Psalm 27:4 - One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.
God is looking for worshipers!
Myths about Worship:
- God prefers EMOTIONLESS truth groaning
- God prefers WILD and CRAZY
- Worship must be relevant to UNBELIEVERS
- Worship brings us into God’s PRESENCE
- Worship must be a certain STYLE
What Worship Looks Like (Psalm 96):
- WHAT WORSHIP LOOKS LIKE OUT THERE
- You worship by SONG (Psalm 96:1)
- You worship by WITNESSING (Psalm 96:2-3)
- You worship by GIVING (Psalm 96:9)
- WHAT WORSHIP LOOKS LIKE IN HERE
- Up with the FRESH, down with the LEFTOVERS (Psalm 96:1)
- Up with the THANKFUL, down with the FORGETFUL (Psalm 96:3)
- Up with the REVERENT, down with the FAMILIAR (Psalm 96:9)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:05
Our Father in Heaven, as we come before you just now, we're about to turn to your Word.
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We realize that's not a popular thing in a lot of places.
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Father, you can be a group of people that still believe that you wrote this book and that you are communicating words of life in this book.
00:31-00:35
Father, just now we pray for our children that have gone to hire me around.
00:35-00:40
I pray that you would be with everyone working in the children's ministry.
00:43-00:47
As they pour into the kids and help parents disciple their own children.
00:49-00:51
Father, we lift up the offering to you.
00:53-00:58
And just pray, Father, that you would bless it and use it for your purposes.
01:02-01:05
Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come.
01:08-01:12
Prepare us now to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word as well.
01:14-01:19
We pray these things in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
01:30-01:48
If you would have known me back in about 1983, you would have seen me running around my parents' house pulling out a plastic sword that I would tuck in the back of my shirt and lifting it I am saying by the power of...
01:49-01:49
Greyskull.
01:49-01:50
Thank you.
01:50-01:52
Some of you guys know what I'm talking about, don't you?
01:52-01:52
Thank you.
01:53-01:54
By the power of Greyskull!
01:55-01:56
Why did I do that?
01:58-01:59
I was a huge fan of He-Man.
02:00-02:00
Alright?
02:01-02:03
We're getting some things on the floor early on, I get that.
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But I just, I loved He-Man.
02:05-02:07
And I had one of those plastic swords.
02:07-02:10
And that was 1983, though.
02:10-02:13
And I don't do that as much anymore.
02:14-02:14
(laughter)
02:15-02:36
And if you had gone forward a couple years, 1985, you would have seen me jumping off of the chair, which was the top turnbuckle, onto prone, my pet monster, and hitting him with a leg drop.
02:36-02:41
Because like most other people in America back in the mid-80s, I was a Hulkamaniac.
02:42-02:47
And I thought I was Hulk Hogan, or going to be the next Hulk Hogan.
02:48-02:57
And then if you would have fast-forwarded even just a few more years, 1991, you would have seen me with longer, shaggy hair.
02:58-03:04
And a drawer full of flannel, like a lot of other people my age then.
03:05-03:18
it was what? It was grunge, it was Seattle music, it was Pearl Jam and Nirvana and those kinds of things. Well, here's my point. You become like what you worship.
03:21-03:34
And what is God's number one goal for you as a believer? It's no secret, Romans 8, 29. God, what do you want for us? God says, "My goal is that you are conformed into the image of my Son." That's the purpose of salvation.
03:34-03:36
Salvation is not a ticket to heaven.
03:37-03:38
It's not fire insurance.
03:38-03:43
It is God taking dead people and making us alive people.
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And part of being alive, part of maturing in our Christian walk, is God conforming us to be like His Son.
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And it's true that you become like what you worship.
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Do you worship money?
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You'll become a greedy person.
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Do you worship sex?
04:07-04:09
You become a lustful person.
04:10-04:11
Do you worship yourself?
04:13-04:15
You become a self-centered person.
04:16-04:18
Do you worship Jesus Christ?
04:18-04:35
Because if you truly worship Jesus Christ, maybe you find yourself becoming more like But Jesus Christ Himself, I'd encourage us all to be checking what we're worshipping.
04:35-04:40
Sometimes in church, you get a bigger pastor, you hear this a lot, but I was bored.
