Tag: Psalms

Before the Throne — Chapter Six — Facing the Fire

This was talk six of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

Last chapter we saw this picture of the throne room of God — and of God himself — as raw fiery power (Ezekiel 1:27). Yahweh — the God of Israel — is the ruler over all the other gods in heaven; holding court, rendering judgment (Psalm 82:1).

This is a common picture of the throne room — that it is the place where God acts as judge; where the God whose fiery power melts mountains will turn that power against evil in order to destroy it.

There is a Psalm — Psalm 11 — that brings together a few of our images. It is a Psalm of David, and he starts by saying he takes refuge in God like a bird fleeing to its mountain.

He is fleeing because injustice seems to be winning; the wicked are flinging arrows at him, shooting from the dark at the upright in heart. Where else can the good go but the heavenly throne; where God is — enthroned in his heavenly temple. These are images we have been bringing together — the mountain, the throne, the temple.

David is confident that God is, from his throne, examining the righteous — and the wicked. Those who love violence — he is judging them. He hates this violence with a passion, and he will rain fire: fiery coals and burning sulfur — there are those coals again. There will be a scorching wind as his power moves against the wicked in judgment; a sort of purifying fire. David is confident God is just; that he loves justice — and the upright will see God (Psalm 11:1-7).

The throne room as a courtroom is a picture we also see right at the end of the Bible’s story. Again these thrones in heaven are occupied by these authorities, but around the throne there is a cloud of witnesses — these martyred Christians, people beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus — people crying out for justice (Revelation 20:4).

This crew is first described back in chapter 6 of Revelation — the faithful testifiers who have been killed — who are at the throne asking, “How long, O Lord, until you judge and avenge…” until you bring justice for our deaths.

And they are told, “Wait… wait a little longer…” not because God is sitting on his hands, or because he is waiting for the world to turn to him. He says, “Wait until the full number of witnesses have been killed” (Revelation 6:9-11).

That is hard. It is hard when we have our own suffering and identify with those crying out. It is an awful reason to wait — if our suffering is ultimate; and often it feels like it is.

But in the vision of Revelation, God’s justice comes — these martyrs are raised up to reign on the throne with Jesus (Revelation 20:4). We are not going down the thousand year rabbit hole today.

Our eyes are drawn to a great white throne of the God whose power overwhelms the heavens and the earth.

And God is judging all the dead according to their actions — every human ever to have lived and died will come before the throne and be judged:

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”
— Revelation 20:11-12

Ultimately death itself, and the place of the dead, and all those whose names are not written in the book of life — and especially those who have been opposed to God’s kingdom and his faithful witnesses who do not repent — these people will experience the fiery judgment of God. The power of God we saw last week is turned on them in what Revelation calls the second death (Revelation 20:14-15).

And this picture might make us uncomfortable — partly at the idea of the books being opened and our lives being exposed — but also for reasons on two poles. Some of us find it hard to believe an all-powerful, loving God could be violent like this; could judge — especially if he might judge us, or people we love. On the other hand — some of us who have suffered evil might be like the martyrs crying out for justice; wondering why God has not stepped in — if he is absent, powerless, or even if he is good.

Navigating this tension is one of the hardest parts of belief in Jesus. It is where the problem of evil and suffering leads people on either end of this spectrum away from God’s throne. I wonder what happens if we take these problems directly to God’s throne.

We can try to rationalise our way through these tensions, but I wonder if rightly imagining the throne room of heaven and encountering the God enthroned helps us resolve these tensions better than just knowing facts. If we add our voices to the witnesses around the throne, and see him as the one who can answer our cries — calling out for justice while experiencing mercy — this might help us with another tension.

See — we have been pondering how entering the throne room of heaven, as those raised and seated with Jesus, is meant to shape our lives on earth. So what do we do with this picture of God’s raw power falling with such violence in the name of justice?

Coming before God as the one who can answer these cries; adding our voices to those testifying in heaven; calling for justice while experiencing mercy teaches us that our job is not to enact God’s job for him, and to leave justice in his hands, or in the hands of those who wield the sword.

There is a theologian named Miroslav Volf who has been helpful for me in navigating these tensions. He is a Croatian who grew up in the Republic of Yugoslavia. His most famous book is called Exclusion and Embrace; his reflections on the genocide that took place as the Republic dissolved. Volf’s life is marked by injustice. His father — a pastor — had been held in a concentration camp. Volf himself was completing his PhD overseas when Serbian soldiers were conducting an ethnic cleansing of his homeland, targeting his neighbours and family. His PhD supervisor asked him if, given his commitment to non-violence, he would be able to embrace one of these soldiers. These are some of his reflections as we navigate our discomfort with God acting in judgment.

For Volf, a God not grieved — angry even — at injustice, who does not act to end violence, would not be worthy of worship. He argues that the belief that God will not, with some sort of violence, end injustice actually creates the conditions for human-on-human violence — there is no fear of God to restrain human evil. To commit to human nonviolence requires the belief God will bring justice; vengeance even — where we have withheld it.

For Volf — some of the discomfort we westerners feel about judgment and justice from God is a product of western privilege — a “quiet suburban home in a peaceful country.” This sort of judgment can feel unnecessary for us. Whereas in a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, where people are crying out for justice — it dies quickly.

Here is an extended set of his words:

“If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence God would not be worthy of our worship… violence thrives, secretly nourished by belief in a God who refuses to wield the sword… the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance… It takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge… In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.”

We will come back to Volf — but let us grant that this might be true — as we imagine coming face-to-face with the holy God who will bring judgment and justice. Our readings from Isaiah are a picture of doing this — of this heavenly court.

Isaiah approaches this holy God — recognising he deserves judgment — and is not destroyed, but is made holy; which, through Jesus, becomes our story too.

We read about Isaiah’s encounter with God in his throne room — which, like with Ezekiel last week, is part of his commissioning to carry a message from the throne to earth. And his message is one of judgment.

We read this in chapter one — Isaiah is carrying God’s declaration that his children have rebelled against him (Isaiah 1:2). Zion will be delivered with justice — there will be some faithful ones left, but rebels and sinners will be broken and those who forsake God will perish (Isaiah 1:27-28).

This Zion that is delivered — it is the mountain of the Lord’s temple. This is imagery we have seen of the heavenly throne room coming to earth. When this happens the nations will stream up the mountain, to the temple; before the throne. They will be saying, “He is going to teach us to walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from this temple mountain; the word of God from Jerusalem. And he will judge from his throne and settle disputes (Isaiah 2:2-4).

