True Worship

Father, this morning we are gathered here in the name of Jesus, and I pray for my brother Jeremy as he shares, Lord, what you've laid on his heart. I pray for each person that's in this building that you would open our ears to hear a message from you, God. Thank you.

Thank you for gathering us. Thank you for what you will do yet this morning. Thank you for being with our loved ones over in Idaho.

Give them a safe trip home. We just bless you in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated.

God bless you. Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning. That was a powerful testimony. I think he loves the Lord a lot for his great sins that he's committed, which actually, I could use that in my sermon, so thank you.

This couple of weeks ago, Timothy and I were, well, mainly Timothy and I helped a little here and there, but his clutch went out in his vehicle, and he decided he's going to take this on. He's going to try this new big project of dropping a transmission, and boy, I was cautious going into it, but Timothy was ready to give it a try, and man, was that a job. We worked, or he worked, I think three and a half days morning through evening, and thankfully Leland Krupp let us put it up on his car hoist, and I mean, you're talking about this thing about this long, I'd guess four or five hundred pounds, and up getting all the way in there and all these bolts way up high and disconnecting everything and following all the instructions just right and unhooking wires and all the stuff, and then you put this thing under it, this hoist, and you're just shaking it back and forth trying to release itself and to come out, and then this thing's off balance and big old 400 weight thing under the truck and get it off the clutch.

He said, that was a fun job, just put the clutch on, you're done. Now we got to put the whole thing back on, and we're wiggling it, and we can't get it to line up. It's got to line up with these little, there's a little, there's little splines, and they got to line up just perfect.

So you got this massive 400 pound piece of metal, you're trying to get lined up to these splines, and oh man, we're just going, well, after we're all done, we get it all put together and we're like, okay, now's the big time, let's go test it, and Timothy gets in and pushes the clutch, and the clutch just sticks at the bottom, and then you wave a little, it pops back out, and something's not right, and there's this little tiny hole about this big in the side of the transmission that we can kind of view in there and see what's, and oh, there's this little tiny stud that was screwed into there, and there's a fork that goes like this, so when you push your clutch, it pushes this throwout bearing, I'm telling you, mechanical terms, I barely know, but it pushes it forward, well guess what, that little stud that it pivoted on was busted off. And we're just like, oh, you got to be kidding me, you got to be kidding me. After three and a half days of work, the feeling, the feeling of, was that all done in vain, was that all done, what, now we got to pull the whole transmission out, and so we did it the right way, we got some good old J.B. Weld, J.B. Weld did that thing in there, we're not going to pull the transmission out again, but I thought of that story this morning as what I want to talk about this morning, the title is True Worship, and I thought about that whole feeling, you know, we're going to do this job, and all the way to the end, and we find out this little tiny piece is broken, and we never caught it before we put it in, and that feeling of hopeless, that feeling of all that work was in vain, and Timothy thought, maybe I should just hire a professional, I don't want to go through that again.

