How Do We Worship? (07/16/2000)

And I wanna speak to you this morning about how do we worship? How do we worship?

Job 1 .20, then Job arose and rent his mantle and shaved his head and fell down upon the ground and worshiped.

What had Job been through when that happened? What had he lost? Everything except a nagging wife.

He still had her. So he rent his mantle and he shaved his head and he fell down upon the ground and he worshiped.

Now, I want you to picture this occasion. What do you picture while he's actually worshiping?

How much noise do you hear? Do you hear a lot of shouting and hollering?

What do you picture? Someone tell me what you picture. Total silence.

What does someone else picture? Total silence,

I hope, because that's the right answer. He says, naked came

I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave and the

Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job sinned not nor charged

God foolishly. Anybody who thinks they can change God, that's foolish too, isn't it?

Change God foolishly. That's good, that would preach too. In fact, that's gonna be on some of your paragraphs that you write for next

Sunday school, isn't it? Well, now, I don't know, but that just seems completely different than a lot of the picture that the world is giving us for worship.

Turn to Job 42 and verse five, and we're gonna see

Job take worship to another level even. I mean, it's still worship, but I think it's to a new level.

Job says in verse five, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear. That's what happens every

Sunday when we come together and hear preaching and teaching. It's what happens when you study the word in your homes together or when you go to a home

Bible study during the week. We hear of him by the hearing of the ear. But he says, but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore

I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Something happened even beyond what had happened in verse chapter one.

Chapter one, he was worshiping God because of events that had taken place and he knew that God was a sovereign

God. You see, Job was not an Arminian. He knew that God was in control of everything and therefore he knew that the things that happened that seemed bad and that he perceived as bad in his life.

And in fact, from our viewpoint, they were horrible. And yet he knew God was in control.

He didn't know the answers to why this had happened. In fact, his wife told him just curse

God and die. She blamed it on God and said, God can't be right. This is horrible.

God would not do anything such as horrible as this. And if he did this, curse him and die.

She said, was that good advice? That was short sighted at least to be nice.

That's the least we could say about it because by the end of the book, Job could see God's hand in it and see some of the whys.

But a little bit later towards the end of the book of Job, after God had literally responded from the human point of view to Job's questions,

Job was questioning God. He says, God, I'm right with you. And all my three buddies are telling me all of this happened because I'm not right with you.

But I know I'm right with you. And he went on and on and on. And God comes back and says, well, now let's discuss this a moment.

And he pointed out how little Job knew. And isn't that what happens to us as we study? We find out how little we know about God.

And about the time we think we have God in a comfortable box in our hearts and minds, he comes out of it, doesn't he?

He comes out of it and we're confused. We're uncomfortable, but we have to understand that we just don't understand as much about God as we thought we did.

Well, after this enlightenment, when the Lord himself revealed more of himself to Job and Job saw

God as a far greater, larger, more awesome

God than he had ever seen before, Job makes this statement that I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear.

I've been taught of you all my life, but now I've seen you with my eyes. And he meant the eyes of understanding.

And he says, now I abhor myself. Why is that? Why do you think he would abhor himself?

That's right. In comparison to what? In comparison to God. So the more, would you agree with me then that the more we perceive

God, the more we perceive ourselves as we really are in our inadequacies.

Now, today I'm convinced that when people, I'm sure many of you have heard about this new addition to church.

And you say, well, Brother David, how do you know it's an addition? I mean, how do you know it wasn't always that way and we're just getting back to it?

Because you can read. You can read history. Clarence gave me a little book on the life of William Carey, the father of modern missions.

And I've been reading that again. I'd read it 20 years ago, I guess, or a book about him. I don't even remember if it was by the same author.

But he was living in the late 1700s. And just a few little places in the book, you can see a glimpse of a church service that he would go to.

Or in fact, he pastored a couple of churches. So you can see a little glimpse of how their services were in the 1700s.

And so you can read, you can go back further than that and see what was going on in some of the services. And you can see what they were doing.

And I'll promise you that they didn't go out and hire a group to come in and lead the worship and praise for the service.

Now, how many of you are familiar with the fact that that's what's going on and came out of the charismatic movement, now it's moving into the

Baptist movement, where you have to have a praise and worship leader? Are you familiar with that?

Yeah. Okay, that's modern. That's an invention in these later times.

And what is happening, and I'm not questioning motives here because I'm hoping that in many cases, the motive is we really want to worship

God. And that's wonderful. But I remember a man one time that had wonderful motives when the ark of God was on a cart and was just about to fall over and he reached up to stop it and what happened?

