Otherness of God
Worship thrives on wonder. We can admire, appreciate and perhaps even adore someone without a sense of wonder. But we cannot worship without wonder. For worship to be worship, it must contain something of the otherness of God.
I’ve come to love that word –“otherness.” It’s such a great worship word. A sense that God is so pure, matchless and unique that no one else and nothing else even comes close. He is altogether glorious—unequalled in splendor and unrivalled in power. He is beyond the grasp of human reason—far above the reach of even the loftiest scientific mind. Inexhaustible, immeasurable and unfathomable—eternal, immortal and invisible. The highest mountain peaks and the deepest canyon depths are just tiny echoes of His proclaimed greatness. And the blazing stars above, the faintest emblems of the full measure of His glory.
Otherness gives us a sense that God is so pure, matchelss and unique that no one else and nothing else even comes close.
Many music critics know that the skill of songwriter Bruce Springsteen lies in his ability to take the everyday, the ordinary, and make it sound extraordinary. Sometimes in Church we find ourselves doing the total opposite—we take the extraordinary revelation of God and somehow manage to make him sound completely ordinary! We fail to communicate the sense of God’s otherness. As A. W. Tozer puts it, “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms.”
Time after time the book of Isaiah reminds us of the uniqueness of God: “I will not give my glory to another” (42:8). “I am the first and I am the last: apart from me there is no God” (44:6). “To whom will you compare me or count me equal?” (46:5). “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me” (46:9). In light of Scriptures like these, I’m becoming more and more wary of worship songs that seem to make God merely sound like our equal. Once or twice people have shown me a worship song and said, “This is great. The lyrics are so down to Earth that you wouldn’t even know you’re singing to God—it could be normal pop song or a love song.” Now, I guess the point to make, but there is higher value in worship than cultural relevance. It is the glory of God.
God will not be diluted, dumbed down or patronized. He rebukes worshippers in Psalm 50:
You thought I was altogether like you (v.21)
But He is not like one of us. He is utterly incomparable—beyond the furthest horizon of our imaginations. He is off the scale of our comprehension. We have merely known the shallows of the mighty deep.
A while back I bought my daughter a couple of little goldfish. I’ve never really been one for keeping pets, but I figured that these tiny creatures were probably quieter and tamer than the most. So there they swam, up on the mantelpiece, apparently forgetting everything every one and a half times around the bowl. They very next day I found myself watching a documentary about creatures of the deep sea. Right down in the depths of the ocean, the camera was capturing the most fascinating images of wild fish and other strange sea creatures. I sat glued to the screen—so many varieties, so much untamed beauty. And there in the background were Maisey’s tame little goldfish, doing yet another lap of the bowl.
Sometimes in the Church, I worry that we’ve settled for “goldfish bowl” worship. We convey a tame and domesticated God, and then find ourselves stuck in the endless pursuit of the ordinary. But the call is to venture out into the ocean, to encounter the extraordinary and to explore the mighty depths of God. And though our earthly gather worship times may never fully sound the depths of His glory, beware of those that don’t even attempt to do so.
Back to Psalm 50 and we discover that God doesn’t even need our worship:
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it (v. 12).
Do we detect a harsh tone in the voice of God here? Yes, we most certainly do. This is the voice of the all-sufficient King of the universe. He does not need to be sustained, supported or sponsored. He is not in urgent need of our offerings, like a TV charity fund-raiser, urgently appealing for as many contributions as possible. Charles Spurgeon writes:
Do men fancy that the Lord needs banners and music, and incense, and fine linen? If He did, the stars would emblazon His standard, the winds and the waves become His orchestra, ten thousand time ten thousand flowers would breathe forth perfume.
The apostle Paul echoes the same truth in his speech to the men of Athens:
He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25).
The plain truth is this: God has absolutely no need of our offerings. In fact, every single thing our open hands bring to Him—whether a good deed, a tithe or a simple act of compassion—came to us first from His hand. We cannot even offer a simple song of praise without using the breath of God first gave to us.
