Father, we love you so much.
You are so worthy of our worship, our
praise, our adoration.
We are so often so self-centered and
preoccupied with ourselves that we fail to give
you the glory and the honor that you
deserve.
Lord, we pray that through our time together,
looking into your Word today, that you would
retune our thinking, Father, that you would once
again place within the center of our minds
and hearts the ultimate priority that you have
for us, which is to give our lives
to you and to worship you.
Father, bless this time.
Bless us with a good, alert attention span
to you, Holy Spirit.
Work the truth we're going to look at
deep down within us that we might go
on to grow in our worship and exaltation
of God the Father.
And we ask these things in the name
of Jesus Christ, Amen.
We are going to talk about worship now,
which is the ultimate priority in the Christian
life.
We have been called actually as God's people
to an everlasting preoccupation with the Lord.
And I want you to see in the
Bible today that worship, worshiping God is the
ultimate priority for us as God's people.
If you could turn in your Bible actually
to John, the Gospel of John 4-20,
I'd like to read down through verse 24
and use that as a starting point, a
launching point.
Here Jesus Christ is standing at the well
in Samaria with a Samaritan woman.
The Samaritans were half-breeds, part Jewish, part
other nationalities, and they were a half-breed
in their worship as well.
You could say that their worship was a
hybrid of Judaism and pagan worship, and they
worshipped down there in that area of the
country rather than Jerusalem.
So Jesus enters into this discussion with this
woman about worship.
And He very masterfully shows the priority that
worship has with God the Father.
And in verse 20, the woman is saying
to Him, Our fathers, the Samaritan fathers, worshipped
on this mountain, and you Jews say that
in Jerusalem is the place where one ought
to worship.
Jesus said to her, Woman, believe Me, the
hour is coming when you will neither on
this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know.
We know what we worship for salvation is
of the Jews, but the hour is coming
and now is.
When true worshipers...
See, in Jesus' mind, there's such a thing
as a true worshiper and a false worshiper.
He says the hour is coming when true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth.
For the Father is seeking such to worship
Him.
God is spirit and those who worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Now, as we go on from here, and
we'll refer to this section again and again
throughout the message, I want you to know
this is not meant to be a final
word on worship, but rather a word to
raise in our thinking a few main important
thoughts about worshiping God.
And I want to give you a threefold
outline for where we're going.
First of all, we're going to talk about
the perversion that we are dealing with today
in terms of God-centered worship in the
church.
Secondly then, we will talk about the priority
in the Bible of God-centered worship.
And then we will talk about just briefly
the practice of God-centered worship.
And at that time, we'll talk about worship
here in the church, coming to church, and
what that is to be all about in
the Christian life.
So let's begin with the first main point
in our outline which is the perversion of
God-centered worship.
The perversion around us today is basically that
worship is for me.
That is the perversion today.
There is a very prevalent mindset today that
we come to church to worship for what
we can get out of it.
Worship is for me.
It is a, if you will, me-istic
mindset.
There is much in the church that has
contributed to this.
I think one main contributing factor is of
course the Word-Faith Movement with Kenneth Hagen,
Kenneth Copeland, Charles Capps, Marilyn Hickey, Fred Price,
people like this.
And they have spread around the church such
a selfish, me-istic mindset that I'm into
Christianity for what I can get out of
it.
And that's what they talk about.
All the prosperity, all the stuff that God
wants to give you if you have the
magic formulas that you can only get from
them.
These people are of course mainline heretics.
They're false teachers.
They are wolves in sheep's clothing.
They need to be avoided at all costs.
And certainly the attitude that they propagate should
be avoided.
I would recommend to you Hank Hanegraaff, president
of Christian Research Institute, has a brand new
book.
It's called Christianity in Crisis.
And he really rips the mask off that
whole movement and exposes it for what it's
really all about.
And I would recommend that you get that
book.
We have it in our bookstore.
It is a very, very important book for
our time.
But these people have certainly contributed to this
me-centered kind of Christianity and then me
-centered worship.
Another thing that has contributed today to that
is the pragmatic mindset that is very prevalent
today in the church.
And that is the whole thing of all
these programs and these pastors obsessed with having
big churches, pastors obsessed with being seen among
their peers as being successful men in the
ministry.
And thus one program, one formula, one technique
after the next has been spawned to get
people into church, get bodies into buildings.
It's pragmatism.
The whole thing then becomes, will it work
for me?
If I try this, will it work for
me?
