A Thoughtful Response to God

God honoring and God pleasing worship cannot be manufactured by artificial means.  Whether you like formal music or more contemporary, whether you build a beautiful building and everyone dresses up or if you have a very liturgical order of service or even if you have a quiet atmosphere; these things aren't in themselves the worship of God.  They can aid in worship and should be addressed and have their place but potentially have nothing to do with worship.

As I was thinking through these things the expression that came to me was that worship is a thoughtful response to the revelation of God to our hearts and minds.  This is why Jesus told the Samaritan woman that those that worship God must do so in Spirit and Truth.  I believe the worship God seeks is for us to consider carefully his Word and respond properly to it out of a sincere love for his person.  If we do this properly his Truth will transform the way we think and live.  The atmosphere of the setting in which we hear his Word (church service) can either facilitate this or hinder it but the worship is when we hear from God and our hearts and minds are so struck by it that we can't leave the service the same as we came.

This happens all the time in the world when people read after their idols and seek to be like them.  Perhaps your idol is some business man who you want to pattern your business after and so you read everything you can from him.  Or suppose someone's idol is a movie star.  They are so consumed with that person that they study everything about him or her that they can; they watch every movie and they pattern their life after them or live vicariously through them.  This is what we were created to do towards the Lord.  To be so consumed with his person that we can't get enough of him, we can't hear enough of his Word and we can't do enough to please him.

When we sit in church or anywhere else and find fullness of life and satisfaction in learning of his glorious person and his glorious works and his redemption of sinners to the point that it transforms the way we think and live then we are giving him proper worship.  Emotion that comes from Truth is worshipful emotion.  Emotion that comes from man made music and atmospheres is not.  It might not be sinful but let's not confuse it with worshiping the Lord.

Jonathan Edwards on Guilt and Fear

I thought these words from Jonathan Edwards, expanded on by John Piper are not only good but especially so in our age in which we deny Hell and are afraid of guilt.  Piper says in "The Supremacy of God in Preaching":

"The use of threat or warning in preaching to the saints is rare today for at least two reasons:  It produces guilt and fear, which are considered to be unproductive, and it seems theologically inappropriate because the saints are secure and don't need to be warned or threatened.  Edwards rejected both reasons.  'When fear and guilt correspond with the true state of things it is reasonable and loving to stir them up.  And the saints are only as secure as they are willing to give heed to biblical warnings and persevere in godliness.'"  "Let him who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall", 1 Cor. 10:12.

But Edwards realized that love was the highest motivator.  "Holy love and hope are more efficacious to make the heart tender and to fill it with a dread of sin than is the slavish fear of Hell."  Then Piper makes a great statement:

"Preaching about hell is never an end in itself.  You can't frighten anyone into heaven.  Heaven is for people who love purity, not for people who simply loathe pain."  Edwards is then quoted for balance:

"Some talk of it as an unreasonable thing to think to fright persons to heaven; but I think is is a reasonable thing to endeavor to fright persons away from hell - tis a reasonable thing to fright a person out of a house on fire."

When we see thirty youth walking into convenience stores at a predetermined time to causally steal whatever they want and then leave daring anyone to stop them we can be pretty sure they aren't sitting under the preaching of Hell, Fire and Damnation!

He Owns the Cattle on a Thousand Hills

The other day I was considering Jesus’ words in Matthew chapter 6.  Here Jesus says that we do not have to give ourselves over to taking care of the body or accumulating wealth for security since God is quite capable of providing for us.  This frees us up to focus on obeying and serving him even when it looks like doing so will put us into physical danger or need.

I was thinking of scriptures and songs that taught this and the song, “This Is My Father’s World” came to mind.  I also thought of the old song, “He Owns The Cattle On A Thousand Hills”.  But when I turned to Ps. 50 I noticed something interesting.  The context of this statement was not about God’s ability to provide for us but instead something equally if not more important.

Now to be sure, the fact that God owns all the earth and everything and everyone in it infers that we will be adequately provided for; so I don’t have a problem with this fact being used in the song to make this point.  But the context has to do with the silly and sinful notion that somehow we are impressing God or providing something for him when we bring a sacrifice to him.  The point is that some of the Israelites thought that the sacrifices were the end in themselves.  Evidently they thought that regardless of how sinful I am and how much my life is offensive to a holy God, as long as I bring him an animal he is happy. 

