Have You Not Read - S1:E13

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Welcome to have you not read a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

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Saints before we dig into our topic we humbly ask you to rate review and share the podcast thank you

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I'm Andrew Hudson joining me today are Michael Durham Kyle Smith we're gonna jump right into our first question received from one of our viewers recently evangelicals seem to be talking more these days about racially accurate depictions of Jesus I see no issue with this but I have noticed it has also led to more discussions about Second Commandment violations commonly known as to CV on social media

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I was not raised to believe that a picture of Jesus in a children's Bible or anywhere else was a to CV but I'm seeing more and more respected pastors who feel that any picture of Christ is a to CV is this a real issue and if so where is the line what do you think about that Michael well that sounds like one of those questions that has a lot of questions kind of built into it so I think since the the main concern is about the

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Second Commandment we should go look at what the Second Commandment says so obviously you can go to Exodus chapter 20 or Deuteronomy chapter 5

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I'm happen to be Deuteronomy 5 and the see verse 6 begins with the

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Decalogue these 10 words the 10 Commandments I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage you shall have no other gods before me there's commandment number one here's commandment number two

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I'm saying that because Protestants count verse 7 you shall have no other gods before me is commandment 1 and then beginning in verse 8 they begin to count commandment number 2

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Roman Catholics combine those first two together as the first commandment and wait till they get to the coveting commandment and split those up into two the reasons for that will are probably fairly apparent now verse 8 this is the second commandment you shall not make for yourself a carved image 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 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them for I the

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Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me but showing mercy to thousands and to those who love me and keep my commandments so we notice that so that God says

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I'm the Lord your God I have redeemed you from Egypt therefore here's how you shall now live and this second series of you shall not is very specific to not make a carved image a graven image a likeness of anything in the created order for the purpose of bowing down to them serving them and God explains that he's a jealous

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God he's not going to tolerate that at all so this question is concerned about second commandment violations now we understand that a carved image a graven image is in principle a painted image a computer -generated image even an image that we may bring up into our mind and craft in our mind even that matters so anything that is crafted by man according to man's imagination according to man's capacities that's what we're talking about here the commandment is not to be read so narrowly that we're only talking about when you get a knife out or to work on wood or a chisel and hammer to work on stone and so on I think everybody understands that so the concern is about second commandment violations the question is are people creating images of Jesus are people creating images of Jesus so that they may bow down to them and serve them that they may worship them is that what is going on is that the concern that is being brought up in in this question many pastors are being more vocal concerned about violations at the second commandment because creating any kind of image of Jesus not only runs the risk of depicting him inaccurately okay but then also leading people into a false worship so let's just take an obvious example our let's say a seven -year -old child of ours goes to Sunday school and receives a

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Bible story about Jesus feeding the 5 ,000 is a picture of Jesus lifting the bread and the fish to heaven and he's praying to the

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Father to bless the food the disciples are all around people out in the crowd you know holding their stomachs are hungry you know and they're going to color this picture while the teacher teaches to reinforce the lesson do we have here a violation of the second commandment what do you think

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I would say no okay why would you say no Kyle I think it comes from the standpoint of the child isn't explicitly worshipping that and seeing that depiction of Jesus as their

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God as their deity it's simply a reinforcement to the story that they're being taught at that point okay is there any sense in which you have you ever experienced this you know that there is a instructions with the color sheet to to venerate the image of Jesus on the page not in any coloring book

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I've used yeah I've not it's been a while though not seen that right okay and now there is of course the concern well let's not even get close to violating any of the commandments so this is idea of fencing the law so let's make sure we don't get even close to breaking any of these very important commandments so let's let's fence the law a little bit and not get anywhere close so in the creating of images of Jesus does this get anywhere close does this get close maybe it maybe it's not a second commandment violation but but are we treading in dangerous waters if perchance let's say

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I'll give you I'll give you a very specific example there was a new family in my former church and they've been out of church for a long time they're just kind of getting back in and looking for community really their son had a few disciplinary you know problems and they're trying to find a good fit for him you know they start coming to church and to encourage the young man in the stories of the

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Bible the dad buys him the action story Bible okay and this guy is basically a big fat comic book and it has all the stories of Scripture in comic book form and he thinks it's the coolest and of course the other kids thinks this kid's got the coolest

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Bible ever and they're you know looking at all the pictures and all that kind of thing so is this treading and dangerous ground as far as the second commandment what do we think

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I mean again let's look at this it says you shall not make for yourself a carved image any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth you should not bow down to them nor serve them this is a bad thing to do so I have a question

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I guess is this to be separated into individual elements of you shall not do this and you shall not do this and you should not do that or is it rather taken as a whole that the creation of these carvings are meant towards veneration or obeisance or service right

