How Shall We Honor God?

How shall we honor God? How shall we honor God? That's the title of my message today. You know, it's natural for those of us who believe in God, I would say, especially those who really, really love him to want to honor him. That's as natural for a Christian today is breathing in and out.

We want to honor the God who called us out of this crazy world, put us on a path towards being first fruits when Jesus Christ returns. The incredible opportunity that has been put before us. Like why wouldn't we want to honor that God, especially those whom God has called? But that desire to honor, as good and sincere as it is, that has to be guided by something.

Because in our natural desire to honor God, it's also natural to want to do it our own way. But you know, we have examples of the golden calf, the very first sin of Israel as a nation. We've got man-made traditions that have come to us over centuries, over millennia. History shows that people routinely honor God in ways that frankly he never asked for and wouldn't approve, but they still say it's honoring God.

I want to turn today. I want to start over in Leviticus chapter 10. I think this story helps to frame and lay the foundation for where I want to go in this message today. Leviticus 10:es 1 and 2. Okay. Leviticus 10:es 1 and 2. Leviticus 10:1 says, "Then Naab and Abaihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his sensor and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

" So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. So, I was looking at this story and I'm thinking to myself about I was contemplating intent. What What do you think they were thinking? Do you think they were thinking in their mind? I hate God. I'm going to do what I want. Like, no. Can't be that.

So, rebellion against God and his commands probably wasn't at the forefront of their minds. You know, I don't care what God said. I'm going to do what I want. I don't think that's that's not the sense you get from it. So, what's the intent? We have a job to do. We're supposed to do, you know, we're supposed to do this incense thing. Maybe they forget.

Maybe they're presumptuous. Maybe that they don't think it's that important. Only God really knows what they were thinking about. But Moses tells us something important. And this is the lesson I want us to take away from this. Let's read verse three. Moses says to Aaron, "This is what the Lord spoke, saying, 'By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy, and before all the people, I must be glorified.

" This is what God said about about honoring him. That this is where he wants the honor and the focus of the honor to be. on him that he is to be regarded as holy before all the people and he must be glorified. He wants things done the way he says to do it. Nab of I who are young men by all we can tell.

I was commenting earlier in Olympia, you know, we we see something like this and we might think that there's some unfairness here. two young men, maybe they didn't know any better and so forth, and God just takes them out to I was thinking about this from God's perspective, though.

To God, two people who are going to come up in the second resurrection, that's just that's just a chess move. You go from there to second resurrection, and we'll deal with you there. So, from God's perspective, it's not cruel. So, now the question is, so why did he do it? Well, he obviously wants to make a point, and he makes a pretty big point. Would you agree? by consuming them with fire and destroying them as a witness to what thing? Well, I said this is how you are to provide the incense before the Lord and this is what you did and it isn't what I said to do.

So no matter what their intent was, God did not honor it. This is pretty early on for him to make such a bold point means it's important to follow that up with these words. I must be regarded as holy. What I say goes, I must be glorified. Our God says this is what he is owed. How do I honor God is the question. This is what we have to wrestle with.

I think what's at the root of this is a problem called presumption. Presumption. And we're going to get into that a little bit today. I don't think we give a lot of thought to being presumptuous, assuming we know how to honor God, that what we decide to do to honor God is in fact acceptable to God. So, we have to wrestle with that.

But God has not left it up to us to decide how to honor him. He has told us the Bible is filled with specific commands, clear examples, and foundational principles about worship. And yet all around us today, especially during this season of the year, millions of sincere people are honoring God, quote unquote, through practices that have no biblical basis and worse are rooted in traditions borrowed from pagan worship.

That doesn't mean that the people are evil, and I'm not trying to say that. It doesn't mean that they're malicious. It just means they've been misled. We can admit that, and that's okay. A world that is deceived by Satan is going to have people misled by him. The real question we have to ask is not just do I want to honor God, but am I honoring God in the way that he said to? That's a critical question that we need to ask and answer for ourselves.

