All right, well, we're gonna go straight into tonight's message, and tonight's message is, not that I've entitled it, but it's what I call the highest occupation. So let's pray first. Well, Lord, you do have a high calling for us, and Lord, every one of us, you have a purpose for, and we're so thankful, Lord, that not only do you save us, But you call us into your harvest field to represent you to be ambassadors so we could share what we found with somebody who was in our shoes Lord and help us never to forget that as we look at people and even more if we come across people who rub us the wrong way and who are aggravating. Let us never forget Lord. We were in their position and they need Christ. And so help us to be able to take this message and give it in word, give it in our lifestyle, Lord, in everything we do. And so tonight, thankful for, um, that we could be here and, uh, pray that most importantly, Lord, that you would come and visit with us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Okay. We're going to read from Psalm 96. First, if you want to turn there, if you have your Bible and, uh, You know, sometimes I think it's maybe we get too dependent on the screen and, you know, got to really flip the pages of the Bible. And they say that a clean Bible is a sign of a lean soul, you know, and make sure you use it and use it up and try to take care of it. But if you take care of it, it certainly will take care of us. But I think it's important that we go through references and we learn where things are sometimes. We become too dependent, and there's one of the downsides of modern technology, and a lot of positive benefits to anything, new developments and that, but sometimes it can take away from a good exercise, and it is learning where things are in the Bible. Well, tonight we're gonna read all of Psalm 36, but we're gonna highlight what, I believe and I think is the highest occupation. You know, occupation does not just mean your job. The word occupation means that which occupies your time in something that you do. And of course, our job occupies a lot of time, hence our occupation. But we have a higher occupation than that. And the highest occupation, I believe, is even in all the various forms of ministry that there are, our highest form of occupation and it's something that we'll do forever. And as you know in heaven we won't have to witness to the lost. In heaven you know we're not going to have to serve the needy. We're not going to have to visit in prisons. We're not going to. We won't have to do that in heaven. But there's something that we can do here that we will continue to do in heaven and that is worship the Lord. And that is our highest occupation. Psalm 96, sing unto the Lord a new song, sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name, show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. And you notice that's a small capital there. There is no other god but God, and this really means people who elevate themselves and are viewed as gods. He is above all them. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Given to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all the earth. Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth. The world also shall be established, that it shall not be moved. He shall judge the people righteously. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad. Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Let the fields be joyful, and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the woods rejoice before the Lord, for he cometh. For he cometh to judge the earth, and he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth. I wanna focus on, though, verse nine, where it says, oh, worship the Lord, in the beauty of holiness. I found this excerpt in one of my books about worship. And it says here, because he is holy, the word holiness refers to his separateness, his otherness, the fact that he is unlike any other being. It indicates his complete and infinite perfection. Holiness is the attribute of God that binds all the others together. Properly understood, it will revolutionize the quality of our worship. You know, if you wanna be good at something, you know, God has created all men, I believe, equal. Our own documents say that, governing our country. But, We're all equal in value. We're not all equal in how he's gifted us for different things. We all have different gifts. And even in Christian service, the Bible compares the body of Christ to a human body. There's hands, the eyes, the foot, and they all serve different functions, different purposes, everyone very needful. You lose one of those functions, it really throws everything else out of sync. And so we all play a part. Not one is really more important than the other. And even the longer we live, some of the things that maybe we do and some of the things that maybe we were gifted in will have to change. I used to work a lot with the young people and used to do all the activities with them and run as fast as them. Now I watch and say to myself, I used to be able to do that. Things change. But there's one thing that doesn't change that we can do now and we will do forever. And this is one thing, if you wanna master anything in the Christian disciplines, and I'm not saying, because I'm addressing it tonight, I'm not saying that I certainly have done this, but this is one thing I wanna get better at, this is one thing I wanna know how to do, and that is to worship the Lord. And we can learn a lot from other people, you know, We need to have sound doctrine. We need to know, thus saith the Lord, and rightly divide the word of truth. And as people certainly have gone way off on tangents, and there's such a hodgepodge today of Christianity, and it confuses people. But you know, even for some of those who