A. W. Tozer writes a prayer at the beginning of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, which says in part, “They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.” He goes on to say, “The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.”
Bible study that only uses the mind to sort out words, and geography, and culture, and grammar can get pretty dry and, at least for me, boring. We must remember that while we use our minds to study the Scriptures, the Scriptures themselves are meant to reach our hearts and our wills. So this month I would like to suggest two books that will cause you to ponder and worship our mighty Saviour God. Each of them is to be read slowly, in small increments, and to cause us to bow before our God in adoration.
The first of these books is the one mentioned at the beginning of this article — The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. In twenty-three short, deeply devotional chapters, Dr. Tozer takes us on a journey into the sublime heights of the person of God as revealed in His attributes. God is incomprehensible, the unknowable God, and yet He has revealed Himself in words we can understand and it is our duty as well as our delight to know Him. This classic of devotional literature is written reverently as one worshipper comes alongside to help us. “True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him” (John 4:23).
There is another book of the same caliber that needs to be read and meditated on. This one is written by a German theologian of the nineteenth century, F. W. Krummacher. His work is entitled The Suffering Saviour and is a rich commentary on the last week of our Lord prior to His crucifixion. Again written in short chapters, fifty-two in all, he takes us through, as he calls it, “the most important, world-transforming, and eternally significant event in the entire history of the world.”
Written in three sections, he calls the first, “The Outer Court,” taking our Lord from the announcement of His death through the upper room discourse. Then “The Holy Place” takes us through Gethsemane, the trials, the scourging, and the road to Golgotha. The third section, “The Most Holy Place” meditates upon the crucifixion itself to the garden tomb.
There are those who would say that he should have added one more chapter on the resurrection, that to meditate on the death of Christ without resurrection is depressing. It is good to think of glory and honor and majesty and might. But this is not a morbid book. It plumbs the depths of sorrow that we might scale the heights of worship at Calvary.
For those who would prostrate themselves before our great God in worship and sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him, these two books will be handy guides. May I emphasize the word guides. Whenever we try to pry into the depths of the suffering of Calvary, much mystery abounds and those who attempt to solve the unsolvable tend to emphasize the humanity of our Lord. In so doing at times they take away from His deity. This happens on occasion in Krummacher’s book. But, read in the spirit in which they were written, each of us will come into a deeper appreciation of Christ and will bow our hearts before our majestic God.