No 3

(Acceptable True Spiritual Worship Explained)

When it all boils down, there are only two ways of worshiping the Lord: acceptably and unacceptably. The early Jews learned this lesson the hard way. When they were waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain with the law, they grew impatient and created an idol; well, technically it was an idol but their intention was to create an image of the One that brought them out of Egypt (Exod 32:4). They worshipped the true God, but in the wrong manner. Another occasion is when Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu burned incense that was not commanded by the Lord on the altar and it is called in verse 1 of Levitcus 10 : "strange fire". They worshipped the true God but in a self-styled manner. One last example is where the Jews were offering sick sheep or lame ones and had taken worship to be something of a ritual (Malachi 1:8). They worshipped the true God but with a bad attitude.

In our last study on this, we looked at several verses in the New Testament that gave ways of worshipping the true God in an acceptable manner. All these verses basically spoke of meeting people's needs and offering this to God as acceptable true spiritual worship. Could we ever be accused of doing these things, say: in the wrong manner, or in a self-styled way, or with a bad attitude?? This is a retorical question, of course, but nonetheless, it needs to be asked.

If we want to worship God in a true, spiritual and acceptable manner we must worship Him with what He gave us when He created us. We learn how to worship God by reading His Word ( our intelligence); we choose to worship Him (our wills) and because of what He did for us and because He loved us first, we worship him by our love (our emotions). God created us in His image; we ressemble Him by our minds, our wills and our emotions.