God Loves… Himself

This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses are wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field (A.W. Tozer The Knowledge of the Holy)

Good restaurants and stores focus on quality. So do good churches. What is a quality church? It is one that is focused on the majesty and glory of God. The quality of a church can only really be measured by the sense of God that people have. That is hard to look at in many ways since many people seem to love and worship God when in reality they are taken with Him only to the degree that they think He serves them and obtains what they want. In other words, sinners love those who love themselves. But true religion is all about the heart as it is before God and of the views and loves it has of God.

“But let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God” (I Peter 3:4). This text teaches us what God sees as important. It is, as Tozer said, internal. Here we see that God looks on the hidden person of the heart. True quality before God is a gentle and quiet spirit. Notice that it is not just that the person is quiet, but that the person has a quiet spirit. It is this type of heart that God thinks of as precious. The kind of heart that God thinks of as precious should be considered the type of heart that the Church considers precious too. Instead, we are enamored with celebrities and all sorts of outward things. Ah, we have settled for outward things of infinitely less value.

“You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?” (Luke 11:40). It is so hard for man to focus on the inward man more than the outward. Man sees with his eyes and seems to judge for the most part the outward things. But in doing so man forgets the importance of his inner man. The outward things that are done are ruined by the stench of a filthy and rotten heart. When each church gathers before God to worship, the people see the fancy clothes and the nice show that goes on. God is given a little lip service and so the people are happy and leave. But God is looking on the heart. Does that musician play for His glory from the heart? Are all those people there worshipping the living God in spirit and truth from the heart? Do the people want to be there to see God’s presence or are they there to please themselves and do their weekly duty for God so that He will bless them? What does God see when He sees the hearts of a lot of churches in our day? A human could not stand the sight if the Lord opened our eyes for a few moments one Sunday morning. People judging others for how they dress and how they look. There are jealousies among people and perhaps even hostility toward others. There are people lusting in their hearts for more money and people. There are people planning what they are going to do that afternoon or the rest of the week. There are people there who are wondering what others are thinking about them. Where is the quality of religion in worship like that? I believe it is below zero.

“And He said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God'” (Luke 16:15). The quality of our religion is determined by how much the heart is set on God and the things of God. This is true in worship as well as other things that what men esteem highly is detestable in the sight of God. The ways that men choose to help them worship today may indeed be highly esteemed by a great number of men, but at the same time they could be detestable in the sight of God. The quality of religion is determined by the pleasure and glory of God and not how many people like or esteem a particular method. Until the Church is determined to please God regardless of how many people approve or disapprove, its worship will be detestable to God. Until the Church seeks the sense and presence of the majesty of God in its worship, its worship will be from and of itself and not God. It matters little the size of a church and of how advanced it really is, the issue is what God esteems and counts as true worship.

This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses are wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field (A.W. Tozer The Knowledge of the Holy)

These words of Tozer have the ring of a prophet to them. In the modern day we are inundated with church growth books and practices. We are told that successful churches follow certain models and do certain things. But who is defining success? A successful church in Scripture is a group of people who are holy and do the will of God. This is to say that these people worship God with reverence and awe (Heb 12:28). There is no acceptable worship without reverence and awe. It matters not how many people attend a meeting on Sunday and call it church, if there is no reverence and awe there is no worship. Without the concept and reality of majesty there will be no reverence and awe in the meetings of churches. The loudness and quality of the music cannot give the sense of majesty in the service of the living God. A sermon laced with humor and anecdotes cannot give a sense of the majesty of God.

While it may sound absurd to many, the truth of the matter is that the Church in the United States is probably as weak as it has ever been. Indeed there are large numbers of large churches and there is a lot of money being given to various things. But all those are external and do not deal with the internal aspect of true worship. If you have an unacceptable worship to God and add huge numbers to the total of people who worship unacceptably that makes the situation far worse instead of better. So the Church in America today is seeking to make the churches better with gimmicks and outward activities. This is no better than the worship of Israel. They were not always appreciative of the way things went at the Temple, so they set up high places and did what they wanted. God hated that and called it “idolatry.” When the Church in America in the modern day does the same thing in principle, is it anything less than idolatry now?

God commands the church to worship in spirit and truth (John 4:22-24). The church cannot do that of its own will, so instead of seeking God for the heart to worship with and the truth for the worship to be guided and driven by, it sets aside doctrine and hard teachings in order to make things easier. It focuses on man and what man can do. However, does God ever command things like this? Has He ever been pleased with so-called worship if He has not commanded it Himself?

