Worshipping & Serving God

Q: What does the Bible say about worshipping God?

The Bible emphasizes the importance of worshipping God with reverence, sincerity, and in accordance with His commands. The Bible clearly teaches that worship is one of the greatest privileges bestowed upon believers. In Leviticus 10, we see the consequences of Nadab and Abihu's actions when they offered strange fire to God, which He did not command. This event highlights the necessity of adhering to God's prescribed way of worship. We, as members of the church, are to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God, recognizing that we come before a holy God who expects reverence in our worship. The assembly of believers is the house of God, where His presence is promised, and our conduct during worship should reflect our understanding of His holiness.

Q: How do we know that God is present during worship?

God's presence is assured wherever His people gather to worship in spirit and truth, as He promises to meet with them. Scripture affirms that God meets with His people whenever they assemble for worship. In Leviticus, after the first sacrifices were offered, the glory of the Lord appeared to the people, indicating His presence among them. This principle extends to us today, as God has promised to be with us when we gather in His name. When we worship, our hearts must recognize that we are in the presence of the living God, and this reality should instill a sense of awe and reverence in our conduct. Our worship is a response to God's merciful gathering of His people, and we ought to approach it with fear and trembling, attuned to His holiness.

Q: Why is reverence important in Christian worship?

Reverence in worship underscores God's holiness and our need to honor Him as the sovereign Creator. Reverence is crucial in Christian worship because it acknowledges the holiness of God and reflects our understanding of who He is. As seen in Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu disregarded this aspect by offering profane fire, resulting in serious consequences. The Bible instructs us to behave with reverence in the assembly of the saints, recognizing that we worship a God who is greatly to be feared. This reverence influences our attitudes, actions, and the way we conduct ourselves during worship. It challenges us to bring our best to God and to honor Him above all else, fostering an environment where His glory is magnified and His truth is upheld.

Q: How should Christians respond when loved ones rebel against God?

Christians are called to remain steadfast with God and prioritize His glory above personal feelings. When faced with rebellion among loved ones, Christians are challenged to stand firm in their faith and maintain their commitment to God. In Leviticus 10, God commanded Aaron not to mourn for his sons Nadab and Abihu after their disobedience, emphasizing that honoring God's glory is paramount. This principle extends to our relationships today; we cannot compromise our faith or the truth of God’s Word for the sake of personal relationships. While it is natural to grieve for those who reject God, we must remember that His glory and the well-being of the church take precedence. Our steadfastness serves as a testimony of God's sovereignty and grace, reminding us that He calls us to allegiance to Him above all else.