My first point is the danger of presuming what honors God. The danger of presuming what honors God. It's one thing to believe in God and desire to honor him, but it is another thing to honor him the way he has asked to be honored, the way he commands to be honored. And the line between heartfelt sincerity and spiritual presumption, very thin.

We often may be stepping over it and we don't even realize it. Many of God's people throughout history have stepped over this line, often without rebellion, but through presumption. assuming that their way of honoring God must be acceptable because it came from good intentions. They's Greek lexicon defines presumption as an unwarranted assumption of the right to do something without approval or authority.

Okay, it is the unwarranted assumption of the right to do something without approval or authority. Well, that's the proclivity of human beings. We want to worship God on our terms. My intent should be enough to garner God's appreciation of what I do. But the Bible repeatedly shows that God does not accept worship on man's terms, no matter how sincere.

The desire to honor God has to be shaped by humble submission. I want to look at a few examples here of people who were, I believe, sincere, but sincerely wrong. I'm going to start over in 2 Chronicles chapter 26. 2 Chronicles chapter 26, uh, verses 3 through 5. So Uzziah was 16 years old. This is verse three of chapter 26 of 2 Chronicles.

Uzziah was 16 years old when he became king. And he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. Man, that is a long run. 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jeaniah of Jerusalem. And verse four says, 'And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father Amziah had done.

Well, that's what you'd like to have said about you, right? At the end, you did what was right in the sight of go of God. Well, who wouldn't who doesn't want that said about them at the end of their life. Verse 5 says, he sought God in the days of Zachchariah who had understanding in the visions of God. So a prophet and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.

So he's being a good example. He's leading a right life. He's an honorable king before God so long as he seeks God's will through the prophet Zechariah. Now we drop down in the story a little bit. We get to verse 15 and we start to see successes happening for him.

Verse 15 of 2 Chronicles chapter 26 says, "And he made devices in Jerusalem, invented by skillful men to be on the towers and on the corners to shoot arrows and large stones. So his fame spread far and wide, for he was marvelously helped till he became strong. God was with him. He was being blessed.

" All of these things being said about him, we clearly don't see here rebellion. We don't see uh a desire to um you know reject God's way or or anything like that. We see somebody who's sincerely trying to obey. But success is dangerous. It can breed hubris, pride, arrogance, a belief that whatever you decide, well, that must be right because look at your life.

Look at how successful you've been. Verse 16 says, "But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up." That is, that only means one thing scripturally. When your heart is lifted up, it means you are filled with pride. That's what it means. It always means the same thing. So his heart was lifted up. He was filled with pride to his destruction.

For he transgressed against the Lord his God by entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. He went into the temple to give an offering to the true God. So, it wasn't that he wasn't believing or following the true God. Here's the temple. He believed in it. He wanted to do right by it. He wanted to honor God by offering incense in it to God.

But Uzziah was not authorized to make such an offering in the temple. That duty belonged only to the priests. If you want to mark a note in your Bible, look at Exodus 30 7 and 8. Exodus 30 7 and 8. This is where God says who gets to do that.

And when the priests tried to stop him because they tried to stop him and she shoe him out, you can't be in here. God struck him with leprosy. He became very angry when they tried to stop him. Notice here. Let's look let's look at verse 19. It says, ' Then Uzziah, verse 19 here, we're still in 2 Chronicles 26, and Uzziah became furious, and he had a sensor in his hand to burn incense.

And while he was angry with the priests for trying to stop him from doing wrong before God, well, as he became furious, obviously leprosy broke out on his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord beside the incense altar.

So while he's trying to do the misdeed, which he clearly doesn't understand what he's doing is wrong or why is he trying to do it? You think he's doing that because he knows it's wrong here? He's had all of this success. He's been blessed his whole life. He wants to honor God. So, this is a question of sincerity. He's absolutely sincere and that he wants to honor God, but he's sincerely doing it wrong.

