Take your Bibles, if you will,
and open them to the book of Genesis.
We have been continuing our study
concerning worship,
and we’re going to be continuing that this
evening.
We’re gonna jump back into the Old
Testament.
We spent a little bit of time,
a couple of weeks in the New Testament.
We’re gonna spend a little bit more time
in the Old Testament looking
at some matters related to worship.
And ~ then we’ll deal with a few things.
But as we get into that, we’re actually
going to begin with some time
~ spent looking at some of the altars that
are in Genesis.
And then also ~ looking at some things
related to God’s sovereignty.
But let’s begin with a word of prayer and
then we’ll get into our study.
Our gracious Father in Heaven,
we come before you grateful for the day
you’ve blessed us with,
mindful of those who are ill,
those who are struggling with physical
maladies,
~ those who are
facing upcoming procedures and those who
are trying to recover from
~ diseases and and difficulties.
Lord, we pray that your healing hand be
upon them and that their health
and that their abilities be retained back
to their desired state.
Lord, we pray that you be with those who
are from this congregation that deal with
chronic disease and and hardship.
And Lord, we pray that you
Help them as well. Lord, we pray that you
be with this nation and this state.
We pray that you be with this region,
this city that we belong to. May we have
open doors of opportunity.
May the gospel have an influence
throughout this area and throughout this
country
and throughout the world. May we always
stand boldly for the truth.
And Lord, may we be firm in standing.
To say that we ought to worship you and
you alone.
Lord, we pray that you will forgive us
when we sin and fall short of your glory.
We pray that you will bless the work of
our hands and the labor
of this congregation and the opportunities
that it has.
And all of this we pray and ask in Jesus’
name.
Amen.
As you get into the book of Genesis,
you find in the beginning of chapter four,
we’ve noticed this briefly, the events of
Cain and Abel and the worship that
is offered there. Cain will offer of the
what?
Fruit of the ground. Abel will offer what?
All right, the firstborn of the flock.
~ now, one point to make, we’re not gonna
spend a lot of time dwelling
on that since we’ve already looked at it,
but one point to be made ~ is you find in
verse three
of Genesis four, and in the process of
time it came to pass that Cain brought
an offering of the fruit of the ground to
the Lord.
The one of the contrasts that we see in
the text between
What is stated about Abel’s sacrifice and
what is stated about Cain’s
is actually found in verse 4. So
generically being stated,
Cain offered of the fruit of the ground.
But when you notice verse 4, Abel also
brought of the firstborn
of the flock and of their fat,
and the Lord respected Abel and his
offering.
If you were to just examine the text.
You would say, okay, well, we could look
at the comparison or
the contrast of offerings. Cain offered of
the fruit of the ground.
Abel offered of the f ~ of the flock.
Cain, it doesn’t state whether his was the
first fruit of
the ground or not. Abel, it specifically
states that it
was the firstborn of the flock.
Track forward to the days of the Mosaic
Law,
and what does God require of the people?
The first of everything. All right,
turn to Exodus chapter twelve.
Exodus chapter 12, as the Israelites
are beginning to proceed or about to
proceed out of the land of Egypt,
there is the tenth and final plague,
which happens in chapter 11, and it is the
death of what?
The firstborn. In chapter 12,
you open up the text, and the Lord spoke
to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
saying,
This month shall be your beginning of
months,
and it shall be the first month of the
year to you.
Speak to all the children of Israel,
saying, On the tenth of this month every
man shall take for himself a lamb,
according to the house of his father,
a lamb for a household. And if the
household is too small for the lamb,
let him and his neighbor take to his
house,
let’s sorry, next to his house,
take it according to the number of the
persons.
According to each man’s need you shall
make your count for the lamb.
Your lamb shall be without blemish,
a male of the first year, you may take it
from the sheep or from the goats.
Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth
day of the same month,
then the whole assembly of the
congregation of Israel shall kill it at
twilight,
and they shall take some of the blood and
put it on the two doorposts,
and on the lintels of the house where they
eat it.
