So turn with me to Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19. We started our study of this 19th chapter in our last time together. We only made it to verse 4. And so that's where we resume this morning. There in verses 1 through 3, you'll recall that the Lord through Moses instructed the Israelites to be holy as he is holy, to reverence their parents, and to keep the Lord's Sabbath days. Here in verse 4, the Lord turns from these positive commands to a command of prohibition, saying, do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods. I am the Lord your God. As I noted last time, just as the Lord reemphasized the teaching contained in the 4th and 5th commandments in the previous verses, He now turns His attention to the 1st and 2nd commandments. And just as a refresher, let me just reiterate those from Exodus 20, verses 3 through 5. Exodus chapter 23 through 5, the Lord said, You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. Now, conceptually at least, idol worship is not that difficult to understand. The Hebrew word translated as idol is the word Elil, E-L-I-L. And from an etymological standpoint, it's interesting to note that the first two letters of the word for idol are the Hebrew word for God, El. And so what do we get when we add the I-L at the beginning? Elil means that which pretends to be God. It's a diminutive form of the Hebrew word for God. It would be the equivalent of our using little g to describe God. Over time, This word became to mean more than just a diminutive form for God. This word came to be understood as anything deemed worthless, anything vain, anything of no value. When understood in the context of God Himself, an idol is any worthless thing that one uses as an object of worship in replacement or as a substitute for the one true God. And the reasoning is simple. How can something inherently worthless be put in the place of God who alone is worthy of loving with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind? Well, the answer is it can't. There's nothing that you can replace God with in terms of that which is owed your worship and mine. There's nothing that is of any real value when compared to the priceless, inestimable God that we worship. This is what makes the doctrine of God's exclusivity so important. And if you've never heard that term, if you're looking for a textbook definition of the doctrine of the exclusivity of God, it would be this. The exclusivity of God refers to the belief that there's only one God and that this God is unique and incomparable with no other gods or deities existing or deserving of worship. This was something that was consistently repeated whenever the Israelites would call themselves together. Remember, when the priests would assemble the Israelites, they would blow the shofar, which is the ram's horn trumpet, and then they would sing what is known as the Shema. The Shema actually comes from Deuteronomy 6.4. It's, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one. The Lord is not only one, but this Lord is the only one. I don't know about you, but I get really tired of people saying that, you know, all roads lead to God, that there are many interpretations of who God is, there are many understandings of the one true God. Those things are patently false. Why? Because the scriptures themselves declare the glory of God, the creation declares the glory of God, but that's further refined in the scriptures where we learn exactly who God is in all of his perfections. We call those things attributes. I don't like that word. I mean, it's appropriate sometimes. But perfections is better because every characteristic of God is, by its very nature, perfect. This is why we say God is love. God loves. Yes, God loves. But it's more than that. He is love. God is just. He exhibits justice, but that's on the basis of his perfection of justice. God is righteous. He is infallibly, impeccably righteous. So all the things that you can say about God are in their perfect And this is, again, why we call those things perfections. When this Shema would be uttered, it was understood by the people of Israel that when they're told the Lord is your God and the Lord is one, they're speaking of His exclusivity, His uniqueness, His being without competition, His being without compare. And it's important that we understand that. He will not share His glory with any other gods, little g, because He can't share with them what they're incapable and unworthy of possessing. They're not worthy to be glorified. They're not worthy to be worshipped. Only God Himself is. That said, It's still true that since the dawn of man's existence, attempts have been made to refashion the one true God into many other forms in an effort to make him more relevant, more relatable, less severe, or simply visible, tangible. I've said before that one of the ways that we differentiate our God from all other pretenders is that God is identifiable not only by his perfections that I just mentioned a moment ago, but by his identity. by who he is. Now, let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. The Muslim says, well, we worship the same God as the Jew and the Christian. It's not true. In fact, the Jews don't even worship the same God as the Christian. Now, how do we know that? I mean, and this is not to, it's not an anti-Semitic statement, I'm not poking Jews in the eyes just willy-nilly, but it's a true statement. This is one of the most profound misunderstandings within Christendom that we somehow believe that the Jews worship the same God. Let's put it this way. They might think they worship the same God, but they do so in utter ignorance. Why? Because, well, Paul tells us why in Romans 9, 10, and 11. They've been blinded. God has intentionally blinded them, set them aside for a time. Romans 11 is coming, right? For a time, until such time as the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, and then once that happens, the natural branches are remnant, will be grafted back in to the tree that is the root of Jesse, the Lord Christ himself, and then all Israel will be saved. We don't need to go back down that road. But why do I say the Jews worship a different God? Well, think about it this way. If God is known by his perfections and his identity as the one true God, then we all have to agree that certain things are true about him. Is that a simple enough statement? We all have to agree that whatever's true about him is true about him. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, it's true. And here's the litmus test. Just ask the average Jewish person, is Jesus Christ God? No. Is Jesus Christ the promised Messiah? No. right away you can see that they're not worshiping the same God, or at best, they're worshiping the one true God in complete ignorance, which we understand given their spiritual condition. But I don't think it's that far a stretch to say that they're just not worshiping the same God. Why? Because if you say, my God, according to the scriptures, exists in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, He has a son, the only begotten God, who's in the bosom of the Father, who has declared who God is. This son is Jesus Christ, God of very God. If you don't agree with that, then we're talking about two different gods. It's no different than I've used the analogy before about Steve. Somebody says, hey, where do you go to church? I go to Grace Baptist Church. Oh, okay. Do you know Steve? I do know Steve. Yeah, Steve, he's married and has three daughters. Yeah, I know Steve. Me and Steve go way back, right? Yeah, he's a plumber for a living. Young guy, about 40 years old. What happens at that point? What is abundantly clear from that misstep? Different Steve. We're not talking about the same Steve. Why do we allow people to talk about our God who's described impeccably and very carefully throughout the Word of God? Why do we allow people to deviate from his most fundamental characteristics and yet give him a pass and say, yeah, you're worshiping the same God? It's not the same God. The Mormons believe in Jesus. Which Jesus? Is it the right Jesus? Ask a Mormon sometime, do you believe that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers? Yes, they are. Are we talking about the same Jesus? No. Our Jesus is Satan's Lord and master. Whether he'll ever acknowledge that, one day he will. Even he will bow the knee. But again, it's two different Jesuses, so we gotta be very careful. This is what's so dangerous about idolatry. You know, we can say, well, this idol represents the one true God. No, it doesn't. Well, how do you know? It doesn't because it can't. There's nothing that is capable of representing the one true God in all of his perfections. We just can't do that. Getting back to God's characteristics, one of those, one of the most fundamental characteristics about God is that He's invisible. God the Father is invisible. He's incorporeal, to speak theologically. He has no physical makeup. He has no body. We have a couple of verses to actually prove this. 1 Timothy 1.17 There in 1st Timothy 1.17, Paul gives Timothy a short word of benediction, and he says to him, Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Then, of course, in John 1.18, the apostle writes, No one has seen God at any time. That's kind of problematic, especially for the charismatics who insist that God the Father is about the same height as we are and has a rather large hand span, and He indeed has corporeity. I mean, you get the idea that none of these guys ever opened their Bible, much less a theological textbook, right? But the Apostle writes, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God, who's in the bosom of the Father, that is Jesus, has explained Him. How exactly? Well, remember Jesus' conversation with Philip in John 14. John 14, verse 7. Jesus says to His disciples, If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. From now on, you know Him and have seen Him. And how did Philip respond? He said, Lord, just show us the Father and it's enough for us. You see, Philip was still stuck with this idea that God the Father possessed a body that could be seen by human eyes. And how did Jesus respond to Philip's request? He said to him, have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the father? Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the father abiding in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me. Otherwise believe because of the works themselves. If you're looking for one of the best examples of the deity of Christ in scripture, there it is. Now we can't quite wrap our brains around the metaphysical reality that's going on here. What does it mean that God the Son is in the Father and the Father's in the Son and that they are one and the same in complete essence? And yet they're distinct personages within the triune Godhead. We have God the Father, God the Spirit, God the Son, and those things are never to be mixed together. nor are they to be torn apart." How do we understand that? We can't fully understand something that exists in three parts, and yet the parts exist in an unbreakable, indissoluble whole. At the same time, being co-equal with one another. At the same time, being co-divine one with the other. We just don't really