Are You Insulting God in Worship?

The misunderstanding of a short, three-letter word can transform an act of heartfelt worship into a slanderous insult.

Perhaps you’ve heard Matt Redman’s song “Here for You” and are familiar with its lyrics. Here’s the first verse:

     Let our praise be Your welcome
     Let our songs be a sign
     We are here for You, we are here for You

     Let Your breath come from heaven
     Fill our hearts with Your life
     We are here for You, we are here for You

Little words can mean a lot. They can make the difference between good and evil, between heaven and hell. In this case, a right understanding of a single word is the only thing that prevents an act of worship from degenerating into a colossal insult to God. It’s the word “for.”

Here to Help?

Imagine for a moment that a person in your church has fallen ill and is bedridden. While he is helplessly laid up, his house suffers from disrepair. The yard is overgrown and desperately in need of care. You and a small group from the church show up unexpectedly at his home, prepared to do for him what he simply cannot do for himself.

“Why are you here?” he asks. “What’s this all about?”

“We are here for you,” everyone responds in unison.

Think about the meaning of “for” in that sentence. You are telling your friend that you are present in order to provide a service for him. He is weak and sickly and in great need, and you and your friends are here to do for him what he lacks the strength and ability to do on his own. He is in lack. You are here in order to supply for him a service that he is unable to accomplish in his own power.

“Our worship on Sunday morning doesn’t meet a need in God. It meets a need in us.”

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Once the house has been cleaned and the yard has been mowed, the hedges trimmed, and the trash hauled off, he says, “I can’t believe you are so kind to me. That you would provide this service for me is amazing. I’ve been so weak and exhausted, and I simply didn’t have the time or energy to do for myself what you’ve done for me. Thanks so much.”

What are we doing when we gather corporately and sing our praise to God? What is our intent? What is it that we believe we are achieving?

When we sing, “We are here for you,” in what sense do we use the word for?

God Does Not Need You

If you are singing and praying and praising and preaching in order to do forGod what you and your friends did for that sickly and needy man, you have insulted God. Now, why do I say that? Consider what the apostle Paul said in his speech on Mars Hill:

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” (Acts 17:24–25)

Simply put, God does not need you or me. He is altogether self-sufficient, dependent on no one. He is, in fact, the one who is responsible for the existence and preservation of all life, yours and mine. Therefore, he cannot be “served” as if he were needy or exhausted or weak or lacking something that only you and I and the people of your church can supply.

To arrive on a Sunday morning and declare to God, “We are here for you,” in the sense that you believe there is something you can give to God that he doesn’t already have, or that you can shore up a weakness, or fill a gap or overcome a deficiency, is to insult God to the very core of his being.

That is why we must be extremely careful that we are never there for God in the sense in which we might be there for an invalid or someone who is destitute of the resources to care for himself.

Here to Be Refreshed

But let’s go back to your gracious and loving service for your friend who is bedridden. Let’s assume that after your hard day at work in his yard in one-hundred-degree temperatures, you are desperately thirsty.

Suddenly there appears a truck at the curb, offering ice-cold, refreshing water. You run up to the driver and say, “We are here for you.” Your obvious intent is that you are there for what the driver can supply. You don’t pretend to bring him anything other than your thirst. You are desperate for refreshment. Without it, you will faint. You are there humbly asking him for what he alone can provide: life-giving, thirst-quenching, soul-refreshing water.

“We don’t bring anything to God in corporate worship that he doesn’t already have. Nothing except our need for him.”

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That is how we are here for God in worship. We cannot add to his resources as if he were in lack. He is infinite and immeasurably abundant and needs nothing from us. Rather, we are here for God in the sense that we need him as a thirsty man needs water, as a hungry traveler needs food, as a bankrupt beggar needs money, as a guilty soul needs forgiveness, as a broken heart needs healing, as a lost sinner needs salvation. That is why we are here forGod. Only he can supply what we lack. Only he can give us what we need.

If we gather for God, thinking that he stands in need of us, we insult him. But if we gather for God to drink deeply and feast upon all that he is for us in Jesus, we honor him.

By the way, we should give Matt Redman credit for making this quite clear in his song. If we ask of the lyrics, “Why are you here for God?” the answer is clear:

     Let Your breath come from heaven
     Fill our hearts with Your life

The worshiper comes not to infuse God with breath, but to receive it from him. The worshiper makes no pretense at filling up what is lacking in God, but cries out that God fill his heart with divine and supernatural life.

Such is how a simple, short, three-letter word can be used either to denigrate and dishonor God, or to honor and extol him.