And just in case we think the task of those meeting God in this throne room — the God who is going to enact justice — should lead to violence in the name of bringing heaven on earth by eradicating evil ourselves — that is the opposite of the picture Isaiah paints. People meeting God in this throne room will forgo violence; they will beat their swords — their weapons — into tools to create food and peace and prosperity. Nations will not go to war against one another or train for war (Isaiah 2:4).

Now, this is a vision of the new creation — and while it would be amazing if all the combatants in modern wars were confronted with this picture of the heavenly throne room, or any violent individual laid down their weapons or their desire to hurt others — this is not necessarily a call to total pacifism now. God appoints people to wield the sword and to enact justice — and that has to be part of our picture when we experience evil and injustice.

But this is not the role of his heaven-on-earth people; the church; those called to walk in the light of the Lord (Isaiah 2:5). We can only do this — we can only choose non-violence as a “just” heaven-on-earth way of life if we truly believe God will act to bring this ultimate justice and use his power to make all things new.

I wonder how often our desire to seize control, and the small ways we choose violence, or wield power over others in various ways — with our words, or the way we position ourselves to exclude others, or the ways we seek revenge with whatever tools we have — shows that we do not always believe God will act this way. Perhaps part of this is because we are not in the habit of asking him to do so.

In chapter 6, Isaiah has his heavenly encounter where he is commissioned to take this message of judgment to his people and the world. He sees the Lord — Yahweh — high and exalted — seated on the throne. This is in a sort of heavenly temple — or a heaven-on-earth temple — because he sees God’s robe filling the temple; cascading down off the throne (Isaiah 6:1).

Where Ezekiel saw those heavenly cherubim, Isaiah sees seraphim (Isaiah 6:2). Their name comes from the word for “burning ones” — they are bright shiny creatures — sometimes pictured as winged serpents in nations around Israel. I guess you could call them fire-breathing dragons. They have six wings, and they are flying above the throne, singing:

“Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh Most High — the Lord God Almighty — the earth is filled with his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)

This is a song that emphasises some of the qualities of the one on the throne; especially his holiness — his absolute perfection; his inability to abide impure things, and the idea this light will consume everything.

The whole cosmic temple shakes and there is smoke (Isaiah 6:4). It is like when God settles on the temple in 1 Kings — and a bit like when tongues of fire settle on God’s living temple in Acts to mark us as holy.

Isaiah is overwhelmed; he is thinking back to Moses on Sinai and the threat of death that accompanies being in the presence of God’s holy power. He cries, “Woe to me! I am ruined — destroyed…” It is because he is not holy — he is a man of unclean lips. He falls short of God’s perfection. He is meant to be a prophet whose lips will speak God’s words to a people whose lips should speak for God. He falls short of God’s holiness and has entered the most holy place. Now his eyes have seen the King — the Lord Almighty — enthroned in heaven, and this should be the end for him (Isaiah 6:5).

Only — rather than the fiery power of God obliterating him — he experiences mercy. One of the burning ones, who serves the burning powerful God with his burning throne, flies over to Isaiah with a live coal in his hand from the altar (Isaiah 6:6). This is fire from heaven. There are rules in the Old Testament law about the fire on the altar in the holy place never going out (Leviticus 6:13), because it was lit by God when his glory appeared when the tabernacle was completed (Leviticus 9:23-24).

As this burning one approaches, Isaiah must imagine he is about to be burned up, but the seraph uses this heavenly fire to purify his unclean lips. This heavenly fire becomes a gift; his guilt is burned away; his sin atoned for (Isaiah 6:7).

When God asks, “Who will I send to speak for me?” Isaiah says, “Pick me” (Isaiah 6:8). It is not an easy message either. He is carrying the message from the start of the book — an announcement of God’s fiery judgment (Isaiah 1:2). His job is not to cleanse the lips of these rebellious people, but to show how their commitment to dead idols has deadened their hearts. Isaiah’s words are going to confirm this judgment; their hearts will become calloused in response; their eyes blind; their ears deaf. They will hear this message and will not turn back and be healed. Anyone who has been crying out for justice will see it, while those who oppose God’s plan for a heaven-on-earth renewal will experience it (Isaiah 6:10).

This is where Isaiah asks, “How long, Lord?” — “How long do I have to carry this message of judgment and despair?” And God says: until the stuff that gets in the way is cleared; until the land is empty and a blank slate for re-creation (Isaiah 6:11). That is an interesting parallel to the martyrs at the throne in Revelation — God’s people asking, “How long?” “When will you act?” (Isaiah 6:11; Revelation 6:10).

The delay between the announcement and the judgment creates this period where people hearing can respond; but their response will often be to confirm that judgment is deserved as they turn on God’s witnesses (Isaiah 6:11; Revelation 6:11). That can feel hard when we are part of those witnesses — or when we are experiencing the violence of the wicked and seeking refuge in God’s throne room. That wait is only bearable if God will act justly; if he will actually make amends and heal and restore.

The end of the book of Isaiah depicts God speaking in judgment:

“Heaven is my throne, the earth my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will I rest?”

But nobody is building this house; his nation has chosen their own ways, not his — delighting in abominations, rejecting God — so he will remove them. When he called, nobody answered; they were too busy doing evil (Isaiah 66:1-4). So Yahweh promises he will come with fire; fiery chariots like his throne from Ezekiel — bringing his anger and rebuke and flames of fury; coming with fire and his sword and executing judgment on all people (Isaiah 66:15-16).

Why? How can a God who is good and loving do this?

We would have to believe the evildoers are actually doing evil — and humans doing evil should not be hard for us to imagine. As a thought experiment: imagine that God is good and has held off as long as he could, but has to balance the reality that inaction fosters evil — and weigh this evil against his holiness and his desire for renewal; a world free of evil. How can God claim to be just if the violent and wicked truly prosper?

This is so the vision of Isaiah 2 can happen — people from all nations coming to the mountain throne, becoming priests of God. In a new heavens and new earth the opposition to this plan has to be removed so those who dwell in God’s presence can endure forever and live lives of peace (Isaiah 66:20-22).

Isaiah’s throne room encounter is a picture of this; of a human coming into God’s presence to be made holy; to be purified; to become a witness to God’s kingdom as he receives forgiveness of sins — atonement — so that he can not just be in God’s presence in heaven without being destroyed, but carry God’s word into the world.

