The wonderful thing about Sovereign God is He doesn’t keep Himself totally separated from us. This devotional reading looks at how God approaches us and keep us in His presence.
Nuggets
- God has no problem coming to us.
- We must prepare to be in His presence for all eternity.
What a wonderful God we serve! He is Sovereign God, yet He wants to have a genuine relationship with us.
To do that, God approaches us. He sanctifies us to be in His presence.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Finding Jesus through Spiritual Worship study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this series is Menander and Charnock’s Spiritual Worship.
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The words in blue are Charnock’s words.
God Approaches Us
“Then the LORD told Moses, “Go down and prepare the people for my arrival. Consecrate them today and tomorrow, and have them wash their clothing. Be sure they are ready on the third day, for on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai as all the people watch” (Ex. 19: 1-11 NLT)
There is in worship an approach of God to man.
God has no problem coming to us.
We might think that Sovereign God wouldn’t want to have anything to do with lowly mankind. We would be wrong.
God has always come down to us. He was face to face with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He was in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, leading the Wilderness Wanderers to the Promised Land.
Most importantly, God came down in the form of Jesus. He willingly came down, died, and rose again so that the penalty for our sins could be paid.
I love what Hughes said. He wrote, “The true Mediator is as ready to sanctify His people as God would have Him.”
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We know God wants all to be saved. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (II Pet. 3: 9 ESV).
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to change our sinful ways to ways of righteousness through obedience.
- Obedience means submitting ourselves to the will of God as it is presented to us and living our lives accordingly.
Glossary
But Hughes wasn’t talking salvation. Salvation isn’t the end.
Hughes was talking sanctification. It is the restoration process.
Sanctification is the transformational process of the mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
Glossary
When we navigate the Sanctification Road, we follow Jesus’ command that we become sanctified. “So Moses went down to the people. He consecrated them for worship, and they washed their clothes” (Ex. 19: 14 NLT).
Consecration is the process of being set apart. We are to be set apart for worship.
Breay explained how that works. He wrote,
“God gets at the mind through the senses; and He doubtless intended to instruct the people by this act that their minds should be purified, and their hearts prepared for His service. And to us it points out the necessity of our hearts being cleansed from sin, from the defilement and the love of it, before we can serve the Lord acceptably; it teaches us also that we must not rush heedlessly into the presence of God, even in private prayer. This becoming reverence for the presence of the Divine Majesty will likewise show itself in our [demeanor] in the house of God.”
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God makes His presence known not just by dropping thoughts into our minds. He uses all our senses to get our attention and get us in gear.
From the get-go, a response is required. Our first response is to accept the gift of salvation.
- “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Eph. 2: 8-9 NLT).
- “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved” (Rom. 10: 9-10 NLT).
After we have gained salvation, our response is to serve God and others.
We have to prepare for worship. If God Himself is approaching us, we have to know we are in the best possible place to welcome Him.
- We have to repent of our sins.
- We need to be focused on Him.
- We should be excited to be spending time with Him.
- It is important that we are navigating the Sanctification Road.
Why is it important that we are being sanctified? It is because, by being sanctified, we are becoming holy and righteous.
We only gain access to God after we have sincerely repented. God can’t let us into His throne room until we are set to leave our sins behind.
Dale believed we need an intense passion for holiness in order to live in God’s eternal kingdom.
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We have to have made a sincere profession of faith. That is shown by a genuine desire and intentional submission to God’s plan for our lives.
God will be with us every step of our journey.
God Is Present
“The distance around the entire city will be 6 miles. And from that day the name of the city will be ‘The LORD Is There’” (Ezek. 48: 35 NLT)
Ought not our spirits to be prepared to receive Him?
We must prepare to be in His presence for all eternity.
We talked a little bit about preparation in the last section. The verse in Ezekiel takes it to the next level.
This is the last verse describing Ezekiel’s vision of what New Jerusalem looks like. The main attraction is that God is present.
Piggybacking on the last section, Aitken reiterated that preparation centers around renewing our hearts.
