HOW DOES GOD FEEL ABOUT OUR RITUALS?

Our church has a hand out that visitors take with them that informs them about our church. At the bottom of the card it says, "Go to church because you want to not because you have to." Many of us can probably say at one time or another that we have attended church out of a sense of duty. At youth group last night I asked my students, "When it comes to church, what do you think God has in mind?"

It is interesting that during Jesus' ministry the sin he attacks the most is not drunkenness, sexual immorality or foul language, but self-righteousness and hypocrisy. These harsh rebukes are often dealt to the religious leaders of the day. In Matthew 23:1-7 Jesus basically says, "Everything for you is about being seen in public as important people. I mean you love to be looked up to. You love to be respected. You love the best seats where everyone can see you.' And then Jesus says, 'Everything for you is about appearance. How things look to other people.'"

If this is our motivation then God despises our rituals. In Isaiah 29, God addresses the hypocrisy that existed among the Jewish people. He says in verse 13 that they "...draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me." When commenting on this verse R.C. Sproul affirms, "God desires expressions of devotion from the heart and hates empty ritual."

Many people often confuse Christianity with religion, meaning man's attempt to find God, and view the Bible as a list of do's and don'ts, which results in them doing away with the Christian faith altogether. Christianity is a relationship between God and man and the Bible is God's love letter to His people. Christians are people whose hearts have been broken and created anew by a God of mercy and who serve Him and one another out of a love for their creator and redeemer who first loved them.

"Quote" of the Week

"To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator." -A.W. Tozer on the self-sufficiency of God

IS GOD DIVIDED?

When we talk about God, we have a tendency to inadvertently divide Him into parts. We take the attributes that we like the most and simply focus on them. Many scholars have been guilty of this and have concluded that the God of Scripture is divided. Some have said that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and judgement while the God of the New Testament is a God of love and mercy.

Trying to know the God of Scripture by studying one attribute is like examining one piece of a puzzle to try and understand the entire picture. When we focus on one attribute, whether it be God's grace or His judgement, we tend to read and teach the stories that emphasize it. According to A.W. Tozer, "The harmony of (God's)being is the result not of a perfect balance of parts but of the absence of parts. Between His attributes no contradiction can exist. He need not suspend one to exercise another, for in Him all His attributes are one. All of God does all that God does; He does not divide Himself to perform a work." (Knowledge of the Holy, pp. 15)

I have been teaching our children this truth by showing them that redemption is not only displayed at the cross and discussed in the New Testament, but is also revealed in the Old Testament. Yesterday I taught them the story of God's plagues upon Egypt. When many hear of this story they think simply about God's harsh treatment of the Egyptian people. After carefully studying the text, however, I have come to realize that God's wrath and his mercy are working simultaneously throughout this story. Even though God puts division between the Jews and Egyptians (8:23), there is no division in God.

Another interesting aspect of this story is that you not only see God's mercy demonstrated in His treatment of the Jewish people, but also in his dealings with the Egyptians. The Lord told Moses to present himself before Pharaoh and say, "For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth" (9:15-16). When commenting on this passage, R.C. Sproul says, "God's Judgements are tempered by mercy. He withholds total destruction so that the Egyptians might know His power...Further, God's judgments against Pharaoh will cause God's name to be proclaimed to the nations."

If the Lord's wrath and mercy were divided, then one could exist without the other. That is not the case in Scripture. Where one is present the other is there also. This should challenge us to read and teach these difficult stories and focus upon the fact that God is a God who punishes a hardened and unrepentant heart, but also shows mercy toward those who have seen their need of Him and are trusting in Him for their salvation.

"Quote" of the Week

"Origin is a word that can apply only to things created. When we think of anything that has origin we are not thinking of God...He is unaffected by time or motion, is wholly self-dependent and owes nothing to the worlds His hands have made." -A.W. Tozer on the self-existence of God

Behind the Name

The name of the place where we meet for children and youth is called The Greenhouse. Many have inquired about the meaning behind the name. A greenhouse is a place that is designed not only to help plants grow and mature, but to also protect them from the changing conditions in the climate. In the same way, I want The Greenhouse to not only be a place where our young people mature in their faith, but also a place where they are protected from adopting unbiblical philosophies that are ever present in our world. The way this is combated is by persuading them to adopt a biblical worldview that is profitable for all.

"Quote" of the Week

"When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand."- A.W. Tozer on God's incomprehensible nature

"Our Need of Him"

This past Sunday a consistent theme found in both our children and youth lessons was the importance of recognizing our need of God. An inescapable truth in Scripture is that God's people are not exempt from suffering. Another truth, however, is that God hears the cries of his people and is the one who delivers them out of their difficult circumstances. For example, read Psalms 34:17; 55:17-18; 72:12; and 107:5-6.

A covenant relationship is an agreement between two persons or parties. When God makes a covenant with His people one expectation He has is for His people to recognize their need of Him. The Jewish people who had been enslaved in Egypt discovered this truth. Exodus 2:23-24 states, "During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob."

Do not look at trials as punishment. Learn from them. See your need of God, cry out to Him and trust that He will bring deliverance.

"Quote" of the Week

"A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple." -A.W. Tozer on thinking rightly about God.