Images of Christ

Exodus 32, verse 4. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. when Aaron saw this he built an altar before it and Aaron made a proclamation and said tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh turn back to Exodus 20 I'm not exactly going to be exegeting that verse that was just one of the verses that came to mind with this week's topic Exodus 20 verse 3 or 4 to 6 will remind you what we're preaching about.

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. So this week is, according to my plans, you know what Proverbs says about the plans of men.

So my plan, though, is that this is the last week that I am going to maybe belabor the point of the second commandment. I think this may be the 10th sermon in the series. And so when I initially thought Ten Commandments, maybe two weeks each, 20 weeks, I think I was wrong since I don't even know if I'll get through the Fifth Commandment in the next 10 weeks at this rate.

But this week I want to look at the last couple phrases there of this commandment in Exodus 20. but then in particular what I want to review is a particular application of the second commandment that I think is largely misunderstood and that is whether or not we are permitted to have images of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. So it may seem obvious to some of you it may seem obvious to you in one direction or another actually but because Jesus Christ became incarnate because he actually had a likeness because he had a form because he took on human form there is a special argument that we make to discuss whether images of the incarnate Lord are permitted or even helpful to the church and so I will spoil the conclusion and tell you the thesis now will be that no, they are absolutely not permitted In fact, it is idolatry. And we are better off if we avoid it as much as possible to the point of even trying to avoid even looking at images of Jesus that somebody else has created.

In fact, one of the reasons we're in the building we're in, well, this was the best building anyway, but the other building that Elijah and I were taking consideration of on that wonderful summer day when we were looking at buildings, or as the spring day, I almost had to gouge my eyes out when we left. There were so many images. But first, I want to talk about this phrase in Exodus 20, verse 5, where God says He's a jealous God.

We talked about what that meant last week. And then He says, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me. so this is a passage that speaks of something that people will bring up a lot called a generational curse and you'll hear phrases like generational curse in particular they are used often times in circles that would be more what we consider to be continuationist a lot of times we call them Pentecostal or charismatic I don't like calling them that because I'm Pentecostal because I believe in Pentecost and I'm charismatic because I believe in gifts of the spirit. So I actually don't like that somebody hijacked two very biblical words.

The fact of the matter is these people, our continuation is to often cite generational curses for whatever reason. And one argument people make is that the son shall not suffer for the sins of his father. That's one of the commandments that Ezekiel gives to people. And And yet it says here, God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

So I don't want to dig deep into this verse. But what I want to communicate to you is that he doesn't necessarily say he visits the children of fathers and punishes them for the sins of their father. That's not what it says. And sometimes that's how this is read or interpreted. What it says is God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

And so what I want you to understand that it's saying is that children will often imitate their parents. That means children will imitate the good things their parents do. and children will also end up imitating the wicked things their parents do. One of the things when you run into an abuser a lot of times you can look at the person and say who hurt you Because a lot of times when there an abuser in this life it somebody who when they were a kid they watched somebody else do something abusive, and then they just ended up growing into doing the same thing themselves.

Even though they hated it, they end up becoming what they hated. And so, if you just look around you, I'm not going to try to prove this extensively, But if you just look even in your own family, look at yourself, look at your children, look at your grandparents, your parents. I think you're going to notice that, yeah, you know what? We do sort of sin in the same way sometimes.

And we pass down, maybe it's even some genetic traits that cause us to be more disposed to certain sins than others. It's not an excuse, of course. But the fact of the matter is, is it just seems that children follow in the iniquities of their parents. if you look at some of the world leaders we have you know we thought we think Hillary's bad like just think how bad Chelsea's going to end up right she follows in her mom's footsteps and a lot of times people come along with more pride they end up with more power and they do worse than their parents but God intervenes and one of the reasons why a number of you are here today and at least in some ways are not actually living out the sins of your parents in doing exactly what you inherited even from birth and what you learned as a child is that God intervened and gave you a new heart and he's given you a hunger and a thirst for righteousness that causes you by being shown his steadfast love to have some good desires to repent of those things and so God shows steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Well, nobody loves him and keeps his commandments. So in the end, this is just telling us that by God's mercy and election, some people are going to basically escape these types of curses. Otherwise, it would go on forever, right? I mean, if God didn't intervene, we would just be worse and worse and worse. And some of us would just be more inclined to lust and others of us to stealing and others of us lying.

