Although we looked at the fact that God is the ‘Alpha and Omega’ of our faith, the main word we focussed on tonight was ADORE. To adore means ‘to love and respect someone deeply’, to worship, to venerate, to regard with respect or honour. The word itself in English is only found in the NIV version of the Bible in Song of Songs when the Bride says of the Bridegroom, ‘How right they are to adore you!’ (Song of Songs 1:4), but the sentiment of adoration is found in many different places in God’s Word.

Nowadays, we use the word ‘adore’ to simply mean that we really like or love something or someone: ‘I adore chocolate cake!’, ‘anyone can see she adores him!’, and we have to be careful to strip words of their modern meanings if we are to really understand the Biblical meanings of these words we use so casually these days. Adoring chocolate cake simply means we really like eating that particular food; we don’t really think the cake is worthy of worship or honour! To adore is a personal response to someone we deeply respect and honour as being greater than ourselves. The word itself comes from the Latin adōrātiō, meaning “to give homage or worship to someone or something”. When we think about adoration, we will always think about a response to One who is greater than ourselves, which is why we’ve talked about the eternal nature of God. God, being eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, holy and immortal, is definitely worthy of our adoration!

‘Adore’ tends to be a word we associate particularly with Christmas. We sing the carol ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ with its repeated refrain ‘O come, let us adore Him.’ We sing ‘Christ by highest heaven adored’. Chris Tomlin has just brought out a new album of Christmas songs, the title of which is Adore’ and in that song he sings ‘Let all that is within us adore.’ Why should this be? What is it about Christmas that emphasises the need for adoration to us?

Christmas forces us to stop and pause, because we see in the manger the humility of God, how God wasn’t too proud or mighty to come to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, God who came in total vulnerability as a baby.

nativity outlinePaul tells us in Phil 2:6-11 that Jesus, even though He was God, didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped, to be used to His own advantage, but was willing to take the very nature of a servant. The Message version puts it like this: ‘he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.’

We expect God to be mighty and majestic, but the vulnerability of God as a baby or hanging on a cross shows us His love and compassion in ways that cause us to bow in adoration. Our God deserves to be adored!