This morning, I’ll be speaking on worship, and God willing, tomorrow evening I’ll say a word on prayer.
Could we bow in a further word of prayer?
Father, how thankful we are for the precious blood of Jesus. Father, here we all are before You, cleansed, spotless, holy ones. Through what our Lord has done, we have become Your children, Father.
And Father, we know, according to Your Word, that You delight to give good gifts to Your children. And Lord, You said that it is Your good pleasure to give us the kingdom.
And Lord, You said if we would ask, You would give us. If we would seek, we would find. Lord, pour out for us much blessing. We want to see Him. We have been singing about it and declaring it: Lord, we must see Him.
Open our eyes. Lord, open the heavens above us. Lord, give it to us to apprehend what You want to show us, and, Lord, to be apprehended by what You want to show us.
Thank You for loving us to the uttermost. In Jesus’ name, amen.
If you would turn in your Bible to the Gospel of John, chapter 1.
I begin in verse 26. This is John the Baptist speaking. This is an amazing time in history. This is the coming upon the stage of history, and to Israel, of the Lamb of God—the long-promised Messiah, who for centuries had been prophesied and declared.
As far back as Moses—and even further back—Moses clearly said in Deuteronomy 18 that the Lord was going to raise up, after him, a prophet like him from among the people. And when He did, they were to listen to Him.
For centuries, many prophets were raised up, but none like Moses. Everyone knew this, because when John the Baptist came preaching, they said, “Are you the Prophet?” Interesting: fifteen hundred years later, they were still waiting for the Prophet.
And the Lord said to David in 1 Chronicles 17 that He would raise up one of David’s descendants after him. He would sit on David’s throne; God would be His Father, and He would be God’s Son. He would reign from David’s throne forever.
They knew that this was no one who had ever yet come upon the scene. This was the Christ, the Coming One. For a thousand years, they had been awaiting the Christ.
And in these days John the Baptist came speaking, and everything—not just for them, but in the whole universe—was about to change.
“John answered and said to them, I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know.
It is He who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”“These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’”“This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’”
“And I did not recognize Him, but in order that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water.”
“And John bore witness, saying, ‘I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him.’”
“And I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’”
“And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
“Again, the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked upon Jesus as He walked and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’”
“And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and beheld them following, and said to them, ‘What do you seek?’”
Isn’t that an interesting question that the Lord asked them—a question that they could not answer?
By the way, I do not know how many questions we will have for the group leaders in the discussions today, but when they asked me for a question, I think the question I gave was, “What do you seek?” He said, “Well, that’s too short to run off. Just tell them that when you’re speaking.” So my question is: What do you seek?
“And they said to Him, ‘Rabbi’—which translated means Teacher—‘where are You staying?’
He said to them, ‘Come, and you will see.’”
Amazing parallel between that day and this day. The Lord who had been promised to come to them, for whom they had waited through all those centuries, came in the fullness of time.
Can you imagine what it was like if you had been John or Andrew, those two disciples of John the Baptist, standing there that day and hearing him point and say, “Behold, the Lamb of God”? Andrew left, went to his brother Simon Peter, and said, “We found the Christ.”
Now, you would think that after fifteen hundred years, after a thousand years with no Christ and no Prophet, Peter would have said, “Ah, go on.” But he did not respond that way at all.
In fact, in those days Israel was filled with the expectation of the coming of the Lord. It was not just a few. There were Simeon and Anna. You remember Simeon: the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until his eyes saw the Lord’s Anointed.
Perhaps he thought he was going to see some great champion on a charger. But he was in the temple when they brought the little child to dedicate Him, and the Holy Spirit said, “This is the One.” He said, “Oh, Lord, now let Your servant depart. My eyes have beheld Your Anointed, Your salvation.”
But there were many others. You remember Joseph of Arimathea, one of the council, one of the Sanhedrin, one of the group of people who had condemned the Lord Jesus to death. It says he was a good man and had not agreed with what the council had done. He was looking for the consolation of Israel.
I am sure Nicodemus, who came to the Lord by night, was looking for the consolation of Israel. The reason there was so much expectation in Israel in those days was because of certain prophecies in Daniel. The people did not know exactly when this was going to happen, but they were full of expectation.
Can you imagine being John or Andrew and thinking, “Of all the people in all the world, we actually got to live at the time of the coming of the Messiah”? Not only did they get to live at that time—it would have been wonderful just seeing Jesus preach, heal, and minister to the people—but they were actually His disciples.
They were called by Him, given to Him by the Father, and brought into intimate relationship with Him. They went everywhere He went and were discipled by the Lord. I keep thinking they had to pinch themselves every day. They were men whose hands had handled God the Son come in human flesh.
