First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
February 20, 2011
WORSHIPING GOD IN TRUTH
The Glory Due His Name: Part 2
Isaac Butterworth
John 4:21a, 23-24 (NIV)
‘Jesus declared..., “...A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”’
Many of you know that I did not grow up in the church. My family was not religious, and so, we seldom spoke of God. Still in all, even as a child, I had some conception of God. I don’t know where I got it or how I picked it up, but I had an undeveloped, primitive theology. I mean even as young as five or six.
I remember playing at the window of our second story apartment, overlooking the street in front of our building. I had a small plastic figure -- a toy soldier, perhaps, or maybe a cowboy, I don’t remember. But this I do remember. I positioned the tiny replica of a man on top of the lower sash near the lock just over my head. ‘Now, you be god,’ I said, and I imagined this being -- human in appearance -- situated above me. That was my notion of God: ‘the man upstairs’ model of the deity, I guess you might say. I really knew nothing about God. I just thought I did.
Most of us are beyond thinking about God as a being who looks like Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel or even William Blake’s ‘Ancient of Days,’ both of them bearded and old, with white hair and the body of a man. We are sophisticated enough to know better than that. But the truth is: many people in our world today have a less than adequate view of God. What was it Jesus said to the Samaritan woman? ‘You...worship what you do not know.’ And that is the way it is among many in our day.
Now, if that is true, and, if what else Jesus said to the woman is true -- if authentic worship requires some degree of understanding, so that ‘we worship what we do know,’ if, as Jesus said, ‘True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,’ then we must affirm that there is such a thing as worshiping God ‘in truth.’ But what does that mean -- to worship God ‘in truth’? It means, at the very least, that we must have a sufficient understanding of reality, that we must grasp something of the nature of things, especially as they relate to God and to us.
I. THE MAJESTY OF GOD
And the first thing we must grasp is this. If we are to worship God in truth, we must apprehend something of the majesty of God. Now, please notice what I am not saying. I am not saying that we will, or even may, comprehend God in his fullness. We could never do that. The great Charles Spurgeon once said, ‘I could imagine that all the stars and constellations of stars might be put together and threaded into a string—made into a bracelet for the arm, or a ring for the finger of [God]—but I cannot conceive what God is himself.’ Nor can we. What we must know about the majesty of God is what he has chosen to reveal to us.
When Moses was in the wilderness with the fugitive Israelites, overwhelmed by the hardship and responsibility of being their leader, he asked to see God’s face. But God wouldn’t allow it. He would not do that for Moses. ‘You cannot see my face,’ God said, ‘for no one may see me and live’ (Exodus 33:20). But what God did do for Moses is this. He hid him in the cleft of a rock and covered him with his hand until he had passed by. Then, when God was all but out of sight, he removed his hand, and Moses saw his back.
But why just his back? Why not his face? Michael Horton writes: ‘God’s majesty is not benign.’ Reflect on that a bit. Were we to see God in all his glory, what we would see is not some ‘beatific vision.’ What we would see is a revelation of God’s law and his wrath against those who break his law, and ‘in our fallen condition,’ Horton says, ‘the glorious righteousness of God can only condemn us’ (The Christian Faith, p. 50).
If we would worship God in truth, we must start with humility. We must submit ourselves to being addressed by God on his own terms. God does not invite us to ascend to him; rather, he descends to us and reveals himself to us by grace alone in Christ alone.
The way John Calvin put it is this. He said: God ‘is shown to us [in Scripture] not as he is in himself, but as he is toward us: so that this recognition of him consists more in living experience than in vain and high-flown speculation’ (Institutes, 1.10.2). God, the Scriptures say, is ‘immortal and...lives in unapproachable light; ...no one has ever seen or can see [him]’ (1 Tim. 6:16). But...he has shown himself to us in Christ. And, if we would see God, let’s look there. Let’s look to Christ. He alone is our intermediary. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, ‘For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all...’ (vv. 5f.).
II. THE MISERY OF SIN
So, to worship God in truth, we begin with God and what he has revealed to us of his majesty. We might say that we must have a proper assessment of God. And, if that is so, then we must also have a proper assessment of ourselves. Not only must we see the majesty of God; we must see the misery of sin. And when I talk about the misery of our sin, I am not talking about the laundry list of offenses that you and I accumulate: things like anger and greed and envy and gossip, and so forth. I am not talking about that. I am talking about the condition of sin in which my heart and yours are held captive, so that we do not and cannot desire God. I am talking about the stone cold stubbornness of the human will that only God can penetrate. Only God can break through the hard outer shell of a resistant heart.