And they shall eat the flesh on that
night,
roasted in fire, and unleavened bread,
and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Do not eat it raw nor boiled with all at
all with water,
but roasted in fire, its head with its
legs and its entrails.
You shall let none of it remain until
morning,
and what remains of it until morning you
shall burn with fire,
and thus you shall eat it with your belt
on your waist,
your sandals on your feet, and your staff
in your hand,
so you shall eat it in haste. It is the
Lord’s Passover.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt
on that night,
and I will strike all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt,
both man and beast, and against all the
gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.
I am the Lord. Now the blood shall be a
sign for you on the houses where
you are, and when I see the blood I will
pass over you,
and the plague shall not be on you to
destroy you when I strike the land of
Egypt.
So this day shall be to you a memorial.
And you shall keep it as a feast to the
Lord throughout all your generations.
You shall keep it as a feast by
everlasting ordinance.
Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
On the first day you shall remove leaven
from your houses.
For whoever eats leavened bread from the
first day until the seventh day,
that person shall be cut off from Israel.
On the first day there shall be a holy
convocation.
On the seventh day there shall be a holy
convocation for you.
No manner of work shall be done on them,
but that which every one must ~ but that
which everyone must eat,
that only may be prepared for you.
So you shall observe the feast of
unleavened bread,
for on this day I have brought your armies
out of the land of Egypt.
Therefore you shall observe this day
throughout your generations
as an everlasting ordinance. In the first
month,
on the fourteenth day of the month at
evening,
you shall eat unleavened bread until the
twenty-first day of the month at evening.
For seven days no leaven shall be found in
your houses,
since whoever eats whoever eats what is
leavened,
that same person shall be cut off from the
congregation of Israel,
whether he is a stranger or a native of
the land.
You shall eat nothing leavened in all your
dwellings,
you shall eat unleavened bread.
Then Moses called for all the elders of
Israel and said to them,
Pick out and take lambs of yourself ~ for
yourselves according to your families,
and kill the Passover lamb.
And he gives them the instructions on what
they’re to do.
And verse 29 and 30, you have the death of
the firstborn.
Okay? As God brings this plague upon
Israel,
God institutes the Passover.
God creates the calendar for Israel all
over again.
Here’s the beginning of your year.
And in the beginning of your year,
on the tenth day, you’re going to do this.
And on this, the 14th day, you’re gonna do
this.
And on the 21st day, you’re going to do
this.
But it in the very first year,
the fundamental thing behind the Passover
was
the plague of the firstborn.
You step over to chapter 13, and God is
going
to consecrate the firstborn.
God is going to claim the firstborn of
Israel.
Forever. Notice chapter thirteen.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
Consecrate to me all the firstborn,
whatever opens the womb from the children
of Israel,
both of man and beast, it is what?
Mine. Mine.
God is going to tell Israel, your
firstborn child,
it’s mine. Your firstborn lamb is mine.
Firstborn cow, it’s mine. Your firstborn
of everything.
Ultimately, when you follow this through
to the Mosaic ordinances,
the firstborn of every field, the first
fruits.
Belong to the Lord. Matter of fact,
there will be a feast of first fruits.
God is going to tell Israel, the first of
everything is mine.
It’s always interesting me when people in
the religious world talk about tithing.
They’ll say, Well, God commanded a tithe.
That is technically accurate in the Mosaic
law,
except it ignores the majority of what God
commanded.
Because God commanded
The first. And God commanded a tenth.
And God commanded special feasts.
And God commanded other things.
When you start adding it up, God God
actually commanded about 25%
of everything that came out of Israel.
Okay? So when you start doing the math,
like, no, ~ you just went with the easiest
one to calculate because it’s
in the name. It’s called a tenth,
it’s a tithe. But God commanded way more.
than 10% when it comes to Israel.
Now, when you look at this text,
you find an interesting detail with
Genesis 3 that what
God respected in what Abel did is Abel
offered
the first thing.
Abel, as he worships,
will offer to God what comes first.
And if he gives to God what comes first,
what is Abel by a token of doing that
saying about himself?