May it always be the latter when we come together and say, “We are here foryou.”

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Is Your Joy Real or an Imposter?

Do you believe that “real enjoyment is essential to real godliness,” or does that sound more like a tagline for the power of positive thinking? Or maybe a self-serving cliché on the lips of some popular prosperity preacher of our day? I was caught a bit off-guard myself when I discovered that the author of that statement is none other than J. I. Packer.

The more I delved into the mind and ministry of J. I. Packer, the more relieved I was to discover that his “enjoyment” has nothing to do with what he calls “hot tub religion,” and everything to do with a robust delight in God in the midst of the most severe and troubling trials.

Is Christian Hedonism a Hot Tub Religion?

Now, don’t be hindered by the emotional dissonance of the image of J. I. Packer in a hot tub, and consider for a minute the way that this experience explains much about modern Christianity. As he relished the pleasures of a hot tub for the first time, it dawned on Packer that the experience

is the perfect symbol of the modern route in religion. The hot tub experience is sensuous, relaxing, floppy, laid-back: not in any way demanding, whether intellectually or otherwise, but very, very nice, even to the point of being great fun. . . . Many today want Christianity to be like that, and labor to make it so . . .

[To this end, many] are already offering occasions which we are meant to feel are the next best thing to a hot tub — namely, happy gatherings free from care, real fun times for all. . . . [Thus] when modern Western man turns to religion (if he does — most don’t), what he wants is total tickling relaxation, the sense of being at once soothed, supported, and effortlessly invigorated: in short, hot tub religion. (God’s Plans for You, 49)

Packer has no objections to the pleasures evoked by his time in a hot tub, and neither should we. But the life of radical obedience to which Jesus calls us may well, and should, provoke opposition, ostracism, and ridicule from a world that finds the message of our Lord both distasteful and threatening.

These inevitable consequences of Christian commitment, however, are no threat to the sort of exuberant joy and “holy happiness” that are the lot of those who’ve seen the beauty of Christ and basked in the knowledge of his redemptive love. It thus bears repeating that biblical joy is always deeper than and never dependent on physical, financial, and emotional pleasure. To suggest that the former is in any way dependent on the latter wreaks unimaginable havoc on the Christian soul.

Full Joy Fixed on God

Joy has never been an easy word to define, at least in terms of the way it is used in Scripture. When the followers of Jesus are told to “rejoice and be glad” as they are reviled and persecuted and slandered (Matthew 5:11–12), we flinch. Or when Paul says that “we rejoice in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3), and James urges us to “count it all joy” when we “meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2), we squirm and collectively scratch our heads in dismay. Clearly we need a new and more biblical perspective on joy.

Packer bristles, and rightly so, when the spiritually shallow of our day speak casually of joy in terms of religious frivolity, fun, or that sort of light-hearted levity that fails to equip and empower God’s people to suffer well. Indeed, he cuts across the grain of standard but largely misguided Christian opinion when he insists that biblical “joy” is inextricably tethered to our grasp of deep doctrinal truths. I’ll let him speak for himself:

The secret of joy for believers lies in the fine art of Christian thinking. It is by this means that the Holy Spirit, over and above his special occasional visitations in moments of joy, regularly sustains in us the joy that marks us out as Christ’s. Our Lord Jesus wants our joy to be full. Certainly, he has made abundant provision for our joy. And if we focus our minds on the facts from which joy flows, springs of joy will well up in our hearts every day of our lives; and this will turn our ongoing pilgrimage through this world into an experience of contentment and exaltation of which the world knows nothing. (God’s Plans for You, 125)

My reading of the biblical text, with Packer’s considerable help, leads me to regard “joy” as something akin to spiritual euphoria. Joy, then, is a feeling, or better still an affection, a deep, durable delight, if you will, that is the fruit of a mind immersed in the truth of who God is and all that he has savingly secured for us in his Son.

The Joy of Crucifixion

Packer was awakened to this life-changing truth as he read Scripture with the help of the seventeenth-century Puritans. Contrary to widespread misperception of the Puritan vision for life, these men helped Packer see that there is immeasurable joy in heeding the call of Christ to self-denial and the happy (never morbid) embrace of the rigors of discipleship in a fallen and broken world. The counterintuitive call to take up the offense of the cross (Mark 8:34–35) and to lay aside the “sin which clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1) serves only to intensify and deepen the spiritual euphoria of knowing God in Christ.

What, then, might we learn about Christian experience from the life and thought of this latter-day Puritan (Packer turns 89 on July 22)? Countless lessons, to be sure, among which is the encouraging, Christ-exalting truth that “holiness is essentially a happy business” (Rediscovering Holiness, 87).

