True Worship | Shawn Miller

and bringing honor and glory to him.

So as we go into the new year of 2024, I told Randy that I would like to take just a short break from 1 Peter and I would like to preach through the core values over my next four turns of preaching and as we preach through, as I preach through the core values, I would like for that to lead up to a session and we'll have to finalize the date yet with the leadership team, but we've been talking about having a session in April, for I'm going to call it a brainstorming session because of a lack of a better term, or maybe we should call it a vision session for Grace Point Church, centered around our four core values.

Can we recite the core values this morning?

The first one is obviously what?

Worship.

What's the second one, holiness.

What's the third one, discipleship.

And our fourth one, evangelism, evangelism, evangelism.

I was afraid we're not doing a good job at all in getting those out and it seems like we might have to do a better job of keeping those in front of us Worship, holiness, discipleship and evangelism.

The first two core values have to do with our relationship with God worship and holiness and when those are in their rightful place that translates into our relationships with others in discipleship and evangelism.

This morning, I would like to start with talking on the subject of worship.

Have you ever wondered what really is the meaning of life?

Do you ever get tired of just the daily cycle of life, the daily grind, even though I have everything I need?

Why do I become discontent?

I profess to be a born-again Christian.

I have a relationship with Christ, but my Christian life often times ends up being on cruise control.

Why is this?

Do you constantly find yourself looking for answers in the wrong places?

Why is it at times hard for me to get excited about even coming to a Sunday morning service?

We all long for a pursuit, a single pursuit of God.

We often attempt to bridge the gap between our head and our heart.

We know we have it, we know a lot, but why is it so difficult to at times, drop it into our heart and to put it into shoe leather?

We often try to remedy our boredom in life with a lot of distractions.

Worship what is worship?

Worship, the key to worship, or, let me restate that, the key to the questions that I just ask?

I know for in my own heart, the key to that is true connection to the Lord God, continual connection to the Lord God.

There's three areas I'd like to look at this morning in worship.

The first is how was worship designed?

And the second is when was worship broken?

And the third is when was worship restored?

Turning your Bibles to Genesis, chapter one, genesis, chapter one I'm going to be jumping around a bit in the first three chapters of Genesis, but I'd like to spend a little bit of time and looking at how did God establish His presence with His people?

How did God establish worship with the first man, adam and his wife Eve, and then how was it broken?

And how did God establish worship with the first man, adam and his wife, eve, and then how was it broken?

Genesis 1.26.

Reads like this then God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Now I'm going to jump into chapter two and we're gonna read verses seven through nine, genesis two versus seven through nine.

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust, the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food.

The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now jump with me down to verse 15.

Genesis two, verse 15.

The Lord God took the man that he had just created.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work and to keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make him a helper fit for him.

Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

This is a picture, perfect scene A man just newly created and a woman newly created in a garden, in a place of perfection, constant, and I don't know, was it verbal?

I like to think it was verbal connection with the Lord God.

Fellowship that was sweet, fellowship that was perfect.

There were no blemishes, fellowship that Adam and Eve probably didn't at that time know what they had.

This was a new experience for them Direct and continual fellowship with God, unbroken communion with their Creator, god.

They were created to work, but work was meant to be pleasant.

They were commanded to dress and to keep the garden and you have to wonder, in its perfect state, what was there to dress and to keep?

I don't know what that was, but they were commanded, or asked, to work, literally commanded to know God and to enjoy Him forever.

The call of worship came to Adam in the context of a covenant Earlier.

We would read that the unique image bearer of God's glory.

That was part of Adam's job.

That is part of our job today to be the image bearers of God.

The covenant that was made with Adam here, between Adam and God, concerning the trees in the garden.

It was a covenant of life, the tree of life or death, if they do partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

This covenant was based on Adam's faith and obedience and continual fellowship with God.

You don't have to turn to this, but I'd like to read a portion in Isaiah 14 as we go into.

How was this covenant?

How was this worship, this continual fellowship with God in the early days of creation, how was this broken In?

Isaiah 14, verses 12 through 14, is one of the few times in scripture that we read or is mentioned about Lucifer or Satan being thrown out of heaven, and this is referring to Satan.

Isaiah 14:12–14

It does not directly address him, but this passage is referring to Satan.

Isaiah 14, verse 12,.

Isaiah 14:12

How have you fallen from heaven, o daystar, son of dawn?

