Please turn your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 11. We are finishing up this section before we head into chapter 12. We are only dealing with the very last verse, verse 36, but I want to read it again in context, starting from verse 33 to 36. Romans chapter 11, verse 33 to 36.

"Oh, the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

To Him be the glory forever. Amen." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are gathered here together as a community, Lord God, to focus our attention on You, to thank You, to worship You, to express our adoration, Lord God, for who You are in our lives. I pray as we are studying through the book of Romans that what You have intended for the original readers, Lord, help us to glean and understand.

We know, Father, that Your truth requires more than our minds to understand, that it is spiritually discerned. So help us, Lord God, to be humbled that Your Holy Spirit will continue to speak and convict in our hearts, to see if there's any hurtful ways in us, that we will be corrected, sanctified, and that we would become more and more each day what You desire us to be, people who will worship You in spirit and in truth.

So we ask that You will bless us this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. One of the blessings of being bicultural is that you're able to see things from different perspectives. And, you know, this is something that I, when I was younger, I really didn't appreciate because, and I think I've expressed to you when I was younger, you know, when I came to the United States, living in Kansas, Georgia, Philadelphia, and just moving all over the place, I never felt like I fit in anywhere.

And I always wanted to be able to say that this is my hometown, this is where I'm from, and these are my roots. And I don't, I can't say that because I've never been in one place longer than a certain period of time. But as I got older, I realized the benefit of that, that I'm able to see things from a different perspective, you know, and I've pretty much lived in the Midwest, in the South, in the East Coast, in the West Coast, back in Korea, back and forth.

And again, one of the benefits of moving around so much and being bicultural is, again, you get to see things from different perspectives. But one of the things that, again, the paradigm shift or the way that we look at things is so radically different is our Christian perspective versus the worldly perspective.

And there are some things that are absolutely contradictory, that you can't possibly understand unless there has been a regeneration in your heart. You know, just basic things that you know, where Jesus says that if you want to live, you need to pick up your cross and deny yourself. If you want to be great, you have to learn to be the servant of all.

It's completely contradictory to what we know in this life. We are taught since we were young that the reason why you get education, the reason why you work hard, the reason why you get promotion, all of it is to elevate ourselves. We might not use those words, but that's how this world works.

You're trying to be better than your neighbors. But Jesus tells us exactly the opposite, that we ought to be servants. We have to humble ourselves, be less. Here's a passage that I want to introduce to you that, again, we may just read it, but when we think about it in the worldly context, it'd be very difficult to understand if you didn't have a Christian perspective.

In Psalm 144, 3-4, it says, "O Lord, what is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him?" So let me stop right there. The psalmist is asking, what value do we have? So he's already stating, why is it important? Why do you even care about us?

Man is like a breath. His days are like a passing shadow. He's expressing, if you really take a careful look at who we are, all we are is a simple breath that comes and goes. We all have to acknowledge that. But the whole culture that you and I live in is to elevate, like, no, you have value.

You're important. And to build up your self-esteem. But the psalmist says, we're nothing. We're just a breath. Why do you even care? Consider that with a paradigm in our generation. Why don't you care? All this stuff is happening, and why don't you care? Why aren't you doing anything? Versus the psalmist who says, why do you even care?

Psalm 139, 4-5, it says, "O Lord, make me know my end." How many of us have sat there and thought to ourselves, it's like, "Well, I want to know when I'm going to die." That's what he says. Make me know my end, and what is the measure of my days?

Let me know how fleeting I am. He's not asking, "Let me know how precious I am in your sight. Let me know how much you love me." He doesn't say that. He says, "Let me know how fleeting my days are. Behold, you have made my days a few hand-breaths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you.

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath." We were meant to be worshippers rather than, again, that's part of my notes. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. The whole purpose of the psalmist in the end is to come before God and say, "Lord, help me to realize how insignificant I am." Think about how contrary to that, to everything that we are taught in our culture, in our generation, sometimes even in the church.

