Acts 17:24-26 “God, who made the world and everything in
it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with
hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as
though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the
face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the
boundaries of their dwellings.”
The
other day, I heard a great study on genuine “Worship”, where the teacher quoted
Dr. David Wells, from his book “No place for Truth”, saying that the disappearance of the study of God from
the life of the church and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of
its leaders is hard to miss today, in the vacuous worship that is prevalent in
the shift from God to “the self” as the central focus of faith. In the God-centered
approach to faith, the science of humanity and all other disciplines are subsumed
under the search for ultimate “Truth” in the study of the nature and character
of God. Our study of humanity is always to be pursued in light of our
understanding of the Lord, since we are created by God and image bearers of
Him, to have a proper understanding of what it means to be human. God, himself,
is first and foremost. As imitators of the Lord, we study the prototype model
instead of the reflection.
Jeremiah
25:6 “Do not go after
other gods to serve them and worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with
the works of your hands.”
Ever hear that
Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship. What does that mean, and why?
Religion is the sociological study of a particular type of human behavior based
upon beliefs. There are all kinds of religions in the world. Religion, from a
human prospective, is how people, who have certain beliefs about the
supernatural, behave in their personal cultic lives, earning their way.
Christianity is not just a way of behaving that we can determine by studying
the affairs of mankind, but rather it is a belief system that is, indeed, an
entire life & world-view, with God at the center. We live in a culture that
has certain axioms and adages that are popular in the nomenclature of the day. You
hear it say that “it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you are
sincere.” And that idea communicates that what God is really concerned about is
that we are religious. This thinking is stating that “it doesn't matter what
the religion is, as long as we are sincerely religious.” Not only is this
thinking “sincerely wrong”, but that idea is on a collision-course with
biblical Christianity. Who or what, exactly, is being worshiped?
Romans
1:25 “Who exchanged
the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than
the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
To be continued …
In Christ, Brian
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