Rethinking Worship

Today we're going to take a look at a topic that is very, very significant. We've sung about it, this idea of worship. And in preparing for the message, you know, there is a lot of working and just God, what message do you have for me to share? And sometimes it comes quick, sometimes it's a struggle, and sometimes with a struggle, I think it's more significant. And this is the case today.

So I want you to prepare for a few things because we're going to get rolling and try to cover a lot in a short period of time. And as you do, please prepare and follow along in the scriptures. Deuteronomy, the fifth book in the Old Testament, page 156 in the Pew Bibles, got up there on the slide, 1 through 15. We're going to actually focus on 1 through 7. Might overshot there on 15.

14 is probably the better breaking point. And as you turn there and prepare, I ask you to join me in prayer. Father God, I ask that in this time you glorify your word, that you give us ears to hear, hearts to respond, minds to accept your truth, that you would give me clarity of speech, guard me from error, that your word would prevail and mine would not glorify your name, Father, as we lift up your word and bring ourselves before you in honest examination, I ask this in Jesus name, Amen. So I've got some questions to start off and ask us to consider. Why are you here today?

I mean, beyond the logical answers, it's really what motivates you to come to worship. Is it really a habit? If you are not capable of driving yourself, transporting yourself or you here by force more than choice, Maybe you're keeping peace in a marital relationship.

Maybe you come because you want to be here. That's great. But you're not sure really what worship is supposed to really be about. But you do it because you're seeking, maybe you're hurting, you're desperate. Searching for God and looking.

All those reasons could be possible. So let's ask that question. What's worship? Is it singing, music? Is it listening?

Is it the communion? Is it all above? Is that only part of the story? Now, if you look up a common dictionary definition, you're going to find a simple one. It says to give or ascribe value or worth to.

So I ask sometimes, do we use worship like we kind of overuse the word love? You know, I love a good cup of coffee. I love my wife and she hopes that I'm not talking about the same kind of love. Someday. She what?

Thank you. Give me something.

Maybe you're telling me I don't love her too well. Okay, fine.

How about this? Does worship.

Does worship lift God in his appropriate place in our lives and our hearts? And does it align the world and ourselves in proper relationship with him? I think that's what you find with the call of Isaiah in chapter six. Just so you can take a look at that later, for those of you that take notes.

But worship is perhaps far greater than what we've experienced.

So what's your mindset when you come to worship? Have you thought about that? Is it, man, I can't wait to see my brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe it is. Maybe it's, oh, I got a volunteer obligation.

Got to be there.

Maybe it's, don't tell me they let Don speak again.

You know, give me back Mike, and I've missed him, whatever it is. The question is, are we intentional? Do we think about it? Do we prepare for worship? How do we.

How many of you had a bit of a struggle getting here today? Anybody? Oh, thank you. I love it when people are honest. The rest of you, I doubt.

You know, the alarm goes off. I never want to, you know, and sometimes there's a stupid preacher's joke, but it's out there, right? The alarm goes off and in comes the lady and tries to wake him. No, no, I don't want to go. I don't want to.

You have to. You're preaching in 30 minutes.

Oh, Lord, truthfully, let it never be a job. But maybe some of you, maybe a few of us, actually have a time of preparation. We pray, we read, we think about what we want to bring to God or we hope to experience in God. So that leads us to another question. What are the results of our worship when we leave?

Are we different than when we arrived?

Or is it the first thing on my mind? Let's see. I got to check in, see if. See if those prescriptions got picked up. And do I get those things before I head off to visit somebody?

Or is it, what are we going to do for dinner? Or when's the next obligation I got to get the kids to? Or does it change us because we've been in the presence of the holy? So these are questions I ask you because the wife and I were very privileged last month for our 30th anniversary to have a wonderful trip, a river cruise on the Danube. I have pictures.

I have pictures. I have lots of pictures. But I'm not going to bore you with them. But I Can tell you I came away from that trip different than what I went, what I saw and what I experienced. And it remains in me.