04:42-04:46
Sometimes I find myself tuning out during worship time.
04:46-04:51
I think maybe we've all been guilty of that, but we need to check ourselves on that.
04:52-04:56
Because we are worshipping Jesus Christ.
04:59-05:18
If I were to ask you, "What are you worshipping?" Or let's phrase it this way, if I were to say, "Well, suppose the Lord very tangibly and very visibly came down this morning and said, 'I'll give you one thing, any one thing that you want.' What would you ask the Lord for?" What would you ask God for?
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And see, your response might help you understand a little bit more about how you worship.
05:28-05:29
Because do you know what the psalmist said?
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He said, "One thing have I asked of the Lord." This is in Psalm 27, verse 4.
05:35-05:38
"One thing I've asked of the Lord." What did he ask for?
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He says, "That I will seek after." He says, "I'm actually going after this, and I'm going after it myself too." He said that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
05:51-05:57
To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.
06:00-06:02
So we're going to be talking about worship today.
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We did it for our four pillars last week.
06:05-06:08
We talked about proclaiming the authority of God's Word without apology.
06:09-06:15
This week we're looking at lifting high the name of Jesus through worship.
06:16-06:22
And much like politics and sports, we're covering a subject that everyone is an expert on, right?
06:23-06:28
But as Sam said earlier while he was leading us in worship, this is what we were made for.
06:30-06:33
You realize this is the purpose for which God created us.
06:34-06:39
He created us to have a relationship with Him.
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We are not created for religion.
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We are not created to sort of go off and do our own thing and maybe check in with God once a week.
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We were created to have a living relationship with the Living God.
06:58-07:11
In fact, Jesus told the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 that God is seeking for worshippers who worship Him in spirit and in truth.
07:12-07:16
So before we turn to the Word, I'm going to give you some myths about worship.
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These are myths about worship.
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Top 5.
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If you're taking notes, we're going to stop at the bottom and work our way up.
07:26-07:28
But here's some myths about worship.
07:32-07:44
I realize this is week three, but as I was talking earlier with some friends, I know that in talking about worship, at some point in this sermon, you're going to be offended.
07:45-07:53
I don't mean to do that, but anytime you talk about music, or worship, or practice at the church, your toes are going to get stepped on.
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So just get your bullet and maybe keep a little score card.
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The point that you got offended in the message.
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I don't mean to do that.
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Okay? But you just need to evaluate what we're talking about with the Word of God.
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Okay? And here's some myths about worship.
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Myth number five is God prefers emotionless truth-probing.
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God prefers emotionless truth-probing.
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people been to a church like that where it's time to say we pull out our handles we've been looking at the wall and everybody's just you know you've been to a church like that where it's like what are we doing what are we doing? Not too much emotion. We don't want to be labeled as left-wing, charismatic. We don't want to be labeled as big-hot on emotionalism. So, emotional is true currently.
09:01-09:13
No. Well, number four, here's another myth about worship. God prefers wild and crazy. You know, no way I'm We're going to stand there and get a bubble of stuff, wild and crazy.
09:13-09:15
The wilder and the crazier the better.
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That's what God prefers.
09:17-09:18
And let's ramp it up.
09:18-09:20
And that's what a lot of ministries are doing.
09:20-09:22
It's just manipulation. We're going to ramp it up.
09:23-09:25
Here's my favorite. You can look this up on YouTube.
09:25-09:26
Worth your time.
09:27-09:30
But this worship, I think it's called the what's it called Bill?
09:30-09:33
The World's Worst Worship Leader or something like that.
09:33-09:34
You know what I'm talking about?
09:34-09:35
Maybe some of you have seen it.
09:36-09:38
But there's this big youth rally, this church thing.
09:39-09:41
He has a great voice, great musician.
09:41-09:43
He gets up and he's like, "Alright everybody!
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Take off a shoe, a sock, anything!
09:48-10:06
And start swinging it over your head and sing with me!" "You spin me right round, Jesus, right round..." And he was getting everybody jumping up and down, swinging their shoes over their head, taking that Goofy song, and putting Jesus' name in it, so that's gonna make it Christian, right?
10:06-10:08
And that was worship.