And that, the thought of what that'll be like when we meet the Lord, will we look back at our life and think of all the Sundays, and all the Wednesdays, and all the times we worshipped, and then find out it was vain, it was just empty, it wasn't real, and so that's what I want to talk about this morning, the title is True Worship, now worship is a Bible word, we have it in our Bible, many times it's kind of like the word church, we kind of grow up hearing it all our life, and we kind of develop our own mentality, and sadly enough, many times we come up with definitions of things, and ideas of things more from the culture around us than the Bible says. Worship actually is an old English word that comes from the word worth, and ship, now not meaning the ship like a boat, but ship that was a suffix, in English we would put a suffix on the end to say it's state or condition, so membership, this is a member here, he's the membership, it's a state or condition of somebody, or the word companionship, lordship, we put the word ship on the end to describe that it's in a state or condition, on nouns we do that, and then on adjectives, which I read, we only have two adjectives that are survived through, one is worship, and one is hardship, now I don't know, maybe there's another one, but this place I was reading said there's no others that have survived, but in old English, there would have been more adjectives, so worship is one of these words, it's describing of worth to something, and so Jesus had some things to say, now why did I decide to preach about this, well one day I was reading in the book of Romans, you can turn there, chapter 12, and I just happened to be reading in, I don't know if it was the New Living or the NIV version, and I'll read it to you how I read it, 12 verse 1, you can follow along in your Bible, in the King James, but I'm going to read it to you and you tell me what changed, therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship, I thought worship, now what do they get, that's not how the King James says it, you know, so then I looked, well NLT, they say this is truly the way to worship him, okay those are two more liberal translations, so let's look at the conservative translations, NASB, your spiritual service of worship, ESV, which is your spiritual worship, interesting, why did they choose worship, so I went in and I pulled up the King James and I pulled up the Greek word for worship, sorry for reasonable service, and service is translated, its root word is translated worship, it's the idea of the service that was done in the temple, huh, you know, we we think of all the services and rituals they would do in the temple and that was considered worship, we even call it, we come to a worship service, oh wow, so this is your reasonable worship, this is your reasonable service, this is how we worship God, to present ourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, now let's turn to John chapter 4, Jesus had some things to say about worship, he met a woman, a Samaritan woman, one day in verse, John chapter 4 and verse 5, he came to the city of Samaria, which is called Syknar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, now Jacob's well was there, Jesus therefore being wearied from his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour, there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water, Jesus said to her, give to me drink, for his disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat, then said the woman of Samaria to him, how is it that thou being a Jew asks drink or asks water for me, which I'm a woman of Samaria, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans, Jesus answered and said to her, if thou know the gift of God and who it is that sayeth to thee give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him and he would have given you living water, in other words if you would only know who I am, you would be asking for living water for me, alive water, verse 11, the woman said to him, sir thou has nothing to draw with and the well is deep, from whence then hast thou that living water, art thou greater than our father Jacob which gave us the well and drink thereof himself and his children and his cattle, Jesus answered and said to her, whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, speaking of the water in the well, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life, the woman said unto him, sir give me this water that I thirst not, neither come here to draw, I don't want to keep coming here every day to draw water, 16, Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come hither, the woman said, I have no husband, Jesus said to her, thou has well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands and let he whom thou now hast, sorry, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband, in that saidst thou rightly, you said the truth, you've had five husbands and you don't have one now and the man you're living with now isn't your husband, interesting enough, watch her response now to him, the woman said, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet and then watches what her question is, as soon as she realizes who this guy is, she says this, our father is worshiped in this mountain and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship, Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, the place that they worshiped, nor yet at Jerusalem, the place the Jews worship, worship the father, you're not going to worship those places anymore, ye worship, ye worship you know not what, you don't know what you're worshiping, we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews, but the hour cometh and now is, that's because Jesus was standing there, when the true worshipers shall worship the father in spirit and in truth, for the father seeks such to worship him, God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, so Jesus, here we see him talking about worship, true worship, he even brings in the word true and we want to know what is he talking about, what is he talking about, we want to know the Bible definition of worship, we want to know Jesus definition of worship, we live in a culture and in a society right now that has an idea of what is, you hear of it constantly, let's go to that worship service, they had a worship service and you go there and there's a lot of singing and there's a lot of hype and there's lights and there's excitement and there's emotions and they call it worship, but is that what Jesus calls worship, that's what we want to do today, we want to look at what is true worship because Jesus said that the father, his father, an hour was coming and now is where the true worshipers, the real worshipers, the one that won't come to the end of life and find out it was all vain like we did with the transmission, the true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth and it says God is seeking for those kind of worshipers, he wants to know where his eyes are looking all over the earth, where are true worshipers, now this morning we came here, we've gathered here, we call it our worship service, we're here to worship God, we sing songs, thank you brother Mike, but did we qualify, did we really come through this time as true worshipers of God, other places in the scripture it talks about what we are made up of, it says we are made up of body right here and then inside of us are two places, a soul and a spirit, now interestingly enough in the Old Testament we had the tabernacle and anybody remember the picture of the tabernacle, in fact I can draw here, I never saw it before, the tabernacle was what God instructed the Israelites when they would come and worship, tabernacle means a dwelling place, it could be translated like a tent and even in the New Testament, I think it's Peter, he says he refers to his body as a tabernacle, the tabernacle had an outer court, it was made up of three parts, this is where the labor, labor, labor, labor, thank you, out here is where they would bring the ox and kill them and all of that and offer that, and then in here separated by a veil, a thick veil, the same veil that was torn when Jesus died was the most holy place and the holy place, now in the New Covenant I find it interesting that we're made up of the same thing, we are made up of a body, an outer court, what we see, a holy place or our soul, that's what the Bible says, it says there's a, I pray your whole body and your soul and your spirit be preserved till the day of Jesus, it says in Thessalonians, and our spirit, now Jesus didn't say we need to worship him in our soul, he said we need to worship him in our spirit, a soul is where you have all your emotions, it's where you have your mind, it's where you have your will, it's where you make your decisions from, it's where you feel happy, it's where you feel sad, it's where you feel depressed or elated, it's where you wake up in the morning, I'm gonna do this, it's where, it's really just you, it's, that's why we call it, let's go soul winning, we need to go win some souls for the Lord, right, but our spirit is a place that when we become Christians, it becomes made alive, it becomes a place where God deposits his spirit, it becomes a place that God talks to us through, it's our spirit and that's the place, Jesus said, we have to worship from, we can't worship just only from our soul, now, sure, when the Lord is in our spirit, it overflows to our soul, right, it overflows to our emotions, it overflows to our mind, but, if it's just there and not in the spirit, then it's gonna turn out to be vain. That's what Jesus said.

