God hates impure worship. If you’ve read any sizable portion of the Prophets in the Old Testament, that should stand out to you. That’s a chronic problem.
And although not emphasized in the New Testament in some regards, that is relative to the proportion of the Old Testament, it’s still there. It hasn’t disappeared. The function of the New Testament isn’t to go over everything you saw in the Old Testament.
It’s to supplement it and expand it into settle it. That’s why the New Testament quotes the Old Testament often, to learn moral truths, right? He hates it so much that he killed thousands of Old Testament saints because of it. And that should tell us something.
But to avoid the judgment of God upon false worship, we ought to get a better grip on what true worship entails. And so with your patience, let us get to that point, the first point. What is false worship? And by implication on the flip side, therefore, what is right worship? And you’ll see how the two go right next to each other very easily.
What is False Worship?
Once you understand false worship, you will understand true worship because of the principle involved, I believe. Now, I’m going to go through a little history here. This puts things, I hope, in perspective.
It’s the same pattern of argument that we saw this morning in Sunday School class in Romans 5, where Paul argues that sin fell upon all mankind, not just the Jews. Because from Adam to Moses, people died. And you can’t die unless there’s sin.
And the sin is culpable for everyone there before the Mosaic Code. It existed against Moses. There are things that are just Moses, right? The temple, and the priesthood, and the like, and the land.
That’s true. That’s just the Moses, or the Mosaic era. But if it existed before then, and it’s morally imperative before then, and the moral activity before the Mosaic Code, clearly it’s moral.
It’s something that’s independent. You can’t just say, that’s just the Mosaic era. And so Paul’s argument is, people are dying before the Mosaic Covenant comes along.
Why? Because they’re sinners. How? Because they’re still under the curse and the judgment of the covenant of works. They’re culpable.
They’ve sinned, even without the Mosaic Code. And in a similar fashion with respect to worship, we see before Moses, there is worship. And God takes it seriously.
So it’s not just, oh, you know, God, Him and the Jews of the Mosaic time, He’s just being very particular. And there’s some truth to that. There are some things that are clearly God focusing on them, like we do with children, where we’re harder on them on some things than we are adults, as it were.
That’s the moral equivalent, in my mind, that God deals with some things. But here we see Cain and Abel. Genesis chapter 4. Cain and Abel.
Now, when you hear Cain and Abel, kids usually, I think, probably hear the story of Cain killing Abel. Such a terrible thing to do. But something happened before then.
Why was he driven to rage to kill Abel? And in the process of time came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord, all caps, Yahweh, covenant-keeping God, respected Abel and his offering.
And he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry. What we notice here, if we listen to the words used, it doesn’t say, God respected Abel and did not respect Cain.
It says, God respected Abel and his offering. And he did not respect Cain and his offering. I mean, that’s the context, right? In the process of time, Cain comes along and gives an offering, a sacrifice, which is an act of worship.
We know that, even if you don’t see it here, once you go to Moses, because it’s the same word, same activities going on during the Mosaic era, except now they’re multiplied, all these different kinds of sacrifices and layers of sacrifices and different time periods of sacrifices, right? We all know that’s the context of public worship. Formal, setting aside, of focusing upon God, in adoration of Him, in hearing His word. Which is different than what you’re doing throughout the rest of life.
If you have a little prayer time, yes, you maybe read some Bible with your family and the like, or at lunchtime and the like. That’s different than Sunday, public formal worship. And the same with the Old Testament here.
When they give these offerings, it’s supposed to be done precisely and properly. And I would argue, as Dr. Coppice argues and others have argued, and that God had already explained to them what He wanted. He did not and was not satisfied with Cain and his offering, because he gave of the earth and did not give a bloody sacrifice.
If you’re giving the firstborn of a flock and it’s fat, what are you giving but a bloody sacrifice? Which was already implied in the giving of the garments to Adam and Eve when they fell. And God says, no, the clothing you put on, the little fig leaves, that’s not going to cut it. You need to have a total covering of your sin.
