Gaze into His Glory

 

 

Author and pastor John Piper says that God delights in Himself — there is no other greater or more wonderful person to WORSHIP. While the Bible does not say anything about His worship, a few hundred verses use words describing our worship or lack of it. It is about bowing down, acknowledging authority, paying homage or honor, giving glory to where glory is due.

Of course, God forbids the worship of anything that is not Him. Instead, we are to “worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness” and bow down before Him, exalting Him in wholehearted love and service with our adoration and praise. The focus is on Him, never on those who lead us in worship or on any other person or thing, for He alone is worthy of true worship.

The OT verbs translated worship can refer to both terror and awe, or even to serve. The terror part is noteworthy as some people teach that God is like a best friend or buddy, yet He is far more. His attitude toward sin ought to put some fear in us, a fear that respects Him deeply and negates our desire to do our own thing. When this fear is coupled with a loving response to His love for us, worship is filled with awe, an emotion that can be compared to other events and things, but never adequately. Worship is also sacrificial service and God’s people are commanded to serve no other gods.

The NT words for worship are religious in nature and do not always refer to God. Idolatry is forbidden as is the worship of other people. Jesus replied to Satan’s temptation to fall before him in Matthew 4:10, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”

He also told a Samaritan woman that there is a correct way to worship God:

John 4:21–24. Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

This means worship is an inner response to truth about God that shows up in outward action. If I understand it correctly, it means there is a place for worship (not merely avoiding assembly with God’s people and going out in the bush to do it) but more importantly, an attitude of worship. The basis for it is truth about God.

In a discussion with another person about God hating sin, she said, “Oh, my God is not like that” and I’ve wondered ever since about that reasoning. How can we make up what we think God should be like and then worship that imagined God? False teachers and cults do this, a trap that Christians must be careful to avoid.

This reminds me of an incident in our daughter’s life. She got a new job and for the first month her coworkers had an odd attitude toward her. She finally discovered that because of the car she drove, they thought she was an ‘undercover boss’ and reacted accordingly. It was amusing for us but not funny when I try to imagine how God thinks when people assume He is something He is not and then worship that made-up God.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. God asks me to worship and serve only Him. To do that in spirit and in truth, my spirit needs to be in right relationship with His Spirit, humbly submitted to His will. And my understanding of Him must be according to the truth He has revealed about Himself, not twisted to suit my desires, but willing to see Him as He is, as my Creator, Savior, and Friend, but also as the God whose ways are higher than my ways and no matter how close to Him I bow, there is a mystery — I cannot fully grasp the wonder of who He is.