Wednesday Bible Study- Habits of Christian Living (Worship)- Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and young speaker.

Thank you for listening.

Well, y'all need to say thank you to Bobby.

I'm the most untechnical, mess everything up guy, and he just makes it all smooth.

So y'all need to just give him a hug when you see him and thank him for all he does.

He makes all his stuff work, and we show up in his office making up all kinds of craziness, and he just goes, Hey yeah, we'll figure it out.

So it's really good.

Hey, he looked good on the screen on Sunday.

Didn't he look good on the screen, Sunday?

I'm telling you.

We're going to put him up there more often.

It was good.

Hey, let's uh let's pray and then we'll get started.

Lord, we thank you for tonight and a chance to be together.

Uh, we thank you for uh as we're moving towards the end of the summer, just all the incredible things that you're doing and that we're getting to see.

Uh watching those baptisms on Sunday, uh, that family that joined, that we're ministering to through Bobby and his team on television, just all those things, we know that nobody's that smart, that that is Jesus at work, and just we want to praise you for that.

We thank you for our new staff folks that you brought to us and their families, and uh so we thank you for David and chance to hear him teach tonight as we continue working through these spiritual habits.

Uh, we're just so blessed with all that you're doing, and so we just want to thank you.

We pray this in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said.

Well, uh, it's a great study we're having.

We're excited.

I get to learn tonight.

Uh, David Skarupa is going to teach us.

I don't know many of y'all have met Dave, I'm sure.

You may not have had an opportunity to hear him teach.

I know that you enjoyed uh Jared Farley last week, and uh we this is a great platform.

Matt and I have enjoyed doing this together, but when we got the new guys here, we thought, well, this is a good chance for some more of y'all to get some more exposure to them.

And uh David has been a preacher and Bible teacher and uh just does a great job, and so I'm excited that you'll get a chance to hear him tonight.

Let's talk about the schedule a little bit.

Um, we'll be talking about it starting on Sunday as we move towards the end of the summer.

What we want to do is uh get the kids back to school, and then we'll kick off our regular programming then.

So August the 23rd, that Wednesday night, that's a couple of weeks from now.

Um we'll have the big family night for Iwanas and children's ministry and uh preschool ministry and all that outside, and then we'll kick off all of our Bible regular Bible studies that night.

So Brother Roger will be back with his prayer group and our men's and women's discipleship groups will start up uh that that night and and all of that.

So that's August the 23rd.

Be looking forward to that night.

That'll be in the bulletin and all of that again Sunday.

We have you know people just taking these last little vacations and squeezing them in for school starts and all that.

So it's good to kind of keep our summer program uh as we've been doing this until we kind of get everybody back in the groove again.

So um, so that's coming soon, so we're excited about that.

Uh, we love those groups.

Uh, brother Roger does a great job, and that's a great group, and then our men's and women's discipleship groups uh really high impact, and so those are excellent.

So we'll put out on Sunday the information about all of uh all of that uh program and how that settles out.

So uh we hope this has been good.

You're enjoying the summer.

We have a few more weeks, we'll finish out.

I'll be back next week uh teaching again, and we'll get into chapter three and kind of finish out the book.

But tonight um Dave is gonna talk to us about another one of those spiritual habits, and he's going to talk to us about worship.

And so we're excited to have a chance to hear and teach.

And if you've not uh had a chance yet, you're gonna be blessed, you're gonna be excited, and you're gonna come tell me what a great pastor I am for hiring such talented, gifted people, right?

So, Dave, come on.

Well, good evening.

Tonight we are going to be uh doing an examination of an episode from the history of God's people in God's Word, talking about worship.

Now, when Brother Matt and Brother Greg came to me and they said, hey, we're doing these healthy habits of Christian living, these essential habits of Christian living, and they shared with me some things about uh having quiet time and journaling and prayer and praying through the scriptures.

And then they said, We want you to do worship.

