Let us turn to our Bibles to Hosea chapter 3. Hosea chapter 3 verse 3. Turn to Hosea 3 verse 3. Let us listen attentively to the Word of God. And I said to her, you shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the harlots, nor shall you have a man, so too I be toward you.
Let us pray. And here God we see in this description of a broken marriage relationship and the warning there in God, the spiritual lesson behind it, where Hosea is showing to the nation there at the time of their unfaithfulness and violation of the first four commandments of the Ten Commandments, that is their direct and explicit worship and relationship to God of the Covenant, the first table of the law, wherein we are taught, Lord, how to express and that we ought to, therefore, in our hearts and certainly in our lives, express the love of you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And they had not.
They had fallen in various and sundry ways, God, and we will hear some of these things as we go continue through the book of Hosea, Lord, and their false worship and violations therein in doing their own thing and their own desires, God, in claiming it’s what you want and feeling satisfied therein. Help us, Lord, in other words, we pray, to better have an understanding of the second commandment and how to honor God in His worship, we pray. Amen.
Here, as you know, we live in an age when Christians are comfortable with God. It seems to me too comfortable, in almost a flippant manner towards Him. And there are the movies about Christ in comedies, about the Most High, they had them since the 70s and maybe even before then, it was Oh God, I think it was with Barnes in the 70s.
I was a little kid, if you remember that one. And then they had Bruce Almighty about 15 years ago. Social media posts, too often, it seems to me, show pictures of Christ.
I don’t want to see that. There are even comic book versions of the Bible. It’s still there.
I’ve checked a couple six months ago at the local Christian bookstore. They treat it in a very flippant manner. And a few years back, there was a Jesus Christ action figure.
It probably is still for sale. You just shake your head. You’re like, what is this? Is this a joke? Worship on Sundays or maybe even on Saturdays, as they do around here in Denver at times, include shorter and shorter sermons, it turns out.
And they include more and more entertainment. It is so bad that in some places that Christians are leaving the megachurches and voting them all together as the numbers show. Some Christians don’t even bother being baptized or take the Lord’s Supper.
And there’s in fact a strand of that in Christianity since at least the Anabaptist era. In other words, the worship of God, the honoring of him and his things that he’s told us in which we honor him, like the Lord’s Supper and worship and hearing of the preaching of the word, is belittled and taken less seriously than a wedding, it seems to me. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the poor theology taught, of course.
There’s great ignorance. I’m not saying they’re dumb or anything. They just don’t know, many of them.
Although I think if you ask them, they’re like, something’s not quite right here. Should we turn the house of God into a house of entertainment? We know the difference in everyday life. The great and mighty God, creator of heaven and earth, is little explained, it seems, that is proper theology as a great and mighty God.
In other words, there is insufficient teaching upon who this Lord is with whom we have to learn and to love. Closely related to this is the widespread lack of knowledge of God’s will for his people, not just who he is, what he has done, but what he commands of us. How should we live with each other, but more importantly, how we should live before God.
He gave us his will as summarized in the Ten Commandments. There are four commandments, the first four, as you know, about our relationship to the creator and redeemer. That we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
This is the question they ask Jesus. Are you a real rabbi? Do you understand the basics of ethical theology? And Jesus does. And they respond, you answer correctly.
They too believe these things. Of course, we know they twisted it. And the second commandment is like unto it, to love your neighbor as yourself.
That’s the second six commandments, or the second table of the law. I already preached on the first commandment. Next is the second commandment this evening.
We see many violations of this in the book of Hosea. In fact, our text in the opening chapters used the metaphor of marriage and fidelity to describe the false worship practices of the Jews at this time. The Lord of the Covenant describes Israel’s unfaithful wife and her collective worship practices.
This is made even more clear in chapter two, verse 13. If we roll back a little bit, I will punish her for the days of the bales to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry and went after her lovers, but she forgot me, says the Lord.
So it’s not just the first commandment that some of them apparently went after Baal instead of God, but they also had their own days of Baal, which is a violation of what? The fourth commandment. God had his days. They shouldn’t have Baal’s days.
So you see this wrapped up here, all these sins over and over again in the prophets and here in Hosea. But you may ask, how is this therefore about the second commandment? Here, verse three and the rest of the verses of Hosea I’ll be talking about. The answer is this.
This is true for some of the Israelites. That is, he shall have no other gods before me, the first commandment. It’s true apparently for some of the Israelites.