The book of Romans hammers this point home: “Who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again?” (Romans 11:35). One of the biggest mistakes a person can make in life is to think that God owes him or her something. It destroys faith and insults the sovereignty of God. There are some incredibly painful struggles in this life, and hard questions to which we may never fully know the answer. Yet even in these dark hours, we must accept that God is God, and as such, He never owes us an answer. As the hymn writer William Cowper puts it, “God is His own interpreter.” We cannot work Him out of force Him to fit into our way of thinking. He is high above our human understanding—high enough to see things that we could never see.
But the picture of God’s otherness is only really complete when we add to the mix the reality of His outrageous grace. It’s true that God does not need our worship. But there is a crowning beauty that completes this truth—God loves our worship. God delights in an honest and heartfelt offering of worship. Dwell on that mystery for a moment. Here is the all-sufficient Creator of the universe who could get along just fine without our little contributions. And yet He rejoices and delights in every adoring response to Him. It is the joy of a doting Father over a cherished child. It is the pleasure of a mighty King over a faithful and treasured servant. Just as we cannot begin to imagine the heights and depths of His great glory, so too we cannot begin to fathom the infinite measures of His fatherly love and grace.
Not only does God reveive with delight gifts that belconged to him in the first place, but He also pays the costliest of prices for their delivery.
And as the ultimate affirmation of this heart of welcome, God has even paid the price for us to draw near to Him in worship. We’ve seen that everything we could ever offer to God in worship has been provided by Him in the first place. But even forgetting the gifts themselves, the very means of our access into His presence is all of His own provision. It is a gifted response. We could never enter by own efforts. We come to the Father on the merit of what Jesus has done. In light of the cross, the resurrection and the ascension, we come through Jesus, in Jesus and with Jesus. And we come too in the in the power of the Holy Spirit.
So not only does God receive with delight gifts that belonged to Him in the first place, but He also pays the costliest of prices for their delivery. In human terms, this seems a little strange. How can that be a meaningful gift? Surely the giver must pay the full price? But we cannot measure god by our human standards. This extravagant act of grace is yet another reminder of His incredible uniqueness. His ways and His thoughts are way higher than we could ever imagine.
The more we delve into the otherness of God, the more we grasp the truth that worship is quite simply “all about Him”—a phase we may have sung many time. But do we realize just how true it is for every aspect of this life? The whole of our existence—our creation, our salvation and our sanctification—is first and foremost all about God. Another journey to the book of Isaiah and we get the message, loud and clear:
Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory (43:7)
The people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise (43:21)
I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake (43:25)
I have refined you… for my own sake, for my own sake, I do this (48:10-11)
The Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and Earth, stands set apart from all others. We are the created, and He is the uncreated. Around Him revolves and unfolds the story of His great and eternal glory. And, yes, right through the very heart of this epic narrative runs a beautiful thread of grace—He is the steadfast God of love—and there is mercy to be found on every page. Time after time we find ourselves amazed by the blessing he lavishes on us. Yet let’s not be fooled into thinking that this story is all about us. It never has been, and it never will be. God is very passionate about His own glory.
Some of us might find this a little hard to compute at first. Every day we see mere humans making claims to fame and boasts of their glory. And this can make it all the harder to get our head around the face that God must care about His own glory. But we must not confuse displays of earthly arrogance with God’s declaration of His glory. It is not at all the same as boxer Muhammad Ali in his prime, ranting and raving around the ring screaming, “I am the greatest! I am the greatest!” and self-proclaiming his name and title. For sure, he had his time as a champion, but like all other mere men, he could not hold on to his crown. The boasts of men are motivated by pride and pure arrogance. They are empty temporary and shallow. The claims of God flow from glory and pure holiness. And they are powerful, eternal and true. For God to be God, he must care about His own glory. God must prize Himself above all else, for to prize anything or anyone else more highly than Himself would compromise His worth—and therefore imply that He is not God after all J. I. Packer puts it:
If it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to have the same goal? If man can have no higher purpose than God’s glory, how can God? … The reason it cannot be right for man to live for himself, as if he were God, is because he is not God. However, it cannot be wrong for God to seek His own glory, simply because He is God.