And I just kind of like a deer in the headlights for a bit because we have not had a contest, but I dare say if we were to ask all of the staff to sing, I would probably be on the bottom and below in terms of voice quality.

I I've said this before, I'm I'm not a singer.

I do sing on Sunday morning, and that's why all of you need to sing all the louder on Sunday morning, is because I've got one of those terrible voices when it comes to singing.

I've got lots of enthusiasm and no gifting whatsoever.

And yet I'm asked to talk about worship.

Now, worship is more than singing, but when we think of worship, that's where our minds traditionally go to, is the idea of singing part of the choir on Sunday morning, part of the choir and part of the mass choir of the entire church on Sunday morning.

As a matter of fact, people throughout the history of uh the Baptist church and every other church in America for that matter, a lot of times you will hear people say, Well, you know, I go where the preaching is good and the singing is better.

You know where I first heard that?

My grandfather.

My Baptist grandfather, that's the first place I heard that.

Is he he would say, Well, I go where the preaching is good and the singing is better.

And for a long time I used to think that worship was something that was done with a church service, but the reality is that every part of the church service is an act of worship.

You know, when we come together, just the assembling together as a congregation is an act of worship.

When we bring our tithes and offerings, that's an act of worship.

When we sing the songs of the faith, that of course is an act of worship.

When we go to the Lord's word together to hear God's word being spoken to us, that is an act of worship.

The listening to the word of God is an act of worship, and our response to the word of God, all of that is an act of worship.

So when we call it the worship service on Sunday morning, we're talking about more than what Brother Jacob does with the choir.

We're talking about all of us coming together and worshiping.

Now, how many of you have either said this or heard this before?

Well, you know, I just don't, I'm just not feeling much like worshiping today.

Been there?

Done that?

Well, some of you are brave enough to nod.

The rest of you are liars.

But uh we've all been there.

We've all been there.

We have all thought to ourselves at some time or another, I'm just not feeling like worshiping today.

Now, many of the times when that thought crosses our minds, that thought of, I'm not feeling like worshiping today, it's not because your life is going so great.

It's not because everything in your life is just rainbows and sunshine and all the rest of it.

No, the reason you're feeling that way, like you don't feel like worshiping, is because something's troubling you.

Something's either troubling you physically or it's troubling you in your mind, might even be troubling you in your very spirit.

There is trouble there, and it is that trouble that causes you to think, well, you know, I just don't feel like worshiping today.

Well, this evening we are going to go to God's Word, and we're going to look at an episode in the history of the people of Israel where they had some trouble, and if anything, the trouble that they were in didn't cause them to stop worshiping.

The trouble that they were in caused them to worship all the more.

And there's an example there for us.

So if you did bring your Bibles tonight, I'll ask you to go to the book of 2 Chronicles.

And if you didn't bring your Bibles tonight, we're going to have words up on the screen, so you're going to be okay either way.

I'm going to be making reference to verses in the Christian Standard Bible tonight.

Before we go to God's word, however, let's prepare our minds and our hearts and our spirits by opening in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that you've given us this evening, this time of fellowship, this time of worship, when we come together as the body of Christ to hear from you through your word.

Prepare our minds, prepare our hearts, prepare our very spirits as we engage these words that you inspired, these words that you've preserved down through the centuries.

May we, in hearing your word, hear from you, and through that apply what we hear so that we can be more like our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord.

And God's people said, Amen.

All right, tonight we are in 2 Chronicles, and we're going to be in chapter 20.

And let's just look at the first two verses of 2 Chronicles chapter 20.

2 Chronicles 20 · chapter mention

After this, the Moabites and the Ammonites, together with some of the Mayanites, came to fight against Jehoshaphat.

People came and told Jehoshaphat, a vast number from beyond the Dead Sea and from Edom has come to fight against you.

They are already in Hazazan Tamar, that is, and Geti.

Let's stop here.

All right.

So we see here in just the first two verses the trouble, the trouble that Jehoshaphat and the Israelites see.

Their trouble is a huge army has come from another land to fight against them.