But God says in Ps. 50 that he already owns the animals.  They aren’t filling some need of his let alone pacifying his wrath against sin by offering a sacrifice to him that is already his to begin with.  He says, “Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?”  They were failing to realize that these sacrifices couldn’t be the main point but that they pointed to something else.  In other words, the very nature of God should have caused them to realize that such pitiful “gifts” couldn’t actually make things right with God. 

What makes our lives acceptable to the Lord is that we live to honor him.    This is primarily shown in that we find our joy and fulfillment in knowing him.  To think that we can bribe him with something that is his just makes our sin more apparent; it does nothing to attain forgiveness and fellowship.  He goes on to say that while you are bribing me you continue to walk in ways that I hate. 

Unlike all false gods, the True God isn’t satisfied as long as we jump through a series of moral or ritualistic hoops that he has arbitrarily set up.  The only thing that proves that we love him is that we long to be like him.  These Israelites were not interested in hearing what God had to say since they "hated discipline and cast his words behind them"; they were pleased when they saw people doing evil; they spent their time with the wicked; they gossiped and slandered and threw God a dead animal now and then as if God was so low, petty and shallow that he would be satisfied with this.

But he gives us a weighty warning in vs. 21, “These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Psa 50:22  "Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver! Psa 50:23  The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!"

First of all anything we do and say that suggests that God is like us is wrong.  This happens a lot in our day when people suggests that God is evil or unjust in some way because he doesn’t express his love and justice the way we think he should.  Railing against the providence of God is bringing his wrath upon you at worst and refusing to rejoice always at best. 

Then he says to get his next point because if you don’t you are in danger of his eternal wrath.  He is much more concerned with what is going on inside your heart than the religious activity.  The sacrifices he wants are the ones that arise from hearts full of thanksgiving and worship.  But then he balances this out.  He did not make humans with two parts, a body and a soul, that can be viewed separately as if they can live independently from each other.  What makes us human is that they cannot be independent.  We cannot let our body do what it wants and pretend that this doesn’t arise from within.  So he finishes by saying that the one who is right on the inside will be right on the outside. 

We cannot live an ungodly life and be clean on the inside.  On the other hand, good works and religious activity won’t clean up an evil heart.  When the Lord saves us he gives us a new heart or a new nature and this necessitates a new walk.  Perhaps Romans 6:4 says it as well as anywhere,  “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  Lest we think salvation is just positional and doesn’t have to affect the way we live in vs. 6-7 he adds some commentary, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.”

There are two things that the Old and New Testaments teach exactly the same; salvation is by grace alone and it comes with a new heart.  Nowhere does it teach that we can earn it or continue to live as we did before once we have it.

Pristine Societies

The other day I came across a video on the internet about a Amazon tribe that was supposedly one of the last people on earth to be exposed to “civilization”.  Of course, the premise was that they were better off left alone and great care was being taken to leave them that way lest they be “corrupted” by modern civilization.  For this to be true certain presuppositions have to be true. 

First of all evolution and naturalism must be true.  One must suppose that the highest level of life is achieved by living close to nature and that having to live in a society that has pollution and is given over to greed and materialism is far worse than living in poverty and at least the air is clean and none of western civilization’s social mores are ruining your life.  Along with this is the presupposition that there is nothing after death and so if one can eke out a few peaceful years on earth nothing more can be hoped for.

What such presuppositions fail to take into consideration is that isolation from western society while protecting from a few things also quarantines one from the gospel.  Thus a society left alone condemns everyone to a Christless eternity.  We might also add that while modern society certainly has a lot to be ashamed of and is full of crime, avarice, pollution and all sorts of corruption, supposedly pristine societies are no better.  Watch any “nature” show and you will see them living in filth, poverty, rampant disease and as much violence and moral decay as seen anywhere.