10:12-10:12
Itch.
10:14-10:14
Right?
10:15-10:17
So, that's another myth about worship.
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Number three, worship must be relevant to unbelievers.
10:24-10:27
Worship must be relevant to unbelievers, and here's what I mean by that.
10:28-10:36
I was at a camp retreat one time where the pastor said, "Oh, at our church, Our music is just like the stuff that they're playing on the country music station.
10:37-10:53
Because listen guys, you got that guy coming into church listening to country music, and he's going to be leaving church listening to country music, and he's tuning out while we're doing our music. So we need to make our music as relevant to that person as possible.
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Now I'm not talking about music style, I'm talking about the danger of that relevancy idea.
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We don't want to offend somebody. Let's not sing the name of Jesus.
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Let's not get too bibly about our worship time.
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Listen, 1 Corinthians 14, verses 24-25.
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Paul writes, "If all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all.
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He is called to account by all. The secrets of his heart are disclosed.
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So, falling by his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.
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That's saying a lot, but just for today's purposes, here's what I want you to see.
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Paul's saying when an unbeliever comes in to the midst of a group of believers who are in the presence of God's Word and passionately worshiping God, that's what brings conviction.
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Not, "We need to try to meet them at their level, and we'll kind of water down sugar coat the gospel so we don't offend them." He says, "That's not how it works. They're coming into our territory where we're passionate about Jesus Christ." That's what's going to convict them.
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"Wow, those people are really excited about this." Yeah, we are a little excited about this.
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Number two.
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"Worship brings us into God's presence." Alas, I've said that before.
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"We'll bring the going to God's presence in worship." That's a myth.
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Jesus brings us into God's presence.
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The Bible is crystal clear about that.
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Jesus brings us into God's presence.
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In fact, the Bible teaches that God is always present.
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What does Paul say in Acts 17?
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Though He is not far from any of us.
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Worship is, we're removing this idea that God's way up there in heaven, somewhere distant.
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Let's try to get His attention.
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We're worshipping God because He's here.
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He's right here.
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He is right here.
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We are in the presence as a congregation of God already.
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And that's why we're worshipping Him.
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Worship doesn't bring us into His presence.
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It reminds us of His nearness.
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The topic of worship is a topic that the 1991 version of I Worship best hits, what's that, Wild '91 or whatever, unless it's on that album, it's called Worship.
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And we have so narrowed down what it means to worship.
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And I really loved the video we watched last week when some of our senior staff out of the armies was talking about worship.
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Kirk Randolph had said, "It's not about how we worship, "it's about who we worship." But we all need to check ourselves to make sure we're not pursuing a certain worship style.
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We're pursuing the God that we worship.
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That's what we're after.
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We wanna worship God in spirit and truth.
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And we all have our preferences, that's why this is a hot button.
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Some people like one style, some people like another style, and that's okay.
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But what concerns me are the people that think that the style that they prefer is the only type.
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That's it.
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If you're not seeing this, that you don't really worship Him.
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Alright, so let's turn to the Word.
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Turn to your Bibles, which would be Psalm 96.
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Psalm 96.
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Turn really loud so I can hear you.
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Even if you just have to shake your Bible a couple times.
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I like to hear that sound.
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I don't have a Bible.
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have a Bible. There's Bibles on the table that you can have. We want everybody to be in God's Word with us.
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How serious is God about worship? Well, if you look at the location and length of the book of Psalms, that kind of answers it. Longest book in the Bible, 150 chapters, and it's right smack in the middle. I guarantee you take your Bible, open it up, halfway you're going to be in the Psalms.
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God's pretty serious about worship.
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But understand as we look at Psalm 96, this isn't a step-by-step guide.
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Like, here's how to worship, step one.
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Okay, and then after you do that, step two.
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It's not like, you know, here's an instruction manual.
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Psalm 96 is just worship.
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It's just worship!
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And what we're going to do is go through Psalm 96 and look at some of the elements of worship.
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So what does worship mean?
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We're talking a lot about worship.
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What does worship mean?
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You know, jot down in your outline, what does worship mean to you?
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What does worship mean to you?
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Write something down.
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There are a lot of words for it, translated worship in the Bible.
