of anything that is in the 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, 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, but showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Amen. Grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of our God stands forever. Except for the Hebrews, all the peoples of the ancient world were idolaters. The gods changed from nation to nation, but the idolatrous worship stayed remarkably the same. Now, as I showed you last week, idolaters don't actually think that this little bit of wood or stone is God. No, they made their idols to represent their God, and it was through that means that they expressed their devotion. The idol was holy, dedicated to God, a representative of God, and therefore given a special place, perhaps a special place in the house, or a special house of worship or temple built, and people would do special things to honor their God through the idol. They would kiss the idol. They would bow down to the idol, they would bring gifts to the idol, they would pray to the idol. It was symbolic, you see, for their love and devotion and their submission to their God. Against all this, God's second commandment rings a clarion call that there is to be no idolatry among the people of God. And lest anyone misunderstand his command, or make an excuse, God elaborates remarkably on this commandment, so that the meaning would be unmistakably plain to everyone who reads. He doesn't just say, you shall have no idols, and go on. Oh no! He says, look, I don't want you to make an image, but just so we're clear, anything in the heavens above, that is to say the moon, the starry host, or the birds, the fowls, the winged creatures, not to make anything on the earth, people, animals, vegetation, not even anything under the earth, fish or creatures of the sea, no images there, there, or there. You get it? And three activities are prohibited. Don't make them, don't bow down to them, and don't serve them. And God then goes on to give the strongest incentive to keep this command, a promise of mercy for thousands of generations to those who love him and keep this commandment. And he likewise gives the strongest threat to be found in any of the Ten Commandments, the threat of visiting the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generations of those who hate him and who break it. To break this commandment, he says, is the same as hating God. How? Well, the language of this commandment is clearly very solemn, is it not? Very serious. It certainly should cause God's people to tremble, and nevertheless, despite such labored language, despite the most sublime of promises, despite the most dreadful of threats, the production of images and statues for worship is nearly as common in Christianity as it is in every idolatrous religion. Evangelicals tend to forget that most of Christian worship is through images, that it is virtually identical in many cases to pagan idolatry. the kissing of the image, the bowing down to the image, the praying to the image, the special place in the house, and on and on. And today I'd like to begin with a much longer introduction than usual to remind you of the state of the Christian world today, and to set now this commandment, which is the theme for today, in our historical and modern context. So please excuse the extra long introduction and the lack of biblical reference in it, because I'm trying to just give us a sketch about why this commandment is even important in the modern day. Let me just sketch the history of this great conflict. Following the apostles, the early church, for the first several centuries, taught the foolishness of idol worship, called people to leave idolatry for the spiritual worship of the living God. Charles Hodge summarizes, it was not until three centuries after the introduction of Christianity that the influence of the heathen element introduced into the church was strong enough to overcome the natural opposition to the use of idols in the service of the sanctuary. Three parties then soon developed themselves in connection with this subject. This is a good analysis of history, people. Three groups arose by the beginning of the fourth century. The first, he said, adhered to the teaching of the Old Testament and to the use of the apostolic churches and repudiated the religious use of images in any form. The second group allowed the use of images and pictures for the purpose of instruction but not for worship. The common people could not read, and therefore it was argued that these visual representations of scriptural persons and incidents were allowable for their benefit. The third group contended for their use not only as a means of instruction, but also for worship. All this arising now in the fourth century. Some have begun to use the images of Christ in worship, as I say, and so the Synod of Elvira met in 305 A.D. in part to condemn the use of images in the church. One of the canons puts it this way of that synod, pictures are not to be placed in churches so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration. And both the parties you see who oppose all images of the Trinity and the party who would allow them only for instructional purposes. They were both agreed on this much. No images in the churches. Just after this period, Eusebius, the first major church historian, also was complaining about the rising use of images, as did Augustine a few years later. And what was happening was it seemed that while the leaders of the church were generally opposed to the use of images, especially in the church, right? the people were increasingly desiring them. And things progressed slowly then for centuries, but by the 7th century, images become generally accepted in the churches for instructional purposes only, by the 7th century. For example, Pope Gregory I called these images, Scripture for the Illiterate, or Books for the Illiterate. And