One God (2)

Now to Rick Warren’s question.  When Moslems worship Allah, what are they doing?

1. If they are trying to worship God, because they have an innate awareness of him (Rom 1:20), they are trying to worship the one true God They are not worshipping a different God, because there is no another God to worship.

2. Many may be deceived by the devil. Some may be controlled by him, but most are not worshipping the devil. Their intention is to worship God, not to worship the devil.

3. When they bow down, they are worshipping God as they know him. The problem is that there understanding of God is very limited, and often wrong. They believe there is only one God, and they believe that he created the world. They also believe that he is sovereign over the world, but there is a whole lot of other important things that they have wrong. The common declaration that “God is Great” is true, but it is not the total truth about God. So when Moslems bow down and offer worship, they are trying to worship the true God, but their understanding of who they are worshipping is wrong. Therefore, they are not worshipping in truth.

4. Moslems do not have faith in Jesus, so their offering of worship cannot get to God through him. They do not acknowledge the Holy Spirit is divine, so they cannot worship in the Spirit.

Most Moslems are trying to worship God, but it goes nowhere. Their efforts are wasted because they do not know the truth about God, they do not have faith in Jesus, and they are not let by the Spirit. To deny God is sad. To believe there is a God and try to worship, but fail, is really a dreadful waste.

The same applies to most Jewish worship. Adherents of Judaism do not acknowledge Jesus and have resisted the Spirit, so that cannot worship in spirit and truth. That did not matter in Old Testament times, because Jesus had not been revealed and the Holy Spirit had not been sent. Their worship was acceptable then. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus have changed the nature of acceptable worship. Abel’s offering of worship is no longer acceptable. Most Jewish worship is now wasted, because the Holy Spirit cannot carry it to heaven to bless the Father.

Christians should not be too smug, because they can waste their worship in the same way. Some Christian worship is wasted, because it is unacceptable. Before I knew Jesus, I believed in God, but I had decided what God could and could not do. I worshipped my conception of who I believed God was. I had constructed an intellectual idol and was worshipping that. For me, a large step in getting to know Jesus was repenting of creating an idol to worship. That meant agreeing that God could be who he is, not what I wanted him to be. Prior to repenting of this sin, I was offering worship, but my worship was wasted, because I was not worshipping in spirit and truth.

Having said all this, understanding who people are trying to worship does not really matter that much. A far more important question is who is working in their midst. Is the Holy Spirit or is it some other spirit?

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