Amos 5:20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness instead of light, Even gloom with no brightness in it?
21 “I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 “Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.
23 “Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.

Should Americans think that God is pleased with our worship today? With no heart for God and no sense of His majesty in worship, do we think that our worship is something other than a noise to Him? Does it take loud guitars and amplifiers in order to get the all-knowing God to hear our worship? No, it takes hearts that have a sense of awe and reverence before Him. It takes a sense of His majesty and glory to move the heart to true worship. What the churches lack in reverence and sense of majesty they try to make up for it with new things and as entertaining and possible exciting atmosphere. It would appear that a lot of services are all about getting people in the door and once there to be sure that they enjoy the show. When that happens, as Tozer says, those types of gains are really losses. We have traded away the presence and majesty of God for larger numbers of people and outward success. This must be truly an abomination to the living God. How the Church needs to repent and seek God to come to her services rather than hordes of people who just may keep God away. What is success after all? Is it God and those He brings or the largest and most prosperous church in the world without God?

Referring to the message of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer says this: “It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.” This book was originally published in 1961. What Tozer wrote about is far worse now than when he first wrote about it.

While Tozer says that the Church has not surrendered her concept of God deliberately, I am not so sure. However, he is surely correct when he says that it was done “little by little.” Perhaps what has happened is that the thought of liberalism has crept in and men taught the same things at first and yet without the true concept of God. Later on, they dropped most of the façade. We then had a conservative reaction and people wanted to conserve the old morality, the old way of doing church, and the old teachings. But all of those can be done with less and less of the glory of God. Instead of teaching a doctrine from the Bible as that which the glory of God shines through, the teaching then simply becomes a way that man pleases God. It then becomes even more centered on man and is how man is to live a better life.

It is true that the Church is simply unaware of this. However, this means that it is blind. The Church is to be the representative of God in the world and it does not even know who God is? The Church is set apart to declare the excellencies of God in the world and it does not know Him? This is indeed a very tragic situation. The Church is not declaring the excellencies of God to the world, but is telling the world how great it is and how much God is impressed with it. The Church is certainly backwards in its approach, but it is easier to exist in the world like this.

Tozer is most likely right on target when he says that the church is doing this little by little. It is not as if the Church jettisons teachings that are held dearly by the people. It is not until the teaching has been eroded over time that the teaching is then said to be cultural only or intellectually not possible. We can see this in the churches mentioned in the book of Revelation. The church at Ephesus did many good things. “‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; 3 and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. 4 ‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:2-4). The problem with this church, as set out in the text, is that they left God as their first and foremost love. Perhaps they did their deeds faithfully, but did not have love. Perhaps they did not tolerate evil men and tested those who came to them claiming to be apostles, but they did those things without true love for God. I Corinthians 13:1-3 is quite clear on this subject. Yet, if the Church has a continuing loss of the majesty of God, it will have a continuing loss of love for God. God is the only source for true love in the universe and when He withdraws, so does the source for true love.

As God has withdrawn from the Church, She has been turned over to a lower and lower conception of His majesty. The Church, in terms of a lofty conception of His glory, is at a very low ebb. This is true of conservative and Reformed churches as well. The Pharisees were quite conservative and supposedly had a relatively high view of sovereignty. But they did not have a lofty concept of God. They did not walk in the fear and reverence of the glory of God. The Church as a whole is virtually in the pit of hell regarding its concept of God. If this degrading of the concept of God continues, there may be no return for the Church in the United States. While there are talks about the many things that the Church needs, there is nothing that the Church needs more than to put a halt to its continual degrading of the concept of God. If the Church in the US does not repent of this, perhaps the most wicked of sins, who needs it? The world suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, they do not honor God as God, they do not like to think of Him, and they exchange the glory of God for lesser forms. The Church is simply being like the world in its treatment of God. It tends to make me think that the vast majority with the name of Church is really the world in the guise of the Church. How unaware the Church is of this and of the majesty of God.

Referring to the message of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer says this: “It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.” This book was originally published in 1961. What Tozer wrote about is far worse now than when he first wrote about it.

