WHOM SHALL MAN WORSHIP?
By S.
A Pertinent Question Just Now.
THIS question is as old as the human race; and the question, Who ought to receive worship? is as old as the rebellion in heaven. It did not come into either heaven or earth until the justice and sovereignty of God were challenged by the father of sin. And so the controversy and conflict from then till now has been over the matter of loyalty, obedience, reverence, worship. It is as great an issue now as it ever was—indeed it is reaching its culmination in this very age, as we shall see. The man Adam met the question and fell before it. Disobedience was the proof of his disloyalty; disobedience showed his worship of another out of harmony with the One he should have served; obedience is one of the highest forms of worship. As all the offspring of Adam fell in his fall, so there came One who was to meet the same test, and who, if He met it successfully, would open a way whereby all men might rise and stand in His triumphant stand. He came; He met the test in the personal presence of the fallen rebel, and He triumphed gloriously over the common enemy of God and man. In the example of His own life Jesus Christ answered truly and fully that question for all time. So now when voices are calling to us from every side, when scores of standards are being raised, we ought to know what is the true Standard and the true Voice. Otherwise we shall be deceived, and ruined eternally. As God is not a God of discord, there can be but one true standard, one true voice. All others, all that are not in perfect harmony with this Standard, this Voice, are false; either counterfeits of the genuine or open or secret enemies of the true. He who worships anything but God has listened to one of these voices of deception, and has placed himself under one of those false standards. It makes no difference what that other object of worship may be, to worship it is to range one’s self on the side of the enemy of God. The worship of self is such a worship, and he who performs it is on the side of Satan and against God. Self-worship is a religion that is very much in evidence at the present time. It is not confined to sect. It is manifest wherever the Spirit of God has not come into the heart to soften and subdue the elements within us that would war against God. We may be made to think we are doing God service while we are burning incense to this idol and so serving under the banner of sin. This worship of self is not the mere serving and pleasing of self, known as selfishness. It is a specific act of worship performed as self-worship. It is the dogma of a cult or cults in which the object of worship set before the individual is the “divinity within himself,” the “Good within him,” the “God within him.” The cults which teach these God-defying doctrines are becoming numerous. It is becoming “quite the thing” to be a member of one or more such. Those religions teach that we have God within us. That makes the human being divine in the mind of the believer in that doctrine, and then he is prepared for the instruction given by such a cult for his worship of himself. He is taught to sit down at some definite time each day and slowly, carefully, and distinctly repeat to himself such sentences as these and many more of similar import:— I am ONE with Infinite Life. I am HEALTH, for the indwelling Life is Health Itself. I am STRENGTH, for the Eternal Good [by which they mean God] within me is Strength Itself. I am HARMONY, for the Divine Mind is Harmony Itself. I am LOVE, for the Infinite is Love Itself. I am WISE, for I know that God is Wisdom Itself. I am TRUTH, for the Truth is Law of Being. And so it goes on, attributing to the finite all the attributes of the Infinite. Whatever God is, that they claim to be; whatever He has, that they claim to possess. If they are a part of God, what He is they must be; and they claim that they are, because they have Him within themselves. The ascription of all those attributes to self makes self a god. The repetition of those claims at recurring, designated periods is an act of homage, worship; and the deeds which go with it testify to the reality of that worship. With such the “I” is all, and the “I” is God. This is the key and the kernel of the philosophic religions which are claiming such attention in the world to-day. Their adherents are multiplying rapidly. Every cult in which man is looked to in this way and set up in this way in the place of God is doing the work of God’s enemy, and is inspired in that work by him who sought to usurp the throne of the Most High. That one said to Christ, Fall down and worship me, and all you see shall be yours. That would have made Christ the servant of Satan, second to Satan, instead of the servant of God and Redeemer of man, and would have stamped failure upon Christ’s mission as Adam’s did upon his. But Christ was more than equal to the test. He answered: “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” And those words of Christ should be uttered by every man or woman to-day who is urged to turn from the worship of the true God to the worship of self, and consequently and unavoidably to the worship of Satan. The principle underlying that declaration should be made a part of the very life. That made Christ a victor, and it will make you a victor. The enemy is coming in like a flood. This is the standard which is lifted up for you in this crisis: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Allow the enemy to gain no foothold in that citadel by flattering you with the possession of the attributes of divinity in a flesh which you know to be only frailty itself without God’s sustaining grace. Whom shall we worship? If God be God, worship Him; but if man be God, there is nothing worth worshiping in the universe. There is, however; and He is the Lord our Righteousness, our Creator and Redeemer.