The Second Commandment..

Well, thank you. You may be seated. Sorry about singing different words that are on the sheet there. I say Yahweh for the Old Testament, where it says capital L-O-R-D, Lord. And so that's how I have that song memorized. If you open your Bibles to Exodus 20, we will be back in Exodus 20 today.

Although we generally do verse-by-verse exposition, we've been going through the Ten Commandments, and so we've done a lot of, I guess you could call it, jumping around. So in the exposition of Exodus 20, we're going through a lot of other passages to see what it means. But before I read this scripture, I just want to read for you questions 96 to 98 from the Heidelberg Catechism.

And so question 96 says, what is God's will for us in the second commandment? The answer given is 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. And so the first part of that is that we don't make an image of him. And the second part is what we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks, the regulative principle of worship, which says we don't try to make up how we're going to worship God in our own mind.

We just do it the way he's commanded us. So we're actually not going to get into that one today, but there's some people that weren't here. So if you're questioning that one, it's been taught the last few weeks. Those sermons are available. So then question 97 is a very good question, and it's actually one of the objections people end up having when we discuss the second commandment.

Question 97 says, may we then not make any image at all? Which is a reasonable question. The answer given, God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Additionally, although creatures may be portrayed, yet God forbids making or having such images if one's intention is to worship them or to serve God through them. Okay, so we'll get into that in a moment when we look at the second commandment, but it's okay to have a picture of a dog, all right, as long as you're not pretending to worship it or pretending you're worshiping the one true God through that picture of the dog.

Question 98. but may not images be permitted in churches in place of books for the unlearned? So if someone is illiterate, if someone is small and doesn't know all the words yet, or if you're going to a remote tribal country where they don't have a written language yet, that's the question. Can I just use images to teach them about Jesus, right? The answer, no. we should not try to be wiser than God.

God wants the Christian community instructed by the living preaching of His Word, not by idols that cannot even talk. So those are good questions to ask, and hopefully we will answer those. So we'll turn to Exodus 20. Just a reminder, you've been challenged to memorize at least the verse verses 1 to 17 those are the Ten Commandments and it would be a good thing for you to be able to review if you simply, every time every day before bed if you just prayed about the commandments and just honestly try to ask yourself how you did that day, it's a good feel for confession ultimately when confession is a good feel for forgiveness which makes you feel good so there's your feel good sermon for the day The rest might not make you feel so good.

Alright? Okay. Exodus 20. Verses 4 and 5 and 6. 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, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

There is a lot here. And what I want to do this week is I want to look at this commandment from a bit of an overview perspective. And give us kind of the 50,000 foot view of it. And I want to drill down only a little bit into it. But I want to give you a taste of what's going on in the commandment. And then I also want to look at a number of passages where we're just going to see idols defined.

And we're going to see the results of what happens when people are idolaters. Jeremy just read in Revelation 9. And we'll hopefully turn there if I remember to. that these people, even when God's judgment is coming upon their land, people don't turn from their idols. The idols are very important things to people. Ultimately the first commandment was telling us how to worship God and the second commandment in many ways is telling us how not to worship Him And they not really that separated in my opinion It almost like one concept and it split up to delineate for us And it's probably one of the most confused things in the history of the world.

So if you look out, let's say in the United States, where we all live, if you look out in the United States and you think things are going bad sometimes, If you think maybe they've been going bad for a long time already, right? I want to challenge you to realize that some of the things that you can see that are so obviously wrong in our world today started long before they manifested outwardly where people in their hearts were not worshiping God. And we started to allow people to worship God or to worship another God through idolatry.

You don't break any of these commandments like murder, adultery, lying, stealing without first breaking the first commandment and in many cases the second commandment. Part of the problem with the second commandment that it's dealing with is that not only are we not to make images of our God, we're not to worship other images of these false gods. But part of the problem is, and you remember in Exodus, sometimes people decide they're going to worship the one true God, but they're going to make an image that they can physically touch and taste and smell and hear.