There's some people today who their inclination is even to forms of self-righteousness that actually make them really good people. Some of your best neighbors out there are religious people that don't do all the really bad sins. They just do the ones in their heart and they do them more privately because they actually enjoy being seen as righteous. So God shows steadfast love to thousands.

My Bible says thousands of generations. Just there's generations and generations of people who are blessed because of God's steadfast love. And I won't prove this probably ever, but I have a theory. And when we look at the United States of America and we can look at the history of the United States of America and we can see some pretty bad things being done even toward the very beginning of the country. and some people will ask why has God been so gracious to the United States and blessed us in the way he has when in many ways we are as evil as other countries around the world and I think you'd have to have some real rose colored goggles on to not see that I think one of the answers may be that if you look at also the history of the church you look at the history of Christianity and when you consider that the United States was effectively born out of the Reformation, the United States was born out of the group of people who were really trying to seek religious freedom and trying to worship God in the way that he sees fit in his Bible.

And I actually suspect that there were some great men of old and some great women of old who were faithful people who prayed for this country. and in some ways God is still granting the prayers of some of his saints from even a couple hundred years ago, maybe three or four hundred years ago even before we were a nation and some of these other nations where you see a lot of darkness and you see a lot of people that are trapped in darkness and idolatry I fear for them that this is a that they are just suffering that they were not prayed for in the same way and so pray for the future of our country pray for pray for the place where your grandchildren and grand-grandchildren and generations you'll never see may have to live pray maybe god will be gracious to them because of your prayers okay so one quick verse in leviticus and then we're going to spend the bulk of our time in deuteronomy eventually just a reminder about idolatry God hates it. In Leviticus 26.30, you don't have to turn there telling the people what's going to happen because of their disobedience. He says, you shall eat the flesh of your sons and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.

That's their curse. And he says, and I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols. and my soul will abhor you. God hates idolatry. I want you to remember whenever you read of a curse that God gives the people, that if Jesus Christ died for your sins, Jesus had to basically eat that curse himself.

So he didn't literally eat people, but he had to pay. He had to pay worse than that. Okay, Jesus Christ is God. Matthew. Not Matthew, sorry. In John 10.

Quick survey. Jesus Christ is God in John 10 verse 30 I and the Father are one And the Jews picked up stones to stone him because he proclaimed himself to be equal with God In John chapter 8 Jesus says your father Abraham this is verse 56 sorry He says, your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. so the Jews said to him you are not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham and Jesus said to them truly truly I say to you before Abraham was I am and then they picked up stones to stone him again or throw at him and so these people understood very clearly that Jesus an obvious man in their presence was proclaiming himself to be equal with God and so I don't want to go through an entire sermon series on Christology to prove he's God I like to believe that we're at a point here that we can believe he's God.

That you can read chapter 8 of our confession that describes Jesus, the God-man. And you can also read the creeds, like the Chalcedonian Creed, that talk about him being truly God and truly man. He came from heaven, emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. It doesn't mean he emptied himself of his divinity. He took on another nature. He's one person with two natures.

Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ is also man. So now we have the problem. And the problem is, if we're told in the Bible that we are not to make an image of God, can we make an image of a man? if any one of you in the last probably 24 hours has taken a picture of yourself or someone in your family you've made an image right? this is very common we read a history book today about John Owen and we looked at picture after picture that was portraits of people who lived at the time of John Owen and at no point did I feel any moral obligation to repent of breaking the second commandment.

So the second commandment is about how we worship the one true and living God. That's why I read the verse about the golden calf. Because in the golden calf passage, the thing that we often forget, this is Exodus 32, is that Aaron was proclaiming that the golden calf is the God, he said these are the gods that brought you out of the land of Egypt. He wasn't saying worship this other god.