God killed him. Now, God doesn't do that all the time today because he doesn't have to because he showed his mind once to us.

He does not accept any worship that is according to man's methods.

He reveals throughout the scriptures how we are to worship him and we must do it

God's way. Doesn't matter what our society cries out, doesn't matter what some of our friends say, all that matters is what

God reveals in his word to be the right methods for worship. And there's so much here that you could really take this and make a two, three month deal out of it, which

I promise not to do. We'll get it all in today. So we won't have to do that.

Let me give you some of the forms of worship listed in the Bible. And by forms of worship, I mean literally what the people were doing if you looked at them physically, what were they doing when they were worshiping?

In 1 Kings 9 .9 and 2 Chronicles 7 .24, it says they took hold of God.

Now in some cases there, they were talking about false worship of false gods, but it says they took hold of these false gods.

And in the same sense to worship the true God, it would mean to take hold of God. In Psalm 95 .6

and Exodus 11 .8 and Isaiah 49 .23, the position was that they bowed down to the earth.

They bowed down. In Matthew 28 .9 and Matthew 28 .17,

we see that they held the feet of Jesus. So they bowed down and held his feet.

In Revelation 7 .11 and 11 .16,

they fell flat down on the ground, just totally flat on the ground in worship.

In 1 Samuel 2 .36, they crouched before him. In 2

Samuel 16 .4, they humbly beseeched, beseeching him, it says.

In 2 Samuel 9 .6, it says doing reverence to him. And then in Job 9 .13,

another case where we see the idea of worship, it uses the word stooping, stooping before God.

The actual word in the Hebrew for worship is shakal, which means literally to bow down.

And according to Unger's Bible dictionary, it means to bow down on the knees and touch the head to the ground.

Now, what group today do we still see worshiping this way on TV sometime?

Right, the Muslims. The Arab world still worships that way.

Now, let me tell you something, even though the Islam religion is, in fact, a false divergence from the true word of God, they're kind of like the

Mormons in the sense that they carry some biblical truths into their Koran. And you see, the

Jews used to do that too. In fact, if you go to the Wailing Wall today, you'll still see them sometimes in these positions.

So this is what the Bible says about how it looks when you see someone worship, at least when you look outwardly at it.

Psalm 95, six says, "'Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. "'Let us kneel before the

Lord, our maker.'" I remember one time when Charlotte and I first got saved, we wanted to hear

Dr. Criswell preach. So we drove up to Dallas First Baptist Church and it took us a while to figure out how to even get in the building.

There were so many buildings and yet they had people meeting visitors in the parking lot and ushering them to the right places.

And it was really highly organized. And we went in. One of the most unique things about it is we noticed that they had kneeling benches attached to the back of the altars, kind of like an

Episcopalian church would have. And at first it was a little uncomfortable because I'd been in some Episcopalian churches and high churches and they have those things.

And I thought, why do they have this here? And then Dr. Criswell began the service and they had a time of prayer and you could hear those things slamming down all over the auditorium and the members got on their knees before the

Lord. And I thought, well, this is a little bit different than what I experienced in the Episcopalian church

I had visited once. And they were truly in prayer before the Lord.

Now, let me discuss before we go on with this, a false form of worship.

Turn to Colossians 3 .20. Now, while you're turning there,

I wanna just make a personal statement about what I believe so that you'll know, I don't want you to read between the lines anything that's not there.

I'm not picking on the Charismatic and the Pentecostals today any more than I'm gonna pick on the

Baptists. So just don't try to categorize people in your mind as I talk because we all kind of know some of the things going on out there, but let's just do this.

Let's put everything into the thing we call the modern church. The modern, and I'm using modern in a bad sense here.

Modern in the sense that it has diverged from biblical methodology. It's not anything like the early church.

Nothing like what we find in the Bible, the modern church. And you'll find various forms of false worship.

Colossians 3 .20 says, "'Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ "'from the rudiments of the world, "'why, as though living in the world.'"

Isn't that an interesting phrase? Before we go on a little rabbit trail here. Don't you think it's interesting that Paul says, why are you acting as though you're living in the world?

Isn't that an odd phrase? Why are you acting as though you're living in this world still? And he goes on and says, are you subject to ordinances?

Touch not, taste not, handle not, do it this way. Here's how we come in and do this every

Sunday. Here's what we are supposed to do. Now, you can translate that across the board on the groups.

If you were in a Pentecostal church this morning, this is what you'd be doing. Brother Roger would come up, and as soon as he came up, he'd have his wife come up.