Turn back there to Leviticus
10. Thank you, Art. The assembling together of believers
to worship God is the single most important and single most
greatest privilege that God has given us who believe. That's
not up for debate. That's not up for doubting. That's just so. And the reason
is, is because believers, as lively stones, as living stones,
are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Together, we as believers are
the house of God. We make up the house of God. That's why it's so important
and such a great privilege to gather together. You won't have
a house if you don't have all the stones. But God's the one
doing the gathering. Christ is the one doing the gathering.
He gathers His people. He builds them up. We're fitly
framed together by our great architect. And together we are
the church of the living God. And when we assemble to worship,
we are the house of the living God. Now it's amazing, and this
is a reality, that wherever God assembles His people and wherever
we are assembled together to worship, God has promised to
meet with us and be with us in our midst. To be present with
us. God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is
with us when we meet. So how should we conduct ourselves
in the presence of the living God? Let me give you this, Psalm 89,
7. Listen to this. is greatly to be feared in the
assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them
that are about him. That's how we ought to behave.
The saints loved the Apostle Paul for Christ's sake. They
loved him for the gospel he preached. And they obeyed him in his presence
always. And they did what the Spirit
of God tells us we ought to do. The Spirit of God says, honor
them to whom honor is due. And they honored the Apostle
Paul. They put forth their best with
Him when He was present. I'm always so thankful for you.
I'm thankful that when we have a visiting preacher, we love
our elders. We love those who have been instrumental
in preaching the gospel to us and bringing us together. And
you always put your best foot forward in everything you do.
And I'm always thankful for you. I always thank the Lord for you.
The apostle Paul reminded the saints of something. He reminded
them that God was present with them even when Paul was absent. He reminded them God is worthy
of all reverence and all honor all the time. And therefore he
told the Philippians, Wherefore, my beloved, as you have always
obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my
absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for
it is God's work that worketh in you, both to will and to do
of his good pleasure. You work out all your daily affairs
in your personal worship of God, as well as, and especially as,
amongst one another when you gather together in the house
of God to worship God. Do so with fear and trembling,
he said, much more in my absence, because God is always present
working in you. He's working in you individually
as well as in you His body assembled together both to will and to
do of His good pleasure. But the point I'm making to you,
God's present. Always. So, beloved, knowing
that we're in the presence of Almighty God, that ought to cause
us to fear and to tremble with reverence in His presence. How we conduct these services?
Singing, scripture reading, prayers, preaching, and how we conduct
ourselves in our attendance, in our attitude, in our attention,
in our attire. All of these convey the fear
and the reverence of God that's truly in our heart. When you
love somebody and you want to reverence somebody and honor
somebody, it affects everything you do. It does. You do everything differently.
You put your best foot forward. The honor and the reverence is
due to God is the chief reason that Paul wrote the pastoral
epistles, 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus. It was to teach us
how to behave in the house of God. He said, if I tarry long
that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in
the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the
pillar and ground of the truth. Here's my main point. Knowing
that we are the house and church of the living God. Knowing we
are in the presence of God. And knowing the church is the
pillar and ground of the truth. This is where God is going to
reveal Christ in the hearts of the lost sheep. We must never gather together
here with the likeness that we would in our own homes. But greatly
and esteeming God with the highest reverence. I want to show you
a few things that are necessary in the worship of God. And our
text is Leviticus 10. We're just going to take it a
verse at a time. First of all, in order to truly worship God,
we must do so with the sacrifice God requires. Verse 1, Leviticus
10 1, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them
his censer, put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and
offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them
not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them,
and they died before the Lord. God gave Nadab and Abihu great,
great privilege among the children of Israel. These two fellows
here, they were the sons of Aaron, the high priest. The high priest
over Israel. And they were the nephews of
Moses, who was the prophet and ruler over Israel. And just days
before, they had just finished the seven days of consecration
where they had been made priests unto God at the command of God. Now listen to me, believer. You
know what you are? You are a son of Jesus Christ, our High Priest.
You are a child of Jesus Christ, our Prophet. You are a child
of Jesus Christ, our King, our Ruler. and you have been made
kings and priests unto God. You've been made king-priests,
a royal priesthood. Something never before done in
the old covenant system. We're kings and priests. We're