And that's what happened with Aaron and the golden calf, right? He didn't make a golden calf and say, all right, we're worshiping the Egyptian gods, we're worshiping the gods of some other society. He said, this is Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. you may remember I think I think God crushed it into powder through Moses and then he made everyone drink it so that's how God feels about idolatry God is, I don't like to say God feels that's what God thinks about idolatry so a couple notes just from the text here in Exodus 20 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 a lot of people divide that into two separate commands and they make it so that now you can't make an image of anything so again, you couldn't have a picture of a beautiful mountain range hanging on your wall the intention behind the commandment is that you do not make images that you are to serve and worship if God didn't want you to make a likeness of anything ever then everything God told them to do to build the temple was almost God telling them to commit idolatry do you remember in the temple there was the Ark of the Covenant and you had the mercy seat and there was the two cherubim and they actually had skilled craftsmen that were gifted by the Holy Spirit of God to make these things And so we have to be very careful that we don't commit an error that is a common error, and it's something that's the root of something called biblicism, where we read a verse of scripture, and we simply say, well, that's what it says, so that's what I believe, and we just read it without any context and without cross-referencing with any other scripture whatsoever, and suddenly we make up strange rules.

And usually the rules are even more stricter than the ones God has made. and so we can have images of things that are created we just read that in the heidelberg catechism we you can create things it's what is the intention behind the creation of that is it because you're going to worship that image because you trust in that image or is it because you're actually going to say i'm going to worship the one true god but i'm going to do it through this image. That is idolatry. But if you're simply creating something, just a picture, and it's not a picture that's supposed to represent God, and it's not a picture intended for your worship, then it's okay.

So I want you to be careful that we don't have this shallow reading of this commandment where now you proclaim you could never have even a picture of your wife, I guess, right? It reduces to absurdity really quickly when you think it through. One of the reasons we can't make an image of God is that God's invisible and God's infinite. You cannot draw a picture of something that's invisible.

The The word invisible literally means it is not able to be seen. That's why you can't draw a picture of the invisible man even in the make-believe world. God is invisible. He's also infinite. So for you to attempt, let's say you took the biggest piece of paper that we could make, and you attempted to draw God on that piece of paper, it would be infinitely different than what God if I could use this phrase, actually looked like so the intention of the commandment is to help you to realize his magnificence and his infinitude so that you will, rather than think that by the machinations of your own brain by your own imagination's ability to draw some picture and so we've drawn some great pictures in the history of time here in the world We have some beautiful pieces of art that you can go to museums and you can look at artwork.

That's fine with me. But there isn't a piece of art that comes anywhere near scratching the surfaces of encapsulating the greatness of our God. He cannot be drawn in such a way that you would see him. You can sculpt out of a piece of wood that he created something that accurately represents him whatsoever you can even approximate it God desires the living preaching of His Word to be the way that He heard Here's your imperative.

If you're worried about people that don't have a written language, stop what you're doing throughout the week and learn to translate the Bible into other languages. If that's your big objection, well, what about people that don't have a written language? We need a picture book with long-haired Jesus on it. Learn how to translate and make new languages for people.

Learn Hebrew, learn Greek. There's people who dedicate their whole lives to these things. Some of us, the only thing we're good at is navigating different social media sites. Some of us are good at video games. Use that skill to serve people. So, turn to Jeremiah 10.

Well, real quick, you can turn there. Quick overview though. We can't make images to worship. First of all, because God can't be contained in anything we can create in the first place. Second of all, because there is nothing besides him that should be worshipped, so we can't make anything that we would possibly worship. Second note that we're going to talk about, not today, but I do want to get to this, is I want to talk about this phrase that I, Yahweh, your God, is a jealous God.

He says, I am a jealous God. Jealousy is a bad word sometimes. In fact, in Scripture, sometimes it's a bad word. You're not supposed to be jealous when somebody that you know has good fortune. but jealousy also is a very normal circumstance for people who want what's best for someone else and god is jealous not only for you to have what's best which is to know him and his son but god is jealous for his own glory he won't share it with another and there is nothing prideful or conceited or wrong about that in fact if god were to allow his glory to be shared with anyone else whatsoever, he would be an idolater and he's not.

And then thirdly, one of the things I hope to talk about eventually is this showing steadfast love to thousands of generations and visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. So we want to talk about what these generational curses mean. But in Jeremiah 10, I want to survey the Bible a little bit. I want to look at some of the effects of people who worship and I want you to see the introduction that God gives to the idolatry because what I want you to notice is that what God tells his people repeatedly is don't do what you see the people doing that I drove out before you or will drive out before you everyone in the world is a worshiper the question is whom do they worship and how do they worship and what God is saying is you don't copy the pagans who worship their false gods you don't copy them in their false gods and you don't copy the methods that they use either Jeremiah 10 hear the word that Yahweh speaks to you a house of Israel thus says Yahweh learn not the way of the nations nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are are dismayed at them.

