Holy Jealousy

God [is] being robbed of His glory. [This] upsets God, Who appears within His being to be hypersensitive to this whole issue, for the universe is founded on the basis of it: He says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. My glory I will not give to another.” Now of course we sometimes think, what a strange adjective to use of God, to suggest that He is jealous. Isn’t that the ugly green-eyed monster that we all want to be rid of? But you know, there is a holy jealousy, supremely found in God, as well as an unholy and ugly jealousy. And that holy jealousy is a beautiful thing. . . . That holy jealousy which is in the heart of God is reflected in the marriage bond, of which God makes much use in Scripture: here is the bride of the Lamb; there is Jehovah, the husband of His people. And He says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. My glory I will not give to another.”

—Eric Alexander, “Worship God! (Rev. 19:10)” (sermon)

Angels and Saints, and Demons

The one thing that angels and saints, as we are described in Scripture, have in common is that we are servants. We exist and are called by God to be servants. You will know that that’s what angels were created for. This is the real horror of what happened to Satan. He was created an angel by God; he became a fallen angel because he rebelled against his status and fell. Isaiah cries,“How you are fallen, Lucifer, son of the morning.” And he fell from the high glory of his privilege of being created as a servant to glorify God.

—Eric Alexander, “Worship God! (Rev. 19:10)” (sermon)

To Know Him Is to Worship Him

The real key to biblical worship is always increasing in the knowledge of God. . . . Preaching is not listening to some man giving his own ideas, or sharing his philosophy; it is listening to someone opening up the truth of Holy Scripture and expounding it. Why? So that we might come to know God, because this is where He is to be known. And worship is not some mystical activity; it derives from knowing God. This is how we learn to worship God. And as He reveals Himself to us, we are enabled to be absorbed with His glory and majesty and beauty, His righteousness, His truth, His love, His mercy, and so on. And we worship Him, because we are coming to know Him. The more you know God, the more you will worship Him in spirit and truth.

—Eric Alexander, “Worship God! (Rev. 19:10)” (sermon)

The Ultimate Activity

What is the ultimate activity of the people of God? It is that we might spend ourselves, heart and soul and mind and strength, in worshiping Him.

—Eric Alexander, “Worship God! (Rev. 19:10)” (sermon)

 

The Main Thing

Why has God designed and purposed that our great destiny is to know Him? What is the knowledge of God for? Why does God mean us to know Him and to grow in the knowledge of God? And there is only one answer that Scripture gives us to that: and that is that we might worship Him. Everything will disappear as we enter His presence and glory, except this. It is the chief business of the church of Jesus Christ in this world, because it is the permanent occupation of the church of Jesus Christ in the world to come, that we should worship God. So says Jesus to the woman of Samaria: The Father is seeking worshipers. When God began to seek you and then find you in Jesus Christ, and drew you to Himself, He was seeking worshipers. The Apostle Paul tells us that it is the mark of the people of God, one of the great marks of those who are His true circumcision in Philippians 3:3f.: we are the circumcision, that is the true people of God, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. It is [the] ultimate activity of the people of God: to worship God.

—Eric Alexander, “Worship God! (Rev. 19:10)” (sermon)

 

God’s Delight in Himself

God created the world to reveal Himself. There is, then, a property in God’s being that not only delights in Himself but longs to show Himself. We might say that there is a divine self-love in God. But unlike the display of narcissism in God’s creatures, this self-love is not sinful, for God’s delight in Himself is not a vain misconception. It is just and right.

—John Hannah, To God Be the Glory, 18

The Root of the Fall 3

The ugly and ghastly distortion of Satan’s whole appearance in Scripture is that he who was formed to honor and glorify and praise and worship God has begun to rob God of His worship and seek to deflect it to himself. Isn’t that what happens in the temptation of Jesus? “Now,” he says, “I will give you the kingdoms of this world if You will fall down and worship me.” Have you ever thought how extraordinary and horrendous that here an angel, created to worship this holy Being who created Himself the heavens and the earth, now comes and says to Him and says, “You come and bow down and worship me.” I tell you, there is something utterly grotesque about this, both in the Garden of Eden and in the temptation in Matthew 4.

But, my dear friends, there is something equally grotesque about a man or woman who devotes the faculties God has given them and the gifts God has bestowed upon them to bring worship to any other creature or object in the universe except to the living God.

—Eric Alexander, “Worship God! (Revelation 19:10)” (sermon)