That’s the symbolism there. And it’s got to be through the slaying of blood, hence an animal cloth covering them, not just fruit of the earth. So offerings already existed.
And who taught them this? We don’t see it in the text. It doesn’t say God said, here you go, you ought to do some offerings. You just see actions of God.
Then you see God reacting. Humanly speaking, to their bad sacrifice or to the good sacrifice. It wasn’t the light of nature.
They couldn’t have observed creation or their conscience to say, ah, I know what I got to do to satisfy God and give him good worship. Now, all nature tells us is that there is a God and that he should be worshiped, but it doesn’t tell you how. You can’t get that from worship, from natural revelation, from your conscience at all.
And so, as I said, when God gave Adam and Eve clothes from the slain animal, he was already showing them what to do. And by now, with this punishment God gives Cain, God is not a willy-nilly God that just said, I don’t like you today, Cain. Cain was responsible.
He was responsible to knowledge. He was given the knowledge of what kind of sacrifice to give, and Cain didn’t give a rip. We understand that again, as I said, because God doesn’t judge you if you’re ignorant in that sense.
We see that in Romans 1. It’s not like the whole world’s ignorant. The point of Romans 1 is everyone knows there’s a God and they’re guilty. Knowledge and guilt, got that? Cain’s guilty here.
Therefore, he has what? With a morally rectitude God, he has to have had knowledge somehow. God told him somehow. I don’t know the details.
I just know the end result and the fruits thereof. He knew. He knew better than it had to be a bloody sacrifice.
Worship, we see from there on out to Moses. But the patriarch was through a three-fold process. Prayer, praise, and I want to say preaching because it’s three Ps, but it’s the sacrifice of preaching, the sacrificial preaching, right? What is the sacrifice but a picture and therefore an explanation, although in mute terms, as it were, of Christ and of sin and of redemption, and of the Messiah to come who will die for his people.
The patriarchs weren’t dumb pagans who think somehow the gods need food or an animal. He said, God’s hungry. You know, the best of the pagans didn’t even believe that.
If you look at their literature, then it was rather symbolism in a way to manipulate their God. So the patriarchs didn’t believe, oh God, this was hungry, he needed an animal. No, it was symbolism.
Symbolism of the seed to come. That promise that was given to Adam and Eve, and they gave an oral tradition, probably wrote it down pretty early. I mean, Adam and Eve were geniuses, I believe.
They fell, but they lived a long time, and I think God gave them brains for a long time. They advanced as best they could during those thousands, hundreds of thousands, thousands of years, hundreds of years combined. So the worship of the patriarchs, as you see in those instances of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what do they go to God? They give a sacrifice.
They’re talking to him. They’re praising his name in their talks. You have a prayer built into the talking.
Maybe they sung, I don’t know, but it’s certainly singing as a subset of praise. And again, the preaching there of the sacrifice about what is required of you, repentance and faith, and that Christ will do it all for you. And this is what you have going on for hundreds of years, for a long time, up until the time of Moses.
Then it explodes. All the different sacrifices, the formal office of priest and the like, and all the assistance of the temple, and the whole ball of wax. So that’s up until the time of Moses.
There was worship. There was not a want of or lack of a worshiping community before God above. It’s always there.
It talks about then they started calling upon the name of the Lord, that phrase a couple of times in Genesis. And that seemed to be an indication of things, specifically them thinking about God, and praising God, and calling out for God in worship and in prayer. And during the time of Moses, we see now that at long last the population has grown.
And after 400 years of living in Egypt, I would suspect there was a lot of ignorance. They have their traditions, some things perhaps written down. We don’t know how much is written down other than what Moses gave us, of course.
God gave him a lot. And he had what he wrote down for us there in Genesis and the Pentateuch. But when we get to the Ten Commandments with Moses, God makes clear what his people already knew intuitively, the Ten Commandments.
