Giving God Our Very Best

Introduction

It occurs to me this morning that I could actually roll out a sermon about mothers on Mother’s Day, but then I would have to do a sermon about fathers on Father’s Day, and there’d be nothing wrong with that. It’s just not something that I traditionally do, and I will not this morning either. But we do have sort of a different kind of crowd today because some of our mothers are off visiting children other places, and some of the children of mothers have come here to be with mom to honor them. I’m not with my mother. My mother is in Tampa, Florida. But Lord willing, I’ll see her tomorrow. So a little late Mother’s Day with her next week, or this week and next week, early next week.

And even my surrogate mother is not here. My Tomball mother, Martha Banning, is not here today. So I’m going to let Tommy Glenn Clark be my mother today. Tommy Glenn worshiped with me for a long time in Baytown, and I respect her so much. So glad you’re here today, Mom. And some of you are going to honor your moms today in a special way. And well, you should. I’m going to commend you and recommend that you do that to honor mom. However, I would not recommend that you do an ostentatious showy display like bringing your mother roses at the church building. That’s a little over the top, but some have been known to go that far. Actually, this morning’s lesson comes from an article that was written just a month ago by my good friend and one of my mentors, Max Dawson, who’s been preaching in Beaumont for the better part of a hundred years.

And he just conducted a weekend series on leadership at the Kleinwood congregation nearby. In fact, he’s doing that all over the country. And when I was with Max in the late 80s and early 90s when the Dallin Road Church building was built, we were talking a lot then about elders and their function and deacons and their function and how the local church really should operate according to the scripture. And a lot of those thoughts progressing from that time have led to Max speaking a lot on the subject of leadership. And so I want to talk for a few minutes this morning about leadership, particularly as it relates to worship, because a lot of his thoughts in this article pertain to that idea and the need to strive for excellence and banish any kind of mediocrity in terms of our approach to leadership.

He begins by talking about young men who lead in the assemblies, and they’re not as proficient generally as older men simply because they’re young and they lack experience. But you have to get started somewhere. So don’t let that be a hindrance to you. In fact, he applauds their efforts. But then he goes on to say there is no excuse for those of us who are older, who have been around for a while, to not give our very best effort in leading God’s people. Nowhere in the Bible, Max suggests to us that God is pleased with mediocrity. And I want you to just think about that. That’s not what God expects from us, nor what he deserves. Our God is the awesome and excellent God, Max says.

He deserves our very best. I’m troubled when I see kingdom work being done in a careless way. Some examples. How about a sermon that’s just thrown together? Let’s hope I’m not doing that. Or a Bible class where no one has really prepared, not the teacher. Our teacher was prepared this morning in the auditorium, not the teacher and not the students. And what about dirty church buildings and unsanitary restrooms? You know, is there care given to the facility where we worship? And all of those things should probably be considered. But then he asks, what about passionless singing? So let’s talk about giving God our very best. That was a problem in the days of Malachi. Not sure why the graphic cuts off part of that, but it does.

1. Are You Giving God Your Best?

But are you giving God your best? Failed leadership is the theme of the book of Malachi, leading us to the one who would come, who would be the ultimate leader of God’s people, Jesus Christ. The priests were failing, the people were failing, and the people often fail in the midst of poor leadership. The priests despised the table of God and they defiled it. And yet they didn’t even understand the nature of their error. And he talks about the kinds of sacrifices that were being offered. And he said, Your governor wouldn’t even accept those in Malachi chapter one. God was so disappointed in the nature of their worship and the leadership of his priests. That he said, I just wish somebody would bar the doors. Can you imagine that?

God saying, don’t let anyone into the building. Wouldn’t that be terrible if that’s what he thought about the decoratory church? Would somebody lock the doors and change the locks and don’t let those people in because they are not giving their best to me. People of Malachi’s day were infected with a spirit of mediocrity. They offered to God was of no value to themselves. Service did not emanate from the heart. Evidently, they thought their worship was good enough for God. And yet in Malachi chapter 1, notice verse 11. For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, my name, Jehovah says, will be great among the nations. This isn’t just about what you do in this confined facility in this particular locale. What kind of message are you sending to the world?

