It is the responsibility of all
rational creatures, men and angels, to worship God, to call upon His name, to give
praise to Him. It is the responsibility of all. We try to teach our children
to give thanks to God. to seek mercy from God, to plead
with God for the forgiveness of sin. Your mamas and daddies
are wise to see to it that your children are in the house of
God every time they possibly can be, under the instruction
of the word. Wise to see to it that they are
taught by word and by example, to worship and honor God according
to their responsibility. honor God with their time, with
their words, with their thoughts, with their lives, with their
possessions. It's the responsibility of all to worship Him. It is
the privilege of a few to worship Him. We have come here this hour above
everything else. to worship God. The fellowship is sweet with
you, with one another, with our friends. But we've come to worship. Not to go through the religious
exercises and ceremonies that pretend to worship, but to worship. Not to simply go through the
motions, but to worship our God. The Holy Spirit tells us bodily
exercise profiteth little. And He's not talking about physical
exercise. He's not talking about getting
out and walking a mile a day, or four or five miles a day,
or running 10 miles a day. That may be of some physical
profit. He's talking about the exercise
of religious duties, ceremonies, and writes, he says, bodily exercise,
going through the motions, profits little. But godliness, oh, godliness,
that's somewhere else. Godliness. Godliness. And that's not talking about stuff me insane. And what the
world calls godliness, most ungodly stuff in the world. When he's
talking about godliness, he's not talking about stuff men say. He's not even talking about stuff
you can do. He's talking about what's inside you. Vital godliness. Lindsay Campbell is the worship
of God in our hearts. Now that, that is great gain. Oh, spirit of God. Give us grace
now to worship. I want to talk to you for a few
minutes about divine worship. Our text will be Leviticus 22,
verses 31, 32, and 33. I just told you the Bible is
open at Leviticus 22. And let me show you some things
that God requires if we are to worship Him. If we would worship the eternal,
infinite, omnipotent, ineffably glorious, sovereign Lord God. I use all those adjectives to
describe Him and fall indescribably short of setting forth His greatness. We have come here not to meet
a man. not to meet the President of
the United States, not to meet all the kings and potentates
that have ever existed in this world. We've come here to meet
up with God Almighty, to worship Him, to worship Him. You remember how hesitant Esther
was to go into the presence of the King? She said, I don't dare
go in there unless he asks me to come. I don't dare go into
his presence unless I'm invited to go into his presence. God
Almighty, God Almighty calls us to his throne. We come here
to worship him. But if we would come into his
presence, if we would worship God, If we would in our hearts
worship Him, if we would stand before God Almighty and be accepted
of Him, God demands that we stand before Him, now listen to me,
in perfect cleanness. Look at verse 4. The Lord God
tells us that none can eat of the holy things of His altar
until he be clean. Well, what's that got to do with
us, preacher? The eat of this altar is that which is described
in Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 10 as feasting upon Christ, who
is our altar. The eating of the holy things
of the altar, feasting upon the sacrifices by the priest, was
that which God gave them to do and provided for them and said,
this is your food. It is your right to have it if
you are God's priest and God's family. Those things pictured
feasting upon Jesus Christ our Lord by faith. Those things pictured
living by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord
God here says, you can't come to my altar and you can't eat
my sacrifice, you can't worship me until you stand before me
clean. Clean. But preacher, I'm so vile." I'm glad to hear you know that.
Brother Doug and I were talking the other night. He was discussing
the message Todd preached last Sunday. And he said, he preached
on, am I a dog? And he asked me, why is it that
through the parables the Lord seems to constantly never immediately
answer the request and desire of those who come to him, but
rather forces them to see and acknowledge their loneliness,
their corruption. Why didn't he just immediately
say to that Syro-Phoenician woman, OK, I'll take care of your daughter.
She came, said, Lord, have mercy on me. My daughter is grievously
vexed of a devil. And he started talking to her
about what it wasn't right to do. And she kept seeking mercy. And he said, it's not right to
take the children's bread and give it to dogs. And finally,
that poor desperate woman said, I know that. But even dogs get
the crumbs that are scraped off the master's table. And this
is what impressed Doug. He said, the Lord said, I've
never seen so great faith. Well, why did he compel that? Because God never will be worshipped
and will never give grace to any sinner who has not been compelled
by His grace to acknowledge His utter desperate need. I'm going
to tell you when you'll come to Christ. I'll tell you when
you'll trust Him. I tell you, when you believe
on Him, when you've got no other choice, that's the only time you'll come.
