Our Exalted God Calls Us

In the 1960s and 70s, there were too many prominent evangelists, but the two I want to contrast. One was Bob Jones, Sr. One was Francis Schaeffer. Bob Jones was of the mentality that he would call youth retreats to burn the secular rock and roll CDs. Sorry, they didn't have CDs. That's anachronistic. They're eight tracks and albums. He would say, burn these things up. We need to get rid of them. Well, I much more appreciate Francis Schaeffer who said, let's listen to it and let's engage it. I'm much more of the Schaeffer model. I want to hear what the world is saying and then try to engage it. And this is going to be a short attempt at doing that. And I'm going to go bold. I'm going to go after the greatest rock band and the greatest rock song of all time. Stairway to heaven. I tried to get that play for the operatory, but it was a little long. So it's also a religious song, and the song has a religious meaning. You really need to listen to the lyrics with the music, but I want to try to explain the song as well as I can briefly. It begins by talking about a woman who's buying a stairway to heaven. She thinks everything that's glitter is gold. She's very optimistic. And the stairway to heaven is really representing the ultimate end in life. It doesn't tell us what the ultimate end in life is. The whole point is to leave it very mysterious. But here we have this woman who represents optimism. It's the mood that lays out throughout the whole song. Optimism and mystery. She is seeking to buy a stairway to heaven. Now the song represents really the ideals of American rock and pop even to today. One of the key lines of the song is when all are one and one is all. Well, that's that's nice. But what does that mean? Maybe it's the best. The description is whenever all the working parts are in harmony, that there's no more problems or war. It may be something pantheistic where all the many are just engulfed back into the one God and we are no more. My favorite line in the whole song is to be a rock and not to roll. And in many ways, he's intentionally using these words because rock and roll was a religion. To be a rock and not to roll. See, the mystery and the optimism is seeking that place where we're no longer longing. We've been found or we found or looking for. We found rest. And we have to be weary of and cautious of reading too much Christianity into what he's saying here. Because this is very not Christian. The whole point is that the wind is blowing you wherever it will. You wait for it and you're going to happen upon the ultimate meaning in life. This song symbolizes the desire today to believe you can't find ultimate truth, but you have to hope for it somehow. It's really summarized best in what I heard someone say the celebrity of religions is. It's cool to be searching for meaning, but it's never cool to have found it. It's cool to be searching for meaning, but it's not cool to say, I found it. We want to pretend to be deep and act like I really want to know what life is all about. But to ever say you found it, well, that makes you look judgmental and righteous. Well, we are not coming here to wonder about the stairway to heaven. We're not coming here to hope that the wind will blow us in a certain way. We're here to hear from the Word of God that tells us how God has descended to us so that we can know Him. God has given us a definite, clear way to know Him. It's through Jesus Christ in the Spirit and by His Word. Our thesis this morning is this. It's very simple. God alone is our destination, our path, and our guide. God alone is our destination, our path, and our guide. God is the end for which we are supposed to live. God is the chief end of man. We are supposed to be living for Him. We are supposed to be worshiping Him. He is what we are supposed to be focused upon. The only way we can live for Him is for Him to provide the way. We have all sinned, and so He has given us the way to know Him and to love Him and to worship Him again. And that is His Son, Jesus Christ. God is our destination. He has given us the path to get to that destination, Jesus Christ. And we can only find that path with a guide. And therefore, he has given us his Holy Spirit who guides us to Christ, who then takes us to the Father. That is a theological bigger picture of what worship is. He is, God alone is our destination, our path and our God. Now our text this morning is Jacob's Ladder, the real stairway to heaven. And we're in chapter 28 of Genesis, and there are three main scenes here. The first scene is really one through nine, where we have some continuation of our dysfunctional family from last week. And then we see Isaac finally blesses the chosen child, according to God's plan. Scene two is verses 10 through 17. And this is this dramatic revelation from God. This is where God reveals Himself to Jacob for the first time. This is where Jacob himself hears the personal promises of God with this dramatic dream of a ladder with angels ascending and descending. And our final scene is verses 18 through the end. And this is where Jacob, well, he's still Jacob. He's going to make a deal with God. Let's look at verses 1 through 9, chapter 28. Isaac obeys God by blessing Jacob. Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him. You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May He give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham. Thus Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan Aram to Laban, the son of Bethuel, the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau's mother." Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there. And that as he blessed him, he directed him, you must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. And that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan Aram. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth. That last word is a little tricky. Here we see Isaac, he obeys God's Promise of it. Finally, he blesses the right shot. He's no longer loving Esau because Esau makes some tasty food that was repeated six times. Now he's going to finally bless Jacob according to God's plan. He references God Almighty. El Shaddai, the God who provides, the God who cares for him. He will bless you. He repeats many of the aspects of the Abrahamic covenant here. He reminds him, this is the promise of Abraham. It's being put upon you. Now it's finally put upon the man by faith for faith, not with deception. Notice here, though, that Isaac sends Jacob by himself to go find a wife. When Abraham sent his servant to find Isaac's wife, he told that servant, never let my son go into that place. Don't let him go. And I think it's because he knew if he went, he would be tricked or confused or possibly lose faith. Here, Isaac doesn't show the same kind of protection over his son that Abraham showed for him. He sends him out into the wolves. And Jacob, well, he's already proven to be mischievous. So here we see Isaac really having less faith in Abraham. He's having less care and concern. He's throwing the promise into the possibility of corruption. Obviously, God is going to protect him. But Isaac is just not as careful as Abraham was. Verses six through nine are really interesting. Because Esau hears what happens. And he finally realizes, oh, my wives are a problem. Well, we've already seen that right above chapter 28, verses 46. Rebecca said, I love my life because of the Hittite women that Esau have married. Look at 26, verse 34 and 35. The wives of Esau have made life bitter for them. But here Esau, he finally realizes after Isaac is given direction, oh, my wives are causing trouble. Ethel's a short-sighted man. He's a man who's very able. He's a hunter. He's very industrious. But he's a man that doesn't have great wisdom. He has no spiritual aspect to him. He finally tries to make his dad happy again, but to no reward because the blessing is on Jacob. Now, to think about this, let's think about what has led to this point. Rebecca led her son to deceive her husband. The dysfunctional family from last week has to be in the back of our minds. Here we see the consequences of sin played out. Rebecca, who was the primary agent in all this deception, she has now lost what is most precious to her. Her son. She'll never see him again. When she says flee until Esau has calmed down, and then Isaac says, go get a wife, she doesn't realize that she's never going to see him again. She has lost her son. She's also lost Esau, I assume, because of the anger and the hatred and the bitterness. So here, whenever she's trying to keep in her own way what she loves the most, well, of course, she loses it. There are consequences to her sin. We're also going to see consequences for Jacob. Jacob, the deceiver, Jacob, the ankle grabber, he's deceived over and over again in his life. He's deceived by Laban. He's deceived by his own children who lie about the death of one of his children. As I look at the consequences of sin, it reminds me of really the best discipline I ever received from my father. Now, I'm going to go back into my adolescence, which I don't like to do. because I was a stupid person. Now, all the children know you're not supposed to call other people stupid, but trust me, I was stupid. I was a foolish person making foolish decisions. To prove that, I'm not sure if it was the second or the third time my parents had to come get me with the police. I do remember the scene. I was in a cul-de-sac. My dad was having friends over. and he didn't want to leave his friend to come get me. So, here I am. Dad gets out, goes to talk to the cop. I have to sit in the car with his friend. That's awkward. He doesn't say anything to me. My dad gets back in the car. We drive home. He doesn't say anything to me. I want to hear something, but he's just dead silent. The only thing he says to me all night, go to your room. Okay, I'm not sleeping well that night. Wake up the next morning trying to think, was that a dream? Was that real? Yes, I've got to get on stairs. I get downstairs and I'm just anxious as can be. What is dad going to say? Well, my dad tells me my punishment is that one week from that day, I've got to make a colored sand sculpture. All right, we're not artistic at all in our family. The only art we had in our home was the old guy who's praying with a bread, right? We're not an artsy family. So I'm just confused. I don't even know what he's talking about, first of all. Well, of course, I have seven days to do it. So on the seventh day, I go, I buy colored sand at some store that I've never been in before. And of course, I get a dried beef jar. That's how fancy I'm really thinking about this thing. I get a dried beef jar. And what you do is you put a layer of blue sand, a layer of orange sand, a layer of green sand. You keep layering the sand colors. Put the top on, give it to dad. And he shows me the sculpture and he says, thanks for