True Worship

Good morning. May the Lord bless you. Yeah, it's a blessing to fellowship together.

Before we go into the message this morning, I need some help from some of the younger boys and girls. How would you, as a boy or as a girl, as a son or a daughter, how would you show your father, your dad, that you love him? Give me some thoughts. Tell me what you think.

How would you show your dad that you love him? Make him coffee. Nice. Good.

Yes, I appreciate that. Did you have one? Pray for him? Good. That's right.

Well, what I would like to highlight, and maybe I'll ask it this way, children, how many of you love your dad? Now, what this morning I'm using the word dad, not because it's, you know, the fathers, but because I want us to think about it the way we think about God. God the Father. And we want to think about how would a child show his dad that he loves him? What does it mean to love your dad? When Twyla makes me coffee, is it the coffee? Is coffee love? What does it mean to love your dad? What's the word love mean? Does it mean when you're in a store and you want a bag of chips and he's there to quickly pay for it? Is paying for your chips, is that love? Kaden, what does it mean? What does love mean? Any thought, what comes to your mind? What do you think love is? Even if you give me a synonym, another word for love.

Affection. Good. Akai, I don't know.

It's going to tease you. Next time I'm going to say, I don't know if I love you. I'm not quite sure what that is.

Well, that's okay. You know what? That's fine. So, something for us to think about, right? Well, this morning, I would like to share a message with us.

And the underlying thought that I would like to have is that we love our father. When I think about loving my children, you know, I can, I can think about watching my youngest little child, which is Nolan. And I don't know, I just feel that I have a lot, lots of affection for my little children.

I am very blessed that God gives him, has given me my children. So all my children, whether it's Nolan or Rosie or Akai or Twyla or Elton, they're all at different stages. But I can say that I have a very strong love and appreciation for them.

It's hard, not for me not to look at my children. And it's nothing that I did. But I just thank God for him.

It's like being, it's when we use the word being a proud dad, being a proud dad. I love my children. And I want what's best for my children, even sometimes to a point where I, where I'm not doing them good.

Maybe sometimes by loving them too much, I actually, maybe I'm teaching them or causing them to have habits that aren't very good. I tease, I like to tease. And so my children tease a lot.

And then sometimes when they tease each other, they actually quarrel and they start to maybe get upset with each other. So I wonder sometimes maybe I should be, I should tease less. So they would tease less.

But anyway, I love my children. And I was trying to think about how would I say or share, you know, that I love my dad. And for me, with me and my dad, there is, there's almost no relationship.

So it's not that I have all kinds of bad feelings towards my dad. But I can't speak of a relationship. I can't talk about how I love my dad, because I have a relationship with him.

I don't have that. It makes me sad that I don't have it. But I do not have that.

I hope though, very much to have a relationship with my children, so that they one day can say, I love my dad, because we have a relationship. Okay, so with that, we have heard a lot of messages on worship. And they can be different, and in different ways, we can talk about worship.

And I have thoughts that I would like to share with us this morning that have come, that are a bit unique. And yeah, hopefully they can be a blessing to you, as they have been to me. And I was thinking about this, this aspect of worship.

Now there's going to be more, more details that I need to give. But in light of thinking of worship, yeah, this thought came to me, just the underlying thought for worship should be a love for our Father. And when we worship, we worship God, and we want to love God.

Again, I know for us older brothers and sisters, you're walking with the Lord. Maybe this will be a simple message, and yet I think it's good. Again, I want to address you younger children, young boys and girls.

You know what, sometimes we hear God's Word preached. And there's a lot of preaching about, you shouldn't, or this is sin, or you need to be saved. And there's a lot of preaching that comes across.

And we'll call it, that it's heavy. It's heavy preaching. You know, it's, it's correction preaching, maybe, where we shouldn't do these things, but we should do those things.

So I wanted to just share here again, in the beginning, that as you hear preaching in my heart, and what I want to share, I don't want you to come away with, with the wrong idea of worshiping God. See, the idea of worship, it sometimes, maybe, it makes us think about, oh, that's like slaves, you know, slaves got to get on their knees and bow to God. Oh, we think of God as a hard master, and He wants us on our knees, you know, praising Him.

That's wrong. That's very wrong. That's not what God is at all.

So, and again, why use that example of a child loving God? How can a child explain, I love my dad? And my guess is, as a child, they're going to relate to a lot of experiences. Well, my dad is good to me. My dad does take me skating, or my dad this, and my dad whatever the, the things would be.

