Charnock looked at why we worship God. This devotional reading looks at His excellency, command, and aversion to worldview worship.
Nuggets
- Our worship must stem from God’s worthiness.
- God gives us specific instructions regarding what is and isn’t acceptable ways to worship Him.
- God requires spiritual worship to be performed His way rather than the world’s way.
We are starting a new series in the Finding Jesus series. After looking at habits we need for spiritual worship, Charnock looked at why we worship God.
I have to confess that Charnock’s first point has me scratching my head. He wrote, “The best we have is robe presented in worship …”
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Luckily, Charnock gave three subpoints as support, most listing verses as evidence. 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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The heading titles are Charnock’s words.
Of God’s Excellency
“‘You say, “It’s too hard to serve the Lord,” and you turn up your noses at my commands,’ says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. ‘Think of it! Animals that are stolen and crippled and sick are being presented as offerings! Should I accept from you such offerings as these?’ asks the Lord. ‘Cursed is the cheat who promises to give a fine ram from his flock but then sacrifices a defective one to the Lord. For I am a great king,’ says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, ‘and my name is feared among the nations!’” (Mal. 1:13-14)
Our worship must stem from God’s worthiness.
Okay, well. This didn’t start out as I expected it to do. So, let’s work through this.
Aren’t we like the Israelites? We say it is too hard to serve God.
I mean, it is really hard to read — no less understand — God’s Word. In my devotion time, I’ve just read through Isaiah and Lamentation, and just started Ezekiel.
Talk about dry and confusing.
It is really hard to keep the law. Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t planned out how to murder anyone.
But come on, no one can keep all the laws God gave us.
That is the point. We should serve God because He is worthy, and we aren’t. There is no way we’re going to save ourselves.
That means God is worthy of our spiritual worship. More importantly, He designed Plan of Salvation, so that we could worship Him again.
But if we put it into context of what Malachi is saying, we remember that the Israelites were worshiping — but not the right way. They hadn’t gotten to the spiritual worship level.
Isn’t there nothing worse than thinking we are doing it God’s way, but we aren’t?
From Thomson’s discussion, we can get the progression to spiritual worship. However, to me, it more the how to worship God than they why Charnock thought he was describing.
We have to be more religious. Our sacrifices have to be pure.
No, I don’t think this is necessarily out of place. Yes, it is the end goal. We can only truly get there through sanctification.
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.
- 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.
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 to me, this is more our motivations have to be right. Our worship has to be sincere.
Okay, it does address the why. We must worship God because He is worthy of worship.
We have to keep the Lord’s Day. The assemblies, meetings, and feasts must be done in devotion to God.
We have to tithe. To me, this is more than only giving money. It is giving God His due in all things.
We have to keep, as Thomson said the Israelites didn’t, “… the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” Unfortunately, he didn’t elaborate on that. (I am seeing a series of its own devotions to dig deeper there.)
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We must worship in faith and with repentance. Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to change our sinful ways to ways of righteousness through obedience.
- 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.
- Obedience means submitting ourselves to the will of God as it is presented to us and living our lives accordingly.
Glossary
Clayton takes our insincere worship a step further. He talked about faking sincerity in public worship.
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Think about it. We can and do fake sincerity in private worship. But when we get to that point, don’t we usually stop worshiping?
I can see both happening.
Bottom line is our worship must be an unblemished offering to Sovereign God. We worship God only in His way.
But, to me, this is also talking about focus. Our priority must be to give God the worship He is due. He must be the central, foremost object of our worship.
Eden noted that, to worship God correctly, we have to understand what he has revealed to us. We can’t try to limit God based on what we know and believe is true. We have to worship him in spirit and truth.
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The offering of worship must be given in reverence to God. We can’t get sloppy and weary in worshiping Him.
God’s Command
“Take all the fat around the internal organs, the long lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat around them, and burn it all on the altar” (Ex. 29: 13)
God gives us specific instructions regarding what is and isn’t acceptable ways to worship Him.
Hmmmm. Charnock is on a roll, isn’t he?
What I get from this is that God can be very specific. He told Noah exactly how big to build the ark.
God also gave specific instructions as to how we are to worship Him. It may have to do with getting things exactly right.
I would imagine it is more about us following God’s directions. He wants our obedience.
The original sin occurred because Adam and Eve decided they would not obey God. He told them not to eat the fruit of one specific tree. They did anyway.
To restore our worship of Him, we have to do exactly what God says for us to do. We have to put Him in charge.
Heathen Precedent, who Offered Their Males and Their Children
“You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord” (Lev. 18: 21 ESV)
God requires spiritual worship to be performed His way rather than the world’s way.
Oh, great. Charnock didn’t give us a verse on this one.
We know there are verses that told the Israelites to not sacrifice their children to the gods of other nations. Let’s go with that.
Well, there aren’t any sermons devoted to this topic — probably because in my neck of the woods people generally don’t do this anymore.
So, let’s dig into what the verse is saying.
Matthew Henry told us who Molech was. He wrote, “Moloch (as some think) was the idol in and by which they worshipped the sun, that great fire of the world; and therefore in the worship of it they made their own children either sacrifices to this idol, burning them to death before it, or devotees to it, causing them to pass between two fires, as some think, or to be thrown through one, to the [honor] of this pretended deity, imagining that the consecrating of but one of their children in this manner to Moloch would procure good fortune for all the rest of their children.”
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But we can’t just pat ourselves on the back and say we don’t do that anymore. Henry said in his commentary for Deuteronomy 12: 31 that we can’t even check it out.
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We can’t even look like we are doing research on worshiping something else than God. It is too easy to be sucked into it. We need to leave it alone.
The worst thing we could do is follow the customs of the world. They may look all nice and shiny, but they aren’t designed to be loving and uplift us.
I think the main point here is that God has specific requirements for worship. We do not want to deviate from them. “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (Deut. 12: 32 ESV).
Fun fact. Second Kings 23: 10 and Jeremiah 7: 31 both talk of Tophet in conjunction with the sacrifice of children. Instead of being a high place, this was a valley adjoining Jerusalem. It went from what sounded to me like a park where people went to get air to being a cemetery.
Jeremiah had been prophesying about the destruction of Jerusalem.
Remember we said we pat ourselves on the back because we don’t do this anymore? But in a way don’t we still do that?
True, there might not be flames involved, but haven’t we sacrificed our children.
Think about it. In the 1950s, many people went to church. All they heard was fire and brimstone and sit down and be quiet. They didn’t hear God is a loving God who wants them to find His joy.
So, starting in the 1960s, many of the kids started rebelling against going. When they had kids in the 1980s and 1990s, they didn’t “force” them to go to church.
Now in the 2010s and 2020s, the children have no concept of church.
Oh, I can see in some cases that we have run our children off. Keeping our buildings pristine was more important than purifying our kids’ souls.
We have to worship God for Who He is. He is a loving, caring Father.
Making the Connections
I think we found the key to worship. We have to worship God in obedience and submission.
Yes, the how is important. The why is much more important.
God will only accept our worship when the why is present. We have to worship Him because He is Sovereign God, Creator and controller of the universe.
How Do We Apply This?
- Gain a closer relationship with God from our worship of Him.
- Do not neglect the spiritual aspect of worship.
- Don’t be absorbed in the world.
Repent of our sins.
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Father God. We worship You because You are worthy. Lord, our worship falls short of what You deserve, Yet, You require our obedience in worshiping You. Help us to praise You the correct way. Amen.
What do you think?
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