I ask you to turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. Remind us that we are following a series guided by the Heidelberg Catechism. We are in the section that deals with the Ten Moral Commandments of God as found in the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. Children, here are your questions for this morning. First, what is the second of the 10 commandments? Two, should anyone make statues or pictures of the invisible God? Three, why is it that God is jealous for our worship of him alone? Why is it that God is jealous for our worship of him alone? And four, Jesus says we worship God in spirit and truth. Do we need to see or touch anything to worship God in the right way? Exodus chapter 20, verses four to six. This is the word of God. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or 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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. There ends the reading of God's word. Let us pray together. Almighty God, we do thank you that you have taught us how to worship you. And Lord, as we come to this commandment, give us insight and wisdom on just what it means, but also how it applies to us here in our context today and to our daily lives. Lord, we know these things are never truly remote to us. But we need your help to understand. And so please help us. Please help the preacher. Send your spirit in a special way. Lord, please help all of us who will hear, that we would hear well, that we would receive and respond appropriately to your holy word and the work of your spirit in our midst. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? That's Moses' song right after the Exodus. But it's not long before the people of Israel completely ignore that very truth. This morning we're dealing with the issue of images of God. There is no other God. And there's nothing to compare that God to. There's no representation of the one true and living God that would ever do. He's to be worshiped properly as he's been revealed, not as any man can ever imagine. God gives us this command. I'm gonna spend a little more time actually talking about the problem of imagining God or creating images of God, then I am actually looking at all the ramifications of it that God gives us in the commandment. Because we really do, as mankind, have a real problem. You see, man can't really comprehend, fallen man can't really comprehend the person of God, so he comes up with ideas. and how to worship that God and his own ideas when God's people are specifically told how to worship, to throw off all those kinds of imaginations that are man-made, man-developed, man's inventions. We're prone to falsehood. We're prone to wild imaginations. We're prone to make idols. We're prone to idolatry. But God's to be worshiped in purity. Mankind is designed to worship God. But because of mankind's distorted view of God, he invents all kinds of imaginations about who God is or the many gods that they create, but they also tend to make imaginary items to represent either the various gods they believe or the one true God. There are some levels in heathendom where animals or even inanimate items take on God qualities themselves. But most often in the pagan or heathen world, these items, whether they're inanimate objects like rocks or stones or wood or little statues that are made, or if they're living creatures like animals or people, are usually used to represent some invisible spiritual being. In my catechism class, when we come to this part of the catechism that talks about the commandments and all the false gods, I have a whole realm of pictures of gods and items that were found for worship in the ancient times, sometimes even up to today, and some of them can actually be quite horrific. Egypt, the place that Israel had just left, was notorious. They had all kinds of little images of the gods that they thought were gods that they worshiped. Everything from little beetles to alligator, crocodiles, or all different kinds of creatures. And as they began to develop their cult of worship, they would actually begin to have a combination of humans and animals put together. You've probably seen some of the pictures with a human body and the head of some kind of hawk or a ram or even a crocodile that they would use for their worship. And they even got to the point where Pharaoh himself was seen to be a god who would be in the council of the gods. Now to our sensitivities, these things seem quite bizarre. We say that we've come a long way from these things. Well, you would have thought that that would have been true for the people of Israel. But their problem was they were quick to forget. They were quick to embrace the things around the world that other people were doing for worship. That's why God told them to come out from among them and to be holy. Don't have anything to do with the way they worship or the things that they do. You're my holy people. But time and time again, the people of Israel fell back into their own distorted hearts and wanted some kind of touchable, tangible thing to remind them of the person of God. Well, as I said, it's not soon after the deliverance from Egypt that they fall back into this. Turn in Exodus to chapter 32. Exodus chapter 32. Moses is receiving the details of the law. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, up, make gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, You do not know what has become of him. So Aaron said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. And they rose up the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." They immerse themselves in this kind of imagery and idolatry. But note that they say that these are the gods These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Well, of course, they were sharply rebuked and many died because of their wickedness and sin. And eventually this calf was ground up and burned and the people had to drink it mixed with water. The people of Israel continue to have the same kind of problem. You remember the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness as an emblem to show the people to look to God. It was never to be worshiped itself, but eventually that becomes an item of worship. In Hezekiah's reform, he removed the high places. He broke down pillars. He cut down the Asherah. and broke in pieces the bronze serpent Moses had made until those days people in Israel made offerings to it. Jeroboam, King Jeroboam at the split of the kingdom is concerned that he's going to lose the attention and the worship of the people. So he takes it upon himself to make two golden calves in two different places to be worshiped. Even great Gideon, if you'll turn to Judges, I want you to see this. Turn to the book of Judges. Chapter 8. I was reminded just yesterday by some friends that we're never to try to imitate Old Testament saints, or for that matter, New Testament saints, because they're all sinners and sometimes very bold sinners. Now we can imitate them as far as they're godly, but this has to do with Great Gideon, Judges 8, verse 22. Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the land of Midian. Gideon said to them, I will not rule over you and my son will not rule over you, the Lord will rule over you. So far so good. And Gideon said to them, let me make a request of you. Every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil, for they had golden earrings because they were Ishmaelites. And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a cloak, and every man threw in it the earrings of his spoil. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian, and besides the collars that are around the necks of their camels. And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there. And it became a snare to Gideon and to his family. So Midian was subdued before the people of Israel, and they raised their heads no more. And the land had rest 40 years in the days of Gideon. But you see Israel's propensity to take items and objects and make them issues of worship, as it says in Judges, items for whoredom. Talk about provoking God's jealousy. Now understand, in the Old Testament, there were plenty of physical items that were created for legitimate worship, but they were always, always Ordained by God the whole setting of the temple the beauty of the temple and all the items inside of it were all Tangible things but they were always only used to worship the true and living God and to remind them of his real presence But even those things by God's design were things that were going to be passing, things that were earthly, things that were made with human hands. Those items were never to be revered and worshiped themselves. They were temporary and passing. We come to the New Testament and all those things are projected to be gone. And Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple. And when it finally comes, there's absolutely nothing left. any of those items. God is constantly driving people to true worship in spirit and in truth. But the bent of man's heart keeps going back. It's not long after time of the early church and all the Struggles that went into hammering out sound doctrine and true biblical worship that the church itself began to embrace gross idolatry. By the Middle Ages, the church, by and large, had developed a vast array of items and relics to worship. And if you do some studying of the medieval Roman Catholic relics that were compiled one after another, it can become a grotesque study. Everything from shriveled hands to shriveled decapitated heads, all kinds of bizarre things that were set aside as special items to be revered, these relics. throughout Christendom, throughout the Christian world, especially in Rome. But you might be surprised to know that even right here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the churches there boasts the biggest collection, over 5,000 of these relics that are to be revered. Now granted, a lot has changed since the Middle Ages. But note this comment on the church in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, relic veneration became obligatory. And every church in Christendom was required to have a holy relic. Body parts of a saint, shards of the true cross, to pieces of cloth rubbed against a saint's tomb. Venerated, esteemed, adored, held up for the people of God. allegedly to inspire them to worship the true and living God. The Roman church and the Orthodox church may want to make the argument that when we bow down to them, it's not an act of worship to them, but that's a part of their ritual. But I want you to know that God is very careful to attach the two right in the commandment. You shall not bow down to them. They might want to say there's a separation between the spiritual veneration and the physical act of bowing down. But God says, no, bowing down before that something is an act of worship. I don't want to numb your minds with this, but it keeps going. And this might sound a little crazy, but all the glorious temples and all the churches that man builds with his hands are not sacred. They're simply not sacred. There's nowhere in the Bible where you can argue that man made facilities after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD are sacred. None of the items in them are sacred items. They may mark the place of the church in the world, but they're all consumable things. God's people worship in spirit and in truth. God's people also need to be very, very careful because I think we've become very careless with imagery, our reverence of things. We need to be very cautious that we don't even make crosses, even if they're not crucifixes, sacred items, as if they hold any spiritual thing in and of themselves. You see, this command keeps driving at us, again, for two reasons. One is because we are prone to imagine things inappropriately. but two is because God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth and purely. God clearly prohibits any images of himself, any graven images. And note the emphasis is on worship. No images to be worshiped, but there shall be no image of the invisible God. What a travesty it is to see the Father God depicted as an old grandfather, even if he is depicted in splendor and power, as if he were a man. You cannot see God. He's the invisible God. What an absurdity to bow down to anything, to worship the invisible God who's always present. Think of the absurdity. Say you live in the Dick Van Dyke world where you're a husband and you come home every day and you're greeted out the door by your darling wife and you're called darling and you're used to getting a big kiss, but imagine coming in and looking for that kiss and walking right past your wife and picking up a portrait of her and kissing that instead. We're gonna have a wedding here, Lord willing this coming week. I don't think that the groom would be very happy if somebody else was replacing his wife. I don't think the wife would be very happy if we had a cardboard image of the groom up here and she came up to kiss her groom and he was cardboard. The bride and the groom don't wanna be observers in worship, they wanna, in the marriage, they wanna be in the marriage. They want that true, real contact. Well, the way we have true, real contact with the living God is never through any image, never through any item. As Jesus himself says, we worship in spirit and truth, he is right here. and we don't need to touch or taste or smell anything. Any image anyway would so far diminish the glory of his person. He's unimaginable. And he's to be worshiped. The commandment takes it further. God is a jealous God. and he reacts to that kind of stuff. Picture the bride or groom, if someone tried to be a pretender of one or the other. The kind of jealousy that would rise up in the one who was left out. Somebody's taken my place. Something has taken my place. God won't have it. God is a holy, righteous God. He alone is to be worshipped. And He's jealous for His glory. He shall not be robbed of His glory. And His glory can never be contained in anything that we can touch. or for that matter, anything that we on this side of glory can see. He's jealous for his glory, but he's also jealous for his son. And he sent his son so that we might be able to come to him to worship him in spirit and truth. Now understand Jesus was fully man, but he was also fully God. He is the image of the glory of God. He is in the image of the unseen God veiled in the flesh. And we are told to listen to Him and to leave all the things of the world and all the imaginations we have about the way God is to be worshiped or lived for, and we're to follow Him and we're to worship God in spirit and in truth through Him. But the way we know him now is not the way we knew him when he walked the earth. He's not the way he was when the women tried to hold onto his feet, even Jesus. Dwells in a glory that we can't imagine now. He said to the woman, I have not yet been glorified. He ascends to the right hand of glory. Should not imagine how glorious that savior is. He's the image of the unseen God. I want to come down for those glorious thoughts for a moment to what can be a sad and sometimes confusing issue. To use a term that is inadequate, the elephant in the room. Images of Jesus. Now I'm gonna admit up front that I'm not 100% clear on the issue. But we have to be extremely cautious and careful. I will say flat out that our larger catechism absolutely prohibits any image of Jesus Christ at all. but we need to think very seriously about this whole issue. Representations of the person of Jesus, the incarnate son of God. What do you think about portraits, stylized airbrushed portraits of Jesus that emotionally draw you in? Do you think that's a helpful thing? I'm thoroughly convinced that it's a dangerous thing to try to stylize Jesus, to make an image of Jesus. I'm thoroughly, thoroughly convinced that when he walked the earth, there was nothing at all in his physical appearance that would have distinguished him from anyone in the crowd. and to make him glow, or to make him almost effeminate looking, or to make him the most handsome one in a picture, or to make him in this portrait as if he were posing in a blue robe with blonde hair and blue eyes, to be adored. There's something wrong with that. Scrap the glow and the white robe. I think we need to do a lot of unimagining. Again, I'm not pretending I have all the answers here. I'm always surprised when I go into a Protestant church and see portraits of Jesus or images of Jesus. And I'm not gonna point my fingers I'm simply going to ask the question, is it at all biblically appropriate even to make images of the man Jesus? We need to think deeper. Again, the key is worship. But there's a lot of dangerous things attached when we begin to imagine the person of God. Is there