That is, in their hearts they were not worshiping God, but worshiping another God, a false God. But I believe, and I’m going to give evidence for this, that many others, and perhaps the great majority of them, as we’ll see in the language used in Exodus for example, thought they were worshiping the true God. This is the true God.
I have the first commandment down pat. I’m a child of the Lord. We are the sons of Abraham, as they said in the New Testament, right? We don’t have any other God.
What are you talking about? Jesus? What are you talking about? But they worshiped the true God in a false manner. That’s the second commandment. So here, I pick verse three of course, it says you should not play the harlot.
That’s that spiritual infidelity, not in a vague, hand-waving way, but in violation of the first commandment and in violation of the second commandment. And I think especially the second commandment is emphasized because that is what we see over and over again in the history of the prophets, right? Why do you have these groves? Why are you making these false sacrifices? In fact, you have these days of bail, even. These false days of worship.
Those particular acts fall under the second commandment, more precisely. So, although there’s probably violations of both, that is those violating the second commandment are also violating the first commandment. I think most of them probably believe they’re worshiping the true God.
Very much like today. I believe in the Lord. I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
But I’m okay with having entertainment and pantomiming and thunderous shows and rock concerts at worship, because I think it honors God. What? No, no. We want to avoid this misunderstanding.
That’s not acceptable. And I’ll show you why. We see this in several ways in various Bible verses.
The most obvious is that Hosea and the prophets warned the people about acts of worship, as I pointed out. They specify sacrifices, feast days, burnt incense. Those are activities not found in the first commandment.
Because the first commandment is primarily about God Almighty, that He is a spiritual Lord and we’re supposed to worship Him in what? Spirit and in truth, as Jesus tells us in the New Testament. Because He’s reiterating what they should have known in the Old Testament. That’s first and foremost about the heart.
They’re supposed to love Him, honor Him, fear Him, pray to Him. All that’s under the first commandment. That’s what I preached several weeks ago.
Here is more or less about the external actions of the heart. How are you going to show with your lips and your hands the proper praise and honor of God? That’s the second commandment. In a nutshell, there is some slight overlap, because the first commandment also includes opening your mouth with prayer.
You don’t just keep your mouth shut. You pray to the true God. So, that’s part of the evidence.
This is unacceptable, God tells them, that you have these kinds of sacrifices, these burnt incense, these supposed holy days, such worship activities, as I said, do indeed follow under the second commandment. The intent behind such worship, the intent behind the false worship under the second commandment, the way you express your love before God publicly, or even privately, in family worship, for example, the intent behind it, that’s more or less the first commandment. The two, of course, are going to go together.
Are you doing it because you love Him? Are you doing it because He wants you to do it? Is really the question of the way you think is pleasing to Him. There’s more evidence that many of these passages are actually about the wrong way of worshiping God, not the wrong God as such. And here it is.
Consider the use of the word, Baal. You have Baal’s plural, verse 13, but Baal’s singular is also used elsewhere in the Prophets. We read in chapter 2, I’ll punish her for the days of Baal’s in which she burned incense, but the word Baal would seem to end the discussion about, is this about the first or second commandment? Well, first of all, it says days, so that’s clearly the fourth commandment, a violation of the Sabbath day.
But it’s also about the first, perhaps, and I think it’s probably true for many of them, but again, I don’t think all of them, that they’re worshiping false gods as such. That’s a direct object of their thought. And it’s simply this, because the word Baal means master, lord, or even husband, and the word Baal is used to describe God.
Did you know that? You don’t know that because we translate that word. If you read the Hebrew, you would see Baal, right out of the Hebrew, as a noun and as a verb, with respect to God Almighty. And it makes sense if you think about it, because, well, brothers and sisters, we use the word God all the time.
It’s just that when we speak it, we understand we mean capital G, we don’t mean lowercase g, and we don’t mean Allah, although they may use the word God as well, and so do the Mormons. Everyone runs around indiscriminately using good words in a Christian context, and even Christians understand. The word Elohim is also used with false gods.
It’s actually the plural. Im is the Hebrew ending of the plural, and the like. So it’s really not surprising.
Lord is even used, I don’t know, for Abraham and Peter. She called him Lord. That word is also used for God.
But no one’s confused about this. We’re only confused because we don’t see the Hebrew. It’s not your fault.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing. It’s not necessarily wrong. But I’m pointing out to you, the word Baal, they just purposely translate it in the English here, transliterate it, B-A-A-L, right out of the Hebrew, to highlight to you that this is what we think is going on here in this translation.