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words literally translated falling on your face before.
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It's honoring and respecting to the nth degree, that's worship.
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What does worship mean to you?
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Well, the most important thing is what does worship mean to God?
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And let's see if our definitions match up with God's.
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So for today, I wanna read Psalm 96, and we're just going to look in the Bible what worship looks like.
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First thing we're gonna see is what worship looks like out here.
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Okay?
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And then we're going to see what worship looks like in here.
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'Cause these are all in the psalm.
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Ready?
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Let's read it all, then we're gonna go back.
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Typically, we'll go through a verse at a time, but Psalm 96 really isn't structured that way.
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It's just, we're worshiping.
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We're gonna go through and pick out the ingredients.
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I would sing to the Lord a new song.
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Sing to the Lord all the earth.
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Sing to the Lord, bless his name, for telling his salvation from day to day.
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Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.
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For great is the Lord and great may he be praised.
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He is to be feared above all gods.
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For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
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Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
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Ascribe to the Lord all the glories of the peoples; ascribe to the Lord glory and strength; ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name.
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Bring an offering and come into his courts; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him all the earth.
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"Say among the nations, 'The Lord reigns; yes, the world is established, and shall never be moved; he will judge the people with equity.' "Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it; "and shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord. For he comes, for he comes to judge the earth; And He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness.
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Okay, so if you're taking notes, first of all, what does worship look like out here?
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What we mean is, ways that we worship.
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And three of them we'll look at here.
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First of all, you worship by song.
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That was a pretty easy one.
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1) O sing to the Lord a new song, or singing to the Lord.
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If you read in your Bible Revelation chapter 4 and 5, that's what heaven is.
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It is praise after praise, escalating and growing and passionate.
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That's what heaven is.
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And if you can read through Revelation 4 and 5 and think, "That sounds kind of boring. That concerns me." You know, I've heard people say that from time to time. "You mean heaven is just sitting around praising God all the time? That kind of sounds boring." That's a concern.
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One thing I wonder is, have you ever really worshipped?
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Because when you're worshipping God's Spirit and Truth, you never want it to end.
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And that's what heaven is. It's being in the presence of God and praise after praise after praise.
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So we worship and song. As I said before, nothing starts with a B more than music.
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You know, we're talking about styles and instruments and those types of things.
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Well, you see what we're doing here, and I'm going to kind of pull the curtain back a little bit just for a second.
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I'll let you know a couple things about worship at Harvest Bible Chapel.
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First of all, we go for doctrinal accuracy in all the lyrics.
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Meaning this, and Sam will tell you every week, you know, if it's a song that I'm not familiar with, what do I say, Sam?
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and email me the lyrics, and I go through line by line.
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If I wouldn't preach it, we're not going to sing it.
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If it's not something I would say, thus sayeth the Lord from his word, we're not gonna sing it.
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There's a lot of really nice tunes out there that have some doctrinal inaccuracies, and we're not gonna sing it.
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So we go through line by line.
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One example of that is, you know, the song, Above All?
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We're not going to sing that song.
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You know, "Like a rose trampled on the ground, you took the fall and thought of me above all." That's not true.
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Jesus was not thinking about me above everything.
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God was on the cross.
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He came out of obedience to his Father.
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He was thinking about glorifying God.
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Does God love us yet?
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Did he send his Son to die for us?
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Absolutely.
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That's all true.
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But let's dispel the notion that the cross is all about us.
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It's about glorifying God. That's what the cross is about.
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We're just the beneficiaries of the work of the cross.
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So that's not really true, so we're not really going to see it here.
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Because we want doctrinal accuracy.
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The other thing about Worship of Harvest is we want it to be contemporary without compromise.
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We want to be contemporary. We want to worship the Lord right now where He has us, at the times that He has us.
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Contemporary, but without compromising.
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So if you liked that song earlier, you should be right around.
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If you liked that song, and you're kind of hoping we do that, I'm sorry.
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We're not going to do that song.
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If you want to try to connect with Samuel and have him do that for you, have him do a little private thing, I'm just not going to do it.
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So we're not doing that Psalm. So you worship my Psalm.
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Secondly, you worship by witnessing.
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You worship by witnessing. See, some people would leave worship just to music.