We live in days like that. I do not think there is much difference between the people in this room and those two. They were young men. I am sure they were younger than the Lord. He was thirty when they met Him; they were probably in their twenties. Some of you are in your twenties, and some soon will be.
They had been drawn to John the Baptist before they heard about the Lord Jesus. They had seeking hearts. When John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” they went and began seeking the Lord, following Him. And the Lord said, “What do you seek?”
I am so glad they did not start naming things. They simply said, “Where are You staying?” And He said, “Come, and you will see.” I think His answer meant much more than, “Come, and you will see where I am staying.”
Come, and you will see who I really am. You will see the kingdom of God, all the blessing, and every good thing that is found in the Lord Jesus Christ for all eternity—for man and for creation. You will see all that.
Well, we live in a day when, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you can hear the Lord at the door. You can hear His footsteps. Brothers and sisters, the coming of the Lord is at hand.
Every day, when I think about this, I think, “Amazing.” For two thousand years Christians have yearned for the coming of the Messiah, the coming of our Lord Jesus again, to restore everything. And we live in that day.
There are more Scriptures than what they had in the Lord’s day, and they were all expecting: “Are You the Prophet?” “Are You the Christ?” They were not exactly sure. They did not understand that the Prophet and the Christ were the same One.
It is great how we look at the Scriptures and get so clear in hindsight. But when things happen, I think there is a lot of confusion about the Lord’s coming. People have sort of majored in “Jesus’ Coming 101.” They have all their ducks in a row, all the Scriptures down, and this is the way it is going to be.
It is going to be a shock when we realize that some things we do not have down right are as fundamental as the fact that the Prophet and the Christ were the same Person. Oh, it is so easy to look in hindsight. It is enough for us to know that these are the days.
I do not expect anyone in this room, any of you young people, to die of old age. I do not expect myself to die of old age—unless you think I am already old. I expect to see the Lord’s coming. I am yearning for His coming and waiting for His coming, and here we are.
It is interesting how the Lord said, “The first will be last, and the last will be first.” That is so full of meaning that I am sure I do not understand it all.
But I know that at one time when the Lord said that, He was talking about laborers in the vineyard. You remember the man who went out to hire laborers. He went out early in the morning and hired some, and every hour he went out and hired more. He kept going to the city square because he did not have enough.
Finally, with one hour left before quitting time, he went again and saw some men standing around not doing anything. He said, “What are you doing here?” He had agreed with the first ones what he would pay them, but to these he said, “Just go, and I will give you whatever is right.” They trusted him and went.
When they came back, he paid them the same as he paid the others. Those who had borne the heat of the day were indignant. They said, “We bore the heat of the day and did all the work, and You are going to pay them what we got paid.”
Here we are. So many have gone before. Do you know whose shoulders we stand on? We stand on the shoulders of teenagers, women, and men who were willing to go into the arena with wild beasts in Rome for the sake of the testimony of Jesus.
We stand on the shoulders of people who were tortured to death all through the ages. We have a brother in Memphis, and in the brothers’ meeting on Saturday morning we have begun an old custom again. He has an old Anabaptist book called Martyrs Mirror.
I think Fox took much of his material from that old book when he wrote Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. It was first published in the 1600s, I believe. At the end of the brothers’ meeting, Larry brings that book, and if we have time—and usually we just make time—he reads us an excerpt.
We are back in the beginning of the book, now in the second and third centuries, and people are being fed to lions, boiled, hung, and subjected to every sort of thing you can think of.
When you listen to that, you say, “Lord, what was it about these people that made them willing to undergo all of this?” They could have walked away. All they had to do was say, “Okay, Caesar is god. I was just kidding.”
These people had seen the Lord in the most wonderful way. All through history, brothers and sisters gave up their lives. Here we are at the very end of this age. I do not see many torturees in here, or people who have even missed many meals.
And yet the Lord, I believe, wants to do something in us and with us that is a glory to His name right before He comes. Others have borne the heat of the day and done all the work, and here we come.
The Lord wants to form Himself in us in such a way that when people see us, they will not see us; they will see Him. Like the Lord said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” May people say, “I was among those people, and all I can say was, ‘Jesus.’”
The Lord wants to do this in you and in me in these last days, just before He comes. So I will ask you: What do you seek?
You do not have to answer that. The wonderful thing is that although you might be seeking something, like John and Andrew were seeking something that day, they had actually been sought out themselves. They did not know it.
God the Father had known them, chosen them, and was giving them to His Son. They had no idea of that. They simply thought, “We heard about John, went out, were drawn out, became his disciples, saw this, and then began following this Man.”
They did not realize that, in reality, God was moving and drawing and giving them to His Son. Not one of them would perish. No one takes anything out of His hand.
