O Worship the King

There is, somewhere between the showmanship of TV evangelists, and the deadness of many churches today, a genuineness of worship that excites the child of God, and warms the heart of God.  Worship that is boring is, at the least, meaningless.   Worship that is merely a well-performed show is sinful. Neither comes close to what will happen in heaven, and through all eternity.

I often think of those people who find excuse after excuse to miss worship services.  Some of that may be attributable to poor worship leadership, which inevitably means boring services.  Often, however, I would venture it means a misunderstanding of the responsibilities and privileges in worship, and therefore choosing something else as important over worship.  The sad conclusion to be drawn is that, If you don't like worship here on earth, heaven will be a disappointment!

So…what about worship here on earth?  What should it be like?  What are the signs that you have truly been in a worship service?  There are several key indicators:

Spontaneous Worship which Praises God

The second terror is past, but look, the third terror is coming quickly.  Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices shouting in heaven:  “The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.”  The twenty-four elders sitting on their thrones before God fell with their faces to the ground and worshiped him.  Revelation 11:14-16

In a declarative thunder the angels sing the praises of God, and announce the settled fact that all kingdoms of the earth belong to God.  George Fredrick Handel took this text for his magnificent work,  The Messiah.  He had shut himself up without any outside contact, wishing to worship God without distraction.  Inspired and overwhelmed at the thought of the Christ who shall reign for ever and ever, he wrote the whole piece in less than a month!  This is a spontaneous declaration of praise.  True worship declares the wonder of God's mercy, grace, power, and love.  Has there been that in your worship this morning?

The twenty-four elders, representing the saints of all time, spontaneously respond to the praise of the angels.  They fall on their faces, prostrate before the throne.  That’s a difficult concept for many Western Christians.  Our fierce allegiance to political freedom has made bowing of any kind absent in our culture.  We may use words to deliver approval or disapproval, but praise demands full-body participation.

Our demonstration of worship should not be so tied to performing well; it should flow spontaneously from a heart that has decided to worship his Lord.  That doesn't rule out pre-planning in worship.  The planning allows that we have decided to worship, but the offering of our worship can alter the plan.  Spontaneity is God breaking into our plans, and us being ready to hear him.  Has there been in your worship this morning spontaneity which praises?

Singular Worship which Glorifies God

And they said, “We give thanks to you, Lord God, the Almighty, the one who is and who always was, for now you have assumed your great power and have begun to reign.  The nations were filled with wrath, but now the time of your wrath has come.  It is time to judge the dead and reward your servants the prophets, as well as your holy people, and all who fear your name, from the least to the greatest.  It is time to destroy all who have caused destruction on the earth.”  Revelation 11:17-18

O Lord God, the Almighty is the name offered up in worship.  Singular worship means the dogmatism which is not afraid to declare there is only ONE God!  It does not offer acceptance for other Gods or worship systems. 

There is no room to glorify any other God when it comes to Jesus! 

Singular worship means without apology.  We don't bring New Age nonsense into the church of Jesus.  We don't buy the Age of Aquarius, and horoscopes.  We don't buy phrases like:  Well, we're all trying to get to the same place.  We're all serving the same God.  That's heresy!  It smells like smoke out of the pit of hell! 

True Christianity doesn't make room for any other gods!  Jesus taught with authority because He was (and is) God!  Have you recognized that in your worship this morning?

According to John the nations get very angry over the fact that Jesus is God, and that He has great power, and reigns.  Why is that?  Because in the end it means Satan, the Beast, and his false prophet, along with untold millions of his demons, and all human beings who reject Jesus Christ as Lord are going to be deposed, stripped of power, and cast into the lake of fire.  Beloved, there are only two sides of the eternal war.  You can have faith in this world, and Satan, who is the god of this world, or you can trust in Jesus, the true coming Lord of all life. 

A word of caution:  There is no Switzerland, no neutrality in this war.  If you try to sit on the fence, you'll find quickly that there no fence.  There is only a dividing line, the Word of God – and it is too sharp to sit on that blade! 

Singular worship means Jesus, and only Jesus!  Is He the only object of your worship this morning?  Are you glorifying Him?