He didn't break the first commandment in that sense. He was saying you need to come to the real God, but you can come through this visual way that you can understand better, a way that feels more comfy to you, a way that makes you feel like you did something, a way that makes you feel like you can touch something, because you know what? It was pretty scary on the side of the mountain with peals of thunder and God's voice. so these people wanted something they had a little more control over and so I want you to understand that the first commandment tells us not to worship any other God the second commandment is telling us how to come to the one true God so Deuteronomy 4 if you turn there we're going to look at Deuteronomy 4 and then we'll look a little bit at Deuteronomy 5 not a lot, but Deuteronomy 5 is interesting because if you read Deuteronomy 5, you'll think you're accidentally reading Exodus 20.

Because in Deuteronomy 5, we see almost word for word the same set of Ten Commandments that God gave everyone in Exodus 20. But it's not quite word for word. It's slightly different and nuanced in a couple places, like the Fourth Commandment and the Tenth Commandment. But here's an interesting tidbit for you, Reformed folk. Here we are in October, and in four weeks we should remember at least that Martin Luther began the Reformation, and that was on October 31st.

And the Roman Catholic Church looked at Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and the Roman Catholic Church saw Exodus 20 and said, well, you shouldn't have any images and worship God that way, and they didn't like a whole commandment dedicated to idolatry and creation of statues that they worship or that they say venerate. So the Roman Catholic Church said, you know what? We still need Ten Commandments because God called it the Decalogue.

He calls it the Ten Commandments. And so what the Roman Catholic Church did is they said, we're going to split up the last commandment into two. So you shall not covet your neighbor's wife is nine. you shall not covet your neighbor's house as ten in the Roman Catholic list of ten commandments. This is actually why I was so utterly confused when I became a Christian when I started reading lists of the ten commandments because I had them memorized in the Roman Catholic version and I knew which ones were which.

And I thought I had done something wrong. But in fact, the Roman Catholic Church said, we're going to get rid of this pesky second commandment that prohibits the use of images in our worship and instead we'll just split the one on coveting into two commandments. They have their reasons. None of their reasons are good. None of them are exegetical or grammatical.

If anything, it's just a doctrine of demons. But it's an interesting thing to know if you talk to a Roman Catholic because when you come to that, they think that Deuteronomy was like an updated version of the original ones. And so even if they agree that Exodus has that commandment, they tend to think it's not there. So just a little tidbit of information for you.

So Deuteronomy 4.15, let's look at some text. And then I going to tell you why you can have images of Jesus And then we all enjoy the rest of the night Therefore watch yourselves very carefully God says And then he says, since you saw no form on the day that Yahweh spoke to you at Horeb, out of the midst of the fire, he's talking about when he gave the Ten Commandments in the first place. He says, beware, lest you act corruptly. and then he says by making carved images for yourselves in the form of any figure the likeness of male or female so my challenge to your roman catholic friend is tell them to go back and read the chapter before deuteronomy 5 if they want to get some idea whether deuteronomy 5 suddenly allows idolatry and images so let's think about this for just a moment.

It almost seems too obvious. He says, you saw no form on the day that Yahweh spoke to you out of horror. He reminds them that when the law was given in the first place to them, they didn't see any form. God is invisible. You don't see God. There's no form of God.

Now we have to deal with the fact that Jesus Christ had a form. Right? He was a real man. One of the accusations that's given against people like we are, is that we are docetists. And hopefully I'm saying it right. I forgot to bring any notes today.

But the docetists were these guys that actually belittled Christ's humanity so much that they didn't actually give him true humanity. And so they were declared heretics. And so the accusation is, if you don't want to show pictures of Christ, you're basically a docetist. That's what people will say to people like me and hopefully all of you. I think we should be in agreement because I believe it's quite confessional, 1689 confessional, to avoid images of Christ.

But he says, beware lest you act corruptly. And it's interesting because if I told you, beware lest you act corruptly, like let's say at dinner I decide I'm going to give you a warning, you could probably think of a dozen things I might tell you not to do, and making a carved image might not be one of them. But in God's eyes, this is like the very first thing.

