“By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.””
Isaiah 45:23
Walking the streets of Hanoi on our last evenings, we watched a young man kneel by a curbside brazier, feeding the flame with sheets of “hell money.” The smoke rose, an offering dispatched to ancestors in the unseen realm. Earlier we had stepped past trays of incense and fruit at neighborhood shrines and Buddhist temples, simple and sincere tokens of reverence. Scenes like these, repeated across Southeast Asia, remind us that humanity carries an innate bend toward prayer and offering. We are worshipers by design.
Genesis tells us that God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26, ESV). Bearing the image of the Living God means that, at a deep inner core, we feel compelled to reach beyond ourselves. We cry out in crisis, we bow in gratitude, we light candles in the dark. We are bent toward our Creator, whether we acknowledge it or not. As the old line puts it, “There are no atheists in foxholes”—a blunt way of saying our souls already know to whom to cry. This is not cultural habit but created design—a homing of the heart toward the One who made us.
In Genesis 4, before any recorded command to sacrifice, Cain and Abel bring offerings to the Lord, portraying worship as an uncoerced expression of perceived reality: if God is there, then God is worthy. Yet the narrative also warns us that not all offerings please God. The Torah reveals this as worship flowing from creation itself: image-bearers will worship because love must aim at something, an echo we hear in Paul’s words: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20, ESV). But their loves diverge. Abel’s faith loves the Lord as the Lord has revealed Himself; Cain’s love bends inward and is wounded when not regarded. This pattern recurs throughout Scripture: we all worship something, and our offerings follow our love. On the road we saw devotion—sincere, costly, constant. Yet sincerity without rightly ordered love still misses the mark. True worship is found where God has made Himself known and where love comes by faith in the way He provides.
Isaiah records the Lord’s own oath: “To Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance” (Isaiah 45:23, ESV). The claim is absolute and universal. In the New Testament, this promise resounds in the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Our hearts are made for this allegiance. All lesser altars and borrowed fires point, however dimly, to the One who alone deserves our offerings.
Humanity is wired for worship. The question is not if we will bow, but to whom. This is why the Church carries the name of Jesus into every place, inviting real people to real allegiance, in real life.
We do not mock the devotion we witnessed. We view it as a reminder that the human heart is awake to eternity everywhere, in every language and neighborhood. What we saw is universal. And in witnessing it, we are not discouraged; we are galvanized. We are compelled all the more to carry the Light of Christ into every darkness, to announce not a vague spirituality but the Name that saves.
Therefore, let us bring the offering God desires: a contrite heart, obedience born of trust, and lives presented as a living sacrifice. Let our lives be poured out as a drink offering, even as Paul wrote: “I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith” (Philippians 2:17, ESV). Let us love our neighbors with patient presence and truthful words. And let us bow our knees—now in joy rather than later in compulsion—before the One to whom every knee shall bow. Then let us rise and go—let us respond to our image-bearing nature in reverence and awe, bearing our cross as a witness.
References: Genesis 1:26; Genesis 4:1–7; Isaiah 45:22–25 (ESV)
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27