God just completely destroyed horoscopes, okay? Completely destroyed. When I was younger, I was into that stuff. At first it was a game, and I didn't really think much of it. And then I got superstitious enough in my age that I would read the horoscope and take it pretty seriously. And I had a friend with a book that actually went to each day of the year, if you were born on that day, exactly which...

I mean, these horoscopes, we think there's 12 signs, but there's like 366 divisions because it comes down to the day you were born and where the stars were that day. These are created things. These stars are servants of God that do His bidding and they don't even come close to reflecting His true glory and we worship them. And we look at the way the stars are aligned and we think, oh, well, that means something today.

Do not be dismayed at the signs of the heavens. This one's personal to me because I have a Facebook friend who I love. It's a high school friend of mine who is constantly posting about being a Taurus and what Mercury's doing and Venus this week and how that's going to affect her week. And it hurts me to think that this is actually how she's driving her life.

She's making decisions based on these things. and some of us are dabbling with things that actually come from the same type of root we just don't call it we don't call it the stars of the heavens anymore but now we call it the Enneagram we've got some of these personality test stuff there's all sorts of things that we do that come from the same superstition but we're wise enough to just say well, you know, we don't really believe the constellations are driving things or the day you were born. So when we're told not to make an image of anything that is in heaven, I used to think that meant like angels and stuff like that. I've sort of come to believe that that's just a reference to the sky.

Stop making images of moons and stars and worshiping them is what God's saying. That's what pagans do. That's what normal people do, non-Christians. He says, for the customs of the people are vanity. That means useless. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.

They decorate it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. I'm not going to tell you don't have a Christmas tree. Some people use this verse to say that. If you're not worshiping your Christmas tree, it's not going to bother me. I not a big Christmas tree fan anyway but I okay with Christmas trees I don think that what he talking about here He says their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field And they cannot speak Our God is a God who spoke everything into existence by the word of his power, by the word of his mouth.

Faith in Jesus Christ comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And every single idol that people make cannot even speak. God calls them dumb. he says they have to be carried for they cannot walk there's a fun picture on the internet of a guy in some other country I think and there's a flood in his city and he's carrying his household idol on his shoulder to get it out of his house he's got to save his God from the flood our God is the one that sends the floods if he chooses he says do not be afraid of them he says for they cannot do evil Neither is it in them to do good.

So don't be superstitious like the people around you in the world. Don't give in to that temptation. It is a temptation that I don't think a lot of us realize how powerful it is and how much of it is seeped into our thinking. And so I think we need to be very careful and we think about things a little more deeply than we often do. So he says, there's none like you, O Yahweh. you are great and your name is great in might.

Who would not fear you, O king of the nations? It's a rhetorical question. What kind of person would not just fear the God who actually creates all the things that we carve the images out of that we worship? Why not worship the God who made it all? The God who made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them. So he says, for this is your due, for among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you.

It's a reminder, there's only one God, and there's no one like Him. All these false gods that we talk about, all the gods of the peoples, they're all worthless idols. There's no one that's like Him. You can take the best God of the best false religion that we can conceive of, and He's a loser. He's just a loser. He's actually a non-existent, I can't even say that, He's non-existent.

So yesterday at Ohio State, when people would come up and say, My God would never judge people like this. Well, of course not. Your God doesn't exist. Your God doesn't have any power. Your God can't even live. He's not even alive.

So he says, they are both stupid and foolish. The instruction of idols is but wood. Talking about the idols people make in worship in the pagan lands. He says, beaten silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Uphaz. it'd be like saying we got your idols in Cleveland you know there's nothing special about what you're making your idol out of it's just common stuff he says they are the work of the craftsmen and of the hands of the goldsmith their clothing is violet and purple they are the work they are all the work of skilled men he describes how these idols are made And then he says, but Yahweh is the true God.

He is the living God and the everlasting king. At his wrath, the earthquakes and the nations cannot endure his indignation. So while you're cutting down trees to carve out an idol, he can just quake the earth any time he wants. That's who's worthy of warrior. He says, when he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.

