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Worship (Lesson 4) The Laws and Worship – Aaron Cozort – August 12, 2026
Good evening.
Running just a few minutes behind and I
appreciate ~ Justin stepping
in and starting us off with a song.
If you would take your Bibles and open
them to John chapter four.
We’re going to be continuing our study of
worship and of the things pertaining
to worship as we’ve been doing for the
last few weeks.
And we’re going to jump into the New
Testament to look at
a few principles that Jesus establishes
while he is on this earth.
But let’s begin with a word of prayer and
then we’ll get into our class.
Our gracious Father in heaven,
we come before the throne grateful for
your mercy,
your grace, your everlasting kindness.
We’re grateful for your love that has
shown been shown to
us in sending your son to die on the cross
for our sins that we might have
the hope of eternal life.
Lord, we are mindful of the difficulties
that individuals face
on a daily basis. We’re mindful of the
struggles that come with health,
the struggles that come with age,
the struggles that come with work.
Lord, we pray that in all of our human
endeavors you will grant us your mercy
and your grace, knowing that we strive in
these areas imperfectly.
But Lord, we are also grateful for your
word,
for its timeless nature,
for the revelation which teaches us both
how to live and how to serve you
in a way that is acceptable.
And Lord, we pray that we might strive
diligently to apply the things that
are in your word to our lives.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
In John chapter four,
we find Jesus and
he travels through Samaria. He goes
to the place where the text tells
us he needed to go, verse four.
He needed to go through Samaria.
So he came to the city of Samaria,
which is called Sichar, near the plot of
ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus
therefore,
being wearied from his journey,
sat thus by the well, it was about the
sixth hour.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water,
Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
For his disciples had gone away into the
city to buy food.
Then the woman of Samaria said to him,
How is it that you, being a Jew,
ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?
For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
As you see this event transpire and you
see the things surrounding it,
Jesus is by himself at the moment that
this occurs.
His disciples have gone to buy food in the
city.
They have gone to acquire these things,
and the indication is they will bring them
back to him.
So as he sits there by the well,
a woman comes to draw water. Now,
the sixth hour of the day is not the
typical time for the drawing of water.
That’s usually done in an earlier hour of
the day.
But she arrives to draw water,
and Jesus.
Requests of her when she arrives,
give me something to drink. As the text
tells us,
she is surprised,
might put it that way. How is it that you,
being Jew, ask of me a drink? ~
And the text tells us that the Jews had no
dealing with the Samaritans.
Now, who are the Samaritans?
Okay.
So ~ much like some businesses,
they’ll figure out they’ve got one group
that is causing problems in their company,
and so they’ll split up that group and
they’ll put one of them here and
one of them here and one of them here,
and what they they they may not be able to
get rid of them,
but they could sure separate them.
Well, that’s what the Assyrians’ policy
was as a conquering nation,
is the people that they left alive,
of course. ~ they would cart away the
people who were originally from a
particular
Land and carry them off and split them up
and disperse them across
the entire nation. And then they’d take
people from other lands and they’d
do the same thing and disperse them across
the entire nation.
And so ~ the Samaritans were a half-Jew or
part Jew,
part Gentile, intermarried group of people
that were living in the land.
Now, when we say that.
Bear in mind, it’s not as though the rest
of the nation were somehow,
shall we say, of pure Israelite stock.
Were they?
Now, if they had been obedient to God’s
commandments concerning marrying within
the nations that were in the land and
intermarrying with them and
not giving their children to those nations
and not taking their children
for their sons and daughters ~ from those
nations,
they would have been. Except that’s not
exactly how the nation operated,
was it?
So this is quite a bit the height of
hypocrisy that the Jews would have nothing
to do with the Samaritans because they
weren’t a hundred percent Jews,
because neither were the Jews after they
had intermarried with
all of the nations that were around them.
Now, there are points in the Israelite
history where some of that is cleared out.
For instance, in I believe the book of
Nehemiah,
where Nehemiah will have them put away
their ~ their ~ families that
are ~ not from Israelite descent because
as he brings back
~ or returns back to the land,
he discovers what is going on,
says, Listen, this is exactly what got us
put in Babylon to begin with,
and now you’re going right back to your
old ways.
