Bootstrap
Greg Elmquist

True Worship

Acts 18:13
Greg Elmquist December, 16 2021 Audio
0 Comments
True Worship

The sermon titled "True Worship" by Greg Elmquist focuses on the doctrine of worship in spirit and truth, as articulated by Jesus to the Samaritan woman in John 4. Elmquist emphasizes the importance of worshiping God authentically, grounded in Scripture and the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. He discusses Acts 18, highlighting Paul's challenges in upholding true worship amidst accusations of violating the Law, noting Paul's compromises when he took a Nazarite vow to appease the Judaizers. Elmquist argues that true worship is an act of grace and must be informed by the entirety of Scripture, thereby underlining its practical significance for believers who may waver in their commitment to the Gospel. The sermon is a call to re-evaluate the motivations behind worship practices and to remain steadfast in the truth of God's Word, despite societal pressures and misunderstandings.

Key Quotes

“True worship is a work of grace in the heart. Only those who know Christ and have the Holy Spirit can know anything about it.”

“We worship God according to the revealed truth of His word. His word is full and complete.”

“The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipper shall worship God in spirit and in truth.”

“We are the true circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”

Sermon Transcript

Auto-generated transcript • May contain errors

100%
Number 352 from your hardback
hymnal. 352, let's stand once together.
Let's stand again together. Number 352, Jesus, lover of my
soul. Jesus, lover of my soul, let
me to thy bosom fly, while the nearer waters roll, while the
tempest still is high. ? Hide me, O my Savior, hide
? ? Till the storm of life is past ? ? Safe into the haven
guide ? ? O receive my soul at last ? ? Other refuge have I
none ? ? Hangs my helpless soul on Thee ? ? Levi, leave me not
alone ? ? Still support and comfort me ? ? All my trust on thee is
stayed ? ? All my help from thee I bring ? ? Cover my defenseless
head ? ? With the shadow of thy wing ? Thou, O Christ, art all
I want, more than all in Thee I find. Raise the fallen, cheer
the faint, heal the sick and lead the blind. Just and holy is thy name. I am all unrighteousness. False and full of sin I am, Thou
art full of truth and grace. Plenteous grace with Thee is
found, Grace to cover all my sin. ? Let the healing streams
abound ? ? Make and keep me pure within ? ? Thou of life, the
fountain heart ? ? Freely let me take of thee ? ? Spring thou
up within my heart ? ? Rise to all eternity ? Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to Acts chapter 18. Acts chapter 18. I've titled
this message, True Worship. True Worship. reminded of that question the
Lord or the woman at the well posed to our Lord in John chapter
4 when she wanted to know if it was okay to worship God there
at Mount Gerizim or whether they had to go to Jerusalem. And the
Lord made it clear to her when he said, the hour is coming and
is now when the true worshipper shall worship God in spirit and
in truth. God is spirit and he that worship
him must worship him in spirit and in truth. My hope is the
Lord will reveal by his spirit the truth of Christ and then
cause us to bow before him and to to rejoice in him and to to
worship him. Verse 12, Paul is being accused
in this passage of not worshiping God properly. And so I want us
to think about what it is to worship God in a fashion that
he's pleased with and is acceptable unto him. And when Galileo, verse 12, was
the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made insurrection with one accord
against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat, saying,
this fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law."
Now, that was the accusation that these Jews were making to
this Roman governor who could care less about, you know, about
their contention. But they brought the charges
in hope that the Roman governor would pronounce him guilty and
have him put to death. And when Paul was now about to
open his mouth, Galileo said unto the Jews, if it were a matter
of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would I have
that I should bear with you. But if it be a question of words
and names and of your law, look you into it, for I will be no
judge of such matters." I'm not concerned about the conflicts
that you're having over defining names and terms and your religious
laws and rules and regulations. He said, I'm here to I'm here
to monitor criminal behavior that would disrupt the peace
of our society. Look at verse 16. And he drove
them out of the judgment seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes,
the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment
seat. And Galileo cared for none of those things. wasn't the least
bit interested. Now, the first thing I want us
to see in this passage is that Paul was a man, and man at his
best is but a man at best. He's a sinner, just as all men
are. A choice servant of God, we think
about the Lord told Ananias there in Acts chapter 9, when Ananias,
you remember Paul in Damascus, blinded by the Spirit of God,
and the Lord told Ananias to go to him and lay his hands on
him. And Ananias said, I've heard
of this man. I've heard of the havoc that he's caused the church.