When you find out there's nothing in you, nothing you can do to
commend yourself to God, you're utter, vile, sinful, wretch,
justly condemned, deserving eternal damnation, alienated from God,
and justly so because of your sin. When you recognize that
there's no way of access to God for you except through the mediation
and merit of an all-sufficient substitute, that's when you'll
trust Christ, not before. This is what I'm telling you.
If we would worship God, we must be clean. And the only way we
can be clean is to plunge into that fountain filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel's veins. For sinners plunged beneath that
flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day. Now, here I am, in all my vileness, in all my depravity, in all my
corruption, there in Christ the Lord, in
the fountain of His blood, there may I, though vile as that thief,
lose all my guilty stains and wash all my sins away. Would you be clean? Would you be clean before God?
I mean clean, so clean before God that God Almighty has no
grounds upon which to charge you with sin, so clean that your
own conscience, your own conscience says, Amen! God accepts me! Rightly so! Plunge in to the fountain, open
for sin and for uncleanness, and believing on the Son of God,
Watch your filth roll away. This is what the Apostle Paul
said. You were adulterers, fornicators, idolaters, thieves, covetous,
all those things. But now you're washed. But now
you're justified. But now you're sanctified by
the Spirit of our God. washed in Christ's blood, justified
by His righteousness, sanctified because God the Holy Spirit has
given you grace to believe on His Son and to plunge in yourself
into that fountain of Christ's sin-atoning, redeeming blood.
Look at verses 19 and 29. You can't worship God until you
stand before Him in perfect cleanness. And if we would worship God,
we have to do it willingly. You notice in those two verses,
19 and 29, God says, if you bring anything to me, offer it at your
own will. At your own will. Anything we offer to God. Anything we offer to God, we
must offer because we want to, at our own will. I find folks sometimes say, well,
I don't ever force my children to go to church because they
don't want to go. I don't want to bring them Sunday
school because they don't want to go. I don't know where on earth the
crazy notion came into being that children had rights. Children
have the right to do what they're told. That's all. Just to do what they're told.
You children, when you get old enough to make your own living,
to provide for your own clothes and provide for your own food
and protect your own family, then you have the right to be
responsible for them. But until then, the only right
you've got to do what you're told to do. I can't imagine a
mama saying to a 2-year-old or to a 12-year-old or to a 16-year-old,
do you want to go to church today? Do you want to eat today? Would
you like to go to bed tonight? Well, you don't treat children
that way with anything of lesser responsibility. What nonsense! I never asked my daughter if
she wanted to worship God. Like Joshua, as for me and my
house, we will worship the Lord. But those are minors. Those are children. If we would
offer anything to God acceptable to Him, we got to come to Him
because we want to. Your gifts, they're a mockery
unless you want to give. Your Bible readings are a mockery
unless you want to read. Your worship of God is a mockery
unless you want to. But preacher, I thought you folks
didn't believe that man has a will. Where on earth did anybody ever
get that notion? My soul. The only reason a fellow takes
a drink of water is because he wants to. I never knew anybody,
never knew anybody to go draw water out of a well who didn't
want to. Never knew it to happen. Never knew anybody put a piece
of bread to their mouth who didn't want to. Of course man has a
will. His will's perverse. His will's
corrupt. His will's bound by his nature.
And no man will ever willingly worship God. No man will ever
willingly come to Christ. No man will ever willingly believe
on the Son of God until he's made willing. Oh, but blessed
be God when He drops His grace into your heart. You're willing to believe, willing
to worship, willing to call on His name, willing to trust His
Son. And so the psalmist sings, blessed
is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto
thee. Listen to this word. If there
be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a
man hath And not according to that he hath not. Paul is talking
in that passage in 2 Corinthians 8 about giving. And he's talking
about giving particularly for the poor, for the needy, those
saints at Jerusalem particularly who had suffered such persecution
and such devastation because of their faith in Christ. And
Paul is writing this letter in particular to get the Corinthians
out of their abundance to do what they said they were going
to do. He said, oh, we'll take care of it. He said, now do it.
But I'm not asking you to give one red cent to anything or anybody
in the name of God unless you want to. If there's a willing
mind, if there's a willing mind, God will make your two cents do indescribably more than a
rich man's million dollars. Let a man give according as he
has. Not according as he has not. God will accept it if there's
a willing mind. All right, look at verse 24. That which we bring to God, whatever
it is, whatever it is... Now listen to me. I'm not talking
about just your money. No. I'm not talking about just...
