Ser 2005.29.05 Final
Drawing Near to the Throne…
In the last couple of weeks we’ve been looking at the Vision of Heaven
Chapter 4 and 5 of Revelation
· Worship is Defiance Against the Culture
o The world is focused on the immediate, the temporal.
o Believers are called to look to the Throne.
· Worship means starting at the Throne – everything flows from the throne…
· Worship reveals the faithfulness of God in light of His Holiness.
· Worship is the way we center our life towards God – so we can be with God,
Quote: Dallas Willard:
“Worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration in the whole person.
It nullifies every evil tendency in every dimension of our soul and mind – it naturally arises from thinking rightly of God on the basis of revealed truth confirmed in experience…”
In other words – Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand…
Tozer wrote that worship is the
“admiration of something to the point of delight”
Worship is first request the Lord’s prayer…
Jesus said when you pray…pray like this…
Hallowed be thy name – Holy is your name – it is the first thing mentioned in the Our Father because it is the most important thing…
We are so focused on the aspect of worshiping so that our needs be met – that we have come to view Sunday this way – we go here or go there because our needs are met or not..
J.B. Phillips wrote a book, some decades ago called “Your God is Too Small” – PREMISE - not because He is too small to meet our needs – but that our God is too small that it causes us to fail to relentlessly worship and adore Him…
In the “Renewed Mind” – Willard writes “God constantly stands as uniquely and supremely worthy” –
Hallowed be thy name..
The last week we looked at the Vision of the Lion who is also the Lamb
We saw that:
When we look to the Throne – we not only see the One Who Sits – but the Son to whom He has handed over all authority in Heaven and Earth..
We see that we can go from desperation to exaltation as we see and worship Jesus as He really Is…
We saw a God who is
1. IN COMPLETE CONTROL OF ALL HUMAN HISTORY…EVERY DETAIL OF IT
God rules History….it is important to know that He is not frustrated by History..
(Daniel 2:20-21 NIV)
"Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.”
2. JESUS – THE LION/LAMB IS WORTHY TO OPEN THE SCROLL
He is not just WORTHY – He is Supremely Worthy!
Meaning no one else can touch Him in worthiness..
He can open it – because He is uniquely qualified to open it!
Today…we will see that this throne is accessible to us!
· Radical idea to the Greek – God unknowable
· To the Jew – God too Holy to be approached…
Now the wonderful thing is that just as John was called into the very presence of God – into the throne room we have a royal invitation to enter there…
1. God calls us to draw near to Him
look with me at Hebrews 4
(Hebrews 4:14-16 NIV)
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
This book says a lot about High Priests – a term that means little to us today…
Explain…
1. He is in Heaven full time – for good
2. He is the Son of God – has royal rights to be there…not just a mere human who gets bumped up a notch to be a priest.
This gives his sacrifice – what He presents before God – infinite worth.
Presents His own blood – the blood of the Son of God.
When God sees Jesus’ sacrifice He declares – that is enough!
Debt has been paid…
God’s righteousness is vindicated
His glory is exalted
3. He is can sympathize with our weakness –
Fifty years ago C. S. Lewis imagined someone objecting here:
"If Jesus never sinned, then he doesn't know what temptation is like. He lived a sheltered life and is out of touch with how strong temptation can be."
Here is what Lewis wrote in response to that objection:
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.
Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. . . . A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense know very little about badness.
They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. . . . Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means -- the only complete realist.
Jesus can sympathize with us in our pain and our dying, because he experienced excruciating pain and entered all the way into death.
And he can sympathize with the way that we are attracted and so easily drawn to sin, because he was tempted --
· to lie (to save his life)
· and to steal (to help his poor mother when his father died)
· and to covet (like all the nice things that Zaccheus owned)
· and to dishonor his parents (when they were more strict than others)
· and to take revenge (when he was wrongly accused)
· and to lust (when Mary wiped his feet with her hair)
· and to pout with self-pity (when his disciples fell asleep in his last hour of trial)
· and to murmur at God (when John the Baptist died at the whim of a dancing girl)
· and to gloat over his accusers (when they couldn't answer his questions)
Jesus knows the battle.
He fought it all the way to the end.
And he defeated the monster every time.
So he was tested like we are and the Bible says he is a sympathetic High Priest.
