Knowing The Festal Shout

Psalm 89:15, ESV, says, "Blessed are the people who know the festal shout...."  In the NLT it renders it:  "Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship...."   We are made to worship and will worship something or someone if not God---only God is worthy of worship and esteem and reverence (cf. Rev. 4:11).  We are hard-wired for worship, though worshiping God is unnatural for the natural man, who is not in the Spirit. When we do worship "in the Spirit" (cf. John 4:24) as commanded by Jesus we make contact or enter another dimension (God's throne room). In some ways worship is an existential, even surreal encounter, whereby God becomes real to us in an experiential way,  just like it says in Psalm 34:8, KJV,  (cf. 1 Pet. 2:3) "O taste and see that the LORD is good...." The proof of the pudding is in the eating. 

All of us need to be reminded of spiritual matters on a regular basis and touch base with God, to see if we're on the same page and in fellowship or walking in the Spirit.  Jesus commanded us to "abide in [Him]."  Worship can be considered a spiritual checkup or a spiritual workout for those who have grown lax, complacent, or need renewal in the faith and is not to be done in a lackadaisical manner, but wholeheartedly to the glory of God, as is everything we do in the name of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 10:31; Col. 3:17, 23).

We don't worship God passively, or vicariously, (i.e., you are not worshiping by observation of others doing it), but worship is active and involved, even demanding. Once you've experienced genuine worship you get addicted and develop a taste for it, but done in the wrong spirit (cf. Jer. 12:2; Matt. 15:8), or perfunctorily, halfheartedly, just going through the motions, or memorizing the Dance of the Pious is the same as "offering strange fire before the LORD," as did the sons of Aaron in Leviticus 10:1 (God is a God of order (cf. 1 Cor. 14:40), even in worship and proper protocol).

Worship is not to be mere lip service or lukewarm adoration and is one measure of spiritual growth.  There is no "one-size-fits-all to worship and people have different tastes and inclinations from being a traditionalist and liturgical to being demonstrative and spontaneous, but one must avoid getting in a worship rut and getting stale and complacent in one's adoration and contemplation of God:  It is not how much of the Spirit you have, but how much of you the Spirit has.

There is the so-called nod-to-God crowd that feels duty-bound to go to church, but the fact is we "get" to worship, not that we "have" to. Worship is a privilege and honor and worship leaders are to be shown respect. When you say you can worship God in the cornfield, you ignore the call to worship and to gather together in the name of the Lord (cf. Heb. 10:25), and to "worship God in the sanctuary." The importance of having the right attitude in our worship is expressed in Psalm 122:1, KJV, like this: "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD."  Church should never become blase or commonplace!  The worship experience is always a measure of our surrender and is not a measure of any spiritual gift.

With true spirituality, comes the spiritual fruit of the "sacrifice of praise" (cf. Heb. 13:15, KJV):  In fact, worship is the offering of "sacrifice of thanksgiving" (Psalm 116:17, KJV) for what God has done, and the "sacrifice of praise" for who He is:  "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His court with praise!" (Cf. Psalm 100:4).  "I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.

This will please the LORD" (Psalm 69:30-31, NIV).  The more we worship the closer we get to God in Spirit, for there's power in praise.  God "inhabits the praises of His people" (cf. Psalm 22:3). Worship and praise are a continual feast and a blessing of the presence of God--it's a transforming experience. Worship isn't informational, but formational!  "Shout to God with a voice of triumph!" (Cf. Psalm 47:1).  God is "enthroned on the praises of His people" (cf. ibid., ESV).  God thrives on praise and deserves it.

In true worship, we focus on God, and get our eyes off of ourselves! Just as the definition of an Englishman says a self-made man who worships his creator: We must give God the glory; as the phrase says: Soli Deo Gloria! (to God alone be the glory!). The book of Psalms was called the Psalter or book of praises and the Puritans hymnal was called the Bay Psalm Book, which they used in worship.  A point in fact: Psalms is the official hymnbook for private and corporate worship by tradition, as it's probably the most loved book in the Old Testament.

