10 Commandments - Exodus 20:4

to abstain from things polluted by idols. and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

And so it focuses on two things, one of which is idolatry and the ceremonies around it, which often involve animals, and blood, and strangulation, and those kinds of things, and sexual immorality, as two things that we're gonna highlight that say, yeah, all those laws in the Old Testament don't apply, but these are really important, and we need to make sure that those are at the forefront of what they're doing. And Paul has a little bit, as the church grows, and there are continued discussions, Paul has some more nuanced discussion as, as, Ben has talked about as he's gone through first Corinthians and they talked about what do you do? What does it mean that you stay away from food polluted by idols? And he did a great sermon about that and Paul wants to argue on one hand that right, you know We're about faith and there are no these idols aren't anything. They aren't real gods. They're false gods but So you can't really be hurt by them because they're not real. But there's also that important need to separate from those idols because other people believe that they are real. And other people, if you treat those idols as if they're real, then it confuses people. It goes back to that idea that you're like other people that, oh, they believe these are other gods too. And so certainly we have tried to stay away from idols as Christians, but the church has struggled with this over the years. Back to my question about what an iconoclast is, we've had two major incidents of iconoclasm in church history, and the first of these occurred in the Eastern church. what is now what we think of as Eastern Orthodoxy. And there were a lot of struggles in the Byzantine Empire over whether or not you should have icons. I don't know if any of you are familiar with Greek orthodoxy, but they are famous for having icons, which are pictures that they use as devotional items. And there was a battle. And literally, there were times in which people came through and destroyed the icons. They were iconoclasts. They destroyed it. But ultimately, the church in the East decided that this was something that they would continue to do. And they continue to do today. And if you've been looking at any of the reports from Ukraine and the war going on there, I saw one the other day where this icon had been recovered from a bombed out building. People were looking at it as semi-miraculous that it was protected. But that's a major part continuing in the Eastern Orthodox religion. And then, of course, it's really hard to outdo the Catholics and their images. If you've ever been to a cathedral in Europe, it can just be overwhelming, the number of images there. And if you go into a cathedral, in addition to sort of the front of the cathedral where the priest might give a homily or a sermon, there'll often be dozens of these little baby chapels where it's essentially they're blocked off sections and they'll have a statue of a saint or a painting of Jesus or some other thing and there'll be candles in front of it and there'll be a kneeling row and people can come into each of these areas and look at these images and it's supposed to focus focused their understanding of God. Part of what they said they were doing back in the Middle Ages was people couldn't read, and so you'd see the stories of the Bible acted out in these images. But when the Reformation came along, there were some folks who, again, became iconoclasts and literally went in some of the Catholic churches and started destroying the images because they considered it to be sacrilegious. Looking at those images, what's the first thing you think about in terms of images of God that we may have seen in Western art? What do we think of as God the Father? Big man, gray beard. If Michelangelo is to be believed, naked and muscular. What are the descriptions in the Bible of God the Father? Invisible. Now, to be fair, sometimes the Bible anthropomorphizes, i.e., makes him look like a man. When Isaiah sees him, what does he see? He sees the train. He sees the very bottom of the road. And you know, nothing above the knees. What does Moses see when he gets to see? A little bit of the back. You know, there's some pictures in Revelation where it talks about, you know, seeing God sitting on the throne. And what is the description? It's basically, Big bright lights above him, a big shiny glowy thing where his face is, and then lots of, again, miraculous shiny things at his feet. The idea is you're not really seeing him, but you're just overwhelmed by this presence. I don't know what Jesus looks like, but he's not blonde. I'm 100% certain he's not blonde. He doesn't look like that. You know that picture that you've seen a thousand times which is the same guy that people hang in their houses as a picture of Jesus? He doesn't look like that. How does the New Testament describe Jesus? In His man form. Actually, I think that's the Old Testament prophesying forward about Jesus. It doesn't say anything. It doesn't say anything. And at best, we have the idea from the Old Testament that the suffering servant is going to look like nothing and might even be homeless. There's nothing in the New Testament that says, Jesus came into town and people said, look at him. They said, listen to him. It was what he said and what he taught, not what he looked like. He wasn't like Saul. He wasn't like the tall brothers of David. He was there to be heard. So the two questions that we're supposed to answer as part of this series on each of the commands is how does Jesus fulfill this? And how does this relate to us? And so how does Jesus fulfill this command in the New Testament? He fulfills it in his person in one respect. The Bible says that he is the visible image of the invisible God, who he is. because he is the image. I think that's exactly right. We see in the Old Testament, God tells us not to build images, right? In the Old Testament, has God made images? People, right? We are God's image, not a bull, not a statue. We're the image of God, and he's placed us in His world to lead as His representatives. And Jesus is the perfect man, who's the perfect image of God. As Colossians 115 and following say,

He is the image of the invisible God. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on heaven or on earth, making peace by the blood of His cross.