Pope Gregory wrote to a certain bishop who had destroyed images upon coming to his church, quote, the pope said, in that you had forbidden them to be adored, we all together praise you. But we blame you for having broken them. For to adore a picture is one thing, that's bad. But to learn through the story of a picture what is to be adored is another. Now by the eighth century, just a hundred years later, the church worship was deeply set in idolatry. At the papal level, the church was being commanded to worship through the images in the churches. And Roman Emperor Leo III, as one historian put it, felt himself called as a second Josiah to use his authority for the destruction of idolatry. And so in the year 726 AD, Leo prohibited the worship of images in the empire. And then, four years later, in 730 AD, he commanded that they had to be removed from the worship areas, from the sanctuary area of the church. Now, when he did that, it caused armed revolt. And it's at that point that the true war of the idols actually begins. It was at this time that people started dying. Some were intent on ridding the church of idols, the emperor and his forces, by force if necessary. Others were just as intent on keeping them and resisting to the point of death. Such was their commitment to the worship. Armed force from the emperor was met by armed resistance from the Christians. And I won't go into details of the iconoclast century, the controversy, which burned for a couple centuries actually, except to say that many people lost their lives and there truly was war over idols. Pope Gregory II refused to obey the emperor, as did his successor Gregory III. The images will stay and they will be worshipped, said the popes. In 754, Leo's son, Constantine V, emperor of the empire, he decided he'd have to call an ecumenical council to deal with this. The popes were not cooperating. What are you going to do? 330 bishops attended. The pope refused to attend. the council called by the emperor condemned the use of all images either in public or private worship. Images all over the empire were subsequently destroyed and they were done at the cost of many lives. But popular support for the images was by that point so deeply ingrained in the church that lasting reform was inevitably doomed. When Constantine's son, Leo VI, died prematurely, his wife became the empress, Irene. And Empress Irene then reversed her husband's policy and worked diligently to restore the worship of images in the church. She then called the Second Council of Nicaea, 787 AD. 380 bishops came and restored. The use and worship of images in the church. 814 AD, the controversy arose again in the empire. Many more people died. I won't go through the history. It's bloody. Ultimately, in 1054 AD, the church split into what we now call the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. One of the big issues in that split was the use of images. Only the churches under the Roman bishop were using graven images, or what we might call statues, in the worship of God. The Eastern churches condemned the Roman Catholics for this. They said, you're violating the Second Commandment. Graven images are expressly forbidden in the Second Commandment. Because, you see, the Eastern Orthodox churches, they only would use paintings in worship, not statues. Paintings, which you'll know, are commonly called icons. usually made from paint mixed with consecrated communion wine, so there's a justification these are actually part of the body and blood of Christ, you see. So let me be clear, though, on the position, lest you misunderstand, Roman Catholics ardently say, we don't worship these blocks, we don't worship these images, we only veterate these images, We worship Christ or Mary who is represented by them. I pointed out to you last week that no idolater ever believed that he was actually holding his God in his hands in that block of wood, right? The idolaters in Lystra say, oh, the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. The gods have come down. Everybody knows. All idolaters know. Whatever gods there be, dwell above. but they are worshipped by means and aid of these images. And so the Roman Catholics are making this false distinction to say we're not worshipping the image, only the God represented by the image. Rome to this day is doing the very thing forbidden in this commandment. The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes Thomas Aquinas, sadly, to defend its position. It says, is not contrary to the commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype, Saint or Mary or Jesus. And whoever venerates an image, venerates the person portrayed in it. In the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent said that Those represented by the images are to be worshipped as if the persons represented thereby were present. Hence the kissing, the praying, the bowing, the devotion, the things which some of you are more familiar of than others. And Trent also cursed all who denied this. One contemporary Orthodox Church apologist, Eastern Orthodox Church apologist says, Christians pray in the presence of icons. We don't pray to the image. Orthodox Christians do not worship icons. Orthodox Christians do venerate icons, which is to say we pay respects to them because they are holy objects and because we reverence what the icons depict. So they try to make the distinction, you see. We're not worshiping this canvas, this block. We're worshiping the person. It's not here. But in practice, you see, the ordinary believer, Catholic or Orthodox, is worshipping in exactly the same way as every other idolater. They kiss the image, they bow down to the image, they pray to the image. Even the idolater knows this isn't God, God is above. They do believe that God or Mary or the saints do special things in the presence of these images, which is why you can bury St. Francis in your front yard if you really