understand, and I've heard all kinds of analogies, the ice cube, the egg, just, it's okay to throw up your hand and say, you know, there are things that are a mystery to me, and will always be a mystery to me. I'm not so sure that even when we get to glory, we're gonna understand the subtleties of Trinitarian doctrine. I don't think we'll need to know. I don't think Jesus's disciples who watched him and were ministering with him for all these years, I don't think they really needed to understand it. Because Jesus explains it very clearly. When you see me, I am the physical manifestation of the whole triune Godhead. And it's as if he's telling Philip, what's so hard to understand about that? Right? You can only imagine Philip's response. We're not really told what it is, but Philip's probably like, okay. Right? Right. By insisting that he was in the Father and the Father was in him, Jesus was claiming equality with God in every way. He, the Father, and the Spirit are one God in three persons, as I said. All this to say that we do have a visible corporeal God in the Lord Jesus Christ. But even then, He is one of a kind. Right? Because God is one of a kind, Christ is one of a kind. We also speak, when we speak about the exclusivity of God, we also speak about the exclusivity of the Son and the Spirit because they are all God of very God. And here's the thing, any and all attempts to capture his complete essence and glory in physical or artistic form automatically robs him of a portion of that glory. This is really the sum and substance of the second commandment. We talk about second commandment violations all the time, and I've had people come up to me over the years and listen, I've waffled on this for years, up until about a year and a half, two years ago. I waffled on this, what's so harmful about little Johnny or little Susie opening their coloring book, and there's a picture of Jesus speaking to the children who have so lovingly gathered at his feet. What's the big deal? Is that really a Second Commandment violation? It most certainly is. Why? Because to even claim to be able to capture the essence and the glory of the person and work of Jesus Christ, much less in cartoon form, is blasphemy of the highest order. You can't do that without robbing Him of His glory. You might disagree with me on that, and that's okay. That's okay. May the Lord bring you along as He brought me along over the last 50 years. But it suddenly dawned on me that these attempts to put the Lord Himself in a bottle, as it were, where we can look at Him and admire Him from so many different angles. We are talking about a God in the Lord Jesus Christ, the physical manifestation, visible manifestation of the triune Godhead who cannot be expressed in human terms fully. Remember when The Lord himself took Peter, James, and John upon the Mount of Transfiguration. Why did he do that? You ever wonder that? I mean, just like he told Philip, I'm standing right before you, and if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I mean, this is the bodily manifestation of the triune Godhead. This is me. Right? That should have been enough. In fact, Jesus said it should have been enough. And yet there was something else that he wanted us to know about himself, which is why on the Mount of Transfiguration, he was transfigured into light. Why light? Well, we know light's the purest form of energy. We know that light is the ultimate expression of power. And so, I think Jesus wanted to relate to Peter, James, and John, who would then go relate it to others. This is not some normal man. This man, Jesus, is beyond our capability to either understand fully or even express who he really is in simple words. There's simply no substitute for the real thing, so we dare not even try to represent him in any other way than he presents himself in the Word of God. Now, we're all quite familiar with the idols of other religions, right? I mean, we know what, we've watched enough movies to know what idols look like. They're usually made out of wood or stone or metal, other things. But is that all there is to consider in this regard? No. No, because idols themselves don't have to be made out of metal, wood, stone. Idols can be anything that we place in the position of importance that hinders our ability to worship God alone and to love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. As I've said before, many people have made idols out of their jobs. Many people have made idols out of their hobbies, their children, other individuals, other individuals to whom they become unusually beholden and Love with a love that's very uncommon among the rest of mankind. Professional athletes, people fawn over them, people wait in long lines just to get them to scribble some unintelligible looking autograph on a piece of paper just so they can, what, stare at the ink on the page. I was there. You don't realize you're talking about another mere mortal, right? movie stars, social media personalities, podcasters, celebrity pastors and teachers, etc. Listen, there's nothing wrong with liking people. There's not. There's nothing wrong with respecting people and admiring them for the things that they're able to do for the kingdom and cause of Christ especially. There's nothing wrong with loving our children as we're taught in scripture to love them. It's okay to have hobbies that we enjoy engaging in from time to time. But the minute we become preoccupied with any of those things, to the extent that they get in the way of our dutiful worship of God, our reading and studying His Word, our being among His people whenever we decide to assemble in His name, the