“Worship in Truth”
Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father
In seminary I earned a few extra dollars serving as a teaching assistant for two of my professors. (You happen to know both of them). Dick Belcher, our dear Old Testament professor and friend, would hand me stacks of Hebrew papers to grade. No fun. John Oliver, however, rarely gave me anything to grade for him. You might say I served more as a “researcher” than as a grader for him. John once sent me on an adventure to an Episcopal church in the area; my duty was to “scout out” a so-called “Christian Education class” the church was offering one January morning. Simple enough, right? Who wouldn’t want a bit of an adventure? Well, consider the title of the class: “God Our Mother.” Yes, you read that title correctly. “God Our Mother.” From what I could gather, I was the only person in the classroom – and sadly, there were plenty of folks in attendance – who expressed dismay at such a suggestion. God our Mother?! I barely could keep my seat and restrain my emotions. The suggestion might have been popular among those attendees, but I could not stomach it because the immortal, invisible, only wise God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Period. You and I must worship God as He reveals Himself to us.
The ancient Israelites probably didn’t have Sabbath classes about “God Our Mother,” but they committed an equally heinous sin: they crafted idols such as golden calves for themselves and treated those idols as God. Once again, the sin of idolatry, and specifically of creating God in man’s own image, was as easy to identify as it was in that Sunday School “class.” You and I might not have golden calves or Sunday School classes with putrid titles, but if we look at our hearts, lives and worship, we’ll find our own self-made images of God. These too are sinful, because you and I may worship God only as He has revealed Himself in His Word.
The Second Commandment, our focus this morning, deals with setting limits on what is acceptable worship to God. This commandment impacts whom you worship, how you worship, and future worshippers (who come after you). You might not find any golden calves, Asherah poles or references to God as “Mother” in your heart and home. But if you are not worshipping the one, true God as He has revealed Himself in His Word, you are not serving the God of life.
First, this Commandment impacts whom you worship. The previous commandment is comprehensive in scope, forbidding you to have any other gods besides the one, true God. The Second Commandment likewise forbids you to worship false gods, although it approaches the subject from a slightly different angle. It was the practice of the spiritually dead nations surrounding Israel to craft for themselves handmade idols to worship as their gods. These nations would take created material and mold it into – or carve into it – the images of created beings. As we noted last week, these false gods represented fallen man’s attempt to fill the “God-shaped vacuum” in his heart. They were sinful humanity’s best effort to explain the whys and wherefores of space, time and eternity. The Israelites, however, were the redeemed people of God who had a special knowledge of Him as Creator and Redeemer. They were His peculiar treasure and therefore were to stand apart from the idolatry of the nations as they worshipped the true God. In the same manner, you and I as Christians – the “spiritual Israel” – are to worship the one, true God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and not to make false gods for ourselves. Like the Israelites of old, though, we sinfully tend to follow pagans’ lead in taking created things such as sports, family and work and making them into idols. We place them where only the triune God belongs. Yet the Second Commandment, like the first, prohibits idolatry in any form. But there is a subtler meaning to this commandment; it features a nuanced difference from the first. You see, the Second Commandment forbids you and me from claiming to worship the one, true God while we at the same time trying to mold God to fit our liking. You and I are a people of revelation – God’s revelation (or disclosure) of Himself to us in His works and in His Word – and we must limit our description and understanding of God as He has chosen to reveal Himself to us in Scripture. You are made in God’s image; He cannot be “remade” in yours! The Israelites at times tried to produce visual representations of the invisible God, and those sinful actions flew in the face of this commandment. As the prophet Habakkuk noted, when man creates an idol for himself – even if he calls it his god – he will become captive to its lies. And when you and I reject the self-disclosure of God in Scripture and begin to cast God in our own image, we have become prisoners to our own lies as well. There are so many professing Christians today who claim God doesn’t care what you believe so long as you are sincere in your beliefs and nice to other people. Some Christians claim God is all-good but definitely not all-powerful. To posit such lies is to violate the Second Commandment, because these people are not worshipping the God of Scripture, whose Son claims to be the exclusive way to the Father and who has ordained “whatsoever comes to pass!” A friend recently directed me to the Web site of a nationally syndicated morning radio show to see the provocative statement on its opening page. One of the hosts’ children had drowned only days before, and the host himself had preached at his child’s funeral. This host, a dedicated Christian, could have taken the Harold Kushner approach and said, “God was powerless to save my child.” Or, to a similar effect, “Some things just happen, and God is on the sidelines crying too.” Instead, he took a biblical tack on his Web site, saying, “We don’t always understand, but we know who is in control.” Our fallen, sinful, spiritually dead world loves its wax-nose god, a god made to order. But such gods always disappoint, because you and I – “god-makers” – are the same people who lie, cheat, steal and hate those around us due to our sin nature. God has made you in His image. And you must worship Him only as He reveals Himself in His Word. Only this God is true, and in Him alone is life.
