All right, lesson 37. We've got three questions today. It's Lord's Day 35, questions 96, 97, and 98. And we're gonna once again, with a reminder of the components of gratitude, we are in the section on gratitude, which is listed there as conversion, but we usually call it repentance, good works, then the law, and prayer. So we are in the early lessons on the law, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and it's going to be dealt with as the means of how we should then live. If we are grateful to God for the salvation that he has given us, then it becomes our heartfelt desire to live the way that he wants us to live. That is outlined for us in the Decalogue. As we've seen, it doesn't mean that we've succeeded that. We usually fail pretty miserably at it, especially when Christ revealed that the law goes to the heart, not simply the deed. But despite the struggle, it is a heartfelt joy for those who are actually God's people, because it is truly about wanting to do the will of the God that we love. That new life that he puts within us, we then respond, right? and we are created for God. Therefore, once we have that new life, we gravitate toward him and we have that desire to live after him. And so we work to put to death the old and to replace it with the new. And as God's people, we keep in pursuit, even as the renewal of our minds ever shows us how much farther we have to go. That's why we said last time that maturity doesn't lead to perfection. Maturity leads to our understanding of how much further perfection really is. But then last time we began with the catechism asking, what is the law? And we won't read it all again, but the answer is directly from Exodus chapter 20. It is the Decalogue in its entirety. And then from there, as I said, we're going to look at 22 questions concerning the law of God. Particularly in this section, it is in the so-called third use of the law. We talked about that last time. Remember, the first use is to expose to us our sins. The second is the civil use that restrains evil. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal. The third use is the rule of gratitude. And we reference Calvin here who said that the law is the best instrument for believers to learn God's will for them day by day. So you don't have to turn on TBN and figure out, what's the will of the Lord today? You find it in Exodus chapter 20, right? In Matthew 22. I remember Calvin had that great quote. He said, it is as if some servant, already prepared with all earnestness of heart to commend himself to his master, must search out and observe his master's ways more carefully in order to conform and accommodate himself to them, right? So he has this heartfelt desire to commend himself to his master. But in order to figure that out, he watches his master and figures out what commends them to his master and begins to try to live that way. And remember in that illustration, the servant who wants to please his master, this is not some morbid obligation. It is a desire, it is a want to. And that's why we quoted David in Psalm 19, where he says that the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. So if your idea of trying to live as a Christian is some kind of obligation that weighs you down, you don't understand what the law is for. And then Cluster who said that we could not love the law if it inspired only fear and anxiety. We will love it only if it leads us to our mediator Jesus Christ. That's where the law takes us, when rightly understood. We then saw in question 93 that the law is commonly divided into two so-called tablets. The answer there says the first teaches us how to live in relation to God, The second, what duties we owe to our neighbor. And that, of course, agrees entirely with Christ's own summary of the law, the love of God and the love of our neighbor as ourselves, okay? And so the Decalogue can be broken into the first four commandments that teach us how to relate to God. It's a vertical relationship. The second has six commandments that teach us what we owe to our neighbor. That's the horizontal. But as we said last time, in reality, it's all vertical, isn't it? And then we close with two questions that define the first commandment. The heart of the commandment is that there is nothing, nothing that should be more important to us than our creator. Doing so is damnable. And there is no salvation when we trust in anything other than Him alone for our deliverance. It doesn't matter what it is. Whatever you're putting in between you and God, whether it's your good works, your great decision, or a priest, that is putting something before God. And since he identifies himself as the God who brought the Hebrews out of Egypt, so he says, this is who I am, so he has an identity that is revealed first by the written word and then by the incarnate word. And so we pointed out that we must know him for who he is, apart from all other human notions of who he might be, or who our insanity thinks he should be. I don't know how many times I've heard people, when you tell them the doctrines of Scripture, say, that's not a God I would serve. Really? That's the God who is. You think you get a choice? And so the first commandment is to have no other gods than the God of Scripture. And it is from Scripture that we come to know who he is. Anything else is idolatry? But of course, we have to understand what idolatry really is, which is the last question we looked at