And I wasn't trying to worship, but I saw some glory. I saw some glory there. So I ask you these things. And as you now start to look towards Deuteronomy 12, I need to prep us before we read it. Okay, let's get the setting here.

Where are we at again? This is the fifth book in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy, Dute, repeating second time law again. Why, why and to whom? This is reading the law to the Israelite people.

This is pointing it back out to them. And this is a time period 40 years after they were delivered miraculously from slavery in Egypt. And they are standing on the very border of this great promised land. That that's all they've looked for for 40 years. One generation is passing away and a new one is taking over.

And God wants them to hear it again. So we have our characters, God, Moses, the Israelites and the nations. Give me just a moment with you to take a look at those before we read. Who's God? In all of Scripture, but particularly in this, he is the central figure, and particularly as sovereign.

Take just a second. What does that mean?

That means over everything there is none other. Higher than he is none so powerful. And in his power, in his superiority overall, he is completely holy, completely different and completely pure, righteous and so good. Sounds redundant, but we need to understand that because there's some harsh stuff ahead of us. These are the truth claims of the scripture.

Now we have Moses, God's appointed leader, his prophet, his spokesperson, speaking to the people, the word of God, leading them in this journey and caring for them and shepherding them. Now who are these people? Good old Israelites.

I breathe because this one takes a little bit from scripture alone. Who is Israel? Israel is the people. They are the people of God, of God, chosen and created by God for God because of the promises of God. We see that repeatedly in Deuteronomy chapter 6:8.

And for those of you that taking good notes, Mark in there, Genesis 12 through 17. Watch the Origin of the nation of Israel with Abraham and God's promise out of Abraham to make a nation for himself. Not because of their goodness, not because they were better than anybody, but because his sovereign promise. This is Israel. And that's important, especially when we look at the Israel or the seven nations.

Oops, one too far. Well, try that again. There we go. The nations. Seven nations to be destroyed.

Utterly destroyed. Because the scriptures tell us the full measure of their wickedness. Now, folks, this is a volatile topic, and I'm not trying to get into all of today's politics. I want to ask you to shut out the noise or reinterpret the noise through Scripture.

So I need to take just a moment to get into that.

God raised up a nation to be a people unto himself, to belong to him, for them to be faithful and belong to him, that they might represent him to the world. He had a destination for them.

Were they more righteous on their own than the nations they were called to dispossess? Actually, the scriptures said they weren't as bad.

The nations around them, the seven nations that were to be destroyed, God says because of the full measure of their wickedness. That is totally, totally opposed to the culture of our society today.

It's judging, and that's terribly arrogant. If I do it, if you do it. But if it's the sovereign, divine, holy God of all that there is, it's truth.

And he has the right to make that decision.

So I'm not trying to make that all nice and neat for you. This is God's word in Scripture, and this is where we're at. My focus is on the difference between the nation of Israel and the nations around them. So keep that in mind as we read, starting with verse 1, chapter 12, Deuteronomy. These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord the God of your fathers has given you to possess.

All the days that you live on the earth, you shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods on the high mountain and on the hills and under every green tree you shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their ashram with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, but you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and contributions that you present, your vow offerings, your free will offerings, and the frank firstborn of your herd and of your flock. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God.

And you shall rejoice in you and your households, in all that you undertake in which the Lord your God has blessed you. Amen. And may the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his Word.

I ask you to consider today the two different examples that we have in this passage, false worship and true worship. By definition, false worship in God's view is evil. True worship honors him. As we look at this, I want to be very clear and tell you what I am trying to accomplish and ask that the Lord blesses that through this message. The first thing is I want it to call us to examine our worship, our motives, our aims of worship, not out of criticism, but to draw us closer to Him.

