Worship is an Attitude

To turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 12, the people of Israel are getting ready to enter the land of promise, and God is preparing them for what they're going to face. While in the wilderness, they have a tabernacle that was a part of their worship experience, He had directed them to build it exactly as He told them, and He told them exactly what they were supposed to do. And now they come into the promised land, and the very first thing that He says to them is, when you go into the land of promise, you are not to worship like the people around you worship. The people around them were worshipers of the Baal gods, and these were highly emotional and sexual religious experiences, and their temples were all over the countryside, on the mountains, on the hillsides. And He said the first thing they were to do is to tear down all of those places of worship, so that there'd be none of them left, so there'd be no temptation to compromise their worship of Yahweh God with the gods of Baal. Verse 4 of chapter 12, He says, You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. This was the greatest temptation they had, to say that they were worshiping God while living exactly like the people who are worshipers of Baal. A great temptation all of us have. We live in a culture as to worship God, read our Bible, go to church, and then be tempted to live like the people that are around us living. It's hard not to do, because there's so much on the media, there's so much influence all around us everywhere we go, that we get tempted to do that. And I mean by that, that we're tempted to run our lives doing exactly what we think is the right thing to do. And consulting God only in times when there's an emergency, or some big catastrophe, so that the God that we serve becomes the God of the disasters, or the God of the gaps, the places where we can't cover it. And then every day else, every day of the world, we make our own choices about how we're going to spend our money, how we're going to use our time, how we're going to treat each other. It's a big problem how we treat each other. It's a big problem. God has specific concrete rules for that. But our feelings and emotions take over, and so we treat each other the way we feel like treating each other. So He says to these people and us, when you enter my kingdom, you must learn to live differently than the people around you. Now, here's the way you do this, destroy all their idols or places. Now, for us, that's harder, because we can't isolate ourselves from all the people that are around us, and influence around us. But we have to be able to have a way by which we can find guidance moment by moment in life. And of course, the way that happens for us is once you surrender your life to Christ, God's Holy Spirit comes inside of you. You read the scripture and He teaches you what's wrong with your life and how you need to change it. So He's guiding you every single moment of the day. And if you do something and you feel a little guilty about it, say you're nasty to someone in your family, I know probably nobody here ever does that, but you see your neighbors doing it maybe, and you know that the moment that they do that, there is always for them that moment of regret. The moment of regret is the voice of God. You may think it's just you, but it isn't. It's the voice of God telling you, this is not the way my people do things. When you learn to hear the voice of God, you see you find guidance in your life. Regret, shame, guilt are all tools that God uses to correct our behavior. So you have to listen to those carefully. But you listen to them carefully to make sure that Satan, who also uses the very same tools on us, is not a hold of you. You know how I can tell the difference? When God gives you guilt, he's wanting you to confess that you've done something wrong. And he wants you to apologize for it. And he wants you to ask for strength not to do it again. When you have guilt from Satan, there's nothing to apologize for. For example, you may have done something you should apologize for, and you go to apologize to whoever you've offended, and you get forgiveness from God. And then the next day, you get to feeling guilty about the same thing again. It's Satan who's come to you saying to you, of course you're not forgiven. Don't you remember you did this yesterday? And so you walk around with this burden inside of you that there's no way to get rid of. I mean, you can stop again and say, okay, God forgive me. But he's saying, what about what? I already wiped that off. There's nothing here. So you have to tell the difference between those. Satan's guilt traps you in a constant state of despair. God's guilt opens a door for forgiveness and freedom from the guilt and shame that experiences in your life. So what God is doing is trying to help us every minute of our lives know how to be able to live. And he uses these tools to help us. So many people don't know that when they get these experiences that God is really dealing with them. So they brush them off and they miss the opportunity for God to help. So he says to them, you must not live like the people around you, for they are not controlled by me. And the forces that control them are destructive. Now, here's the way he says they're to do it. But you are to seek the place Yahweh or the Lord your God will choose from among all the tribes to put his name there for his dwelling. He said to them, this is where it's going to be. You're going to destroy all those places where they say Baal is present and he's