Now, I don't know about you, but the last time I had a huge army come to fight against me was, well, never.

Never.

But Jehoshaphat is the king.

He's a good king compared to most of the kings that we read about in 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles.

He's been following the ways of the Lord for the most part.

He's been trying to do the right thing.

You know, when you try to do the right thing and you try to follow the Lord, you never have any trouble with anything, do you?

Well, some of you get the joke.

No.

No, if you follow the Lord's ways and if you do what the Lord wants you to do, you're going to face trouble from time to time.

That's just the way that life works.

That's the way life has been working from the very beginning.

And so we have this good king, King Jehoshaphat, and he is seeing trouble.

Now let's take a look at some of the verses moving forward, because not only does he see trouble, but now let's see how he seeks God in verses 3 and 4.

Verse 3 says, Jehoshaphat was afraid, and he resolved to seek the Lord.

Then he proclaimed a fast for all Judah who gathered to seek the Lord.

They even came from all the cities of Judah to seek him.

Let's stop there for a minute.

Alright, so in verses 3 and 4 we see that Jehoshaphat's response to this trouble.

He has a giant army on his doorstep, and he makes a point that he's going to seek the Lord.

Not only is he seeking the Lord, he is putting out a notice to the whole kingdom that he is seeking the Lord, and he is inviting people from across the kingdom to join him in seeking the Lord.

I get a lot of comfort from this because sometimes when I'm in a jam, sometimes when I feel like I've got the army knocking on my door, all I really want to do is I want to pull down all the shades and shut the door and just kind of be alone to myself with God in my time of trouble.

I don't want to share news with other people that, hey, I need you to pray for me because I'm in a real bad spot right now.

You know what?

That's just that typical human pride that doesn't want to admit that we need the Lord's help in a given situation.

Jehoshaphat's the king.

He could have simply said, I'm ordering everybody to pray, but I'm not going to tell anyone what's going on.

But instead, he puts out this notice that he is seeking the Lord and he proclaims a fast, verse 3 tells us.

He wants people to be focused on the Lord in a way that is above and beyond and different than everyday living.

And we see that the people hear this, and some of them even come from all of the other cities of Judah that aren't being threatened immediately right then, in order to pray with him and in order to seek the Lord.

Now, one of the things I want you to see here as we move forward, well, first let's move backward.

So he saw trouble.

Now he's seeking God.

What's he gonna do next?

The first thing he's gonna do is he's going to remember what God has done in the past to show his faithfulness.

Let's look at verses five through nine.

In verse five, Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem in the Lord's temple before the new courtyard.

He said, Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not the God who is in heaven?

And do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations?

Power and might are in your hand, and no one can stand against you.

Are you not our God who drove out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and who gave it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?

They have lived in the land and have built you a sanctuary in it for your name, and have said, If disaster comes on us, sword or judgment, pestilence or famine, we will stand before this temple and before you, for your name is in this temple.

We will cry out to you because of our distress, and you will hear and deliver.

You see, before going to the Lord and praying about his current trouble with that giant army, the first thing he does is he focuses on what God had done faithfully in the past.

All I can think about is the size of the army.

All I can think about is how difficult that current situation is.

But Jehoshaphat gives us a model here somewhat indirectly.

And before he even brings up what's happening today, he reminds himself through his prayer to God about all the good things that God has already done.

Things that God has already done that people would have thought was impossible.

The idea of delivering a people group who had come out of slavery to become a nation in a land that was already occupied by other people.

God made that happen.

And so he's remembering, he's remembering God's past faithfulness.

Now, after he remembers God's past faithfulness, he is going to remember his current situation, and he's going to remember that God always has a plan.

Let's take a look at the next verses beginning in verse 10.

Jehoshaphat is continuing to pray, and here in verse 10 he says, Now here are the Ammonites, Moabites, and the inhabitants of Mount Sier.

You did not let Israel invade them when Israel came out of the land of Egypt, but Israel turned away from them and did not destroy them.

