By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
We are all worshippers. We don’t have to believe in God to be a worshiper. I know some folks who worship their family. There is nothing they wouldn’t do for their family…good, evil, moral, immoral.
Nothing! I know some folks whose God is their sport’s team. They live, breathe, eat and sleep their team. I know others who are their own gods. Their choices are always made by what is best for them.
The family, the job, everything is second to what is best for them personally. Some worship money and financial stability. For others, it may be their health, their reputation, their youth. We all worship.
What we worship shapes us. It is what causes us to make the decisions we make—wise or dumb. How do you figure out who or what you truly worship?
I know we can give verbal assent to being worshippers of God but in truth, we have set these others up in his place. Time is one factor that we can measure to help us get a better understanding of our “gods”.
I went off the rails today. I got home from church at about 2:30 after a good service and a nice lunch with a new couple we had just met. And, for one of the first days in ages, I wasn’t pressed to do anything.
My Monday Bible study was already done. I didn’t have any columns like this that needed to be written before deadlines. I was even up on housework. So, nothing was pressing me.
I sat down and began to flip through those short videos you see on your phone. People doing stupid things, pets doing crazy things, jokes, comedians. Next thing I knew, I had wasted 5 hours.
I’m embarrassed to say that’s more time than I spent in the Word this week. If I used a time log to see my priorities this week, I’d be hard pressed to deny that secular waste of time was my god. There’s nothing innately wrong with watching some comedians or car crashes or funny animal stunts.
It’s kind of like candy. Some is OK but a diet of it can be deadly. The first question is “How will my attitude be tomorrow when I fed my spirit on nonsense all day today?”
Will my face, my posture, my attitude be a blessing to those I meet on Monday, or will my entire self be warped somehow because I fed on some not very uplifting mental snacks today?
And the bigger question is: “Will my Worship be influenced or impacted by what I put into my mind and spirit today?” Romans 12:1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
Notice it’s the “holy” that makes our worship acceptable to God. Psalm 29:2 says it like this: “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.”
The “splendor of holiness” is an interesting phrase. It appears in several places in scripture including Psalm 96:9 “Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!” and in 1 Chronicles 16:29 “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;” Holiness is the beauty of God himself; he is glorious in it. It’s the one attribute of God that is presented in the superlative “Holy, Holy, Holy”. The word “holy” means “apart” in its primary sense. God’s holiness means he is in a class by himself and is transcendentally distinct from his creation.
God is distinguished from everything and everyone by his purity, which sets him apart from us. Yet, by his sovereign decree, we have that same holiness.
Ephesians 1:4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” We are set apart as his. No longer a part of creation as much as a part of him. When it says to worship God in the “splendor of holiness”, we are able to do that.
Not because we are perfect or sinless or spent six hours in prayer or sang praise songs for five hours yesterday but because we are holy by His decree. By His declaration we are holy.
The splendor of holiness is found in the purity that God has given to us and not in our actions. We could never worship God in our own holiness.
But, because he chose us before the world was created to be holy, then we can come to worship him in the splendor of our holiness.
So, while I may not be as fit on Monday for my fellow human beings as I could have been with a better use of my time today, I will not fall short in my worship to our God because I cannot be less than he has declared me to be…in this case, he has declared me…and you…holy…just like He is Holy.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.