She wasn't in the nursery. And she would stand down here, and she'd begin to start doing like this.

Much better than ladies do, I suppose, because they always do it that way. And then Sharon, and Ann, and Diane, and Charlotte would come up and begin to do it.

And then the men would be going. I'll give you a quarter if you can find that in the

Bible, but you can find it down the street this morning. Now, then we have other categories in churches.

We have the churches that, turn in your handbook if I wanna know.

I never have liked, not even you anymore, but the same three songs every

Sunday. And prayer, offering, same thing every

Sunday. And then you've got to be out of here at 15 after 12.

Now, who am I picking on there? Ain't no need to just pick on everybody else. That's us, that's us.

Now, if I had to pick between the two, I mean, it's just my personality.

I know Sharon doesn't agree, but it's a personal thing. Both are wrong, but I would pick the mm thing, and Sharon would pick the mm for this.

And, you know, because that's just personal. And the whole thing about worship, now,

I'm not discussing praise and thanksgiving only as it relates to worship, but I'm discussing worship.

And the truth is, none of that counts. None of it does.

The way we do it doesn't count. The way they do it doesn't count. And because look what he says.

He goes on and says, now, you got your little things you tell each other you have to do. You can fit that into this touch not, taste not, and do it this way.

This is what we do every, you know, we're going to make this thing happen. All right, or we're going to keep it from happening.

Okay, either way. All right, after the commandments and doctrines of men. So we're going after traditions here.

Which things, now notice this, have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship.

Now that little phrase is an interesting phrase. What is will worship? Because he's discussing will worship and saying it's bad.

He says, it's a show as in a vain show of will worship and humility and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.

What is will worship? Well, it's interesting to look at the Greek here. It literally means the definition of this word is arbitrary and unwarranted piety.

Now that in itself is strange by today's standards because no one would say there's any such thing as unwarranted piety, but it means arbitrary.

That means you just choose when to do it. And unwarranted piety or sanctimony.

Now I had to look that one up. Been a long time since I used that word in everyday language.

And last time I called Charlotte sanctimonious, she slapped me, so I quit using it years ago.

But it means affected or hypocritical holiness. Hypocritical holiness is what sanctimonious means.

Well, these are the definitions of this phrase will worship. So it's arbitrary and affected, which means someone is causing you to do it, some human.

Some human or some tradition is causing you, you're affected by your peers and so therefore you're doing this.

What an amazing definition. I mean, it just fits what's going on all around the world.

It comes from two smaller root words. One is phthalo, which means impulse.

And the other one is thresikia, which means ceremonial observance.

So it means will worship is when we have some form of ceremonial observance by impulse.

We just, this is what it seems like we ought to do. I mean, to me, that's amazing.

And Paul is obviously saying this is not the right thing to do. This is not what worship is all about.

And yet that's exactly what was going on. Now let's look at this little phrase where he says, why do you live as though you're in the world?

In chapter three, verse one explains what he means. He says, if you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.

Have you ever gone into Revelation and watched how the creatures worship God in the heavenlies?

You can see pictures of it in the book of Revelation. Where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God, set your affection on those things, things that are above, not on things on the earth, for you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.

So we see these wrong forms of worship. We see groups of people who are worshiping in form, but God has nothing to do with it.

I had an interesting discussion with Russ, brother Russ about this. He grew up Pentecostal and all of his life he observed these things.

And when he got born again, he told me that he said, I prayed that very hour and I said, Lord, don't give me that.

And the reason he prayed that way is he saw so much fake stuff. Now he said he saw some real people too, but he saw a lot of fake stuff going on.

Now I grew up Baptist. Some of you grew up Baptist. Have you ever seen any fake stuff going on?

Never, brother Otis says. Never, he was blind to it. That's right, you usually don't see it.

That's a good point. Normally you don't, but you can look back and see it. Now this is will worship, worshiping by your own will.

Now let's talk about right worship for a few moments. Turn to Exodus 33 in verse seven.

The only way that we can please God in worship is to meet him outside the camp, to meet him outside the camp.

Exodus 33, seven, and Moses took the tabernacle. Now this is not the wilderness tabernacle that would be built later, but it is a plate, a tent probably, a large tent that was built for them to meet in.

And he took the tabernacle and pitched it outside of the camp, far off from the camp, it says.

And he called it the tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass that everyone which sought the

Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation. They had to go outside the camp and go out there if they truly sought the

Lord. It's kind of interesting as we read on here and see what happens. It says, and it came to pass when

Moses went out unto the tabernacle. And you see down at the bottom of the passage, Joshua went with him.