And I'm going to kind of warn you here, all the sin you commit, you can trace it back to violating at least commandment 1 or 2 also. And probably commandment 10. But every sin you commit, at some point when you're committing that sin, you're making a false god in your mind or you're worshipping God falsely. And so, he says, you don't want to act corruptly by making a carved image for yourself in the form of, he says, any figure.

So notice, he didn't say in the form of any figure that isn't like my son. He didn't give any qualifications to this. And I know sometimes in Scripture we see words like all and we have to figure out, well, does he really mean all people, like all the time, everywhere there, or does he mean something else by it? But in the context, there's no context here to indicate that there's some exceptions to this.

When he says you saw no form, that's the preface. No form means there was no form, so you don't make a form. You're going to be tempted to because you're weak and you're finite and you want to comprehend things and you want control. and your pride doesn't want to release enough control to God Almighty that you just worship Him based on what you've heard.

And then he says, the likeness of male or female. So now it just gets like... I mean, if idolatry and images of Jesus was like an almost dying person, like He just shoved a stake in the heart of the person. Like, you can't make an image of a male or female. So what do you... I mean, like he's making it so specific here.

I don't know how you can apply this to Jesus Christ then. He's a male. Then he says the likeness of any animal that is on earth, because that's going to be our temptation eventually, like a golden calf, right? That's our temptation. Our temptation is to say, well, I worship God, but I just do it through this other way. And my faith is very personal.

And you shouldn't judge it. That's what people will say to you, right? He says, 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. So, you know, you make your little Jesus fish. Don't worship it, okay? I don't think it's wrong to make images or symbols.

This is about how we worship. And you'll see, if you review all these chapters, and we already went over this earlier, that the second commandment prohibition about making images has all to do with your worship. And so there are certain things that make sense that we could have an image of that's not used for worship. And then there's one thing that we can never make an image of, and that's God Almighty.

And I'll argue today that if you even try to make an image of the human version of God, Jesus Christ, if you try to make an image of the incarnate version of Christ, you are inherently also making an image of God. and if you could make an image of Christ, it ought to be worshipped. So we'll get to that in a minute. But the fact of the matter is, is even if you could make an accurate representation of Him, that means you should worship that image.

Because if it's Him, it's Him. But God says not to worship Him that way. So then He says, Beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven. Verse 19, And when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them. things that Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.

Don't worship the stars. You realize, like, a lot of people think of it The whole zodiac, that's completely based on the constellations. And when you can see them at the different times of year, because we have a, you know, the earth revolves around the sun, and there are certain constellations you just don't see part of the year because the sun's in between us and them.

And then there are certain constellations that we see really bright because the sun's on the other side. It's just that simple. And for centuries and millennia now, human beings have noticed these constellations moving around that God gave us so we could keep time and so we could have an idea like where the earth is at any point and we can start to solve some mathematical things and all the great stuff that's been able to be done.

And so we can maybe look at the countless stars in the sky and be a little bit in awe of the one who made it and instead we've created a little device where we can sell little scrolls to people and make them think that tomorrow is going to be a good or a bad day because Leo is fighting with Taurus or whatever. You see what I'm saying? It's preposterous.

And the irony is, is the very same people who will call you stupid for believing in the God who created all of it are the ones that worship these things. But they'll use a different word for it. They won't call it worship. But they do. But Yahweh, verse 20, has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace. Out of Egypt.

Egypt was a furnace of affliction. and God rescued them from there to be a people of his own inheritance as you are this day. You're God's people, that's what he's saying. All these stars and stuff, they were given for these other people and you know what? Some of them are going to commit idolatry and they're going to pay for it. I'll have my vengeance, I'll repay, God says.

That you're my people, you are not going to worship the way they do. You realize God doesn't even want us to imitate the worship of the pagans. You get that, right? He doesn't want us to imitate it. Furthermore, Yahweh was angry with me because of you, and he swore that I should not cross the Jordan. So this is Moses letting the people know.