My name will be great among the nations. And in every place, incense is going to be offered to my name and a grain offering that is pure, for my name will be great among the nations. I am a great king, he says in verse 14. And my name is to be feared among the nations. Last week we talked about the name of the Lord, the name of the Lord Jesus. He wants nations to have regard for his reality, all that he is, his true essence. Is that reflected in the nature of our worship? When visitors come into our assembly, what do they think about our God by the nature of what we do here? Do they see us as much as they can perceive? Do they see us worshiping him in the very best way possible as the excellent and great God?

Do they witness in us a spirit of reverence as we gather in to his presence together? Do they see in us our confidence in him to provide what we need in our lives? Our absolute trust in the living God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. There are two important aspects to all of this. Approaching the throne of God in worship, approaching the throne of God in worship is profound, it is awesome, and it is magnificent. It is weighty. And secondly, the challenge, responsibility, and privilege of leading God’s people to the very throne of the creator and Savior should be taken seriously. And appreciate it. I have been thinking a lot in the last number of years, as I’ve been among you of what an incredible privilege and responsibility it is for me to be able to direct so many people in a study of God’s book and their appreciation of Him.

If I can contribute to the reverence of your worship, the enthusiasm and zeal for what is done in this place, and your pursuit of holiness and godliness in your daily life, I will have accomplished my task. For that is my goal.

2. Corporate Worship and My Participation

I want to talk about the impact of corporate worship in regard to my participation personally. And the first thing that I want us to note about what we do in this place is the very nature of coming here involves a union, a participation with other people. And that’s a wonderful thing. There are obviously some tremendous benefits and some things that God wants produced by all of us coming together. It’s a wonderful thing to blend ourselves in unison of spirit and voice to the throne of God. So I want to say something about this union of me coming to you and you coming to me in this place. Poor attitudes must first be managed. God does not want our gift while we have aught against our brother.

Poor attitudes must first be managed. And secondly, that we should not want to hinder anyone’s approach to God. Instead, we are here to facilitate and help. That should be reflected in the way that we participate. The fact that we might want to give sufficient rest in preparation when we can. I know sometimes as we get older, we can’t always rest like we would want to. Why am I looking at you, Joanne? I mean, I never pick on Joanne, but I just did. Why do we, as we get older, struggle? I don’t know. But as much as lies within you, prepare for the occasion of worship. Bring zest and enthusiasm with you. Because again, we’re doing something awesome here today together. We should want to facilitate, not hinder.

And that’s why we should give consideration to not only the manner of our assembling, but even perhaps what we might choose to clothe ourselves with. Oh, what about a dress code? I’m not going to talk about dress code this morning. There isn’t one here. But should we not at least give some consideration to what our clothing might reflect about how we regard this occasion? Just move that over. What about distractions? What about our demeanor? But having said that, as we’ve come into union here with each other for the occasion of worship, may I suggest this is important. We must not be focused too much on people. This is a part of our coming together, but we must not be focused so horizontally that we forget that what we are doing vertically is foremost in importance.

And the reason why is because we have a decaying problem. This goes back to the old thing I was mentioning earlier, getting older. Our outer man is decaying. I know as young people you are vibrant and alive, and hey, things are going your way right now. Enjoy it. But childhood and the prime of life is fleeting. Old age comes, as he goes on to talk about in chapter 12 of the book of Revelation, the Book of Ecclesiastes. He says, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. Our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison. And I’ve always loved that verse. Our temporary light affliction, three things. It’s producing for us an eternal weight of glory.

All that is here is temporary. This is permanent and eternal. An eternal weight of glory. This is light. This is heavy. Our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. More on that in a moment. Or we do not look to the things which are seen. The things that are seen are temporal. This isn’t going to be here forever. But the things that are unseen are eternal. So while there is some focus on the horizontal, realize that all of this is decaying, including all of us. And we must look vertically to that which endures. So what we are doing today, what you are doing today, let’s make this personal. You are contemplating life’s greater realities. I love the word realities.

It’s real. You are contemplating the greater realities, the living God, the exalted King, a life-enhancing message. And are we expressing confidence in that? A life-enhancing message and a thrilling hope.

And I said I’m pretty sure because I can’t really remember 40 years ago. But as I look back now, I’m thinking, you know, I was sort of just trying to hit the notes when we were singing. And when you hit one, you, oh, that sounded pretty good. At least I matched the guy next to me. I still do that. I try to match Daniel, whatever he’s singing, I sing. When he goes to sing tenor, then I’m really messed up. But you’re trying to hit the notes. You hit the notes, and oh, that’s a pretty song. I like singing this one. I love when those bass chorus songs, you know, where the bass is really good. My buddies were all sitting on the road next to me, just like y’all were doing.

