This is verse 7 and following. And he said to him, this is God, said to Abram, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it. He said, O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it? And God said to Abram, bring me a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old female goat and a three-year-old ram and a turtle dove and a young pigeon. Then he brought all of these to him, and cut them in two, and laid them each half opposite the other. But he did not cut the birds. The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. This is the word of God. Heavenly Father, we do. And we thank you that you would preserve this word. And that God, as we look at this narrative of this close and personal relationship with your servant Abraham, the father of our faith, we ask that you would help us today as we consider how we worship you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You may be seated. And as you're doing so, we want to see here from verse 7 through 11, there are some things that we'll stop and pull a lot of details out of. Others of it, we're still, really I need to get to the second half of this chapter to begin to unpack the covenant theology position that is found here in this text. And we're right on the brink of it. But today we're going to look really here at who is the one doing the instructing on how and what is considered proper worship before God. And so we'll see this. God clearly is the one who's who is the one instructing his servant how he should worship him. So we'll see this in the text. In a first glance at verse seven, you'll see who's the one doing the initiating here. It's God. He said to him, so God said to Abram, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it. So we see it's God who's taking the initiative on the invitation now to worship. And what God has done here by saying this to Abram, he's reminding him, hey, by the way, don't forget, I'm the one who brought you. You didn't come here on your own. You didn't get to an intellectual ascent here to say, you know what I need to do? I need to leave this place and go and worship this Yahweh. He wouldn't even know to worship Yahweh unless God's the one who comes initially. We have from chapter 12, 13, 14, and 15, we see that God is presenting, He's inviting, He's making Abram aware that He is the creator of heaven and earth. And here in the 15th chapter, in the 7th verse, when God reminds him, I'm the one who brought you out of Ur. So just as a matter of reminder, Ur of the Chaldeans, this would essentially be modern day Persia, modern day Iran, Iraq, this Persian region, modern day Babylon area, region. In Abram's day, Ur of the Chaldeans is just a regional description for what appears to be a specific city that's just below modern day or biblical day Babylon. It's in this place that God comes and introduces himself to Abram. Everything we know about Abram in the day in which God calls him out of Ur is that this is among the most pagan of places in all of the established world at this time. And this is after the flood that there's been this amalgamation of ideas that people have begun to build their own ideas about who God is and really developing this idea that there are a plurality of gods. Not a triune God, a singular God, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the Bible describes Him, but just any God will do. And so it's hard for us to see that there's any way that Abram would have come to the conclusion that Yahweh, this is where you see in the text when you see the all capitalized word LORD, L-O-R-D, when you see that in some translations of the English language, that's translators' attempt to tip you off that this is Yahweh, this is Jehovah, this is this God. It's not just any God, not just any lowercase g God, but this is the Almighty, the One, the Only, the Triune Yahweh. That's who's reminding Abram, I'm the Lord who brought you out of Ur. I brought you out of that pagan culture. And what did I do? I made you my own, and in this, I'm telling you, I'm giving you this land, and you will eventually, that's my inserting here, because Abram does not permanently possess the land. His descendants will, but he does not. As a matter of fact, it will not be until they go to Egypt, where the family will go to Egypt seeking relief from a great famine, that they will eventually end up just staying there in Egypt and then eventually becoming slaves to the Egyptians before God raises up Moses to go and demand Pharaoh to let God's people go, that they will eventually go and take possession of the land. But this is God reminding Abram Hey, by the way, I am the Almighty. So that's reminding us here, there's precedence, there's responsibility for man to respond to God, to the Almighty God, when he presents himself and declares to them who he is. In the eighth verse, you see that it is Abram's response. Abram says, in response to God identifying himself as Yahweh, Abram says, O Yahweh. So he knows who he's talking to. He knows specifically. This is not just any God speaking to him. This is not some God he made up in his own mind. This is the God who's revealed Himself to him. And so God says, you will take possession of this land in verse 7. And Abram is saying, O Yahweh, Almighty God, how may I know that I will