need to sell your house today. And it's in this context that the Protestant Reformation takes place. It's in this context. The Reformers went after this idolatry with remarkable zeal. At the time of the Reformation, there was this enormous negative reaction to this rampant idolatry which had really gone to extremes in the churches. Now, Luther and the rest of the Reformers, for the most part, they wanted the churches purged of idols. They wanted to have people stop kissing these statues of Jesus and on and on, right? Praying and doing obeisance to them. But they wanted it done in a lawful and orderly way. Some of the Reformers were not quite so patient, such as Karlstadt in Germany. He wanted them moved immediately, by whatever means necessary. And you know what happened then. We think of the Reformation as in part a violent time. I tell you that much of the violence, even in the Reformation, was caused by people trying to purge the Church of Idols. A great deal of violence was done by Protestants and Anabaptists, by taking things into their own hands. Throwing the stuff out front and lighting it on fire. Breaking it in pieces. One historian writes, while Luther was away, Karlstadt led iconoclastic riots in Wittenberg. The people looted the churches and destroyed the idols. And historians point out that the people just had so much anger pent up against the long rule of the Pope. This is how they were expressing it. This is how they were expressing their desire for a revolution. Merle d'Aubigné, that famous French church historian, says, quote, in times of the Reformation, the teachers attacked the Pope, and the people, the images. You see what was going on. Now, the riots were, for the common people, their declaration of independence for Rome. I'm not defending this, I'm just giving you the history. For Catholics, though, For people who view the image as holy, as Christ himself represented there before him, this was shockingly irreligious. People taking statues and pictures of Jesus, trampling them down the streets, burning them and breaking them in pieces. You see why the violence was touched off city after city. And so it was then for decades, all across Europe, mobs, often violently, stripped churches of images and publicly destroyed them. Much bloodshed ensued. Much more could be said as a result of this history, though. Nearly all the Protestant churches were extremely averse to all images and statues of the Trinity or the Saints or Mary for many years, especially in the worship of God. But you know what's happened, right? More and more Protestants have, in the last 200 years, begun to reconsider their positions, and while we don't have statues of Jesus, we're still, to this day, 500 years later, still averse to statues of Jesus, will not pray in their presence like Roman Catholics and so forth. We have brought in many other two-dimensional images, even in places of worship like the Eastern Orthodox churches do, though certainly not to their level. I'd like to make some brief points about the application of the Second Commandment now, in light of this, to our day, to help us to think through this matter of the purpose of images in the church, or even an instruction, and that we might be able to make satisfactory application to ourself in all of our worship today. Thank you for letting me have that longer historical introduction. First, my first point is, in light of all this, our worship is important to God. It's important to us for a thousand generations. How we worship is important to God. And it's important to us for even a thousand generations. People, there's nothing more important than we can do on Earth than worship God. I'm preaching to the choir. I'm preaching to people to come back to the worship. This is important. There's nothing you can do more important than this. It's going to be one of our most joyful occupations to all eternity. Our worship on Earth is a kind of foretaste of heaven. But if it is so important, How much thought do we actually give to our worship? How well do we do it? Over half a century ago, A. W. Tozer called worship the missing jewel in modern evangelicalism. Christians in his day, he said, have just forgotten how to worship. And 50 years on, we can say that much worship in our day is superficial or dull or boring. God forbid we could put some of that in ourselves. Superficial, or dull, or boring. Well, what is the purpose of our gathering together, people? Why have we come? Our main purpose is not to visit and encourage one another, or to evangelize the unconverted, or to receive our blessing from God, or simply to be taught from His Word. We hope those things will occur. But those are not the reason that we have come here. The word worship in both Old Testament and New Testament, the main word is just the same word as to bow down. That is to say, to bow down and worship God. And the main purpose of worship is to praise God, to glorify God, to give God the offering of our love and adoration and thanks. How did you come here this evening? What did you have in mind? What purpose did you hope to fulfill? It should be your first and greatest desire to come together with his people, to give God praise and thanks, offer him our trust, our confidence, to honor him, glorify him, please him, to bring him pleasure. For the Lord, it says, delights in the praises of his people. Is God honored among us? It's not simply a matter of having good forms or good singing. Are we lifting up our hearts to the Lord? I begin with this question because we shouldn't think that just because we hold a pure form of worship that our worship is therefore more pleasing in his sight than that of others who may have a more corrupt form in some ways. The worship that we offer God is primarily spiritual and therefore primarily a matter of our hearts. And the primary question about acceptable or pure worship or whatever you want to say