No Images — On The Second Word

Text — Exodus 19:4, 20:22-26, 34:17, Lev. 26:1-2, Dt. 4:15-24, 11:16-17, 27:15
Subject — Images
Theme — Prohibition of Images
Proposition — The consideration of why God prohibits images should once again awaken within us the grandeur of the God we serve.

Introduction

The Necessity to preach on God’s Law,

As we continue to consider God’s law we are mindful of the fact that we consider this law as His children. Because of Christ’s complete sacrifice for us, we are no longer strangers and aliens to God, under His personal wrath because of our violation of His just law. Because of Christ we could and did successfully sue for peace and because of God’s benevolence we have we have been delivered from the sting of the law’s eternal condemnation and have been delivered to the soothing comfort of the law as a a guide to life.

Outside of Christ, or as we are in Adam, we hate God’s law and find it burdensome since it forbids us to be our own gods and puts us in the service of another God. Outside of Christ we desire to be a law unto ourselves. United to Christ we love God’s law and on it we meditate both day and night. Belonging to Christ we find God’s law, “Holy, Just, and Good.” We do not convince ourselves that in and of ourselves we are law keepers but having been freely given Christ’s law keeping righteousness we now live in terms of ever increasing obedience to God’s law as we “with earnest purpose do begin to live not only according to some but to all the commandments of God.” (Q. 114 — HC)

And so we understand that our motivation in attending to God’s law is one of love to God for delivering us by our Mediator, the Lord Christ, who came to glorify the Father with His obedience to the Father’s law and so was rewarded with the Church as an inheritance. And we understand that the work of the Spirit is to work within us so that we put off the old man with his penchant for lawlessness and put on the new man who walks in good works according to God’s law. (Q. 91 — HC)

We boldly affirm that there is a need to return to God’s law in sanctification as there is in the Reformed Church a lawless spirit and a despising of God’s law as a guide to all of life.

This Lawless antinomian spirit can be seen by the way well known Reformed ministers are denigrating the role of the law in the life of the Christian by suggesting that an awareness of God’s law is somehow in opposition to an awareness of God’s grace.

“A taste of wild grace is the best catalyst for real work in our lives: not guilt, not fear, not another list of rules.” Tullian Tchividjian

“So the key to living the Christian life — the key to bearing fruit for God — the key to a Christ exalting life of love and sacrifice — is to die to the law and be joined not to a list of rules, but to a Person, the the risen Christ. The pathway to love is the path of a personal, Spirit-dependent, all satisfying relationship with the risen Christ, not to resolve to keep the commandments.” John Piper

Note in these quotes how the Reformed ministers suggest that God’s rules (Law) is somehow in opposition to Christ for the Christian as if the Christian doesn’t understand that he has been delivered from the law’s condemnation and having been swept up in the finished work of Christ for sinners he now identifies Himself with the one who identified with God’s law (Heb. 10:7). You can not drive a wedge between those who have had a taste of wild grace and their delight in God’s law both day and night. And when people have a all satisfying relationship with the risen Christ the result is that they do resolve to keep the commandments precisely because they have a all satisfying relationship with the risen Christ.

All that is by way of Introduction. This morning we continue to consider God’s law, specifically the Second commandment.

Background On The Ten Words

As we approach God’s law we remember that when God gave His law to His people, He gave it as one who had already revealed Himself as gracious to His people. God had brought His people out of the House of Bondage and had born them on Eagle’s wings away from Pharaoh’s persecution. And so the giving of the law to God’s people follows a Gospel (God doing all the saving) Law (God’s requirement’s upon His people) Gospel (the proleptic forgiveness found in the Sacrificial system that pronounced Christ).

This Gospel – Law – Gospel motif is very important to note for it reinforces that the Law has a place in the Gospel presentation to God’s people. God has graciously done all the rescuing. Having been freely and fully rescued God continues to pour out His grace to His people by giving them a standard to live by so as to glorify Him, and His grace is poured out even more as God provides a means of Sacrifice for the ongoing forgiveness of sins.

Previously we looked at the first commandment and we noted that we are not to serve false gods. We tried to note the dangers of false gods and how we always end up projecting ourselves into our false gods and then ironically enough we reflect what we have projected. We noted how Idolatry was involved in the sin of our first parents. The second week we considered the idea of magic and how moderns still employ magic. Last week we saw that in the 2nd word we have prohibition concerning how the cultic worship is to be shaped. The Second word informs us we can only approach God on God’s terms, there are to be no Talismans between God and man — no mediation between God and man — except that which is ordained by God.