possess it? And then verse 9. We see that God tells Abraham, not how He's going to possess the land in a strategic, militaristic manner. What God does is He instructs him to worship Him. God instructs Abram, don't worry about how you're going to take possession of the land. I've promised it to you. You will take possession of it. Now worship Me. And He gives him very specific details And it is in a day in which there is a plurality of gods being worshipped throughout the world, pagan worship and idolatry abounds, not just in Abrams Day, it's like nothing's changed, is it? There's this instruction. It's a rather simple instruction that God gives to Abram. Abram would have no no. There's no room here for Abram to say, OK, a three year old heifer. Would a four year old heifer work for you, God? He doesn't. You know, he's very specific. And then we'll see that Abram does exactly this. And he says, bring a three year old female goat. God, would it be all right if I bring a male goat instead of? Well, God says, well, also, You should bring a three-year-old ram. Oh, you mean I've got to bring both a male and a female? You don't hear any of this in Abram saying, I don't know, this doesn't feel right. God's the one giving the instruction on how we ought to be worshipped here. You don't see Abram, because Abram knows who God is. Abram's not wishy-washy. Abram's not trying to figure out, is this really the God I want to worship? Abram's got it settled in his mind, and so when God instructs him, Abram obeys him. Now that's going to be really important for us when we move to personal application of this into corporate application. How are we going to do this? Then God also says, He'll also want you to bring a turtle dove and a young pigeon. Now what we don't have here is any explanation as to why He's calling for these animals to be sacrificed. And I would say here, it's not necessary for us to know this. We don't worship like this today. God does not require the blood of sacrifices for us to worship him like this. God settled the sacrificial issue by sending his only begotten son. to die on the cross, to once and for all pay the penalty for the sins that men have committed. So when we come to worship God, we're not worshiping a different God in a different way. We're worshiping the same God, and let me make the argument, in the same way because of the scapegoat, the Lord Jesus Christ, where all of our sins are imputed upon Him, and He dies for our sins. So our worship is actually the same. Now, arguably, it's far more grand here, because with Christ, it's satisfied. This old system, which by the way, you know this, Genesis chapter 15 predates the Mosaic Law. So we don't even have the Mosaic Law at this point. But one thing we do have is precedence that God's people, from the time of the fall in the garden, that God has been requiring the blood to be shed for the sins of man. God doesn't cover Adam and Eve without the shedding of blood. Cain and Abel. Abel brings a blood sacrifice to the Lord. We see that Noah will bring a blood sacrifice and lay it upon the altar. Abram has already been in the practice of giving sacrifices, costly sacrifices, unto the Lord. And so this is not out of... No one would say, well, God's never required blood before. Why would He require blood now? He's always required blood. And He will always require blood. But listen, dear brothers and sisters, you are not responsible for shedding the blood. Amen? I mean, that's a costly endeavor. Depending on how much sin you're doing in your life, that's a costly endeavor, isn't it? And quite frankly, that's pretty expensive. Because we're perpetually sinning against God. So it would take a costly sacrifice of the only begotten Son of God to satisfy once and for all, all of the sins of all of humanity. Now that should stop you dead in your tracks to think of the worthiness of the blood of Jesus. That is sufficient for all of humanity to cover all the sins throughout all of time in every place around the world. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And so we find in the 10th verse that Abram did this. That's exactly what Verse 10 says, it's pretty simple, isn't it? So he brought all of these to him, and he cut them in two and laid each half opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds. And we'll be back to this verse, so I'm not gonna give much detail here. We're just going to make the observation, the general observation, this is what God required, this is what Abram did, and that appears to be satisfying of the worship that God was requiring of Abram at this moment. So he did what he was commanded to do, and we don't have any reason to think or any evidence here to think that he came short of anything that God required of him, that he made substitutes for anything that God required of him. He did everything precisely as God had told him to do. In verse 11, we're introduced to a distractor of the worship of God, and that is the birds of prey. They come down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. So we are the people who, we've already made the proclamation, we believe the word of God to be true, and it is. And so what we're seeing here being laid out in this narrative from verse 7 to 11 is we don't have anything that's correcting. So