And you remember what the Lord said to Dan and I? I said, you
go, he's my choice servant and I'm going to show him what great
things he must suffer for my name's sake. So, and time and
time again, we see the apostle Paul as the epicenter of so much
conflict and revolving around the gospel. And so, Twice now,
once in Acts chapter 18 and then once in Acts chapter 21, Paul,
in trying to settle this controversy among the Jews, agrees to take
a bow and to go to the temple and to make sacrifice. Now he
knew that the Lord Jesus Christ had put an end to those things.
He knew that those Old Testament types and shadows were already
fulfilled in Christ. And yet he's trying to quiet
the accusations that are being made about him as not worshiping
God according to the law. And he's trying to convince the
Jews that he's faithful to the law of God. And so he compromises
the truth of the gospel. Notice with me down in verse
18, and Paul, after this, tarried there. Now, Paul's been in Corinth
for a year and a half before this riot breaks out. And the
Lord makes it clear that it's time for him to leave now. And
in chapter 18 and 19, he's going to go back to Jerusalem. And
look what happens in verse 18. And Paul, after this, tarried
there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brethren
and sailed thence to Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila,
See, here's one of those times when their names are reversed
and Priscilla's name is put before Aquila's name. So Priscilla and
Aquila are traveling with him, having shorn his head in Sencriah,
for he had a bow. Now, what is the shorning of
the head and the bow? It's the same bow that he takes
in chapter 21. It's the Nazarite bow. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
Nazarite. He's the fulfillment of that
vow. He's the one who did not have the glory of his hair cut,
not physically speaking, but the strength of Samson. You remember
that was the Nazarite in the Old Testament. And he was the
one who did not derive any of his pleasures from the wine of
this world. He was filled with the Spirit
of God every moment of his life. and derived all of his joy and
strength and hope from his perfect union with the Father and with
the Spirit of God. He's the Nazarite. Why Paul would
make this Nazarite vow? You remember in chapter 21, we're
going to get to that. Notice, turn over with me just
a few pages because the same accusation is made against him
again. Look in chapter 24 of Acts at
verse five, for we have found this man a pestilent fellow and
a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world
and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarene. who hath gone
about to profane the temple." And look at verse 14 in that
same chapter. But this I confess, Paul's now going to give his
defense. In verse 13, he says, neither can they prove the things
wherein they accused me. But this I confess unto thee,
that after the way which they called heresy, so worship I the
God of my fathers, believing all things which are written
in the law and in the prophets. You see, it all had to do with
worship. Proper worship. They were accusing
him of not worshiping God properly, and he was tempted to satisfy
those accusations by taking a vow of the Nazarite. He does it here
in chapter 18, and then after he goes to Jerusalem, he does
it again in chapter 21. And in chapter, the end of the
vow of the Nazarite was a blood sacrifice. That's what had to
be made at the end of the vow. This is the apostle Paul. He's
on his second missionary journey here in chapter 18. And he's
agreed with James, who's the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. the half brother of the Lord
Jesus Christ, James and the elders came to him and said, look how
many Jews we have that, that had believed. And if you'll make
this vow, you'll settle this, you know, this controversy. And
he agreed to do it. God stopped him. A riot broke
out. He never got to make a blood
sacrifice. He got arrested and sent to Rome. What do we see
from this? Oh, Lord taught Paul a lot through
this experience, didn't he? I'm sure that much of what he
wrote after this, just as Peter fed off of his experience of
having denied the Lord, and much of what we read in Peter's writings
reflects back on that. So the apostle Paul becomes so
clear on law and grace. And how are we to worship God
in the spirit, according to the truth of his word, and how the
Lord Jesus Christ hath fulfilled the law. And that there's, it's
wrong. Now, I was gonna say there's
no need for us to practice these, but it's just wrong. And yet
Paul did it, and God used it. And here's our encouragement,
brother. We make compromises, don't we? And yet we learn from our mistakes,
don't we? And the Lord shows us again and
again, His mercy. The fact that the Apostle Paul
continued to be used of God, even as Peter was used of God,
is an encouragement to every believer that when we compromise
the gospel and try to make peace with men, That's what he was
doing. He's trying to make peace with
men. That the Lord will teach us from that and it will not
disqualify us from being used of God again and again. Our Lord
uses broken vessels, doesn't he? He uses empty vessels and
he uses our experiences and our failures to empty us of our pride
enable us to see once again our need for Christ. Here's our hope. Now Galea was a Roman governor
of Corinth and he wasn't interested in the in the debate that these