The reason is obvious.  “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”.  You can take a few godly souls and put them on a deserted island but soon their society will be as evil as any before it (read the American experience).  It is popular to depict the Native Americans as peaceful cultures that lived close to the earth and had a healthy respect for the land and that the White man spoiled it all.  For sure, the Europeans acting out their sinful ways treated them unfairly and in many cases cruel and inhumane, but their cultures treated themselves the same way.  But with all the bad that happened to them so also came the gospel. 

This won’t mean much to those who see religion as part of the problem and have no idea who God is but to those Indians who were saved, without the invasion of the Europeans they would have no hope of salvation.  Sin is sin and nothing can justify mistreating our fellow man but let’s be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that anyone is better off being left alone, isolated from the world.  If we hear of a tribe who has never seen anyone from the outside world then pray that the Lord of the Harvest would send the gospel to them.

Yes, in a few years they might be driving cars, dealing with smog and watching television but at least they have the opportunity to hear of Christ.  It is only after the world contacts these people that we have any hope that there is any elect among them.  Their greatest danger isn’t modernity with all its social ills; it is to never hear that Jesus Christ came to earth to save sinners.  

Sorry, But We Do Not Have A Free Will

One of the problems we face today when speaking to people about the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is correcting the view that man has a free will.  We need to be very clear about what the Bible teaches about free will; no one has one except God.  Yes, man was originally created with one but lost it in the Fall.

The Bible is clear about this.  For instance, in Rom. 3 the Word of God says that no man seeks after God or is capable of doing any good thing.  Now think about this.  If I am by nature incapable of doing good then I am incapable of choosing to do good.  My will is corrupted in some way in which I cannot choose to do good.  It would be better to say that I cannot do good because I will not do good because I don’t want to do good. 

One might think within himself, “Wait just a minute, I am free to think and choose whatever I want to. No one is telling me what to think.  When I get up in the morning I am free to pursue whatever I want.  If I want to choose God I can and if I don’t want to, I won’t.”  One reason people have a hard time understanding free will is because they don’t detect any force or influence in their minds expect their own will. 

But to claim the freedom of the will to do either good or wrong is akin to saying that a dog has the freedom to bark or not.  There is a fundamental problem with this logic.  A dog does not have the freedom to choose between barking or meowing or mooing because he is a dog by nature.  Thus he is incapable of doing anything other than being a dog and dogs bark. 

Romans 3 is saying that this applies to humans as well.  We are by nature sinners and so the only thing we are capable of doing is sinning.  To insist on being able to exercise our will in a way that chooses God or obeys him is to insist to be able to do what sinners cannot do. 

One way fallen man has made this confusing is by changing the definition of sin and righteousness.  We redefine sin and lower God’s standards so that it appears that we are doing things that please him but we have only set ourselves up as the standard which means that everything we do is in rebellion to the Lord. 

Rom 6:17 says, “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.”  Here is another place where we learn that before God gives us a new nature we were under bondage to sin.  For the natural man to claim to have a will that is free is to claim to be his own boss independent of his sin nature.  But if the will is under bondage to sin, then it is not free; there is no third option, you are either free or a slave; you are either in jail or out of jail.  One cannot be in a middle position. 

It will be much easier to understand and explain the Bible when we don’t start with unbiblical presuppositions.  Understanding that we are totally corrupted by and in bondage to sin will immediately cause us to realize that we are totally dependent on God for every step of salvation.  And this is true of the rest of life also.  We need him each step of the way for without him we can do nothing; nothing but sin that is.

Who Did Jesus Understand Himself To Be?

Mar 10:19  You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.'" Mar 10:20  And he said to him, "Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth." Mar 10:21  And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

James White made an interesting point the other day speaking about the rich, young ruler.  In seeking to expose the fact that he was a law breaker and in particular an idolater Jesus tells him that in order to inherit eternal life he must keep God’s Law perfectly.  This young man does what so many have done before and after him.  He assumes that because he has not grossly broken the second table of the law he is not guilty of the first commandment. 

This got me to thinking.  Jesus starts off with the easier ones then finishes by showing that this man loves himself more than God because he is not willing to part with life’s pleasures for the sake of Christ.  Ultimately Jesus is teaching us that no poor attempts of law keeping are going to save anyone.  In order to inherit eternal life one must trust fully on Christ alone.  But first one has to realize that we are all lawbreakers regardless of how good you think you are.