This is about the false gods. And I’m going to show, I also think it’s about the second commandment, in that they think they’re worshiping the true Baal. You follow me? And I’ll show this in Exodus.
So, let me show you where Baal is used. Isaiah 54, 5, For your maker is your husband. The word there is Baal.
The Lord of hosts is his name, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. He is called the God of the whole earth. I’m not just any Baal.
I am the Baal. I’m not just any God. I’m what? God of gods, King of kings, and Lord of lords.
God is also called King. We also understand he’s the capital K. He’s the little k’s. That’s what’s going on here.
Isaiah 31, 32. There’s that famous passage. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt.
He’s going to make the new covenant, the better one. My covenant which they broke, though I was a what? Husband to them says the Lord. That’s Baal.
I am the real Baal. These are the fake Baals is the implication. It’s used as a verb in Jeremiah 3, 14.
Return all backsliding children, says the Lord, for I am married, Baal, to you. It’s a verb form. We have something like that in English at times where the noun and the verb sounds seem very similar.
I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will give you to Zion. I husband you would I guess be the English equivalent. It is used as a participle in a passage many of you may remember in Isaiah 62, 4. You shall no longer be termed forsaken, nor shall your land any more be termed desolate, but you shall be called Hevazaba and your land Beulah.
For the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. Or as one translation put it, your land shall be called Beulah. You’ve heard that right? It’s an old song.
The word is married or Baal. It’s literally there. I looked it up.
Yeah. When you see that, you’re like, okay, wait a minute here. So just simply saying Baal doesn’t really solve the question of the first verse of the second commandment.
Are they really worshiping a false god or are they actually calling God husband and God above and mixing that with false worship? And I think it’s probably both, but I think it’s especially the second half. And when I get to Exodus, I keep giving you guys suspense here, Exodus. So reference to Baal in the prophets probably means the Israelites were misusing God’s name, maybe attributing the local false Baals, you’ve heard about those, the Canaanites, attributes to God, and of course false worship as well, the worship methods and the tools they use before him.
This would no longer be pure idolatry in the sense of outright denial of the God of covenant, but mixing a local deity and his attributes or names and worship and of course, moral law, because they were doing lots of wickedness as we’ll see in chapter four. Such violations would then include not just the first, but also the second, third, and even fourth commandments. Such an overlap of names is already found in many other passages with the word God and Lord, as I pointed out to you, except we all recognize it’s capital L for God, G for G, and L for Lord, but those names are also used for the local gods.
But there’s further evidence that most of the worship violations were about the second commandment and not necessarily only or merely about the first commandments. We find this one in the first great transgressive act of worship of the Jews and where’s that in Exodus. What’s that great event we all recognize? You may not have thought about it, but it’s the very first thing that happens to them.
They’re delivered from Egypt, gone through the desert and protected for 40 years with the sandals on their feet do not even fall off and wear away. They come to mount the mountain of the Lord and Moses is gone just for a little bit and the people are antsy, right? That’s the very first massive public transgression the people of God do. What is that? The golden calf.
The golden calf. Here Moses goes to the mountaintop of the Lord and leaves Aaron behind. Come on Aaron, watch over the people.
We remember what happens next. They grow impatient, demand Aaron the high priest, make them a god to honor and to worship because we don’t know what happened to Moses. And he received the gold, that is Aaron, from their hand and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molten calf and then they said, this is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.
Thus they made an image and a physical idol to honor as a representative of the Lord of the covenant to bow down and worship because the first evidence here is they’re talking about the god on the mountain because they just said he got us out of Egypt. You think they literally forgot three weeks ago what happened? Or even the prior generation, the kids lived through it. They’re talking about Yahweh, we would say, and saying we want an image of Yahweh and the image of a calf because that’s what they got out of Egypt.
Egypt used one of those images, that is the image of the calf, besides all other kinds of animals and even insects. We want something that they did. And they were there for hundreds of years.
You can’t imagine they were not affected by the false worship there. And so they wanted to mix the worship. But we have even stronger evidence than this.
The greatest evidence that they have not outright denied that the Lord’s existence is said, we don’t care about God, we want these Egyptian gods. Actually, we care about this god, but we don’t want to worship him the way the Egyptians worshiped him. That’s my argument.
Everyone with me? This is significant. Verse 5, right after I read verse 4, you received the gold? This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt? Verse 5, so when Aaron saw it, because they’re the ones that say it, he engraved it, he sets it up, they say it’s the god that brought us out of Egypt. Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow is the feast to the LORD, Yahweh, L-O-R-D, all caps.