It’s already written on our hearts before the fall, I believe, as it were, in positive form. Thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt. There’s no sin.
Remember, the commandments are mostly negative. It gets a face. There’s a fall.
There’s some illumination. There’s some truth here, we know. They did some righteousness by God’s grace.
They did a lot of unrighteousness, as we saw, as well, the patriarchs. Here, God’s like, I’m going to settle all this. I’m going to write it down.
You’re getting the Ten Commandments. I’ve given you Moses. And here’s a nice outline of the first table of the Ten Commandments, right? The first four chapters.
Excuse me, first four commandments. This is from Matthew, Henry. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before you, is the who of worship.
The second commandment, you shall not worship any idols, etc. That’s the how of worship. The third commandment is the why of worship.
And the fourth commandment is the when of worship, right? On the Lord’s Day. There’s public, formal worship. Deuteronomy 12, then, we see by the hand of Moses and the Holy Spirit, is the law of worship chapter.
In Romans 12, we have the law of Christian liberty. And here in Deuteronomy 12, we have the law of Christian worship. That’s how I remember the two.
You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. What way? The way of the world. The way of the pagans.
For every abomination to the Lord which he hates, they have done to or for their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their God. Isn’t that astounding? You hear that description, like, wow, that can’t be real.
And you think about America, oh, maybe, you know. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it.
There at the end of Deuteronomy 12, whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it nor take away from it. He’s not talking about the law of God.
That phrase, neither add to nor take away from, you have something similar in Revelation. We’d like to think of, well, you can’t add to the Word of God. That is, you can’t add another Bible.
You can’t add verses. That’s true, but you can’t get it from this text, I would argue. This text is specifically about worship.
You should neither add to nor take away from the worship of your God. You can’t do as it pleases you, and you can’t do as it pleases your neighbors. What’s God doing but restricting worship, isn’t he? Not to man’s will worship, as it says in Colossians, but to God’s worship as defined by him.
This was already assumed before the Mosaic Law, as I pointed out, and practiced by the patriarchs, who did not add to nor take away from the worship as revealed to them. They didn’t worship like the pagans worshipped. That probably came upon them in Egypt because they were surrounded by pagans.
And as we heard before, peer pressure, evil companions corrupt good habits. Evil neighbors corrupt good habits. And evil culture corrupts good habits.
And look what happened in Egypt to Israel. After 400 years of this, they’re being vexed as Lot was vexed. After Moses, we have the consideration that the worship forms changed, necessarily, but the substance was still there.
Therefore, we see some of the things going on in the New Testament, for instance, like the time to go to bed changes with time. A child has to go to bed at a certain time. They need it as you get older.
You’re like, I’m an adult, I can go to bed when I want. But you still can’t violate the rule behind when to go to bed. And that rule is, you need sleep.
You just need sleep. You’ll actually die if you don’t sleep. As weird as that may sound.
Usually you’ll faint of exhaustion before that happens. And same with worship. Although some of the forms change, we see a lot of it just gone in the New Testament era.
God’s like, no more temple. All that’s gone. All the pictorial way of preaching Christ is done away with.
You’re no longer children. You don’t need a picture book anymore. You’re adults.
That is, collectively speaking, as the people of God. You don’t need that anymore. But nothing has changed in substance of what that worship is.
Everyone with me? The substance. What is worship? Honoring Him and praising Him in accordance to His Word. Christ, we see in the New Testament, condemns adding to God’s worship in Matthew 15, 9, just like we saw in Deuteronomy 12.
And in vain they worship me. That’s a specific word, worship. Teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.
Adding things that men say and saying, this is the teaching of God. This is how we should enact worship. And Christ is saying, no, that’s wrong.
Christ is coming. And Christ is changing a few things. The outward forms of worship.
But not the true truth of worship as we know in John, where he comes to maintain true worship and spirit and truth. And he says, I’m concerned about worship. And the worship, the false worship, is teaching the doctrines and the commandments of men as though they’re from God.