But how about as a Christian? What would I, as a Christian, say when someone says to me, so why do you worship God? Now, the term worship, we're going to get a little bit into what that definition is. So why worship God? And our answer should be, well, I love God, and we should have a reason why we love God. So Christians, why do Christians love God? And it's because God did a work for man that man could not do.

And God gives man life. So we're going to go on, yeah, the title of our message this morning is True Worship. And we'll look at a few things here.

So there's three main points I would like us to think about. One is, love no other gods. We'll go into some detail about that.

The second one is, serve no other gods. And the third one is, worship no other gods. Some of these things we could actually put together, and they could be intertwined, but we're going to separate them this morning.

So as a young child, and a child says, I love my dad, there's going to be two things that I think are part of the feeling that the child has for their dad. And one is, adoration. Just a heart set of, let's call it a healthy type of pride.

Sometimes, here's maybe another place where we use the word proud. I take pride in my dad. My dad is my hero.

And so, a child that has this strong feeling of love to his dad, we could say he adores his dad. And there are two we could expound on that definition. But he adores his dad.

He appreciates his dad. And another one is reverence. There's two parts thought here on this idea of reverence.

So one of the definitions of reverence is, it's a fear acceptable to God. And it says it's a filial fear. Filial fear, the example it gives is, a child's fear towards their dad.

So a child, when doing wrong, it would look at its dad and know, oh, dad doesn't want me to do that. And so, if the child was going to pour out, just for the fun of it, pour out water, and the dad looks at the child, and the child would have this healthy fear and say, oh, I know dad doesn't want me to do it, I'll put it back. And the other side of that is, the dad has an authority that the child respects and says, you know what, if dad says no, I'm not going to do that.

So a child's reverence to his dad. And then we could say a child that adores their dad, or where the dad is the hero to the child. So that is worship.

Worship, the definition of worship is expression of reverence in adoration of God. Now for us, as children of God, we worship God. And there's something uniquely different here than in any other case or with any other person.

God is not a person, and God is not limited. We could go on to expound on who God is. You know, God being the Savior of man, the power of God, the wisdom of God, the holiness of God.

God is someone that we, in our minds, cannot contain. We can't put him in a box and say, I understand God. So God is a great and mighty God.

He's a just God. He is a loving God. And so with all these thoughts, here God is my hero.

Jesus is my hero. And so my heart is full of affection for God. So worship, expression of reverence and adoration of God.

Now, I don't know in other messages or even my own thoughts as trying to go back and see the build of a message in light of worship. I know we could spend a lot of time on saying what worship is not. But here we want to consider these things.

And we want to bring this together or keep in mind the definition of worship as we look into a few other things. So we don't stand in a place where we have fear of God because God is angry or God will judge us or God is, you know, God is just mean. Because God is God, he can stand there and say what he wants and I got to do what he says.

That's not God, not at all. God is our creator. He sees our need and in love he tries to give us life.

And it's on our side whether or not we want to receive that and that we want to adore and reverence him. But for anyone that is born again having experienced God's forgiveness of their sins, we need to learn and grow in our appreciation and affection to God that we would worship him. Our testimony of our view of God should be that God is a loving God and because of who he is, we would love him.

When we look at the Old Testament and we look at the topic of worship, you would see a lot of different things. God was worshiped in different places in the Old Testament. So, 1,500 years from the days of Abraham to the time of Ezra, worship seen many great changes.

There were many great changes in the form of worship in ancient Israel. Abraham, the wandering nomad, he built altars and offered sacrifice whenever God appeared to him. That was a neat thought.

In the Old Testament, there are times with Abraham, I remember it more, I think it's with Jacob, that through Jacob's life, he would live everyday life and every once in a while and sometimes 14 years apart, God would meet with him and he would experience God. And he would have, yeah, he would have an experience with God. And as it says here, when Abraham met with God, whatever that time frame was, he would set up an altar and give sacrifice to God.

So, it was not regular. It was whenever God came to him, then he met with God. In Moses' time, the tabernacle served as a portable sanctuary for the Israelite tribes journeying through the wilderness.

Now, Solomon, he founded a lavish temple in Jerusalem which lasted more than three centuries until its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Though all the temple buildings were destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, the foundations remained and today, by the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the Jews would still pray. So, we would, yeah, we know that how the Jews even today go to this wall and they pray to God.

I don't know what they process in their minds when they go to this wall. Do they feel like God has an extra ear or God is more concerned about hearing their prayer as they pray by this Wailing Wall? I don't want to be disrespectful to them, but it seems that there is no connection. I can't understand why they would go there to pray, yeah, to pray at the Wailing Wall.

