What Are You Bringing To God

Last week we looked at how Satan mixed the truth of what God said with a lie and deceived Adam and Eve.

The original sin was disobedience, as long as they never ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they were operating in obedience to God. As soon as they partook of that tree, they disobeyed the commands of God and sin entered into this world.

That sin entered the blood line and because of it, every single one of us has sinned and I don’t know about you, yes I do, because you’re human, I have to constantly fight the dark side of my life to keep it in line and under the blood of Christ.

Every single one of us has sinned since we’ve been saved. I don’t think not one of use would want some of the thoughts of our heart this year to be flashed up on the overhead projector.

There’s a sinful side that’s always trying to gain control, that’s why we need to make sure that submit our selves to God every day of our life.

We need to pray daily that God would lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. The enemy is constantly looking for any crack in your spiritual foundation that he can gain ground in.

Tonight we’re going to see that man’s nature has fallen to the point where it didn’t even bother Cain to offer up an unacceptable sacrifice.

The problem with vegetables

I’m kind of strange, being home grown in Indiana, my family had a garden every year where we would grow peppers, corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes, strawberries, green onions. How many thinks those things sound good?

I would have to shell peas, snap green beans, pick ears of corn and fight tomato spiders.

Something strange happened in my childhood, maybe it was when I fell down the stairs as a baby, and I just don’t connect with vegetables.

They taste horrible to me and to this day I can’t stand vegetables. I think it should be the 11th commandment, thou shalt not eat vegetables.

If George Bush can go on record saying he doesn’t like broccoli, I’m going on record too!

I told the church the day we came and tried out here that mom didn’t raise a rabbit.

I think that maybe God is against veggies. We see Adam and Eve got in trouble, it was probably a veggie, and now we have Cain getting in trouble over what? Veggies!

Unfortunately I can substantiate by anti vegetable doctrine but we do know that there’s something about Cain’s sacrifice that God found unacceptable. Let’s take a look at this sacrifice…

First of all, I want you to see that Cain and Abel’s sacrifice represented Worship

God instituted worship from the very beginning and the only acceptable worship was that of the very best. God didn’t accept Cain’s sacrifice because He didn’t like vegetables, He didn’t accept it because it wasn’t the best Cain could give.

Let me ask you tonight, what is your quality of worship towards God? Is it acceptable to God?

Do you just go through the motions or do you worship from the heart?

I think to often we just put our selves on autopilot when it comes to church. We’ve been doing this for so long, we know what to expect when we come to church, the pastor’s going to open with prayer, then we’re going to sing for a half hour, we usually pray, take up the offering, endure a message and go home.

Listen friend, that’s not worship. That’s just enduring to the end!

Every time we gather here at 2401 Curdes Avenue, we need to make sure that we take time and give God the best worship we can. If we will get to that place, it will change us.

Here’s some observations I want to share with you about what we bring to our worship service…

Touching the heart of God with our worship will cause God to touch the heart of man.

You can’t keep that from happening. When someone enters into real worship. God escorts worshipers through the gates and into His throne room.

Second observation I want to share is, God always responds to worship.

It is either a positive response like Abel’s, or it’s a negative response like Cain’s. It all depends on what you bring to God.

If you just come here to church, or in your prayer time and go through the motions, (and some people don’t even go through the motions very well). There are people who come to our church week after week and there’s no life in their worship.

They’re just not connecting with God, and most of the time it’s because we’re bringing unacceptable sacrifices, giving Him half hearted or no heart in their worship to Him.