Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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The Priority of Worship

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening Prayer

And he says, it says, Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the flood surrounded me. All your billows and your waves passed over me. Then I said I have been cast out I have been cast out of your sight. Yet, I will look again toward your holy temple. The water surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer went up to you into your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, but I will sacrifice to you. With the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay what I avowed. And what struck me about this passage was, this was Jonah’s lowest point, literally, geographically, physically. I mean, below sea level, you know what I mean? His lowest point, yet he said, yet I will look toward your temple. At his very lowest point, what did he do? He turned to the Lord and he said he would offer thanks to the Lord. He would offer thanksgiving, he would offer prayer, he would basically, at my lowest point, I’m going to worship God. And a lot of times when we’re at our lowest point, we do just the opposite, right? We’ve kind of skunk away and when I feel better then I’ll go to church or when I feel better then I’ll go to Life Group or I’ll be around my Christian friends when I’m feeling better. It was at the lowest point that he looked to the temple. It was at the lowest point that he turned to God. And when you’re maybe you’re at your lowest point right now, maybe you’re having a bad day, a bad week, bad morning, doesn’t matter. As a matter of fact, when you’re at your lowest point, that’s the most important time to turn to the Lord. Amen.

Offer your prayer, offer your thanksgiving to Him. So let’s do that as we go into the Lord’s presence and worship Him. God is good. We thank Him for His presence here this morning. And I appreciate the worship team. Amen.

The kids are going to class? Is that correct? Sure, yes. Okay.

Let’s stand. We’re going to pray a blessing on the Word today and all the children. Father, we thank you for your presence here, for your precious gift of your Holy Spirit that dwells in and amongst your people. We pray that He would be our instructor and teacher today as we look at your word. We pray your blessing on the preaching of the word as well as on the teaching in the catechism classes, Lord. We pray that your word would bear fruit in our lives. Give each one of us ears to hear what your spirit is saying to the church. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Opening Scripture: John 4

If you’re going to class, you can be dismissed now. The rest of us, open your Bibles to John chapter 4, the Gospel of John chapter 4.

This is a fairly well-known passage where Jesus has a very long conversation with the Samaritan woman, often referred to as the woman at the well.

And let’s just read part of it. Verse 5 of John 4. So he, Jesus, came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well, and it was about the sixth hour, or we would say noon. A woman of Samaria came up to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with. The well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this, water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. And then the woman said, sir, I’ll take some. Give me this water. If you’ve got water that is going to last forever and I’ll never be thirsty again, I’ll take it. That I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. Now, she, of course, is still thinking of water. Right? She’s like, this is a great deal. I’m going to get this water. I’ll never have to go through the hassle of coming out to the well and the heat of the day and drawing water and doing all this work. Great. Still looking at things from a natural perspective rather than a spiritual perspective. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, you’ve said, that’s true. You have no husband. For you’ve had five. perceive that you are a prophet. Like, how do you know about these intimate details of my life? And I don’t even know you’re a stranger to me. You must be a prophet. She was right about that, amen.

And then she says, our fathers worshiped on this mountain. And you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Now, I don’t know how often you’ve read this passage, but it is really fascinating to read this passage. I mean, really slow down and see all the psychology that’s going on here. Is this woman, how a lot of times she’ll speak in the plural like we, we Samaritans. But then sometimes she switches and says I. And usually she switches to I when she wants something. But then she wants to be evasive and doesn’t want Jesus addressing her personally. She goes to we. Very interesting. So she perceives he’s a prophet, which was true. And so, she begins to discuss worship. In other words, okay, you’re a prophet, so there’s this long standing dispute that’s been going on between the Jews and Samaritans. So since you’re a prophet, maybe you can shed some light on this. That’s why all of a sudden, we get this apparently radical transition to all of a sudden talking about worship here. Verse 20, our fathers worship on this mountain and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. As Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship, you do not know what or you know not what. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth.

God Seeks Worshipers

So this morning I wanted to speak briefly about worship, and as I was meditating and studying this passage, Jesus’ response to her about worship struck me where he said In verse 22, you worship what you do not know.