have aberrant teachings, and there's still some things we can learn. You know, I don't know if any of you had any background in Presbyterianism. And the Presbyterians, especially the United Presbyterians, have really gone off track on a lot of things. And today they're ordaining homosexuals. It just goes against what the scriptures teach. It doesn't mean we're hateful. We don't hate people who are off track. We love them. But God has boundaries that he wants us to follow. And in Presbyterianism, You know, they have some of the, especially the old Presbyterian church is very classic, sometimes gothic architecture and the big pipe organ and there's something majestic when you go into a building like that. Now listen, God does not dwell in buildings made with hands. But in some ways they had developed at least the respect and the honor to a holy God. The music often indicated that. It was a time of worship. Now, you can get into the formalism and become dead. I have a friend, if you ask him what his denomination is, he says he's a Baptist, a Baptocostal, because he has the learning and the burning. He combines them both. And there's some truth to that. You want to have fervency, which you, I think the Pentecostals had some things right. There was an openness, an open expression about their love for God. That was a good thing. Now it can become pretentious and it does in some people's lives. Where other denominations often were more stoic and they stay back and they can't, if you go into a Presbyterian church and you say amen, everyone will look at you. You'll feel very conspicuous. But we can take the good and learn the good things and learn to apply them to our own lives. We want to get this one thing right as a body of believers. We want to get worship right. And what is worship? Well, worship can be quite natural, but it's also something I think that grows as we grow in our understanding, in our love. And so let's look a little bit about what is worship. Well, the Bible tells us one day, Psalm 22, 27 says, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nation shall worship before thee. One day, as the Bible says, all the knees will bow and every tongue will confess one day. We want to do it now, but there will be some who will do it, and they'll worship, but it'll be too late for them. They will bow down before the king. We have this great privilege now of knowing the Savior and then knowing what it really means to worship. In the Bible worship really comes and I don't think you need to know the original language. I don't know the original language and to me I think the King James is the finest version. And, you know, often you want to go see what a word means, and you search all these commentaries and lexicons and various things, and you'll find out it says what it means. Worship, though, literally, to some extent, means to bow down, to bow down, prostrate, to in homage to something. We lower ourselves in giving honor to something above ourselves, and that is what worship is. is to be to God and God alone. So why do we worship? Well, number one, Isaiah in chapter six is a well-known chapter when Isaiah has a vision. It happens, now I don't know if it's just a catalog to time when it happens, but it states that in the year the king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. Now Isaiah was a prophet and close with God, one of my favorite books of the Old Testament, but He sees a vision in that same year. Now some people speculate maybe because the king was such a prominent figure. Uzziah was a long reigning king and very prominent king. And sometimes things get in our way and obscure our vision of God. And maybe it was the King Uzziah was in the way. That may be, maybe not. Maybe it's the cataloging the time when this vision occurs. But when Isaiah gets a vision of God and he hears the seraphims, the angelic beings giving tribute to God, the attribute that they give homage to God is holy, holy, holy. Now God has many attributes. They could have said eternal, eternal, eternal, but they didn't. They could have said almighty, almighty, almighty, but they didn't. There's a host of things they could have said, but they said holy, holy, holy. And again, holy goes beyond anything what we totally comprehend. It's without blemish. It's the ultimate of the pinnacle of perfection. That is what God is. So why worship God? Because he and he alone is holy. It's his main attribute you will see throughout all the scriptures. Holiness to the Lord, above all others. Yes, he's many other things. He's loving, he's truthful, he's all those things. But again, the binding factor of it all is that he is God and that he is holy. And that makes our position even more unbelievable that he would choose us to be a part of his creation, to be servants to him, that his eyes would be upon us, and he loved us with an everlasting love before the world ever began, this holy God, we who were the exact opposite of holy. And so number one, holy above all other things. The Bible tells us in Isaiah 45 that I am the Lord and there is no God beside me. He is the only one. He is the creator. We'll never get to the bottom of his understanding. Listen, I am very comfortable today. It took, you know, in my early days of trying to serve the Lord and trying to evangelize and you come into situations where you're You feel like sometimes you have to defend or explain God to maybe a questioning soul or somebody who's even argumentative sometimes. But I found that you don't have all the answers. And I find that you can never get to the bottom of understanding God. His ways are past finding out. And I'm glad that there's a mystery to God. I am glad, if I could totally explain God, he would not be much of one. He's way beyond anything that any of us could ever, ever try to describe. In