This is a confronting picture, is it not? When we imagine God as holy and just, turning heavenly power against evil — even the evil that lurks on our lips and in our hearts. Are you prepared to expose yourself to God for this to happen — knowing it might involve some pain, but that to refuse to come before the throne of the judge means being brought before the judge on his terms?

Isaiah is a picture of this, but not the final picture. His encounter points to God’s redemption of humanity — his invitation into his throne room through Jesus. To come before his throne still involves being transformed — being made holy — by heavenly fire, but this happens because Jesus absorbs the fiery judgment of God to remove our guilt, atoning for us as the Lamb of God, so that the fiery power of God — the Spirit — might dwell in us without destroying us.

John — who (I think, though this is debated) wrote Revelation — says a bunch of things about Jesus that we will look at next week, but there are a couple of things in chapter 1 of his Gospel that are crucial as we imagine coming before the throne of the judge. John talks about Jesus, the Word of God, coming into the world — his own — and being rejected (John 1:11). Crucified. This is the ultimate expression of violent human rebellion. When he describes Jesus “tabernacling” with us, he says that in Jesus we are beholding God’s glory; there is not a God in heaven who is not revealed in the life of Jesus (John 1:14). Then he calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) — a lamb did that in the Old Testament by being a sacrifice in the place of God’s people; whose blood would lead God’s judgment to pass over his people.

In one of his letters, John also talks about Jesus being our advocate in heaven; standing for us in the throne room like a lawyer when those books are opened — saying, “This one is mine” — and the atoning sacrifice for our sins; the one who absorbs the blow, like a sacrificial lamb, so that we might enter the throne room and not be consumed — and not just us. His offer is to the whole world (1 John 2:1-2). Jesus is God’s offer of merciful embrace to the world; an invitation to be included in his life. He changes our picture of heaven — when John describes his vision of heaven in Revelation he sees a slain Lamb on the throne (Revelation 5:6).

When we imagine heaven and this throne, we are not just picturing the raw, fiery power of a vengeful God, but a just God with his beloved God-King enthroned with him — a slain Lamb bearing the scars of encountering human violence and evil; scarred on our behalf so he might advocate for us, bringing us before the throne, testifying on behalf of those who testify to him, and sharing his throne with us in his kingdom — sins forgiven, scars healed, raised to life with him forever, while justice is served.

Miroslav Volf — who observed the horrors of human violence up close — says this image helps resolve our concerns about God’s judgment. While Revelation pictures Jesus riding a white horse, violently destroying those who have harmed his faithful witnesses, Volf says:

“The violence of the Rider on the white horse, I suggest, is the symbolic portrayal of the final exclusion of everything that refuses to be redeemed by God’s suffering love.”

Revelation wrestles with the tension of the timing of this judgment, but it has to come because, for God not to act — not because he is eager to pull the trigger, but because every day he is patient and holds back — violence (the same sort of violence turned on the Lamb) multiplies.

Volf again:

“The day of reckoning must come, not because God is too eager to pull the trigger, but because every day of patience in a world of violence means more violence. God’s patience is costly, not simply for God, but for the innocent.”

God’s patience comes at a cost for those harmed by evil — and some of us feel that cost and bear those scars. But it is the slain Lamb who offers comfort to those of us who are scarred; who cry out, “How long?” Those of us wounded and suffering have a wounded and suffering King who knows our pain; and it is the slain Lamb who reminds us of God’s love and mercy — that he is good and just; that he has suffered evil; that at the heart of God’s heavenly rule and his justice is the cross. “At the center of the throne, we find the sacrificed Lamb… At the very heart of ‘the One who sits on the throne’ is the cross,” Volf writes. The one who rules — who we approach in prayer; who we might picture as we picture the glory of heaven — took human and cosmic rebellious violence upon himself while taking on God’s fiery power, to make the unholy holy, to conquer enmity and embrace the enemy. “The world to come is ruled by the one who on the cross took violence upon himself in order to conquer the enmity and embrace the enemy. The Lamb’s rule is legitimized not by the ‘sword’ but by the ‘wounds’; the goal of its rule is not to subject but to make people ‘reign for ever and ever.’”

So how do our lives on earth reflect this reality in heaven — where God the Father and God the slain Lamb exercise judgment from the throne, and the Lamb advocates for us? What do we do with this picture?

First, if judgment is a reality, we — like Isaiah — can find refuge by approaching God’s throne in confession and repentance, knowing our sinful hearts and bodies and mouths should be destroyed by this fire; but coming all the more willingly because we know that our sin and its punishment have been dealt with not by fiery coals from the altar, but by God in the violent death of the Lamb, so that we can be forgiven and atoned for — and made holy as we receive the Spirit as our own fire from heaven.

Second, if we have found refuge here — as forgiven sinners — and if we have been transformed, there is an obligation to testify to this Lamb who testifies on our behalf; not just proclaiming the fiery God who will judge evil, but the slain Lamb who offers embrace. We can name the evil in our own lives and bring it to God’s throne to be transformed, and be sent into the world. And part of lives that testify to this reality is not to embrace violence in pursuit of justice, but to embrace the non-violence pictured in Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4), trusting that God will judge and be just; and that while our cries might feel unheard, he hears and will act.

Third, as those with access to this throne room — who have the slain Lamb as not just our King but our advocate — those of us whose hearts are captured by this vision of God’s nature are able to cry out for justice; naming the way our own wounds and scars are products of the evil of others — and even knowing we will be resurrected and enthroned — we are able to call out, “How long, O Lord?” and to expect an answer, and to know that we do not just have permission to call out to God this way, but an advocate and a God who delivers justice, not just at the end of the world, but as its ruler.

A few weeks ago, when we pictured heaven as a mountain, we looked at how the Psalms of Ascent might become part of what shapes our language and imagination as we approach God’s throne. As we think about crying out for justice there are a couple of types of psalm we might use to shape our prayers. We might be moved to lament — to carry our anger and grief to God, knowing that he cares and will bring justice — and that our own healing and transformation happens through encountering him, not running from him. But we might also be moved to call down judgment from heaven — there are psalms called imprecatory or curse psalms. Some of them are full of graphic imagery as God’s people cry out for justice; for judgment; for the destruction of the wicked. It is fair to say Christians have not been sure how to pray these psalms — and that we should be careful not to position ourselves as judge, or to refuse the idea of mercy, or that God might embrace those who have hurt us in a way that brings them to transformation and repentance. Yet in our experience of injustice these psalms might give us some words to say to God, where — even if our limits and perspective are wrong — they bring us towards God, rather than away from him, in our suffering. About one in ten psalms include the psalmist crying out for justice.