I do not know what you seek this weekend, but I believe that God the Father is giving you to His Son as a gift—giving you to His Son to be those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
We do stand on the shoulders of so many dear, wonderful saints through the ages. We may be living at the very last of the last days, but perhaps the Lord will save the best for last: people who do not deserve it and who owe so much to everyone else.
What are you seeking? Many Christians look at their Christian life sort of like a Christmas tree. You go out and buy a big evergreen tree—hopefully it is well shaped. I am not big on Christmas, but I still remember all this from being a kid.
You get it well shaped and formed, just the right height, trim it, put it on a stand, and there it is. It is beautiful, but it is bare. It is evergreen—sort of like eternal life.
Of course, deciduous trees speak of death and resurrection. Every year they die, and every year they are born again, as it were. The whole creation is speaking of our Lord.
Then people look at this tree and say, “We need some accoutrements for this tree. We need some adornments.” Maybe they do not go out and buy them; maybe they already have them in the attic. So they bring everything down and begin taking these baubles.
“Every Christian life should have some humility.” So they take the humility ornament and hang it on the tree. We go through life as Christians trying to gain Christian attributes, trying to get adornments for ourselves.
Yes, the Lord has saved us, but now we need to be proper Christians. We need some Bible learning, joy—Christians should be joyful people—a certain amount of consecration, and attributes like patience.
After a while, this tree begins to look very pretty. We add righteous living, prayer, and then this matter of worship. “What a beautiful ornament. Let’s hang this one in a very noticeable place toward the top of the tree.”
Brothers and sisters, the Christian life does not need worship in it. The Christian life is worship.
And worship is the Christian life.
If you belong to the Lord—and I think most of us do—you have a life in you that knows how to worship because the Lord gave it to you. We sang earlier this morning, “Lord, You gave me Your Spirit.”
The Lord of glory, the Creator of the universe, humbled Himself and took on the form of a man. He lived His entire life on the earth as a living sacrifice to His Father.
He said, “The words that I speak, they are not My words. I hear the Father, and I speak His words.” He said, “The things that I do, I see the Father doing, and I do those things.”
It is interesting: in the Gospels, I do not think we ever really see the Son. Yes, we see Jesus all through the Gospels, but you are not really seeing Him; you are seeing the Father.
A lot of people think, “God the Son is so wonderful. He is the Lamb. The Father can be pretty severe, but the Lord says to that woman caught in adultery, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.’” But that is the Father. He heard the Father saying that.
Can you love a Father who is revealed to us by His Son in the Gospel? Could you trust a Father like that—the eternal God?
The Lord has shown us His Father. At the end of the Bible, the Lord Jesus comes back, and the sharp two-edged sword comes out of His mouth and He slays His enemies. We never saw a Lord like that before. We are going to begin to see more of what the Son is like.
But on the earth, He humbled Himself and became a living sacrifice to His Father. It says in Hebrews, “Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.” That is what He came for.
He came for the Father’s purpose: to do the Father’s will, to speak the Father’s words, and to do the Father’s works. Here was a Man whose life was laid down. And that is worship.
You have received His Spirit. This One who has already lived such a life dwells in your spirit. He is eternal life.
You do not have to learn to act in such a way that is worship. Just begin to live by that life we have received. The Holy Spirit, being lived out in us and through us, will do the same thing He did in the Firstborn, that He might bring many sons to glory.
If you are a Christian, you live at the epicenter—at ground zero—of the great cosmic battle of the universe, being fought over the great single issue in the universe. That issue is: Who will be worshiped?
I do not know if you have had trouble in your life. I do not know how the enemy has treated you, what you have experienced of his attacks, his deception, and all the rest. But this warfare is going on over this single question: who will be worshiped?
I would like for you to turn with me to Isaiah 14. If you are living on ground zero of this epic battle, you ought to know something about it. It would be terrible to get to the end of your life, look back, and see what the real situation was and say, “That’s what it was.”
It would be better to know that now so we can be well armed. Forewarned is forearmed.
This is Isaiah 14, beginning in verse 12. Then we will look at something in Ezekiel. These two passages give us more understanding than probably any other place in the Bible of how the enemy came to be the enemy.
It starts off, as many prophetic things do, as a lament or a taunt against the king of Babylon. You see that in Isaiah 14:4. But then it changes from being about an earthly king to being about the one who is the power behind the throne of so many earthly kingdoms.
“How you have fallen from heaven,
O star of the morning, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the earth,
You who have weakened the nations!”“But you said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’”“Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol,
To the recesses of the pit.”
Look at that last one: “I will make myself like the Most High.” When this one, who had the bad judgment to decide to be so ambitious as to desire all this, came to Adam and Eve—especially to Eve—in the garden, ultimately what he said to her was, “You surely shall not die, but in the day that you eat, God knows that you will be like God.”