He didn’t say you worship whom you do not know, because the Samaritans actually worshiped Jehovah, and the Jews worshiped Jehovah, right? So they both knew the whom, but not the what. Jesus was saying, I think what he’s really saying, If I were to give it the Vaughn paraphrase, it would go like this. You don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to worship. I mean, that’s putting it simply. They had Jehovah. Yeah, okay, Jehovah is the right object. But you don’t really understand what you’re saying when you talk about worshiping on this mountain. You don’t understand worship. You have the right object, but the wrong worship. And the problem was she didn’t understand, at a minimum, she didn’t understand the spiritual nature of worship. To her, it was the location. It was the tradition of her people. It wasn’t the spiritual essence of worship. Essentially, Jesus is saying, when it comes to worship, you don’t really understand it, so you don’t know what you’re doing. And so it caused me to begin to ponder, do we understand it, and do we really know-know what we were doing? When it comes to worship, do we understand worship? Do we really know what it means when we call upon the name of Jehovah? Do we have correct views of God’s glorious attributes? Do we comprehend the perfections of Christ and His finished work? Do we know what the Bible says when it exhorts us to bless the Lord, or to exalt the Lord, or to praise the Lord, or to worship at His footstool, or to fear the Lord, or to glorify and magnify His name? Do we understand these things? When we observe the host of heaven worshiping in their crying out, blessing, honor, glory, power, riches, wisdom, strength to the Lamb.

Do we understand what these things mean? The blessing and the honor and the glory and the power and the riches, the wisdom, the strength, what are called the seven perfections of praise. Do we really know why the Bible tells us to lift our holy hands or to kneel before the Lord our maker? To be grasped the meaning of the first commandment, which is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength. Of course, you don’t need to be an expert theologian to worship God. Thank the Lord for that, amen.

Some of those who are of the simplest minds are also of the purest hearts. Nevertheless, that being said, we ought to strive to grow in our understanding and our practice of worship. So the question is why? And the answer is simple, because it’s important. It is a priority, a biblical priority. And so this is where I want to talk about the importance of the priority of worship. And I want to talk about its importance not to us, but first and foremost its importance to God. Notice here in this text in John 4, Jesus says this in verse 23, The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. So worship is important to God because He is seeking, worshipers, not just seeking converts, not just seeking souls to populate heaven, but He is seeking worshipers. Now, Now go to Revelation for a moment, very familiar passages, but we’ll just quickly look at these. Make a quick point here. Revelation is an awesome book because it’s like, just for a moment, the veil is kind of opened up and we get to peek into heaven for a minute. What’s going on up there? What’s really happening in heaven? And what do we see? Chapter 4, verse 6, Before the throne there was a sea of glass like crystal, and in the midst of the throne and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes and front and back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second, like a calf, the third had the face of a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of. around and within. And they do not rest day or night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and they worship Him who lives forever and ever. And they cast the crowns before the throne saying, you are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. So the first snapshot we get of what’s going on in heaven is worship. And as you read through chapters five, six, seven, we repeatedly, we are told over and over and over, what’s going on in heaven is worship. verse 8, Now when he had taken the scroll, the four living creeks and the four elders fell down before the lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song saying, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals. That scroll is the scroll of history. The lamb is the one who is governing history. For you were slain as to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nations. And you’ve made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth. Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne. The living creatures, the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands. A whole lot. Right? A vast multitude that really could not even be numbered. Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature, notice this, every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and all that are in them I heard saying, every creature I heard saying blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the church says what? Amen. Amen to that means I agree. It’s true. Amen. And the 24 elders fell down and they worshiped him who lives forever and ever. And we see similar scenes as we proceed through the book of [audio unclear] going on in heaven. This, if you are a believer in Jesus, is where you’re headed. So guess what we get to do now? We get to practice. We’re getting ready for the great marriage feast of the Lamb, which is going to be a big wedding party and an awesome celebration, and an awesome wedding reception, I and we are going to be literally The plan of redemption seeks such to be part of this company of worshipers.

So if he’s seeking this, then it must be important to him. It’s also important to God, secondly, because he commands us to worship him. Quickly go to Exodus 20, I know I’m jumping around, but this is more topical than expository.

