Restoring True Worship — Shane Idleman

A message that's been burning on my heart all week, because God is really just getting my heart in the right spot. The title of the message tonight is Restoring True Worship, Restoring True Worship. And I know a lot of you people are here tonight are serious because it's very cold and the Dodgers are playing.

And anytime that happens in Los Angeles, many people stay at home, but to get this many people out here, because you are desperate for more of God, but you need to hear from God. That's why we're here.

Hope for America Through Humility and Repentance

Folks, I don't know about you, but I need to hear from God in these dire times. There's so much fake news, there's so much falsehood that the church is divided, the wheat and the tares are being separated, the sheep and the goat are being separated, and your Christian friends are doing this, and you can't believe that you're doing this, and there's a divide in our nation, because I believe that God is stirring the pot, and with a true Christian, please stand up, not now, I'm just saying that, but would we please stand up, and when we make a difference, would we be broken and humble before God?

Because the question is always asked of me, and I don't know why, many of you know I write articles for the Christian Post, and Charisma News, and The Stream, and Christian Headlines, and God has really exploded this ministry, and so we get tons of emails in, and a lot of people are asking, Shane, is there any hope for America?

Is there any hope for America? And you know why I believe that there is hope for America? Because I don't trust in man, I trust in God Almighty, and He has called this nation, from the founding of our nation, and the Mayflower Compact that said, for the glory of God, and to the advancement of the Christian faith, and from the Constitution, and from the court system, relying on God, and God Almighty, and quoting scriptures.

It was built on God's word. You might not know this, but did you know that the Webster's Dictionary used to define words with scripture? The 1828 edition defines words for our language with the scripture, with God's word.

But my encouragement is this, God often breaks a heart before He rebuilds it, and He often humbles a nation before He exalts it again. And America is getting in the spot now of where we need deep repentance.

And often, I believe we can read in the Old Testament, and it often parallels with where we are today. Now I know I don't wanna take scripture out of context, but the principle often applies, that if God's people humble themselves, and seek His face, and pray, really pray, and turn from their sin, that God says, I will hear that heart cry, and I will heal that land.

Josiah and the Recovery of God's Word

Now I'm going to be quickly in 2 Kings 23, because I wanna hear more worship. I don't know about you. But 2 Kings 23, restoring true worship. I need to set the stage for you. There was a lot of wicked kings before this king came on the scene.

He became a king at age eight. Can you believe that? There is hope for our young adults. His name was Josiah, and he was, before him was Amnon, and Manasseh, and these wicked kings. And the Bible says, then they did wickedness in the sight of God.

They did evil in the sight of God. They turned from God. But then every now and then, you would get a glimmer of hope, and a king like Josiah would be raised up, and God would use him to help turn that nation back, and restore true worship.

Now when I talk about this word worship, I'm not just talking about singing, because that's an aspect of worship. But real worship in the context of scripture, is a lifestyle of worship. A heart set ablaze for God.

It comes out in singing, but it also comes out in living, and restoring that worship. And I like this story, because the Bible was lost for many years. And they were cleaning the temple, and the priest, I believe his name was Hilkiah, or something like that.

They found the Bible. They found the covenant, the law of the covenant. It wasn't like your Bible. It was a scroll. And they found it, and they brought it to the king. And the king began to read the word of God, and was convicted, and tore his clothes, and cried out, and said, oh we have drifted.

We need to get back to God. And so that's the stage that I'm reading from. So once the king saw the word of God, he saw how far they drifted, it says in 2 Kings 23. Now the king sent to them together, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

So he said, go get all the people, much in a setting like this. Go get all the people. Get the priest, my representatives, and get my prophets, my spokesmen, and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing.

He read the word of God in their hearing. And that's what we need to get back to. I'm tired of people giving their opinions from the pulpit. We need to get back to the clarity, and the purity, and the sound doctrine of God's word.

Just speak the word of God, and let it change the hearts. I like what Spurgeon said. You don't need to defend the Bible any more than you need to defend a lion. And just open the cage and let it loose.

Reading the word of God again, the power of the word of God. Why is that? Because the word of God is living and powerful. It divides, it pierces, it convicts. And when you read it, it's living, and it brings life to the deadness of the human heart.

And it convicts, and it transforms. And so he read the word of God in the hearing of the people. He read all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the house of the Lord. So I just got three points.

I know that's hard for me, I usually have 10. But I summed it up to just three. Number one, restoring true worship. If you want, let me just encourage you, if you need to restore true worship in your home, in your personal walk with God, maybe there's pastors, a lot of pastors have been following the ministry, and they're listening right now.