And does God bless him for that? Clearly not. It says here that leprosy broke out on his forehead. He presumed that he could make the decision to honor God how he wanted to and that God would accept that. God did not accept that. You can't honor God on your own terms. In each example, I want us to stop and say, "Can I see any of myself in this? Could this happen to me?" Because it's really worth asking that question, right? Could this happen to me? Can I get to the place where I'm so filled with I don't know maybe we don't see it because pride's deceptive. Selfdeception is the first casualty of pride. You

can't see it. Could I be guilty of it and in that hubris in that arrogance decide I will do I will honor God however I want and I know that God's going to accept that. I hope not. This is supposed to be a good lesson for us. Here's another example for us older. Let's go back to Judges chapter 17. Judges 17:es 5 and 6.

So here's this man Micah. The man Micah had a shrine and made an ephod and household idols and he consecrated one of his sons who became his priest. Now notice verse six because this is repeated in the book of judges multiple times. It says in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Micah is doing what he thinks is right. to honor God. So, he believes in God. He wants to honor God. So, he's doing what he thinks is right to honor God. He creates for himself an Ephod. He makes some household idols representing the things he believes represent God. He even consecrates one of his sons and says, "You're now a priest of God.

" Like, you can't you can't argue about his sincerity, but he's he's all in on the idea. But Micah wanted God's favor. Just a few verses later, he even hired a Levite to serve as his priest. Verse 13, then Micah said, "Now I know that the Lord will be good to me since I have a Levite as a priest." This is classic Israelite thinking, by the way.

I have a priest. So I know I'm now pleasing to God. He will bless us. Okay. Really? I can worship God how I want and he will accept that. That's Micah. He thought he was doing the right thing. And of course there's no indication that there's any maliciousness or any rebelliousness here. You might say ignorance. Maybe he doesn't remember. He doesn't know. Maybe he doesn't have a copy of the scrolls.

I don't know. It doesn't say. But he does. It does say he wanted God's blessing. But everything he did, making his own shrine, inventing his own ephod, ordaining his own priesthood, that was a complete violation of God's instructions. Utter violation. I ask again, can we see ourselves in him in any part? I don't mean that you're at home making idols to worship, but is there anything in his attitude that we can say maybe I've been a little bit guilty of that? Maybe I have been kind of wanting to do some things on my own terms with God.

Saying to yourself, as long as my heart is in the right place, it must be okay. That's really his attitude, isn't it? My heart's in the right place. It's got to be okay. Look, I've even hired this Levite as a priest, so it's got to be okay. God, now he's going to bless me. Okay. So, his system felt right to him.

As it said, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Doesn't say that they're trying to do wrong. They're trying to do what they think is right. But did it please God? Did God preserve his efforts? Like, that's the first question I'm asking. Let's turn over to Judges 18 18 to 20 and we'll just see the summation of what happened to him. If God was pleased with this, yes, you can worship me however you want.

Well, then God surely would have preserved that for him, right? Yet we get over one chapter to chapter 18 and we look at verses 18 through 20 and we read, "So when these men went into Micah's house and took the carved image, the ephod, the household idols, and the molded image." The priest said to them, "This is this Levite. What are you doing?" And they said to him, "Be quiet.

Put your hand over your mouth. Come with us. be a father and a priest to us. Is it better for you to be a priest to the household of one man or that you be a priest to a tribe and a family in Israel? So the priest said, "No, God has placed me here and he's very pleased with how Micah is doing this whole whole thing. So I'm going to stay here with Micah.

No, I don't think anybody's thinking about God at all." So the priest's heart was glad and he took the epod, the household idols, the carved image and he took his place among the people. Virtually everything that Micah valued, God took away from him. But Micah was using them to honor God. God says, "Not your way, my way. I don't want to be honored your way.