king priests. Now that's the picture. That's
what Nadab and Abihu were. Never be lifted up by your privileges.
Never take for granted your privileges that God's given to you. Never
take them for granted. Now on this day, now I believe
this was the same day as what goes on in the 9th chapter. The
reason I believe that is because chapter 10 begins with a conjunction,
and. I think this took place on the
same day. Whether it did or not, we don't have to get hung up
on that, but just go back with me just a moment. Let me show
you what had taken place. The first sacrifices that Israel
had ever offered were being offered. This was worship. They were gathering
together to worship God. That's what they were doing.
This was worship for them, just like we're gathered together
here now. That's what this was. And the Lord had said in Leviticus
9.4, the Lord had said, Today the Lord will appear unto you.
When we meet together, God's meeting in our presence. He's
meeting in the presence of His people. And He said, today now,
I'm going to meet with you. And up to this point, Nadab and
Abihu had been doing what Aaron and Moses told them to do, or
what Moses particularly had told them to do, because it was the
first time they'd done any of this. The first time! And Moses
was getting all his instructions directly from the Lord, and the
Lord was giving them directly to Aaron. And these boys were
doing what their father Aaron, the high priest, told them to
do. And they had done that up to this point. Now after offering
the sin offering and the peace offerings and everything that
was as God commanded, Leviticus 9.23 says, Moses and Aaron went
into the tabernacle of the congregation and came out and blessed the
people and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people.
And there came a fire out from before the Lord and consumed
upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat. Just like he promised,
God made known that his presence was in their midst. Just like
Paul said, God is in our presence when we worship in God. That's
what God was doing. He was making His presence known
in their midst. And when that fire came out and consumed that
sacrifice on that burnt offering, He was conveying to them, He
accepted them in that burnt offering. He accepted them. It was a picture
of God accepting His people in Christ who's given Himself for
an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.
Verse 24, And when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on
their faces. And all the people rejoiced with
joy unspeakable, because God accepted their sacrifice, and
God made Himself known to them. Now that happens to us, brethren.
When we're worshiping, that happens to us. The Spirit of God produces
joy in our hearts, joy unspeakable, when He makes us to see we've
been accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ by His works, not our
works. In spite of our sin, that He's
accepted us, He fills us with this same kind of joy. And what's
the effect of it? It makes us bow. They bowed before
Him and were singing praises to Him and glorying in Him. That's
what happens when He makes us truly worship God. We don't just
come in here and worship God. That's a farce. That's something
men have told, preachers have told men, you don't just show
up and worship God. No, sir. God makes you worship
Him in your heart. And that's what happened here.
God gave them true worship in their heart. And they fell down
in reverence and humility with fear and trembling because the
presence of God was in their midst and they knew it. And that's
what happens to us when He makes us known in our heart. The fear
of God is the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of knowledge. And
we fall on our face before Him in our hearts when He's entered
in and made us to know He's present. And He keeps making us worship,
and keeps making us bow, and keeps us humble, and keeps us
reverent, and fearing, and trembling before Him as He continually
makes His presence known in our heart through the gospel. This
is what He does. This is worship we're looking
at here now. But instead of rejoicing in Christ only, only, Instead
of bowing before God in faith and humility and reverence to
God, Nadab and Abihu had all this privilege. They got on these
fancy coats now. They're somebody in the congregation.
And they got so carried away in everything that was going.
It says in verse 1, And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron,
took either of them his censer, and he put fire in it, and then
he put incense on top of that, and he went to go make an offering
to God. And he offered strange fire before
the Lord, which he commanded them not. They offered a sacrifice
of their own choosing. They offered a strange, unholy,
profane, polluted fire before the Lord. That's what they did.
There was one fire there, and that was enough. That was God's
fire. But they said, we'll add our fire to it. And God commanded no other fire,
no other incense be used but that which God gave them from
heaven and set apart and said, this is holy, holy, holy. Instead,
they took a sacrifice of their own choosing. And God didn't
tell them to do this. They offered this according to
their own will. It says there, which He commanded
them not. They came at the wrong time,
they came in the wrong place. And they were supposed to wait
on Moses and Aaron to tell them when their services were needed
according to God's command. Yet together they bypassed God's
prophet and God's high priest and did that which God commanded
them not. Why was God so offended by this?
They blatantly profaned the holy worship of God by mixing their
will and their works and their wisdom. Bypassing Aaron the high
priest was the same as bypassing Christ Jesus the high priest.
