Isaiah 55:7-8 “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
Sometimes, we need to make changes in our lives, when they do not accurately reflect what true worship should be. We need to continually develop a more biblical understanding of worship of God and a greater conviction of our dedication, devotion and desire that results in life-change. What we need to be or what we need to do to be in continual awe of God; the Creator of time, space, matter, the Cosmos and everything within us. The greatest commandment is to love God with everything that we have and our neighbor as ourselves. No Creed but Christ, No book but the Bible, and No name but Christian insists that we keep the truth of the Bible ahead of what we consider as flawed humans to be the truth. Mistakes in the past encourage us to change and live wisely from that point forward, Non-essentials in worship come from our thoughts and preferences. God created us with different gifts and personalities to complement one another. Our opinions need to be with an attitude of love and unity. Divisions are non-essentials. God is concerned about essentials, like saving people from spending eternity in Hell for their sins.
If we are going to argue and put a lot of emotion into something, then let’s make sure that it is over something that really matters; like the authority of the Bible or the deity of Jesu Christ, the fact of the resurrection, or God’s plan of Salvation. What is your frame of mind? We cannot let Satan direct our concerns to non-essential issues about us or our opinion on non-essentials; emotional distractions by things that don’t really matter. We need to be serious about the reason are assemble as a church body of Believers to worship; and that is God. The business at hand is worship of God. We can add essential or subtract non-essential things in order to make our worship better. The point is to refocus us onto the things that really do matter. When we sing Hymns and spiritual songs at worship services are we really singing praises to God in true worshipping, like a prayer to music, or we just singing words up on the screen to a catchy tune? Is attending church just an item on your check-off list of “things to do today” because you are supposed to? It’s not just important to have the proper focus on God during Worship services, but during the rest of the week also. He is our Gods and we are his people every minute of every day on this side of eternity. We should be holding our almighty heavenly Father in awe 24hrs., seven days a week and 365 days a year. So, what is essential to worship?
John 4:23-24 “But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Commentator Matthew Henry states that the Apostle describes the evangelical worship which alone God would accept and be well pleased with. Having shown that the place is indifferent, he comes to show what is necessary and essential—that we worship God in spirit and in truth. The stress is not to be laid upon the place where we worship God, but upon the state of mind in which we worship him. Note, the most effectual way to take up differences in the minor matters of religion is to be more zealous in the greater. It concerns us to be right, not only in the object of our worship, but in the manner of it. Christians shall worship God in spiritual ordinances, invigorated more with divine power and energy. The way of worship which Christ has instituted is rational and intellectual, and refined from those external rites and ceremonies with which the Old-Testament worship was both clouded and clogged. This is called true worship, in opposition to that which was typical. In truth, that is, in sincerity. We must depend upon God’s Spirit for strength and assistance, laying our souls under His influences and operations; we must devote our own spirits to, and employ them in, the service of God, must worship Him with fixedness of thought and a flame of affection, with all that is within us. Worshipping the Father in spirit and truth is an essential for true worshipers.
Exodus 20:1-6 Then 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 slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, inflicting the punishment of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing favor to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
We need to think about worship and be purposeful about it, realizing what is essential for our true worship and what is not essential. We need to get back to basics. There has to be an object for us to worship. Even pagans worship, but they worship idols. An idol is defined as: anything on which we set our affections; that to which we indulge an excessive and sinful attachment. An idol is anything which usurps the place of God in the hearts of his rational creatures. An idol is anything that comes between God’s face and yours. Whatever it is, is an object of worship. God rebukes and warns about worshipping false gods and idols. Is idol worship still going on today? Who or what is the object of your worship? For many, that object is themselves. Becoming a follower of Jesus Christ begins when we no longer make ourselves the object of our worship and being obedient to what God says. People possessed by God can never themselves be impotent, but have we not robbed the Almighty of much of His awesome glory and to that extent are we not ourselves despoiled? We’ve contemplated the beauties of the rainbow but we have overlooked the dim severities of the Throne of God. We have toyed with the light but we have forgotten the Light-giver. We have rejoiced in the Fatherhood of our God, but too frequently the fatherhood we have proclaimed has been throneless and effeminate. We have picked and chosen according to the weakness of our own tastes and not according to the fullness or the full orbed revelation of the truth. And we have selected the picturesque and rejected the appalling.
What is the object of your worship this morning? What is driving your thoughts and attitudes? God tells us that the object of our worship is to be Him alone, in spirit and in truth. In God We Trust.
In Christ, Brian
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