~
The fact of the matter is the Samaritans
were considered to be worse than dogs.
They were considered to be the people you
would absolutely not spend any time with.
And to the the perspective of that,
the Jews would cross the Jordan River to
go up on the other side of
the Jordan River and then cross back over
the Jordan River a second time
to go to Galilee, so they wouldn’t go
through the land of the Samaritans.
That’s how much they disapproved of the
Samaritans.
So the woman is noticeably surprised when
a Jew asks of her, a Samaritan,
for a drink of water.
Going back to the text, Jesus answered and
said to her,
If you knew the gift of God and who it was
~ and who it is,
who says to you, Give me a drink,
you would have asked him, and he would
have given you living water.
The woman said to him, Sir, you have
nothing to draw with,
and the well is deep. Where then do you
get that living water?
She she i i i is confused,
first surprised, then confused,
because he says he can give her something
to drink,
and that the gift that he could give her
would be the gift of God.
But he doesn’t have anything to draw the
water with.
Now I don’t know in her mind what she had
imagined that somehow he would draw
up water with some other method that would
be better water than what
she could draw up out of the same well.
Didn’t make a whole lot of sense there.
But the fact of the matter is she sees an
obvious problem.
You have no utensil to do this with.
How are you going to do that?
by the way, that that should probably tell
us a little bit about the nature
of the well and how it was ~ structured in
that you had to bring your
own tools to bring the water up.
it wasn’t just that ~ the well was there
waiting for you to you know,
you see the old West idea of a well and
it’s got the bucket and
the bucket goes down, the bucket comes
back up,
there’s water in the bucket. That wasn’t
it,
because otherwise Jesus could have got his
own water and the woman wouldn’t have.
made that the the statement. So not that
kind of well.
Now notice further, we we see
in the text she says, Are you greater than
our father Jacob,
who gave us the well and drank from it
himself as well
as his sons and his livestock?
So who is she holding to as a as a
ancestor from the past?
Jacob. It’s interesting that
the description here is of Jacob,
but the text earlier tells us that Jacob
gave the well to who?
Joseph. Now the reason why I point that
out is Joseph’s descendants who would have
actually possessed
the land, because you remember Joseph
didn’t,
right? Joseph was in Egypt from probably
age 18 until he died.
So Joseph personally never possessed the
land.
But Joseph’s descendants would have,
except Joseph’s descendants lived
underneath what law?
The law of Moses. So Joseph’s descendants
lived under
the law of Moses. Did the Samaritans claim
to live under the law of Moses?
Shake your head this way.
So under the law of patriarchy that Jacob
lived under,
where could you put an altar?
Think back to the days of Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob. Correct.
You could put an altar,
so you go look at Abraham. What did it
what was Abraham’s practice when
he left Ur of the Chaldees and God said
you go here?
Wherever Abraham went, what do we read in
the text that Abraham did?
He built an altar. So under
Principled descendants of Jacob,
they could have their altar where they
wanted it.
They could say, Hey, our father is Jacob.
We don’t know about this whole Moses folk,
but our father is Jacob, and this well
originated with him,
and where we worship is going to originate
with him.
In contrast, you have the Jews who say,
No, you have to worship in Jerusalem.
True or false? All people,
everywhere, from every nation,
during the time of the law of Moses,
had to worship God, in order to worship
him faithfully,
had to worship God in Jerusalem.
True or false. All people everywhere from
every nation had to worship in Jerusalem.
False. Okay? It’s important as we go
through the text that
we do not take what
we often envision about the Old Testament.
And more what actually was the case in the
Old Testament.
In the Old Testament, and Paul deals with
this significantly in the Book of Romans,
there are two parallel laws going on.
One law for who? The Jews.
For the Israelites, for the descendants of
Abraham,
through exclusively Isaac,
and through exclusively Jacob.
And through exclusively his sons.
Okay? There was a law given to them.
And that law said that they were to
worship wherever
God put his name. Now,
when they initially came into the land of
Israel,
where did God put his name? Shiloh.
Who did God tell?
that he was going to put his name there
and that they would worship there,
if you remember back to your old testament
history.
Right? so even before that though,
you remember when Jacob has taken the
birthright?