How were you cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low?

You said in your heart I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high.

I will sit on the Mount of assembly in the far reaches of the North.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the most high.

So here comes Satan, after God created Adam and Eve and put them in a state of perfection and had communion, continual communion with God.

And here comes Satan, not because he was angry at Adam or Eve, but because he was angry and jealous of his Creator, god.

Turn to chapter three of Genesis.

We like to read verses one through eight of Genesis.

Chapter three, genesis, chapter three, verse one.

Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat it, when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons or loincloths, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.

What happened here?

We don't know how long of a time they were in the garden before this happened.

That is not recorded, but by assumption we would say that it wasn't very long.

So here comes a serpent, angry at God, had been jealous at God, was thrown out of heaven because he wanted to be like the most high.

And here he says okay, god, I'll come back at you, but I'm not gonna go directly to you, I'm gonna do it through your creation of perfection.

So here he is, visiting Adam and Eve in the garden.

It's interesting to note that the serpent does at no time bring a direct temptation.

He doesn't at any time just tell Eve just eat of the fruit.

But what does he do?

He starts questioning what God said.

Instead of going with a direct command or a direct temptation to Eve, he starts chipping away at her belief in the character of God.

He even quotes basically quotes what God said.

So God actually said to Adam and Eve, or to Adam you may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

Then look at what the serpent does.

And I often miss this when I read through this and some of these thoughts I gleaned from Tyler Staten's book Praying Like Monks, living Like Fools, and he had some really keen observations in what happened here in the garden.

And one of those things is the serpent takes what God said and he just twists it a bit.

He changes the tone and the emphasis of what God said.

The serpent says did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

This was a most effective lie because it had seeds of truth sprinkled in to this question.

The serpent goes and flips God's generous command of you may eat of every tree in the garden except the one.

And here Satan takes this, flips it around into a very restrictive command by positioning it differently.

He's basically asking did God say, why didn't God say you should be able to eat of any tree?

You shouldn't be restricted at all?

The serpent flips God's generous command into a very stingy restriction.

The serpent is not asking Eve to eat the fruit, but he is chipping away at her trust in God.

And there's another thing that's going on here that I often miss when I read through this.

In chapter two, god is repeatedly referred to as the Lord, god which is Yahweh Elohim.

Satan refers to God only as God, which takes away the Yahweh.

Now, in the Hebrew the Yahweh is basically like the first name of God.

It's the personalization between God and man.

And so what Satan is doing here, he is further taking away that trust of God's character away from Adam and Eve by basically saying God's a dictator, he's not letting you eat of this tree, he's a dictator rather than a father.

Lord God is basically like calling somebody by their first name.

If we go to the doctor, we normally say Dr Miller or Dr Smith or Dr whatever.

We very solemnly call a doctor by their first name.

There's a personal basis versus a title, and here what Satan was doing by just calling God God and in the first two chapters he's often referred to as Lord God he's taking away that personal connection that Eve felt with God up to this point.

The serpent is subtly demoting God from a father to a dictator and Eve takes a bait.

Suddenly, eve not only forgets who God is as her father, but who she is as his child.

When we imagine God as something other than a father, we will also imagine ourselves as something other than his child.

Who is God to you this morning?

Who is a God that you worship?

Is the image that you have of God?

Is that somebody you want to worship?

Last fall I had the opportunity of going on a men's retreat up in the mountains of Idaho.

There was 12 of us men and they split us up into two smaller groups of six and we shared our life testimonies.

And the one evening there was a gentleman there.

I'll just call him Joe, that was not his real name, but Joe was there and it was his turn to share his life story and up until that point I had taken him as being just interacting with him, hearing him talk, observing.

I had taken him as having a very good relationship with God.

I had observed him as being a fine middle-aged Christian man.

When he gave his life story he said in his growing up years he had a very poor home situation.

His dad was not the loving dad that all of us would want and desire.

And as he was going on through his life story, he came to the end of his life story and I was still waiting on hearing how he was converted or his conversion experience and at the end he said today I am no Christian, I do not belong to a church, and if there is a God, he's a very evil being because of what he experienced in his growing up years.

So I asked you this morning who is God to you?

And we could go through this group and we would probably come up with however many people are here this morning.

We would probably come up with that many different descriptions of who God is to us.

