Worship

And now, to give us the afternoon sermon, we will hear from an elder in our congregation, Mr. Greg Thomas.

Thank you, Mr. Henderson, and good afternoon, brethren! After that sermon, I was ready to come up here and sing, if I only had a brain, but decided against it. Some of you would take me up on it and ask me to sing all four verses of it, so I decided against that. Happy Sabbath, all of you!

Today, I would like to discuss a very powerful and important biblical concept, one that we're doing right now, and that is the concept of worship. The Bible has a lot to say about this topic, and you may be surprised how, diversely, worship can be described in the Word of God. You may be surprised how, diversely, we worship God in so many different ways. You know, anthropologists say that human beings are hard-wired to worship a deity. They go back to the very earliest fossils that were buried by other human beings, the earliest, and what they find is evidence of the belief in a deity. They find flowers, they find things that symbolize the afterlife, that symbolize something greater than themselves. As human beings, we are hard-wired to worship something. We were created that way, and the truth is that we're either going to worship God, we're going to worship ourselves, or we're going to worship other men. And then, we're going to get angry, and we're going to burn their jersey when they move to Miami.

Aren't we?

I see some folks saying no. I agree. But my point is that it is hard-wired in human beings to idolize and worship something. We are all that way, and it's either God, ourselves, or another human being.

We get the word worship from an Old English word that means worth. Worship originally was pronounced worth sheep. Worth sheep. Of course, the word worth meaning something of great meaning, and ship is a suffix that means possessing the quality of. For example, leadership means that you possess the quality of being a leader. Worship means that we possess the desire to adore a worthy God. That's what that Old English word means that we call worship that originally was worth sheep. So what can scriptures tell us about the topic of worship? Let's find out today by going to Genesis 4, beginning in verse 1. Genesis 4, verse 1. 1 of the very earliest written accounts of an act of worship, and it highlights what Mr. Thomas believes about every aspect of human existence, and that is, it's all about attitude.

Everything is about attitude, and we see that demonstrated here in this account of the offering of Cain and Abel. Genesis 4, verse 1.

Adam knew Eve, his wife. I won't explain what that means. You can ask Mrs. Thomas afterward.

She conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord, and she bore again.

This time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Now at first glance, that doesn't seem so bad. After all, we know later on in the Pentateuch that offering first fruits was a good thing. So at first glance, that doesn't seem so bad, but let's continue to read, and we'll get to the full flavor of what it's talking about Verse 4, Abel also brought the first-born of his flock, and their fat. Now in contrast to his brother who brought the fruit of the ground, it doesn't say the best fruit that he had. It doesn't say the choicest fruit. It doesn't say the first of the fruit. It just says that he brought the fruit of the ground. I mean, who knows? It may have been fruit that fell on the ground, that he gathered up into a basket and brought before God. It says, speaking of Abel, again, verse 4, Abel brought the first-born of the flock and their fat, and the Lord respected Abel in his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. Why? It was because the attitude behind why they were giving an offering. One was an attitude of sacrifice as something of great worth and wealth, the gift of the great God, and the other attitude was tokenism. I'm doing it to present a token. You know, a lot of people go to church out of tokenism and not really to worship God. Millions of people do religious things out of tokenism because they were taught particular rituals as children, or they went to school systems that were fostered by religious denominations, and they do things out of tokenism, not out of understanding what sacrifice, what the word sacrifice means at all.

Verse 5, but he did not respect Cain in his offering, and Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. You could look on his face and see that he was angry. Verse 6, so the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you're like your brother, if you decide to give me something that has real value, something that hurts, because I'm God, and all I want is your best, is that too much to ask, considering the fact that I created you, nurtured you, have given you everything in this beautiful world to live in?

I'm going to offer you eternal life someday. Is it too much for me to ask, out of respect, that you give me your best? So he basically tells Cain that you have no reason to be angry. If you do well, if you follow the attitude, the example of your brother, you'll be accepted.

You'll be just like your brother. And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you. But you should rule over it. He says, I can sense that you have hatred. You instinctively resent your brother. You're jealous of your brother, because your brother did something right, and you're resentful of him, because he's getting the praise for doing something right, and you want to kill him. God said, you need to overcome that desire in your heart and in your head, because sin is at the door.

So we see by this account, brethren, that worship involves some type of personal offering, and it requires a sacrifice. Worship and sacrifice go hand in hand. In order for something to be a form of worship, it means that you are sacrificing either your time, your self-denial, you are having physical distress, like maybe fasting, or you're giving of your personal wealth, something that's important to you that you're sharing with others. Those are the requirements of an offering. Those are the requirements of what worship is about. When you came in here today to worship God, you sacrificed your time.

You came and you took three to four hours of your life on this Sabbath day, and you came and made the commitment, the fellowship, to obey what God's command is on his holy day, and the fellowship with like-minded believers.

You sacrificed your time. If you drove here, gas also cost you money. You sacrificed some of your wealth in order to come here. So it always requires some type of a sacrifice, giving up of something in order to worship God.

The problem with Cain's offering is that it cost him next to nothing. It cost him a few fruits, and it doesn't even say there were the best fruits or the first fruits. They could have been fruits that just fell on the ground that he would have thrown in a in a compost bin anyway. He just offered God, it says, the fruit of the ground. Abel made a personal sacrifice of his wealth.

Think about this, and draw an analogy. You know, fruit's a good thing, but when I pull fruits off of my emaciated, sickly fruit trees, those trees will continue to live, won't they? They'll bear more fruit. When you give an offering of an animal to God, and it shed its blood, that animal doesn't produce any more animals. That's a real sacrifice of your wealth. That animal no longer provides milk. That animal no longer provides wool to make clothes out of. That animal's gone, and it's gone forever. It doesn't regenerate its properties like a fruit tree does.