You have it in your translations. That’s the covenant keeping God. We are affirming the covenant keeping God.
We are affirming he’s the one that only exists, he’s the true God, and we are his people, and we’re going to worship him in a different way. That’s the violation of the second commandment. Of course, it’s always a violation of the first, because the first commandment includes what? Not just love, not just fear, you need those of God, but faith and believing in his word, and they did not believe in his word.
When he said, don’t make an image, they literally were told these things, and they ignored it anyways. So Exodus there, 32 is it? Yes, 32.5, I think, is very illustrative of what’s going on often in the prophets. I’m not saying always, but often.
So we read of this formal acknowledgment of the covenant keeping God and Hosea, although they approach him with an unfaithful heart, as well as faithful hands in the outward worship of God. Hosea 4.15, though you, Israel, play the harlot, let not Judah offend. Do not come up to Gilgad, nor go up to Beth-Avin, nor swear an oath, saying, As the Lord, the covenant keeping God lives.
Don’t use God’s name this way, when you have such false worships about him. Hosea 5.6, with their flocks and hers, they shall go to seek, what? The Lord, all perhaps again. But they will not find him, he has withdrawn himself from them.
So in the midst of him admonishing against their days of bales, sacrifices, and incense, they’re still talking about the Lord of the covenant. They’re mixing it. It’s called syncretism.
What Is Forbidden in the 2nd Commandment?
So this is the general background, that took most of the sermon apparently, to go over the second commandment. And why this verse, and many other verses, here in Hosea and elsewhere, are about the second commandment, and not necessarily, of course, excluding the first. So what is forbidden in the second commandment? Question 51, what is forbidden? The second commandment, that is the Shorter Catechism, the second commandment forbids the worshiping of God by images, or any other way, not appointed in his word.
The first commandment tells us who to worship, only God. The second commandment tells us how to worship him, only as God tells us. It’s as simple as that.
No images to worship God, Exodus 20, you shall not make for yourself a calm image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, and you shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting iniquity of the fathers and the children of the third and fourth generations, to those who hate me. It’s very explicit, and very clear, in the ten commandments, it’s the longest one, one of the longest, that and the fourth commandment, in terms of detail of what you shouldn’t be doing.
We read a couple chapters later, they’re doing it. Deuteronomy 4.15 is even more breathtaking in many ways. Take careful heed to yourself, Moses warns them, God, through the mouth of Moses, warns them, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb, out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourself a carved image, in the likeness of a man or a woman, it continues on, or anything else on earth.
They literally came to the mountain, and they saw nothing, except thunder and fire and lightning. It’s as simple as that. Romans 1.22 and following, of course, professing to be wise, Paul writes, they, that is, unbelievers, became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man.
How could you make an image of God? You cannot make an image of God, of birds and four-footed animals and creeping things and, of course, the like. No images. Now, I don’t think I need to explain to us here and go into much depth that we understand when he says no images, he’s not saying only just that, but anything else associated with respect to worship, as though we can avoid images and do everything else and have a rock concert.
But the image is the biggest, one of the biggest problems, because the eye-gate is such a weakness for us and our sins, even as Christians. We talk about, ah, maybe I can handle losing some feelings, maybe I can handle losing my hearing, but I don’t want to lose my eyesight. We, we like to see it, and that’s, that has a good thing, but it’s also, can be a problem, and God knows this, so he makes it very clear.
No images, period, because he knows what will happen, and it’ll be worshiped. It’s like they worship the golden calf. And so that leads to no images of Christ, right? We shouldn’t make an image of Christ.
The only people who could have seen Jesus would have been the original apostles. They never made an image of Christ, and any image you make would be a false image, because we don’t know what he looked like. It’d be just like you trying to make an image of your wife, or friends of yours trying to make an image of your wife, a hundred years from now or something, or other side of the world, you never met him, you’re like, what in the world is that? I don’t know who that is.
You’d be kind of offended. That’s not my wife. What’s going on? No, this is your, this is a very serious project.
I’m honoring your wife. I don’t recognize this woman. What are you talking about, man? But we come to God, and I say this, you know, in general, we, the American system, it seems to be, in my experience, and have a very flippant manner.
Well, you know, Jesus, whatever looks good to me, I’ll make a picture of him. I think it honors God. Mostly, I think, frankly, it just makes me feel good.