And that I should not enter the good land that Yahweh your God is giving you for an inheritance. For I must die in this land. I must not go over the Jordan. but you shall go over and take possession of that good land. Take care lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you. Again, and make a carved image. All the warnings Moses could give the people, of all the bad things they could do and will do.

I mean, these people would eventually be sacrificing their own children to pagan gods. But remember, it started with the pagan gods. Nobody wakes up and obeys commandment one and obeys commandment two and then starts sacrificing their children. It starts by turning away from the one true God. And he says, and you make a carved image. And he says, the form of anything that Yahweh your God has forbidden you.

So he reminds them again, they do not need to make these images. And he says, for Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. He reminds them. He says, who weren't at the mountain. When they have grandchildren who don't remember Egypt. He's telling them, you don't need to make an image to teach them.

So imagine here, you're a good Israelite guy or maybe you're a good Christian guy and you want to lead your family, right? You're a homeschool mommy. You feel the burden of wanting to teach your children about the Lord. and someone says, well, hey, here's this book that will teach your kid about God. And you say, oh, there's pictures. My kids don't know words yet.

Words are hard for kids to grasp. I think if you study a little psychology, which I don't encourage you to study, but you just read some basic things. I think people don't really form a good use of language until they're like 14 or 15. And that's like girls. This is why when you meet a college-age guy and you try to talk to him, he's like, because boys are even slower.

We don't actually understand language well until we're much older. I think it's called rhetoric. We understand memorization. This is why classical education is what people like. Memorization when kids are young, and then a little math and logic in the middle age. And then later they can write better.

And they can grasp some things. So the temptation is, well, I better show my kid a picture of Jesus so they know what I mean when I talk about Jesus. Or what if I go to a tribe somewhere where I don't know their language? How am I going to give them the gospel unless I can open up a little cube and show them Jesus walking on water and then later raising from the dead?

The Westminster Larger Catechism, when asked this question, should we use images of Jesus to teach people that don't understand these things, it says we should not try to be wiser than God. God said don't use them. So we don't use them. So maybe some of you should work a little harder to translate for people. Or maybe some of you should work a little harder to figure out how to teach people who don't quite understand language yet.

Maybe I need to. Maybe somebody comes up here and says, you know what, you're a good preacher, but the kids don't understand your words. I don't know if you ever noticed, sometimes I use a big word and then I say it again but I redefine it I do that a lot because I want people to understand the words I saying And a lot of the people in this room are younger and probably haven done as many crosswords as I have You want to learn vocabulary, just read and do crosswords, I think.

So verse 27, so just remember this is an admonition against Israel, and it's got a larger context that's applicable to us as the church. He says, and Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples. We see that happen with Israel. He says, you will be left few in number among the nations where Yahweh will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone.

So you want to serve gods made of wood and stone and gold and silver and all the different machinations of your mind and all the things you can imagine God to be. And even if in your heart nobody knows, except you, that you've got little pictures of Jesus when you pray and you've got little ideas in your head of what God really looks like. Even if it's only in your heart, He knows and God promises He'll just cast you into a place where that's all you'll have to worship.

He'll be so far from you, the only thing you'll have to worship is wood and stone. The work of human hands, He reminds us, that neither seeing nor hearing nor eating nor smell. This is why He says, I'll cast your dead bodies on the dead bodies of your idols. The difference is God doesn't have to kill your idols. They're already dead. But then here's the promise, and this is what I want you to have some hope here, because some of you have committed gross idolatry.

Some of you are like me, or like I was, and you got saved, and you went to churches that taught that images of Jesus were okay. And although I will say, I don't mean this to be proud. I was never comfortable with images of Jesus as long as I've been a Christian. I never liked them, but I never understood them to be sin, and I never opposed them like I would today.

And so some of you have committed idolatry. I was looking through my Amazon purchase history. I'll make another story about the pastor here. I was looking through my Amazon purchase history the other day just for fun. I've been with Amazon for like 15 years or something. and I found some purchases from before I was a Christian and they were these weird like spirituality books that I used to read.