And that has fostered a pragmatic mindset in
God's people.
Will it work for me?
What's in it for me?
Will it make me feel good?
Will I like it?
And we have come to a very pragmatic
time in the church.
And just think for example, there are in
America over 350,000 churches.
Collectively, these churches own 800 billion dollars worth
of real estate.
Never has the church been so programmed collectively.
Never has it been so informed, so well
planned, so quote influential or busy or aggressive
or clever or all these other things.
Motivated, you can go on and on.
But never has the church been so carnal.
Never has the church been so self-centered
as it is today.
And never has true God-centered worship been
so lacking in the church in America.
A distinguished explorer spent a couple of years
among savages in the upper Amazon.
He attempted to force a trek through the
jungle at an extraordinary speed driving the native
carriers to the limit physically.
Everything went along okay for about two days.
And on the third morning all the natives
just sat down and wouldn't go any farther.
Finally, he went over to the chief and
he said, what in the world are they
doing?
Why won't they march on?
And he said, because they're waiting for their
souls to catch up with their bodies.
Well, so is the church.
God's people in America have been driven and
driven and driven with one program after the
next, one pragmatic formula after the next to
get people into the church to make it
bigger.
And in the meantime, their souls are lagging
way behind.
They're suffering and people are not understanding and
being taught how to worship God.
They're being taught how to build an empire
for some man's massive ego.
It's a tragedy and it's perverting the worship
of God in the church.
John MacArthur, by the way, is coming out
next month in just a couple of weeks
with a brand new book called Ashamed of
the Gospel.
And it deals with this whole business of
pragmatism in the church and how the gospel's
been thrown out for programs for building big
empires.
Okay, there's another thing.
Not only has pragmatism contributed to this, but
the love affair with psychology in the church
has fostered this selfish mindset.
You get into psychology enough and it will
make you selfish, self-centered.
Psychology, there's so much we could say about
it, but know this, it came from the
fallen minds of fallen men sealed in the
darkness without the light of God.
When men tried to figure out their problems
that can only be solved by the Spirit
of God and the light of His Word
and the truth of His Word, you have
the blind leading the blind.
And there is so much psychology in the
church today that everybody's running around wondering how
they feel.
Wondering how they feel about what happened to
them way back when.
And becoming irresponsible and selfish and wanting to
blame their problems on somebody else and want
to live in the past 25 years ago
and be mad about it every day until
they get some kind of a magical inner
healing.
Listen, the church needs to worship God.
When they worship God and make Him central,
they will find God.
In finding God, they will find the solution
to their problems.
We could go on and on as to
the contributions to this perversion and worship, but
I think that those are enough things to
get you understanding why we have the problem
we have today.
The perversion, again, is that worship is primarily
for me.
In contrast to all of that, let's talk
about what worship is really to be all
about.
Worship is to be for who?
God.
That's right.
In John 4.23, Jesus said it, the
hour is coming.
Now is when true worshipers will worship the
Father in spirit and in truth, for the
Father is seeking such to worship Him.
You find throughout these verses the word worship
again and again and again and again and
again.
You find it throughout the New Testament.
In the Greek, the main word you find
again and again is the word proskuneo.
It means basically to bow down, to kiss
toward, to prostrate oneself.
It is a word that describes what you
would often see in the biblical society where
a man would come before his king, his
sovereign, and he would bow down until his
forehead actually touched the ground.
Kneeling with his forehead on the ground as
a sign of his profound reverence for his
sovereign and his king.
Well, you take that word, you put it
into the Bible, you use it in reference
to God, and it's exalted to its highest
dimension.
And it speaks of what we are to
do with our God.
The modern word English, the modern English word
that we use, worship, that we see in
our English translation actually comes from an old
English word worth-ship.
Worth-ship.
And that old English word denoted a worthiness
of the individual in receiving special honor.
So when we talk about worship being for
God, we're talking about the fact that worship
then is essentially giving rather than receiving.
That is not to say that when we
are worshiping God, we don't receive wonderful blessings
from Him because we do.
But know this, we don't come to God
to get the blessing.
We come to God to worship Him and
we get blessed in the process.
And there's a big difference.
Do you understand that?
As subtle as it may seem to you,
it is a major difference.
It is the difference that makes all the
difference.
Essentially then, worship is giving to God.
You could say worship is a blessed act
of blessing God.
Now, we're going to move through the Bible
and look at a number of different things.
