Man Is Naturally Drawn Toward God’s Presence
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Hebrews 2:9-10
No mistake about it, something within the creature lifts itself in response to something within the Creator. That “something” is the great mystery of the human heart created in the image of God.
Read and Learn More Bible Verses about the Presence of God
If a culture does not know the true Jesus Christ, it will invent its own God and worship that. The history of the world is filled with religions conquering countries.
It would be impossible to find any culture in any generation in any part of the world that does not have some kind of religious tendencies and rituals.
Where did that come from? Why is it that man is always looking upwards or at least outward from himself to something greater and more magnificent than himself?
These spiritual stirrings within the natural heart fall on deaf ears and go unanswered for one simple reason. From a mere intellectual and rational viewpoint, they are incomprehensible.
Man feels drawn toward something but does not know what it is or how to define it. It is something above and beyond human rationalizing.
Down through history, man has taken many paths in his quest for God’s presence, all to no avail. Only one path is correct, and that path is revealed in the Word of God.
Only in the Bible do we begin to understand what these inward stirrings are and how to find entrance into the presence of God. A right understanding of the Bible opens to us the only path into the presence of God.
The Bible Way Into God’s Presence
Two aspects of the Bible that are critical to coming into God’s presence are revelation and inspiration.
In the volumes of Christian testimony that have come down through the centuries, two words occur frequently: one is “inspiration,” and the other is “revelation.”
When we say “inspiration,” meaning that the Scripture is inspired or given by inspiration, we mean that in its original signature, that is, as originally given, the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, to be written.
What we have was put down at the order of the Holy Spirit. That is what we mean by inspiration. God wrote the Bible as originally given, and it is a trustworthy sourcebook of authentic truth.
What we have in the Bible is true, but not everything true is in the Bible. You can learn everything from the Bible that the Bible teaches, but you cannot learn everything from the Bible.
For the reason that the Bible does not teach everything. It does not pretend to. We must distinguish between revealed truth and truth.
Revealed Truth
The Bible has to do with that which deals with redemption. It is a book interested in our rescue from sin, our moral rehabilitation, and our spiritual regeneration.
It is interested in keeping us right making us useful and causing us to grow up into the maturity of a Christian. Then, at last, it is interested in preparing us for the journey from this temporal life to eternity.
It is interested in all that, but it is not interested in geometry. You cannot go to the Bible and learn geometry, but you can go to the Bible and learn that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
You cannot learn from the Bible how to bake a pie or send up a rocket. But you can learn from the Bible that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
The Bible reveals _the truth we need to know to save us from sin, to regenerate us, to rehabilitate us morally and spiritually, and to prepare us for the day of the Lord.
It is all in the Word, and that is what we mean when we say the Bible is the only sourcebook for our rule and practice. The Bible is the only final, authentic sourcebook of information concerning those things that have to do with our salvation.
The Scriptures tell us that God created the heavens and the earth. In addition, we are told many other things that do not seem to bear directly upon our salvation, but that do, nevertheless, bear upon it.
Revelation is the uncovering of truths that have not been known before and are undiscoverable.
Discoverable Truth
Some things you can discover on your own. For example, someone discovered the atom. Roman philosopher Tims.
Lucretius Cams (ca. 99 BC-ca. 55 BC) wrote a book before Christ’s time, On the Nature of Things, and in it.
He explained about atoms. He thought atoms were tiny, hard bits of matter out of which everything was made, just as a concrete building is made out of tiny bits of matter: sand and concrete.
You can break it down and find its tiny particles. He came wonderfully close to it, even though he did not have the benefit of modern scientific techniques and information.
Those things are discoverable. You can discover them. This is a distinction between “revealed truth” and “truth.” Some truths can never be discovered on their own or by man’s initiative.
God inspired the Bible to be written, and inspires man to say things; often those things could be discovered. For example, look at Psalm 8:3-8:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou, hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea.
Tho’s words were an inspired utterance. The Spirit of God moved David to write this psalm, and it has a spiritual benefit for us.
But this is not revelation, because it is a reaction anybody could have, even if he were an atheist.
He could still look up into the heavens and say, “When I look at all of that space, what is man?”