What you set aside to give to the cause of Christ, to this
church, to missions, no, no, no. I'm talking about that and
much more. Whatever we bring to God. Bob
Bunce, we brought ourselves here to God this morning to worship
Him. I brought this message. I'm preaching
it to you, but I'm bringing it to God. That song Judith just
sang, she sang it in our ears, but she sang as I'm sure she
did. with proper motive, she was saying,
for God. Brought it to Him. These gifts,
they go to support the cause of Christ around the world, but
we brought our gifts not to this preacher, not to this church,
not to our friends in Mexico or around the world. We bring
those gifts to God. Now what we bring to God? Whatever
it is. God requires that it be our best. Our best. Look at verse 24. You shall not offer unto the
Lord that which is bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut, neither
shall you make any offering thereof in your land. Hold your hands
here and turn to Malachi chapter 1. When you're doing something for
God's glory, When you're doing something for
God's glory, whether it's cleaning this building, Bobby out there
mowing that grass, me preaching this sermon, giving of your means,
coming here to worship Him, when you're doing something for God's
glory, Ron Wood, don't ever think, well, I've worked hard enough
for that, that'll do. That'll do. It's just a church house,
that'll do. It's just, I just had a little
handful of meats on Tuesday night in the middle of nowhere out
here in Danville, Kentucky. That's good enough. That's good enough. That's enough preparation. That's
good enough. Menzies stands up here and teaches. He labors at
it. He tries to get me to get the
lessons to him before I get them done, but he labors at it. Don't
ever presume, well, I just had a little handful of meats on
Sunday morning for the adult class. This is, that'll do. That'll
do. Don't ever imagine, with regard
to worshiping God, that'll do. He demands our best. And he deserves it. Look at Malachi
1, verse 6. A son honoreth his father, and
a servant his master. If I then be a father, where
is my honor? If I be a master, where is my
fear, saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priest that despised
my name? And you say, wherein have we
despised your name? We've been worshipping you and
serving you all these years. We come to your house. We bring
our sacrifices every morning, every evening. What do you mean
we despised your name? You offer polluted bread on my
altar. And you say, wherein have we
polluted thee? in that you say the table of the Lord is contemptible." Contemptible. That word contemptible,
let me tell you what it means. If you walked by a place of business out of your
restaurant, let's say, and you walked by and saw a table spread. No businessman would ever do
it in his right mind. It wouldn't be a business law.
But you looked at the desserts. That's what, as we get into our
age group, most of us are most interested in. The little kids
and folks past 50 have got a big sweet tooth. What you're really
interested in is the desserts. And you walk over there and you
look at that coconut pie and it's been sitting out there so long
the meringue's hard and the crust is soft. And you kind of dry
it up. And that pecan pie just kind
of shriveled. And that piece of cake, man,
it looks like it's been sitting there for days. And over here
is a dessert table. Man, you can smell the coconut
on that pie. You can see the serpent at the
compound. You can, oh, that chocolate cake, oh. You can walk right
by one to that one. Because this is contemptible. It's been there a long time.
And if I'm hungry, it'll be there tomorrow, because ain't nobody
going to bother it. That's what he's talking about. You've said
the worship of God's contemptible. Here's something more appealing.
Here's something more desirable. And if you offer a blind for
sacrifice, is it not evil? And if you offer lame and sick,
is it not evil? Let's see how good of a gift
it is. Offer it to your governor. Come on, take it to the governor.
See how pleased he'll be with it. Or accept thy person, saith
the Lord. Look at verse 12. that you have
profaned it, in that you say the table of the Lord is polluted,
and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. Christ
is contemptible. God is contemptible. The worship
of God is contemptible. Always there at my disposal for
me to take or reject. You said also, behold, what a
weariness. That's just too much trouble.
And you have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of hosts, and you brought
that which was torn and lame and sick. Thus you brought an
offering. Should I accept this at your
hand, saith the Lord? But cursed be the deceiver, which
hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrifices unto the
Lord a corrupt thing, less than is best. For I am the great King,
saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the
heathen. I want to tell you something.
We better learn it. God won't accept our leftovers. He won't do it. Our leftover
gifts, our leftover time, our leftover energies, he won't accept
it. In recent years, I've spoken
to two men who have worked all of their
adult lives at securing a good place of retirement, good position,
good income for their aging years, their golden years, and they're
getting close to it. And you know what those fellows
had the gall to say to me as though I ought to look at it
and say, well, bless your soul. Once I get my retirement in,
I believe I'll consider entering the ministry. Believe I'll consider pastoring.
Some of these churches will need somebody like me who can provide
for themselves. The churches might, but God doesn't.
And he won't have you. He won't have you. You forget
that. God won't take your leftovers.
Not now and not tomorrow. Let's hurry. I can't stop on
all these. Here's something that needs to
be heard and heard clear. Verse 25, the worship of our
God deserves and demands personal sacrifice. Verse 25, he said,
neither from a stranger's hand shall you offer the bread of
your God of any of these, because their corruption is in them.
and blemishes be in them, they shall not be accepted." Now,
clearly, the passage is talking about God will not receive anything
from the hands of an unbeliever. You must be clean to be accepted.