You're precious. God loves you. God's not sawing you. But the psalmist comes before God and said, "Let me know that I am worthless. Let me realize just how fleeting my life is and how insignificant I am in your eyes." Why does he say that? In Psalm 90, 12, it says, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." He said, "Wisdom begins by recognizing what we are not." Some of us have been told all our life just how precious you are.

And I'm not saying that that's bad. But we have this paradigm, even as we approach God, that you owe me. When we pray to God and God doesn't answer our prayers, so what? Why does he need to answer your prayers? Why does he need to answer my prayers? If I get sick and God, why don't you answer my prayer?

Why does he have to answer our prayers? Who are you? Who am I? If I get fired from a job, Lord, give me a job. And he doesn't give me a job. He's like, "Why? Why do you not help me with this?" Why does he have to help you?

Who are you? Who am I? We're just a breath. We just come, we disappear. The psalmist says the beginning of wisdom is recognizing the insignificance of who we are. And the reason why he says that's the beginning of wisdom is because the whole purpose of why you and I have been created was not to be the object of worship, but to be worshipers.

We were not meant to be. We were not created to be objects of worship. And yet, think about the whole trajectory of our life is trying to be worshipped, trying to be better, get ahead in life, want to be a little bit taller, a little bit skinnier, a little bit faster, a little bit better than everything else.

For what purpose? We might not use the word worship because that's blasphemy, but at the core of our paradigm is we are working hard to become objects of worship. Why we pay so much attention to our hair? Why we pay so much attention to our careers? To all that we do?

Because there's innate rebellion in mankind. So the beginning of wisdom is recognizing who we are in light of who God is. That's why Ecclesiastes 12, 13, at the end of Solomon's full life, experiencing everything, getting everything that a human being could possibly imagine, there's no sports figure at the top of his game ever experienced what King Solomon experienced.

Michael Jordan may have all the adoration, he had all the skills and respect and maybe even all the money, but he never had the power that Solomon did, where he could have just gathered concubines and whatever he wanted. He could make law and get rid of laws. This guy had access.

Not only did he have all that, he was the wisest man on earth. He had the intellect. So you could think of anything that you could possibly desire in this world, he had access to and the whole book of Ecclesiastes is a written document of his experiences and at the end of his life he says, "The end of the matter, all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandment for this is the whole duty of it." See if we don't recognize who we are, we're not going to fear God. He becomes our servant. We're not his servants. He says the end goal, the totality of life that he's experienced, he says, is to fear God and keep his commandment.

Now Paul says it in a different way in the same passage in verse 36 where he says, "In summary of 11 chapters of gospel preaching, before we get into the imperatives, he said in light of this mercy you ought to live this way, the very last statement that summarizes almost everything that he says is, "To him be the glory forever.

Amen." To him be the glory forever. Amen. That's basically in essence what Solomon was saying at the end of chapter 12 in Ecclesiastes. The end goal of man is to recognize God, fear God, and then to obey him. To give him all the glory. You know the word for glory in the Old Testament is kabod and the literal meaning of that is weightiness.

And you could see that. Old Testament is a revelation of the glory of God and whenever God's glory is revealed there's a sense of weightiness, seriousness. Whenever God would show up there would be fear, maybe even terror. And you see that in the tabernacle, you see that in the clouds, you see that in the Shekinah glory, you see that at the giving of the law, you see that even as he carries out his judgment.

Whenever God appears there's a sense of weightiness and seriousness. And that's the word for glory in the Old Testament in Hebrew, kabod. In the New Testament the word for glory is interesting. It's doxa. Doxa literally means opinion or thinking. So the word in and of itself doesn't really describe anything in particular.

All it means is your thoughts, your opinions. Now that's a strange word to use to describe a heavy word like glory in the New Testament, doxa. The word doxa, you probably know this word, I mean orthodox is again a combination of two words. Ortho means to straight, doxa is thought.

So orthodox is straight thinking, right? And we should use the word orthodox of right doctrine, right? That's where we get the word glory, doxa. Or paradox. The word paradox means to be above, to be above thinking. So paradox is something that is beyond comprehension, paradox, beyond thinking, beyond understanding.

So something that you can't simply comprehend by using logic, we call that a paradox. So the word in and of itself could be positive or negative. So what's interesting about even the word glory in the Old Testament, New Testament, the Old Testament word for glory is kabod, and whenever God showed up there was a sense of weightiness.

And so at the end, if you were an Old Testament saint, when you thought about God, you thought of something very serious, weighty, heavy. Whether that would be his deliverance or whether that would be his judgment, it would be something very weighty and heavy. I don't know if you guys still use that word now, but when I was younger, and maybe you still use it, but whenever you heard something profound, the hippies would say, "Dude, that's heavy." Do you guys still use that?

My guess is no. So back in the '70s and the '80s, they would say, "Well, that's heavy." Meaning that's so profound. And again, that's the word in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, it's simply to be revealed, to be displayed. Now I thought that was really interesting because in the New Testament, the way God revealed himself was through the display of Christ.

He came taken on very common form, human form, that initially you wouldn't even recognize him as the Son of God. His revelation was gradual, and then the climax of his revelation, we recognize on the cross and his resurrection. But in the New Testament, God simply displayed himself. That in the Old Testament, it was a shadow.

In the New Testament, it was like an HD version of who God is, and we were able to see him clearly. So the word glory in and of itself is simply God's nature on display. That's the meaning of that word. Now the significance between all of this and giving God the glory is in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, when the disciples asked him to teach us how to pray, Jesus said, "Pray this way.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." So the very first statement is recognizing God as God. Recognizing God as God. May his name be hallowed. Before we are concerned about our life, our sustenance, our well-being, our safety, he says, "Let his name be hallowed." And then the second thing he says, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." So all that is happening in heaven.

All the reality in heaven made happen here. He said, "Make that your first prayer." That's basically in essence what Solomon would say in Ecclesiastes, that's the end of his life. The chief end of man is to fear God and keep his commandment. Paul says it's the end of Romans.

He says the totality of the gospel, "Let his name be glorified." Jesus said in his prayer, "To hallowed be his name. Let his kingdom come." Not our kingdom. How much of our frustration in our life happens because we are in conflict with his kingdom and his will in our life?

He said, "Let his kingdom come." And everything that's happening in heaven, let it be done here. So those of us who have been studying, again, through the book of Revelation, every time we see a glimpse of heaven, what's happening up there? You don't need to answer because I've mentioned this several times already.

Every time we see a glimpse of what's happening in heaven, what is happening up there? Worship. All throughout the book of Revelation, we see scenes of the elders, of the holy creatures, of the saints, of the angels, of the 144,000 Jews and multitudes behind them. Every time we get a glimpse of the throne of God, they are in worship.

So when Jesus says, "Pray this way, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, holy and honored and feared and glorified are thy name, let your kingdom come here." Why does his kingdom have to come here? Because this kingdom down here is in rebellion against God. So that's a prayer.

That's a prayer of battle. That let your kingdom come and be established here and that what's happening up there happen down here, which is worship. So the primary call to mankind is worship. You and I were not created to be objects of worship, but to be worshipers. And the main reason why we face frustration in our lives is because we have that thing completely reversed.

We have it completely reversed. Now let me ask you, how much would it affect your life if you didn't have to worry about what other people thought of you? Like at all. You probably save a lot of time in the morning, right? Worry about how your face looks, about certain clothes you wear.

There's a lot of things you wouldn't do if you didn't care at all what other people thought. What kind of car you drove. I mean, as long as you can eat and live and have a family and have life and friends and practice love, right? I think that would be it.

But so much of our frustration in life is because we care a lot about what other people think and there's not a single person in here that's like, "Well, I'm not that." Every single one of us wrestles with that. How much freedom would you feel? How much of anxiousness would disappear?

How much of your friendships? If you just didn't care at all about what other people thought, about what your parents thought, what your friends thought, what your husband thought, what your wife thought, what your friends, your neighbors thought. I mean, it would take away a lot of weight in our lives.

See, God didn't create us to be objects of worship. It's not fitting for us. It doesn't fit us well because that's not who we are and everything that we do to try to be objects of worship, it just causes more frustration. God created us to be worshipers. See, he's not saying, "Hey, let it be about me." God's not saying, "I've heard stories about celebrities and famous people saying that I stopped going to church because God is an egomaniac.

When I first heard that God is seeking his own glory, I mean, he said, "Okay, instead of me," he said, "give him the glory," and he said, "He's an egomaniac. I can't worship an egomaniac." You see, it is when he is worshipped we feel alive. You know, last Sunday, I know that we had a wedding, right?

Tim and Sarah had a wedding and a bunch of guys were watching the Dodgers baseball, and I know that there was a grand slam that was hit right in the middle of the—not the ceremony, but at the reception. And I wasn't watching, so I didn't know what was going on, but there was an instantaneous worship that was happening at the corner, and I had no idea what happened.

So I thought maybe there was a rat or maybe something good, maybe some, you know, the snacks came out or the cake was so delicious and they instantaneously yelled in one voice, but something spectacular happened in the corner. And we all turned around, whether we were watching the game or not, we all turned around to look, and then eventually we had to, "What happened over there?" Then eventually we found out that one of the Dodgers players hit a grand slam, and eventually as a result of that, that they ended up winning the game.

So, you know, this is in the context of Chasing the World Series, so it was a huge game. But instantaneously, instantaneously, there was an eruption of worship. And I bet you at that moment, there was not a frown in that circle. For that moment, nobody was thinking about how hungry they were, nobody was thinking about the human problems that they may have had, nobody was thinking about anything other than just the elation of just watching.

I mean, how did it personally benefit you? Do you get money because they hit a grand slam? What did you get out of it, other than you're a fan? You're just a fan. And because you're a fan, when that happened, you're filled with joy. And I bet a lot of you talked about it afterwards.

It wasn't just there. I bet you today, you know, you're still talking about it with your friends, with other fans. Why were you so happy? Why were thousands, hundreds of thousands of people so happy about what some other guy did? Why does that make you so happy? Why are people willing to pay $1,000 for the cheapest World Series tickets?

That's what I heard on the radio, cheapest, like cheap seats are going to start selling for $1,000. Why would people pay that kind of money to watch a bunch of guys run around on the field throwing strange objects? Because you're a fan. It makes you feel alive. You are willing to quit your job.

Not quit your job, but miss your work, right? What else would you spend $1,000 for? Because it makes you happy. It makes you feel alive. See, God created us to be worshipers. Imagine if you went to this game and paid $1,000 and you're pouting because nobody's looking at you.

You know, you dressed up so nicely and combed your hair and put on the best shoes and you walked in and nobody's paying any attention to you. All they're doing is interested in the game. Imagine how ridiculous that would seem. Why did you come into this stadium? This stadium was for the purpose of watching this game.

You see, God created us to be His image bearers. See, the first thing that He says, He said, "God deserves the glory because He is the originator of all things." He says, "From Him," that's the first thing He says, "From Him." The reason why He deserves to get the glory is because all things are from Him.

Revelation 411, "Worthy are you, our Lord, our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." Because He created it. He's the creator. Colossians 116 and 17, "For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authority, all things were created through Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." He deserves the glory because He is the originator of all things.

How short-sighted we are in Romans chapter 1 when it says that God put His imprint, His glory upon creation, and we see creation and we glorify the people. Every time I go to the Great Wall, people pay thousands of dollars to come and see this Great Wall because it's supposed to be so long.

It took hundreds of years, 500 years to make, and so many people gave their lives, and there's a rich history behind it. But every time I go there, it reminds me, like, look at the mountain that it sits on. Look at the hills that it sits on. And we travel over there, we look at the rocks that were piled up, and we glory on the piled rocks, and then we completely forget about what it's sitting on.

You don't look at a painting and then worship the paint. Look at that paint. Look at the way it dried. Look at the canvas, right? No, you give credit to the painter. See, but that's the insanity of mankind, that we look at the universe, and clearly there is a Creator, and we give credit to man.

First and foremost, it says He deserved the glory because He's the Creator. In Genesis 1, 26 and 27, it says, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image.' He made us in His image, not Him in our image. For God created man in His own image, and in the image of God, He created Him." We were the canvas.

We were the canvas that He painted on, and He put imprint of Himself on us. So the man who is seeking glory for himself is no different than a painting who is sad that the observers are not recognizing the quality of the paint, the quality of the canvas. You completely missed the whole point.

In Genesis 9, 6, it says, "Whoever sheds blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in His own image." So the whole reason why murder is an egregious sin is because of innate value of mankind. You're not going to go to jail for killing an ant.

Well, it has life. Plant, we call it living. We eat cows every day, right? If you're not a vegan. Fish, they all have life. Why do we not call that murder? Like PETA does, right? But most of the world would not consider that murder. Most of the world would not have an issue with that.

Why not? Well, the Bible says because we have innate value. Where did this innate value come from? Because we were created in the image of God. Because our Creator's imprint is on humankind. So our very value comes from the fact that we were created by Him and put His imprint on us.

He deserved the glory. See, but in the immediate context that you and I are looking at, it's not just talking about creation. Paul is talking about the gospel itself. Not only is he the author of creation, he is the author of recreation, which is the gospel. He initiated the first creation, and because of our fall, he also initiated our recreation.

In Ephesians 1, 4-6, it says, "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to His purpose and will, to praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the beloved." He says from the very beginning, not only creation, the physical world, but the recreation of the spiritual to bring us back to life, is that He is the author of that.

You and I don't get the credit. You and I don't get to say, "You know what? God did His part and I did mine. Thank God that I had enough sense to go to church when I did. Thank God I had enough sense to ask the right questions." Even for our creation and for our recreation, God deserves all the credit.

There's nothing else that you and I did. That's why He says, "From Him, from Him, we glorify Him." Again, Ephesians 5, 25-27, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He may present the church to Himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish." So from the very get-go, our salvation was initiated by Him.

So He deserved the glory because He is the initiator. He is the creator. Secondly, God deserves the glory because He is the sustainer of all things. Colossians 1:17, it says, "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." In Him, all things hold together. Acts 17, 28, "For in Him we live and move and have our being." Our very existence depends on Him.

I think a simple way to describe hell is right now is not hell. No matter how hard life may be, this is nowhere near hell. Because every human being, Christian or non-Christian, experiences what we call common grace. God sustains our universe. He allows you to experience goodness. Christian and non-Christians also experience love.

You experience joy. You experience family. This is not hell. God is the sustainer of all things. Not only did He create it, not only is He responsible for the recreation, but everything that you and I know is because God is sustaining us. Think about it. Are you living because you willed to live?

You can't will yourself to live. You can't will yourself to have enough oxygen. If you have a heart problem, you don't will yourself to have a better heart. You don't will yourself to make sure that political... I mean, who knows? A nuclear bomb goes off, you get hit by a car, or the universe just gets too hot, or it gets too cold, or you get infected by some disease.

I know, this may sound morbid, but you and I don't have control over any of that. But again, the insanity of mankind is we wake up every day thinking it's us. That's why Jesus says, "You cannot bear fruit unless you abide in me." You can't survive physically, and neither can you survive spiritually.

He deserves all the glory because not only is it all from Him, but He says it is all through Him. In Hebrews 12, too, it says, "Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and seated at the right hand of God, right under the throne of God." He is the founder and the sustainer and the perfecter.

There's so much attention on the justification of our salvation. And then when it comes to our sanctification, we have a tendency to think, "Well, if I read the Bible enough, if I attend the right church, if I sit under the right teaching, that somehow sanctification is just going to happen if I will myself." No.

Even the bearing of fruit, we're completely dependent on Him. Everything that you and I know is completely dependent on Him. He deserves the glory because every single one of us is here because somehow God is allowing you. Do you understand when we open up the scriptures, it made sense to you?

Because some of you may remember what the Word of God sounded like before you became a Christian. Some of you guys may remember that. Reading the Bible, nothing made any sense to you. It sounded like gibberish. Maybe it sounded like instructions on how to put together IKEA furniture that you have no intent of ever putting it together.

So you just have no interest in it. Some of it, it just didn't make any sense to you. But God opened your eyes. It didn't make any sense to you, but now it does. Why? What happened? Did you just become smarter one day? Did one day you just learn how to do better math and you put it together and it just made sense to you?

No. God had mercy. And the whole reason why we are able to understand, why we're able to study the Bible, why we're able to pray and understand even what I'm saying to you is because God is allowing it. He's softening your heart. He deserves all the glory. In fact, one of my favorite verses, Romans 8.32, it says, "He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us everything?" How will he not along with him give us everything?

If he loved us enough to send his only begotten son, will he not love us enough to sustain us? That's where we have assurance of salvation. It's because of him. It starts with him and everything is sustained by him. "Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." The reason why we are sustained is because we are held in his hands of love.

Everything is from him and everything is sustained through him. But finally, God deserves the glory because he is the ultimate goal of all things. He is the ultimate goal. It is not simply through him, but it is also to him. First Corinthians 8.6, "Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist." He doesn't exist for us.

We exist for him. So most of you guys took BCC. The first and the most important vision of BCC is what? God-centered worship, not man-centered. Nobody's nodding their head. God-centered worship, not man-centered. That's the most important part of our church vision. We don't cater to, "Oh, what do you want?

What makes you happy? What makes you feel comfortable?" The most important question in the church ought to be, "What does God desire? What does God want? How does he want to be worshipped?" So whether it is preaching or teaching or the organization of the church or the decision that's being made, all of it is first and foremost to honor God because all things are not just from him, through him, but is also to him.

It's for him. He is the goal of our salvation. And that's the part that if we don't understand, we can still, recognizing he's a creator, recognizing he's a sustainer, but if we don't recognize the third part, we can still live all our lives using him to glorify ourselves. Does that happen in church?

All the time. I can stand up on the pulpit here to glorify myself. I just found a new avenue. Instead of making a lot of money, clearly I can't play basketball. I'm not going to make money playing basketball or any particular sport. Maybe wrestling, I had some chance, but clearly I wasn't going to be a professional basketball player.

And it's much harder to make a billion dollars. They already made Facebook. Amazon already exists. Google was here long before. They made a computer before I even recognized what it was. So all that stuff is just too hard. So I could easily come into the ministry, stand in front of a lot of people to glorify myself.

That could happen. It could happen in a smaller scale in the church. Every decision that we make, everything that we do, we can use God. We can lead worship. We can be on the praise team. We can stand on a stage. Or even other things. If we don't recognize the third part of this, everything's from him, everything's through him, ultimately for me.

Ultimately for me, so that I can have a better life, so that I can be happy. No, he says all things are to him. It's for him. We exist for him, him not for us. Romans 5, 10 through 11, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his will, his life?

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." So the goal of our salvation is to be reconciled with God. If I got in a fight with my wife and I said, "Oh, reconcile," because I sent her a letter.

Would you consider that reconciliation? Reconciliation is I have an ongoing relationship with my wife. That's what I would consider reconciliation. It's like, "Oh, I did something wrong." It's like, "Hey, I'm sorry." Then I just go live my own life. That's my wife. And you ask me, "Where is he?" I don't know.

"Where does she live?" I don't know. "What does she want?" I don't know. But we're reconciled. Lot of Christian relationship that we have with God is no different than that. We've been justified, but there is no personal relationship with the Father. And that's why prayer is so strange to nominal Christians.

You can study the Bible because your knowledge increases and you can immediately show if your knowledge increased. But this one particular activity of prayer, unless you're going to walk around with a dot on your head and say, "I prayed this morning," and then you put 10 minutes or 30 minutes so that people can see, unless you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you won't be able to pray because that's just like closing your eyes, doing nothing for 20 minutes, especially in our generation.