fact, often the Bible uses, meager ways of trying to, using human characteristics to try to relate to a God that we can't see or touch or hear with an audible ear. He's not bound by a body like we are. He is infinite. He's omnipresent. Who understands that? When we all leave tonight and maybe we all agree to go pray at nine o'clock, who's God closest to? Every one of us. all at the same time. That's beyond, because you and I are bound by one location. You and I are bound by time, and so these are things that are way beyond us, but he's the only God. I am the Lord, and there is none else. There's no other God. And anything that we try to do to give any description of him, he supersedes all of it. And so we only know in part. We still see through a glass darkly. Moses wanted a greater vision of God, Exodus chapter 33, and says, show me your glory. And it's a mysterious chapter. And God tells him to come up into the rocks and kind of hides him in a crevice, and he says, I'm going to allow myself to pass by, and at a certain point, I'll have your face covered with my hand. Again, we see God having a hand, and again, he's using this to describe the situation that we might identify with it, and of course, at a certain point, he says, I will remove my hands, and he says, but you will only see my back parts. You cannot see my face. No man can see my face. Again, the faces are, if you will, the expression of the identifying factor of who we are, right? That's what you have on your driver's license is your face, right? You don't have your hand or your foot, and you have your face. Yeah, and that's what our identifying factor. It's the fullness of the expression of who we are. And so God says to Moses, you can't see my face. you won't be able to take it in. But I'm glad God is greater than anything that we could ever comprehend or try to explain. You know, we see his handiwork, and it's pretty awesome, right? Sometimes we just get caught up into, you know, seeing natural things and take it, but never lose the wonder of God's creation. Now, creation's not God, and this is where a lot of our culture's going. It's trying to make God out of the creation. Don't stop there. If the Rocky Mountains are majestic and you feel so small in the Rocky Mountains, don't stop there. Who made those mountains? This is what everything is to point to the creator, the God of gods, the only God. who is worthy of worship. And the Bible tells us that whosoever offers praise glorifyeth me. And we want to be a people of praise, not pretentious praise, but genuine praise, praise that emanates out of the heart because there's no other God. And we shall not, should not be ashamed of the fact that we serve the true and the living God. And we're to be the witness for him. So how do we worship? Well, again, you'll see various examples and various ways of worship. First and foremost, we are always to be in sincerity in everything that we do, not pretentious, not anything to be ostentatious, and there's where some of the, Strains of Christianity have gone wild and with some of their demonstrations of fullness of the spirit or whatever, and it becomes a show. And you know, it's even in prayer. Our best prayer is when no one is around. You know, what did Jesus say? Enter into your closet. No one praises you there. No one says nice prayer. There's no distractions. It's you, if you will, one on one with the creator. How do we worship? Well Psalm 46 10 something we must do and as one is to be still and know that he is God to take them and listen we live in a world filled with distraction. Our homes are distracting if you have young kids your homes are very distracted. Lots of distraction. I I learned a long time ago when my kids were young if I going to have some private time I got to do it early. I got to do it early because once the kids are up, it's like really hard to focus. Again, I understand some people aren't, I'm not a good evening person. If I go home and I try to focus late at night, it doesn't work real well with me. And I'm more of a morning person and I focus way better. But somewhere along the line, all of us, in our busyness of schedule, because it'll wear us down if we get caught up into the busyness of our schedule. All may be important things that we're doing, but it will wear us down spiritually unless we get to the point where we learn to be still and know that he is God. To take that time and to know that he is God, to meditate on it. And there is such a thing as true meditation, not what, you know, come across our land, the influence of Eastern mysticism and that type of meditation, transcendental meditation. But there's true meditation. And this is what you'll see, especially scattered throughout the Psalms, Sela is about. And that is to stop. Think. What did you just read? Dwell on it. You know, that's why memorization is a good thing. But I understand even in memorization of scripture, sometimes you can just do it to memorize them instead of just trying to take a moment to say, what does this mean? And the impact, to get the full richness of a verse, to be still and know. Psalm 4 says, stand in awe and sin not. commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still. You could ask yourself a question, how often do I stand in awe of God? How often do I do that? Now listen, I think one of the lessons that at least I'm learning from the shutdown, the year of shutdown I call it, you know, whether People think it was manipulated by the government or whatever. You have all these theories. I know this though. God allowed it. And there's some purpose for us to learn something from it. And I want to learn from it. And I think one of the things that I'm gleaning from it and that is you know Zechariah tells us not by might nor by power but by my spirit sayeth the Lord. And