“Why are you doing that?” Have you ever asked that question? Have you ever looked at something that someone did or was doing and said, “Why? Why are you doing that? Lets be honest: we’ve all asked that about ourselves too, haven’t we? “Why on earth did I do that?” We’ve given others reason numerous times in our lives to say, “What on earth would compel you to do that?”
Why do we do what we do? Why does anyone do what they do? This question applies to all human behavior. But today I want to focus on one behavior. It is the most important behavior in all existence. It is the behavior of worship. So my question is this: “Why do you worship? As a Christian, why do you worship your God?”
The title of our sermon today is the answer to that question: The Worthiness Of God. We worship God because He is worthy. This doxology – and all others in the Bible – is an expression of the worthiness of God, AND it is also an expression of worship. It is actually showing us the ONLY RIGHT response to the worthiness of God: worship.
Its like in Revelation. In chapters 4 and 5 its the picture in heaven of all of heaven in total worshipful submission and praise to God. They are seeing God correctly and responding to seeing Him correctly – as seen in their worship. The reason this is seen first, before the terrible judgments beginning in chapter 6 and going all the way to chapter 19, is because it is showing the contrast between the way heaven relates to God and earth. Everyone on earth is in rebellion against God, worshipping idols, demons and the antichrist, committing the most sin the earth has ever seen. Heaven worships God but earth is in full rebellion against Him. Chapters 4 and 5 show what earth SHOULD be doing but isn’t and THEREFORE that is why all the judgments are going to be unleashed on the world described in chapters 6-19.
Jude 25 is Jude’s doxology, his last words to his readers, and in it I am going to identify 10 aspects of God’s transcendent worthiness. And thus 10 reasons why we worship Him.
I would clarify this point. In saying God is worthy to be worshipped it makes worshiping Him an obligation, not an option. In other words, to refuse to worship God is to sin against Him. Yet the obligation to worship God is fully and wholeheartedly taken up by anyone who sees the truth of how God is worthy. In other words, His worthiness is so awe-inspiring that we want to worship Him, we can’t BUT worship Him.
This doxology Jude gives is such a perfect way to end the letter. Doxologically it stirs our own hearts to glorify God and think glorious thoughts of God. Practically, it brings the whole letter together. We identify, call out, and avoid false teachers because of God’s glory. We actively live out the positive instructions how Jude said in verses 20-23 because of God’s glory. We know we will be presented to God in the end FOR His glory.
ORIENTATION
The first thing we see about the worthiness of God is that EVERYTHING is and is to be ORIENTED towards HIM. My thought on this comes from the words, “To the only God our Savior be….” The key words right there are “to…God…be…” It is language that is directional. It is language that is pointing out to us that everything is to be pointing towards God for His glory. It is all about orientation.
This is not a thought unique to Jude. You are very likely familiar with a passage that declares this very same thing. Turn with me to Philippians 2 and lets read verses 6-11.
APPLICATION: Orient your whole life towards God. Make everything in your life say, “To God be!” First Corinthians 10:31 tells us, “Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” Do it ALL. Everything is oriented towards God to glorify Him. As a thought exercise here are two questions. Can you name one thing in your life that you have oriented towards God? And second, can you name one thing that you are currently NOT orienting towards God?
APPLICATION: Everything is NOT oriented towards us. In the Garden, Adam and Eve would have turned down Satan’s temptation if they had kept themselves oriented towards God INSTEAD of themselves. All sin you can say is a reorientation. It is a reorientation of our desires, our commitment, priorities, our ambitions, our thoughts, our actions away from God and towards OURSELVES. The pro-choice slogan captures this perfectly: “My body my choice.” What is that but a declaration that that woman is the center of her universe, that she is the supreme and final god of her life (and the life in her womb)?
The correct slogan that would reflect a right orientation towards God would be “My body, God’s choice.” That’s what the Bible says. “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices…” Romans 12 says. “Do not offer your bodies as instruments of unrighteousness” Romans 6 says. “Each of you ought to learn how to control your bodies” 1 Thessalonians 4 says. First Corinthians 6 says “Honor God with your bodies. You are NOT your own, you were bought with a price.” My body, God’s choice.
Here’s the thing: our faith in Jesus Christ begins the proper orientation of our entire existence towards God and away from ourselves. Discipleship, growing in the faith, learning more of God’s Word in the Bible, committing more and more to what we learn, reshaping our lives to increasingly resemble Jesus, is all part of the process of greater orientation of ourselves to our God.
You orientation towards God in this day and age we live is going to come at a cost. When you are oriented towards God you will insist there are two and only two genders because “in the beginning God made them male and female.” Gender is not assigned at birth, it was formed at creation by God. You will insist, if you are oriented towards God, that a man is a man and a woman is a woman and that doesn’t change because of dysphoric feelings. Why? Because God MADE them male and female Genesis 2 says. You will insist that the abortion propoganda and industry is wicked if you are oriented towards God because that living human being in the womb is made in God’s image as Genesis 1 says, and because it is murder and God will demand an account for every life taken, as Genesis 9 says. You will insist, if you are oriented towards God, that same sex relationships are sin. And you will insist that sex outside of marriage, that adultery, that pornography are also sin.
EXCLUSIVE
God is worthy to be worshipped because He is the only God. Notice what Jude says, “To the ONLY God our Savior be….” He truly is the ONLY God. That is the message from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Jude actually gets at this not only here at the end of his letter, but also at the beginning. He said in verse 4, “….deny Jesus Christ our only Soveriegn and Lord.” Only. Our ONLY Sovereign and LORD is the one and only Jesus. God is exclusively God. Turn to Isaiah 43:10, 11; 44:6, 8; 45:18 with me. Then turn to 46:5 and then 8-9.