But Moses and Joshua went out the camp and out to the tabernacle that all the people rose up and stood every man at his tent door.

Now, if they were standing at their tent door, you tell me, did they go out of the camp or did they stay in the camp?

They stayed in the camp and they stayed at the tent door and they looked after Moses until he was gone at the tabernacle.

Now, do you think we have a problem with this in Baptist circles today? Do you think there are a lot of churches where the people really believe, maybe they've been taught this or maybe they just come to believe this, that they are supposed to watch the preacher walk with God?

They're supposed to watch the preacher get his prayers answered. They're supposed to watch the paid staff do the ministry of the church.

This is what they did. They stood at their tent door and they watched Moses and Joshua go meet with God. It wasn't the first time they had chosen this way.

The very first time they met with God, they said, oh, no, no, no, we won't go up there. You go up for us, go up for us.

Remember that? And here they do it again. And it came to pass as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle and the

Lord talked with Moses because he was one that was there. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door and all the people rose up and worshiped every man in his tent door.

Now, the scriptures had just said that everyone that sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle.

So what were they doing? Were they really worshiping? At first reading, you might think so, but they weren't in the right place, were they?

They were wishing they were in the right place because they saw God show up over there and they had stayed in the wrong place.

They stayed in the camp. Now, what is the camp? What do you think it pictures? There's an interesting place in the

New Testament where it talks about this same camp. In Hebrews 13, 10, it says, we have an altar where they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.

Those who were serving the tabernacle in the day this was written were those who were part of organized religion of the day.

They were the Jewish belief. And the scripture says, they have no right to eat at our tabernacle.

For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned outside of the camp, even in the

Old Testament. Wherefore, Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the camp.

Now, I've seen Golgotha where the cross was and it is outside of the gates of Jerusalem.

It's not part of the city. Let us therefore go forth unto him outside the camp bearing his reproach.

So I'll tell you what this pictures. This pictures the fact that you cannot worship

God in an acceptable manner if you stay inside what today's world says is accepted religion.

You gotta go outside the camp. I've been reading this delightful book on William Carey that I told you about a minute ago.

And in that day, the Church of England was the accepted church. It was a state church in England.

And anybody who was not a member of that church was frowned upon. There were times when they did more than that to them.

But I remember when Carey got born again, he didn't really exactly know why he did this, but he said he came out of that church and he joined a particular

Baptist church, which was not acceptable at all. And he related to this very passage in Hebrews 13, where it says they went outside the camp and he said,

I didn't even understand the verse, but I knew that meant that I was not to stay in the Church of England.

So I went out of that camp and went out and found a group, a small group of people who were not acceptable, mostly poor people, people who weren't in society.

And they just preached. They had an old time preaching from the word of God and they sang hymns together and psalms and new songs and heard preaching.

And that's where he went. And that's exactly what this means. So the first point of worship is you cannot worship inside the camp.

You've got to leave the camp of the organized religion of the day.

Now, in Job chapter 42, verse five and six, the verses we read when we opened, it shows the second main point of true worship.

And that is that humility is always involved. It's impossible to worship God in pride.

Job 42, five, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes have seen thee.

And that brought about the worship. Now, the third thing

I want you to notice about worship is the following verses, and I'm gonna let you pick out what you see.

There's a common trait in some of these verses. And you don't need to look all these up. You can jot them down if you want to, but just listen, because I want you to tell me the common trait that you see.

Exodus four and verse 31. And the people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.

This is when, for the first time, they really believed he was gonna take them out of Egypt. And they saw that it was gonna happen.

The next place is Exodus 12, 26. And it shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you, what mean ye by this service?

That ye shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when he smote the

Egyptians and delivered our houses, and the people bowed their head and worshiped.

And the children of Israel went away and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they. This was right before the night of the

Passover. This was the day of the Passover, the first Passover. And Moses revealed to them what

God was going to do to all the firstborn who were not in a house that was covered by the blood, and they fell down and they worshiped when they heard that.

And then in Exodus 34, in verse one, it says, and the

Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables which thou breakest.

And so Moses did this, and then he rose up early in the morning and went to Mount Sinai, and the

Lord, like the Lord had commanded him, and he took in his hand the two tables of stone, and the

Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. Isn't that interesting that the

Lord proclaimed the name of the Lord? And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the

Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, long -suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon children's children unto the third and the fourth generation.

And Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

What had just happened? God had passed by him, and the

Lord Jesus preached a sermon, and in that sermon that he preached, he proclaimed the name of the

Lord. Isn't that amazing? Now what you're gonna find as we move on into this message is you're gonna find it very difficult to find worship anywhere in the

Bible where you don't see it in conjunction either with the word of God or with preaching. I recently went to a quote praise and worship service where there was not a

Bible in the house. All they had was electric guitars and drums and people doing all this, and they did this for an hour, and then we went out.

Not one person gave a message, not one person even talked about the Lord as far as any principles from the

Bible. The Bible had nothing to do with it. You won't find that in here.

So let me go on here now and try to catch this little theme that you see. Here we see God passing by Moses and he falls down on his face.

And then Joshua 5 and verse 13, and it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went unto him and said, art thou for us or for our adversaries? And this man said, nay, but as captain of the host of the

Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship.

Now let me give you another one. Judges 7, 15. And it was so when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and the interpretation thereof,

God called him a mighty warrior and he was really a coward. And he gave him this vision, and when he understood what

God was about to do, it says that he worshiped and returned unto the host of Israel and said, arise for the

Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian. And then in 2 Samuel 12 and verse 20, right after David had been found in sin with Bathsheba and the man of God told him, your child is going to die, this happens.

David, as you know, prayed for the child and prayed and fasted, and then the child died just like God said would happen.

And then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his apparel and came into the house of the

Lord and worshiped. Then he came to his own house and when he required, they set bread before him and he did eat, he stopped his fasting.

And then in Job 1 .20, remember all that happened, Job and it says, and then Job arose, rent his mantle, shaved his head and fell down upon the ground and worshiped.

And then in 2 Kings 17 .36, but the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and stretched out arm, him shall you fear and him shall you worship and to him shall you do sacrifice.

And in a New Testament example in Matthew 14 .33, then they that were in the ship when they thought they were gonna be destroyed and Jesus comes walking on the water and calms the storm.

Then they worshiped him saying of a truth, thou art the son of God. And then

Psalm 5 .7, I'm gonna give you a terrible hint here. So if you hear this one, you'll have it figured out.

But as for me, I am come into the house in the multitude of thy mercy and in thy fear will

I worship toward thy holy temple. What's the common denominator in those verses? Fear of God.

Now, what brings that about? It's not what one might think, but most of you have lived through it.

So it's many times and you know what this is talking about. It's when you see

God's evident hand in circumstances and you recognize it. Sometimes it's when there are all kinds of dangers and God saves you from the danger.

Sometimes it's when you're in the midst of the danger, but you know God is sovereign and you know that as you would think of it, he's allowing this to happen.

He's not stopping it. Now, if you've been in Brother Otis's class, you know it goes beyond that.

He's in control. And so what do you do when these seemingly bad things come into your life?

You know who's in control, what can you do? You better bow down and worship because the other thing you'll do is question him.

That's very dangerous. That's what Job's wife did, but Job didn't do. Now, turn to Psalm 138 verse two.

So we see now that worship is accompanied by a fear of God, which brings about humility and it can never be done along the lines of the way the current popular religion is doing it.

The fourth thing that we see is the word of God and how it's involved in worship.

I want you to notice this in Psalm 138 too. I will worship toward the holy temple, thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and because of thy truth.

For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. One of the most remarkable verses in the whole

Bible is the concept that God himself magnified his word above the name

Jehovah. Now, in the modern practice of praise and worship, all you hear is

Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah. Oh Lord, Lord this, Lord that.

But if you don't accompany that with the word of God and a reading, sometimes it's a simple reading.

In fact, if you'll go through and read the great sermons in the Bible, you'll be amazed at how simple they are.

Usually what they are is a going over of the history of God's people and they just rename things they've heard a million times.

And even Solomon, when he dedicated the temple, he goes through and he talks about the history of Israel and what

God has done. God's hand in the history of Israel, God's sovereign power in the history of Israel, his salvation from Egypt and from the world and slavery.

And the same story is told again and again, the story of how God had delivered them. It's a story about what

God has done. It's a story about who God is. And this is always what brings about worship.

And yet today you don't put that into it, you just worship without it. And that's a form of worship, it's not true.

Because I dare say that after this study, I've come to really be convinced that I was right in what

I already believed is that worship is a response of God's people to the awesomeness of God and their awareness of his awesome being and his presence.

But we see that his word is magnified above his name. So before we go and praise his name, we need to hear the word.

And it is the word of God as the Holy Spirit uses that in our heart that shows us his face spiritually.