Verse 11.

Stop here.

Stop here.

Years ago, generations ago, way before Jehoshaphat, when Moses and the Israelites were wandering around in the wilderness, they had an opportunity to wipe these people out that have now formed an army and are now knocking on the door of Israel.

But God did not tell Moses to do that.

God basically, by not telling them to do that, God spared them.

And so Jehoshaphat is thinking through his problem.

And he's saying, well, why are we having the problem from these people?

God, if that was part of God's plan for these people to be bothering us, why didn't God allow us to wipe them out generations previous?

What's going on here?

And then he arrives at the conclusion, God must have a plan.

God must have a plan.

You know, when we're facing our problems in life, sometimes we're so distracted by whatever the anxiety, the worry, the all the distractions of the of whatever that problem is, we don't think through what it is that God might be doing through what it is that we're going through.

Jehoshaphat is putting pieces of God's plan together.

Look how he continues here in verse 12.

Well, hang on, let's uh not do that just yet.

Oh, I forgot one part.

All right.

In verse 11, Jehoshaphat says, look how they repay us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you gave us as an inheritance.

Jehoshaphat isn't saying, I'm worried because I'm the king and they're coming to defeat me and my army.

Jehoshaphat takes his problem and frames it within the way that God sees the situation.

You know, there's lots of times when we're facing trouble, and all we can do is think about the way that we feel about it.

All we can do is think about it with the thoughts of panic that are racing through our minds, and we stop and we forget to think, how is God seeing this situation?

How does God look at this problem?

How does God look at this trial?

Here in Jehoshaphat's prayer, we see that he makes it a point to look at things through God's point of view.

Now, Jehoshaphat from there remembers that God is all-powerful.

You know, if I were to ask you to raise your hand if you think God is all-powerful, probably every hand in the room would go up, right?

Now, if I were to say, is God all-powerful over your problem?

Some of you would be raising your hand, but you'd be raising your hand because you knew it was the right thing to do, but it wouldn't necessarily reflect your heart or perhaps your mind, depending upon what it is that you're going through.

Sometimes even strong believers need to be reminded that God is all-powerful.

Look what Jehoshaphat says here, beginning in verse 12.

Our God, will you not judge them?

For we are powerless before this vast number that comes to fight against us.

We do not know what to do, but we look to you.

Stop there.

Now, this is where we get into worship.

Because one of the hearts of worship, one of the cornerstones of worship, is responding to who God is through the realization of who you are in comparison.

When we worship God on Sunday morning, we Sing all of those songs.

If God were just like us, if he were just another human being, if he were not almighty, we would not be singing those songs of praise.

But since God is so much greater than us, since God is Almighty, since God is all powerful, when we sing those songs, what we're doing is we are acknowledging in a public way that the God that we are praising is worthy of being recognized in a way that is significantly different than the way that we recognize anyone else.

And so Jehoshaphat says, we are powerless before this vast number that comes to fight against us.

We do not know what to do, but we look to you.

So when Sunday morning comes and you find yourself thinking, well, I really don't feel like worshiping.

Well, what's happened?

Has God changed?

Is he no longer all-powerful?

Is he no longer able to defeat every problem?

Is he no longer able to have victory in every situation?

No, he's the same God.

What's changed as us?

What's changed as us?

What's changed is we're looking at God, not at who he is, but rather we're looking at him and we've put whatever our problem is between us and God.

And that's affecting our desire to respond to who God truly is.

Jehoshaphat is the king.

And he's making it a point to lead his people in worship that recognizes God for who he is.

Let's continue, because the next part is remembering that God always knows what to do.

Let's look in verse 13.

All Judah was standing before the Lord with their dependents, their wives, their children.

In the middle of the congregation, the Spirit of the Lord came on Jehazael, son of Zechariah, son of Benaniah, son of Jael, son of Metaniah, a Levite from Asap's descendants.

And he said, This is what the Lord says.