before God is whether we have worshipful, joyful, thankful, broken and contrite hearts. So, as we come to the commandment, we are, I say first, to hold not just the form of godliness, and then deny its power. As Jesus complains, the people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, and in vain they worship me. No, we are to come primarily with the spiritual matter of worship from our hearts in view. And because our worship is primarily a matter of the heart, we should not therefore conclude that it doesn't matter how we do it. So don't misunderstand me. We shouldn't say, well, it's just really a matter of how we are inside, therefore it doesn't matter what we do outside as long as we're sincere. That's obviously false. If that were true, God would not be giving us the second commandment, right? The point is, the form is also very important. I mean, to ignore this is to hate God. To keep this is to love God, in his own words. But my point is, for proper worship, to hold God's worship pure and entire, and so forth, as we want to do, this requires a pure form of worship which is zealous and from the heart. Christians, it's true, have very different views on the Second Commandment. But we can surely all agree on this much from our first point. Whatever the commandment means, and however it applies, we are finding in this commandment the most solemn motivations applied. We are finding the most solemn and serious words. Whatever it means, we need to consider what this says very carefully and apply it very conscientiously. This is obviously a matter of great importance to God, and it can be a great danger to us. There is a promise here of worshiping God aright, a blessing, most remarkably, for thousands of generations. And there is a very solemn threat, especially in this matter of corrupting God's worship with images, that for three or four generations, people will suffer who break this commandment and so hate the Lord. My first point is, our worship to God is important. It's important to God. It's important to us, and it's important to a thousand generations, our spiritual worship. Second, the worship of God by means of idols is, in God's view, a terrible corruption. A terrible corruption. The worship of God by means of idols is a terrible corruption. God calls this violation of his commandments in this passage, hating God. Very strong language indeed. And I won't go through the many, many passages we just read tonight. Isaiah 44, he calls it a lie, a corrupture, a deceiver, right? Making an abomination. He believed, God says this is debasing of his glorious spiritual nature. Romans 1, the use of idols exchanges the truth of God for a lie, that people will then serve the creature rather than the creator. Idolatry exchanges the glory of the incorruptible God for this corruptible man-made image. To make an image of God is to take our thoughts of Him from a human source rather than from God Himself. And this is what's wrong with all this image-making. It's substituting imagination for revelation, right? Substituting imagination for revelation. God views His worship the worship of Jehovah, even, by images, as a terrible corruption. The people of Israel, you remember, they were hardly out of Egypt when they made the first image of Jehovah in the form of a golden calf. This is tomorrow's Feast of Jehovah. Here's your God, O people, who led you out of Egypt. And God shakes his head as it were and says to Moses, Moses, your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted. themselves. Strong language continues. Again, no sooner were they in the promised land that Gideon made an idol of Jehovah and it says all Israel then played the harlot with it there. It became a snare to Gideon and his house. Similarly, Judges 17, Micah makes an image, a silver image of Jehovah, sets it up and consecrates his son as priest of the house of God. and the people go downhill. In fact, they quickly go from the worship of Jehovah by these idols to the worship of Baal by these idols and bring down greater wrath again and again upon them. Israel enjoyed a brief respite from idolatry. I won't go through the history. They set up at first idols to Jehovah, Dan and Bethel. And it just goes right downhill again and again. The New Testament urges us to flee from idolatry simply. Do not become idolaters as some of them were. Beloved, flee from idolatry. Little children, keep yourselves from idols, John writes. We're not even to eat anything that has been knowingly sacrificed to an idol, for that would be to provoke the Lord to jealousy, Paul writes. And so, to say it again briefly, my second point I could prove by a hundred texts, the worship of God by idols is a terrible corruption in God's sight. My third point is, idolatry, once established, became a snare to the people from generation to generation. Idolatry, once established, became a snare from generation to generation. God warned the people of the serious implications of turning to idolatry and corrupting his worship. Idolatry, he says, will take deep root and produce tragic fruit for generations. Children will be born into an inheritance of wrath. God is very jealous, says the commandment, for his worship and his glory. He will visit the iniquity of those who break this commandment to the third and fourth generation of those who hate him. And so it is that idolatry, once established, becomes a snare from generation to generation among God's people. And you'll ask me, well, is it right for God to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children for three and four generations? I mean, doesn't it say in Ezekiel 18 that the son shall not bear the guilt of the father or the father the guilt of the son and so forth? Doesn't it say the soul whose sins shall die? Well, yes. And it's true that everyone is only responsible for his own sin before God. But I also remind you that in judging the sins of fathers, God