That’s Why We Worship - Worshiping God As Savior
That’s Why We Worship
"Worshiping God As Savior"
We are looking at why we worship God.
Revelation 5:11-14
Last week we looked at God as creator. That alone should evoke from us a desire to worship Him, but our sin instead causes us to draw back, to hide. But God does not leave us in this predicament. He is also our Savior.
To understand what God has done to save us, we need to examine three vital parts of the nature of God. The failure to do this results in the kind of wishy washy faith that too many people hold today. Too many people believe that God is only love; that He will save everyone, because He could not do anything else. This is a cheap view of God’s grace, and it is a false view that will leave many separated from God’s love for eternity.
I. The Righteousness of God.
- Revelation 15:3,4 - one of the things we worship God for.
- People can be pretty predictable, especially when you get to know them
- Brad Asche will always sit in that chair Sunday mornings.
- the middle and high schoolers will always run from class to get donuts
- Sherri will always say it’s a little cold in here first thing in the morning.
- God is predictable in a sense too. The Bible calls that God’s righteousness.
-The word "righteous" is the same word as "justice." It means to conform to the proper standard or law. When the Bible speaks of the righteousness of God, it refers to the fact that God is always true to His own nature - He is the standard or norm. God will always act true to His nature - you can count on it - that is what God’s righteousness means. Now this is a good thing, or so it seems. God is holy, pure, just, loving, faithful. We can count on it. He will never depart from these. It is a good thing, but it poses a problem for us.
It becomes a problem because of our sin. Because of sin, it is no longer easy for God to be holy and also loving with us. Why? If God were to be true to His holiness, justice or righteousness would demand that we be punished for our sin. If God were to be true to His desire to love us, He would not have us be the objects of His wrath or punishment, but would want to protect and save us. Sin is a very real problem. It began in the Garden of Eden, and it continues to now. Sin, doing that which is against the will of God, is a very real problem.
Man has often suggested that it is not a problem at all. This is done by emphasizing the love of God. In this way, God’s holiness and wrath against sin is ignored or explained away by saying that "God is love." But the problem is that while God is love, He is not only love. He always acts true to His nature, His entire nature. Remember, God is righteous.
At no given time can God be explained or understood only by His love. Neither can He be explained only by His holiness. Both run throughout Scripture. God has never abandoned either. And this, I suggest, is the amazing thing about our salvation in Jesus. God did not have to abandon His holiness or His love to accomplish it. In saving us, God remains righteous.
- Romans 3:21-26. God remains righteous. He is both just (holy) and the justifier (love) of those who have faith in Christ.
- 1 Jn. 1:9
Let’s look a little closer at His holiness and His love and how both were expressed in our salvation.
II. The Holiness of God.
Holiness means at its root to be separate or distinct. The Bible tells us that God is holy in two ways.
- in His being - transcendent - uncreated and infinite.
- in character - ethically - He is completely pure, without any sin or evil. This is the holiness that we need to focus on this morning. Our sin presented a dilemma for God’s righteousness because of His holiness.
- Illus: Martin Luther
Before the events of the Protestant Reformation unfolded, Luther, unlike most people of His day, had studied very closely what the Bible said about God. Like Isaiah, when he came closely to God, He was terrified by what He saw. The holiness of God he saw throughout the Bible told him there was certain doom and punishment coming his way because of his own sin. Martin Luther was a monk at the time. In fact, he was a very disciplined monk. He spent more time in prayer and study than others, but he also spent a lot of time in confession of his sin. He wold often spend six hours a day in confession with a priest! He knew that almost every thought of his heart was tainted in some way with at least a less than holy motive. He nearly drove himself insane with the thought of his own sin and God’s holiness and what it meant for him. When it came time to present his first mass as a priest, he could not finish it, because he did not feel worthy.