You find, for example, in the book of
Exodus that God takes Moses aside and He
talks to him about how to make the
incense that they burnt in the tabernacle and
later in the temple.
Before the Lord, perpetually.
And the incense would rise up to God
as a sweet fragrance, as a picture of
their worship offered up to God.
You come to the New Testament if you
turn to John.
If you're in John 4, just turn to
the right to John 12.
And you see a wonderful picture of worship.
The fragrance rising up to God.
The worshiper at the feet of God.
So, John 12.
Here in John 12, beginning with verse 1,
Jesus has come to have dinner at the
house of Lazarus who had been raised from
the dead.
And He is there with Martha and Mary,
His sisters.
It says, Then six days before the Passover,
Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was who
had been dead, whom He had raised from
the dead.
There they made Him a supper, and Martha
served, but Lazarus was one of those who
sat at the table with Him.
Then Mary took a pound of very costly
oil of spikenard.
Remember who it was that sat at the
feet of Jesus when her sister was busy
with many things?
Who was it?
Mary.
Here is Mary again.
She is obviously a worshiper, a true worshiper
to use Jesus' terminology.
Mary comes, and here is the picture.
She bows down at His feet.
She would have to get on her knees
to do this because she ends up wiping
His feet with His hair.
It says, Then Mary took a pound of
very costly oil of spikenard and anointed the
feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with
her hair, and the house was filled with
the fragrance of the oil.
Just a beautiful picture of what worship is
all about.
Giving to Jesus, worshiping Jesus, and the beautiful
fragrance filling the entire house.
Well, that is how our worship is to
be.
And so worship is to rise then up
to God from His people.
We come and we give our worship to
Him.
In the New Testament in Romans 12, after
11 solid chapters of doctrine, Paul the Apostle
brings the first practical word to the Romans,
and he says, I beseech you by the
mercies of God, in light of all the
grace that you have learned, that you now
present your bodies as a living sacrifice which
is your reasonable, what?
Service.
The English says, the Greek is Latruo.
It is a word for worship, a worshipful
service.
And so he says, in light of everything
you've learned about God, the most reasonable thing
you can do is worship God.
Give your life to Him and serve Him.
That's what he's saying.
We are to worship God.
We are to give our very lives to
Him.
So let's be very specific then.
In reference to the church meeting, when we
come to church to give our worship to
God, it should be just that.
You should be in your car on the
way to church with a gift for God.
It should be a gift in your heart
that you can't wait to give the Lord,
and that is the gift of your worship.
You see, when you look at the term
proskuneo in the Greek or latruo in the
Greek, you do not find a word that
says, where you get the definition of proskuneo,
it means to gas up, to fill up,
to receive.
No, it doesn't mean that.
It means to bow down and give out.
That's what it means, you see.
We need to understand that.
So when we come to church, put it
this way, if you come to church primarily
just to see what you can get, if
that's your primary thing, then know this, you
don't truly worship God.
If you come to church just to get
the blessing, then you don't truly worship God.
You see, one of the things I think
is wrong with the extremes that you find
in the charismatic movement in the area of
worship is that there's such an emphasis on
the experience, such an emphasis on getting the
quote anointing, on feeling the feeling, on catching
the lightning bolt, getting the zap that's going
to change your life.
As a result, it cultivates this me-centered
zap syndrome where all you think about in
going to church is that you can get
your zap for the day.
And you grade the service on a scale
of 1 to 10 by whether you got
the zap or not.
And so much then goes on in the
service to whip up and guarantee a zap
for the day.
Then you get about 10 minutes of the
Bible, right?
Which is watered down because the pastor's so
into getting the zap, he didn't have time
to study that week.
Or then you have the pastor say, oh,
we're so into worshiping now, let's just go
on.
That is just to say, I was too
lazy to study this week and get you
a message, so let's just let the band
do the rest.
You see?
Might as well call it for what it
is.
Anyway, all of that cultivates the wrong attitude.
We come to God to give our worship
to Him.
And that is not to say our worship
shouldn't be lively.
And I think certainly many of the circles
in the charismatic camp bring to us an
enthusiasm for God that's genuine and real.
And we should be encouraged by that.
But there are extremes that take you all
the way out into something that is not
even real worship.
And we need to be aware of that.
There is a balance.
We come to church to give our worship
to God.
Psalm 45, verse 1, the psalmist says, my
heart is overflowing with a good theme.
The word overflowing literally means to bubble up
and to spill over and to boil.
