Adoring Our Savior

Advent  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  41:53
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I know Christmas is over, but we shouldn’t so quickly depart from celebrating the joy of our saviors birth. For in the advent season we find ourselves today covering the topic of adoration.

What is Adoration?

Many times in scripture the verb adoration is replaced with worship. For Adoration is giving honor or reverence to something or someone.
The reason certain things have worth is becasue we ascribe value to them, such as the american dollar or bit coin.
They have value becasue we have ascribed value to them.
Their value is subjective
Then, there is God. His value isn’t subjective but objective. For He is the creator or heaven and earth. In Him we live move and have our being. It He ceased to think of us, we would cease to be.
His value is objective and inherent.
Things that have subjective value, when we adore them, we are placing value or worth on them.
God on the other hand, when we adore Him, we are not adding to or giving Him value. We are simply beginning to recognize His majesty and worshipping Him for how glorious He is.
What is adoration? When we speak of God, it is giving Him the glory that He is due according to the magnificence of His nature.

How Do We Adore?

When we seek to ascribe value to something, what do we do?
Posture is a large part of adoration.
You see cultures giving adoration to idol by kissing them.
God says we aren’t to make graven images, so that crosses that out.
Bowing or kneeling. Being prostrate before God in an act of worship.
Sometimes this would also include removing your shoes, for the place that your entering in holy ground.
You will remember when there is a Christophony (an appearance of Christ) in the Old Testament, such as the burning bush or the commander of the armies of the Lord. Those drawing near are told to remove their shoes, for you are treading on holy ground.
Bringing offerings
In Israel, they would bring a sacrifice or bring money to the temple.
Taking time to learn about God and serve Him with your life is another way of showing adoration.
God even said that Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”
God see’s desiring to spend time with Him, to learn about Him as a kind of sacrifice.
It ascribes worth to God becasue He means enough for you to study about Him; and it is a sacrifice of Your time.
As Christians, our lives are to be living sacrifices. Every thing we do is to give God glory and honor.
That includes a repentance of sin.
Psalm 51:15-17
Psalm 51:15–17 ESV
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
God desires us to be broken by our sin.
To feel sorrow for breaking His commandments.
This means that adoring God in the way that He loves is by repenting of sin and living correctly before Him. (to live correctly before Him, you must know Him and what pleases Him)
Our worship coming out our fingertips
Another way we adore God, is by doing all things for His glory.
All of Christ for all of life.
I don’t care if it’s evangelizing to the homeless, homeschooling your children, to cleaning porto potties, are you doing it to the best of your ability for the glory of God!
Do our lives reflect that we serve God, or do we look like the rest of the world?

Why Do We Adore?

Adoration naturally follows a conviction of the presence of God. (1 Cor 14:25)
If we believe in God. That the creator of the universe came to pay for our sins, how can we help but adore Him?
If you believe that the one who by His very word created galaxies, and He loves you (yes we speak about Him loving the whole world but) He loves you individually, how can you not adore Him?
Therefore, if your life doesn’t reflect adoration…you don’t truly believe.
Do we see Jesus for who He is?
Does the reality of God coming to earth sink in?
Does the reality that because you love God, that means He first loved you, does that sink in?

Luke 2:22-35

We find ourselves 8 days after Jesus had been born, He is now being brought to the temple.
v.25

The consolation of Israel

The comfort, the encouragement for Israel.
Here’s a man, probably advanced in years, though it doesn’t tell us how advanced.
He is waiting for what God had promised he would reveal to this man, the consolation of Israel.
He loves God, and He is excited to see God work in His nation!
May people start their walk of faith well.
They join bible studies, get involved in church.
How many people end well?
We need to be Christians who have a love for the word of God, a love for the people of God.
We need to be believers who end well.
Here was Simeon, ready to end well, he was just waiting for the hope of Israel, the messiah.
Understand that this phrase draws attention to the Jewish hope of the messiah.
The messiah would be the one to bring comfort to the people.
Not just from their physical travails, but also from their spiritual.
For they were able to temporary washing through their sacrifices. But they knew that it didn’t make them right with God.
For the sacrifices were only meant to point to the holy one who was still to come.

Song of adoration

This song is praising God for always fulfilling what He has promised.
It was more than just for Israel, also for the gentiles.
Isaiah 49:5-6
The messiah, was to bring Jacob, bring Israel back to God.
However v.34 we see that many in Israel will fall becasue of Him.
For Jesus is a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense.
In Isaiah 49:6, He is a light for the nations.
What God is doing is far greater than just in Israel.
He is using Jesus to redeem the nations.
Beloved, that is us!
Simeon laying eyes on this child is so overcome with joy becasue God would draw the world to Himself through this child, and this child would be the glory of Israel.
For in all the ways that Israel had failed, Christ would succeed.
Where Israel had complained in the wilderness for not having food. Jesus knew that man does not live by bread alone.
Israel tested the Lord when they thirsted at Massah. Jesus wouldn’t put the Lord to the test.
Israel worshipped other gods. Jesus knew you worship only the Lord and serve him alone.
He fulfilled where Israel failed, and by doing so was the glory of Israel.

My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation

This was the cause of the worship.
It hadn’t been fulfilled yet…but God is sovereign, therefore their is no chance He will fail to do what He had promised.
This child was proof that all that had been spoken was at hand.
Simeon was praising God, becasue He trusted in Him.
He knew that God would fulfill all that He had said.
Have you realized the greatness of the salvation of the Lord?
This time of year, as we celebrate the Lord coming to earth, and as Spurgeon put it:
The great object of our Lord’s coming here was not to live, but to die. He appeared, not so much to subdue sin by His teaching, or to manifest goodness, or to perfect an example for us to imitate, but “to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” -Charles Spurgeon
This is why we celebrate the birth of Jesus.
The day when the one who would be the sacrifice for our sins, was born.
When we consider the glory of the incarnation, do we realize, the salvation of God has come.
Does that knowledge move you to worship?
We can get into a repetitive nature, and it’s important to break out of that, and to realize that we are to be worshipping God for who all who He is, and what He has done.
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