minute we allow anything to overshadow God's rightful place in our lives as the sole object of our worship, love, adoration, and devotion, we've made a huge mistake. And it's something that could constitute the sin of idolatry. I mean, think about the subtlety of this particular sin. I've talked about this before in relation to the Lord's Day. We have people forsaking the assembling ourselves together because, oh, today's the opening of Fiesta Texas. Oh, it's Super Bowl Sunday. I might be there. And if I am, though, it's going to be a short exit for me because I'm just going to run out of here. Can't miss the kickoff. Can't miss going to the grocery store and buying all the goodies that we're going to enjoy. See where I'm going with that? It's so subtle. No, I'm not gonna come to church, you know, every time the doors are open, simply because I've got better things to do with my life. That's dangerous. If you've got anything better to do with your life than assemble with the people of God and worship Him in spirit and in truth, you really need to check yourself. It's not a legalistic statement. I'd say that in any church, anywhere in the world today, if you have something that is more beneficial to you than being with the called-out people of God in corporate worship, something's wrong with you. I know, I'm preaching to the choir. Somebody asked me last week, you always say these things in Sunday school. We're all there, Tim. Just venting, right? Listen, I don't have any idea what idols you may have in your life, but I can most certainly say that if you have them, you need to destroy them. You need to mortify the flesh and its desires to do anything other than worship God aright. You need to turn your focus back to the one true God himself. One of the most frightening things I've ever read in scripture, and this sometimes goes unnoticed. I mean, namely because it's in Revelation. I mean, people hear Revelation and they're like, oh, no, I'm not. Pastor says he's never going to preach through Revelation, so I'm never going to read it. Don't do that. Read it, join the gang, be as confused as all of us, right? I won't preach it because I don't know what it says. I don't understand definitively what it says and it would be remiss of me, I mean it's good in like a Sunday school setting, maybe it's good in a classroom setting where you can very slowly and very deliberately look at every known translation of what's going on here and then compare and contrast and throw opinions around, but this is not the place for that in my opinion. But, that said, the book of Revelation has many wonderfully applicable teachings. I would entertain the idea of going through Revelation quasi-topically. In other words, picking out passages and then speaking to those passages with a certain subject matter in mind, which is about what I'm going to do right now. Look at Revelation 2. Revelation 2. This speaks directly to the type of idolatry that I'm talking about, the subtle idolatry. Revelation chapter 2 verse 1. Some of you already know where I'm going and that's good. Here we read, to the angel of the church in Ephesus write The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands says this, and as you all know, the seven lampstands are the seven churches of Asia Minor. He says, I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance and that you cannot tolerate evil men and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles and they are not and you found them to be false and you have perseverance and have endured for my namesake and have not grown weary. But here's where things get really frightening. But I have this against you that you have left your first love. Folks, I can't describe to you how unbelievably tragic that situation is. You have left your first love. Therefore, remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deed you did at first or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent. How had the Ephesians lost their first love? Most scholars believe this is a combination of several factors. It had to have been. But the biggest culprit was their simply having become overly distracted by the world around them. In the midst of all the political turmoil of the day, the constant need to address and correct those who are introducing false teaching in their midst, the various stressors involved with faithfully attending to all the ministries of the church and the personalities that led and participated in those ministries, financial concerns, all of these things, all of these things are to blame for why they became so preoccupied and missed the forest for the trees, so to speak. In short, all of those other things had become idols. All of those other things had become more important to them than Christ himself. Let it never be said of us, you know, we sit here in this nice building by God's grace, We've done a lot to make it look good. We've been involved in this, that, and the other thing. A lot of you are involved in not only the building and the renovation ministry. Even now, you're still involved in those types of things. You know, what goes on after the service at 11 when we go down and have our meal together. There's so much activity. It's a beehive of activity. You know, we have people that routinely do sorts of ministries for everyone else in this body. Let me just cut to the chase. The minute you allow those ministries even to take preeminence over the reason for those ministries, You've probably created an idol out of those things. Never lose sight of the fact that everything we think, say, and do as believers in this place centers around