Most people do not think this way. We are all as sinful as Martin Luther was, and yet we are not nearly as hard on ourselves. Unlike Luther, we often feel we are capable of good deeds. Luther did not think this was possible. But in our quiet moments of reflection, we do sense that we fail miserably to love God completely and perfectly. We just get good at avoiding the thought of it too much. We also know that everyone around us is in the same boat. And herein lies our false sense of comfort. "Nobody is perfect," we say to ourselves. "We all fall short of God’s perfect holiness, so why worry about it? If God punished everyone who failed to keep His laws and will perfectly, He would have to punish everyone. The test is too great, too demanding. It isn’t a fair test. God will have to grade on a curve. And on a curve, maybe I don’t look so bad."
But Martin Luther didn’t see it that way. He realized that if God graded on a curve, He would have to compromise His own holiness. He would no longer be righteous. To think that God would or even could do that is extremely arrogant, ignorant and foolish. God never lowers His own standards to accommodate us. He remains altogether holy pure and just. But we are not, and so the dilemma, and Luther saw it clearly: How can an unjust man survive in the presence of a just God? (Isaiah had said essentially the same thing in the Old Testament in his vision). Where everyone else seemed at ease about the situation, Luther was in agony.
You see, God’s holiness, for a sinner, should evoke a sense of incredible terror. God has said in Hebrews 12:29 that He is a "consuming fire." God will not go easy on sin or sinners. Look at what God has said about His feeling and His intentions for sinners.
A. His disposition to sinners.
- Js. 4:4 - "whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
- 1 Pet. 3:12 - "the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
- Deut. 25;16 - "everyone who acts unjustly is an abomination to the lord your God."
- Psalm 5:5 - "Thou dost hate all who do iniquity."
B. What they become - objects of His wrath.
- Rom. 2:8 - "there is coming to sinners "wrath and indignation" from God.
- Rev. 19;15 - we see the "fierce wrath of God" upon the sinful
C. Their end - eternal destruction.
- Rom. 12:9 "leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘vengeance is Mine,’ says the Lord." (also Heb. 10:30)
- 2 Thes. 1:7-9 "When Jesus returns, He will "deal out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, and these will pay the penalty to eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power . . ."
- Jude 7 - there will be "punishment of eternal fire."
It is a terrifying situation to be a sinner in the hands of an angry God. But, people, by and large, ignore the holiness of God, and its certain implications. They find bliss in ignorance. They find comfort in the fact that we’re all in the same boat. But Martin Luther did not, and I do not. It is common to hear people say, "I believe God will save everyone ultimately. After all, how could a loving God condemn anyone to eternal punishment?" The question they should be asking instead is "How can this holy God save anyone?"
Let us never be stupid enough to ask for justice from God, to ask for our own fair share. That would be worse than your worst nightmare. Let us understand that as sinners, every breath we take is an act of mercy from God. And if you cannot accept or agree with that, then you do not know God. And don’t hide from God’s holiness in ignorance. Ignorance will not be bliss for long, not on judgement day.
But I thank God, that the terror His holiness brings to a sinner does not have to remain that way. And so I want us to go to the cross now. Let us look at the cross in light of God’s holiness, and there also see His love. Here is where Martin Luther found what He so desperately needed, and where we can find what we so desperately need also: an understanding of how God can be loving and merciful without compromising His holiness.
III. The love of God.
- Romans 3:21-26
- key word in vs. 25 is "propitiation" or "atonement." - it means to satisfy the wrath of. It means to do what is necessary to make God favorably disposed to the sinner by dealing with the sin. Now the text here says that God displayed His Son Jesus as a propitiation in His blood.
- 1 Jn. 2:2 - same thing
- 1 Jn. 4:8-10 - same thing - except that here is says that this is God’s demonstration of His love.
Let me approach the understanding of propitiation this way. Many people claim to see two different Gods in the Bible, or at least a changed God. In the O.T., they claim to see a holy and angry God who is ruthless and arbitrary in His judgements. In the N.T. they claim to see a loving and compassionate God who wants to save everyone. I say they don’t know their Bible very well. The God of the O.T. is the same as the God of the N.T. God, in the O.T. was in fact extremely merciful, patient and compassionate. He rarely gave people what thy deserved. We should not be outraged at the few times when He did pour out His wrath. The fact is that God, in His patience, was waiting to pour out His wrath on sin. Waiting for what though? Waiting until His plan could be fulfilled that allowed Him to look favorably upon us and save us without compromising His holiness. He was waiting for the cross! God, in the N.T. is still a God of holiness. In fact, the most brutal act of divine vengeance and wrath recorded in the Bible isn’t found in the O.T. The most violent expression of God’s holy wrath upon sin is seen at the cross!