You can find it over in Revelation where it tells us that when we
pray, There's an angel by the golden altar that has abundance
of incense and he takes our prayers and he presents them to God in
all this sweet-smelling savor. That angel's Christ. He's the
one that enters into the holiest of holies making intercession
for us. He's our high priest. They bypass Christ. And bypassing
Moses, who's the prophet and king of Israel, they bypass Christ,
who's the prophet and ruler of his people. Same thing. And doing so, they exalted themselves
and cast contempt upon God and upon His ordained order of worship. That's what they did. And for
that, God killed them on the spot. This is not a fable. This is not something that is
just a story to make a point. This happened. They all gathered
there worshiping God the first day. Imagine if we gathered here
on the first day to worship God. And we all gathered here the
first time we met together back in 2007. And somebody did something
that was irreverent to God and God just came down with lightning
and killed you right on the spot. This is the God we're worshiping?
Yeah, this is the God we're worshiping. come before him in fear and trembling,
he said, I was down there, I don't know if I've told everybody this,
I was at Hurricane Road preaching last Wednesday, and you can hear
it on the internet if you want to listen to it, but I was preaching
and I made the point, when God speaks in your heart effectually,
you will bow. And the second I made that statement,
Lightning went off on top of that building, on top of us.
Thunder so heavy and hard and loud, it shook the place to the
foundations. And you know what everybody in
the place did? Everybody bowed. Everybody ducked. It was just a reflex. When God
speaks into your heart, when He speaks in fire into your heart,
that's what happens. You bow. These boys are an example
of somebody in whose heart God had not spoken. And they said,
this looks good, we can worship God this way. And God killed
them for it. Get the point now. The only way
to worship God is in spirit and in truth. Bowing in humility
of heart before God through faith in the one sacrifice God has
provided. Christ said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me. any attempt to come
to God, any other way than through faith in Christ is to exalt your
will over God's will, your works over God's works, your wisdom
over God's wisdom, and God's a consuming fire, you will die. You will die. You will die. That's
strange fire to God. Anytime religious exercises are
going about with no Holy Spirit wrought heart reverence, no Holy
Spirit wrought conviction, no bowing that's been wrought by
God in the heart. It's just a hypocrisy and it's just nothing
but a superstition and it's just vain acts. That's strange fire
to God. And God, you'll die. You'll die. Strange doctrines, it's not according
to this scripture. That's strange fire to God. Any
kind of invention of men in the worship of God that God has not
commanded. 99% of this crap you see being
done by men in churches today. That's strange fire. They're
going to die. They're going to die. They're
going to die. If God doesn't command it, it's
forbidden. That's how it is. Nadab and Abihu,
they were probably proud of their new position and privileges and
excited about the ceremony that was going on. That was a true
miracle that took place. But that didn't work faith in
their heart. And all this junk that men call miracles going
on today that's not true miracles, that don't work faith in their
heart either. If a true miracle of God didn't do it, you know
this phony junk they're doing don't do it. It was presumption
without faith and fear. That's my point. It was presumption
without faith and fear. Alright, here's the second thing.
Did you get the first point? Christ has got to have preeminence
in our worship. We're not here to draw attention
to ourselves, but to Christ. He's got to have preeminence.
He must increase, I must decrease. Alright, here's the second thing.
In God's house and at all times we must sanctify and glorify
the Lord. Look at verse 3. Then Moses said
unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be
sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people
I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace. God
says that those that come near to God must sanctify God. That
means we must declare God holy before all people. That means we don't treat God
like we do everybody else. We don't treat His worship like
we do everything else. That means when we come to worship
God, it's something that is preeminently more important than anything
else because of the one who we worship. So we're declaring before
people this is a holy time because we worship a holy God. By the electing grace of God,
By the redeeming grace of Christ Jesus, by the Spirit, God the
Holy Spirit's work of regenerating and converting His people, we
have been made holy. You know, in God's law, according
to God's law, a priest could not be a priest if he just had
a blemish in him. He could not draw near to God.
That's how holy God is. He couldn't come to God if he
had a pimple. He couldn't come to God. That's right. They'd
looked him over. If he had a blackhead, he couldn't
come to God. You couldn't come to God if you had a blemish,
at all. That's how holy God is. That
means, brethren, if we've been made priests unto God, they're
not a blemish in us, because He says you have liberty by this
new and living way, Christ Jesus, to enter into His presence, and
He will receive you. That means we're holy. That means
there is not a blemish in us. Now, knowing that, brethren,
knowing that He has reconciled us in the body of His flesh through
death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable
in His sight, you cannot be blamed and reproved in His sight because
you're holy in His sight. If you continue grounded in the
faith, that's so. So knowing that, brethren, this
greatest of all blessings we've been given before all the people
at all times, our great God and Savior deserves to be and must
be obeyed and served by us as He is. Holy, holy, holy. The one way you can do that is
by believing on Christ our sanctification. And if God's brought faith in
your heart in Christ, I can guarantee you this, when you gather to
worship God, in our attendance, in our attitude, in our attention,
and in our attire, you will give God your very best. You'll give
God your very best. That's right. The person sitting
next to you, their best might not be your best. That ain't
your business. Their business is they're giving
their best from their heart. That's the business. Understand
that? That's the business. He will take nothing less. He
will take nothing less. Doing so, we show all those around
that this is not just any old ordinary time. You're drawn near
to the presence of the thrice holy God. One time Will asked
me, when he was a lot younger, Will asked me, he said, Nettie,
when we open the service, why do we always stand? What do you
do when a king enters in your presence? You stand. And bow your head before him.
That's why we stand, that's why we bow our head when we pray.
It's not just something we do, there's a meaning to it. We worship
in the king of glory. And God says those who draw near
to God must glorify God before all the people. Now brethren,
listen. You who are truly called to God,
I know you desire more than anything else in your hearts to glorify
the God who saved you, who loved you without a cause in you. I
know you desire to glorify God. And you can rest in this assurance.
By Christ Jesus the Lord, by what He has done, we have glorified
God to the highest. Because Christ came and by His
obedience to the law, He magnified and He honored the law in every
regard, in precept and in penalty for His people so that not a
charge can be laid to God's elect. We have glorified God in the
highest, in Christ, His glory. And that means by His own precious
blood, you're bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. When I say attitude,
that's what I mean in our spirit, in our hearts, as well as in
our body. God says, and do so before all
the people. Before all the people. Listen
to this. Keep thy foot when thou goest
to the house of God, keep thy foot, and be more ready to hear
than to give the sacrifice of fools. For they consider not
that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and
let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God.
For God is in heaven, and thou upon earth. Therefore let thy
words be few." Did you catch what he said? He said, be not
rash with your mouth. And he said, and don't let your
heart be rash either. That's inside, that's where nobody
can see. Here's our example. Look at the
end of verse 3. Aaron held his peace. Art, his two oldest sons were
laying dead at his feet, killed at the hand of God. They would
not sanctify and glorify God before all the people in God's
presence, and so God Himself sanctified Himself and glorified
Himself before all the people by killing them. You've got to know His heart. Your son, you came to worship
God, and you're in the middle of worshiping God, and you went
from rejoicing like you've never rejoiced, seeing the fire of
God come down like you wanted to see it, and consumed that
sacrifice off the altar, meaning God receives you and accepts
you. And in the next minute you see that fire come down in a
way you hoped you'd never see it, and it consumed your son
right in front of your face, and he falls dead smoking on
the ground. And Moses, the preacher, turns
around to you and says, this is what God's talking about when
He says He's going to be sanctified and glorified in front of the
people. And Moses, in his mouth and in his heart, held his peace. You know what His silence said?
His silence screamed out, God has done right. That's what His
silence screamed out. God's done right. When you draw near to God, don't
offer the sacrifice of fools. Believe on Christ and let your
words be few. And men, when you read Scripture,
weigh your words carefully. Weigh them carefully. When you
do order a word from this pulpit, make sure it is Christ, Christ,
Christ, because He's the glory of God. He's the glory of God. If a passage is dealing with
the believer's walk, show how God came down because man could
not do what was required to be done by it. So God came down
in human flesh and He did it for His people. And He paid for
all our sins for not doing it. And then God will apply it in
the hearts of His people and make His people realize, I've
never done this deed that I should be doing. I've never walked like
I should be walking. I've never done this before at
all. by showing you that Christ has done it for you and made
you righteous by what He's done. And then there will be a reverence
in the heart to do what the command says to be done because you're
motivated and constrained in your heart by love. And that's
the only motive God will receive. Alright, let's go now to the
third thing. Worshipping and serving God requires
steadfastness and standing with God. Look at verse 4. Moses called
Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel, the uncle of Aaron,
and said unto them, Come and carry your brethren from before
the sanctuary out of the camp. So they went there and carried
them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said. They
carried them out. Those coats they thought merited
them something with God. God carried them out in those
coats to be buried. They didn't marry them anything.
But now watch this. So they went near, carried them
