You Are What You Worship

Worship is a as common to humans as breathing because it is part of who we are. Worship is not a religious thing it is a human thing. But the unique thing that I am starting to discover about worship is that you resemble most what you treasure deepest. That is to say you reflect in emotion, thought, and action what you worship with emotion, thought, and action. Psalm 115: 4-8 is the text I am drawing my understanding of this principle from. The Psalmist is giving a description of how idols are made (v. 4), the qualities they possess (v. 5-7), and the effect they have on those who worship them (v. 8). These idols are made by human hands (v. 4), yet do not even hold the attributes of a human because they cannot speak, walk, or talk (v. 5-7), and as a result those who worship them lack spiritually what the idols lack physically (v. 8). The error in understanding idolatry and its effect on those who participate in it is to assume that this was a cultural point and does not affect us presently. But because the Bible is timeless and worship is woven into the fabric of our being this principle is very timely.
To illustrate how timely the idea of you are what you worship let me give two present cultural examples:
The Second Largest American Religion: Sports
Any discerning person taking a trip to a Sports stadium during a game who understands historical pagan religion will see the connection. Pagan worshippers dressed up in weird gimmicks, painted their faces and bodies, and chanted unintelligible songs in order to influence their tribal deity. Compare that to a football game where people dress up in the most ridiculous costumes, paint their entire bodies in their teams colors in subzero temperatures, and sing fight songs to support their teams efforts. People get so wrapped up in the worship of a sports team that they start to refer to their team as “we” when referencing anything done by them. Also, a person who worships a sports team will also have his emotions determined by that sports team. When they win their happy and stable and when they lose they are depressed and unpredictable. Or if you are a Minnesota sports fan you are emotionless because you have been taking anti-depressants for so long that you have forgotten how to feel.
The Largest American Religion: Sex
I think this one is pretty obvious seeing as the Porn industry last year brought in more money than the NBA, MLB, and NFL combined. People who worship Sex are marked by the same passion that sex offers. They are people driven by passion and controlled by it so much so that they are willing to sacrifice anything to indulge it. Examples, would be husbands sacrificing their marriage and families to indulge a passion with a woman who is not his wife. A kid willing to sacrifice his purity and parents trust to view pornography. A man willing to sacrifice his freedom and risk going to jail to indulge a passion for someone underage. People resemble (are passionate indulgers of pleasure) what they worship (Sex: a passionate pleasure).
So the question is not do you worship but what do you worship. Sadly for most people they are idolaters who have worshipped themselves into sin by substituting the worship of the creator for the worship of created things (like sex and sports) (Rom 1:18-32). Jesus came to save us from our idolatry by paying for our false worship so that we could be restored to true worship (1 Peter 3:18). You worship your way into sin and you must worship Jesus to save yourself from sin (2 Cor 3:18).

Muting the Gospel by Minimizing Missions

When Paul mentions in Romans 1 that God has clearly revealed Himself through creation so that man is without excuse, he is not trying to make a case for the saving knowledge of General Revelation (God revealing Himself in creation Ps. 19:1-6). Instead Paul wants to portray how people without the Special Revelation of God (God revealing Himself in Scripture Ps. 19:7-11) are justly condemned for not worshiping the creator of the universe. He wants to show that Gentiles (all non-Jews), like Jews, sin but in a different way. Jews sin because they disobey the Special Revelation God has given them in the Law. On the other hand, Gentiles sin when they disobey the created order that has been revealed through creation.

But some will ask what if a people group who has never heard of Christ acknowledges God through creation and starts to worship Him? Paul goes on in 3:11-20 to show that universally all Jews and Gentiles are under sin (held captive by its power) in such a way that they without exception do not seek God. And lest we think these people are just universally neutral toward God, Paul says they have "all turned aside." So does this mean that those who die apart from the Special Revelation of God found in the Gospel will eternally perish? I admit that this is a tough question, but it's a question that implies that God would not be fair if it were true. And if fairness is what you want from God, you’re begging Christ to undo what He did on the cross. Because when Christ bore our sins on the cross, He paid for our fair and right penalty and purchased eternal everlasting grace for those who believe. So let us not mute the cross by trying to maximize fairness.

But this still leaves the question “Do people need to hear the gospel to be saved?” In Romans 10:13-17, Paul addresses this same question after showing that the gospel message is for all people, whether Jew or Gentile. He starts in verse 13 by citing Joel 2:32, which says "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Then, Paul poses a problem by asking four rhetorical questions: (1) How are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? (2) And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? (3) And how are they to hear without someone preaching? (4) And how are they to preach unless they are sent? In these questions Paul not only poses a problem, but he also proposes the solution by mapping out the process for the spreading of the gospel.