He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses. Every man is stupid and without knowledge. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of delusion. At the time of their punishment, they shall perish. these idols that people make, ultimately what we realize is people are worshiping themselves.

Because they're the creator of the idol. They fashion the idol. Charles Spurgeon, in this wonderful book I have of Spurgeon quotes by my friend Kerry Allen, who compiled them. He's a pastor in Illinois. If you ever go to the Chicago area, go visit my friend Kerry's church. Great guy.

Listen to this story Spurgeon told. When some men come to die, the religion which they themselves have thought out and invented will yield them no more confidence than the religion of the Roman Catholic sculptor who, on his deathbed, was visited by his priest. So now it's me talking, it's not the quote. There's a Roman Catholic guy who was a sculptor, and his priest came to visit him on his deathbed. so far it sounds nice right? unless you're reformed he says the priest said you are now departing out of this life and holding up a beautiful crucifix crucifix is the word we describe what Roman Catholics do where they make a cross but they have Jesus hanging on the cross so they've made an image of Jesus Christ out of wood or gold or whatever it's made out of and they call it a crucifix Just as a side note, Jesus is not on the cross.

He held up a beautiful crucifix and he cried, Behold your God who died for you. Alas, said the sculptor, I made it. There was no comfort for him in the work of his own hands. And there will be no comfort in a religion of one's own devising. that which was created in the brain cannot yield comfort to the heart. A God that you can make out of your own hands can't save you.

It's that simple. Turn to Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40. It's a big chapter. I think that song, Behold Your God, is pretty much quoting that chapter repeatedly. verse 18 to whom then will you liken God or what likeness compare with him so Isaiah is kind of giving people a chance here where are we going to compare God to so we can have our own way of thinking about him Because we don't like just believing God the way he's described himself.

So what can we compare him to? He says, an idol. He says, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts it for silver chains. Listen, he is too impoverished. 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. it seems kind of interesting he says he who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot what is he trying to say here whatever you worship is going to demand your time and your money and ultimately your life you worship the one true God you give him your time you're going to give money you're going to help poor people you're going to help the church and ultimately you're going to give your life for him if you have to.

A lot of saints have. Whatever you worship, it's going to demand your time and your money and your life. You want to worship an idol, you know what's going to happen even if you're poor. He who is too impoverished for an offering still goes out and buys the best stuff to make his idol. He has to find wood that won't rot so that his idol will last. it's all going to burn up so he says 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 stretch out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness skip down to 25 to whom then will you compare me that I should be like him says the Holy One there's no comparison there's nothing that you can we can take the most skilled man who ever lived and the most skilled woman who ever lived multiply them by a thousand so get 2,000 people that are the most skilled that ever lived have them craft the greatest possible image of God that they think they can make up and it'll just be an idol that God's going to burn up.

And it won't look anything like him and it won't point anyone to him. It won't help anybody in their worship. It won't aid them in understanding anything about him whatsoever. Only God's word does that. Do you think God's word is sufficient? Isaiah 46, more Old Testament here.

Bell bows down, nebo stoops, he says. Their idols are on beasts and livestock. These things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts. He says, They stoop, they bow down together, they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into activity. Listen to me, O house of Jacob. All the remnant of the house of Israel who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb, even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made and I will bear, I will carry and save. To whom will you liken me and make me equal? The people have a choice. They can worship God as he's revealed himself to them. Or, they want images. This was the first temptation when they left Egypt.

Egypt was filled with gods. With visible, touchable gods. Little g gods. not big G, little g gods, the false ones. And the Israelites wanted a God they could touch. They wanted a God they could just name. God, that's what I am that I am.

I'm not defined the way you define things. I'm outside of creation. You don't think about me in human terms. He condescends once in a while and gives some human terms to describe himself. It's called anthropomorphism and anthropopathism. These are just two big words.

It just means God speaks in human terminology and describes himself with forms and feelings just so we can have a clue. But he's nothing like that. He's immortal, invisible, the eternal God. So then he says, to whom will you liken me? Verse 6. Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god.

Then they fall down and worship. Their God is creative It fashioned by men They lift it to their shoulders they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there, for it cannot move from its place. And yet some people get down, and they bow down to their God, and to their idol, and they expect things to happen as a result. And this God can't even get himself up out of his place.