So, the forms of worship have changed a lot over time, but its heart and center has not changed. Modern people today, in our time, much of worship is looked at as what happens at church. Someone says, where do you go to worship? Oh, I go to that church over there or this church over here.

So, there's the idea of worship which happens at church or it happens maybe on Wednesday night at prayer meeting and so on. And so, that is not the only time we worship. The aspect of worship that we want to think about today is not a certain time frame where, oh, I worship the Lord when I sing, which it is worshiping the Lord, that is good, but we don't want to look at worship in a way that it's an act that I do once, you know, maybe it's Wednesday night or maybe it's Sunday morning and it's only then that I worship God.

Those are times where our worship is more openly expressed, but worship is actually a state of the heart, I would say, continually. This is where our hearts should be each day, in a heart, having a heart of reverence and adoration for God. Thinking of the, also of the worship that was taking place in the Old Testament, we have the stories of the many different types of sacrifices and things that they did and it seemed like God gave them a to-do list.

God said to the people of Israel, these are things I want you to do so that you will remember me. They did not have a direct relationship with God. There's a few that did, but most of the people didn't and so for them to remember God or what God said, many of them, you know, and they did it in the form of sacrificing and feasts and so on and they would do that to remember God.

That's not God's heart for us today. God doesn't want us to go to church Sunday morning and where our heart would then say, yet now here I'm going to worship God. So, we do come together to worship God, but it's not isolated that I can only do that when I'm at church.

So, as we have in Exodus chapter 20, we're going to read a verse there, so you can turn there. We have in Exodus chapter 20, verse 3 is the verse that we are going to read and we have something that comes together here. This is where God gives out the 10 commandments.

God is wanting to give to the children of Israel the 10 commandments. If we were to look through history of the stage what the Israelites went through, they have left the land of Egypt and they have, yeah, they've come out of the land of Egypt. They've been on a journey and God has done lots of miracles.

God has shown his power, his saving power, specifically to save the children of Israel and so on. And the context that I think of this story here in Exodus chapter 20, the context, the way it looks to me is there's a people in great bondage and as the people are in bondage, they're in Egypt, they're slaves, they're crying out to God, they want to be free, but it doesn't tell us, it tells us that God heard their prayer, but it doesn't tell us how did God reveal himself to the people, to the children of Israel in Egypt. So, I've wondered as they were slaves and they were going through all their hard times, would the people of Israel think about God, think about what, where God is, you know, can God hear us or is there a God, what God should we serve? The Egyptians had all their gods that they were serving.

The way it seems to me that there could have been a great distance between the people, the children of Israel and God himself, no connection. And the people are crying out to God for salvation and this is something that God uses to show the Israelites of who he is. So, before we read verse 3, we're actually going to read verse 2. So, it's Exodus chapter 20.

God makes a strong statement here and is showing something to the children of Israel and I feel he uses this as a backdrop, as a foundation to show the children of Israel, to reveal himself to the children of Israel. So, the children of Israel witnessed all the miracles, the plagues. If we went into the details of the plagues, how God defied all the false gods that were in Egypt, he showed himself to be all-powerful.

He brings the children of Israel out of Egypt and now it's Exodus chapter 20 verse 2. This is what God says to them just prior to giving them the Ten Commandments. God says to them, I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. It reminds me how God did a lot of work, again, revealing himself to the people and there's no doubt this was a supernatural power, a power that resembles the claim of all the false gods.

The Egyptians and their false gods, they would have claimed that they were gods and they're expecting some sort of power out of these gods but there was no power. Jehovah comes to the children of Israel and he does all these miracles, saves them from Egypt, from bondage, saves them from this bondage and then God says to them, I am the Lord thy God. And just to highlight the firmness here, God did not need to explain to himself that he was God.

God didn't need to figure out how could I qualify myself that I'm allowed to be the person in charge, the person in authority. God is telling them. There is no other God and God tells the children of Israel, I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

And then he goes to that next verse is where we want to start with our message here. Verse three, he says to them, this is the next thing he says, thou shalt have no other gods before me. In between these two verses, I would like to say in our own hearts this morning, we find ourselves saying, yes, you are the Lord my God which have you have brought me out of the out of the bondage of sin.

That's our verse two and then out of love and appreciation, adoration and reverence, we would look to God and we would say, we will not have any other gods before him. That God alone, Jesus Christ, he will be our God. So my first point here was, we should love no other gods.

To love no other gods, we should love one God. We should have a heart of love for one and the true God. Looking up this word of love, so he says, love no other gods.

Or that's our writing here. Yeah, it says, love no other gods. And I was thinking about the word love and trying to process, well, what would that look like? And we would know if we would look at the idol worship that was in Egypt.