" Jeroboam serves as another interesting example over in First Kings. First Kings chapter 12. Jeroboam was placed on the throne by God himself. But he feared that if the people were to go down to Jerusalem to keep the feast days as they're commanded to do that they would attach themselves again to David's grandson Riabom.

Gerobam feared that more than anything. So we get down here to verses 28 to 31 and we see his very practical solution to this. Therefore the king asked verse 28 advice. He asked advice made two calves of gold and said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.

Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt." And he set up one in Bethl, and the other he put in Dan. Now this thing became a sin. For the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan. He made shrines on the high places and made priests from every class of people who were not of the sons of Levi. The story doesn't say that Jeroboam rebelled against God.

That wasn't his motivation. Instead, we see his motivation is what? To keep the people here. Here's your God represented by these two calves. We'll put them up in these two places and you can go there. It's much more convenient. It's closer. Well, in fact, we'll bump the feast back a month. You can keep it in the eighth month.

It's just easier. It's better all the way around. He's still trying to honor God if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt. But he wants to do it his way. Obviously, does God honor that? This wasn't idol worship instead of to God. It was idol worship to get to God. You see my point? He's being sincere. He's just sincerely wrong.

So he invented a new priesthood here by the way forming a counterfeit system full of good intentions, political logic but spiritual disaster. Can we see ourselves in Jeroboam? A man trying to protect what God had given but in doing so replacing God's instructions with his own judgment. That's Jeroboam.

This is human presumption. We substitute our thinking, our ideas, and what we want for what God wants. Solomon wasn't perfect in this regard. Worth looking at Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived. Let's turn back to First Kings chapter 3. First Kings chapter 3, the first three verses. It says, "Now Solomon made a treaty with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and married Pharaoh's daughter.

Then he brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem." Meanwhile, the people sacrificed at the high places because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days. Now notice, and Solomon, verse three, and Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David.

So that's we'd all like to have that said about us, wouldn't we? Like he very clear he or she loved God, obeyed his commandments. Okay, but it continues, except that he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. Why is that written like that? If it's a good thing, if it's a good thing, you don't use the word accept. Accept means outside of what was good. I told you what he did that was good. Outside of that, he was doing this bad thing. That's what accept means.

He was worshiping at the high places, which is not God's way, obviously. So I ask, can we see ourselves in Solomon? People who loved God but maybe make little compromises. Solomon was a product of his time, the people worshiping at the high places. He would have been influenced by that. Good intentions to do what the people are doing.

He's the king doing it for the people. Did it please God? No. God comments on it. You know, for us that to me should be very sobering. Yes, God acknowledged where Solomon was doing things correct, but he very explicitly says, "But I see you doing this thing that's not correct." Like, isn't any of us escaping scrutiny in how we worship God? If Solomon's getting scrutinized, we're all getting scrutinized.

for the same thing. The real lesson for us is that God does not need our improvements to his commands. The thread through these stories is not rebellion. It's presumption. I decide how to worship God and God will accept that. That's presumptuousness. God never says you get to decide. I get to decide.

He decides how to honor him. But they assume that because they meant well that God would be pleased. It's all about my heart, right? My intent, how sincere I am. Isn't that more important than getting it right? Let's turn over here and look at what God says and what they're warning that first.

Let's look at what the warning Moses gave them because he gave this to them pretty early on. Deuteronomy 12. Deuteronomy 12:8 where Moses says, "You shall not at all do as we are doing here today." Deuteronomy 12:8. Every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. The very warning Moses here is giving before Israel takes over and enters the promised land. We get to Judges and it is the very thing that Israel is doing.

Every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. God instead gives very clear instruction about how he wants to be honored because he says here at the end of chapter 12 verse 32 he says whatever I command you be careful to observe it you shall not add to it nor take away from it that's how I want to be honored don't add anything to my commandments and do not take anything away from them.