Jews were having with Paul over names and definitions and words
and their law. He said, now, if he was doing
something lewd, if he was breaking the law, the Roman law, then
I would step in and exercise my judgment. Turn with me to
1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter three. This is such another good truth
for us to think on concerning these things. 1 Peter chapter
3. We'll begin reading at verse
10. For he that will love life and see good days, let him refrain
his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile.
Let him eschew evil and do good and let him seek peace and ensue
it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and his
ears are upon, are open unto their prayers. But the face of
the Lord is against them that do evil. And who is he that will
harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? But if
you suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye, and be not
afraid of their terror, neither be troubled." We worship God in spirit and
in truth. We stand for the gospel. There's
going to be some suffering for righteousness' sake. There's
going to be some relationships strained at best, or at least. In verse 15, but you sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer
to everyone that asketh you a reason for the hope that is within you.
And when you do, do it with meekness and do it with fear. Do it humbly. Having a good conscience that
whereas they speak evil of you as evildoers, they may be ashamed
that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. And he's
saying there, you know, nothing's changed. They accuse us. I talked to somebody recently
and he said, he said, you ever called an antinomian? And I said,
well, yeah, but everybody believes the gospel is called that, you
know, you, you just lawless people. That's what you are. No, we're
not. For it is better, verse 17, if
the will of God be so, that you suffer for well-doing than for
evil-doing. For Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit of
God. Oh, here's the one we look to,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered more for good than he, and who
was good not to be a lawbreaker than he, by which also he went
and priest into the spirits in prison, which sometimes were
disobedient. When once the long suffering
of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing,
there in few that his eight souls were saved by water." That just
means that it was the Lord Jesus Christ that preached the gospel
through Noah to that generation. And that nothing's changed from
Noah to the first century to now. It's all the same. It's
all the same. So, this matter of worshiping God,
the first thing I want to say about it is that it is a work
of grace in the heart. You must worship God in spirit. Now that means that the Spirit
of God's the one who has to enable us to worship. And he enables
us to worship in the Spirit. True worship is a work of grace
in the heart. Only those who know Christ and
have the Holy Spirit can know anything about it. And they know
so little about it. True worship's what we're gonna
do when we get to heaven. True worship is what we're gonna
do when we're no longer looking through a glass darkly, we see
him face to face. True worship is when you don't
have the distractions that you're having right now, of your mind
wandering off, of sin and the world and the flesh and all the
things that distract us. You see, though worship can only
be done in the power of the Spirit of God, even then it is It's so weak and beggarly, isn't
it? Isn't it? We groan. We seek to apprehend that which
has apprehended us. We press towards the mark for
the prize of the high calling. We're reaching for the mark and fleeing for the refuge and seeking
to lay hold of that which has laid hold of us. Oh, it's a spiritual
work, isn't it? It's the work of the Spirit.
It's a spiritual work. I thought, you know, worship
is kind of like preaching. You know, the last 25 years,
and I apologize to those of you that have had to listen to me
for that long, but I think about what Spurgeon said one time when
he said, some men's judgment in hell is going to have to be
to listen to their own preaching for all eternity. And I'm sure
that's true, and I would hate to have to listen to my own preaching.
for all eternity, how awful that would be. But that having been
said, I figured out in 25 years I've preached over 3,600 messages
here. And twice, twice, I stepped out
of the pulpit in 37 years and I thought, now that's what preaching
is supposed to be. There's nothing I could have
said that would have made it any clearer, any better. And
then I woke up from my dream. I've never come out of the pulpit
feeling that way. And you've never come out of
church feeling like, you know, I've, I've worshiped God as I
ought with all my heart and all my mind and all of my soul. Isn't
that true? So worship is kind of like preaching.
We can relate to one another in our inability to worship God
as we ought, and we can long together for that day when we
will worship him as he ought to be worshiped. And for all
eternity, we will glory in his presence. Right now we're following
after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience. First
Timothy 611, fighting the good fight of faith, seeking to lay
hold on eternal life. Seeking to lay hold on eternal
life. Our Lord said to that woman at