often judges the sins of fathers in part by giving their children over to the same pattern of disobedience and then punishes them for it. God punishes the children by giving them over to their own disobedience. David, for example, after committing such murder, is told then that the sword is not going to depart from his house. For God says, you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up adversity for you from your own house. And I will take your wives from before your eyes and give them to your neighbor. And he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun. And by this means, he means that the sword is going to be carried from son to son. The boys Amnon and Absalom will fall into grievous sins, die horrible deaths. And Absalom and Amnon, they're punished for their own sins. They're not punished for David's sins. But it was because of what David did, you see, that God gave them over to that iniquity that they desired, did not restrain David's son so that the iniquity of the fathers was visited upon the children. They weren't punished for David's sin, but they were given over to their own sins and then punished because of what David had done. This is not an automatic thing, of course. Plenty of counter-examples about people leaving the idolatry of their fathers, or vice versa. The godly Josiah was succeeded by three idolatrous sons and one godless grandson. And the reverse is also true in Scripture. So it's not automatic. And God tells the people in Ezekiel, this is not an excuse for you. Don't say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. No, no, no. God says, look, Whenever the son turns from the wickedness of his father, he will not suffer with him. This threat is not to be used as an excuse for children to say, we're just being punished for our father's sins. That's not how God works. Turn from your sin, he says. So don't misunderstand, but this command is a serious warning to all fathers. Consider solemnly the multi-generational iniquity which your sin can bring upon your home by the worship of images, and consider well the blessings of mercy promised to thousands of generations for you who keep this commandment." So, my third point, idolatry once established among the people becomes a stare from generation to generation. Let me conclude then by making some answers to various practical questions as you wrestle through these matters yourself and seek to apply these principles in our day. First you'll ask, well look, is God against all images in worship? Is God against all images in worship? And the short answer is no, only those images that are made in the likeness of God or that are used as a medium for worship in some way, right? In the old covenant, God commanded artistry in the temple in terms of fauna and flora. Worship even had many symbolic elements in the sacrifices and incense and showbread and so forth. God has given us symbolic elements for our worship today. And it's true that some churches turn those into a kind of idol as though God himself were to be, Jesus himself were to be found in them and worshiped through them. But that is clearly not the intention of these things. Both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, God was careful not to use any picture or statue or image or even creature or symbol to represent himself in this way of worship. None of these things are supposed to be worshipped. So to make it more clear about this matter of the Lord's Table, when the priest in the Catholic Church, for example, holds up the bread and calls for the adoration of the host. The people bow down and they worship the bread. The symbol has become an idol. That's the distinction I'm trying to make. I used to go also to a church many years ago where people were urged to come and to pray at the foot of the cross, but they had a sanctuary. Didn't think too much of it, and I don't think many people did, but I noticed later As many Protestant churches, they bow at the cross when entering some churches, they kiss the cross. And please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying there's no place ever for the symbol of a cross. I'm saying even a cross can become an idol to people when it starts to receive kisses, bows, prayers. This is the kind of worship that is being forbidden in the commandment. Even a cross can become an idol. It can become like that brazen serpent that God commanded Moses to make. Nothing wrong with that. But later it had to be destroyed because it had become an idol to the people. So I don't want to make you overly sensitive. I'm simply saying, beware of our tendency to idolatry, to turning even things that are good into means of the worship of the spiritual God. We must worship in spirit and in truth. And you'll ask me, what about this matter of images for art or instruction? Our second question, what about images of God or Christ or so forth for art or instruction? Because there are still in the church to this day three parties, just as there were in early days. Some, like myself, believe that there should be no images of God or Jesus Christ, even for art or instruction. Some say no. What's being forbidden here clearly is the use of images for worship, rightly, and images should therefore be allowed for other purposes like arts or instruction. So this is a difficult matter, one in which Christians, evangelical Christians, are divided. Now, I'd like to at least get you to think through this more clearly. I realize we often have very strong attachments to these images, so please bear with me. Many writers have pointed out the obvious difficulty with allowing images for art or instruction. Especially realistic type images, right? Can a Christian contemplate his savior without worship? Can a Christian be invited to behold Christ without any thought of worshiping him? Be told, okay, here's the picture, but now you can't pray. Because if you were to bow down and pray, that