for Abram to give attention to get rid of the birds of prey, it's not followed by a verse by God telling Abram, hey, don't do that. You shouldn't do that. We're not we're not seeing this as didactic teachings. No, this is not something we should be doing today. And nor are we seeing that Abram did that, what he did by shooing away the the birds of prey, that he should not have been doing that. And so then we start we take a big picture look at this. And let's understand this, that when anytime the birds of prey are mentioned in the Bible, we could we could do a deep dive into this, but we can see that This is a description of the evil one, of the devil. And here it appears as though he's coming to get between Abram and God, to distract him, to take away, to get his mind off of what he's come to do, and that's to worship God. And so that's where I want to aim for the remainder of our time here, is to consider what's here. So let's put the big package together. What God requires of us in worship is not too difficult. So what we're reading here that God's not asking Abram to do something that's too difficult for him to do. He actually could do it. And so God's requiring of him something that he could accomplish. And I want to bring that over to our day of worship. What God requires of us is not too difficult for us. Oh, sure, I hear the argument, but you don't live in my house, preacher. You don't know how hard it is sometimes. I know how hard it is sometimes. Let's watch this as we try to make some application upon this. Well, God's required of us in worship of Him. God gives us everything in order to actually accomplish the worship of Him. It's not too difficult for us. When God requires, or what God requires, man must never attempt to substitute. So we're going to talk about order of worship or the matter of worship that is before us in this day post death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does the Bible teach us that is required of us in our worship services? What's important for us to know is that we are not so clever that God's been waiting for us to find ways to substitute the way we worship Him. God's clearly instructed His church what she should do. The New Testament teaches us. This is a principle of the Old Testament, and it follows into the New, and that is setting one day and seven aside for resting in God. It's not too difficult. Now, there are certain circumstances, and let's keep this in mind that this is not a legalistic position, but it is a principle of the Bible that the Lord commands man to set one day in seven aside for the worship of God. To most of us, that means a Sunday. Now, to some, because of particular circumstances in life, it may mean that there has to be some adjustments according to particular work schedules or shift schedules. But by and large, there is this principle, this application of the setting of one day aside for the worship, not for the worship itself. And the Bible actually calls this a rest. And you might, I know sometimes in my mind, this is one of the most unrestful days of the week. It's because we're looking at the word rest wrongly. We typically think of the word rest as a long nap or a quiet afternoon. This is resting in God is different than the physical rest of the body. You don't just rest one day a week, do you? I mean, you there are some days you may feel as though you don't get any rest all week long, but by and large, you go a whole week long without any resting of your physical body. You're of no good to your employer. You show up, your mind is drunk on deprivation of sleep, and you can't think, and you can't get things right in your head. No, your body requires, it demands rest. So this isn't physical sleeping, resting. This is resting in God. And I'm going to take one day in seven, and I'm going to treat this one day in seven unlike all the other days of the week. And it's not too difficult. It's not too hard. There may be seasons where it doesn't work out so conveniently and so nicely. But one thing is for sure that it is right and it is good for you to rest in God one day in seven. Now again, to most of us in the modern day, that means about an hour and a half a week. To the ancients, To the early days of the church, this would not just be a one and a half hour gathering on a Sunday morning. This would include really a fullness of the day, maybe not all collectively together throughout the entirety of the day, but it would be a full day devoted to the worship of God. It may be in small Bible studies, which your church provides every Sunday morning. It may be in a Sunday morning corporate worship service, just as we've gathered here at this moment. It could include, like what many of the Puritans would describe, the bookends of the day. We start the day in worship and we end the day in worship. And that making this idea of a day, one day in seven, devoted unto the Lord. What is the modern man made of this day of worship of God? Well, it's a lot of negotiating with God, isn't it? So I'll put this in here, and then I'm going to spend the rest of the day really doing what I wish I could do seven days of the week, rather than giving one day in seven fully, completely devoted to the Lord. And I want this to encourage and edify you that the way in which the