I think even within a church you can have all the machinery of ministry. We do this and that, we have all these functions and that's all good and we should. But if that's all it is, we've missed something. We've missed something. And if it's not having God's Spirit in it, it will really come to naught. How often do we stand in awe? Stop and just take things in. How often do we stand in awe of his word? You know, it's easy to read through the Bible in a year. It's really not that hard. I think three chapters a day on Monday through Saturday and five chapters on Sunday. I think you can get through the whole Bible. And depending on your reading rate, maybe 20 minutes a day, you can read through the whole Bible. It's not that hard, but it's kind of easy to just get caught up into doing it and really not remember or not know what you just read. And you don't get anything out of it. So how often do we stand in awe of his word and stop a minute and look and see God in the wonders of his word John 4.24, there's a debate about how to worship. This is, of course, the woman at the well, a Samaritan woman, and they had a location to worship. They worshiped in Samaria in a mountain that, of course, the Jews worshiped in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. And so there was this debate of where do we worship? And Jesus makes this statement. God is a spirit, and those that worship God, must worship him in spirit and in truth. You know, right away we learn that God is everywhere, all at the same time, and we have an opportunity to be in an attitude of worship, often more than just in one location, more than just here, or more than just in your closet at home, or wherever you designate as an altar, if you will. You know, we always talk about the, having family altar. That doesn't mean you have a literal altar at your house, but it's a location where you're going to go and you're going to spend time with God. And Christianity is malnourished often because people don't spend time with God. And other than maybe getting force-fed a little bit, all good, okay. We have the privilege ourselves to read this ourselves and to hear that voice, thus saith the Lord, and to draw close to him, and we have to take time to do it, take time to worship. I'd like to read a section from 2 Chronicles, because this plays a part, and this is something we didn't do tonight, and part of worship. This is 2 Chronicles chapter 29, and this is during the reign of Hezekiah, and 2 Chronicles 29, Second Chronicles chapter 29 and verses 28 and 29, Hezekiah is restoring temple worship. It was a time of revival under Hezekiah and verse 28 says, and all the congregation worshiped and the singers sang and the trumpeters sounded. And this continued until the burnt offering was finished. And when they had made an end of the offering, the king and all that were present with him bowed themselves and worshiped. So we see music was incorporated into it too. And again, there's something where that was what, I think it was, I'm no historian of music, but I thought it was Beethoven that said all music was really meant to glorify God. It was one of the, great composers, so I'll say it was Beethoven. Don't go here and say I said it, but maybe it was him. But often, many of them, that's what much of Handel's music was all, it was meant to glorify God, and music is part of it. But worshiping God in spirit and incorporating music is not to create some kind of altered state, though. You know, I've been to some churches where they, try to create an atmosphere, a certain atmosphere of worship. So we gotta lower the lights, not against that. I've seen some churches where they have, I had a friend say, what's with some of these emerging churches with the smoke? They got the smoke coming and I don't know what it's about. They're just trying to create some kind of atmosphere. And listen, God doesn't want us to alter our state of mind. What do you envision when you pray and you worship God? Well, you know, do we try to picture an image of God? Because God's not a body, but we want to get in a position where our spirit is open and respectful and insightful in the presence of God in this place. And we want to bow down to him. We can do it in song. That's why the Bible says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. And for those of us who can't sing very well, he still delights in hearing our praise when we sing to him, no matter how off-key it is. With that being said, music. We can worship God with our music. And that's one of the things that if it helps us gravitate our thoughts towards him and to honor him. This they obviously did in Hezekiah's revival. Psalm 29, again it uses the phrase, the beauty of holiness. The beauty of holiness. We come before God who is a powerful God. He's a God who can judge. He's a God who can forgive. He's a God who extends mercy. He's a God of truth. He's all of these and he's a holy God. And what a privilege to be able to come into you know Hebrews talks about coming into the throne of grace boldly. Pretty amazing because in the in the temple there was this not entering into the only the high priest. could enter into and once a year into the holy, there was such reverence and respect for God. And we don't ever want to lose that. Yes, Jesus is, God is our friend, no doubt about it. He's a friend of sinners, but he's much more than a friend. He's much more than that too. And we want to be able to keep that right balance, but always having the attitude of Our God is holy, our God is holy. God can, you can meet him in a location here. Psalm 5, seven says, but as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy worship, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. There's something about a location, too. This is a good, you know, it used to be a country