Romans 1
These are the Apostle Paul’s
words as he writes to the Romans. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. called to be an apostle set apart
for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through
his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, who was descended
from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son
of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness by his
resurrection from the dead Jesus Christ, our Lord. through whom
we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience
of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including
you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those
in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. Grace
to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through
Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed
in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I
serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing
I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s
will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long
to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to
strengthen you. That is that we may be mutually
encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. I have often
intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented
in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as
among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to
Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and the foolishness
or foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel
to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel,
for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,
to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written,
the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who,
by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth. For what can be known
about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For
his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine
nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the
world in the things that have been made. So they are without
excuse. For although they knew God, they
did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became
futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men
and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them up in
the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies
among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God
for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the
creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave
them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural
relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men
likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed
with passions for one another. Men committing shameless acts
with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit
to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind. to
do what ought not be done. They were filled with all manner
of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers,
haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil,
disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they knew God’s decree
that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not
only do them but give approval to those who practice them. Amen. This is God’s holy and inspired
word. Let’s pray now and ask for his
help and blessing. Our great God, this is your holy
word to us. We give thanks that you speak.
We also give thanks that you do not speak without assisting
us. And so now by your Holy Spirit’s
power, give us eyes that see and ears that hear, hearts that
perceive, and give us hands and feet today that are willing,
whatever the cost, to go and to serve you faithfully in this
world that has turned its back upon you. This we pray in the
strong name of Jesus, our great Savior, whose blood has been
shed for us. Amen. Here is the question for
us. Why must we worship? Why must we worship? Now we can
answer that question in all sorts of ways. We can say it’s our
tradition. It’s something that we and our
ancestors have done for centuries, even millennia. And that would
be true. Why must we worship? Well, we
can say it’s the thing that is done on Sundays. It’s the thing
that for polite company or for Southern Americans or whatever
category you’d like to put yourself in, it’s the thing done. For
others, the answer may be, I’m checking the box. I’m simply
checking off the to-do list. I went to work. I took out the
trash. I went to church. I went to worship. Why must we worship? Some may
answer that question by saying it’s meritorious in attending
worship and participating in the rights of the church. I am
earning something, namely my way to heaven or a good standing
before almighty God. And others may still answer the
question with all kinds of different reasons. It could be that my
parents dragged me to church. That could be the answer from
some of the young people in our midst. Well, here’s the biblical
answer. Why must we worship? The simple answer, the biblical
answer, the most foundational theological answer is this. We
were made to worship. It’s In our DNA, it’s in us. There is a sense in us that we
must worship. The question is not whether or
not we will worship, but who or what will be the object of
our worship. And Romans chapter one tells
us very clearly. It tells us in plain terms that
we will either worship the creator or something from his creation. Those are the only two options.
We understand that we were made to worship. We will worship something
and it will either be the great creator of all things or it will
be something from his creation that has eclipsed his glory and
has drawn our eyes and our attention to it. And we worship it. Romans chapter one tells us that
men and women and boys and girls will either worship the living
and true God or they will suppress the knowledge of God that is
clear and plain to all and has been so since he made the world
and everything in it. And we will worship idols. We
will worship things made by human hands. So the question is not. Whether we will worship it’s.
Who will we worship? What will we worship? And the
answer for Christians, for people saved by Jesus Christ, is that
the object of our worship, the basis of our worship, the blessing
of our worship is rooted in God himself, in his commands to us,
that we must worship him. We must, as our catechism says,
we must glorify God and enjoy him forever. Did you notice the
succession in the questions and answers In the first three questions
of the catechism, what is man’s chief end? Why were you made?
What’s your purpose? Why do you exist? Why did God
make you? It’s to glorify and enjoy him. Well, how do we know
how to glorify and enjoy him? We learn from the Bible how to
glorify and enjoy him. What does the Bible tell us?
The Bible tells us what we must believe and how we must act.
is worshiping people. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?
Where do we get our marching orders from? The Bible. Why did
God make us? Why were we born? Why do we exist? Why does God sustain us with
life? It’s so that we might worship Him. And so people saved by Jesus
Christ must worship Him. Now, there’s a lot we could speak
of in this subject of worship. There’s a lot we could speak
of about the current state of worship in this world, in this
culture. There’s a lot we could speak of about why we do everything
we do in worship. But I want us to understand simply
today that we, as God’s people, must worship God. We’re made to worship. And we
have the option of worshiping all kinds of things, but why
not because we are redeemed, worship the creator. Well, that
in fact is our marching orders. So I want us to consider a couple
of things today about worship as we reorient, as we recenter,
as we align our lives around the marching orders God gives
us in his scriptures as Christians. First thing to think about is
the object of our worship. Now it’s obvious we can worship
all kinds of things. We can worship idols. We can
worship objects. We can worship ideas. We can
worship things. We can worship addictions. We
can worship hobbies. We can worship philosophies or
desires or things that we think will make life perfect. But the
Bible simply says to us that we must worship the living and
true God. Him alone must we worship. We’re told in the scriptures
that our God is a jealous God. He is a consuming fire. He is
jealous for his own worship, for his own glory. And he wants
nothing else in this life to eclipse our view of him, our
glory of him, our worship of him, our adoration. Now, why
should God be the object of our worship? I mean, that sounds
a little self-centered. That sounds self-aggrandizing.