In this article we will focus on how “the Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men.” If the Church does indeed have one so low and ignoble as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men, then how unworthy is it of the infinite God of all glory. Could it be true that the Church in our day of so much technology that we have surrendered the lofty concept of God? Is the Church so focused on being relevant with technology and science that it has lost its true relevance? Without any real question the lofty concept of God is gone within the Church today. Did the Church really surrender that concept? Why did it do that?

The Church has indeed given up any real concept of God. In fact, it could be argued that the Church has such a low view of God that it is really being given over to the practice of idolatry. In 1930 Arthur Pink wrote in his introduction to The Sovereignty of God that “more and more men are men in their philosophisings and theorisings, relegating God to the background.” Man has forgotten that all the nations are as nothing before Him and are as a drop from a bucket (Isa 40:15-18). Man has forgotten that it is God who upholds all things by the power of His word. Man has forgotten that all things belong to God and every knee will bow before Him on judgment day.

To quote Arthur Pink again, from his book on the attributes of God, “The “god” of this twentieth century no more resembles the Supreme Sovereign of Holy Writ than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun. The “god” who is now talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday School, mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day, and preached in most of the so-called Bible Conferences is the figment of human imagination, an invention of maudlin sentimentality. The heathen outside of the pale of Christendom form “gods” out of wood and stone, while the millions of heathen inside Christendom manufacture a “god” out of their own carnal mind. In reality, they are but atheists, for there is no other possible alternative between an absolutely supreme God, and no God at all.”

The Church, it appears to me, wants to be relevant and respectable in the world. It wants to get along with the world and it wants to be tolerant of the world. When it does that, it inevitably gives up what makes the Church the true Church. The world is at enmity with God and it hates God. So the Church must make up a nice, warm and friendly God in order to maintain respectability with the world. The world is not really offended by a God who loves all equally and is something like Rodney King who just wants people to get along. The world can tolerate those who are nice to them and make no demands on their ownership of self and their right to do as they please. When the Church, however, begins to declare a sovereign God who demands that people repent and that He owns all things including them, the world gets upset.

The Church has surrendered its once lofty concept of God in order to be like the world. How utterly damning it is that the Church has chosen to be like the world rather than to be like God. How despicable it is that the Church has chosen the favor of the world rather than the favor of God. Should the Church complain that God has left when the Church has chosen the enemies of God over God? Should the Church use the methods of God’s enemy (the world) in order to obtain the blessings of God? Maybe, just maybe what the Church needs to do is to fall on its face with broken hearts and plead for the return of the living God. Only when the Church has been restored to where God’s majesty shines through it will the Church be the Church. The way things are now, the Church is unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. It is also, even infinitely more importantly, unworthy of the living God.

Referring to the message of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer says this:

“It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.”

This book was originally published in 1961. What Tozer wrote about is far worse now than when he first wrote about it.

When I visit churches, I am usually struck by the absence of any kind of real thought about God and any real reverence for Him. It is probably thought that we are doing church and so of course God is with us. The name “Jesus” is perhaps mentioned some, but He is talked about only as a means to an end or perhaps only in ways that make people think that Jesus does nothing but focus on people. Christ as God is utterly and gloriously majestic as well. Has the truth of the majesty of God been so lost that what is thought of as the Church is no longer really the Church? I think we should take this very seriously. The Israelites were rejected by God and yet they kept on practicing their rituals. Could it be that the modern “Church” has been rejected by God as evidenced that they no longer worship Him in His majesty? The greatest thing that God can do for a people is to give them Himself. When God gives Himself He gives His people a sense and taste of His glory. Clearly, this sense of glory is not with us.

As evidenced in the last forty years or so, God has withdrawn. His absence has been noticed by some, but what they have noticed is the lack of interest and the lack of numbers. We have turned to entertainment and special speakers from athletics and the television. We have turned to church growth methodologies and all sorts of analysis of the church. We have turned to so-called seeker sensitive ways of doing church. We have a postmodern version of the church called “the emergent church.” We have all sorts of conferences and a vast amount of books that will help you grow the church and help you become better at virtually anything. We have all sorts of Christian music and we are told that we must have certain kinds of music to worship. Do we need music to worship? We need God to come among us to worship. But of course this is all done in the Christian way and is usually sprinkled with a few verses here and there. The church is seen as having a product and the people are seen as the consumer. Where for God’s sake and glory is God?