He said, he must worship him in spirit and he must worship him in truth. Now, the sad thing, we read about this in our Bible study this morning. How many of those Pharisees were worshiping him in truth? You know, they had the traditions, they had the look, they had the tassels, they had all the things, the big long beards and the robes.

They looked so religious. But as we read, Jesus asked them the question and they were over there, what were they doing? Well, if we say this, then he will say, why didn't you listen? Because he's from God. And if we say this, is that truth? You know, truth isn't worried about what man thinks.

Truth is truth, right? Men of integrity do what's right regardless of what people think. But see, that's what's so dangerous about religion is we can become just like those men, not worshiping God in truth. And so, Jesus brings up a true worship, but then he also talks in other places about vain worship.

We can read about that in Matthew 15. Let's read what Jesus had to say in Matthew 15 in verse eight. He's talking to the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the people that the Jews looked up to to speak the scriptures, to interpret the scriptures.

They had rituals of washing their hands and all the different things they did, their traditions. And yet they had a little loophole, a little thing they weren't being truthful about, a little thing they were being hypocritical about. And Jesus said this to them.

We'll look in verse eight. This people speaking about the Jews. Notice in verse seven, he says, you hypocrites.

Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you saying? So he's bringing a prophecy from the old covenant, from the old testament. He says, here's the prophecy. This people draws nigh to me with their mouth and they honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines and commands and their command. Okay, so we wanna look at this this morning. There's another thing right along with true worship that is called vain worship.

And one thing that impressed me as I was studying and preparing is how this thing has repeated itself over and over. Don't think it's new. Don't think this is new for us to fall into the trap to come here and think we're worshiping God and tricking ourselves.

This has happened over and over and over again since the beginning of time. Hypocrisy, where we come to the place we actually deceive our heart and think we're truly worshiping God and we're not. This verse, I'd never seen it before.

I mean, I probably read it, but I don't remember it hitting my heart. Look in Ezekiel chapter 33. I was just shocked by this verse.

So I underlined it. All right, Ezekiel 33. Verse 30, Ezekiel 33, 30.

Also the son of man, the children of the people still are talking against thee by the walls and the doors of the houses and speak one to another. Everyone to his brother saying, come, I pray you and hear what is the word that cometh from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh and they sit before thee as my people and they hear thy words, but they will not do them.