Oh, I'm sorry, he said, Listen carefully, all Judah, and you inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat, this is what the Lord says.

There you go in verse 15.

Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast number, for the battle is not yours, but God's.

Verse 16, which is not on your screen, says, Tomorrow go down against them.

You will see them coming out of the ascent of Ziz.

You'll find them at the end of the valley.

Verse 17, which is on your screen, you do not have to fight this battle.

Position yourselves, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.

He is with you, Judah and Jerusalem.

Do not be afraid or discouraged.

Tomorrow, go out to face them, for the Lord is with you.

So has the Lord here said what he's going to do?

Not with any real specificity, not with any great detail.

He hasn't said, this is how I'm going to defeat the army that's knocking on your door.

He hasn't said I'm going to rout them or I'm going to cause them to disappear or I'm going to cause them to find something else to do.

All God has said is, I'm going to take care of this.

This is my problem, not your problem.

So what we see here is that God is reminding his people that God always knows what to do.

You know, when we recognize that God is Almighty, that God always knows what to do, suddenly that should give us reason to worship.

Suddenly, no matter how we feel about worshiping, we should have a reason to worship.

Because whatever our distraction is, whatever our worry is, God is all-powerful, God's got a plan, God always knows what to do.

Our response to that, our response to that should be to worship.

Now, let's move forward here to verses 18 and 19.

Because in verses 18 and 19, we see that worship is recognizing who God is and who we are.

Let's look at verse 18.

Jehoshaphat knelt low with his face to the ground.

And all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord to worship him.

Stop there for a minute.

Has God defeated this army that's at the door yet?

Has God taken, has he done something to move that army off of the page yet?

No, they've still got the problem.

That army is still there.

But what we see is when they're reminded of who God is, and they're reminded that even though they are powerless, that God is all-powerful, that even though they don't have a plan, that God has a plan, that even though they don't know what to do, God always knows what to do, their response, their response is to worship.

They fell down before the Lord to worship him.

It doesn't say they felt so good, they felt so much relief, they felt so relieved that they decided to kneel down.

No, there might have still been a little bit of apprehension.

There might have still been a little bit of fear because of this massive army that's knocking on the door.

But their response was to fall down before the Lord to worship him.

You see, God deserves worship regardless as to how we feel.

God deserves worship regardless as to what's going on in our lives.

God deserves worship because of who he is.

That by itself is enough reason for us to engage in worship.

Let's keep going.

Verse 19.

Oh, we we're just getting into the good part now.

Verse 19.

The Levites from the sons of the Kohites and the Korahites stood up to praise the Lord God of Israel, shouting loudly.

So what we have is we have quiet worship from the king and his people as they are bowing down to the ground, and we have loud public worship going on from these singers who are praising and shouting loudly.

Make no mistake, both are forms of worship.

One is not a superior form of worship over the other.

They are responding to the truth of who God is.

Let's keep going.

Because when we see trouble in light of who God is, and because of that, we see victory before the battle is even waged.

Ladies and gentlemen, when we see that and we respond to that, we are engaged in worship.

Let's look at these next verses, verses 20 through 25.

So in verse 20, we see that in the morning they got up early, went out to the wilderness of Tokoah, and they were about to go out.

Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, Judah, and you inhabitants of Jerusalem, believe in the Lord your God, and you will be established.

Believe in his prophets, and you will succeed.

Stop here.

You know another way of saying this very same thing is believe in God and believe in his word.

When you say, when you read, believe in his prophets, what did the prophets share?

They shared the word of God.

Word of God, same word of God that we're looking at this evening.

When we believe in God, when we believe in his word, amazing things happen.

Let's continue reading.

That's verse 20.

Let's look at verse 21.

Then he consulted with the people and appointed some to sing for the Lord and some to praise the splendor of his holiness.

When they went out in front of the armed forces, they kept singing, give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love endures forever.

Now stop here for a minute.

If you know anything about military strategy at all, you know that if you are going out to fight an organized army, an organized army that's bigger than your own organized army, you don't take the people who sing the best and put them in the front line.