One of the more famous — and more graphic — is Psalm 58. It says “even from birth the wicked go astray.” It says they are like snakes; spawn of the evil one; their poison is destructive (Psalm 58:3-4). This is another psalm of David, and he prays that God would break the teeth in the mouths of these evil humans — these powers — that their evil might fail, and that they might be destroyed and disappear (Psalm 58:6-7).

It is not ungodly to come before the throne of the just judge to pray for the destruction of evil; for those who have harmed or are harming us; to ask him to act. We would have to have a wrong picture of heaven if we never did this.

September 20, 2025 Add Comment

Before The Throne — Chapter Five — Chariot Of Fire

This was part five of a sermon series preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2024. You can listen to this on our podcast, or watch the video.

I want you to imagine you are in the new creation — heaven and earth have merged, and you are sitting with the prophet Ezekiel.

You are having a chat — and you are trying to explain solar power to him — we just dragged these glass panels up on the roof — and they did not just reflect the radiance of the sun, they captured it and harnessed its power and transformed it into energy we could use.

And then someone from 50 years in the future — you will have to check if this is the right time frame in 50 years… someone walks up and says “wait till you see what we did with hydrogen.”

Explaining power — energy — raw unharnessed might — is pretty tricky. I wonder how you would go explaining the power generated in atomic fission — what is going on in the heart of a nuclear reaction — and what would happen if you were standing in the presence of that sort of reaction.

Lots of the power generating options with this sort of raw energy involve bringing water into the mix and creating this steam which is used to spin things really fast and transform it into energy that flows out into the world to be used. The raw power is both destructive and transformative in ways that spread energy and turn on the lights.

Anyway… Ezekiel is doing something like this exercise in what we have just read — trying to use words and images to capture the glory — the majesty — the power — of God’s presence in words people can understand. We are going to try to build a bit of a bridge back in time as we look at his imagery, just like he would have to come up to speed when it comes to the pictures we might use.

We have been on a bit of a journey over the last few chapters, and have arrived at our destination; we are looking at depictions the Bible gives us of the heavenly throne room.

We have been trying to remap our view of reality so we can live as God’s heaven on earth people — people who have got a vision of heaven driving our lives on earth.

We looked at Paul’s prayer that the eyes of his readers’ hearts would be enlightened (Ephesians 1:18-19) — like his eyes were enlightened when the heavens opened for him and he was overwhelmed by bright light on the road. He wants us to see that God’s power which was at work in raising Jesus from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavenly realms — above all these authorities and power and dominion (Ephesians 1:19-21) — is at work in us as we are raised and seated with Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). We are talking about what it means to set our hearts and minds on things above — where Jesus is.

We have worked our way towards the throne room — starting with the idea of being raised and seated in paradise; a garden — a new Eden — regaining access to this sort of heavenly space that was lost and shut off by a cherubim with a flaming sword in the beginning of the Bible’s story (Genesis 3:24). And then we looked at how heaven is pictured as a mountain top — in the heavenly Mount Zion — the temple mountain of God’s dwelling place (Hebrews 12:18, 22).

Mountains and gardens and temples are pictures of heaven — they all merge — so Ezekiel describes Eden as a mountain garden (Ezekiel 28:13-14), and the temple is decorated with cherubim — heavenly creatures — and fruit trees from the garden. It is also a picture — a copy of God’s heavenly dwelling; his sanctuary — and throne room (Hebrews 9:24). Jesus invites us into the holiest part (Hebrews 10:19); where God’s throne is represented in the “copy” by this golden box, called the ark, into God’s presence; his throne room.

Well, now we’re in the throne room, and we’re looking around — and in some spiritual sense, that is also true and real, this is where we belong. This is where the Bible says we live; where we see and encounter and speak to God, and where he sees us as we approach him in prayer and worship and devotion as his children. As people who, because God’s Spirit dwells in us on earth, and unites us to Jesus in heaven — we are heaven on earth people. And our lives on earth are meant to be shaped by this throne room being our ultimate reality. But this was not always the reality for humans in the Bible. There is a time where it appears that heaven on earth spaces are disappearing — that they are totally separate — that other powers — maybe other gods — maybe powerful people — it looks like they have won. So God’s people have to grapple with where this means God is, if he has abandoned us, or if he is really there at all, and how to live with those questions. I wonder if we spend lots of our lives feeling more like this — and how we might deliberately cultivate a different picture.

This is the situation facing Ezekiel and other people carted off to Babylon with King Jehoiachin. Ezekiel is 30 years old — he is among the exiles in Babylon (Ezekiel 1:1). This is before the full force of Babylonian power falls on Israel — that bit we looked at last week from 2 Kings, where the temple is desecrated, and Jerusalem is left in ruins. Ezekiel is among the first political prisoners in Babylon — and here God is choosing him as the spokesperson to go back to Israel and tell them what is coming for them.

This is how the scene is set for his work as a heaven-on-earth speaker — a prophet — who speaks these words, that are then crafted into a book Israel will treat as part of God’s word as they contemplate life both in exile and back in the land afterwards. We get a little third person description of the scene in verse 3 to make sure we know he is in Babylon, and that others believe the hand of God is on him in this moment. He is by the rivers of Babylon and the skies open — he gets swept up into this sort of heavenly vision — visions of God — it is a vision explaining the situation of Israelites in exile.

“In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.”
— Ezekiel 1:1

They are wondering if the looming end of the temple and maybe the kingdom of Israel means they have been abandoned by God; that his throne room is gone; that he has lost a sort of cosmic battle between ancient deities. But Ezekiel has his eyes opened and he is looking at the heavenly throne room the earthly one depicts.

And we are starting to get some visuals here — some colours and descriptions and an audio visual display it is worth taking a moment to imagine and dwell on and to see how it aligns with other descriptions from the Old Testament as we build a picture.

Ezekiel’s vision starts with a windstorm — an immense cloud with flashing lightning and brilliant light — there is a fire and the middle of it looks like glowing, molten metal — this is like a furnace (Ezekiel 1:4). It is a moving version of the glory of God that settles on the mountain in Exodus — where there is — again — thunder and lightning and a thick cloud — a sort of terrifying scene — awe inspiring (Exodus 19:16).

