God Revealed

Isaiah 6:1 NIV

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

What Do You See In God?

The other day I was in a high school class and a couple of the students asked me how old I was.  It was of course somewhat presumptuous on their part but I decided to play around a bit with them so I asked the kids how old they thought I was.  I did not expect them to be as wildly off base as they were since they were fifteen years old but they guessed 42, 44 and 45.  I just smiled and walked away, leaving them without an answer.  The next day the same group asked me again how old I was and this time I told them.  “Sixty.”  The shocked expressions on their faces were the best Christmas gifts ever.  They argued that I did not look that old and once more I smiled and walked away.  How fascinating to learn something new about someone, to discover secrets about that person you might never have guessed.

We often fail to consider the fact that God is a person.  He is not an idea or a premise.   The God spoken of throughout the Bible is not a theological concept but someone specific with actual characteristics that are His.  I have had conversations with different ones who have opinions of how the Lord should be if He really existed as if they are the ones who determine God’s nature and personality.  Either God is or He isn’t and if He is, then we do not decide what He is like any more than biographers can chose the qualities of George Washington or Pocahontas.  It does no good whatsoever to speculate about the characteristics of the Lord; one can only discover them through experience.

There is a rather humorous account found in the Bible that illustrates just how wrong we can be in our speculations about God.  After the Arameans attacked the Israelites and got soundly beaten by them, the counselors to the king of Aram insisted that the reason the Arameans were soundly defeated by the Israeli army was because they had fought in the uplands of Samaria.  The God of the Israelites they speculated was a god of hills.  What they needed was a change in location.  Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram advised him, "Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they.  Do this: Remove all the kings from their commands and replace them with other officers.  You must also raise an army like the one you lost — horse for horse and chariot for chariot — so we can fight Israel on the plains. Then surely we will be stronger than they." He agreed with them and acted accordingly. (1 Kings 20:23-25 NIV)

When the Arameans were crushed again by the Israelite army, one wonders if the Arameans might have pulled out their canoes to fight on the lake, hoping that God was not a god of lakes.  The Arameans were certainly right to guess that the Israelites had a God who brought victory to His people.  They however were wrong to make determinations about Him without actually knowing Him.  It is like watching movies depicting aliens when no one has ever seen an alien and if they exist have no idea how they look or act.  There is absurdity in the way so many talk about God without having the least bit of experience interacting with Him.  When the patriarch Jacob ran away from his furious brother and exhausted fell asleep he was unprepared for what came next.

He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."  When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." (Genesis 28:12-16 NIV)  Jacob’s reaction is priceless.  He did not realize God was where he was!

Nearly the entire world is oblivious to God.  Ambulances run to heart attack victims, senators discuss tax plans, shoppers comb the stores for deals, librarians restack books and hardly anyone realizes God is there.  Cynics decide God is cruel, professors think He is a myth and pharmacists believe He is a legend and all the while God is among us with His own specific personality and characteristics waiting for someone to notice Him.  The old pop song, “One of Us”, absurdly wonders what God would be like if He was one of us.  “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us.  Just a stranger on the bus tryin' to make his way home?”    The idea is that we cannot know what God is really like so we just make up things about Him.  For many, we can read the Bible and take what is said there as one person’s view of Him or maybe even the impressions of lots of people but we cannot really know what He is like because He is an idea or a concept and not an actual person.

When Jesus Christ was born and placed in a cattle trough after He was born, grew up and became a man, everyone who met Him discovered that God had specific, observable characteristics that made Him unique with certain qualities and personality traits.  God did this and behaved like this and reacted this way to these kinds of things.  God was not Fred down the street or the imaginative ideas of Marvel Comics.  He was not Thor, a made up character that could be anything the writers or the movie director wanted him to be.  God was there and He was just as He was seen and heard.  But you may argue that that was then and this is now.  How can we know what God is like now?

