All right, we're ready to take our Bibles. Let's stand for the reading of God's word. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 46. All right. So I'm going to ask all the teenagers and young people if you would please pledge to put your phones away. And if you would just put them away for 40 minutes. I know that is an eternity. but I'm gonna ask that you would do that, please. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 46, we're gonna read seven verses. Hear the word of the Lord. So Israel took his journey, Israel referring to Jacob, his whole household, the entire family, took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba. and offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac. To the God of his father, Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in a vision of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob, and he said, here I am. And then he said, I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt. What a promise. And I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes. Then Jacob set out from Beersheba. The sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, their little ones, and their wives, and their wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him. And they also took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan and came to Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him, his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his offspring he brought with him into Egypt. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I ask, oh Lord God, that you would be with us this morning during our time of teaching, and may this be, Lord, through the Holy Spirit, super helpful, encouraging, and edifying, productive. May your people feel as though they've gained something because of their time in your word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. So we're not gonna exegete all those verses. We're gonna focus right here, just this little tiny section right here. Offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And then next week, we'll come back again and we'll look at all seven verses all over again. Two weeks ago, Pastor Jonathan accused me of preaching on single words like the word and, and he said that I could build an entire sermon from and. I'm going to do a little bit more than and this morning. We've got one, two, three, four, five words, okay, that we're going to deal with here. But I want you to notice that offering sacrifices to God is what God's people do. This is what we do. We are characterized by the action of offering sacrifices to our God. And I want you to see this morning that this is a theme through all of Genesis. So what I want to do is I want to go back to Genesis, I want to work through the entire book, and then I want to launch over the rest of the Old Testament and launch to a connection point in Romans concerning worship. And I want to hopefully tie the two together for you. So Cain and Abel both bring an offering to the Lord. And often it's said that one was rejected because it wasn't blood, and the other one was, and that's the rejection. That is actually not a good understanding of the text. And I preached an entire sermon that you can find on Sermon Audio. Download the Church One app if you don't already have it. It's free. You can get it for Apple or Android devices. It's a generic app, put in Berean Baptist CH, then you'll know you're at the right page when you see our church logo there. And then if you wanna listen to the sermon because you got more curious about why was one offering accepted and the other one rejected, you can download the particular sermon and listen to it. In verse 26, which is the last verse in chapter number four, there's a turning point. And the language of the text is, at that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. People began to call upon the name of the Lord. What I want to show you this morning is that language like call upon or call on the name of the Lord and language like altar and language like offerings and sacrifices, that whenever we see that type of descriptive words in a verse or in a particular section of scripture, we need to be thinking worship. That this is their way of worshiping the Lord. We make a giant mistake in our thinking when we limit worship to singing praise to God. And that's not to minimize in any way, shape, or form the praise that we offer in our corporate assembly and the praise that you offer individually by song driving down the road. We're not minimizing that in any way, shape, or form, but worship is much larger than that. Much larger than that. Worship could be defined as any act that is done or motivated by a desire to ascribe worth or glory to God. So you can virtually turn lots and lots of things into worship by seeking to do it in such a way or to do it with a heart that ascribes worth to God. Worth to God. I found it very interesting that the secular definition of God, the secular definition of God, this is Webster's Collegian Dictionary, defines God as the