THEME: WORSHIP LIVING THE Zeal of the WORD-
CHECK YOUR VITAL SIGNS
Worship is a vital part of our walk with God.
Pulse or heart rate, breath, blood pressure!
If any of those 3 isn’t normal…then someone is in big trouble.
Your vital signs are good indicators what’s going on inside your physical body.
Well, worship is a healthy response to a healthy relationship with the Lord.
If someone isn’t worshipping, it’s a good indicator something is wrong in their spirit.
Text: Psalm 99:1-5; 8-9
1 The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! 2 The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.
3 Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he! 4 The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. 5 Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he! In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them; they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them. 8 O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. 9 Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!
ILLUSTRATION: THE ZEAL OF COMMUNISTS.
In the late 1940s Whittaker Chambers was called to witness before a New York Grand Jury against Alger Hiss, one of among high government officials. Chambers, a one-time Communist, accused Hiss of trying to transmit confidential government documents to the Soviet Union through him.
When asked by one of the jurors what it meant to be a Communist, Chambers struggled to provide a clear answer. Finally he told them that when he was a Communist, he had three heroes.
His first hero was Polish, a political prisoner in Warsaw. While there, he insisted on cleaning the toilet of the other prisoners because he felt that the most devoted member of any community should take upon him the lowliest tasks as an example to those who were less devoted. "That," said Chambers, "is one thing it means to be a Communist."
His second hero was a German Jew who was captured and court-martialed during a revolution in Bavaria. When told that he was under the sentence of death, he replied, "We Communists are always under sentence of death." "That," said Chambers, "is another thing it means to be a Communist."
His third hero was Russian exiled to a Siberian prison camp where political prisoners were flogged. He sought some means of protesting that inhumane persecution. Finally in desperation he drenched himself with kerosene, set himself on fire, and burned himself to death as a protest against what he considered a great indignity. "That," repeated Chambers, "is also what it means to be a Communist."
How many of us Christians reveal that kind of commitment to our Lord? How zealous are you in Worshipping God?? Such commitment is costly.
o Worship is important to the church. As a matter of fact the church is powerless without worship.
o Worship is important to the soul. Worship is how we come into the presence of God.
o If we don’t go into the presence of God we cannot grow spiritually, therefore we shall surely die spiritually speaking.
o That’s why when we come to the house of God it is vital that we worship.
o We need to get our minds off the busy day that we had and get our minds on God. We can’t worship God if our minds are everywhere but here.
WORSHIP IS IMPORTANT. WE HAVE TO HAVE WORSHIP
• Worship is what brings revival. It brings the power of the Holy Ghost and with the power of the Holy Ghost comes deliverance, peace, and victory.
THAT’S WHY THE DEVIL WANTS TO HINDER OUR WORSHIP.
• THE DEVIL will do whatever it takes to distract you to the point that when you get to church you don’t feel like worshiping. That’s how he robs us of our blessing.
• Because worship is what gives us the strength to get up and go on.
• If we don’t worship we become weak and feeble and easy to whip.
SO THE DEVIL WANTS TO HINDER OUR WORSHIP.
• There is an old song that we sang when I was a boy: “As we gather...”
• And that is exactly why we have gathered here today and there’s not a problem or a devil that’s going to stop us from worshiping God.
This is God’s house, and He’s worthy of all we can give
Question: Why did I come to church today? What’s my purpose?
• Did I come to worship God or did I come for some other reason?
• One way the devil can bind our worship is through PREOCCUPATION.
If he can preoccupy your mind while you are at church he can bind your worship.
• In other words if your mind is on something besides God, you can’t worship the Lord
How many times has this happened to us?
• We know that we ought to have our minds on God but for some reason our minds are on where we’re going to eat lunch after Sunday service.
◊ Or whether or not we left the stove on or unplugged the iron. Or we might be sitting there thinking about the argument that we just had with our spouse.
◊ Or we might be thinking about what time the game starts, sure hope the preacher has a short one today.
◊ Understand: the devil will fill your mind with anything that will stop your worship.
◊ Sometimes we even get preoccupied with what everybody in the church thinks about us.
◊ Am I dressed the right way? Do I fit in? Do I look out of place? Does my hair look OK? Is anybody staring at me?
◊ Don’t forget the reason we’re here! We didn’t come here to please one another; we came here to please the Lord.
• The Bible says in Acts 2:1 that on the Day of Pentecost that they were in one accord.
• They were not preoccupied. When they came to that Upper Room they had their minds on God. They were only concerned about pleasing God. They were hungry for God to manifest Himself among them.
• And when we come to Gods house; if we would somehow occupy ourselves with God and not preoccupy ourselves with something else we would see a greater outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
All of our ATTENTION has to be on God.
• We can’t be looking at everybody else and focus on God at the same time. We can’t scan the church to see who’s here and who isn’t and still have our minds on God.
• We can’t be thinking; oh man, so and so needed that, I sure hope he’s listening and still have our minds on God.
• The devil will use any device necessary to preoccupy your mind because that will keep you from worshiping God.
• We have to stop allowing the enemy to distract us. If we will go ahead and worship God instead of looking at them wondering why they even bothered coming to church in the first place.
• We would have a move of God and when God moves they will pray through or get up and leave. We are not going to get caught in the devil’s trap.
• We’re not going to look at what other folks are wearing. We’re not going to look at their reputation.
• We’re going to keep our eyes on Jesus and worship Him and have a move of the Holy Ghost.
A second way the devil can bind our worship is through PRAYERLESSNESS.
• If the devil can keep us from praying, our worship is nothing more than a ritual.
• The devil’s favorite tool to keep us from praying is to get us to think that we’re too busy to pray. [We’re too busy not to pray]
• The devil knows that if you’re not praying you’re already beaten.