The last book in the Bible, the famous book of Revelation, or as the Greek name for it would be translated, “unveiling”, presents us with two specific groups of people.  The first would be those who are either oblivious to God or opposed to Him.  They react to circumstances they face without any sort of relationship to God.  There is no interaction with Him, no attempt at communication with Him.  They fear what is happening, are angry with their circumstances but never reach out to God or try to align themselves with Him.  The book of Revelation describes a typical response of those in this group to the destruction God will bring to the economic structures of the world.  "When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her.  Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "'Woe! Woe, O great city O Babylon, city of power!  In one hour your doom has come!'  "The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more— (Revelation 18:9-11 NIV)

If you can just not let the nature of the events that are described in this chapter distract you, the point is that no one here looks to God for help or even tries to reach out to Him.  The entire crowd only reacts to the circumstances as if that is all that is there, as if there is no God involved in it.  Yet there is a second group of people described in the book of the Revelation and that is those who are aware of God all the time.  They view Him not as a story or an opinion or a thought but as He is, there, present, with characteristics that are specific and certain.  They do not speculate about God, they interact with Him and the result of being with Him is worship and undiminished love for Him.  Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah!  For our Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory.   For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.  Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear." (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) (Revelation 19:6-8 NIV)

There is a clear and defined line of demarcation between two parts of humanity.  There are those who live without any consciousness of God, who live within the world and see nothing beyond it but the wins and losses of what they do and what they face.  God, the real God Jesus Christ, is beyond their mental scope.  The second group is made up of those who worship Christ, who love Him and yearn for His affections.  Worship is the mechanism through which those who are born-again experience Christ; it is the means by which God becomes known to us.  Like your ears enable hearing and your eyes seeing, worship enables you to be aware of Christ.  You cannot know God without worship.  You can read about Him, think about Him or have conversations discussing Him but you cannot know God without worship. 

A disturbing statement made by the Apostle Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit is found in the book of Romans.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  (Romans 1:21 NIV)  Literally, it reads, “Formerly knowing God not as God they neither glorified nor gave thanks…”  In other words, what knowledge these people had of God did not lead to them worshiping Him or thanking Him.  The result of this was that they could not think clearly or understand what they saw.  Without worship, you become irrational and mentally dull.  Worship of Christ is the gateway to seeing and understanding what you see.  Why is worship so critical to the church service?  It enables you to see God as He is and live with your eyes wide open and your mind able to comprehend what you face.  To skip worship or to not try to worship is like taking a pill that shuts down your brain and deadens your ability to comprehend.

When you are born again and have Christ as your Savior, your operating system is completely reworked so that worship of Christ is the way you connect with God and access His gifts.  Peace, joy and wisdom all flow into a heart that worships Christ and without that worship, it all gets blocked.  Practice worship this week.  You might not be very good at it.  You might get quickly bored with it.  But like any habit crucial to your well-being, practice is the only way you will develop it so that your mind will know Christ and understand God as He works in your life.

The Fullness of You...Smelling

Genesis 8:20-21

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

How Do You Smell?

Smell has the unique ability to serve as a trigger within the heart.  It registers deeply within us and locates memories long forgotten or buried and drags them to the conscious mind.  The sudden whiff of a pot roast, coffee, a gardenia or a type of perfume can take us back to when we were young.  Scent is important to our relationship with God.  Smell and the use of odors were key parts of how the Israelites were to worship the Lord.  From the use of prescribed concoctions of incense in the Temple to the burning of sheep and goats on the altars, the smell of sacrifices pleased God.  As noted above, God was happy to smell the burnt sacrifices Noah offered following the flood.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man… (Genesis 8: 21a NIV)  The Temple, which was the central location for worship in Israel, at least in the beginning, produced a flood of smells that overwhelmed the nostrils.  The odors of blood, cinnamon, cooking meat, salt and smoking fire pits nearly took one’s breath away.  When Solomon dedicated the Temple, the smoke from cooking sacrifices and burning incense was so thick you could barely see.  Imagine the overworking of salivary glands as one entered into the Temple grounds and the odor of barbecuing beef and mutton reached you.