So, in the contrast of the offerings, one was tokenism, and the other one was a sacrifice of someone whose attitude was so beautiful that, God, I'm giving you something that has great meaning to me because you are worth it. You are worthy of my best. It was the attitude behind the offerings that was the problem, not the actual act of worship. As I said, if you go into the Pentateuch, you'll see we're giving first fruits as a good thing. It's not a problem with that at all. It was the attitude behind the difference between Cain and Abel's offerings that was one of worship and one of tokenism.

If one doesn't have the right attitude when they approach God to worship him, then the act itself is worthless. It has little meaning to God. Let's now go to Exodus 4 in verse 27, and we'll see the most commonly used Hebrew word for worship in the entire Old Testament used here. I'm sorry, Exodus 4 in verse 27. This is before they meet Pharaoh for the first time.

Moses and Aaron are kind of being introduced to the elders of Israel. They're getting ready to go for the very first time to confront Pharaoh so that the Israelites can be free after hundreds and hundreds of years of bondage in slavery.

Here's what the Scriptures say about their gathering together and then meeting Exodus 4 in verse 27. It says, And the Lord said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him on the mountain of God and kissed him. The obvious family affection there. So Moses told Aaron all the words that the Lord who had sent him and all the signs which had commanded him.

He's going to free his people. God says he's going to send us there and we're going to take Israel out in a mighty hand out of the slavery of Egypt. And we're going to lead them to a land of promise and freedom. And in excitement, he's explaining these things to his brother. Verse 29, Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel and Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses.

And they got everyone excited about this is what God has promised. This is what God is going to do. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people. Verse 31, And the people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that he had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped. And the word worshiped here.

The English word worship is from a Hebrew word that almost sounds like a bird call.

The Hebrew word is shawkah. And shawkah means basically to pay homage, to reflects, to crunch, to fall down, to humbly beseech, to do obesience, to do reverence, to make, to stoop, to worship. It's used over 90 places in the Old Testament, the most common word for worship.

And that's a reason why, when we have prayers and services, that we bow our heads. We do that understanding that we are bowing down. But that is what we are doing to show our humility, our obesience to the great God. We are paying homage to royalty. We're paying homage to our great God. The Old Testament idea of worship is a reverential attitude of mind and body to demonstrate religious adoration, to demonstrate an attitude of service, of obedience. Well, let's now find out, through the first four of the Ten Commandments, a little bit about worship, because that's what they're all about. God gave the first four of the Ten Commandments instructions about the proper way to show respect and how to worship Him. So it's certainly important that we go through these and understand God's original intention.

Go to Exodus 20. If you see a minute, just return there. Exodus 20, beginning in verse 1.

Exodus 20, verse 1, God spoke all these words, saying, 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. Now, this may seem kind of easy at first glance. I mean, most people in our world today would say, well, I don't worship an idol of stone.

You know, I don't worship those things. Well, the sad thing is, is that, as I said earlier, we either worship God, we worship ourselves, or we worship other people. And the great means of doing that is through something known as materialism, of which in our Western world, we are saturated with. I have a sales and marketing background, and I'm going to let you in on a little truth.

And the truth is, if there is a complex, highly powerful industry whose sole purpose is to get you to covet and want things you don't have, did you want that beautiful new sports car, that bigger home, those stylish clothes, the latest eye, whatever. There's an entire complex industry out there whose sole goal is to get you to covet things, to want things because your neighbors got them, because you deserve it, because you just paid your credit card and you have $200 before you reach your limit. Whatever the reason is, there's an industry out there whose sole goal is to make you covet after material, physical things. And it is powerful, and it is very successful. It's called materialism, and it is the God that most people worship in our world today.

This is not an easy commandment to observe. As a matter of fact, I think it's harder than ever to observe the first commandment that it has ever been since the time when it was uttered in the mountain of Sinai. Today is worse than ever. We have hundreds of distractions, glitter, glamour, and bling everywhere to distract us and attract us towards physical things to get our minds off of God. Here's what Henry's Bible notes say. Actually, I was going to use Henry's Bible notes, but Mr. Henry wouldn't allow me to read from his Bible. Now, all kidding aside, these are Henry's Bible notes. Mr. Henry was a scholar, a very respected scholar. Here's what he says about this commandment. He says, quote, The first four of the Ten Commandments, commonly called the first table, tell our duty to God. It was fit that those should be put first because man had a maker to love before he had a neighbor to love. But that's pretty profound. That's why the first four commandments are about God and how to worship Him. He continues, it cannot be expected that He should be true to His brother who is false to God. If you have to choose between one or the other, your brother or God, the decision, the choice, has to be to follow God. Continuing, quote, The first commandment concerns the object of worship, Jehovah and Him only. The worship of creatures is here forbidden. Whatever comes short of perfect love, gratitude, reverence, or worship breaks this commandment. Still think it's pretty easy to do this one? I don't. Whatever, quote, whatever you do, he says, do it all for the glory of God. So this is a difficult commandment to keep, particularly in its spiritual implication. And Jesus expanded the commandments and taught the spiritual, the original implications of God's law. And this is one of them. And God says that you are to have no other gods, not yourself, not another man, not things, not physical possessions. You are to have nothing and hold nothing in life more dear and more important than I am. Let's go to verse four now. You shall not make for yourself a carved image of 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 on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