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We Must Live With This

“Let anyone who has no love for the Lord be accursed.” (1 Cor 16:22, NET)

This verse seems to dangle there with no immediately apparent connection to what precedes it or follows. Paul placed this thought in the very last handful of sentences in the first letter to the Corinthians. He’s given the readers some final punctuated reminders to end up his long epistle. It has a strength there, even if all alone.

But maybe it’s not totally alone. It’s followed by the exclamation “Maranatha!” This is usually translated “Come, Lord Jesus!” This Aramaic word can be divided differently however. It could read, “Maran atha” rather than “Marana tha” and therefore assert, “The Lord has come!”

Could Paul be saying, “The Lord has come. He’s to be contended with. Anyone who doesn’t love him is to be accursed!” Or, could he intend, “The Lord is coming, therefore let anyone who has no love for the Lord be accursed [when he comes].” We may not know for certain.

There is power in the sentence. Earlier he wrote the Galatian churches pronouncing “anathema” on those who were distorting the gospel of grace by adding the requirement of circumcision and the Mosaic Law. But in this statement is the anticipation of a curse on people who have simply failed to have something. Let him be accursed who has “no love for the Lord.”

No love for the Lord. One wonders how it could be so, that any person could be in such a state that he or she has no love for such a glorious and gracious being.

Why?

Some have no love for reason of having never given any attention to him at all. No comfort can be found there though. Just as we are guilty of a crime whether we know of the statute or not, so neglectful people are guilty of not loving Christ whether they ever thought much about him or not.

Some do not have any love for Christ because they love everything else. They pursue and lust for other things which preoccupy them. They have no time or interest because other things, such as pornography, or acclaim, or dress or wealth has all their attention.

But I have found a much deeper repulsion of Christ on the part of some. I talked to a man recently, for instance, who wanted nothing to do with Christ no matter what I might say about him. He was not interested and wanted me to know that no talk about him will change that. It was a great offense to him that anything was mentioned about Christ at all, though I had known him a long time and was very gentle and thoughtful to discuss Christ in a careful way. Such people find Christ distasteful in every way. These people reveal a development in their unregenerate heart that has left them calcified and seemingly unmovable.

Whatever the status of the malignancy of the heart, there is no hope for those who don’t love the Lord until and unless they have a change of heart. They must love what they do not love now. That transformation, the best I can understand it, is where the Lord comes in. He is able to do the impossible, to change the unregenerate heart that has no love for Christ. He uses our words and many other things when he does this, but ultimately, it is his work.

But Paul isn’t talking here about what could be. He’s only stating the fact that a person who has no love for the Lord will be accursed . . . now, and forever. It’s stark, painful, sad and difficult to think about. Yet, it is true. And we have to live with that awful reality.

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The Hour Had Come

“The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.” (Mark 14:41)

All Jesus’s human life had anticipated this hour. Every careful attempt at keeping the messianic secret. Every emotional investment poured gladly into his disciples. Every glimpse of the ocean of his kindness as he healed the blind, the mute, the lame, the demonized, and even raised the dead.

Now the hour has come. All history hinges on this hour. And it is utterly terrifying. Jesus must decide: Will he protect his own skin, and soul, or will he embrace his Father’s perfect and painful will?

His dying had begun long before this hour, but now in Gethsemane, he must face the death to self that comes before the death at Calvary. Never has a soul been in such anguish. Never has a human been so undeserving of divine wrath. Never has anyone else faced such horror, to be made sin on behalf of others — to put himself forward in our place.

His Hour Has Come

Even as early as John 2, when Jesus turned water to wine, he knew, “My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). But he acknowledged his hour would come. And it shaped him from the beginning.

“Never before had a human heart faced what Jesus did in that garden. And never again will God require it.”

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When he went up to Jerusalem privately for the Feast of Booths, he knew, “My time has not yet come” (John 7:6). Once he began to teach publicly, it wasn’t long before “they were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him.” Why was he spared? John explains: “Because his hour had not yet come” (John 7:30). Then again in John 8, during this same appearance in the holy city, “he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him.” Again John explains his invincibility: “Because his hour had not yet come” (John 8:20).

But when Jesus finally came to this grave and prescient Passover week, he knew, at long last,

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:23–24)

When Jesus reclined with his disciples in the upper room to prepare them for his departure, he knew this was the hour (John 13:1). As he began his magnificent, high-priestly prayer that Thursday night, he prayed, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).

Why “Maundy”?

