Five Keys to God-Honoring Worship

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So, I shared with you last week, as we looked at the Scriptures together, that worship is not just what we do together on Sunday mornings. It’s not just about music, although that’s part of it. Worship is the way that we live our lives in obedience and reverence for God.

Now, what we do here together with the music, that’s part of worship. It’s just not all of worship. But it’s still a pretty good baseline for understanding what we’re supposed to do.

And it is amazing to me how easy it is, whether we’re talking about worship here, whether we’re talking about what we’re supposed to do outside of here throughout the week, it is amazing how easy it is to phone in our worship. You know what I’m talking about? It is amazing to me how easy it is to lose sight of what we’re supposed to do and then come unprepared to worship the Lord.

I experienced that this week and this morning and had to stop and spend some time to prepare myself just to be in the right frame of mind for this. Over the last couple weeks, I think I’ve been the tiredest I have ever been. Is tiredest a word?

Is that how you say it? Or is it the most tired English teacher? Help me out.

I’ve been tired. All right, we’ll just put it that way. just, and nothing, nothing even big.

Just the regular stress of life, I feel like we’re all doing that. I feel like I’m juggling all these things as husband, father, pastor, all the other stuff I do, and I feel like I’m dropping the balls all the time. I feel like I can’t keep, I’m just, I don’t feel like I’m up to my own expectations at any of it.

And then on top of but there’s just been little additional stress that just wears down on you. I feel like if it was one big thing, I could handle that, but it’s just the constant bombarding. And I’m not telling you that to complain to you this morning.

I’m telling you that because a lot of you probably feel like you’re in the same boat. And I want you to know it’s not just you, it’s me too. All right, we are all in the same boat.

It was so bad that even after working all week on preparing for today, there’s still stuff I forgot to do. I walked in, Jack said, hey, you don’t have this to me. Yeah, that totally slipped my mind.

But last night, I kind of collapsed on the couch and then looked up at Charlotte and said, good grief, tomorrow’s Sunday. And she said, what, are you not ready? I said, I am.

I just didn’t realize it was Sunday. Sunday was not even, I did the work to prepare. Well, except for what I didn’t get to Jack, I did the work to prepare, but Sunday was just nowhere on my radar.

And then this morning, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get Five children ready for church. But whoever wrote the song Easy Like Sunday Morning was a liar, right? We were all sniping at each other, all stressed out to the point that I’m walking out to the truck and saying, somebody says one more word, I’m not going.

Benjamin said, you have to go, you’re the pastor. And I was just in that mood. I said, oh really?

I have to go? Somebody’s going to throw me in prison? I said, I might lose my job, but I don’t have to go.

And we got in the truck and I was like, you, yeah, you’re going to go preach. That’s good. So I had to spend some time dealing with the Lord this morning about my own attitude just to be able to come in here prepared to worship.

Because it’s really tough to come unprepared. Whether you’re coming to church to worship together or you’re trying to be in a worshipful frame of mind just for the things you have to do in life, it’s really tough to just switch that on and off like a light switch. We have to prepare ourselves.

And God recognized what we’re like because He made us and recognized that we were going to have that tendency to just phone it in sometimes and come unprepared. And so He gave His people instructions on how we are supposed to prepare. He gave specific instructions to the people of Israel.

And while we can’t keep those instructions to every last detail, because they were written to a different people at a different time, there are some principles that we can learn from how God told Israel to worship. And so I want us to look at those this morning out of the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 12. These are not the only instructions God ever gave Israel or anybody else on how to worship, But they’re a decent starting off point to learn some principles that will help us as we try to worship God in a way that actually honors Him, in a way that actually brings Him glory.

Not just coming in and mouthing words and staring at the screen. I was having this attitude and this preparation for the week, and then I saw this that one of our missionaries posted on Facebook, where he said, want to change your worship experience at church? Pray before you get there.

ask God to speak to you listen to worship music on the way take a Bible with you instead of relying on the screens now we do have it on the screen if that’s November that’s last week it should be on there I saved it on there can you look again I know it’s there oh good grief it may not be on the screen maybe maybe this is a sign to us use your no what I was going to say is if you have to use a screen because you forgot your button nobody’s going to shame you for that all right it is helpful to have but there there is something there is something impactful I think about having it right there in your hands take a bible with you don’t run late you know what and if you’re running late I’m not here to shame you about that either we’re glad you’re here whether you’re late or early. But I know if I run late, for me, I have to be here early. So come at 8.

15 or 8. 30 like we know. You don’t have to do that.

