Let's now turn in our Bibles to Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy 4, our passage for tonight, is verses 9 through 19. Listen now to the Word of God, the words of God through Moses to Israel. Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children, how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, gather the people to me. that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so. And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form. There was only a voice. And he declared to you his covenant which he commanded you to perform, that is the Ten Commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess. Therefore, wash yourselves very carefully since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you'd be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them. Things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. That's for the reading of God's word. Let's now turn to the Heidelberg Catechism on page 890. Our passage for today, our selection for today is Lord's Day 35, questions 96 to 98. Question 96. What is God's will for us in the second commandment? That we in no way make any image of God, nor worship him in any other way than has been commanded in God's word. May we then not make any image at all? God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Although creatures may be portrayed, yet God forbids making or having such images in order to worship them or serve God through them. But may not images as books for the unlearned be permitted in churches? No, we should not try to be wiser than God. He wants the Christian community instructed by the living preaching of his word, not by idols that cannot even talk. So our topic for tonight is the Second Commandment and the Heidelberg Catechism's exposition of it. We read from that passage in Deuteronomy chapter 4, because there in that passage we have a fuller exposition of the rationale for the prohibition of images. God said, you shall not make a carved image and you shall not bow down to it and worship it. But the reasoning for that is not explicitly stated right there in the second commandment in Exodus 20. But here in Deuteronomy 4, we have a fuller explanation of the rationale for this prohibition of images. And it is found there in our text, that statement that is repeated several times in the passage, where it says, for example, in Deuteronomy 4 verse 12, that when the Lord spoke to Israel out of the midst of the fire on Mount Horeb, which is another name for Mount Sinai, those are interchangeable. You see, looking back 40 years earlier when they were at Mount Sinai, and he says, when the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire, he says, you heard the sound of God's voice, but you saw no form. There was only the voice, there was only the Word of God, the Ten Commandments. And that's repeated again in verse 15. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. So beware of making images Why is this? Why is it that we are forbidden to make images of God? The reason is because these images that man would make, they dishonor, distort, and ultimately displace. So three Ds, they dishonor, they distort, and they ultimately displace the true God. So first, images dishonor God. God is infinitely glorious and majestic. He is far above all created things. God does not have a material body. He is spiritual. He is infinite. He is eternal. He is infinitely glorious and majestic. To make an image of this infinitely majestic and glorious and spiritual God would be to bring God down to the level of corruptible physical bodies, whether of men or of animals. The first reason why we must not make images of God is because they dishonor God. They bring God down. They bring our thoughts down to this low level of thinking of God in a created form. There's a helpful passage in Isaiah. You know that whole section in Isaiah? It begins around chapter 40 and it goes on until around chapter 48, where there's this extended discussion of why idolatry is wrong. And there's this, what's called polemic, this argument against the idols. And in Isaiah 40, we have this wonderful polemic, this argument against idols. Which is this idea that you cannot picture God, you cannot image God without changing your conception of who God is. Isaiah 40 verse 18, to whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with him? An idol? A craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts it for its silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who makes princes, who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows on them. and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him, says the Holy One." God is infinitely greater, infinitely more majestic than anything earthly, whether it's an animal or a human being or even a seemingly powerful and important human being like a prince or a king or a ruler of an empire. From God's point of view, they're just like grasshoppers. He blows at them and they wither away. They're nothing before him. So to whom then will you compare me? God says that I should be like him. You cannot even do it. It's impossible. It's impossible to use any created thing as a image to conceive of what God is like. That's in the Old Testament in Isaiah 40, but in the New Testament we have the same argument, the same polemic against idolatry in the words of the Apostle Paul when he was at Athens and he was preaching the gospel to the philosophers at Mars Hill. And he was noticing all of their idols and shrines to all of their gods. And he noticed that there was one shrine, one altar to the unknown God. And he says, let me tell you about the true God. He says, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of men. That's Acts 17, verse 29. It's very interesting in that verse there that Paul uses this