the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is our reason for being here. He's our reason for everything we do in His name. He is our reason for living, period. And the moment we lose sight of that, our minds can become cluttered by all the periphery, by everything that's going on. You know, this is another, let this be another warning to some of you who are preoccupied, some even overly so, with what's going on outside these four walls. Right. Everybody's preoccupied with what's going on in the church at large. The church does this. The church does that. The church does this. The church. What church this church. Oh no not not this church. Well what are you worried about it for. There is enough here to keep you busy. praying for one another, discipling one another, leading one another, shepherding one another's hearts, being of good counsel to one another, helping one another in various ways that are required. There's more than enough to do in this place from now until the cows come home to inoculate you against this need to be preoccupied with everything else. God has called all of us to serve in this place He has gifted us to serve in this place, and He expects us to serve in this body. And to the extent that we're looking outward, right? Looking at everything else, every other shiny object, everything that goes bump in the night, we're actually not only doing ourselves a grave disservice, but it's quite possible that we're in danger of losing our first love. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who has brought you here to minister your gifts here for the edification of the body here. Now, if you're doing that, if you're full up on your list of things to do for the body here and you're content that you're doing everything that needs to be done in your own little sphere of ministry, then great. But even then, Is there really a need to be preoccupied with all the other, all the other tangential issues? You know, if we'll turn our eyes back to Christ and learn more about Him and focus more on Him, it's like the song says, all these other things will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. I think sometimes churches can be so busy doing church that they forget who they're doing it for. Anyway, that's enough on that subject. Let's move to verse 5. Yeah, that was all verse 4. People still ask me, how can you talk so long on one verse? Sometimes I'm like, maybe I shouldn't, but that's okay. Verses 5-8, Leviticus 19. Here the Lord tells Moses to tell the Israelites, now when you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. It shall be eaten the same day after you offer it and the next day, but what remains until the third day shall be burned with fire. So if it's eaten at all on the third day, it's an offense. It will not be accepted. Everyone who eats it will bear his iniquity for he has profaned the holy thing of the Lord and that person shall be cut off from his First things first, let's re-familiarize ourselves with the peace offering. What is the peace offering? Well, remember, peace offerings were those offerings that could be offered at any time. Anytime you wanted to stop by the tabernacle or the temple and call a priest into service to accept your peace offering, you could do that. And peace offerings were intended to be made, one, as a way of expressing gratitude to God for His blessings. You could just bring an offering to the tabernacle or the temple and just say, here, I want to give this as a token of my appreciation for the way God has blessed me. Number two, as a means of fulfilling a vow or a promise made to God. We are to commit via faith promise, for example, to continue giving. to the local church. This is a modern equivalent of that. Back then, they made promises to support the work of the Levitical priesthood by bringing all kinds of offerings, whether that was food and grain and even money to support that ongoing work of the temple. Number three, it could simply be a way to express devotion to and fellowship with God. So it was a way of drawing closer to God, asking God that you might continue to enjoy that peace that He has given to you, His peace. And so again, in many ways, conceptually at least, the peace offering that God had prescribed for the Israelites is the same as anything we do for God now in the local church. Whatever we do, we do it for Him. When we give to the ongoing work of the church, what are we doing exactly? Well, we're expressing gratitude to the Lord for His many blessings. We're fulfilling our promise to God to be faithful givers. And we're expressing our devotion and fellowship with God in this place. And what kind of givers does God approve of? Remember what Paul said in 2 Corinthians? 2 Corinthians 9, 7? Absolutely, each one must do just as he has decided in his heart, there's the promise, not reluctantly or under compulsion, there's the devotion, the selflessness, for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves those who can give out of their heart, out of the abundance of their heart. Anyway, if you need a more lengthy refresher on the peace offering, you can always go back to Leviticus chapter 3, verses 1 to 17, I believe. are especially instructive with regard to the peace offering. So why is the Lord mentioning these things again in our text? Well, simply because he wants to reinforce the Israelites' understanding of the precision of his commands. First of all, he says, when you offer a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. Now, what does this imply? Well, it implies that there are certain offerings that can be made to God that are unacceptable. Immediately, your