Stand In Awe Of God

Introduction

To most people nowadays, religion is an ugly word, full of negative undertones. Religion is what other people get, and religious is what other people are.

For sceptics and unbelievers, all faith is religion and, as such, it is to be rejected as a mystical hoax, or as Karl Marx said, “An opiate of the people.” But for Christians, faith is belief in the truth of Jesus Christ - and a good thing, while religion is equated with nominal and outward formalism and is therefore a bad thing.

This distinction goes back a long way. Robert Burns uses it in “A Cottar’s Saturday Night” to contrast the simple fervent faith of a Scottish cottager with the showy religiosity of polite society. Having described family worship as it was (and still is in some places) practised by godly folk in Scotland - the singing of a psalm, the reading of Scripture, and kneeling for prayer - he writes:

Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride,

In all the pomp of method, and of art;

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion’s every grace, except the heart!

The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole:

But haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul,

And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enrol.

Burns has a very valid point here. There is an obvious hollowness in much of what passes for Christianity in this world of ours. And, as it was a stumbling block for Robert Burns two centuries ago, so it still is a stumbling block for millions of people today both inside and outside the institutional Church.

So, how is God to be approached? How are we to worship and serve Him? Where does God fit into our human experience? And what use is religion in this world, which seems as if it’s going to hell on a roller-coaster? If God is supposed to be the solution to our deepest, human problems, why is there so much religion around and precious little real faith?

That is the problem Qoheleth addresses. He has been concerned to show the meaninglessness of life lived under the sun - that is, life lived without reference to God as the ultimate reality. In the course of his discussion he hints at the answer to the problem. Yes, says Qoheleth, there is the potential for joy and satisfaction, and it is in pleasing God. There is meaning in life, but it is only to be found through a living faith in the Lord. Only in Him can we understand correctly this world in which He has placed us. And only in Him, can we cope with the challenges it presents.

But Qoheleth is aware of the fact that religion and man’s approach to God can be corrupted along with everything else in this sin-sick world. So how do his gentle pointers to an answer that says “meaning will be found in true faith in God” fit in with the overwhelming evidence that so much religion seems little better than a charade and looks pretty meaningless itself? Is religion not also trying to catch the wind?

Now, Qoheleth knows how easy it is for us to go found the motions, whether it is singing hymns or saying prayers. He wants us to distinguish an empty, meaningless religion from the real thing. He wants us to root out empty formal worship and come to experience living communion with the Lord. So, he begins with that most fundamental element of Christian experience - the worshippers’ approach to God. Qoheleth begins with a person’s first step towards God, for he knows that no one can avoid such a beginning. After all, we have all had a real, definable experience (or non-experience) of worshipping God. We know, each one of us, who we think God is, and we know quite well the attitudes we have in our approach to Him. Of course, Qoheleth is speaking primarily to God’s people. He begins with their faith as it actually is. And his discussion penetrates behind our screen of creeds and theological language, to lay God’s claims upon our consciences and demand a practical response, either of faith or (God forbid!) unbelief.

If your life seems to be meaningless, then you must realise that it is because meaninglessness in one form or another has a place in your heart. Meaninglessness cannot be injected into a heart that has been reborn by the Holy Spirit and reformed by saving faith in Christ. But it can grow there, if the Christian wavers in his faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Christians can lose their way for a shorter or longer time.

Approaching God

For, central to the Christian life is the principle that our inward obedience must match our outward obedience. When people’s outward obedience is slowly eroding, as it was in Qoheleth’s Israel and is today, it is clear that their hearts are no longer turned to the Lord, as they ought to be. The Bible consistently teaches that a careful outward obedience to God’s will can only be built upon an inward love and devotion to Him, in Jesus Christ. We are not to be like those who honour God with their lips, while their hearts are far from Him. As one commentator put it, “From the heart to the hand, we are called to joyous discipleship.”