There is a fondness, there is an appreciation, there is a value, there is a delight in this object. Now we could go through Isaiah chapter 44, which I find to be almost a humorous chapter. It talks about the man who cuts down a tree and cuts up the wood, builds himself a fire.

And with that fire, he warms himself and he bakes his bread. And with remainder of the wood, he carves out an image and he sets it up and bows to it and says, you know, thou art my God. That's what Isaiah 44 says.

And as we look at that concept, that idea, we would say, well, that is just beyond foolish. Really? Half of it you're going to use and burn, it'll become ash and you're going to warm yourself with it. And the other half all of a sudden became your God.

How? How could we do that? To have a love. Man has this sense of need. Man has a sense of inner worship.

And so he wants to worship and he turns to this piece of wood, this carving, and he worships this carving. Now, in light of that, and as we think of that and that being foolish, let's ask ourselves this morning, what would we worship today? What would we carve out and bow down to and say, you, I love. I find my delight in you.

You are special to me. I commit my energy, my love to you. What would that be? I will say it seems in our day that, yes, it is foolish to the average person to go and take a piece of wood and carve it out and bow to that.

But times have changed. Times have changed drastically. But I would say today our world is full of idols.

Full of idols. The population is much higher than it's ever been. And I believe the idolatry is also higher than it's ever been.

I think the form of idolatry just has changed. Instead of I'm bowing to this piece of wood, cultures have changed so much that today it's called self-worship. Self-worship in many, many different forms.

Maybe we could bring up a lot of different examples. But what is it today that's our idol? To what would we say, no, I can't serve God. No, I can't be holy.

No, I can't live right. I would much rather have, and then we would bow to whatever that is. What would you rather have? What would I rather have than God himself as my full delight? I love Jehovah God, Jesus Christ, and not any other thing more than God.

Well, for us to love no other gods, Christ must be first in our life. Jesus Christ needs to be our most important concentrated love, delight in our hearts. I was pondering this a little bit and I again observed the makeup of man.

Man is made up in three parts, we'll say. We have the body, the soul, and spirit. Our body is the physical life, the flesh, hair, bones.

It's the life beneath us. It's the vehicle that gets us around maybe. Our body.

Our soul is our emotional makeup. My mind, your mind, your will, your personality, your character. It's who you are.

Your soul. It's what makes you, you. It's possibly what makes you a carefree person or it makes you a person where for some, they can take life with a breeze.

For others, they're a lot more concerned. They're a lot more directive. I think if different characters bring out different weaknesses and for the one that can take life just as it goes, he has some weaknesses.

But then there's others who are very committed to their cause, very committed to what they want and enjoy and so on. But anyway, so your emotional makeup, your mind and your will, it's who you are. It's good, it's how God created us, but it's also part of the fallen man, so it has its bad side as well.

Then we have our spirit. Our spirit, God created us with the spirit and when we are reconciled with God and we have his spirit living in us, then it is our life above. One way of this being said is, you know, our body is the life below.

Our soul is the life around us. That's how we relate one to another. That's how we have relationships and our spirit is our life above.

It's our life with God. The spirit is the most important part of our life, part of our creation and it has the greatest need. Our spirit has the greatest need.

It's the most important fragile part of our life and it receives the least care. It receives the least attention. The body is the least important.

It's our vehicle that we get around with and yet it receives the most care. Everything about our body, our body is our highest concentration. The soul is our intelligence center.

This is like a computer system. This is where we gather information and we process it and we evaluate. What do we value? What do we not value? Here is where we make decisions in our minds and our soul has a tendency to value our body more than our spirit and can we just call it our flesh? There's a tendency where our flesh gets more attention than our spirit does.

Again, I think of this as my soul. As I take in information, as I look at things, as I hear things, as I process things and evaluate things, I ask myself the question, what would I evaluate as more valuable than Christ? We know that as a person not born again, our focus is everything in the flesh but when we're born again, our focus is in the spirit and then we are able to put values in the proper places where we can value God and His will for us and that is the most important to us. So Christ must be first in our life.

Of all the things that we could choose that we would consider important and that we don't want to be foolish with or neglect but Christ must be first. As my soul takes in information and as I process it and I put a value to something, let us take in information and value Christ more than anything else. When I think about the three part in body, it was unique to me just to think that maybe we need to make effort that our soul would realize as we think and process that we would at that point already choose that we should feed our spiritual being more than our physical, not with physical food but again, it's a good thought to know that I have a spiritual life that's more important than my physical and hence maybe it can help me make decisions where maybe, you know, it's the idea we could give an example that, no, I don't feel like it, well, I'm going to override that feeling of the body, I'm going to, my soul, my evaluation is, I'm going to override my feeling of I don't want to because I know spiritually I need to and so God becomes first and most important to us.

