All Glory Must Go to God, It Is God's.

 Have you ever wanted to direct your attention to something tangible in order to focus more fully on God? Millions want to do just that. Millions build shrines, simple or elaborate, but still they are shrines where they put their focus when they want to think on God. I have a prayer closet of sorts where I've hung several verses of the Bible- my focus on reading the words of God. I don't have a cross, or any figurine to focus on, I simply want the word of God in my sight. Yet, how many do have figurines, and altars, and candles, and pictures that they behold. Jesus never asked us to erect a statue in His likeness and we could have been told to do that, there were artists even in Jesus' time. Jesus never sat down for a portrait to be drawn of Him, suggesting that all get a copy so they wouldn't forget what He looked like. Jesus did not want us to worship His image, not ever. Jesus used the WORD, His word and we are told that His word is our SWORD in this spiritual warfare. HE used the WORD in His personal confrontation with Satan in the wilderness. He didn't whip out a statue of an image of what someone imagined God to look like and wield it at Satan threateningly.  He didn't hold up any kind of staff- trying to imitate Moses' staff that was in the Ark. He didn't yank out a miniature set of the two tablets of stone where the Law was written and placed in the Ark of the Covenant. Objects weren't used by God, never condoned by God. Our God is a God of SPIRIT- unseen, invisible, everywhere, always and never confined! He can be with us wherever we are, at any time! There are no constraints upon God. Even when Solomon built the temple where God's spirit would dwell, it wasn't confined there because EVERYONE knew that no temple could truly hold God.  There were so many false gods with temples- and the people had to go to those temples or at the least erect tiny shrines with miniature replicas of their gods in them, and they believed those idols to be their gods. We are to worship NO IDOLS. Our thoughts are NOT to be focused upon statues! Our thoughts are to be on a God who cannot be contained in any wood, stone, plastic, metal of any sort! Yes, God did set up various reminders-

Deu 6:4  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 

Deu 6:5  And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 

Deu 6:6  And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 

Deu 6:7  And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 

Deu 6:8  And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 

Deu 6:9  And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

WORDS- reminders- written upon posts of the house and on gates. 

Num 15:37  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 

Num 15:38  Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: 

Num 15:39  And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring: 

Num 15:40  That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and be holy unto your God. 

Num 15:41  I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God. 

REMEMBER WORDS!

Jesus didn't like how the Jewish leaders of His day used words on cloths and such and decorated themselves with them as if those things declared their righteousness with God. They weren't using them as reminders any longer even if they had started out that way, they were using them to promote their own self-righteousness. The dangers of decorations, of idols are very real.

I wear tee-shirts with various Bible/God promoting sayings/verses and I love when people tell me they like them, because that means they are others who love God. I wear these tee-shirts not because I'm righteous in anyway. I wear them because I can't speak to share God, my personality isn't such that allows for that ability, that's not something I was gifted with- and yet I want to shout to all about God's love. My tee-shirts shout for me. I don't worship the clothes I wear in any way at all. I know I'm a sinner in need of constant forgiveness. My righteousness is like a filthy rag, I have none! All glory must go to God, it is God's!

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'April 2, 1901

“The Keeping of the Commandments. The Second Commandment” Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 78, 14, p. 216.

“I AM the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 

“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 showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:2, 4-6. 

The First Commandment forbids the having of any other god than the Lord; and so calls upon all to have God alone, and Him with all the heart, and all the soul, and all the mind, and all the strength. 

Thus the First Commandment requires all creatures to worship only the true God; and the Second Commandment forbids the worshiping of Him in any but the true way. 

The First Commandment forbids the having of any false gods; the Second Commandment forbids the having of the true God in a false way. 

It is thus forbidden to worship God, or to think of Him, under any form or representation of any kind whatever. This is made clear by the word of the Lord in Deuteronomy 4. Having described how God came down upon Mount Sinai and spoke to the people out of the midst of the fire, declaring the Ten Commandments, it is remarked especially: “Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude.” 

It is not suggested that there was no similitude there. There were similitudes: multitudes of the host of heavenly angels were there; four-winged and four-faced cherubim were there; six-winged bright seraphim were there; Christ was there; and the glory of God, which was like devouring fire, was there. 

But all this glory, and all these similitudes, were completely hidden from any eye of man by the “blackness, and darkness, and tempest: that enveloped the whole mount. For “Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke;” and “the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace,” which formed a “thick cloud upon the mount,” a cloud of “thick darkness;” and the voice of God was heard “out of the midst of the darkness.”

Now, why was it that this wonderful scene of glory, even the brightness of the glory itself, was so completely hidden from the eyes of the people? Here is the answer: “Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them.” Deuteronomy 4:15-19. 

If the people had been allowed that day to see any similitude, or any figure, on Sinai, they would inevitably have formed a likeness of it, as a means of their worshiping God. If they could have seen but the wings of the cherubim or seraphim, they would have used winged creatures, or the likeness of them, as a means of their worshiping God. And even though they had seen no figure or similitude, yet if only they had seen the brightness of the glory, then they would have employed the brightness of the glory, then they would have employed the brightness of the sun or the moon, or the stars, as symbols, representations, by which they would offer worship to the true God. 

Nor would they have taken these representations which they would have made as of themselves gods, so as to worship the images or representations themselves; but would have used them as visible symbols, as aids in fixing their attention upon God, the better and more exactly to worship Him. And they would have claimed all the time that, in this, they were worshiping the true God, and that such worship was true worship of God. 

But all such idea as this, even all possibility of such idea, was utterly excluded by the Lord himself, in enveloping the whole grand array and glorious scene in impenetrable darkness. And then, by this fact, and in telling them why He did it, He gave His own clear interpretation of His own Second Commandment, and the plainest possible instruction to men as to how to observe it. In this the Lord himself has given, in the plainest and most forcible way, instruction to all people, that in the worship of God no conceivable form or similitude can be used in any way, or to any extent whatever. And thus there was said at Sinai precisely what Jesus said to the woman at the well, neither more nor less: that “God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 

God is Spirit, and is to be only spiritually discerned, and, therefore, can be worshiped only in spirit and in truth. 

He can be worshiped only in truth as in spirit, because it is only by His word, which is the truth, that men can know what is true and acceptable worship. No man can know God except by revelation; and God must be worshiped strictly according to His own revelation: otherwise He is not worshiped at all. '