This scripture is just chock full of powerful meaning. First of all, to put it in context, God is saying that we cannot draw an image or take a picture of a bird, or take a picture of the sky, a cloud, or a praying mantis, or whatever. The context is that you do not make images of these things in an ideal of worshiping them, in idolizing them, of saying, yes, this is what God means to me, this praying mantis, because he's ferocious and he eats things alive, or whatever a person's concept is. You are not to make any of these images and use them in an effort to worship the true God. That's what he means in context. He doesn't mean that it's wrong to take a picture of, or for your children to draw a sketch of a horse or a dog, or the likeness of something that's in heaven and earth. The context is to worship or idolize that image. Another thing we need to understand here is the natural law of consequence. He says, I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children, the third and fourth generations, of those who hate me. It does not mean that God somehow chooses children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and just curses them because of something great-grandpa did. No, my friends, it's the law of cause and effect. Dysfunctions go from generation to generation. When a family culture is dysfunctional, God doesn't have to do virtually anything. And unless there's an intervention, that dysfunction, whether it's alcoholism, verbal abuse, or some other type of perversion, will be carried on from generation until generation until someone has the courage in that family to say, it all stops here. It all stops now and it starts with me because I'm going to make a difference for my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But unless one does that and that's called conversion, by the way, unless one does that, family dysfunctions are carried down from generation to generation to generation. But what breaks that cycle? The latter part of verse five, showing mercy to thousands who love me, love God, and keep my commandments. What do his commandments do? His commandments teach us it's unacceptable to be verbally abusive. It's unacceptable to commit incest. It's unacceptable to be an alcoholic or a drug addict or many of these other diverse dysfunctions that human families have. It's understanding God's commandments and understanding that God wants us to make a difference in our lives and in the lives of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, going on and on and on that causes us to say, it's got to stop, it's got to stop right now, and I am going to be the one to be different. I'm going to make a change in my family's history. From now on to eternity, my family will be better than it has been. It'll be more godly than it has been. It'll be more respectful of God's commandments than it has been in the past. Very powerful scripture. I'd like to read this from the translation God's word for today. Here's what it says beginning in verse four, never make your own carved idols or statues that represent any creature in the sky, on the earth, or in water. Never worship them nor serve them, because I, the Lord your God, am a God who does not tolerate rivals. Boy, I like that. I am a God who does not tolerate rivals. I punish children for their parents' sins to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but I show mercy to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey my commandments. Here's what Henry's Bible notes say about this particular commandment. It says the second commandment refers to the worship we are to render to the Lord our God.

It is forbidden to make any image or picture of the deity in any form or for any purpose or to worship any creature, image, or picture, but the spiritual import of this command extends much farther. All kinds of superstition here are forbidden and the using of mere human inventions in the worship of God. Now, does our human culture, our western culture, has it created human inventions in order to worship God? Why? It's borrowed just about every perverse religious tradition that ever existed in the pagan world and attempted to convert it like you can a human being and say, oh, this honors God. This God really respects us. Is this silly simple? Rabbits and eggs? I mean, these kind of things truly make religious sense, don't they? Well, they don't because they've been borrowed from a rival and God is not impressed in our effort to worship Him using something that we borrowed from one of His rivals. He is not pleased. He is not impressed when we do those things. Verse 7, we shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold Him guiltless who takes His name in vain. Now, this time I'm going to read, I thought the notes from the Believer's Study Bible were a little more powerful to discuss this verse. So this is what I'll use here. It says, quote, to take the Lord's name means to lift up or to use it to do something in vain meant to do it with no good purpose or effect. In this case, in vain includes both the frivolous use of God's name and its wicked or deceitful use, or to accomplish a selfish or wicked goal. For example, a false prophecy claiming God said something when He did not. End of quote. As I've said in a past sermon, we often think of someone swearing and that's certainly using God's name in vain, but we often miss the original implication of it. And that is when a minister says, God says, and God didn't say that, that's using God's name. That minister has just broken one of the Ten Commandments. He has lied. God did not say that.

That's why James says that those who speak in front of the church will be held more accountable. He says, before you want to speak to the church, before you want authority, realize you're going to be held accountable for everything you say. And just like it's wrong to abuse God's name with a swear word, it's equally as wrong and as much of a sin to claim that God says something that God didn't. And we need to understand that and hold each other to higher accountabilities that we do not use God's name in vain. Now let's take a look at verse 8. 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. In it you shall do no work, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who was within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. So God says that everything that is within your possession is to rest. This is holy time. This is special time.

You don't say, well, I'm going to keep your Sabbath, but tell your children to go out and cut the grass.

You don't say, I'm going to keep the Sabbath, but if you're wealthy enough to have a maid or a servant, not too many people in here that I know of in that situation, but if we're wealthy enough to have a maid or a servant to say, well, I'm going to go to Sabbath services, but I sheared like this carpet vacuum by the time I got home. No, that would be hypocrisy. Everything within your possession that you own is to rest. Even your animals are to rest on the Sabbath day because it's very special time. Henry's Bible note says this about the fourth commandment, Remember shows that it was not now first given, but was known by people before. So those who say, well, the tenth commandment didn't exist before Moses. Wrong! Every one of the ten commandments reflect God's value system and His laws. The first four reflect how He, as God, desires to be worshipped. That's universal.

The rest of the six reflect our attitudes and our relationship with other beings.

These are universal values that transcended before Moses was given these laws and that will continue to exist throughout eternity. There are also laws that are part of any covenant that God ever makes with people because they are His value system. God will not make a covenant with man that does not include His basic value system. So when He says, Remember the Sabbath day, it's because they had been instructed about the Sabbath day earlier. And of course, we know if you go to the early part of the book of Genesis that the Sabbath was created after the world was finished on the very seventh day. And that was the original origin when God finished creating the earth. Well, until the time of Moses, we saw here the first four of the Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus. Until the time of Moses, the worship of God was typically private and family-oriented. There wasn't what you would call community public worship. For example, when Abraham wanted to worship, or Isaac, or Jacob, or any one of the patriarchs, they didn't go to a public area to worship. Oftentimes, they would see a vision of God or something would happen right there in that spot. They would lay stones, or they would make an offering. They may even rename that location about something that they had that related to God. It was more of a family, a private, family-oriented matter. But with Moses, God restored something that he intended from the beginning, and that was his desire for public community worship. Because it's all about family. It has always been about family. God is building a family, and he wants a family that loves one another. He wants a family that works together. He wants a family that fellowships with one another. So it began with what was called the Tent of Meeting. That tent was where the original utensils and the Ark of the Covenant and everything was put together by the Israelites in their journeys through the wilderness. And after a period, they would meet there, and they would worship, and many things would occur publicly at the Tent of Meeting. And then eventually Solomon built a temple, and the temple became the center of public worship, and the community would come. On the Sabbath and on the Holy Days, the males representing the families would come and worship at the temple. But there was a problem with that, knowing human beings. People began to worship the temple, the building, more than they worshiped God.