That God comes first. Because generally
speaking,
you’re going to give the thing that comes
first to whoever matters most.
So if you keep what is first and you give
God what is last,
then who’s most important? You are.
Because you gave to yourself first.
It’s one of the principles because we’re.
All of this discussion is not just to get
a history of worship,
it’s to establish what are the principles
that we worship by.
Well, when you think about the offering
that we give on the first day of the week,
should we be setting aside our offering
and setting aside what we offer
to the Lord as the first thing or what’s
left over?
I know when I present it that way,
everybody says, well, the first thing.
But do we actually do that? When we sit
down and look at the money that comes into
our lives, do we go, all right,
here’s the Lord’s. Now I gotta make
everything else work because
the Lord’s area is not going to get cut.
Now, step over, if you will,
to 2 Corinthians.
Paul, as he is writing to the church at
Corinth
Is going to discuss this very idea in the
discussion of what
he will say concerning.
The people in Macedonia, in that they not
only give first to God,
they give more than they could give to
God.
Second Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 1
Moreover,
brethren, we make known to you the grace
of God bestowed on churches of Macedonia,
that in great trial of affliction and
abundance of their joy,
their deep poverty abounded in riches of
their liberality.
For I bear them witness that according to
their ability.
Yes, and beyond their ability,
they were f freely willing, imploring us
with much urgency that
we should receive the gift and the
fellowship of the ministering of the
saints,
not only as we had hoped, but they first
gave themselves to the Lord,
and then to us by the will of God.
Paul says as he’s calling to mind what the
Macedonian Christians have done,
is he’s writing this letter from Macedonia
to the churches in Corinth.
He’s writing to them and says,
Hey, I you need to know what the church at
Macedonia did.
First of all, you need to know their
state.
They’re in deep poverty. As ~ as Jim
McGuigan would say over in
the book of Revelation, about one of the
churches that’s described as being poor
in the book of Revelation.
There’s two words in the Greek for poor.
There’s the one who’s poor, and then
there’s the people who are poor.
They have nothing. They don’t have a they
don’t have
a simple lack. They are destitute.
This idea is destitute. And yet Paul is in
their presence,
and Paul is telling them concerning the
state of the churches in Judea,
and Paul is telling them about the
willingness of the Corinthians to give,
and the Macedonians beg him. They plead
with him to accept their gift.
Paul says is essentially saying,
listen, we would have just reflect
rejected it out of right because they
don’t have
anything to give.
But given that they didn’t have anything
to give,
what they did is they gave of themselves
first.
They said, Well, we don’t have anything.
But we’ll go get something,
and then we’ll give it. So here you have a
group of people
who are already destitute, and they go get
something so they can give
it before they ever worry about their own
state.
This idea of putting God first.
Turn over first Corinthians chapter
sixteen.
First Corinthians chapter 16. Now
concerning the collection for the saints,
as I have given order to the churches of
Galatians,
so you must do also. On the first day of
the week,
let each one of you lay something aside,
storing up as he may prosper, that there
be no collections when I come.
Now, as Paul gave the instruction to the
Corinthians preceding the thing that he’s
writing about in Second Corinthians,
when he gave the initial instruction,
he says, All right.
Corinthians. I’ve given the churches to
the Order of Galatia.
I’ve told them what they’re supposed to be
doing in regards to this gift
to benefit the churches of Judea.
He says you collect it on the first day of
the week and you collect
it according to what?
As you have prospered. Now tie what you
have from
the Old Testament to what you have in the
New Testament.
God says the firstborn of everything is
mine.
What if you didn’t have anything born?
You have anything to give?
No. Wha what if the first ~ fruit of all
of your field belongs to the Lord and your
field doesn’t produce anything?
You have anything to give?
No. There are circumstances and there are
times where God’s
expectation is zero.
Because ten percent of zero is zero.
All right. We do the math on that one
pretty easy.
And this was an interesting discussion
that that came up when we were
in the school of preaching because one of
the instructors asked the question,
Is it ever appropriate on the first day of
the week to not give?
