Worship - Worshipping the King

Getting to the Truth
Anthony Flew, a prominent atheist who recently came out of the closet and admitted that pure materialistic evolution makes no sense of the data, said that believing in the God of the Bible is to believe that the ultimate intelligence is akin to Saddam Hussein.

Here is the quote:
"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

It seems Dr. Flew has not read the Christmas story. Does Flew have any children? I will give him one point: Jesus is Lord of All and King of the Universe. BUT…Jesus is not anything like Saddam Hussein and that is the whole “good news” point. Our method needs to get to the anatomy of the universal experience of worshipping Jesus and this experience cannot be more experimentally different that the experience of bowing down to Saddam. The two realities cannot be more diametrically opposite!!!

We have said in our previous post on worship that worship is spirit to Spirit communion with God. In this post, I am going to begin to look at worship as spirit to Spirit communion with God “in truth” or around the truth. Worship is fellowship with God and others around common understanding of the truth. True worship connects with the true God in the Spirit and contemplates, proclaims, announces, rejoices, confesses THE TRUTH.

So What is TRUTH and Where Does Truth Comes From?
To know the truth, we must first begin by determining what is the source or authority for our truth. The question of “who Jesus is?” gets at the heart of the matter.

Bob Dylan said it (and regardless of how trite and cliché we may think it sounds) it is nonetheless true, “You gotta serve somebody.”

Everybody has an ultimate arbitrator of truth. For most, like my friend Mojoey, a very good friend I might add, his ultimate standard of truth is himself. This self-worship is the American way. Too bad it doesn’t work. Strangely, my friend’s ethic, which finds its source of truth in the reality he sees, has concluded that the oriental despot is THE truth that reigns on high in his world.

Paul said, “the Greeks in their wisdom became fools and worshipped the creation rather than the creator”. How true!! If our world is our sole source of truth, our truth will be brutal and despotic like the world we live in.

I worship elsewhere!!

I began by saying Flew is so wrong. Here is why. If I know I have done Saddam Hussein wrong, I would become very fearful and full of anxiety. The very presence of Saddam Hussein causes people to cower in fear and to loath their king, the despot. A child’s face is not filled with an authentic joy at the contemplation of Saddam as King. Ah, but with Jesus our experience is so different.

When I worship THE KING, my mind is filled with Joy, and I am free of all fear. When I see Him as the Truth, my mind is transformed. For me and my household, Jesus is the ultimate arbitrator of all truth and all definitions of what is real and what is illusion. Jesus is the WORD of GOD. This ultimate authority for all truth is one way that He is King. He is the authority concerning what I long to know and understand. As I worship, I long to learn from Him and honor Him with a teachable heart attitude.

Christmas is the announcement of a King. At Christmas, the Christ child is worshipped. This worship is the statement that we submit our minds and humble ourselves to be learners of truth beneath the loving mentoring of our King. Jesus is the sole mediator of truth for the believer. Indeed,
John 4: “ 22"You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." 25The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us." 26Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He."

How strange that a guy as smart as Anthony Flew cannot tell Saddam Hussein from Jesus Christ. My children know the difference. Every Christmas, they worship at His feet and are filled with an authentic Joy that Jesus is Lord of all.

How sweet the truth is and how worthy of contemplation and worship. Jesus is the truth.

Merry Christmas,
brad