out, verse 6, and Moses said unto Aaron, and to Eleazar, and
to Ithamar his sons. Now get this. They're carrying
his sons out to be buried, to have his funeral, their funeral. Now this is what Moses says.
Don't uncover your head. Don't show one sign of mourning.
Do not rend your clothes. and pull your shirt open and
show that your heart is broken. Don't do it. Lest you die. And lest wrath come upon all
the people. But let your brethren, the whole
house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath kindled.
Now these ones that are in Israel, they can go cry for them. And
they don't cry against God and what He's done. They can cry
at the sorrow that God had to do this in the midst of Israel
because of these two rebels. But now he says, look, verse
7, And you shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of
the congregation, lest you die. You can't even attend the funeral.
Not only can you not cry, you can't go to the funeral. Lest you die. For the anointing
oil of the Lord is upon you. And they did according to the
word of Moses. God required Aaron not to mourn
for his dead sons, and required his remaining two sons not to
mourn for their dead brothers, nor could they leave the house
of the Lord to attend the funeral, because the anointing oil of
the Lord was upon them." That meant they represented the people
before God, and God before the people. They represented the people before
God, and they represented God before the people. If they mourned
for these two rebels, they would be saying God was unjust, and
these two rebels didn't deserve to be consumed like God consumed
them. In doing so, they'd prove themselves rebels, and God would
kill them, and the wrath of God would come upon the people. But
by standing steadfast with God, they declared God holy, and glorified
God before the people. Brethren, when our sons and our
daughters rebel against God, when loved ones depart from us
like ravens, drunk with Babylon's free will, it hurts. It hurts. I've seen it. I have seen it. In my own family
I've seen it. And it hurts. But as priests
of God, We must stand steadfast with God. We cannot take the
offense out of the cross. We cannot leave God in His house
to run mourning after those who will not bow to God. Because
the glory of God and our Redeemer for the good of men's souls.
We cannot do it. Cannot do it. We must stand with
God who is their only hope. I'm sure Aaron's heart was breaking
for those two boys, but there was something more important
than his heart and those two boys. It was God's glory and
God's people. That was more important. This is the God we worship. Listen to what He told Jeremiah.
He said, If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou
shalt be as my mouth. Let them return unto you, but
return not thou unto them. No, sir. Why? You've got to stand
with God. You've got to stand with God.
The glory of God and the well-being of our fellow brethren is more
important than our broken hearts. It's just so. What if some did
not believe? Shall their unbelief make the
faith of God without effect? What if some ran out? If we run
out there, we're saying, oh, we're saying God couldn't save
them. We've got to go help God out. God forbid. God forbid. Let God be true and every man
alive. that thou mightest be justified
in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged."
It's God's way or the highway. That's true. In fact, God's way
is the highway. He puts his people in the highway,
Christ the Lord. That's the only way to get to
God. But we see something else too in this. The blessings of
God to our souls always outnumber the hard eggs. I know what you're
thinking. You're sitting there thinking,
I don't know if I could do that. Let me answer that for you. You
can't. I can't either. We can't do that. But look what
this says, verse 7. The anointing oil of the Lord
is upon you. The reason they could not mourn
and go to the funeral is the same way that they would be able
not to do it. because the oil of God was upon
them. After all of the disgrace brought upon Aaron and his family
by Nadab and Mabihu, God assured Aaron and his remaining sons
nothing had changed between them and their God. Look at verse
12. Moses spake unto Aaron, unto
Eleazar, unto Ithamar his sons that were left. Take the meat
offering that remaineth of the offerings of the Lord made by
fire, and eat it without leaven beside the altar, for it is most
holy. And you shall eat it in the holy
place, because it is thy due and thy son's due of the sacrifices
of the Lord made by fire, for so I am commanded. We saw this
Thursday night. That was their inheritance, given
to them of the Lord. Their portion, their part, just
like Christ is our part. And everything about it pictured
Christ. Christ commanded Moses to assure Aaron and his remaining
sons of the immutable, unchanging, unalterable love for his people
in Christ. That's what he told him. He said,
take the meat offering. All this trouble Aaron's got
to have made you weary, got to have made you doubting and fearful
in your flesh. flee to Christ and partake of
Him. That's what He said. Without leaven, you don't need
to carry your works to it now. Don't carry your fire to it.
Go there and eat and partake of Christ. Beside the altar,
because we have an altar, Jesus Christ, whereof they have no
right to eat that come with their strange fire. Go eat it by the
side of the altar. He is most holy and you have
boldness to freely partake of Him in the holy place. You can
enter in right there to God's presence. and partake of Him. It's thy due. It's due to you. It's due to your son. How is
anything due to a rotten sinner? By God's grace, that's how. By
Christ's finished work. It's not only God's mercy to
give it to us, it's God's justice to do so because it's our due. Because we have perfectly, fully