This is how you should please God. I’m telling you, I think that’s the best way to please God. And Christ is saying it’s not relevant what they say.
It’s what God says is the implication there. Christ is concerned about worship. And there’s no indication He has undermined or removed that same principle of worship in the Old Testament where you can neither add to nor take away from said worship.
Well, what about all those verses in Deuteronomy as I mentioned? What about the New Testament? Consider how Christ rebuts Satan’s temptation with respect to using the Old Testament is my point here. The Old Testament is done away with in terms of worship outward forms. Can we learn anything from it anymore? Of course you can.
In Matthew 4, 9, and 10, we have Christ rebuking Satan in the temptation. And he said to Christ, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. There’s worship again.
And Jesus said to him, away with you, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve. What is he quoting? Satan was tempting Jesus to worship Satan instead of God, but Jesus did not rebuke him with quoting himself. He quotes the Old Testament.
And he quotes Deuteronomy 6, 13, you shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him. So Christ is telling us by His example, not only to use the Word of God, but that you can use the Old Testament Word of God, even though we don’t have the same exact worship forms. Remember the old saying, what would Jesus do? Jesus would quote the Old Testament.
That old saying, WWJD, oh boy. There’s some truth to it, and a lot of confusion, because it’s bumper sticker theology again. Where? Where is it relevant? Not to the forms of worship, of course.
The temple and the priest are clearly gone. But if you think about it, why weren’t they clearly gone? They weren’t clearly gone, actually. There was confusion, if you remember, through the book of Acts about what’s going on here with the Mosaic Code.
And it wasn’t until the book of Hebrews, where he lays it down clearly. It is all done away with, all these outward forms of worship. And that makes sense if we understand the proper principle of worship, that we can only do that which God commands.
So I haven’t defined it quite yet. I just gave you a little definition there, haven’t I? I’m almost there. The substance of that worship is the same through all the ages, for it’s the same God who desires the same worship.
When the woman at the well talked about worship from the Samaritan perspective, right? The northern tribe. She’s a half-breed, as they would say today. Or maybe not.
I’m showing my age, apparently. He didn’t delve into the details of the Old Testament ceremonial law with her. He said, worship God in spirit and in truth.
Truth meaning the right way to worship God, not the wrong way, obviously. And this idea of the right way of worshiping God, of not adding the commandments of God in the worship of God, is summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 21, paragraph 1. 21.1. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in holy scripture. Yes, that’s a mouthful.
They’re covering a lot of details for a reason. But what it means, the nub of it is, you can worship God only as he commands, and not any other way other than prescribed in holy scripture. It’s called the regulative principle of worship.
It’s not what we think about. It’s not, well, it’s not, you know, why not have me mime the gospel? Take a couple of mime classes. You think that’s funny, people have done that, in worship.
Because it gets people’s attention. And the argument would be, you know, it’s not forbidden in the word of God. Because it isn’t.
There’s no verses, thou shalt not mime, or thou shalt not do anything related to mime, thou shalt not have any theater. But if your principle, however, is not, whatever is not forbidden I can do, but your principle is, that which is commanded is only what I can do, you hear the difference? You’ve got to find a command if you’re going to add to the elements of worship. And that’s why we’re weird.
And your children will feel that pressure, and you will feel that pressure when it comes to worship. I don’t know, 100 to 1 of churches that are like, no, no, if it’s not forbidden, you can do whatever you want in worship. You might not like it, you might not be comfortable with it, but it’s not forbidden.
I’m not sinning, I’m not murdering people. I’m not lying to you. I’m just doing things that entertain you and grab your attention.
It’s not forbidden. And we’re like, that’s not relevant. That’s not worship.
Worship is only that which God commands, because it’s so holy to him, and it’s only about him. That’s what that principle is. It’s all the difference in the world, isn’t it? It’s more restrictive, it’s a smaller circle.
Of things we’re allowed to do as an act of worship, of public worship. Consider Jeremiah 730. In Jeremiah 730, For the children of Judah have done evil in my sights.
