Worship as Returning to God
BY ROBERT M. NORRIS
II Chronicles 30:1-20 AHAZ WAS ONE of the worst kings Judah had ever known. Evil and corrupt, he was miserable in the absolute extreme. He dismantled the temple and closed the sanctuary for worship. He took the silver and gold found in the temple and gave it to the king of Assyria. He cast idols and burnt incense at the high places, and even sacrificed his sons in the fire.
When Ahaz died, his son Hezekiah became king. Now, we often hear the argument that people who are brought up in an environment where there is no model of goodness are bound to go wrong. Not so with this young king. He loved the Lord.
The first thing he did was to have the temple repaired and purified, and reopen its doors. Then, as II Chronicles 30 records, he sent couriers throughout Israel and Judah inviting the people to return to the temple in Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover.
Some of the people in Israel did respond and come to Jerusalem. And God gave all the people in Judah unity of mind to carry out what Hezekiah had ordered. As a result, the Passover was celebrated for the first time in decades. True worship was revived.
True worship. Now, true worship didn't happen simply because Hezekiah reopened the temple. Likewise, worship doesn't happen here simply because we open our church doors, because we put all the trimmings of a worship service together, because we sing hymns and read
scriptures, or even because we preach. It happens because we humble ourselves and choose to see God in the assembly.Indeed, it is crucial for you and I to determine whether we are truly worshipping God when we attend church on Sunday, or whether we are just playing at it; whether we seek and see God in the assembly with our spiritual eyes, or whether we are just pretending.
Counterfeit worship produces the judgment of God. To gather before Him and pretend to see and worship Him is to insult His majesty. This is implicit in Paul's admonition regarding the Lord's table. Anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord, he warns in I Corinthians 11:29, eats and drinks judgment on himself.
Unqualified Trust
Hezekiah's letter that rallied the people to assemble and worship God spells out many key elements of true worship. In verse 9, he writes, "If you return to the Lord, then your brothers and your children will be shown compassion by their captors and will come back to this land, for the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn his face from you if you return to him."That's a statement of unqualified trust. Knowing that God is gracious and compassionate, Hezekiah declares that even though the people have been apostate, God will not turn His face from them if they return to Him in repentance. He is also convinced that the sovereign God has the power to so move the captors that they would show compassion to the Israelites.
No other love. In this matter of total trust, Hosea put it well when he said to the people:
Return to the Lord. Say to him: "Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war-horses. We will never again say 'Our gods' to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion" (14:2,3).We worship our Lord because we know only in Him can we trust; only in Him can we find mercy and compassion. We cannot put our trust in the unsaved, no matter how friendly and influential they may appear. Israel entered into an alliance with the Assyrians only to subsequently find itself being conquered by the latter.Nor can we rely on war-horsesthat is, military might, or, for that matter, any other worldly power. And if we trust the work of our own hands and the products of our mind, we are worshipping our own gods. That would be a mark of our having forsaken our first love, and Jehovah God will turn away from us.
True worship of God means Him only will I serve, Him only will I trust.
Reverential Fear
Hezekiah's letter begins this way:People of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that he may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like yourThe fear of the Lord, in other words, is the beginning of wisdom. Hezekiah reminds the people that the reason their fathers and brothers are currently in captivity is that they were unfaithful to the Lord. Because they did not fear God, they were made an object of horror for all to see.
fathers and brothers, who were unfaithful to the Lord, the God of their fathers, so that he made them an object of horror, as you see (vv. 6,7).The true worshipper remembers that Jehovah God is a God of wrath, as well as a God of love. He comes before the Lord in awe, recognizing that He is holy and just.
Submission. Hezekiah writes in verse 8, "Do not be stiff-necked, as your fathers were; submit to the Lord."
By nature, we are all stiff-necked. We want to do things our way. But to truly worship God, we need to turn penitently before Him, submitting totally to Him.
The scripture uses the word "repentance" over 1000 times, and in every one of those times, it means to turn back, positively seeking from the sorrow of our past the presence of God in our midst.
We submit to the Lord as we abandon ourselves to Him. We bow our knee, our head and our heart before Him, letting His commands in us guide us and keep us.
Corporate Worship
Verse 8 continues, "Come to the sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever. Serve the Lord your God, so that his fierce anger will turn away from you."
Those who have a low view of corporate worship have a low understanding of what The temple of God, in this New Testament era, is the Lord Jesus Himself as well as the body of believers. We come to the sanctuary by uniting with Christ, by becoming a member of the body of Christ. But the Bible also tells us to come to the sanctuary in the sense of worshipping God corporately.
In our society, we are told that one man with the Bible and God, that's all it takes. We don't need to go to church. That's a lie. God commands us in Hebrews 10 not to forsake the assembling of the saints. Those who have a low view of corporate worship have a low understanding of what Christianity is, and a low understanding of what the assembling of God's people means.
You see, God is not only to be found out there. He is to be found here. He is to be found in our midst, where two or three come together in His name. It is in the assembly of God's people where we especially experience the Lord's presence among us.
Service. And only then, as we come together, can we effectively serve our God. Only when we have gathered corporately to support one another, only when we have unity of mind, only when we pool our gifts together can we serve the Lord effectively.
And serving God faithfully is an integral part of worship. "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve," Jesus said, and "no servant is greater than his master." When we come with a heartfelt desire to serve, we are confessing that Christ is the master of our life.
And that service is not the lip service that is occasionally offered only when other loyalties don't con
flict and other interests don't usurp. We want to serve the Lord Jesus because we are grateful that He has redeemed us from our sins. There is that passion burning inside us that makes us want to please Him in every area of our life.Unceasing Prayer
In verses 18-20, we then read:Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, "May the Lord, who is good, pardon everyone who sets his heart on seeking Godthe Lord, the God of his fatherseven if he is not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary." And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.Not everyone who comes to church has a pure heart. Though we have trusted in Christ, we still have a sinful nature. But like Hezekiah, we pray as part of our worship. We pray for ourselves and intercede for others. When Hezekiah prayed for the people, God heard him and healed the people.That doesn't mean that we all have one long prayer meeting. Rather, we have a sense of constantly being in communication with Christ and a sense of being together in Him. And in our prayer, we recognize the totality of our vision to God's world.
Conclusion
Where is the fear of the Lord in His people? And what is true worship? It starts when we see Him. When we open the doors and gaze into the sanctuary, we see not the pews or the carpet, but we see the Lord. For He is there, lifted up and high in glory. And our praises jump out from our lips because the Savior invites us and draws us and brings us to Himself.Here is where Hezekiah learned before the Lord to worship Him. We come there. We come as Christ, our Savior and Son of God and Lord of lords, calls us boldly to know Him and with vitality to worship Him.
And that's our call and that's our promise. God with us. Abiding in strength and grace. Touching us as we come before Him. o
Dr. Robert M. Norris is senior pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church, 5500 River Road, Bethesda, MD 20816.