Article 22. The Sabbath And Worship Series

Baptist confession of faith 1689.

Article 22. Worship and the Sabbath.

The essentials of Worship

Intrinsic in the heart of every human being is the desire to worship – (that’s why your here today to enter into worship) it’s like a default mechanism in built in every human being on the face of the planet. Whether that’s worshipping the creator (AUTHENTIC) or the created (DEFICIENT) we are born to worship. No matter where we are in the technological advanced countries of the west or in the remotest parts of the world where society hasn’t changed for thousands of years, there will be human beings worshipping something transcendent beyond themselves or even something created right before them.

• Sir John Horton said, (scientist) there is general evidence that human beings alone give divine worship.

But what is true authentic Christian worship? Several quotes

• W. Tozer wrote, Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient Mystery, that Majesty which philosophers call the First Cause, but which we call Our Father Which Art in Heaven. Christian Publications, 1964, p. 90

• William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury, defined worship as the quickening of the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God, and devoting the will to the purpose of God

• C.S. Lewis - “In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him. God wants our worship to be motivated by love, thanksgiving and delight not duty.”

• John MacArthur - “Worship is all that we are responding to all that He is.” –

• Jesus Christ – “The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (Jhn4: 23-24).

Here Jesus makes a profound statement that when it comes to worshipping God, location is not important. Firstly the object of our worship God is important (22) whom at this point she did not know. And then he turns here to the essence of worship away from God, to the worshippers because God is Spirit so really worshippers will share something of that nature with God, they will worship in spirit and truth, they are in tune with God (23) this is authentic Christian worship.

In the broader sense of worship our whole lives are to be an act of sacrificial worship.

• Rom 12:1. – In view of God’s mercy we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - which is your spiritual act of worship.

The Apostle here is picking up the OT practice of offering acceptable animal sacrifices in their act of worship before God - The NT application is that our spiritual worship in a broad sense includes offering our whole life to God as an act of worship.

• Tony Evans says, “If you limit worship to where you are, the minute you leave that place of worship you will leave your attitude of worship behind like a crumpled-up church bulletin.”

Today I want to unpack authentic Christian worship in its narrower sense as practiced and experienced each Sabbath Day as we come together in a corporate act of worship.

What I share today are essentials....

1) The Call to Worship. Ex 20:8 -10 (Matt 28:1) (1Cor 16:1-2, Acts 20:7)

The call to worship on the Sabbath day originated in the Creation of this world, God gave humanity a pattern to follow in living out their lives before Him. On the 7th Day after His creating, God rested and blessed the day. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

This pattern seemed to be followed long before the Ten Commandments (Gen 24) 26 Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time men began to call on [a] the name of the LORD. By implication in Adams own life cycle, people were setting apart a day to call upon God and worship Him. Also Patriarch Job worshipped the Lord with sacrifices. (Job 1:4-5)

The Israelites followed this pattern as an obligation to rest from their labours and set the day apart as a holy day for the worship of God. It became enshrined in the 10 commandments through Moses (Ex 20:8-10). 8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.