mind should think back to Cain and Abel. And we've said before, whether or not Abel's sacrifice was accepted above Cain's sacrifice because of content or character, we really can't be sure. I think it was probably a combination of both. Cain's sacrifice was not acceptable unto the Lord, primarily because it was brought with a grudging heart. If you'll recall, Cain actually brought from the fruits of the harvest. the fruits of the land. And it could very well be also that that was in violation of God's stipulation that it be a living thing who had died. And that's why Abel brought the first of the fatlings of his flock as a sacrifice to the Lord. So again, there are acceptable sacrifices and there are unacceptable sacrifices. And you know, again, the same thing is true even today. We can offer acceptable praise unto the Lord as a sacrifice, or we can offer unacceptable praise to the Lord. And this is really where the rubber meets the road as far as your own character, your own motive for being here this morning. If you've come into this place grudgingly, If you've come into this place with a chip on your shoulder, thinking, well, I've got a lot of other better things that I can be doing with my time right now. If there's any burden aspect to what we do here every Lord's Day, then let me just give you the best advice you'll ever receive. Don't come. Right? Don't come. If you can't come cheerfully, willingly, with a heart that desires nothing more than to serve the Lord in all of His glory, in all of His splendor, in the way that He has graciously afforded you to come and worship Him, if you can't do that, don't come. Pastor's saying, don't come to church. Yeah, with that attitude, don't come to church. And what I'm doing for you is perhaps one of the most loving things I can do for you. Every time you come to church with that kind of attitude, guess what? You're just heaping judgment on yourself. And you're opening yourself up to the divine chastisement of God. Much better to pray, Lord, I don't feel like it. Help me to feel like it. Restore to me that joy that I had with you in the very beginning. Restore to me this hunger and desire to demonstrate my righteous standing before you by coming together with the people of God and stirring everyone up as the day draws nearer for your return. Much better than to come here with a frown on your face and a chip on your shoulder. I don't really want to be here, but my wife said that that she'll never cook for me again if I don't go to church with her. Wife, leave him at home. No, bring him. You know, I'm kind of conflicted there. Bring him, but he's going to know. Again, we need to be careful that we're not offering unacceptable sacrifices of worship to the Lord. What does God want from us? Has God ever really delighted in sacrifices? I mean, you have to ask this question. God says, okay, bring a sheep, bring a bull, bring a ram, bring a goat, bring two pigeons, whatever the case might be, bring me animals. And you need to kill them and sacrifice them and present them this way and cut them this way and eat them this way and don't eat them this way. Is God really fascinated by animal death and Does he have like a menagerie of dead animals that he keeps somewhere in heaven, you know? Are they really important to him in any way? No. Never were. Never will be. So why all the demands to bring these animals? God doesn't need sheep, bulls, goats, birds. God doesn't want those things. What does God want? He wants your heart. That should be an epiphany. He wants our heart. He always wanted their hearts. The fact that he demanded animals was a test. How willing are you to give up that which could sustain you in this seemingly meaningless ritual of sacrifice? How willing are you to do that? And the same thing could be asked of why we're here this morning. Why would you be here as opposed to laid up in the bed slumbering soundly underneath your blankets which would be much preferable in the fleshly sense. Why do we drive sometimes great distances to be here with people that the Lord has brought together for worship and to adore Him and to fellowship one? Why? To the outsider, that's ludicrous. And let me get back to that. If you're not here when the people are gathering together because you've got better things to do with your time, I have to question whether you're part of us or not. And that's not, I'm not saying 9, 45, 11 o'clock. I'm not making that distinction now. I'm talking about the garden variety tendency that people have to forsake the assembling of ourselves together for the whole day. They just choose not to come because it's not important to them. They've run into two problems. One is idolatry. They've placed something else as more important than the Lord himself. And number two, they're not offering a sacrifice of praise. It's not a sacrifice at all. Sorry, we have two cats out there in the little courtyard. Squirrel, yeah. Look, I've confessed I have ADD. You just saw a demonstration of that. But here's the thing, I hope that when you're here, God has your heart. And I would even say, He doesn't want your money. But the giving of your funds is an indication that your heart's in the right place. The giving of your praise is an indication that your heart's in the right place. When you sing out to Him during our hymn singing, The loudness, I'm gonna hold you to this the next hour. The loudness of your voices is a good indication as to where your heart is. You know, we're commanded just to make a joyful noise. Emphasis on the word noise. We're not commanded to always be in tune. We're not commanded to always get it right. We're not