W. Robert Godfrey

I think it's because the Dutch Reformed are gloomier than the Presbyterians and know that ministers are not to be trusted to get things right.

So you just give them something to read and they may be able to successfully do that.

And interestingly, in one of the old communion forms, there's a list of gross sins.

And the form says, anyone practicing these sins are not to come to the Lord's table unless they repent of these sins.

And in that list of gross sins, interestingly enough, one of the sins to be avoided is praying to saints.

Well, this form was written in the 16th century.

People were just coming out of Roman Catholicism, and there were many people still devoted to the saints.

So I knew a minister who was reading this form and he got into it and starts reading the list of gross sins and reads the one about not praying to saints.

And he said, I remember thinking to myself, this is dumb.

You know, this is so old fashioned.

Why are we doing this?

And he said, after the service, a person came up to him and said, thank you so much for that.

I was still praying to saints.

I'd never really been able to break with that.

Well, it's a tendency of the human heart to invest something physical with spiritual presence and power because it makes life easier for us.

We are visually centered, and so the Lord really warns us about that.

Paul, in a sense, I think, echoes this in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 18.

We look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

And that's really reflected there in chapter 4 of Deuteronomy as a great call to the spiritual character