And therefore, I hope it exposes unintentional or unknowing adopted false worship practices that keep us from feeling or experiencing the fullness of God and so presenting true worship elements as God ordained and leading us to experience that full wonder of God and then finally going to call us to commit ourselves to pursue worship according to God's design. So from our passage, the first thing I think we need to notice is that distinctive worship is a defining characteristic of the relationship between God and His people. We're going to take a look again at the first four verses. Verse four says, you shall not worship God, the Lord your God in that way, but you shall. That's very distinctive language.

And it's to be a trademark of who we are as his people that we worship, not as the culture says, but as God says, according to his plan, you should not worship the Lord your God in that way. What do we have here? Listen, listen. Put your ear out for false worship practices. These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord the God of your fathers has given you to possess.

All the days that you live on the earth, you shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods. On the high mountains and on the hills and every green tree, you shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their ashram with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. What way?

In what way is that?

Ask you to consider this. Some of the primary gods that we encounter in the Old Testament in the land of Canaan are Asherah, BAAL and Molech. Asherah and BAAL were known as fertility gods. How do we translate that? Health, wealth and prosperity gods.

I make sacrifices to get better crops, to be prosperous. How about a God that might go to war for me that only takes the sacrifice of a child?

These are worship practices that seek to get. They're Designed after man's thinking. This is false worship. That's man centered. Homo deus is a Latin term for the divinity of man.

Man becomes the judge of what's right and what's wrong and what God looks like. The God I believe in.

We laugh and think of the just absurdity of considering God a divine vending machine. But there are times when the world around us, or we are tempted. If I do this, this and that, quid pro quo. God does this for me. He owes this to me.

You see, false worship can be very individualistic and disregards the world I define. Where I worship, how I worship, what I worship as it suits me. That's God's definition of false worship. And that's what was happening in these lands with these people. On contrast, we have true worship.

But you shall seek the place the Lord your God shall choose. True worship, I propose to you, is defined by God in his holiness. Now let's look at these next three verses. But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings and the firstborn of your herd and your flocks.

What's different? What's different?

One is where the worship takes place and who designates where it's supposed to take place.

It's listening to God and doing it God's way. Now, in case somebody is interpreting ahead of me, okay, listen. The Israelites were given the tabernacle. Later the temple was built. They were called to use as their central place of worship.

Part of false worship sometimes right now. And I want to be clear, we've heard it. I don't need the church. I can worship God in my fishing hole, my hunting ground. I'm not here to attack that.

I'm here to ask who defined where the worship is supposed to take place? Did I do it? Whose choice is it? Mine or God's? And by the same token, I don't want someone who is not able to be in our presence because of health, shut in, or a way on a journey.

We're so glad we're able to broadcast our worship and that folks can participate that way.

There are some of us that got into a habit, especially with COVID that I'd much rather be comfortable in my footies, in my easy chair worshiping than coming into the community. I just ask you to consider is that what God's calling us to. I ask you that. I ask you too now to think back, as I shared with you, those sacrifices that were offered to BAAL Asherah, Molech to get something. And here we have sacrifices.

We have sacrifices of true worship. And I'm going to ask you to consider this contrast.

That false worship was making a sacrifice out of need, out of insecurity, out of a desire for power and comfort and ease.

Is that what our world goes after?

Consider this. The nation of Israel, incubated in Egypt, raised up, miraculously delivered, fed manna and quail, provided clothes that did not wear out, protected from enemies, and now empowered to displace seven nations.

They had a God in whom their promises were certain. Their provisions were not a question.

Their destiny was not to be doubted. The call to bring sacrifices, vows, praises was not out of appeasement, was not out of and by God's design, not designed to get him to act and to have mercy. It was a reflection that he'd already given mercy, already given provision, already given promise. Even the sin sacrifices were not to gain forgiveness, but to recognize that he had made a provision for forgiveness.

So thus it recognized the fullness of his glory, responded to his glory with praise and sacrifice. I ask you very carefully to consider what does that mean, the fullness of his glory? Just repeated some of it. This generation that was soon to pass off the mantle to their younger children saw the plagues, they saw the chariots get washed over in the Red Sea. They saw this weird stuff on the ground every morning called manna.