And Jacob Jacob leaves for fear of his
life from his brother,
and Jacob goes to a place called Bethel,
and Jacob lays his head down and sleeps
and puts his head upon a rock.
And what does Jacob see in the vision
while he is sleeping?
Angels ascending and descending from this
place.
And God will tell Jacob, when he returns,
he will build an altar there. The
indication,
at least from what I have studied and what
I understand,
is that the location, basically,
that the tabernacle will be built,
will be in Bethel, in Shiloh,
where Jacob saw that vision.
That is the first settled location for the
tabernacle in Israel.
It is a returning to a place where
God said, I’m going to put my name there.
Now the tabernacle will remain in Bethel,
in Shiloh, until the occasion where the
Ark of the Covenant is taken,
is possessed by the Philistines because of
the actions of Eli and his sons.
They carted it off to war and they lost
it.
It remains in the Philistines until the
Philistines return it back into Israel,
although it doesn’t go back to the
tabernacle.
In one individual’s house. It remains
there all the way up until the days of
David.
And it is during the moving of it back to
Jerusalem,
the new location where now the tabernacle
has been moved by David from Bethel
to Jerusalem, that now you find Jerusalem
being the location of worship.
So from the days of Moses all the way to
the days
of David was Jerusalem the place of
worship.
No. Matter of fact, till the days of
David,
Jerusalem wasn’t even an Israelite city.
It was a city that belonged to
the Jebusites until ~ David essentially
told his man,
one of you go take it. And they did.
So Jerusalem wasn’t the place of worship
in Jacob’s day,
wasn’t the place of worship in Moses’ day.
Wasn’t the place of worship in Joshua’s
day,
wasn’t the place of worship in the days of
the judges,
wasn’t the place of worship in the days of
King Saul.
It is only towards the end of David’s
reign,
middle towards end, last half,
that Jerusalem becomes the place of
worship.
And it is only culminated as the place of
worship when the temple
is built by Solomon, the next king.
But, here’s the interesting piece that
matters.
And it’s going to matter for the remainder
of the discussion.
It was the place of worship where God
said,
in the days of David and in the days of
Solomon,
I am putting my name here.
In the days of Jacob, God said to Jacob,
you can worship me here. In the days of
David,
God said to David, You can worship me
here.
In the days of Solomon,
God said, You can worship me here.
The reason why I bring this up is it’s
important to realize that throughout
the existence of the Israelites,
who
Gets to decide where the place of worship
is.
God. We went through this discussion a bit
last week,
and that is this core principle of God
gets to decide.
God gets to determine what is acceptable
and what is not in worship. Now,
notice
As the woman asked, Are you greater than
our father Jacob,
who gave us the well, and drank from it
himself,
as well as his sons and his livestock?
Jesus answered and said to her,
Whoever drinks of this water will thirst
again.
But whoever drinks of the water that I
shall give them will never thirst.
But the water that I shall give him will
become in him a fountain
of water springing up into everlasting
life.
The woman said to him, Sir, you Sir,
give me this water, that I may not thirst.
Nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her,
Go call your husband and come here.
The woman answered and said, I have no
husband.
Jesus said to her, You have well said,
I have no husband, for you have had five
husbands,
and the one whom you now have is not your
husband in that you spoke truly.
The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive
that you are a prophet.
Now
As we move into this part of the
discussion,
bear in mind that she is observing these
things.
She is hearing what he is saying.
She is trying to comprehend, though she is
working from a different mental model
than Jesus is.
So first she wants to know how you can do
this physical thing,
get down in this well and get water.
Second, she wants to know, are you greater
than Jacob,
who gave us the well, and his sons who
drank from it?
Third thing she wants to know is,
can you give me the water? You’re offering
it to me.
I’m all right, I’m a buyer. Give it,
give me some. And Jesus immediately turns
to the question of go call your husband.
She answers appropriately that she has
none,
but Jesus said, You’re correct,
you don’t. You’ve had five, and the one
you have now isn’t your husband.
She immediately realizes as she’s gone
from you have
no physical tool to you have not you can’t
possibly be of greater stature
to now.
Y you must be a spokesperson for God.
