“Discipleship is learning about Christ’s supremacy over all things. It is truly companionship with Jesus through all of life. A scheme of the devil is to get people to renounce their faith in Christ, but another scheme of the devil is for people to simply grow bored with Christ. Satan will do anything he can to get you to take your eyes off Christ. He knows that you, or your church, do not have to renounce Jesus to cease to be useful in God’s kingdom; you just have to grow bored with him.”[1]
In the opening lines of Psalm 45 the psalmist gushes over the beauty of the king. He says that the king is the “fairest of all.” To him, the king’s beauty simply exceeds all men who have existed, existed during the psalmist’s time, and would exist forevermore. What makes him so lovely? His exceedingly great character, His warring on behalf of righteousness and meekness and truth, and grace pours from His lips like the mighty water of Niagara.
The psalmist simply cannot contain himself and he cannot wait to sing before the king.
This psalm points to the Messiah – the author of Hebrews tells us so (Heb 1:8), as well as the fact that the king is addressed as God in verse 6. Jesus is the object (even if the psalmist didn’t fully understand that – the Holy Spirit inspiring him did) and His deeds are magnified as He takes a bride and makes her lovely through His deeds.
The opening lines of the psalm provoke a question in my own heart, and I wonder about how other modern Americans would answer this question: do you gush over Jesus like this psalmist did? Can you hardly contain yourself when you worship Him? When you think of Him, does He thrill you – get your heart racing?
By all accounts, we are an excitable people. Anyone who is morose in worship can say “I just don’t get outwardly excited about things” but that’s not true. As someone who currently resides in Georgia, I can say I’ve seen how people react to Georgia Bulldog games. I have doubts that they go all the way to Athens and sit the whole time with an expression on their face like they just bit into a lemon. I doubt when the Dogs score, they stay seated and golf clap.
I also doubt that when their kids achieve something they aren’t thrilled. I doubt that when they got that promotion they wanted they were docile. I doubt that if someone handed them a million dollars they would simply nod, expressionless, and say “Thanks.”
We get thrilled, but is Jesus the One who thrills us?
I also wonder if the way we easily get distracted about things isn’t a sign that Jesus bores us.
I can’t help but wonder when Christians buy into conspiracy theories, worship at the altar of politics, bounce from church-to-church over trivial things, focus on church programs or get bogged down in preferences, or fight and divide in the church, or grumble, or focus on worship styles rather than on the One being worshipped, if we haven’t simply just gotten bored with the King.
Jesus should thrill and excite, Jesus should astound and ignite our passions, but so often in the church we focus on other things that are not Jesus. I’ve known people who have left churches that preached the gospel from the Bible and put Christ at the center, but because of things like the format of Sunday school or the lack of musical programs, they left unceremoniously. Jesus was preached faithfully, the words sung were true and Christ exalting, yet it wasn’t enough for them to stay in the fellowship. Why is that?
Was Jesus not enough? They needed more?
Or consider what we look for when we are searching for a church. I have asked many people who were “church shopping” (what a horrible phrase, by the way), what they were looking for. Typically, the first thing said had to do with style of music, programs for kids, or a place they could “fit in.” I can’t remember a single time when the first thing said was “A church that preaches Jesus from the Bible” or “A church that makes Christ the center of everything they do” or some theological agreement.
Are we bored with Jesus?
Why are we obsessed with politics? Why are some social media pages of Christians filled with nothing but political posts that vilify image bearers who happen to disagree with us? Why are we willing to abandon the fellowship of a church for something as trivial as music genres and programs?
Truly, if a church simply preaches the gospel from the Word faithfully and sings Christ-exalting songs, shouldn’t that be enough for us? Isn’t everything else in addition to that gravy?
If Jesus thrills us, shouldn’t worshipping Him with the saints still get our hearts pumping? What a privilege! If He was truly enough, would we really have time to fight with each other? If He was enough, would we really have time to be on the look out for things in our churches to gripe about or leave over? And if Jesus was the King that the psalmist says He is (which, He is and more) then would our obsession be with earthly politics in which our hopes raise and fall?
The solution truly isn’t that difficult: simply dwell on His majesty. Stop letting other things edge Him aside. He is glorious enough to be infatuated with – the depths of His glory are truly endless. And if you’ve been distracted, bogged down, thinking about abandoning the fellowship, feeling unstratified with things of earth, ask yourself: Am I bored with Jesus? And be prepared for a hard answer from the Spirit of God, then, with haste, fix your eyes back on Jesus and be thrilled once again!
[1] J.T. English, Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2020), 36. Emphasis Added.
The Bearded Ecclesiologian 