This is an answer I have just given to a protestant regarding Statues. I hope it clears up any misunderstanding they have. God bless. In Deut. 5:8 it reads You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or 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 shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” The key for you to understand this verse, is where God says “you shall not bow down to them or serve them”. God here is forbidding the worship of statues as a false god. Otherwise he wouldn’t command them to be made in the following verses. Exodus 25:18-22; 26:1,31 – Here God commands to huge statues of golden cherubim (angels) to be made on the two ends of the mercy seat which was to be sat on top of the Ark of the Convent. Clearly God is not against the use of statues, but is against worshipping them, as he said just 5 chapters ago. Also in Numbers 21, God commands the making of the bronze serpent, God even granted healings when they looked at this statue. So God even used statues ritually, and not only as religious decorations. Num. 21:8-9 make [a statue of] a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live” In 2 Kings 18:4 some 700-900 years later when the Israelites started to worship the statue, that God had the statue destroyed by the king. Clearly God is against the worship of statues, but allows the use of them if they are not worshipped. I Kings 6:23-36; 7:27-39; 8:6-67 – These verse show that Solomons temple contains statues of cherubim and images of cherubim, oxen and lions, palm trees and open flowers. If God really meant any we couldn’t use any craving or statue in a religious use, then these would have been condemned. 1 Chron. 28:18-19 - for the altar of incense made of refined gold, and its weight; also his plan for the golden chariot of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered the ark of the covenant of the Lord. All this he made clear by the writing of the hand of the Lord concerning it all, all the work to be done according to the plan David gives Solomon the plan for the altar made of refined gold with a golden cherubim images. These images were used in the Jews most solemn place of worship. Here David gives Solomon the plan for altar in the temple, which once again included golden statues of angels. And the Scripture tells us it was done by the writing of the hand of the Lord concerning it all, Also in 2Chron. 3:7-14, We see the Soloman building the house of the Lord, which was lined with gold, and in verse 8 we see “In the most holy place he made two cherubim of wood and overlaid them with gold” Ezekiel 41:17–18 - Ezekiel describes graven (craved) images in the temple consisting of carved cherubim (angles). On the walls round about in the inner room and [on] the nave were carved likenesses of cherubim.” These are similar to the images of the angels and saints in many Catholic churches.. So clearly if we take Scripture as a whole, we see the command against the use of graven images in Exodus 20 is to do with the false worship of those images. God is not against the prober use of these images as the Scriptures has clearly shown.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 12:17:35 +0000
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