This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is week five, day four together, if I look through the book of Exodus. So
we're in Exodus chapter 24, and in this chapter, the people reaffirm their
commitment to the covenant that they had with God, and all of it happens within
this atmosphere of worship. There's a lot of worship that goes on as the people
receive the law.

It's a good reminder to us about how you live in a life of freedom. There's no
life of freedom without a life of worship, because worship is me connecting with
God, the God who gives me freedom, me living in relationship with him. As we
walk through this chapter together, I want to look at seven things, pull seven
things out of this chapter that you and I can learn about worship.

The truth is, many times we worship without really thinking about what we're
doing. We just show up at church, we sing, we listen to a message, we go home.
Maybe it was even very helpful to us, but we don't really think about what was
happening.

There's something about thinking about what it means to worship that can refresh
your experience of worship. So I want to think about it together for these few
minutes today, using this chapter to help us do that, using the experience of
worship that they had to help us to do that. What is worship, and what does that
mean in my life?

Number one, we learn in this chapter, worship is responding to a call,
responding to the call of God. It's not my idea, it's God's idea, it's
responding to his call. Chapter 24, verses one to three.

"Then he said to Moses, 'Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abahu,
and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, but Moses
alone is to approach the Lord. The others must not come near, and the people may
not come up with him.

' When Moses went and told the people all the Lord's words and laws, they
responded with one voice, 'Everything the Lord has said we will do. '" I want
you to notice here that God initiated. He said, "Come on up here," and they
responded.

That's what worship is. God initiates and we respond. So in many ways, worship
begins by listening.

How am I going to respond to God's call unless I'm listening to God's call? If
all I do in worship is sing and listen and talk and prayer, and I don't sing and
listen to somebody else talk, I mean, and I talk back to God in prayer and I
never listen to God, how do I really respond to his call? You may need to do
that even before the worship service begins.

You may need to do that on a daily basis. Worship can be with others. It can
also be between you and the Lord in a daily quiet time.

Listen. And then when you hear him, you respond to his call, to what he's
saying. That's what worship is.

A second thing we learn about worship here, action of worship, is worship is
building an altar. In verse 4, "Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had
said. He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the
mountain and set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of
Israel.

" Now what does that mean? What does it mean to build an altar? It's setting
down some stones.

Abraham did this. Moses is doing this here. It's setting down some stones that
remind you, "I met with God in this place.

God is in this place. " And in many ways, worship is setting down a stone of
remembrance that God is in that place in your life. Whatever you're going
through right now, whatever you're facing right now, worship is setting down a
stone that says, "God is here.

" I'm going through some terrible circumstances right now, but God is here with
me. In worship, I set down that stone that helps me to realize I've got a solid
rock to stand on even in the midst of this. You might be going through some
great things in your life right now.

Worship is setting down a stone at that place in your life saying, "God is here.
" Whatever you're going through, when you worship, you're saying to yourself,
you're reminding yourself, "God is here. " That's what it means to worship.

It's responding to a call. It's building an altar. Number three, worship is
giving an offering.

Verse five, "Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings
and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. " Worship is
giving an offering to God. Now, I know we give offerings in worship.

We have a time of offering, but really it's much more than that. You give of
what God has given to you. That's part of worship, but you also give of
yourself.

Let me say it this way. You cannot offer your things to God without offering
yourself to the Lord, and you cannot offer yourself to the Lord without offering
your things to the Lord. If I try to offer things to God without first offering
myself, it's an empty gesture.

It's like I'm trying to tip God or buy God off or recognize God without
recognizing what he wants to do in my life. First you offer yourself. First they
gave themselves to the Lord, it says in the New Testament, and then you give out
of whatever he's given to you.

But also you can't do it the other way. You can't offer, you can't give yourself
to the Lord without it becoming a motivation to give whatever he's put into your
hands. To say I can worship the Lord with my life without me being willing to
give of my things, that means I haven't really connected with him in my life,
because things are so much a part of my life.

The money that I have is so much a part of who I am, the way I earn it, the way
I spend it, the way I manage it. I've got to worship God at that point in my
life. Worship is giving an offering of yourself and then of whatever he's put
into your hands to manage.

Number four, worship is making a sacrifice. Now listen to how they did this,
beginning in verse 6 down to verse 8, "Moses took half of the blood from the
animals they'd slain and he put it in bowls, and the other half he sprinkled on
the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and he read it to the people.

They responded, 'We will do everything. ' The Lord has said, 'We will obey. '
Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, 'This is the
blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all
these words.