• But when you pray it puts the devil in a panic mode. Because he knows that God answers prayer.
• That’s why the devil tried to hinder prayer in the Bible in every way he could.
o In Acts 19:15, it was the demons that cried out and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know”...
• You know why they knew Paul, because he prayed?
WHEN WE DON’T PRAY IT MAKES THE DEVIL’S JOB EASY.
• Prayer prepares us for worship! It tunes us in to the Holy Ghost frequency channel.
o We become aware and sensitive to what God wants and we are able to flow with the Spirit.
o When we pray, we understand what God is trying to tell us because we are tuned in to the right station.
o The more we pray the more we know Jesus and worship becomes a natural part of our lives.
• And the devil wants to bind that because worship will make you an over comer. You will overcome whatever the devil throws at you if you will be earnest, fervent, and consistent in prayer.
• Prayer gives us liberty to worship at home and at church.
A third way the devil can bind our worship is THROUGH PRIDE
• Pride is a disease that makes everybody sick but the person who has it.
• Somebody who’s proud is always looking down on other people.
• But as long as they are looking down, they cannot see God because He is up, so they miss out on the higher and better aspects of life.
• Because the Bible says that all good things come down from the Father above.
• God hates pride! He said in Proverbs 8:13, I hate pride and arrogance, Pride will build a wall between you and God.
Psalm 138:6 6 Though the LORD is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud.
• You can’t be close to God and be full of pride.
• We can’t be arrogant and be close to God. We can’t start thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think and be close to God.
• Pride is a spirit that we have to get rid of so that we can be close to God. But it’s hard to crucify the flesh. So how do you do it? Through prayer!
James 4:6 says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
The humble can worship the Lord.
• When we humble ourselves in the house of God and we worship, God will respond to that kind of worship.
A fourth way that the devil can bind our worship is through prejudice
• The devil has used this tool a lot in order to bind the worship of some good people.
• To have prejudice means that somebody has prejudged somebody else or something else without sufficient facts to make an accurate judgment.
• It’s sad to say, but it happens in a lot of churches. Folks come to church and they have prejudice against somebody else.
• We cannot fall into the devils trap and prejudge somebody who doesn’t fit into our predetermined mold.
• We cannot get caught judging somebody’s spiritual condition. It doesn’t matter how they look.
• We cannot get preoccupied with prejudice because that will bind our worship and if our worship is bound that will hinder our revival.
• I understand that some folks don’t intend to change but I also understand that if we allow ourselves to become preoccupied with it that it will hinder revival.
THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THE DEVIL WANTS.
• So that’s what we are not going to give him. Anybody who wants to worship with us can. Because if we, the church, worship without being preoccupied, God’s going to move.
• And when He moves there’s a chance that if they are in the service that He can move in their lives.
• Can I add something? We cannot be prejudice about how we think everybody ought to worship.
• Everybody worships differently. If we didn’t, we would all be puppets on a string.
WHAT GOOD IS THAT TO GOD?
• God wants us to worship Him because we want to, not because we have to.
• Everybody has their own unique relationship with God. It’s our responsibility to come to church with the purpose the desire to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
• All prejudice have to be put aside and crucified.
A fifth way that the devil can bind our worship is through PRESUMPTION
• What does presumption have to do with? It has to do with overstepping, taking for granted.
• If we ever reach the place to where we start thinking that God is here just because we showed up, we are badly mistaking.
• The devil would like for us to think that we can have church with or without God.
• That we can replace God with social activities or whatever.But we cannot replace the presence of Almighty God. If God is not here, then we may as well stay home.
• Because it would be a waste of our time to come to church if God is not here...
THIS CHURCH DEPENDS ON THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
• LIVES ARE AT STAKE! FAMILIES ARE AT STAKE! MARRIAGES ARE AT STAKE!
• We must have the presence of God in this church. Not only do we need his presence in this church, but we need to experience his presence in our lives.
• The name on the building doesn’t guarantee that God will be here.
• So we have to prepare for the presence of God. How? We need to remove all the unsightly things from our lives.
PREPARATION IS NOT IN THE BUILDINGS OR OUR PERSONALITIES OR TALENTS; IT’S IN OUR INDIVIDUAL HEARTS.
• Preparing the way means that the crooked places must be made straight (Isaiah 40:4), that all sin be removed from the camp.
• We may have to repent, but whatever it takes to make sure that the presence of God is here is what we ought to be willing to do.
• When we make preparation, there will be a revelation of the glory of God.
CONCLUSION:
Psalm 33:1 REJOICE IN the Lord, O you righteous, you upright in right standing with God; for praise is becoming and appropriate for those who are upright [in heart].
Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God's near presence and holiness.
• Each revival movement has its own distinctive features, but the pattern is the same every time.
o FIRST GOD COMES. On New Year's Eve 1739, John Wesley, George Whitefield, and some of their friends held a "love feast" which became a watch night of prayer to see the New Year in. At about 3 a.m., Wesley wrote, "the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground."
Revival always begins with a restoration of the sense of the closeness of the Holy One.
o SECOND, THE GOSPEL IS LOVED AS NEVER BEFORE. The sense of God's nearness creates an overwhelming awareness of one's own sins and sinfulness, and so the power of the cleansing blood of Christ is greatly appreciated.
o THEN REPENTANCE DEEPENS. In the Ulster revival in the 1920s shipyard workers brought back so many stolen tools that new sheds had to be built to house the recovered property! Repentance results in restoration.
o FINALLY, THE SPIRIT WORKS FAST: godliness multiplies, Christians mature, converts appear. Paul was at Thessalonica for less than three weeks, but God worked quickly and Paul left a powerful church behind him.