satisfied God by what Christ has done. He says, now go eat,
go eat. Moses said, for so I've commanded.
Who told him to do that? Who told him to tell them that?
The Lord did! And they did, verse 7, they did
according to the word of Moses. We must persevere steadfast with
God and not yield and not bend. But I can assure you of this,
it will only be by the preserving anointing oil of God the Holy
Spirit making us to continually be upheld by the grace of God
given us in Christ Jesus. That's the only way. Only way.
Here's the fourth thing. This is the last thing. Every
trial God is teaching us something. You know that. So let's learn
what He... Now He's going to sum something
up here to us. So here, God teaches us, if we're
going to worship and serve God, we have to walk after the Spirit,
not after the flesh. We have to walk after the Spirit,
not after the flesh. Look at verse 8. And the Lord spake unto
Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine, nor strong drink, thou nor thy
sons, with thee, when you go into the tabernacle of the congregation,
lest you die. It shall be a statute forever
throughout your generation. Now God, He prohibited His priests
from literal wine and strong drink when serving Him in the
tabernacle. Some say these boys were probably drunk. They may
have been, I don't know. But Christ's preachers are not to
be given to strong wine. That's just so. Nor should we
drink wine or strong drink, come to the house of the Lord. That's
just irreverent. It's just irreverent. But in drunkenness, that's the
key. because Christ drank wine with
his people to show a picture of Christ. And we're fixing to
drink wine to see a picture of Christ. That's not forbidden.
Don't, don't, now you got, hang with me, you got to get this
point or you're going to miss the whole message. Here's the other side
to that. If we're going to worship and
serve God, we must not, it says, be not drunk with wine wherein
is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with God
the Holy Spirit. We must not be ruled by the flesh,
by excitement, by our emotions. We have to walk after the Spirit
according to God's Word. That's the only way we'll be
able to use spiritual discernment. Okay? Spiritual discernment.
Look at verse 10. That you put difference between
holy and unholy. between unclean and unclean.
In our message, in our methods, in our manners, in our music,
that you put a difference between that which is holy and unholy.
Be filled with the Spirit so that we can discern between holy
fire and strange fire. The pure wine of the gospel and
the wine of Babylon's fornications. We're not up against the out
and out Armenian in our day. We're not fighting what brother
Ralph Barnard and brother Henry Mahan fought in their day. The
harlot today is dressed like she comes straight out of the
Reformation. That's right. She's saying election and predestination
and particular redemption and all of those things and she's
preaching universal atonement and salvation by works while
she does it. It's what Christ was talking
about when He said, if it was possible they would deceive the
very elect. That's not something that you
just can obviously tell is a lie. We're in that day. We're in that
day. So you gotta be walking after
the Spirit and not drunk in your flesh, in your fleshly wisdom,
in your fleshly emotions. so that you can discern the truth
from a lie. So you can tell clean from unclean.
Again, Aaron shows us the example of this. Walking by faith in
the Spirit, not by law. Look down at verses 19 and 20.
I have to be brief on this point, but it's very important. Verses
19, it says, Moses came and Aaron had taken of the sacrifices that
the law said he was to partake of. Now the law said it. He was
supposed to do this. And he came to Aaron and he said,
Aaron, you didn't partake of this. And look what Aaron said,
verse 19. And Aaron said unto Moses, Behold,
this day have they offered their sin offering and their burnt
offering before the Lord. And such things have befallen
me. And if I had eaten the sin offering today, should it have
been accepted in the sight of the Lord? And when Moses heard
that, he was content. You see, Aaron was sober. I'm
talking about he was walking in the Spirit. And he was filled
by God the Holy Spirit to see that Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness. So he didn't take the things
that God said and worship God in the letter of the law. It
looks like he broke the law. But he didn't. He worshiped God
in the spirit of the law. And the spirit of the law is
for love to God and faith to God and reverence to God, I don't
want to do anything that's going to cast any kind of disparagement
on his worship. And Moses said, I'm content. I'm content. Why? Because the
law, the letter of the law, has been thoroughly satisfied by
Christ Jesus. So that it's out of the picture
now, nailed to His cross, but He's given His people the Spirit
in the heart where we want to be filled with that Spirit and
not drunk in our flesh in our own vain wisdom and vain works
and vain walk and vain tradition and vain, vain, vain, vain. We
want to be filled with His Spirit so we see the law we're under
is the rule of faith that works constrained by the love of Christ
looking to the... because we love Christ and we
want to honor Him and everything. And the law says It don't get no better than that.
That's what I teach. That's the spirit of what I teach.
Men are everywhere going about trying to worship me in the letter
and they're missing the spirit of what the law is. The law is
love for God. All right now. Let's go back. Verse 11. And here's why else
you want to do it. Not only so you can discern between
clean and unclean, and that you may teach the children of Israel