modern man treats the day of worship is quite different. than the way in which the church has treated it historically. Worship is by nature an act of sacrifice, and I think we're seeing that in Genesis chapter 15. A discipline of the body, the mind, and the soul. It's a sacrifice, isn't it? It's a sacrifice to set one day aside in seven to devote to the worship of God, to meditating, to being quiet. to being still, to using our words carefully. Not to imply you shouldn't be careful with your words six days of the week, and only be careful about your words on one day of the week, but especially on the Lord's Day. Being really careful with our words. It's an act of sacrifice. What am I going to allow to entertain my mind on this day that's devoted to the Lord? Again, it's an act of sacrifice. It's a sacrifice of time, it's a sacrifice of resources, it's a sacrifice of discipline. And I think without stretching anything in these verses, from verse 7 through 11 in Genesis chapter 15, that we're seeing all of that employed by what God's expecting of Abram and what Abram is doing. All of this is in place. So it is a discipline of the body, the mind, and the soul. A measure, if you will, of how one will act throughout the week toward your spouse, toward your children, toward your neighbors, your coworkers, strangers, enemies. You think of this. Well, God, God's not just saying, Hey, I only want you to obey me one day and seven. So I want you to rest in me one day and seven so that whenever you entangle with the world, you'll have me influencing everything you're doing. Think about What would it do to your marriage if you devoted one day and seven to the worship of God? And that you would then exercise a discipline of your mind, your body, and your soul in the way you treated your spouse. Parents, how would that impact the way you're training your children in the fear and the admonition of the Lord? How's it going to impact the way you relate to your neighbors, your co-workers, whom you spend probably more time with than nearly anyone else that you know? What about the strangers who bring different levels and kinds of irritations upon your life? Or your enemies, who seem to always be poking? We cannot really expect to endure successfully in the entanglement of the temporal day experiences if we're not giving one day unto the Lord. Now, I know the argument because I even made some of the argument myself as I was reading the text that, well, preacher, it appears as though you're trying to make this about one day in seven when it's really not. And I want to exercise care there, but I am not going to run away from the fact that this is a clear instruction to Abram about the worship, how God required Abram to worship him and that Abram responded in obedience to the Father. This again is even long before we get to the Mosaic Law that even gives that instruction of setting one day and seven aside for the worship of God. But let's keep this in mind. God is giving us types and shadows of everything that God will specifically do. And so the revelation of this comes somewhat progressively, but it's even being understood before there's a law. Before there's a law to set one day aside for the worship of God, God's people are seen in the early parts, before the law, as setting days and times and events and worship of God. It's different than their regular practice of life. So if I'm If I'm distracted by pride in how I worship God, then I will act in the same pride toward others. So think about this as we get right down to the grassroots level of this. There's these birds of prey that is very clear in the overall picture of the Bible that these birds of prey are distracting outsiders. I mean, think of it first in your own private worship of God, your own private devotion, the reading of the Bible, prayer. These are things that I'm expecting you're at least attempting to do these. You know what the birds of prayer are doing the moment you set aside five minutes to read your Bible. Oh, a hundred distractions take over. The moment you want to devote some time to structured, intentional prayer, Sure enough, the phone will ring. A knock will come on the door. The buzzer will go off. The timer will tell you it's time to get the bread out of the oven. And then before you know it, you've spent little time at all in your personal devotion of the Lord. These birds of prey are like that. They're standing as a type or a shadow of the outside influence of the world to distract you from the worship of God. So what are these birds of prey? They're principalities of the air, aren't they? They are the demons of the underworld, the underbelly of all of God's creation. They've come to distract. As the New Testament says, they've come to steal, kill, and destroy. They're not here to play games, are they? They're not here to jump rope with you in the backyard. They're here to steal, to kill and to destroy, and they've come uninvited in most cases. Perhaps you're inviting them, and if you are, I should say you should stop that immediately, because they're coming whether you invite them or not, and I'm not so sure it would be a good idea to invite them. So these birds of prey, what are they doing? They're hovering, looking. Any moment that God's people are going to stop and