He was saying, God, as I contemplate You,
my heart begins to burn within me begins
to bubble up, it begins to boil within
me with adoration and praise for You.
Thus, Lord, I'm going to come and give
You all the honor that is due to
Your name.
It is a thing of giving.
How long has it been since you knew
that kind of worship?
How long has it been since you came
to church along the way saying, Oh God,
I long to come and give to You.
I can't wait till I have an opportunity
to express my giving to You in the
time of singing.
How long has it been since you've known
that kind of God-centered worship?
And so we see the perversion of God
-centered worship and we see what worship is
to be all about.
Let's move on then to the second main
thought in our outline today, the priority of
God-centered worship.
And I want to give you a couple
of thoughts here, a few main thoughts, basically
three in this section.
First of all, I want you to see
that worship, when you talk about salvation, when
you talk about salvation, if it is rightly
presented, you must understand that worship is the
ultimate purpose of redemption or salvation.
When God saves a man, the ultimate purpose
is to turn that man or that woman
into a worshiper.
I mean, this is exactly what Jesus was
saying to the woman at the well.
You see, men on their own do not
worship God.
In fact, when man fell in the garden,
what was effectively lost was the God-centered
worship.
Man became the center of the whole thing.
Turn in your Bible, could you, to Romans
1-20, where we see this in some
detail.
Paul is kind of giving a summary of
fallen man and his state and the greatest
sin of the whole thing is that man
has ceased to be a worshiper of God
and has become a worshiper of himself.
Romans 1.20 Here we read, for since
the creation of the world speaking of God,
His invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood
by the things that are made even as
eternal power and Godhead, so that they are
without excuse.
Because although they knew God, they did not
glorify Him as God.
Neither were thankful, but became futile in their
thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God.
Watch this massive step down.
Into an image made like unto who?
Corruptible man.
And then he goes down even further.
And birds and four-footed beasts and creeping
things.
And so here, Paul says that man fell
from his worship of God and instead began
to worship himself.
Changed the glory of the incorruptible God into
an image made like corruptible man and further
got even worse and more perverted and then
began to worship images of beasts and four
-footed things, creeping things.
He could have actually said creepy things, but
he said creeping things.
At any rate, it is important to see
that man's big problem is he doesn't worship
God, he worships himself.
That's the problem with the world today.
Jesus came in response to all of that
and He said, I came to seek and
to save that which was what?
Lost.
And what was lost?
True God-centered worship.
And so He says in John 4.23,
But the hour is coming, and now is,
when true worshippers will worship the Father in
spirit and in truth, for the Father is
seeking such to worship Him.
That is the only place in all the
Bible that says God is actually seeking something
from us.
Then you find in terms of the fact
that God redeems men to make them true
worshipers in Revelation.
Why don't you turn to Revelation 14.6.
Here we come down to the end of
the Bible.
Revelation 14.6. You find in the beginning
of the Bible, man falls.
And the big temptation he gives into is
to become a god so he can basically
be worshipped instead of worshiping God.
So the beginning of the Bible, worship is
lost.
God calls for God-centered worship as the
ultimate priority all through the Bible.
You come down to the very end of
the Bible, and you see that God is
still wanting to redeem men for the purpose
of becoming worshipers.
Revelation 14.6. Then I saw, John says,
another angel flying in the midst of heaven
and having the everlasting gospel to preach to
those who dwell on the earth, to every
nation, tribe, tongue, and people.
This is at the end of the human
history.
Jesus Christ is about to come back at
any time.
And this is God still calling for men
to come and worship Him.
Verse 7.
Here's His message.
Saying with a loud voice, Fear God and
give glory to Him for the hour of
His judgment has come.
And what?
Worship Him.
Come to God and worship Him.
And so I say again, worship is the
ultimate purpose of redemption.
If God saves you and gives you forgiveness
in eternal life, it's to turn you into
a worshipper of Him.
Let me take you to another thought.
Worship is the ultimate focus of the Bible.
You take your Bible, read through it cover
to cover, and you'll find out that the
ultimate focus here is worship.
This is a book about worshiping God.
We can follow this theme all the way
through, really.
If you just go back to the beginning.
Adam and Eve were created by God to
worship God.
They fell into sin when they refused to
do so and wanted to be worshiped themselves
and become God.
Cain and Abel.
You look at that.
Cain killed Abel, didn't he?
Over the matter of what?
Worship.