term, the divine being. He doesn't just say, we ought not to think that God is like gold or silver or stone. He says, we ought not to think that the divine being, that is this concept of what does it mean for God to be God? The being of God, it's a qualitatively different concept of being than anything that we're familiar with in this created realm. Anything in this created realm that we could think of is finite. It has a beginning, it has an end. It changes, it undergoes either corruption or improvement. But God is immutable. God is spiritual. God is not in any way finite or created. He's not made up of parts. Everything created is made up of parts, but God is utterly simple. Meaning that he is a pure being that has no composition, no parts that make up who he is. So we ought not to think that the divine being, that this concept of the divine nature is somehow in any way similar to anything created. And so just as Isaiah was arguing against the folly of idolatry, so also Paul, centuries later, made the same argument. Why should we not make images of God? First of all, because images dishonor God. They bring God down to the level of corruptible physical things. But secondly, images distort God. Images distort our view of God and give us a fundamentally misleading understanding of God. They prevent true understanding. If you make an image and you say this is God or represents God, It prevents true understanding because it leads your mind away from heavenly things to earthly things. Images, idols, are fundamentally false. They distort our understanding of who God is. There are a number of passages in the Old Testament that talk about this. For example, in Jeremiah chapter 10, it says that his images are false. They're worthless, a work of delusion. In Habakkuk 2, verse 18, it says, If you make an image or if you look at an image and think of it as somehow representing God, it is teaching you something, but it's teaching you lies. It's teaching you a fundamentally distorted and false view of who God is. And then another verse in Isaiah 44 verse 20. Again, this is in that section in Isaiah about the polemic against the idols. The one who worships idols feeds on ashes. A deluded heart has led him astray and he cannot deliver himself or say, is there not a lie in my right hand? I love that. The idolater who has this image that he's relying upon and looking to as his deliverance, he has no idea. His heart is so deluded that he cannot look at that idol in his right hand and he cannot recognize that it is a lie. It is fundamentally a distortion. Images dishonor God because they bring God down to the level of creation. They distort God. They're teachers of lies. But finally, and inevitably, images displace God. They take the place of God, even if the intentions are pious. Even if originally the idea was to say, yeah, we know this isn't really what God looks like, we know this really isn't God, but it's a useful tool that will help us to worship God better and to use this image as a means, as a vehicle through which we can worship the true God. Even if the intentions are pious, the image itself inevitably takes the place of God and becomes an idol. We see this idea in Romans 1 verse 23, where the Apostle Paul says that the Gentiles, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. The intentions might be pious at first, but inevitably your own heart begins to change as it gets passed on to the next generation. They begin to misunderstand and pretty soon the images themselves displace God. And we are guilty then of exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images that are simply resembling mortal man. Now, one question that comes up in this discussion is, what about artistic representations of Jesus? This is a little bit different because Jesus, of course, when he became a man, when the eternal Son of God became incarnate, we're celebrating the incarnation here at this Advent season. When he became a man, he took on a real human body that could be observed and seen with the eye. And so some have argued that it is appropriate to make artistic representations of Jesus, not to venerate them, but rather to be used as a means of instruction, especially for children and for the uneducated. The Heidelberg Catechism mentions that in question 98. May not images as books for the unlearned be permitted in churches? No, we should not try to be wiser than God. He wants the Christian community instructed by the living preaching of his word, not by idols that cannot even talk. making artistic representations of Jesus may seem less problematic than the crass idolatry that was being argued against by Paul at Athens or by Isaiah. It may seem less problematic because of the fact that in the incarnation, the Son took upon himself a true human nature. And yet, it is also dangerous. In church history, this argument that while we could make images of Jesus for the purpose of instruction only and not for the purpose of worship, this argument was the foot in the door that ultimately did lead to idolatry. One of the arguments that was made by some of the theologians that were defending images was that the honor of the image passes to the original. The honor of the image, that is, when you honor that image, you're not honoring the image itself, but rather using that as a tool so that the honor that you're giving to the image then passes to the original, that is, to Christ himself. But in practice, that is just a theoretical justification. In practice, it ends up being that the honor is given to the image itself. In practice, it leads to superstition and idolatry. Even today in Christendom, we see contemporary examples of people who are using artistic representations of Jesus in a way that probably is not intended to be idolatry, not intended to be worshipping