Eventually, the Jews went into exile. The first temple was totally destroyed, and it was during the exile to Babylon that the concept of the synagogue came along. And the synagogue was for public community worship, but instead of the temple, it was a room much like this, where believers would come, and they would hold a religious service, and someone would read from the Torah, and they would learn the way of God, and they would worship God. Now, the Bible doesn't tell us much about the synagogue. It doesn't say the synagogue is good or bad. It doesn't endorse the synagogue, but we know by the very fact that Jesus often visited the synagogue, and he preached there that there's no problem with synagogue, with worship of that type. As a matter of fact, Jesus oftentimes would go to the synagogue rather than the temple. He was more favorably received in the synagogues than he was by the smutty aristocratic priestly group at the temple. So oftentimes, if he had his choice, he would go to one of the synagogues in Jerusalem. By this way, Jerusalem had a temple, and it had dozens of synagogues at the same time as it had the temple. It had become an accepted form of a way to worship God. So public community worship was moving away from the temple, and it was moving toward synagogues. Worship at the synagogue. Now, the New Testament church, we have our roots in the synagogue, not in temple services.

I've been attending God's church for almost 40 years. I've never seen a sacrificed animal. I've never seen blood flowing from the stage, except when someone slapped a mosquito and a little blood came out. I have never seen turbans. I've never seen anyone wearing vestigures. I've never seen anyone wearing a breastplate with stones like the high priest, even though some may have felt they were a high priest. I've never seen that literally in services. So our roots come from the synagogue. They don't come from temple services. Let's go to Matthew 12, verse 1, because we're going to see that Jesus is shifting the focus away from the temple. But the temple is not where it's at. It's not about the temple. It's about worshiping Jesus Christ. He's greater than the temple. And we'll read that here, Matthew 12, beginning in verse 1.

In reality, after Christ died, the church became the spiritual temple of God and replaced the physical temple. But let's read about Jesus giving a foretaste of this change taking place here in this story in Matthew 12, beginning in verse 1, another one of the many conflicts that occurred on the Sabbath. At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and His disciples were hungry. And they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do in the Sabbath. Now we have to realize that they're not only criticizing the disciples, they're criticizing Jesus because they're saying, You're the rabbi here, You're the master, and You haven't corrected them. You haven't said anything to them. So You're as guilty as they are. That's what they're implying to Jesus Christ. Verse 3, but He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him, how they entered into the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat. And technically, the showbread was indeed only for the priest to consume, continuing, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priest? Have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priest and the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? In other words, on the Sabbath, the priests sacrifice animals that were required on the Sabbath day, and they're working hard, and it's not easy being a butcher, and they're profaning the Sabbath by sacrificing animals to keep the command to do that on the Sabbath day. Verse 6, Yet I say to you that in this place there is one greater than the temple. Now, who could that be? He's referring obviously to himself. He says, You're all obsessed about Sabbaths and things. He says, Well, I'm going to teach you something about the Sabbath, and it's coming from a being who is greater than this temple that you idolize, and it's also coming from the being who created the Sabbath day. And he said, Here's what I have to say. But he said, If you had known what it means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. In other words, Jesus Christ created the Sabbath. Don't tell him what's right or wrong to do on the Sabbath day. He created the thing. Who are you to tell him what's correct? You can go through the entire Old Testament. Nowhere will you find that it's wrong to eat grain, the tips of grain on the Sabbath day when you're walking down. Now, this was one, unfortunately, of the many hundreds of doctrines of men that were created by the Pharisees. They were judging the disciples. They were judging Christ because they had created all these layers to make the Sabbath a day of joy, a day of reverence, a day of reflection into a burden.

With all of these do's and don'ts and rules and regulations, and nowhere in the Old Testament does it say that you couldn't pluck heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath day. Jesus is saying, look, they're hungry. The law is about mercy. It's about compassion. It's about service and caring for people. These are more important than your man-made laws. His point is that charity and mercy and service to others transcends how men have decided to observe the Sabbath.

And that was the point that Jesus was making here. And, of course, he wants them to understand that he is greater than the temple. Let's now go to John 4 and verse 16.

John 4 and verse 16. And Jesus predicts something else about the temple.

He was indeed a prophet, which he is being complimented on being a prophet in this particular scripture. Every time I read this scripture, I think, busted. Jesus said to her, speaking to a Samaritan woman, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered, said, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, you have said, well, I have no husband. For you had five husbands, and the one you're living with now is not your husband. Busted! Now, how did he know that?

To use the phraseology of Genesis, she knew six different men already.

She says, continuing here, sir, I perceive that you're a prophet.

How could you know this about my personal private life? There isn't even an internet yet. How could you know this about me? Jesus, our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say and you Jews say that it is in Jerusalem in the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said, their 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 the true worship is 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 truth. Jesus tells this woman two very profound things. Number one, the time is coming when there will be no temple in Jerusalem to worship in. Notice He said that nor in Jerusalem, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem. She just said He was a prophet. He says to Himself, all right, I'm going to prophesy something else. In approximately 40 years, that temple in Jerusalem is going to be gone. No one's going to be able to worship there. It's going to be rubble. The Romans aren't going to allow one stone to be standing on another. So that's the first profound truth that He tells her. The second is that reinforcing what we learn in the commandments of God, we must worship God in the way that He desires to be worshiped and not out of convenience or accustomed. If you want to worship God, the first question you should ask is, how does He desire to be worshiped? What pleases Him, not what's easy? What tokenism can I perform to show everybody that I believe in God? How can I, like the herd, just run through and do some rituals and hang some things in the walls and do something in order to pretend like I understand God or have a relationship with Him? Jesus is saying that you have to worship God in spirit and in truth. The Father wants children who worship Him as He is in spirit, not with things, not with rituals, not with ceremonies, usually borrowed from rivals He despises, but He wants to be worshiped in spirit.