Matthew 6 verse 33, a familiar verse to us, Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 says but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. We could look previously at the previous two verses 31 and 32, it says therefore take no thought and here's where we want to again just meditate on the soul, body, and So Jesus is telling us here, focus on Christ, focus on God, feed your spiritual life in a proper and healthy way, be right with God, serve God, that should be our first focus but as verses 31 and 32 verify that we have a tendency to focus on the body, therefore take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or wherewithal shall we be clothed. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

So our heavenly Father will provide them for us, He would have us to seek, that we would seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. So Christ must be first and another point here, Christ must be sought. Just wanting to build on that a little bit, we'll turn to Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6. As we think about loving, we love Christ, we want to love no other gods, an aspect to that for us is that we would seek Christ.

Proverbs 3 verses 5 to 6. Actually just before I read that, there's actually a verse in Philippians, Philippians chapter 2 verse 21. You don't have to turn there but I'll read it here. Philippians 2 verse 21, it says, for all seek their own, not the things which are Christ's.

Even as children of God, our flesh has a tendency, a comfort in pleasing itself. So as Philippians 2 verse 21 tells us that our flesh will seek its own. And here, for us not to love other gods, for us not to love other things, for us not to love ourselves and whatever else that we would add to that more than God, we would turn to Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6. I feel like I have something in my throat here, hopefully it doesn't diminish on me.

So verses 5 and 6, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. Or maybe here we could say, look to God to build and to feed our spiritual man and look not to our soul and body itself that it would have the choice of feeding itself rather than feeding the spirit. So in all thy ways acknowledge him, acknowledge God and he shall direct thy paths.

So may our spirit be fed and may we be drawn to God and not to ourselves. And we know how our flesh works, we could all share. Have you ever experienced something where you needed to make a decision for Christ and in your flesh you just felt like, nah, I would rather not, I'm not interested.

More now than ever, I feel like it's in my mind where I am realizing how often I myself will make decisions based on the body and the soul, my, yeah, the body and the soul, rather than God's will. I feel like I have this echo that comes to me many times and I see my own self constantly making decisions where, well that wasn't because I love God, well that wasn't because I love God. And I find myself having to acknowledge that often I'm in a place, oh actually I love myself, oh actually I love myself rather than God.

So my testimony is that my flesh will seek its own comfort, it will seek its own entertainment, it will seek its own joy and it will not be Christ, not by itself. So I have to make a choice, I discipline myself, I say no to the flesh and I say no, I will seek after, I will look for God. So we must seek Christ, we must draw to Him, we must go to Him and we need to override the flesh and go to God.

Colossians 3 verse 1 says, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. The verse here tells us or gives us an implication that we've made a change. As a Christian we have made a change and yes that is a battle that we still face but the change is I went from where it was my joy to seek out how to please myself, it was my joy to focus on what I found to be fun and enjoyable, the things I found myself delighting in, those things I have turned away from and I'm now looking to Christ and I find my joy in Christ.

There's a saying, it's I'm not sure the exact saying but something to this effect, walking in the flesh is like sliding down a hill, it comes easy, it comes natural, you don't even have to look for it. Walking in the flesh is just a simple slide downhill but it will cause us death. But walking in the spirit is like climbing up a hill, it can be exhausting, can be tiring and sometimes it's a steep hill.

Walking in the spirit is like climbing up a steep hill. We need to choose Christ, we need to look for Him, we need to desire Him, we need to say no to the flesh and look for Christ. A next point here is Christ must be supreme, Christ must be supreme.

Supreme, the definition of the word supreme here is highest in rank or authority. Christ must be highest in rank and authority in my life. Jesus must be my King, my Lord and my Master.

We can look at Matthew chapter 22, Matthew 22 verses 37 to 39. Familiar verses here again but verse 37 it says, Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment and a second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

A thought here on Christ being King, Lord and Master and bringing that together with thou shalt love him with all thy heart, soul and mind. And I just want to highlight again, it's not because Jesus says, I am God, I am King, I'm Lord, I'm Master and this would be correct but this is not the only basis for this. Jesus would be right in saying, I am your creator and I'm telling you, you are to love me with all your heart, soul and mind, no ifs or buts about and he would be right in doing so.

And we would have no reason out of ourselves, even if we had no benefit, he could still ask that of us and he would be righteous. But that's not what he is doing. He is because of his invitation to us is far greater than him wanting to be this chief saying, I'm your master, you're going to do as I say.

But yet he draws our attention to him and he says, thou shalt love thy Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. And Jesus is making this request after he has done all the work. And I think that's amazing.

Jesus is making a request, he's given us all things. Maybe he is that father that buys the children more than they should have and says yes more often than he should, maybe should say no more often. Maybe I am the child of God that's really discontent because I'm spoiled.

Sometimes we say when we buy the children toys and they're still not happy, we say, oh, you're spoiled. Maybe I'm that child of God that's spoiled. Jesus says, I've given you eternal life.

I've done everything for you. He says, you should love me with all your heart, soul and mind. Am I spoiled? So Christ must be supreme.

And this comes from our understanding of who he is. And we won't go into that much more. Christ is supreme and he wants to be supreme in our life.

I was thinking about this. Christ is not, Christ isn't an employer who's asking the employee, hey, do you mind if I'm boss? Can I be the boss? There is no one like him. There's no one like God.

God doesn't need to ask, hey, do you mind if I'm the king? Do you mind if I'm Lord? No, Christ is Lord. And the day is coming and he knows it. The day is coming where I don't have a choice in the matter.

So the question isn't really, am I going to allow him to be king and Lord? He is king and Lord. Will I accept him as king and Lord? Will I accept him as master? So here we have Christ is supreme. He is the highest rank and authority out of all creation.

That will not change. Has my heart allowed him to be that in my life? Am I willing to face this loving king saying, yes, you can be the supreme, highest rank and authority in my life. He created me, he has the authority, and yet he's asking permission if he may be my Lord.

And again, he's being that kind father out of love reaching out to us. May it be true that our hearts are not finding that our heart isn't in revolt, where our heart says, no, no, no, no, God cannot have full charge over me. I will share again.

I find that in my own life, I find that I've found myself very guilty of continually in some way or another saying, Lord, no, no, not there. Not there. You can be supreme over here, but not here.

You guess your Lord and master. I'll give you the titles, but oh, you want to be in control of my life. And then my flesh wants to struggle.

Maybe the Lord should say again to me, as he did there in Exodus 20, verse two, I am the Lord by God. Was God bargaining trying to convince them? Hey, you know, I have the qualifications. I can be, let me be God.

No, it's the, it's God's goodness where he takes the time to let me know, I am the Lord by God, which have brought the out of the land of Egypt. So is Jesus your savior? Is Jesus your King? Is Jesus your Lord, your master? One thing we do know, Jesus will be our judge. So do you and I love him for saving us and setting us free from the sin of bondage? I hope that that is a, that is a, that is a love that we all feel towards Christ.

That yes, we love him because of what he did for us. So will we allow Christ to be supreme in our life? Serving no other gods. And there's a connection here again.

Let us just note that. So we have love no other gods. And this is where these titles could come together as one in the same.

When we love someone, we serve someone. So the question or the statement that we should love no other God would be a similar statement to serve no other God. But love comes before serving.

So here, I'm thinking about that we should have Christ as our first, and we should not love other gods. We move to where the outworkings of love would be serving. And so we should not serve other gods.

To serve really means to give, you know, giving of yourself, your money, your time, your life, etc. There's a little phrase I'm going to say next here. And I appreciate it.

I think it needs, I could meditate on this more. But a little phrase I really appreciate and that is this, serve him with your love. You ever thought of that? Serve Jesus with your love.

I find myself so often focusing on the serving, right? Is it not common that we take the time to serve and we forget to love? We take the time to do all the right things and go to the right places and say the right words. And sometimes we come up dry and find out, oh, it's like Revelations chapter two there. You have lost your first love, Jesus says.

And that just connected me, connected with me here. So the statement is serve him with your love. Taking time to think about loving God and directing our love to him.

Again, I might do a good deed out of love for God. And often my tendency is to focus on the deed that this is my love to God. We could use the little story that we had here in the beginning.

So if I go and buy my son a bag of chips, he says, thank you, dad. Love you, dad. Was the bag of chips the love? How is it sometimes that we do the same for God, right? Where we do something for God and we say, see, God, I love you.

See, I got your bag of chips. Or do we process this appreciation, this adoration, this reverence to a level where, no, Lord, no matter what, like Job, no matter what, God, I love you. And so it's much more personal, much more of a true affection for God and who he is and not the deeds that are around and surround us in our life.

So as our cup overflows with love for God, may we in turn direct our appreciation and praise to him. But let us serve him with our love. When we serve God, when we think about serving him, let us process it in a way that, yes, Lord.