My friends, we do not just commit sins; we are sinners, bent on sinning. It is our nature. And knowing that should have a sobering effect upon us. It should cause us to fear, for the God whose majesty we cannot comprehend is a holy God. And Scripture says of him: ‘Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong’ (Habakkuk 1:13). And the Apostle Paul writes: ‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress’ -- listen to this! -- ‘who suppress the truth by their wickedness’ (Rom. 1:18, emphasis added).
Does it make us uncomfortable to hear such things? It was Peter Finely Dunne, a newspaper man in the late 1800’s, who coined the expression, ‘to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.’ Dunne said it was the job of newspapers to do that. Others have said it is the job of preachers. In any case, that’s what Scripture does. Just listen to Amos the prophet. ‘Woe to those,’ he thundered, ‘who are at ease in Zion’ (Amos 6:1, RSV). Are you and I at ease in Zion? It would be better for us if we were not.
If these things make us uncomfortable, let us remember this: It is for our good that we grasp adequately how sinful we are and what great misery we suffer for it. The next time you sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ that hymn beloved by so many, listen again to the words that go, ‘‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear....’ That is the beginning of what is ‘amazing’ about grace. Not until we learn to fear will we see anything ‘amazing’ whatsoever in grace. It’s only when grace has ‘taught my heart to fear,’ that I am then able to say, ‘and grace my fears relieved.’
III. THE MERCY OF CHRIST
And it is to this that we turn next: the relief of our fears, the mercy of Christ. To worship God in truth, we must know something of the majesty of God and the misery of sin. And then, and only then, will we know the mercy of Christ. And this, too, we must know if we are to worship God in truth. Speaking of God, Isaiah said, ‘A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.’ (Isaiah 42:3; cf. Matt. 12:20). Our condition, if we will but acknowledge it, is exactly that of bruised reeds.
But bruised reeds we must be -- for, before we can know wholeness in Christ, we must know brokenness in ourselves. Before we can be filled with Christ, we must be empty of ourselves. Before we can know his sufficiency, we must despair of our own adequacy. Else we will see no need! Nothing can be gained if we have no sense of loss. We must die to pride and self before we are raised to newness of life. Romans 6:8 says that, ‘if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.’ But do you see it: we must die with him first! In the same chapter, in Romans 6:5, we find these words: ‘If we have been united with [Christ] in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.’ But note the order. There is no life without death. There is no Easter without Good Friday! There is no resurrection without crucifixion! We do not come into life in Christ until we go through death to ourselves! We will never know Christ’s mercy for our sins until we know God’s judgment on our sins, until we observe the wounds he inflicts on our pride, until we know ourselves to be bruised reeds.
It was once said, ‘This bruising is required...that so the Spirit may make way for himself into the heart by leveling all proud, high thoughts, and that we may understand ourselves to be what indeed we are by nature,’ sinners in need of grace. These are the words of Richard Sibbes, vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, in the seventeenth century. He goes on to say. ‘It is a very hard thing to bring a dull and an evasive heart to cry with feeling for mercy. Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten from all evasions, never cry for the mercy of the judge.’
But when we see how greatly afflicted we are by sin, we will more readily turn to Christ for comfort. When we are humbled before God, bruised and broken, when we see our wick almost gone out, we will find in the cross of Christ the safe haven for our souls, the only true refuge for our hearts. Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Light is the burden of Christ compared to the burden of sin! Easy is the yoke of Christ compared to bondage to sin!
IV. THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAISE
And when we grasp the mercy of Christ -- or, better yet, when we are grasped by it -- our hearts erupt in praise. Just look at Paul. In Romans 7, he cries out, ‘What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me...?’ What has happened to Paul there? He has seen the misery of his sin, and he cries out for the mercy of Christ. And he receives it, just as you and I do when we cry out for it. And mercy leads to praise. Where else could it lead? ‘Thanks be to God,’ Paul says -- ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom. 7:24f.). When we recognize the misery of our sin, we can properly appreciate the mercy of Christ. When we truly grasp the mercy of Christ, we can worship God in truth. In fact, we will burst forth in the magnificence of praise. Consider again the words of Paul. In Romans, chapter 11, he says that ‘God bound all men over to disobedience so that he might have mercy on them all.’ That is what we have been saying -- that and no more -- that the God of fathomless majesty has bound us all in the misery of our sin so that we may know the mercy of Christ. What can we say to that? Only what Paul says: ‘Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing.... To him be glory forever. Amen.’ This is the God we worship when we worship in truth.
