Spiritual worship will not be spiritual worship if it is not conducted through holiness. This devotional reading looks at the connection between spiritual worship and holiness.
Nuggets
- We can confidently worship God because He is holy and unchanging.
- We can confidently worship God because of Jesus’ sacrifice.
- We must be holy as God is to worship Him.
We’ve been studying Menander and Charnock’s sermon entitled Spiritual Worship. The section we have been discussing the habits we should cultivate.
Charnock turned to holiness. Spiritual worship must be accompanied by holiness. Let’s take a look.
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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God’s Holiness Is Forever
“Your royal laws cannot be changed. Your reign, O LORD, is holy forever and ever” (Ps. 93: 5 NLT)
We can confidently worship God because He is holy and unchanging.
Psalms 93 is a wonderful psalm worshiping God as King. It talks about Him being all-glorious, all-powerful, all-enduring, and all-victorious. The psalmist ends the psalm by saying God is all-holy.
The psalmists began verse 5 by talking about God’s royal laws. His laws are unchangeable because they reflect His character, which is unchangeable.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Keen told us what holy in character means. He wrote that it is “… knowing nothing of prejudice, partiality, connivance at wrongdoing: hence, righteous in administration, consistent, and beautiful in all.”
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Some non-believers like to think that God is not prejudiced about the sins they commit. On the flip side, other non-believers claim He is prejudiced because He does have a very strict policy against sin.
People like to use the synonyms of narrow-minded, biased, opinionated, and discrimination when they think of the word prejudiced. They see the predisposition only as being negative.
Let’s look at God’s predisposition. He knew before He created us that we were going to disobey Him.
God created us anyway.
If God is such the dictator as some claim Him to be, why would He go ahead and create us knowing what He knew? That argument doesn’t make sense to me.
Instead, God’s predisposition is to love us.
We know that God is impartial.
- “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3: 16 NLT).
- “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” (I Samuel 16: 7 ESV).
- “For God shows no partiality” (Rom. 2: 11 ESV).
So, God’s predisposition is to love everyone and treat them the same.
God has no part in wrongdoing. He does not sin. 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.
- 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.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
Glossary
God’s laws, like His character, are perfect. Because they are good and not associated with evil, they never fail.
- Good, in the biblical sense, is the workings of God within His people through His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- Evil is equated with sin because it is that which goes against God and His purposes.
Because God is pure and unchanging, we can worship Him. We don’t have to fear that we are worshiping the wrong One or that He will go off on a tangent and pull us away from what is good.
Our worship of God will lead us to perfection. We are called to be holy as He is.
Robinson noted holiness must be present in spiritual worship. He wrote, “They do not show an intelligent appreciation of the holiness of the house of the Lord who are indifferent to the order and symmetry of its services.”
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One cannot be achieved without the other.
I know. We sure don’t feel holy. We usually feel anything but.
We can take heart that God meets us where we are but doesn’t leave us there. He sanctifies us to make us more like Him. Sanctification is the transformational process of the mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Spiritual death is the 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.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
Glossary
We can be holy like God.
God’s Holy Power to Redeem
“Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins” (Heb. 9: 14 NLT)
We can confidently worship God because of Jesus’ sacrifice.
Charnock just cited Hebrews 9: 14 as evidence of God’s holiness. I think we need to look at verse 13, too.
“Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity” (Heb. 9: 13 NLT).
Earlier in this study, we did a series on ceremonial law. Included was an in-depth discussion of the sacrifices performed by the Israelites.
Jesus was the Sacrifice that once and for all paid the penalty for our sins.
Gore noted that the atonement Jesus accomplished can be applied to our lives. He argued that we could consider “… atonement should have been necessary at all to satisfy the requirements of the Divine Righteousness in the moral government of the world.”
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Let’s step that out. Atonement is about repayment for a wrong by the shedding of Jesus’ blood. Righteousness is the indwelling goodness that is the result of a solid relationship with God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to God’s laws and commandments and from which all virtues flow.
It is easy to read what Gore is saying as, because Jesus was the atonement, we are righteous. But we always go back to the response that we don’t feel holy.
But whether or not we feel – or are – holy, isn’t that the point? It isn’t about us or what we have or haven’t done.
It is about Jesus being the only One who could pay the penalty for sin – and our acceptance of that. He was and will always be the only perfect One.
No, that doesn’t give us license to keep on sinning. But we don’t have to put the stress of being 100%-fruit-of-the-Spirit perfect.
Gore went on to tell us what this should look like. He wrote, “A new spirit of devotion; for we need not only absolution but inspiration before we can serve God freely, lovingly, joyously.”
Resource
At conversion, we need to gain a new spirit of devotion. Gore indicated that this is motivation.
Yeah, that is something else we’ve hit pretty hard in this study. Our purpose of spiritual worship has to be to honor God. We have to do this freely, lovingly, and joyously.
God Is Holy
“Each of these living beings had six wings, and their wings were covered all over with eyes, inside and out. Day after day and night after night they keep on saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty — the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come’” (Rev. 4: 8 NLT)
We must be holy as God is to worship Him.
I know. This isn’t the first time Charnock has led us to look at this verse or this topic.
We’ve talked about the worship being continuous throughout eternity. We’ve also talked a lot about Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6. The seraphim reverently worship God by highlighting His holiness.
Wilson gave us a list of the characteristics of the seraphim’s worship that show us what spiritual worship is.
- Continuous service
- United
- Same character
- Before the thronAll-absorbing
I love Wilson’s definition of worship. He wrote, “Worship, as distinct from prayer and praise and thanksgiving, is the conscious lifting up of the soul to God in contemplation of Him, in His Being and acts, whether towards ourselves in particular, or towards our whole race, or in all His works, according to our knowledge of them.”
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Worship must be our decision to offer our inmost being to God as we think solely of Him.
Making the Connections
Worship isn’t a one-sided event. We are to give God glory and honor through our worship. He gives us knowledge of who we are to be.
Yes, that is a chicken and egg kind of thing. We worship God because we know Him, but we don’t really know Him until we worship Him.
God doesn’t reveal Himself fully to us until we are His children. Well, let me rephrase that. We won’t fully know God until Heaven.
God’s Word give us an introduction of Who God is. He reveals more to His children as we navigate the Sanctification Road.
How Do We Apply This?
- ABCD if we haven’t already.
- Don’t be afraid because God is in control.
- Continually think on God.
- Purify our conscience.
- Seek God so that we may worship Him.
- Humbly approach God in worship acknowledging our unworthiness.
- Acknowledge God’s power in worship.
- See God’s character as it truly is.
Resources
Father God. We want to be holy as You are. Sanctify us to be like You. Amen.
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
What do you think?
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