And we could go back to this definition of worship. If worship and the definition of that worship is the foundation under us loving God and serving God, then you have healthy harmony there. God, you're my hero.

God, I love you. You are righteous. I do not want to sin.

And God, because of my love for you, I want to serve you. I will interject here a little phrase, a little caution thing maybe that came to my mind. And I was thinking of the struggles of Christians.

And how is it that Christians are in so much chaos? Christians are by title, all kinds of Christians. And by worship, there is seems to be no God to worship. It's honestly like Christians have found themselves in a place of worshiping the unknown God.

Because their hearts can't focus on Christ, but focus on so much of what religion is, and not Christ himself. And so here we want to serve God with our love. Rather than defining my life and who I am by the deeds, may I just find myself to love God.

And as I love him, the deeds will flow from my life. Even thinking about as a church, the value and the weight that all churches could put on worship, not just with the mouth, but the whole harmony together with worship, adoring God, reverencing him. And one of the definitions I should actually read of reverence.

So I'm going to read this definition again of reverence here. The fear acceptable to God, a full of awe reverence of the divine nature, proceeding from a just esteem of his perfections, which produces in us an inclination to his service and an unwillingness to offend him. Reverence, that's a heart for God.

Reverence, we do not want to offend him. We do not want to disobey him. Like the example of Saul, that Saul would rather than have this second avenue of how he was going to serve God, that he would rather obey God out of reverence.

We need to be devoted to God in love, the state of being dedicated, consecrated, or solely set apart for a particular purpose. Maybe we should ask ourselves that question here. Are you as a follower of Christ? Are you content? Are you full of joy in the reality that you're set apart from this world? Isn't that sometimes a test for our flesh? It is for me.

Sometimes my flesh doesn't want to be set apart from this world. Sometimes my flesh finds itself thinking, man, you know, there's so much fun to be had in the world. We don't have to call it evil.

There's a lot of things we could do that aren't evil, but my heart could focus. My heart could find my delight and my joy in all this fun and other things rather than God. But as a Christian, I am consecrated.

I'm set apart that I would worship God. I would adore him and I would reverence him. Second point under serving no other gods is serve him with our lives.

This is a beautiful order here. We serve him with our love first, and then we serve him with our life next. All the actions that come from our life that we would serve God because we love him.

So how should we serve him in our time today with our lives? Should we do animal sacrifice? Should we hold the Passover feast of weeks or the feast of booths or the day of atonement? What should we do? How should we serve God? I look at and we don't have the time to explain all of this, but I look at the beauty of the New Testament. The New Testament is a book of so many principles of a way of life that that's how we would serve God. I'm going to paraphrase it into that little phrase.

We don't need to hold these sacrifices and feasts, but we can study the word of God. We look at the New Testament and the principles that Jesus teaches us and to that we pay attention and we live that out for there is life. So we serve the Lord.

We learn of him and then we live out what we learn. Romans 12 verses 1 and 2. Paul says, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So you and I don't need to bring a lamb to the altar.

We just need to bring ourself. We need to bring yourself to the altar and learn that good and perfect will of God and live out that will. So we need to serve God with our lives and next point here is serving him with our lips.

Here is a right and proper place to put this phrase that we would serve him with our lips. First we serve him with our love. Second we serve him with our life and third we serve him with our lips.

By praise and testimony both silent and vocal let us serve God with our lips. Out of love we would sing praise give praise and give prayer of thanksgiving to God for who he is. I also think of what we were some of us said here this morning the idea of sharing the gospel with those around us when we serve the Lord in a healthy proper way where you can imagine if I didn't serve God with my love but I served him with my life so I did all the right deeds I have no love for him it's duty and habit and I go and try to spread the gospel what would I be spreading? Say for example I don't love God it's a real punishment for me to have to conform to my church all the time and we're going to go out Friday night and try to spread the gospel or in my own heart where I'm constrained I can't participate in the things I love that my delight is in Egypt and yet I'm supposed to constantly be this holy person and we have this heart that's for the flesh and finds itself let's serve God with our lips.