Sing loudly like you mean it. Take notes. Expect God to move.

We come prepared for worship. And so the people of Israel were given instructions on how to do this, and they’re in Deuteronomy chapter 12. Did you find it?

You found it? No? Okay.

Well, did you find it? It was up there? Okay.

If you’re looking for a perfect church, you have not found it. But if you’re looking for an imperfect group of people, I have the perfect place for you. All right?

All right. We’re going to go ahead and read one way or another. So if you have your Bibles, we’re in Deuteronomy chapter 12.

And if you would, once you’re able to find it, if you’d stand with me if you’re able to without too much trouble. We’re going to look at the first seven verses here of Deuteronomy chapter 12. It says, these are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth.

You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree, and you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things, but you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes to put his name for his dwelling place, and there you shall go.

There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households in which the Lord your God has blessed you. And you may be seated.

So these are instructions again, just to be very clear, These are instructions to the nation of Israel. We have to be careful to read the Bible in context and understand who it was written to, what they were talking about, what was going on at the time, and then we can apply those things to our lives in light of the cross. But this is not an instruction for you and me today to go out and find the tabernacle and start sacrificing animals there.

We have to understand who it was written to, the time period, and then try to bring it forward. So the instructions that he gave to Israel about their worship were very specific. He said, worship the Lord throughout your whole life.

In verse 1, he tells them that these are the statutes and the judgments that they were supposed to observe in the land that he had given them. And there’s that phrase, all the days of your life. Now, it could mean that he has given them that land to possess all the days of their life.

It could mean, follow this all the days of your life while you’re in the land. Either way, it’s all tied together. This idea that for as long as you live, Israel, you are supposed to worship the Lord.

You are supposed to serve Him. And for them, it was not a once a year thing where they would travel to the tabernacle and make their sacrifices, and that was the only time they would worship. It wasn’t once a week we go to the synagogue and we pray and that’s our worship.

All of that was part of it. But for them, worship was obedience and reverence toward God every day. And he said, you’re supposed to do that all the days of your life.

As a matter of fact, when Israel forgot God, and it happened over and over and over, when Israel forgot God, when they ceased worshiping God, it never went well for them. Because that was their job first and foremost. They might think of it as my job is to be a shepherd. My job is to be a farmer.

My job is to be a potter. My job is to be this or that. God said, do those things, but if you’ll serve me, I’ll take care of you.

Ultimately, their survival was in God’s hands. Their job as a nation was to bring glory to God, and He was going to take care of them. So for Israel, they needed to understand that their whole life, their whole life, as long as they inhabited the land, their whole purpose was to bring God glory.

It tells them to be careful to observe in the land. Worship and serve the Lord in recognition and remembrance of what He’s done. And that’s what I told you last week.

if we’re going to worship properly, we’ve got to always keep in our minds who God is and what He’s done for us. Because when we do that, when we remember those two things, then we’ll be more mindful of what He deserves. If we’re not thinking about what God deserves, then it becomes real easy for our worship just to be something that we check off on our list. It’s one of the things we do throughout the week.

Here, I’ve worshipped, I can check it off the list and move on. But when we are constantly careful to remember who God is, His holiness, His righteousness, His justice, His mercy, when we’re careful to remember all of it, it’ll keep us in awe of who He is, where we won’t be able to help but worship Him. And again, all the days that you live on the earth means it was an ongoing practice.

It was not just an occasional activity. But then He also told the people of Israel to destroy all of the idols that could compete for their affections. He says this in verses 2 through 3, when he tells them to utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess serve their gods.

And he goes on to list what some of these places were, the high places, they were shrines up in the mountains, under every green tree, sacred pillars, altars, wooden images, they would set up shrines, they would set up altars, they would even carve trees and worship those things. God said, go and get rid of all of that. Now, to be clear, as Israel came in to possess the land, the pagan nations that moved out left these shrines behind.

All right, they were not going to somebody’s house and saying, no, you can’t worship that way anymore, let me tear it down. So we don’t apply this by saying there’s a, I think there’s a Buddhist place of worship down the street now. We don’t apply this by going and tearing that down, right?

He’s saying the things that are left behind by these pagan nations. As you’ve moved in, they’ve moved out. They’ve left these traces of pagan worship with them.

Get rid of them so that you are not tempted. When we bought our house in Norman years ago, there was a statue of a Greek goddess out in front of the house that was left there. I thought they were going to take it with them when they moved, but no, I guess they decided we needed Aphrodite in our garden.