The Church and each church is to be the temple of the living God. The church is to be the dwelling place of God. True worship is only found when God comes among His people and opens their eyes to taste and see of His glory. When Isaiah saw God he did not ask for any kind of music as he saw the music of glory and majesty. When the disciples saw and heard Jesus speak and tell the wind and the waves to hush, they were more afraid of Him than of the weather. They did not need anyone to sing a special or to sing a certain kind of music to prepare them for worship. Even more, they did not need to hear some simply little message in order to inspire them to lead a better life. They did not need some postmodern around to help them make church more relevant. The most relevant thing in the world to them was God and His glory. The disciples and Isaiah were not ready for a conference to teach them how to do church, they were in the presence of a holy God and they knew what majesty really was.

Now, it may seem as if I am knocking all conferences and music. That is not the point. The point is that we must seek God for a return of the presence of God. The sign of God’s presence is for His people to be humbled in His presence which is “seen” by people who are caught up in His majesty. People who are caught up with God are no longer concerned about all the daily things of self; they are concerned about their souls and the glory of God. Conferences and music and church need to focus on seeking God for Himself and not for anything else. As Tozer said, we have lost the concept of majesty. Instead of seeking God for His return, we have made many substitutes. Nothing will substitute for the lack of the concept of majesty. The Church does not need more programs and all of its corresponding vanities, it needs God. The problem, however, is that God is sovereign. He does not have to return and we cannot make Him. A program is far easier and we can control it. Don’t settle for cheap imitations, go for the real thing. We should never settle for anything less than the majesty of God. If we do, it just shows that we have no idea of what His majesty is really like.

“True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time.” A.W. Tozer

A.W. Tozer, like the rest of us, was not a man who was perfect in his theology. However, he did have some profound thoughts on the greatness of God and how that should apply to man. Here we see a profound thought. “True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time.” The term “confronts” is an interesting term in this like. It tells the Church that her message is one that should be confronting people with the reality of spiritual things all the time. Anyone who pretends to have true religion should understand that confrontation is necessary on a regular basis. Whatever one thinks of Christianity, which is what true religion is, it cannot stand still and do nothing.

True Christianity confronts others simply by virtue of what it is. The message of Christianity is that God’s kingdom has arrived and it is a victorious kingdom. The message is that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The necessary implication is that each person must repent of his rebellion and crime since they are against the majesty in heaven. True religion is Christianity which is the revelation of the truth of God. Christians have the truth about God revealed in Holy Writ by the Holy Spirit. When Christianity falls into the wickedness of a low view of God, of necessity it becomes more and more like the world. With a low view of God the Church falls into idolatry and is turned over to hardness so that it is tolerant of the world. This has already happened. While the job of the Church is to confront the world with the character and glory of God which is to bring eternity to bear upon time, it has dropped that and is now just like the world in preaching a soft love along with its corresponding tolerance for virtually all things. Well, there are many who are adhering to conservative values and theology. Fine, but one can have those things and confront the world with those and still not confront the world with true religion.

Christianity is to be all about God. Christians are the temple of God (I Cor 6:19-20) and are here to proclaim the excellencies of God (I Peter 2:9). Christians are as vessels of clay to show forth the life of Christ in them. We are not here to live for ourselves in any way, but to live to and for the glory of God. When Christianity is moral or theological for itself, it is being like the world in doing all for itself. Self-centeredness and self-love as the same thing is the mark of the world and increasingly the mark of the modern so-called Church. It is only when the Church is used of God to manifest His glories and excellencies that it is different and confronts the earth with heaven. How the Church needs to repent of its self-centeredness and neglect of God. The Church neglects God simply by being focused on so many things other than Him. It can neglect God in His own name and so “THE NAME OF GOD IS BLASPHEMED AMONG THE GENTILES BECAUSE OF YOU” (Romans 2:24). It is offensive to think that this text may be applicable to the church where you and I attend. However, if we do attend church at a place where the name of God is blasphemed, then our offense is far worse against God. It is better to be offended by the Word of God than it is to offend God. Do our churches offend the living God by what we do and what we don’t do because of our neglect of Him? Do our churches blaspheme the name of God among the unbelieving world because of the way we do things? Are we really seeking to glorify His name according to the strength He gives or are we striving to do what we want according to our own desires and traditions? Well, one might say, “I do evangelism a lot and so of course I don’t blaspheme God.” But why is evangelism done? Is it done out of a love for the glory of God or not? We do evangelism and therefore we say we love God. But we are to do evangelism because we love God if it is to be done in a way that He is truly glorified. Another might say that his church has great music. Fine, but where is God? Perhaps He is in the words and perhaps the feelings of people are elevated, but where is God? Feelings are to be elevated because of the beauty and glory of God and not because of the beat of the music. Do people have their feelings elevated when they meditate on the truths of Scripture? If not, the feelings might be because of the tune rather than be true worship. Others might say that “we teach the truth at our church since we teach Reformed orthodoxy. Again, where is God in that? Is it possible that people love their creeds and Reformed teachings because of its history and logic rather than the beauty and glory of God? Do people love God’s beauty as He shines in and through the truth or because of other reasons?