Each of us ought to declare God is God exclusively and make our lives reflect that.
APPLICATION: Reject obvious idolatry – Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. No true Christian would say that Christianity is basically just the same as other religions.
APPLICATION: Reject subversive idolatry. Subversive idolatry is people who claim the label Christian but the Jesus they imagine and describe for the rest of us is clearly not the Jesus of the Bible. Jude’s letter is warning about such “Christians” and their subversive idolatry. Paul was too when he told the Corinthians that he was worried “[people] come to you and preach a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached…[and] you put up with it…!” (2 Cor 11:4)
- Jehovah’s Witnesses say Jesus is not God. A different Jesus.
- The Chosen creator, Dallas Jenkins, has stated that his Mormon friends worship the same Jesus as he does: I stand by the statement that those friends of mine that I’m referring to absolutely love the same Jesus that I do” Mormons believe Jesus was the product of the divine father and divine mother procreating. All gods in the mormon cult are made of flesh and blood. Jesus became God after ascending to heaven and made the way for his “siblings” to also become gods. This helps you understand the mormon doctrine, in their own words, “As man is God once was, as God is man may become.” Another Jesus.
- Even though he wasn’t a Mormon, Martin Luther King could’ve been, as his beliefs were very similar. God bless that man for his civil rights achievements, but not his false brand of Christianity. He wrote that Jesus was not God, but that through a devoted life to God he became divine. He also that all of us can through the same effort do the same. In his seminary essay “The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus,” he called the view that Jesus was the eternal Word, the, 2nd Person of the Trinity, who became flesh, “inadequate” and an “insuperable difficulty” for “modern minds.” Rejecting the biblical, orthodox view that Jesus is the eternal God who took on human flesh, King goes on to explain how the “liberal tradition” (of which he represented) could find any divine aspect of who Jesus was. His explanation was Jesus was a man who became divine because of his “warmest devotion” to God and “his absolute dependance upon God” his “filial consciousness” with God and who “completely opened his life to the influence of the divine spirit.” Jesus’ divinity was something he achieved through his own hard work. His heresy becomes even more full blown when he says this: “The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit of God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.
- This is why you will find that many social justice “Christians” ultimately reject the inspiration and/or authority of Scripture. The result is that the authority for who Jesus is, is their own imaginations of what they want him to be.
The point is this: it is all idolatry. But the subversive kind, the kind that claims to have Jesus but it is a different Jesus than the one who is in the Bible that the Apostles preached and whose identity has been preserved for us on the pages of Scripture. They are all worshipping a different Jesus. Their view of Jesus is not informed by the Scriptures. But it is worse than that, they are informed and know what the Bible says but they consciously reject it because they don’t like what it says.
- An example regarding sexuality where a false Christian teacher teaches a different Jesus than the one in the Bible is right here in our own town, Jared Cramer says, “Because no matter who God created you to be – straight, gay, bi, trans, or any of the other diverse and beautiful orientations and identities out there –.” Cramer categorically rejects Christ as He is revealed in Scripture.
- James Cone, the apostle of Black Liberation Theology, adored and loved by so many Social Justice Christians today, says this “I accept Delores Williams’s rejection of theories of atonement as found in Western theological tradition and in uncritical proclamation of the cross in many black churches. I find nothing redemptive about suffering in itself. The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross.” A more idolatrous view of Jesus you would be hard pressed to find. Jesus is not a Savior who accomplished our salvation in his suffering at the cross. This view pervades many – if not most -l informed and ardent social justice “Christians.” It is not a rare view.
I say all this because the Church is inundated with false teachers and false teachings. False Christians and false Christian teachers reshape Jesus to be a reflection of who they are. They cherry pick bible verses out of context and manipulate Scripture to support their unbiblical views. This kind of idolatry is much more pervasive and dangerous to the Church because it all flies under the label “Christian.”
Which let me warn anyone who would promote sin while using the name of God or His Son. That is one of the most blasphemous things you can do. The commandment “Do not use the LORD’s name in vain” is something God takes seriously. And if while saying “God” in a casual way like “Oh my God” is problematic, it is nothing compared to taking the name of the Lord and using it to promote sin. Making people think God approves of sin by using his name to endorse it when the reality is that He is going to judge sin is an even greater sin than the sexual sin being promoted. It is not just worshiping another god, it is stealing the true God’s name and holy reputation to endorse wickedness.
God is the only God. He is God exclusively. But it means more than that. It means more than just that He is the only God who exists and no other gods exist. It also means that He is who He is and He has told us who He is and what He is like and what He thinks in the Scriptures. And so His exclusiveness also means that He is exclusively the way He is. He will not be reimagined or reinvented to fit the zeitgeist of any time period. He is God, and He is who he is as God, before all ages, now and forevermore. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Everyone who belongs to the faith will confess this.
CONCLUSION
Why do you worship God? Because He is worthy to be worshiped. The Magi came from the other side of the world with extremely expensive gifts and bowed down to the child Jesus when they saw Him – because they knew He was worthy. The Apostle Paul spoke of the worthiness of Jesus in Philippians 3:7-8 when He said, “But whatever was to my gain I know consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.” God declared through Isaiah the prophet, “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? Is there any god besides me? No, apart from me there is no God.”
He is worthy of us orienting absolutely everything in our lives towards worshiping Him and submitting to His Lordship. He is also worthy because He is, always has been, and always will be exclusively the One and Only God. He is God and other than Him there is no other. Worship Him, EFC!