So he is the perfect man, the perfect image of God, and he is the only way that the invisible God can be made visible. And in him, not in any image, not in any idea, God was pleased to dwell. And in 2 Corinthians 3, it talks about Moses, going in to see God and having to cover a veil over his face so that when he came out, they would not see the glory of God. But in 2 Corinthians 3.16 it says,

but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is spirit.

We're being conformed to Jesus. Our image is being made into His image through all that He has done for us. So how does this relate to us? One thing I already mentioned is other Christians have decided to use images in how they help people focus on the things of God, how they try to take things that are abstract and make them concrete, be easier for them to understand. We don't do that. But isn't it true that those kinds of things can be helpful to get people to focus on these kinds of things? Isn't it human nature that people latch on to those concrete things in order to help them understand? I mean, we even use real life examples in our sermons to try to connect the abstract ideas of scripture down to something concrete we can understand. I think it is true, I think it is human nature to actually say, all right, I can see this, I can put some feeling into it, helps me focus. The problem is God knows that. He knows that's part of our human nature and he told us not to do it. because as we had in the example of the snake, and in all these other things, it leads to idolatry. In fact, in chapter four of Knowing God, J.I. Packer makes a very strong argument that we should be very careful of even trying to do representational art of Jesus in any fashion, because of, The issues about, you know, all too many people do think that Jesus is a thin guy who's really nice and has blonde curly hair. And for some reason, in Renaissance art, he's the only guy with blonde curly hair. All the other ones have short hair and it's usually darker, and he's usually taller. And none of that is anything from the Bible. That's us trying to do what we do, which is to churn, our ideas of God into something that we've created and that this is what we think would look good. And just as we in the West have turned Jesus into this Nordic-looking white man, there are, you know, people in other cultures who they want Jesus to look like them, right? And so there are liberationist theologians who say, hey, we should have pictures of Jesus as a black man because he speaks to those who are downtrodden and the people of Africa who have been through all of this. And I don't think that Jesus was a sub-Saharan African any more than he was a Scandinavian. He was a Middle Eastern Jew, and we shouldn't try to put our own conceptions on what he is. We're careful about how we use images in our worship here, right? We don't have any statues of Jesus in this main hall. At times, we've had flags up in the front. And we've removed those as we've thought about it over time. We had an American flag up in the front and we moved that out of that location. We had a Christian flag, what could be wrong with that? We moved that out of the location. We try to keep that space focused on the word, on God, and not introducing these images. There was a time when we had a, not a Christmas tree, but a Chrismon tree, which was supposed to be a way to have a Christmas tree without calling it a Christmas tree, and keeping it a little less flashy, and having sort of Christian element on it only. We don't do that anymore. We've thought about that, and we don't want to introduce those kinds of things. When I first came to the church, the stained glass window wasn't up there. We had a wonderful older lady who donated money for a stained glass window. And the original version of what was suggested by her and her representative was one of those classical pictures of Jesus praying in the garden. in the very traditional Nordic Jesus kind of way. And we decided not to do that. Now that said, should we have done what we did? Should we have the cross up there on a stained glass window? Is that acting as an image? Someone who's a member now has asked some very pointed, penetrating questions about why we have that dove at the top which represents the Holy Spirit. Is that appropriate? How many people knew there was a dove at the top of the stained glass window? Okay. So I think these are questions that we ought not to be afraid to answer or think about. But remember that God is invisible. God the Father is invisible. God the Spirit is invisible. And although God the Son was made visible here on earth, the scripture made a point of not telling us anything about Him and He is now not visible to us. He will eventually be visible to us as will the amazing, miraculous, ineffable, hard to put into speech vision of what God looks like. If you see any descriptions of God in scripture it's always like It just makes a crazy picture because it's just trying to show glory and they can't describe the glory that they're seeing. And so we have that to look forward to. In the meantime, we're called to worship in spirit and truth, not dependent on images, not going along with the world or even human nature, which makes us want to, you know, have things that we can touch and put our hands on and know that we can trust in God. We can trust in the God that we don't see. We can have faith even though we do not see. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful that you sent your son Jesus Christ to be the perfect man. We are thankful that He was also the perfect image of you, that He was fully God. And Father, we pray that you would give us faith to worship you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit faithfully. even knowing that as we cannot see now, we can trust in your promises which have been fulfilled throughout the ages and recorded for us to know that we might trust in you. And Father, we look forward to that day when we will truly see you and that we will be in your presence in a way that we can't even imagine now. that will make any feeble human attempt at trying to figure out what you look like, look like stick figures on a wall. Won't even be, not even conceivable in our current bodies. And Father, we thank you for the great gift that we have in Jesus Christ. that we have been saved to know You. And Father, we do pray that You would keep us from idols, whether they be statues or pictures or whether they just be ideas that We love to have our hands on, whether it be goods, whether it be money, whether it be physical pleasure, all the different ways that we put physical things above the spiritual things. And Father, we pray that you will keep us to the end, faithful and from polluting ourselves with idols. And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.