being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness. And there are a lot more that can be said about that. A lot more attributes can be put in there, but those are good ones. But I want you to notice what they say is who is worshiped. who is worshiped. So here's the reality. You may say that you believe in God, uppercase G, but you might not actually worship God. You might worship something else as God, lowercase g. And I want you to think this morning, all morning long, do I worship God? I don't mean 15 minutes on Sunday morning. I don't mean during the corporate gathering. I'm talking about a much larger sense. Do I worship God as the creator and ruler of the universe? Do I worship God as my creator? Do I worship God as my ruler? And we could easily add, if we want to expand that definition, we could put in there redeemer. That would be really good. Redeemer, to put an emphasis on God our Savior. But this is a good starting point, because at the center of this definition is the concept that God is the being worthy of being worshiped. worthy of being worshiped. So what I want to do is I want to show you that worship of God is a major theme in Genesis, beginning in chapter 4 and culminating in chapter 46. Now, on the verse that I showed you, at this time, men began to call upon the name of the Lord. This is the CSV. I just took a picture right out of it. This is the CSV study Bible note. It's one you might look at if you own this one or another study Bible note. And I want you to notice what's there and not there. So verse 26, the name Enosh, like the name Adam, means humanity. In a very real sense, Enosh's birth marks a new and brighter beginning for humanity as people now began to call on the name of the Lord, and then they define, Lord, for you there is Yahweh, and then they help us understand, Exodus 3.15, that this is Yahweh's personal name. What question is missing, though? What do they not address? What are you left wondering with that study note? I heard it. Someone said it. All right, what causes it? That's good. And Michael, you said what caused them to start worshiping God, and you inserted into your question your understanding that they don't address. And what they don't address is, what does it mean to call on the name of the Lord? In other words, did they stand there and go, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord? Or were they on their knees going, Lord, Lord, Lord? I mean, is that what was happening? Lord, Lord, Lord, is that? What was going on here? What did it mean to call upon the name of the Lord? In Word Biblical Commentary on Genesis, Gordon Wenham gives us this additional commentary. He says, the call on the name of the Lord is used elsewhere in Genesis, as in Genesis 12, 13, 21, 26, and it seems to be, and this is good, an umbrella phrase for worship. for worship. So Abel and Cain were seeking to worship God. And then Genesis 4, 26, there was a turning point when men began to worship God. Men began to worship God. In chapter number 8, we find Noah building an altar to Yahweh, and he takes some of the clean animals and every clean bird, and he offers a burnt offering on the altar to God. And this is no doubt in response to what? What's in chapter 8? This is no doubt in response to what? God's saving them! Chapter seven, they're on an ark for over a year. Chapter eight, they get out of the ark. And what's this first act, having been saved from God, from judgment, by God, from judgment, what's his first act? It's time to worship the Lord. I've not had an opportunity to worship the Lord by offering sacrifices on this ark for a year. And my immediate response is, I need to ascribe word to God for what? For salvation, for saving me, right? From saving me. In chapter number 12, then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him, to your offspring, I will give you this land. In response to the promise that God said to you, I'll give this land, he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. And the next verse says, verse number eight says, and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon Yahweh, or called upon the name of the Lord. or offered worship to Yahweh. In chapter number 13, Abraham again, and there Abraham called upon the name of the Lord. What is he doing? The Net Bible helps us. The Net Bible says, and there Abraham worshiped the Lord. Worshiped the Lord. In chapter 21, we read about him planting a tree. Isn't this interesting? Planting a tree, and then having planted a tree, he called there on the name of the Lord, and now the everlasting God. All right, stop. Freeze. Just a moment. Our Father who art in heaven, Our father who art in heaven, come on, you should know this. Help me. Hallowed be thy name. What is that? What is hallowed be thy name? What are we doing when we pray privately or corporately? Hallowed be thy name. What are we doing? Yeah, we're ascribing worship. Your name is hallowed. Your name is set apart. Your name is holy. Your name is separate. We are not the people who are characterized by flippantly using your