If you need to restore worship in your church, if you're dead, if you're barren, if God seems distant, these three things will get you back on the right track. Josiah, in order to restore true worship to the nation of Israel, I believe Josiah was actually in Judah.

Israel was the northern kingdom, Judah was the southern kingdom. They were divided. God gave them over to a debased and corrupted mind because they begin to drift from him, and they begin to worship idols.

They would actually place their children on the hot arms, they would cook, they'd have a fire right here, and there'd be a statue of Bel or Molech, and the fire would be heating the arms of this altar, this brazen altar, this idolatry, and they would lay their child, their little infant on the arms of Molech, and that child would be killed as a sacrifice to the goddess or God of fertility.

Oh, Shane, how could they do that? Well, it's no different than Planned Parenthood, folks. It's no different than what we're doing in our nation. Oh, it breaks my heart every time I think about how wicked we've become.

Restoring Worship by Elevating God's Word

But what he did, he restored the word of God. He brought back the word of God. He read it to the people. He said, this is what we're going back to. So the only way there is hope for our nation, there's only way for churches to open up again and be the church is to restore the word of God.

Let the pulpits be aflame with righteousness again and holiness. Let the preaching come through pastors who are broken and humble. Elevate the word of God again. Don't apologize for it. Don't apologize for the word of God.

You elevate the word of God and you preach it. Paul said, because the time will come, Timothy, when they will not endure sound doctrine, they will look for teachers who will tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.

So in order to restore true worship, you've got to elevate the word of God again. What fascinates me is how did they find the Bible? How did they find the parchment of this covenant that God made with Moses?

And it had been lost, they don't know for how long, years hidden in the temple. Here's what happens in our own lives. Compromise enters in. We begin to compromise. And what they would do is they would put certain things in the temple and they would put other things in the temple and they begin to compromise and God's word was pushed out, pushed aside and was hidden.

And that can happen in our own lives. We can begin to compromise and bring in things that aren't good and aren't godly. And as that compromise begins to come into our life, the word of God begins to be stifled.

Remember that, I've told you many times before, if you attend West Side Christian Fellowship, that the devil never pushes you off the cliff. What does he do? He takes you down one step at a time. One compromise at a time, one wrong choice at a time and then before you know it, you're at the bottom looking up saying, how did I fall so far?

That's why the Bible's clear that you root out sin at its conception. Root out sin at its conception. Don't let it grow because as sin grows, it will destroy us from the inside out. So restoring true worship begins with restoring the word of God.

That means preaching the difficult truths, amen? The difficult, it's okay to talk about the difficult things. A true church, a true church that is called by God and built by God. When Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail.

Yes, we love grace and we love mercy like amazing grace says. It's grace that's brought me here thus far and it'll be grace that takes me home. But I also have to talk about the cross of Christ and repentance and the blood that was shed for me.

At Calvary, you have to talk about the difficult things. There is a judgment coming. There is a day of reckoning and there is a repentance that must happen. The power is in the truth of God's word. God forbid when we cherry pick and we candy coat, it's not, the word of God is not a buffet line.

Oh, I'll take this. I'll take the cheesecake and the steak. I don't want the broccoli. I probably would, right? The broccoli and the hummus and the plant-based and the whole foods and those kind of things.

But most people don't, that's a rabbit trail. That's from my health expo. We'll hold on to that till January. But we have to restore the word of God, the difficult things. Did you know that's what's happening right now?

You'll see in the political things. I'm not gonna get into all that. But we're so worried now that something doesn't offend somebody. Well, that might offend them. You know, that might offend. Shane, that's pretty narrow.

That might offend. Did you know God's word never says, don't worry about don't offending man? He says, don't offend God. That's our fault. Lord, does this offend you? Because when I don't offend God, I will offend man.

The message of the gospel is offensive. When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life, nobody comes to the Father except through me, that's pretty narrow. That's pretty offensive. That's why the darkness hates the truth of the gospel.

Conversion, Holiness, and the Transforming Light of Christ

And it will offend. I think I shared with you guys last week or two weeks ago when my mom just passed away, I spoke at her memorial service right here a couple weeks ago. I left her, but she would really offend me because she would take that Bible and she would put it right on top of my Metallica CDs.

ACDC, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, right? I just love that darkness. The light is offensive to me. And then when the gospel changes your heart and Christ saves you and changes you and sets you free, now I wanna put on worship because now the heart's been changed.

The light gravitates, the things of God gravitate towards the things of light and the darkness is pushed out. So you must restore the word of God in your life. Folks, if you have not been reading God's word, get back into it.