In our culture, that sounds a bit narcissistic. Well, guess what,
brothers and sisters? God can command that we worship
him and him alone. And why is that? Well, it’s because
God is God. God is the great God of the universe. Before all things that we see
were created, he always has been and he always will be. God has
existed in eternity past and he will continue to exist in
eternity future. There has never been a day or
a moment where God was not. He is, as we might say in philosophy,
the ultimate reality. Apart from him, nothing would
exist. And so we must worship God as
ultimate reality. We must worship him in the beauty
and splendor of His holiness, His attributes. Some of you men
in the room will remember a day in time when you fell in love
with some young gal. And you wrote her letters, you
adored her. You told her things about her
that you loved, that you desired, that you thought were lovely
and beautiful and special. And that is, in a sense, what
we must think about when we worship God. He is the object of our
adoration. He is the object of our love
and our worship. And why is that? It’s because
he is. It’s because of who he is and
what he’s done. It’s because of his beauty, his
power, his majesty, his purposes, his creation, his salvation. It’s because of all the things
he is. And how do we know about God that we might worship him
as the true object of our worship. We know that from our scriptures.
How do we glorify and enjoy God? Well, we learn about him in the
scriptures. He tells us what he is like.
He tells us who he is. He has condescended into human
language and using poetry. using history, using real life
events, using story after story of redemption. He has shown us
what he’s like. He is a great God, a majestic
God, a powerful God. He is a king over all the earth.
He’s a God of justice. He’s a God of war. He’s a God
of paying back evil. But he is also a God of mercy. And he has most clearly revealed
who he is and the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And
so God alone is our object of worship. And we come to him on
his terms. We read in the first four commandments
in Exodus chapter 19 about God’s desire to be worshiped. I am
the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not bow down to any graven image. You
shall not take my holy name in vain. And you shall remember
the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. And on and on throughout
the Old Testament, we hear God saying, I am God, I am to be
worshipped and I am to be worshipped and adored in this way. And we
read about the tabernacle and the temple and the sacrifices
and the priest, the way they’re to dress. We read all these commands,
all these imperatives of God saying, I am to be worshipped. And so we come to him on his
terms. We worship him as he desires
to be worshiped. Remember Nadab and Abihu, the
two sons of Aaron, they offered to God strange fire. And what
did God do? He took their life. It’s a rather unsettling event
in the life of Redemptive history. But God says, I am to be worshiped
on my terms. Remember when Moses came down
from the mountain and there was all that hoopla, all that whooping
and hollering and Moses thought it was the sound of the cries
of war. But what did he see? He saw Israel gathered around
a golden calf worshiping it. What were they saying to that
golden calf? Here is our God. And this is the God that brought
us out of Egypt. Out of the house of slavery. And you can imagine the anger.
of God, but of Moses when those commandment tablets were broken. God desires to be worshipped
and he desires to be worshipped in his own way. Now, we understand
that we worship God, we understand that he is the object of our
worship, but we also must understand that we cannot worship him without
help. And it is only it is only through
the blood of Jesus that has cleansed us and made us fit to be in the
presence of God that we can worship him. You can say all day long
to the world, worship God, worship the creator, do not worship idols
or things made with human hands. We can say that all day long,
but one cannot worship God without being redeemed by the blood of
Jesus. For without redemption, we will
continue, as Romans chapter one says, living in our futile ways,
worshiping things that are handmade, that are manmade, worshiping
creatures and creations, but not the creator. And we read
that God leaves us in our sin and misery. And apart from Christ,
we cannot worship God. And so if we want God as the
object of our worship, we must have Jesus as the author of our
salvation and put our faith, our trust, our hope in him for
the forgiveness of sins. So why must we worship? It’s
because we’re made to worship. Who is the object of our worship?
It is none other than God himself. Second thing I want us to think
about is what is the basis of worship? On what basis, on what
authority, on what access, on what premise do we dare to enter
the presence of God to worship him? You know, some of you work
in office buildings where you must have a pass. You must have
credentials to get past security, to swipe a door that will unlock
and let you in. We have tickets to events. We
have season passes to various museums and other institutions. We must have access. into the presence of God in order
to worship him. And we’ve just said that that
access is only through the blood of Jesus. But I want to back
up in biblical history for just a moment and tell you the basis
for our worship of God. It’s a relationship. It’s a covenant
relationship. Do you remember in chapter 12
of Genesis where God comes to Abram? Abram was a man like other
men we read about in Romans chapter one. He did not worship God.