They fell to a temptation when it was offered to them that they would become like God—as God. You do not need to be those who kowtow to anyone.
In fact, he began first with a question: “What about this tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Shall you not eat of all the trees?” “Well, of all except this one.”
Then he said, “God is a liar. You surely shall not die.” She said the Word said, “In the day you eat of it, you will die.” “You certainly shall not die.”
But God knows—God has something in mind for you that is less than what you could be. Do you not want to be all you can be? He is trying to keep you down.
You know how many Christians—not just unbelievers—have this sort of suspicion about the Lord? They say, “Well, I guess I really could give myself completely into the Lord’s hands. I guess I could abandon myself to His purpose for my life, but…”
“What I really had in mind was maybe having a ship like the Calypso, that Jacques Cousteau used to sail through every little coral island place in the Bahamas and the Pacific, go scuba diving, make films, and show them on PBS.”
And maybe, in the evenings, we would be in the galley around lobster dinners, having Bible studies. Now, that is the kind of Christianity I would be interested in signing up for. I do not know what the Lord has in mind for me, but it could not be as good as that.
Do you really think that whatever the living God, in all His creativity, all His goodness, and all His love, has for you—that you could come up with anything better than that?
People are so afraid of the will of God. They come up with all sorts of things: “What if the Lord makes me marry somebody I do not like? What if I wanted to go to Harvard and I might have to go to state university? What if, what if, what if?”
The big “what if” ought to be, “What if somehow I get my own way and miss the purpose of God for myself because I demanded having my own way?”
You need to know something about yourself—about your flesh.
The enemy said, “I will make myself like the Most High.” He told Eve, “You can be like God.” There is something in your flesh that wants to be like God and wants to be worshiped.
We are talking about worship today. There is something in your flesh that wants to be adored and worshiped. If you do not believe it, without any bias, begin to look at human society.
Go to a rock concert sometime. I do not—get someone to take a photo of it and look at that. Watch those people standing in front with their hands stretched out, adoring these musicians, lighting lighters and candles, and throwing themselves at people who are certainly enemies of the cross.
I turned on the news the other day. I can do this without naming names. There is a four o’clock local news, and I wanted to find out what was going on, but the channel was on Oprah’s show.
She had a movie star on there, and he was talking about another mega-superstar movie star who came to his birthday party. He was just so in awe, and the people in the audience were oohing and awing that this man actually came.
It was like the Pope himself or somebody had come. And you think, “This guy is just an actor. He is a member of a cult—an anti-Christian cult.”
Seventy thousand people recently went and stood in stadiums for several days in all sorts of places trying to make it on American Idol. Think for a moment: American Idol.
No, people do not want to be worshiped. No, they just want to get up there and stand in front of all those people, do their thing, have those people chanting their name, applauding, forming fan clubs, and adoring them.
There is something in your flesh and in my flesh that wants to be worshiped. It wants to be like God.
Let us go a little further. Oh, thank you. Otherwise, we are not going any further if I do not have that.
Let us turn to Ezekiel. I am going to help three or four people out who are helplessly at the end of Numbers. Isaiah is the first major prophet. Then two past that are Jeremiah and Ezekiel. So we were in Isaiah 14; two past 14 is 28. Ezekiel 28—same verses. That is a mad mind, isn’t it?
“Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God,
You had the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering.’”
“The ruby, the topaz, and the diamond,
The beryl, the onyx, and the jasper,
The lapis lazuli, the turquoise, and the emerald;
And the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, was in you.
On the day that you were created they were prepared.”“You were the anointed cherub who covers,
And I placed you there.
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked in the midst of the stones of fire.”
“You were blameless in your ways
From the day you were created
Until unrighteousness was found in you.”“By the abundance of your trade
You were internally filled with violence,
And you sinned;
Therefore I have cast you as profane
From the mountain of God.”“Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground.”
Well, this is speaking of Satan. Before his days as the adversary, he had been created perhaps as the most beautiful being in God’s creation: an anointed cherub who covered.
When you read about the ark of the covenant in the Old Testament, you see that on top of the ark was a mercy seat, and at each end were two cherubim. They were kneeling, and their wings came up and formed a covering for the mercy seat.
The anointed cherub who covered, or guarded, the throne of God—the most beautiful being, with every precious stone and gold—was corrupted by his own beauty.
He was made for one purpose: the purpose of God. He could not have had a better purpose. He could not have been made more perfect, more beautiful, or more wise. Yet he decided that he had a purpose for himself that was different from the Lord’s purpose and better than the Lord’s purpose.
He became self-aware: “I will arise. I will ascend. I will exalt myself. I will be like the Most High.”