He does not roll his eyes at your pain and say…what’s that…that’s not pain…you want to see pain…
Jesus doesn’t do that – it says he sympathizes…
“Sympatheo” – to be affected by another’s suffering…not just to know the person… “who suffers, experiences etc. the same as another,”[1]
4:16
We are called to draw near with confidence to the “throne of grace…”
Now this is the huge…please listen carefully…
Everyone of us needs help…
· We are not God…we have needs..
· We have weaknesses
· We have confusion
· We have all sorts of limitations.
· We must have help..
Now the difficulty is that we have something else…
Everyone of us has something else: we have sins.
And because of this at the bottom of our hearts we know that we do not deserve the help we need.
And so we feel trapped.
I need help to live my life and to handle death and to cope with eternity –
help with my family,
· my spouse, my children,
· my loneliness,
· my job, my health, my finances.
· I need help.
PROBLEM: But I don't deserve the help I need.
So what can I do?
I can try to deny it all and be a superman who doesn't need any help.
Or I can try to drown it all and throw my life into a pool of self self gratification – or self pity…
Drown the pain in sex or alcohol, or drugs…
Or I can simply give way to the paralysis of despair.
But God makes a powerful declaration over this hopeless conclusion:
Jesus Christ became a High Priest to shatter that despair with hope.
Yes, we all need help.
Yes, none of us deserves the help we need.
Look at what God says.
Because we have a great High Priest, the throne of God is a throne of grace.
And the help we get at that throne is mercy and grace to help in time of need.
Grace to help!
Not deserved help, gracious help.
This is the whole point of the Old and New Testaments.
God planned for a High Priest, a Savior, a Redeemer, a gracious Helper.
You are not trapped.
Say no to that lie.
We need help.
We don't deserve it.
But we can have it.
You can have it right now and forever.
If you will receive and trust in your High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, and draw near to God through him.
Not only are we invited and permitted to enter into the very center of Heaven to ask for God’s help.
But…
2. We are intimately connected to Heaven – right now…
This is part of the Salvation that Jesus had brought about.
Our soul is anchored to Heaven…
Look at Hebrews Chapter 6…
(Hebrews 6:17-20 NIV)
Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
IN THE MESSAGE PETERSON WRITES…
(Hebrews 6:17-20 MSG)
When God wanted to guarantee his promises, he gave his word, a rock-solid guarantee-- God can't break his word.
And because his word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable. We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It's an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.
So he not only makes promises to his children, but he takes and oath and swears that he will bless them, and only that he swears by the highest and most precious reality in the universe, himself (v. 13).
So there are two things, not just one -- a promise and an oath -- that secure our hope.
Two different Greek words – promise is in essence a declaration – a sort of boast – to say that you can make something happen.
Look at verse 18 of Hebrews 6….It says that GOD took an oath
"in order that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, we who have fled for refuge in laying hold of the hope set before us."
In other words he wants us to have strong encouragement to lay hold on the hope he has sworn will be ours.
The promise and the oath are meant to give us the deep confidence that we WILL inherit all that he promises us in Jesus – in this life and the next.
So he wants us to experientially "lay hold of" it. What does it mean to be told that God has secured a future for us with promise and oath and that we are to "lay hold of" it? What does "lay hold of" mean in real life experience?
It means bank on that hope.
Trust in it.
Feel secure in it.
Be satisfied with it.
Long for it the way you long for the coming of the dawn after a long, dark, scary night.
There are at least five practical things you can do to move your heart toward "laying hold of your hope."
1. Meditate on these verses about how great your hope is in the presence of God.
2. Meditate on these verses….on how sure your hope is in the presence of God.
3. Pray that God would open your mind and heart to this greatness and this certainty and incline you to hope in him.
4. Consider how much Christ has suffered for your hope.
5. Consider Christians like yourselves who have laid hold on hope in Christ.
For example, in 1934, when twenty-eight-year-old John Stam, missionary to China, was being led away to execution by the communists with his wife Betty, someone on the road asked, "Where are you going?" John laid hold on the hope set before him and said, "We are going to heaven."
6. Help each other do all these things in your small groups. Exhort each other every day to lay hold on hope.
----
[1]Theological dictionary of the New Testament. 1964-c1976. Vols. 5-9 edited by Gerhard Friedrich. Vol. 10 compiled by Ronald Pitkin. (G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley & G. Friedrich, Ed.) . Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI