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Muskegon SDA Church

Jason Sliger

The Throne of Grace

Father in heaven, you have invited us to come to your throne of grace.

Lord, I pray a simple prayer, that you would send your Holy Spirit to take the words that are spoken and to breathe life into them, that our hearts may be touched and we may be drawn nearer to thee.

Thank you, God, for we ask it in Jesus' name.

In his book, The State of the Church, An Urgent Call for Repentance and Prayer, Andrew Murray made this fascinating statement about prayer.

He said this, "'It is high time for the church to view prayer "'no longer in the light of our weakness "'or our limited desires.

"'We must begin to believe that God, "'in the mystery of prayer, "'has entrusted us with an unbelievable force that can move the heavenly world and bring its power down to this earth Would you say amen to that?

That's a powerful statement and 1 that's well worth meditating upon.

God has given us an amazing gift that every single 1 of us can exercise.

Eloquence is not needed to exercise the gift of prayer.

Knowledge, biblical knowledge is not necessarily needed to exercise the gift of prayer.

It is a gift that God has given to every single 1 of us, and it is a gift, it is a tool that God has given us that can move the heavenly world and bring its power down to this earth.

Over the last 10 days, we've seen prayers answered, and I trust that there have been more prayers answered than what we have seen in our 10 days together.

And I trust that as we continue going throughout this next year, that we, when we get to the kingdom of heaven, we'll be able to trace back prayers that have been answered that were prayed during the 10 days that we spent in our upper room right here in our church.

And I trust that we'll be able to trace back other prayers that have been answered in our own personal prayer time together with the Lord as we've asked the Lord to move here upon this earth.

God is interested in working in the hearts of his children.

God is interested in answering the prayers and the requests of his children.

And not only is he interested, he wants to hear what you and I have to say.

And so he invites us to come to the throne of grace.

Here the Bible tells us in our scripture reading in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 16, it says, let us therefore come, how?

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.

I find it interesting that the Bible does not call it a throne of judgment.

The Bible does not call it a throne of condemnation.

Why should we come boldly to this throne of grace?

As you read in our scripture reading, just 2 verses before this, Paul elaborates on how we have a high priest, Jesus, our high priest, who is interceding for his children in the heavenly sanctuary.

And because he is there doing that great work of intercession, we can have confidence, we can come boldly to the throne of our gracious God and there make our requests known to our heavenly Father.

Of course, in order for there to be a throne, there needs to be a king that sits on that throne, does there not?

The Bible tells us in Psalms 46, in verse 7, "'For God is the king of all the earth.

Is there a king that sits on this throne?

As we are invited to come to the throne of grace, is there a king that sits on that throne, yes or no?

Yes, the Bible tells us God, God is the king of all the earth.

Now a king must have a kingdom that he rules over.

And we are told in the Lord's Prayer, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.

Does God have a kingdom that he is ruling?

It is all that God has created is the kingdom that he rules over.

So we are invited to come into the presence of God to stand before his throne and make our requests known.

The King of kings, the Lord of lords, who has a kingdom that rules over all the earth, and he is inviting you and I every day to stand before the throne of our gracious God.

Now, in our society today, in the world, we still have remnants, vestiges of nobility in different parts of the world.

And if you were given, For an example, if you were given an invitation to stand before some king or queen here upon this earth, I think you would find that to be a rather high honor to stand before somebody of such stature.

But I want to tell you something this morning, that if you were ushered into the presence of some nobility here on this earth after receiving an invitation, I wanna tell you something, that they are probably not as interested in your presence as you are at being in their presence.

But I wanna tell you this morning, our God is more interested in you being in his presence than oftentimes we are about being in the presence of God.

And this isn't just an earthly king that rules over a small piece of real estate.

This is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who rules over all of the earth, all of the universe, who has created all things.

He is anxious to see you come into the throne before His throne of grace, and there talk to Him about the deepness that is in your heart, about the deep desires that is in your heart.

I praise God that he is inviting us to come into his throne, amen?

Now I wanna just share with you 3 things this morning.

3 things to keep in mind as you come before Christ's or God's throne of grace.

The first thing is when you come into that throne of grace, come with complete submission.

Now the desire, obviously, when we come into before the throne of grace to make our requests known before God is not only to tell him our requests, but to praise him, to ask for confession, to thank him for all of the things that he has done.

But as we come before the throne of grace, we must come in an attitude of submission.

We are not there, we are not invited to come before Christ's throne or God's throne to dictate to him what we want.

We have not been invited to come before the throne of grace to tell God what we think ought to take place.

But we are invited to come before the throne of grace, yes, to make our requests known, but to make our requests known, we need to make them subject to the will of God in submission to Him and His will.

You know, it's interesting, as we spent time in prayer over the last 10 days, I oftentimes heard people mention that they didn't want their will, but they wanted what God's will was.

And I believe that's a prayer that God can answer.

But listen, friends, it shouldn't just be something that we tag on at the end of our prayer just because it sounds good, but it really needs to be the attitude of our hearts.

That even if God does answer contrary to what we are asking, we will still be just as committed to God before as we were, after as we were before.

In fact, the Bible tells us this in 2 Chronicles 7 in verse 14.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall do what?

Humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will do What?

I don't know about you, but I think our land needs to be healed.

There is a problem that is happening in the world today.

And there is a beautiful promise in this Bible passage, And I know a number of you have read it, but I don't want you to miss the first ingredient.

We oftentimes like to zoom to the promise where it says, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.

But there is a preface to the, or there's a condition to God being able to answer these prayers and the first ingredient to having our prayers answered is having an attitude of submission and humility to God.

If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves, then the Bible says God will hear and answer our prayers.

Obviously, there are other conditions in there, but the point is that As we come before Christ's throne, as we come before the throne of grace, we must come with an attitude of submission, humble submission, not my will, but thine be done.

Just recently, my family and I, we have a habit every morning as we are getting ready to have breakfast, we have what I call the reading of the word.

And we're just kind of going through the Bible.

And as the kids are getting ready to eat their breakfast, I just read a few verses from the Bible.

And just recently, we've been going through the portion of scripture dealing with the story of Gideon.

How many of you remember the story of Gideon?

So God calls him and he says, listen, I want you to go and destroy these enemies, the enemies of God.

And so Gideon goes out and he gathers a mighty host of men.

He gathers 32, 000 men to come and fight with him in battle.

But as they get ready to go off into battle, what does God tell Gideon?

He says, listen, any of these men that are fearful, I want you to tell them to go home because I don't want the Israelites to think that it's by sheer number alone that they overthrew the enemy, but it was through the power of God.

Can you imagine what was going through the mind of Gideon?

32, 000 he started off, 10, 000 is all he is left with.

And then as he's getting ready to go off into battle, what does God tell him to do?

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The Throne of Grace

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