name. Your name is holy. Your name is worthy of worship. Your name is set apart. Yes or no, church? Yes. Yes. Yes. What happens in Genesis 22? Don't turn there. You should know your Bibles. Cheaters. Guilty as charged. What happens there? I heard someone say it. Yes, it's the sacrifice of Isaac. Go ahead and turn there, please. Genesis 22. Now you can, yes. Now you can. It's a guided tour, John. Don't get ahead of the guide. Genesis 22. Genesis 22. I ask questions like that because I want us to grasp the idea that there is an expectation that we learn our Bibles. That there is an expectation that we learn our Bibles. Chapter 22 is one of the most difficult chapters in the entire Bible. We are shocked as the reader when God tells Abraham to sacrifice his one and only son. We are blown away by this expectation that God himself would ask a father to sacrifice his son. They get to Mount Moriah, they have been traveling, father, son, and some servants. Young men is how they're described in verse number five. And I want you to hear the language of the Bible. When we read, then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and please notice what they're going to do. They're going to worship. Stop and think about this. Let this sink in. Abraham believed that Yahweh was so worthy of his obedience that he described the sacrificing as Isaac to God as a burnt offering as worship? As worship? Worship? Did you notice your bulletin cover? Did you see your bulletin cover? Do you have it right there, your bulletin cover? Does anyone have a bulletin cover? Okay, can you look at it, please? Can you take a second and look at the front of it, please? Can you take a moment? We gave you the date of the next Lord's Supper. We're asking you to put it on your calendar. We're asking you to say that you are so worthy of my worship during this sacred ordinance that I'll be there. That I will be there. that I know the table's gonna be there. I know the representation of the death and the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is gonna be there. And I know that I've been saved from the wrath of God because of the blood sacrifice of the Son of God, and I will make it my priority to join the body of Christ in what? Worship. And those of you who were here last Sunday night, we worshiped the Lord. It was truly a time of collective worship, ascribing worth to God through these sacraments, through these elements of the communion. In verse number eight, Isaac asked the question, where's the sacrifice? Where's the lamb, dad? Something's missing. And prophetically, Abraham says, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering. And we know that this is a prophetic reference to Jesus Christ being offered as the ultimate sacrifice, the lamb of God dying for the sins of the world. And somehow I think that we go, okay, Christ died on the cross, done with sacrifices, the end, story over, move forward. That's unfortunate. That's unfortunate thinking. What I need to be embracing as a follower of Christ is He made the ultimate sacrifice. It's nothing for me to sacrifice my this, that, or another thing. He's not asking me to give my life right now. He's asking me to stay alive and sacrifice. He provides for me the ultimate example of what this looks like. Genesis 26, then Isaac built an altar and there worshiped the Lord. Genesis 31, Genesis 35, Jacob offered a sacrifice. Genesis 35, Jacob poured out a drink offering. Paul will call his entire life a drink offering, his entire life. Genesis 46, Jacob offered sacrifices to God en route to Egypt. So look at this litany of this chart I have for you on the screen. Chapter four, chapter eight, chapter 12, 13, 21, 22, 26, 31, 35, and 46. Obviously there's a theme here. And the theme is that God's people worship God. If you go a week without worshiping the God in the next six days, are you really part of God's people? Can you go entire chunks of time without ascribing worth to God? Carving out moments of worth to God. Offering to Him praise and adoration in your heart, in your mind, and by your actions. And we'll talk about that in a minute. So can we move to the New Testament? Is there a continuity? Can we stop with the sacrifices and go to something different? Or is there a bridge or a connection point? Well, turn to Romans chapter 12. I'm going to suggest to you that Romans 12.1 is our bridge. It's our connection point. It's the jumping off point. It's the connection back to this idea of sacrifice. It's a text that you're super familiar with. If you've been in church for any length of time, you've been a follower of Christ any length of time, you've probably heard one or two sermons on this verse. It's kind of a go-to popular kind of a text. It's verse number one of chapter number 12 of the letter that Paul wrote to the church at Rome. Like John was saying, I memorized it in the King James. I beseech you, therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God, I'll read it to you in ESV in verse number one. I appeal to you, therefore, that's in a very important verse, word