And when we see his face, we bow down before him. First Samuel 3 .1,

and the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli, and the word of the Lord was precious in those days.

There was no open vision. Now you have to be a little careful with that verse because it makes it sound like that they felt like that the word of the

Lord was precious. And really you would think that today, wouldn't you? With six of them on a coffee table and all over the house, one in every glove compartment and Bibles everywhere, the word is precious.

But I'll tell you what the word means. It's an old English word. It meant that you couldn't find them.

You couldn't find the true word of God. Oh, you had people proclaiming things and saying this is the word of God, but it was precious just like bread would be precious if you didn't have any.

And so the word of God, you couldn't find the true word of God in this day, and therefore there was no open vision.

It meant God wasn't working in his own men. The men of God didn't have any leadership. They didn't have any vision.

They didn't know God's mind. They couldn't preach the truth because they didn't know God's truth.

So it proves in an indirect manner that the word of God has to be there and be understood properly before there can be any praise.

Jeremiah 7, two says, stand in the gate of the Lord's house, proclaim there this word and say, hear the word of the

Lord, all ye Judah. Then enter in at the gates to worship the Lord. Is that clear?

Do you see the progression? First of all, stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim his word, and then tell all the people, hear

God's word. It's not enough for me just to proclaim it. You need to have ears that are hearing. You need to not be thinking about the cares of the world this morning, not thinking about what's gonna happen this afternoon, what's gonna go on this week.

You need to hear the word of the Lord, and it's my job to tell you that, or whoever's job that's up here to tell you that, and then enter into the gates and worship.

Let me just ask you a question after reading that verse. Do you think the proper form or Bible methodology for worship should be to have the girls dancing and the music going on at the first of the service, like is always done in this country?

You come in and you open the service with your praise group, and then you do that, and then you worship, and then you have the word of God preached.

Is that how it was done here? Yes or no? It wasn't done that way? How was it done here?

The word of God was proclaimed, and the people were told to hear the word of God.

As they heard the word of God, it sank into their hearts and did a work in their hearts, and then what was the result of it?

The response of the heart to the presence of an awesome God was proper worship.

That's the only way it can be done properly. Let's look at it in the New Testament in,

I'm sorry, I got one more in Jeremiah. Let me go to Jeremiah 26 too. Thus saith the

Lord, stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the

Lord's house, speak all the words that I commanded thee to speak unto them, diminish not one word.

That's powerful. Do you understand that that tells us that we are to preach everything

God says to preach before we even think about worship? Matthew 15, nine says, but in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Do you see how important the word is? If you come into a situation where in the church, the preaching that is done is the same kind of preaching that's popular among men in the world, in that society, and they're preaching doctrines, they're saying phrases and catch phrases that they've heard every other preacher say, and that's what you get is like one verse in a long story.

Will that set you up to worship? No, it says they worship in vain that are in situations like that.

They do the outer form of worship, but it's in vain because it's not from a heart that's been stirred up by the coals of fire that the

Lord puts in your heart. Jeremiah said, I've got fire in my bones. That causes worship.

Nehemiah nine, and starting with verse one, it says now in the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting and with sackcloths and earth upon them, and the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers.

That's not done in the church today. Most churches just bring the world right into it, and stood,

I couldn't believe. Is that a true thing? I mean, was that newspaper you were reading where it said they paid 10 bucks to get people to come to church?

What kind of people would you get if you did that? Well, yeah, but I'm talking worse than that.

You get spiritual bums. You get lost people because you don't have to pay one of God's children to come to church.

You can't keep him away, all other things being equal. Now he says here, and the seed of Israel separated themselves from the bums, spiritual bums, lost the goats, and stood and confessed their sins and their iniquities of their fathers.

It wasn't enough for them. They got right, and they said, man, my father was bad too. Let me name his sins. Isn't that what you say when people ask you what you've been doing upstairs all night, praying for your sins?

But then look what they did. They stood up in their place and read in the book.

That's verse three. They read in the book. And you know what?

They read in the book of the law of God what? One fourth part of the day.

I have upon occasion been criticized for long sermons, and I'm proud of them now.

I just, the only thing that makes me upset is I didn't, they weren't long enough because the fourth part of a day is what they should be.

And another fourth part of the day, they confessed and worshiped. Now, if you put those two fourths together, how much of a day you got?

A third of a day, that's right. Probably by the Jews reckoning, it would be what we'd call a third of the day.

