God's Guidance in Vocation and Worship

Again, reading at verse 18, just 18 and 19, kind of connected. All the way through the discussion that Moses has with the people of Israel is his final prayer for them as they enter the land of promise. He's repeating to different ones of them all the great promises of the covenant. That is, that God would give them guidance, that he would provide for them, that he would protect them, and that he would make them a great influence in the world. Those promises that God makes to all of the people, all of his people. So in each of these, there are various parts of this promise that God holds up and makes to them. In verse 18, he says about Zebulun, he said, Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out, and you, Issachar, in your tents. They will summon people to the mountain, and there offer sacrifices of righteousness. They will feast on the abundance of the sea, and on the hidden and the treasures hidden in the sand. Now, if you go back to see the promises that Jacob made to his descendants, chapter 49 of the book of Genesis, you'll see some of the same promises that were found here in that section. He says, Zebulun will live by the seashore and become a haven for ships. His border will extend towards Sidon. And Issachar is a raw bone donkey lying down between two saddlebags. When he sees how good is his resting place, how pleasant is his land, he will bend his shoulder to the burden and submit to forced labor. Not a very good promise made to Issachar. But what's done here is God give us two promises in this section. He's talking about, first of all, the vocation that the people are going to have, the location where they're going to give. He gives them land, the source of their income. In the land both in chapter 49 and this chapter 33, he identifies where they're going to settle. Both of them indicate that they will be settling on the shore of the sea and indicate that he's talking about the Mediterranean Sea. So, one of the promises that God makes is guidance with regard to our lives and the choices we make and where we're going to be. The provision that he makes, here land that's given to them, is the source of their income and security. So, God has made a promise to them that this will be the career that they will have. I think it's important to understand that God does make promises to us with regard to things more than simple spiritual matters of our lives. He makes guidance choices for us with regard to vocation. Whatever it is we choose to do in our lives to provide income for us, God has a stake in that. Your job is important to God. He wants to be able to provide a means of income for you and a provision for you. Now, in this instance, he says, you will settle by the seashore. The people of Israel have been walking across the desert for many years, not even close to the seashore, not close to anything like that, but now he provides for them that that's their future vocation. You'll be at the seashore, one of them, Zebulun, is going to be the tribe that takes care of the ocean traffic. They're going to be the boat builders. They're going to be the people that had the ports for the ships to land and to take care of the ships. That's going to be their course. Issachar ends up with the responsibility for the things on the shore. For example, the sand that's there, they were glass makers. So they used the sand on the seashore to be able to make their living. They also were using the seashells of the animals to make dye. Now, the fish and whatever kind of seashells they are, they pull out of there a small portion of that shell to make the royal red or purple. And it takes hundreds of those to even make a little bit of dye. But this was their job. And it was the royalty that bought it. So it was a very exclusive kind of product that they made. So they had the responsibility of making sure that these things were made and this was their livelihood. So God directed each of them to a particular location and a particular job. And what we see in this is that God's guidance in our lives with regard to vocations can be trusted. Now, it doesn't always mean that the vocation we have has any connection at all to the spiritual things of our lives. But it is spiritual in the sense that God provides a means of income for us. That's his promise to us. What God's promise does is allows us to know that he's going to give us wisdom and guidance about our choices. Now, the calling that a person would have, say, to a mission work or to be a pastor or some kind of religious vocation like that, is sort of a unique area in which God is doing because it's a service to the church. And so it has a different sense to it. But God is interested in all the things that we do because these are the means not only whereby he supports the kingdom, but also it's a means whereby he provides for us. So when you're making choices about jobs that you get, it is an important thing that you seek God's wisdom about it because the wisdom that he gives you helps you to be in the place where you can make the contributions you need to make to the community around you. Also, where you're able to be able to find the provision that God intends to get for you. So that the people here are looking at the territory that they're going to be in and the promise that God made to them that he would take care of them. The second part of this was the provision that he made for their lifestyle. They were to be different than the other people around them. They were to be not farmers and not sheep herders, but they were to be maritime people. People who worked with the water and the boats and the things that were related to that. We look in Hebrews chapter 10 and we see God's guidance, a picture of God's guidance in the New Testament about how God deals with us in terms of worship. The last part of this passage with Zebulun and Issachar, he said to them that they would have people draw from the mountain around them to the mountains where they were. In the story of the scriptures, God said to the people of Israel when they got into the land of promise, that they were never to start a place of worship that God had not directed for them. The requirement that he gave was that they listen to what he said to them and establish worship in the places where he wanted them to worship. In Deuteronomy chapter 12 verse 5, I started back at the New Testament, but I want to go back. Deuteronomy chapter 12 verse 5. And I'll start with 4. It's the beginning of the paragraph. You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. He's talking about the people in the land they're going to come