This week we start by noting the Unique Place of the Second Commandment. Roman Catholics and Lutherans wrongly lump the first two commandments together and count them together as the first commandment.

However, these two commandments deal with different subjects:

The 1st commandment deals with who we worship — We worship no God but God and so we oppose the worship of other gods.

The 2nd deals with the form of worship — no images of God. The second opposes designer worship.

The 1st deals w/ the true God. The second deals w/ true worship.

Last week we saw how necessary those distinctions are. More than once Israel wanted to worship the true god through idols. (see Deut.4: 15-18; the golden calf, Exod.32: 4; Jeoboam’s Gold Calves 1 Kings 12:28, etc.) Last week we considered that God’s prohibition against Images is a prohibition against constraining god. In an Image God is controlled but of course it is God who is the one who control us. You can not manipulate God

Illustration — (I Sam. 4:3-8 — Philistines ark of the covenant)

What other reasons might we give for God’s opposition to Images as a means to worship him besides the fact that he who controls the image controls not only god but the people who serve god. Remember in any culture or social order whoever is in charge of the god(s) is in charge of the people. If the state is god and the politician class is in charge of the state then the politician class controls the people. The second commandment teaches that God is in control of Himself.

2.) image worship is forbidden because it reduces God

a.) reduces his incomprehensibility to comprehensibility

Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor? — Is. 40:13

And yet that is exactly what image worship allows for. God is reduced to a image that is comprehensively known and man’s knowledge reigns over God’s knowledge.

b.) reduces God’s majesty and transcendence

To capture Yahweh in an image is to misunderstand His majesty.

When the Lord spoke to the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, he spoke while the mountain burned with fire ‘to the midst of heaven’ (Deut.4: 11-12). Images, by contrast, do not hear, eat nor smell (Deut.4: 28). Image worship evokes ridicule and sarcasm. “To whom will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to him? Do you have to nail him down so he doesn’t fall over (Isa.40: 18; 41:7). The majesty of God is indicated in Scripture by the metaphor of darkness, by which he is covered (Deut.4: 11; 5:23) or unapproachable light, in which He dwells (1 Tim.6: 16). Darkness and light are opposites but they communicate this much, God is so majestic, so transcendent that he cannot be brought within man’s reach. Both darkness and light are impenetrable and a image denies that reality.

Perhaps the fact that God’s majesty and transcendence lies on believers so lightly indicates that images impinge upon their lives?

c.) Not only does the image reduces God’s majesty and transcendence but it also reduces God’s nearness and covenantal intimacy.

Unless you carry the image w/ you God is always located someplace else but God is a God that is near to His people where ever they are (Psalm 139).

Next week we will consider the blessing and cursings attached to the second commandment upon obedience and disobedience and spend some time chatting on the relation of blessing to obedience and we will consider what God’s expectations were among His people for the violation of the 2nd commandment.

Conclusion

Re-cap

Obedience is motivated by gratitude that we are constituted a new people by God because our disobedience to God’s law has been paid by Christ. Christ has reconciled the Father to us so that we are the people of God’s favor. Being the people of God’s favor we walk in terms of His Law-Word.

Knowing The Times … Knowing The Audience

“From the fact that to a generation which knew God only as a righteous Judge, and in an atmosphere surcharged with the sense of retribution, He (Jesus) made the sum and substance of His preaching the love of God, it does not follow that, if He were in person to preach to our present age so strangely oblivious of everything but love, His message would be entirely the same.”

Geehardaus Vos
Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation
The Scriptural Doctrine Of The Love Of God

Different generations and different people need different aspects of the one Gospel emphasized at different times. This is why it is so important to know the times in which one lives, the culture one moves in, and the people with which one deals.

This reality perhaps explains, at least in part, why there are divisions within the body of Christ. By way of example, if one looks over the landscape and determines that disobedience on the part of God’s people is a major problem there are going to be systems of thought that develop that so emphasize obedience that some will accuse the practioners of those systems of eclipsing the truth of Grace. On the other hand, if in the same generation there arises a parallel group who determine that legalism on the part of God’s people is a major problem, there are going to be systems of thought that develop that so emphasize grace that some will accuse the practioners of those systems of eclipsing the truth of and necessity for holiness. In these kinds of situations disagreements that arise aren’t really so much over the nature or character of the Gospel as it is over the nature or character of the times in which we are located.

