Exodus 20 verse 4 says thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. I walked around our house just to sort of take inventory before making this devotional to see if there are any pictures portraying Jesus in our home. I knew we had a couple. We don't have any statues, but we have a couple of pictures. One's a painting of the rapture in which Jesus is depicted far into the distance in the sky, surrounded by clouds as saints are busting out of the graves and flying out of homes and cars into the sky to meet the Lord in the air. It's pretty cool. And the other is a painting by the late great Jack Chick portraying Jesus on his throne in heaven as an angel is delivering a deceased saint into his presence in heaven. In both paintings, the artist fails to actually follow the information given in the Bible. Not by the fact that they painted an image of Jesus, but they painted him in his glory, but gave him dark hair and a dark beard. Revelation 1, 14, and 15 describes what Jesus has looked like ever since he ascended to heaven in Acts chapter 1, and has since lived in his glorified state. We're told, his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like undefined brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. That is one of the many reasons that we know that the stories of people going to heaven and then coming back are not true or real. Nearly all of them claim to have seen Jesus, and when they describe what Jesus looks like in heaven, their description doesn't match that which was given to us there by the Apostle John in the book of Revelation. But beyond getting the details wrong, there's nothing wrong with artistic renderings of Jesus, whether drawing a picture of Jesus with dark hair and a beard as he was on earth, walking on water, turning water into wine, or dying on the cross. or drawing a picture with Jesus having hair white like wool, eyes like fire, and feet like brass as he sits on his throne in glory, or rides a white horse at his return, or stands on the Mount of Olives as he establishes his millennial kingdom. The graven image only becomes a problem when it's used as an aid to worship. You see, if you read your text carefully here, you'll see there's no period after verse four. The commandment continues into verses five and six and then says, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments, period. There's the period. It's like I give a kid instructions and I say, you can't have any pie, whether apple, cherry, or peach, it doesn't matter. You can't have any pie unless you finish your meat and vegetables provided on your plate for dinner. What a lot of people do is the equivalent of hearing those instructions, then saying, see, you can't have any pie. And I would say, until you finish or I finish my meat and vegetables, then I can have pie. So it is with the images of Jesus. Exodus chapter 20 verse 4 isn't the full commandment. The commandment is not to make graven images and then bow down to them. That sort of thing. You can make a blow mold or carved statue of some sort or digitally print something out of a digital printer or draw or create something with software, some image of Jesus. But if that is then used in worship with people praying to it, burning incense to it, adoring it, singing to it, bowing down to it, that is when it becomes a sin. And that's something about Jesus that the Lord thought you ought to know, evidently, because that explains why he didn't put a period in Exodus 20 verses 4 and 5 and 6 until the end of verse 6. And that's why I'll put out a nativity scene every December in my front yard and in the church yard at the BBF Church building to remind the world that Jesus is come in the flesh. Amen.