Significant Worship

Then, in heaven, the Temple of God was opened and the Ark of his covenant could be seen inside the Temple.  Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and roared, and there was an earthquake and a terrible hailstorm.                     Revelation 11:19

Worship is bowing your life to the glory of God.  If there is one thing we seek when we come to worship, it is the vision of God.  We want to see Him, hear from Him, touch the hem of His garment.  Do we really?

Isaac Rankin says that just outside his window is a large wire which carries a heavy current of electricity for light and power.  It is carefully insulated at every pole and is out of common reach. "However," he says, "if I could lean out far enough to grasp it, death would be as swift as a lightning stroke.  Yet the doves in my neighborhood suffer no harm when they perch on it.  They fly from my windowsill, where I sometimes feed them, and preen in safety and contentment on the cables.  The secret is that when they contact that wire, they touch nothing else.  My danger would be that, should I attempt to reach out and do so, the walls of my house would act as a ground, and the current would turn my body into a channel through which the electricity would flow in damaging power.  Because they rest entirely upon the wire, they are unharmed. 

So God would have us seek our safety in complete surrender to His power and love.  It is when we reach one hand to Him while still holding fast to some forbidden thing with the other that we are in danger."

Worship can only be satisfying if we can stand in the presence of Holy God without being condemned of sin.  Otherwise it is like grabbing on to a high voltage wire, while standing in the bath water. 

How can one stand in God's presence and not be condemned for sin?  Only by trusting in the One who died for your sins.  Then there is no reason to be punished for them! 

Accept Jesus today, and stand now – this moment – before the Lord God Almighty who reigns forever and ever. 

Stand clean.  Stand forgiven.  Worship spontaneously.  Worship until you're satisfied.  You'll never stop!

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture from The New Living Translation  

 

From Eternity to Eternity

 

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Bring out the people who have eyes but are blind, who have ears but are deaf.  Gather the nations together!  Assemble the peoples of the world!  Which of their idols has ever foretold such things?  Which can predict what will happen tomorrow?  Where are the witnesses of such predictions?  Who can verify that they spoke the truth?  “But you are my witnesses, O Israel!” says the Lord.  “You are my servant.  You have been chosen to know me, believe in me, and understand that I alone am God.  There is no other God—there never has been, and there never will be.  I, yes I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior.  First I predicted your rescue, then I saved you and proclaimed it to the world.  No foreign god has ever done this.  You are witnesses that I am the only God,” says the Lord.  “From eternity to eternity I am God.  No one can snatch anyone out of my hand.  No one can undo what I have done.”  Isaiah 43:8-13

The prophet is taking his beloved kinsman to task (as most prophets did!).  Their history was unmistakably orchestrated by the sovereign will of Jehovah, Creator of the universe and all it holds.  Yet, they had somehow forgotten that, and taken the seemingly more convenient approach of accepting their neighbors’ gods.  It was “convenient” in the sense of going along, to get along.  It is easier, in the short run, to  surrender truth to those who only believe what denies the facts.  But, in the long run, you eventually run into….God, specifically, the one, true, living God.  Everything else is an idol. 

Isaiah reminded Israel they were supposed to be faith-believing witnesses of the God Who stretches from eternity past through eternity present and future.  There is no time when God did not exist or rule the universe, and that includes forever, as well as today.

So, the question for Israel, for us, for anyone, is:

When does it ever make sense to trust in anyone but God?

Consider this picture; a 7-year-old boy was delivered from his mother’s womb.  She and the dad fed, diapered, and loved him.  They trained him to walk and talk.  They taught him to act like a human…sort of.

One day the dad took his son to work with him at the nuclear reactor energy plant.  He showed him all the dials, levers, gauges, and control panels that ran the place.  He showed the boy how, when he flipped a switch, things buzzed, moved, and either turned on or off.  He even let his son get in on the fun, allowing him to flip one switch that returned electricity to a neighborhood that had been powerless due to a storm.  The emergency crew had finished their repairs, and the boy was permitted to flip the switch, and voilà, there was light!  

Well, as 7-year-olds are wont, the young man decided he wanted more of a good thing.  If it was fun to press one switch that turned on thousands of lights, there must be plenty more where that came from!  So, in his newfound joy of turning dials, switches, handles and control panel buttons, he began running around touching everything. 