I hated that thing. I had no temptation to go and bow down to the concrete statue of Aphrodite, but I still didn’t want that thing in front of my house. For one thing, I didn’t want anybody to think that we were into that sort of thing.

And so my very first act upon moving into the house before I cleaned it, before I changed the locks on it, was to send that concrete statue of Aphrodite away. See, I had bought the house, I had come into the land, the inhabitants had left their pagan statues, and I got rid of them. And that’s what he’s telling them to do.

You’ve come into this land, it’s yours now, get rid of everything that was there before, as far as these pagan statues. Because for the people of Israel, these statues, these shrines, these altars, they were going to be a continual temptation. And God’s not just being overly dramatic here, because we see from the history of Israel that when they did not do this, and they left those shrines and those altars and those high places in place, eventually people went and worshipped there.

And you and I look at that today and say, well, that’s ridiculous. Why would they do that? It makes sense.

I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but it makes a little more sense when you consider the world that they lived in. They were surrounded by these pagan countries, and these pagan countries would say, you know, we really need a good harvest, Because they couldn’t run down to homeland and buy groceries if the harvest failed. If they wanted to survive, they needed a good harvest. And the Israelites see these countries around us, well, they have their God that they pray to for a good harvest, and they seem to have an okay harvest. We need more children.

They’ve got a God of fertility over here they pray to, and it seems to be working for them. To be in the mindset of being surrounded by that, and somebody comes along and thinks, you can never have too many people in your corner. And so they became tempted to pray to these idols and these statues.

God said, don’t even offer yourself the temptation. Get rid of it now. Destroy all of those things and get rid of them.

We are taught that we are supposed to resist temptation. There may be situations where you are face to face with temptation and you can’t get out of it. All you can do is resist. Pray for the Lord’s help and resist. But I see far more times in Scripture we are told to flee from temptation.

we need to quit teaching our kids we’ll resist temptation no we need to teach our kids to get out of there get out of where the temptation is and that’s what God is telling them telling them get rid of those idols before they even become a temptation to you if they could possibly compete for your affection and pull you astray from God go ahead and get rid of them and they were also told don’t try to worship God don’t try to worship a holy God in worldly ways verse 4 says you shall not worship the Lord your God with such things. Now this is not quite the same as what he’s just told them about the idols. Because Israel also had this unfortunate tendency to adopt pagan ways to try to worship God.

And God was never pleased with that. If you recall the story of Moses going up on Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments from God and coming back down because there’s a noise that sounds like war in the camp, and he comes down and sees this massive golden calf that they’ve built. And he asks Aaron, oh, one of the dumbest lies in history, asks Aaron, where did this golden calf come from?

And Aaron said, I don’t know, I just threw the gold in there into the fire and it just came out. It was always that way. If you go back and reread that story, I’ve become convinced over the years, they were not trying to worship one of the false gods of Egypt.

In their minds, they thought they were worshiping the God of Israel. And there’s other instances of this in the Old Testament as well. I’m convinced they were in their minds trying to worship the God of Israel, but they wanted something to look at as they did it like the Egyptians had.

And you don’t have to look further than the compromise in a lot of Christianity in America to realize there’s a temptation to say, well, sure, we don’t worship idols, but if we’re going to take those idols and redeem them and use them in the worship of the true God, then what’s the problem with that? God was telling Israel, don’t keep those statues and those altars around and think you’re going to worship me with those. Don’t think you’re going to justify the idolatry by saying, well, it’s for you, Lord.

He said, get rid of them. Don’t try to worship me with those things. He said, this is forbidden.

They were told to worship God in the way that He prescribes. And this is where God is talking about how the tabernacle will eventually be built. And He does give some very specific instructions for the tabernacle elsewhere, which was basically a tent that they would travel around with, and they would tear down, travel, set up wherever they camped, and it would be their meeting place with the Lord where they would offer sacrifices.

But He said, you’ll seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all the tribes. God will say where he wants that tabernacle to be. God will say where he wants his dwelling place to be.

God will say how it’s supposed to be set up. And then you’ll go there and you’ll take your offerings. You’ll go there and offer the bird offerings.

You’ll go there and offer the animals. You’ll go there and offer all the tithes and free will offerings. You’ll go there.

So they were not supposed to go the convenient route of making offerings wherever they wanted. And you and I could look at that and say, well, what’s the big deal? If I want to make a sacrifice here in Lawton, instead of having to drive to Oklahoma City to make the sacrifice, why does that matter?

It matters because God said so. I don’t know what to tell you. Right?

