Sound Doctrine

The God We Are Trying to Worship

From the very beginning of creation, man has always desired to serve a power greater than himself. When God created the universe and everything in it — the earth, the seas, and all that fills them — He created man and placed him in a garden. But man rebelled against God, and for that reason was driven out.

Ever since that day, something has been burning in the heart of man — a longing to reconnect, to worship, to bow before something greater. And in that longing, our fathers tried. They reached out toward God the only way they knew how. But not knowing who He truly was, they did what fallen man always does — they created God in their own image.

They carved gods out of wood. They molded them from mud. They looked at the water and said, "That must be God." They looked at a tree, a crocodile in a pond, and bowed down. They built shrines and tents for their gods. They brought food and water every morning and evening. They poured out blood and oil in times of sacrifice. And in all of this, what they were really saying was: there is something out there greater than us, and we want to reach it.

That desire is not wrong. The problem is the direction.

The God We Cannot Contain

The God we are trying to worship is not the God we can carve with our hands. He is not made of wood or mud or stone. He existed before time itself began — before the first second, before the first atom, before anything that can be called a beginning. He spoke the entire universe into existence out of nothing. He knows everything. He sees everything. He is everywhere, all at once, without limitation.

His understanding is unsearchable. His magnificence is unreachable. You cannot wrap your arms around His power. His authority is everlasting. His love is deep, and broad, and wide, and long — and we cannot begin to reach the bottom of it.

That is the God we are trying to worship.

And here is the hard truth: our minds are too small. Not just limited — too small to even begin to comprehend who He is. His magnificence is not slightly above our understanding. It is infinitely, immeasurably beyond it. We cannot start to grasp it.

So how, then, can we presume to worship Him on our own terms?

The Ant in the Room

Let me give you a picture that I think will make this very clear.

Imagine you are sitting in your room, and there is an ant on the floor. Now, to this ant, your room is its entire universe — the only world it has ever known. And somewhere in that tiny mind, the ant has come to a conclusion: there is a god of this universe. There is someone, something, that is greater than me — the ruler of this room. And that god, it has decided, is you. The person sitting in the chair.

So the ant sets out to worship you.

It gathers sand and water and builds a tiny tent out of twigs and leaves. Then it takes a bit of mud, shapes it into the form of another ant — because that is the only form it knows — and places it inside the tent as a representation of you, its god. Every morning, it brings a grain of sugar and a drop of water and lays it before this mud-figure as an offering. And as it does this, it bows down and worships.

Now you are sitting in your chair watching all of this. You have to get on your knees, take out a magnifying glass and a flashlight, just to see what is happening down there. And what you see is a tiny tent made of twigs, a little mud figure shaped like an ant, and an ant bringing it sugar.

And this ant believes it is worshipping you.

You, who built the house. You, whose house the ant lives inside of. You, who could hold the ant in the palm of your hand. You, whose nature and intelligence and being the ant cannot even begin to imagine.

What would you say? You would say: This is not me. This is nothing like me. And this worship — I cannot accept it.

Not because you don't care about the ant. But because the ant, in all its sincerity, is worshipping something it invented — a god shaped in its own image — because it has no capacity to know who you really are.

That is the relationship between man and God when we try to worship Him by our own invention. We are the ant. And the gods we have made — carved in our own image, fed with our own food, housed in our own tents — are nothing like the God who sits on the throne of heaven, whose footstool is the earth.

God Comes Down

But here is where the story turns.

If you were sitting in that chair watching the ant, what would you do? Would you simply watch and walk away? Or would you bend down and say — let me show you. Let me guide you. Your mind cannot grasp who I am, but let me give you just enough that your worship can be acceptable.

That is exactly what God did.

He looked at man — lost, groping in the dark, fashioning gods out of wood and mud — and He came down to meet us. He started with one man. He called Abraham out of his father's house — and that house was a house of idolatry, a house full of lesser gods. God said, "Get out from your father's house, to a land I will show you." And Abraham went.

And from that moment, God began to speak. He began to teach. He began to guide. Abraham, Noah, Melchizedek — these were men God called and instructed, so that their worship would be something He could accept.

These are the patriarchs. The fathers. And through them, God began to lay a foundation.

Later, He raised up Moses, and through Moses He gave the nation of Israel a full covenant — a detailed, clear set of instructions: this is what I require. This is how you come before Me. God was guiding them, step by step, generation by generation.

But notice what happened whenever Israel decided to do things their own way. When Moses was on the mountain and was slow to return, the people told Aaron: "Make us a god." Aaron took their gold, melted it down, and shaped a calf. And the people bowed before it. And God's anger burned.

Every single time Israel stepped outside of what God had instructed — every time they leaned on their own imagination — they went wrong. Because you cannot invent a worship that is acceptable to God. You can only receive it.

The Son Sent to the World

All of this was building toward something.

God had always planned to do more than save one nation. He had always intended to reach the whole human race — to bring all of humanity back to Himself after the fall. And so, in the fullness of time, He did what no one could have imagined.

He sent His only begotten Son.

As Hebrews 1:1–2 tells us, God, who in former times spoke to the fathers through the prophets in many and various ways, has in these last days spoken to us through His Son. Not to guide a single nation, but to reach the whole world. Not to give one people a covenant, but to offer salvation to every human being who has ever lived.

Jesus Christ came down and brought the Father's message. He lived it. He taught it. He called disciples and poured into them everything the Father had given Him. And when He was preparing to return to heaven, He told those disciples: "Wait. I am going to send you a Helper — the Holy Spirit — who will bring to your remembrance everything I have taught you." And He commissioned them: go and teach all nations.

What they received, they recorded. What they recorded is what we have — the New Testament, the teachings of Christ, the doctrine of the Lord.

This Is For You

This is not ancient history. This is for you.

The same God who called Abraham. The same God who gave Moses the law. The same God who sent His Son into the world — He has extended His hand to this generation. To you. And He has given us, in the Scriptures, everything we need.

Nobody can sit down for a hundred hours and reason their way to acceptable worship. It is not possible. Just as the ant, given a thousand years, could never arrive at a worship that reflects the nature of the man in the chair — we, in all our intelligence and sincerity, cannot arrive at a worship that reflects the nature of God.
The distance is too great. The difference too vast.

Only God can show us. And He has.

Second Timothy 3:16 tells us that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God — for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteousness — so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. The Scriptures were written for our learning. Written to guide us.

And 2 John 9 makes it plain: whoever goes ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. The teaching of Christ is not optional. It is not one tradition among many. It is the only light given to us — the only reliable guide we have for worshipping a God whose magnificence we cannot begin to comprehend.

This is why the doctrine of Christ matters. This is why we hold to it. This is why we teach it.

Not as a tradition. Not as a rule imposed from outside. But because without it, we are the ant — sincere, devoted, and completely lost.

We will look more closely at what the doctrine of Christ actually says — and what it means for how we worship today. 

Part 2 coming soon...