the well, you worship what you know not. The hour coming and
now is. at the Father, seek at those.
The Father's gonna have to seek us if we're gonna worship him
in spirit and in truth. Second thing I want you to see
about true worship, Paul's being accused. Here's our message tonight. Here's the text. Paul's being
accused of these Judaizers of worshiping God contrary to the
law. And rather than, Rather than
clarifying the truth of worship, he compromises, and yet the Lord
teaches him that and uses his, I mean, we think about how horrible it
was what David did with Bathsheba and Uriah, and yet for 3,000
years, God's people have had the blessing of Psalm 51 as a
result of that. So it is with the failures of
all these penmen of God, these great men and women of God who
were just men, and how the church has benefited
from their failures. Second thing we learn about true
worship is what Paul said in Acts chapter 24. We already read
it once. Go back to it. Go back to that
passage again with me and look at Look at verse 14,
Paul is defending himself against this false accusation that they're
making against him, that he's a rebel rouser and that he's,
that he's worshiping God contrary to the scriptures. And Paul said,
but this I confess unto thee, he's, they brought him before
Festus or Felix and, and, And he said, I confess this, that
after the way which they call heresy, so worship I, the God
of my fathers, believing all things that are written in the
scriptures. If we're to worship God, we worship him according
to the scriptures. I've thought about good communication. is the ability to capture an
idea in the fewest of words. I've never been a very good communicator,
but that's what I know good communication is, good writing is, when you
can capture the idea in the fewest of words. Brethren, it took God
Almighty 66 books to communicate to us the glory of the gospel
of His free grace in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
66 books, not one single word, too many. Took every word in God's word. And there were many other things
John tells us in John 21, many other, many other things that
the Lord Jesus Christ did, but you're not written in this book,
but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the son of God, and that believing you might have life
on his name. So that's the reason that God's
given us his word. He's given us his word to reveal the glory
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And faith comes by hearing and
hearing comes by the word of God. And of his own will begat
he us with the word of truth. And so he... Paul said, no, the
accusation he learned now by chapter 24, Paul's already compromised
twice. Once in 18 and once in 21, he
took a Nazarite vow in order to try to justify himself to
these Jews that were making these false accusations against him.
Now in chapter 24, he said, no, no, I believe every word that's
in God's word. And I'm worshiping God consistent
with the revealed truth of His word. And that's what we do. We worship God according to the
revealed truth of His word. And His word is full and complete. And I thought, you know, if it
took God 66 books to communicate to us, His glory in the gospel. How proud is it for man to think
that he can concentrate the truth of the gospel in fewer words
by writing creeds and confessions? I mean, is that not setting yourself
up above God? To say, well, you know, yeah,
we've got the word of God, but let's concentrate it down to
fewer words so that we can have a better handle on what we really
believe. That's blasphemy. And yet the
very groups that say, sola scriptura, the Bible only, are the very
groups that will go to their creeds and confessions. I had
a man call me recently, wanted to come visit. And he said, he said, well, you
know, I'm of the 1689 persuasion. And I said, well, You know, we
left that 25 years ago, and no one here would be interested
in having a conversation with you about that. You're welcome
to come, but we're not of that persuasion. We're of the persuasion
of the scriptures. We believe the Bible's the word
of God. Well, yeah, but what do you believe about this? And
he kept pressing me, you know, to try to condense that. So just
come, just listen. You're going to have to listen
for a while to understand everything that we believe. Turn to me to the book of Revelation
chapter 22. Revelation 22. Paul is being accused in chapter
18 by these Jews of not worshiping God properly. By chapter 24 he says, that what they're calling heresy,
by that means, I worship God, believing all that's written
in the scriptures. We believe every word. We don't understand it all, but
we believe it. We know it's God's word and that's
enough. Revelation 22, look at verse
six. And he said unto me, these sayings
are faithful and true. And the Lord God of the holy
prophets sent his angels to show unto his servants the things
what's much must shortly be done. You know, the book of Revelation
starts out with the God's preachers being referred to as angels.
They're messengers. That's all that angel is. An
angel is a messenger. He's taking a message from God
and declaring it to God's people. And these words are faithful
and they're true. The whole word of God. Behold,
I come quickly, blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the
prophecy of this book. He's not just talking about the
book of Revelation, he's talking about the whole canon of scripture.