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I think that they're they hold together and the whole idea of making a carved image for example all kinds of carved images were made expressly for the temple even cherubim were carved there were pomegranates that were carved into the pillars there it was all kinds of carved images everywhere in the temple and that wasn't the problem even the the

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Ark of the Covenant had a mercy seat and there was a lot of carving a lot of shaping going on there but in regards to any of these elements they were not being revered they were not to be revered no one was to you know bow down and worship these things so it's definitely not a separation of elements here in this commandment it's not saying any carved image is bad because we see how much

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God delights in art in the instructions that he gave in the construction of the tabernacle and the temple also we see how much

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God delights in imagery when we read his word our imaginations are amply excited by the visuals that God creates he wants us to be using our imaginations and crafting in our mind the visuals that he gives to us

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God is for that which is good and true and beautiful and art is a gift from him so he's not against carved images per se just by themselves he's against anyone crafting them so as to bow down to them and worship them so regarding that Jesus Christ being the center of everything

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Christ has the preeminence in all things it would make sense that people and I forget the name of the man who does this but he's been creating art for some time and releasing it through his website and on YouTube and so on it's called full of eyes and his work goes out to various countries and since they go it goes out to Latin American countries he has a big disclaimer at the front of many of his videos saying these images are not to be worshipped they are not for veneration these are to glorify

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God glorify Christ these are not meant for worship and he makes that very very clear

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I think he's being sensitive to the proclivities of some of his audience that's exactly what

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I was thinking just in terms of you know the Catholic tradition and you have very much veneration as part of that in images especially so yes so is somebody wants to honor and glorify

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God and so they want to make a piece of art okay what's the the favorite subject of the scriptures what's the what's the central reality of the universe what are we going to well it's

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Jesus Christ the God -man the incarnation so makes sense that art will be made about Christ now let's we have to dig a little deeper now

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I think because for some people it would make sense to them that if a picture was made of Jesus it would be worthy of worship right because it would be a depiction of the one who deserves all praise and so they would consider it their obligation to worship it or to venerate or to be led in worship by this image informed by this image as to the worthiness of Christ and therefore

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I worship by use of this image which I think would be a violation of the second commandment but we've got to dig a little bit deeper as to why it can't why is it possible why is it possible to create an image of Jesus okay and not the idolatrous right isn't he

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God isn't he God in human flesh Ryan mentioned to us earlier a great passage that Jesus says to Philip Philip have you known me so long and if you've seen me you've you've seen the father all right so how are we to understand what goes on here how is it that an image if you try to draw an image of Jesus you're not trying to draw an image of God any ideas why the two are different part of me wonders if it gets down to the physical reality of it that he came down in bodily form the incarnation and he is here in our world with us

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I can see you across the table from me right now I can look at my wife I can see my kids the beauty of them the majesty of them the same thing applies to Jesus Christ his physicality is just as important as his deity and so by maybe saying well we shouldn't be depicting

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Christ in any image form in some way diminishes his condescension to us right so when we think about the nature of the incarnation and this has been worked out for us helpfully by the creeds whether you start with Nicaea and Constantinople and Chalcedon the the fullness of Christ's humanity is a full humanity the fullness of his deity is a full divinity he is as much

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God as God is God and he is as much man as man is man this extends even to according to the creeds it extends even to the will even to the emotions to the very to the very soul of the matter there is nothing there is nothing lacking in Christ's humanity and there there is no communication of the attributes between divinity and humanity so that the the divine nature of Christ does not leak into the human nature of Christ and thereby improve it and the human nature of Christ does not soak into the divine nature of Christ and thereby lessen it that he is two natures in hypostatic union one person the mystery of the incarnation and the creeds lead us to this biblical truth that we can have we have several examples that we may just simply affirm by you know looking at these different passages by way of negation saying we are not saying that he is some kind of third kind some sort of unique mixture but that he has two natures in one person and by this we may say by dealing with the human nature of Christ that he was a

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Jew they lived in the ancient Near East that he was born of Mary that he was a lineage of David that he ate certain types of foods he encountered a certain type of environment there were certain types of genetics involved means that he's going to look a certain way he's not going to be he's not going to be as tall as an

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NBA player right he's not going to be as a fair -skinned as a

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Norwegian okay he's not going to have certain features that sometimes are depicted in the child's coloring book or a in stained -glass windows so we recognize that in the humanity of Jesus and we recognize the fact that he was a

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Jew living in the ancient Near East at a certain time period we recognize that well we don't really know what he looked like but he looked like the people around him like you know