Notice that Psalm 8 is a night scene, while Psalm 19 is a day scene:
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge (Ps. 19:1-2).
And then in verse 5, the psalmist talks about the sun and says, “Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race” (Ps. 19:5).
Seen from the earth up, that is exactly what the sun looks like—a great, shining bridegroom of the world, shining in his splendor. Both psalms are inspired, but there is no particular revelation because anybody could say the same thing.
Anybody could say that the “heavens declared God’s glory and the firmament showed His handiwork.” That is a discoverable truth.
The Main Difference Between Man and Every Other Creature
Everything in the natural world falls short of man’s supreme aspiration for God and His presence. You do not have to like it, but we might as well face up to it: We are the glory and the rubbish of the universe.
But we never would have been the rubbish of the universe if we had not chosen the gutter. If sin had not entered the world, and we had not fallen, we would never have been the rubbish of the universe.
We would have been the glory of the universe. When our Lord is finished with His redemptive work, He will have made His people.
Once again, the glory of the universe when He comes to be admired in His saints and glorified in all them that see Him.
Man is the weakest creature there is, but he is the only creature that knows how weak he is. That is where his glory lies: in his weakness. He knows how weak he is, and no other creature knows this.
I do not suppose that if you were to ask a mosquito, “Are you weak?” he would say yes. He does not know he is weak. He could not answer you. He would not know what you said.
If mosquitoes could talk, they would call us the animal that swats, because that is the only thing they know about us.
Man is the unknown—pitiful, wonderful, weak, mysterious —and yet he is the only creature that knows he is this. Man is the only creature that sins, and yet he is the only creature that could know that he sins.
And man is the only creature that knows how foolish and inconsistent he is, and he laughs at himself.
He is the only creature that aspires because there is no other creature dissatisfied with himself. Man alone is dissatisfied with himself.
In John Keats’s poem “Ode to a Nightingale,” he made this point, among other very wonderful things: You were here. You were here way back long ago when the Grecians heard thee sing among the isles of Greece.
Yes, the nightingale was there then, but the nightingale was there before there was any Greece, and before there was any Egypt. Why has the nightingale remained the nightingale from the time God created her and said.
“Let the birds inhabit the air”? Because the nightingale, although she is a beautiful singer, does not aspire.
But the man who used to come out of his cave and listen to a nightingale is now dressed in a Hart, Schaffner, and Marx suit and watches television. Why? He has aspired, you see.
He has come up. Only man aspires. All other creatures are exactly what they were; the only creature that ever improves is the one that man gets hold of and crossbreeds.
Those Guernsey, Jersey, Holstein, and Hereford cattle you see standing around in little clusters under the trees on hot days are crossbreeds.
They have been bred up to that. Someone got a hold of a poor swayback heifer and bred her to something better.
Then he bred that to something better, and on until he has these fine cattle. If man can get hold of a thing, he will breed it up, because man alone aspires.
Nothing else aspires. The lowly cow does not aspire to be anything more or else than she is.
What does this indicate? It indicates that God made man in His image, and in the image and likeness of God made He him and of nothing else can this be said.
Therefore, man aspires and is the only creature that prays and worships. God made man to worship, and he is the only creature that God made to worship, at least the only creature down here.
The lion roars for his prey and the bird builds its nest in the thickets. The stormy wind fulfills God’s will, and He gives hail and snow like wool.
Snow does not pray, and neither does the bird pray; neither does the lion pray, and neither does the stormy wind pray.
We can read prayer into it, but it is not there until we read it in. We, who can pray, read into nature prayers, and we say the wind is moaning her prayers to heaven, but she is only moaning in our imagination.
The wind is just blowing. You and I are doing the moaning. So we read those thoughts into nature. We say the little bird dips his bill in the water.
Then looks up and thanks God for it, but the bird is merely putting his chin up so the water will run down. That is all, purely a mechanical thing. No bird prays.
I think it is perfectly terrible to get a dog down beside the bed and have him pray, as some people do.
If God made a dog to pray, he would be praying without you getting him down alongside your bed, so stop it if you have been doing it. No dog ever prayed. No bird ever prayed. It is man alone that prays.
“What Is Man That Thou Art Mindful of Him?”