We must bear in mind that it's not about us, but all about Him!  The heart of worship is all about ownership and surrender because He owns us. We seek His face (cf. Psalm 27:8) and presence in worship and God is with us whenever two or three gathers together in His name (cf. Matt. 18:20) as a community of believers--we need not wonder whether God is with us or not, as did Israel in the wilderness with Moses.

Worship is consecration:  The offering of ourselves to God as a "living sacrifice."  All in all, the heart of the matter is that it's a matter of heart and a measure of it!  "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you..."  (James 4:8, KJV).  We all observe certain worship rituals in our comfort zones and get accustomed to what suits us (however, we should venture out of them and experiment and try something new), but worship makes our fellowship and relationship with God validated as we go on to practice the presence of God!

Caveat: Only God is worthy of veneration and of paying homage to others it is idolatry.  In sum worship is a methodology and conduit to connect with the living God and touch base with the Divinity in real-time; we can worship God in whatever we do to His glory and in His name, as an example, Olympic runner Eric Liddell, from the film Chariots of Fire, said, "... [When] I run I feel God's pleasure."  Soli Deo Gloria! 

The Beatific Vision

Men have always imagined what God must be like and Christians have longed to see visions and revelations of God, known as theophanies. But no one knows what God looks like because God is Spirit (cf. John 4:24)!  Moses saw the backside of the glory of Christ, who does reveal Himself, but the Father doesn't and no man has ever seen the Father.  Our faith concerns the God who is there!

A child was asked what he was drawing in class:  "I'm drawing a picture of God!"  The child had to learn that no one can draw God, but the child answered that people will see now what He looks like. Children have an innocent faith and we are to mimic it (cf. Matt. 18:3).  Hebrews says that we do see Jesus (cf. Heb. 2:9), and we sense His presence when two or three are gathered in His name as a promise (cf. Matt. 18:20).

He indwells each of us and we can have an existential encounter with Him as we read Scripture, fellowship, worship, or pray.  Christians see the glory of God in His work on earth and will see God's glory in heaven, to our delight.  The prophets who claimed they "saw God" were seeing theophanies, and not God in His fullness.  We cannot bear to look at the sun in its brightness, much less look at the glory of God directly. That's one reason God reveals Himself propositionally and in the Word.

Christians want Christ to be seen in them and also to seek Christ being glorified.  As Paul said in Col. 1:27, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." He also boasted that Christ was glorified in him. We wait till Christ be formed in us and in our brethren as a sign of maturity.  God will never give up making us in His image and we are works in progress (cf. Phil. 1:6).

The Greek disciples came to the apostles and said they "[wanted] to see Jesus"; we have a much greater thing in that we have the Word of God and full revelation of the wisdom and knowledge of God in it--we're better off than being with Christ in person also, because we have the inner blessing of the Spirit.  The apostles said that it would suffice to see the Father, but Jesus said that to see Him was to see the Father!  All that we can know and see God is revealed in Christ!  In eternity we'll see the big picture!

The infidel doesn't see God anywhere at work, but the believer sees His fingerprint everywhere, from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, at work.  No amount of proof will convince someone who doesn't want to do God's will or sincerely have a relationship with him; to the believer and honest seeker, there is ample evidence--no one can disbelieve due to lack of evidence!

In glory, we shall behold Him as He is and we shall be like Him too, able to take it in.  It is said that some angels always do behold the face of God and that Gabriel "[stands] in the presence of God"; we'll have more privilege than an angel!  People generally say that seeing is believing; however, believing is seeing!  Don't envy those who have seen a vision or revelation, as Jesus told Thomas: "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed" (cf. John 20:29).  Jesus rebuked the Pharisees who maintained they could see but were "blind guides," in fact, the "blind leading the blind"; think how much worse it is to think you see and be blind, or not knowing you're blind!  Christ came to open our eyes and to make the blind see, and Satan has blinded the eyes of all who don't believe in Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 4:4).