But the passage is talking about more than that. He's saying, David, if we'll
worship God, we can't do it without self-denial and personal sacrifice. God won't be worshiped by our
convenience. We ask folks to do things, and
when we're dependent on them, we say, at your convenience,
when you're able to. But if you decide you're not
going to do it, I'm just up the creek. God Almighty is not going
to be served by you or me at our convenience. It ain't going
to happen. Turn over to 2 Samuel 24. David is bringing the ark of
God up to Jerusalem. He's planning to build a house
for the worship of God. And God struck us dead because
he tried to stabilize the ark, put his hand to God's salvation.
And David said, the Lord brought a breach on us. He said, let's
stop and consider what we're doing. And then he went down
to get the ark and bring it up to Jerusalem after he sought
the Lord. And this fellow Ornan, he's called
one place, here he's called Orana, he heard what David was doing
and David wanted to buy his threshing floor so he could make a sacrifice
to God. And this fellow, he was a rich
man. He said, ho, King David, you're going to worship God here.
How many cattle do you want to sacrifice? Here they are. How
many sheep? How many oxen? Here they are. I've got plenty.
The threshing floor? Shoot, you take it. No, I won't
charge you a dime for that. Take it and worship God. Now
watch David's response. 2 Samuel 24, 24. Nay, but I will surely buy it
of thee at a price. You name the price. You name
the price. Well, let's dicker on this. I'm going to buy it from you,
but I won't pay too much for it. No, you name the price. You name
the price. Neither will I offer burnt offerings
unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. Fifthly, if we would worship
our God, we must do so by feasting upon His sacrifice in His house.
That is, worship requires the feast of faith. Look at verse
30. On the same day it shall be eaten up. You shall leave
none of it until tomorrow. I am the Lord. The sacrifice, of course, is
Christ the Lord, the bread of life. And he says, you eat the
sacrifice here, where the sacrifice is revealed. And you eat the
whole thing all at one time. You see, some folks have the
idea that what you do is you get Christ and you, well, I'll
believe a little bit of this, and I'll believe a little bit
of that, and I'll pick and choose a little bit of this, a little bit of
that. After a while, I'll put them all together like a big
jigsaw puzzle, and I'll make my own Savior, and I'll call
that faith in Christ. Oh, no. Oh, no. Christ is revealed in
His full, redemptive, God-man glory. And He says, you trust
Me. Take My life, My righteousness
alone, and My blood, My redemption alone, and there, feast before
God. Look at verse 31. If we would
worship Him, God demands that we worship Him according to His
own order. We must worship Him in the way
He has prescribed. Keep my commandment. Do what I say. We baptize believers. Somebody says, why do you all
baptize that way? Because that's the only way you can do it. Because
that's what God says. We observe the Lord's table.
We have unleavened bread. And we have wine. I could never take that. Oh,
you're better than God, are you? More holy than God? More righteous
than the Almighty? Why do you insist on that? Because
that's the way our Lord did it. That's why we do it that way.
I had somebody ask me one time, what if you went to a church
where they didn't serve wine and unleavened bread for the Lord's table? First
time I served, we'd have wine and unleavened bread. Well, you
just can't do that. I wonder why I can't. Our Lord
requires it. We worship him the way he said,
and not any other way. And we won't accept any other
way. And number seven, God requires that when we worship him, first
and foremost, honor him. He said, profane not my holy
name. He said, hallow me. I will be
hallowed of them that draw nigh me. Let us take care that we honor
God in what we do here. More needs to be said about this
than I can say now. But our purpose is not to entertain
men. I make a deliberate effort of
doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to gratify the taste of this
age, to gratify and satisfy the flesh. Oh, but the churches,
they have ball teams for the kids and they have scout troops
and they have youth night and singles night and single moms
night and single dads night and divorce night and this night
and that night and this club and that club. Oh, they've got
so much to offer for everybody. And nothing to offer for anybody. I have one thing for everybody. Free grace. through an all-sufficient
substitute, will carry you to glory. That's all. That's all. But everything's
so simple. That's not because we're just
plumbed dirt poor. It's because we intend it to be simple. But
everything's so plain. That's because our intention
is to focus your attention on God our Savior and honor Him.
But y'all don't have any ceremonies, nothing impressive. My dear sister,
I called her this week. She may hear the tape, that'd
be all right. She might get upset, she might not. She said she had
a daughter going up to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Did
you ever hear them? I was talking to my Nichols.