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This is our worship time when we come together and sing. And that's it.
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incorrect, actually biblically with the life of Christ in us, everything we do is an act of worship.
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Everything we do.
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And one of the things the Bible specifically points out here, look at verses 2 and 3.
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"Tell of his salvation from day to day, declare his glory above the nations." One of the ways that you worship the Lord is by witnessing to people.
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Just by saying that with somebody and saying, "Do you know the difference that Jesus Christ has made in my life?" Do you know the story of the cross? Do you know about Jesus?
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Do you know the Bible says that while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us, and He rose from the dead, giving us the promise of eternal life?
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Do you know that story? What have you done with Jesus?
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When you do that, that's an act of worship. Witnessing is an act of worship.
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There's a lot more I want to say about that, but that's pillar number 4.
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So, we'll talk about that in a couple of weeks.
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And then verse 8, "You worship by giving." Look down at verse 8, it says, "Bring an offering." You come into his courts, and obviously in the Old Testament economy, bringing your offering meant bringing your animal to sacrifice.
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We don't sacrifice animals.
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Why? Because the Bible says Jesus Christ would be laid down in his life.
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It was a once and for all offering.
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But the idea of coming to God without anything in your hands as an offering, it was inconceivable.
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Say, we're going to present an offering unto the Lord.
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This is where my wife always keeps me straight.
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Anytime somebody will invite us over, I'm just like, yeah, we'll be there.
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And then we get off the phone, and everyone's like, yeah, what are we supposed to bring?
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Like, they didn't say to bring anything.
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And I was like, of course they weren't going to say to bring something!
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I just don't think about that.
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Call me inconsiderate, but I just don't think about that.
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I'm just like, "No, they brought us over to their house." And I was like, "Yeah, we gotta bring something." You see, we're coming into the presence of the Lord.
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We're bringing an offering.
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How much of the money in your wallet or purse is God's?
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Like 10% actually no it's 100%.
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The earth is the Lord, the fullness therein.
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It's all from God.
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And what we give back, we're just giving God back a portion of what He gave to us.
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It's coming to God, this is what I have in my hand.
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Bring an offering and come and do some works.
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I'm bringing this to you God again.
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It's not...
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It's not to atone for our sins.
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I have so much more to say about that.
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You worship by giving.
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So, you worship by song, you worship by witnessing, and you worship by giving.
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Before we move on from there, I want you to see that it isn't pick one.
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It isn't like God says, "Okay, here's three ways you can worship me, you can pick one." It's not like that. See, these are all aspects of living a life of worship. They're all aspects of that.
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You know, sort of like a baseball game.
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I know this... I grew up in a series. I mean, this is a tough time to talk about baseball.
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And, um, but if you've watched a good baseball team, maybe on the TV or something, not locally, But if I said, "What is baseball?" Somebody might say, "Well, baseball is a guy standing up with a bat, taking a swing at a ball." Is that baseball?
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That's part of it.
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No, no, no, baseball is the guy pitching.
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Baseball is the guy, you know, he throws the ball 100 miles an hour.
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Well, that's part of it.
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No, no, no, baseball is the feeling, you know, when the ball is in play.
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That's part of it. You see, it takes all of those things to make a baseball game, right?
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And it's the same with worship. All these things that the Bible is talking about here, these are all elements of the life of worship.
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A worshiper lifts up your voice to the Lord in song. A worshiper comes before the Lord with an offering.
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A worshiper tells others of his salvation.
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God is seeking worshippers. He's not seeking people who sing, or people who offer a tip, or people who worship occasionally.
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The Father is seeking worshippers.
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So that's what worship looks like out here. He's just saying, "Here's some of the ways that we worship the Lord." But I want to close our time talking about what worship looks like in here.
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Because the truth is, we can do these other things in the flesh.
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We can externally fulfill these other things.
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I know the message of salvation. I can kind of sing. I have some money to give.
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We can externally do that.
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The Father is not looking through the externals, He is looking in here.
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And three things I want to share with you about that.
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First of all, getting back to verse 1, it says, "Now sing to the Lord a new song." "Sing to the Lord a new song." So, everyone, you're outlined. The first thing is, "Up with fresh, down with leftovers." "Up with fresh, down with leftovers." You know this is the only song commanded in Scripture, is to sing a new song. Did you know that?