You go on and you look at the
patriarchs as we have been on Sunday night
in Genesis and you find that when they
properly worshiped God, they were blessed.
When they didn't, God punished them.
You continue to move through the Bible and
you find that Israel was doomed in the
desert because of failure to properly worship God.
You find that Moses could not enter the
promised land because he failed to properly worship
God obediently at the incident with the rock
and the water.
You find that when God gave them the
law to govern them as a people, the
first thing He did was give them a
call to worship.
Turn in your Bible to the book of
Exodus.
Let me show you this.
In chapter 20, beginning at verse 1.
Exodus 20 verse 1.
And God spoke all these words saying, I
am the Lord your God who brought you
out of the land of Egypt and out
of the house of bondage.
Here it is.
You shall have no other gods before me.
I am to be the one you worship.
I am to be the very center of
your adoration and your praise.
See, anything that occupies your thinking and your
energy and your time and your effort continually
will become a God to you, an idol
to you.
It will draw off, quote, your worship.
God is saying you shall have no other
gods before me.
Then just turn to the right.
In Exodus to chapter 34 verse 14.
He makes it very clear.
And he sums it up.
God has made it very clear.
You shall worship no other God.
Jesus summed all of that up in Matthew
22 when he said, You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with
all your soul, with all your mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
This is what God has been after from
the beginning.
It is the ultimate focus of the Bible.
As you continue along the Bible in Exodus,
if you read it carefully, you will discover
that about 25 chapters are devoted in the
book of Exodus to the building of the
tabernacle.
And there is a reason for that.
The tabernacle had one function and that was
worship.
Even the geographical location of the tabernacle is
crucial.
Because if you've studied your Bible, you know
that when they built the tabernacle, the tent
that you find it all covered in the
25 chapters, when they finally put it out
there geographically, it was right in the center
of the people.
They lived around the tabernacle.
Everything in their life revolved around the worship
that went on in the tabernacle.
You had the tabernacle and the priests living
here and the Levites living here.
And out a little farther came the rest
of the 12 tribes of Israel.
They lived literally around the tabernacle.
There was a purpose for that.
The purpose was this.
They were to know every day of their
life, when they came out the door of
their tent to start their day, the very
first thing they saw was what?
The tabernacle.
The glory of God was there, often manifesting
above the tabernacle.
All the worship went on there.
So every day of their life, they were
given the message, the center of your life
is to be worshiped.
That your life revolves around what goes on
in this tabernacle right here.
And so even the geographic location of the
tabernacle sent out the message that worship is
the priority of your life.
To be the center of your life.
Your life is literally to revolve around the
worship.
It takes place there in the tabernacle.
You continue on in the Bible and you
find that God takes worship seriously.
So that when you have the violation of
principles of worship, God acts swiftly and seriously.
Take for example, when they came out of
Egypt and Moses was on the mountain receiving
the Ten Commandments.
Remember what they were doing at the bottom
of the mountain?
What did they do?
They built a golden calf, didn't they?
They were down there and somebody says, let's
make a calf.
And we'll put it together.
We've got all this jewelry we brought out
of Egypt.
Let's throw it in the fire and melt
it down and we'll build golden calves.
We'll bow down.
We'll say these are the gods that brought
us out of Egypt.
Moses comes down from receiving the Ten Commandments,
hearing God talk to him personally, watching God
write personally on a rock with his finger
the laws for his people.
He comes down the mountain and they're down
there dancing around, having a pagan worship orgy
type situation and worshiping these golden calves.
How did God respond to that?
He slew thousands of them.
He took it very seriously when they violated
the principles of worship.
Leviticus 10, you find the sons of Aaron,
they come in to be ordained on their
ordination day.
And the Bible says they offered strange fire
before the Lord.
We don't know what that was.
All we know is they didn't come the
way God said they should come.
God took it seriously.
He would not tolerate their impudence and their
flippancy.
And He killed them, Nadab and Abihu, slain
by God.
1 Samuel 13, you find Saul the king
and he's waiting for Samuel to come down
to the battle and give an offering and
lead them in worship so they can have
victory in the battle.
Samuel delays.
He doesn't show up.
Saul takes matters into his own hands.
He says, ah, anybody can worship God.
Anybody can give an offering.
He goes and he gives the offering.
Samuel shows up right after he's done it.
He gets Saul and he says, you know
what, Saul?
You have a big problem.
You're disobedient to God.
You presume to take the office of the
priest.
God will not tolerate that.