For with their mouth, they show much love, but their hearts go after their covetousness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument for they hear thy words, but they do not do them. Wow, look at this.

These people were evangelical. Hey, let's go hear the word of God. Let's go to the church building.

The word of God's happening. Let's go. Hey, everybody, they're announcing it.

Let's go. They get there and look at this. They sit before thee as my people.

Yeah, I mean, anybody walking here, they'd say, wow, here's a church of God. Here are Christians, right? Look at them. They sit here, they all are dressed nicely.

They look like good Christians. They hear the words it says. Oh, they sit before me as, they come, they sit before me as my people and they hear the words.

They're all listening. They're taking notes. Good job.

And what? They do not do them. They will not do them. We talked about that this morning.

Doers of the word. The one that said, oh, I'll go and then didn't go. But the one that said, I won't go, but went.

That's what matters. So they look good. They're evangelical.

Let's see, I wrote here some thoughts. They're evangelical. They look like God's people.

They listen. Then he goes on and says, and even this, they show much love with their mouths. Man, not only do they look good, they're evangelical.

They listen, but afterwards they talk about how much they love the Lord. You know, they talk real good religious talk, right? But in the end, he says, they will not do them. See, it hadn't affected their will.

It hadn't gone down low enough into their soul. Their will was still strong. They were emotional about it, right? We have mind, will and emotion.

They knew that we're gonna talk about the Lord. Their emotions were all excited. Man, you're like a pretty song.

It goes on to say, you're like a lovely song. One has a pleasant voice, but their will would not be conquered. Their will said, we were not gonna do that.

So when they left the meeting and all, real good worship meeting, but they didn't do the things that were talked about. And in the end, that is called vain worship. That's what the devil wants.

He wants us to fall into that trip. We all know the Sermon on the Mount very well. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that not everyone who calls me Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the, what does it say? Will of my father in heaven.

Many on that day, speaking of judgment, will say, Lord, Lord. Now think about that. Lord is our mind.

Hey, we know the Lord. We've read about him in the Bible, right? Lord, Lord is a little emotional too. We can get pretty excited about the Lord, but they didn't do the will of the father.

See, it hadn't gone down and affected their obedience. It hadn't gone down and affected their dying to self and following the Lord. And so in the end, Jesus says, what? He doesn't say, well, yes, you had some worship.

And so come on in. He says, I never knew you. That's amazing.

It was vain because it didn't affect their will. Now, Satan, it's interesting for the sake of time, we won't go back there, but in Isaiah, it talks about Satan falling. We all know Satan.

He's the adversary. He's the accuser of the brethren. He's the one that God created as an angel of light and then ends up falling at the beginning.

Whenever it happened, way back at the beginning of time. And what did Satan, what caused Satan to fall? Let's just think about that for a minute. Was he a murderer? Did he murder some other angel? Did he commit adultery with some angel, some heinous sin like we think about? He wanted worship.

Isn't that amazing? He said, for thou has said in thine heart. He didn't even say it out loud. He said it in his heart.

I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars. I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the cloud. And finally, I will be like the most high. Wow.

He wanted worship. That is what caused him to fall in the beginning. Satan wanted his worth to be acknowledged.

He didn't want God to be acknowledged anymore. He wanted to be thought of as like the most high. He had made an idol of himself.

He wanted praise, and he wanted honor. Satan couldn't say, thy will be done. Satan didn't want God's glory to be seen.

He wanted worship, and it was pride that made him fall. We talked about it in our Bible study this morning. What is the root of all sin? Look at this.

It's pride. It's worship. It's who is on the throne of our hearts.

And so Satan, at the beginning of time, did that, where we hear a voice in our heart that says, we want to be acknowledged. We want to be noticed. We want to be respected.

We want to be reverenced. Who is it that's speaking? What spirit is it? It's that old liar, the devil, from the beginning of time. And interestingly enough, when Satan appeared to Jesus, what did he come and bring to him? And the devil, taking Jesus up to a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of this world.