He worshiped idols. He was a pagan. He was an idolater. He did not know God or worship
him. And God came to Abram and called him out of paganism. He
rescued him from idolatry and said, now, Abram, you will worship
me. And God began to display his
covenant love that through Abraham would be the same covenant relationship
he would have with all his people. And the center of that covenant
relationship is this, I will be your God and you will be my
people. And my desire is to dwell with
you. And we read at the end of the
book of Revelation, it says, now the dwelling place of God
is with men. That’s the covenant relationship
fulfilled. And that’s what we have to look
forward to as Christians. God will come down with heaven. There will be a new heavens and
a new earth and we will dwell with God forever and ever as
he has always intended to do. But that was broken by sin. So there’s a relationship. God
is the object of our worship, but our worship of God is on
the basis of a relationship, a covenant. That covenant is
marked with covenant signs and symbols, just as many of you
may be married. You have a covenant symbol on
your finger. It’s a ring. It’s a sign and
a symbol of the covenant of marriage, which you have entered into.
In the church, in God’s covenant, we have covenant signs and symbols,
and they are namely baptism in the Lord’s Supper. In our baptism,
we are baptized into Jesus Christ. We are saying, I belong to Jesus. And Jesus is saying, you belong
to me. And these are signs and symbols
of the reality of that covenant relationship, which is the basis
of our worship. But there’s also the Lord’s Supper.
God says, not only are you my child, but I will feed you. I
will nourish you. I will make sure you have every
resource under heaven to make it safely home to be with me.
to be with me in my presence forever and ever. And there have
been other covenant signs and symbols throughout the Bible.
Remember, after the flood, God made a covenant with mankind
through Noah. I will never, ever again flood
the earth and destroy it completely. And so he hung his bow in the
sky. And so every time after a rainstorm, we see a bow in
the sky. We are reminded of God’s covenant love. The same with
the cross. We see the cross and we are reminded
of the great mercy of God and Christ Jesus, that we have forgiveness
of sins and we have an eternal relationship with Almighty God.
So how is it that you can approach God in holy worship? The psalmist
asked this question. Well, he asked it in Psalm 24,
he asked it in Psalm 15, who can ascend the holy mountain
of God? Who can approach his throne?
Who can come into his holy temple and not be struck dead? Who can
come before the presence of almighty God? Well, it says he who has
a clean hand and has a pure heart, who swears oaths to his own hurt,
he who does not do wickedness to his neighbor. That’s only
possible by faith. and through a right relationship,
through the covenant relationship we have with Jesus. Who can approach
Almighty God? Well, Christians can. We just
spent an entire many months looking through the book of Hebrews.
And what does the book of Hebrews tell us? It tells us simply this. Jesus is better. Jesus is better
than angels. Jesus speaks a better word than
Moses. Jesus is better than the Aaronic priesthood. Jesus is
better than every thing that in the old covenant pointed to
him. And in and through Jesus, we
have eternal access to the Father. We can approach the mercy seat.
We can enter the presence of the Holy Holies and we will never
be turned away if we are a child of God by faith in Jesus. And so the basis of our worship
of God is the object of our worship is that covenant relationship.
And we need to remember that we were sinners and just like
Adam and Eve, we were banished from the presence of God. We
were thrown out. We were cast away. We were alienated
from God. We were estranged from God. Every
aspect of our relationship with God was broken. But thanks be
to God for Christ. that through his sacrifice, we
have been brought near. God’s wrath was turned away.
His wrath was satisfied. And so God in Christ Jesus has
brought us near. We come to church every week
on the basis of the blood of Jesus. It’s this covenant relationship
that we nurture. And why is it that our worship
service looks very different from many other ones that we
might experience or might have participated in? Well, it’s simply
this. We believe with the historic
Christian faith for centuries that worship is not a concert. It’s not a pep talk. It’s not. a community event. It’s not all
kinds of things that it has become today. It is simply this. It
is a dialogue between God and his people. It’s a dialogue. It’s a conversation between lovers,
between family members, between those who love one another dearly. And so we come into church and
God greets us. Grace to you and peace. from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ through the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit. God calls us to worship. You
are my sheep. Come into my presence. Bow down
before me and worship because I have redeemed you. I have bought
you with my precious blood. We affirm our faith. I believe
in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. We confess
our sins. Oh, dear God. Here I am again,
sinful. Here I am again. I’ve broken
every one of your laws. I’ve shattered the tablets of
your commands. Take me back. Be merciful. Don’t treat me as my sins deserve,
but treat me as if I am your child, your only son, Lord Jesus.