club. And this was a dining area. And in the back where the baptistry was was a bar. The kitchen was back where that mural is in the back. That's where the kitchen was. And when we got this building, you know, we were going to convert it. And. But that's not where the blessing is, just because we now made it, quote, a church. But you want to come here not to. Just go to church, you want to come to church. To worship and the blessing about worshiping at a church is we're doing it collectively. We're doing it with other believers because we will do that one day in heaven to worship. Learn to worship by yourself. No doubt about it. We need that to be still and know that he is gone. But we have to worship with other people also. We're one in Christ. This is where we're one, in Christ. The world can't find unity because they don't know Christ. Where it said in Psalm 5, that I'm gonna come into thy house. So there is a place, you know, where we come to. We find it in the scriptures about not coming with a proper, if you will, way of worship. Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, for instance, who were very, religious, but he says, this people draw nigh to me with their mouth and honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And Malachi talks about them bringing offerings that were, you know, lame. And when they, you know, sacrifice is part of worship. And the Old Testament way of worshiping was based on sacrifice. And it was based on that. You know, it goes back to the Passover where the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed and the blood was put on the door lintel and in the bowl at the foot of the door and the death angel would pass over and they were miraculously delivered. And that was a reminder, but that was sacrifice. A whole institution was developed with the priesthood and the sacrifices that were made. but it became ritualistic and they lost sight of what it was really all about. And the same thing can happen to us. We want to take warning from those things and to make sure that we are sincere and we have a pure heart in what we do. And to some degree, our sacrifices, there's a cost too. I'd like to read, this is from 2 Samuel chapter 24. This is when David does a foolish thing. Some people say, well, this seems kind of harsh. David wanted to number all of Israel. Now God had been with Israel and miraculously delivered them from their oppressive enemies and was establishing everything under King David. And towards the end of his life, David commanded, he wanted to know, How many people are there? What's the size of our army? And if you will, maybe leaning towards the arm of flesh. See, God had been with him all along and God had been delivering, but now he was kind of shifting gears and looking more towards the physical powers to bring protection and deliverance. So a judgment comes. In fact, God gives him an option and offers three, if you will, punishments. You pick. Well, he picked to fall into the hands of the Lord and so a pestilence comes and we'll pick it up at the 18th verse. And Gad came that day and he came to David and said unto him, go up and rear an altar unto the Lord in the threshing floor of Arana the Jebusite. And David, according to the saying of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded. And Arana looked and saw the king and his servants coming on toward him And Aaron went out and bowed himself before the king on his face to the ground. And Aaron said, wherefore is my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, to buy the threshing floor of thee, to build an altar unto the Lord, that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Aaron said unto David, Let my lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him. Behold, here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing instruments, and other instruments of the oxen for wood. All these things did Arana as a king give unto a king. And Arana said unto the king, the lord thy God accept thee. And the king, David, now says unto Arana, nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver and David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And so the Lord was entreated for the land and the plague was stayed from Israel. There was a cost. There was a cost. Our cost is not the sacrifices that we make. That is not what endears God to us and you know it's the same way someone was asking me about fasting and they say you know does God see me fasting and then because I'm fasting I really believe fasting is more of an attitude in that you're caught up in what you're doing in prayer and so it's not because you're fasting You're praying and caught up with a burden. And so the abstinence of food isn't a big deal because you're petitioning the Lord and you're praying and fasting. Or some people think, well, if I don't eat for a day, God's gonna honor my sacrifice. It's not Christian superstition. In the same way, David understood to some degree, though, a sacrifice to what we do. We have to give up things. Again, it's not buying favor with God. We give it up because of our love for Him. And David said, I can't offer that which costs me nothing. And so he buys the threshing floor from Aaron. It's the same way with our worship. We want our worship to mean something and sometimes there's sacrifices involved in doing their sacrifices of time. It could be a multitude of other ways of sacrificing but we wanted to do it. It's for him. You know we see even today in worldly kings when someone comes and visits the king they're always bringing gifts. You know how many gifts can you know Queen Elizabeth have over. I mean how long she been queen in England and imagine how many you know what the storage room looks like. of all the things they bring to the Queen, but in a sense, when we come to God, we