I didn't say much. I said, no, I never heard him. I never heard
him. Oh, God, they're such great songs. So beautiful. You know, the last
time we were there, we got to hear the senior pastor. I knew he brought a good message.
I thought, after I hung up, and first time I see her face to
face, I'm going to talk to her face to face. Don't you understand
what that impressive bunch of idolaters believe? Don't you understand what they're
promoting? Oh, but it's so impressive. Look at the beauty, perfect harmony,
perfect pitch. Oh, what a choir. I don't think
I'm interested in joining them to listen to them sing in hell,
are you? We worship God according to his
word for his honor. Now, I've got to quit, but I'll
give you my outline. Verses 31 through 35. How can
we be inspired? How can you and I be motivated
of God to worship him, depending on Christ alone to
make us clean? How can we be persuaded to willingly
bring Him our best? To devote ourselves to Him? This
hour, in this place, in our lives, in our hearts, in our homes,
day by day, how can we be motivated to willingly sacrifice? Oh, my God. Teach me something
of this thing called self-denial and sacrifice. How can we be
persuaded willingly? Willingly. How can we be persuaded
willingly to bring God back which cost us? How can we be persuaded
willingly to conform our worship to his word? Willingly to do
everything we can for his honor. How can we be so persuaded? Number
one, God speaks to us and says, therefore, shall you keep my
commandments and do them because of who I am? I am the Lord. That is to say, I alone am the
object worthy of worship. I alone am the object worthy
of faith. I alone am the object worthy
of devotion. I'm the Lord. You see, no man
will ever truly worship until he worships at the throne of
a sovereign, an absolute sovereign. Divine sovereignty is not the
last thing believers learn before they leave this world. Preachers
talk, well, you know, we'll hold off for a while. We'll wait till
the old fellow's on his deathbed. Then we'll talk to him about
divine sovereignty. It's the first thing you learn when grace
is put in your heart. Revelation chapter 4, the very
first thing John saw, a picture of what happens when God saves
a sinner. The very first thing he saw is a through. And the
first thing a sinner has to be confronted with is he's dealing
with God, an absolute sovereign. Worship me because I'm the Lord.
Number two. Read on. Neither shall ye profane my holy
name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel.
Here it is. God inspires us to worship Him by telling us He's willing to
be worshipped by us. Imagine that. God Almighty, sitting
on His throne, stoops. He stoops like a hazardous tester. He stoops and stretches out His
golden scepter and says, Bob, come on in and worship me. He's
willing to be worshiped. He said, I will be hallowed. God demands that we hallow, that
we sanctify, that we honor Him. But He's willing to be hallowed
by such things as we are. Read on. I am the Lord which hallowed
you. I've been looking at this over
the last few weeks. Looked at it last night pretty carefully. The Lord God here calls for us
to worship Him, to sanctify Him, assuring us and motivating us
that He is the one who sanctifies or hallows us. Now there are
numerous compound names, there are 14 of them, given in the
Old Testament, where God uses His redictive name Jehovah in
connection with other names. None of those names, Jehovah
Sikhenu, the Lord our righteousness, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will
provide, Jehovah Rokhaka, the Lord that healeth thee, none
of these names, none of them, is any greater, more delightful,
more blessed than this. Jehovah Makedesh, that is, the
Lord that doth sanctify thee. And this is what God says. He says, Ron Wood, I've sanctified
you. I reached down with a long arm
of omnipotent grace and pulled you out and separated you and
set you apart from all the peoples of the earth. I redeemed you. I justified you. I chose you. I called you by my grace. I sanctified
you. And I'm keeping you. I'm preserving
you. Now, it just seems reasonable to me you ought to sanctify me. You ought to set me apart from
all the gods of the heathen and worship me. Number four, our great God, our Savior inspires
us to worship Him as God our Savior by reminding us of His
great deliverance of our souls that brought you up out of the
land of Egypt. I'm the Lord. I'm the Lord that
will be hallowed. I'm the Lord that has sanctified
you. I am the Lord who brought you out of bondage, out of darkness,
out of misery, out of woe, out of death. I brought you up by
my blood and by my power. I saved you by my matchless grace. And then fifthly, He motivates
us to worship Him by reminding us of His purpose
in everything He has ever done. In everything He is doing. In
everything that He shall yet do. Look at it. I did it. I did it all. I did it all. I did it all. I did it all to
be your God. To make myself your own peculiar,
distinct, treasured, worshipped God. I did it all to be to you
a God and a Father and a Shepherd and a Savior. Oh, who would not
worship Thee? If only they knew Thee. So Lord, make Yourself known
and compel us to worship Thee.