And that's why God's Church has worked very hard not to have a lot of ritual and ceremony. You know, the ministers don't wear priestly garb. We do not have crosses of our own. We do not have crosses the Star of David, crescent moons, burning candles, cinnamon incense, or anything else to distract people from worshiping God in spirit and in truth. To attempt to worship the Father with a borrowed custom is an insult to Him and no more acceptable than the Samaritans worshiping on their mountain. If it wasn't acceptable for the Samaritans to worship God on their mountain the way they wanted to, it's certainly not acceptable for our culture and our society to worship God the way we want to.

The question is, how does the Father ask to be worshiped? Will He ask to be worshiped not by borrowing anything that came from His rivals, but by worshiping Him in spirit and not through falsehood, not through trickery, not through artificial ceremony, but in truth? That's how He desires to be worshiped. Let's now go to Philippians chapter 3 and verse 3. Philippians chapter 3 verse 3.

Paul hears writing to the flicking congregation. It was primarily Gentile. Of course, everyone was all... in that day, it was a lot about circumcision. You had to be circumcision to be saved. You had to be circumcised to be saved. And Paul says something here that it's not about ritual. It's not about temples, incense, symbols, cutting off a little piece of flesh off of your you-know-what. That's not what any of this is about. So he says to them, for we are the circumcision, speaking of Gentiles, we're not physically circumcised, for we are the circumcision who worship God in spirit, not who worship God with cutting off little pieces of flesh or flesh, animals, throats, or burnt incense, or candles, or pictures, or symbols. He says that's not what any of this is about. It's about worshiping God in spirit. He says, Rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Cutting off a little piece of flesh will not save you. It should not make you confident about anything except a wound, being wounded. I'd like to read this from the New Century version, verse 3.

He says, We are the ones who are truly circumcised. We worship God through His Spirit, and our pride is in Christ Jesus. We do not put our trust in ourselves or anything that we can do. In other words, we put our trust in Christ alone. That's what Mr. Lucre was saying in the video last week. It's all about being thankful to Jesus Christ for all that He's done. Everything we owe, we owe to Jesus Christ. Everything in this life that we have, we owe to His calling, and we owe to the grace and goodness of Jesus Christ. So it's not about what we can do ourselves.

You know, God did not need us. He chose to create us for His own enjoyment. We were created to give God pleasure. He wants a large family to love and to share eternity with. He didn't have to create us. He wanted. He desired. Out of His pleasure, He created us for His purpose, His benefit, and His delight. And when we worship Him in spirit, we bring delight from God.

A thing that often is a burr under my saddle that I hear many times is a misunderstanding about worship. Worship is not primarily for us. It's primarily to honor and praise God. And many times over the years I've heard comments about, I'm not inspired in church services, or I'm not encouraged by the sermon, or this or that. And I understand how you feel, and I certainly have those weeks too. But we have to understand this. It's not about us. Primarily, we worship to give our Father pleasure, to honor Him, and to praise His name. That is the first and foremost reason that we worship God. And certainly, I pray, and I hope you do, that the services go well every week, that the ministry is inspired, and they provide messages that are encouraging and inspiring and edifying and corrective when needed. And all of these things, certainly that's important. But let's realize that if we do nothing else but come here with a smile on our face and praise our great God and give deep reverence and thankfulness and appreciation for His calling and for the opportunity to be here, that is what it's all about. That is the first and foremost reason why we should have come here in the first place. Let's now go to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3. Ephesians chapter 1 beginning at verse 3.

Paul wrote through the congregation of the Ephesians, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. So before the foundation of the world, Jesus Christ said, I'm going to choose firstfruits. I'm going to choose a select group of people to be my firstfruits and to call them during the most difficult age that one could be called. A time of materialism, a time where Satan is let loose, a time where they have to not only fight Satan, they have to fight their own carnal human nature, they have to fight a culture that's against them, that's all about me and mine and using people.

They're going to have a difficult time, but I love them so much and want to give them such a great reward that I'm going to call them before I return to earth in the second time. And congratulations on your calling, because that was done here according to Scripture and the foundation of the world. Verse 5, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, do you notice that? That we were called, God created us, and we were called according to the good pleasure of His will. God didn't do it with resentment. We're not here because God said, oh, I created these people. I'm stuck with them now.

Well, I might as well call a few of them and just see how it works out. I know it's not going to be good. This isn't going to be pretty, but I'll go ahead and call a few of them and just watch the fur fly. No, God didn't do that. That's not His intention. That's not part of His plan. We were called according to the good, the pleasure of His will. Remember what I said? We were created to bring pleasure to God. We worship to bring pleasure to God. When we sing hymns together, when we get on our knees and pray privately, when we give an offering on the holy days, when we serve someone, when we fast, when we take time out of our day to meditate in God's way of life, doing all of these things, we give pleasure to God because we are making a personal sacrifice of time or health or self-denial or our wealth in order to say, hey, Father, You're number one in my life. You're more important to me than anyone or anything else. Verse 6, to the praise of the glory of His grace by which He has made us accepted in the beloved. So are we despised? Are we somehow condemned as God, somehow not like us? No, it says that we are accepted in the beloved, meaning that we are His children. He loves us. He cares for us. Verse 7, in Him we have redemption through His blood and forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, not because of anything that we can do, not because we're so righteous, but we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. We are beloved. We are accepted by Him, it says, because of the end of verse 7, the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.

So the point I want to bring out in this particular Scripture is that we were made to bring pleasure to God. That's why we were created. He wants a family because it brings Him pleasure. On the 4th of July, when I'm looking at all my grandchildren running around and eating up all my food and making a mess of my deck, I speak in just... it brings me great pleasure to have my family around me. I can understand how I can relate to how God feels because when everyone's over and we're all talking and laughing and eating and the grandkids are playing and they're jumping in the pool and they're running the yard. That gives me great pleasure. So I can understand and relate in a very small way, of course, how God's creation, the people He created to expand His family and to share eternity with them in His glory, brings Him great pleasure. He gave us five senses. He created us in His image and He gave us five senses so that we can delight in life itself.