worship Him, and the moment they do, the birds of prey swoop in. What must we do? Let's behave like Abraham here. Get away from here. I have important things to do. You are not taking me away from the most important thing that I have to do today, and that is to the worship of God. So they are principalities of the powers of the air. They've come to kill, steal, and destroy. What else have they done? They've come as oppressors. And they come tempting with pleasures and entertainments of the world. Now, I'm of an age where I can honestly say that I've seen this nearly completely shift in our culture. So I grew up in Colorado, even in liberal Colorado. It wasn't so liberal when I was growing up there. But even in Colorado, stores were mostly closed on Sundays. And I'm not making an argument that stores ought to be closed on Sundays. By and large, society had an influence from the church. And that's shifted in my day. Rarely would you find that a sporting event would happen on the Lord's Day. It wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s when big professional sporting events began to take up prominence on the Lord's Day. Now, there were complications of it on the global scene with Olympic events that would happen every four years. And when Christians would go and participate in sporting events or one in particular, you may remember Eric Little, a missionary, eventually a missionary to China, that he refused to run a race on a Sunday that he qualified for and that the announcement of the day of that race was not on the schedule until he had arrived to run the race for the events. When he learned that it was on the Lord's Day, he went to the Olympic organizers and he made the appeal to either move the race to another day or to allow him to swap with one of his one of his teammates. The eventual agreement was for the swap of individuals in the event. So he ran. He didn't have to run because he felt like from his conviction that this was a day of enormous significance between him and his God. And that he would have seen this as the birds of prey coming to distract him from worship. Let me just say, you will not hear of that happening today. But in days past, there was a general glory of God that sat, not always, and not predominantly everywhere, but there would be a level of respect that organizations and institutions would have for people of faith. People who worshipped the Almighty, the Triune God. So these would be oppressors. What are they doing? They're coming to distract you with pleasures and entertainment, to take your mind off to take you away from that position of worship. They are disturbances with introductions of personal ambitions. You know, you could get a lot done, couldn't you, if you didn't have to have one day in seven set aside for the worship of God. I think about how the older I get, I know what every old person says, but you cannot believe how fast time moves by. I'm going to lay my head down tonight on a Sunday night in my bed and my eyes are going to be closed and I'm going to open them up and I'm not going to sleep this long but it's going to feel like I've been asleep for six days. Sometimes, Renee will testify to this, sometimes I wake up on a Tuesday thinking it's a Sunday. What am I doing? It's 7 o'clock. I shouldn't be here in bed. It's amazing how fast time just moves along. And I know to the children, they're thinking, you have no idea how slow the world is moving by. I've got all these things I want to do and great ambitions of what I want to do, and I can't do any of them because it's a decade before I'm even old enough to drive. Just wait a decade. You'll be thinking, where in the world did that decade go? So there are these personal ambitions that want to come and distract us. And I always say, let's behave like Abram here. And let's shoo those birds of prey away on the Lord's day. And not let them become disturbances. Let them not become more important to us as ambitions in which we could have done it all today had we not had to give time to the worship of the Lord. The worship of the Lord actually enhances every breathing moment of your temporal life. And then I think another way in which we can view these birds of prey is they're distractions of vain thoughts. Now this is something that really is a modern phenomenon in the modern church, is that I will participate in the parts of worship that I want to participate in, and I will refuse to participate in the things that I think I'm better than God in. Now this is perplexing to me as a pastor, and yet even in my own lifetime I think, well how often have I even attempted this myself? That I will participate in the parts of worship that I like to participate in, but I really don't want to participate in these things that I think are really not necessary. What we do when we think like that is we are literally saying to God, I have a better idea of how to do this than you. What I loved about this text as I meditated on it this week is you have verse 7, God reminding Abram of who he is, where he's come from. And isn't that good? I think we ought to do that when we worship God. It's good that I'm not where I used to be. And oh, how good it is to be here. at this place where I now know God. And then God giving, or Abram asking some questions. How