How would we do that? How would we testify how good God is what God has done for us and how someone else can receive life when our heart isn't in the right place all of this together comes together in thought of true worship true worship that we would serve no other gods that we wouldn't serve ourselves that we wouldn't serve items or events or nothing nothing else would take the place of our God but when this comes together in harmony where I love I serve God with my love I serve him with my life and I serve him with my lips God is great and he's able to do a great work through me a saying is Christ is not looking for talent he is looking for those who will serve him maybe I could be more concentrated on my talent rather than my heart of love and service lastly here our last point is worship no other gods and I think we could easily put together our first point where love no other gods and a second point serve no other gods and that would equal worship God if we love Christ and if we serve Christ then we worship Christ so worship no other gods not dead cold ritual worship but true worship from the heart not a habit or a duty but with love from the heart again here's what reminds me of revelations there where we're admonished that we make sure we have not lost our first love so do you and I worship him do we worship God with desire let's look at psalm 42 verse 1 and 2 do we worship God with desire here it says psalm 42 verse 1 and 2 as the heart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after thee oh God my soul thirsteth for God for the living God when shall I come and appear before God a hunger and a desire for more of God and with the proper definition here again of worship so for us to have a hunger and thirst for God is more than just an intake of information about God the idea that I need to get saved and yes I'm a Christian and that that information is enough for me that I don't desire God but I believe this full uh full round desire for God and we see it from King David in many places but it's a righteousness it's a it's a desire for God that's not only God you are so good you're mighty you do a mighty work you have done much for me but it's also that return love from David to God from me to God that return love that says God I love your ways your ways are wonderful your ways are are you know it's a light your word is a light to to my path that is the desire that we should have again I would say it seems that in our time that's so much of focus on God and worshiping God is the idea that there's a there's a a gap between me and God I'm here and I am what I am and I'm I'm this wretched person and can't help myself and God's over there and he's holy and yet it seems just as an observation note here it seems that I find more comfort in my acknowledgement of my sinfulness I find comfort in it I'm not uncomfortable and I look at God as he's over there somehow it's there's a safety net with the thought pattern that says I'm just a poor sinner over here and oh God's over there so we're disconnected yes I am that wretched sinner that needs Christ but more than that may it be there is my God I adore him there's my hero there is my delight as David would say I desire God I desire his ways yes I struggle to be righteous but I desire to be righteous I struggle to be holy I desire to be holy I struggle to love but I desire to love may we desire may we desire God we should worship God with devotion we know the verse John 4 verse 24 we should worship God in spirit and in truth and again we're going to highlight the aspect where I am walking in the spirit and I'm walking in the truth the truth being God's will God's ways and that's what I walk in so the combination there it again is me loving God or me serving God with my love and me serving God with my life that is combined in spirit and in truth it's not in the body by itself but it's in spirit I walk in the spirit of God and I live in the truth of God the truth of God's word so we are devoted to we are dedicated we are separated unto God and we also last point here for this part worship with dedication Romans 12 verse 1 and 2 again that we would be dedicated to God his will being our will his way being our way it's us seeing our need and seeing our need fulfilled in Christ it allows us to again come to Jesus with the heart of love and gratitude and it helps us to reverence God to adore God and as we see who God is him being my Redeemer it helps me or I'm going to use the phrase here it produces in me an inclination to his service and an unwillingness to offend him that is produced in me as I see who God is as I allow as I put my will my ways aside my spirit in Christ overrides the soul in the body and says yes Lord thy will be done and it helps me to worship God there is a two-part phrase that I appreciate and it is this worship is our supreme duty that is what we'll be held accountable to and then another one worship is our maximum privilege so that's a balance there comes together worship is our supreme duty and worship is our maximum privilege that we will have here and in eternity to think of worship in all eternity we will be worshiping why does mankind struggle so much to worship God here the comfort the desire towards eternity you know living with Jesus being at the feet of Jesus and if the Lord will bring that picture together for us when we are on our knees before him and we're going to be in this place that is holy righteous all the things what we'll call here all the sins that that harass us and bother us and cause us strife in this world none of that will be there all the beautiful teachings of the new testament the principles of God of love and and long-suffering and all what all the things that Jesus teaches us in the new testament that will be there it will be in heaven and it will come together so perfectly where I can be before Christ in full worship and I will be absorbed and filled and overjoyed can you imagine um I don't think there is words but can you imagine having like Moses where you have just few minutes of an experience of perfection I don't we couldn't handle it not not here not now but to think that that is our eternity that it's going to be in eternity will be full of perfection every need that I have will be met and not just I'm hungry I want food I'm sleepy I need a bed and so on no the spiritual needs that I have they will be met and when they are met they will bring together a powerful compelling love from within me to God where I will worship him I won't be able to help myself but worship him and so why not here in this world live with love to God towards God worship him and give him this proper worship uh this expression of reverence and adoration for God and I think of us again making you know becoming a testimony around us in our area here all the opportunity God wants to give us to be this light to worship him steadfastly and people will see that my they are different and may God be the reason for our difference it is noon may God add his blessing