This is our adversary. This is the one who deceives all the nations. It says that in Revelation 12: he deceives all the nations of the world. And in 1 John 5, it says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
This is your adversary. Ultimately, when he came to the Lord Jesus—if you want to turn there, it is in Luke 4—he came after that moment with John the Baptist.
Before Andrew and John, who were disciples of John, saw Jesus and followed Him, Jesus had just returned from the wilderness. Forty days before, He had been baptized by John in the river. He came up out of the water, the Spirit of God descended upon Him, and the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness, where He was tempted.
As a Man, He went forty days and forty nights without food or water. Then He became hungry. The enemy came to Him three times in three ways.
He first came with a temptation concerning His own body. When Eve was tempted, it was in a garden—a lush garden full of fruit trees and abundance. There was every tree from which she might eat, only one forbidden.
The Lord Jesus was not in a garden. He was in a wilderness. The One who won our redemption was in a wilderness, having fasted and at the point of death. The enemy tempted Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread. Do something for Yourself.”
This is what was going on: “You have come as One under authority. You have come as One whose life is worship to the Father, a life laid down. The Spirit has driven You out here into the wilderness, and You have, in obedience, fasted for forty days.”
“Do You not think it is time to do something for Yourself? You need to start thinking about number one. You do not need to die. You are weak, and in this condition You need to command these stones, if You are the Son of God, to become bread.”
And the Lord Jesus said:
“Man shall not live by bread alone.”
The enemy also tested Him spiritually. He took Him up to a high pinnacle of the temple. Pilgrims were continually coming to worship at the temple in their form of worship.
The Lord Jesus knew that this whole system was going to condemn Him and reject Him. He came, He loved them, and He came to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Ultimately, He would be rejected by them.
“Just cast Yourself off from here, and He will give His angels charge concerning You, and they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.”
All those who would later cry, “Crucify Him!” All those who would say, “Who are You? Is Your father a Samaritan? Were You not born out of wedlock? Do You have a demon?”—they would all see the angels of God bearing Him up. “This is the Christ,” and they would begin to worship.
The Lord answered Him under authority: “No, it is also written.”
“You shall worship the Lord your God.”
In Luke 4, the second temptation is when Satan took Him up to a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. This was a temptation of the soul.
“And the devil said to Him, ‘I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.’”
Matthew says, “If You fall down before me, if You worship before me.” This is Satan, this fallen adversary of ours, who wants to be like God and desires—even when he tempted the Lord—“Just worship me. Just worship me.”
In our flesh, we have this same nature. You need to know that about yourself.
Quite often I find that it is we—I am not talking about you; I am talking about we Christians—who begin to formulate another plan for our lives other than the one the Lord might have.
We begin to say, “Lord, it is wonderful that You saved me. I want some ornaments on my tree. Ultimately, Lord, I want worship in my life. But, Lord, I do not want to be a life laid down.”
Lord, I think we want to be in charge.
It is interesting that when the devil came to Eve, Adam and his wife had not eaten of the tree of life. It had been there. It was available.
When God made Adam, He made him a living soul and gave him dominion over the whole earth. Now this was the prospect: “If you will eat this tree, My life and My Spirit will come into you, and you can take your place as one under the authority of this life.”
Stephen Kaung once shared this wonderful illustration of the tripartite man. He said the spirit is like the sovereign, the king; the soul is like the steward; and the body is like the slave.
Here Adam was, with dominion given to him: “Rule over the earth. Reign over it. Subdue it.” He was a living soul. He was wise. I am sure he was beautiful.
It was open to him, if he would have it, to go and partake of the tree of life and have the life of God come into him. Then he could be under the Lord’s dominion, be a servant and steward of the Lord, and be one under authority—not necessarily one in authority.
But he had hesitated. For however long, I do not know, but when the enemy came, he still had not done that. There is not only something in your flesh that desires to be worshiped and lifted up; there is something in man himself that does not want to submit.
Coming, yielding to the Lord, and submitting is not just a natural act. But you and I have the life in us of the One who submitted to His Father and lived for thirty-three years in perfect obedience.
Did you ever think about what the Lord was like at twenty-nine years old, working in Nazareth? Twenty-nine years old—not much different from thirty.
Do you think the Lord learned a lot in that last year? What was He like at twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-six, or twenty-five, waiting there?
You might think, “He came for this purpose. He was good to go.” Yet He yielded to His Father, waiting on His Father and doing nothing from Himself.
Do you know what an idol serving the Lord can be? Have any of you ever thought about that? No, not serving the Lord—this is what He wants us all to do.
But if you have not given yourself, in truth and reality, to the Lord as a living sacrifice, then serving the Lord can become an idol.
People long to serve the Lord. You can turn on television or radio and see people building great empires with their names on them—serving the Lord, actually receiving worship from many adoring patrons.
