Judges 7. Gideon, part 29: Properly directed worship.

Title: Judges 7. Gideon, part 28: Properly directed worship.      

 

Announcements:

 

What does he mean when Peter entreats us to be diligent to make certain about our calling and election? I am challenged to believe why eyes cannot see, ears cannot hear, and what has never entered into the heart of man by his own calculation.

 

2Pe 1:1 Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:

 

2Pe 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge [epignosis = complete appropriation of all truth and unreserved acquiescence to God's will] of God and of Jesus our Lord;

 

2Pe 1:3 seeing that His divine power [saving mankind in Christ] has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

 

Think about the kind of power it took for the Son of God to take on the frailty and limits of humanity and then offer Himself without blemish for the sins of mankind. This is how He has granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness.

 

Life: zoe - the way and spirit of life.

Godliness: eusebeia - to worship well; properly directed worship.

 

Everything granted by God is the believer's possession forever and without strings. These are for life and godliness.

 

Christianity does not narrow life, but expands it by injecting it with devotion to God's magnificence and service of Him, which prior to salvation is absent from life.

 

Such worship of God gives life meaning, making it vital and significant. It animates life and makes it eternal in substance and in impact. It makes life ethical or good and without confusion from man's different ideas of goodness, but singular of mission and purpose. It makes life dynamic in that learning and growth never ceases and so wonders of faith never cease. It makes life divine in nature.

 

How many in the world are going through life without meaning, purpose, vitality, joy, goodness, in which they are constantly growing and learning? How many have of life of adventure and meaning? The true worship of God provides these in abundance.

 

2Pe 1:3 seeing that His divine power [saving mankind in Christ] has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

 

2Pe 1:4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

 

His promise of who we are enables us to grab hold of a lifelong fellowship with the nature of the divine and to leave behind the world’s lust.

 

World's lust: pleasure, wealth, fame, power.

 

Christ's life, death, and resurrection are promises.

 

Col 3:3-4

For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

 

Rom 6:4

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

 

Promises of crucifixion of the old nature and resurrection of the new.

 

Promises of renewal and transformation.

 

2Co 4:16

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

 

2Co 3:18

But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

 

Promises of election, inheritance, predestination, justification, and glorification, Rom 8; Eph 1.

 

He is a promise; a living and active one.

 

Eph 3:6

the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,

 

2Ti 1:1

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus

 

I could give hundreds of more of such promises from the Bible. The Spirit of God and His ministry to us is a promise as well.

 

We are what we are because we are in union with Him and for no other reason.

 

We did not make ourselves this way. We believed in Him. We believed in the gospel and we didn't even know what was done to us until later. We never imagined this. We were given the only glory that exists - God's glory, which we knew nothing about, no matter how much we thought we might have known. Christ is perfect divine glory and He gave each of us His own glory.

 

God called us. We did not originate or instigate the relationship. By the baptism of the Holy Spirit we were placed in union with Christ and that act by God, by His power alone, made us what we are.