last time. Question 95, what is idolatry? The answer is, idolatry is having or inventing something in which to put our trust instead of or in addition to the only true God who has revealed himself in his word. So one of the things we pointed out last time, You notice here, it doesn't define idolatry only in the terms of something tangible, something perceived in our senses where we have created something. Idolatry is an invention of our delusions. It's a fabrication of our ignorance and our insanity. So it could be simply conceptual. This is what I think God is or God should be. But if it's not the God of Scripture, that is idolatry. Idolatry isn't simply what we can create with our hands, it's what we create in our hearts. And of course, especially today, there's an almost infinite number of ways that we express our idolatry, because we put most everything ahead of God. And far too often we are comfortable with a God that we define ourselves, notion by false notion, weakness upon weakness. As we said, that's a God to be pitied instead of worshiped. So what the first commandment says is restore your sanity, humble yourselves before the true God of the universe. Submit your understanding of who he is and his own witness of himself and then discover, as we quoted Acts, the one who does whatsoever his hand and his counsel determined before to be done. Omnipotence, omniscience, these are the things that he declares about himself. and we need to submit ourselves before that revelation or we're an idolater. And then we said the definition of idolatry after the first commandment also leads well into the second. We're gonna read the second commandment from Exodus chapter 20 as a reminder. It says, you shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above, or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who keep me or love me and keep my commandments. That's the actual commandment that God gave in Exodus chapter 20. And so the catechism's question and answer then is question 96, what does God require in the second commandment? The answer is, we are not to make an image of God in any way, nor to worship him in any other manner than he has commanded in his word. Okay, so we read Exodus chapter 20, And you remember when God spoke to Israel on the mountain at Sinai, there was no form to see. There was no likeness to witness. It wasn't Zeus on Mount Olympus, right? And then came this warning from Deuteronomy. It says, and when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the heavenly array, Do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has distributed to all the nations under heaven. So the scripture excludes everything in creation from being compared to God. That includes mankind, angels, the glories of the heavens, The created world, even in its immensity or the powers of a burning star, all of that is a breath away from nothing. God spoke it all into existence. And so while the world is not an illusion in a technical sense, any comparison to God is to denigrate him because we have compared him to almost nothing. We have compared him to a contingent thing that it was no effort for him to create and no effort for him to sustain moment by moment. Is it any wonder then that idolatry angers him so much? Nothing brought forth his holy anger more than the worship of false gods. Over and over, as Israel did just that, He demanded that they tear down the altars, break up the idols, cleanse the land. And when they didn't do it, he sent judgment, often very severe judgment. As the commandment itself says, the jealous God, right? And I've got Isaiah chapter 40. We should read this with a contained anger from God and this is what he says. He says, to whom then will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? To whom will you compare me or who is my equal says the Holy One. And yet that's exactly what fallen human beings do all the time. Is it any wonder that he is angry with humanity every single day? And Paul in the New Testament talked of the insanity of human wisdom. Remember in Romans chapter one, it says, although, and the context is godless and wicked people, finds all of humanity to begin with before regeneration, but although godless and wicked people claim to be wise, They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. It's insanity, isn't it? But there's more to the catechism answer, just as there is more to the second commandment. The first commandment and the second commandment are intimately linked, in fact, the Roman Catholic Church, and for centuries prior to the Reformation, the first and second commandment, what we know as the first and second commandment, was one commandment. But then they split up the coveting part of the last commandment into two. In any case, they are still, whether it's one or two, are intimately linked, because the first commandment forbids idolatry. The second commandment forbids all idolatrous forms of worship. That's the other aspect of the answer. We are not, quote the answer again, to worship him in any other manner than he has commanded in his word. We are not at liberty to worship even the true God by false means that we invent. God has prescribed how he is to be worshiped. The focus of worship is God, not us. It's the focus of his salvation of us in grace. It's the focus of our reasonable adoration of him in gratitude. Therefore, it should always revolve around his word and his sacraments, not on our entertainment or