A Devotion from John Broadus

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.  —John 4:24

Why should we worship God? [First,] because it is due to him.

Robert Hall said that the idea of God subordinates to itself all that is great, borrows splendor from all that is fair, and sits enthroned on the riches of the universe. More than that is true. All that exalts our souls ought to lift them up toward God.

Especially we ought to adore the holiness of God. There is not a human heart that does not somehow, sometimes, love goodness. Find the most wicked in your city, and there are times when they admire goodness. I imagine there are times when they hope that they may yet be good themselves. When someone we love has died, we are prone to exaggerate in our funeral discourse, in our inscriptions on tombstones. We seldom exaggerate in speaking of a person’s talents or learning or possessions or influence, but we are ready to exaggerate her or his goodness. We feel that goodness is the great thing for someone who has gone into the unseen world. Long ago, a prophet saw the Lord seated high on a throne in the temple, with flowing robes of majesty, and on either side adoring seraphs bent and worshiped, and what was the theme of their worship?: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3). And there do come times when we want to adore the holiness of God.

Then think of his love and mercy! He hates sin. And yet he loves sinners! How he yearns over the sinful! How he longs to save them! God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever will have it so, might through him be saved.

Holiness and redemption! We ought to adore if we had nothing to do with it, for we have a moral nature to appreciate it. And are we uninvolved spectators? That most wonderful demonstration of God’s mercy and love has been made toward us. And if the angels find their highest theme of praise in what the gracious God has done for us, how should we feel about it? Yes, there is a sense in which, amid the infirmities of earth, we can pay God a worship that the angels cannot offer.

And sinful beings out of grateful hearts for sins forgiven may strike a note of praise to God that will pierce through all the high anthems of the skies and enter into the ear of the Lord God Almighty.