Now, I'm gonna hate to say this, but the fact is, unless we are willing to stay here and hear the word of God preached where the entire message could be preached instead of saving half for next,

I mean, a fourth of it for next week, a fourth for the next Sunday, a fourth for next Sunday, like that. And unless we are willing that when that, now it may not take a fourth, it doesn't always take a fourth of a day.

I can read you sermons in the Bible where it was over probably in 10 minutes. Everybody goes, amen. Well, y 'all are asleep, you didn't amen that one.

But the point is, the message has to be finished. And when the message is finished, you have to be willing to stay because that's when the good part starts.

That's when the worship starts because by that time, God has touched your hearts, our hearts.

It might even make the preacher preach another message. But everybody, when they see

God by faith, it gets quiet. The singing is over with.

The praising, now, I see, I'm not against praising and thanksgiving being done at the first of the service because I'm not talking about praise and thanksgiving.

I'm talking about worship this morning. The worship comes at the end and it is a response to what

God has done in your hearts. I really believe that's why Baptist churches have the altar call and they don't even know it.

They think they're doing it to get people saved or they think they're doing it because it's tradition. But let me give you one good reason for it.

It gives a time of a few minutes of quietness when the sermon's over. When you can examine your hearts.

If you wanted to worship, you could come right down here and bow your knee to the ground and put your forehead on that bench and worship.

Then there's nothing wrong with that. Fact is what should be happening. But not if I say it has to happen because then it would be a form.

Tricky, isn't it? They read from the book for a fourth part of the day and another fourth part of the day, they confess their sins and then worship the

Lord, their God. John 4 .24 says, God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

Well, I think we see that worship is a lot different than the way the church of today portrays it.

Any church, doesn't matter which one you pick. The charismatics are confused in the Pentecostal because they think praise and worship,

I mean, praise and thanksgiving is worship and it's not. They think jumping around and dancing and playing cymbals and tabares and all that is worship and it's not.

It is praise if it's done from a proper heart. The camp are beginning to omit the word of God completely and doing little plays, they'll do plays or they'll tell stories or they'll just leave it all out and have a musical or they'll just do the dancing and the singing and the music and then get real quiet and raise their hands in the air and they don't include the word of God.

And I find it hard to find many places in the Bible where the worship preceded the word.

It always comes after because it's the word of God that God uses to speak to hearts and his

Holy Spirit will take the word of God and it becomes the living word of God and he'll place it in our hearts and cause us to see the face of God in our own way.

And then we fall before him in worship. There's one passage in one of the revivals in the

Old Testament and I have several examples here but I wanna read you this one this morning.

Turn to 2 Chronicles 29, 35. The last point that I wanna make this morning is that worship doesn't always happen.

It should. But you know, in our services, there are some services where you feel the heavy, like the, just, you know that, as they used to say in old time meetings,

God showed up. You know that God blessed that meeting with his spirit and his presence and you might have wanted to shout.

You might have wanted to get up and run around the pew. Brother Otis, if you ever wanna do that, it'd be okay because I know if you do it, it'll be real.

Most of you, many of you were here. I'm gonna give you time to find 2 Chronicles 29, okay?

Most of you were here about five or six years ago when I went to an old time Baptist meeting in,

I believe it was North, let's see, North Carolina, I believe, or was it South Carolina, Charlotte?

I don't remember. I believe it was North Carolina. They spent the whole week preaching against tongue speaking and preaching against faith healing and all the

Pentecostal things going on, the fake stuff, they preached against it all week. They were true

Baptists is what I'm trying to point out. They were not Charismatics, they weren't Pentecostals, they were

Baptists, that's all they'd ever been. And the difference was a lot of them were saved. But something happened, the thing started out on a

Monday and it was great preaching and wonderful music and the people that did the singing were walking with the

Lord and you could just tell it by their countenance and it was powerful music. And even the choir, the people in the choir, you could tell they'd spent many hours in prayer before this meeting, that they were consecrated people and you could just tell it.

And on Thursday night, nothing really different happened. Nothing different was done, the choir came up and they were casual, they just came in with, some of them came straight from work.

Some of them would take their little children up in the choir loft with them, let them sit with mom and dad while they sang because they were just gonna sing a few hymns and then go back out and hear the preaching.

And I vividly remember about the third or fourth note of the first song that the choir began to sing, something happened in that room.

And it happened a long time before anybody could cause anything to happen. Happened a long time before any lively music was played.

It was about the third or fourth note of the hymn and it was an old fashioned Baptist hymn, wasn't anything lively like everybody thinks you have to do, it was just right out of the hymn book.

