“Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your (money); I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.’ Luke 19:20-21

Today we’ll look at a second change that affects our Scriptural basis of worship…our view of God changes from a wrath-filled, exacting God to a majesty-filled Father God. In today’s verses, the third and worthless servant explains why he has not done what the king asked. He was afraid of the wrath of the King—if he risked the money he might lose some or all of it and he was scared stiff. The other two servants were just the opposite. They saw the majesty of the king and went out and used the king’s money to create more money.

In recent time: the character of God has shifted in Christian thought. God didn’t change, but how the church views Him has. We have moved from a focus on the wrath of God to the majesty of God. A good thing. A holy fear of God is not a cringing fear, but a reverential awe (and yes, even an un-reverential camaraderie with the Holy One. Jesus wants friends, too –Jn 15:15.).

This has powerful implications for worship. We might grovel before a wrathful God, but we can’t worship Him. We can’t really even follow Him. But the more the majesty of God moves to the forefront the more we will desire to worship Him and follow where He leads.

So what is the majesty of God? To try describe God’s majesty is kind of like describing the splendor of the Grand Canyon. Words can’t do it justice. Even pictures don’t really provide the full impact. You just need to see it!

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon, it was on a side-trip whim as we drove along I-40. When we got there to the first overlook and I gazed on its beauty I was totally shocked. I suddenly knew why so many people visit it over and over. Its majesty was unsurpassed in anything I’d ever seen or any description I’d heard. I’d seen pictures but they didn’t do it any justice at all.

I expect most of us have a gut feeling about what God’s majesty is. It has to do with God’s strength and glory. His superlative greatness which comes from His authority, character, and manner. One of the reasons we don’t experience God’s majesty is because, like the Grand Canyon, we’ve seen pictures, but never taken the trip to actually see it.

A lot of us first saw God through a Sunday school quarterly. At such a safe distance, He seemed to be pretty OK. But in those simplistic terms and doctrines that someone decided children can handle He wasn’t very majestic. Morphing along through various youth ministries, perhaps Bible college, the pictures were better, and we might have gotten goose bumps from some particularly good representations, but it wasn’t until we experienced Him for ourselves, up close…that’s another story. Talk about impact! He became completely overwhelming.

Then, we’d following Him anywhere. Then we could worship; then we couldn’t stop worshiping.