It can be quite an idol in our lives. There is all the dark side of the flesh—murder, theft, drug addiction, drunkenness, violence, immorality—but there are other things we normally want to harness for the Lord’s purposes. You cannot do that.
The flesh cannot please God. There are many people who became pastors and ministers before they were ever saved. I think John Wesley’s testimony is that he was a so-called servant of the Lord and a minister before he was led to the Lord by Moravians on a ship.
He was burning to serve God, and he did not really even know the Lord.
What do you seek? I pray that you seek to give yourself to the Lord completely.
The Lord is seeking something. The Bible says in two different places that the Lord is seeking something. One says that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. We have all experienced that.
You were lost, and the Lord sought you out, whether you know it or not. Maybe your experience is that you made a decision to receive Him and be saved, but just as sovereignly as John and Andrew followed the Lord, and as Paul had an appointment with the Lord on the road to Damascus, you were saved by Him.
He came to seek and to save that which was lost. But there is another interesting thing. Turn to John 4.
This is the Lord’s encounter with the woman in Samaria at the well. She perceived that He was a prophet.
“Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
She wanted to know the truth about this. Here was a Man who was obviously a prophet and had all the answers. It had been bothering her for a long time.
“Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father.
You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”“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.”
What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth?
The Lord Jesus at one point says:
“This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
Therefore in vain do they worship Me.”
He quotes that from the Old Testament. Can you imagine Christians who worship the Lord in vain—in other words, for nothing? They give Him service, but their hearts are far from Him.
Could that ever describe you? Let me say it for myself: from time to time, that could describe me.
Do you ever think about some of the songs we sing? Some of the declarations we make in song—so beautiful, so perfect, so edifying, so absolute?
“Lord, it’s all about You. It’s all about You, Jesus. Though I’m rich or poor, all I have is Yours, every single breath.”
Except the breath that I take for myself. But everything else is Yours—except the things I reserve for myself. Everything else is Yours—except my plans for tomorrow. Everything else is right—except my plans for my life, except for almost everything.
In an emotional moment, even a spiritual moment—because when we come together, the anointing of the Spirit is there, and you all have the gifting of the Holy Spirit—we begin to speak the truth together.
Sometimes we gauge what we call worship by how good it sounded, how the instruments played, how the voices blended, how we felt, and what we thought about it.
You come away and say, “Oh, I was at worship this morning. You should have been there. Oh, the Lord was in the room. I mean, it was wonderful.”
And I wonder about myself: how many times did that happen, but it was actually in vain? Did I worship Him? Because all the things that I said—my life was different.
I was worshiping Him in spirit with the Lord’s people, but not in truth. The things that I said—someone who knew me intimately could begin picking them off: “Well, what about this? What about this? What about this?”
That song—I love that song. We sing it in Memphis. Dana wrote it:
“Moving past the brazen altar,
Passing through the holy place,
Enter in before His presence,
See the glory on His face.”“Precious servant of the temple,
Cease all busyness and toil;
Now fulfill your deepest ministry,
Come and satisfy your Lord.”“Stand and all worship Him.
Open up your hearts exclusively to Him.”
Except when I was thinking about that, I thought, “Oh, I dare not do this because Dana wrote the song, and he is particular about his words.” But I thought, if I were going to change that song, I would say, instead of “Moving past the brazen altar,” perhaps, “Beginning with the brazen altar,” or, “Coming to the brazen altar, and then passing through the holy place.”
There is a place where our lives need to be presented to the Lord—lock, stock, and barrel. Everything we are, all we have, every single breath, all we will ever hope to be, our plans, and our ambitions.
It is the words: “I do not have a better plan for my life.” Oh, Lord, please save me from having a better plan for my life than what You have purposed for me.
“Oh, but you do not understand, brother. The Lord is very busy, and I am sort of a low-key, low-profile person. He probably did not notice me, and so He is going to overlook me. He is going to hand out all these wonderful destinies for all these saints, and there is probably nothing left over for me.”
“People like me have to make our way in this world.” How long do we have here before He comes? How much time is there for you to experience this life of worship—a life laid down to the Lord, giving yourself as a present to the Lord?
He will not make you do it. I would say that for every ten people He seeks and saves, perhaps one becomes a worshiper in spirit and in truth.
I will tell you why I came up with those wonderful numbers. Remember, I am a numbers guy.
In Luke 17, the Lord saw ten lepers with enough faith to say, “Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us.” And the Lord said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” As they went away, they were cleansed from leprosy.
They all went away—one running home to his wife, whom he had perhaps not seen in two years because he was a leper and had to live separately. Someone else went to his family; someone else went wherever.
But one man, a Samaritan—the Lord called him a foreigner—turned back, glorifying the Lord, and came and took hold of the feet of the Lord Jesus.
Every word for worship that we have in the Bible basically means to fall at the feet of, to bow down. In other words, to submit yourself.