Following this theme for just a moment, I have always wondered if the Puritans could come back today if they would be puritanical in the same way that we know them. As we know them they were famous for their plain sermons, their plain buildings, and their plain worship. Much of this ‘plain-ness,’ was a reaction against the superstitions and magic like quality of religion and worship that bled the substance out of worship and religion and replaced it with smells and bells that left the people both credulous and stupid. I wonder though, if we could bring the Puritans back today and if they could observe the way that the sense of the supernatural and fear of God has been bled out of modern Worship if they would advocate bringing back some of those things that during their age they had been against. Would they advocate bringing back some high Church Architecture? Would they advocate bringing back the surplice? Would they mind to terribly much if we knelt to receive the Eucharist? In the face of a dead rationalism that removes all sense of the transcendence of God in worship is it more in keeping with the spirit of the Puritans to insist that something must be done that creates a complimentarity between the transcendent and holy God that is proclaimed and the worship environment in which we learn about this high and holy God?

Manufactured Culture

Most people, still today, think that all entertainment to do with movies and drama is there for nothing more than their entertainment. Such has never been the case. The greatest social messages are promoted through movies, high drama, and television, through the fixation of emotive sequences that drive emotional responses as opposed to logical or factual sequences which would drive rational response. Through the emotive sequences points are pushed across in an emotional way which registers and fixes in the mind. The emotional content provided by entertainment media is extraordinarily important. Rather than going through an actual discussion or argument using logic and facts, entertainment media that calls for a passive response is a downloading through fiction that bypasses the discursive parts of the mind. The parts of the mind that exercise critical thinking are in hibernation mode when we become sponge receptors of whatever message is being communicated via story time media. This is particularly true when a generation is trained from the youngest age to soak in front of the television. What the aggressive media does in its entertainment format is to encode messages that are downloaded into the passive recipient without having to engage in debate or even explanation.

With the advent of the National media, the tools of the media have been used for dominion via the exercise of social engineering as expressed by a message that comes in a host of different venues or story-lines but which all reinforce the same overarching narrative.

Now throw into this mix the tactic of diversion. Not only would there be a constant barrage of the same message delivered through an aggressive media to passive recipients but also there would be created diversions that would channel off potential resistance by channeling that aggressiveness into harmless allegiances. H. G. Wells before the advent of National Sports teams talked about “Arenas,” Wells offered, over a hundred years ago, that arenas could be set up all over the world for sports. Now at that time when Wells offered that idea, sports was something that children participated in while, exceptions notwithstanding, adults would go on to adult things. It was unimanigable during Wells time that there would be a need for adult sports on the scale we have it today. Wells idea at the time was to eventually create a “Sports culture” for the men, using a tribal system where men would form allegiances according to a tribal system where men in set geographic areas would exhaust their aggressiveness in a vicarious identification with “their team.” Because men would be more disengaged then ever before from their own destiny a “Sports culture” was developed for them in order to provide an outlet for aggression that might otherwise be channeled in things that really were matters of consequence for responsible male citizens of a commonwealth. Between the passivity created by the entertainment model as well as the messages downloaded for conformity by the elites, and the pseudo and abstract aggressiveness aligned with a tribal team men would be effectively neutered in leadership and castrated in resistance. This in turn would allow the cultural gatekeeper elites to have their way in terms of setting the agenda for the social order.

All of this was reinforced by the majority of the populace being linked to the same message entertainment conduits. People would judge their own sanity by bouncing “their” ideas — ideas learned from their entertainment downloads — off of their neighbors who themselves have been downloaded with the same messages with the result that a reciprocity of comfort would be afforded to neighbors by neighbors, quite without realizing that they all had received these same ideas from those responsible for creating and making and marketing culture. It is quite irrelevant if this programming is true or whether it corresponds to reality, or whether it coheres as long as everyone agrees among themselves what a great ideas they all share.

Once this regimen is successfully put into place a Matrix is created that is almost impossible to get out of since virtually everyone is sharing the same deception. Certainly, there will be some margin for disagreement and often that disagreement will be fanned to life by the Message Masters in order to advance some new Message but by and large the citizenry is all hooked to the same message life support system.