And I, John, saw these things and heard them. And when I heard,
and when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before
the feet of the angel, which showed me these things, then
said he unto me, see thou do it not, for I am thy fellow servant,
and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings
of the book, worship God. And he said unto me, seal not
the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at
hand." Don't close it yet. And then he goes on to say, if
any man adds to the words of this prophecy, the curses of
this book will be added unto him. And if any man takes away
from it, his name would be removed, be taken out. That's symbolic
language. You'd have no hope. You take
anything away from the work of Christ or add anything to the
work of Christ. Scriptures. Paul said, here's
how I worship God. You're accusing me of not worshiping
God. I worship God, believing all
of scriptures, all the scriptures. So we worship God according in
the power of the spirit of God. And we worship God according
to the revealed truth of his word. And, it's consistent with all of scripture
we don't we don't nitpick or cherry pick the verses of the
bible that we want to that we want to believe we we know that
all god's word fits together perfectly and complements each
other and confirms one another each other and That's why Galileo
said, if it's about words and names and your law, you tend
to that. What was he saying? This pagan
Roman governor understood that the problem was not words, but
that was the definition of words. And in one sense, preaching is
defining the terms of the Bible. what we're doing. We're using
Scripture to confirm Scripture, the spiritual to the spiritual,
to define what these words mean. Now, I'm not talking about lawyers you know, parsing verbs
or splitting hairs over the nuances of meaning or complicated intellectual
definitions. No, what does this word, what
does the simplicity, what's this book say about grace? You see, there's the controversy
over the gospel there. Everybody believes that salvation
is by grace. Yet they don't believe that grace
is a free gift. They believe that grace is something
that has to be earned by something that you do. Or the popular definition
of grace today is that it's, you know, it means we're just
gracious people. We tolerate anything, you know. We don't
have any standards about anything. Just come and, you know, you'll
be loved and embraced regardless of what you believe or what you,
you know, anything. What does God say about grace?
What do we believe about grace? We believe, for by grace are
you saved. Through faith, not by faith,
but through faith. And that faith is not of yourself.
It's a gift of God, lest any man should boast. We believe what Grace, grace unto it. You know
what the prophet said? Oh, it's all of grace. In election, it's all of grace.
God didn't look down through the quarters of time and see
who would merit his favor or who would make a decision for
him. No, he chose us in Christ according to his own will and
purpose, all of grace, all of grace. What the Lord Jesus Christ
did in redeeming those whom the Father had chosen was all of
grace. We didn't add anything to that. We didn't deserve that. We didn't do anything to warrant
that or merit that. It was all of grace. When God
did for us what he did for Saul of Tarsus and knocking us off
our high horse and putting our face in the dirt and causing
us to cry out, Lord, what would you have us to do? That was of
grace, the regenerating work of the Spirit of God in the heart,
arresting a man and stopping him in his destructive life and
causing him to look up. God is the one who opened the
windows of heaven. He's the one that shined that
light into the heart of the apostle Paul when it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother's womb to reveal Christ in me. It was all of grace. We're kept
by grace. We don't add to the sanctifying
work of grace in our hearts. We bow to it. We respond to it,
but we don't add to it. It's all of grace. If we make it safe into glory,
it'll be all of grace. God who foreknew us and predestinated
us to be made into the image of his son, he called us by his
grace. He sanctified us by his grace. He glorified us by his grace. Matter of fact, we're already,
God's people are already with him in heaven. It's what the
scripture says, we're already glorified. And we live in this
bubble of time, but God lives outside of time. And in eternity,
there is no time. I love thinking about that. I
don't understand what I'm saying. I just, I know this. When we, when we draw our last
breath and enter into glory, we're not going to look around
and be comparing what we're seeing to what we came from. We're just going to discover
that we've always been there. Always been there. That's just
grace. We didn't have anything to do
with that. Galeo, a pagan Roman governor,
knew that the controversy between these people was over definitions.
He says, over names and words and your laws and rules and regulations,
you're saying that he's not worshiping God properly? And nothing's changed, has it? Everybody throws the name Jesus
around, like, you know, just, oh, Jehovah does do the saving. You shall call his name Jesus
for he shall save his people from their sins. He actually
accomplished their salvation. He's the Joshua who led us across