That’s what God wants. Okay? The song says whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

No. Whatever God wants, God gets. He said, you’ve got to come to the tabernacle, so that’s just the way it is.

So they were required to bring their offerings, not to the place that was most convenient, not to the place that they wanted to, but the place that the Lord had designated. which is the tabernacle. And then finally in his list of instructions to Israel, they were told to teach future generations to worship the Lord.

He says, there you shall, verse 7, you shall eat before the Lord your God and you shall rejoice in all which you have put your hand, you and your households in which the Lord God has blessed you. He’s saying, teach your children, teach your grandchildren, teach your servants, teach everybody that’s part of your household what it means to honor the Lord. Show them what worship looks like.

And he tells them to rejoice, that they’re going to do this gladly. Once again, these are not the only things that God ever told Israel about worship, but they’re a pretty good start. And now you and I cannot go to the tabernacle.

It’s not there anymore. We are not supposed to offer sacrifices any longer. And the reason for that is that Jesus Christ is the ultimate sacrifice.

The book of Hebrews spends chapters talking about the sacrifices that were offered and how Jesus is superior to all those sacrifices. That He in one act of sacrifice, offering Himself for our sins, He did what all those other animal sacrifices could never do. He made a lasting peace between sinful man and holy God, that those sacrifices never could.

So we don’t offer sacrifices anymore, not because we don’t care about the Old Testament, but because that has been fulfilled. If the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was not enough, tell me what would be. There’s nothing.

But we can still look at these principles, even though we cannot follow these commandments exactly, and nor were we intended to, they were given to Israel, we can still learn from the principles that are put here and the reasons for them. And so we see God’s instructions to us on how we can apply these things. And the first one I would give you, these go along with the five things I’ve already told you about Israel, is that we make worship the pattern of our lives.

This is what he told Israel to do, and we can practice this one as well. Worship is an all-day, every-day way that we live our lives more than it’s just an activity. And that should say verse 1, that’s my mistake.

It’s an all-day, every-day way of living life. As I said to you last week, and I should have used different examples, because poor Bob’s never going to get free of mopping the floor after what I said last week, that you can worship God by mopping the floor. But whatever we do, if we do it with a recognition that we want to glorify God in the way we do this, anything we do can and should be an act of worship.

And if we can’t worship God while we’re doing it, we ought not to do it. Amen? Think about that one for a moment.

But it should be the pattern of our lives. Are we ever going to be perfect? Are we ever going to glorify God with everything we say and do?

No, but it should be the goal. It should be the pattern that characterizes who we are. Just like Israel, we can also rid ourselves of the things that lead us astray. We all have things that pull us away from God.

If you sit there and say, no, I don’t have one, the Bible says lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset you. There are certain sins that are going to trip each of us up every time, and not all of us have the same sin. And it’s like the old hymn says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love. We all have this tendency that there are certain things that are just more tempting than others. There are certain things that claim our affections.

Sometimes even good things can be idols if we put them in a place that only God occupies or should occupy. And if there are those things in my life, then I need to be ruthless about cutting them away. For some people it can be money.

For some people it can be their job. For some people it can be their kids. For some people it can be hobbies, interests.

There are certain things that I have to be on guard about that may even be good things, but I can easily overindulge in this area, in this pursuit, and make it an idol to where I neglect my time and focus toward God. And if that’s going to happen, I need to be ruthless about cutting this out. But I really want it.

That’s the point. Anything, just like the idols that the pagan nations left behind. I doubt any of us are, you may be, there is paganism in our world, more than we realize.

But very few of us are going to be tempted by statues and things like that, but there are things that will draw our attention and affection away from God if we allow them. And for us to prepare ourselves for worship, we need to purge those things out of our lives. We need to resist the urge to compromise, because they would come in with those idols and say, but it’s okay, I’m using it in worship of you.

We need to resist the urge to compromise with worldly practices. This is called syncretism. People have tried it all over the world.

They’ll come into a place and they’ll adopt some of the spiritual practices and some of the philosophies of the people that they come in contact and try to mix it with Christianity. And I’m not talking about cultural things, different kinds of music, different languages, different ways of organizing. I’m talking about different ways of.

. . They end up changing the gospel.

When you start trying to mix pagan philosophy and Christian theology, it ends up changing the gospel. We can’t compromise with worldly practices in our worship and say, but I’m doing it to worship God. I was in a church one time years ago, and let me emphasize, I was in a church one time years ago where in the worship service they started using songs from Jesus Christ Superstar.

