In this week’s video teaching series by Ray Vander Laan, he begins by describing another unique way Hebrews process information. The Hebrew people were a highly visual culture. Rather than simply declaring, “My God is bigger than yours,” they would say, “Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in!” (Psalm 24:7) to describe the power and magnitude of God.

The “top” of the gate was referred to as the head of the gate. The psalmist's poetic imagery is saying: lift the heads of the gates because the King of Glory is coming, and He is too great to enter through a standard opening. Rather than building an eight-foot-tall gate and calling it sufficient, they said, in effect, “Our God can’t fit through that—He’s way too big. Lift the gates!”

Ray asks how the Israelites expressed or represented this when surrounded by empires like Egypt, which were full of grandeur and symbolism. If your ancestors had just come out of Egypt, and now you're standing in the shadow of a 90-foot statue of Ramses II, how could you possibly explain to your children or your people the glory and power of a God they could not see? How do you compete with that kind of visual representation?

The Nile River is over 6,000 miles long. It is the longest river in the world. In Egypt, the Nile floods regularly, providing life-giving water and rich soil. Where it doesn’t flood, the land is barren desert. The contrast is drastic, and until you've seen it, it's hard to grasp the visual impact.

The Israelites lived in Goshen, an area where the Nile's floodplain could reach up to 69–70 miles wide during peak seasons. However, for much of the river’s early course (roughly the first 4,000 miles) it flows through steep canyons and doesn't flood at all. In those areas, the banks are too high, and growth is minimal. It is mostly desert and rocky terrain.

But once the river exits the canyons, it spreads across flatter ground, flooding annually in Biblical times. This flood left layers of rich sediment, creating some of the most fertile topsoil in the world. Ancient Egyptians barely needed to use fertilizer—nature did the work through divine design. The land was so fertile it seemed miraculous.

The Egyptians had a word for this fertile land: ma’at. It’s the same concept as shalom in Hebrew—peace, completeness, prosperity. They believed their gods brought this shalom.

Ma’at was also the name of a goddess, symbolized by a feather in her hair. Every carving of an Egyptian god includes her or her feather. It was Egypt’s way of saying, “I, the goddess Ma’at, am the one who brings order and peace. I kept the locusts from your grain. I made sure the Nile flooded and brought you prosperity.” But their understanding of shalom was distorted—they viewed it as a purely material or physical blessing.

Ray went on to say that shalom, however, is not the absence of chaos—it’s peace in the midst of it. It’s the presence of wholeness and divine order that only God can give (John 14:27). Everywhere in Egypt, carvings and statues represented gods—millions of them. They believed physical forms could represent divine presence. These statues weren't considered gods themselves, but they marked where the god was. If you saw the statue, you knew the god was near.

This concept applied to Pharaoh as well. His image didn’t need to be exact—just “close enough,” like a shadow ( Hebrews 10:1). An image (tselem in Hebrew) meant a physical representation of a deity or authority. It marked divine presence but wasn’t the deity itself.

God used this same framework but flipped it. He forbade images of Himself (Exodus 20:4), yet He still gave Israel a physical sign of His presence: the Ark of the Covenant. It was overlaid with gold, weighed thousands of pounds, and featured two cherubim with wings touching. God said, “There I will meet with you... from between the cherubim” (Exodus 25:22). The Ark was a holy marker. Anyone who approached it without proper preparation died because it was where God's presence was focused (Leviticus 16:2).

This is also why Catholics often keep a candle lit near the altar. It’s not that the candle is God, but it symbolizes His presence in connection with the Eucharist. It's a visual reminder just like pagan statues used to be reminders of their gods. The candle marks, “God is here.” Similarly, statues in ancient religions often aimed to reflect a god’s character. The statue itself wasn’t divine—but gave people a glimpse of what that deity was like.

Abu Simbel is a temple carved into a cliff featuring four enormous statues of Pharaoh. Compared to him, the statues of his wives are tiny, again visually emphasizing the size of their god.

In ancient Syria, the temple of the goddess Asherah featured a large statue in the inner sanctuary—the Holy of Holies. She stood on a platform, and people would say, “Asherah is here.” You could even see her “footprints” carved into the floor, showing where she walked—massive impressions designed to emphasize her power, communicating in visual metaphors and symbolism. Pharaoh built massive gates to say, “Want to know how great I am? Look at how big the gate is that I have to enter through.”

How could Israel respond to that? They couldn’t build bigger statues or more extravagant temples. Instead, they declared: “Lift up your heads, O gates... that the King of glory may come in” (Psalm 24:7). That’s how they represented their God’s greatness—not by out-building others, but by elevating His majesty in word and worship.

Greek and Roman statues often featured a bare chest and fig leaf to symbolize deification of the human form. Caesar Tiberius’s statue was made with one arm extended forward, holding a scepter to signify authority. One foot was placed behind, showing the past, the other stepping forward to represent the present, and the outstretched arm pointed to the future. The statue’s purpose was to show a glimpse of who he was.

God came along used images too, but He didn’t want a stone carving or idol. Instead, He chose human beings. While pagans crafted statues to represent their gods, God made people to reflect His image.

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). The same Hebrew word used for idol (tselem) is used to describe humans. Christians are meant to be to the world what statues were to pagan gods - visible, living reflections of divine character and presence.

Then sin entered the world and distorted that image. But through Christ, redemption came: “...put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). When we follow God, our lives offer others a glimpse of what He is like. This mission—to represent God to creation—was built into human nature from the beginning.