worshipped there. So there's none of those temptations. And then God is going to say to you, there is only one place in all the world that you're to come to worship me. They didn't tell them where it's going to be yet. In the Old Testament, the covenant God made with the people of Israel was very physical. They were not conscious or the Spirit of God did not work with them in the same way he does with us. And so they were very conscious that God was in a place and it helped them to be able to see a place and say, I know God is there. So he said to them, I will name a place. This will be my place. And you go there and there you can worship God. So they were to be removed from the physical place of Baal worship and then identified with this new place of God's worship for them. Now, for us, everything is different. For in the New Testament times, the spiritual covenant we have with God is not the place anymore. For what the Bible teaches us about God is the moment we surrender ourselves to him, his Holy Spirit enters our life. And there the Spirit of God dwells in us so that the Spirit of God is present in our lives. When Jesus was talking to a woman, a Samaritan woman, he was talking to her about a spiritual condition. And she said to him, Sir, I can see that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, which is what God said. I'm going to give you a place to worship where we must worship that the Jews claim the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus didn't want to get into that argument, but he said, believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. He abrogated this Old Testament place thing. Now, he says, in place of that, you Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and now has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth, not in a place, but in spirit and in truth for their kind. They're the kind of worshipers the fathers seek. The father seeks. God is spirit. And you could say that could be translated a different way. God is spiritual. It means by that as opposed to physical. God is spirit in that sense, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. So you see, whenever you receive Christ as your Lord, he comes to reside literally inside of you. He's present with you all the time. So the new place of God's residence is not a location like on a hill or in Jerusalem. It is inside of you. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. You are the new Jerusalem where God now abides. And he doesn't abide in you until you come to the place to say, I give you my life and accept you as the master and Lord of my life. And then his spirit comes to live within you and he guides you day by day. And how do you worship? You worship by focusing on his spiritual presence. Like I was talking about a minute ago. Why not have this sense of guilt? God is talking to me. There's something spiritual going on in my life. And so I'm conscious of that. And then you consciously elevate or you consciously test everything that comes to you against the truth. So you can tell the difference between the devil's temptations and his conviction and God's. So you worship God by recognizing his presence, recognizing what he's putting in your mind, the things he's causing you to think. And you test those against the truth of the scriptures so you don't get deceived. So when you know that God is saying to you, you should apologize. You know that the master has said to you, you've done something wrong. Then you do that because your spiritual nature, where God interfaces with us in our spiritual nature, no longer in the external physical things, but in this spiritual dimension. That's our connection to God. And in this manner, we see God. Now, you can be misled easily because unless you understand the nature of God, you won't know the things, whether they come to you or God or not. The more you know about God and his character, the more you know when he's talking to you. Now, you don't know my wife the way I know her. But if someone were to come to me and say, Carol would like this tomorrow for you to come and play softball with her. I would know that you were telling the biggest lie possible on this world. There isn't enough money to pay her to get her to try to play softball because I know her. But, you know, that's not true of every woman. You know that person, and if you know them, you know what they would do and what they wouldn't do. And the more you know them, the more you're able to make good judgments about their character. That's why the word truth is there in spirit and in truth. That's where our worship is. Now, when he describes the worship that's going to happen for us, this is what it is. But in the Old Testament, there's a location. When they went to that location, they felt they were physically in the presence of a physical God. We now know that God is spiritual and we're in the presence of a spiritual God when we work with God. Now, to that place, it's picking up in verse five. To that place you must go and there bring your burnt offerings, sacrifices, your tithes, special gifts, what you vowed to give, your free will offering, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. Now, he lists here a long list of the physical things they are to give in worship. And the first is you bring your burnt offerings. Now, the temple was destroyed and no longer did they have the sacrificial system. It became clear that this wasn't something God was going to demand of us from that moment on. Even the Jews recognized this. Remember what the burnt offering was about. You brought an animal to the altar and you took this animal, which was without spot or blemish, and you put your hand on the animal's head and you said by this action, my own life now is represented in this animal. The animal then was taken, it was throat was slit, and it was skinned and gutted and thrown on the altar, and it was burned completely up. The symbolism here was powerful. If I have given my own nature symbolically to this animal, when it's physically burned on this pile of fire, it is a symbol of my complete surrender and submission to God. I have given everything. That's the burnt offering symbol. There is not one thing left of the burnt offering that you could take, use, or had any value. For everything was given. Now, that's what Jesus was talking about when he talked about becoming his follower. If you want to follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Everything must be given to me. So when we come to worship in this new age in which we worship, our spiritual worship is not changed from what's asked here. Symbolically, they were to give themselves away, and as they saw the animal burned, it was a way of saying, everything in my life is given up to God. Now, we come in the presence of God and we say, God, everything in my life is given to you. You now control me. You are the Lord. You're the master. You're the ruler. And we still in worship begin by giving our everything. Nothing held back. The symbol is being burned up. I am giving myself to you, God, so that there is nothing left. Now, that symbolism was followed with other kind of requirements. You're to give this burnt offering and sacrifices. Now, once the animal is burned up, it didn't mean that there were anything left to do, because they still had times in which God asked them to make sacrifices. For example, he might say, if you've sinned, you're to come and bring a sin offering, a sacrifice. So you would bring an animal and you would offer it to the priest and the priest would put it on the altar and sacrifice it. And in that sacrifice, you were acknowledging your sin and asking for forgiveness. Now, it might be a little different with us here, you know, in this time. Say, you know, one day you got up and you were out of sorts in some way, and the people in your family did things that you didn't really want them to do, and you had all of it you could take. You caused a scene and said some things you shouldn't have said, hurt some feelings that were bad, and the voice of guilt and shame came on you and said, you shouldn't say things like that, you hurt their feelings, you've acted in ways that have damaged your relationship. What in the world do you think you're doing? Well, Lord, so you know what they did, I mean, that really hurt my feelings, and I was tired, and he's listening to all these excuses, and he says, you know, what you need to do is just go right back in there and say, I was wrong. And I have to apologize to you. And you say, well, Lord, you know, if I do that, then next time that person gets mad at me, they're going to say, now remember, you're the one that always does this. They're going to use it on me. And he says, I want you to sacrifice yourself. I want you to give yourself invulnerability to this other person and admit what you've done is wrong. That's hard. Now, think about the times in your life that God has asked you to do something hard. You didn't want to do it. You were embarrassed to do it. You were afraid it might come back later, and you'd hear it over and over again till you were sick and tired of hearing that you'd messed up that time. But you knew God wanted you to do it anyway, or you were supposed to go to somebody and talk to them about something in their life that needed to be straightened. And you didn't want to do it because you were afraid that it would cause you to look bad or hurt someone's feelings, or you might get in trouble. Sacrifice. Think about the times, you know, that somebody came up to you and said, you know, we're needing somebody to work with our preschool back there during the church service. And you think, oh, I don't want to do that. You stop and say, is this something you're asking me to do? And he says, sacrifice. There are a lot of things in the world that God asks of us that requires us to do things that put aside our own desires and feelings and interests. And you can sell almost everybody around you to believe that what you're saying is right. I'm too tired, I'm too old, I'm too weak, I'm too whatever, you know, and they'll believe you. And one person that knows better, that's God. You're never going to walk with God that you don't have to sacrifice. Never. Because he wants to know that he has a soldier under his command, who when he says, charge that hill, they're going to do it. And his kingdom never advances unless there are people prepared to pay the price for it. And that's what this was. I've already given you my life and the burnt offering, but now you're asking for something more because of what I've done or what I need to do. And here it is, Lord, the sacrifice for you. Your tithes and the special gifts. The tithes was commanded of them as commanded of everyone, even in the New Testament to give that. It is the reminder that everything we have comes from God. That's why it's so important to give it. If I was to go into business and say, you know, I want to make a deal with you. Sharon, if you'll do what I ask you to do, I'll pay you $5,000 a month. But here's what I want. I want every month for you to give me back $500 of that. Would you take that deal? Here's what God says. I'll give you a