In Exodus 20 we have the Ten Commandments and the first two commandments, the Lord says this in Exodus 20 verse 2, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. In other words you are to worship me and worship me alone. We need to have the right God if you will. might sound silly, but you know, we now live in a pluralistic society and your neighbor might worship a very different God. You may have a Muslim neighbor, a Hindu neighbor, whatever neighbor. So we have a multiplicity of gods that are being worshiped in our society today. God says, I am God. Jehovah says, I’m God, and you shall have no other gods before me. Worship He said, the first commandment is, he says, you shall make for yourself no carved image. In other words, not only do you need to worship the right God, but you need to worship the right God in the right way. That was the Samaritan’s worship, Jehovah, but they weren’t doing it in a proper way. So if God commands us to worship Him and to worship Him properly, and I could give many other scriptures to support this, worship him properly, and I could give many other scriptures to support this, then clearly worship and proper worship is important to God. It’s important to God. Thirdly, worship is important to God because he frequently, and I stress the word frequently, he frequently exhorts us to worship him. Look at Psalm 135, if you would. We’re going to Look at a few scriptures and Psalms. 135. Psalm 135, y’all there? Yep. You’re on your phone. Yep. I wonder if I couldn’t hear the little rustling of the leaves over there. I can hear some leaves over there. I like the leaves. I like the sound of the leaves. Psalm 135. Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Praise Him, O you servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. praise the Lord for the Lord is good sing praises to his name for it is pleasant amen look at Psalm 146 verse 1 Psalm 146 verse 1 praise the Lord praise the Lord Lord oh my soul while I live I will praise the Lord I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Psalm 147 verse 1, praise the Lord for it is good to sing praises to our God for it is pleasant and praise is beautiful. Look at Psalm 148, praise the Lord. Are you getting the point? Praise the Lord praise the Lord from the heavens praise him in the heights praise him all ye angels praise him all his hosts. Praise him, sun and moon. Praise him all you stars of light. Praise him, you heavens of heavens and you waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord. Amen. Now look at Psalm 149. Again, praise the Lord. Look at Psalm 50. This is the summation of the book of Psalms. It says, Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his mighty firmament!

Praise him for his mighty acts! Praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with the sound of the trumpet! Praise him with the lute in the harp! Praise him with the timbrel and dance! Praise him with stringed instruments and flutes! Praise him with loud cymbals! Praise him with clashing cymbals! symbols, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. And God’s people said, praise the Lord. Everything that has breath. And guess what? That includes you. And I could, we could literally spend the whole morning looking at scriptures where God says, praise me, bless me, extol me, worship me frequently over and over and over in God is exhorting us to worship Him, exalt Him, bless Him, etc. It must be important to God. Now some people are uncomfortable with that. They’re like, God’s kind of egocentric, you know? You know, I remember some guy who led the Christ years ago, just began to read the Bible, he’s like, you know, I don’t understand, my God’s always telling us to, to worship Him. God’s always telling us to worship Him. What’s that all about? He seems really insecure. Well, in a fallen creature, if a fallen creature said to you, praise Him, then, hey, praise me. Come on, praise me. You’re like, that’s creepy. Right? But in a perfect being, in an unfallen being, in a being whom to worship is to find one’s fulfillment, to worship that one is to be called really to an ultimate blessedness.

And so when God says to us, praise me, exalt me, worship me, He’s calling us to be blessed.

He’s calling us to be fulfilled, He’s calling us to be enriched, He’s calling us to find communion and fellowship with Him, which is our ultimate purpose for being.

So it might seem ironic, but God cares about worship a whole lot, and He frequently calls us to worship, but we’re the benefactors of it. I mean, in one sense, you can’t give God anything, right? I mean, we can ascribe honor to him. We can ascribe strength to him. You don’t give him strength. I mean, the Scripture uses these phrases, give him strength. Well, really? Like he’s not strong? He’s almighty. I can’t give him any strength, but I can ascribe to him what he is. I can acknowledge what he is. I can profess what he is. And by doing that, I am the benefactor. God doesn’t need my worship. He doesn’t need your worship. He created these wild creatures called living creatures. We just looked at Revelation with all the eyes and all the wings, you know. And they’re created and they just circle the throne. And they just worship. Holy, holy, holy. God doesn’t need our worship. But he frequently calls us to look at him, to contemplate him, to exalt him, to extol him, to glorify him, whatever word you want to use, to worship him. We’re the benefactors of that. But it tells you how important it is to God that he repeatedly says this. Fourthly, we know worship is important to God because he’s pleased. He’s pleased with genuine worship. Since we’re in Psalms, go back to Psalm 51 for a moment. In Psalm 51, this is a Psalm of repentance or a Psalm of contrition. you might call it a lament, if you will. David is repenting of his sin with that Sheba. And he says in verse 15, Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall show forth your praise. For you did not desire sacrifice or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. These, oh God, you will not despise. Now we may look at this at a later date, But you know when Jesus talks about worship in spirit and truth, that’s what he’s giving out. A genuineness of heart, a humility and brokenness of heart before God.

