[review: Worship - part 1]
     Good Morning and welcome to the Berean Break, my name is George Sinkie and I am so glad that you have joined us this morning.  Truth is a wonderful thing, it is great to have all religious truth recorded for us in the Bible.  It is amazing that God, with all His knowledge of all things, and His greatness, could and would tell man everything he needs religiously in this one small book.  For those who love God and want to be His disciples and servants, it is not too big.  There are those who think that the Bible is too big and they write their creeds and catechisms, but what really happens is they write their own desires and ideas and then distort passages from God’s will to appear to support their beliefs.  I am glad that we have this opportunity to examine the word of God.  As always I encourage you the listener to check out the word of God for the truth.  And I would like to ask of you a favor, if you think that I am not teaching the truth please have the love for me to let me know so that we can study together and know the truth.  Let’s go to God in prayer,

Great God in Heaven, We thank You for this day in our lives, Help us today to love You more, To know Your will better.  To serve You completely with our lives.  We thank you always for the truth that You gave us in You word, And help each of us to be satisfied with Your will, And reject the doctrines of men.  In Jesus’ Name!!  AMEN !!

     Today we are going to continue and conclude our study on the principles of worship which we started last week.  We were using an acrostic for the word worship to look at these points.  Let us quickly review the points that we considered last week and as always if you would like an audio cassette of these lessons they are free of charge, all you have to do is call or write and request the lessons on worship.
     Last week we looked at points for the letters W, O, R, and S.  We need to remember that the type of worship that we are considering is the truth worship that God wants.  Each of these points of worship that we are looking at have been and still are distorted.  For the letter W, we looked at the idea the truth worship is done willingly.  While there are religions in this world that coerce and outright force people to follow them, God never has and never will force man in this realm to worship Him.  It is God’s desire the we willingly and lovingly worship Him.  For O, we saw how acceptable worship was to be orderly.  It is orderly because God has given the pattern for what is to be done, when it is to be done, and how it is to be done.  When we accept the authority of God and worship as He desires, we will not have the circuses and confusion that some religions have in this world.  That brings us to the point that we considered for the letter R, which is that godly worship is reverent.  It makes God the boss and respects His authority.  So many religious groups today struggle with the authority of God.  Now many say that they accept His authority, but then they make up their own religious laws and change their religious laws as it suites their fancies.  This is not being reverent.  The final point we looked at last week was for the letter S and it was that we need to be sincere.  We must not confuse this with the wide spread belief that sincerity is the god.  Some people have made sincerity out to be god by teaching and believing that if a person is just sincere then they are right with God.  This is not what God wants and neither is it what I mean when I say that true worship is sincere.  Sincerity is what Jesus was talking about when He spoke to the Samaritan woman by the well in John 4:23-24.  Jesus says,

   23 But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
   24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

     Now let’s continue on with acrostic for worship.  We are up to the letter H and this should remind us that worship should be humble.  Consider with me what Peter says in 1 Peter 5:5-6,

   5 You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
   6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,

     Worship is not a place where we are to exalt ourselves or anyone else except for God.  Yet in many religions of this world that is exactly what is seen.  Think about some of the titles that men take for themselves.  The title Reverend is not found in the Bible and the only use of that word in the King James version has reference to God.  But many people go beyond this to things like Most High Holy Reverend.  True worship is impossible when man is looking to exalt himself.  As Peter says, it is when we humble ourselves that God will exalt us, not man or ourselves, but God.  Jesus tells a parable concerning this in Luke 18:10-14

   10 Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer.
   11 The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer.
   12 ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
   13 But the tax-gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
   14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

     Not only does humility need to be a part of our worship, but it also is a part of our justification.
     The next letter of the word worship is I and true worship is an individual thing.  Now don’t misunderstand this point and think that I mean that worshipers of God can be a hermit that isolates themselves from everyone else.  There are commands and examples throughout the Scriptures that show that God wants His people to fellowship with one another.  But the fact remains that we are each individually accountable to God and therefore our worship is individual.  Paul wrote of this in Romans 14:10-12

   10 But you, why do you judge your brother?  Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt?  For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.
   11 For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall give praise to God.”
   12 So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God.

     It doesn’t matter what your spouse may do, You need to worship God according to His will.  It doesn’t matter what your children may do, you need to worship God according to His will.  It doesn’t matter what your parents may do, You need to worship God according to His will.  It doesn’t matter what your friends may do, You need to worship God according to His will.  Even if everyone else in the whole world is not following God, You as an individual need to worship God according to His will.  Now we need to look at this from the opposite angle as well, even if the people we assemble with are worshipping according to God’s will, that doesn’t do us any good if we as an individual are not doing it according to His will.
     The final letter of the word worship is P.  The worship that is pleasing to God is pure.  We already looked at where Jesus said that we need to worship in spirit and in truth.  The idea that our worship must be according to truth shows it must be pure.  In James 1:27, James writes about religion and says,

   27 This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

     Pollution is a very big topic these days and yet many do not want to hear about the pollution that goes on in religion.  James show that there are two things that effect our religion.  First is our relationship with our fellow man, in particular those who are in need, widows and orphans.  The second is to keep ourselves unstained from the world.  That means not to let the world influence us.  Most people think of this in the realm of not lying, or stealing or committing adultery.  And this is all true, but it also deals with being unstained by the world in our religion.  Consider this for a moment, when the world in its religions uses instrumental music to worship God, and God nowhere commands the use of instrumental music and specifically commands His worshipers to sing.  Whose religion is pure and whose is stained by the world?  The one who follows the teaching of God and has singing without the use of instruments has the pure and undefiled religion.  Or what about the religion that copies the world and has a governmental structure that is not found in the Word of God.  This too makes that person’s religion impure and defiled.  God calls all people to follow Him, but only those who have pure and undefiled religion are His true worshipers.
     Worshipping God is important to those who love God and they will strive to do it according to His will.  As we have seen with this acrostic, true worship is done willingly, orderly and reverently.  Worship that is true and pleasing to God is also sincere and humble.  We saw as well that worship, while it needs to be done as the church or family of God, is an individual thing.  And finally we saw that it must be pure.  God is the one who designed and planned and commanded true worship and God is the only one that can make any changes to true worship.  We can read about God’s plan for true worship in the New Testament today.

[review: Worship - part 1]