Worship comes from the old English worth-ship. The one who receives worship is the one worthy of it, the one to whom it is due, the one whose value is so great that everything should go to Him and belong to Him.
This is worship. When we say, “Worthy is the Lord,” we are saying, “Lord, You are worth all of this—all that I can give, all that I am. Lord, I am Yours.”
The first place in Scripture where this word is used is interesting, because it is not always translated “worship.” The first two notable places give us an understanding of worship in spirit and truth.
Abraham was sitting by his tent, and those three men came to see him. It was the Lord. Abraham noticed it, came, and fell on his face before Him. This falling on his face is the word used most often for worship in the Old Testament.
This is a wonderful expression of worship. When someone says, “Where did you go on Sunday?” and you say, “Oh, we went to worship,” you went to express worship.
Because worship is a life laid down. We worship twenty-four hours a day. We are a living sacrifice to the Lord continually.
When that is the truth, then when we come together—or even individually—and begin to express that state, there is the expression of worship. There are wonderful songs, beautiful music, perhaps even a glorious fragrance to the Lord, because we worship in spirit and in truth. There is no contradiction in our lives.
In Genesis 22, the Lord came to Abraham and said, “Now, Abraham, take your son, your only son, whom you love, to a place that I shall show you. I want you to offer him to Me there as a burnt offering.”
Abraham did not know the end of the story. He took his servants, his son, the knife, and the wood, and they traveled three days.
Then he left the servants and said:
“You men remain here, and the lad and I will go yonder and worship.”
No—he was going to sacrifice the most precious thing he had. He was going to take his son, his only son, whom he loved, bind him, take a knife, and slay him. And that is worship.
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”
It is interesting: if you look in the Greek, it is more aptly, “your reasonable,” “rational,” or perhaps “spiritual service.” But this is worship.
This is the definition of worship. From now on, when you think of worship, do not think primarily of beautiful songs, lovely music, poetic words, or emotional feeling.
Think of a life laid down—a present you have given to the Lord. You have made a present of yourself, of all you are, all you have, and all you will ever be.
Know this: His purpose for you, and His end for everyone who comes that way, is the same destination as the Lord Jesus. It is the throne.
The Lord never shortchanged anyone. He never took one of His sons’ gifts of themselves and let that one become nothing. His goal for you is His throne for eternity—to rule and reign with the Lord Jesus.
Everyone who has another idea, another purpose—this is what I call anti-worship. Worship is, “Lord, I am Yours.” Then there is anti-worship: every other thing.
“Lord, I want to do a lot for You. Lord, I want to serve You. Lord, I want to serve Your people. Lord, I want to go to a foreign land. Lord, I want to do this. I want to do that. Lord, I am going to do this.”
What about just what He wants you to do? What about simply yieldedness and submission to Him?
I was thinking of that dear sister Mary of Bethany. We see her in the Bible in three places, really. First, we see her seated at the Lord’s feet, listening.
I am not going to talk about her sister or compare her with anyone else. We can just look at her. This woman, if you will look at her, will teach you about worship.
She sat at the Lord’s feet, listening, concentrating, utterly focused upon the Lord—all that He had to say, every word that proceeded from His mouth—being taught, submissively sitting.
The next time you see her, it is interesting. Her world has fallen apart. For all her submission, yieldedness, worship of the Lord, and presenting herself to the Lord perhaps as a living sacrifice, her brother has died.
He has been in the grave four days. Jesus was not fair. He could have prevented it. She does not understand. It is a fiery ordeal. “Why is this happening to me? How could this happen?”
Finally, of course, we know—she did not know—that Jesus actually delayed coming for His own glory. All she knew was that her life had fallen to pieces.
Then Jesus finally came. Her sister got up and ran to where Jesus was, and you almost say, “What is wrong with Mary? Jesus has come.” But she just kept sitting in the house.
Then He said to her sister, “Go call Mary.” Martha came and said, “The Teacher is calling for you.” She jumped up, ran to where Jesus was, and fell at His feet.
Mary, why did you not get up when you heard Jesus had come? She was waiting for the Lord’s command. She was waiting for the Lord to say, “Come here.”
Not, “Come take hold of the Lord. Lord, this; Lord, that.” She basically said the same thing as her sister: “Oh, Lord, if You had been here, he would not have died.”
But she said it when He called her, and she was holding to His feet, worshiping in her sorrow. And the Lord wept with her.
Then, at the end, of course, the Lord was just a few days away from His crucifixion, and He was in Bethany again. She went and took the most precious thing she had: a box of ointment, very valuable.
People used to invest in these kinds of things, to have something for their old days, something to retire on. It was worth three hundred denarii—about a year’s wages for one person. What is a year’s wages today? Well, for me, it is not much, but for some of you it is probably a lot.