And we can love others. These five senses give us the opportunity to enjoy the worship of God. That's a gift that we were given these senses in order to use them towards worship. I'd like to talk about different forms of worship that are all acceptable to God and should be part of our lives. First is the formal, what we might say, community public worship of God. We know of it as the Sabbath day and God's annual holy days. We should never forget what Paul said in Hebrews 10.

You should not stay away from church meetings as some are doing, but you should meet together and encourage one another. Do this even more as you see the day coming. What Paul wrote almost 2,000 years ago is as applicable today as it was then. But we have a public community worship where the family, the children of God in the greater Cleveland area, get an opportunity to come together. And we do things together in order to give pleasure to God. First of all, we have music.

And the music is intended to be inspiring and uplifting. And when we sing hymns together, that's something that we can all share together as one body. Whether you have a good voice or a terrible voice, that's something we can all participate in when we sing hymns. And sometimes we're blessed to have someone give special music. And they have a special gift from God that they're able to share with us. And that's also very beautiful and meaningful to God. It's like a sweet-smelling incense coming up to him when we participate in services in that way. We have an opening and a closing prayer. And during those prayers, we have one individual speak through one heart and one mind. The entire congregation focuses on those words to address the Father.

One individual has the opportunity to represent the congregation as we all focus on those words. And together, with one heart and mind, we pray the same prayer. Then we have a portion in which we have the sermonettes and the sermon. And hopefully those provide biblical instruction and edification for the congregation. That's our goal. And every minister that I know works very hard to prepare good, solid messages. And that is a gift that God has given us, people who are willing to do that. And that is also part of something that we inherited from the synagogue service. There was always a portion where people would read and comment from the book of the law, from the Old Testament. And we continue that today through sermons and sermonettes. Then there's listening respectfully. That's when we honor, we recognize that it's holy time. When the opening prayer, an individual asks that God's presence be here, he means to the entire service until another individual comes up in the close of services and says, thank you for this holy time. Amen. That between the Amen and the Amen, that we are to be respectful. Listening is showing a form of honor and respect for God, of hearing His word. And it's through listening that God speaks to us. Through prayer, we speak back to Him. Through listening, He speaks to us. And then we have the opportunity on Holy Days, of course, to worship by giving our wealth as an offering to help others, to share the gospel, to share the good news of the coming Kingdom of God. And we share something that's important to us, our money. And we give it away as an offering that is used by the church to do some wonderful things. So we do have, thankfully, God is instructed and we continue to follow a form of worship that is public and communal as God's children gather together every Sabbath and every Holy Day. But there are also a lot of things that we could and should be doing as individuals on our own that reflect a form of worship. Let's take a look at Luke chapter nine and verse 23. This is what I will classify as part of daily living, some daily living principles.

Luke chapter nine verse 23.

Jesus said, then he said to them all, if anyone desires to come after me, if you want to be my disciple, if you want to be an ambassador for the Kingdom of God, if you want to be a child of God, here's what you have to do. Let him deny himself. Remember that I said earlier that his sacrifice, and he's drawing the analogy of being nailed to a cross here, that a sacrifice is where you give up your time or your health or your wealth or you deny yourself something.

That's what any offering, that's what any worship, that's what any sacrifice requires to be genuine. Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Notice he doesn't say, take off your cross once and follow me. He doesn't say, take up your cross on the sawdust trail when you accept Jesus and follow me. No, he doesn't say that. He says, you have to take up your cross each and every day you have a new burden to carry. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. When we submit to God daily and we deny our selfish instincts and our carnal desires, we give ourselves up to God, just like Jesus Christ did on the cross. He gave his all. He gave himself up to the Father and allowed himself to deny the instincts and the carnality that he had because it's all about God. What he's saying here is that we have to deny our selfish instincts, our carnal desires. We have to give ourselves up and give all of ourselves, just like Jesus Christ did when he was nailed to that stake. Something else that we can draw out of this scripture because for some of us our cross is hardship. It might be health problems. It might be relationships that have gone bad. When we endure hardship and trials with persistence and with faith, we imitate what Jesus Christ himself was willing to do when he took up his cross. This is the sacrifice of our own will. This is what's pleasing to God, not our own personal agendas. Too many individuals want to give God a little bit. They want to give God part of themselves in still maintaining their own agenda, their own game plan, their own goals and purposes that are not what God's goals and purposes are. And Jesus said, you can't do that if you want to come after me. You have to deny yourself. Not 10%, not 80%, 100%. And you have to take up that cross daily, whether it's your attitude, whether it's your carnal instincts, whether it's a problem you're struggling with, whether it's a health issue, whatever your cross may be. And for all of us, it's different. You need to bear it daily. Very powerful scripture, Romans chapter 12, beginning in verse 1. Let's see how Paul comments on this concept of daily living. Romans chapter 12, verse 1.

Paul wrote to the congregation in Rome, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. What does that mean? It means denying yourself. It means putting God first in your carnal instincts, in your desires, in your own agenda, and sweeping all of that away and denying yourself and being willing to be a living sacrifice that says, God, I'm here to be used by you. Use me. Open up my heart and mind. Help me to become more of a loving child of God. Help me to develop the fruits of your Holy Spirit. Help me to prepare to serve billions in the kingdom that you're going to establish on this earth. Help me to prepare to be a servant for eternity, because that's how much I love you and that's how much I love others, including those who are yet born. Those who have never even been born yet. I want to serve them and care for them and be part of your family. He says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that if you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. That means not in the way that we want to. You have to be a sacrifice that God accepts, that makes Him pleasurable and happy. That's the way that He wants it, not the way that we want it. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. As Jesus said, thy will be done. It's not about our will. It's not about our own agenda. It's about God's will and God's agenda for us. And we'd like to read verse 1 from the new century version. It says, so, brothers and sisters, since God has shown us great mercy, I beg you to offer your lives as a living sacrifice to Him. Your offering must be only for God and pleasing to Him, which is the spiritual way for you to worship. I like the way that that's translated.

