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Celebration
and Praise is No Substitute for Worship
Part I
After descending from
Heaven and speaking the Ten Commandments to
Israel from Mount Sinai (Exodus 20), the Lord
called Moses to a summit on Mount Sinai. (Exodus
24:12) During the forty-day visit, God gave Moses
various instructions and the Ten Commandments
that Jesus had written with His own finger on two
tablets of stone. Moses left his brother Aaron,
and Hur* in charge of the camp as he and his
aide, Joshua, departed. The Bible says,
the glory of the Lord settled on
Mount Sinai. For six days [Moses and Joshua
waited near the summit while] the cloud covered
the mountain, and on the seventh day, the Lord
called to Moses from within the cloud. To the
Israelites, the glory of the Lord looked like a
consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses
entered the cloud as he went up the mountain. And
he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty
nights. (Exodus 24:16-18, insertion mine)
While Moses was visiting
with God in what looked like a consuming fire on
top of the mountain, the Hebrews camped at the
foot of the mountain became bored. The Bible
says, When the people saw that Moses was so
long in coming down from the mountain, they
gathered around Aaron and said, Come, make
us gods [a god **] who will go before us. As for
this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we
dont know what happened to him [he may have
perished in the fire]. Aaron [who tried to
thwart their evil request by demanding their
precious jewelry] answered them Take of the
gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your
daughters are wearing, and bring them to
me. So [to Aarons dismay] all the
people took off their earrings and brought them
to Aaron. He [obligingly] took what they handed
him and [he had it] made it into an idol cast in
the shape of a [male] calf**, fashioning it with
a tool. Then they [the metal craftsmen] said,
these are your gods [This is your god**], O
Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.
When Aaron saw this, he built [tried to sanctify
the situation by building] an altar in front of
the calf and announced, Tomorrow there will
be a festival [a celebration] to the Lord.
So the next day the people [were excited and
they] rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings
and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward
they sat down to eat and drink and got up to
indulge in revelry [wild dancing and singing].
Then the Lord said to Moses, Go down
because your people, whom you brought out of
Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick
to turn away from what I commanded them and have
made for themselves an idol cast in the shape of
a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed
to it and have said, These are your gods
[This is your god**], O Israel, who brought you
out of Egypt. I have seen these
people, the Lord said to Moses, and
they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me
alone so that my anger may burn against them and
that I may destroy them. Then I will make you
into a great nation. But Moses sought the
favor of the Lord his God. O Lord, he
said, why should your anger burn against
your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with
great power and a mighty hand?
(Exodus 32:1-11, insertions and emphasis mine)
Did you notice the way
the Lord tested Moses? The Lord identified
rebellious Israel as Moses people, but
Moses reminded the Lord that the Israelites were His
people and that He had brought them up out
of Egypt! This banter about ownership says much
about the character development that took place
during the forty years Moses spent in the desert
herding sheep. When Moses was a powerful member
of Pharaohs court, the Israelites were his
people and he thought of himself as their
deliverer. Now eighty years old, Moses
understood the truth. He was a servant of the
Owner and Deliverer of the sheep.
As Moses and Joshua
descended the mountain, a loud sound could be
heard. When Joshua heard the noise of the
people shouting, he said to Moses, There is
the sound of war in the camp. Moses
replied: It is not the sound of victory, it
is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of
singing that I hear. When Moses approached
the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his
anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his
hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the
mountain. (Exodus 32:17-19) And when
Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron
had made them [dance and sing] naked unto their
shame among their enemies). Then Moses stood in
the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on
the Lords side? Let him come
unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto him. And he said to
them, Thus saith the Lord of Israel,
Put every man his sword by his side, and go
in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,
and slay every man his brother, and every man his
companion, and every man his neighbor [that is
naked]. And the children of Levi did
according to the word of Moses: and there fell of
the people that day about three thousand men [and
in addition to this, many women]. (Exodus
32:25-28, KJV, insertions mine) And [after
thousands of naked revelers were slain] the Lord
struck the people with a plague because of what
they did with the calf Aaron had made. (Exodus
32:35, insertions mine)
No
Substitute for Worship
Three thousand men and
perhaps as many women were killed that day, and
perhaps thousands more perished when God sent His
plague upon the camp. This is a powerful object
lesson. The worship of God is a very serious
matter and God is angered by idolatrous revelry
and dissipation. From Gods point of view,
there is a sharp difference between true worship
and false worship. True worship occurs when a
person approached God to humbly and obediently
submit to Gods commands. Celebration and
praise are no substitute for worship. Of course,
it is appropriate to praise God in a worship
service, but our praise falls on deaf ears if we
have not humbly and obediently entered into
worship. The primary reason for worship is the
renewal of submission to God and His authority.