But I'd like to challenge myself and all of us this morning to, through Scripture, find God as a father, god as an Abba Father, no matter what your experience was in your growing up years, no matter what's going on in your life today, even though worship was broken by the serpent in the garden we'll get to it in a minute worship has been restored and today we don't have to live on in our past.

We don't have to view God as maybe you viewed another man in your life.

Was it your father, was it somebody else?

Or your mother, or your siblings, or whatever bad experience you might have had?

But today God wants to be our father.

God wants us to call him by his first name Lord God.

It's not just a title of a dictator.

God is love and he wants us to experience that this morning.

Adam and Eve they chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

They chose moral autonomy on their own, decide what is right and wrong.

They no longer needed God to reveal himself to them.

They had to make a choice of whom they will worship, the Creator or the created, and they choose at that moment to side with the created.

Now we can say that they probably didn't understand what was going on.

They probably didn't, but Satan coming back at God through his perfect creation, and he succeeded for a bit.

The question for me this morning, and for all of us, is whom will I worship?

Adam and Eve made the wrong decision, with dire consequences for the whole human race, but God restored worship.

Romans 1, 22 through 25.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore, god gave them up to the loss of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped him, served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forevermore, amen.

I'd like to read one more verse in Genesis 3, verse 21.

Genesis 3:21

It simply says and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

It's very interesting Before they ate of the fruit, before they knew good and evil, they were both naked and they weren't ashamed.

Right after they sinned, their eyes were opened and they were ashamed.

What did they do?

Up until that point, they had continued communion with God, and right after they went and hid themselves from the Lord God that they knew so intimately.

Before this happened.

Because they sinned, they were ashamed.

And also because they sinned and God made them garments to hide their nakedness.

It implies that an animal had to die because of their sin.

It was the first sacrifice because of sin, because of sin blemishing God's perfect creation.

A sacrifice had to be made in order for man to again be in the presence of God, and we see this throughout the whole Old Testament up until the New Testament.

So we have worship design, we have worship broken, and now I'd like to look at worship restored.

Turn in your Bibles to Matthew, chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Matthew, chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

This is the account of Jesus being led into the wilderness.

And again, who's there to bring temptation?

Satan himself.

It was astounding to me as I studied these two scriptures, how similar and how many similarities Matthew 4 and Genesis 3 have.

The big difference is the second Adam Jesus did not give in, but he restored worship.

Let's begin at Matthew, chapter 4, verse 1 through 11.

Matthew 4:1–11

Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter came and said to him If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread, loaves of bread.

But he answered it is written man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written he will command his angels concerning you and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

Jesus said to him again it is written you shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And he said to him all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.

Do you think Satan was still jealous of Lord God being the highest being?

He was again trying to get back at God through not only his creation, but now his only Son.

But Jesus was ready.

Then Jesus said to him be gone, satan, for it is written you shall worship the Lord, your God, and him only shall you serve.

Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

It's very unique that here we have the created offering, the creator, something he already owned, something he already had.

Whom will you worship, jesus?

Answer is drastically different God and God alone.

Again, I ask the question whom am I worshiping?

Back to the questions I posed at the beginning of the sermon.

Do you get tired of the cycle of life?

Do you feel as if your Christian life is, at times, on cruise control?

Do you get tired with the daily grind?

Whom are you worshiping?

Whom are you connected to?

What are you connected to?

Jesus is our model to worship the Lord, our God, and him only?

Jesus reestablished the fundamental distinction between the Creator and us as created.

Jesus restored the basis of true worship.

Now, since the fall in the garden, up through the Old Testament, worship and connection directed to God had to be through a mediator.

In the Old Testament, it was through animal sacrifice.

Our mediator, thank you God, is Jesus Christ, because Jesus is our ultimate sacrifice.

We now have access and we all know this, but I think we need to be reminded.

We all have access directly to God, whenever and however.

Aw Tozer says this.

Why did Christ come?

Why was he conceived?

Why was he born?

Why was he crucified?

Why did he rise again?

Why is he now at the right hand of the Father?

The answer to all these questions is in order that he might make worshipers out of rebels, in order that he might restore us again to the place of worship.

As we knew when we were first created.

Jesus not only passed the test that Adam and Eve failed in the garden, but he also passed the test in another garden, the Garden of Gethsemane.

Matthew 26, verse 39, and going a little further, this is Jesus.