To do that we must never forget who God is. Watch your step when you go to the House of God. Qoheleth says literally, “Watch your feet.” The idea is that if we are not careful to do God’s will, we inevitably trample upon it. Where we put our feet tells a great deal about our attitude. We vote with our feet! Remember when Moses met God at the burning bush, and God instructed him to remove his sandals, because the ground on which he stood was holy? Moses’ feet had to be clean in the presence of God - it was an outward sign of an inward reverence for the living God.

We urgently need to recapture such a reverent approach to the worship of God today. It is not so much the structure and forms of our worship that need reforming, as much as the attitudes we bring and the way we behave as we outwardly come into God’s presence.

The preparation of the heart in quietness before the call to worship; holy abandonment to full-throated praise; the bated breath of expectancy in prayer; the sense of the Holy Spirit encircling us in the act of worship, leading our hearts and minds into the very presence of God in Christ; the joyful receiving of the Bread of Life as God’s Word is read and preached; and the exalted celebration of our risen Saviour, as the blessing of God in Christ is poured out according to His promise.

For these things to become a reality, and not just wishful thinking, we must be willing to concentrate our minds on the things above, not on earthly things. And only a clear view of the Majesty of the Lord we worship will draw out such gripping, exhilarating reverence. God is our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Comforter. Every moment of living worship must acknowledge this truth with joy. What is crucial is a deep sense of who God is and a felt need of His loving, merciful, gracious and joyous fellowship in Jesus Christ.

Promises to Keep

The sad fact is that so often we go through the motions and tell ourselves that we have been worshipping. We are only fooling ourselves.

But, surely, we know that when we deal with God, we must mean what we say. How lightly, it seems, people say they will do something and then never do it at all, or make all kinds of excuses in an apparent effort to justify their carelessness.

This applies especially to the promises that people make to God and later do not keep. You have no idea the lame excuses people offer me for never attending worship. In this church members are received on a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and make a covenant commitment in which they solemnly promise to be a living part of the congregation of the Lord’s people.

Every member of this church has promised to accept, in the Lord, the teaching and the discipline of the fellowship. They have committed themselves to Bible reading, prayer, attending public worship, observing the sacraments, giving to the Lord’s work and serving Him.

These are the normal, standard acts of membership of reformed churches. But they are still profound commitments that are taken very seriously by the Lord and ought to be taken seriously by us.

Promises are meant to be kept. Not to keep a promise to God is to be a fool. Why? Because God takes us at face value and will hold us to our solemn commitments. He will not tolerate pious language that is no better than a smoke-screen for a deceitful heart. It is only a fool who trifles with God’s holiness and thinks that God will wink at such hypocrisy, as if it were no more than a childhood prank - an April fool! What is crucial here is, once again, the character of God and our personal relationship to Him.

At first glance, it may seem harsh for God to hold people to their vows. We are so used to broken promises that we tend to shrug them off after a bit of grumbling. And we are often surprised, when we find someone who is consistently conscientious and trustworthy.

A society that takes for granted the easy making and breaking of promises naturally finds God’s standards of uprightness rather hard to take. And that is just what Qoheleth wants to get across: God is holy and cannot look upon sin, and those who are truly His believing people want to do His will from the depths of their renewed hearts! God calls us to say what we mean and mean what we say. We have promises to keep, for our God is an awesome God.

The Awesome God

For the Christian, fear of God is a fear born of love: fear lest we should grieve our loving, heavenly Father. This is precisely what Qoheleth is saying. In spite of many daydreams, pointless actions, and empty words, you should still fear God.

God is awesome. Before Him, all the empty words and false actions of empty religion will melt away. In the presence of God we are either in, what we might call, the danger zone or the safety zone. If we do not mean what we say, we are very much in the danger zone, because God knows our hearts and He will not excuse our empty words and broken promises. However, if we do mean what we say, no matter how often we may fail to live up to our promises, we are in the safety zone and there is no safer place to be. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but it is a blessed thing to put ourselves in the hands of the living God.

Conclusion

For, you see, God is awesome - in love. And His awesome love will not let us go. Living worship is quite simply the life of God in our hearts pouring out: in adoration and praise, in the confession of sin and prayers of repentance. Therefore stand in awe of God!