Renewing our hearts is another way to describe sanctification. Mankind was one way in the Garden of Eden. Sin happened, and we changed.
We need to change back so that our character will be more like God’s.
If we aren’t in the process of sanctification, God is not with us. Aitken addressed that. He wrote, “Again and again, throughout the Word of God, we have it directly asserted, or incidentally implied, that God dwells, by His Holy Spirit, in the hearts of true believers, and that He dwells in them to form within them the New Adam, to develop the nature and spirit of Christ.”
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That really speaks to those who think they can make a profession of faith so that they have fire insurance, but not do anything about it. We must change our character to God’s.
If we don’t renew our hearts, we are not sanctified. If we are not sanctified, we are not holy. If we are not holy, we will not be admitted to eternal life with God.
We will spend eternity in hell.
To read a devotion in the Hell Does Have Fury series, click on the button below.
Newton told us why God’s presence is so important.
- It is an unveiled presence.
- It is a transformed presence.
- It is a satisfying presence.
- It is a progressive presence.
- It is an eternal presence.
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If we look at God’s presence in these terms, we see His presence is a blessing. He is with those who are faithful to Him.
Making the Connections #1
I have to chase a rabbit for a second. Spurgeon said something that took me on a scenic root. He wrote, “What a glorious state this world was in at the very first, in the age of Paradise, for the Lord was there! ‘The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day,’ and communed with man; and man, being innocent, held high converse with his condescending Maker. The topstone of the bliss of Paradise was this all-comprehending privilege — ‘The Lord is there.’”
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Spurgeon talked about the age of Paradise. He was talking about the Garden of Eden.
Jesus told the repentant thief on the cross that he would be with Him today in Paradise. Not Heaven, Paradise.
Read Spurgeon’s last sentence again. “The topstone of the bliss of Paradise was this all-comprehending privilege — ‘The Lord is there.’”
Paradise is Paradise because God is there. Heaven is Paradise because God is there.
Bottom line is don’t get hung up whether it is Heaven or Paradise. The most important thing is God is there.
Making the Connections #2
Read what Aitken said about how it is when God is not present. It’s long, but he nailed it when he wrote,
“The man of the world awakes in the morning with no sense of the presence of his God: he may hurry through some form of devotion, but the Lord is not there. The world rushes in with all its thronging cares and busy excitements, and the battle of the day is fought, but the Lord is not there; and when he lays his head on his pillow at night, while he forms his schemes for the future, or congratulates himself on the past, it still remains true the Lord is not there. Years roll on, and the life without God draws towards its close; human nature loses its charms, the affections become [paralyzed], the genial enthusiasm of youth is a dream of the past, the barren routine of habit has [fossilized] all the higher faculties of the soul; but while the transient loveliness of humanity fades away, the sad truth still remains, ‘the Lord is not there.’ When the last scene comes, there may be weeping friends around the bedside of the dying sinner, and some may speak oft the kindliness of his disposition, and some may tell how he ever did his duty to wife, and child, and friend; but the curtain falls upon the last scene in the sad drama of a wasted life, inscribed with the melancholy sentence, ‘The Lord is not there!’ Follow his receding form, if your inward sight can penetrate so far into the dreary regions of eternal hopelessness, and as you gaze with horror into the blank solitude into which he plunges, can you not catch that distant cry, of agony which wanders like an everlasting echo through the deep night of hell, ‘The Lord is not here!’ ‘The Lord is not here!’”
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That is so sad. The despair people will feel when they realize they were wrong when they said there is no God or He doesn’t matter.
God is real. He does matter. His Word tells us exactly what He expects from us —submission and obedience.
Is that where you are at?
How Do We Apply This?
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17)
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3)
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16)
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11)
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2)
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11)
Father God. You are an awesome God! Thank You for allowing us into Your presence. Thank You for changing us so that we can. Help us as we navigate the Sanctification Road, so that we may spend eternity with You. Amen.
What do you think?
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