And the answer is yes. When you’ve not
prospered.
Because what God is saying is,
you give to me first. Now,
what we have to be careful about is when
we look at our bank account and go,
well, I ~ I I obligated myself to the
bank,
and I obligated myself to the company that
sells the boat,
and I obligated myself to the company that
sells the car,
and I obligated myself to the
To the company that sells the internet,
and I obligated myself to the company that
sells the cell phone.
So as a result of that, I don’t have
anything to give to the Lord.
That’s not gonna work out. Because what
you did is you said,
Well, the house is important and the boat
is important and the car
is important and the cell phone’s
important,
the internet’s important, but the Lord
needs to get what’s left.
Okay?
So as we consider going all the way from
Genesis 3 all the way forward,
there’s this fundamental idea in what God
says
is respected and acceptable when it comes
to worship.
And it is what is first.
Now, yes, Ava.
Absolutely. We’re we’re headed back to
Exodus thirteen because one
of the things that you saw already in the
text that we read in Exodus twelve
is that God said, Hey, everybody’s not
gonna give the same thing.
Because not everything is appropriate at
the same level.
He already mentioned, you know what,
for the number of some families,
they should give a lamb by themselves.
But there are other families that by
reason of number it is not appropriate
for them to give a lamb by themselves.
They and their neighbor can combine
together to give.
Okay? So in this, you have
God understanding circumstance.
Over in 1 Corinthians chapter 16,
Paul understands circumstance.
Over in 2 Corinthians chapter 8,
God and Paul both in in the writing of
this to the church
at Corinth are understanding circumstance.
But the principle behind the giving
is a manifestation of an attitude that
says,
God’s going to come first, as opposed to
God’s going to come last.
Turn ~ back to chapter 13 of Exodus.
In Exodus chapter thirteen
~ we’re going to start in verse eleven.
It shall be when the Lord brings you into
the land of the Canaanites,
as he swore to you and your fathers and
gives it to you.
Now, first thing to note, when does this
ordinance begin?
When they get into the land of Canaan.
This is not an ordinance that begins at
Mount Sinai.
This is not an ordinance that begins in a
forty year wilderness wandering.
This is an ordinance that begins when they
receive the land
God had promised them. Okay? So worth
pointing out,
but there are going to be some things that
occur along the way beforehand.
He says, It shall be the case when you
bring when the Lord brings you into
the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to
you and your fathers,
and gives it to you, that you shall set
apart to the Lord all that opens the womb.
That is, every firstborn that comes from
an animal which you have,
the males shall be the Lord’s.
But every firstborn of a donkey you shall
redeem with a lamb.
And if you will not redeem it,
then you shall break its neck.
And all the firstborn of man among your
sons you shall redeem.
So it shall be when your son asks you in
time to come,
saying, What is this? That you shall say
to him,
By strength of hand, the Lord brought us
out of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage. And it came
to pass when Pharaoh
was stubborn about letting us go,
that the Lord killed all the firstborn in
the land of Egypt,
both the firstborn of man and the
firstborn of beast,
therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all.
All males that open the womb, but all the
firstborn of my sons I redeem,
and it shall be as a sign on your hand and
as frontlets between your eyes,
for by strength of hand the Lord brought
us out of Egypt.
So God is going to essentially say,
firstborn of everything, beast of burden,
or one of your own children, if it’s a
firstborn male,
it belongs to me. Now
As you track forward in the text,
you’re going to find that God is going to
offer to Israel a substitute.
What is going to be the substitute for the
firstborn of every tribe?
That’s correct. The Levites. Essentially,
what is going to happen is God is going to
claim the Levitical tribe as his tribe.
So the Levites are going to be the
substitute.
And so every year, essentially,
what they were to do is they were to
number the number of Levites.
And then they were to number the people.
And they were to basically pay the
difference between the Levites and
the rest of the people.
So that the Levites stood as the
redemption of the firstborn.
But as we bring these thoughts to mind,
consider that God is saying,
the first belongs to me.