The moment she comes to a realization that
he is a spokesperson for God,
some things start to change. And she says,
I perceive that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,
and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the
place where one ought to worship.
If you’re a prophet, if you speak on
behalf of God,
then I want to bring up the age-old
question that us and your people argue
about
all the time.
She makes a statement. Have you noticed
sometimes statements are questions?
She says, I perceive you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,
and you, Jews, say that in Jerusalem is
the place where one ought to worship.
Period. Not question mark.
Have you ever heard the question?
or the statement, ~ you’re from the Church
of Christ.
You’re those people who believe you’re the
only ones going to heaven.
It’s not a question, except it is.
So the woman says,
Hmm, you know what you Jews always say?
You Jews always tell us we’re worshiping
in the wrong place.
Now, as we get into the discussion.
And Jesus’ answer, ask yourself one more
time,
was the place where all people
of all nations everywhere were commanded
to worship in the days of
the law of Moses, Jerusalem. And the
answer is no.
Could a Babylonian who was born
and raised in Babylon
Who met Daniel in the period of his exile
was taught concerning Jehovah and began
worshiping and being obedient
to Jehovah in the land of the Chaldeans,
a place where Abraham came from.
Could that Babylonian worship
God faithfully in Babylon? Yes.
Yes he could.
The law of Moses was given to what people?
The Israelites.
It pertained to them. Now, it also
pertained to all those
who converted to their nation.
Give an example of an old testament person
who converted to become an Israelite.
Take I heard two different answers and
Rahab.
Ruth by nature of marriage,
Rahab by nature of being obedient to God
and I guess eventually through marriage.
~ a New Testament example.
The Ethiopian eunuch. All indications
because he was going or coming from
Jerusalem
where he had gone to worship is that the
Ethiopian eunuch was a proselyte.
He was one who had converted to the
religion in the nation of Israel
in the religious sense, though he was
still an Ethiopian nationally.
Okay?
So for those individuals who bound
themselves under the law,
to use Paul’s terminology, where were they
to worship three times a year?
In Jerusalem. They were not to build
places of worship all over the land,
all over the place. They were not to build
altars to God and offer sacrifices
on every high hill, as the Old Testament
says.
They were to worship in Jerusalem,
where God put his name. Okay?
But everyone who wasn’t an Israelite.
So if you think about the world’s
population,
how much of the world’s population lives
in Palestine,
Israel, ~ and was of the twelve tribes of
Jacob?
Pretty small amount.
All those people were never given a
commandment to worship in Jerusalem.
And yet, if they worshiped God faithfully,
their worship was still accepted.
Their worship was still in accordance with
His will.
Under a different law. Okay,
so bear in mind as the discussion moves
forward,
Jesus is fully aware there’s two laws.
But these Samaritans,
are they Israelites or are they not?
And that’s where the rub is. Because the
Samaritans wanted
to be Israelites, go all the way back to
the days of Nehemiah.
The Samaritans wanted the position of
being considered part
of the nation, but being distinct at the
same time,
they refused to go worship in Jerusalem.
No, we can worship here, where our
ancestors worshiped.
So notice what Jesus says. Woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when you
will neither on this mountain
nor in Jerusalem worship the Father.
Jesus immediately responds with,
There’s something coming you don’t
understand.
Jesus immediately tracks her forward to
the truth of
the kingdom that He came to establish.
But he then says, You worship what you do
not know.
We know what we worship for salvation is
of the Jews.
When Jesus says that salvation is of the
Jews and that they know what they worship,
is he indicating that at the time that he
was walking this earth everyone
who could possibly be saved was a Jew?
No.
Rather, his point is a historical one.
That the origination of salvation,
that is, the one whom God was sending,
because you’re going to watch the
conversation immediately,
head straight towards the Messiah.
The one through whom salvation is coming
is of the Jews,
is essentially what he’s saying.
Jesus says, You worship what you do not
know,
we know what we worship, for salvation is
of the Jews,
but the hour is coming and now is when the
true worshipers will worship
the Father in spirit and in truth,
for the Father is seeking such to worship
him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him
must worship
in spirit and truth.
The woman said to him, I know that the
Messiah.
Now notice she she she understood what he
was saying.
When he said salvation is of the Jews,
she said, I know you’re talking about the
Messiah.