have things to offer Him. Obviously, a broken and contrite heart. God wants to see that. He wants to see the real you, the real me. You know, it says, I think the last verse in the book of Ephesians says, blessed be all they that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Sincerity. That's what God wants from us. And so, We worship this way. When to worship? Well, Matthew 28, 17 says, when they saw him in his resurrection, they worshiped him. And when do we see Jesus? Well, we see him in his word. And there'll be times, hopefully if we're open, and there's times where God's word can really jump out at us. It can grip us more than it ever did before. As they said, the blind Bartimaeus, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. And I think there's times in our life where the Lord, now listen, he's always close. I know that, I understand that. But there are times where he's closer than others. There's situations, sometimes you can't. One of the prayers I had when I, found the Lord, obviously your burden's mostly for your family right away, those closest to you. And when I found the Lord, I'm sure I overstepped my bounds. If we could retrace and learn, whether in pretense or in truth, but in trying to witness to my dad, I'm sure I did it the wrong way in the beginning. Now, I meant right, but sometimes we don't, You know, we're not as wise as serpents. And we're not harmless as doves sometimes. And so I think there was a barrier that was built up. Plus, it plays into where my dad's personality was. He certainly was not an open personality. You know, he wasn't a lovey-dovey kind of guy, give you a hug. And I never heard my dad say I love you in his whole life. Never said that to me. I didn't feel unloved. That's, you know, maybe that was that generation too. But every attempt I would make at witnessing to him just wasn't going well. And so what do you have left? Well, you always have prayer. He can't reject that. And so when people reject your efforts in trying to share the gospel with them, You know, we can't overstep our bounds. You can't force this down somebody's throat. But you can pray for them and keep praying and persevere and pray. Well, I prayed for my dad over the years. And what I would do, I would send them, I would send them stuff. I write letters to them and seem kind of silly. You know, we lived in the same neighborhood. But I'd mail him. I figured he's going to read it. I know he'll read this. And he won't be influenced by my personality, by my presence being there. And, you know, and I would have all kinds of Bible verses. And I knew that he would read it. But he wouldn't tell me that. He wouldn't say, hey, I got your letter. Thanks a lot. I would never hear that. But it was interesting, I found them later. He kept them. I knew that he read them. My prayer was, though, is that the Lord would not take him suddenly, unprepared. You know, I don't want to see anyone languish. You know, sometimes quick deaths are merciful. And you know, if I could write my own ticket how God's going to take me out of this earth and I'm going to live a nice full life till, you know, I'm 90, have health the whole time and just go to bed one night and wake up in heaven. Right? That's how we all want it. You can't dictate that to God. But I had a prayer and my prayer was don't take my dad quickly if he's not ready. And if the dying process drags out and if that is what's necessary, Please, Lord. So my dad had pretty much amazing health well into his 90s. The only medicine he took when he was 93 was eye drops for glaucoma. He had no other medicine that he took and had the worst diet in the world. My wife would make him a pumpkin pie and it would be gone the next day. So when he had to go on hospice, They as often hospice have chaplains. And when my mom went on hospice care I was her chaplain. I didn't think that would work for my dad. And they had a young chaplain that we were able to talk with who knew the Lord loved the Lord and he wasn't just a chaplain as a figurehead. He did it because he loved God and he wanted to reach people and meet the needs of the dying. And so. He was about the age of my sons, and so I thought maybe my dad would connect with him. So he went to the home where my dad was and often wondered how it went. And my dad looked forward to his visits, we found out. And the chaplains called us a couple times to give us progress reports. And I think that was the agent that God used. And one day he calls us and tells us about my dad acknowledging these truths. Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. And when I got that news I was in the car. And that car became a place of worship at that point. You get news. This is one of these times where you see God or you see Jesus, not in form, but he is close. And that's a special time. And you want to be able to worship God when those times occur, when you get a glimpse of him. As hard as this may be, the Bible says concerning Job, Job arose and rent his mantle, shaved his head. This is after he got all this bad news, lost everything. shaved his head, fell down upon the ground, and worshiped. We may lose everything in this life, every earthly possession, but we retain our greatest possession. We always will retain that greatest possession. And we retain our God and the ability to worship him. Even with this, what an example that is, you know, of Job in the tremendous grief, he still was that close to bow down and to worship him. We need to worship him by faith with nothing guaranteed. I find this interesting. In Matthew 9, chapter 9, is the case of Jairus. Jairus has a daughter who, at the point of death, who dies actually. One of the people that Jesus raises from the dead. Matthew 9, 18, there came a certain ruler, Jairus, and worshiped him, saying, my daughter is even