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Hebrews says he was like one of his brothers Isaiah says he wasn't much to look at he wouldn't didn't have an attractive appearance he was only around 30 but then like the

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Pharisees were saying you're not 50 yet if they wanted to insult him better they would have said you're not 40 yet right but he must have looked a little bit older than than he was and we were just guessing at some of these nuances as we read the text but we don't know we do know some things that we want to try to accurately depict but we don't know exactly look like one question

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I guess I have is in that vein do we just as people as fallen creatures when we don't know something do we tend to just project on to what we think that thing actually is based on either our experiences or our desires of what we want that to be and that may be getting a little bit to the heart of the question especially the racially accurate depiction part yeah writers are told to write what you know but that the bill projection thing you know draw what you know where I see around me

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I'm gonna I'm gonna draw that I'm gonna depict that I'm gonna think that that's why we're that's why when we're dealing with this concern of racially accurate depictions of Jesus there's a whole background to those types of concerns and statements and it's hard to know what those concerns might be for some people they're going to be wanting to push to push back against what they see as the theological import of the white

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Jesus and the black Jesus and the gay Jesus and so on and so forth for others they're going to see some of those depictions they're going to say well we shouldn't be engaging in any of that all of that is a breaking of the

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Second Commandment and that's where the problem is guys and so I hear some of those concerns

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I think that we can say that it's fine to strive for at least more realistic more accurate depictions of Jesus in our art forms while at the same time recognizing that those who would advocate for racial

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Jesus's are then in themselves those constructions are false and intentionally so and should be rejected that can lead ultimately to Second Commandment violations if you keep on telling people somehow for some reason if you start telling people that Jesus was white

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European I don't remember everybody ever saying that I mean I you know

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I haven't ever found anybody who teaches that but people do teach that Jesus and depict

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Jesus as a black man they say Jesus was black and the color in black and don't like and then they disciple people and say that he was black okay but then behind that they fill in all the details about what that means that would be a violation of the

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Second Commandment because the engraving here the carving here is the building up of something that Jesus was not and Jesus is a

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Jew right Jesus is a Jew he was born of Mary he grew up in Nazareth I mean we have the the details of his life so we don't have to fill that in so to the degree

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I would say this to the degree that we are fast and loose with our depictions of Jesus that can be a problem if we are intentionally trying to disciple and instruct folks that Jesus was something that he was not okay

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I would agree at that level that you're getting into Second Commandment violations so there was someone published an article a few years back that the

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Jesus was on the the sexual spectrum that he was struggling with his sexual identity right and that he didn't know if he was a straight or gay or somewhere in between you know well what is that what here's the

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LGBTQ Jesus right when you're doing that that is idolatry little children beware of idols the

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Apostle John says 1st John 5 21 and that's important for all of us to beware of you have any other thoughts

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I think I would just say it comes down to your motivations if you're motivated by the truth then you are going to want to have as accurate a depiction ethnically racially of Jesus as you can but if your motivation is to appease a group of people who want to score a point and you capitulate to that you're doing more than just giving them a point you're letting go of something very important so that's probably where I would

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I would leave that other than first of all I'm thankful that I got this question ahead of time so I could prepare to keep up with you guys but one of the things that I thought about looking at this question art came up and I know you've already mentioned art several years ago

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I was able to read with my dad and my brother Nancy Piercey's book saving Leonardo where she talks about art within the scope of human history but particularly how it relates to our worldview and I couldn't remember for the life of me where she talked about or address this issue but I know that she did so I was able to find her on Twitter reached out to her on Twitter and she actually responded how about that so she gave me the page number and everything but it kind of relates to the

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Reformation I guess you could say within the context of history the whole idea of iconoclasm where you have destruction of religious images yes for a variety of reasons goes all the way back to the

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Byzantine period with Constantine and the people in the the 7th and 8th century back then but it resurfaces over and over again in church history and one of the areas that it resurfaced again was during the

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Reformation when you had the Reformers come in and basically have a problem with the images that the

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Catholic Church at the time really didn't have a problem with and wanted to push as forms of art and she pointed me to page 80 86 in her book under the heading matter is spiritual just a few quotes from that it's been pretty interesting to read but she says one of the regrettable results of the

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Protestant Reformation was a surge in iconoclasm the smashing of statues and images this had nothing to do with opposition to art per se but had everything to do with concerns over theology in the visual arts the

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Reformers charged that imagery had slid into idolatry just as the brass serpent in ancient

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Israel had become an idol and we can see that in 2nd Kings chapter 18 so the

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Reformers come in especially the Calvinist she says and they sought an austere uncluttered form of worship found and focused on the word instead of the image or ritual to emphasize