He assures us of our pardon. We offer our spiritual gifts,
our tithes, our offerings. We sing doxologies. We sing Gloria
Apatres. We praise. laugh sometimes, we
cry at other times, we sit in quiet, we tremble. But worship
is a dialogue between God and his people. Remember in the Old
Testament, when God wanted to speak with his people, he would
tell whoever it was, Moses, Ezra, whoever, whoever his mediator
or his prophet was at the time, he would say, say to the people
of Israel, tomorrow, I want to meet with you. And he would often
say, tell them to change their clothes. Tell them to take a
bath. Tell them to abstain from certain
worldly activities that would make them impure. And tell them
to get ready to come and meet me. And tomorrow, as they gather,
I will come in their midst and I will speak to them. Friends,
that’s what’s taking place on Sundays. We get ready. We prepare our hearts, oh yes,
our clothes, and we put our Bibles by the door, but we make ourselves
ready for a meeting with the God of the universe. Now, if
I were to tell you that Jesus would be preaching here next
Sunday, guess what? The pews would be full. But through
our theology of worship as a dialogue, we believe that God, through
the mediation of the ministry of the elders and the pastor,
God is meeting with us and speaking. It’s not face-to-face, that will
take place in heaven. But in the New Testament, we
believe that the church, particularly worship, is the most important
thing that we do. And so we come to speak to God
and to hear him speak to us. So God is the object of our worship.
We worship on the basis of that covenant relationship. One final
thing to consider, we worship in order to receive a blessing.
God willing, you leave here week after week, filled full with
the grace of God. And you say to yourselves, as
you walk out the door into that crazy world we live in, I can
make it another week. I can endure the hardships. I
can face the challenges. I can make it again until next
Sunday when I come into God’s house empty and I know that I
will be filled full. The Puritans used to call the
Sunday or the Sabbath the market day of the soul. It was the day
to come into the market of God’s house and to choose from among
the wares he has to offer and to say, I will go home filled
full, ready to serve him again. Friends, we should come to worship
expectantly. We should come with expectation
that God himself will show up and that he will impart some
blessing to us. We should come with hands open.
We should come exhausted, worn out and weary, poor, broke. We should be like that man in
the gospel story who doesn’t say, oh, I thank God that I’m
not like those other sinners. But we should come beating our
chest saying, God, have mercy upon me, a sinner. not even willing
to approach his presence in his face, but saying, I am empty
and needing his grace. You know, from time to time,
we take our cars in for service. We get the oil changed. We get
our tires rotated, but we get that front end aligned. And why
is it we do that? Because we’re tired of driving
crooked, right? We’re tired of our tires getting
worn bald on one side. We want our cars to drive straight.
And weekly Lord’s Day worship is just that for us. We’ve hit
so many bumps and potholes on the way that we need to come
again into God’s house and see what is good and right and true
and to recalibrate, recenter, reorient our lives away from
this world and all that it offers and to orient our lives heavenward
towards God. We need to have our vision checked.
We need to have our dietician speak to us and say, you’ve been
eating poorly all week. You’ve got the wrong prescription
in your lenses. And we need to get things straight. Worship is a blessing, and we
should come with our hands outstretched and say, God, I come today empty. What have you to offer? Friends
from Romans chapter one, we understand that you will worship something.
There’s no question about that. You may worship golf. You may
worship physical fitness. You may worship fashion. You
may worship education or success in the business world. And remember
that all of those things are given to us by God. But we must
not worship the created. We must worship the creator.
All those things have been given to us for our enjoyment and thanksgiving.
Yes. They’re good things to be part
of and participate in. But we must not be like the rest
of the world who worship idols. For you have turned to the living
and true God. He has revealed himself to you
through his covenant love and mercy. And so as a church, we
must come week after week into the presence of almighty God,
ready to meet our Lord. and that he might speak to us,
and that when we speak, he might hear, and that as our hands are
outstretched, expecting something from him, he will fill us arms
full so that we can serve him again for the week. Pray with
me. Oh God, help us to have our priorities straight, to desire
to be in the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day with the Lord’s
people in the presence of not only this company here today,
Not only in the presence of those around the world who call on
your name and worship you, but to worship together with the
heavenly throng, the saints gone before us, the eternal creatures
who give glory to your name, and all those who gather around
you in festal worship. Help us to make that the highlight
of our week. Help the things of this world
to grow strangely dim. but the light of your glory to
be bright and to be the reason that our hearts beat. Help us
to glorify you, to enjoy you forever through faith in Jesus,
we pray. Amen. Let’s stand now and ask that
God, through the singing of this hymn, would fix our vision on
things that are proper.