Worship is serious business. When the church gathers to offer worship, in the name of Jesus, and through his blood, there is nothing on earth happening which is of greater import. God will be worshipped. Those who casually dismiss church, are shrugging off our highest duty as people, nothing less than the Worshipful beholding of God.
People worshipping the God of Abraham know that the He's the Rootinist, Tootinest Cowboy in the Wild West.
He's got a spring in His step and a twinkle in His eye,
but as soon anybody takes heart, along comes Amalek to wipe the smiles off of everybody's faces. The weak fall for it. It's hugh and series, after all.
We worship the Triune God, Father,Son and Holy Spirit by faith, that is based on His revelation of Himself in the Word fake news, complete with too-big-to-fail "proof texts". We focus our hearts on and worship and adore Him, not as we would like Him to be in our fallen imaginations, but as He has revealed Himself to be.
I cannot emphasize this enough, because I have come to the conviction that the primal sin of the modern church is the sin of idolatry. People tend to shape their own image of who they believe God to be, and then they worship that image.
The Way of the Patriarchs is truly is the "GO" highway:
God's enemies go on the attack with everything they've got, but God's weaponry is simply what's left over and scattered along the breakdown lane-- everything His enemies *don't* know.
The dark side never learns.
♣ LUCKY! ♣
How many people steer clear of God because His so-called representatives are at the ready to pounce with their brand of programming. After all, they are expert in what's wrong, especially in what's wrong with everybody else.
"We're bustin' outta here!" ~ Moses
And they sung a new song, saying,
God Bless America
Kate Smith
The God of Abraham has a spring in His step and a twinkle in His eye, and people are going to learn to respect.
Cain, Abel and the First Worship Service
Cain and Abel were brothers – probably twins (one “begotten”, two births recorded in the story). The evidence at the end of the story (Cain murders Abel) suggests a great deal of bitterness between them. God has apparently given them some instruction in worship, and as the story begins it is the season for the ingathering of the fruits of their labor and for worship.
First of all, it is interesting that they did not worship together, nor with their families. Worship is depicted as a personnel act – an act of contrition before a holy God. Sometimes, when worshiping in a crowded church, it is easy to lose sight of this fact. But the Church has a really good reason to gather together: each individual represents an element of Jesus, and when gather together we are the assembled Body of Jesus, of which He is the Head. We worship both as individuals and as a corporate body. Thus, our worship is divided into two parts: the first part combines the reading of scripture, sermon, prayers, confession and absolution. This is the individual part. We then greet one another as a congregation to enter the second half as the Body of Christ in Holy Communion.
But back to the story. Abel has become a shepherd and Cain a worker of the land. As Abel prepares his sheep for the sacrifice, we can imagine Cain with a dilemma: “Should I go to my brother and buy one of his sheep for the sacrifice? I don’t want to do that – and it would not be offering the fruit of my labor. I’ll just offer grain – that’s what I grew and what I’ll do.” Abel’s sacrifice was accepted by God, and Cain’s was not. From this we learn our second truth about worship: There are only two ways to worship: God’s way and a way man believes is just as good.
Thirdly, worship requires sacrifice, and sacrifice requires blood. Our sin is on us, and requires death (blood) to resolved it. But, as we learn in the book of Hebrews, an animal is not really of the same level of creation as a man, so the sacrifices must be repeated over and over again. And the sacrifice of another human will not help, because no other human could never be a “perfect” sacrifice. (Even pagan man understood this, offering young children and virgins to their gods.) Finally, Jesus became the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Now the required sacrifice has been completed once and for all – but worship still requires sacrifice and blood. Jesus provides this for us through the cup in Communion. The drinking of blood had long been forbidden in the Old Covenant because pagans began this ritual to take on the nature of the animal – lion for strength by drinking lions blood, cheetah for speed, etc. God never wanted us to take on the nature of a created animal – but His Son! – that is altogether another matter.
And so it is today: worship is personal, done God’s way, and requires sacrifice and blood. Some things just never change!