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God's transcendence they whitewashed over religious paintings on church walls leaving them plain and unadorned so now you have this challenge to the

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Catholics of the day with regard to imagery and they come back and they use the same defense that was used back in the

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Byzantine era saying that they had been successful then in their defense through the doctrine of the

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Incarnation which is kind of what we've been talking about here images were acceptable they argued because Christ is the image of the invisible

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God seen in second it's seen in Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 mm -hmm the word became flesh therefore the material world has the dignity of being an avenue of divine presence one historian explains

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God himself through Christ had taken on human form and thus revealed the earthly world to be capable of bearing the divine it's with this justification the

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Christian use of images sought to lift the visible and earthly to the dignity of reflecting the invisible or eternal so I found that quite fascinating to kind of read through and see you know there is a push -pull between you know these two completely you know diverging sects of the

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Christian faith and I think we can kind of come to a point of agreement with them on this am

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I wrong well I'd say there is a point of agreement because what is said there I think is is fine it's just easily forwarded by either you know

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Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholics into because of the incarnation therefore we can venerate through statues it's not that much farther to go ahead and just push that forward and I think that people sense the danger of that and say okay we're done with it all okay but this is the same thing that we have time and again the the scriptures have tons of warnings about wine but wine never goes away so this is something where for example if somebody got up and preached against wine and they would be unbiblical okay if they got up and they asserted the warnings against wine and then said here's what it actually is supposed to be used for biblically then they would be correct in the same sense images

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I mean how many times do we see in the scriptures warnings against the wrong use of imagery the wrong use of images well that's everywhere but then we also have passages that show what art is for and how it's good so our tendency is when we sense something possibly dangerous sometimes we we throw the whole thing away right it's just completely away but we are called to a level of maturity where we've got to grow up and use dangerous things right and then use them properly and use them rightly so I would say that there there is agreement and there has to be biblical qualification for for those assertions because it's as I said new people can kind of sense the danger in it is this a moment to consider the weaker brother well

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I would say yeah there's always the need to be considerate about those things so for example you know here at our church we don't have a lot of imagery around what we have is probably not like you know overly intentional or anything we just this is just our church house that we gather at as a church family you know so we don't have a lot of imagery going on I don't use imagery as a rule

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I think I broke my rule one time but I don't use imagery and when I preach I don't put anything up on the screen and there is a thought of the weaker brother in regards to that I've not watched the

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Jesus film I've not watched Mel Gibson's the passion I've not watched I've actually not watched the chosen series

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I saw the Christmas one when they they came out like the what do you call it the first episode kind of like a pilot hit the pilot yeah

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I saw the pilot but I haven't watched the chosen I have watched the one I've watched the cartoon Jesus he walks among us the voice of the martyrs the cartoon for the kids or whatever

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I like that one because they quote a lot of scripture in it and I think it's great for kids and all that but I in general

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I just don't I don't watch I don't have a necessary conviction about that but it's not because I'm against images of Christ I just don't think anybody can really do it well

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I just think it's like everybody is failing at it miserably but I I don't

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I don't worship the images in my head but I do imagine what is it like for Jesus to talk with his disciples what is it like when he's teaching what is it like when he gets angry and I am given permission to imagine those things but I'm not worshipping the images in my head you see and this is where it's like I think just it's important to be just honest with where where we're at on those things like yeah so I think there's a opportunity to be careful about those who do have convictions but still there is

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I love Rembrandt I'm a huge fan of a lot of really well done art and I've got a lot of it on my computer that you know kind of cycles through all right well thank you for that question what are you thankful for I'm thankful for answered prayer had a lot of struggles this last week week and a half and I'm thankful for the

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Lord answering prayers not just and just thankful for the prayers of the the people of God our church family who prays for us

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I thankful that he hears their prayers and our prayers it's just a constant reminder of how dependent we are upon the

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Lord how we've got nothing and we just have to look to him for everything on a daily basis many times it's just a moment by moment basis so I'm just very thankful for that I would say

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I'm thankful for brothers sharpening each other just to be in a body that cares about the truth cares about one another and honestly just enjoys the company of each other and that we can sit down open the word together and just talk frankly about it ultimately yielding each of us individually to what the truth of Scripture says and if there's a question we can bring it up and talk it out that's one of the beautiful things about the

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Christian faith when you ultimately have you know fellow believers you can trust and who at the end of the day you love regardless of even if at the end of the day there's still maybe a point of disagreement there you know that they love you you love them and you want the best for them so I'm thankful for that you kind of see a little bit of that modeled in the

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New Testament with the disciples asking questions right that's what disciples do they they also ask questions of the master we are so blessed to be able to ask questions of the master and we have his word with us not only that he has not left us orphans