I was committing idolatry. I was seeking to worship something but I wouldn't worship the one true God. So I basically found anything else and he went ahead and fulfilled my heart's desire at the time and thank God he had mercy on me. But he says, from there you will seek Yahweh your God and you'll find him if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.

When you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to Yahweh your God and obey his voice. For Yahweh your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. Verse 33. did any people ever hear the voice of a God speaking out of the midst of a fire as you have heard and still live has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation by trials by signs by wonders and by war by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and by great deeds of terror all of which Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes to you it was shown that you might know Yahweh as God out of heaven he let you hear his voice that he might discipline you.

And on earth he let you see his great fire and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. And we'll just skip down to 4. He says, therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, that you may prolong your days in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you for all time.

And then if you skip down to verse chapter 5. and he says in verse 8 you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth it's the same text as Exodus 20 and yet the Catholics think it doesn't apply alright so I think we've established we don't worship God with images like stars in the sky. We don't want to have all these visual aids in our worship. But the question becomes, okay, Jesus Christ is God.

Yet Jesus Christ is a man. So the argument might be, hey, I'm just drawing a picture of a historical figure just like if I drew a picture of Julius Caesar. so if I draw a picture of Julius Caesar you don't accuse me of idolatry do you if I draw a picture of Julius Caesar you don't look at me and say that's not instructional for students in a school because we don't know what he really looked like we don't make the same arguments against pictures of Julius Caesar that sometimes we make about pictures of Jesus Christ and so I want to give you a few reasons why so first of all if you're worshipping Julius Caesar it's a whole different problem but a few reasons why are this one the people who saw Jesus Christ in the flesh the apostles by just implication they're prophets as well I say the apostles and prophets usually that means the Old Testament guys but I'm talking about the actual apostles the guys who wrote the Bible for us didn't include any pictures of him. If that was the only argument I legitimately had, which it's not, that's the weakest one, that's why I say it first.

But if that was the only argument I had of why you should not create images of Christ yourself that would be a pretty good one I think The people who saw Him who could have drawn pictures of Him did not give us these images Okay, now somebody created this image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin, right? And they said, if you've heard of the Shroud of Turin, it's probably another Catholic thing, right? Where they say the thing He was wrapped in has His face imprinted in it, and you can't actually test it because then you're, you know.

But we already know it's garbage. We don't need an archaeological test on it to verify that. The people who could have given you a picture of Jesus, the people who God actually commissioned to tell us about Jesus, to write about Jesus, to be the foundation of everything we do today in Christianity, to give us the New Testament, didn't find it necessary to draw a picture of them.

And you know what else they didn't do? I'll challenge you read the New Testament you don't even see a description of him I mean it doesn't even say like Jesus and Peter came up and Jesus sure was taller than Peter like there's nothing I don't know if he had a beard we don't know any of it in fact we don't even have to think about it and that was one of the things I was at a Black Lives Matter march and somebody comes up to me and starts telling me Jesus was black and a lot of times people argue back like well he probably looked Middle Eastern and they have all these theories and I'm like, who cares? God didn't want us to know.

He could have been whatever God wanted him to look like. I don't have to guess. I don't have to imagine what a first century Jew might have looked like. Because I bet you they had a wide variety of looks too. Just like people in the United States do right now. The point is, God didn't want you focusing on how he looked even as a human being. it wasn't important to who he is I'm going to take out my phone which I don't do much during church but there's a there's a quote that I really wanted to read to you and I forgot to forgot to print my quotes this is a man named Thomas Watson in a book called a body of practical divinity.

So the second reason I'm going to give you why images of Christ are prohibited, unhelpful, and in fact sinful, is that you can't actually represent Jesus. You can't physically do it because He is God. Amen. Tis Christ Godhead, united to his manhood that makes him to be Christ. Therefore, to picture his manhood when we cannot picture his Godhood is a sin because we make him to be but half Christ.