In the vastness of the universe, man is very small indeed. But seen as a spiritual creature in the bosom of God.
He is greater than all the winds that blow all the mountains that rise all the seas that flow and all the rivers that run down to the sea.
He is greater because God made him in His image. That is why the Son came. Why did the eternal Son become the Son of Man? He was the Son of God.
So why did He become the Son of Man? He came for the singular reason that man had sinned and had become the glory and the rubbish of the universe.
He came down in human flesh to get down as far as we were. If He had come into the world as a child of 10, there would have been 10 years unaccounted.
If He had come as a child of five, there would have been five years unaccounted. If He had started at a year old, there would have been a year unaccounted for.
If He had been born by some miracle apart from childbirth, there would have been nine months unaccounted. Scripture says, “Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
Jesus went back not only to the original embryo but back to the original germ so that He might know everything that man knows and develop the way of man’s development right up to full, blooming manhood.
Jesus came down to where we are. If He had been born in a palace, there might have been those who were born in huts and grass cottages that He would not have understood; but He was born in a stable that He might know the poorest there are.
Revealed Truth Allows Us To Live By Faith
Revealed truth leads to a restoration of God’s sovereignty in the redeemed. Christ is now the corporeal head of the human race, and under Him, the human race is going to regain sovereignty.
Christ came down so that He might taste death for every man. The word “taste” does not mean taste as a child might taste food and then reject it. It means “experience.”
He experienced death for every man. “Now we see not yet all things put under him” (Heb. 2:8), but we see only that which has been done. We see that He was born. We see that He grew to manhood.
We see that He died. We see that He rose again from the dead. We see that He is saving His Church and that there is a Church within the church; there are redeemed people.
Regenerated people, bloodwashed people, forgiven people—people who compose the true Church. That is the Church inside the false church —the Church that God acknowledges and approves within the vast Christendom, which God rejects.
We do not yet see all things put under His feet, but we do see what was done. ByTaith, we see all things put under Him. Faith is a kind of sight because faith sees what has not yet happened.
And if we have actual faith, we act as if we see what we believe. And if we claim we believe and do not have faith, we act as if we believe it but do not believe it at all.
We say we believe in revelation. We believe in inspiration. We believe that man is made in the image of God. We believe that God was made in the image of man by the incarnation of the holy Son.
We say we believe He tasted death for every man so that we might cease to be the disgrace of the universe and become the glory of the universe again.
And if we truly believe this, we begin to act as if we believe it, and it changes our inner perception.
Remember: You do not believe a thing rightly until you act by it. When you bring your life, into line with your faith, you are a believer.
But when your life is not in line with your faith, you are no true believer at all. We believe He tasted death for every man.
We believe that He will soon triumph over all things, and God will put all things under His feet. I believe that, and I believe there will be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.
We see not all things under Him, but we see Jesus. God has put all things in subjection under His feet. For in that He put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him.
We do not see it all done yet, but we have faith, and we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than angels so that He might suffer death.
We see Him crowned with glory and honor at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And when He comes back again, He will put all things under His feet.
For myself, with God’s help, I want to live for that time. I want my money to live for that time. I want my talents, whatever they may be, to live for that time.
I want my time to be given for that hour when He comes back again. I do not want to divide my life and live for the earth while this is approaching.
I believe with all my heart that God has put all things under His feet, and one of these days, He is coming back to take His power and reign. May God grant that you and I be ready.
Man’s highest aspirations are fulfilled through the revealed truth of God’s Word. This truth obeyed will prepare the heart to come into the presence of God in worship and fellowship.
Come Hither, All ye Weary Souls by Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
Come hither, all ye weary souls,
Ye heavy-laden sinners, come;
I’ll give you rest from all your toils,
And raise you to my heavenly home.
They shall find rest who learn of me:
I’m of a meek and lowly mind;
But passion rages like the sea,
And pride is restless as the wind.
Blest is the man whose shoulders take
My yoke, and bear it with delight:
My yoke is easy on the neck;
My grace shall make the burden light.
Jesus, we come at thy command;
With faith and hope and humble zeal,
Resign our spirits to thy hand,
To mold and guide us at thy will.