our self-focus or any other innovation. Because what happens when we invent some new way and new notion to worship God? 100% of the time, it's about us. Keep my interest as if God isn't enough. Keep me entertained, right? All those novelties then revolve around us, and that is not the focus of worship. And there's actually a very good example, you all remember. Adeb and Abihu, right? Offering strange fire. And what happened? Struck dead. The real illustration of that is it's only by God's mercy that that doesn't happen everywhere Every Sunday, because there's so much innovation out there. That's the patience of God. So the heart of the commandment is that God is to be worshiped only as he himself prescribes, so that every false depiction of who God is is then forbidden. Calvin said that scripture, yes sir, go ahead. Yes. Absolutely. We create God in our own image. Who do we love more than ourselves? Right? So we create God in our own image. And when they read the God of the Bible, they're offended. Right? They're offended. And that's why I said, they'll say, I couldn't worship a God like that. Well, you're right, you can't unless God draws you. And when you say things like that, you need to look at yourself because there's a real good possibility he has not drawn you. If the God of scripture offends you, What that means is you're more comfortable with a God in the image of the criminal instead of the righteous judge, right? What Calvin said, he said, Scripture usually contrasts God with these physical idols. But he said, that doesn't mean that the conceptual idols of philosophers, or we would say liberals, is any better. It's just that God can make his point by showing the utter madness and foolishness of the absurdity of physical idols. That you could take something and form it and shape it and then say, here's God. It would be laughable if it weren't so profane. But the same thing is true of the conceptual idolatry that we so often do about who God should be and the way we mold this idea of who God is. So it applies to the vain imagination of men in both who God is and how we approach him. The commandment forbids any superstitious rituals, any devices, any innovation of man. Because as I said, any innovation is going to be something that appeals to us. Therefore, it puts us at the center of worship instead of God. And so Calvin said, to worship God truly is to worship him in the manner which he himself has prescribed in his word, period. Now, Ursinus, who wrote the Catechism, uses three words in his comments on the Second Commandment. And we'll look at those real briefly. Not surprisingly, the first word is idolatry. And he says, idolatry consists in a false or superstitious worship of God. And of course, remember that the worship of Mary, the worship of saints, calling Christ down into the bread and the wine, was to the reformers, rightly, a superstitious worship. The second word is hypocrisy. And he says, hypocrisy consists in putting on the appearance of piety and worship of God, even doing such external works as God has commanded, yet without true faith and conversion or inward obedience. It's probably a big one, isn't it? That appearance of godliness with no reality. Now Christians are often accused of hypocrisy, for calling sin what they too often find themselves failing at. But that is not hypocrisy, that's Romans chapter seven, assuming there is also humility. Hypocrisy would be to call sin in another one without acknowledging that it is sin in yourself. Hypocrisy would be looking down upon someone else, You have no justification for looking down at anybody because even your good works are filthy rags, right? But you can still, you're commanded to call sin, sin. As we've been saying, don't be deceived, right? But the point is that the second commandment speaks of those who hate God and those who love God. And what we learn from Christ is that a commandment can be kept externally and yet hypocritically broken in the heart. So like the Pharisees, you can claim to keep the law, you can claim to be pious, et cetera, et cetera, and yet actually hate God, at least the real God of scripture. You may love the God that you've created in your head, but that's because you've created him in your own image and you most certainly love yourself. That's what we've said. Now the last word is profanity. He says profanity includes a voluntary renunciation and contempt of all religion and of the worship of God both internal and external or of some portions of it and is therefore not only in opposition to this commandment but to the whole worship of God prescribed in the first and second tables. So what he's saying is The second commandment condemns atheism. If there is no God, then the universe is self-existent, the universe is self-sustaining. So by definition, those are attributes of deity. The atheist may not call nature God, but deity by any other name is still a God. That is their God. And it's very telling. That nature, if you watch documentaries, is almost always personified. Nature did this, nature did that. Sounds like a God to me. But atheism, of course, is condemned. Now, before we move on, let's notice that the commandment under the third use of the law, that is gratitude, really is positive. Said a lot of negative things here, right? But it really is positive because the reason gratitude expresses itself in proper worship is that God's mercy and grace upon us allows us to gladden