- 00:00
- It's good to be able to be with you again this morning and the
- 00:06
- Lord has continued to to bless us with life and breath and all things and those all things include not only the material and physical things that we can see and feel and touch but the the invisible things of of God that come to us through the the spiritual blessings that come through us to us through our blessed
- 00:31
- Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and how God not only has forgiven us our sins but but has forgotten all that would have come our way as far as the judgment and the and the wrath of God that was abiding upon us but God in his mercy spared us has called out a people to himself and we're we're privileged to be able to gather again in this place the first day of the week and what a great way to begin the week with the people of God who have have a desire to come before the
- 01:09
- Lord and to be taught and helped and encouraged and and just to open the book and to see what
- 01:15
- God would have for us this morning and of course it would be it would not be right for us to to come to the word of God and not ask the
- 01:22
- Lord's blessings and ask the Lord to teach us so let's pray together our
- 01:27
- Father in heaven we come before you once again and what a privilege it is and we don't come lightly we come as the word of God instructs us to come in the fear of the
- 01:40
- Lord we come oh God to with a desire to ask you to please remember us once again you have been faithful just on so many occasions and the songwriter points us in the right direction to count our many blessings and to name them one by one and it will surprise you what the
- 02:00
- Lord has done and Lord as we even think of those words that it doesn't surprise us because that's who you are that's who you promise to be to us a great
- 02:11
- God our Heavenly Father who loves us Lord our our great
- 02:17
- Savior who not only saves but keeps and one of the way that you keep us and one of the ways that you direct us is through your word and it is sure it is settled forever and it is to be the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path and we pray today that it might be profitable for our souls this morning to have spent this time these brief minutes considering a subject that is important for us it's important to you and it ought to be important to us so stir our hearts we pray convict us challenge us mold us shape us and make us and as the psalmist wrote search us oh
- 02:58
- God and know our hearts Lord and try us and know our ways and our thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in us and lead us in the way everlasting we pray in Jesus name amen as as a people of God it is um it is first and foremost important for us always to remember that all that we are and all that we have and all that we will become and anything that takes place in our lives is to be attributed to our great
- 03:34
- God and Savior the psalmist the psalmist said that our God is great and he does wondrous things and when we look at our lives it is it is truly amazing when we think of and I'm speaking to those here this morning who can say that God has saved me
- 03:51
- I'm a Christian I know that that I have been changed I know that I've been forgiven
- 03:56
- I know that something has happened in my life and one of the Puritans said it this way he said
- 04:04
- Christianity is being manipulated now that is not a bad way that he put that but he says basically with religion we manipulate
- 04:14
- God we fashion a God that we want and we we we are the ones who formulate a definition and give
- 04:25
- God this false God the attributes that we want him to have because he will then cater to us and we will be pleased with this
- 04:34
- God so we fashion God and we make this God of our imagination and basically the writer was saying no when it comes to Christianity it's not something that we do when it's not something that we formulate it's not something that originates with us
- 04:51
- Christianity and being saved and salvation is a work of God and it is something that God does to us and and basically we are the ones who are the clay upon the wheel and God is the potter and he manipulates us and I'm not saying that in a negative way but we are controlled by God we are influenced by God we are worked on by God God is doing something to us and if he didn't of course we would be lost if he didn't we'd be helpless and hopeless and graceless and and it would be a horrible state that we we would be in yesterday at our gathering
- 05:31
- I I looked at Psalm 40 verse 2 very briefly but God brought us up out of an horrible pit and out of the miry clay and God set our feet upon a rock and God establishes our goings and that's what
- 05:44
- Christianity is God doing something to us for us to help us to bring us out of this place where we had no footing whatsoever at all our feet were slipping into hell the scriptures say we were and it is
- 06:00
- God who keeps our feet from slipping even into the realm of death and of course into destruction and he does that through his mercy and through his grace through Jesus Christ and yet when we are saved we are not left alone thank
- 06:13
- God for that because if if it was Christianity was something that was handed to us and kind of wound up it would be gone in a in a moment because because of our inclinations but Christianity is something where God works upon us and God gives us certain desires and one of the desires that God puts in the hearts of his people is to him and this week
- 06:36
- I have been kind of blown away if that's the right word or I've been really just super challenged
- 06:44
- I've been examining even my my own life in the area of worship and what you're going to get this morning is just a smattering and I apologize ahead of time it's a smattering of my thoughts what
- 06:58
- I would like for us to be able to do when we're done with this class is to think do I do
- 07:04
- I have a proper idea of what worship is do
- 07:11
- I worship God when I come to this place when I come to this building and we gather together have
- 07:17
- I ever worshiped God I mean how much of the time when when I go to the house of God and I just say that as this place where we come as it's the old testament way of saying to when they gather together come to the house of God to worship before the
- 07:32
- Lord what is it that I do what is it that I'm thinking about what is it that goes through my mind as people are walking about as Charlie gets up there and picks up the guitar and plays it and and and we're opening up the paper to sing what is it that it's all about what are my motives what are our motives and I'm definitely lumping myself in because there are times believe it or not if it hasn't happened to you already as a believer one day you're going to be reading the word of God and you're going to be saying to yourself
- 08:08
- I don't do this or I don't do this very well we have things that might have been taught us on our own maybe we read a scripture and we just misinterpreted it or we might have heard a message or we may have had past historical churches or teachings that we are coming out of and there's there's some baggage there still things that haven't been dealt with and we don't do things properly and we as believers do we not want to honor the
- 08:38
- Lord in all that we do I would say everybody I see some heads nodding we do want to to do things rightly and properly before the
- 08:46
- Lord and of course it would be in this area also and what what area is more important when we think of when we come to this building when we come to Bethlehem Bible as the church gathering together what do we even
- 09:01
- I mean do we put it even in the bulletin I'm just saying that I know other churches have what we call it this morning worship
- 09:13
- Sunday 10 15 morning worship service that's what it says now if it's a morning worship service it would certainly be great if we understood what worship is and we know the right motives and the expectations behind it and what what it is what is it that a worship is all about because um it's possible it is absolutely possible and it is probable that many of the folks that walk in these doors and sit in these chairs and leave afterwards don't really worship and I'm not saying it's you um and it might be just a part of our time but let's consider what this means to worship in psalm 95 in verse 6 oh come let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the
- 10:10
- Lord our God our maker let's take a look there psalm 95 one of one of my favorite ones not only to to remember when it comes to worship but also um in the past with the believers that I had gathered with at other churches that was a that was a psalm that was put to song and we used to sing that and how many know that one anybody okay
- 10:35
- I mean I probably know my own recognition to it if I tried to sing it it would uh it might be a little different than the one you know but um psalm 95 in verse um six did
- 10:49
- I say yes five and six no five six and seven is the two verses that we sing when we used to sing it in for our services psalm 95 verse 6 oh come let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the
- 11:07
- Lord our maker verse 7 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand and how important it is for us to understand our position how important it is for us to to consider what this word worship means it is the greek word proskuneo the word pros means to or towards it's a motion towards and the middle part of that of that word has to do and has the idea of a dog and you might think where it is where does that go but the idea of worship is to kiss or to kiss towards in humility and it's like a dog who is licking the master's hand it's a it's the rightful position of that dog that animal towards the master that it understands and it comes to the master and appreciates and gives homage that's the idea it's it's to crouch before to prostrate oneself in homage it means to do reverence to or to adore now when we gather together that's the idea of gathering when we worship the