That's the foundation of honoring God. Not deciding for ourselves what is best, but submitting to what God says he wants. So, we need to ask ourselves, are we drawing near to God in the ways that he has commanded or in the ways that we have assumed are acceptable? My second point is a question.

How does God want to be honored? It's not a mystery. He's very clear about how he wants to be honored. Let's use an example here to see how God wants to be honored. Let's use Saul over here in 1st Samuel chapter 15. Saul's the first king in Israel, handpicked by God. He was a head taller than anyone else in Israel. He was a big man. And when God first called him, he was, remember the scripture says he was little in his own eyes. He was humble.

that changed 1st Samuel 15 13- 15. Here we know that God had given Saul direct instructions to utterly wipe out the Amalachites. He was very clear. You will destroy every single human being and all of their livestock. Everything dies. That's the command. There's no wiggle room here. There's no negotiating position here.

It's just a clean, clear command to go do that. We get to verse 13 and we see Samuel coming to him to talk about how he had deviated from the command. We get to verse 13 and it then Samuel went to Saul and Saul said to him, "Blessed are you of the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.

" In all these stories, I'm looking for sincerity, right? Intent. He says, "I have performed the commandment of the Lord." In his mind, he has obeyed. He says, "I obeyed." Okay. Samuel says, "What then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the loing of the oxen which I hear?" Well, and Saul says, "Well, they the people brought them from the Amalachites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen.

" Why? Well, to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we utterly destroyed. So long as I utterly destroyed something, I was obeying apparently is the argument. So, I utterly destroyed everything that didn't look good. And that's called obedience to Saul. Look, you can ask, and I think it's fair to look at the text for what it says.

We don't see here him saying, "God in heaven, I cannot stand the command that you gave to me. I hate everything that you stand for. I want to rebel against you. I I just going to do it my way." Is that what you see? I don't read that in the story. I see arrogance 100%. I see arrogance. that pride that person is lifted up to make a decision for himself to say presumptuously I can change the command of God and he'll be okay with it. How do we know that? Keep reading the story.

Is Saul surprised or not surprised at the result? Because if he's surprised at how things turn, then he wasn't expecting it. And he's surprised by how things turn out. So he was not expecting God to be disappointed in him. He thought, "God is going to be thrilled at this answer.

We're going to sacrifice these to you, God. So I presumptuously decided that I would improve the command." God said, "Utterly destroy." Well, let's take the best of this and we'll sacrifice it to God. That surely must be better. Except verse 22 Samuel answers that specific issue where he says, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?" That's very clear, isn't it? I couldn't care less if you had sacrificed one animal. What I did care about was obedience.

I gave you a very specific command. You didn't follow it. Obedience. How do we honor God? How does God want to be honored? And it is obedience. A very simple answer. That's how God wants to be honored through obedience by doing what he says. The Hebrew word for obey that we see here as obeying the va voice of the Lord.

That word means to listen with the intent to respond or to follow. That's what it means to listen with the intent to do. It's the same word that is used in Deuteronomy 6:4. Deuteronomy 6:4. Hear, O Israel, listen to obey. Listen to obey. Not just hear, but do. That's the kind of hearing that God honors. In the New Testament, the Greek equivalent is too. Teo.

That's the Greek word, but it is translated. Let's look over here in John 14:15. John chapter 14 verse1 15 where Christ says if you love me keep my commandments keep is the same word that's the Greek word which means the same thing listen and obey keep my commandments So to honor God, we must not only want to serve him, but we have to serve him in the manner that he commands.

Love for God is not defined by what we feel, but by whether we do what he says to do. Jesus Christ warned, let's go back here to Luke to see that he warned the Pharisees about this in Luke 6:46. Luke 6:46 where he says, "Why do you why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things which I say? I'm not pleased with you to say we worship you how how we think you want to be worshiped." He says, "I don't care about that. I care that you do what I say.