Caveat: Don't reduce God to one dimension or put Him in a box, emphasizing one aspect, like seeing Him just as: the Old, Doting Grandpa who says, "Boys will be boys;" the Kind Father; the Man Upstairs; Cosmic Killjoy; the Great Spirit; the Strict, Mean Judge; the Higher Power; or even as the Great Mathematical Mind.  Whenever we have an inadequate perception of God it's idolatry and our God is too small, thinking of Him in human terms. How big is your God, is just as important as seeing Him.  God cannot be limited, defined, or confined, and we must know that He is beyond comprehension, known as His profundity, and we will never fully apprehend His glory, nature, or essence throughout eternity ("the finite cannot contain the infinite," says the maxim).

The eyes of our heart are opened upon salvation and we can literally say we see and were blind, just like the blind man Jesus healed said, "I was blind, but now I see!"  No one can argue the fact that we have spiritual eyes enlightened and illuminated by the Holy Spirit living in our hearts. Theologians have attempted definitions of God in vain, for He cannot be described, only known, loved, and worshiped!

It is the childish faith that seeks to know God through pictures, visions, or experiences, but the mature obedient believer clings to the Word and hears God speaking His message through it; just like Francis Schaeffer wrote:  "He is there, and He is not silent!"  The problem with man is not only is he blind to spiritual truth, but spiritually hard-of-hearing and turns a deaf ear to the gospel message that he does hear.   Man isn't faithful to the God he does see and is without excuse.   Soli Deo Gloria!  

Are All Faiths Basically The Same?

"The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ"  (John 1:17, NIV).  "What can be known about God is plain to them [people] because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse"  (Romans 1:19-20, ESV).
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."  (C. S. Lewis)

Baha'i teaches that all religion's teachings are basically equal, and, as a symbol of their faith, they have a nine-sided temple and on the walls which says, "All religions teach the same thing about God."  We will see that all roads may have led to Rome, but not all religions lead to God, one can be sincerely wrong.   Even Secular Humanists believe in being good, but good without God--that is the evil. Yes, some people do have a reductionist philosophy of religion thinking that all that matters is that we are good because in the end result all that matters is that our good deeds outweigh our bad ones. Some people who actually regard themselves or fashion themselves as Christians embrace the notion of the Sermon on the Mount, or even say their religion is the Golden Rule--they assume this type of ethic or philosophy is the essence of the faith.

This is a simplistic approach, although good deeds are vital to prove our faith and "faith without works is dead" and cannot save, and Paul said that all that counts is faith expressing itself through love (cf. Gal. 5:6, NIV). God doesn't save us by our works, but for our works.  We are not saved by good works, but not without them either; we are saved by faith, but the kind of faith that produces works--for we are a "people zealous of good works" (cf. Titus 2:14). Superficial people do not see faith in action but only the works not realizing that the motive (cf. Prov. 16:2; 21:2) is what God sees, whether it's done for the applause of man or selfish reason.  Paul says, "I'll show you my works by my faith;"  James says, "I'll show you my faith by my good works!"  They go hand in hand.

All religions have a grain of truth and this is what's so evil; Satan mixes truth and error and there is enough error to fool and make it evil and dangerous.  There is just enough truth to lure and tempt you, and enough falsehood to fool you that it's all true.  There is an element of truth in all faiths, but this doesn't preclude the proposition that one faith is absolutely right without any error. There is just enough truth to inoculate from the real thing and make one immune to the truth.