Alright?

You just don't do that.

Now, singers, there's some singers that can probably handle themselves in a fight.

But to play to a stereotype, we do not think, oh, well, you know, uh, let me pick a name that nobody has in here.

Well, you know, Judah has this fantastic singing voice.

Let's put him in front of the army.

No, no, you would pick Judah to be in the front of the army if he's got a really good arm with a sword, or if he is really, really good at shooting a bow or something like that.

We don't take the people who have the greatest voices and put them in the front line of an army.

That would be considered bad strategy for the most part.

But that's what happens here.

Jehoshaphat puts these singers in front of the armed forces.

Now, what do they do there in the front line of the armed forces?

Well, they're singers, so they sing.

They sing.

And so imagine you're in that other army, and maybe you've got a scout spying on the Israelite forces, and you come back and you give your report, and you're kind of looking like this, and your commander says, Well, what are those Israelites doing?

What, how, how strong are their forces?

How many men of combat have they got ready assembled to fight us?

Well, uh, sir, they're uh they got a bunch of singers out there, and they're singing songs.

Well, what do you mean?

Well, well, they're singing songs, sir.

Well, what kind of songs are they singing?

Um they're singing religious songs, sir.

They're singing religious songs to their God, the God of Israel.

Well, what are they singing?

Well, they're singing, give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love endures forever.

I don't know about you, but if I'm the commander of that other group, I'm wondering what in the world is going on?

Why are these people singing when they know that I brought this giant army from another country to wipe them out and take over their land and take over everything that they have?

Why are they singing songs of thanksgiving to their God?

If anything, they should be singing against their God for bringing such a terrible calamity upon them.

Well, let's keep reading.

Reading.

Verse 22.

The moment they began their shouts and praises, the Lord set an ambush against the Ammonites, Moabites, and the inhabitants of Mount Sier who came to fight against Judah, and they were defeated.

Verse 23, the Ammonites and the Moabites turned against the inhabitants of Mount Sier and completely annihilated them.

When they had finished with the inhabitants of Sierre, they helped to destroy each other.

Stop here for a minute.

Okay.

Remember that God is all-powerful.

Remember that God understands the situation.

Remember that God always has a plan.

Something, God caused something to happen that caused those armies to distrust each other.

And as the Israelites are singing praises to God, and they're putting their trust in Him, they show that they don't trust each other and they begin to attack each other.

And that massive army that had come together with one goal to defeat the Israelites instead leaves defeating each other.

And so God's plan comes into place.

We see here in verse 24, when Judah came to a place overlooking the wilderness, they looked for the large army, but there were only corpses lying on the ground.

Nobody had escaped.

Then Jehoshaphat and his people went to gather the plunder.

They found among them an abundance of good on the bodies and valuable items, so they stripped them until nobody could carry anymore.

They were gathering the plunder for three days because there was so much.

It brings lots of equipment, and it takes money to fight a battle.

Sometimes soldiers have to be paid off in gold or in other forms of currency.

Fighting war in the ancient world was no cheaper, no less expensive than it is today.

If anything, it was much more expensive to fight a war in the ancient world.

And so all of these people had come together to cause trouble for Israel.

But because of who God is, and because God always has a plan, and because God is all-powerful, that curse of having an army knocking on the door ended up being a blessing of plunder.

There was so much plunder that they were going back and forth, raiding and bringing in all that gold and all those metals and all the rest of the food and everything that they, for three days, they were doing nothing but filling their own coffers with the supplies of the people that they thought were going to be their doom.

Now, when you take a look at the rest of this chapter, when you move down to verse 29, which is not part of your slideshow here this morning, what you see in verse 29 is that all the other kingdoms around Israel, when they heard about this story, they were scared to death of the Israelites.

They didn't want to have anything to do with those people and their God.

They didn't want to raid them, they didn't want to cause any problems for them.