now dead, but come and lay thy hand upon her and she shall live. He's not worshiping after he does something miraculous, he's worshiping before he even does it. Now he believed it could happen, he had faith, but there was no guarantee other than his faith. that Jesus was going to do this, but he still had that attitude of bowing down and worshiping God. It's always right for us to do, not just when the atmosphere is right, and we feel like it, or we had a tremendous, what we call a tremendous blessing. We always associate blessings with pleasant things, but sometimes blessings don't come in the form of a pleasant thing. Sometimes they come in the form of a trial, and when they first come, we, you know, We reject it, we wanna reject it. But God has a design that goes way beyond our understanding. And he is to be worshiped at all times and in all situations. Quickly, we're going to worship in heaven. And you know, the Bible is all about redemption for mankind, and restoring paradise, and so that we can get to heaven. And it's interesting, because the Bible doesn't give great, great, great details about heaven. It really doesn't. And the book of Revelation gets us a little glimpse, if you will, into heaven. And if you wanna turn there quickly, we'll just read a couple verses and we'll be done in just a moment. But I think when we read Revelation, I like, and it has its place, prophecy, and I know I would caution some people, sometimes people get an imbalance with prophecy. And they delve into it so much that they neglect other parts of the Bible. And every word is God, is pure, and we need every part of the scriptures. But to me, the chapters in Revelation, some of them are kind of mysterious, figurative, can't be definitive sometimes what some of these things are. But there are some chapters where we get a glimpse into heaven. Chapter four is one of them, verses 10 and 11, and it tells us, and the four and 20 elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are, and were created. Next chapter, chapter five, verses 14 and 15, we see again, verse 12, I'm saying same with a loud voice, chapter five, verse 12. Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power, riches, wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory. And every creature which is in heaven, and in earth, and under the sea, and such as are in the sea, and all that are therein, heard I saying, blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb forever and ever. And the four beasts said amen, and the four and 20 elders fell down and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever. In one closing with one more verse, and I quote it from John chapter four, those, God is a spirit, and those that worship him in spirit and truth, consider this, this is an amazing thing. The verse before it, 423 says, but the hour cometh and now is, When the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and then it says this, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. It's the grandest privilege that any of us, we can't even comprehend it, but it's something I wanna learn to do. And the very fact that the creator of the universe seeks us to have this privilege, what a tremendous privilege it is. Now listen, I know that the pandemic has been difficult with church, and even to some degree, we've not had congregational singing, but I'm gonna reinstitute it tonight in a different fashion. And if you can bear with me just for a moment, I'm not gonna sing, but we're all gonna do a song, but I want you for a moment, again, I'm not trying to create some ooh atmosphere, if you will, I want you to bow your heads a moment, and block out any distractions and picture yourself in the presence of God. Don't try to paint a face or a body on God, but we're before God. And I'm going to read a hymn to you. And there's no music. It's just the words. But these words are powerful. And they have, they're meant to elevate our spirit and to put us in the presence of God. And so I'll read these stanzas. I'm sure I've sung this song and maybe you're familiar with it, but now let's just meditate on the words of the song just for a moment. Oh, worship the king, all glorious above. Oh, gratefully sing his power and his love. Our shield and defender. the ancient of days, pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise. O tell of his might and sing of his grace, whose robe is the light, whose canopy space, his chariots of wrath The deep thunder clouds form and dark is his path on the wings of the storm. Your bountiful care, what tongue can recite? It breathes in the air. It shines in the light. It streams from the hills. It descends to the plain. and sweetly distills the dew and the rain. Frail children of dust and feeble as frail, in you do we trust, nor find you to fail. Your mercies, how tender, how firm to the end are maker Defender, Redeemer, and Friend. O measureless might, unchangeable love, whom angels delight to worship above. Your ransomed creation with glory ablaze in true adoration shall sing to your praise. Well, Lord, we do praise you this night. We worship you, Lord. Lord, we can't even begin to comprehend what you have done for us, but what we do know, Lord, we appreciate. And teach us, Lord, to worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, we'll go out these doors, we'll go about our business, and we'll resume our schedule, but along the way, Lord, there are opportunities to hear your voice and to give honor to you, Lord, and to bow our heads in worship, our hearts in worship to you. Lord, if we learn anything in our treading this earth, please help all of us learn how to worship you, Lord. In sincerity and in truth, help us to worship you. We love you this night, Lord. Thank you for loving us. In the matchless name of Jesus, amen. Hey, oh sure, John.