George Lucas has come to the conclusion that all religions are true!  (It is possible that all religions could be wrong, but not all be right!)  This is a violation of the law of noncontradiction, for example, Islam teaches that Christ did not die on the cross and didn't physically rise from the dead for our sins, and Christianity does--there are many points of conflict in the religions, but in today's pluralistic thinking one accepts the fact of apparent contradiction because no one can claim to be right and tolerance is the biggest virtue. In our Postmodern era contradiction is acceptable, since we cannot know the truth anyway and all beliefs are equally valid and worthy.  Pluralism is the present-day, accepted, religious way of thinking, which means we must be tolerant of each other and get along despite others being wrong; however, some go so far as to say that no religion can be universally true and therefore we ought to be tolerant, all religions being equal.  In short, we agree to disagree and refuse to privatize our religion, making it unobjectionable to others.

Finding God is not an experiment, but a revelation leading to an encounter--He found us and holds us all accountable for that knowledge. Man is without excuse:  His problem is not that he doesn't know God exists, but that he's a sinner and separated from God and needs reconciliation--first, get right with God and man will know what God is like--we will know God.  We are responsible for the light given us and that's the problem--neglecting it:  we don't obey that!  It's not that man just knows part of the truth and that is sufficient, but that he is the problem himself and needs intervention from God--we are lost without God and alienated from Him. The problem with man is that he's unwilling and disobedient; it's a moral, not an intellectual problem:  any man who chooses God's will shall know whether Jesus is the Truth (cf. John 7:17).  Jesus often complained that people were hardened and wouldn't believe despite his miracles (cf. John 12:37).

The Hindus have a parable of six blind men touching an elephant, and each coming up with different interpretations of what God must be like because they feel a different part of the elephant. This parable assumes two falsehoods:  man is searching for God, and man has found God in the process--both are contrary to Scripture.  (It's vitally important to know God:  One Greek philosopher of antiquity said, that if he wanted to know how to live, he must know what God is like.)  The caveat is that it's not what they think!  They must realize their knowledge is limited and inadequate. And I wonder if the men knew they were feeling an elephant or God, and who informed them and why they accepted this as fact!

Man is not physically blind and our interpretations of God in various religions contradict each other and don't show that each only is part of the story. The blind men don't know there are other blind men who see differently and come to different conclusions.  We didn't find the truth, it was revealed to us supernaturally by revelation! In this scheme no one is right and no one is wrong relatively speaking and each knows only a portion of truth or nature of the elephant--how do we know no one, in reality, can feel the whole elephant? But we do know that no one is right in this parable! Why do they all have to be blind? How do we know they are?

The two self-contradictions in the parable is that we are blind men (and don't know it!), and at the same time we possess knowledge about God (that it's a real elephant and the men are blind)--you can't have it both ways!  If there were no God we would never know it, but since there is a God we naturally search for Him and want to know Him because we just know instinctively that we need Him and something is wrong with us--there is an invisible tug towards God that draws us to Him. Noteworthy is the fact that you cannot describe God, but you can make Him known, which negates the parable--can you know a tusk, a trunk, a leg, an ear, or what have you? Were these men so naive as to think God wasn't invisible and couldn't be felt, comprehended, or put in a box as one-dimensional?

Satan has "blinded the minds of them that believe not" (cf. 2 Cor. 4:4). Jesus is in the business of opening our eyes and we can see the proof in tasting the pudding:  "Taste and see that the LORD is good!" (Cf. Psalm 34:8).  With the limited knowledge of man, we need supernatural communication to us or revelation.  But how we do know for sure they are all touching the same elephant, or even an elephant at all, without supernatural revelation from God, unless they have faith? 

We are assuming that each man only discerns a part of the truth of the elephant's nature with no collusion, and we know something they don't--it's a real elephant!  How do we know the blind men didn't coordinate and communicate with each other to come to a consensus or that there was a third party intervening? The analogy is so weak only the naive would believe it.  It would seem the only way to arrive at truth is to learn to study with all the blind men!

We are not relying on some one's experience but on divine revelation!  One notable contrast from reality is that we are not trying to find God and cannot know God apart from revelation; God found us and revealed Himself.  It is true that there is truth in each religion, but this parable assumes no one has full knowledge or that God hasn't revealed it (would a loving God let us be totally deceived?). Are we all blind men?  But the Bible posits inspiration with internal attestation. Jesus came to show the way and open our eyes. We would realize that we are in the image of God who is no elephant, but someone we relate to and communicate with.