God complains, as we hear often by the prophets, says the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name. That is, what about the house? The house is a picture of worship, public worship.
That’s what that imagery is. And they’ve polluted it. And they have built the high places of Topheth.
Remember the high places? That phrase used often. Again, that’s the picture of worship. They go to the groves, they go to the high places, they set up their idols, and they say, we’re going to worship God this way.
Or we’re going to worship Baal instead of God. And they did it again. Which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom.
To burn. Why do they make up the high places of Topheth? To burn their sons and their daughters in the fire. Now, is murder forbidden in the word of God? Yes.
I think guys are all exhausted from the prior meeting apparently. Yeah, it is. And so, you know, if you were seeing these people murdering kids in worship, or for the act of worship, it doesn’t have to be as it were in here, it could be elsewhere, like they were doing in the groves and the high places.
They’re saying, we’re doing this as an act of worship before God. Murder our children. And you say, God says not to murder! That would be correct.
But what does God say instead? Which I did not command, nor did it come into my heart, that you should do this, is the implication. He doesn’t say, stop it, I said not to murder. He said, it never came to my mind that you should be doing this.
It didn’t come into my heart. You guys catch that? You see the difference? That fits with the model of, you should only worship what I tell you to worship, what comes to my heart, what I desire. And think about how amazing that is in this context, is your first thought is, they’re murdering kids! And that’s true.
But God’s first thought is, I didn’t tell you to do this as an act of worship. That is an astounding, I hope it does. Whoa, where are my priorities? Whoa.
Jeremiah 730 and following. It’s an odd way of speaking, but it makes sense when you already understand the principle involved. That which is not commanded should not be done.
That which is not in God’s heart should not be done. That which is not His command should not be done. New Testament examples, right? This makes sense if we understand the New Testament examples.
Why do you baptize? Why don’t we just say, you know, worship is that which is never forbidden by God. So we can do all kinds of things. There’s all kinds of things not talked about you shall not do in worship, right? It’s just a free-for-all, call it Christian liberty.
We take all Christian liberty, regular life, and dump it into public worship. Which is what, like I said, 101 churches do. 100 out of 1 churches do.
Then why do we have baptism? Why do we have communion? I don’t believe there’s a verse that says, Thou shalt not not have communion. Thou shalt not not baptize. Catch how I said that? Because if that principle is true, then you might as well just skip worship, skip baptism, because it’s not been forbidden not to do it.
It’s a positive command, right? Remember what we learned about the moral principles? That which is commanded is always our duty, but not every duty is done at every particular time. You’re like, oh, now’s not the time to do it. It’s not forbidden.
And I know churches that do that. We don’t baptize. Not this time.
You know, this person’s struggling, and it’s kind of offensive to baptize them, and, you know, we don’t want to offend them. No, because intuitively, we’re already enacting the principle, we can only do what God commands. And the reason why we baptize and have communion is because Christ commands it.
He says, these are things you’re supposed to do in acts of worship. Okay, because Jesus told us, not because we made it up in our head, and we thought this would be a really great thing to do, and it’s not violating God’s laws. All the difference in the world, isn’t it? So, God commanded in the New Testament era, not because we thought it would be good.
That’s the regular principle of worship, brothers and sisters. The elements of worship. I’m not going to go into all the details, because sitting down is not an element of worship.
What time you go to worship is not an element of worship. All right, those are circumstances common to all of us. Whatever you do in life, you’ve got to pick up time, place, are you going to stand, are you going to sit, how long it’s going to be, right? Things like that.
Lights, walls, etc. So, don’t go down that path. I mean, that which is an act of worship.
Israel’s False Worship Punished
Israel’s false worship is punished by God. The nub of this verse here, all her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her pay as a harlot shall be burned with fire, so that it is her false gods, i.e. her false worship in particular, worshiping God with false images, because God said, make no images of me, and he’s calling them, therefore, spiritual harlots, right? That’s what he’s talking about. Worship, your worship is harlotry to me.
