🧠✨ TRIVIA NIGHT is coming! Join us for an evening of fun in support of JCS. 📅 Friday, Nov 14 🕖 7:00 PM 📍 Grand Oak Culinary Market Come solo, as a couple, or rally a team of 8! 🔗 Register now using this link. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdBnapShOjK2mBvocW29rFUMP_tMQcgtX9mF8TbgoQ6UCr-GQ/viewform?usp=dialog (fb)

October Meditation: The digital age has ushered in the explosion of images – and social media has proliferated the visual over the written word (at least anything longer than 280 characters) – to such an extent that we may essentially be returning to an age of illiteracy. Just consider how hard it is to read through this message! Yet, as we return to an image culture, we are faced with the dilemma of artificial intelligence creating deepfakes with such realism that we cannot trust the digital images we see. The power and proliferation of images in our culture is greater today than ever before – the greatest idol of our day being the pornographic image. It is very scary and disgusting to consider that over 90% of deepfake videos online are non-consensual pornographic clips. Yet, the temptation for creating, using, and abusing images for the manufacture of idols and the veneration of icons has a history as long as mankind after our fall in sin. Even the Christian church has had to deal with great controversy surrounding image-worship. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 A.D. sought to resolve the argument between iconodules (worshippers of images) and iconoclasts (breakers of images) by settling on a weak compromise: images may be venerated in the church but are not to be worshipped. One of the main arguments for the use of images in the church was that the common people (or laity) were mostly illiterate and could be more effectively taught through the use of images. By the time of the Protestant Reformation, image worship was commonplace – and it was the Reformers who lamented this idolatry and advocated for the complete removal of images from the Christian church. The Reformers pointed to the second commandment as the biblical basis for doing so, which we also will consider with our theme for this month: Holy Love for the one true God must be In His Way. God spoke this second word in Exodus 20: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments” (vs. 4-6). The second commandment is one of the most disregarded or unrecognized of them all. Roman Catholics actually combine the first and second into one and thereby do not acknowledge the second commandment as a stand-alone imperative. Even many evangelicals have the notion that so long as we are worshipping the right God, the manner in which we do so is not so relevant. It is true that idolatry is already condemned in the first commandment, where we are instructed to worship God only; yet there is another dimension to idolatry that is condemned in the second. As Charles Hodge put it, “idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images,” or to quote John MacArthur, “Idolatry is worshiping something other than the true God in the true way.” The Reformers were clear in their confessional statements about the sin of image worship and the importance of heeding the second commandment. The Heidelberg Catechism teaches plainly that we may not represent God by images, “nor worship Him in any other way than He has commanded in His Word” (Q. 96). The Catechism goes on to condemn the use of images in the churches as “books to the laity” by stating, “we must not pretend to be wiser than God, who will have His people taught, not by dumb images, but by the lively preaching of His Word” (Q. 98). During the Reformation in England, Thomas Cromwell began the purge of icons and images from the church. Yet, it was the Puritans who especially sought the further reformation of purity in worship. Puritan Thomas Watson puts it bluntly, “God is to be adored in the heart, not painted to the eye.” The Westminster Larger Catechism’s list of sins forbidden in the second commandment includes: “all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever” (Q. 109). The Puritans embraced the regulative principle of worship, which is distinctive of Reformed Christianity. While Christians in many traditions would add elements to worship so long as they do not contradict God’s Word, the Puritans taught that worship is to be regulated by the Word. They argue that the Holy Scriptures teach us as to how to worship God in His Way, and any deviation from this is ‘will worship’, displeasing to the Lord. In the second commandment, the LORD is serious about how we are to worship Him. He is Jealous for His Name, for His worship, for His glory. He is the Judge who punishes sin, warning us that the consequences of our idolatry impact our families and future generations. He is the Merciful One who calls us to holy love, keeping His commandments. This command is not merely written in stone for ancient Israel, but it comes to us today in our image culture. How we must seek for the true worship of the true God, looking to Jesus. Again, it is Puritan Thomas Watson who offers us instruction, asking “how shall we conceive of God aright, if we may not make any image or resemblance of Him?” He answers, “We must conceive of God spiritually, viz. 1. In His attributes – His holiness, justice, goodness – which are the beams by which His divine nature shines forth. 2. We must conceive of Him as He is in Christ. Christ is the ‘Image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1:15) as in the wax we see the print of the seal. Set the eyes of your faith on Christ-God-man. ‘He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father’ (John 14:9).” This is the Image we can fully trust! Let us worship Him rightly in spirit and in truth. (fb)