Saul, I have to tell you that because
of all your rebellion, all your disobedience, and
now this ultimate act of self-styled worship,
you are removed from being king of Israel
as of now and you will be replaced
by a man after what?
God's own heart who will worship God the
way He is to be worshipped.
The Lord took it very seriously.
And then you have, of course, the account
later in 2 Samuel 6 of Uzzah.
The Ark of the Covenant had been captured
by the enemies of Israel.
And they were so glad to get it
back and they built a new cart.
And they put the Ark on there.
And they got Uzzah who was a Kohathite,
one of the men who was trained by
God to handle the Ark of the Covenant.
And they're riding down the road and David
is singing in the road.
It's a great celebration.
Hundreds of thousands of people singing and dancing
and shouting and rejoicing that the Ark is
coming back to the nation.
All of a sudden, the cart hits a
bump in the road and it kind of
flies up a little bit.
The Ark wobbles a little bit.
Uzzah reaches out to steady the Ark.
Boom!
He falls over dead on the street.
David stops.
Instant silence.
The rejoicing turns to mourning.
Everybody says, what is going on?
David goes back and for months he seeks
God and he figures out from the Word
of God that Uzzah as a Kohathite was
never to touch the Ark.
There were rings on the side of the
Ark that you slid poles through.
And the Kohathites would then lift the Ark
by the poles without touching it and move
it in that way.
All as a part of a great reverence
in worshiping God His way.
Uzzah in a very flippant manner reaches out
and says, I'll just steady this cart.
First of all, it shouldn't have been on
a cart.
It should have been on the poles on
the shoulders of the Kohathites.
Secondly, he should have never touched it.
And that's why God killed him.
So when there were violations of the principles
of worship in the Bible, God takes it
seriously.
Then you come down to the time of
Jesus Christ.
We could go on and on seeing how
this is the focus of the Bible, but
Jesus says that the hour is coming and
now is when worshippers will worship the Father
in spirit and in truth.
And He goes on to say the same
message.
Then you find out that not only is
worship the ultimate purpose of redemption, not only
is worship the ultimate focus of the Bible,
but worship is the ultimate destiny of believers.
This is what we're going to do forever.
We should learn to do it now.
Get in the flow with what God's going
to do with us forever.
In Revelation, for example, chapter 4, you have
the 24 elders who are falling down before
Him who sits on the throne and they
worship Him who lives forever, casting their crowns,
symbolizing all that they are and have received
and worship before God on His throne.
We are told in Revelation 15.4 that
all nations will come and worship the Lord.
And then this.
Turn to chapter 22 to verse 8.
We find out that even the angels who
live in the presence of God understand worship
very clearly.
They understand that God-centered worship is the
priority.
Nothing else is to be tolerated.
And here is John receiving the revelations from
the Lord, the angels ministering to him.
And we read this in Revelation 22.8,
Now I, John, saw and heard these things.
And when I heard and saw, I fell
down to worship before the feet of who?
The angel who showed me these things.
Now just imagine, this angel was around when
Satan wanted to take over heaven and receive
all the worship.
And this angel saw Satan and one-third
of the angels thrown out of heaven to
take their place eventually in an eternal burning
hell, right?
This angel knows about that.
This angel was around when the golden calf
incident took place and God slew thousands.
This angel was around when Nadab and Abihu
offered strange fire and God killed them.
This angel was around when the worship was
perverted, when Uzzah touched the Ark of the
Covenant and died.
This angel has seen people pervert worship and
offer it in the wrong direction and die
or be punished and judged.
John falls at his feet.
Can't you see the angel panic?
Get up!
Quickly!
And so he says in verse 9, he
said to me, Don't do that!
Get up!
I am your fellow servant.
He's looking around thinking, God is going to
do something to me if I look like
I like this.
He says, For I am your fellow servant
of your brethren the prophets and those who
keep the words of this book.
Then what does he say?
Worship God.
Worship is the ultimate destiny of believers.
It is the ultimate priority for all of
us that know God.
So we've seen the perversion.
We've seen the priority of worship.
Finally, let's come to the practice of God
-centered worship.
I just want to take a couple of
minutes to deal with this.
Let's talk about the basic elements of Christian
worship.
What should it involve?
Two things.
Truth and Spirit.
Jesus said, You must worship the Father in
truth.
How can I do that?
There is only one way.
By learning what is in the book of
truth, right?
By learning what God has revealed about Himself.
That is why I am committed to verse
-by-verse expository preaching.