Wow. And I’m going to burn it all down, all that wealth you put in, because it takes money to make these idols. You’re going to lose it all.
And in fact, it’s going to go, and they shall return at the end of verse 7, they shall return to the pay of a harlot. I take that to mean it’s going to go off to the pagans, and they’re going to use it for their own harlotry, which they did when they took over Samaria in 722. It’s a standard theme, as I said, Jeremiah says, the corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away, all because of false worship, and the prophets, and here we have Micah.
In the New Testament, we see, so I can go through all the Old Testament stuff, showing you how much God hates false worship, and how he punishes them as well. You know better, what are you doing? It’s not hard, don’t make an idol. Don’t make an image.
And Israel does it anyways. In the New Testament, Christ tells us, has this house which is called by my name become a den of thieves in your eyes? And he drives them out of what? The temple, which is a place of worship. He’s zealous for the worship of God, and he quotes Jeremiah 7.11, he’s zealous for the worship of God.
Hebrews 12.28 is another passage about the worship of God, we might not have thought about that before. He’s giving an imagery here, and warning them, as we see in Hebrews 12, that don’t be like Esau, who sold his porridge, his birthright for a piece of porridge. Threw it all away, his circumcision.
And he was judged for it. Then he continues on to describe going before God at Mount Zion. And that’s the act of being in his presence in a unique way, like we are here in public worship.
Anybody who touched that mountain was slain and killed. Remember that? They put a fence around it to make sure none of the animals wandered off and got slain and killed, and destroyed by God. Because God’s holy presence is there, this is another theme that can be unpacked as well.
In worship in a unique way, it’s not done elsewhere, his worship, his presence, excuse me. But Hebrews 12.28 tells us, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.
The judgment of God and the fear of God are not Old Testament doctrines, they are New Testament doctrines. With respect to worship in particular, serve there it says, we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably. That word there means religious duty.
Catch that? That’s the Greek word, religious duty. I’m not going to go into all the details, trust me. If you have a good footnote, it will tell you that.
It’s a specific word. And so he’s talking about what then? Worship. As I said, the background, the verses before this is them coming, in the Old Testament, Israel coming before the mountain and being consumed by fire.
And God’s saying we have something more firm and more established than the old Mosaic covenant. We also still have a same God though, and the same God of consuming fire. God takes his worship seriously in the New Testament, brothers and sisters, and you will be burned if you offer false incense.
You remember those stories, right? The priests are like, oh, I just feel like doing something different today. They don’t tell you what it is in the text, it’s not relevant. They offer strange fire before God and God says, I don’t care if you’re priests, you did it wrong, it never came into my heart, nor did I command it, and he killed them.
America’s False Worship Punished
Right? New Testament says, worship God acceptably with reference and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire that is religious service before him. America’s false worship is punished as well. And I know I’m mixing the ideas here as not as though America is the church, but America comprises of a lot of church and has collectively, less and less now, we’ve had a religious past.
Common religious past. The first table of the law, as Calvin writes in his Institutes, opening of his Institutes that he wrote, surely the first foundation of righteousness is the worship of God. When this is overthrown, all the remaining parts of righteousness, like the pieces of a shattered and falling building are mangled and scattered.
If you don’t have the right God and you have false worship, what do you have anymore? That’s his point. The violations are more serious because it’s all about God. The first table is about God and the violations, they’re ever more serious.
We talked about that, I think, in a sermon about the heinousness of sin, how some sins are worse than others. And why? One reason is on account of who you’re sinning against. The sin against God is worse than the sin against man.
Do you believe that? Who he is and how we honor him are on his term and not our own. America has worship problems to be sure, not merely gross idolatry of idols that you bow down to, although you have that in Roman Catholicism. Lesser forms of it would be candles in Anglican churches.