And the mountain in Sinai is smoky because God’s presence is like a fiery furnace (Exodus 19:18). There is nothing more powerful in the ancient world than a thunder cloud and lightning and a furnace — they did not have nuclear bombs and mushroom clouds — so when they are looking for a visual to describe this sort of raw power — well — look at some of these descriptions from the Psalms. In Psalm 18, David describes smoke coming out of God’s nostrils and consuming fire and blazing coals from his mouth as he comes down from heaven on dark clouds — mounting the cherubim — this is an image we will come back to — soaring on the wind, riding the clouds and controlling lightning — thundering from heaven — it is the same sort of picture (Psalm 18:8-13). Psalm 97 describes God reigning from his throne — where there are clouds and darkness again — and fire. His fiery heat is the sort of smelting furnace that melts mountains — or makes them smoke as he comes down. Mountains are the biggest thing they could imagine smelting (Psalm 97:1-5).

And — not for nothing — this raw, smelting, fiery power — approaching the presence of God — it is meant to be transformative. There is a risk it is deadly and consuming, but even approaching the foot of the mountain and this fire — Moses says — even not seeing God as he speaks out of the fire has a refining impact. God has no physical form in encounter — he was raw transforming power — and this encounter is meant to shape how they use power; their own smelting fires. It is meant to stop them forming images of gods in the world that deform them as they worship; to avoid corruption, because they are formed by this fire (Deuteronomy 4:11, 15-16).

We have got to be careful — I reckon — even as we are trying to engage our imaginations and picture this heavenly reality — realities described in picture language — and as we seek to encounter God; to behold his glory — that we are being transformed rather than deformed by wrong images.

Encountering God’s raw power — these heavenly visions are meant to transform and transfix Israel so they will worship this powerful God, not use their own smelting fires to make idols. We are not meant to make images to worship because as soon as we reduce God or our object of worship to humans or animals, or the bright lights of the sky — worshipping them — or the things given to other nations to worship — we become deformed in that worship, instead of being the people formed by God. God’s people are those formed by encountering his power and might. God is the furnace, and his worshippers are his image bearing heaven-on-earth people in the world (Deuteronomy 4:16-20).

This is the goal: to approach his presence — his throne — so we radiate his glory in the world.

This is what is happening for Ezekiel — he is learning some worship-shaping perspective that will shape his life in the world as a prophet. Ezekiel is seeing the God from Sinai, and the Psalms and the temple — seeing him enthroned — but he is in Babylon, when the skies open and he sees God’s throne on the move. It is mobile — it is a chariot throne being pulled around by these strange creatures. Now — we started with Ezekiel’s vision from chapter 1, but he records an almost identical vision in chapter 10, and we are going to pull some bits back from that to make sense of what we are seeing.

So there are these four living creatures — they have got four faces and four wings. They have got gleaming bronze cow legs and human hands. The wings are touching, and their four faces are animal and human. Now — we can get into all sorts of knots trying to picture these things (Ezekiel 1:4-10). Or asking an AI image generator to picture this description for us and they become wild and wacky alien figures — which I have done, so you do not have to.

This joins a long tradition of trying to capture the imagery here — here is someone’s attempt from the 16th century — and I reckon when we do this we might be pointing the camera at the wrong bit of the picture — but also I think we are trying to represent beings from a reality outside ours in ways the descriptions do not quite let us. Ezekiel is stretching language to its limits to describe images he saw — and there is this word that is at the heart of what we are trying to do with our imaginations this series that is important — Ezekiel is imagining and trying to describe something ineffable; something beyond our ability to describe in words — but using evocative picture language to spark our imaginations and push us to our limits.

But the thing is — people reading or hearing this vision in the time Ezekiel is speaking know exactly what he is describing. This is where we need a bridge — it is as foreign to us as solar panels are to him.

Israel’s neighbours all had versions of these winged creatures — and lots of them played a task of being the chariot pullers for god-kings. So here is an inscription image from Megiddo — a city that will ultimately become part of Israel — where a member of the royal family is riding a chariot pulled by a winged creature.

But — more importantly — people from Israel know what these four creatures are, because they are living, flying versions of the creatures from the throne room of God. They are cherubim — which is what Ezekiel will actually call them in chapter 10:

“Each of the cherubim had four faces: One face was that of a cherub, the second the face of a human being, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.”
— Ezekiel 10:14

And there are four of them because in the holy of holies — around God’s throne — there are four cherubim (Ezekiel 1:8-9). The two giant ones covered in gold (1 Kings 6:23, 28), whose wings touch above the ark (1 Kings 8:6). And there are two on the ark lid whose wings reach over the lid and touch as they represent holding up God’s throne (Exodus 25:18, 22).

Ezekiel is seeing the reality represented by these statues. This is why we are seeing four cherubim — and in his vision these are burning too; the fire and lightning that accompanies Yahweh as he travels on the cloud in the thunder is flashing among them as they speed around (Ezekiel 1:13-14). And they have got a job to do which has to do with these weird gyroscopic wheels. Wheels within wheels that are beside them — the wheels are sparkling; jewelled; majestic (Ezekiel 1:15-16). These creatures are chariot pullers — pulling this platform — on these crazy wheels that are also full of eyes. Where the cherubim go, the wheels go. There is a sort of spiritual bluetooth connection between the cherubim and the wheels of the throne-chariot (Ezekiel 1:17-20).

Above them there is this vault — a sort of crystal dome that might also get called a sea — and it might be part of what separates the heavens and the earth and the ground and sky waters in Genesis 1. The vault is sparkling and awesome.

This whole scene is vivid and multicoloured and multimedia and it is meant to stretch the language about power and beauty and grandeur to its limits (Ezekiel 1:22-23). God’s throne is on the vault, and there is the same blue crystal — lapis lazuli that Moses sees on the mountain top.

Our eyes are drawn upwards from the creatures, to the vault, to the throne, so we are not looking at the weird ineffable creatures — but this figure like that of a man. Now — it is tricky to know how to picture God — right — we are wrestling with something ineffable here because on the one hand we are told God is the one in whom we live and breathe and have our being of raw power — who has no form — a sort of infinite and omnipresent grounds of being — and then at the same time, right from the first page of the Bible we are told humans are made in his image and likeness — and here Ezekiel is seeing this heavenly figure who is human-shaped — but not human. From his waist we have got the sort of molten metal that was at the heart of the cloud — full of fire — surrounded by the brilliant light we imagined in week 1. He is radiant; like a rainbow breaking through storm clouds. Overwhelming radiance.