those representations of Jesus, and only intended to be instructional. And yet, there's great danger involved. We see this with Christmas pageants, Nativity scenes, illustrated Bibles, even the more recent example of this is the TV show, The Chosen. And, you know, all of these things, I would caution people against that because there is great danger involved there. One of the problems with all of these things is what? It's that inevitably there is a certain degree of creative license where the person who's behind it, whether the director of the TV show or the artist who's doing the illustration in the Bible, is going to take creative license. And it's also, it's inevitable because you have to. You have to sort of use your creative imagination to fill in the details because the Bible itself doesn't tell us exactly what Jesus looked like. And so creative license comes into play and that then is an opening for distortion. An opening for man-made ideas about who Jesus is and what he was like. Just think about the idea of being an actor. Let's say you were chosen to be the actor to play Jesus in a play or in a TV show or a movie. Can you imagine doing that? I can't even imagine agreeing to that. The actor who plays Jesus is being asked to do something that no one should feel comfortable doing. In fact, it is interesting that, I was doing a little bit of research on this, but the actor who plays Jesus in that TV show, The Chosen, his name is Jonathan Rumi. By the way, he is a Roman Catholic, so it's not surprising that he would be okay with this. He says that he struggles with this. He says very often, I don't feel worthy of playing Jesus. I struggle with that a lot. but I also acknowledge what God has done for my life as a result of playing Christ." It's like an odd statement. What do you mean? Something that's like a means of grace that somehow by being in this show that God has blessed you and done something in your life through this? You can see how it's very odd, right? It leads to some weird things in terms of what are you saying exactly? That this is some sort of a spiritual blessing for you to do this, but yet at the same time you're also acknowledging that it's struggle and you don't feel worthy of doing this, which is probably the right attitude to have, so then why are you doing it, you see? The whole thing is very confusing and it's just an opening for a great abuse and for superstition and ultimately for idolatry. Again, this pattern, right? It dishonors God, it dishonors Christ, then it begins to distort Christ and ultimately displaces Christ. There's a desire to bring the gospel stories to life, to make the story of Jesus more vivid, more accessible to a contemporary audience. Seems like a pious thing, seems like a good thing, but it's dangerous. Subtle emotional manipulations can occur. There's going to be creative license in how the story is told that's going to be changing the way it's written in the Bible and adding certain things in and making a certain editorial interpretation of things that is not exactly right. And so there is a dishonoring of Christ, a distorting of Christ, and ultimately a displacing of Christ. So let us be careful then of not violating the second commandment, even when the motives seem good. Now the second commandment is not only about the issue of images. The second commandment also contains a broader principle. If you go back to the Heidelberg Catechism in question 96, The Catechism says, what is God's will for us in the Second Commandment? So first it says that we in no way make any image of God. That's what we've been focusing on is that first part. But there's a second broader principle implied in the Second Commandment. It says, nor worship him in any other way than has been commanded in God's Word. The second commandment explicitly forbids images and worshiping God through images, but it also, by implication, contains this call to worship God only in the ways that he has commanded. This broader principle is called the regulative principle of worship. We are prohibited from attempting to use images to worship the true God, but we're also, by implication, prohibited from attempting to worship God in any other way besides what he has commanded in his word. And the reason why we extend it to that second application is because of the examples that are given in the Old Testament. The prime example of this is the incident of the golden calf in Exodus chapter 32. In Exodus 32, you remember how Moses was up on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments. He was there for so long that the people began to wonder what happened to him. And so they decided that they were going to take matters into their own hands and come up with a way of worshiping God on their own initiative. They took their golden rings and they brought them to Aaron. And Aaron took the gold and he fashioned it into a graven image, into a golden calf. Now what's interesting is that that's clearly against the second commandment, but what's interesting is that he didn't say, I'm going to tell you guys now to stop worshiping Yahweh, and instead I want you to worship this golden calf. Rather, what he said was, this golden calf represents Yahweh. He said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And Aaron even said, to make it very clear. He said, tomorrow we're going to hold a feast to the Lord, to Yahweh. So the point is that when we look at the examples of how the Second Commandment was violated in the Old Testament, we not only see clear examples of people making images of false gods, whether it's Baal or the Ashtoreth or all the other false gods of the Canaanite religions around them, we also see, and that's clearly forbidden by the Second Commandment and the First Commandment, but we also see examples where