" As a parent, I can recognize that my kids can say all day long, "I love you. I love you. do I love you? But if they're disobedient little rascals, I'm not feeling the I love you part very much. Like, if you want to show me you love me, how about do what I say? It's a great starting place.

Most of the time they did to give them their credit. But this is the heart of the issue. Many claim to celebrate Christ in holidays like Christmas. You think they mean it? Yeah. I think a lot of people mean it when they say they're honoring God when they keep Christmas. I'm not going to criticize the reality that that's what they think.

It's just that God said there's a way I want to be honored and there's a way I don't want to be honored. That's it. over in 1 John chapter 2. I love going to First John and reading through his stuff as we got it to go through that during the sermonet today. A little bit of that. 1 John chapter 2:es 3 and 4. 1 John chapter 2. Now remember, John gets to look back over his whole life. He's the last of the apostles.

He's got this clear view back through time over the church, its development, its growth, its maturity, its weaknesses, its strengths. And he says here in 1 John 2:es 3 and 4, he says, "Now by this we know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He who says, I know him," and does not keep his commandments, he's a liar.

and the truth is not in him. Well, that's pretty strong language from John here at the end of the century who's basically saying God wants to be honored God's way and that means obedience. He wasn't unclear about what to to what he says keep his commandments. These aren't the commandments of Jesus Christ in the sense that they're somehow not the 10 original commandments. they are.

That is the commandments he's talking about at the end of the century. He's still talking about the commandments. And that if you say you love God, you're going to be keeping them. So God does not want us to be innovative in how we worship him. He doesn't need us to be creative. Adding something to what he gave us or taking something away out of a pure heart, out of innocence, out of sincerity. This is how I want to worship you, God.

Is it this must be okay because of I love you and I care for you and it's coming from my heart. So, it must be okay. And God, no, that's not okay. Matthew 15:9, again, strong language. Matthew 15:9 will be used here. Actually, let's read verses 7-9. Christ is very u critical of the Pharisees.

He says, "Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying, These people draw near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men." So Christ isn't here condemning worship in general. Obviously, he's condemning worship that replaces God's instructions with human inventions.

So it's not enough to say I worship God my way because if our way contradicts his way, that way is in vain. It's empty. It's useless. But we're living in a time when many believers have accepted traditions that have no biblical basis. And often, such as with Christmas, they have roots and practices that God condemns. Some are going to say, "Yes, I know the origins aren't biblical, but that's not what it means to me today. That's not what it means to our family.

" How is that any different than saying, "God, I will worship you my way because you'll accept that." Right, God? We've been reading that God says, "No, I don't want to be worshiped your way. I want to be worshiped my way." The true heart of worship is to do what God says to be careful as he said in Deuteronomy 12:32 where he said, "Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it.

You shall not add to it nor take away from it." That's the true heart of worship right there. to do that. He doesn't need us to add our own festivals, our own man-made ideas, our own symbols, our own customs, and claim that they're for him. He's not interested in that. First John 5, let's turn over to here real quick.

1 John 5 verse three, he says, "For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments." And his commandments are not burdensome. John, that's testimony from John. God's commandments are not burdensome. When you understand them, when you live by them, you know what he's talking about. You know, John, what John said is true. They're not a burden. The real burden is trying to please God with our own ideas.

But when we humble ourselves to his will, to his commandments, to his way of life, we see we have clarity in our life. We have purpose in our life, don't we? We get that because we obey God. That's why we have the life we have because God is blessing us for doing what he wants his way. Okay. The third point, the last point I want to make today is to just look at what has God asked us to do. Let's look at three examples.