God calls us to worship to break up our
selfishness. The carnal heart is like jello; as
it gets cold, it will congeal. True worship
renews our understanding of God and commitment to
His Word. True worship warms the heart and makes
it turn to putty in the Potters hand. If
submission is not the design of every worship
service, the service itself becomes a stumbling
stone. False worship can be inspiring and
comforting and false worship is popular and
fulfilling to the carnal nature because it
satisfies the carnal nature. Billions of people
are following in Cains footsteps. They are
telling God how He will be worshiped rather than
humbly submitting to Gods commands. I have
said many times, if we leave a worship service
without being brought into a deeper sense of
Gods love and our need to obediently submit
to His authority, we have not worshiped we
have been entertained.
Aaron knew the price of
true worship because he had been on the mountain
in Gods presence just a few days earlier.
(Exodus 24:1) He tried to weasel out of the
request to make an idol by demanding they give up
their precious golden earrings and to his
surprise, they gave them up. Then, at the feast,
he demanded they dance naked and to
everyones amazement, they gave up their
clothes. This is a powerful object lesson. The
carnal nature would rather give up possessions
and decency than to submit to gods
authority. The revelry at the base of Mount Sinai
is very revealing (pun intended). Aaron failed to
stand up for the honor of God whose cloud of
burning fire was clearly visible at the top of
the mountain because he was afraid the people
would riot and ultimately kill him. Aaron tried
to rectify the idolatry of Israel by putting an
altar to the Lord in front of the golden
calf, but that did not stop them. Aaron should
have boldly refused to build the idol and
suffered the hostility of the Israelites.
Aarons weakness is seen today. Many
preachers, to keep their jobs, give their
congregations what they want rather than what
they need. Thus, Israels descent into
apostasy is like ours.
Israels long
history is one of rebellion against the Lord.
About 700 years after the golden calf incident,
just before the northern ten tribes were to be
destroyed in 722 B.C., the Lord said to Israel
through Isaiah, The multitude of your
sacrifices what are they to me? Says the
Lord. I have more than enough of burnet
offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened
animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls
and lambs and goats. When you come to appear
before me, who has asked this of you, this
trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless
offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New
Moons, Sabbaths and convocations I cannot
bear [to listen to] your evil assemblies. Your
New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my
soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am
weary of bearing them. When you spread out your
hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you;
even if you offer many prayers, I will not
listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and
make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out
of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!
Seek justice encourage the oppressed. Defend the
cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the
widow. (Isaiah 1:11-17)
What is the point of
attending a worship service if God will not
accept our worship? Those who approach God must
do so with clean hearts and hands. Jesus told the
woman at the well, Yet a time is coming and
has now come when the true worshipers will
worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they
are the kind of worshipers the Father
seeks. (John 4:23) The phrase,
Worship the Father in spirit and
truth means submission. Worship is a humble
surrender to Gods authority. Worship
services should renew our devotion to God because
our carnal nature is hostile toward God (Romans
8:7) and the law of sin is at work in our bodies.
(Romans 7:23) However, we will be transformed by
the power of the Holy Spirit if we wholeheartedly
worship God and submit to His authority. (2
Corinthians 5:17; 1 Peter 4:1,2)
About 100 years after the
ten tribes had been destroyed because of
rebellion, the Lord told Jeremiah that the
remaining two tribes of Israel were about to be
destroyed. Notice the words of the Lord:
For when I brought your forefathers out of
Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them
commands about [temporary] burnt offerings and
sacrifices, but I gave them this command:
Obey me, and I will be
your God and you will be my people. Walk in all
the ways I command you, that it may go well with
you. But they did not listen or pay attention;
instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations
of their evil hearts [and even though they never
failed to have worship services, they rarely
worshiped me]. They went backward and not
forward
. Therefore say to them, This
is the nation that has not obeyed the Lord its
God or responded to correction. Truth has
perished; it has vanished from their lips. Cut
off your hair [Jeremiah] and throw it away; take
up a lament on the barren heights, for the Lord
has rejected and abandoned this generation that
is under his wrath. (Jeremiah
7:22-24, 28, 29 insertion mine)
After reviewing
Israels idolatry at the foot of Mount Sinai
and 1,500 years of failures, I hope you will be
awaken to the fact that the true meaning of
worship has been largely lost today. True worship
comes with a price, the price of submission. A
strong current of false worship is sweeping the
world away from God and when the first
angels message in Revelation 14:6,7 is
given; the call to fear God and worship Him will
be stunning!
* Hur
was probably one of the seventy elders because he
was the head of the tribe of Judah which was the
largest tribe.
** See Psalm
106:19,20.
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