I do not need to carry this imagined scenario any further.  A seven-year-old, turned loose near the controls of a nuclear reactor is a tragedy just waiting to be written (assuming, of course, anyone lives through the day).

Imagine Israel as the little boy; favored by their Father, Jehovah, and heir to the power of the universe, far superseding anything manmade, such as a little nuclear energy plant.  This is what Isaiah saw, an heir of universal greatness, running around in juvenile playtime, instead of growing up to boldly proclaim the name of Yahweh to the nations.  Like the little boy in the imaginary tale of going to work with daddy, Israel had grown bored with just pushing buttons as instructed.  I can just hear the words:  OK, dad.  I got it from here.

That is the condition of our world today.  God is largely ignored, and we, human children are pressing as many buttons as our pudgy little fingers can reach.  Some day we will press the wrong button – not the nuclear annihilation one connected to all those bombs – but the one that crosses the line of God’s patience.

For You Today

If Yahweh was God before the beginning, and He will be God after whatever ending we humans engineer, it is safe to assume He is God right now.  What further call do we need to worship Him at this (and every) moment?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title image Pixabay.com ∞  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Isaiah 43 see Eyes that Do Not See; Ears that Do Not Hear and No Other God

 

You Alone are God

 

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Psalm 86:8-10

No pagan god is like you, O Lord.  None can do what you do!  All the nations you made will come and bow before you, Lord; they will praise your holy name.  For you are great and perform wonderful deeds.  You alone are God.

The Old Testament (Hebrew) Scriptures declare that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph is one God, and He is alone in that…there is no other true God. 

The Shema is like the Christian affirmation of faith, what we believe about God.  It is the basic prayer every orthodox Jew prays; it begins this way;. 

“Listen, O Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  Deuteronomy 6:4 

Image via WikimediaCommons

                            

Jesus affirmed that first tenet of faith to the Pharisees who came to question him:

Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord.  Mark 12:29 

And, now for the part that gets every Christian preacher in deep, and very hot water, for being faithful to the veracity of the Word of God:

To believe this…that only Yahweh is God, and there is no other; that He, alone, is God, makes God an EX-clusive God, as opposed to IN-clusive.

To say it one other, perhaps more offensive way:  to believe that ONLY Yahweh, Jehovah God, is the true God, and there is no other, is to say since Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and the Father Jesus said he came from…if that God isn’t your God, you have a false God.

Hello!  I’m Russell, and I’m a 21^st century cultural outcast, because I believe in an exclusive relationship with God, and that begins with the claim that Yahweh, is alone the Creator and Sustainer of all life.  He alone is God, and persons who will not acknowledge Him as Lord of all, will not receive eternal life; they will be lost forever.

So, what does this kind of thinking, that there is one and only one God exclude?  Well, it excludes at least these few realities:

1.     It excludes all religions that do not worship the triune God (Father, Son, Spirit) as sovereign, in charge, and to be obeyed and worshipped.

2.     It excludes all faith that is universal, supposing that God approves of all persons, regardless of faith and practice.

3.     It excludes all faith that includes God, but does not worship Him with all heart, mind, soul, and strength.

4.     It excludes all faith that makes the cross of Christ less than necessary for the forgiveness of sin, which is entirely necessary for every human being’s redemption.

Now, that’s not very ecumenically-welcoming, or politically-palatable these days, but I hold to these statements like the great reformer, Martin Luther, said when accused that his faith statements were heretical,

Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience.  Here I stand.  I can do no other.  God help me. Amen!

That got Luther defrocked, stripped of his clergy credentials, and excommunicated (kicked-out of) the church.  The church leaders wanted to have him executed, so he was hunted like a criminal heretic for the rest of his days. 

I have a word for his persecutors (in hindsight)…how’s that working for ya?  It’s only been 500 years, and grace alone is still standing!

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, you require your people to be faithful.  We understand that from Scripture which shows us every ill that befell Israel was because of their unfaithfulness.  And just as warfare requires faithfulness on earth, so the spiritual battles that are conducted in prayer require our steadfast commitment to the truth that You are God, alone.  Not only are we not God, nobody else is either!

For You Today

In this pluralistic 21^st century everyone’s faith and ideas are valued as equal…and the Christian that falls for that will never stand for anything else in God’s Kingdom.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Psalm 86 see Asking and Reaction Time  and The Justice in Mercy