people in a pious attempt to venerate the true God used an image as the vehicle for doing so. And that is equally forbidden by the second commandment. Some other examples of this in the Old Testament would be in Judges chapter 17. Remember how the book of Judges is describing for us that everyone did what was right in their own eyes? There was no king at that time. And so the book of Judges gives us, especially as you get further and further into the book, it gives us some horrible examples of terrible idolatry and sin and all kinds of terrible things that happened as the people of God were going in their own direction and doing their own thing. One of the things that they did was there was a guy named Micah of Ephraim, Micah the Ephraimite, not the same Micah of the prophet Micah later on, but Micah made a carved image. And again, this is the same thing where he was doing so as a vehicle for worshiping Yahweh. But he was setting up his own shrine. He even found some wandering guy and said, hey, I'm going to make you into a Levite so that you can be the temple personnel to govern and run this shrine. And so he's setting up his own worship of God apart from the central shrine, apart from the way that God had commanded. And he was trying to do it out of pious motives, and yet it ended up becoming a snare to God's people. Same thing happened with Jeroboam. Jeroboam, this is when the kingdom of Israel divides into the northern and the southern kingdoms. Jeroboam was the one that God had ordained to be the king of the northern kingdom. And he was worried that the people in the northern kingdom would still be going to Jerusalem to worship God at the temple. And he wanted to create his own secondary temple, his own secondary place to worship Yahweh. And he set up golden calves in the far north in Dan. And the golden calves that Jeroboam set up were intended to be means by which God's people could worship the true God, but doing so in a way that he had not commanded using images. And so this other example of using images to worship the true God shows us this broader principle that is implied in the second commandment, which is that God not only prohibits the worshiping of other gods, false gods using images, he also prohibits the attempt to use images or any other mechanism besides what he has commanded in his word to worship the true God. This is the regulative principle of worship, and it stands in contrast with what is called the normative principle of worship. And that is the view that any practice in worship is permitted as long as it is not explicitly forbidden. in Scripture. And this is the view that is followed by the Anglican and Lutheran traditions. The reason for that is because both of those traditions are trying to permit more and more Catholic traditions, even though they're Protestants, but they're trying to give an opening for carrying over some of the Catholic traditions into the Protestant church. And so they use the normative principle of worship, which is a looser principle, to allow that. Even today, many evangelicals increasingly seem to hold to the normative principle of worship in order to allow not for Catholic traditions, but to allow for various innovations in worship that will, out of a pious motive, seek to make worship more culturally relevant to today's people. that normative principle of worship is out of accord with the second commandment. It's out of accord with the reformed understanding of this second principle that's a broader principle that flows from the second commandment. And it's also tied to this important fact, going back to our opening text in Deuteronomy 4, that at the very beginning, when we see the institution of formal corporate public worship with Israel at Mount Sinai, we see this principle that the primary basis of worship is God's Word. You saw no form, but what did you see? What did you hear? You heard God's voice. You heard the Word of God. The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form. There was only a voice. And he declared to you his covenant, the 10 commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And so this leads to the reformed understanding, not only of the regulative principle of worship, but putting it more positively that the word of God has primacy in worship. You might think, well, we know that because we always have a sermon in worship, but it's not just in the sermon. Every aspect of worship is infused with the word of God. The call to worship, the language we hear, when we hear God's assurance of pardon, all of these different elements of worship are derived from scripture. In many cases, they're just directly quoting scripture. Even our songs, the lyrics of our songs are based upon scripture. Many of our songs are just the Psalms, but even the hymns that we have are reflecting the teaching of the Word of God and are based upon Scripture. The primacy of the Word in worship, not only as preached, but also in every other element as well, in the prayers, in the lyrics of our songs, the call to worship, the benediction, all of these elements are the Word of God. There's a fundamental principle behind the regulative principle. The regulative principle is kind of a negative thing. We're not supposed to do anything that God has not commanded us in worship. But there's an even more fundamental positive principle, which is that worship itself must be fundamentally a response to God's revelation. That's what worship is. God reveals himself, and then we respond. And when we respond, we respond in faith to what he has revealed. That's why there's this key principle back in Deuteronomy 4 that you didn't see an image of God on Mount Sinai. Rather, you heard God's Word. You heard the covenant. And so, therefore, the worship of God's people is a response to that. We