Live in that book more than you live on Netflix. Get in God's book more than Facebook. I know these are cute little sayings, but they are absolutely true. The word of God gives you life. You're built up your strength and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed.

How, Paul? By the renewing of your mind through the word of God. So number two, are you ready for number two? Let me keep reading. Then the king stood by a pillar. Now it's interesting. I don't wanna get too much into this, but I just thought all week, he stood by this huge pillar.

The Church as a Pillar of Truth

I can picture him probably at the temple. And I was reminded of Timothy when Paul said, Timothy, the church is to be the pillar and the foundation of all truth. The church, the true church of God is supposed to be a pillar.

The society might not like you. Political parties might not like you. Sometimes different people might not like you, but you are a pillar holding up the truth. You elevate the truth. You point people to the truth.

We are called to be pillars who support the truth of God's word. And the king did something very interesting. He made a covenant before the Lord to follow him with all of his heart. And when you go before God, see, we've really missed this.

Sometimes we don't understand Old Testament typology or imagery, but when they would make a covenant, they would actually call it cutting a covenant. And it was very serious. God would often use the blood of animals and the shedding of blood there as a covenant.

I remember when God made that covenant with Abram, there was a she-goat, a heifer, a ram, a turtle dove, and a pigeon. All five of those animals were sacrificed. Abram had a dream and three of them were cut down the middle and God said, I'm making a covenant with you like a blood covenant.

And so this king stood before God and he said, God, I make a covenant before you that we will turn back to you, we will worship you. So don't tell me leadership doesn't matter, politics doesn't matter.

You better wake up, leadership matters because what direction a nation is going is very important. Leadership often determines the course of a nation if that leadership is good and godly in our churches.

So he made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in the book and all the people took a stand for the covenant.

Renewing Commitment to God Through Repentance

So here's my point too. You must restore, in order to restore true worship, you must restore your commitment to God. Folks, there's too many people on the fence. Ah, I'll live for Christ on Sunday, but here comes Monday.

And they kind of go back and forth and I'm reminded of Elisha when he called down fire on Mount Carmel. He said, how long will you waver between two opinions? If God be God, follow him, but if Baal be God, follow him.

And there comes a point where you must restore that commitment to God. That's why I love what Kim's saying when she said, there's a time, sing out to God and say, I surrender. God, I surrender this tonight.

I surrender my addiction. I surrender my lust. I surrender my anger, my arrogance. God, I put everything on the altar. I'm renewing my covenant and my commitment to you. Do you know that's what the prodigal son did?

Did he not? The prodigal son, he was eating with the pigs. And he said, the Bible says he came to himself. He came to me, he renewed that commitment. So you have to restore the word of God in your life, in your family.

You have to restore the commitment that you made to God. Restoring that commitment. I'm gonna use a word here that's not used a lot. Are you ready for it? Repentance. It's okay to preach. Jesus said, go and preach repentance.

Peter said, repent and be saved. Paul says, repentance is the key that unlocks the kingdom. Repent, repenting is changing your mind about sin and turning completely to God. Repentance often precedes deliverance.

If you, throughout, especially the Old Testament, but of course the New Testament, any time God would deliver a people, it often was preceded. Repentance came first. They repented and God delivered. They repented and God heard.

They repented and God went back and saved his people. Repentance opens the door of communication. And I will submit to you tonight, if you are here tonight and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the only way that you'll know him is via repentance, faith and trust in Christ and you repent of your sin.

Josiah's Weeping and the Call to National Repentance

And this king did something amazing. He wept. I think he was 20 years old by this time. He wept and he tore his clothes and he grieved. And that's my call. That's my cry today for America. Oh God, would you rend the heavens as we rend our garments?

And what they would used to do in the Old Testament is they would rip their shirt or they would rip their clothing as a sign of disgust. And they say, oh God, we cry out and we repent. And that's why when you read that famous verse that we love so often, it makes more sense.

Oh God, would you rend the heavens? Basically, God, would you rip open the heavens and let your glory fall down? Let your renewal fall down. Let the waves of revival fall down on a dry and parched land.

God, we are hungry for more of you. We are desperate for more of you. Oh God, if you don't move, we are lost. Our children are lost. Our grandchildren are lost. God, if you do not move, we are desperate for you.

You've gotta get desperate sometimes, folks. Come on, you get desperate and you call the unemployment line? You get desperate when your TV isn't working. I can't get this internet to work. Get desperate for God if he has any hope for our nation and for our families and our churches.