And he said, in a moment of time, he showed him. What an amazing thing. Just in a moment of time, Jesus saw everything.

And the devil said, all this power will I give thee. Everything you see here, Jesus, everything you see, it's mine. And the glory of them.

Interesting that glory is translated one place, worship. I will give you all this worship and splendor and glory, all this power I have, Jesus. But somehow he didn't have one more thing he needed, right? He wanted the son of God to fall down at his feet and worship him.

See what his desire still is? His desire isn't, oh, let's go murder something or let's go worship me. That's what I want. I want worship.

Other translations, he says, for that it is delivered to me in the King James. Other translations say, because it is mine, they are mine. And to whomever I will give, if thou will worship me.

What does Jesus respond? Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, thou shall worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. You notice how that worship is tied with serve? Many times to the Bible, worship is tied with serve. Worship is tied with fear.

Him alone shalt thou serve. See, it's about his will. Worship is about doing the will of the father.

We have a desire in our heart, whatever it may be. Think of all the things that you desire right now. Look at the deeper motive in our heart.

Jeremiah says, our hearts can be very deceitful above all things. Ask God to show you the motive for that desire. If there's an ounce of pride in it, then beware.

This is what caused Satan to fall at the beginning. And as we see, it's still when he's with Jesus, what he's after. He's after worship.

Corinthians tells us to cast down all imaginations, or we could say thoughts, cast down all thoughts and every high thing that exalts, or you could use the word lifts up, itself against the knowledge of God. Whatever we have in our life, whether it be our clothes, whether it be our technology, whether it be our vehicles, whether it be our reputation, whatever it be, if it exalts itself or lifts up itself above God and above his will and above knowing him, we're commanded to cast it down. We're commanded to take every thought that comes into our heart, captive to the will, to the obedience of Christ.

Now let's look at a couple examples in the Old Testament. Abraham, in Genesis chapter 22, Abraham was a worshiper. First book of the Bible, first time the word in English shows up as worship in Genesis chapter 22, verse one.

And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham. So let's just give a little picture of where Abraham was. I had heard, and I didn't look into this, but I heard Abraham was roughly around 75 when God showed up to him and said, I want you to leave everything.

I want you to leave your father, I want you to leave your land. Think about this, man, is that retirement age, at least for us nowadays? You know, he's got a good home, he's been around, he's been raising his flocks. God shows up and says, it's time to leave.

It's time to leave your father and go into another land that I'm not even gonna tell you yet. And so now here he is, he's done that. He said, yes, Lord, your will be done.

He's left his father's land and all the things he had there. And now he is 50 years later, they haven't had a child and they finally have this little boy, this little boy that is their only son that they've had between him and Sarah. And in a sense, it almost sounds like maybe Abraham has made this little boy an idol in his heart.

And so God comes to Abraham to see, is he gonna worship me or has he replaced me with his own son that I gave him? See how easy it is for us to do that? How easy it is for us to take even God's creation. It says they worship the creature more than the creator. We can take these things God gives us and get our eyes set on it and put it above God.

And so God comes to test Abraham. And he says, take your son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of. Can you imagine getting that? That command? Take your son, get up, take your son and take him up on a mountain.

I'm not even gonna tell you where, but over there, just trust me and go. And I want you to put him up on this altar and I want you to kill him for me. And so what did Abraham do? He rose up in the morning.

I don't know if the Lord must have told him that night. He got up and started going. Three days journey, I think, thinking about this, thinking about this.

I'm gonna go and kill my son because God wants this. So he got up early in the morning and saddled his ass and took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son, and claimed the wood for the burnt offering and rose up and went up the place that God had told him. Then on the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off.

And Abraham said unto his young men, abide ye here with the ass and I and the lad will go yonder and worship. Wow. Look at this word worship.

This came at a cost to Abraham. This was not some worship service where he went up on the mountain and the lights came out and the singing came out and they were all raising and waving and lighting candles and all that. Not saying that you couldn't do those things, but look how deep this is for worship.