in the text, brothers and by extension sisters, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies, notice, as a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice that is characterized by being holy and acceptable to God. And then he says, this is, which is your, and you either have reasonable service or spiritual worship or something like that in your text. Those are our kind of options. As I traced it down and did some studying, I noticed that the ESV has spiritual worship. King James and the Net Bible say reasonable service. The NASB says spiritual service of worship. The Christian Standard Bible says this is your true worship. And then Jack Farmer's new favorite Bible is this Jewish Bible. And it's really expanded. It says the logical temple worship for you. Now church, let's be honest, that's quite the variety right there, isn't it? That's quite the variety. So at this point, just kind of give you a heads up, the sermon's gonna become boring. There's no other way of describing it, just boring. If you go to sleep, I'll give you a special dispensation and I'll let you nap this morning, okay? Because when it's boring, you have a justification for napping. I want to show you, using Blue Letter Bible, why we have that variance, all that variety. Because that's quite a bit of difference right there. Reasonable service, spiritual worship. How about logical temple worship for you? And hopefully, in showing you this, you'll get two things. One, a much, much, much better understanding of Romans 12. And two, I'll show you how to use this free tool better. And I know in this church, we have lots of teachers, Sunday school teachers, Wednesday night teachers, Christian school teachers. Power Hour, Children's Sunday School, Wednesday Night Iwana. We have a lot of people that teach God's Word in this church. So maybe you can get something out of this this morning. So at this point we have two questions. Is it spiritual or reasonable, which is the right word choice? Is it service or worship, which is the right word choice? Why this variance? Why this variance? Well, the first thing we may think about when we have a variance like this is there's a textual difference between manuscripts, Greek manuscripts. Textual difference. There is none. There's no textual variance. We know this, John, because we looked at the footnotes. And when you look at multiple footnotes, they'll always give you a little reference like, some manuscripts say. When you see that, you know that there's a variance. And OK, that's why there's a difference. This manuscript versus this one. Not the case in this situation. Not the case. Everyone agrees on what the Greek is. So let's go to Blue Letter Bible, and I wish I had a laptop right here and I could take you on this guided tour, but I'm gonna do the next best thing, which is show you screenshots. All right, raise your hand if you're somewhat familiar with Blue Letter Bible. Raise your hand if you're somewhat. All right, lots of you in the congregation. Very good. Use it more. Use it more. It is super helpful. Hopefully I'm gonna show you two ways. So I put in my Romans 12 one at the top, and by the way, it's completely free, so there's no excuse why you're not using it. Hey, let's acknowledge this. No people in the history of the church for 2,000 years have had the free resources available to us in any sense. And yet, unfortunately, we are some of the most biblically illiterate people ever in 2,000 years of human history having more access than any other group of people have ever had. This is all free. This is an amazing group of volunteers out in California that put this together, and they're making it better every day. I want to focus on the category of number one, interlinear, and number two, Bibles. The category of interlinear and the category of Bibles. We'll do Bibles first. I pull my Bible translations up, and this is my go-to all the time. Before I go to a commentator, I never go to a commentator. I go to multiple languages. I wanna see how did you render it? How did you render it? Why the differences? I'm asking questions. Teachers, you need to be interacting with the text. Why does this say this? Why is this written like this? Why is it translated this way? Ask and answer questions when you're preparing Bible studies. So again, we notice this variance. For example, the Net Bible, let's look at it on the screen together. Therefore, so he starts that translation committee right off the bat. Therefore, I exhort you, brothers and sisters, all Christians, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a sacrifice. And then they want you to see that sacrifice now has some adjectives to describe what kind of sacrifice. Number one, alive, and everyone should say amen. Amen. Because there's only one time that you can offer your body a sacrifice if it's not alive, right? There's three people that got that, John. Literally, there's three people. Sister, if you, like, a dead sacrifice, you can't do that more than once, right? Okay. It's terrible. Visitors, please come back