Removing Ungodly Influences

And the third point to restore true worship that is so important that King Josiah did. In order to restore something, you often have to remove something. To restore something, you often have to remove something.

And I often tell people when I help them with health and fitness and weight loss, when you get all that junk out of the refrigerator, don't just have an empty refrigerator. Put the good stuff in, right?

Go through the pantry, get rid of the bad stuff, put the good, so you have to replace it. Same thing in our spiritual walks. In order to restore something, you have to remove something else. So here's what the king did.

Imagine, this is the house of God, this is the temple. The king commanded, he said, go and bring out of the temple, basically go get all the filth out of the temple. I don't even know how this happened.

It's sad that God's house was desecrated. God's house was put on the back burner and people didn't even care. They would bring in false worship to God. So he said, go into the temple right now, remove the filth, take out all the articles that were made for Bel and Asherah.

Asherah was the female goddess of fertility. Bel was the male figure there. And they had these articles for them in the temple of God. And they said, go remove all the things that are in there that are not of God, burn them outside of Jerusalem.

Then he also removed the idolatrous priests. I love this. He got rid of the fake spokesmen for God. There were false prophets in that time. And did you know there's false prophets today? Uh-oh, Shane, how do I know?

It's actually not that hard. You will never hear what I just said the last 20 minutes from a false prophet. They will tell you, peace, peace. Peace, peace, it's okay. God loves our sin. God's a doting grandfather.

He's a cosmic ball of love. He just loves us. False prophet. He told Jeremiah, I didn't even send these false prophets, but they ran. I didn't even speak to them, but they spoke. But had they truly stood in the counsel of my word, they would in turn my entire nation back to me.

Is not my word like a hammer, like a hammer that breaks, like a fire that devours? But you have perverted the words of the living God by not warning the people. False prophets are more worried about being liked than being truthful.

And so Josiah got rid of these false prophets, these false priests. Then he, I love what he did here. He tore down the ritual booths of the perverted persons. I'm not gonna get into it here, but there were areas there in the temple where perversion took place.

And Josiah tore those down. He also broke down the high places at the gates. And he defiled, check this out. He defiled, basically he desecrated Topeth that no man might take his son and his daughter and have them pass through the fires of Molech anymore.

Basically he removed Planned Parenthood. They would allow their children to be sacrificed on the burning hot altar of Molech. While the children would cry out, they would chant, the drums would be so loud as not to hear the children.

Jane, I don't wanna hear this. I know, I don't either, but you need to hear it because God wants us to understand what's at risk. What are we praying for? What are we interceding for? Because the nation of America has the blood of innocent children on her hands and it requires deep repentance.

Oh, Shane, why are you getting biblical, political? I'm not getting political, I'm getting biblical. I will not shut my mouth. God did not tell me to shut my mouth. He actually told me to open my mouth.

He said, Shane, open your mouth and preach what I preach to you. Preach what I tell you. What I tell you in the darkness, in that morning time with me, you proclaim it from the mountaintops. So the final thing is you have to remove ungodly influences, remove the ungodly influences in your life.

The old Puritans used to say, be killing sin or sin be killing you. I don't know about the English on that, but it sounds pretty good. Whatever is there to take you down, what is your Delilah tonight?

What is the enemy sent in to destroy you, to take you out? What evil influence, what relationship? I mean, our viewing habits as a nation are pathetic. Remove ungodly influences. We must be relentless in our pursuit of God, ruthless and rooting out sin and quick to repent and seek a renewed fellowship with God.

Listen, God is a loving, merciful God, but he says, son, daughter, remove that sin from your life. Come out from among them and be holy and be set apart for me. God isn't looking for perfect people. He's looking for people who wanna follow hard after him and remove the things that are pulling them away from him.

Seeking God Wholeheartedly

And then it says of Josiah, now before him, there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his might, and to restore worship again, you must get back to seeking God.

Seek God with all your heart. Now, I hate to be repetitive here. If you've been coming to Westside for a while, you're gonna know that one of my favorite Hebrew words in the Hebrew language is bakash, bakash, that word seek.

Seek, and here's why. I think some of you need to hear this, who haven't heard me talk about this before. Bakash, when it says to seek the Lord with all your heart, it means to search out by any method necessary.

Search out for any method necessary, specifically in worship or prayer, to beg. So it says whatever is necessary, you cry out to God, you seek him with all your heart, nothing else matters until you find him.

I know you want the analogy again, so I'll give it to you one more time. I'm gonna take a break the rest of this year on it. It's only two months left. But how many of you have kids here tonight? That's a lot of people.

