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Deuteronomy 12
Posted by Administrator (charlie) on Apr 06 2009
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1. Introduction

I was listening to a speaker this week and he made this comment.  “We are an A.D.D. culture. We cannot focus on anything for very long.”  That is why we are in the tank economically right now.  It is why we are such an unhealthy nation.  It is why we demand so much activity with so little time to do anything.

Spiritually, the same thing is true.

We are in a spiritual A.D.D. culture in which we cannot look at or do anything for the long haul.

We don’t stay with things or see them to their conclusions before we are jumping ship and moving to the next program.

I have intentionally tried not to do too much programming here for that reason.

I would rather be a faithful Bible teacher than a good manager of the latest SBC program.

 

2. Describing the Biblical Text

As w are looking at the text this morning we are seeing a text that is describing the idea of the Lord’s desire for them to worship where he has chosen to meet them..

The key is the sacrifice and where the Lord chose to meet the people.

Jesus is the sacrifice today and since God has taken care of the sacrifice, location no longer matters.

That is what Jesus was saying when he said that true worshipers don’t worry about being in the temple or on the mountain; they worry about God’s truth and His Spirit.

 

3. Narrate the Contextual application

As we look at this passage we can see that God wants something.

God simply wants us to love Him and to demonstrate that love through truly worshiping Him.

He does not want us to hold on to the elements of our former lives or to preserve the pagan ideas that populated the world’s culture.

He wasn’t us to worship in Spirit and in truth.

But what does that mean?

It is not a cultural question.

It is not a musical question.

It is not even a church question.

It is a personal; question.

 

4. Life Application (thesis)

There a lot of things that we roll into the idea of worship.

Mostly, we consider it having something to do with our music.

That is why ministers of music have become known as worship pastors, worship and creative arts ministers and leaders of worship.

It seems as though music has become the defining character of worship.

But, I want to tell you that it isn’t.

There are actually two defining characters of worship:  The character of God which never changes and the character of the worshiper which can be just about anything.

True worship is not going to come out of this hymnal and it’s not going to come out of a drum set or a guitar.

True worship is going to come out of your heart and your life and will be defined by your love for God as demonstrated by your obedience.

True worship stems from keeping the commands of God.

 

5. SO WHAT!!  (Outline)

This gives us 3 principles that we must understand if we want to be true worshipers.

We must be mindful of the Lord’s plan.

Have you ever thought of what life would be like if you never planned anything?

I think that would drive me nuts.

Have you ever been lost on the highway?

Nothing is more frustrating to me than to be lost especially if I have to be somewhere by a certain time.

It drives me crazy.

One day I was on my way somewhere thinking I have plenty of time all I need to do is enter the address in my GPS.  Guess what?  The address was not found and I was stuck.  I started heading in the right general direction and called my daughter who is the most internet savvy person I know.  I asked her to look up the address on Google and then give me directions.  The found it, gave me the directions and I did eventually get there on time.

But I try to have a plan on a trip.

 

God has a plan for us and sometimes, we the people lose sight of that plan or we think we can put our lives and our church on autopilot and the plan will just happen.

That is really not the way things work

The problem with most plans is that they are not necessarily seen as being the best plans by all those involved.

Consequently one is forced off message or off plan by mere circumstances or rebellion as was the case with Moses.

Remember, these people were at the brink of entering the promised land once before but hey pulled back and the refused to go where the Lord was taking them and then they had to wander, wander in the wilderness for some 40 years waiting for the generation of the rebels to pass away for the Lord to be able to enact His plan again with a new generation of people.

 

The Lord was pretty clear about His plan.

He wanted a people who would love serve and obey Him, who would demonstrate their love by obeying Him.

Look at verse 5.

Come to the Lord.  Seek Him where He establishes His name.

Bring your worship to Him.

I think that is what he tells us today except there eis one big difference.

Today, we come by grace to a savior who has chosen to indwell the hearts of His people so instead of going to Him, he brings us into His presence.

 

The static is this however, we must still obey Him.

The responsibility to obey the Lord did not disappear under the age of grace.

The responsibility to obey the Lord is actually the highest mark of grace in the life of the believer.

Obedience is not the obligation to keep or to maintain our relationship in good standing with Christ although it does do that.

Obedience is the demonstration that we love God and we are grateful that he demonstrated His great love for us.

Obedience keeps is in the Lord’s plan as we obey Him in our love for Him.

 

Let’s look at our second principle this morning.

We must be mindful of the Lord’s provision.

I remember the very first Vacation Bible School that we had at my first church.  The Purity Ice Cream Company donated small cups of cream and my favorite little wooden spoons to eat them with.  Well, it was a very generous donation of vanilla ice cream and do you know what happened the first night we served it?  Instead of “thank-you’s,” we got, “Don’t you have any chocolate.”

 

Sometimes the people of God become like spoiled brats and we really don’t appreciate all that the Lord has done for us.

Look with me at verse 20

Do you see how the Lord plans to bless them by enlarging their borders?

He is going to make provision for them so that there will a be a sacrifice

Remember that little prayer of Jabez out of Chronicles that became a the Christian marketers dream come true?

We almost have an entitlement mentality in church as though God needed to save because we were deserving of it.

In reality, the only thing that we are deserving of is death and hell.

The Bibles tells us that we were dead in our trespasses and sins and we were made alive by God through Christ.

 

What is even more amazing than that is that God has chosen to bless us beyond our salvation.

He has enlarged our borders with good friends and close families.

He has given some of us earthly relationships in which we can thrive and grow as well.

Some of us have been provided with skills and jobs in which we can serve Christ through our incomes and with our families.

This demonstrates our third principle.

We must be mindful of the Lord’s purpose.

I often think about he church the Anthony Compollo spoke of in NY State.  This is the church that split over their stained glass windows.  They split over whether Adam should be depicted with a belly button.

Why would a church split over something like that?

It would be because they lost focus on the purpose of God and place the focus on themselves.

 

There is a church in the NT that did much the same thing.

The church at Corinth was a divided church and it was over the same kind of stuff.  The fought over who was a better teacher, Paul, Apollos, or Peter or Cephas as he was also known.

Because they were divided over the mundane, they lost sight of that which was important.

They were in a pagan city where Aphrodite’s temple was and they had the opportunity to be a great witness for the Lord yet because of their divisions, they tolerated immorality themselves.

They abused each other in the serving of the Lord’s Supper.

They exalted themselves by the misuse of spiritual gifts.

They took each other to court.

 

Look at the very last verse of Deuteronomy 12.

They say that successful people focus on one thing and they do that one thing very well.

Our focus should be on that one thing, simply obeying God at His word.

That seems so simple and yet it has become so hard.

But the only thing that makes it hard is the fact that too many of us our focused on ourselves.

When you see division, you will find selfishness.

When you see immorality, you will find selfishness.

When you see worship that is merely a form having lost its power, you will find selfishness.

Paul painted a picture of the selfish church to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. ²For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, ⁴treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power

God’s purpose for us is very simple: love Him with everything that we are and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

It is when we are doing that that we will truly worship God.

Last changed: Apr 06 2009 at 12:15 PM

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