to. But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his name there for his dwelling. Deuteronomy chapter 12. Well, I said 5 first and then I changed my mind, but you quit listening. That's it. Oh, okay. I will slow down till you find your place. Okay. You must not worship the Lord your God in their ways. Talking about the pagans that they're around. And that's a big temptation to pay attention to what's popular around you as opposed to what God says. But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go. There bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, your special gifts, what you have vowed to give and your freewill offerings in the firstborn of your herds and flocks. There in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your family shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you've put your hand to because the Lord your God has blessed you. What God said to the people of Israel when they were entering the land of promise was he said to them, when you enter, I will determine the places where you can offer sacrifices. Now, it doesn't seem like that's a big thing for us, because if you wanted to offer a sacrifice to God, all you'd really want to say is, God, here's the animal I get for you. You cut its throat. You lay it on the altar. You burn it up. What difference would it make? But God made a very specific requirement of them. You are not to offer sacrifices anywhere except the place I set for you to do it. What God is demanding of his people is that he be in control of their worship. I want you to do what I want you to do the way I want you to do it and where I want you to do it. I hear a lot of people when they talk about worship say things like, well, you know, I can worship God wherever I am. I can worship him on the mountains. I can worship him at the lakes. I can worship him in my backyard as I look around me. And that's true. But the Bible also tells us that there are specific concrete things that God asks of us. In the book of Hebrews, I've started to turn to that one. In the book of Hebrews, the author is talking about the worship that the people of Israel were going through. And it's chapter 10, I think. I'm having trouble finding that. Where I wrote it down. I've turned my book up and lost some of my markers in this. The warning that God gave to them is that they were not to quit attending worship with other believers. Verse 25 of 10. Verse, I want to start reading verse 19, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way open for us through the curtain that is his body. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, see, all of these are preparations. These are preparations because he's looking back at the Old Testament and the Old Testament in the temple where the worship of God was to be made. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswerving to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. In this passage, he's referring to the passage to the worship in the Old Testament where the temple was established and it was necessary for a person to go there for the sacrifices to be made properly. The sacrifices were to be made in a certain place and in a certain way. I don't know if that's going to go off or not. OK. OK. Well, we didn't with it leaking last time. We don't want a thing to blow up on us, so we're cautious. He's talking about the place where they were to worship. You come with your sincerity to focus on what God wants you to do. We are to have faith and our hearts open to be cleansed. We are from the guilty conscience and have our bodies washed with pure water and holding on to the hope that we have. This is a community event. When you go to the temple, you're not there by yourself or you're not alone. You're with the whole community of faith. What he wants to point out here is that in the Old Testament, this was necessary to have one place where the people gathered to focus their attention on God. Now, he does the same thing about the New Testament. The temple is gone. No longer is he talking about that. Let us consider how we might spur one another toward love and good deeds. There is a community nature in worshiping God, whereas in the Old Testament, they gathered in the tabernacles and they gathered in the temple as a community. They worshiped God. So in the New Testament, it is a community of faith that worships God. It helps us to be able to look around and see people when we're worshiping who are there for the same purpose and same reason. Maybe you can tell sometimes whenever you come to church and the crowd is smaller, it seems like there's just a little bit of difference than when the day comes and there's a big crowd. There seems to be a sense of enthusiasm and encouragement to each other that our presence makes on one another. That's why the Bible is describing for us that our refusal to do that changes the dynamics of worship. Because when we come together, as God directs us, we support and encourage other people. You see people there. It causes you to feel a sense of participation or involvement with them. It doesn't mean that you get up and shake everyone's hand who's there. It may be that you don't even speak to people. But when you sit down and look around, you see there are people who are there for the same purpose you are. And it gives a sense of encouragement. That's what he's talking about. Let us consider how we might spur one another towards love and good deeds by our worship together. I want to do this. There are other people here that want to follow Christ. I have an encouragement. One of the great difficulties that comes whenever you're alone and not able to be with other believers is that it's hard to keep your focus on what you should be doing. But when you have another person to pray with you or talk with you or to encourage you, it causes us to feel more enthusiastic about our own worship. Attending church is a command of God. It's a command of God in the same way it was in the Old Testament. I will pick the place and the time where I want you to come together to worship and offer your sacrifices. I will choose a place in which I want you to be a part in which you will come together to encourage each other to love and to encourage each other to good deeds. So let's not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. But let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. What God asks is that we use our relationships with each other as a way of encouraging faithfulness to each other. Whenever you see people who are faithful to come to worship, it helps you feel more faithful yourself. I need to participate. I need to be a part. You can