Recalling the Hope of Glory | Allen P. Ross

Allen P. Ross. Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation. Kregel, 2006. 592 pp.

The words of worship flow so easily from our lips that we seldom stop to think about them: we casually talk about knowing the Lord; we say we talk to God and in one way or another hear from God. We attend churches on Sundays to have, as we say, fellowship with God and each other. There we celebrate the belief that he is our God with songs and hymns, but even these have become so familiar to us that our minds drift to other, more immediate concerns. And when we approach the Lord’s Table, to eat with God as it were, we often do not have enough time to appreciate what it means. In short, our worship services have become time-bound and routine. We have been so successful in fitting God into our important schedules that worship is often just another activity. But it should be anything but routine and ordinary.

After all, this God we say we know is the sovereign Creator and Lord of the whole universe, the eternal and ever-living God, all wise, all powerful, and ever present. Our attention to the Lord must not be an ordinary part of life; our worship of him should be the most momentous, urgent, and glorious activity in our lives. But we rarely see the splendor, the beauty, and the glory of worship because we are not drawn out of our world enough to comprehend this God of glory; consequently, our worship is all too frequently unexceptional and at times irrelevant.

If we could grasp the incongruity of speaking so casually about God, we would be overwhelmed and could never again worship comfortably in the same ways. We would think it too demeaning for God and too flattering for us. On the one hand, here we are, finite human beings, concerned chiefly with staying healthy and making a comfortable living. We spend our days in familiar routines with an array of anxieties and uncertainties threatening our sense of security. We genuinely would like to focus on worship and service, but more immediate concerns occupy our time.

And on the other hand, there is God, the sovereign and ever-living Lord. He is the inconceivable and incomprehensible source of all existence; he is the invisible majesty who reigns on high. This God we claim to know is the one before whom thousands upon thousands of angels and archangels stand, never ceasing to laud and praise him as the holy and glorious majesty. This Lord merely speaks, as he did at creation, and myriads of angels wait to carry out his will. He is completely unique, truly glorious and incomparably holy–there is no one like him, anywhere, at any time. And there is no measure of the magnificence and beauty of his holiness, for all his works are amazing, good, and glorious. And we say we know him!

Moreover, by his greatness and because of his grace, this God created us humans out of the dust of the ground and made us as his image; he made a Paradise for us and promised us immortality and everlasting joy in his presence. And even though we, his creation, treated him as worthless and relegated him to an insignificant place in our all-important lives, he still desired that we be with him and he with us. Therefore, he set about with his plan to bring us to glory. Such was his preoccupation with us, such was his love for us–who are but dust and ashes–that he prepared this plan in ages past, revealed it century by century, and then at just the right time in human history came into this little world in human form to die a humiliating death in our place so that our indifference to and rebellion against him could be forgiven and that we might still live with him forever. This incarnate Lord, the Jesus we talk about as if he were just another man, albeit extraordinary and exemplary, is the one who made all things. And he is the one who is the radiance of the glory of the Godhead, and the exact representation of the divine essence. It is he who bears the world along on its course by his powerful command. It is he who someday will come in great glory and power to judge the living and the dead. And it is he who will make all things new, a new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness and peace will reign undisturbed. There is no power in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that can change his plan, for all wisdom, knowledge, power, and dominion belong to him. Nothing occurs, or has occurred, or will occur, that he does not know perfectly well. And because of who he is and what he has done, there is nothing in all this universe that can compare with his unimaginable perfection, illimitable majesty, and incomprehensible glory. Our minds can scarcely begin to take it in. . . .

How then can we talk casually of this Lord? How can we merely slot him into our fully scheduled lives? How can we think there might be more important things for us to do in life than to worship him? If we even begin to comprehend his glorious nature, we cannot. We will be caught away from our worldly experience and transported in our spirits to realms of glory. We will be overwhelmed by the thought of being in his presence, tremble at the thought of hearing what he has to say to us, and be amazed at the thought that we can speak to him and he will listen! How can we not desire to transcend the ordinary routine by entering his courts to praise and glorify him above the profane things we so eagerly value? Truly, if our worship, if our spiritual life, is going to rise above this earthly existence where our minds are fixed on mundane thoughts and our attention is given to mundane concerns, then we are going to have to begin to focus our hearts and our minds on the holiness and the glory and the beauty of the one we say we know and love. . . .

For any significant change to occur in our worship activities, we have to get behind forms and methods and changes in style and focus on the biblical theology that informs worship, because one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for the lack of proper attention given to worship is the lack of a biblical, theological understanding.’ That understanding must begin with a thorough study of the biblical text from the beginning of creation to the end of the age that traces the unfolding revelation of God’s design for communion with his people and the cumulative record of their appropriate responses to Him. Such a study will show how the patterns of worship have developed along with the outworking of God’s plan of redemption, culminating with worship in glory in the presence of the glorified Christ. . . .

For worship to be as glorious as it should be, for it to lift people out of their mundane cares and fill them with adoration and praise, for it to be the life-changing and life-defining experience it was designed to be, it must be inspired by a vision so great and so glorious that what we call worship will be transformed from a routine gathering into a transcendent meeting with the living God. When that happens, then we will be caught up in our spirits to join the heavenly choirs of saints and angels who even now are gathered around the throne of God. Thereafter, our hearts and minds will be filled with the hope of glory so that we may truly love and serve the LORD in this life.

Without sustaining a vision of the holy Lord of glory, what some call the sublime “worship” very quickly digresses from the revealed design of worship that God desires and becomes routine, predictable, and even irrelevant. The starting point of any discussion of worship must be the object of worship, the Lord God himself, who is higher and more significant and far more glorious than life itself. This is the vision we need to inspire our worship; it is the vision that a world lost in sin needs in order to be reconciled to God.

Taken from Recalling the Hope of Glory by Allen P. Ross. Copyright © 2006 by Allen P. Ross. Used by permission of Kregel Publications, a division of Kregel, Inc., Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.

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