This commandment secondly impacts how you worship. The Westminster Confession of Faith speaks of God limiting worship so that He in His Word defines what is acceptable to Him. In Exodus 20, the Lord specifically prohibits representing Him in any visible form. It was not then, is not now and never shall be permissible to fashion visual images of the invisible God, even if such images are to be used as “aids to worship.” This is why we do not have paintings of the Father or the Spirit in our church, and this commandment seems to limit drastically any attempt to portray the Lord Jesus Christ – who was and remains true man – in visible form. More broadly, though, this commandment implies God alone has the right to order His worship as He sees fit, and you and I are not free to introduce uncalled-for elements into a service of worship. He alone is Sovereign, Creator and Redeemer of His elect, and God alone has the right to dictate what a worship service must consist of in order to please Him. Of course, in the Old Covenant the Lord enumerated exactly what He expected of His people in worship; but the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary means we no longer live under those ceremonies. They were mere types and shadows of the Christ who now has come. The New Testament Scriptures require you and me to worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth, but they offer only the bare elements of a worship service in the New Covenant era: prayer; the reading, preaching and hearing of the Word; the singing of Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; taking solemn vows; receiving a collection; catechizing; and the observance of the sacraments. These elements, and these alone, must comprise our services of worship in Leakesville. Worship is of the utmost importance to God and to you and me. What we do in worship reflects what we believe about God, and if you and I fail to focus on the Redeemer or do whatever pleases us in a service, we are revealing our lack of concern for salvation or our irreverence toward the Sovereign Lord. When you and I read the Second Commandment, we tend to concentrate all our energies on the Roman and Eastern churches and to lambaste their use of icons and of images in worship. But it is even more important that you start with your own heart, life and church. Is your worship outwardly biblical but inwardly dead? Are we substituting humor or drama in the place of the reading, preaching and hearing of the Word? Are the preacher and the choir doing all the “serving” of God while you recline and enjoy yourself? Are you and I following Greene County customs for worship, or are we making our services more biblical? If our worship is not by God’s Word, emphasizing what He emphasizes and doing only what He requires, you and I are not pleasing the One who created us and redeemed us from our sins by His precious Son’s life and death.
Third, this commandment impacts future worshippers – your physical and spiritual heirs. The Lord says in verse 5 that He is a jealous God: jealous for you, and jealous for your worship. He bought you with the price of Christ’s blood, and He delights in obedient worship. Indeed, our Lord Jesus said the Father seeks those who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. Because our God is a jealous God, unwilling to share you with another and unwilling to abandon His right to your worship, He cares about your choices. He cares about your idol worship and is much displeased with it. In fact, He visits the iniquities of you and me to the third and fourth generation. To be sure, Scripture teaches that each person must give an account of Himself, and each of you bears the responsibility for his own sins. But as you study the Word, you note God’s concern for how parents raise their children (Ephesians 6) and how parents are to teach their children the true faith (cf. Deuteronomy 6). Your children – and your spiritual heirs in this church – will follow where you lead, and if you hate the Lord by despising His commandments and molding Him to fit your whims, you will lead your children down the road to destruction. There is, however, a wideness in God’s mercy: He promises to show faithful, covenantal mercy to thousands of those who love Him – and who demonstrate that love by cherishing and submitting to His commandments. If you and I draw our beliefs about God from His Word alone, and if we order our worship according to His Word, we have the assurance that we belong to Him and are heirs of hope through Jesus Christ our Lord. And we will pass on a bounteous spiritual heritage to those who come after us: we will have shown them the one, true God and Jesus, His Son.
Last week, we departed God’s house contemplating the idols in our own hearts and lives. The Word challenged you and me to turn from every creature that we have been worshipping, serving and cherishing as though it were the Creator. This week, the Lord challenges you to examine what you mean when you speak of God. He also calls on you to examine your, and our, practices in worship. Are you making an idol for yourself – a god who doesn’t care about your pet sins, an idol who really isn’t sovereign, an idol who doesn’t condemn sinners to hell – and calling it “God?” Are you acting or thinking as you please Sunday mornings at 11 and calling it “acceptable worship?” There is only one true God, and He has revealed Himself specifically in His Word and in His Son. If you love Him, worship Him as He is – and live in the light of Christ. If not, you are worshipping an idol – no matter your sincerity. And there is no room for the Living God where dead idols clutter your heart. |