think about God and you can have wonderful experiences in your relationship with God by yourself. The Bible never denies that that's true. But it simply adds to this that in spite of the fact that you can have personal experiences with God, there is something about corporate worship that is unique. The Bible describes it in this way, where two or three people are gathered together, there I will be among them. That's a promise you don't always have when you're worshiping God by yourself. There is a unique presence that God gives to corporate worship. It is when other people are gathered with you to be able to worship a promise of God's presence in a way that is not given to us individually. Now, the Bible does make a promise to us that God will be with us when we're in his service and work. When he gives the Great Commission, you're going to all the world and make disciples. He ends that by saying, and I am with you always to the end of the ages. He means by that that you will have the wisdom of God in making your choices about how you're going to fulfill what he wants. He means that you will have the wisdom of God in being able to say and do the things you need to do. He means that his protection will be with you as you're doing his work. All of those are given to us individually, uniquely for our own life and the work and service we give to God. But on the other side of that, there is something uniquely reserved for corporate experience of worship, where we feel a part of a greater body of people than simply one individual alone in the world. The Bible makes us know that both of these are something God honors and blesses in different ways. That's why in the Old Testament, he says, the place in which you do the corporate worship is my selection. Now, that means for all of us that God puts people in places where he wants them to be. Church membership or participation in a church is really by the guidance of God. Sometimes we look at these things and we think it's really the choice we have. I go around, I look in all the places and say, OK, I like this and I like that and I like this and I like something else. But in the Bible, the indication is that God makes that choice. Like all the other things in our lives, he makes that choice for us. So he says, this is the place I want you. It's not always for our benefit that he does that. It's for his benefit that he does it. For God is in the process of doing something in his kingdom, and we shouldn't ever think that selection of a church is unique to our own personal interests. But a lot of people think that way. I've talked to people about churches they're going to join and they have specific things that they're looking for and they won't join a church unless it has these specific things, not necessarily spiritual things, but just things that they want. I want to have a church that has a gymnasium. I want to have a church that has this, that or the other in it. And the Bible never sees this as the way by which we're guided in our spiritual lives. For what we say to God is, I am ready to serve you wherever you want me. I remember years ago, whenever I was at the church at Larned with this one, that we had a lady come to the church there and she came in and sat down and picked up a Baptist hymnal out of the rack in front of her. And she held it up and I was standing there and she said, oh, this is so wonderful. Said, I've been to several churches and I can't even worship without a Baptist hymnal in front of me. That is wrong. It is tying yourself to certain things that are insignificant with regard to God's purpose for your life. Whenever we do that, we make our own faith controlled by ourselves and our own goals and our own interests. So that whenever God calls us to something, it is for his benefit and his purpose. You'll notice in the New Testament, when Paul goes out to do missionary work, he never took care of himself. He went to a place, he did the work that he was supposed to do, and he moved to the next place. He may be beaten, he may be run off, but he was never interested in his own personal life. For he had a call about the kingdom of God. So what the Bible tells us is that worship, corporate worship with other believers is a call that God gives us. We should know this is where he wants me. This is the place for me and these people are part of my life. Now, the writer of Hebrews found that some of the people in his group had suddenly become disinterested and were not attending. Now, when we look at that, we think of a church today and you say, OK, we have people that come and have joined our church and they've gotten busy on the weekends or they're doing something else. But what's happening in the Hebrew church and the church that was indicated in the book of Hebrews was there was a great persecution time. And people were being killed for being in church. And so some of them were beginning to think maybe this is not worth my life to be in church. And so they were starting to drop out. So the author writes this passage saying, let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. We see this happening in our world, in the Middle East, where believers are gathering in churches with the threat of death hanging over them. Many of the churches there have people stationed in front of the building to make sure that no one throws a bomb in to kill people. Now, if you were afraid when you went to church on Sunday, that the possibility of a bomb that the possibility of someone throwing a bomb in your church was real and maybe even likely, I think the attendance at many of our churches would be radically depleted. It's not just the music that makes them not come. It's the bombers that even would be more powerful a threat. So the Hebrew writer was writing to people saying, even though it may risk your life, to be faithful in your worship, God wants you to worship. So that worship for them was a choice, a choice in which they faced the possibility of death. And you could have a good reason to say, why do I not go to church? Because I'm afraid that they're going to find out I'm a believer and the Roman authorities will get me and kill me. Yes, that's right, the writer saying. But God has made a command to us that we're not to fail joining together for worship. Now, that puts this in a really different picture. It's not a matter of convenience that God says we should worship together. It is a matter of necessity. Because in this necessity, we spur one another toward love and toward good deeds. We come together and encourage each other to do the things that God has asked us to do. We come together to hear the Bible taught, the