Can't even move, can't talk, can't see. He says, if one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble. Remember this and stand firm. Recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me.

He's the one that does all that he pleases. These false gods can do nothing. Psalm 115, turn there. right now we're just reviewing what does it mean what does it mean to have this idolatry going on and God is pointing out to his people that there is no common way that those who are not worshippers of the one true God and the way that worshippers of the one true God will worship so I just said that we're all going to sacrifice for our God we'll make sacrifice our life we'll sacrifice time and money so there is categorical commonality but when it comes to specifics he is altogether different in such a way that there is nothing nothing at all that is in common when the Israelites were sent into the land and they were told to destroy the altars that were there before them because even if they could be useful for their own altars but God wanted all new ones.

God doesn't want our pride involved in the worship of Him. He doesn't want our innovation. He wants us to worship Him as He has said. So in Psalm 115, Not to us, O Yahweh, not to us, but to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Why should the nations say, where is their God? so there's two there's two meanings here that you can pull out one is when Israelites suffer or when the people of God suffer one of the questions is well the people around are going to say well where's your God now right isn't that what they said to Jesus on the cross so they're going to mock and so one of the cries we have to God give us some give us some reason just to boast in you in this world you know be victorious over our enemies But second of all, the nations say, where is their God?

Because they can't see him. He's invisible. All they see is his effects. Nobody can come near to touching God. We can go down the street. We can go up to Seton Parish right now.

We can tear down their idols in about 25 minutes. Corey's probably got the equipment to do it, right? Yeah. We know how to demolish things, right? Nobody can touch our God. They can't even come close.

So the only thing they can do is hurt his people. And they try. But he says, why should the nations say, where is their God? And then he answers, well, our God's in the heavens. He does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

Just again, he's just pointing this out. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell. They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, they do not make a sound in their throat. It's reiterating what we've already talked about. They're worthless.

They can't do anything. Our God is pure act. That's a theological proper concept, but he's pure act. Our God can't do nothing. But verse 8, this is the scary one. Those who make them become like them.

So do all who trust in them. I think this is even a greater truth than what it says here. I think you become like what you worship, whether you worship an idol or whether you worship Christ. What is our goal as Christians? Romans 8, right? To be conformed to the image of Christ, who is the firstborn over all creation. your goal is to be conformed to his image to be daily and regularly sanctified which just means being made holy and if you're made more holy you're becoming more like Jesus Christ and to the extent that the people around you worship idols they become like them this is one of the reasons why we have a country that 250 years ago fought for freedom where it seems like at least half the people are actually fighting against it now because we have now started to worship something else people have worshiped safety they worshiped the state one of the tricky things that the devil has done is he has somewhat stopped us from creating little totem poles and little idols we put on the shelf in worship And he's actually given us some more invisible idols to worship.

The devil has created more things that are counterfeits to the one true God that deceive us. Because if I held up a picture of something that said, worship this, most people are smart enough to say no. but instead we create concepts like prestige, power, fame, money, safety. We create things that people then worship and submit themselves to. But if you worship Jesus Christ, you will become like him.

And that's why you see some of the divide you see. So if you turn to Revelation 21, verse 8. but as for the cowardly the faithless, the detestable as for murderers the sexually immoral sorcerers idolaters and all liars their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur which is the second death violating the second commandment is punishable by death. Worshiping a false idol is evidence that you don't worship the one true God.

So just like if a man walked in here and we found out that he had cheated on his wife, we would question him and we would seek his repentance. And if he refused to repent, We would eventually exercise a church discipline where we'd say, we can't even treat you like a believer if you will not repent of this obvious sin. But it is no different if you're an idolater, whereby you must repent.

And that is the evidence of salvation in your life. now each and every one of us is going to probably die with a couple of idols i still have trouble sometimes praying and not thinking about images of jesus i've seen i have to pray that god would remove those from me and we'll get into images of jesus in this as well i know some people probably have an argument in their mind like well images of jesus are okay and i'm going to tell you It's not. And I'll prove to you why. Either next week or a couple weeks from now.

But what you need to understand. Is that God's jealousy. Is a virtue. So just like. If you. If you commit adultery.