They saw this burning mountain that Moses went up and the earth shook and they received the law of God.

They saw the tremendous power of God even in their rebellions.

But they also knew the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, did not leave them. And the presence of God went with them, represented by the tabernacle.

That's the glory of God, the Creator of all that is holy, righteous good, is intimately close and promises in his steadfast love to never leave us, to never forsake us, knowing the number of our days, the number of hairs on our head, the thoughts in our minds, and I repeat something I've said before for the last few years. He does not love us in spite of whatever he loves us. This is the glory and grandeur of God that we are invited, we are called to come worship. And so our worship, true worship, returns the blessings God has given us and rejoices in God. And his purpose is because we trust in Him.

And finally, that true worship is Communal. It belongs together and it's about Him. It gives witness. It gives witness to the world around us. I've expounded a lot and went fast.

There's a reason for that because I've got some other questions to ask you. I'm going to give us an option to respond here in a moment, but think through these questions.

How's your worship? Has it become a little mundane, a little lackadaisical, a little passive?

Folks, when we bring sacrifices, praises, imagine the preparation it took for those. There were requirements on those sacrifices they were bringing. They were acting. How about us?

Do we sometimes think that the responsibility lays with the pastor or the worship team on how worship's going to go? And worship is okay if it's the right music, the right temperature in the room, the right color of the lights, lifestyle of message?

Or is worship what we bring before the holy God who's given all to the point that he sacrificed himself through His Son, that we might be his people, he, our God, for his purposes and for his glory?

Do you need to realign yourself with worship according to God's way?

How about your whole life if you haven't acknowledged the holy God of all there is in seeing the wonder of his love and his sacrifice, that we might belong to him, and that there is futility in trying to run life on our own, in chasing after the falseness that the world promises. Do you need to align yourself with a sovereign, holy and glorious God?

And I'm going to go ahead and ask the worship team, Stevie. They're going to come after I read a passage here from Hebrews 12.

And I'm going to ask you to consider. Do you need to respond to God today? Is there something you need to get straight?

If so, today's the day, now is the time.

So if you need to respond after this reading, we're going to move into song. And during that song, that's your opportunity, not because of me, but because you need to meet with the Lord God Almighty if you need to do that. There's strength in coming before Him. If you'd like to do that by yourself here and have some time to pray, to talk to God. Come over here to your right if you'd like to do that and have one of us pray with you.

There will be people ready. Please come up and come to your left. If it's something that's going to take extended time and you can't kneel. First of all, we've got chairs. We'll just go over into the prayer room.

But don't put it off. Don't put it off, because we're going to see in a moment the day will come when God returns. And at that time it'll be a consuming fire. So let me set the stage for you. Told you there was the nation of Israel, just came out of Egypt, and they're at Mount Sinai and they see this great flame.

Moses comes down and gives them the Ten Commandments. But they had requirements. And this mountain, they couldn't touch it. It was holy and it scared them. This is what the writer of Hebrews is referring to.

That and the other sad thing about Israel.

They didn't fully achieve their purposes for God. They rebelled. So they were promised the Sabbath rest into this promised land. And the writer of Hebrews tells us, it's still open. And let's not refuse the warning, but let's take advantage of the provision and the promise.

Hear the word of the Lord, for you have not come to what may be touched. A blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. That's the sense of the holy. For they could not endure the order that was given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.

Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. And to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect a glimpse of all heaven and eternity. And to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. And the sprinkled blood.

Or can I come before the table? This sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he is promised yet once more I will shake not only the earth and but also the heavens. This phrase yet once more indicates the removal of things that are shaken, that is, the things that have been made in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire. If you have a question about the message Community Church or Jesus Christ, Send us a text to 330-400-3242. You can learn more about our events and community groups at CCPL LifeConnect.

There you can also send in a prayer request. We would love to pray for you. Have a blessed Lord's Day and we'll see you on Sunday.