am I going to do this, that you've given me this land? And then we hear God giving him instructions on how to worship him. And then the very next verse, in verse 10, that Abram did everything that God did He had told him to do. I wish that were the way it was in my own life, that I would hear a clear, simple instruction from God And then the next verse that would follow my life would be, and Paul did what God told him to do. Rather than Paul spending hours trying to think of how to make it more entertaining or how to make it more enjoyable and more pleasant. As though there's something wrong with our thinking of God when the human thinks he's got to make God look more attractive than God is. That's perplexing. Now, it's a practice I used to be in and would have been happy to have invested lots of energy and lots of attention to do so. But what have we done when we do that is we're actually setting the glory of God aside. I think one of the reasons that most people don't come with a great anticipation to worship God is because rarely is God presented in front of the people. So what can we do here? We have to shoo away these birds of prey who want to come and distract and oppress and destroy. So how do we keep the distractors away? Just a couple of thoughts that I've meditated on this week in thinking of this. How do we keep the distractors away? We must be watchful. Listen, you must be aware that the enemy does not want you worshiping God. If you don't know that today, then you don't know how much you're being distracted. We must be watchful. The enemy does not want you worshiping God. What else must we do to keep these distractors away? We must be resisting pride. The Bible tells us that God resists the proud and he gives grace to the humble. Abram is displaying humility here. God told him, Abram humbled himself and he did. And it was to his benefit that he would do that. What else should we do? Persevere. This practice is important. Repetition is not the enemy of the worship of God. Let me say that again. Repetition is not the enemy. God's instructed His people to set one day and seven aside. It means there's going to be a lot of repetition in your life. There's going to be a lot of 1's and 7's in your life. There's something God knows you benefit by being an obedient worshiper of God. So be watchful. Resist being proud. Persevere. Call upon God to help you persevere because you already know how easily distracted we can be. So we think through just for a moment the particular order that the Bible gives us of worship. We have here in verse 7, 8, and 9 a very concise, very detailed order of what God's demanding of Abram to bring to the worship meeting. What does a modern church worship service look like? It needs to include at least these these elements. There ought to be, and so let me just say that's one of the reasons why I think around here I'm producing more and more of the order of service so that you can be aware and mindful. This is how the order is going to flow through the morning. And you should expect it's going to be real similar to this the next time we gather together. Well, the first thing we're going to do when we gather in this place is we're going to sing a psalm to the Lord. We're going to open up the Word of God and we're going to let God speak to us. And then we're going to give a moment of confession. This is a practice of the church for centuries. That there will be a moment of confession. Not with another man, but with man to God. And in the corporate meeting, House of the Lord, that we would set time aside for us to be sure that we have confessed our sins. We ask God to show us unconfessed sins, so that as we progress forward in the act of worship, that we don't have this unconfessed sin holding on to us and dragging itself through the entirety of the worship service. So we confess our sins before God, and then we give a response to God. And this response is usually in the form of singing. We've already at this point sung a psalm. And in keeping with the New Testament instructions, we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. So we incorporate in the service hymns, spiritual songs. We also devote time to teaching. Now, it's my expectation that the entirety of the church benefits from the children's catechism time. We don't just teach funny little stories to little boys and girls here. In our church, we're teaching them deep theological principles. These historic catechisms would stump the basic modern Christian who's been a professing Christian for decades. It's been expected throughout church history that children would know these things. So when we have our catechism time, it's really a teaching moment for the entirety of the gathered church. And we are expecting that parents are teaching the children in the home. But whenever so then whenever we come to the public worship gathering and we have a teaching moment, we are actually engaging in the teaching. And I'm always grateful. for that with the children. The Bible teaches us in the New Testament that there ought to be public reading of Scripture. We read from the Old Testament. We read from the New Testament. We read the Word of God. We read it out loud. We read it in a real formal manner. And we do it in a manner that is respectful