First, someone needs to be sent to preach Christ. Second, that preacher needs to preach Christ so they can hear Christ. Third, when they hear Christ they need to believe in Christ. Finally, they need to believe in Christ by calling on Christ. There is no other way around it. And that is why Paul says at the end of v. 15, after all his rhetorical questions, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" The feet are beautiful because they bring what is missing! The feet are beautiful because they bring the news of Christ.

If after this we still say that it is possible for people to get saved apart from the gospel being preached, we are entertaining the thought that there are people out there who are neutral toward God and on their own have the ability to seek God and gain a righteousness the earns them Heaven. But if this is true, then missions isn't really all that essential. And then it turns out that the American church has got it right after all; we can just stay home and relax because we don't need to go. And if we do go and try to reach people who have never heard about Christ with the gospel, we will actually be doing them a disservice. Because if we bring the gospel of Christ to them and ask them to believe in Christ but they reject it, we have now brought judgment upon them, whereas before we came and preached they were neutral with God. With this perspective, by preaching the gospel to them, we have just become the instrument that sent them to Hell.

My point is this: if we believe that people can be saved apart from the gospel, this is absurd at best and destroys missions at worst. The gospel of Christ is good news to everyone because everyone is opposed to Christ. The gospel of Christ is good news to everyone because everyone is in need of Christ. Missions is essential because sin is universal. Missions for Christ is necessary because Worship of Christ is non-existent. The message of the gospel is good to everyone because the work of Christ is glorious for everyone. We need to be ignited in our passion for missions because the gospel is the power of God to turn Hell-bound haters of God into Grace-bound lovers of God.

I end with this admission by Lecrae:

"You hold the truth that saves so run and shout it to the world;
They can't believe in something they ain't never heard;
Go and run with those beautiful feet."

The Wrath of God

Why when I read the opening phrase of Romans 1:18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," does it not hit me like a ton of bricks? The sheer fact that what we get from God when we don't get his "saving righteousness" is His "wrath" should put anyone in an insane asylum until they know they are free from God’s wrath and under His eternal grace. Two thoughts came to my mind as to why I am not deeply riveted by an understanding of the "wrath of God": (1) The preaching we get on the wrath of God is scarce and what we do get is puny and trivial (there are a few, keyword “few” exceptions though). (2) Our culture has taken God’s attributes and made them in our image so that we eventually have a God and a Jesus who is as Mark Driscoll says “a hippie-Christ (or God); a neutered and limp-wristed popular sky fairy of popular culture that would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell." So then I decided to look up a couple definitions and statements about the wrath of God that brought out the true biblical definition of it and exposed its horrendous implications. Here is what I found:

Douglas Moo says the following about the wrath of God in his commentary on Romans: “The wrath of God is not, of course, an emotional rage but a steadfast and absolute opposition to all that is evil. It is essential to the character of God: ‘As long as God is God, He cannot behold with indifference that His creation is destroyed and His holy will trodden underfoot. Therefore he meets sin with His mighty and annihilating reaction,’ (A. Nygren, Commentary on Romans).”

Jonathan Edwards talks about the torment that the unbeliever will face when he finally experiences the full wrath of God: “"The body will be full of torment as full as it can hold, and every part of it shall be full of torment. They shall be in extreme pain, every joint of them; every nerve shall be full of inexpressible torment. They shall be tormented even to their fingers' ends. The whole body shall be full of the wrath of God. Their hearts and their bowels and their heads, their eyes and their tongues, their hands and their feet will be filled with the fierceness of God's wrath. This is taught us in many Scriptures..."

Here is John Piper speaking out against people who try to dumb down the reality of the wrath of God that will be experienced in Hell: “when the Bible speaks of hell-fire, woe to us if we say, 'It’s only a symbol.' If it is a symbol at all, it means the reality is worse than fire, not better. The word 'fire' is used not to make the easy sound terrible, but to make the exceedingly terrible sound something like what it really is."

Wayne Grudem gives a concise but solid definition of the wrath of God and then talks about why as Christians we should embrace it and thank God for it: “God’s wrath means that he intensely hates all sin…this is an attribute for which we should thank and praise God…what would God be like if he were a God that did not hate sin. He would be a God who either delighted in sin or at least was not troubled by it. Such a God would not be worthy of our worship, for sin is hateful and it is worthy of being hated. It is in fact a virtue to hate evil and sin (Heb. 1:9; Zech. 8:17).”

After I started pondering the wrath of God I had to move quickly to the one place where I know I can rest assured that I am not under God’s wrath but under His eternal grace. Some may think I started thinking about the Kingdom and how God is going to restore everything and sit upon His throne but I did not. I went some place more comforting; more central. I went to the cross, the same place Paul eventually goes in 3:21-26, where the wrath of God that was meant to be poured out on me for an eternity was spent on Christ so that I could embrace and be embraced by God and experience nothing but grace for eternity.

So let us understand wrath so we can understand the cross and be moved into a deeper understanding of the grace of God revealed in the cross.

Jesus, keep us near the cross.