The Cultural gatekeepers have been practicing this game for decades now using men such as Edward Bernays to learn how to create and then control mass psychology. Propaganda has become a science and advertising a art as the culture creators pull the strings on the Marionettes of John Q. Public.

The only thing way that this can be challenged is if individuals and families once again take it upon themselves to enter into the great conversation that has been happening over centuries. People must once again read the great books and then they must converse among themselves as they get together to re-establish genuine community that is flavored with what Augustine said or what Chrysostom offered or what Dante offered etc. Until our conversations reach again beyond the American Idol contestants or the latest episode of “Good Christian Bitches,” we will continue to live in the Matrix and will turn whatever way our Masters pull our strings.

Around the Web

I.) Library

http://www.hornes.org/theologia/rich-lusk/what-is-biblical-theology

http://chalcedon.edu/research/articles/the-family-3/

http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=167

http://www.realnews247.com/who_rules_america_updated_2004.htm

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/021843.html

II.) Video

III.) Audio

Rail Against The Machine — Reflection On The Belhar;

The Belhar would find us confessing,

We believe

• that God has entrusted the church with the message of reconciliation in and through Jesus Christ; that the church is called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, that the church is called blessed because it is a peacemaker, that the church is witness both by word and by deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells

Now remember the problem that we have recognized with the Belhar is its ambiguity. The reason for that ambiguity is lodged in the reality that we do not know what meaning the drafters of the Belhar are filling their words with. We need to keep in mind in this discussion that while words have true meaning in themselves, one tactic that is used by a alien worldveiw to overthrow an existing worldview is to retain the form of the word while emptying it of its true meaning and then filling that word with a novel meaning unique to the worldview that the word is now dwelling. Purposeful ambiguity thus becomes a chief weapon for those seeking to introduce non-Biblical thinking. The Church has had to fight this tactic of subterfuge by purposeful ambiguity for millennium. If one reads carefully through books like Jude or I John one sees that a similar tactic was being used there as the Gnostics / Docetists were retaining the language and jargon of the Christian faith but were filling it with a meaning that was unique to their alien world and life view. In the 20th century, in the Modernist vs. Liberal controversy that roiled the Church the battle was fought over the tactic of the Liberals / neo-orthodox to empty Christian words and jargon of its orthodox meaning only to fill those words and that jargon with a meaning that was alien to Biblical Christianity. In all such contests the form of Christianity is maintained but the thing itself is mutated into something unrecognizable to those who previously identified with it.

This is the kind of ambiguity we find throughout the Belhar. Over and over again we find words, concepts, and jargon used that sounds familiar to the Christian ear but upon closer examination one is left wondering if the words used, left undefined as they are, really mean what they have historically meant or if those words are being used ambiguously in pursuit of subterfuge.

The emboldened words in the paragraph above is just such an example.

What few people in the American setting recognize is that the words “witness by word and by deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells,” have a decidedly political meaning in the light of statements that have been made by liberation theologians. In other words what we have in the phrase “witness by word and by deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells,” is a phrase that has been co-opted by some of the Liberation Theologians. Dr Allan Boesak, a key drafter of the Belhar and one influenced by Liberation theology and theologians, explained the above emboldened phrase like this:

“The New Jerusalem is no future world somewhere else. No, the new Jerusalem comes from Heaven into this reality… The New Jerusalem is no mirage from the beyond… It does not need to wait for eternity. This new Jerusalem will arise from the ashes of all that which today is called Pretoria. For the old things have passed away.”

Now, when you read the quote immediately above and then juxtapose it with this liberation theology inspired quote below from Dr. Boesak suddenly the implications of the Belhar take on foreboding meaning,

“[Black Power] is action to achieve justice and liberation for black people. It does not purport to be the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, or the true Christian church. Black Theology is how black theologians understand Jesus Christ, the Spirit, the church, etc., in relation to justice and liberation

Farewell To Innocence: A Socio Ethical Study On Black Theology And Black Power
Dr. Allen Boesak — pg. 71

Now, in light of these words one wonders if the New Jerusalem in which righteousness dwells is in fact a community ruled by Black Liberation Marxist theologians and inhabited by disciples of James Cone. At the very least we see that the phrase “the church is witness both by word and by deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells,” is one that is filled with ambiguity. If the Belhar is adopted that phrase could be read in terms of its historic Christian meaning or it could easily be read in terms of Liberation theology. Do we want to affirm a Confession that we are not sure what it means?