We all, yeah, we like this. We’re gonna sing this. This is gonna be great. But how much attention and consideration was I giving to this as I engaged in these acts of worship. Obviously, we’re gonna appreciate that more. What was it? A failure in teaching? Or maybe I just wasn’t listening. Was it just my immaturity? I don’t know. But I wanted to speak this lesson to you this morning to encourage you to focus on what it is that is exactly accomplished when we worship. Everything here, getting back to 2 Corinthians chapter 4, is short-lived, inferior, ultimately very underwhelming and disappointing. It is our hope that will not disappoint. But as I talk about worship, and particularly leadership in worship, I want to move on to how corporate worship affects other people.

3. How Corporate Worship Affects Other People

This should be a part of our thinking. As we assemble corporately. We need to consider the total effect of what we’re doing upon all the worshippers who are present.

Even the announcements. We need to ask ourselves the question, why are we doing this? Why are we saying this? What is the impact of all of this? I was preaching in Arizona a handful of years ago. In fact, I’ll be going back to Arizona, Lord willing, next month. I was preaching in Arizona in a gospel meeting, and what I remember about the meeting so very well is that during the week, I mean, I know it’s a certain way on Sunday, and churches have their rituals and routines, but on Monday night, one of the elders gets up and starts making announcements, and they seem to be the announcements I heard the day before. And the announcements went on for seven or eight minutes. And remember, we started at 7.30.

That means it was 7.40 by the time we actually started singing and worship. And remember, by the time I got up to preach, it would be almost 8 o’clock, which on my body clock was 10 o’clock. I started preaching at 10 o’clock at night out there. And so I preached till midnight. So I thought about it at that time and I thought about since what are we doing? We have visitors in our assembly, and they’re going, I don’t know who Joe Bob is. I don’t know who this person is, and that person is, and I know that there are emergency situations where we need to be praying about these people, but is there another way to disseminate the information? Perhaps it reflects, oh, well, they care about each other, and that’s all fine and dandy.

Perhaps we should do some of that. But if we’re doing that all the time, and then we say, okay, now turn in your psalm book to number 75, or here it is on the slides, we’re thinking about the person who has cancer. We’re thinking about this thing that has happened or that thing that has happened. What are we here to do? We’re here to come to the very throne of God. It must foremost be about Him. It’s not that these other things are unimportant or shouldn’t be mentioned, but we need to give some consideration to the impact of what we’re doing. Are we doing something merely because it’s our tradition? Like I said, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night. Yes, it went through Friday night.

The same announcements every night. Do we need to do that? Well, why are we doing that every night? Okay, if we’re gonna do it one night, I might suggest Wednesday for a reason, but we’re gonna do that every single night during a meeting? What are we here to do? Is this hindering or helping devotion and expression to God? Is it distracting and focusing too much on people? I even think about that, believe it or not, in regard to the reading of the scripture. Now, there might be an occasion where I would pick up my Bible in a pulpit and read 45 verses in a row. I’m not saying it’d be inappropriate. But you know what’s gonna happen if I start reading from the Bible and I read 45 verses in a row?

Your head’s gonna start swimming. It’s too much information, unless it’s a narrative or something. I mean, it’s like, what am I supposed to do with 45 verses? And I would say the same thing about the Lord’s Supper. We read 45, we don’t need to read 45. Yes, all the scripture is living. It’s wonderful to be appreciated, but not all in one moment. We need to think about directing people to the throne of God effectively. What impact is this having? And so I take you to a passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. And in some ways, there is a stretch in terms of relevance to some of what is said here. As Paul talks about when the whole church should be assembled and all speak in tongues.

Whoa, we didn’t do that this morning. And the ungifted men or unbelievers enter. Okay, they might have the folks who are not in Christ in their assembly. He is convicted by all and is called to account by all. Not really sure what that may all involve. But be careful when you walk into an assembly where there are spiritual gifts. There might be things revealed. The secrets of the heart are disclosed. Now, if perhaps there was some exercise of the gifts that when you came in, what was on your heart could be told to everyone, well, that would be probably helpful in your spiritual journey. But you know what you might do when you experience that? So he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you.