We separate what God hath joined. We leave out that which is the chief thing which makes him to be Christ. That's Thomas Watson. If you draw a picture, let's say, for example here, we forget the fact that we have no pictures or descriptions of Jesus. Let's say you actually found a 2,000-year-old fragment of a document and it said this is exactly what he looked like.

And you could draw a picture like those mug artists sketch and they can get some pretty good pictures, right? let's say you could draw a perfect picture of him the only thing you could draw is what's visible and even if you drew a perfect picture of what's visible of when he was a man you have now left out his godhood you have not drawn a picture of Jesus Christ you've drawn a picture of half of his person will say, even though he's not a half of, he's not half God, half man, so that's not a good phrase. Don't think of it that way. But you cannot represent him because he's God.

So even if you could draw an accurate picture of him, which you can't, which is the other argument, right? Thirdly, let's say you could draw an accurate picture of Jesus Christ. Right? So first of all, Jesus Christ, we don't know what he looks like, so we can't even draw an accurate picture, so what's the point, right? Even a faceless baby. So I hate to blow this for some of you, your manger scenes.

The little Jesus in there, that's bad. That's a sin. It's not what he looked like. It's not how we're to come to God. I know they're fine. I looked at them for years.

It makes me mad that atheists want people to tear them all down, but at the same time, I want to tear down at least part of it. It's an interesting thing. but thirdly let's say you could draw Jesus Christ and let's say somehow there was some artistic way which there's not that you could represent his divinity let's say there was a way where you could make it clear like this is what Jesus really looks like and when people looked at it they knew that's Jesus and that's God that's the Christ that saved me that's the real Jesus tell me what should that evoke from a believer's heart? Worship.

Well, if I'm going to draw an image that's actually so accurate of him that it evokes worship from you, we're now violating the commandment. Do you see the logic? Okay, so it's a little bit less of an exegetical thing here at the end. But the whole point is we have to apply logic We are to believe what the scripture says explicitly and by necessary inference So we can necessarily infer So it of necessity it is needed that we draw the deduction from what we know from scripture See, I just did it, right?

It's needed that we deduce that images of Jesus Christ are wrong, either because they're completely inaccurate, or if they happen to be accurate they should evoke worship from us which is exactly what God doesn't want us to do with images. So now one of the other arguments people give is that Jesus Christ images of Jesus Christ are almost impossible to although they say they're impossible to eliminate from your mind. And my argument back is you could say that about all manner of sin and unrighteousness that doesn't make it permissible it just means that we're really depraved and we're really wicked and we should maybe pray a lot more about god not only forgiving us of this gross idolatry but pray that god would help us to have power over it and i'll tell you what my life changed when i when i read a suggestion from someone that said that I should pray as earnestly that God would remove images of Jesus that are stuck in my mind from years of seeing them.

Not even ones I made, just, they're everywhere, right? That I should pray as earnestly about those types of images as I did once about pornographic images. And you know what? God answers those prayers. And He forgives us. And He helps us to not have these thoughts that we once had.

He's very gracious to us. Quick story. I was in Tampa at the Super Bowl. We were preaching the gospel, and one of the guys on my team, I didn't realize this, so this is one of the reasons I'm probably not going to go back for a while. I was asked to go again by someone, and I guess you guys can pray about that. I don't think I will.

But one of the guys on my team hung up these gigantic posters with the picture of whatever somebody thinks Jesus looks like, right? It was some good-looking actor guy with a crown of thorns or whatever. You know what I mean? And I saw these pictures, and I actually thought they were from the Seventh-day Adventists down the road who was preaching close to us.

And me being the conscientious iconoclast that I am, I tore them down, right? So you can say what you want about the Eighth Commandment or whatever, but I prioritized the second commandment. I ripped these signs down. And then I thought, oh, there was a guy who was technically with me, okay? This isn't a reformed team, all right? And this guy starts arguing with me.

I said, hey, man, I just said, hey, at the very least, just brother to brother, if you could just keep those away just out of love for me, I'm really sensitive to that. I didn't even try to play the, like, you're totally wrong, this is a sin card. You know, hey, I'm just sensitive, like, love your brother. I don't care, call me weak or just take him down, you know?