If a person ever had room to complain about injustice, it was Jesus at the cross. He was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God. If we stagger at the wrath of God, let us stagger at the cross. Here is where our astonishment should be focused. If we have cause for moral outrage, let it be directed at Golgotha!
The cross was at one time both the most horrible and the most beautiful example of the nature of God. It was the most holy and loving act in all history. God would have been more than unjust, unrighteous, if Jesus had not first willingly taken upon Himself the sins of the whole world at the cross. Once Jesus did that though, . . . once He volunteered to be the Lamb of God, laden down with all our sin, then He became the most vile thing to the Father. With the concentrated load of the sin of all the world for all time on Him, He had become utterly repugnant to the Father - who in His holiness, could not look upon the Son. He then became the object of divine wrath that had been stored up for so long. God poured out His holy wrath upon Christ, and He forsook Him on the cross (Mtt. 27:45,46). Jesus became sin that we might be made the righteousness of God, the Bible says. We become right in the sight of God! It is too amazing to fathom. Jesus became the propitiation for our sins, the way to satisfy the holy wrath of God upon sin and sinners. In doing so, the cross was also the greatest act of divine love toward us sinners. I am the sinner. God owes me nothing good. I owe Him everything. And yet it is He who loved me so much that He saved me by punishing His own perfect Son for my sin. O Lord, forgive us for taking your love and mercy for granted!
- "For God so loved the world . . ." - There is a lot of meaning under the surface to John 3:16 isn’t there?
IV. Our Response
So what is our response to the God who saves us?
Where do we begin. The cross becomes the place where we find our ultimate motivation for faith, obedience, evangelism, the pursuit of holiness in my own life . . . But this morning, I want you to see it as your supreme motivation for WORSHIP!
- Creation by itself gives us all the motivation needed for worship, but sin also gives us a reason to be terrified, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." But at the cross we find out more about God. There we see Him not just as the good Creator, but as a merciful and faithful and loving Savior - so wise and powerful that He came up with a plan to remain righteous, true to Himself, and still forgive us our sins.
Hymn and song writers, painters, sculptors, writers, and us more common folk have for centuries now been trying to find ways to express our awe, appreciation and adoration for the God who saves us.
- the response of terror is replaced with a response of thanksgiving. And then once again, we can apprecciate God for being creator and ruler of creation and of our lives. Once again, we can draw near, in full assurance of faith, as Adam once did in the garden. Heb. 10:19-22
Our greatest pursuit as the people of God is to draw near and worship at His feet and to worship the Lamb that was slain. In Revelation 5, we find just that. Vs. 11-14 say, (read)
- Remember how you felt and acted the first time you really understood what God had done to save you? We need to strive to keep what God has done for our salvation fresh in our minds and hearts, so that we never tire of expressing our worship - never get "used to" to cross. (Why we have the Lord’s supper each week)
- That’s why we worship - because Jesus made it possible for us to be the objects of God’s love for eternity instead of the objects of His wrath. We get what we do not deserve because Jesus took upon Himself what we did deserve. That’s why we praise Him.
If you are sitting here this morning, and you are not a Christian. If you have not acknowledged your sin, repented of it and placed your faith in what Jesus did for you on the cross, then you sit in a terrifying position. You are still the enemy of God, the object of his just and holy wrath. Your denial or delay will be of no comfort in that day. But the good news is that you can come right now, to have it all changed. You can become the beloved child of God. You can be washed clean. Lamentations 3:33 tells us that God does not inflict willingly. That is, it is not pleasing to Him. But He must act by His righteousness. His desire is to give you mercy, but to access it, you must place your faith in what Jesus did for you at the cross. Then you too can draw near to God and worship Him.