You can't get into a restaurant with some noise going on. You can't get into your car without something turned on. You can't sit for five minutes without the phone being turned on and going through Facebook. So sitting quietly, talking to somebody that you don't know for more than just a few seconds is torture.

Nominal Christians can't pray. No matter how much we emphasize how important it is, you can't pray. You can only pray if He really is your refuge. You will only pray if you really think He's your hope. You can only pray if you really have a personal relationship with Him.

But when you do, my gosh, it changes everything. There's nothing that is hopeless. There's nothing that is hopeless because a sovereign God, you have access to the sovereign God. You have a personal relationship with the sovereign God. So the whole purpose of the gospel is to reconcile with us because every problem that you and I have is because we've been disconnected with the author of life.

So salvation is only a legal contract. You missed the whole point of salvation because the whole benefit of salvation is to know Jesus. Everything is from Him, everything is through Him, and ultimately everything is to Him. The whole reason why the door has been opened is so that we can enter the throne of grace with confidence.

Why do we enter the throne of grace? Because that's where Christ is seated. Because that's where He is. So if our pursuit is not Christ, you missed the whole point. If our pursuit of Bible study is not Christ, you missed the whole point. If our pursuit and our fellowship is just so that we can have friends, you missed the whole point because the point of fellowship is to draw near to Christ.

The point of evangelism is to point people to Christ. The point of worship is to exalt Christ. The point of Bible study is to know Christ. All things are from Him, through Him, and to Him. And let me summarize all that Paul has been saying in these simple words.

As I wrap up, Psalm 19, it says, "Heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork." All that God created declares His glory. But in Romans chapter 119, it says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them, and yet mankind decided not to give Him the glory." God displayed His glory.

Mankind chooses not to give Him glory. In Romans 3:23, it says, "All have sinned and fall short of," what? "The glory of God." So His creation is the display of His glory. His rebellion is to refuse the acknowledgment of His glory. The man's sin is described as falling short of His glory.

So what was salvation? Is to display His glory in a greater way on the cross. If glory is what we fell short of, it is glory that must be reestablished. And when His glory is reestablished, when we are in the presence of His glory, what happens to us? We become worshippers.

Book of Revelation chapter 21, 22, we are not there yet, but heaven is described as a place that is no need of the sun. And the reason why is because it's that God's glory is going to light up heaven. His glory is going to be so plainly seen. We're going to become worshippers.

Worship ultimately is not something that you and I stir up. Worship is a response, just like the people watching baseball, right? Pure worship. Pure worship. Nobody had to be tucked into it. Nobody said, "Hey, let's get in line. Hey, stand in a circle. I'm going to high five and then you high five him." There was no organization in that.

It was just an eruption of pure joy when they saw something spectacular. That's how worship is described in heaven. In the presence of His glory being revealed, we will erupt in worship. What you and I are experiencing now is a glimpse of that. And that's what Romans chapter 12, that'll take us into Romans chapter 12.

He says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." All that Paul has been saying has been leading up to chapter 12. All of the display of His grace, of His mercy, of His holiness, His judgment, His patience, all the gospel, chapter 1 through chapter 11, is to bring us to chapter 12, therefore, that we may become worshipers.

Ultimate purpose of the cross is so that we may worship. Again, I hope that will kind of set the tone for us. You know, I know whenever we jump into the imperatives, you know, there's always a segment of the church where it's like, "Oh, I feel burdened." You know, let's just talk about the cross, not recognizing the point of the cross is to cause us to worship in spirit and in truth.

So as we invite our worship team to come back up, again, I want to ask you guys to take some time to really come before the Lord in prayer. Whenever you pray, pray very specifically. Don't pray in generalities. I want to be a better person. I want to be a better Christian.

Pray specifically. Like a surgeon who needs to get to the problem, be specific. What areas are you compromising? What sins have you swept under the rug? What are things that you're not dealing with? Come before the Lord. In light of His mercy, how can I become, how can I be a better worshiper?

How can I respond reasonably? Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leaves.