Paul is expanding upon what Jesus stated in John chapter 4, and that is the greatest offering or sacrifice that we can give God is ourselves. There's nothing greater. But notice that offering ourselves must be acceptable to God the way He wants it. It must be pleasing to Him.

And that may mean it's not pleasing to us, I might add, but it has to be pleasing to Him.

This means a sacrifice the way He desires it, and not the way we want to give it like Cain did. Cain made an offering, but Cain did it his way. He made a sacrifice the way and offering the way He wanted to do it, but it didn't please God. And as I've said before, the problem with being a living sacrifice is that we can crawl off the altar, and we often do. We start out with all the right motives and intentions, and yes, God, do with me what You will, and then we kind of wiggle ourselves off the altar and start doing what we want to do. That's a problem that, of course, we have to deal with. Let's now go to the book of Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 15, because one of the ways that we worship God is by praise and thanksgiving. Of course, we come here together as a church, and we sing hymns, and those are hymns of praise, many of them words from the book of Psalms or other scripture. So we sing praises as a congregation of God. We give thanksgiving. A lot of our hymns talk about thanksgiving, but we're also reminded here by Paul, who I believe wrote the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13. He said, therefore by him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name, but do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices, God is well pleased. Now, giving God His deserved praise is a form of worship, and He deserves it. He's entitled to it. It gives Him pleasure when we praise His name. And of course, Paul isn't talking about some repetitive mantra.

That's not what Paul's talking about. What he is talking about is that our conversation should always be seasoned with thankfulness. It should always be mentioning God's grace and His love as part of our conversation. Again, as Mr. Luker said last week, it's all about Christ, what Jesus Christ did for us. It should be easy for us to season our conversations with thankfulness towards Jesus Christ and the Father, and with praising all that they've done for our lives, for calling us, giving us life itself, the opportunities that we have, the marvelous plan revealed in the Holy Days, how wonderful all of that is. It's very important.

So, giving God His deserved praise, and He deserves it, as I said, is a form of worship. There are two things that Paul mentions in this verse. The first, verse 15, he talks about the sacrifice of praise, giving thanks to His name out of our lips. And again, our conversations need to be seasoned with how thankful and appreciative we are to God for His grace. And also, verse 16, service. Do good and to share, for with such sacrifices, God is well pleased. So, service towards others is a form of sacrifice. Why? Well, when you serve someone, you are denying yourself the time. Remember those things? I'm not going to go through them anymore. But you are denying yourselves those qualities that I've spoken about so many times already. You give something up to serve someone. And that's what giving an offering, that's what worship is all about.

Another area that I would like to talk about is obedience and total surrender. That is very important to worship. Now, we Americans, we don't like the word surrender. It's anti-American. We don't surrender. There are stars in our heels because we don't leave our post.

Those stars and stripes, they never bleed. We don't like, as Americans, the talk of surrender. We like to talk about victory. We like to talk about being the winners.

But in the spiritual world, nothing happens unless you surrender yourself to God. And I don't mean part of you. I don't mean half of you. I don't mean 99% of us. I mean all of us. The truth is that victory only comes through surrender. Again, I'm talking about the spiritual world. I'm not talking about the carnal, physical world we live in with nations and armaments and all the horrible things we have that can annihilate life in the blink of an eye off the earth. I'm talking about spiritually, victory only comes through surrender. Surrender doesn't weaken you. It actually strengthens you because once you totally surrender to God, you don't have to fear anything or anyone else in the world. When you totally surrender to God, He gives you a secret weapon. It's called His Holy Spirit. And that spirit within you is more powerful than a nuclear weapon. It can do more good, or if called upon by God and instructed by God, can do more carnage and damage than anything that man has ever created. And it resides in each and every one of you if you've given yourself to God. It totally surrenders through repentance, through baptism, through the laying on of hands. As I said, when you totally surrender to God, you don't have to fear anything or anyone else in the world because you have a new master that dominates everything and everybody in that master is Jesus Christ. Brother, nothing is more powerful than your surrendered life in the hands of God. There's nothing in the universe that powerful. When Jesus said that if you had enough faith, you could make this mountain move, He understood and was trying to help them to understand the concept of how powerful that spirit is that resides inside of us. If only we will tap into it in the way that God desires. Let's go to 1 Samuel 15, verse 22. Again, talking about obedience and total surrender. Let's take a look at someone who, unfortunately, wanted to give God a token offering. Didn't really want to obey God. A token sacrifice. Wanted to put on a show, but really didn't want to obey God. 1 Samuel chapter 15.

You may remember this story. This story is very simple.

Samuel, through God's instruction, had made Saul king. A period of time went on. Saul got the biggie head. Saul started thinking far too much of himself. Common human trait. Whenever you give any one power. Saul began thinking that he didn't need to do what God wanted him to do. God said, I want you to go to the Amalekites. I want you to wipe out men, children, animals. It is such a perverse, deviant culture. I want it wiped off the face of the earth so it no longer exists. He didn't do that. He spared flocks. He spared some of the good stuff. Samuel comes looking for him. I think it tells us a lot in verse 12. Again, this is what happens when you give men power. Verse 12. So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel, saying Saul went to Carmel, and indeed he set up a monument for himself. Now it's always, it never fails. You give people a little bit of power, and they're making monuments to themselves. It's all about them. It's all about how great I am. God gave him a very simple instruction, and he's gone on around, passed by, and going down to Gilgal. So now we'll drop down to verse 22.

He says, and Samuel said to him, as he's correcting Saul, has the Lord as a great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the word of the Lord?

He says, do you think it's about slain animal blood, and it's about goats, and it's about sheep?

He says, no, it's not about that. It's about obeying the simple commands. God gave you a simple thing to do, a clear command. The communication was there, and you just simply ignored it.