doing this. And he started to show me how the orange sand shouldn't be where the blue sand is. Sometimes the sand kernels and the grains, they would get mixed in. And he was pointing out that these are like my life decisions. Whenever there's a sand out of place, you can't put it back. Well, I'm blown away because all of a sudden my dad's kind of Confucius. I mean, he's speaking to me in a way that I've never experienced before. And the point there was that my choices were going to have long-term consequences. When I was messing up the way I was messing up, they were going to have long-term consequences. I couldn't erase those events in my life where I was making foolish decisions. Even now, there's still the taint and the stain of sin on my affections from the choices I made as a child. So children, as you were thinking about your life, You need to realize that every choice you make, every time you get a kernel of sin, a grain of sin out of place, you can't move it back. You mess up the whole thing if you're going to do that. We have to realize early on, I pray you will realize early on, that you need to trust Christ as your Savior. You need to realize that there's already grains out of place. And you need to trust Christ that He will forgive you for those kind of foolish decisions and foolish sins that you have made. You see, what we need to do is hope to present a sculpture, a life that's ordered on the gospel, a life that follows Christ and is well-ordered, that is well-established, that is godly and wise. You see, what will worship God is a life that obeys Him. My life was in disorder, and I praise God for how He has corrected and forgiven me. But I wish so much that my life didn't have that disorder, that I didn't have those taints of sin all over my affections today. Commit early, don't make the same foolish decisions I made, and I know many of you, your parents have made. That's why they love you and are seeking to give you such wise, clear counsel. There are many of you who are 20 to 30 years old. I think this is one of the most important times of your life because you now are tasting freedom. Maybe you're going away to college. Maybe you're out of college. You're living on your own. How are you going to use this freedom? How are you going to use this new time? Are you going to use it to experience things you've never experienced before? Are you going to be responsible and use your newfound freedom to worship God? See, too often we think it's those who really messed up and now are saved. Those are the great worshipers of God. No. I praise God for the testimonies of those who have been pure, who have been kept, who have the innocence. May I pray that our children and our young ones will be committed to making those kind of decisions and being those kind of worshipers. Sin has consequences. Our every decision will have long term consequences. I pray we'll be committed to God and not make the same kind of mistakes. Let's look now to Jacob's ladder, verses 10 through 17. Jacob left Bathsheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set, taking one of the stones of the place. He put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie. I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.' Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Now really, this story interrupts Jacob's life. It introduces a major change in Jacob's life. He was a man who's living only for himself. And this begins to change the trajectory, which will finally come about after he wrestles with God himself. Now, he's fleeing. He's taking refuge. He is fleeing as a fugitive from his home to Haran. Now, first of all, he's making the opposite journey that Abraham made. Remember Abraham left Haran and went down into Bethel? Now here we have Jacob doing the opposite track back up. And what's really interesting is that God is going to change everything about Jacob beginning with this revelation. This is the first time he heard the promise of God. Here we see a major change. And the major change can be summarized this way. A place becomes a shrine. A stone becomes an altar. A fugitive becomes a pilgrim. That last one is interesting because his family has told him to flee, and God says to go. God comes at night. Jacob's sleeping on a rock. Okay, I'm not really sure how productive or helpful that is, but it contrasts the comforts he had at home. Remember, Jacob's kind of a mama's boy. He's not the wilderness man of Esau. So, we had this man who stayed at home and stayed home with mom. And now he's out in the wilderness by himself, sleeping on a rock. God reveals Himself in a dream in a very unique revelation. This word for ladder or stairway is the only time it's ever used in Scripture. This dream interrupts His life. It introduces a new future. The vision of the stairway that reaches into heaven. Angels ascending and ascending, the Lord himself standing at the top of the ladder. Now, we think about this, we have to realize this is clearly in contrast to the Babylonian power in Genesis 11. The Babylonian power are all people coming together and working to build a stairway up to God that God then confuses the languages and destroys that place. That's contrasted with God building his ladder down. See, we can't build ourselves up to God. We can't seek to ascend to God like the people of Babel were doing in Genesis 11. But no, God gives a ladder where He is going to descend. He is going to reconcile us to Himself, His own way. We can't do it like the Babel folk were trying. God creates the connection between God and man. We can't remake that connection because we're the ones that broke it. We're the one that broke our relationship with God. He is the one who's going to seek us out to reconcile us to himself. This symbolizes the reverse of the curse. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden and then kept away from God's personal presence. Here he's bringing away so that we can be back into his personal presence. And Jacob gets to experience this ladder that symbolizes that. The ladder is our connection to God, but it has to be God's ladder. not the one the Babel folk were building. Let's look at the text. God reveals himself, first of all, in verse 13. Behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord. This is Yahweh, the personal name of God, the God of Abraham, the father of your father, and the God of Isaac. He's the God who has already committed himself to this family, and now he's committing himself to the third patriarch. It's the first time Jacob has heard this specific promise himself. Look at the next promise in 13, the second part of 13, the land on which you lie, I will give to you and your offspring. Look around, this land is yours, the same promise that Abraham received. Verse 14, he makes a promise for offspring, your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east and the north and the south. And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Now, this is extremely important because we're still waiting for that one child promised in Genesis 13, 315. We're still waiting for that one child promised in Genesis 3 in the midst of the curse. We're still waiting for that one offspring who's going to reverse the whole thing. And here, Jacob is promised, you will have many offspring. But most importantly, it's this one offspring we're focused on because it's through that one offspring that all the world will be blessed. Now, we think about Israel, they were supposed to be a blessing to the world. And as we see Israel become tribes and nations, we're going to see they were nothing but a curse. The people of God were meant to be a blessing to the world. They were only a curse over and over again. That's why God had to come Himself to be that promised seed. God Himself had to come and be the blessing of the world. God Himself became that child, that promised child, when Jesus Christ took on flesh. In Him, all nations will be blessed, and all nations and tongues and nationalities will be united by His blood when they confess Him. Finally, let's look at verse 15, and it's marked off with, Behold, let's focus here. I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Here, God promises his personal presence. This promise is marked out. It will be very special for Jacob, I think. Remember, he's a fugitive. He's sleeping on a rock in the middle of the desert. He's by himself. He's not Esau. He's scared. He's going somewhere he's never gone before. It's a 500 mile journey. It's a long, difficult journey. And here God is saying, I am going to be with you and you will have success because I'm going to give it to you. This is very comforting for Jacob. It's very reassuring. He promises him preservation and protection. And what's really most troubling about this promise with Jacob, God does not say, walk with me and I'll be with you. God says, I am with you. God doesn't say, if you do this or this or this, I will make my presence known to you. God intuitively says, I am with you regardless. There's no condition here. Well, as we see at the end there, Jacob, he responds, he builds up an altar, he says, this is the house of God, this is the dwelling place of God, the stairway to heaven, the gate of heaven. He recognizes this place is awesome. Now, I'm not sure if he's supposed to just say this place is awesome. Because God isn't a territorial God. Yahweh, El Shaddai isn't just the God of a certain region. I don't think Jacob has gotten it yet that this is the Almighty, the one and only God, the Creator, who said, wherever you go, I am with you and I'll protect you. He seems to focus on the locality. Paganism is built upon local deities. Let's continue to look at verses 18 through 20, where Jacob blesses God. So early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, which is house of God. But the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow saying. If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then The Lord shall be my God. And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me, I will give a tenth to you." Jacob's still in ankle-grabbing character. Here he has one of the greatest revelations of God. Not the greatest. Nothing like Abraham seeing God going between the carcasses. But he sees God in a unique revelation. And remember, God's promise was not conditional. I am with you. Jacob says, if God will give me food and clothes and protection and water and bring me back safely, then I will let you be my God. It's supposed to be startling in terms of the contrast. God's great love and commitment to him and his selfishness. His desire for his own well-being. Now, we don't have a word that says this is a good vow, a bad vow. I think it's a mixed vow. I think it's a mixed promise. Because we start to see a change in Jacob, he's starting to see God, but he hasn't quite gotten it yet. He names the place Bethel, he sets up an altar, he anoints it. He is seeking to do some