Core Value: Awed
January 20, 2008
We prayerfully seek to be awed by the glory of God and the mercy of the gospel.
This is the final article which will outline our core values at Whitton Avenue Bible Church. We began with six core values that a number of you graciously helped refine, and as I read over them multiple times, I realized something was missing. While there are many other values we could add, there is one that is perhaps the most significant, which I hope to unpack below.
God’s glory is the blazing radiance of all his perfections. Glory is not as much an attribute as it is a description of other attributes. God’s power is glorious (Exodus 15:6). His name is glorious (Deut 28:58). His deeds are glorious (Psalm 78:4). His beauty is glorious (Psalm 145:5). His very presence is glorious (Isaiah 3:8). Everything about God-his love, his faithfulness, his justice, his wrath-is characterized by brilliance and magnificence.
Like first-time observers at the rim of the Grand Canyon, creatures can only respond to God’s uncreated glory in awe. Angels in the throne room of the Almighty never cease to give shouts of adoration to God for his splendor. Humans who were granted a vision of God responded like Ezekiel: “Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell on my face” (Ezekiel 1:28).
Yet the awe of God’s perfections creates a problem for sinful humans. If God is glorious in justice and wrath, then awe will immediately give way to fear of judgment, as it did for Isaiah: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
God’s response to Isaiah introduced a new type of awe-filling glory. One of the angels brought a burning coal from the alter, touched it to Isaiah’s lips, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7). The merciful forgiveness Isaiah experienced was a foretaste of what God would do for all his people. He would lay their griefs, sorrows, iniquities, and transgressions on his servant. Isaiah would prophecy about this suffering servant: “upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). What Isaiah anticipated, we view historically in the sin-bearing crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Thus the Bible unveils two great, marvelous, awe-worthy realities in the world: the glory of God and the mercy of the gospel. At Whitton Avenue, we want to remain appropriately awed by the blazing radiance of God’s perfections. And we want to be stunned by the undeserved kindness God has shown us in crucifying his Son, through whom sinners can enjoy God’s glory rather than being consumed by it. Nothing else compares to these realities, so we make it a central prayer that God would give us hearts that are joyfully overwhelmed by his grandeur and grace.
Gazing in awe with you,
Pastor Chris