She says, I know that the Messiah is
coming,
who is called Christ. When he comes,
he will tell us all things.
Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am
He.
So a few things we want to gather from
this in regards to worship.
Number one, Jesus reveals the nature of
the kingdom.
That the kingdom was not like the law of
Moses.
That the thing that God was bringing in
the days of
the Messiah was not like the Old Testament
law of Israel.
Turn to Jeremiah chapter 31.
Jeremiah chapter thirty one, a passage
which the Hebrew writer in making
the same line of argumentation concerning
the old and the new law will argue from is
And we’ll quote in detail. We read in
Jeremiah 31 and in verse 31,
Behold, the days are coming, says the
Lord,
when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and with
the house of Judah. Not according to the
covenant that I made with their fathers
in the day that I took them by the hand to
lead them out of the land of Egypt.
Notice God tells Israel through Jeremiah,
When I make this new covenant,
it’s not going to be like the old one.
It is going to be inherently different
from the law of Moses.
Now they’re not going to fully appreciate
that,
but Jesus is telling this woman:
the thing that God is doing through the
Jews,
through the Messiah, is inherently
different from what
you have always known as what the Jews
worship.
But he goes on to say in Jeremiah chapter
31,
verse 32: not according to the covenant.
That I made with their fathers in the day
that I took them by the hand
to lead them out of the land of Egypt,
my covenant which they broke, though I was
a husband to them,
says the Lord. Now notice something else.
Jeremiah accuses
the Jews of breaking the covenant.
Jeremiah makes it clear that it is not the
Lord
who is breaking the covenant.
That it was the Jews who had done that.
So when Jesus says to the woman,
We know what we worship, you don’t know
what you worship.
He is not arguing that the Jews have
always done it right.
He is in no way arguing that the Jews have
it all figured out.
Rather, he is establishing that there was
a God.
Given command that was being followed in
the worship in Jerusalem. That God had
said for them
to do this, and that with the Samaritans
their worship
was not ordained by God.
It was not commanded that they worship
there in that mountain.
They were not given that instruction by
the mouth of a prophet or by
the mouth of the Lord. So Jesus is
establishing the source of authority.
The Jews know what we do because God said,
Do this. You have no such command.
You are arguing back to your forefathers.
Well, Jacob did, therefore it’s okay.
Now notice what else.
We find in Jeremiah. Verse 33.
But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days,
says the Lord. I will put my law in their
minds and write it on their hearts,
and I will be their God, and they shall be
my people.
Where was
the law written previously?
In the days of Moses.
All right, initially Ten Commandments on
tablets of stone,
and then Moses wrote down
The Pentateuch, Genesis through
Deuteronomy.
The law was in written form.
Now, the point Jeremiah is making is not
that there won’t be a written law.
Rather that the nature of the covenant is
going to go from one where it’s
a law that you could go in and open the
the Ark of the Covenant and pull
out a scroll, or go into the tabernacle,
or go into a storage place and pull out a
scroll.
In contrast to that,
you have God saying, No, I’m going to put
it in their heart and in their mind.
Is going to be something internalized and
not just externalized.
But he goes on to say, he says,
My law shall be in their minds and be
written in their hearts,
and I will be their God, and they shall be
my people.
This is an interesting contrast to,
by the way, the writer Hosea, who will
describe Israel
as not my people from God.
He says, No more shall every man teach his
neighbor,
and every man his brother, saying,
Know the Lord, for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest of
them,
says the Lord. For I will forgive their
iniquity and their sin I will remember
no more. God says,
Here’s how you’ve always had it.
You’re born in the covenant.
You are birthed into a nation,
and by blood you are a part of the
covenant.
After you’re born, somebody’s got to teach
you what the covenant is.
Because you didn’t have any sake.
You were born an Israelite. So now you
have to be taught the covenant.
He said, That’s not how my kingdom’s going
to be.
This new covenant, everyone who’s a part
of it will know.
The covenant. They will all know me.
In other words, the knowledge will come
before the birth.
They’re not going to be born into this
covenant by physical birth,
but rather they’re going to be born by
spiritual birth.