The first and most obvious one would be, hey, do we keep the commandments? Exodus chapter 20. This isn't going to be an exhaustive walkthrough of each one, but let's just touch on these. Exodus chapter 20 the first three verses say and God spoke all these words saying I this is so God is telling Israel at Mount Si in his own voice he speaks these words these commandments to the people I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage you shall have no other gods before me you shall not make well this is let's just end right there in verse three because he makes the point

you shall have no other gods before me. This is the first commandment which immediately defines the exclusive nature of true relationship. God and us. That's it. No other God, just God. God alone is to be worshiped. So this not only rules out false gods but also any blending of pagan practices which are designed by intent to worship false gods. We don't get to incorporate those into our worship of God.

It violates the very first commandment verses 4-6. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generations, of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

So God is not honored by worship that borrows symbols and customs from idolist idolist cultures. He wants our worship to be separate from false religion, from false or man-made worship practices. Verses 8 to 10 where he says, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God, and in it you shall do no work. you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. That's pretty clear instruction about keeping the Sabbath.

It says remember, it's the only commandment that says, "Remember, remember to do this." Why would God say that? Remember the Sabbath day. Well, I don't know. It's been quite a while now since the creation of Adam and Eve and mankind living here, not keeping the Sabbath. Yet God had ordained it from the beginning and set it aside from the very beginning a day of rest.

No one seemed to be keeping it. And so here he codifies the very same command to rest on this day. And he codifies it in the covenant with Israel. And he says, 'Remember this. I wonder why God would say, 'Re something. It's like there's lots he could say, 'Re this because we're not that great at remembering things we're supposed to be doing, right? So, what's interesting to me is that a lot of people today disregard the very plain command to keep the Sabbath day while they keep Christmas, a day starkly in contrast to obeying God. And they stand firmly on the belief that

they're honoring God. We reject the command of God and we substitute a man-made tradition based off of pagan worship. They acknowledge most people know this. It's not a mystery. I'm not revealing new truth here to anyone who might listen. It's well known and documented. They substitute out the Sabbath and they substitute in the pagan origins and they claim to be honoring God. They do it in blindness.

It's a lesson for us, isn't it? What about the holy days? Leviticus chapter 23. Leviticus chapter 23. Right at the very beginning, we begin here. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, the feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are my feasts.

They're not the feasts of the Jews. They're not the feasts of Israel. They're not the feasts of modern Christianity. They're not the feasts of the church. They're gods. We don't observe the holy days because they're ours. We obey the command. These are holy, sanctified, set apart by God. That's what holy means.

Convocations, meetings, convokings. We're commanded by God to meet on these days. We meet on these days because we're commanded by God to do so because they're his feasts. It's no more complicated than that. And of course, the chapter goes on and it outlines that we must observe the Passover, the days of unleavened bread, Pentecost, the feast of trumpets, atonement, feast of tabernacles, and the eighth day.

We know that these mark out the plan of God for salvation, for humanity. They're precious to us because we know what he's doing. because he has opened our eyes to see that through these holy days, his holy days, we get to the New Testament and we realize Jesus Christ observed these days, the early church observed these days, and that there's not a single scrap of evidence that these days were ever changed to something else.

They are what they are. Verse 4 of Leviticus 23 says, "These are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at their appointed times." Who did the appointing as you walk through the book of Leviticus chapter 23, we see very clearly who does the appointing? God appoints the day and time for the holy days.

He tells us when we keep the days of unleven bread. He tells us when we keep Pentecost. He tells us when we keep trumpets and when we keep atonement, when we keep the feast of tabernacles, and when we keep the eighth day. God appointed those times. We proclaim them. That's what we do. So, this isn't about us. These are his feasts. So, we obey.

We keep the feasts. The third one I want to touch on here is that God makes a distinction in food. We honor him by obeying his distinctions in food. He calls them clean and unclean, doesn't he? What we can and cannot eat. Let's turn over here. We're in Leviticus. Turn back to Leviticus 11. Leviticus 11, sorry, 46 and 47. 46 and 47.

It says, "This is the law of the animals and the birds and every living creature that moves in the waters and of every creature that creeps on the earth to distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between the animal that may be eaten and the animal that may not be eaten." We still observe that today because it's a question of holiness. It's a question of submission.

