Come and See His Glory
EVERYONE!
Psalm 50:1-6

†  I.H.S. †

May the grace and peace of God our Father and our Lord Jesus instill in you a desire to see God, and to help others hear His invitation to them as well!

• The Summoning

The invitation looked a little ostentatious, being gold trimmed and written on the finest of paper. My first reaction was being overwhelmed, not sure if I should believe I got the interview, wondering maybe if Bob was playing a practical joke on me!

But I looked at it a second time – this invitation to a glorious feast, and studied it, and it was real!

And then I realized the invitation, really a summoning was not just to me, or my family. It was for everyone here, and many, many more people.

You heard it this morning, “The LORD, the Mighty One, is God, and he has spoken; he has summoned all humanity from where the sun rises to where it sets.”

I wonder if they will all show in time, on Ash Wednesday? That would be so cool!

Seriously, this summoning is so powerful – to all people, across all time – all humanity from beginning to its eventual end… all called tp God…

• The Way He Comes?

At first glance, being summoned to meet God sounds like being summoned to the Vice-Principal’s office in High School. Or worse, walking down the hall, and hearing the VP call out your name and yell at you to get in the office.

I won’t say if I know this terrifying situation first hand, or not…. But I know quite a few people that did experience it…

Here how the Psalmist describes God coming to meet us where He summons us. (I wish I had a deep booming voice to narrate this with!)

²  From Mount Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines in glorious radiance. ³  Our God approaches, and he is not silent. Fire devours everything in his way, and a great storm rages around him. ⁴  He calls on the heavens above and earth below to witness the judgment of his people.

If Peter, James, and John hit the ground terrified when God the Father spoke to them at Jesus’ transfiguration, what would they do in this scene?

This sounds scary, and for a reason.

Seeing God in all His glory scared the Israelis’ when they were at Mount Sinai. To hear the voice of God not be silent, but to thunder with more of a crash than the loud mic drop ever done at Concordia, or the loudest the organ can play.

Much louder, more terrifying as God says, “come here! NOW!”

Then we see the fire devouring everything, and the great storm blowing and flooding and washing it all away! And as we hear this terrifying description, part of it goes, “they deserve it,!” and the other half recognizes that the “they” includes the we.

We deserve to be cast into the lake of fine, we deserve the wrath of God that is found in a storm beyond anything ever seen.

And so this picture of God coming and calling might scare us, it certainly will scare anyone who rejects God in this life,

As He comes – hear what the Psalmist writes in verse 4 again, “. ⁴  He calls on the heavens above and earth below to witness the judgment of his people.

If it wasn’t for one word in that sentence, it would terrify me….

HIS

• The Judgment – truly Glorious

HIS

“To witness the judgement of HIS people.”

Those three little letters make all the difference in the world.

Though we deserve to be punished for our sin, our Judge is also our advocate, and He will judge us.

The passage even tells us how…

“Bring my faithful people to me— those who made a covenant with me by giving sacrifices.” ⁶  Then let the heavens proclaim his justice, for God himself will be the judge.

Even before He Judges us, even as He summons us, God is declaring that we trust and depend on Him – that is what it means that wea re faithful in this passage. Not that we are perfect, but that we know He is our only hope to deal with the broken mess sin has made of this world, and of our lives.

This is why Jesus came- to do this! This is what Moses and Elijah, and all the Old Testament pointed to, this point where God would gather His people and declare them faithful.

That is why there is a covenant, based in a sacrifice, that ties us to God. A covenant that says – you will be my people, and I will be your God.

A covenant whose sacrifice happened, not at the temple, but on a cross. Whose broken body and pour out blood we commune with, even as we see bread and wine. This is what we celebrate when we receive the Body and blood—this incredible sacrifice, this incredible blessing, this incredible summoning into the presence of God.

The cross is the guarantee of this judgment of God, that we are judged, not as guilty sinners, but as His beloved children.

No wonder Peter, James and John were told to listen to Jesus!

They didn’t, of course, not until after the resurrection, and for some, the ascension. And even then they had ups and downs. They always returned to the word, and to the sacraments, to remember what Jesus taught them about the Father, and the cross. That’s what the Holy Spirit does – God helping us with the reality we need to know..

That we are HIS.  Amen!