next Sunday. It'll be a better sermon. Holy. Holy. Not sinful, set apart, sanctified, so alive, holy, and pleasing to God. And then it's interesting that they say, this is your reasonable service. This is reasonable. This is reasonable to ask you to present your bodies a living sacrifice that's holy and set apart for God, that's pleasing to God. This is not asking too much. This is a reasonable expectation. The King James is virtually the same. The Christian Standard Bible says, a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. Well, which is it? Is it, sister, my reasonable expectation, or is it true worship? We want to know, John, which one got it right? How should I think about this? So I look at this footnote here. And by the way, listen to me. Footnotes are your friend. Read them. Slow down in your Bible reading and read the footnotes. But I'm trying to get through. I know that's the problem. We're trying to get through, trying to get through. Slow down. The footnotes are there for a reason. The translation committee has to make a choice. Something has to go in the main section, right? Everyone gets that. Then what do I do if I don't know exactly what should go in the main section? What do I add? A footnote. So look at this one. Under the section of spiritual, I'm pointing to spiritual service of worship, I get this footnote to help me understand why the NASB selected, instead of reasonable service, they selected spiritual service of worship. Now those are additional words there. Do you all see that? Those are additional words. In the Greek, there are only two words here. There are literally only two words here in the Greek. And they're translated spiritual service of worship. And the idea here is in contrast to a offering of a literal sacrifice. So why did they specify spiritual? Because you're not offering a literal goat. You're not offering a literal lamb. Did they do that in the Old Testament? Yes. So for us in here, how many of you offered a goat to the Lord before? Not one person. All right, lamb? Bird? Nothing. Nothing. That's not our backdrop, is it? Would that have been their backdrop? Yes. He would have been writing to Jews who would have carried a lamb to Jerusalem maybe multiple times for the Passover. Right. They still had the temple. And even if they were converted, they may have done it in their past as a young person. Or their daddy would have carried them to the temple to offer a sacrifice. They would have seen this happening. So Paul is saying to you, I'm not talking about going back to a sacrificial system of the Old Testament. But grab all that backdrop, put it in your mind, and turn it into an alive sacrifice. An alive sacrifice. So now I want to go to interlinear. And maybe that's not a word you're familiar with. You're like, I didn't go to seminary. This is boring. Well, let's talk about interlinear. Interlinear and learn a new word. It means between the lines. Between the lines. The first inner linear was the Greek New Testament. This is where they put English and Greek side by side, right on top of each other. Geeks like your son-in-law love this stuff, man. They just go crazy over this stuff. And they look at the Greek, look at the English. Look at the Greek, look at the English. Let me show it to you. When you pull up Blue Letter Bible and you're on this interlinear section, which is this tab right here, point up here on the screen, this tab right here, you can come down and grab these tabs. And please do this. You won't hurt anything. Play with it. Learn how to manipulate it. You'll get to these choices. I'll show you an example. This is what we mean by interlinear. It's stacked one on top of each other. I beseech, there's the Greek word. Therefore, there's the Greek word, and so on and so forth. I like to look at it this way. I like to look at it this way, vertical. One's horizontal, one's vertical. Doesn't matter which one. This is my preference. At this point, Daniel, you can look at the Greek words. This is really helpful. So we're going to drill down on the word reasonable. By the way, would you look at that right there? L-O-G-I-K-O-S. You already saw it. Bam, now you know. Now you know exactly why the contemporary Jewish Bible chose the word logical. The argument is very clear. Has God saved you? Has God saved you? Has God delivered you from the wrath of God? Have you been saved from the wrath of God? Somebody say yes, because I've asked four times and not one person has said anything. Have you been saved from the wrath of God? Then it's very logical that you would respond. It's very reasonable that you would respond. We're not asking for anything that's illogical. We're not asking for anything that's unreasonable. God sent his son to die for your sins. It's not asking too much that you would worship him having been saved. It's not asking too much. This is a logical response. We drill down on it by clicking on it, which is what you need to learn how to do. And we go over to this, and I found this amazing. This word right here is Logos. That's correct. It's Logos. This is the word for Jesus in John chapter 1. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld the glory of the only begotten Son of God. In the beginning was the Lord, and the Lord is with us. This is the Greek word. No wonder why they're thinking so spiritual. This is the very root word for Jesus or the revelation of Jesus. No wonder why this is such a spiritual thing. We're talking Jesus here. So I look up here where it says King James translates and I can do the NASB also. Those are your two options. And I noticed that this Greek word is used twice, just twice, in the entire New Testament. The other use, I click on it right here, and I find out it's 1 Peter 2.2. 1 Peter 2.2. The word that we're translating reasonable, or the word that we're translating spiritual. We're trying to figure out, is it logical, reasonable, or spiritual? So I go over here and I notice sincere milk of the word. See, there's the King James, there's the word right there. But I noticed the Net Bible doesn't put word there, instead they put spiritual. I noticed that the CSB says pure milk of the word, all right? So they're keeping the word. I noticed here that the NASB says pure milk of the word. The ESV says spiritual milk. This is easy, you can understand this. Peter is saying to us that you need to desire the word of God like you desire a cold glass of milk when you're eating chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. All right, let's do it right now, it's survey time. How many enjoy, number one, chocolate chip cookies out of the oven? All right, lots of good hands, you're alive. All right, no dead sacrifices here. All right, how many enjoy a glass of cold milk with your, amen. All right, good, so y'all get this idea. Now, in the same way that you love milk with your cookies, drink the sincere milk of the word of God to nourish your spiritual soul So reasonable or spiritual? The answer is clearly both. It's clearly both. It is a very reasonable request that you would present your bodies as a living sacrifice. And when you present your bodies as a living sacrifice to the Lord, this is incredibly spiritual. This is led by the Holy Spirit. This is between you and the Lord. This is profoundly spiritual. And we already talked about logic. So let's look at this word, therefore, in our understanding of the text. Therefore. Why is it there? That's what you're always asking. Why is it there? Right? Why is it there? Well, it's a bridge, it's a connection point. Therefore serves to connect this appeal to everything God has done in Romans chapters one through 11. For the believer through the gospel of Jesus Christ, including but not limited to salvation, doctrine, justification by faith, et cetera. Therefore, it's very reasonable or logical for you to present your life, a living sacrifice in response to what God has done for you. And this living sacrifice is very spiritual in its nature. Let me explain to you how the book of Romans is organized to help you get the most of this. Left hand, chapters 1 through 11, chapters 1 through 11, heavy in doctrine, lots and lots of doctrine. 12 through 16, almost all application. Having been educated with all this doctrine about what God has done for you, this is what you need to do with it. And the first thing he says is start presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice to God, recognizing that you've been justified by faith, recognizing that God has adopted you into the family of God, recognizing that he has declared you holy, sanctified, set apart, recognizing that Christ died for your sins, recognizing that God made the gospel available to Gentiles. And literally, we go on and on talking about Romans. Based on that, all that doctrine, this is your duty. This is the reasonable expectation that God has for God's people. It's not asking too much. The CSB Study Bible note says, Paul commonly used the indicative mode of speech to make statements about what God has done for us. Then he switches to the imperative mode to outline our proper response. The order of the presentation is doctrine first and then duty. That's really good. We could say it differently. We could say, Matt, if all your Sunday school class does is educate people without application, it's almost pointless. You understand what I mean, Marcus? We're not here to fill your head full of knowledge. Yes, you're learning. Yes, you're learning. But that learning is supposed to turn into what? Action, duty, something out of it. We're not here to create intellectual giants, theologians. We're here to learn what God has done for us and then turn it into action, turn it into choices, turn it into a life. Finally, we look at the last word and we're wrapping it up. We look at the last word, service versus worship. Again, we drill down on the word and we find that it's only used five times. It's only used five times. John 16, Romans 9, Romans 12, twice in Hebrews. In these uses, it deals with service to the tabernacle, the priest, what the priest did in the Old Testament tabernacle, what the