Bible proclaimed, to be able to study together and encourage one another to do the things that we ought to be doing. When people come to follow Christ, it is essential for them to continue to grow. They continue to grow in their knowledge of God and putting in practice the things God says they should do. That is a growing process that starts at the first day, and it's that way till you die. And to absent yourself from that is to fail to receive the things that God wants you to have for your life. I think that the spiritual life of a person sometimes is altered in ways they don't understand. Let's put it in this way, if God is wanting to teach you something and He knows that you have a spiritual need in your life or a weakness in your life, what is He going to do? What is He going to do? He can get you to read the Scriptures, and if you're blind to what your needs are, you might choose to read the Scriptures as things you enjoy. But when you come to a church service and there's teaching or preaching and God talks to the preacher about what He's supposed to say, He has messages for people who He intends to be there. And if you choose one day not to come, and He has a message for you, you miss it. Is God going to give you that message anyway, somehow? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe not at the time that you should have it. And maybe even years go by before you ever learn that truth that God wants you to learn. See, I think you need to think, when God has a spiritual service planned, whether it's in Sunday school or the Bible study or preaching, He has an intention to help you by giving you information. To miss that by a choice that you make to not come is to miss that opportunity that God has given to you. What God wants to do is to strengthen and encourage us in our faithfulness to Him. And one of the ways He does it is by giving us teachers who have a gift to be able to teach, preachers who have a gift to be able to preach, and to give them the messages that are intended for the people who are there. None of us know exactly what God wants to say to us. And sometimes it's amazing, if you're in a position where you teach or preach, that you hear people come up and say to you, you know, what you said today really did touch me about this. And then they'll tell you something that you said. And I got a Facebook, whatever they call that. Somebody put something on the Facebook for me. And I got a message from a teacher. And he said, I met you years ago, and you told a story about a little boy and his dad and a dog. And he said, I've remembered that story all these years. And I've told it so many times. I never remembered my life telling a story about a man and his dog and his son and a toothbrush. That's what he said it was about. I have no idea what it was. But for that man, somehow or other, it stuck in his mind all these years. When he said he met me, it would have been 30 years ago. 30 years ago. I don't even know the man. I don't know how he found me. But it brings to my mind the reality that God in certain ways addresses us uniquely when we come together to worship. So the importance of being able to remember, if God says, this is what I want you to do, to go to church, and you choose to do something else because it's your choice, you need to carefully think, am I neglecting the opportunity to hear something God wants to say to me? Now, all of us have times in which we can't because of work or because of health or because of circumstances that are around us. But the times in which we can, God knows well what we need to have. Everybody who preaches and teaches has experiences when you start where in the process of what you're doing, you say things that you didn't really plan to say. And I think those are the moments in which God scans the group and says, here is something I want to say to one person, and they're going to hear it. God cares both about our vocations and guides us to that so He can provide for us, and He cares for our spiritual growth so He provides an opportunity and a place for us to get the information we need to build our lives on. So the writer of Hebrews is saying the same thing that God said to the people of Israel. I will tell you where you're to worship, and you are together only in the places where I've directed you to come to worship me. The writer of Hebrews is saying, God has intended you to be a part of this church group, and that's what He wants for you. He's given it to you, and it is a sin not to participate. Now, many people don't think it's a sin to choose to be a part of this church group. They choose to do something other than participate in worship when they should, but it is. It's not a choice that you make on your own. It is a choice that Satan tempts you to make or God demands you to make, and you choose between them. And the purpose is for the benefit of building and encouraging those who are following Christ. This power that God gives us by listening makes a difference in our lives. Now, let me ask you to think back on your life and choices that you make about times that you worship God. Have you ever had the thought that you should get up at a morning or night and make time for God, and then you found yourself saying, well, I've got too busy? You miss an opportunity for God's invitation to be with you. If you get up and say, well, I know I should go to church, but I've got something I think is more important to me to do, jobs that you have, things that you want to do, you need to ask yourself, is disobedience to God going to be a blessing to me or a curse? God both provides for us financially, and he also provides for us spiritually. But if we don't do the work that he's given us to do financially, his provision doesn't work. If we don't take advantage of the opportunities he gives to us spiritually, his spiritual provision will not help us. So he gives us in this passage an indication of how he goes about making sure his covenant promise is given. I will provide for you spiritually and materially, but it requires you to do what I tell you to do. Would you bow your heads for a moment? So that's why we ask God, what do you want me to read in the Bible? That's why we say, God, where do you want me to be a part of a fellowship of believers? Because there is a spiritual purpose in all this, both for us and for other people around us. Because there is a spiritual purpose in all this, both for us and for other people around us. Father, we thank you for the promise you've made to provide. Help us not to stand in the way of your provision, either materially or spiritually. In the name of Christ, we ask this. Amen. Amen.