You may not be familiar with that musical, but part of the premise behind it is that Jesus is not God and is not perfect. That he’s a man who got caught up in fame and took a wrong direction. Got caught up in the pursuit of fame and took a wrong direction.

Paints a completely unbiblical perspective of who Jesus is. I cannot for the life of me figure out who thought it would be a good idea to introduce that into worship. I mean, maybe they thought the songs were catchy, I don’t know.

But whoever thought that was a good idea, I love you, but no. We’ve got to resist the urge to compromise with worldly practices. But also, wrapped up in this, is with them going back to the idols and saying, I’m going to worship God using this golden calf. I’m going to look at the calf, but I’m going to think about you.

Your mind starts to be affected by the calf. What I mean by this, your picture of God begins to be affected by that. If you start to think, well, God is in this statue, it begins to limit our understanding of who God is.

And so they began worshiping a God who was less than he really is. The whole of the universe cannot contain the glory of God. How could it ever be contained in a little statue?

And so there’s this temptation to compromise by giving God less than what he deserves. That’s easy to do, isn’t it? It’s easy to walk in here with whatever mindset I want and say, God’s going to be happy with however I am today.

Hey, at least I showed up. I’ve been there. I’m guilty.

We’ve got to resist the urge to compromise with this idea of just giving God what we’re willing to give him instead of what he actually deserves. We need to follow his direction, obey him, do what he says, and don’t settle for worshiping God the way you want or the way I want. It’s one of my pet peeves.

We as Americans, it’s been drilled into us that we are free here to worship God the way we want. As an American, I get that. As an American, I understand that and I understand the meaning of that.

As a Christian, I’m going, no, that’s not right. I am not free to worship God the way I want. I am free to worship God the way I believe He has called me to worship Him.

As an American, yes, I can go out and cover myself in blue paint and run up and down the street screaming chants. I say that because I don’t know any religion that does that. I’m free to do that as an American.

As a Christian, I’ve been called to worship God in meaningful ways, in ways that show reverence to Him. In ways that honor Him, in ways that glorify Him. So when He tells them go to the tabernacle, that’s about them following His direction and worshiping the way He said.

And for us, we need to understand that means it’s not about our preferences. I had to learn a long time ago, worship was not about my preferences. My preferences skew very traditional. And I was probably at one point very legalistic about that.

And then somebody pointed out to me at one time, you know, the hymns from the 1700s and 1800s, they were once new. And so now I try to look at the content of, at the words of what we’re singing. But we’re supposed to focus on how God desires to be worshiped.

And he talks a great deal about the condition of the heart, more than just what I’m comfortable doing. We follow his direction. And then finally, this morning, we let our worship point others to him.

There in verse 7, he specifically told Israel to worship him gladly and told them to teach their children. We should be teaching our children and our grandchildren what it means to worship God. Not just in church.

Yes, bring them to church. Let them see you worship. Let them worship alongside you.

But also, it is even more impactful for them to see it take place outside these four walls that you worship God. And see what that means to be lived out all seven days of the week. Let them see that.

He says for Israel to do it gladly, to rejoice in doing it. Let them see the joy that you experience by worshiping God. That the way you live your life, it’s not, well, I’m obligated to do this, so I’m just going to get through it.

but we find joy in bringing him honor and glory in everything we do. Let our children and grandchildren see that. If you no longer have children at home, you can still be an influence on them.

You can still have an impact on them. Maybe you weren’t that way when they were growing up. Be that way now.

Let them see it now. My grandfather didn’t come to Christ until he was in his 70s, and the change was remarkable. Maybe his 80s, if I think about it.

The change was incredible. Let them see that, but also let others around you see that. Not that we’re worshiping as a show.

Not that we’re worshiping so that people think we’re wonderful. But we worship and we let other people see the way we live our lives to glorify God so that we have the opportunity to glorify Him in front of them. And have the opportunity to tell them who He is and what He’s done.

That’s what worship is. It’s remembering who He is and what He’s done. And ultimately as Christians, our worship should draw people to the cross.

Whether we’re worshiping here, we’re singing together, we’re finding joy in doing that. whether we’re worshiping by the way we do our job to glorify God, whether we’re worshiping by trying to love our spouse and children in the way that God tells us to, however we are worshiping in whatever capacity in that moment, we do it with the goal of pointing others to Jesus Christ. Even if it’s something as simple as somebody saying, you are, okay, I’ll use the word weird. You are weird.

What is wrong with you? How can you be so happy mopping floors? And we have the opportun