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Our worship must be an expression of faith from us.
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I've been preaching long enough to know that people hear, that people think they hear what they want to think they hear sometimes.
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And somebody's going to leave you here saying, "Pastor Jeff hates hymns. I love hymns." "Aaron, can I get a testimony? Do I love hymns?" I listen to hymns all the time. All the time. I'll show you my iPod. I love hymns.
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But you know, the Lord has commanded us to bring a fresh expression of faith.
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Sing a new song.
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I've never met Charles Boston, but I'm sure he was a great guy.
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But just singing about his experience with God isn't us singing a new song.
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That's why, you know, very early on when I met Sam, he said, "You know, I've been kind of working on writing some of my own stuff." I'm like, praise the Lord, we're gonna be singing.
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He was like, what?
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We're gonna be singing.
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Someday we're gonna be coming to church and we're gonna be singing a Sammy Coop original.
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I am so excited for that.
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Because it's a fresh expression of faith.
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This is something God is doing in our God.
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And God is doing it through us.
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It's singing a new song.
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See, is God doing something in your life right now?
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Do you have something to sing about right now?
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Now I sit down with leftovers. Listen, leftovers can be good. Frozen, can be good, all that stuff can be good, but nothing beats French, right? Is that true? Nothing beats French.
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And I believe that's true in worship. That's why he says, "Sing a new song to the Lord." The reason I'm throwing this in here is sadly, too many people go to church to criticize instead of to worship.
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There are going to be some people leave today saying, "Aw man, I liked it better when it was just Sam and Laura out there." You remember the good old days last week when it was just Sam and Laura and that was worship?
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And some people are going to say, "Well, it's about time we had a massacre." And that driver sure was a handsome guy.
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It's about time that they got some more people.
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Listen, criticism is not a spiritual gift.
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Not on the list.
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Nowhere, anywhere on the list.
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Did you come to criticize or did you come to worship?
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So how should I really evaluate a worship service?
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What you need to ask yourself, was it spirit and truth?
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That was sort of Jesus' two check marks for worship.
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Worship in spirit and worship in truth.
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Were the lyrics biblical?
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Did the lyrics reflect the heart of God?
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The heart of the true worshiper of God?
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Was there emotion involved in my worship?
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See, much of the evaluation for worship shouldn't even come from what happens up on the stage.
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Much of your evaluation for worship needs to come in here.
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Was I ready for worship?
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Did you ever come to church just completely not ready for worship?
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I'm gonna talk about that as we close.
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try to help you with that.
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So up with fresh, down with leftovers.
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I like leftovers.
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But nothing beats fresh.
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The Lord says, "Sing a new song." So number two, up with thankful, down with forgetful.
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Up with thankful, down with forgetful.
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Did you know that our faith in God is directly correlated to how thankful you are to God.
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I'm going to say that again.
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Your faith in God is a direct correlation with how thankful you are to God.
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That wasn't something I made up.
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You can read about that in Romans chapter 1.
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It talks about people who have walked away from the Lord.
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Though God's truth has been made evident to them, they deny it.
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They suppress the truth.
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One of the key ingredients of that passage is, "They were not thankful." They weren't thankful.
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God has lavishly poured out His grace and...
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Not thankful.
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Well, up with thankful, down with forgetful.
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Look at verse 3.
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He says, "Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples." Declaring God's works means I'm looking back at how God has shown up and I am so thankful for what God is doing.
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That has to be part of your worship.
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Sometimes that's why we tune out in worship.
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We're not thinking about what God's doing.
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We're thinking about, you know, how are the steelers going to do this afternoon, or I'm sure hungry.
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Ever since Jeff started talking about leftovers, I'm really thinking, "What is leftover in our fridge?" And we're just kind of tuning out.
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Let me show you something I brought here.
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My wife calls this our "blessings box." I call it the "thank you God box" because for some reason I think that sounds more masculine, but it's the same.
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What we do is every time God shows up, in a really mighty tangible way, we just take out a note card and we write it down with the date and we stick it in.