And so the kingdom enjoyed a period of peace for some time.

Now, what does all of this have to do with worship?

Let's go back to our original topic here of worship.

While I'm going through these slides.

You know, God did not defeat that army because the Israelites engaged in worship.

That's an easy mistake you can make when you read this passage.

You can think, oh, well, if I just worship God, then God will defeat all of my enemies, and I won't have any trouble.

And anytime anything bad comes my way, God will use it in a way to make me more plentiful and more abundant.

No, what this lesson teaches us, what this lesson teaches us is that no matter what happens, no matter what is going on in our lives, we are called to worship God.

We worship God because of who He is.

We worship God because He is Almighty.

And through that act of worship, through that act of worship, we are blessed.

Through that act of worship, we are blessed.

Do you think Jehoshaphat was more brave once he realized that everything that he was facing was actually in the hands of God?

Do you think that made it easier for him to face what was going on?

I think it did, personally.

I think it did because once he realized that the battle belonged to God, you don't see Jehoshaphat meeting with his war council to come up with a plan.

And if he did have a plan, it was a real strange one to put the singers in the front line.

I think Jehoshaphat, once God told him that this battle was his, Jehoshaphat was like, okay, Lord, it is yours.

And as proof of me understanding that this is your battle, we're going to start with an act of praise and worship.

We're going to put those souls, we're going to put those singers out there on the front line.

Let me ask you, ladies and gentlemen, when's the last time, when's the last time that you met a challenge in your life by putting the singers on the front line?

And what I mean by that is, when's the last time when you had a challenge come into your life that you thought, you know, before I even get into making any plans of my own, the first thing I'm going to do is praise God for who he is.

The first thing I'm going to do is praise God that even though I've got this problem in my life, I know I can trust God because he's a good God and he's a powerful God, and he's a God who loves me, and he's a God who died for me, and he's a God who's already settled everything for me in eternity, so I can trust him in the here and now with whatever it is that's going on.

That's worship, ladies and gentlemen.

When we trust God because of who he is, when we thank him because we know that whatever is going on, he is all powerful.

When we rely on him because we know that whatever is happening, he's got a plan to see us through.

And so instead of be getting panicky and instead of getting anxious, instead of all of that, we go to him and we place it in his hands and we say, Lord, I don't know what you're gonna do here, I don't know how you're gonna do it, I don't know if you're gonna cause me to go through some very strong things here, but Lord, I'm gonna worship you because I know who you are and I know what you did for me, and I'm gonna respond to that rather than responding to this latest episode of pain.

Worship, ladies and gentlemen, it's about more than singing.

Worship.

It's about more than just saying some words out loud.

Worship is the way that we approach the life that God has called us to live.

Amen?

All right, let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this, your word.

We thank you for this time that you've given us together.

And Lord, in a group this large, we know that there are brothers and sisters in our midst who are going through very challenging times.

Lord, it may be a financial matter, it may be a medical diagnosis, it may be a turn of emotions that is taking place with ourselves or with a friend or with a family member.

Lord, there may be there may be unnecessary drama going on in our lives.

There may be difficult things going on in the workplace.

Lord, this life that you've called us to live, indeed, it is full of trouble.

But Lord, when we come together, when we come together as the body of Christ, as we come together as the family of God, as we come together as the kingdom of God, let us give you praise and worship because of who you are.

Lord, give us the ability to take those things, those distractions, and put them off to the side and focus upon who you are.

And Lord, let us never be people who say, I don't feel like worshiping today.

I don't feel like giving God praise today.

Because, God, you haven't changed.

God, you're the same God who saved us.

You're the same God who is growing us in likeness to Jesus Christ.

You're the same God who is walking us through this life.

And we can trust you, and we can praise you, and we can thank you for who you are, even during the darkest storms of this life.

Let us be a people who worship you, not because of what worship does for us, but because of what worship reveals to us about who you are.

We love you, Lord Jesus.

It's in your mighty name that we pray, and God's people said.

Amen.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.