Kootenai Church Sunday School

The third commandment does not just forbid a four letter word substitute. It forbids treating the name of God as empty, meaningless, or vain.
In this lesson, teacher Dave Rich moves the Christian Ethics and Old Testament series into the third commandment, You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain. Rich walks through the Hebrew words behind the command, nasa, meaning to lift up or carry, and shav, meaning an empty or false thing, to show that the prohibition reaches far beyond careless speech alone.
Rich explains why God shifts to the third person in this commandment and what that shift reveals about the weight of his name. Since a name in Scripture represents a person's very being and reputation, to misuse the name of God is to lie about who he is. Rich argues the commandment ultimately prohibits all sin, since every person bears God's image, then narrows the focus to specific violations, including irreverent exclamations, careless profanity, and the substitutes and euphemisms Christians often reach for instead.
This lesson calls listeners to examine their own speech and to consider what it truly means to hallow God's name rather than treat it as something ordinary.

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Dave Rich continues his study of the Second Commandment in this lesson, tackling a question every believer eventually faces: if God forbids images of Himself, why does Scripture describe Him as a lion, a lamb, a light, and even a moth?
Rich walks through the Bible's own use of figurative language for God, showing how these pictures teach us about His character without becoming objects of worship themselves. He also examines anthropomorphic language, God's "arm" and His "ear", and what it does and does not mean about God's nature.
From there, Rich turns to the doctrine of the Imago Dei, tracing how mankind's status as God's image bearer was distorted by the Fall, renewed in conversion, and ultimately fulfilled in Christ, "the image of the invisible God."
The lesson closes with a survey of Second Commandment violations across religious history, from Mormon theology and the prosperity gospel to Roman Catholic relics and cargo cults, along with a careful comparison of how C.S. Lewis's Narnia differs from the heretical portrayal of God in The Shack.
This lesson gives listeners a clear framework for thinking rightly about God, guarding against idolatry in both thought and practice, while learning to see Christ as the perfect and only worthy image of God.

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The Second Commandment raises questions that don't always yield easy answers—and Lesson 32 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament leans into that tension honestly. Dave Rich picks up where he left off, first addressing mental images of God, then turning to one of the more genuinely contested questions in Reformed ethics: may Christians use images of Jesus?
Rich walks through the relevant biblical and theological foundations, establishing what is beyond dispute—images of any kind may not be worshiped—before working through six arguments commonly raised against pictures of Jesus in artistic or instructional contexts. He engages each argument carefully, drawing on Calvin, Packer, Frame, Grudem, Douma, and others, neither dismissing the concerns nor accepting every conclusion. The key turning point is the Incarnation itself: the biblical rationale for prohibiting images of God rested on the fact that Israel saw no form at Horeb. Jesus, as the depictable God who took on genuine human flesh, changes that calculus.
Rich distinguishes between portraits designed for devotion—which he views with serious caution—and historically grounded artistic or instructional depictions, which he finds less clearly prohibited. He closes by reading Matthew 4 and Revelation 1 aloud and asking whether the mental images those texts inevitably produce are themselves a problem—and what that means for the broader question.

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What's actually prohibited in "you shall not make for yourself an idol"? Dave Rich works through the Second Commandment verse by verse, and the answer is more precise than most people assume.
Lesson 31 in this verse-by-verse study examines Exodus 20:4-6, comparing it carefully against its restatement in Deuteronomy 5. Rich breaks down the Hebrew terms behind "idol" and "likeness," then makes a case from the tabernacle's own furnishings (the lampstand, the cherubim) that images of created things were never the problem. The real prohibition, he argues, is worship and service directed at an image, whether of a false god or of Yahweh himself.
From there, Rich traces the pattern through Aaron's golden calf, Jeroboam's calves at Bethel and Dan, and the worship of an ephod during the judges, before tackling the harder question of why Israel specifically couldn't picture God the Father. His answer rests on a simple historical fact: at Sinai, they saw no form. He also takes on what "visiting the iniquity of the fathers" really means, clearing up a phrase many readers misunderstand.
This lecture sets up next week's harder question: what about images of Jesus?

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Charles Spurgeon hated controversy. He spent nearly forty years fighting it anyway.
In this second installment on the life and legacy of the "Prince of Preachers," Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, traces Spurgeon's place in what he calls the Truth War: the long, reluctant fight against error that defined Spurgeon's ministry far more than most modern admirers realize.
Johnson walks through Spurgeon's battles one by one, from the baptismal regeneration controversy to his outspoken stand against American slavery, through the Rivulet hymnal dispute, and into the Downgrade Controversy that consumed his final years and ultimately cost him his denomination. Along the way, he exposes a strange irony: many who praise Spurgeon today stand against nearly everything he actually preached.
Drawing on Spurgeon's own words, Ian Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon, and even a German theologian's begrudging tribute, Johnson shows why Spurgeon's example as a defender of doctrine may matter more for the church now than his example as a preacher.
This episode challenges listeners to ask whether they truly stand where Spurgeon stood, or simply admire him from a safe historical distance.

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