commanded to even be able to read the words correctly off the page sometimes. But when we sing, we should sing with gusto. Why? Because that is an example of sacrificial praise to Him. No, I don't sing that loud because I'm embarrassed. Be embarrassed. That's a sacrifice of praise. Again, God doesn't need the stuff. It's all His anyway. This is beautifully exemplified in what David said in Psalm 51. Psalm 51, 16 and 17. Remember, he's just sinned against Bathsheba and certainly against the Lord himself. Predominantly against the Lord himself. But he's just sinned against Bathsheba when he writes this. And what great insight he has, Psalm 51, 16. For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You know, David's not saying you don't delight in the heart behind the sacrifice. He's like, you don't delight in the sacrifice itself as a perfunctory gesture, just going through the motions. You're not pleased with burnt offering, again, as a perfunctory thing. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. Does your sin break you? Anytime you run afoul of what God's righteous expectations are for your life, does that bother you? Are you haunted by that? You should be. We need to be those of broken and contrite heart. 1 Samuel 15. 1 Samuel 15, 22 and 23, we read something similar as Samuel told a disobedient king Saul. 1 Samuel 15, 22. Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. Saul was one who was willing to go through the motions. He was willing to get everything right in terms of the perfunctory steps that needed to be taken among the people, but his heart wasn't in it. And because of that, the Lord removed him as king. Now, not only was the attitude of the one making the offering important, It was also important that the precise parameters of the sacrifice be obeyed, namely that the sacrifice should be eaten the same day or the next day after it was offered. If it was held over until the third day, it was to be burned with fire. And what would happen if it was eaten on the third day? Well, the Lord says, first of all, it wouldn't be accepted. It'd be offered in vain. It's not part of the sacrifice if you strayed beyond the two-day eating requirement. But not only that, according to verse 8, because the sacrifice, a holy thing unto the Lord, had been profaned, the individual who ate it was to be cut off from his people, which, as we discussed only recently, was tantamount to a death sentence. To be cut off from one's people was to be put to death. I don't know about you, but that seems a little excessive. Oops, I miscounted. I ate the offering that was made on the third day. Oops, sorry. But again, this just goes to show that we cannot have a nonchalant attitude in our worship. Thankfully, God doesn't destroy us in this way anymore. But understand, it's still the same God. The requirements are still the same. We're to worship Him in the way that He has prescribed in His Word, which again makes the regulative principle so important. We're not to stray according to our feelings, according to what makes more sense, according to pragmatism, according to expediency. We're to worship Him in the way that He has prescribed, and only in that way. As I said, this seemed a little excessive until I read this from respected commentator Leon Hyatt. Listen to what he wrote here. This commandment is the only law in this passage that contains a specific penalty. For all the others, penalties were to be assigned by the judges according to the circumstances of each case. Specifying the death penalty for this offense underscores its seriousness. At first sight, the penalty seems to be severe for a ceremonial deviation. However, The offerings Jehovah gave to Israel were a method of teaching truths about Jehovah and the way of life he expected of his followers. He designed them carefully because pagan religions of that day had offerings that they called by the same names. Jehovah wanted to protect his offerings from those pagan forms of the offerings and the ideas they contained. Therefore, if an Israelite did not follow the ceremonies exactly as Jehovah had defined them, he was showing disrespect for Jehovah and was subject to being led astray by false ideas. Such a disrespectful attitude toward Jehovah's instructions showed he had not truly accepted the covenant and did not really belong among God's people. He was to be excluded by being put to death. That's how seriously God takes those matters. Any intentional deviation from God's clear instruction with regard to how he is to be worshipped and how he's not to be worshipped is a good indication that such worshippers are either ignorant of his requirements, which that happens, or it could also mean that there's just no Holy Spirit there. And again, that's a frightening prospect for those who seek to go their own way, ignoring what the Lord himself has said with regard to such things. If there's one takeaway from our time together in this hour, I would just say it's this. What we need more than anything is to be careful to worship him both as he deserves to be worshiped and in a way that he has prescribed for us to worship Him. At least as far as it's up to us, might the Lord help us not to deviate to the right or to the left, but to stay firmly in the center of His will in all things, primarily in the context of what we looked at this morning in the area of worship. Might we all, even now, pray to Him that He would infuse us with the ability to worship Him in spirit and in truth. In this next hour, let's worship Him aright. Worship Him in a manner that He deserves to be worshipped. Might He be perpetually praised among us as well.