And this is going right down to the well. This is going right down to dying to self. And he was willing to do it.

He was willing to take that little boy that maybe was an idol in his heart and give it to God. And we know the story. Thankfully that never happened.

God stopped him. But this is the first book of the Bible. The first time the word worship is.

And what do we see? We see an act of dying to self. Let's look at Job for a minute. Go to Job chapter one.

They say this book is probably the first book written. Our Bibles aren't in chronological order. So this man Job, from my understanding, didn't have Abraham and all the forefathers to look back at.

He was one of the forerunners. And let's see. We're gonna look in verse 20.

Well, we're gonna back up because we need to get the context of this. Okay, so the story goes, I'm just gonna brief it up here, that Satan came into the presence of God one day and God mentions, hey, look at my servant Job. And Job says, well, you've protected him all your life.

You've taken care of him. Of course he's not gonna do anything against you. And so he tempts God and God allows him, says, you can go ahead and you can see, you can try him, kind of like Abraham.

See if he will turn his back on me. See if his children and his lands and his business and everything is an idol in his heart. And so he goes, the devil leaves the presence of God.

This just came to me. Look what he's after now. He's after once again to destroy God's worship.

Wow, and so verse 13, there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And there came a messenger to Job. Okay, his children are off eating and drinking.

And they said, this messenger comes running to Job. And he says, the ox were plowing and the asses were feeding beside them. And the Sabians came and killed them with this edge of the sword.

And I only escaped alone to tell you. Verse 16, while this servant is telling this to Job, all your oxen and all your donkeys are dead. The Sabians came and killed them.

Verse 16, another man came and said, the fire of God is fallen from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consume them. And I only escaped to tell thee. Okay, so now there's another man standing there telling Job, the fire fell out of heaven and it killed all of the sheep and the servants.

So now his oxen and donkeys are dead. His servants and sheep are dead. His business life and everything he knew is being wiped out.

While he was yet speaking, third man came in and said, the Chaldeans made three bands and fell upon the camels and have carried them. And yea, they slain the servants with the edge of the sword. And I only escaped to tell thee.

Now all the camels are dead. And then while he was standing there, another man came. He said this, thy sons and thy daughters were eating.

And they were drinking wine in their eldest brother's house. And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness and it broke down, smote the four corners of the house and it fell upon all of the young men and they are all dead. All of his children are dead.

All of his business is gone. His family, as in his children, are gone. What does Job do? He arises and he tears his mantle.

He shaves his head and he falls down on the ground and he worships. Wow. He says, not my will, thine be done.

And then he says this, naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Worship comes at a cost. Look at this cost to Job. Look at the cost of Abraham.

It costs them something. It costs them their own will. And we, if we're not careful, we can listen to Satan and his voice and trick ourselves and think that we're worshipers of God.

We come here and we act as Christians. We dress like Christians. We sing worship songs about worshiping God.

But if it hasn't affected our will, then it's still vain worship. It reminds me of this passage in 2 Samuel. When David, I believe there was a plague that was striking and David decided he needed to go offer an offering to the Lord.

And so he went up onto the mountain, Mount Moriah, which is also, I guess, according to tradition, where Abraham offered, was going to offer his son and where the temple was built, interestingly enough. He goes up on this mountain to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. And he's the king and he tells this man, he liked his, it was a, I think it was a vineyard or threshing floor, sorry.

And he tells this man, I would like to offer to the Lord. I would like to worship the Lord here. And the man says, you can just have it.

He says, let me pay you for this land. And the man says, you can just have it. It's yours, King David.

And David said, this is what he said. Neither will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord, my God, of that which doth cost me nothing. See, David had a perspective that worship costs money or not money, but for him it was money, but worship costs us.

It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel, they came with their offerings to the Lord and it says of Cain that he came with an offering, just says an offering. But when Abel came, it says he came and brought the firstlings of his flock. You see the difference? One man came with an offering, one man, it cost him something.