and reverent before God. We stand before God as He speaks to us through His Word for the public reading of the text. And then we have an exhortation. This is again fitting both Old Testament and New Testament principles. We have a preaching of the text. We exhort the text. We encourage the people. Now go out and live like this. And then in our services, we take communion every Sunday. That's quite repetitive to some evangelicals. But it doesn't matter if it's once a week. Now I'll make the argument I think it does matter, to the one who's doing it once a month, or once every other month, or once every quarter. If the church is having communion, the saints ought to participate. The saints ought to be at the table with the Lord, with confessed sins, repented of and turned to God. The believer ought to engage in this spiritual moment. This is not just a ritual that gets lost in repetition. This is God and man communing together. Eating and drinking. Worshipping and fellowshipping together. We have invitations. Now one would say, well preacher we have not had an invitation in this church. in over a decade. Well, not in a modern sense of an invitation, where we say, walk the aisle, pray a prayer, and we're not leaving here until at least somebody comes forward. We don't do invitation like that, but every time we gather is an invitation to honor God. And you don't need a formal invitation to come and do that. You're actually getting the invitation even right now. You've been being invited since the moment you walked into this building. Come and worship God. Respond to God. Obey God. Now go and take the Gospel with you as you go. We'll have a benediction. And in our benediction, we will both sing and pray. We will lift up holy hands. These are things prescribed to us in Scripture in the way in which we worship God. We will, before our benediction, we will recite the Apostles' Creed together. These are proclamations. These are things that gathered people do when they come together. They have agreed upon proclamations in which they give glory unto God with one voice. So again, that printed order of service is gonna be beneficial for you here in just a moment. You're gonna see the Apostles Creed printed there. We're gonna recite it out loud together with one voice. This is what we believe, this is who you are, and we worship you. To a large degree, this is really quite simple. It's not too complicated. My, how the modern church loves to complicate. and loves to distract. And so thus, what's happening in a corporate worship service is that we are worshiping together. We haven't come to the same place at the same location on the same day to do individually whatever we want to do. We've come together and we're working through a progressive pattern of worship of God, and we're doing it together. Now would there be occasions? Certainly. You're invited to stand and you physically are unable to stand. You should not feel shamed because you're sitting. You should acknowledge this is where you're at today. I give the invitation to even consider kneeling. You should not be shamed if you need to remain seated. We invite you for the standing, the sitting, the worshiping, We invite you for the coming forward to receive the elements of the Lord's table. Would there ever be an occasion in which you should not come forward? You know, first of all, if you're not a believer, you got no business at the Lord's table. It'd be better for you to stay where you're at. And we would be loving to tell you if you're not a believer, you should not participate in this particular. How can one how can righteousness commune with unrighteousness? It doesn't work, it's not fitting, it's not proper. Is there other occasions in which you should not come to the table? Yeah, unconfessed sins, rebellion, pride. You're a believer, you're a professor, but you're just refusing to repent of a known sin in your life. Are you not aware of the God you've come to worship to think that He's not aware that you have unrepented sins in your life? I would rather say to you immediately, quickly, even now, while it is still called today, repent of your sins and get to the table for the glory of God. That's what we've come to do today. We've come to worship Him. God's instructed us how we should do it. We should do it. God said do it like this. You should do it like this. Now how easily distracted we become. It's the psalmist. We sang this in our opening psalm, Psalm 7. It's in the 17th verse. The Word of God says, I will give thanks to Yahweh according to how I feel. No, I'm not going to give thanks to God according to how I feel. I'm going to give thanks to God according to my preferences. No, who are you kidding? Who am I kidding? I'm going to give thanks to God according to whatever makes the unbeliever comfortable? No, that's ridiculous. I'm going to give thanks to Yahweh Almighty according to His righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High. Psalm 7, verse 17. That's how we come into His house to worship. not according to how we feel, not according to our preferences, not according to our philosophical bent, not according to what makes unbelievers comfortable. We come to his presence to give thanks to him because of who he is. For the glory of God, may the church rejoice.