This is not the right way to fathom God--by trusting blind men or being blind!  Jesus said that if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch!  Men are limited and cannot ultimately be trusted to convey truth--we need revelation from God not inspiration or experience of man. Without any objective source and ultimate truth, how do we know any of the blind men (as founders of faiths) know anything or are credible, reliable, and honest in their discoveries--we have the word of Christ the incarnation of God as one who does know the truth and is a credible source of revelation.

To know the truth we need the objective analysis and observation of someone who knows it and can reveal it to us faithfully--i.e., Christ, who is the Way, and this is not "imperialism."  The parable assumes we know something the blind men don't, and that no one knows the full story or can discover the truth.  In short, the parable only shows that we are justified in relying on the revelation of Truth with a capital T itself, Jesus Christ.

Some say that it is arrogant to proclaim Christ as the only way and all other ways to God are wrong. A. W. Tozer said that Christ is "not one of many ways to God, nor the best way, but the only way!"  It would be egotistical for us to think we are right and everyone else wrong about God and there is only one way if it was because we said so, but Christ is the one who said this and He has the credentials. Truth is by definition absolute and intolerant of error. Christians believe in absolute truth, not truth being relative or changing to a given situation.  We believe we can know for sure, and there is certainty.

Jesus said that who is of the truth will listen to Him, for He is the personification of truth and came to bear witness of the truth (cf. John 18:37).  His personal claim in John 14:6 says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," is one of absolute value and implies the existence of absolute truth and one way to know it.  The converse of absolute truth is not valid however:  There exists a grain of truth in every belief system, including all secular worldviews, and that is the danger; there is no such thing as pure evil, because evil is a distortion and perversion or lack of good and is dependent on it and wouldn't exist apart from it.

There is a uniqueness to Christianity in that it is a faith of grace and that heaven is not earned nor deserved, but a free gift.  We don't lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps and Christianity is not a do-it-yourself proposition.  We are not self-made men who give ourselves the credit for the change that takes place in our lives.  Christ changes lives, but it's not just about turning over a new leaf but getting a new life with Christ in charge.  Christ is still in the resurrection business and no one is too much of a challenge or problem for him as a work-in-progress.

Only in Christianity can we know for sure that we will go to heaven--all other religions leave you in doubt as you wonder if your good deeds will outweigh your bad ones.  In religion, the theme says, "Do!" In Christianity, the theme says, "Done."  We both believe in works, but religion says work "in order that," while Christianity says work "therefore."  We do good works out of gratitude because we want to, not because we have to.

There are so many ways that Christianity is unique in that one can see that it's not a typical religion with a solution to man's problem.  We are not reaching out to God or up to God, but He is condescending and reaching out to us in grace and mercy.  In Christianity we have a relationship with God and know Him, we don't just believe He exists.  Only in our faith can one communicate with God and know Him on a personal basis. Any religion will change you or reform you, but only Christianity can renew you from the inside out, and give you a new start. Many religions teach a God, but none but Christianity posits a personal God that we can know individually one-on-one. Christianity is not a credo to adhere to, an ethic to live by, nor a philosophy to embrace, but a person to know and love; we aren't satisfied just knowing God exists!

Man's dilemma is the problem of sin, not that he denies God or needs enlightenment--he needs salvation and deliverance from the power of sin over his life, not education or to be informed, but transformation.  In the final analysis, all religions see man as having a problem and needing "salvation," but only Christianity adequately and satisfactorily, categorically, and unequivocally answers that dilemma once and for all without a doubt and no guesswork or conjecture, but with certainty and assurance. The Truth is knowable if one diligently seeks (cf. John 8:32) for it, but the problem is that man has rebelled against what he does know and he has no cop-out or excuse!   Soli Deo Gloria!