And you have that principle highlighted
highlighted already
in Genesis chapter four. It can is
consistently true.
All the way through the Old and the New
Testament.
Now I want to spend just a little bit of
time in the book of Isaiah.
We’re gonna begin in Isaiah chapter six,
and we’re going to consider the idea
of God’s sovereignty. When you think about
worship,
and when you think about this idea of
giving the first to the Lord,
someone might come along and say,
Well, why? I’m not an Israelite,
and God didn’t save my family out of
Egyptian bondage,
so why should I give the first to the
To the Lord. And the answer comes from who
God is.
It comes from the sovereignty of God.
~ that idea of a sovereign.
What what is a sovereign in a national
perspective?
Alright, something that stands on its own.
It generally speaking, you would be
considering even either a government
or a king or a queen. The sovereign is the
ruler over that
nation. Okay? They stand on their own,
and everyone else is subject to them.
That’s what we’re talking about.
Isaiah highlights in a number of passages
the sovereignty of.
The exclusive rule of God.
In Isaiah chapter six, beginning in verse
one,
we read, In the first year that King
Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
high and lifted up, and the train of his
robe filled the temple.
And there and above it stood Seraphim.
Each one had six wings, with two he
covered his face,
with two he covered his feet.
And with two he flew. And one cried to
another and said,
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
There’s a song that we sing that’s in our
psalm books.
Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty. When you examine that
song,
that song
Pertains to, it derives itself from Isaiah
and other passages,
but it pertains to the sovereignty of God.
The declaration from the seraphim here is
there’s nobody else like
God. There’s nobody that’s comparable to
God.
There’s nobody who is above God.
Notice what we read.
And the posts of the door were shaken by
the voice of him who cried out,
and the house was filled with smoke.
So I said to me, Woe is me, for I am
undone,
because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips,
for my eyes have seen what? The king.
Isaiah in division,
as he sees this, he sees himself and he
says,
Woe is me!
Now, when Isaiah says this,
do you think Isaiah is saying,
you know what? I I I’m really just I’m not
a good Israelite.
I I I don’t do what the Lord says.
Generally speaking, I live a pretty
rebellious life against the Lord.
You think that’s what he means?
No. What Isaiah is saying is I’m looking
at myself and I’m looking at the Lord,
and we don’t compare.
I’m looking at his holiness and I don’t
match up.
I look at myself and I I realize I
am imperfect in comparison to someone who
is entirely perfect.
And Isaiah will proclaim himself to be a
man of unclean lips,
dwelling in the midst of a people of
unclean lips.
Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
having in his hand alive coal which had
taken which he had taken from
the tongs from the altar, and he touched
my mouth with it and said,
Behold this has touched your lips,
your iniquity is taken away, and your sin
purged.
As the Seraphim comes from the throne of
God,
he goes to the altar because the remember
the picture is happening in the temple.
Okay? So the if you were to try and
envision what Isaiah is seeing,
Isaiah is seeing in the vision,
here’s the temple, and here’s the place by
the way,
here’s the place in the holiest of holies
in the temple.
Here’s the throne of God. What represented
the throne of God that
had the seraphim over it in the temple in
Israel?
The Ark of the Covenant. When you think
about the Ark of the Covenant,
you have a box overlaid with gold with a
lid.
On the top of the lid you had the mercy
seat,
and over the mercy seat you had the
seraphim.
And so Isaiah in the vision is seeing the
temple,
not Israel’s temple. He’s seeing the
Lord’s temple.
He’s seeing the dwelling place of God.
He’s seeing the throne room of God.
Very reminiscent for those of us who are
in the Revelation class
of Revelation chapter 4 and chapter 5.
Isaiah sees the temple of God and he sees
the throne room of God and
he sees the seraphim, and the seraphim
flies from above the
throne of God and goes to the altar.
Takes one of the coals of the altar and
puts it on the mouth of Isaiah.
And he says, Essentially, you’re correct,
you’re right. Your lips are unclean.
But now I’ve taken your iniquity away.