all the statutes which the Lord has spoken unto them by the hand
of Moses. Except for us now, we're learning
the gospel by the hand of Christ. You see, you don't want to be
carried away in your flesh because you know what you'll do? You'll
leave the gospel. You'll get mad in your flesh, drunk in your
flesh, and stagger away like a drunk man down a gutter, down
the gutter of a street, and you'll take your children away with
you and go sit out under a gourd and pout because everything didn't
go your way. And you're going to be in hell
with your kids cursing you and saying, Daddy, why didn't we
stay under the gospel when we had the chance? Be sober so you can discern what
God's teaching is, so you can stand to the Word and worship
Him in reverence and in fear, in faith and in love, so that
you can teach your children. Because among our children, somewhere,
either in our immediate family or in our neighborhood on our
block or in our town or in our nation, somewhere, we got some
sons and daughters here. Real ones. That's the reality. They're the real ones. And God's
going to call them by the gospel. He's going to use us to do it.
You see, here's the point of the whole thing. All eyes must
be on Christ. Now listen to me. A good rule
of thumb is this. If anything about me is turning
others' attention from Christ to me, From the message to me. Or if anything I'm doing is giving
me glory rather than Christ. My attitude, my attention, my
attire, my whatever. Whatever it is. It is not faith. It is not reverence to God. And
it is not pleasing to God. You understand that? Now, have
you seen here how jealous God is of Christ and of His glory
in His house? He killed these boys on the spot.
If we'd worship and serve God, we must come with God's sacrifice,
Christ Jesus. He's never going to strike us
down and kill us who are trusting in Christ. Never. Because Christ
bore that for us. I don't want you to get a legal
fear now. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about
a reverence for God. Like you reverence your daddy. But better. But more. Secondly, we must declare
God's holiness and glorify God before all the people. Which
means we reverence God above ourselves. Above our rathers.
Above our rathers. You know, there's a lot of times
I'd like to just come in here in a pair of flip-flops and not
take a bath in the morning. But I'll be quite honest with
you. I worked hard this weekend. I stunk this morning. You wouldn't
have wanted to be around me. You wouldn't have. But for God's glory and His honor,
I got up, took a bath and put some decent clothes on and came
here because I want to honor Him. Thirdly, we must continue
steadfast with Christ even when our dearest loved ones rebel.
Fourthly, we must walk after the Spirit rather than be drunk
with the wisdom and passions of our flesh. God is greatly
to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be had in
reverence of all them that are about Him. Now listen, here's
what Paul told the Thessalonians. Prove all things. Where's the
proving stone? Christ. Is this drawing attention
to Christ? Is this giving Him all the glory?
And hold fast to that which is good and abstain. Now, everybody, I want all the
young people listening to me. Listen. Abstain from all appearance
of evil. It doesn't say abstain from all
evil. It says abstain from all appearance of evil. Does this
look like, if somebody sees this, is it going to appear like it's
something other than what it is? Let it go. It's not worth
it. If you, beloved God, want to
glorify God and your Savior, it's not worth doing it and saying,
well, that's just their trouble if they see it that way. No,
God says it's your trouble. God says, hold fast to that which
is good, abstain from all appearance of evil. And the very God of
peace sanctify you wholly And I pray your whole spirit and
soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Now who's going to do this? Who's going to apply this
word? You that have already been sanctified unto God, who is it
that sanctifies us wholly and preserves us blameless unto that
day? Who does it? It's what Paul said.
Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it. You've been
told by preachers that you do it. No, God does it. God does. I pray now He'll give
you a heart to understand what you've been hearing. Alright,
let's stand together for a moment. We're going to close in prayer. Father, thank You for Your Word.
Thank You for showing us how serious a thing it is to worship
and to gather here and how that You deserve the very best we
can give to you in your worship because you have given the very
best in giving your precious darling son by whose precious
blood we've been bought and saved and are made complete and shall
never be turned away from your grace. Lord, cause us to think
of that whenever this flesh wants to turn us and take the easy
way, cause us to remember. to go to Christ, to look at Him
and see what's honoring and glorifying to Him, and hold fast to that
which is good, and to abstain from every appearance of evil.
Thank you, Father. Forgive us of our sins. In Christ's
name we ask it. Amen. All right, brethren. You can
be seated.

Worshipping & Serving God

What does the Bible say about worshipping God?

How do we know that God is present during worship?

Why is reverence important in Christian worship?

How should Christians respond when loved ones rebel against God?

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Worshipping & Serving God

What does the Bible say about worshipping God?

How do we know that God is present during worship?

Why is reverence important in Christian worship?

How should Christians respond when loved ones rebel against God?

Sermon Transcript

About Clay Curtis

Comments

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