I like to see a picture, and it makes me feel good. I can see God somehow. God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth, and we’ve got to be very careful in using outward expressions of formal worship before God, either in private or in public, because we’ll get wrapped up in it very easily.
God is a spirit. We cannot see him as such. And the body he had as a man, he did not give us an image of it, because I tell you what, just like they did with the staff and the snake with Moses, what would we do if we actually had a picture of Jesus? You know we would worship it, don’t you? Because they did it with the staff, and it was a trap for them.
Or as Watson puts it, Puritan Watson, if anyone should make an image of snakes or spiders saying he did it to represent his prince, would not the prince take it with disdain? God cannot be honored by making images of anything. Another way of worship is the other half of the summary of what you shall not do in the second commandment. Genesis 4.3, And in the process of time that came to pass, that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.
Also Abel brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel, and what? His offering. And he did not respect Cain and his offering.
And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. He couldn’t understand why wouldn’t God be satisfied with the fruit of the earth when we know implicitly and explicitly elsewhere in the New Testament God told him you’re supposed to kill, you’re supposed to shed blood. The Olaw offerings were one of the first offerings that they knew they had to exercise.
And this brings up as an aside here, you would never have figured out one way to honor God would be to kill an animal and put it on an altar, unless he told you. That clearly falls under the second commandment. You would not know it otherwise and he would tell you somehow through a prophet, through the word of God.
What’s called instituted worship. But you would know to pray to him, to fear him, to honor him, to praise him. That’s called natural worship.
That’s it in a nutshell. Next Mark 7.7, In vain they worship me. Christ warns his disciples to the Pharisees, about the Pharisees.
In vain they worship me. In vain. It’s empty honoring of me.
Because worship is another expression of the word honor and reverence of God. Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You cannot honor God with the commandments of men.
Man made restrictions. In that case, the washings of things and touching unclean things that God said were not unclean before. They just made up these new things and we thought this would be fancy and more special before God if we had to wash these things a certain way.
Why aren’t they doing it? Because God didn’t tell them to do it. Is there a problem with that buddy? They thought they were more holy. That’s called superstition.
And of course one of the great expressions of that is the Roman Catholic Church, which is always something we beat up on. And I tell you brothers and sisters, it’s there in evangelicalism. They have a lot of superstitious worship.
They’re like this, why aren’t you doing this? What’s wrong with your worship here at Providence and other Presbyterian churches? Because you’re not doing X, Y, and Z and having all this excitement and doing all these other things that we think are going to draw people into the church. We’re not here. That’s not the point of public worship.
It’s to honor God. To hear His word. To pray before Him and to submit to Him.
Jeremiah 19, because they have forsaken me and made an alien place because they have burned incense to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known and have filled this place with the blood of the innocents. They have also built the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak nor did it come to my mind. I didn’t command this.
See this? Can I do this? If God commands it, sure. But here he says I didn’t command them to kill their kids and put them on an altar. What do they think they’re doing? Who do they think they are? Making up rules that they think is proper and honoring to me.
That’s the nub of the second commandment. And it’s very offensive. Let’s say the Papists, this is Watson again.
Images are layman’s books and they are good to put them in mind of God. One of the Popish councils affirmed that we might learn more about an image than by long study of scripture. Yeah, that’s where they are.
And that was back then. The prophet, the graven image, the molten image, and the teacher of lies, Habakkuk 2.18 is an image, a layman’s book, Watson asks. Then see what lessons this book teaches.
It teaches lies. It represents God as a visible shape who is invisible. And thus ends what is forbidden in the second commandment.
What Is Commanded in the 2nd Commandment?
What is commanded in the second commandment? What should we do then? Question 50. What is required in the second commandment? The second commandment requires the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God has appointed in his word. Deuteronomy 13.30 Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, that is the false practices of the pagans around you, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? I will also do likewise.
And that is not a commandment forbidding only and merely pagan worship, but any other kind of worship. I can imagine people today reading this, well sure I’m not going to imitate the Canaanite worship, or Hindu, but I’ll imitate secular atheism, because that’s not a religion. Whatever, whether it’s a religion or not, you’re not supposed to run around making up your own way of worshipping God, is the point.
It’s just that they were of course especially tempted because they were surrounded by such raw paganism. You should not worship the Lord, your God, in that way, for every abomination of the Lord which he hates, they have done to their gods, for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire. Whatever I command you, we read in verse 32, be careful to observe it, you should not add to it, nor take away from it.