Matthew 26:39

He fell on his face and prayed, saying my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will, I'd like to.

In the last seven minutes.

I'd like for you to turn your Bibles quickly to John 4.

And now I'd like to see how can we make everyday worship practical?

What are some ideas for us to incorporate worship into the very fabric of our being?

Our worship, our collective worship here at Grace Point, is only a direct reflection of our worship during the week.

If you come to church on a Sunday morning and you're unfulfilled and you leave and you're unfulfilled, take inventory of your life between Sunday to Sunday.

It has a direct bearing on our collective worship.

John 4, verses 7 through 15.

John 4:7–15

And when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard let me start over Now.

When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples he left Judea and departed again to Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus, where it as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sick hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered her if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

The woman said to him sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep.

Where do you, where do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

Jesus said to her go call your husband and come here.

Then the woman answered I have no husband.

Jesus said to her.

You are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband.

What have you?

What you have said is true.

The woman said to him sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is a place where people ought to worship.

Jesus said to her woman believe me, the hour is coming.

Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem you will worship the Father.

You worship what you do not know.

We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

But the hour is coming and now is here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

In other words, jesus is saying you no longer need to just go to the temple, you no longer need to go through a mediator.

You can come to me through Jesus Christ, through by this living water, whenever and however you desire.

The connection is wide open.

All we need to do is make the move and worship.

God is spirit, verse 24,.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

She had no idea who Jesus was.

And by the time Jesus was done with his mini sermon to her, she not only knew, not had a full understanding, but at least she knew who Jesus was.

And it didn't stop there.

She went into town and spread the word Worship in spirit and in truth.

Don't hide anything from God.

Come as you are before the throne.

Worship means to bow in adoration, and this morning we could take that literally, which I think is good in our personal time with Christ, to literally bow before him in adoration.

But I'd like to, even more than that, take it as a heart posture this morning.

What posture is your heart?

Is your heart bowed or are you still in control of your, of yourself?

Be real.

Psalm 139, 23,.

Search me, oh God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

If you have sin in your life, repent of it.

Come clean before God and whoever else.

You need to.

Don't live by a double standard.

Worship in spirit, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit Some of you have seen me do this exercise or given this example before, and I'm going to give it again this morning because I think it fits well with the point I'd like to bring out and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

So what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Well, first of all, it takes a true connection to God through His word, and it's not a one and done deal, it's not a once in a week deal, folks.

It is a daily exercise.

So obviously I have a glove here and if I tell this glove without and just the state that it is now, if I tell this glove to grab this mic, actually nothing will happen.

It's powerless.

If I put my hand in the glove and now tell the glove to grab the mic, I can easily do that because it's powered by something.

Our lives without the Holy Spirit are exactly like this glove.

When it's empty, when temptations come, when the hard things roll into your life and you're not, the Holy Spirit is not woven through every being of your body, of your life.

The power is not there, the batteries are dead, the life is gone.

But through communion, through bowing our heart before God, through giving up control of my own life, through reading and praying and obeying God's commands, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And when the temptations come, when the things that we're not expecting roll into our life, there is power there for resistance, there is power there to conquer.

There is power there to keep going.

Is your love empty or is it occupied?

This morning, if we're filled by the Holy Spirit, then the fruits of the Spirit will be evident Love, joy, peace, long suffering.

Worship must be woven through the every being of my life.

If you love me, I keep my commandments and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever.

How does this apply to us?

Our worship begins before we arrive on any given Sunday morning.

Collective worship is an outward expression of our personal worship with God.

The essence of our worship is centered around our level of faith and obedience to God and His word.

Faith and obedience cannot be separated.

Sin robs us of our worship to Creator God.

Are you worshiping the created or are you worshiping the Creator?

This morning, that is a challenge that I would like to leave with each one of us.

Jesus meets us wherever we are.

It can be at the well, it can be in town, it can be on your job, it can be at home in your office on your knees.

Jesus meets us wherever we are.

God is everywhere and we can worship Him everywhere, if our worship is authentic and in spirit and in truth.

Let's pray Our Father God this morning.

We feel your presence here and I pray as we leave this place that we could worship you in everything that we do, that we could allow your spirit to infiltrate us and that we could be strong for whatever may come.

Lord, this morning, I ask that you would grant the increase to your word that was spoken and I pray that you are honored and glorified.

I pray this on your name, amen.

I will open it briefly.