priest did in the Old Testament temple. Paul is saying to us, Indirectly. Forget about the Levitical priesthood. You're all priests. Forget about the temple. God is the temple inside of you. You're the temple of God. Now carry this idea that you're a priest and the temple's inside of you, outside there, and go worship God. Go worship God. What do you mean, go worship God? Sacrifice yourself. Sacrifice yourself. Sacrifice your time. Sacrifice your talents. Sacrifice your pick it up, whatever you want. Turn it into an act of worship. Turn it into an act of worship. Finally, and my favorite, is the drill down on the Septuagint. I always want to go back because I want to see the continuity between old and new. I want to see the same God working out a continual message. So when I go back to the Septuagint LXX and I drilled down on it, I find out that there are five times this Greek word is used. I know Exodus 12. I don't even need to go there. Exodus 12 is the Passover. It's the Passover. You remember the Passover, right? This is the Jewish families sacrificing a lamb, putting the blood on the doorpost. Remember that? And if the blood was on the doorpost, what would the death angel do? Come on, y'all know your Bibles. He'd pass over. This was an incredible act of faith. Sacrifice an animal, put it on the doorpost. Know that God has promised that he'll pass over your house. all five times that this English word relates to the offering of bloody sacrifices. Bloody sacrifices. Paul takes a word from the Old Testament, would have had all kinds of bloody sacrifice connotations and applies it to us. Interesting. Anybody know where we're going with this? Let me show it to you. Yep. Read it. All right, why did you show that to us right now? Why did you insert that in the middle of this PowerPoint presentation? Because I don't want you to get this idea. I don't want you to get this idea. In the Old Testament, God was in love with goats, rams, lambs, and all that blood. In the New Testament, God's in love with us being a living sacrifice, that is obedience. I wanted you to see, it's been that way from the beginning. That God has always wanted his people to be characterized by obeying him. from the beginning. The bloody sacrifices were to point to the redemptive act of Christ. That's why we're there. But the true worship of God's people has always been, from the very beginning, obedience. Always, always obedience. Let me just show you very quickly a couple things. Romans 15, six. Paul says, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God. Priestly service. He turns soul winning into priest evangelism, sharing the gospel. He turns it into priestly service. That is an acceptable sacrifice. Wait a minute. Are you saying that when I'm doing one-on-one evangelism, I'm worshiping the Lord? Yes. Are you saying that when I'm building a micro group of discipleship, you're worshiping the Lord? Yes. He talks about gifts as being a sacrifice. He talks about being poured out as a drink offering, his entire life being a drink offering to the Lord. First Peter 2.5 says that we are living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer to God spiritual sacrifices, which are in fact acceptable through Christ Jesus. Hebrews 13 5 talks about a sacrifice of praise. Don't turn there. We don't have near the time. Let me just give you one thought out of here, and we'll move on to our last slide. This is the big debate between the Samaritans and the Jews about where to worship. You remember this? Samaria or Jerusalem? Come on, y'all know your Bibles. One sentence here. One sentence. Jesus says God desires true worshipers. God desires true worshipers. All right, why are you telling us this? The one thing that you can do this week that you know for sure God desires is for you to carve out time to worship Him. To worship Him. When you will carve out time to worship God, you know that you're doing exactly what He desires. God wants you to worship Him. It's easy to do it in the collective assembly. It's easy to do it with the gathering. But I need you to know that God wants you, my sister, to worship Him. That God desires that. And then the last slide and we're done. Revelation 22.3. So I started in Genesis 4, and I'm ending in the last chapter of the last book. And we read these words, I'll pick in that Bible. And there will no longer be any curse and the throne of God and the lamb will be in the city and his servants will worship him. Or we could read it like this. There will no longer be any curse and the throne of God and the lamb will be in it and his bond servants will serve him. And now I get it, now it's clicked. When I offer service to God or my brother in Christ's name, it's an act of worship. So it can easily be translated, it is very reasonable for God to expect you to serve him, which is in fact spiritual worship. Spiritual worship. Both brothers are perfect translations. Oh my goodness, I forgot one more. So go serve others. And in doing so, worship God. Amen. Father, dismiss us with your grace. In Jesus' name, amen.