must worship Him not only as He has commanded, but we must worship Him according to His Word and using His Word as the means of worship itself. in order to ensure that our worship is in accord with how he has revealed himself. That's why it's so wrong to use images as an aid in worship. Because God has not revealed himself through images. He has revealed himself through his word. And so therefore we must respond to his word in faith. Everything that we do in worship has to be done in faith. And how can we do it in faith being confident that it is pleasing to the Lord unless it is based upon his revelation. How can we speak words of praise to God in our prayers and in our songs and do so in faith and as an act of worship to God unless we're confident that what we're saying to God and the emotions of our heart in response to God are based upon how God has revealed himself in his word. Faith comes from hearing, Paul says in Romans 10 17. Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Now it is interesting and important and valid to say we are embodied people, right? We're not just intellectual minds just simply thinking about doctrine, right? We are embodied, we have physical bodies, and we have senses, we have eyes and ears, right? And so God does recognize that, and he does condescend to our embodied reality, and he does communicate to us his grace through physical things. But, here's the key, We're only to use those physical mediums, or media in the correct Latin plural, those media that God has commanded. And what are those media? The sacraments. baptism, and the Lord's Supper. God does condescend to our earthly embodied reality that we need to be encouraged with God's grace in some physical way, but it's not through images of God or images of Christ, it's through the sacraments. Baptism, the water of baptism, which symbolizes to us the cleansing power of the blood of Christ, both in justification and sanctification. The elements of the Lord's Supper, the bread, which is broken, symbolizing his body, and the wine, which symbolizes his blood that was poured out for us. The sacraments are the only visible things that God has commanded and that has divine authority behind it. Yes, we do long for that kind of thing. You can see the natural longing for people to have images of God. It's a natural thing to want to do that. But rather than making up our own images and our own physical media that we think will be helpful to us and pleasing to God, we must reserve ourselves and discipline ourselves to only receive the physical media that God himself has ordained, namely the two sacraments. baptism, and the Lord's Supper. These are visible forms of the gospel. The gospel being proclaimed to us in visible form. And again, I go back to this fundamental idea that how can we receive any spiritual blessing and benefit from any particular thing that we do in worship unless we have confidence that we're able to do that thing, to do that element of worship, whether it's singing songs of praise, or enjoying the sacraments, or singing to the Lord, all these elements, how can we do those things unless we have confidence that God is pleased with that and that God has commanded that? Because whatever is not of faith is sin, right? If we don't have faith in doing it, if we can't have faith and confidence that this is pleasing to God and a genuine means that God has given to us to help us, then it is not appropriate and it is not right. Whatever is not of faith is sin, as Paul says in Romans 14. And so therefore, we can only do it in faith if we have confidence that God requires it, that God is pleased with it. And therefore, we can only do those things in worship that God has commanded. And to go beyond that and to set up our own sacraments, our own means of grace, and say, oh, I have an idea. If we do this special thing, maybe we can get up and reenact the gospel and do some sort of a skit, or, oh, I have an idea. Let's make a video that will describe, you know, all these creative, imaginative things. Sounds good to me. I think that'll be great. But your pious motivations mean nothing in the eyes of God. And you won't be able to do it in faith because God hasn't revealed it. And then it won't be a means of grace. It can only become a means of grace if God has ordained it. And then you can do it in confidence that it is not only pleasing to him, but it's also ordained by him for our good and to build us up in Christ, to strengthen our faith in him and to receive again the truths of the gospel in the way that he has revealed. You saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Mount Horeb out of the midst of the fire. So therefore beware. Notice the exhortations in that passage in Deuteronomy 4. So therefore beware. Beware lest you act corruptly by inventing your own ways of worshiping me. Beware. Watch yourself carefully. Listen only to my word. Let us pray. Lord, how we thank you for your clear revelation to us in your word of how it is that you desire to be worshiped. We thank you for the riches of scripture that unfold for us, the nature of worship, the covenant dialogue that happens in worship, the call to hear your word and to respond in faith. We thank you that you've given these things to us to be means of grace by your spirit, to build us up in our faith, to draw us away from the things of this world, to set our affections on Christ and things above. Help us, Lord, at this time of the year, as there are many around us who are engaging in their own unlawful ideas of how to please you and worship you. Help us to be careful, but help us also to rejoice in your word, to rejoice in the wonderful gospel truth proclaimed to us at this time of the year as we think about the incarnation of our Lord. So bless us, we pray, in Christ's name, amen.