I have made your lips holy.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?
As Isaiah is seeing this vision,
he hears a proclamation, he hears a
question from the Lord.
I’ve got a message, I need to send it
through somebody.
Who can I get to go for us?
Then I said, Here am I.
Send me. Another one of the songs in our
songbook.
Here am I. Send me. But Isaiah sees
the Lord in the vision.
And his immediate reaction is this
individual is
of such great holiness and of such great
power and such great position.
I am not worthy to be in his presence.
I am not worthy. My people are not worthy.
And none of us can open our mouth and
speak his words because of how holy it is.
And yet God will make the lips of Isaiah
holy.
And then God will say, Now I’m going to
use your lips.
Verse 9, he said, Go and tell this people,
keep on hearing, but do not understand.
Keep on seeing.
But do not perceive.
Now, Jesus used a phrase over and over and
over again,
He that has ears to hear,
let him hear. The message
to Isaiah is go cause their ears to be
closed.
You’re going to speak the message,
and they’re not going to listen.
You’re going to proclaim the holy message
from the Lord,
and they’re not going to hear you.
He says, Make the heart of this people
dull and their ears heavy,
shut their eyes, lest they see with their
eyes and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart and return
and be healed.
Wait a minute, Lord. Don’t you want them
to repent?
He did.
But the Lord knew the heart of the men.
And the Lord, knowing the heart of men,
knew that they weren’t going to repent.
But he was going to give them the message
anyway.
So in Isaiah 6,
you have the beginning of this picture,
and it’s all throughout Isaiah,
but we’re going to jump over to Isaiah
chapter 40.
You have the beginning picture of the
sovereignty of God.
So Isaiah chapter forty, we find more of
this picture.
In Isaiah chapter forty, verse one,
we read, Comfort, yes, comfort my people,
says the Lord. Speak comfort to Jerusalem
and cry out to her that
her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is
pardoned,
for she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
prepare the way of the Lord, make straight
in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill brought low,
the crooked places shall be made straight,
and the rough places smooth, the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Now Jesus is going to pray.
Appropriately and rightfully connect this
to the work of Elijah sorry
of John the Baptist. But Isaiah is told
to comfort Israel, and here’s the comfort
that is pronounced:
Israel, you’ve suffered, you’ve gone
through the hardship,
you’ve gone through exile, you’ve been
brought back,
you’ve received double for your sins.
Now I’m going to send myself.
To you. But given that the king is going
to show up,
there are some preparations that need to
be made.
There was day and time where quite often
politicians would travel
by railroad and they’d get on the train
and they’d make stops.
Quite often those stump speeches would be
made from the back of
the train where everybody could see them.
But there would, in many places where said
politician was popular,
there would be banners and preparations
and there’d be decorations
and everybody would be waiting to receive
the person
who is this important person.
You can think of the receptions that occur
down the streets of cities when
the team that
Is from that city wins the national
championship of this sport or that sport.
You can think back to the ticker tape
parades at the end of World War II.
You can think of all of these things that
help us to visualize what Isaiah
is being told here. What God tells Isaiah
is:
I’m coming through, and in preparation of
me arriving,
here’s what you need to do: every valley
needs to be lifted up.
And every mountain needs to be brought
low.
I need a straight path.
In preparation for my arrival.
Now, that in actuality,
in fulfillment, was going to be John the
Baptist preaching in the wilderness
and all Israel coming out to hear him.
And what did John tell all Israel
concerning who the Messiah was?
But it wasn’t him.
He was the voice of one crying in the
wilderness.
Make ready for the Lord.
Verse 6 The voice said,
Cry out, and he said, What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness
is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades away,
but the breath of the Lord bl because the
breath of the Lord blows on it,
surely the people are grass, the grass
withers,
the flower fades. But the word of our God
speaks.
Stands for ever.
God makes it clear I’m king,
I’m sovereign, I’m holy,
and when I speak, there’s nothing that
can stop my word coming to pass.
Interestingly, when you jump over to John
chapter 1,
what is it that John describes Jesus as?