So I think the beauty of Jesus’ words here is not that he moves from the law to himself because he doesn’t.  He is going to show this man that he is a law breaker and he is still referring to the 10 Commandments.  If I can paraphrase Jesus’ words I think he is in essence saying, “Okay, you think you have kept the 10 Commandments because you have kept from treating your fellowman cruelly.  Let’s cut to the chase.  The first commandment is that you shall have no other gods before me.”  (This Jesus more clearly explains means that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.)

Now the amazing thing.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Are you willing to forsake all for Yahweh”, he says “Are you willing to forsake all for me!”  The question here is whether this man has broken the law and Jesus equates his love for Yahweh with his love for Jesus.  If the First table of the Law can be summed up in total love and allegiance to Yahweh and Jesus says in order to have eternal life one must give total allegiance to the Son, then it seems the obvious conclusion must be that Jesus is God.

Jesus is commanding this man to forsake all and follow only him.  If Jesus isn’t God then he is in essence commanding him to break the very first and greatest commandment.  Perhaps another way of putting it is that it is impossible to keep the commands of God unless one follows Christ as God.

Heavenly Obedience

We have been considering the Lord’s Prayer in Mathew 6.  While I was preparing the sermon on God’s will being done on earth as it is in Heaven I thought of a couple of places where we might get a glimpse of his will being done in Heaven.  We have all heard messages on how God’s will is done in Heaven and how our obedience should mirror the obedience of the angels in glory.  His will is no doubt done immediately, it is done totally, it is done by all, etc.  And these are certainly important things to consider as we examine our lives.

I believe a case could be made that it is also done eagerly.  If our God is perfect in his wisdom and goodness then any commands he gives must be for the most glorious purposes and we should be eager and joyful in our response or we are demonstrating a lack of faith in his perfectly glorious person.

So where are these examples?  How about the first chapter in Ezekiel?  Here the Cherubim are described for us.  In verse 9 we read, “Their wings touched one another. Each one of them went straight forward, without turning as they went.”  As we read through the chapter we see that this is mentioned quite a bit and seems somewhat obvious as to why.  Here are the verses:

Eze 1:12  And each went straight forward. Wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went.

Eze 1:14  And the living creatures darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning.

Eze 1:17  When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went.

Eze 1:25  And there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads. When they stood still, they let down their wings.

The text seems to emphasize their quickness in obeying the Lord and at least one advantage of having four sides was that they didn’t even have to take the time to turn in another direction.  There was absolutely no delay in doing the Lord’s will!  To me this speaks of eagerness; anything that would cause delay should be removed so we are unencumbered.  This is pretty much what Hebrews 12:1 is teaching when it says lay aside every weight that would slow us down in serving the Lord.  It all goes back to what our most pressing desires are. 

In Ezekiel 1:25 it says that when God spoke they stopped moving, let down their wings and listened to him.  They were never to forget that the important thing was not what they were doing but who they were doing it for. 

This verse made me think of Matthew 18:10, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”  I thought it was interesting that these “guardian” angels were described as always looking at the face of the God in the discharge of their duty to protect their charges.  (Let’s assume anyway that this is what guardian angels do.  I can’t say that I have a handle on guardian angels.) 

If we asked someone to babysit our children and they were occupied with a boyfriend or the TV while they were babysitting we would assume they were not doing their job very well.  But remember that God does not need angels to look after us; it is his ordained way of caring for us to some degree.  Their first duty is not to care for us as they see best but to do so in accordance to the will of God.  Thus the glorious truth of what Jesus is saying besides the fact that even children have the attention and care of the Lord is that nothing happens to us that is outside of God’s will for us because the angels have one concern only; to care for us as the Lord would have it.  So their focus is not on us but on hearing from God. 

When we pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, let’s be careful that we aren’t only concerned with governments and others.  It is first a prayer that in our lives God’s will is honored above all else and may God help us to do so eagerly and joyfully.  Any delay or complaining or souring of our attitudes is not the obedience his nature deserves.