What about if your little five-year-old disappeared? Would you say, well, we'll look for him later, let Shane finish and Kim do another few songs? Think about that, what would you do? Oh, they must be, no, you would, everything would stop.

You're no longer hungry, you don't have to use a restroom, you could care less what I'm saying. You would get up and you would cry out. Where are they? I can't find them, can you help me find them? Where is my son?

Where is my daughter? Nothing else matters until I find that child. That's the same word here, folks, in the Hebrew. Nothing else matters until I cry out to God. I might fast all day, I might pray, I might seek him, I might turn off my television, nothing else matters until I find God.

That's what it means to seek him with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your soul. It's begging for mercy. It's begging for mercy, and I wish more churches and Christians would do this right now in these dire times.

Intercession for the Nation

Lord, our nation needs you. Because the reality is that God's justice must be satisfied, correct? We all know that, God's justice, his judgment must be satisfied. Here's where, here's how his justice is satisfied.

It's either satisfied by judgment or by intercession. Thank God for intercession. Did you know that God calls all of us here tonight to intercede on behalf of our nation? Intercede for our nation, to intercede, God said to Ezekiel, I sought for a man from among them.

Can you imagine him coming here today and God saying, I look for a man from among them, throughout this whole vast amount of people, I look for a man from among them who would build a wall and stand in the gap before me that I might not destroy the land, but I found no one.

See, God's looking for those who are interceded, those who will cry out and call out to him. When Abram, when Abram interceded, Lot was saved. When Moses interceded, the children of Israel were saved.

When Elijah interceded and he cried out on Mark, Carmel, oh God, I intercede between the prophets of Baal and the true God, when he interceded, the people repented. Oh, what about when Jesus interceded?

Jesus interceded on your behalf, if you know him tonight, when I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. I am the intercessory lamb, I am the land that was slain before the foundation of the world.

My blood was shed that you might have redemption and salvation. Jesus interceded, he bridged that gap. So I wanted to end our final night here, as always. We've had about 150 baptisms in the last few months of people coming back to know the Lord.

The Broken Sinner and the Perfect Savior

You know, you see a pastor up here at the pulpit and somehow we get elevated and people think that we're special and we must have it all together. But I'm a broken man with a broken past, with a broken life.

But I know a perfect, whole, complete, untarnished, faultless, flawless Savior who has set me free. That's why we're here tonight. That's why I'm here tonight. That's the only reason I'm here tonight is God took the least likely.

God took someone who was broken and hurting and I simply cried out to God. God is no respecter of persons, he's a respecter of principles. He doesn't care if it's Shane Eidelman or Sarah next door, as long as they cry out to God.

So if you came here tonight, I wanna challenge two groups of people. If you've been living on the fence, if you're that prodigal son, you're that wayward daughter, God loves you enough to wake me up at three, four, every single morning this week and plead and intercede for you tonight.

Because listen, we are coming into a time where the gospel might be silenced in America. You get the wrong person on November 4th, they will try to shut down the gospel, trust me. Of course you can't shut down the gospel.

Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail. But I think God wants us to have the freedom to worship, the freedom to preach the whole gospel and the truth to lead people to him.

How will they know if a preacher is not sent? How will they hear if no one comes to them? So if you've been drifting, if you've been just halfway there, if you haven't really been serving God, I wanna challenge you tonight, make that recommitment and get baptized.

The water's warm, don't worry about that, but even if it was cold, listen, I would go into a tub of ice and I would walk home for my savior. He hung on that cross on Calvary naked, shedding that blood for you and for me.

Salvation Through Faith in Christ

And one verse that always sticks out that I sometimes cry when I read in my Bible that says, when you are yet a sinner, when you're still sinning, Christ died for you. So when I was driving around this town, I was born at the hospital just down the street.

I was driving around this town cursing God, blaspheming God, living for the devil. That's why I love that song, I'm on a highway to hell. I would blast that thing and I would be drunk as I can get. It wasn't but for the grace of God to save me.

And God can do the same for you. And then finally, of course, the person here tonight that you don't know who Jesus is. You've heard his name, you go to church, maybe now and then you own a Bible, your parents are Christians, you're raised in a Christian home, you go to Christian school, none of that matters.

What matters is where is your heart? Have you repented of your sin and believed in Jesus as Lord and Savior of your life? Do you know without a shadow of doubt that as soon as you leave here, as soon as you die, that you will be with God?

If you don't know that, well, you can have that assurance tonight. The Bible says, confess that Christ is Lord and to believe that he has raised him from the dead and he has paid that price of sin for you, he has interceded and you shall be saved.

What a wonderful promise.