You walk into an assembly where miracles are happening, when people are speaking languages and someone else is interpreting those languages that they’ve never studied, you see miracles being done or whatever, you’re going to be impressed. God is among these people. And while we may not be able to produce that, and I don’t believe we can, this certainly still should be a place where a visitor would determine God is among these people. Augustine made an interesting comment. He said, I am inclined, though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject, you know, they had a way of saying things back then, to approve of the use of singing in the church. Well, that’s good because we’ve done that today. So that by the delights of the ear, the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood.

I really like that. If you were of weaker mind when you entered today, hopefully the singing that we’ve done, the thoughts that we’ve said, praise him, praise him, have caused you to be more inclined to a devotional mood. Yet when it happens, remember this is from his work confessions, yet when it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I can set, I confess myself to have sinned wickedly. And then I would have rather not heard the singing. Well, perhaps an overstatement, but the point Augustine is making is let’s not just sing something melodious and wonderful. Let’s think about the very things that we’re saying to God’s throne. And worship should emanate from an investment of our minds. It’s not about where, it’s not about geography, it’s not about location, it’s not about this mountain or that mountain.

But the true worshipers, Jesus says, will worship me from their inner being. And in relation to what is real. They will worship me in spirit and in truth. That’s what that passage is saying. True worship emanates from within. It’s not a ritual. It’s not simply going through the right acts and checking off a box. When you come into this place, don’t be distracted by all these people that you’ve gathered with. Yes, this is a part of it. All of these people. But let us focus on bringing our devotion from our hearts to the awesome throne of our God. Because He is awesome. I wonder if people sometimes look at what we do here. Like that’s emotionless and sterile. We’re going to talk a little bit more about that tonight.

Hope you can come back tonight at five. Is there something we can do about that? Maybe it’s not that way. Maybe it’s not emotionless. Maybe it’s not sterile as you invest your heart, but maybe it is.

4. What Is Accomplished When We Worship

Great is our Lord. What is accomplished when we worship? Some final thoughts this morning. I’ll go through these quickly. We are nurturing and pursuing divine connection. We are making essential, helpful, heavenward, please. We are suing for his favor and his supply of my need. Do you think about that when you come here? I come here to seek God among these people and to ask him to help provide the things that I need in every way. These are important things that are happening here in this place as we worship together. Exalting thoughts from the temporary and the mundane that my mind is on continually through the week and exalting them to the enduring. We are assisting as people. Yes, it is about the horizontal, compelling and encouraging ongoing trust and confidence.

We must consider how to stimulate one another unto love and good deeds. So let us awake. There’s no reason to grow weary in what we do here. Or if we’re going to grow weary, we can just play until we die.

Who needs God? We’re just going to play until we die. What a fruitless approach to lifting. You know, you’re not going to stand before the throne of God and say, you know, I wish I’d have spent a few more hours on Snapchat. I wish I’d have spent a few more hours reading old people’s posts on Facebook. They’ve taken over. Let us not grow weary. For in due time we shall reap if we do not faint. Are you giving God your very best? In every way in your life. He deserves it. He deserves it in every waking moment of our lives because the fear of the Lord is our strong confidence. This is from our reading this week in Proverbs. Are you doing the daily Bible reading?

The fear of the Lord is our strong confidence, and the children take refuge in him. The fear of the Lord, the next verse is a fountain of life that one may avoid the snares of death. Do you realize that’s what’s happening here? We’re learning about how to avoid the snares of death. Previous reading from a week or two ago, the teaching of the wise is a fountain of life. To turn aside from the snares of death. And something struck me about these two Proverbs the emphasis on a fountain. That God is the fountain of life. Of course, Jesus spoke of living waters in John chapter 4. But in Psalm 36, children find refuge in the shadow of his wings, just like in Proverbs 14. They drink their fill of his abundance.

They drink from the river of delights, the fountain of life. And from his light they see light.

Conclusion

Know this. Are you giving God your very best? Know this. The doers of iniquity have fallen. They have been thrust down. And they cannot rise. You can be confident of that. You either drink and imbibe of the abundance that comes from the throne of God. You either drink of the fountain of life, or the doer of iniquity will be thrust down. Do you need to come out of iniquity and sin and have cleansing in the precious fountain of Jesus’ blood, and then drink of his fountain all the rest of your days? You need to respond. Come now as we stand and say.