In the book of Isaiah, the Lord declares, “How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another” (48:11). He will never give up His title or yield His supremacy. He is untouchable, invincible, and eternally glorious. In our celebrity-obsessed culture, fame rises up and then fades away—one minute someone has it, the next minute he or she is nowhere to be seen, and then someone else enjoys or ensures their fifteen minutes of fame. God, on the other hand, will never allow Himself to be defamed, nor will He let His glory pass on to another. He is the undisputed heavyweight King of all glory.
In Psalm 66, the writer cries out:
Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious! (v. 2)
In recent times, the Church has been inspired to make the praises of God more passionate and more intimate. And this is all vital ground for the singing Church to recover. Yet there’s also call to make sure His praise is glorious. One of the biggest challenges facing a lead worshipper these days is to somehow help the people of God find a voice to respond to His otherness. We need poetry, rhythms, visuals and melodies that will help us to sing the glory of His name, offerings that make it clear we are approaching the One who is above all others.
One beautiful way of conveying this is to offer to God that which we do not spend on any other. I love the lead-up to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, when He sends His disciples to certain house to fetch a “colt that has never been ridden” (Luke 19:30). It speaks of the otherness of the Son of God—the means by which He will be ushered into the city has been reserved for Him and Him alone. We must make sure that we do the same in our congregational worship—find ways of responding to God, which we’ve reserved for Him only.
In the Old Testament, God gives the people instructions on how to make up a special anointing oil for use in the Tabernacle. He makes it clear that this oil is only to be used for worship—it must not be used for cooking or any other purpose. ”It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred” (Exodus 30:32). We too must make room for the sacred in our congregational worship—responses that we use exclusively for God and no other. Take, for example, the act of bowing facedown. As we saw in the last chapter, this is a thoroughly biblical response in worship. And in our western culture at least, bowing facedown is a physical gesture that we do not offer to any other, which makes it a fantastic response to the “set apartness” of God—an act of reverence reserved for His praises only.
This principle must go far beyond our church gatherings and seep into the very fabric of our everyday lives—to treasure words, thoughts and deeds we will only ever use in response to the Lord. In the past I’ve wondered whether the face that we have words in Scripture, which are no longer in common usage, might be a big hindrance to cultural relevance. I’m starting to think, however, that used well, they might also be a great strength. Take the word “holy” for example—a word that conveys the notion of one who is “set apart.” The very fact that we only ever use it in the context of God and His Church is very appropriate thing. Now obviously there’s a balance to be found—too many uncommon words and we start presenting a barrier to the uninitiated. But, accompanied names and descriptions of God might actually be powerful tools. Our culture is making up new words all the time—how fantastic if the worshipping Church were to recapture a few old ones as yet another way of conveying the uniqueness of God.
Out of reverence for Yahweh, the Jewish people would not even inscribe the vowels when writing down His Holy name—a way in which, even in their writings, they conveyed something of the otherness of God. A while back I decided that every time I type or write a word that refers to God (“Him,” “His,” “He,” etc.), I would use a capital letter. It’s just one tiny way in which I can reflect something of the otherness of God. By doing this, every time I sit down to write a song—or any sentence to or about God—I’m reminded of His holy otherness. Reverence for God must find its way into even the smallest details of our lives.
It’s time for the singing Church to once again encounter the beautiful otherness of God. But we cannot sing of that which we have not seen. In yet more wise words from A. W. Tozer:
What the church needs today is restoration of the vision of the Most High God.
Spoken nearly half a century ago, this insight seems just as relevant to us today.
