another person, their possessions, privileges etc. God invites us to seek after living out of his life identity (and to live out HIS life) so we can reflect and display him as being partakers of his divine nature - God’s life as our own identity - no longer I that live. Paul saw that we were potential waiting to happen. We don’t so much find an identity but are found in an identity. When we understand that our lives are 'hid in Christ' and we are content to count all things as rubbish to be 'found in him' and not in some fruitless search for 'self discovery' that exhausts our soul we can be what we are and allow God to work in us to will and to do what is his heart’s desire for us We can live creatively like God, not destructively, but towards a purpose, creatively bringing order out of chaos.