The God who distinguishes under the old covenant what is clean and unclean never changed that. How do we know that the disciples walked with Christ for three and a half years? You think they ever stopped for a pork sandwich? No. Have some good old pork bacon? No. How do you know? Go to Acts chapter 10. I don't have time to walk through all this for you, but go to Acts chapter 10.

There's a distinction here between people. The Jews had it down pat. There are clean people called the Jews and there are unclean people called the Gentiles. Nary shall the two mix. So, a blanket in a dream is laid out before Peter. And what does Peter say? Oh, I've had all this stuff when Christ was here.

Yeah, I really like that one. Really enjoyed those little butter. Nice. No. No. He says, "I have never eaten anything unclean. Wait, this is after Christ's death. This is a while after Christ's death. If Christ had meant, hey, look, it's all good. You can eat anything now." You'd think human nature. They'd have been all in on crab and lobster by then.

That surely surely, right? But he says here a long time later, "No, I've never eaten anything unclean." Well, shame on you, Peter. Didn't you know God said it was okay? Of course not. Because it's later when he says, "Oh, now I see what you mean by that. that I shouldn't call any man unclean. For those who want to say, "No, that was all about food.

" Peter didn't understand that. You want to go back and tell Peter he didn't have any idea what he was talking about. God was clearly showing you you could eat all that stuff. No, that's not what it was about. God still today cares and distinguishes between the clean and the unclean. That's why we still care today and do what God says. We observe those food laws to honor God.

So honoring God is not something that we get to define for ourselves. It's something he has already defined and he revealed it very clearly to us. These examples that we walk through today from Naab and Abaiu to Uzziah and Jeroboam and Solomon and so forth, they remind us that even sincere intentions can lead us astray when they're not anchored in God's commands.

The heart may be genuine, but if the actions depart from what God has instructed, then the result is not honor. It's presumption. God doesn't want us to guess. He wants us to listen, to do. So in his word, he shows, he teaches, he talks, he walks us through what he wants and how to honor him through our obedience.

And so we honor him by keeping the commandments. We honor him by keeping the holy days. We honor him by observing the food laws he gave to us. And in many other commands that we know that God has given us, we honor him by obeying. In contrast, the world offers alternative paths.

Holidays, you know, the emotional attachment that people have to holidays is absolutely real and legitimate. I know many many families who like their whole identity is is wrapped up in their observance together during the Christmas season. How do you take that away from them without a cost that they literally feel emotionally? That's why it's so hard. Coming out of this world is hard. For anybody who's coming out of this world, it's hard.

Satan's way is easy and it's it's accepting and it's tolerant. God's way, by contrast, seems like it's rigid. But when you live God's way as we do, you know the joy, the peace, and the happiness that comes from living God's way, that no one in the world who's never done it will understand until they do.

It's not hard for us then, I think, to imagine that Christ has to destroy all of this. He has to remove everything to establish God's government so that there's no competition for keeping God's commandments. There's no competition for keeping God's holy days. There's just that. There's no pig farms for people to eat pork sandwiches. Not going to be available like that.

We're going to obey the food laws. Christ has to set all of that up. And as first fruits, we're going to be helping him to do exactly that. So our job today is to practice honoring God through our obedience to what he wants, not by creating for him our own ways and demanding that he accept that as an honor to him.

I want to end over in Ecclesiastes today. Ecclesiastes. Solomon, as we talked about earlier, the wisest man who ever lived, had the unique ability by being literally the wealthiest man of his day. wasn't anybody that we know of that was more wealthy than Solomon. That gave him the ability to experiment. The book of Ecclesiastes is a record of his experiments to find out what is and what brings meaning in life.

He gets to the end of the book, the end of his research. We get to verse 13 of chapter 12. Verse 13 of chapter 12. And he says the following. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments for this is man's all. This is how we honor God.