our hearts in doing so. False worship is empty. It deprives us of the fellowship of our creator for whom we were made. So when God says to worship him alone and in the manner that he says to worship him, the greatest beneficiaries are the worshipers. God commands worship because that is the greatest good. But he doesn't need our worship. He doesn't need anything. It is you and I who need to worship him because only then do we fulfill what we were created for. All right. So the commandment focuses on images, and so then we have question 97. May we then not make any image at all? The answer is God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Creatures may be portrayed, but God forbids us to make or have any images of them in order to worship them or to serve God through them. Now there's actually many points in this answer, but one of the first is to define the boundaries of what may be visibly portrayed. Number one is deity can never be depicted. Westminster question and answer four says that God is spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. None of that can be depicted by something that God simply spoke into being and that he holds together moment by moment. That applies to our own vain ideas for he holds us together as well. So deity, absolutely not. But the catechism says that creatures can be depicted. Now this may seem obvious, but it hasn't been in the past. When you divorce the prohibition from the context of worship and idolatry, you are left with a command not to make any image of anything for any purpose. And so in the rigorous law-keeping of much of Israel's history, even the depiction of created things was forbidden. Even though God Himself For example, when shaping the robes of the priest or the cherubim on the veil, he commanded them specifically make this image. And yet, in that kind of hyper law-keeping, that ritualism, that man-centered cleanliness, those things, there were aspects in which even those images were outlawed. And it was a detriment to things like the art. I mean, Hebrews, the Hebrew people didn't compare to other peoples as far as art. That's clearly not the intent of the commandment. The context is trying to depict deity and then worship it. And notice that it could be at least a name, the God of Israel. In other words, using some item, some symbol that we attempt to serve God through. Think of the story of the golden calf. When the Hebrews formed the calf, they said, here is the God who brought us out of Egypt. So like much of idolatry, it isn't that this physical object really is a God, but it's something that man can see that represents this God and focuses his worship through it. So they understood this is the God who spoke to Moses. not the god of Egypt, but then they formed this calf and said, oh, we're focusing all of our worship through this golden calf. So what Calvin says is that we must cling, there it is, is that right? Yeah. We must cling to the principle that God's glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to him. And it may surprise us that it wasn't only images of Mary, it wasn't only images of saints, or even more intensely in the wafer god, the Eucharist, that Calvin objected. He was quite dismayed with the number of crosses in churches. Gold crosses, wooden crosses, stone crosses, all the usual suspects for idols. But keep in mind what the catechism forbids here, which is the use of something to worship God through instead of his own word. For centuries prior to the Reformation, and in Roman Catholic churches today, and even in some Protestant denominations today, worshipers genuflect before the cross. And the argument that this honor is given not to the cross, but to what the cross represents, is really no different than what the Hebrews were doing with the golden calf. The cross is a symbol that identifies us. It reminds us of what Christ did, but it isn't a medium for us to worship. The medium is the preaching of the cross, not the display of the cross. Does that make sense? Next. Were you looking over my shoulder? Okay. That is the next question. Particularly the depiction of Jesus himself. And we're gonna have the last question is the one where if there's a question in the catechism they probably don't agree with, it's gonna be the next one. But I do want to say, and answer about the depiction of Jesus himself. So, of course, Jesus is God, right? And his deity and humanity cannot be separated. That's usually the reason given why you don't depict Jesus. However, as you know, Sproul rightly points out, there's a difference between separation and making a distinction. You know that analogy he makes, right? You're dead, that's right, but you can distinguish. I would say the county argument is this, is that in not depicting his humanity or saying you can't depict it because he is God, that's a denial of his humanity. That leads to a kind of Gnosticism. And so as you're pointing out, for example, R.C. Sproul and his church had paintings of biblical scenes, right? But it does matter how those biblical scenes are being used. That's gonna be the focus of the next question. And as I said, this is gonna take a very 16th century reaction, right? Question 98, but may images not be tolerated in the churches as books for the laity? The answer is no, for we should not be wiser than God. He wants his people to be taught not by means of dumb images, but by the living preaching of his word. Dumb meaning