To God Alone be the Glory
Five Solas • Sermon • Submitted
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Transcript
Handout
Introduction
Exodus 32
Golden calf
Tension
Israel is in trouble because God commands us to praise him.
Psalm 29:1–2
1 Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.
The question we're really getting at is…
Big question
Is God a narcissist?
Isn’t it selfish to require someone to praise you?
If I do that you would say I’m an egomaniac
Can God require us to worship him?
Fortunately, the Bible has something to say about this.
Truth
What in the world does this story have to do with how we worship God?
A story about a prophet marrying a prostitute
This is a story about us
Idolatry
Idolatry is when we substitute God for something created.
Usually takes three forms
1 Literal statues
2 Sex Drugs and rock & roll
You can’t tell me what to do
3 Self-righteousness
Follow the rules so I am made right
Something where we have something that brings us more support, comfort, or pleasure than we find in God.
Throughout the Old, Testament idolatry is referred to as adultery.
Vs 1
This story is a metaphor for God’s relationship with his people.
We’re the wife in this story.
To give some context Hosea and Gomer were already married. Then she ran away from Hosea and God calls him to buy her.
God calls Hosea to love this woman - way more than what was culturally normal for marriage at this time.
She ran away from the good man who protected her to sell herself into a kind of slavery.
On the surface, this makes no sense.
Prostitution is a profession you enter into only from absolute despair.
This shouldn’t seem so foreign to us
We do this every day
We are Gomer in this story
We are the ones that run from God toward our own destruction
She is not just an unfaithful wife, not just a prostitute, but one that no one wants anymore.
Wherever she ran to, she now has no value there.
Imagine the scene
She’s up for auction
Probably naked so people could inspect her
People start bidding - then she hears it - the voice of her husband
He literally buys her back and brings her home
Is it wrong for Hosea to demand faithfulness?
Yes, for Gomer to be with any other man is idolatry. She had one husband.
Can God require our worship?
There is one God.
God can’t divert worship to someone else because he is the greatest being in all of the universe.
There is nothing greater than God.
This is why we say that Christianity must be to the glory of God alone
This he won’t share
To say that God should share glory is to say that I should share my wife.
No way, she has one husband
We are the Gomer in the story. We go from what is right and true to what will enslave us and destroy us.
We as Christians give glory to God alone and not other idols because …
God alone gets our worship because God alone is glorious
To glorify anything else is to commit idolatry. And cosmic adultery against God.
Don’t you see how every sin you commit is idolatry?
Every time you choose to follow what you want in direct opposition to God’s commands you have whored yourself out to an idol.
A ravenous beast that wants to use you rather than take care of you.
God alone gets our worship because God alone is glorious
You can’t add him to all the other things you want.
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