You're too concerned with building a monument to yourself, Saul. You've forgotten why you were called, and you've forgotten what it's all about. He says, behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed, in other words, to listen. Zip it, and to listen, Saul, is more important than the fad of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft in stubbornness, maintaining your own way, coming up with a million excuses why you didn't do what you were told to do. And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. So we see here that Saul was given a mission to eliminate the Amalekites. He didn't do it, but instead was off building a monument to himself.

Now, the scripture, of course, has an analogy.

How are you doing against the Amalekites in your life?

You know, there's parts of each and every one of us that are disturbed, dysfunctional, carnal, selfish, egotistical, and those are its good points. How are we doing against the Amalekites in our lives? Are we trying to slay them, or have we decided to compromise? Have we allowed some of them to live? I'll get to them someday. Or maybe we're building a monument to ourselves. Maybe we've allowed our materialism to get to us, and we're building monuments to ourselves instead of slaying the Amalekites, that exist in each and every one of our lives. Do we live a life of obedience?

Or, like Saul, do we live a life of compromise? Do we outwardly want to appear obedient, but inwardly a rebel against what we know we should do, the changes we should make in our lives, the kind of people that we should become through God's Holy Spirit? How are we doing in our battle against the Amalekites? Hopefully better than Saul did.

Because his end was not very pretty or very positive. Psalm 51, verse 17. Psalm 51, verse 17.

The psalmist was inspired to write, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, these, O God, you will not despise.

The psalmist is telling us that humility and repentance and surrender are a powerful form of worship that God respects. That's what gets his attention. A broken, humble spirit, a contrite heart, one that is sorrowful and repentant for the silly things that heart has thought or said or done and seeks God's forgiveness and seeks to be renewed, to have their minds transformed and renewed through God's Holy Spirit. Psalm 119, we're in the book of Psalm 119, verse 33.

Psalm 119, verse 33.

That means I'll obey it.

Of course, one must have a positive attitude in order to delight in anything, but I won't rehash my last sermon. Verse 13, incline my heart to your testimonies and not the covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things and revive me in your way.

Why is obedience important? Because it shows God that we honor his value system. We respect what he respects. We appreciate what he has given us. We understand that his law regulates our happiness, helps us to live happy and contented lives. And when those laws are broken, they cause dysfunction in our families. They cause dysfunction in our lives. They cause hurt. They cause pain. That's why those laws are important to respect and obey. I'd like to read this psalm in the translation new century version. It says, Lord, teach me your demands, and I will keep them until the end. Help me understand so I can keep your teachings, obeying them with all my heart. Lead me in the path of your commands because that makes me happy. Verse 36 from the new century version, make me want to keep your rules instead of wishing for riches. Keep me from looking at worthless things. Let me live by your word. So, brethren, we bring pleasure to our Father when we're obedient to Him. It shows our love, our respect, our honor towards His value system, which are His commandments. An act of obedience is also an act of worship. We deny ourselves something that we probably would have done differently. And if we offer ourselves again, deny ourselves, and it is a form of worship.

The greatest hindrance to total surrender is not other people. It's ourselves. It's our own self-will, our ambitions, our stubborn pride, our egos. And we can't fulfill God's promise for us if we're focusing on our own agendas. Agendas being pride, ego, ambition, and self-will.

Final Scripture, Philippians 4, verse 15.

Philippians 4, verse 15.

Worship also includes service towards others. And in this case, the Apostle Paul shared his thankfulness to the brethren in Thessalonica for being different than the other congregations and for helping him and serving him in a time of need. Here's what he says in Philippians 4, verse 15. It is now you, Philippians, know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving, but you only. For even in Thessalonica, you sent aid once, and again for my necessities. I correct myself. It was the Philippians who had provided for his needs. What is he saying here? He was saying, I served in a lot of congregations, and many of them never helped me financially. Oftentimes, what Paul would do is he would go into an area, he would raise up a congregation, and he would make tents to provide for himself because many congregations did not provide for him financially. But the Philippians were different. Verse 16. For even in Thessalonica, you sent aid once and again for my necessities. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that abounds to your account. He's saying, not that I wanted it. He's because Paul was fully capable of providing for himself. He was used to it. He said, but you received the blessing. When you gave something to me, when you helped me financially, you received the blessing. He said, verse 18, indeed, I have all and abound. Notice his positive attitude. I am full, having received from Ephrathitites the things sent from you.

And here's what their service was. Here were the things that they sent in an act of love and service towards a fellow Christian. A sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. Now, my point is absolutely, positively not to provide financial support for me. It's this. When you see a need among God's people that someone has, supply it. Disobserve. When they have a need, supply it. It's a form of worship. Service, when you see someone is doing without something, whether it's clothes or groceries or their car isn't running, whatever it may be, and you have the means or the ability to serve in that way and to help them do it. Because it's a form of worship. It's, as Paul said, a sweet-smelling aroma. It's an acceptable sacrifice, and it's well-pleasing to God to give of yourself, to give of your wealth, to give of the blessings that you've been given, so that someone less fortunate can be helped. Paul reminds us that service to one another, seeing a need that someone has and supplying it is a form of worship. Remember, it was Jesus who said in Matthew 25, that inasmuch as you did to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did unto me. Well, brethren, I'm out of time. I don't have the opportunity today to discuss personal prayer, daily Bible study, fasting, meditation. These are also ways that we worship God. They're also wonderful ways that we personally worship our Father. They're examples of a personal offering that we give. Again, it's a sacrifice, either of time, of self-denial, of physical distress, like fasting, or of personal wealth. In all of these ways, we give an offering. We give a sacrifice, and we worship our Father.

So, I encourage you to think about how you've been worshiping God both publicly in services and privately. It is a worship that offers genuine sacrifice to Him that pleases God.

How are we doing in that area? Only you can know for sure. And remember that we were created to worship God because it pleases Him. If we don't worship God, we'll always end up worshiping something or somebody else. Have a great Sabbath day, and hope to see after services.