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And our plan is on Thanksgiving to take them out and say, "Here's the way the Lord has shown up in the past year.
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Here's some things to be thankful about." I'm not going to 11th, we didn't have any of this.
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One thing that was like, more keyboard.
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All the AB stuff, the signage, we had nothing.
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We were told that we needed about $80,000 said and done to get all the things that we needed.
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Guess how much money we had?
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Not 80,000. Actually, we were at a leader team meeting, Sammy was the new kid on the block.
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Jordan, I believe it was.
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But, um, we were, our group was kind of sitting around and going, "Well, you know, we need this, we're hoping to launch, you know." And I asked our financial assistant, "How much money do we have right now?" She said, "We have about $15,000." And, Sarah just completely couldn't hold himself back. As soon as she said it, he was like, "Sweet!" And you know, that lit a fire in our group.
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Because from that point on, we were like, "Yeah, you know what? That is sweet." We've been sitting around the last couple weeks, bellyaching about what we don't have.
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Why don't we thank God for what we do have?
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And I believe that was a huge catalyst for our group.
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Because, like I said, September 11th, nada.
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And in just a couple of days, the Lord provided everything that we needed.
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For the funds to purchase, and it was on order.
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But everything came within a matter of a couple of days.
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Do you think there's a card in this box addressing that?
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Yeah, there is.
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And sometimes if you're really interested, I have no problem sitting down with you and going through line by line every card in that box saying, "Here's how the Lord has shown in our life that we are so thankful." Mary and I are so thankful for our church.
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Our DOT is so thankful for our Doors of God.
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So often we say, "I need, I need, I need, I need God, I need God, I need God, I need God, I need..." How much of your prayer time is God thanking you?
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Thank you for what you've done. Thank you.
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So up with thankful, now with forgetful.
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Remember his marvelous works.
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How does worship look in here?
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The last thing is "up with reverent, down with familiar." Up with reverent, down with familiar.
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We get so used to the concept of God's nearness that we sometimes lose the awesome factor.
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And look at verse 9.
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It says, "Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.
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"tremble before him all the earth." Now, is it true that Jesus called his friend, yes.
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Is it true that God is near?
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And the Bible does use some terms like Abraham was called a friend of God.
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Those things are all true.
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However, I think my Lord's Church has lost the awesome factor of God.
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The reverence for God.
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The "you are holy and awesome and sovereign" aspect of God, we've lost that.
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And you're thinking, "Yeah, it's those newfangled choruses you do that just kind of reduce God." You know, I thought about that, and that's really not that often you do.
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Actually, you know, I grew up singing songs like "Put your hand in the hand of the man who steals the water." Remember that song?
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Me and Jesus are just walking along holding hands, hanging out, my frat buddy.
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Or, if I've offended you yet, this is it.
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This is like, everybody would be offended by this one.
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But we used to do services at the Senior Citizens Hub.
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And Brooke smiled, she knows what I'm gonna say.
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Her grandmother actually played the piano.
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And the favorite hymn every time in the garden.
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You know that hymn?
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Oh, Pastor Jack, you're not gonna bash me, or the loving hymn, timeless treasure, whatever you wanna call it.
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But you realize that hymn has like no theological content.
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It's like, the hymn's basically like, you went to a garden, it's pretty, then Jesus showed up, The birds stopped singing because Jesus was there.
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And we just kind of hung out for a while in this garden.
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Amen.
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And it's like, that image is just like, it's pretty, but it's not really...
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The thing that concerns me is just the familiarity.
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Do you know about Jesus was on the earth and his best friend was John?
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The disciple whom Jesus loved, he refers to himself in the gospel of John.
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The one who was leaning on Jesus during the Last Supper.
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The one that Jesus said, "Take care of my mother." That John? You know the guy I'm talking about?
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Well, when Jesus showed up to John in Revelation chapter 1, the Bible says John fell like a dead man.
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Terrified at the awesome glory of the glorified Jesus Christ.
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And I'm thinking to myself, if Jesus' earthly best friend, so to speak, the guy that was probably closer to Jesus than anybody, if he sees Jesus and falls down, then who am I to sing silly songs about walking up and down the beach with Jesus?
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See, the psalmist says, "Tremble before Him." I think there needs to be a reverence to God.
