Faith and love are essential elements for spiritual worship. This devotional reading looks at how both lead to genuine worship and why we should evaluate where we are at.
Nuggets
- Our worship should flow out of our faith for God because He wants us to simply believe in Him.
- Our worship should flow out of our love for God because He has adopted us as His children to remove our bondage.
- God calls us to evaluate our faith so that we know that we are worshiping God correctly and determine where our weaknesses are.
Faith and love are the elements we need for building habits for spiritual worship. If they are not present, we do not have spiritual worship.
God doesn’t call for much. He says we can do wonders through Him when we have faith the size of a mustard seed (Mt. 17: 20).
What God does call for our faith and love to be sincere. That is the measure He uses. To what extent do we truly believe in Him?
We are called to evaluate ourselves to find out where we are in the sanctification process. God wants us to determine our weaknesses.
Charnock said faith and love are necessary for spiritual worship. Let’s take a look at the verses he referenced.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Finding Jesus through Spiritual Worship study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this series is Menander and Charnock’s Spiritual Worship.
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I used Charnock’s wording as the section headings.
Faith
“When these things were all in place, the priests regularly entered the first room as they performed their religious duties” (Heb. 9: 6 NLT)
Our worship should flow out of our faith for God because He wants us to simply believe in Him.
I love when we start verses with references to what was already discussed — not. We sit here, scratching our heads, going, “What?”
The writer of Hebrews started Chapter 9 with a discussion of the covenant with Abraham. Specifically, he talked about regulations for worship. His purpose was to compare the covenant with Abraham with the covenant with Jesus.
Glossary
The writer in Hebrews was focusing on our communication with God through Jesus, our High Priest. God had provided ways for us to approach Him through temple worship. Now, the way was through Jesus.
Bruce made an interesting observation. He wrote, “The epithet κοσμικόν here applied to the tabernacle evidently signifies belonging to this material world, in opposition to the heavenly sanctuary (ver, 11) not made with hands out of things visible and tangible.”
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I bet the ancient Jews would have pitched a fit if they would have heard the temple described as belonging to the earth. It is understandable, though.
The writer of Hebrews talked about candlestick, censors, the Ark of the Covenant – these are all man-made things. Yes, the blueprints for construction were given by God, but the actual creating of what they saw was done by men. We are even given their names.
Regardless of how the articles matched exactly God’s specifications, they are just tools to be used in worship. It is when they are used to worship God correctly that they become tools of worship. Only then is worship acceptable to God.
In other words, if we do not have sincere faith in God, our worship and our tools of worship are suspect. Faith is a gift from God and a work of the Spirit that enhances the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives and distinguishes us from others.
Glossary
The writer of Hebrews tells us about that, too. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11: 1 ESV emphasis added).
We don’t want to worship based on earthly things. But we must worship. That is the foundation of all the covenants God has made with us.
Caird talked about the simplicity of worship. Instead of the regulations of the law, we get spiritual habits. The simplicity of worship is an indication of where our hearts are.
We do have some symbols. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper give us a framework but not step-by-step instructions on how to perform them. Caird said that He was “… leaving all accessories to be filled in, as the varied needs of His people, in different times and places and circumstances, should dictate.”
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Isn’t that amazing? God tells us to worship Him but doesn’t tell us how to do it.
God doesn’t tell us to sing hymns or contemporary music. He doesn’t tell us to plan our church services to be for an hour or two — or all day.
Instead, God wants us to worship Him His way. God doesn’t want us to stop at the water in baptism and the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. He wants us to get to Him.
God doesn’t want us to replace ritual for our relationship with God. He has supplied the truth (Jesus) to give us spiritual truth. It gives us spiritually of mind and heart.
Love
“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, ‘Abba, Father’” (Rom. 8: 15 NLT)
Our worship should flow out of our love for God because He has adopted us as His children to remove our bondage.
After the original sin, we became slaves of sin. This spirit of bondage is the work of Satan.
We know that we are set free when we accept the gift of salvation. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8: 32 NLT).
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
But salvation does not give us license to sin. Some think that disciples can do whatever we want after conversion. We can’t.
Roberts looked at this through a different lens. He also saw bondage as our performing our duties as a disciple solely because we feel we must.
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Do we only go to church because it is a duty? Do we only read these devotions because it is a duty? Do we read these devotions because we don’t want to read God’s Word?
Pastor Steve said something great in one of his sermons. He said, “We are free in Christ, but we are called to live as bond servants.”
Spurgeon told us what that means.
- We must feel the conviction of sin.
- We have to know we will be punished for those sins.
- Doing the works of the law is pointless.
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We must want to perform the duties of being a disciple. In doing that, we draw closer to God because we want to be with Him.
Yes, the bond servant is one who served without wages. However in Roman times, this service was voluntary.
God calls us to voluntarily accept the Plan of Salvation. He wants us to choose to follow Him.
This bondage should lead us to fear God. The fear of the Lord means awe, reverence and love, not terror. Spurgeon said this will lead to righteousness, not self-righteousness.
Glossary
God adopts us so that we become children of God. This adoption liberates us from the spirit of bondage to Satan. Adoption is the act of grace where we are accepted into God’s family when Jesus redeems us and changes to be spiritually alive like God.
Glossary
We should be thankful for this adoption into God’s family. In other words, we are to worship Him. This plays out by our remaining child-like, so that we imitate Him.
We call God Abba and Father when we pray to Him. It is logical that we would call Him this when we become His children.
Beddome described it this way. He wrote, “Prayer is the very breath of a child of God; the first effort of Divine grace in the heart.”
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Yes, there is a familiarity in addressing God as Abba. However, we have to do so in reverence. Trust has to be present.
A Spiritual Sensibility of Our Own Weakness
God calls us to evaluate our faith so that we know that we are worshiping God correctly and determine where our weaknesses are.
God doesn’t want us to be worshiping only through lip service. He wants a strong relationship with us.
Therefore, we need to know when we are attending church only because we feel it is a duty. We have to examine our reasons for reading devotions over God’s Word.
Why is it so important to evaluate where we are at? We don’t want to be the Matthew 7: 21 disciple. “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter” (Mt. 7: 21 NLT).
Making the Connections
God can be exact in wanting us to worship as He chooses. At other times, He may choose sincerity over preciseness.
Moore told us three ways to show our sincerity of worship. We must be reverent, cheerful, and confident.
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How Do We Apply This?
- Work to follow God’s laws and commandments.
- Spend more time with God in prayer.
- Mortify our sins.
- Allow God to humble us.
- Realize we cannot save or sanctify ourselves.
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Father God. We stand in awe that Sovereign God would want to adopt those who have disobeyed Him to be His children. We know we are unworthy. We know You are worthy. We come to You in faith and love to worship You in spirit and in truth. Amen.
What do you think?
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