That is why the pulpit can never be
a place for ongoing constant hammering of social
issues and trying to get you into this
cause and that cause and everything else.
The pulpit must be a place of the
Word of God where you learn the truth
so that you can worship in truth.
You see?
You learn the truth about God.
And then you worship in Spirit.
That means from your Spirit you're to worship
in truth from the very depths of your
being now that you know about God, you
can intelligently worship Him from the very center
of your being in Spirit and in truth.
And so that is how we're to worship.
Psalm 47.7 says, Sing ye praises with
understanding, bringing it all together.
So these are the basic elements of Christian
worship.
And then the second thought I want to
give you here as we wind down is
the basic elements of a corporate worship.
By that I mean, when we come together
in church.
First of all, we should understand the place
of corporate worship in our lives.
You remember the tabernacle in the Old Testament?
Where was it?
In the center.
We have here a church building where we
gather together.
This is the local, quote, tabernacle for us
where we come to meet with God.
What place should the church have in our
lives?
It should be at the center with God
in the center of that.
You see, in the tabernacle of old, around
the tabernacle of old revolved their lives.
They lived near it.
They saw God manifest His presence there.
They worshiped Him there.
And they arranged their schedules around what main
events were happening at the tabernacle.
We are to do the same.
I believe that we need to order our
lives around the main event in our church.
And if you don't go to this church,
if you're visiting, you should do it around
your own church.
In other words, we have on Sunday our
main services here.
We meet in the morning.
We have two services.
Same message, just two services to get everybody
in.
And then we come back together in the
evening.
It seems to me that if we're going
to properly, corporately worship God in light of
all that we've seen in the Bible, then
we need to structure our lives around that
time of meeting with God.
Any man who calls himself a Christian must
understand that worship is to be the ultimate
priority of his life for any woman.
Now, how do you demonstrate that?
You demonstrate that by ordering your life in
such a way as to reflect this.
Thus, church is not an option of the
week.
Coming to worship God corporately with God's people
is at the center of your week.
It isn't the kind of thing where you
wake up on Sunday morning and wonder.
You know, sort of test the air to
see what God might be saying and which
way the wind's blowing.
If the surf might be good.
Or, you know, maybe it's a good day
for tennis or this or that or the
other thing.
Or maybe even church.
No.
I believe that we should place corporate worship
at the center of our lives and order
our life around what we do in our
church.
And there should be preparation for that.
You understand the place of it, you should
then make preparation for corporate worship in your
life.
I think you should do that.
I strongly challenge you on this.
To make a conscious decision that Sunday will
be the Lord's day in your life.
Sunday.
A day to worship God.
If you don't think you need that, if
I don't think I need that in this
day and age in which we live, then
something's wrong.
If you think that you can get on
without all that happens when we come to
worship God here together and have a good
week walking with God, I don't think you
understand how all this works.
You neglect the fellowship of the saints and
the worship of God corporately and you will
be editing God out of your life.
No one can live wholly all alone.
I encourage you to make a conscious decision
that Sunday will be the day you worship
God.
In this church, we come together twice, Sunday
morning, Sunday night.
I want to challenge you to make Sunday
the Lord's day and come to both meetings.
These are the main meetings where we meet
with God.
This is what God has done in this
church.
Furthermore, I would encourage you to just make
it your plan to come to church in
the morning, then leave, go and eat, go
and sleep, get up and eat some more,
and then come back and worship God some
more.
Because that's what God has done here and
that's a good way then to make Sunday
the Lord's day.
Know this, look in the book of Acts.
They met on the first day of the
week.
Go to the book of Revelation.
John says, I was in the Spirit on
what?
The Lord's day.
What is that?
It means he had a day in his
week that was for the Lord.
A day in his week where he worshiped
God.
And on that day, that is what happened.
And the rest of the week, he did
all the other things that he did.
Make a conscious decision to make Sunday the
Lord's day in your life and then let
your schedule reflect that you have done that.
Let me give you a second thought on
preparation.
And this is vital and most Christians don't
do it.
Once you have made the decision Sunday will
be the Lord's day, then you need to
prepare on Saturday evening for the Lord's day.
I venture to say that if you would
do this, there would be a lot less
arguments on Sunday morning.
I read this week some research that showed,
a survey that showed that the average Christian
married couples argue most of any time during
the week yes, Sunday morning.
You know why?
Everybody gets up.
One spouse is wondering if God is leading
to go to church this morning.