And Ezekiel is in no doubt that this is the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord; the personified glory of Yahweh. And so when he sees it he falls facedown — this is a picture of absolute awe-filled worship. Reverence. A certain sort of fearful respect (Ezekiel 1:26-28).

But he is encountering this vision of God’s glory not in his temple on Zion, but in Babylon.

God’s throne is mobile; it is not limited to the temple on the mountain — just like the ark went with Israel wherever they went between the exodus and the construction of the temple — God is able to move.

And actually, this encounter — this vivid vision of the ineffable God and his chariot throne in all its fiery, cloudy, lightning glory — with the colours of crystals and light and rainbows flashing around, as Yahweh is carried by his cherubim-throne pullers — this is a perspective setter for Ezekiel.

He is commissioned to go from meeting the glory of God in this vision of his heavenly throne room — in Babylon — to being sent to Israel — a rebellious nation — to tell them that their rebellion means God’s throne room is leaving the temple (Ezekiel 2:3). And Ezekiel could be terrified of these Israelites still in Jerusalem; their might and their power to harm him. But this perspective is meant to make this human opposition to God’s power and might small (Ezekiel 2:6).

And I wonder if sometimes this is the sort of perspective we are lacking — when human power, and humans who loom large in our lives, feel terrifying; like they have got too much control over our lives and our fates. We get caught up in people-pleasing or people-serving, or not being prepared to speak truth to power for God’s sake, or for the sake of the poor or the oppressed, because of the cost we might face in our earthly lives. Ezekiel’s antidote to this fear — and he is going to have to do a lot of confronting, symbolic stuff to carry this message to Israel — is this encounter with God’s glory and the knowledge that God is still enthroned and still ruling even as Babylon and its massive army crushes Jerusalem and the temple, and even as the political leaders of Israel reject his message and so also are crushed. Ezekiel is not to fear them because he has this perspective that God is enthroned among the cherubim; ruling not in a shadowy temple but in cosmic reality.

This picture of life before the throne — this encounter with the awesome, majestic, mountain-melting God — is what gives him perspective.

It is also a vision that is meant to give Israel perspective when they are in exile; when it looks like Babylonian power has won, and the gods of the nations — these other possible supernatural powers — might be more powerful than Yahweh. Ezekiel’s vision of God ruling — enthroned in heaven — even while his people are in Babylon is a vision shared in the book of Daniel — in Daniel 7 — which expands our vision of heaven.

This connects with an idea Paul touches on in Ephesians — that Jesus has been raised above all powers and dominions (Ephesians 1:19-21). It is a bit of a category breaker for us, but changing our understanding of heaven can challenge us to worship God; to fall before him, and to put the powers at work in the world — and the idols or other things we might choose to worship rather than worshipping God — into perspective.

The Old Testament talks about Yahweh not just as “Yahweh” — the name he gives Moses on the mountain — and not just as “Elohim” — a word for God — but as the Most High God. In one of the psalms we looked at earlier, he is “Yahweh Most High” (Psalm 18:13). Yahweh — Israel’s God, the maker of heaven and earth — is the ruler of all the heavenly beings, not just the earthly ones; the ruler of other powers that nations of the earth might have turned into gods and worshipped.

In Daniel, we get this vision of God ruling in the heavenly courtroom — the throne room — as the nations who worship these other powers go to war. Thrones — plural — are set in place, and the Ancient of Days — another way of speaking about God — takes his seat. It is a heavenly council meeting (Daniel 7:9; cf. Psalm 82:1). He is glowing and bright — clothes white as snow; white hair. His throne is flaming with fire — and it has wheels; this is his chariot throne like in Ezekiel — the wheels are ablaze (Daniel 7:9). A river of fire is flowing, and he is attended by hundreds of thousands in this heavenly court (Daniel 7:10).

As judgment is handed down — as God’s rule is displayed — a figure enters the throne room: one like a son of man who comes with the clouds of heaven — like Yahweh does in the visions in the Psalms and in Ezekiel. This is a human who looks like the glory of the Lord in Ezekiel. He is led into the presence of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:13), and this Son of Man is given authority and power over all nations; a dominion above every dominion. The rule that had been enjoyed by these other powers — now subjected to judgment — is given to this Son of Man (Daniel 7:14). As Daniel explains his vision he talks about a spiritual force that will rise up and animate armies to oppose God’s people, but the court will sit, and that power will be taken away and destroyed, and the rule given to the holy people of the Most High under the Son of Man who will rule an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:26-27).

For God’s people in Babylon, and then under foreign rulers, hearing these words — capturing this vision of God’s throne on wheels and God as ruler over all the other powers, gods of these nations — it is a reminder that they are where they are because they rejected God’s rule. But it does not mean their God is not the Most High, or is not ruling.

All of this could be empty if the kingdom had fizzled out in Babylon; if these words and images had just died out and been lost to history. But they have not. And while many want to take this heavenly vision and push it to a distant future with bits yet to be fulfilled, fulfilling this mission was the mission of Jesus — the human Son of Man — the heavenly human.

Have you noticed how Jesus picks up this same imagery from Ezekiel’s fiery clouds of glory — a sort of heavenly chariot — to describe his coming as the ruler of the heavenly court, commanding angels? In Mark’s Gospel: “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens” (Mark 13:26-27).

This is not just a picture of his return to make all things new — there is a fun thing where the Greek word for “coming” can also mean “going.” In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus talks about a time when he, the Son of Man, will be like the lightning — more Ezekiel imagery (Luke 17:24). He says, “From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of God” — Daniel will be fulfilled (Luke 22:69).

In Acts, Luke leans into the coming/going idea as he describes Jesus ascending in the clouds to heaven, while the disciples gaze into heaven. Two heavenly men appear and ask, in effect, “Why are you looking into heaven?” They say this same Jesus who has been taken from earth into heaven will come back in the same way. He has not abandoned them; he is committed to this heaven-on-earth project (Acts 1:9-11).

As Acts unfolds, one of Jesus’ followers, Stephen, is killed — and it looks like worldly powers are winning. In that moment Luke tells us Daniel has been fulfilled: Stephen looks into heaven and sees Jesus there, the Son of Man enthroned with the glory of God (Acts 7:55).

