Acts 17:22-23
Paul then stood up in the
meeting of the Areopagus and said, “Men
of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked
around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found one with
this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown
I am going to proclaim to you.
Somewhere
along the line I developed a very healthy respect, bordering on pathological
fear, of electricity.
I
think it was when I worked for an electrician for part of a summer when I was
in college. One day he was up on a ladder leaning up against the outside wall
of a house. He was working on some wires coming out of the house and he asked
me to get a tool for him. As I was heading toward his truck I heard a strange
sound and turned around and he was on the ground with blood coming out of his
mouth.
I
ran to him and he grinned and said, “Workin’ too
fast!” Evidently
he had grabbed the wrong wire and the jolt caused him to almost bite his tongue
in two. I decided then and there that God was not calling me to be an
electrician.
I’ve been terrified of electricity
ever since. If my boys break a light while playing in the basement, which at
one time was a relatively common occurrence, usually the bulb shatters but the
base remains stuck in the socket. I not only turn off the light, and then shut
off the entire circuit-breaker box, but if I could, I’d call the electrical company to shut down the entire
midwestern grid before I try to reach in there and untwist that thing. That’s because while I know next to
nothing about electricity, I do know that it can make you bite your tongue in
two!
Sometimes
I feel that same fear when I hear people, even myself, refer to God in informal
or flippant ways.
I
hear someone refer to God as “The Man Upstairs; or The Big
Kahuna; or The Big Guy; and I wonder if they have any idea who they are talking
about.
In her book, “Teaching
a Stone to Talk,” Annie Dillard writes:
“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what
sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a
word of it? It is madness to wear ladies’ straw
hats ... to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue
life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the
sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us
out to where we can never return.”
The Apostle Paul noticed something
similar as he walked around the great ancient city of Athens.
For as I walked around and
looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found one with this
inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am
going to proclaim to you.
In other words, Paul is saying, “You were created to worship, and you give your
extravagant devotion to all kinds of gods, even gods you do not know. I’d like to introduce you to the God
who created you and makes himself known to you through Jesus Christ!”
The writer of Psalm 100 says it
very simply:
Know that the Lord is God.
The God revealed to us in the Bible is distinguished from
any and all “lesser gods” we
may be tempted to worship by three characteristics and one demonstration.
He is sovereign; that is, there is only one God who is
creator and sustainer of all things; only one God who possesses the authority
to establish both truth and judgment.
He is holy; meaning God’s purity, perfection and power is like
electricity in that we must not approach him on our terms but only on his, lest
we be consumed.
He is good; meaning that in his mercy and love he offers
grace and forgiveness to all who humble themselves to seek it.
Finally, God demonstrates his nature most clearly in the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So, how do we respond to this God who is unapproachable in
holiness, but who came to us in absolute humility? How do we respond to the God
who could rightfully consume us in judgment but offers his grace instead?
In Hebrews Paul writes:
Therefore, since we are
receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship
God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:28-29
Brian Coffey
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