"You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God..." ( Exodus 20:3-5 )
This month in my blog I thought it would be good to write a bit about the Protestant Reformation along with Reformed theology. The tradition varies some from church to church, in things such as the order of service and baptism. I have to assume that all of us attend churches that we believe are the most pleasing to God in our worship. Although we have a pattern given to us in the Scripture, there is some liberty as well.
Today I wanted to give us something to think about this week that maybe we've never given much thought to and before you disagree with me, please just hear me out first. Then go to the Scriptures yourselves, ponder and pray.
If you're familiar with Reformed churches you'll know that they tend to be a bit, how shall I put it? Plain. In other words, you normally won't find pictures of God and Jesus hanging on the walls. My own church has a large simple cross at the front of the sanctuary with a banner of Scripture on either side.
There's nothing wrong with decorations and ornaments, necessarily. In the design for the Tabernacle in the Book of Exodus ( 31:1-11 ) God fills his people with his Holy Spirit, as we see for the first time in Scripture, giving them "ability and intelligence with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting and in carving wood, to work in every craft." ( verses 3-5 )
And I'm sure Heaven will blow our minds.
However, back here on earth in our places of worship, our homes, and even in our own minds, God doesn't want us to "carve" images of him to worship.
Before I read J.I. Packer's book "Knowing God," specifically Chapter Four, I had not given much thought to the second commandment. I just assumed the commandment was addressed to those primitive individuals who had the audacity to carve idols of pagan gods out of wood and stone and then bow down and worship them.
I was pretty sure that was the one commandment I hadn't broken.
Wrong.
After God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, ( Exodus 12- 18 ) In Chapter 19 when the children of Israel come to the wilderness of Sinai ( the third day ) they encamp there before the mountain, but Moses goes up Mount Sinai to God.
When Moses comes down he gives the people the instructions that God has given to him about washing their garments and being ready ( again, on the third day ) when God "will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people." ( verse 11 )
"And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, 'Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot, ( with an arrow, that is ), whether beast or man, he shall not live.'" ( verses 12-13 )
When the third day arrived "there was thunders and lightenings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled.... Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire..... the whole mountain trembled greatly" ( verses 16-18 )
God is Holy.
More holy than we can ever possibly imagine, but the children of Israel were given an idea of just how holy. And it was terrifying. The LORD tells Moses again to warn the people not to break through least they perish.
Moses goes up once again on Mount Sinai and this is when God gives him the Law ( including the Ten Commandments ), the promises, confirms His covenant, and instructs how the Tabernacle is to be built, how the priest are to be clothed and perform their duties.
But the people think Moses is taking too long up there.
And his brother Aaron, who is a priest and Moses's right hand man, agrees to make the people a god because they don't know what has happened to Moses. The people give Aaron their gold jewelry and he "fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf." ( Chapter 32:1-5 )
And here's the interesting part: "And they said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.' When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it."
They think they are worshiping God in the form of a bull calf. How degrading is that?
Why would God not want us to make an image even of Him to "help us focus more on Him or Christ" in our worship? The result of the Israelites worship of this idol was pure idolatry - "they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings... they rose up to play." ( verse 6 )
Because anything we can come up with in our imperfect, human, small minds will fall horrifically short of the True, One and Only, Triune God. This was a problem back in 1973 when Dr. Packer wrote "Knowing God," but it might be more of one today with all of our technological advances.
The people were so quick to turn away from God - this God who they had quickly forgotten made the mountain smoke and tremble with his holiness. They could not even stand before him nor did they want to because of his glory, and yet, they were worshiping him in the form of a creature, a bull. ( Romans 1:22 )
And before Moses ever goes back down from Mount Sinai God tells him in verse 7: "Go down for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them."
Moses must have been thinking, "Your people? They aren't my people - they are your disobedient people!"
But God did mean "Your people," and that's the most beautiful part of this story.
God isn't some angry deity needing to be appeased. No, God is love, and perfect love demands perfect justice. We would not want it any other way. God told Moses that He will in no way clear the guilty, and we are guilty sinners, all of us. His holy wrath must be satisfied if we are to stand before him, let alone be adopted as his children. ( Exodus 34:7 ) ( Psalm 14, 53, Romans 3 )
Another important aspect of the Protestant Reformation that I mentioned in my last blog in the "Five Solas" is "Solus Christus" ( Christ Alone ), meaning Jesus Christ is the only mediator between this Holy God and sinful man. Not Mary, Saints, the Pope, sacraments, our own righteousness, or penance. None of that will do.
"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus..." ( 1 Timothy 2:5 )
Christ Alone.
Moses stood between God and the people as a type and shadow of the Mediator to come. We see Moses pleaded to God for the people in verse 11. "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, who you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?" ( Notice they are "God's people" again. ) Exodus is such a deep, rich book in the narrative of God's wrath and mercy and our redemption.
"Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seal?" proclaimed the mighty angel with a loud voice in Revelation 5.
And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy.....And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing.......And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne." ( read all verses 1-14 )
Christ Alone.
Should we have pictures of God and Jesus in our homes or churches? In our home office I have a framed print supposedly of God's finger touching the lifeless finger of Adam from Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a gift from the Farmer many years ago. I haven't removed it. Yet. I'm pondering on it. I don't know.
Although Dr. Packer's words cut me deep. "The mind that takes up with images is a mind that has not yet learned to love and attend to God's Word. Those who look to man-made images, material or mental, to lead them to God are not likely to take any part of His revelation as seriously as they should."
More than anything, I think this commandment should give us pause to meditate on our view of the Triune God. Has our view been too small? Too human-like? Too man-made? Are we getting our knowledge of God from the Bible or from our own imaginations? Or from what others say? Or paint? Or carve?
Should Jesus be depicted in films and on felt boards in children's Sunday School classes or lesson material? ( Not sure felt boards are a thing anymore. Sure they're not. ) I mean, Jesus did take on human flesh. At any rate, I've read my grandchildren Bibles and books with pictures of Jesus drawn in them of what the illustrator thought Jesus looked like. Isaiah gives us the most striking description of Jesus' physical appearance in the Bible - and it's not very pretty. ( 53:2 )
I hope this encourages you to think and to gather with your little ones and your family and even your church family to discuss how the second commandment concerns the holiness of the God who loves us and the Jesus who saved us and the Holy Spirit who untied us to Him.
Happy Monday
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| "Jesus leaving the ninety-nine in search of the one seems crazy, until you're that one." |
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