Do you practice “PRAISING God in your personal prayer life? One of the things I practice and urge believers to do is intentionally incorporate praising God at the beginning of any and all prayers. How do you do that? Looking at the examples of the prayers of people in the Bible, like King David, Daniel, or others. Sometimes its just something that is wonderful about God you read and you turn it into a praise.
Or, you have what we have here today: a doxology. Verse 25 of Jude is a doxology, and therefore, it is a great blueprint for how to praise God. Our sermon title is The Worthiness of God: Ten Reasons God is Worthy. Consider these 10 things you can praise God for in your prayer life. Last week we saw God is worthy because everything is to be oriented towards Him and because He and He alone is God. There is no other God but Him and everything in all creation is to acknowledge Him. Let’s continue this week by moving into the 3rd reason God is worthy
SAVIOR
The third reason God is worthy is because He is our Savior. Jude says, “to the only God our Savior…” Here Jude has God the Father in mind, as he says glory is directed to God “through Jesus Christ.” This is just like 1 Timothy 2:3 when it says, “This is good and pleases God our Savior.”
But other NT passages call Jesus our Savior, like Titus 2:13 when it says “we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
APPLICATION: You must make Jesus your one and only Savior. Did you notice Jude says, “OUR Savior?” It’s not just that God is THE Savior. He is Savior regardless of whether people believe it or not. He has objectively brought and offered salvation to man. But when Jude says, “OUR Savior” its pointing out the fact that he and his readers are those who have responded to the Savior in faith. They have “made Him” their Savior by believing on Him. He is ours. He is yours! If not, then today you must make Him yours! There is only one Savior and his salvation is the only salvation. You must say with Isaiah 12:2, “Surely God is my salvation…the LORD, the LORD himself has become my salvation.” You must heed Acts 4:12 when it says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
APPLICATION: Reject all other so-called “salvations.” Reject political transformation salvations. Reject purpose for your life salvations. Reject I’ve gone to church my whole life salvations. Reject I’ve been baptized so I’m saved salvations. Reject I’ve lived a good life salvations. Reject I’m not as bad as others so God likes me salvations. Reject works based salvations.
Reject any and all other salvations and accept the one and the only salvation: the salvation that comes from God through Jesus Christ who died on the cross for your sins and you know because of Him your sins are forgiven and you are accepted by God and have eternal life because you have trusted in God’s Son, Jesus. He is your one and your only Savior and for you there is no other.
GLORY
Next, the fourth reason God is worthy is because of His glory. Now notice the wording, it is going to group 4 attributes of God together. It’s going to say that these 4 attributes are “to be to” God. These are 4 attributes that are to be directed to God, credited to Him, ascribed to Him, declared of Him. Basically it means He is to be recognized for these 4 attributes and worshipped because of them. They are glory, majesty, power and authority. First up is glory.
God is glorious. And He is to be acknowledged as and worshipped as glorious. How do we understand this word and idea of God’s glory? I’ve read it in commentaries as “magnificence,” “preeminence,” “moral splendor,” “radiance,” “exalted,” “dignity.”
I love all those. A powerful moment happened in Ezekiel 1. Turn there with me … read 22-28…(the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God) Notice how God wouldn’t show Moses a full-frontal view of His glory. There is something about God in His glory that makes Him unreachable in a sense. He’s utterly different, which touches on what theologians call His “otherness.” “To whom will you compare me?” God asked in Isaiah. God’s glory is His and His alone to experience. What I’m trying to convey is seen in Revelation 15:8 as well. No one besides God was allowed in the temple with God while His “glory-smoke” filled it. God’s glory is God’s glory alone. “I will not share my glory with another” God said through Isaiah.
APPLICATION: Seek God’s glory. Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” Seeking to behold the glory of God is the growing desire of the growing believer. Moses hid from God the first time they met in Exodus 3 with the burning bush. But after following God and serving Him Moses said in Exodus 33 to God, “Show me your glory.”
When a man is confronted by the glory of God for the first time it causes a man to want to hide because God’s glory makes man terrifyingly aware of his own sin. But as a man would fly away from God at first, that same awful glory becomes the very thing he wants to see and be near and live for whence the mercy of God removes his sin.
Maybe I can say it like this: the first encounter a sinner has with God’s glory is that he is convinced God is worthy to judge him for all his sin (I am a man of unclean lips! Isaiah cried). BUT! – as that God in His grace removes that man’s sin that man is transformed so that now he sees how worthy God is of all his worship. He is changed by the worship-inspiring glory of God.
Hebrews says Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory
MAJESTY
The fifth reason God is worthy to be worshipped is because of His Majesty. Jude says “To the only God our Savior be glory, MAJESTY…”
Majesty: God’s divine greatness, or as one theologian said, its God’s “awful transcendence.” Wow I love that one. Maybe I can throw my own description in here: God’s majesty is His surpassing and glorious aboveness over everything. His majesty makes you feel your own “belowness.” His majesty is the magnificence of his worthiness, and it makes you feel how unworthy of Him you are!
Turn with me to Isaiah 6…read
APPLICATION: Worship God for His Majesty! See Him for all His transcendent greatness – His aboveness!
POWER
The sixth reason why God is worthy, and we worship Him, is because of His power. Jude says, “To the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, POWER…”
It has the idea of “vigor,” “strength,” “might,” “force.” The idea for me is of God’s ableness, or maybe I would say his effectiveness. He can “do” – He can do what He whatever He wants to do. He can stop up the Jordan, split the Red Sea, bring life to a dead womb, raise the dead, make weak men victorious soldiers, multiply fishes and loaves, walk on water, drive out demons, bring water from rocks and bread from the sky and on and on and on. All miracles are demonstrations of His divine “vigor” and “force.”
Its not just what He can do, His strength is seen in that no one can contend with Him. “Who will hold my hand back?” God asked in the prophets. Or listen to how God spoke to Job, “Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his? If so, Job, then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty. Unleash the fury of your wrath, look at all who are proud and bring them low, look at all who are proud and humble them, crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together and shroud their faces in the grave. If you can do that then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.” (40:9-14).
APPLICATION: Do not trust in your ability. Trust in God and His ability. Worship Him in all His power. He is worthy!
AUTHORITY
The seventh reason we worship God, and the 7th reason He is worthy, is because of His authority. Jude says, “to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and AUTHORITY…” Here we see authority in that He possess the right and power to rule. His authority is the fact that He is the One who has the right to command, and He has the right to be obeyed. So God is worthy because He is the Supreme, Eternal Authority over all that is. It’s not just that He can force by His might people to submit to Him. It’s that He deserves by right to be submitted to. Who He is necessitates that all creation everywhere bow in obedience to His universal and unequalled authority.
APPLICATION: Turn from your own authority. The first step to salvation is to stop seeing yourself as the final authority for your own life. Turn from being Lord of yourself and turn to Jesus, THE LORD.
CONCLUSION:
Speaking of authority, Jesus said something profound and it ultimately led to His crucifixion. He claimed he had the authority to forgive sin. One day while teaching in a house, jam-packed with people, four young men brought their disabled friend to him, wanting him to be healed. Jesus told the disabled man, “Your sins are forgiven.” This enraged the Jewish leaders in attendance, because only God can forgive sins. Then Jesus looked at them and said, “So you know I have authority on earth to forgive sins….” And he turned and healed the man in front of everyone so that the man could walk. The point for everyone there was that if Jesus had divine authority to heal then He also had divine authority to forgive.
It was true for them back then. Its also true for you today.