And the guy starts saying, people need to see this. People need to see this picture so they know who we're preaching about. And I looked at him and I said, do you really think the problem in our culture is that we don't have enough images of Jesus floating around? The fact that he knows people will walk by and know who it is, is the problem. They need to hear the preaching.

They need to hear about sin and righteousness. And they need to be convicted in their spirit by the Holy Spirit because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, not visions of them, not Muslims having dreams of them in faraway countries. It's by the word of Christ and the Spirit applying it to the hearts of people. So you want to teach your kids about Jesus Christ?

Read the Bible to them. You want to teach them about Jesus Christ more? Read the Bible to them more. You want to teach your neighbors about Jesus Christ? speak the word of God to them. And I'll dare say at the risk of being relevant like love them some other practical way as well like Jesus would love people. I'm not opposed to doing good works for people just because I see the primacy of preaching and salvation.

And so Jesus Christ is God. He is represented in various ways throughout scripture with symbols that are not images that are used for worship. So the serpent in the wilderness, and Moses raised up the serpent in the wilderness, and everybody would look at the serpent, right? And that was the whole point. They weren't looking at an image of Jesus. They were looking at a symbol.

When God calls Jesus the lion of the tribe of Judah, if you think of a lion, you're not sinning. Okay? Because Jesus isn't a lion. It's a metaphor. And now if you start worshipping a lion, that's different. If you're praying to God and you start thinking of a lion, you think like, oh, that's Jesus.

Well, that's what you want to avoid. But understanding that the Bible uses symbolism to teach us about God, that's not sinning. When God says His mighty right hand, if you imagine a right hand, I think that's actually what God's trying to make us think because He has to give us terms that we can understand. That's awfully different from drawing pictures of God.

So just like, I don't know, this is maybe a bad example, but I'm not a good artist. I'm a I'm probably worse at drawing than I am at singing but if I drew a picture of one of you and I held it up and said here's the picture I drew of you isn't it flattering doesn't it look just like you most of you would kind of be annoyed because usually we think we're a little better looking than we are anyway and some guy's picture he draws isn't really helpful but imagine how much more offensive it is to a holy God who's infinite and invisible and immortal and has no form imagine how much more awkward it is the best picture we could possibly think we drew of him why don't we just trust the pictures he's given us? Why don't we just believe the words that he's given us?

They're sufficient. And don't buy all these arguments about people need to see pictures of Jesus. They don't. And so for some of us in here, this was maybe a brand new thing. I recognize this. I'm not naive.

There was a day that learning about pictures of Jesus actually violating the second commandment was brand new to me. And I thought, well, it was not anything I was ever taught before. And if that's true, then a lot of people I know are like regularly sinning. And I couldn't let that be the reason that I opposed a teaching that was biblical. And so one of the difficulties I think we do face is when we live in a culture with people who interpret the Scripture differently from us, we do have to try to look at the, we'll say the triage of sin, where are there what I'll call good, reformed, there's even reformed people that believe images of Christ are acceptable.

So am I saying all those people are nothing but heathen idolaters basically savages and they all hellbound I not necessarily saying that But at the same time there a warning in Scripture about our idolatry and about making carved images and images that we create of our own imagination of God in order to worship Him. And it's a very serious warning. And Jesus says the path is narrow.

And so I encourage us to all watch ourselves very closely. and to watch those we love closely and to help those in the church. And if anyone has questions about some of this stuff, there's an amazing amount of really good writing on this. It's like sad how little press this topic gets actually because there's a lot of good writing on it. There's a lot of good help for it.

And so that stuff's available. If you have any questions of me, if I didn't prove it to you, that's okay. There's a lot more behind all of this than what I was able to share today. So remember, God is a spirit, infinite, invisible, and unchangeable, right? And so He's a spirit. He must be worshipped in spirit and truth.

And so we do not worship Him through images, including the one image that He Himself made, Jesus Christ.