He says, 18, in your good pleasure, to Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem, then you shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings, then they shall offer bulls on your altar. In other words, when worship is done properly, when it’s genuine worship, true worship, then it blesses God,. It pleases him. Psalm 147 turned there quickly. We’ve already read it, but I want to make another point about Psalm 147 and verse 1.

It says, it says, praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God.

It’s good in and of itself. It’s a good thing and it’s the right thing to do. Amen.

But notice this, for it is pleasant and praise is. Beautiful. Now, I think the pleasantness of praise is pleasant to God. No, I think it’s pleasant to us too. But I think the Lord saying my assessment is what I think about worship is it’s good. proper but it also pleases me. True worship pleases him, it blesses him. And praise is beautiful in his eyes. So it’s important to him because it pleases him. We also know that worship is important to God because just as he’s pleased with genuine worship, he’s displeased with vain worship.

God Is Displeased with Vain Worship

Look at Isaiah chapter 1. Hear the word of Jehovah, verse 10. You rulers of Sodom give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. Now he wasn’t speaking to Sodom and Gomorrah, do you know that? He was talking to the Jewish people. So when a message starts and you’re called Sodom and Gomorrah, you know it’s going to be a hard word. You know what I mean? It’s like, uh oh, I think I know what’s coming. Verse 11, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? Now remember, sacrifices here isn’t like doing a hard thing sacrifice. This is a literal sacrifice. A bull, goat, whatever, lamb. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord? I’ve had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me. the new moons, the Sabbath, and the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They are troubled to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear, for your hands are full of blood.“

Now, they were worshipping. I mean, do you understand what I’m saying? They were offering the appointed sacrifices. They were doing the ritual, but their hearts were not right with God. And so it wasn’t genuine worship. It was empty or vain worship, and therefore it displeased the Lord. Now, at a later date, I’m going to say a word about the physical and literal expressions of worship that we engage in. But the important thing to understand here is that when Jesus said that God is seeking those to worship Him in spirit and truth, what He’s saying is there has to be a correlation in the heart with what we are doing with the body. You hearing me? Now this is a tricky thing because here’s what people often do. They say, well you know, I came to church and I’m kind of just kind of down, I’m bummed out. I don’t feel like worshipping, so if I worship God, then I’m being hypocritical. So in other words, their emotions govern their expressions of worship. And I think that is incorrect. I think that we are called to obey the exhortations and the commands of God to worship Him in spite of how we’re feeling. That’s not hypocrisy. To come to God and say, God, you know what? I’m having a hard week. I’m having a hard month. I’m having a hard life. Whatever. Okay? And, but I’m going to give you what you deserve. I’m going to profess what I know is true in my head, even though my emotions may be and revolt at this moment to what your word says is true, your word is true, you are true, I’m going to assert what is true. And that’s what I believe we need to do. And David, the Psal says, very often, says, I will sing. He doesn’t just say, I praise, he says, I will sing, I will praise, I will. He’s saying, I’m going to do this as a deliberate act of my will. That’s obedience. And that’s proper. So you know, we don’t let our emotions govern our expressions of worship. And say, well, when I feel happy, I’ll just tell God He’s good. I mean, God is good all the time. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That’s what we learned from Job. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The book of Job ends in worship. That’s what it’s all about. In Mark 7, Jesus… If you want to turn there with me.

Jesus is in a dispute with the Pharisees, and as you know, he disputed with them a lot.

