Worship Through Sacrifice Series

Worship through Sacrifice

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Good morning.

Last week we began a series called A Life of Worship. Often when we think of worship, we think of music, and we are going to talk about worship through singing next week. But, we learned last week that worshiping the Lord is not just about singing, or about feeling moved by God, or about what just comes out of our mouths. Real worship is certainly expressed in those ways, but it is also expressed in our actions.

The Bible talks about several ways that our worship of the Lord should be expressed and this morning we are going to take a look at Worship through Sacrifice.

In the book of Isaiah, when the Lord prophecies about a time when Egypt will worship the Lord, he says in

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Isaiah 19:21

So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings

Making sacrifices before the Lord is a way we worship Him. When we make sacrifices, we are saying that what or whom we are sacrificing for is worth more than what we are sacrificing.

For instance, if I make a sacrifice for my kids to go to college, it speaks about how I value my kids and a desire for my kids to be able to obtain a good education to help them in their future more than I value what I could spend those resources on for myself.

When I make sacrifices to help accomplish the Lord’s will ahead of my own desires, I say that God’s will is more important, worth more, than my will or desires.

That speaks worship.

Now, I think that most of us can understand that making a sacrifice can be a form of worship.

But does it matter what I sacrifice or how I do it?

It does in so far as it reveals your heart.

For instance, what if a friend of yours came and said to you, “I just don’t get my wife. We just celebrated our anniversary and I took her out to eat and we to see a move and she is mad at me. I can never please her and the things I do are never enough!”

But then you find out that he took her to a hot dog stand, and told her to pick out a movie on Netflix because he didn’t want to spend so much because he is saving for a new rifle.

All of the sudden, you begin to understand why his wife is upset and questioning his love.

The level of what is spent and the time that is given compared to the things he wants reveals where his heart is truly at.

He was not thinking about her or what she wanted, but what he wanted.

So, we can see that what we sacrifice and how we sacrifice matters as far as it reveals our heart.

So this morning, I want us to take a look at some Scriptures that help us to understand better why sacrifice is worship and what the sacrifices we make reveal about our heart of worship for the Lord.

Why is Sacrifice Worship?

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Worship through Sacrifice draws us closer to God

Listen to what Jesus says about where we store our treasure and what it does.

Matthew 6:19-24

19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also…24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

That could also be translated as “You cannot worship both God and Money.”

As we talked about worship in general last week, we said that we all worship something and that we could determine what we worship if we stopped and assessed where we spent our money, our time, or thinking, etc.

If we do not think about our sacrifices, our sacrifices will reveal selfishness.

That is because our nature is selfish.

To overcome that and to be transformed into the likeness of Christ, we need to respond to the things we know.

Look at verse 21. It does not say, where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. It says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

We need to lead our hearts to sacrifice for what we know is right. And when we do, our hearts are drawn closer to the Lord.