would be idolatry. Here's Christ, but don't pray. Here's your Savior, don't worship. He sees the difficulty. Let a few others speak more wisely, I think, in this matter. Go in reverse order here. John Murray. one of the very best theologians of this past generation, he writes, pictures of Christ are in principle a violation of the second commandment. A picture of Christ, if it serves any useful purpose, must evoke some thought or feeling respecting him. And in view of what he is, this thought or feeling will be worshipful. We cannot avoid making the picture a medium for worship. But since the materials for this medium of worship are not derived from revelation, we possess respecting Jesus, namely the scripture, the worship is constrained by a creation of the human mind that has no revelatory warrant. This is will worship. And for the principle of the second commandment, we are to worship God only in ways prescribed and authorized by him. It's a grievous sin to have worship constrained by a human figment. And that is what a picture of our Savior involves. give you last week the excellent question and answer from the Heidelberg Catechism. The authors ask, may images not be tolerated in the churches as books for the laity? No, it says we should not be wiser than God. He wants people to be taught not by means of dumb images, but by the lively preaching of his word. And so for these reasons, our own assembly at Westminster listed in the sins forbidden in the second commandment, any making or representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind or outwardly, any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever, and all worshiping of it or God in it or by it. One more wise quote, I think. Calvin writes, a true image of God is not to be found in the world. and hence his glory is deviled, and his truth is corrupted by the lie. Whatever he has set before our eyes in a visible form, therefore to devise any image of God is itself ungodly, because by this corruption his majesty is adulterated, and he is represented to be other than he is. Daily experience teaches that the flesh is never satisfied till it has obtained some image resembling itself as an image of God. It appears to me extremely unworthy to receive any other images than those natural and expressive ones which the Lord has consecrated in his word. I mean baptism and the supper of the Lord. Those are the symbols that we should use, he says. The last question is, again, a difficult one for parents. What about for children? One of the arguments that's often given, usually given, for the images of God or Christ is that they help children to understand things, that these things will be a help to our children. Now, I want you to notice this is the opposite of what the commandment says. God is warning that children are one very important reason not to make images. I personally don't think that the stick figures or the crude cartoon-like drawings in some books are really images of Christ, not lifelike in any way. Maybe some of you would disagree. But I judge that fixing a lifelike image of the one to whom children are going to pray can hardly be a positive thing. I put these matters before you, realizing this difference of opinion, giving you this wise counsel that you might be able to think through these things better yourselves. In conclusion, wherever you stand on these issues, I think that we can at least agree with these wise words of the modern historical, the modern writer J.I. Packer, he writes. Historically, Christians have differed as to whether the Second Commandment forbids the use of pictures of Jesus for purpose of teaching and instruction, in Sunday school classes for instance, and the question is not an easy one to settle. But there is no room for doubting that the commandment obliges us to dissociate our worship, both in public and in private, from all pictures and statues of Christ no less than from pictures and statues of his father. So, in closing, please remember that although we are concentrating now, as the Second Commandment does, on the outward form of worship, although it's been a matter of great, great importance in the history of the Church, this is not the most important thing in worship. God's worship is primarily a heart and spirits matter. And be careful, therefore, how you judge another on this matter, for people with whom you have strong disagreements on this issue may actually be worshipping God more acceptably than you. For the Lord looks at the heart. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, what great bloodshed and what great misery and ruin have come to the Church over the years through the neglect of this commandment. Indeed, it has not just been a matter of three or four generations for the Church, but from generation to generation. Indeed, it seems more and more in our day. We are departing from the worship of God in spirit and in truth, intruding so many other things into it. We pray that you would turn again our hearts to you, that you would take these away, that you would rise up there, reformers, to be able to turn the people of God from these things. As you were pleased in years past to raise up the Hezekiahs and the Josiahs, to purge these things from your people and to turn them back to you, even for a generation. So it is that we are in need of you raising up for us Godly leaders in our day to restore the true and living knowledge of our God and the pure worship of your holy name. We pray, our Father, that you would not allow us, however, to be proud of this matter. We confess that in the greater matters of the law we are often so far short. We present to you such a meager and half-hearted sacrifice as we present to you our hearts. We come before you in worship with many other considerations. Forgive us, we pray, and teach us the pure and true righteous worship of the living and true God. We pray it for Christ's sake. Amen.