We find in the Scripture that all the smells of the Temple were to establish in the hearts of God’s people something of critical importance to God.  In Psalm 141:2 we get a hint of what God was doing through all the sacrifices and incense burning.  May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. (NIV)  The connection between all those smells and God’s people praying was intentionally created by the Lord.  In the book of Revelation the link between the two is spelled out for us.  Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.  He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.  And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:6-8 NIV) Then later in Revelation 8: 4 this is reiterated.  The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand. (NIV)

If you went into the Temple, whether just the outer courts or deeper into its center, there were to be two senses that captivated you: sight with the simple beauty of the gold and woodwork and smell with the all the smoke and cooking.  The gold was to remind everyone of the majesty of God but the smells were to stir up within all who came to the Temple the call to prayer.  In speaking of the work God would soon do in bringing non-Jews into His Kingdom, Isaiah the prophet announced, “…these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." (Isaiah 56:7 NIV)  The smell of the burnt offerings coalesced with the prayers of the people producing a sweet perfume for God.  The house of incense and cooking meat was to be God’s house of prayer and not just for Jews but for all humanity who came to Him.  Jesus’ fury was directed toward those who destroyed that plan.  Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.  "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'" (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)

What we discover as we turn to the New Testament again is that just as the odor of the incense and the cooking sacrifices represented the prayers of the people and were to be a continual call to prayer, so too we find out that the Temple itself was a representation of something greater than wood and stone.  One of the most misapplied verses in the entire Bible is Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians.  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV)  The Temple built in Jerusalem was a foreshadowing of what God would do with all people who came to Him in faith.  They were going to be “houses of prayer”.  Every last one of us are built by God to be a prayer center.  When prayers are not emanating from us like the smell of incense rising into the wind, then we wreck the sanctuary of our lives.  If Christ could beat out the money changers and vendors from the Temple for taking apart the prayer of the place, how much more so does our Lord demand that as the Temple of the Holy Spirit we are to be centers of prayer!

Consider just a couple of examples to make clear how important our praying is to God.  When the ancient king Abimelech mistakenly took Abraham’s wife Sarah into his harem because Abraham had told the king that Sarah was his sister, God’s wrath broke out against Abimelech and his subjects.  The Lord warned Abimelech in a dream that He was about to kill him for taking Sarah from Abraham.  But, God gave Abimelech a chance at life.  “Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die." (Genesis 20:7 NIV)  God would wait on deciding Abimelech’s fate until he heard from Abraham in prayer.  Consider the high place of prayer and its exalted status.  The prayer of one man would decide the fate of another.

We see a similar situation in Job.  Job’s friends who were critical of Job and accused him of terrible sinning also found themselves under the wrath of God.  "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7 NIV)   But the Lord was willing to be merciful, depending on how Job responded. “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.” (Job 42:8b NIV)  If Job prayed for his friends, the Lord would be merciful to them.  Ponder how great a responsibility that is!  One person’s praying determined how God would act.

We have in James 5: 16 the sort of odor we are to produce in this world.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.  Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:16-18 NIV)  If you are not obsessed with praying for others, then you have no idea who you are in Christ and what He wants you to be.  As the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Lord is a part of your personality and He operates in you and through you.  The more aware you are of God, the more He will pray through you and your prayers will become His prayers.  You are not a righteous person because of what you are on your own.  Your righteousness is the righteousness of Christ which comes to your through Christ crucified and resurrected.  Therefore, the effectiveness of your praying is not dependent upon you but upon God living in you and through you.  You make yourself a sweet odor to God and to all around you by offering prayers to God for every person God brings to your mind night and day.  The smell that God loves above all is the praying of His people and like Job and Abraham, you can change the course of history by praying.