Now thirdly, we will consider the object of worship. And these are obvious things, but just to focus on them in this text. Who is the object of worship? Verse 21 ends up with, “Worship the Father.” Verse 23 says, “Worship the Father.” Verse 24 says, “God is spirit and those who worship Him...” We are to worship the one who is spirit and the one who is Father. Those are very important ideas. We are to worship the God who is spirit and the God who is Father.
God is spirit, that is His essential nature. He’s not an idol. He’s not a statue. He’s not confined to a building. He’s not confined to a place, a mountain, to a location, to a city. He is omnipresent, that means He is alive everywhere at all times. He is eternal, transcends time, no beginning and no ending. He is ever and always alive, a living spirit to be worshiped at all times and all places, never confined to any location or to any form. Even in the Old Testament, the tabernacle and the temple were not the places that confined God or even contained God. They were symbols of His eternal and limitless presence. God is spirit and God is eternal and infinite spirit. He is at all times everywhere in the universe and He is to be worshiped at all times and everywhere by those who have been sought as true worshipers.
In Acts 7:48, these words are familiar to us, “The Most High does not dwell in that which is made by hands.” That’s against the background of idolatry, and of all the temples in the world that are supposedly the houses of God’s. He is that eternal living spirit who is to be worshiped at all times in all places by those who belong to Him.
But there’s more to this than just saying “worship the God who is spirit.” Let me take you a little further into that. What is the defining characteristic of this God who is spirit? It is not just that He is limitless, it is not just that He is eternal, it is not just that He is immutable, or unchanging, it is not just that He is omnipresent, all places at all times. What is His essential nature?
And I think to understand that, we need only to be reminded that we are called in the Old Testament to worship God in fear...to worship God in fear. Here is where I want to focus our attention today. When we worship God at all times in all places, because God is always available to the true worshiper, wherever that true worshiper is, we also need to understand that when we come to God, there is a foundational reality about Him that is to be understood. And here it comes from Psalm 96:9, “Worship the Lord in holy array, tremble before Him, all the earth.” Worship the Lord in holy array. Tremble before Him, all the earth.
To whom does the Lord look? To whom does He look? “To this one I will look.” Isaiah 66:2, “To him who is humble, contrite of spirit, who trembles at My Word.”
Where does this fear come from? This fear comes from the fact that God is holy. Remember that wonderful 6th chapter of Isaiah with his commissioning? I love it greatly. But it takes us, in a sense, to the essential attribute of God that relates to us worshiping in holy array, worshiping with fear. And that is God’s holiness.
“In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne lofty and exalted, the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two He covered His face, with two He covered His feet, with two He flew. And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of host, the whole earth is full of His glory.’ And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke.”
Here is the prophet Isaiah who has a vision of God and he sees God high and lifted up in majesty and glory on His throne. And the defining characteristic of God is repeated 3 times by the angels that are hovering in His presence, “Holy, holy, holy,” back and forth they say. And His holiness is a threat to a fallen world and so it shakes the very threshold, the foundation of the temple. And the temple fills with smoke because our God is a consuming fire. And in that vision, Isaiah is literally devastated and he says in verse 4, “Woe is me.” He pronounces a curse on himself. He pronounces damnation on himself, judgment on himself. “For I am ruined.” Literally in the Hebrew, “I am disintegrating, I am crumbling into pieces.” He sees a vision of the holiness of God. And it is a devastating experience for him. It results in a fear, it results in a kind of dread, or a kind of horror. It results in a literal disintegration of his own mind. He begins to crumble, fall apart under the power of the vision of holiness. And what is causing him to crumble is he is fully aware of his own sinfulness and it’s a melt down, it’s a total melt down. He said, “I’m ruined...I’m ruined. I’ve seen God and I’ve seen holiness. And if I’ve seen God, God has seen me. And if He sees me, He sees sin. I am undone.”
Why? “Because I am a man of unclean lips.” Why does he say that? Because depravity shows itself most readily by our mouths. It’s our speech that betrays our fallenness most often. Long before your deeds will betray your fallenness, your mouth will betray it. And he knew it.
Not only that, “I live among a people of unclean lips.” Somebody might say, “Why are you saying this, Isaiah, you’re a prophet of God?” And he would answer, “For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of host. I have seen God in His holiness on display. I am destroyed.” That’s the essence of a vision that produces worship.
It’s one thing to say God is spirit. It’s something else to say God is spirit but God is holy, holy, holy. The true worshiper goes to worship in holy attire out of sense of fear. How many times in the Old Testament are we instructed to fear the Lord? Holiness inspires fear because we realize our sinfulness. It results in brokenness. It results in trembling at the Word of God, as we saw in Isaiah 66. True worship rises out of that context. It is essential if you’re going to be a true worshiper to have a vision of the true God, the God who is spirit but the God who is spirit who is holy, holy, holy. And I believe the true worshiper starts with an awareness of the awesome holiness of God and his own utter unholiness.
I end this series of blogs with another well known NT passage. You remember when the disciples were out on the Sea of Galilee, a storm came up and it says they were afraid, Jesus stilled the storm and it says they were exceedingly afraid? It is more frightening to have God in the boat than a storm outside the boat. They knew who was in their boat, they were exposed. They knew they were in the presence of the Creator who controls the wind and the waves and they were terrified. And they should have been terrified. It’s a terrifying thing to be in the presence of absolute holiness when you are a wretched sinner.
Peter was fishing, Luke 5, couldn’t catch anything. “The Lord said to him, ‘Put out into the deep water, let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon said, ‘Look, Master, we worked all night, caught nothing. Do You think we did that on one side of the boat? What do You mean put out your nets for a catch, You think we missed something out there?’ But they obeyed.” And you remember what happened. They had so many fish they filled both boats and both boats started to sink. “And then Simon Peter fell at Jesus feet.” This is what he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Why did he say that? Next verse, “For amazement had seized him.”
Trauma had seized him. He was panicked because he was in the presence of the One who controlled fish. And Jesus did this in His miracles to traumatize people. His authority was so apparent, it says, the people were astonished at His teaching. His words were so absolutely mesmerizing that they said, “Never a man spoke like this man.” His works were so undeniably divine that the blind man said, “Why here is a marvelous thing, that you know not where He is and yet He’s opened my eyes. If this man were not from God, He couldn’t do this.”
His purity was undeniable. He said, “Which of you convicts Me of sin? And there was no answer.” His truthfulness was unquestionable, “If I say the truth, why do you not believe Me?,” He said. His power fascinated them. “What kind of man is this,” they said in Luke 8, “He commands the winds and the water and they obey Him?” And when the multitudes saw Him heal the paralytic in Matthew 9, they marveled and glorified God who had given such power. They were stunned at His dominance of the demons. The multitudes marveled saying, “They had never seen anything like it,” when He cast out the demons in Matthew 9. When He came to a fig tree and it died in His presence, Matthew 21, they marveled. When He stood before Pilate silent, showing no fear, giving no defense, the governor himself marveled. His teaching was so beyond anything they had ever heard, John 7:15 says, “The Jews marveled, saying, ‘How does this man know this, never having learned?’”
We need to understand the holiness of Christ and the holiness of God. We need to understand the fear of the Lord and view Him with wonder and awe. It is only out of this understanding that true worship can ascend.
Becoming undignified for Him,
pcraig
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