Another spouse is wondering what they're going to
wear this morning.
The kids are wondering what they're going to
eat this morning.
The two parents can't agree on what the
kids will wear this morning.
And the next thing you know, you have
chaos in the home and a bunch of
carnal people getting into the car to come
to church, right?
Glassy eyed and glaring at each other from
all the arguments.
I encourage you to prepare for the Lord's
Day on Saturday night.
Decide what the meal will be on Sunday
morning and get it ready.
Decide what you're going to wear on Sunday
morning and get it ready for yourself, your
spouse, and the kids as well.
Then you'll find that Sunday morning you're ready.
Get all set up.
prepare your heart on Saturday night for Sunday
morning.
I don't know about you, but the times
we have here together are so precious to
me.
The success spiritually of my week depends much
on what happens here when we're together on
Sunday.
And if you just come in unprepared, if
you stay up late Saturday night watching TV
until you pass out on the couch, the
remote drops on the floor and wakes you
up and you're, oh, where am I?
Is it Sunday morning?
Did I sleep all night on the couch?
If you go every Saturday night like that
and wake up groggy and tired and cranky
on Sunday morning, guess how you're going to
be in church?
Groggy and tired and cranky.
And that's why many of you are regular
sleepers Sunday morning in church.
We've designed a t-shirt for you.
And it's a special color.
We're putting together your own support group for
you sleepers.
Want to know who you are so we
can minister to you?
I'm just kidding.
But the reason many of you sleep regularly
on Sunday morning in church is because you
don't prepare at all Saturday night.
It's like, ah, I'll be all right when
I get to church on Sunday.
Then you wonder why you leave and nothing
has happened in your life.
Listen to the words of George Swinock, that
great Puritan.
He's talking about Saturday night preparing for the
Lord's Day.
This is from Packer's book Quest for Godliness.
He says, Prepare to meet with your God,
O Christian.
Take yourself to your prayer closet on Saturday
night.
Confess and bewail your unfaithfulness under the ordinances
of God.
And approach Him in deep reverence for your
sins.
Entreat God to prepare your heart for and
assist it in your religious performances.
Spend some time in consideration of the infinite
majesty and holiness and jealousy and goodness of
that God with whom you are to have
to do in sacred duties.
Ponder the weight and the importance of His
holy ordinances.
Meditate on the shortness of the time that
you will have to enjoy the Lord's Day
in.
And continue musing until the fire burns within
your heart.
It would be hard to imagine how much
good you will gain by such forethoughts.
How pleasant and profitable a Lord's Day will
be to you after such preparation.
The oven of your heart, thus baked in
as it were overnight, would be easily heated
the next morning.
The fire so well raked up within you
when you went to bed on Saturday night
will then be quickly kindled when you arise
on Lord's Day morning.
If you would thus leave your heart with
God on Saturday night, you will find it
with Him in the morning on Sunday.
Boy, those are good words.
I venture to say if we all began
to live like that, it would revolutionize our
church.
And what happens when we gather here together
on the Lord's Day?
Augustine, that great saint, years ago said, Thou
hast formed us for Thyself, O God, and
our hearts are restless until we come to
find our rest in Thee.
And we find that rest when we worship
Him.
Years ago, the shorter catechism was put together
and it asked the ancient questions of what
and why of man's existence and then answers
them in one short statement that is hardly
matched anywhere outside of Scripture.
Here's the question.
What is the chief end of man?
And here is the answer.
Man's chief end is to worship God and
enjoy Him forever.
Worship is to be the ultimate priority in
our lives.
And everything we do in our life should
reflect that great reality.
Let's bow for a word of prayer, shall
we?
Father, we love You so much, Lord.
We have missed out on so much communion
with You, worshiping other things, giving ourselves to
other things so that when the time comes
to worship You, there is nothing left.
Holy Spirit, we ask that You would so
work within each one of us that we
would be molded and shaped into what the
Lord Jesus Christ calls true worshipers.
May we approach You, Father, in spirit and
in truth.
May we be the worshipers that You are
seeking to find.
And together, Lord, as we come and make
You our great priority, as we come to
give to You our gift of worship and
praise, may we go on to experience Your
great and wondrous design of holy communion together
in which we can find the fulfillment that
is ours in Christ as Your children.
Lord, we bless You and we praise You.
And we ask that we could grow in
our worship of You as a people and
as individuals.
And we ask these things in Jesus' precious
name, amen.