I went to an Anglican church meeting once. They were having a speech there off of Colorado a couple of decades ago. And I went in, I’ve never been to an Anglican church before, and they had in the corners candles.
I guess they were prayer candles and some of them were burnt off and used, and others weren’t used, the like. And here, in the room of worship, in the house of God, because they believe those are acts of worship before him, although they never came into his mind to worship him through those means at all. But what we have instead are things close to that.
Prodicicism, we have pictures of Christ. I don’t know why. I guess they feel like we need something.
Kids need to see that. No, we don’t need to do that. No one knows what Christ looks like, so why pretend you know what he looks like? He says very clearly, do it on me for, don’t make any images, don’t make any idols of me.
And he gives a reason, why? Because you never saw me. You didn’t see anything in the mountain. So how can you draw me? And who here has seen Christ? And how can you draw Christ? That alone should be sufficient.
But the broader idea, of course, is you should only do what God commands and doesn’t tell you to make images of him. And I’m always reminded of the story. I’m always reminded of the story Dr. Coppice used to tell.
He went over to a lady’s house, and he saw a picture of Christ, and she’s like, oh, I don’t worship that. I mean, that’s not what I use to worship God. Doesn’t matter either way, right? I don’t think that is God, or I don’t think that’s how I worship God.
And so Leonard purposely, I think, put his coffee cup on her, flipped it over or something, put his coffee cup on it. She got upset. Hmm, things that make you go, hmm, that’s when you know someone’s hard, isn’t it? We had something similar, unfortunately, in a denomination, in a presbytery I’m aware of, where they had candlelight worship in the worship service.
And it was simply asked if it’s not an act, because we asked them, do people consider this an act of worship? Well, not really. So if you took it away, would anybody get offended? Yes. We had to, they had to, the denomination had to, the presbytery had to arm-wrestle them down to finally stop having candlelight worship services.
God’s serious about it. God’s serious about it. Typically, it’s right God, wrong methods, right? In Exodus 32, this passage is astounding.
In Exodus 32, 4, and he received the gold from their hands, right, Aaron, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molten calf. And they said, this is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt. You’re like, what? They’re saying Jehovah God is this calf who brought you out of Egypt.
They were just brought out of Egypt. It’s not like they forgot the other day, brothers and sisters. It’s not like 400 years later, they’re like, who is this God? No, they just turn around the next day and go, I’m gonna make an image of this and call this my God, this golden calf.
So they’re saying Yahweh is this golden calf, we’re gonna worship Yahweh this way. In other words, it’s the same God, wrong worship. Got that? That’s significant because again, 100 churches out of one don’t believe that.
They’re like, worship God any way you want as long as he doesn’t forbid it. It’s okay. God was upset at their false worship methods, how they worshiped God.
The punishment we see of Israel for false worship and more is war, right? It says, Assyria’s gonna come and wipe you out. It’s an accumulative judgment. It’s been many, many decades and centuries and many, many sins.
So it’s hard to know exactly how much false worship is in there. It’s a lot because it’s against God and that’s a very serious thing. I don’t know what it is today.
How much you can say of the sins of the church and we have our own sins. Mentioned this before. How much you can say is the effects and the bad things happening on our churches, it’s because of false worship.
I don’t know, but I know God judges false worship. That I do know. And he takes it seriously, brothers and sisters.
So pray for ourselves that we take worship seriously. And for those churches that don’t take worship seriously or are very confused, I’m not imputing malignant motives to them. Although some of them do have that, like false shepherds, obviously.
But many are just very confused. Pray for them as well. Let’s pray.
Glorious God above you who are majestic and holy, we would think it’s the height of arrogance if the husband picked whatever he thought was wonderful and nice to give to his wife instead of thinking about what she wants. And we ought to do the same all the more with God. All for to your precious Lord and Savior, may we have such zeal in our hearts and minds.
But a zeal of softening towards our brothers and sisters who are confused about this, that they would see, Lord, the importance of worshiping you are right. In your name we pray, amen.