The Importance Of Corporate Worship Series

Introduction:

I want to give you a formula for success today that will encourage you and keep you in trying times.

God + me = success

When we read our text….

28 “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God”

Dt. 12

…..it can get a person optimistic and give him hope, to know that good things will happen when God’s plan is followed

“so that it may always go well with you and your children after you”

We must not only be careful in obeying God’s word, but teaching our sons and daughters as well. Our society today has done much to try to destroy the credibility of the Christian message, but the Spirit of the Living God that reigns in His people is able to overcome these odds and reign supreme.

Illustration on corporate worship

Let me give you a for instance. How many people here today have been told by well meaning parents that they just don’t want to impose religion on their children, that they want to wait until they make up their own minds for them to choose?

I am not going out on a limb here, but if there is one thing that Lorraine and I did right it was to make that choice of going to church for our kids before they were born.

To allow a child to choose to go to church is akin to telling him that Church does not matter. It is akin to telling him that it is OK to play with a loaded gun because when God goes out of the equation, the World will rule.

Purpose Statement and application

Today we must preach on how we can impress upon our families and others the importance of corporate worship.

Body of Sermon

The Negative Reasons For Worship

One strong reason for worship’s importance can be seen in this verse: 31

“you must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.”

Dt 12:31

Today we will be looking at the OT book of Deuteronomy and particularly looking at what God requires from us in our worshipping him.

We are only one generation from Christian extinction.

The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. (Judges 2:7,10)

Illus: last night, Barb and our smallness

Last night, as Barb walked out to her car she noted the beauty of the sky, and conversation begun about Heaven. We shared that when you look at that great beauty, you are forced to realize that the length of days that we have on this planet are so few.

What are we doing with our life today? What is our purpose? God tells us here the importance of being careful to obey Him in regard to worshipping Him His way.

Just a bit ago, I mentioned about the detestable practice of child sacrifice. And though we may pass that off, two things I wan to bring to your attention. First, there have been cases of satanic worship where human sacrifices were made. And regardless of what you think about that, there is something that may be far more dangerous: the sacrificing of our younger generation to the god of disrespect, to the god of mediocrity, to the god of relativism, to the god of ‘it’s all about me’.

Church do you know what I am talking about here!

The Bible at this point tells us to obey God on this point of worship, and it goes so far not only telling us of the detestable practices but in the opening verses of this chapter to be proactice:

2 Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains and on the hills and under every spreading tree where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. 3 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.

Dt 12:2-3

Illustration of the need to be deliberate and diligent: The weeds overcome

When we lived in KCMO, we rented a duplex on Walrond Avenue. We had our own fenced in back yard and along the entire fence line, we had a lot of shrubs and weeds. I did not like that and wanted to get those things out of there so one day, I got an ax, a saw, some shears, and I cleared out that fence line. I dug down below the soil and went after those roots. I was on a crusade to rid us of weeds. Well…..