worship like his father had done before him, but it's a conditional vow he makes, a conditional statement of faith or confession that seems so awkward. So how can we think about this stairway to heaven well together? Well, I think it makes us ask, what is worship? This passage is about worshiping the one God. It's about the God who revealed himself and how we're supposed to respond to him properly. Worship takes place on God's ladder of love, not our Babylonian tower of blasphemy. We do not figure out how we can come up to God. We wait for God to descend to us, and we respond properly. Worship happens when God reveals Himself to us, and we respond properly. In short, worship is only found in Christ. God is our destination. We are supposedly worshiping Him. And we can only worship in Christ, who is our worship leader. Or more importantly, actually, from this passage, he's the latter. Let's turn over to John 1. I'm going to read verses 43 through 51. This is obviously right after the prologue. The story of John, the gospel of John has begun. Jesus is calling some disciples. The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, We have found him, whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said to him, Behold an Israel indeed, in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered him before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathaniel answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe you will see greater things than these? And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. Now, here we have a word that I have a difficult time with because of a slight speech impediment. But, most importantly, we see here Jesus actually claiming to be the ladder of Jacob himself. The angels are going to ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. The heavens are going to be opened up and access to God is going to be granted in this one. Well, who is this one? He is the way. The path to God. He is the ladder of love that God has sent down to lead us in worship. He is the God Almighty who has taken upon flesh, who has become like us in every way, so that He can lead us back up into worship. God Himself has provided a way to worship Him. He is the Son of God who has taken on flesh to be our intercessor. He is our access to God. Let's flip over to John 3.13. Simple verse, no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. We can't find our way up. We can't build our own Tower of Babel. We can't build our own ladder. We can't ascend to God. He's too high. He's too holy. He's too glorious. And we're too sinful. We can't reconcile ourselves to God. But. He who is from above. He can come down. He can become like us. He can die for our sins, removing our offense. He can then resurrect from the dead. Ascend back up to the right hand of the Father and stand there so that he can now lead us in worship. You see, friends, there's too much of a chasm there, there's too much of a divide, there's too much sin in our lives, too much holiness of God for us to ever try to build our bridge back up to God. That's why God himself built a bridge to us. That's why God Himself said, there is no hope for you. I will become like you. I will die for you. I will take away the offense of your sin. I will give you hope of eternal life. By my own Son. Our destination has given us a path. The Father has sent His Son. Now, if we turn over. Well, we don't actually have to turn. We look at John 4. We see this interesting story of the woman of the well. There's a debate over what is true worship, where does the true worship happen? And Jesus gives the great declaration. Well, true worship happens in word and in spirit. True worship only happens in Christ. We can't worship God without Christ. Every word we say, every song we sing, every prayer we make, every word I declare, it's painted with sin. It has to be washed in the blood of Christ. We can't worship without the Word of God cleansing us and forgiving us. And we can't worship without the Spirit of God showing us our sin and leading us to the Son, who will then lead us in worship. We can only see God's light in his own life. The Spirit has to show us the Son. The Son takes us to the Father. It's the perfect worship program. And it's all about God. So about what God has done for us. The Father sent His Son so that we might have faith in Him, so that we might have that path in the way, and the Spirit, well, He guides us on that path. Well, if we notice at the well, how do we worship? Well, the first thing we can see there is that He points out the sin of the woman. The first thing we need to do in order to worship God is have our sin revealed to us. We must desire to have our sin confronted. We must desire for the Spirit to convict us of our sin so we can confess it in Christ and be forgiven. How do we worship? Well, as I thought about this, we're all kind of like Jacob. Jacob's pretty selfish about his relationship with God. It's all about what God's going to do for him. And that's really how we all come to Christ, isn't it? The first thing that draws us to God is what He's done for us. God is only appealing. God is only a draw for us. God wounds us by saying, you're a sinner. I've died for your sin. You can find forgiveness. We're all originally drawn to Christ because of what God has done for us. He forgives us. He gives us eternal life. He gives us wisdom for living. He gives us comfort in the world of chaos. These are all things that