Interestingly, back over in John chapter
3,
Jesus and Nicodemus, just in the prior
chapter,
before Jesus heads to Samaria,
has have had a discussion on this very
topic.
Because Nicodemus comes to Jesus in John
chapter 3 and says,
This man came to Jesus by night and said
to him,
Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come
from God,
for no one can do the signs that you do
unless God is with him.
Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you,
unless one is born again. That’s the point
of Jeremiah.
You’ve got to be born into the covenant.
And it’s not by physical birth.
Unless one is born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be
born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time into his
mother’s womb and be born?
Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you,
unless one is born of water and of the
Spirit,
he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus says, You you’re going to have to go
through a new birth,
and it’s not going to be your mother’s
birth canal.
You’re going to have to go through a new
birth in water and the Spirit
in order to enter the kingdom of God.
Because my covenant, God said,
is a new covenant. And everyone who’s in
my covenant will know
me. So as you examine and kind of piece
these things
together, understand something about
worship.
Under the Old Testament law, there was a
set of laws
and ordinances for the Israelite.
There was a set of worship commandments
for the Israelite.
There was a set of commandments inside
that Old Testament covenant.
And the Israelite was obligated to keep
those laws,
those ordinances, those commandments.
Those same commands were not given to
Israel.
all of the Gentile world. And so they
lived under a different set
of laws and ordinances. Jesus’ point to
this woman is,
that’s not going to be the case moving
forward.
There’s going to be one set of laws and
one set of ordinances.
And that all those who worship God are
going to worship
Him in spirit and in truth.
Because they’re going to be a part of a
new covenant.
They’re going to be part of a new
relationship.
And they’re all going to know God.
You’re not going to go around saying,
hey, you’re part of the covenant,
but let me introduce you to who God is.
It’s not how it’s not how it’s going to
work.
It’s going to begin, let me introduce you
to who God is,
so you can be a part of the covenant.
Okay? We need to understand that under the
Old Testament.
Jesus makes it clear God got to decide
where worship happened and where
it was acceptable. Under the New
Testament,
God gets to decide where worship’s going
to happen and where it’s acceptable.
But one last point,
and that is this. Go back to what we read
in verse 23.
But the hour is coming and now is when the
true worshipers
Will worship the Father in spirit and in
truth.
For God is seeking such to worship Him.
The last thing I want you to hold on to
is this God
is actively seeking true worship.
God is looking for a people
For individuals throughout the world who
are willing
to worship him in spirit and in truth.
And we have to look at ourselves and
examine ourselves and wonder,
not wonder, but examine ourselves and
consider,
are we?
Do we worship God in spirit and in truth?
And can we sit down and evaluate whether
or not we do?
Because we are responsible for our end of
the covenant,
just like the Israelites were,
and just like the Samaritans were.
We’re responsible for our part and for
making sure we’re
in accordance with God’s commandments.
Okay? Thank you for your attention.
Christ’s Christianity or Checklist Christianity – Walker Cain – August 09, 2026
Have you ever had a to-do list?
You had your list of objectives, your list of things that you wanted to accomplish for the
day.
Maybe it was at work and the first day the boss said every single employee here needs to
have a to-do list so that everyone got done what they needed to do.
Maybe it was an instructor at college that said, Listen, if you do this, you are going to
have a head start in your work.
At at Memphis we had an instructor who one of our assignments was to say whether or not
that we had a checklist of the things that we wanted to do each day.
We are used to the idea of to-do lists or checklists.
Now they have strengths.
What what is it that a checklist provides for you?
Well, it can give organization.
You know what you need to do.
You know the order in which you need to do it.
It can be something great, something beneficial.
Well, what are the weaknesses?
Well sometimes we can put a little bit too much on our checklist.
We don’t we don’t have all the information in the world.
We don’t know how much time we’re going to have or what’s going to come up.
So there can be times that our checklist has too much on it for what we can really do.
There’s other times it can have too little where we realize, you know what, I could do
more today, and then we add to it later.
But a checklist can have too much, it can have too little, and also another weakness of a
checklist is usually it doesn’t tell you.
why you’re doing what you’re doing.
You know that you need to get this done today, but it’s it’s going to be rare to find a
checklist that says, I need to do this, and here’s the reason why.