living, but to remind you where it comes from, I'm going to ask you to give me 10%. Will it be easy? No. Sometimes it'll look like you can't. But here's what I promise you. If you'll do that, I'll make sure you have what you need. So the tithe was a reminder that everything in the world belongs to God. Now, it's the physical giving, but it's really a spiritual issue. It's not a law. But it is a way by which God says, do you really believe that everything in the world belongs to me? Now, it becomes not an issue simply of fun, of money, but of spiritual conviction and special gifts. What are those? Well, sometimes you might see someone and you say, man, they're going through a hard time. I think I ought to cook a meal and go there and give it to them. Who you think thought of that? Was the devil? Or was it you because you're so good and such a wonderful person? You ever get that illusion, you might ask the people you live with whether or not that was you or the devil. See, that's all comes from God. And he says, I want you to do something special above all these other things you've done. I want you to go give these people a meal. Or he may say, I know there's somebody having trouble. I want you to give them a little money. Or he may say, I want you to give something to this mission cause. It's physical, but there's a spiritual dimension to it. Do I really believe that God will ask me to do something that destroys me? No. So you give your special gift. The gifts that you've, and what you vowed to give, the special gift and your free will offerings. There come a time, you know, when you say, God, I'd really like to do something for you. And maybe it's a mission offering. When we were doing our estate plans, we said, you know, we'd like to make sure that people could have a way to go to Baptist school and college. And so we'd leave some money in our estate for them. If you do that and you plan your estate and you give something, God's a special gift over and above all these other things. And then he said, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. And by this, he's talking about not withholding from him that which is first in your life. The first animal that you have from your cows or sheep or goats or whatever it is, is the first payoff you get. You have them. It takes a couple of years. You fed them and you don't get anything back. And first one that comes, you say, that's God's. That's God's. These are gifts of faith. You don't know if the animal is going to die and you never get another one. But you give the first one because you trust God. And he asked for it. He says, I want you to remember that I've given you everything. And I'm asking you this. Give me the first as a way of believing that I'm going to take care of you with the second and third and the fourth. Even the Israelites had to come with their firstborn child and bring it to God. And if it was a boy, they had to pay an offering to buy that child back from God. He just wanted them to remember that the first and the best of everything was really his. And he was letting them live in this world by having it. You see, these Old Testament ideas about what was to take place were really, at the heart of them, spiritual events. And there were laws governing all these. In the New Testament, something's different. We don't have a bunch of laws that we have to live by, but the Holy Spirit within us guides us day by day to do all of these things to help us recognize the superiority, the supremacy of God over everything in our lives. And when you don't do these things, you get to feeling like you own your life. You get to feeling like it's you that's making it work. What God wants is to hold constantly before us that we are children of God, servants of God, and we depend on him. And everything that he gives us is a gift of his grace and love. The Old Testament, they had to go to a place. All you have to do is sit down in the morning or at night or during your lunch break and start thinking about God and what he wants, what you've done, and you have worship. So you begin your prayer time by saying, Lord, I give you everything in my life. If there's anything in my life that's wrong, that first surrenders your burnt offering. The second is your sacrifice, your offering for sin. Have I done anything that stands between you and I? Okay, God, what is it you want me to do? And then that's the special offerings that he might ask you to give. He might ask you to remember that everything you have belongs to him. That's your tithe. He may ask you as you think about your family that all these things are a gift from me and they're really mine and humble you so that you come before him recognizing that he's the Lord of all. You see, nothing has changed with God. He wants us to recognize him and his absolute authority over everything. It's changed with us. No longer is it a place, but it's in here and in here. But he requires the very same things. And when you come to church to worship, all of these things ought to take place. That's what you ought to be thinking about. Am I the sacrifice? Have I recognized his authority over my money? Have I recognized the sin in my life? What is it that God wants me to give him over and above what I've done? All of these are tools by which we join with God in oneness and unity. Let's pray. Father, we know that you want us to worship according to your plan and your rules, not ours. Help us to learn how to constantly lift you up and be your servants, that we might experience the closeness to you that you planned us to have. In Jesus name, I ask this. Amen.