May 13th, 2010 
John P Icons – Who Or What Do You Worship? Podcast
Icons or a Graven Image
Deuteronomy 5:7-10 “You shall have no gods except Me”. You shall not make yourself a carved image (icons) or any likeness of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.
For I Am the Lord thy God, a jealous God and I punish the fathers’ fault in the sons, the grandsons and the great-grandsons of those who hate me; but I show kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep my commandments.
To those who have been taught that Jesus did away with the Old Testament, Matthew 5:17,18, ‘Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them.
I tell you solemnly, until heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved.’
Look around and you see all the things that we have made that goes against what God commands us not to do. There are many things or icons that we possess or would like to possess that we worship or adore and also bow down to.
Some of these things are in places where we go to worship. Worship: homage or reverence paid to a deity. acts, rites, or ceremonies of worship. adoration or devotion. adore as divine; honor with religious rites. idolize. attend public worship. Deity: god or godess, divine status, quality or nature.
Let’s start with the first commandment: God commands us to worship Him and Him only, so why is it that we pray to people other than God? God has no beginning or no end, He’s infinite. He exists in all that He created. Without God all things would cease to exist.
God is the great “I Am…”. When Jesus was asked, ” How do we pray?” Jesus replied,”Our Father…”. I cannot find anywhere where Jesus instructs us to pray to others.
To pray to others for help or whatever the case may be, means you are placing them above God and saying that they can answer your prayer and God can’t.
You’re placing God below angels, humans, statues, medals or whatever you are directing your prayer to. This is total disrespect for God because you are turning these items into a god.
John 14:6,’ I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through Me.’ Now Jesus tells us that we need to go through Him in order to go to God, so why do we try to go to God by other means? There are no other means or ways, Jesus is the Way.
God sent Jesus here in the flesh to show us how to purify ourselves so we can return to the way God had intended for us to be when He created us in His own image.
Mary is not the mother of God. Mary gave birth to Jesus in the flesh. Mary was one of God’s elect or chosen ones. God’s elect or chosen ones are people that overcame satan before the world was.
God’s chosen ones gave up their free will before they were born in the flesh. God’s chosen ones are people He can trust and He can intervine into their lives whenever He needs them to do something for Him.
Isaiah 49:1 Islands, listen to me, pay attention, remotest peoples. God called me before I was born, from my mothers womb He pronounced my name.
Matthew 12: 46-50, He was still speaking to the crowds when His mother and His brothers appeared; they were standing outside and they were anxious to have a word with Him. But to the man that told Him this Jesus replied,’ Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?
And stretching out His hand towards His disciples He said,’ Here are My mother and My brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven, He is My brother and My sister and mother’.
If we do the will of God then we become one with God in a spiritual union. God is Father and Mother to us. I don’t understand why people just don’t read the word, instead they listen to man and they follow man and mans traditions.
We need to follow Jesus. Find the way and walk it, seek the truth in Christ and He will give it to you and you will find life.
In Timothy 2: 4-6 Paul writes this,’ God wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the Truth. For there is only one God, and there is only one mediator between God and mankind, Himself a man Christ Jesus, who sacrificed Himself as a ransom for them all’.
One God, one mediator, how much more simpler can it be? I just don’t see where other people are involved in our worship or our prayers, or our salvation, do you?
So, why do people kneel down in front of crosses, crucifixes, statues, paintings and shrines to pray to God? Jesus will show us the way to the cross.
We will nail our flesh to the cross and then Jesus will talk to the Father for us as it is written in John 14:15-17,’If you love Me you will keep My commandments. I shall ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, that Spirit of Truth whom the world can never receive since, it neither sees nor knows Him.’
As long as there are images and other gods in our life, even idols that we are attached to, we may not receive from God the life giving Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.
To fashion items that God has already created is like stealing. God commands us not to make any likeness’ of what He has created. In our way, we have such a thing called a patent, it’s to protect an individual from someone else duplicating or we should say stealing anothers hard work.
So, why don’t we honor God’s command? He does have the right to say,” Don’t recreate what I have already created”. And He has every right to punish us for not following His command.
Go out and reproduce someone else’s idea and see if you don’t get sued and maybe even get some jail time. We even start our children out by giving them things like stuffed animals.
The child gets attached to it and sometimes becomes their security. A child should feel safe and secure by knowing they can trust their parents and God.
We flood our children with all kinds of idols and images. You might say, “But they’re kids and they’ll grow out of it”. Will they? How about you? We might have grown up but only to different toys and idols.
Inspiration-why do we need certain things to inspire us? Are we so weak that we need religious articles and or music to move us before we can worship God? Do we need a painting or a chunk of wood shaped like a cross, or plaster and paint formed to an image to inspire us? If you look at these items, they are man made. These items cannot bring us closer to God, only retard our spiritual growth.
If God wanted us to use such items as icons, then why did He give us the second commandment? When we paint God or Jesus onto a piece of canvas or on a ceiling in a humanly image, we are bringing them down to our level. This is placing a limit on God and God cannot be limited.
God is not in our image, we need to go back to His image through Jesus Christ. God’s love and His creation should be enough to inspire us to worship and glorify Him.
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