In the English-speaking church, we have come to call this gut-wrenching night before Good Friday “Maundy Thursday.” Scholars suspect the word maundy comes from the Latin mandatum meaning command. It’s a reference to Jesus’s charge to his disciples, in that upper room, after washing their feet (John 13:1–20) and watching Judas depart (John 13:21–30):

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34–35)

Calling it Maundy Thursday (Thursday of the Command) may give the wrong impression, that the accent falls on our love, not Jesus’s. The focus of this holy Thursday, however, is not the fresh charge to the church (“love one another”), but the inimitable act of her groom (“as I have loved you”).

When Jesus said, on that first Maundy Thursday, “as I have loved you,” he was not mainly referring to his washing of the disciples’ feet. He was looking forward to what the foot-washing foreshadowed — to his own death the next day and the ultimate sacrifice he would make to rescue them. Their sin, and ours, justly deserved the omnipotent wrath of God. Jesus’s rescue, and demonstration of his love for us, would require far more than foot-washing. And far more than mere physical death.

Anguish in the Garden

When Jesus finished praying in the upper room, “he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered” (John 18:1). His hour had come, and this would be the garden of his agony. The first Adam felt no anguish in his garden, because he gave in so quickly, but Jesus knew that to resist this greatest of all temptations, he must suffer.

“Jesus will be no mere victim. If he is to go as a lamb to this slaughter, he must go willingly.

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His hour of literally excruciating suffering to come at Calvary would be bracketed by emotional and spiritual agony past finding out. Before he would cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” at the great eclipse of his Father’s light (Mark 15:34), he must first, here in the garden, make the final choice to subject himself to hell itself. He must embrace the pain, not just endure it. He must choose the nails and the darkness. He must step forward to receive his Father’s holy wrath. He must welcome his hour.

Never Before

He will be no mere victim. If he is to go as a lamb to this slaughter, he must go willingly. Freely, by his own eternal spirit, he must offer himself (Hebrews 9:14).

If there ever was a holy panic, this is it. He begins to be “greatly distressed and troubled” (Mark 14:33). Fully human, he confesses, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14:34). “Being in agony” (Luke 22:44), he falls to the ground and prays that, “if it were possible, the hour might pass from him” (Mark 14:35).

So great is his torment that “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). He offers “loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). As he hangs by a thread, “there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke 22:43).

With each passing moment, he is closer to the traitor arriving with his troops. He will be betrayed into the hands of sinners, and they will enact, for all the world to see, the very essence of sin itself: assault on God, with intent to kill. How could each minute in the garden not feel like a lifetime?

Anguish, for Joy

He knew that hell itself was coming. How then can he, as man, embrace it in all its horror?

Earlier that very night, he had told his men what his hour would mean: anguish, for joy.

“When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” (John 16:21)

In the garden, he still stands on the other side. And yet he speaks, in all the terror and torment, in all his sorrow and distress, feeling only enough joy to choose the joy to come. Isaiah had prophesied, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). Duty alone cannot carry this hour. It will require joy. “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).

At last he resolves, “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

Never Again

Never before had a human heart, mind, and will faced what Jesus did in that garden. And never again will God require it. His Son’s trip into Gethsemane is utterly unique from any garden of anguish into which God might lead us.

Those who hate God will soon enough stand unshielded to face his omnipotent, righteous wrath. But they will never do so on another’s behalf. And they will never do so for the joy set before them, from love for the Father and his people.

Never again will God walk one of his children through this garden of the shadow of death. We very well might give our own lives in this world to save others here, but we cannot choose God’s wrath in place of another’s sin. What Jesus did on that Thursday evening is utterly unique.

And yet this is Thursday of the Command: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

Our Joy to Echo Such Love

Jesus’s garden will not be ours. His hour will not fall to us. But having been loved like this, how can we not love one another? How can we not, as the beneficiaries of Christ’s irreplaceable sacrifice, ache to empty our own selves for another’s good? Having tasted such fullness from him, how can we not gladly pour out to meet the needs of others?

“Tonight we marvel at what Jesus embraced for us. We stand astounded at the uniqueness of his sacrificial love.”

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Yes, we will love, but Maundy Thursday does not turn on our love. This is a night to marvel at what Jesus embraced for us. To be astounded at the uniqueness of his sacrificial love. To wonder that while we were still sinners, he died for us (Romans 5:8). “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

On Maundy Thursday, we don’t mainly shoulder up to the charge to love others. We fall awestruck to our knees, face to the floor, and say,

For me it was in the garden
He prayed: “Not My will, but Thine.”
He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.

How marvelous! How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! How wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!

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