a difference between stylized portraits and depicting Jesus in a scene among other humans? Again, it's a very fine, detailed, complicated conversation. But I lay out for you this morning, Jesus, the son of the living God. And I would say, people, if you feel like you have to imagine him now, push out your imagination and know that one day you will see him face to face. One day you will know just what he looks like in glory. We all will. One of the best descriptions of the problem maybe, to no surprise, comes from a Puritan named Thomas Watson. You might have to listen a little closely to this. It says, can we have images of Christ? It's answering that question. Listen closely. The word Godhead means the person of God or the being of God. It is Christ's Godhead. united to his manhood that makes him to be Christ. Therefore, to picture his manhood, when we cannot picture his Godhead, is a sin. Because we make him to be half Christ. We separate what God has joined together. Jesus, when he's speaking to the woman at the well, says that God seeks those who worship him in spirit and in truth. You think of spirit and in truth, Think about the way that that peels away all man-made religious clutter. We come to God through Christ. We come to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We push away all spiritual clutter. and we're given the way in God's word how to worship. Once we push away all that clutter and all that imagination, in public and private, God ordains prayer and song and the word and the sacraments. And you say, well, the sacraments, they're tangible things. Water for baptism, bread and wine for the Lord's supper. Tangible, touchable. How does that work? Be reminded again and again, there's nothing sacred in these elements. Nothing. Nothing changes in these elements. That's superstition. These are visible reminders, but they're never to be venerated, never to be paraded around, never to be held up, never to be specially preserved because they're something unique. But at the same time, they're also not to be disparaged or disgraced. One of the worst examples of hyper-Protestantism that I've ever heard of was a man who took the elements, and to make his point about how insignificant they are in and of themselves, he actually took the elements and dropped them on the floor and rubbed them under his feet. No. This is tangible. This is touchable. We taste. We digest. But they're sacred for the sacred moment of the celebration of Holy Communion. God knows our weakness. He provides for our weakness, and he gives us this tangible, touchable sacrament. Thoroughly believe, according to Scripture, that that's what's left for us, and what a glorious thing. No temple, no cups, no bowls, no altar, no ark. We can't find any of it. If I can be positive in my mind about anything, I'm positive that God did that intentionally because of the way we are. Because if we had one item from the temple, we would worship it. And our jealous God would be provoked. Finally, God is righteous and He will bring just judgment on generations of those who hate Him. But in the context of worship, it's those who perpetuates this wrong worship, this man-made worship. Which ends up being false religion after all, when it's brought to its fullest extent. And God will judge. Could elaborate a lot more on those who hate him and the way that the sins of the fathers are passed down, whether it's embracing sinful patterns or addictions. There's so many ways that that goes. But right here in the context of worship, think about false religion perpetuated. God will not have it. On the other hand, steadfast love to thousands who love him and keep his commandments who worship him in spirit and in truth, those he will bless, those he will keep. And those who worship him in spirit and truth will always be in awe. Always. And will in their worship say, who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders. He's the God we worship. We worship him in spirit and in truth. Let's pray. Lord, our God, it's so hard with our feeble minds Not to make images of you. Or not to think of items as sacred. Not to have even very stylized images of Jesus in our minds. Lord, we are frail and weak creatures. And you've revealed yourself as Thoroughly awesome and glorious. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, we love to sing. You are to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. We pray that you would help us to cast away any hindrances to that kind of worship. That any idols of our minds or our lives or any images in our minds or in our hearts would be cast away, that we might bring you wholehearted worship. Lord, we know that we were never meant to worship anyone but you, anything but you. We know that even the glorious temple and all that you established in the old covenant was never, to bind man's heart to things of this earth, but to draw man's heart and spiritual gaze to heaven. How much more now in the fullness of Christ, as we in worship and spirit and in truth no longer come to a temple or to a mountain or to anything made by hands, but we along with all the saints on earth and all the saints in heaven and even the angels worship you. You who are the unseen God, by faith, by the work of your spirit, we worship you. And how thankful we one day in Christ will see Jesus, not as half a Christ, But we will see him in whom the fullness of deity dwells, beholding his beauty, undone with awe, filled with praises and unpolluted adoration. In the meantime, Lord, how thankful we are for true and spiritual worship. Have our hearts, we pray, wholly In Jesus' name, amen.