we get. See, God originally just calls us to worship Him out of the things we get from Him. The gifts are what are so sweet to begin with, right? We are originally drawn to God because of His good gifts. But as we continue to walk with God, as we continue to learn more about God, as we continue to think about the gifts, well, then we start seeing it's the giver that's so sweet. We stop loving Him for the gifts as much as we love Him as the great giver. There's a transition that takes place in the Christian life. Yes, we're drawn to the forgiveness of sins. We're drawn to the eternal life. But then we start looking and learning more about God and we we're no longer loving God for us or loving God in himself. Friends, we must seek to worship God because of what he has done for us in word and deed and have a desire to worship him for who he is as the one holy creator and savior. So what is worship? Worship isn't just an experience. It's not about us. Worship is about God, who He is and what He has done. It's not something that happens to us. It's not something we produce on our own. Worship happens when God reveals Himself and we respond properly. That's worship. Worship happens when God reveals Himself and we have all an obedience. Now, one of the great Baptist distinctives is freedom of religion. That's one of our things. That's one of our luxuries in this world, especially in America. Now, we take this freedom of religion, I think, too far in our own minds, because it's taken... Baptists are the freedom of religion people because we were being persecuted by the Presbyterians and everyone else. They were killing us. So we said, hey, freedom of religion. Well, we now take freedom of religion not just to say, don't persecute me for the way I want to worship. Oftentimes we say, well, I can worship however I want. You see, freedom of religion is not saying I can worship God however I want to. It's saying other people can't persecute me because of it. It's a lateral freedom. What we have to realize is we have to worship God according to the way that He is prescribed. We can't figure out how to worship God. We follow God, who is our own worship leader. We must hear God's word. We must seek to know him better. We must have our sin revealed and repent of that sin. See, worship is God telling us who he is, God himself coming down, letting us see who he is, what he's done for us and us responding with appropriate awe and obedience. Our worship as we come here together needs to be about one thing, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our worship together corporately needs to be about one thing. It's the gospel. It's about exalting Jesus Christ. It's about praising the Father. It's about following the Spirit. It's about having our sin revealed. It's about confessing our sin to one another. When we come together, it's for one purpose. Gospel worship. But let's be clear. Worship doesn't just take place in this building. Worship isn't just supposed to be a couple hours a week that we do together. Worship is supposed to be your entire life. What would your marriage be like if you thought you were only married, you were only committed to your wife during the most romantic times? Your marriage is something you're committed to all day, every day, for your entire life. Your spouse deserves your marital affections all the time. You are to be committed to her or him all the time, not just in the most intense times. But whenever you're at work, when you're at play, you're married, you're committed to her. See, when we're worshiping, it's not just here when we're singing and praying and fellowshiping together. No, we're worshiping God all the time. All of life is a arena for worship. All of life is an opportunity for worship. Christ is our great high priest who stays right here in the Father, giving us access all the time. How are we spending our lives? See, that ladder doesn't just drop down here on Sunday. The ladder is always there. The access to God is always there. Your life is always being played out in the Holy of Holies of God. Our worship is supposed to be obedience all the time. For instance, we conclude thinking about the ladder. Let us praise God, for he is a father who has sent his son so that we can have worship in him. We can have a new life in him. We can be reconciled to God in him. It's not a ladder that we build. It's a ladder that God himself has provided. It's Jesus Christ who died on the cross to forgive us of our sins. It's Jesus Christ who rose again to new life, giving us hope of eternal life, who now stands right under the Father so that we have true hope. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Almighty God, we come before you. You are our greatest hope. You are our only hope. We have no way of accessing Your holiness. We have no way of accessing Your love. We have no way of reconciling ourselves to You. But You, Almighty God, have sought us out. You have said You will be with us and You made Your abode with us in Christ. You took on flesh so that we can have reconciliation. I pray now that as we seek to worship You all the time, We would see that that ladder, that path is always open into your holy presence. Your personal presence is always with us in a way that is unique in Christ. Guide us by your spirit, convict us, Lord, of our sin, guide us into true holiness, guide us into true obedience so that you are exalted and you are glorified. In your holy name we pray, Amen.