Our vision of heaven is different to Ezekiel’s now because it includes this human king enthroned — as Ephesians says — above all the other powers that might try to shape our lives on earth (Ephesians 1:19-21). The writer of Hebrews describes Jesus as the radiant reflection of the glory of God — a high king enthroned in heaven, victorious and worthy of our worship (Hebrews 1:3).

This vision is meant to teach us that God has not abandoned us; that he is powerful and victorious — that consuming fire — but also that this power can now be approached without fear that we will be destroyed, and in a way that transforms us. We are invited to dwell in this power and have it set off a reaction in us — so that we are like metal that melts and is formed into living images of God; or like turbines that spin next to a nuclear reaction and turn on the lights in the world. We are invited into the throne room of God to encounter this power on the throne in ways that stop us worshipping — giving our hearts — to any other bright light or imagined power. This helps us see humans not as terrifying people who can rule our lives — even if there is a threat of harm — but to have the eyes of our hearts — our minds and imaginations — filled with the power and glory and majesty of God in ways that consume us and destroy, or refine away, the bits of us that do not reflect him, or the image of him we now see in Jesus.

I want to encourage you to pray; to enter the throne room, and to consider how when we pray we are coming to God’s throne in worship; and how when we sing — as those who sing before God’s throne; singing words like those in the Psalms that help us capture this imagery of God’s majestic power, it’s designed to transform our hearts and send us out into the world like electricity from a nuclear reaction.

September 18, 2025 Add Comment

The real worship wars (1): You are what you worship

“You are what you love… You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice” —David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. — David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

Image Credit: davidhardie.com

Here’s a confession. It irks me when people call music ‘worship’ or music leaders ‘worship pastors’; not because music is not worship but because worship is so much more, and our terminology matters (so does music). What irks me more, even than this, is that we’ve spent so much time in the ‘worship wars’ fighting about whether to pursue contemporary or traditional styles of worship that we’ve missed the real worship war.

If you google the phrase ‘worship wars’ you’ll find a whole bunch of stuff about music in church, and different styles of church service. There were some shots fired in the worship wars by the Gospel Coalition recently (it’s so unlike them to be combative), which, because I’m irked by the terminology slippage of the word worship, irked me enough to get me to kickstart this series that has been in my head for some time.

Worship is more than music. It’s even more than the liturgy involved in your Sunday ‘worship service’ (including the sacraments). Worship is bigger than Sunday, and until we see that, we’re going to lose the worship wars to the real opponents. Idols and Satan.

There is a real battle going on when it comes to our worship, but the question isn’t so much about music on a Sunday or the aesthetics and regularity of the sacraments (though aesthetics matter too).

I’m going to spend a couple of posts on what I think the real worship war looks like, and where our attention should be focused in what is a real battle for the lives of people in our churches and our world.

To “Arr” is pirate, to worship is human

Everybody worships. We are born worshippers, and as secular novelist/philosopher David Foster Wallace puts it in the most excellent This Is Water, the only choice we really get as humans is the choice of what to worship; that defines everything else about us.

The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship…

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. — David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

What if this is the worship war that matters, not a choice of style of worship — or music — within the church, but the competition for your heart and your service?

Only, what if it’s not a choice? What if what we worship is determined for us by our participation in this great worship war, where different objects of worship are competing for our love and our attention? What if those default patterns aren’t just products of our decision to worship, but form it? What if we worship from the hands (the habits), to the heart (the desires), to the head (the imagination), rather than from the rational mind down? What if it’s harder than DFW thought?

What worship is

So if worship isn’t music or the Sunday service — but rather, those are aspects of our worship — what is it?

I’m going to make the case that worship is the whole-hearted, whole-handed, and whole-headed, attempt to reflect on, and so reflect, the image of our god(s) as we bow to and serve them with our whole being. When it comes to the God of the Bible, and our worship of him, our worship is what leads us to glorify him as we bear his image in his world. The New Testament uses two Greek words for worship: proskuneo and latreuo; roughly translated as ‘bow down’ and ‘serve’. The Old Testament pairs these (in the Greek version of the OT, the Septuagint) in Exodus 20:4-5, the first commandment:

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.

We’re consciously worshipping creatures; we pick a god and that choice shapes us. That’s part of what separates us from the animals (although they too declare the glory of God, with the rest of the heavens); we’re made to be oriented to God, via worship, and part of the sinful human condition is that we orient ourselves to all sorts of other stuff instead. The image we bear in this world reflects the God we worship, and so, we become what we worship with our hearts, hands, and minds.

We’re made to bear God’s image, and so his first commandment to Israel is about worshipping him — not the stuff or animals he made. We’re made to bear God’s image, and yet we keep exchanging God for other images; and that’s deadly. Paul describes the human condition — our defective worship — in Romans 1 (and I’m suggesting ‘glorified him as God’ is synonymous with worship).

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. — Romans 1:21-25

Now let’s just pause for a minute.

Do you think Paul, here, is talking about people singing songs about rabbits? Or sex? Or some other created thing? Or about people going bird watching on a Sunday?

Now. He might well be talking about these activities as forms of worship but the sort of worship he’s talking about is actually the orientation of our desires, and imaginations such that our habits and lives reflect the object of our love. A nature-worshipper might well sing about the beauty of creation and go bird-watching on a Sunday, and that might refresh them, but they keep finding ways to practice their love for nature all week ’round; cause that’s what worship is. A sex-worshipper will sing songs about sex, but will also consume magazine articles about sex, pursue sex, and ultimately, desire as much sex, and as many orgasms, as possible in their finite life on this mortal coil. Worship can’t just be about the songs we sing — or Sunday morning — its about the desires of our hearts, and the practices of our hands that cultivate those desires and inform our thinking as we live lives that express our fanatical service to these gods. In David Foster Wallace’s sprawling novel, Infinite Jest, two characters, Marathe and Steeply discuss this aspect of our humanity — our fundamental need to worship, and the reality that we do so without choosing consciously if we don’t consciously choose…

“Your U.S.A. word for fanatic, “fanatic,” do they teach you it comes from the Latin for “temple”? It is meaning, literally, “worshipper at the temple… Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith…”

“Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you… You U.S.A.’s do not seem to believe you may each choose what to die for. Love of a woman, the sexual, it bends back in on the self, makes you narrow, maybe crazy. Choose with care. Love of your nation, your country and people, it enlarges the heart. Something bigger than the self… choose with care. You are what you love. No? You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice… This, is it not the choice of the most supreme importance?” — David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

You are what you worship

We all grow attached to things — become fanatical worshippers of some god; and this happens whether we’re conscious of it or not as we are lured into worship by different visions of the good human life; different stories we’d like to see ourselves living in. As a result of our hearts and imaginations being conscripted, we start practicing new liturgies — new habits — which reinforce this conscription. That’s the pattern of the rest of Romans 1; defective worship leads to defective lives (and defective lives lead to defective worship).