She took it, broke it, poured it on the Lord, poured it on His feet, and began to anoint His feet with her hair.
All the disciples—not just Judas—were indignant. “Why this waste? This could have been sold for all this money and given to the poor. Many people could be helped. What a waste.”
If you give yourself to the Lord as a living sacrifice, and if you go the way I am pleading with you to go—if you say, “Lord, I want Your purpose and Your plan for my life from now on, and I am not making any more plans”—there will be people all around you.
Members of your family, your best friends, everybody will come out of the woodwork and say, “Why this waste? Oh, you had so much potential. You could have been a contender. You could have been somebody.”
“You could have gone to this university. You could have gotten this degree. You could have had this business. Think of how you could have served the Lord if you had gained this kind of esteem for yourself. Why this waste?”
They could not see: all she had, every single breath, was for Him.
I will bet you that the fragrance was still there even when they were driving the nails into the feet of our Lord Jesus.
I wonder, at His trial before the Sanhedrin, whether somebody did not say, “What is that lovely fragrance?”
A wasted life—wasted on the Lord Jesus. Why this waste?
Well, we will see. We will see who wasted their lives and who did not at the judgment seat of Christ, when all things are valued and weighed, and everything everyone did is revealed.
We will see what amounted to something, who really served the Lord, who was just busy, and who was waiting for the Lord to call them before they would even get up and run to Him to fall at His feet.
I believe our sister, in that day, will be so exalted. Oh, that I could come to the same end that she has come to, have the same occupation she has, and be in the same posture—down at His feet.
This is our place. This is worship. Worship is a life laid down. Anything that comes out of that is beautiful. Any expression that comes out of that is beautiful to the Lord, and it is worship in spirit and in truth.
How much of what you see in Christianity today is a mixture? Something is being expressed in lives that do not look like what is being said at all.
We go away like people who looked in a mirror, saw what they looked like, and then forgot what they saw. We go back to lives of me being on the throne, me calling the shots in my life, making all my plans, giving the Lord lip service, worshiping Him in vain.
We have not been called to that. We have a little time left on the earth, a little time before the Lord comes. There is no time to waste, but there is enough time for all of us to be brought to the Lord’s end for us.
The outcome of that life—a life which is worship—is this: the Christian life does not contain worship. The Christian life is worship.
Lord, we want to commit these things to You.
Lord, we want either to make the Word flesh in our lives, reality in our lives—something lived out, not something on pages, not something merely talked about.
Lord, we want our lives to be worship. Lord, will You make a way for every one of us who is here to become this living sacrifice, to become one who lives before You from that position of being at Your feet?
Under Your authority, perfectly ordered, loving You, holding fast to You. Oh Lord, can it be that in these last days such as we will come to Your perfect end for our lives?
Lord, help us. Fill us. Draw us. Lord, where we have resistance in us, would You fill our hearts full of faith and trust in the power of Your death?
Saints, let me say something about that. The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
When you seek, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to worship—to live a life of worship—there is going to be something in you, in your flesh.
Paul said, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.” There is no good in pretending it is all gone.
If it were all gone, Paul would not have said, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells no good thing.” No, the Spirit makes war against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit.
Oh, wretched man that I am—this civil war going on in us. How will the Lord get the victory? How will it be that it is not one day the natural man, the next day the Holy Spirit, and the next day the natural man?
The Lord has given us a glorious death.
If we will look to Him and trust Him, His death will be perfectly worked out in us to bring all of that flesh to cessation.
And we will follow Him. It is not your will worship. It is not, “Well, I am going to do this,” or, “I am going to do that.” Saints, it is what He has provided.
He has provided the blood for you, for your sins. He has provided His Spirit for your life, your works, and your testimony. He has provided His cross, His death, that you would cease from the works of Adam.
You would cease from being this one who wants, in his flesh, to be worshiped—this one who wants to be in control and in charge.
“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
And because of the word of their testimony;
And they did not love their life even unto death.”
Now, I think this death in us is a process. Paul said, “I die daily.” So, I am dead—I have been crucified with Christ. That is past; that has already happened.
One day, I will put off this mortality; I will die. That is future. But for today: take up your cross and follow Him. I die daily.
Trust Him. Trust in what He did on the cross. Trust in this magnificent death, and stay in fellowship with one another.
We will get to that later when I talk about prayer. We need one another. There is not one of us who can live this on our own. You were made for the body of Christ.
This life I am speaking of is not a life for you or me to live individually, just on your own in your closet. You are part of a body.
You are one with Him and one with one another. This will be worked out in the body of Christ, in the ekklesia, in the church.
Lord, again, we just thank You. Lord, we commit these words and our lives to You. Lord, be glorified. Amen.