He put God first in his life. He said, I want to give God the best, you know? And we read that story that brother Roger read and that man's a worshiper of God. He has seen his sin.

We read the story of the woman who came in. You know, I didn't know this, the woman that came in and was anointing Jesus' feet with that alabaster box and was wiping her hair, wiping his, she was crying and the tears were coming down his feet and she was drying his feet with her hair. Did you know that was Mary? That was Mary, Lazarus' brother.

The same Mary that later is sitting at Jesus' feet and listening and wanting to hear every word and Martha's off busy, you know, and he says, Mary has chosen the better thing. She's worshiping me right now. She's the same Mary.

You know what it says about her? She was a sinner. She was the black sheep of the family. And that's what that story, he was a sinner.

And Jesus brought the parable, he said, he said, if this man has sinned this much, if there were two men that had this much debt, 500, and this man owed 50, and the debtor forgave both of them, which one loves more? And the man said, well, the one that was forgiven more. You know, the more we see our sin, the more we see how disgustingly depraved we are, the more we love the Lord. Just like we read at the end of that story, he said, we're all sinners.

And he loves the Lord a lot because he has seen the Lord has forgiven him, changed his life. And that woman that came in, you know, she had to leave her sin. She was a harlot.

She was a sinner. She had to leave her sin behind and come to Jesus. And she had to come in and as all the men were looking at her like, what are you doing? And she's crying on his feet and wiping, she had to put all man's opinion behind her.

And you know, that alabaster box was worth 300 pence, a year's wage. Think about that. Think about working for an entire year and getting a paycheck every week, every week, putting it aside, putting aside, and then buying this little thing of ointment and bringing it to Jesus.

Wow, that's worship. That's what Jesus wants us to do. He wants us to put everything in our life behind and put him first.

And that's true worship. But Satan wants to trick us. He wants us to deceive ourselves and think we can do these things and sing our songs and all of this and not put God first in our lives.

As it said in that passage in Ezekiel, they say all these things, but they're still after their covetousness. So to conclude here, number one, we need to abandon our sin like this lady to become a true worshiper of God. We need to get past all the social norms and man's opinions to be a true worshiper of God.

We can't be a true worshiper if we do not see our own sins. If we're constantly looking at that person and that person, those people did wrong and that, and that Jesus said, the true worshiper of God is the one that sees their own sin. They love the most.

And finally, it's gonna cost us. So starting from the beginning, number one, God is a spirit and we must worship from our spirit. It's gotta be past our soul.

It's gotta be past our mind, just that God is an existing God. It's gotta be past our emotions. It's gotta even be past our own will.

Like the wise man, he dug down. You know, the foolish man just, he was the vain worshiper, you know, he just, hey, let's get this thing up and let's make it look beautiful. The wise man took time, maybe half of his resources to dig down, down through the sand.

And he hit that rock and he got all the way down. He had to get through all of his mind and his will and his emotions. And he had to break down through that will and finally get to Jesus.

We gotta worship God in the spirit, that innermost place that our dead, our deepest place in our heart. We have to worship him in truth. He's not looking for fakers that say the words, worship on Sunday morning in public, but it has to be the same one every day in our private life.

And it's gonna cost us. True worship of God will always cost us. It will cost you repentance.

It will cost you your will. It will cost you your pride. And the devil has a counterfeit.

He wants to tell us in our hearts that just worship with our mouth is sufficient. Just hearing is acceptable. So I ask this, there is a throne in your heart in each one here, and only one person can sit on it.

You cannot sit on the throne of your heart and be a true worshiper of God. Even if you look the part, sing the part, sing the best songs, say the best words about the Lord, a true worshiper steps off the throne of his heart each and every moment, and he gives God his rightful place. Philippians 3 says this, for we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh.

We worship God in the spirit. We rejoice in Jesus. And what, lastly, we have no confidence in the flesh.

We've set our wills aside and we have become true worshipers of God who say not my will, but thine be done. Amen, I pray the Lord teaches us this.