And I noticed a little child about five years old sitting with her mom and a big old tear started coming down her cheek.

She's not old enough to even know religious stuff, I mean, she didn't know what's going on, but a big tear started coming down her cheek and then she just started crying uncontrollably and just trying to hold it back, but just sobbing like that.

And in the room all around me, people began to stand up and cry.

And praise God and thank God. And now

I kid brother Otis, but you guys, you've known, those of you who've known me forever, you know that I'm just not the, it's not my personality to dance.

I mean, this, I did this because it was choreographed into the message this morning is the only reason I did it. That's not part of my personality.

And you talk about somebody that would never fake something like that, it's me. But I found myself wanting to go out of that building and get all by myself alone with the

Lord. I found myself crying and the next minute I was literally laughing and it scared me to death because I'd heard about this popular thing called the gift of laughter that had been going around the country.

It came out of Canada and it made me think of that and I thought this is weird, but I just had joy so much in my heart that it just bubbled out and I couldn't stop it.

And then I'd find myself crying again. And then I found myself praying they'd hurry up and finish this song because I thought it was the song, but it just got worse when the preacher got up and started preaching.

An old black preacher from the area preached a message. And then the pastor talked for a while and then another preacher got up and preached.

And then this little family got up and sang this song about how Satan thought that when they nailed

Jesus to the cross, he had won. And then all of a sudden when Jesus came out of that grave, he just started trembling.

And she'd do her hands like that and sing with all of her heart. And it was the most amazing service

I've ever been in. I don't know how many hours it lasted, but I guarantee you that preacher didn't stop it.

He just let it go till the time when the altars were filled with people and that's when it got quiet.

And that's when the worship started. It was the most amazing thing. I called my wife and one of our babies was a brand new baby,

I guess it might've been, had to be been. And I said, I'm buying you a ticket and you're flying out here tomorrow.

Because if you don't come see this, you're gonna think I've gone crazy when I try to explain this to you. You won't believe it, nobody in our church will believe it.

And she said, you know, I can't come out there. There's no way that I can come out there with this little baby.

And so she didn't come and I'm glad she didn't because Friday night, it didn't happen. It didn't happen.

Same singing, same choir, same preachers, same people. Now let me read that in 2

Corinthians 29, 30, I'm sorry, 2 Chronicles 29, 35. And also the burnt offerings were in abundance with the fat of the peace offerings and the drink offerings for every burnt offering.

So the service of the house of the Lord was set in order and Hezekiah rejoiced and all the people rejoiced that God had prepared the people for the thing was done suddenly.

And if you go back and you start about verse 28 in that chapter, you'll read about the most amazing, actually go all the way to verse three in chapter 29, you read about the most amazing revival.

And they ended up worshiping the Lord and I'm gonna read the whole story at this point. But at the end, they thanked

God that He had prepared their hearts because this thing happened suddenly. It wasn't something they could really prepare for.

And that really is the way it is. You can't make it happen every Sunday, but it ought to happen some

Sundays. And I don't know why it doesn't happen every Sunday, I can only say that it's because God is sovereign.

And there are times when He just decides to come down and just really put His arms around a congregation or around you individually, you might be out in the field by yourself when this happens.

But when it happens, you're gonna wanna get out by yourself and fall down on your face. You might be surrounded by 700 excited

Baptist people and you wanna get out in a field by yourself and just fall down on your face and be quiet before the

Lord. That's when you know, worship has arrived. Let's stand and have prayer together.

Dear Father, we thank you for your word and how it is the light that guides us through all generations, through all the different ways different societies change and move and change their view of religion and how it ought to be.

And yet your word stands true through all of time and eternity. And you've shown us the proper methods behind how to worship you and what you are pleased with.

And you've shown us that the main thing that you're pleased with is that we worship you when you move upon our hearts.

And Father, help us do what we can do. Help us to sing praises to your name.

Help us to have a thankful heart and a voice of thanksgiving unto you as the services begin.

Help us to preach the word with a true heart and filled with the

Holy Spirit and help us to hear in the same manner. And Father, should you choose to come down upon the place and move and rend our hearts, help us not to be afraid to fall before you in worship.

And Father, we do pray for times like that in our church because it's times like that that help us to abhor ourselves in the right way and to see how frail we are, how far from the mark we are sometimes in our walks.

And it causes us to draw very nigh to you. And Father, we need that so that we can walk with you in true fellowship and in power and in compassion.

So we pray that you'll move in our hearts as we walk before you in our generation and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.