It’s not therefore a mere Old Testament commandment, that’s a moral commandment, because worshipping God is a moral act. The King of the Universe dictates the terms of honouring him, not ourselves. Matthew 28, 20, teaching them, this is Jesus, to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.
The New Testament echoes the Old Testament admonition to observe what God has given us. He says observe, be careful, do these things that I have commanded you, don’t run around and make up your own things, your own doctrine, your own kind of churches, your own kind of worship, because all these things, doctrine of course falls under the third commandment, the word of God, the works of God, and the like. What are God’s ordinances that we should honour him with our time and commitment, because we are called in the second commandment to receive, right, with faith of course and love and honour, to observe properly and carefully, and keep pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinance God has appointed to us.
What are these things? Well there’s a number of them, and some of the details are given in question 108 of the larger catechism, and I won’t read it all for you, I’ll just give you a summary here. I’ll summarize it. The broadest summary I read in the Puritans is word and prayer.
And I get that from the apostles who say in Acts 6, we can’t keep doing diaconate work. You need to set aside some deacons who deal with the physical concerns of the church, and we will what? We will have the word and we will pray. We will preach, we will teach, we will read the word, and we will pray in accordance to the word.
And under prayer many of them put praise, i.e. singing, singing of psalms and the like. So that’s two broad categories of the ordinances, they call them the gospel ordinances of the New Testament era. Preaching of the word, teaching and reading of course, prayer, praise, participating in the sacraments is there in that list in question 108.
These are acts of worship before God, and should be therefore treated as such, and not something we just do on the side or because we feel like it. When God says no images, when he says hear my word, hear carefully, we don’t just think, oh that’s only for Sunday. But throughout the week you can’t have images in your private worship.
And you should read the Bible carefully in your private worship. All this is true, there’s not a substantial difference, although there may be a little more intensity with respect to the Lord’s Day of course, in terms of how we exercise these things. Prayer and reading of the word and praise can be done throughout the week individually and privately in small groups.
It should be done with the proper expression that we’re doing this before God and to God, because that’s what worship is about. He is the object of the actions and the words that we are exercising and doing. And throughout the week when we’re not thinking about God, it’s not a direct act of worship, it’s what we call an indirect act of worship, because you are loving your neighbor, you’re doing a good job, you’re taking care of your body, you’re taking care of your house, God is literally not on your mind at the moment, that doesn’t make you any less holy, because you can’t do more than one thing at a time, you think more than one thought at a time, because you’re human.
But why are you doing it? If you were asked in the middle of those activities, if your responsibility is throughout the week, you say I’m doing it for God’s glory. And that’s why we call that being indirectly worshiping and honoring God with the second table of the law. So there are other acts of honoring God directly or explicitly, vows, church office, church membership, that’s before God.
Fasting and days of Thanksgiving, church government, that’s why I had this sermon on Presbyterianism, because we’re arguing specifically the third commandment, even the second commandment, it’s part of instituted worship. That is a way of honoring God is how you organize the things around that honor, a church, because a church is what gathers together with church officers, and these are given by God, and no other man, no one else. And lastly, question 108 of the American edition, I’ll remind you, not just the original Scottish edition, there’s slight differences there, says, also the disapproving, detesting, opposing all false worship, and according to each one’s place and calling, removing it and all monuments of idolatry.
That’s what it means to take the second commandment seriously, and you will stick out like a sore thumb in the American scene, unfortunately. That’s a number of moral points, of course, that requires another sermon, go through the ordinances of God to honor his worship, but the main point is, we cannot worship God that is honor and respect him as our Lord and Savior in any way we fancy. And we should engage with proper worship, such as the reading of the word, hearing it preached, as we heard this morning, praying and praising our Savior all of our life, brothers and sisters, because he has redeemed us, and we want to do what is pleasing in his sight.
May the Spirit of God preserve you to honor his worship, we pray, amen. Let us pray. Gracious God and Savior, we ask that we would indeed take seriously your worship, seriously, Lord, in the sense of, because we love you, not out of a sense of desperation and anger with one another, God.
And certainly, I pray, it brings mourning to our hearts, Lord, to see so many, and some of us at times, we reflect upon our own history before we had a better understanding of your word and how we participated in such false worship and days of entertainment, God. That, Lord, it would bring a softness to our heart that as we preach and teach these things to our brothers and sisters in the Lord who disagree with us, God, that we would have patience with them and that we would persevere and pray for them and pray for ourselves indeed. We pray these things by our Lord and Savior who lived and died– [cut off]