You have violated a covenant. With a spouse. And whatever elements. that are involved in that need to be destroyed. If a man in the church had a problem looking at pornography and he came repentantly admitting it, one of the first things we'd do is we would destroy all of it. We would try to create a barrier between him and that thing. And God sees idolatry as spiritual adultery. so if we think about what's one of the worst things that can happen to us would be adultery committing idolatry by worshipping false gods or worshipping God in a false way he sees it the same way we see adultery but it's way worse because he's completely faithful there's no excuse to turn away from him and so while you sit here you feel the weight of God's law on you when you realize that you may have more idols in your heart than you ever knew.

John Calvin called our hearts idol factories. So factories, something that just cranks out more of something. Your heart's an idol factory by nature. In Adam. Your flesh is constantly pulling you to disobey God's commands one way or another. Some of us just doodle. we create things we end up worshipping we don't even realize sometimes how deceptive it is I'm sure there's Christians out there who don't realize that some of this stuff is contrary to God's word like the Zodiac type stuff so that's why we educate people but what I want you to understand is that there was a man who came into this world and his name was Jesus Christ and he was born under the law and he never once created an idol he never once found a need to draw a picture of God or to worship a sculpture Although tempted to obey Satan himself he never once, for even a moment, entertained the thought of doing what Satan would tell him to do.

He only worshipped one God. And you cannot do that. Even if you're a Christian today and you believe you've been washed by the Holy Spirit and regenerated and you have a new heart and you've been walking with the Lord for a while and you heard some good preaching one time and you think now you can do a lot better than you used to do and I hope you can.

You cannot live a life of perfection, but Jesus Christ did. And the reason why Jesus Christ was crucified was so that God could forgive sinners even for the total idolatry. Jesus paid the penalty on the cross for the people who would worship other gods than he is. And so we call on you today to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that you shall be saved.

You don't need a picture of him. You don't need me to hold up a picture of some modern day man with a crown of thorns on his head or any of these things that they depict him with. The crucifixes in the Catholic Church. We almost, when Elijah and I were searching for churches, we found one that was definitely not going to be the one. not yours, yours was that one picture we were going to talk about, but we went to a Lutheran church here in Canal, and it was like, everywhere, images of Jesus.

You don't need those things. What you need to do is you need to believe God's call through His Word that all those who believe in Him are saved. All those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And so you call upon the name of Jesus, and that name has meaning behind it. And the meaning is that he's the perfect son of God who died and rose again in the fulfillment of the scriptures.

And everyone who comes to him is completely forgiven. And so if you've experienced that forgiveness, rest in the fact that Jesus did everything necessary for you to be saved, but then follow him and walk in him and worship him. There is nothing else worth worshiping. And I think it's worth a serious investigation into your own daily life to ask yourself, what things, what concepts may I be worshiping that I never even thought of?

Ask people in your home. Look at your, most of the phones now have a screen time thing. Just look at how much time you spend on different apps on your phone. How much time do you spend watching TV? I might come up with a million examples. Was your day destroyed yesterday because the Buckeyes lost?

Did that ruin your day? There were some people down there, did that ruin their day? Mandy's like, no. That's good. Certainly don't worship the Buckeyes. Some people do, I think.

Okay? So that's what you investigate. You ask God to reveal to you where your heart is not fully consecrated to him, where you have other gods before him. And then trust that Jesus forgave you. and he will continue to forgive you, but the constant call in Reformed preaching is repent. You constantly repent, and that is where you get your assurance. Your consistent repentance, that's God's promise to you that he has adopted you into his family.

Father, thank you for giving us your word that we may see the truth of the danger of idolatry. thank you for giving us a command a clear command that helps us be separate from the world a command that actually focuses our attention and our thoughts properly that we may have what is best and apprehend good thoughts of you too often we see your commands your laws and we see them as kill joys that are meant to keep us from fun and keep us from joy, but when we realize that your laws are what lead us to true understanding of joy, we pray that we would repent of our heart attitude and trust fully in the Savior, Jesus Christ, and his ability to sanctify us. in Jesus name I pray amen okay well we have a time now of prayer so for any of the men in the room who would like to pray in particular about what we just heard from God's word feel free to pray I'll have Jason finish the prayer time is that okay and even the guests, if you guys want to pray, you can. I just ask that you be loud because we want to hear your prayers and you don't have a microphone and sometimes there's a fan blowing. So just try to be loud and I'll give you guys some time to pray now.