the river of death into the promised land. He's the one who bore the
sins of his people in his body upon that tree and suffered the
full wrath of God's justice. He actually saved. He did business
with God, he offered himself up as an offering to his father,
and his father accepted him as an offering for sin. He actually
saved his people. They talk of Jesus as if he wants
to save and he's done all he can do to save, but you know,
we've got to do our part. Philippians chapter three, verse
three, Paul said, we are the true circumcision. Now, what
is circumcision? It's the cutting away of flesh.
Is that not what circumcision is? Now, there's circumcision that's done
by men. And that's when men look to the things that they've cut
out of their lives for their acceptance with God. And then
there's a circumcision of the spirit. And that's where men
look at what God did in causing them to have no confidence in
the flesh, not how that passage ends. We are the true circumcision
which worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and
have no confidence in the flesh. We don't get any of our confidence
in fleshly things. We've been circumcised by the
Spirit of God. He's taken away our confidence
in the flesh. He's cut it away. We used to
have great confidence in our fleshly things, in the things
that we were doing and not doing as the hope of our salvation.
And when God does a work of grace in the heart and circumcises
the heart, he cuts away our confidence in the flesh. Whereas men who have circumcised
themselves are getting their confidence from the things they've
cut away from their flesh. There's the two circumcisions. You know the word Pharisee means
a separated one. They prided themselves in believing
that they had elevated themselves to a degree of spirituality that
other men could not achieve. And that's what the word Pharisee
means. It means separated one. You know what the word holy and
saint means? separate. It's a different word,
but the definition is the same. It means just to be separate,
to be set aside. And so what's the difference
between a Pharisee and a Saint? Who did the separating? That's
the difference. We are the true circumcision,
circumcised in the heart by the spirit of God, having cut away
by the grace of God, any confidence that we had in our flesh. We
worship God in the spirit. We bow before him. We rejoice in Christ Jesus. They can call him Christ, but
they don't believe that he's the anointed one. They don't
believe what Christ means. You see, it's all about words
and names and definitions and laws, isn't it? And what do we
do? We go to the scriptures to define
these things as God has defined them. Words have meaning, don't
they? But it's important that we define
them properly. You know, I was thinking about the word see.
Well now, Are we talking about a body of water? Are we talking
about being able to see with the eye? Or are we talking about,
if you speak Spanish, maybe you're talking about an adverb, an affirmative
adverb, which just means yes. Or, you know, what, what do you,
what exactly do you, or do you use it metaphorically? You know,
are you saying, well, do I see something as I understand it
or do I physically see it? You see the word see, or perhaps
when he says see, he's just talking about that letter that's between
B and D and the alphabet. You know what? And so what do
we say when a man speaks a word? We say, use it in a sentence
so that I can understand what you mean by it. And I'll define
the context of how you use that word, we'll define it. Isn't that what we're doing?
We worship God. We're taking the words of God
and we're put them in context that we might worship God in
truth and in spirit. And we don't have to justify
ourselves or compromise the gospel Like Paul did, we learn from
his mistake and we stand for the truth. We're not worshiping
God contrary to the law of God. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
did not come to destroy the law, I came to fulfill it. We preach
Christ, we're preaching the fulfillment of the law of God. Our Heavenly Father, bless Your
Word, bless Your people. We ask it in Christ's name and
for His sake. Amen. 236? 336. 336. Let's stand together. We can sing it to Manoa or the old 100th. Either one. What's the old 100th? Doxology. Yes. Either one will work. I can get
to the doxology. I have a note, but I don't have
a sense of where it is. It's the wrong tune, I'm sorry. Well, it doesn't go, Joy, I'm
sorry. We'll just do Manoa a cappella.
Everybody knows that tune. ? O for a closer walk with God
? ? A calm and heavenly frame ? ? A light to shine upon the
road that leads me to the Lamb ? ? Return, O holy dove, return
? ? Sweet messenger of rest ? I hate the sins that made thee mourn
and drove thee from my breast. The dearest idol I have known,
what e'er that idol be, help me to tear it from thy throne
and worship only thee. So shall my walk be close with
God, calm and serene my frame. So purer light shall mark the
road that leads me to the land. Sorry, Joey. I've got another code.
Greg Elmquist
About Greg Elmquist
Greg Elmquist is the pastor of Grace Gospel Church in Orlando, Florida.
Broadcaster:

Comments

0 / 2000 characters
Comments are moderated before appearing.

Be the first to comment!

Joshua

Joshua

Shall we play a game? Ask me about articles, sermons, or theology from our library. I can also help you navigate the site.