non-speaking, obviously. Yeah. Yep. You have to look at the context of when the catechism is written. Or John Calvin, I mean, this reflects Calvin. In fact, this would have been one of the reasons why, remember, there were only two legal religions at the time, Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism. And you look at a question like this, and that's why they say this is crypto-Calvinist. This is secretly Calvinist, because this was Calvin's position, not Luther's. And you're absolutely right. But coming out of that, coming out of the Roman Catholicism for centuries, it was more than just a depiction of as a reminder. It was something that focused their worship through. That's why they were genuflecting before crosses, right? It was something visual that they could then, In essence, when you're genuflecting to that cross, understand, you are then focusing your eyes and everything else upon that object. And even if it's the cross, it's still made out of something that God spoke into existence. It's not for worship. It's not for worship. Okay? And on this question, as I said, Luther and Calvin were on opposite ends. Luther agreed with the long accepted argument that pictures, again not worshiping pictures, but pictures were useful for instruction. That's why it says books of the laity. That's actually a quote, something that they were called books of the laity, primarily meaning those who were not very literate or of a young age. But Calvin was insistent that only the preaching of the word of God could be properly instructive. And so that's the stance of the catechism. And if we look at history, of course, the Eastern church icons is the focus of their worship. Images in the Western church were sanctioned in the sixth century. So you have a thousand years of use prior to the Reformation. And during that time, you had a thousand years of corruption and abuse. And Calvin could point to early church fathers such as Eusebius and Augustine who complained that images should not stand in the place of the word of God. And yet it was already beginning to happen. But again, here I'm gonna put a disclaimer. I don't believe that the prohibition is clear in scripture. Nor are the proof texts of the catechism convincing for the argument that tries to make. Because there's nothing in scripture that says you can't depict something for instruction. It's not there. And so the proof texts for this particular question are about idolatry proper and images proper. We have to remember the context of the first commandment is deity, the context of the second commandment is worship. So Calvin and others did have a good reason for what's called iconoclasm, no images. They wanted to prohibit any and all pictures that might take away from the preaching of the word. But we know that most reformed churches no longer practice that prohibition. You can find some, but most do not, especially in education or in the hanging of a cross. There used to be a cross behind there too. Cluster comments that the iconoclasm of many reformers has been overcome by events. Very few would say that these pictures are now being worshipped. And yet he says the heart of their warnings and teachings remains valid, and I believe he's correct. Any use of a depiction has to have its content defined and described by teaching the word of God alongside it. It is very much like the fact that when we partake of the sacrament, which is also visual, that pastor preaches what the sacrament means as it's being distributed, right? So the word of God goes along with it. So what Klooster says of this answer, he says, just as we often say that a picture is worth a thousand words, So a religious image may be subject to a thousand interpretations. Therefore, we must make sure that whatever symbols or images are used in any way are understood properly and certainly are not used as objects of worship." And that was the fear that Calvin had and other Reformers as well. You could focus on an image like that, right? And, you know, maybe it stirs your heart or whatever, and you can focus on that, but you really don't know the doctrines behind that. And because it's visual and stirs your heart or whatever, you're not even looking to understand, you know? So you're more focused on that than you are the Word of God. But it's the Word of God that instructs, not the picture. It's in our nature to find something tangible, right? We're sensual creatures, we want that, and we're trying to focus that, whether on it as a God or through it to worship some God, but it's still something tangible. And anytime we do that, we are denigrating who God is. Of course, Jesus is the only visual example of God. But as I'm gonna say here in a second, The revelation of God that Christ provided didn't reside in his humanity, right? It was in the deity that became incarnate in humanity. So the true revelation of God we find in John 1, verse 18. And I'm gonna close with this and give Cliff the floor. It's the expanded version from the Greek and I think it says it very well. So this is John 1, verse 18. says absolute deity in its essence, no one has ever yet seen. God uniquely begotten, he who is in the bosom of the Father, that one has fully explained deity. So however helpful or not pictures may or may not be, we should always remember that God has decided that the power of salvation is in the preaching, and it's in the preaching of what is recorded about God uniquely begotten Jesus Christ.