Praying Before The Throne Ii

PRAYING BEFORE THE THRONE II

HEB. 4:16

There was once a young lady who occasionally walked through the park after work. One afternoon she stopped to have her picture taken by a photographer on this particular day. She was very excited about her picture being taken with the sky line in the background. As she walked out of the park, the Polaroid picture slowly began to become clear. She looked at the picture in total amazement. She turned and headed back to the camera man. When she got their she stated, "this is not right! this is not right! you have done me no justice!" The photographer looked at the picture and looked at her and stated, "Miss, you don’t need justice, what you need is mercy."

Thus is our relationship with God. If God dealt with us justly none of us would be here today. Sometimes we think we look good, but if we look at the real picture under the microscope of God’s eye, justice is not what we really want, what we want and what we need is grace and mercy.

Each one of here this morning ought to realize what a wonderful amazing thing the grace of God is. Without we would not even exist. It is by the grace of God we have our being, it is by the grace of God we have all that we have. We have no right to complain about anything, because it all comes to us through God’s grace. The good and what we see as bad. God owes us nothing, and what we have comes by grace. Grace is something that none of us can do without, whether we have acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour or not, we are totally dependent on God’s grace for every breath we take.

With that said today I want to talk to about the grace of God. We are going to be continuing to look at the passage we started looking at last week. Heb. 4:16. If you would please turn with me to that passage. That is page 1037 in your pew Bibles. Heb. 4:16; “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Last week we spoke on the fact that it is a “throne” that we are called to approach and that a throne denotes royalty. While the we are to approach the Lord as our Heavenly Father we must not lose sight of the fact that He is also King, even more so King of kings and Lord of lords!

Today I want to focus on the what type of throne our great King sits upon, that is a throne of grace.

Let that sink in for a moment. We called to a throne of Grace. It is not a throne of law, not a throne of works, but a throne of grace.

If you want a throne of law go back to the OT. If you read that account of the Lord coming down to Mt. Sinai, His very presence is upon that mount, it becomes in essence the throne of God, yet it is a throne of law. And because it is a throne law no one but Moses and Aaron who are sanctified by God is allowed to go before the throne of God.

Listen to what God states In Exo. 19 regarding the throne of Law, Mt. Sinai, "You shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ’Take heed to yourselves that you do not go up to the mountain or touch its base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. Not a hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot with an arrow; whether man or beast, he shall not live.”

The throne of law could never be approached by mankind because we are utterly unable to keep the righteousness of God. We could never keep the law. Yet there are some who still think they can.

What about you? Do you believe that you can keep the law? Do you believe that you can approach God through your own righteousness. Righteousness that is like filthily rags to the Lord. My friends do not think that you can be saved by keeping the law. Do not think that you can be saved by doing good works, by obeying the standards that you have set for yourself. You are not good enough to get into heaven, you are not good enough to stand before the perfect holiness of God.

Just as the Israelite people were not worthy to approach Mt Sinai, the throne of Law, neither are you worthy on your own merits to approach the God.

But praise be to God that Jesus Christ as changed that. It is no longer a throne of law, but a throne of grace. Through Jesus Christ it is not throne of law, a throne which we could never approach, but it is now a throne of grace, which we are called to boldly approach.