Saturday, December 1, 2018

Worship


DEVOTION
PSALMS
WORSHIP
Ps 99
99:1
The LORD reigns, let the nations tremble; he sits enthroned between the cherubim, let the earth shake. 2 Great is the LORD in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations. 3 Let them praise your great and awesome name — he is holy.
4 The King is mighty, he loves justice — you have established equity; in Jacob you have done what is just and right. 5 Exalt the LORD our God and worship at his footstool; he is holy.
6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel was among those who called on his name; they called on the LORD and he answered them. 7 He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud; they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.
8 O LORD our God, you answered them; you were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds.   9 Exalt the LORD our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the LORD our God is holy.
NIV

Just a reminder of all that God did for the people of Israel, yet it was for the purpose of sending his Son to them to be their Messiah. What would have happened if all of Israel would have accepted Jesus as the Messiah? How would the plan for the rest of the world played out? The offer of salvation to the Gentiles was not just because Israel rejected Christ. John records that fact in the singular most quoted verse in the people. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting last. 3;16. The whosoever is us, we are the ones spoken about in the Holy Scriptures. So then the Lord reigns in our heart, the nation of believers. He is high and lifted up. We lift him up in our hearts. We cannot actually lift the lord up for is it the Lord and is lifted up by his own word. But this lifting up is in a metaphorical sense. We exalt him, we praise him and his great and awesome name. Who would ever dare to claim God is not holy? Yet, how quickly we get distracted from exalting the Lord. How easily we allow our human nature to rule over our heavenly nature. Yes, we are human, but just as we abide the human law we live under, should we not abide, even more, under the heavenly law we live under? However forgiving God is and although we are in Christ, we still need to live in a manner befitting our position, a child of God. We are representing God to the rest of the world. We are part of his plan now. We are part of his active rather than passive plan. It is not just in church that we make that effort to exalt him and worship at his footstool. We need to worship at his holy mountain 24/7/365. That is all the time, without ceasing, for he his holy and is due all our worship, with an undivided heart, undivided attention span. Being a believer, living as a believer is our new nature, the one we were reborn as. So we will exalt the Lord, we will live up to our name, our title, our position in Christ. We will worship the Lord God, not just when it is convenient, but all the time in every situation we are in. We will worship the Lord God because he is holy.  

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