I mean, the Pharisees are really fascinating, you know? It’s like these guys would get all tied up in a knot about whether you drank out of the right cup. It’s like, really? That’s really important. And yeah, we see this kind of stuff in churches. You know, churches have a big fight over what colors the carpet are going to be in. Should we have soft chairs or hard chairs? Really? Is that really important to God? Jesus is telling them that their traditions were unscriptural. And he says in verse 6, He answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, hypocrites, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And the in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. So much could be said about this, but the point I’m making here is that God, when we talk about worship being important to God, He is pleased with genuine worship, but He’s just as displeased when we have vain worship. And I think for many evangelicals who are not high church people, that is, there’s not a lot of ritual in their church experience, we can still go through our own ritual. I mean, we can still be ritualistic about our relationship with the Lord and especially about our corporate worship. We can just, as we like to say, we go through the motions. We sit in the same seat. We sing the same songs. We say the same words, kind of all in the same way. And it just becomes a ritual. Well, you’re a church, so what do you do? Well, you just do this. And there’s an emptiness to it. Because we’re not choosing a deliberate act of worship. The deliberate choice that makes it worship in spirit and truth, a deliberate choice, a thoughtful and deliberate decision of one’s mind and will to enter the presence of God and worship Him. What am I on six? One, two, three, four, five, six. The sixth reason, and I’ll be done in a moment, that we know worship is important to God is that He gave us an entire book of worship songs. You know what the book’s called? Very good. The book of Psalms. And that doesn’t even include many other texts which are songs, right? Both in the Old Testament and in the New. So we have an entire book, one of the longest books in the Bible, has the most chapters by far, and it’s a book on worship. It’s not a book on theology. It’s not a book on church order, or church discipline, or any of that stuff. It’s a book on worship. That ought to be a clue, right, that worship is important to God. He gave us a whole book and more. Lastly, we know worship is important to God because he is glorified by proper worship.

Our Chief End: To Glorify God

Psalm 50 verse 23, and we’ll close with this. Psalm 50, back to Psalms, our worship book. Very simple but profound statement in verse 23. First praise, praise glorifies me.

You know, the Westminster Shorter Catechism opens with this question. What is the chief end of man and what is our real purpose? Why are we here? For what purpose are we created? [audio unclear] Number two, and what rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?

The Word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule how we may glorify and enjoy him. The scriptures tell us how to glorify God in a way that is pleasing to him. Amen? scriptures. We were created for this purpose. When we gather together and we worship the Lord, it’s not a preliminary to a sermon. It’s us coming into the presence of God and to really we’re fulfilling our destiny in the very act of worship. I mean, do we understand that? And when we offer praise to God from a sincere heart, it brings Him glory, and we are called to glorify and honor Him. One more verse. Is that okay? I always say last verse, but I lie. I lie a lot. When I’m in the pulpit, I lie. John 17. Jesus, right before He’s going to die, says to the Father, Father, the hour has come. And here’s what he says right before he dies, Glorify you, that your Son also may glorify you. As you have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as you have given Him. And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me, together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” I mean, this is the summation of His life. Jesus is expressing the purpose of His coming, the purpose of His dying. This is the eve of His death. And what did He say? He says, Father, glorify Me so that I can glorify You. The whole purpose of His coming was to not just save us, but to bring glory to the Father and to the Son in saving us, through saving us, so that we then would join with Him in bringing glory to God. And so at the end of this prayer, Jesus says, He prays for unity of the church, and He He, he says in verse 21, that they will be one as you, Father, are in me and I in them. That they also may be one in us and that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you have given me, I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one. We get to join Jesus in bringing glory to the Father, amen? Because of his redemptive work. That’s what he says in Revelation. He has made us a kingdom of priests. What did the priest do? The priest offered the sacrifices. The priest went into the temple. The priest ordered and arranged the worship and led the worship. We are a kingdom of priests redeemed by his blood that we might glorify him through our worship. Amen?

Closing Prayer

Let’s stand and worship him. Father, we thank you for what you’ve done for us. We thank you that you revealed to us in your word our ultimate destiny to be a people of worship and praise and we thank you Lord that we get to practice right now for when we’re going to meet you in heaven and spend eternity worshiping you I thank you Lord that you’ve given us your Holy Spirit who works in us and intercedes through us and even worships through us. And Lord, I pray that we would truly, truly in spirit and truth have a heart to glorify you and honor you.

That that would be our purpose in our worship. That we and others would truly recognize How glorious and beautiful you really are. We pray this in your name. Amen.