The Word. In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him, and without
Him was not anything made that was made.
You get this picture of sovereignty.
God says, I’m King, I’m on the throne,
I’m holy, and I’m sending my word to you.
Okay? Go forward to chapter 42.
In Isaiah forty two.
In a prophecy concerning the Messiah,
we read, Behold, my servant whom I uphold,
my elect one in whom my soul delights.
I have put my spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the
Gentiles.
He will not cry out, nor raise his voice,
nor cause his feet to be heard in the
streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and smoking flax he will not quench.
He will bring forth justice.
For truth, he will not fail nor be
discouraged till he has established
justice
in the earth, and the coastland shall wait
for his law,
thus says the God, the Lord, who created
the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread forth the earth, and that which
comes from it,
who gives breath to the people on it,
and spirit to those who walk on it,
I the Lord have called you in
righteousness,
and will hold your hand.
I will keep you and give you as a covenant
to the people,
as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind
eyes,
to bring out prisoners from the prison,
for those who sit in darkness from the
prison house.
I am the Lord, that is my name,
and my glory I will not give to another,
nor my praise to carved images.
Behold, the former things have come to
pass,
and new things I declare, before they
spring forth,
I tell you of them.
Sing to the Lord a new song, and his
praise from the ends of the earth.
You who go down to the sea and all that is
in it,
you coast lands and you inhabitants of
them,
let the wilderness and its cities lift up
their voices,
the villages that Kedar inhabits,
let the inhabitants of Selah sing,
let them shout from the top of the
mountains,
let them give glory to the Lord,
and declare his praise in the coastlands.
The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man,
he shall stir up his zeal
Like a man of war he shall cry out,
yes shout aloud, he shall prevail against
his enemies.
I have held my peace a long time.
I have been still and my r and restrained
myself.
Now I will cry like a woman in labor,
I will pant and gasp at once, and I will
lay waste the mountains and hills
and dry up all their vegetations,
I will make the rivers coastlands,
and I will dry up the pools.
I will bring the blind by a way they did
not know.
I will lead them in paths they have not
known.
I will make darkness light before them and
crooked places straight.
These things I will do for them and not
forsake them.
They shall be turned back. They shall be
greatly ashamed.
Who trust in carved images, who say to the
molded images,
You are our gods.
As Isaiah prophesies concerning the
servant,
the one who the Lord said he would send on
his behalf,
the one who was the creator,
the one who God says, This is mine,
I am him. As he speaks concerning him,
he says, I want you to understand,
I don’t give my glory.
to anyone else. I don’t give my glory to
another.
But as Jesus is raised up out of that
watery grave of baptism
in the Jordan River by John the Baptist,
what occurs?
All right. You have the spirit descending
like a dove and a voice from heaven
saying, This is my son.
You go forward to the Mount of
Transfiguration.
There on the mount, you hear,
This is my beloved son,
hear you him.
And that is in direct response
to Peter saying, We need to build an altar
to Moses and to Elijah.
And to Jesus, who were all present there
on the Mount of Transfiguration,
and God says, no, no, no, you don’t.
Because I don’t give my glory to anybody
else.
I didn’t give my glory to Elijah.
I didn’t give my glory to Moses.
But him.
He is my glory. Jesus said,
When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the
Father.
All right, so as we examine this idea of
sovereignty and as we examine this idea
of worship, we understand there’s this
core idea that
God establishes I’m unique.
God isn’t like anybody else.
And no one else is like God. He is king of
God.
He is holy, he is sovereign, he is that
which should be worshipped,
and no one else should. And so when he
demands the first,
he’s demanding what is his. And when we
refuse it,
we’re stealing what is his. And we need to
be mindful as we consider.
How we worship and how we involve
ourselves in worship that
we are not the focus of worship.
He is. And we need to have more times and
more occasions where
we sit back and have the same mindset as
Isaiah,
woe is me. For I’m in the presence of God,
and I am not perfect.
But through his work I am made holy.
Okay? Thank you for your
