Tag Archives: worship God accepts

Makes Your Mouth Water

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Numbers 27-30

The burning meat on the altar of sacrifice was a sweet fragrance to God. Despite the stench of blood and guts, the smell of lamb or beef cooking over an open fire was pleasing to God. That mouth-watering aroma covered the ugliness of the dead animal used in the sacrifice.

We talked about this in Sunday School this past Sunday. As we read the Old Testament account of the required sacrifices, most if not all of us, have trouble getting over all that blood! And the feces, drying blood, the smell of death grosses me out! It did many of us in that room.

But Scripture tells us the smell of the sacrifice pleased God. And actually, I think it pleased everyone in Jerusalem as that smell permeated the air. Who doesn’t like the aroma of a barbecue? Makes your mouth water.

Our worship of God, offered with clean hearts and in humility is that same sweet fragrance to God. The stink of sin is covered with the unmistakable smell of devotion, surrender, complete trust, and repentance. God tells us He loves that smell!

So as you worship God today in your home, driving in your car, or this weekend standing with your church family, check your smell. Is your worship of God pure and offered according to His rules? Or are you trying to slip a bit of feces into your offering by holding onto a sin He has revealed to you?

I pray each of us will offer God our sacrifice of worship, with complete submission. May we bow to Him who demands to be worshiped, in such a way that our worship becomes a sweet aroma, pleasing to Him who deserves to be worshiped.

May we make God’s mouth water every day with our devotion and our worship.

Prepare To Meet Your Holy God

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Leviticus 10-12

I wonder if we would take worship more seriously if the sacrificial system was still required of us. I wonder if the fact that God is so accessible to His children today has made Him less holy in our minds.

The book of Leviticus is a detailed look at God’s requirements for worship. The Jews were required to pay careful attention as they not only worshiped God, but as they prepared for worship. The priests had very specific instructions for the fulfillment of their duties.

I wonder if we really understand what it means that Jesus fulfilled every detail of those requirements. He didn’t simply erase the necessity of them.

These days so much attention is focused on how worship looks, how it makes us feel. We are encouraged to have fun, to get something out of worship. Clap your hands! Smile! Come on, show some enthusiasm! Give God a hand!

But I am reminded how often demonstrations of worship made God angry, made Him want to vomit. Enthusiastic worship cost Uzzah his life as we read in 2 Samuel 6. Later, when David followed God’s instructions, the same demonstration of enthusiasm was accepted by God. The difference was obedience.

Here in Leviticus we read that Nadab and Abihu lost their lives trying to worship God on their own terms. We can demonstrate fire of the Holy Spirit without truly having the Holy Spirit. And that is a serious offense against God.

Worship has to be a connection between us and Holy God. My Life Application Study Bible has this to say:

“Similarly, we need to be prepared for worship. We cannot live any way we want during the week and then rush into God’s presence on Sunday. We should prepare ourselves through repentance, correction of error where possible, and thoughtful anticipation of what it will mean to be in God’s presence with other believers.” (Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; Carol Stream, Illinois; 2007; p 210)

You can worship God with your head bowed, or your hands raised. And you can offend God with your head bowed, or your hands raised. The difference between worship God accepts and rejects is obedience. I guess I would encourage us to stop judging what someone’s worship looks like. You can’t judge someone’s heart, and that’s where worship happens.

So the next time you are privileged to join together for worship with other believers in God’s house – be prepared. The importance of that is a theme in Scripture. Prepare to meet your God with sins confessed and hearts cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

Prepare to meet your Holy God in worship.

(Psalms 49-52) Going Through The Motions

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The psalms are full of reminders that God isn’t interested in our “just going through the motions” kind of worship. He often asks the Jews, who were given the sacrificial system by God Himself, if they thought He actually needed those animals. He owns ALL the animals in the world, so why would they think He placed some special value on one of His own animals burning on an altar? The sacrificial system was never about the animal, except as a picture of Jesus. That sacrificed animal was about sin, about the sinner’s heart condition before Holy God.

Warren Wiersbe in his “Be Worshipful” commentary on the psalms said this in reference to 50:14-15):

“What the Lord wanted from His people was thanksgiving from their hearts, obedience to His Word, prayer, and a desire to honor Him in everything. But the Lord doesn’t want ritualism or formalism. He wants our worship to come from the heart.” (David C Cook publisher; 2009; page 182)

I can hear all the contemporary worship proponents shouting WOOHOO! Told ya!

But haven’t we simply replaced tradition with a new tradition? We may have stopped worshiping with hymnals in front of us, but now we worship with screens in front of us. Where hands and heads used to be bowed in worship, we’ve replaced that with hands and heads lifted.

We’re told to smile, look joyful, move our bodies, be free (but they usually don’t mean you are free to worship with your head bowed and hands folded). We are no less concerned about ritualism, we have just changed how ritualism looks.

I believe that is no less offering God a “going through the motions” kind of worship than before. And I believe that is still worship that God rejects.

“Surely you desire integrity in the inner self…purify me…wash me…turn your face away from my sin…create in me a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit in me...”(51:6-10)

“The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit…” (vs 17)

Stop focusing on how people look when they worship. Stop organizing worship around what people like. We have got to focus on worshiping God with clean hearts, not upraised hands. We need to worship God in purity and not worry about whether people are clapping their hands or not.

You can have a rocking worship service, and still just be going through the motions.

The worship God accepts is only that which comes from people who have dealt with their sin problem first, who approach God in His holiness through the blood of Jesus. Clean hearts. Purified. Washed.

Anything else is ritual and formalism and simply going through the motions.

Shut The Door (Malachi)

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We are really no different than the Jews to whom Malachi wrote so long ago. We, like they, are more concerned about what our worship looks like than we are about the condition of the hearts of worshipers. We use His Name as an exclamation mark, yet claim to love Him. We bring sin into the sanctuary by refusing to repent of sin in our own hearts. We write checks, teach Sunday School classes, smile at and shake hands with visitors, unless there is something else we could be doing on Sunday morning.

Then we ask, “What do you mean God doesn’t accept my worship?”

Friend, God not only doesn’t accept our show of worship, He says:

Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! (1:10)

God would rather we packed up our hymnals, SS lesson books, and dumped our AV equipment in the trash. He would rather we nail the doors of our churches closed rather than continue to offend Him with our useless worship.

“But, Connie,” you say. “God was talking to the nation of Israel about their animal sacrifices. You are reading too much into this.” Am I?

I the Lord do not change. (3:6)

If He didn’t accept half-hearted worship back then, He doesn’t accept it today. If He was disgusted by a blemished animal on the altar of sacrifice, He is also disgusted by my offering of worship blemished by sin I’ve refused to confess.

I hope you read the book of Malachi today, and hear God speak to you about your own worship. These four short chapters have so much to tell us about worship that God accepts. And isn’t that what we who love Him want in our worship of Him?

I’m praying for you.