We must do more than talk about God in a way that is accurate; we must love the beauty and glory of the truth because it is the beauty and glory of God. Loving truth or forms of truth can be self-centered, but we must be God-centered.

In Acts 17 Paul was standing in the midst of the Areopagus addressing the Athenians. Most likely there were many philosophers and yet many more who thought they were wise. Paul had been through Athens and had seen and examined their objects of worship. So he stood in front of them and said this: “What you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). In my opinion this is probably what Paul would say if he stood in the midst of the vast majority of churches today. He would see some singing, some activities, and perhaps even some programs that involve evangelism. But what do we worship if indeed we do worship? What is the core love behind our evangelism and our singing? What God is proclaimed from the pulpit on Sundays and other days?

In the more seeker sensitive churches, as they are called, the seeker appears to be the object of worship. After all, all is done for the so-called seeker. The music is oriented toward the seeker. The sermon is oriented toward the seeker. The lighting and the atmosphere is focused toward the seeker. Excuse me, but if all that is toward the seeker, then the seeker is being treated like God. No wonder some people attend this type of church. They are treated as gods.

Now if these churches were attended by Paul today, what would he say? I bet he would be amazed that so much attention is given to seekers rather than God. “What you worship in ignorance.” Yet the so-called Church today continues on focused on programs and entertainment while the real mission and focus of the Church has been forgotten. Well, we can feel pretty good about ourselves in this light. Really? Isn’t the same thing true of conservative churches? They are focused on keeping the old music, the old morality, the old theology or the old whatever. But where is God? A church can have the old music and not have God. A church can have the old morality and be more like the Pharisees than God. A church can have the old theology and still not have God. A church can be Reformed and be so focused on its theology, theological precision, and being sure that all the people are taught the creeds that it has forgotten about God. All of these things can be done in a way where God is replaced by something else.

Would Paul address our churches as those who worship in ignorance? Would Paul address your church as one which worships in ignorance? We must never forget that the primary seeker in church is God. He seeks those who will worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). In fact, if God is going to be worshipped He must be worshipped in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). One can have a lot of noise and music and it still not be worship of the living God. One can have the correct creed and still not worship the living God. One can have the correct creed and all the outward husks of truth without a heart that adores and worships the living God. Where is God in our churches? Well, some say, He is behind all that we do. Exactly, He is behind rather than in the front being worshipped and exalted. A known God will be set forth and proclaimed. Those who are ignorant of God will have Him behind everything. The Pharisees had God behind everything too. Where is God in the modern Church? Are we sure that He is even there other than in name the few times He is mentioned? Do we really need God in order to keep our churches going? Would we get along just fine without Him? Are we getting along just fine without Him?

Is God in our prayer meetings? Oh, you say, prayer meetings? Well, that is rather an old way to do things. Well, it is said, no one attends prayer meetings any more. When attendance went down to almost nothing we stopped having them. Well, another way to put it would be that when God left the church people stopped attending prayer meetings. Prayer meetings are boring if God is not met there. Prayer meetings are boring if God is not being sought. Prayer meetings are what used to be done when God visited churches. That is the way people used to do things when God was at the center of the Church. You know, that was the way things were when people wanted God to visit the church. We preach and teach on how to make people feel better. We preach and teach on how people should live better lives. We preach and teach on how to make the churches grow. We adjust everything to make people happy in order that they will come or that they will not leave. But when we do those things as they are being done, God is left out. Maybe I am wrong, but when we focus on people like that rather than God, it sure sounds like idolatry to me. Maybe we really are so ignorant of God that we have forgotten the true God so much that we have replaced Him in church with success, numbers, modern music, old music, and orthodoxy. Where is God? Surely He is not in our churches or there would be more love for God and His glory.