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"God, you are awesome, and you are holy, and if you weren't so merciful, God, I would be nothing." Verse 8 says, "Describe your Lord in glory, doing His name." Do you know why heaven is forever? Because we're never going to get there.
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As far as fulfilling this debt.
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You see what I mean?
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If you start worshipping the Lord from now until the rest of eternity, you're never going to get to the point where you're like, "Okay, Doug, I think we glorified God enough, don't you?" And the answer is no, he is so awesome.
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That's why heaven is eternal.
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Because that debt will never get filled up.
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It will never get filled up.
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So as I close, I'll put Reverend Donald familiar.
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I just wanna leave you with, you jot these things down.
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How can I ramp up for something?
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You're like, "I hear what you're saying, Jeff, "but I'll be honest with you.
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"By the time I get, you know, Finding my kids shoes, and oh I forgot the dog, put him in, and you know, all we had to stuff for gas, and my wife really got no fun.
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By the time we get the door on Sunday, it's just like worship is like, it's hard to get into.
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And y'all seem pretty serious about worship.
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So how can I ramp up for Sunday?
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I'll jot these ones down. The first thing is obedience to the Lord.
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What I mean is in John 14, 15, Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And I just want to encourage us all to do a check on that.
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Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." That's an objective test.
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How do you know that you love Jesus Christ?
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Well, look at your life. Is my life reflected?
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Do I see Jesus alive in my life?
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And if you have some areas in your life that you're not being obedient, sometimes that's why it's hard to worship.
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Or saying it this way, does what you sing match what you do?
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Does what you sing match what you do?
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Can you come and sing "I Surrender All"?
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I don't really want to surrender everything.
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That needs to be the first place you start.
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Secondly, as we're talking about thankfulness, you're going to be deliberate about that.
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You're getting up saying, "I'm just so thankful that you've given me the opportunity to go to church." We're so thankful that we're able to rent this facility.
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We have a place where we can come and worship together.
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A couple of other things, help you ramp up your Sunday.
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Drop this down, a Psalm a day.
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Make it a practice to just read a psalm every day.
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Read a psalm and part of your assignment is look for a concept of God's character and just really meditate on it.
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What does this psalm say about God and how can I kind of take that and chew on it and think about it?
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How has God revealed himself to me in that way?
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A psalm a day.
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I also encourage you to worship on your own.
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When you go to the gym, in your house, what music are you listening to?
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You see, it's hard if you're listening to Megadeth six days a week, and then you show up here and all of a sudden we're going to sing about Jesus.
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That's kind of a tough transition, don't you think?
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But if your week is already saturated with praise unto Him, it's exciting to come in and have other people join up with you.
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Specifically, getting to church.
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I encourage you to listen to Worship in Your Car on the way to church.
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Put that praise CD on.
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While we're worshipping in church, focus on the attribute of God.
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Just break down those God's attributes.
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In church worship, what attribute of God is being celebrated?
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And again, asking how have I experienced that?
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I know like, that's like today, Paul Samuel, I grew up here, we're singing "Blessed be your name." I was thinking about, you know, we've gone through some hard times as a family.
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To say, God has been so good to us.
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And yeah, there have been hard times, but we are committed to praising Him no matter what.
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And then to come and to think about that while singing that song, that's worship.
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How have I experienced this in my own life?
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Again, the Bible says that God is seeking worshipers.
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as he unified it all together.
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Let's give our God's forgiveness.
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Our Father, we thank you for the opportunity to worship you.
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Father, forgive us.
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for coming and thinking about such trivial and temporal things instead of worshipping you.
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Forgive us, Father, for the times that we insist on our preferences.
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So much of worship is...
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it's just about who you are.
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It's not even about the instruments.
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It's not even about the style.
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It's ascribing worth to you.
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All glory and honor and praise and strength.
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Father, your word tells us that you are seeking worshippers.
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And I pray for this church.
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That we're not a group that just sings.
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We're not just a group that has excellent positions.
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We're a group that worships.
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Father, we thank you for your nearness, but I pray at the same time that we would never lose our sense of wonder, our sense of your awesomeness, our sense of how majestic you are.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Psalm 96
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.