'" They made a sacrifice of some animals and Moses actually sprinkled blood on
all the people there to recognize that they were making a covenant with God. Now
if you've read the New Testament, looked into the life of Jesus, you know this
is a shadow of what's going to come in the life of Jesus. It's a shadow of God's
promise.

The law would seem at first glance to involve us in the simple relationships of
do's and don'ts with God, but that's not it. It's not a spiritual contract of
do's and don'ts. Chapter 24 verse 8 we just read shows us that the covenant is
all about the blood.

It's all about life and the life that God wants to give to you and it's all
about looking forward to the blood that Jesus is going to shed one day. The
blood of the covenant. This shadow finds its substance in the blood of Jesus.

Remember what Jesus said the night before he died? At the Lord's Supper, he said
to them as he held up the cup, "This is the new promise. " Promise, covenant,
same word.

This is the new covenant in my blood. In my blood. And so now we no longer need
to sacrifice animals.

Worship is making a sacrifice and for you and I it's recognizing the sacrifice
that Jesus made for us and out of that offering ourselves back to him as a
living sacrifice as Romans 12. 1 says. Worship is responding to a call.

It's building an altar. It's giving an offering. It's making a sacrifice.

Number five, worship is enjoying his presence. Listen to verses 9 to 11. These
verses fascinate me.

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abahu and the 70 elders of Israel went up and saw the
God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire,
clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of
the Israelites.

They saw God and they ate and they drank. They experienced the presence of God.
And as they experienced it, there was something about it.

They saw this pavement made of sapphire under God. It reminds us of the book of
Revelation where there's this crystal sea that's there at God's presence. There
is a clarity in God's presence.

That's the picture here. A clarity in God's presence that you get nowhere else
in life. That's part of the experience of worship.

Now I know it says they saw God here. As we walk through the Old Testament, it's
interesting. The Bible tells us no one has ever seen God, but here it says they
saw God.

What does that mean? Well, no one's ever seen the actual appearance of who God
is. But from time to time, God appeared to people in a way that they could
understand.

He did this for Abraham. He appeared as angels at times. And here he appeared in
a way that they could understand.

And in that way that he appeared, they experienced his presence. And I know
there's this sapphire, there's this crystal, there's this they saw God. But to
me, the most fascinating part is how verse 11 ends.

And they ate and they drank. Here they are in the presence of God and they sit
down and they have this meal. They're just enjoying God's presence.

That's what it means to worship. Worship is enjoying his presence. Number six,
worship is obeying his direction.

The Lord said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and stay here and I will
give you the tablets of stone with the law and commands I have written for their
instruction. " Then Moses set out with Joshua his aid and Moses went up on the
mountain of God. He said to the elders, "Wait here for us until we come back to
you.

Aaron and her are with you and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them. "
Now remember that part about him handing the reins off to Aaron and her. It's
going to come in in a few chapters.

But for these verses I want you to focus with me on the fact that they heard
God's direction but then they did something else. They did what they heard. They
followed his direction.

That's worship. Worship isn't just hearing what God wants me to do. It's
obeying.

It's following what he wants me to do. Worship is obeying his direction. Many
times the most important action of worship is not when you're sitting in God's
presence or sitting listening to a message.

It's when you're acting based on what you just heard. Number seven, a seventh
thing that worship is. Worship is experiencing the glory of God.

Verse 15 to verse 18, "When Moses went up on the mountain the cloud covered it
and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered
the mountain and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the
cloud. To the Israelites the glory of God looked like a consuming fire on top of
the mountain.

Then Moses entered the cloud and he went up on the mountain and he stayed on the
mountain forty days and forty nights. " They had this experience of the glory of
God. I want you to notice that word, the glory of God settled on Mount Sinai.

The glory of God in worship, we recognize that his glory has settled on our
lives in Jesus Christ. That's what it means for his Holy Spirit to be in your
life. That's what it means for Jesus to have saved you, to have sanctified you,
to glorified you.

All those big New Testament words justified you. It means that his glory has
settled on your life. And sometimes in worship we need that opportunity to see
the mountain of what God's done in our lives, to see that he has settled on our
lives in ways that are above and beyond our imagination.

We've been talking about worship. Let's take a moment right now to worship him.
Our Father, whatever the busyness of this day, of the moments right before this
or maybe right after this, right now help us to sense that your glory has
settled on our lives in your Son.

Help us to sense your presence. And out of that, I pray that obedience and
sacrifice and responding to your call would be our decision. Out of worship to
you, I pray for a new sense of direction, of strength in life today.

We ask this, Father, in the name of Jesus, Amen.