Issue: Dangers of Depthlessness

I have several loved ones in my family that I long to be gripped by the greatness of God, but there is some resistance. One point of resistance is that Christianity has so often been presented to them as sentimentality about God loving them, drenched in Hallmark-sounding sentimentality, that they have been dumbed-down by the increasingly vapid teaching of some Christians who are charged with leading.

Yet they see me pore over volumes of church history, theology, Bibles, and biographies, etc. They see my wife fill journal after journal of prayers from her life of intercession, but then they hear that Jesus is just waiting to enter their heart, and questions about, “Why don’t they allow him to come in?” Folks, if we know anything about God at all, it certainly is not the case that he needs our permission for anything. When’s the last time you heard a pastor preach through God’s responses to Job? Here are just (3) samples of what I mean about the greatness of God:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4)

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” (Job 38:8-11)  

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (Job 38:31-33)

Encouragement: Like countless others in the history of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, I go through the Scriptures year after year after year. I have yet to find where God ever dumbs down the greatest story ever told. Rather, when people are confronted with the actual God who is, they collapse at his feet (Luke 8:41). Or they flee out of holy terror (Jonah). Or they are struck dead because they lied (Acts 5), or they see their own sinfulness (Isaiah 6), but they have a holy reverential fear of God (Revelation 4:10).

God is unchangeably great, magnificent, and grand. Even and especially at Calvary, when God the Son became sin and was made the curse on behalf of his people, he was raised bodily three days later in power and triumph, proving that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

May we be confident to teach, preach, and herald the actual God of Scripture, and not substitute an anemic niceness in his stead. Why? Because the God who redeems sinners is the same God who named and sustained the Pleiades, laid the foundation of the earth, raised Lazarus, crushed the head of the serpent, and grants salvation to sinners. Herald that God, the actual God, who is Lord over all.