Idolatry — the worship of other gods, or the making of gods out of good things God made — has transforming power with damaging consequences. The Old Testament is full of warnings about these consequences but the concept of becoming what you worship is never far from the surface of these consequences; worship dumb, dead, stuff and instead of being the living people of the living God you’ll be dumb, dead, stuff. Or as the Psalmist puts it in Psalm 115:

But their idols are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.

 They have ears, but cannot hear,
    noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel,
    feet, but cannot walk,
    nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.

The thing that’s truly beautiful (and truly tragic) about David Foster Wallace’s insight into worship is that he highlights how even as our idol worship delivers it doesn’t ever satisfy. Worship sex, pursue orgasm after orgasm, and your god will give you what you want (Romans 1 promises that too); but you’ll spiral into awful objectification or addiction (the next post in this series will consider pornography as a form of worship). That’s true of almost all our idols; as we attain the thing we desire we find it doesn’t scratch the itch we thought it would, or that we become so detached from flourishing patterns of humanity and relationships that we are utterly destroyed. We become what we worship, or, as DFW puts it:

If you worship money and things-if they are where you tap real meaning in life-then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you… Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on. — David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

He also observes the spiralling effect that comes with worship of things that aren’t God (and so aren’t really able to satisfy what he calls the ‘gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing’). This dovetails with the Psalmist’s observation that we become what we behold; what we worship. The Bible differs on its assessment of the morality of these default behaviours; it’s not just that this sort of worship of something other than God is sinful, it’s the heart of all our sinful acts.

“Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.” — David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

At the end of This Is Water, a truly profound assessment of the human condition, Wallace asks the students he’s speaking to to consider their habits, to consider living a life that runs counter to this default. He does this, in part, by challenging the narrative behind these defaults by urging us to pay attention to what’s going on in the lives of those around us

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. — David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

This is liturgy — or worship — of a particular kind, but he’s really just urging people to switch idols, moving from a selfish worship of self, to a self-emptying worship of other people. His narrative here is a form of humanism (unless you take his advice to worship some spiritual thing). It won’t answer the gnawing sense he identifies, and it won’t achieve the aim he suggests (eerily, given his end), that it might.

None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.” — David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

He’s right though. The worship wars are a matter of life and death. What you choose to worship will give you life, or take your life. To win the worship wars — where the real enemy is actually death — we need to take up a better story one that captures our desires and imaginations, and adopt habits consistent with that story; lest our loves lead us to death. That seems to be Paul’s agenda in much of his writing in the New Testament, where he speaks specifically of worship (in a way both similar to DFW, but grounded in a different story), and of a story that changes the orientation of our hearts, minds, and habits.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  — Romans 12:1-2

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things… — Colossians 3:1-2 (we’ll see below how this relates to our habits, and is perhaps the product of our habits).

Paul’s approach to worship differs from DFW’s because his story connects us to something transcendent; something beyond ourselves; something above, something infinite. It’s built from a better story — the story of the transcendent God who both calls us to worship him alone, and makes himself knowable in the ultimate act of love and sacrifice in Jesus’ divinity; and who provides the model of the ultimate worshipper in Jesus’ humanity.

The worship wars are a competition for our loves, a conflict based on what story we live — and thus a conflict that shapes our destiny; the end of our story. Will we live, and live in the light of eternity, like Paul, or live, and face death with the gnawing, nagging, sense of having lost eternity, like DFW, or simply choose the default rat race setting of life for ourselves, and so destroy those around us for the sake of our very temporary happiness, while being shaped and destroyed by whatever it is we’ve chosen to worship.

We’ll see next post that the worship wars are not so much about the songs we sing in church, or the sacraments, or even church on a Sunday, but about much more. The stakes are much higher than a Sunday runsheet, or who gets in the band.

What do you love? What are you prepared to die for? Will it give you life? This is where the real action is in the worship wars;

“You are what you love… You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice” — David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

August 28, 2016

Three days in the belly of a boat

okene

Call him Jonah.

This is the look of a man confronting his rescuer after three days believing he was going to die. Trapped in the belly of a boat.

Back in June, a tugboat cook named Harrison Odjegba Okene spent almost three days in the upturned hull of the boat he’d been sailing in. 30 metres below the surface. A rescue diver sent to retrieve bodies found him. And was sufficiently freaked out when the hand he suspected belonged to a floating corpse grabbed him.

The story is here. But the really stunning bit is the footage of the rescue. Hooray for ubiquitous cameras.

He’d been on the toilet when the boat sank.

“He groped his way out of the toilet and tried to find a vent, propping doors open as he moved on. He discovered some tools and a life vest with two flashlights, which he stuffed into his shorts.

When he found a cabin of the sunken vessel that felt safe, he began the long wait, getting colder and colder as he played back a mental tape of his life — remembering his mother, friends, mostly the woman he’d married five years before with whom he hadn’t yet fathered a child.”

To make the sermon illustration complete, Okene is a Christian.

“I started calling on the name of God. … I started reminiscing on the verses I read before I slept. I read the Bible from Psalm 54 to 92. My wife had sent me the verses to read that night when she called me before I went to bed.”

Psalm 57 seems particularly apt.

1 Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me,
for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.

2 I cry out to God Most High,
to God, who vindicates me.
3 He sends from heaven and saves me,
rebuking those who hotly pursue me—
God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.

4 I am in the midst of lions;
I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts—
men whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.

5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.

6 They spread a net for my feet—
I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path—
but they have fallen into it themselves.

7 My heart, O God, is steadfast,
my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make music.
8 Awake, my soul!
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.

9 I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
10 For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

11 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.

 

As does Psalm 61…

1 Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.

2 From the ends of the earth I call to you,
I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
3 For you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the foe.

4 I long to dwell in your tent forever
and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
5 For you, God, have heard my vows;
you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name.

6 Increase the days of the king’s life,
his years for many generations.
7 May he be enthroned in God’s presence forever;
appoint your love and faithfulness to protect him.

8 Then I will ever sing in praise of your name
and fulfill my vows day after day.

The moral to the story must surely be read Psalms when you’re on a boat.

December 5, 2013