Now a checklist can be fine for work.
It is something that is extremely useful, beneficial, and it’s something that we can use
and it’s an expediency, even in our service as Christians.
But what we need to ask is if we use a checklist or if we use the Bible.
If we go to God’s word or if instead we use some kind of summary that we’ve made for
ourselves, the Jews themselves were guilty of this.
Looking at the Jews, Matthew chapter four verses twelve through seventeen, Jesus came to
this earth, he was baptized, he was tempted in the wilderness, and he was about to start
his ministry, or he was starting his ministry.
Verse twelve Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into
Galilee, and leaving Nazareth he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is beyond the sea
coast, in the borders of Zebulun and Neftalim.
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, The land of
Zebulun and the land of Neftalim by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the
Gentiles, the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the
region in shadow of death, light is sprung up.
From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.
The Jews were supposed to be the people who had the word of God.
They had light.
Paul in the book of Romans would ask, What advantage then hath the Jew?
And he would show, Listen, you have God’s word, you have that advantage.
They had what they needed, not to be in darkness, but also they were in darkness anyway.
Now they didn’t know everything about the Christ that would come, and on top of that, they
had leaders who were hiding the truth from them, or were not teaching the truth to them.
They instead had leaders who said, This is what our rabbi says, so this is what we are
going to do.
This is the tradition of our fathers, so here’s what we’re going to do instead of
following the old law.
In fact, you know what?
It’s not that we’re not following the old law.
We’re just doing things that help us follow the old law.
When what they were really doing was replacing the law of Moses with what man wanted to
say.
They tried to take a to-do list, a checklist that they had made, that man had designed,
and replace God’s word with it.
In the best case scenario, they just tried to make that a useful piece of
of their religion, when what it really did was distract from what they needed to be doing,
following God’s word.
Christ came bringing change, bringing a light, and he was going to change it from being
this faulty way of looking at the old law, of looking of w at what God had said, and he
would also bring the church as well, which was his main goal, saving souls and building
his church.
But looking at Christ’s ministry, we want to focus on it for just a second on the side
before
The New Testament starts, of the teaching he was bringing them then.
Matthew chapter five, verses one through two.
These verses show Christ starting the Sermon on the Mount.
And Matthew five through seven, that is the Sermon on the Mount, and it’s going to show
some of the greatest change you could ever see, or some of the greatest change seen in
what Christ taught the people.
As we saw in Matthew 4, he was teaching them repentance.
Matthew chapter 5, he showed them in many respects how to repent.
He’s it starts with blessed are the poor in spirit.
And when usually they would think, blessed are those who are rich, blessed are those who
have what they want.
And all these other aspects, Christ is going to show them something that turns their world
upside down.
Now, with that idea of turning their world upside down, was it the fact Christ was
changing their law or changing the way they looked at it?
Something that needs to be kept in mind here is Christ was during the Sermon on the Mount,
Christ would say many things such as, You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth.
But then Christ showed that they were supposed to turn the other cheek.
Was this Christ contradicting the old law?
When he says, Ye have heard it said that he who looks on a woman commits adultery.
But but I say unto you,
Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.
When Christ said that, was he contradicting the old law?
Was he adding to what the Lord had said?
The Lord was not changing the law.
And certainly he wasn’t changing it yet.
We know this because the law wasn’t going to be done until it was nailed to the cross.
Colossians 2 14 says that Christ had what he did blotted the handwriting of ordinances
that was against us.
Which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.
So during Matthew chapter 5 through 7, Christ isn’t implementing the new law.
He’s still under the old law.
Whatever he is showing them is not a change in the law they are following.
Looking at those words when Christ says, Ye have heard it said, but I say unto you, we
could translate that but with and.
What Christ was doing was looking at the way they looked at the old law.
the way they looked at it as a checklist, and was saying, You know what, this is what you
should have been doing all along.
Further looking at the fact that Christ was not teaching them something new, he said
himself in Matthew five, seventeen through nineteen, Think not that I am come to destroy
the law or the prophets.
I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law
Till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of the least of these commandments and teach men so,
he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of
heaven.
What Christ was teaching were principles that were going to apply both under the new law
and the old law.
But keep in mind, right here he says he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill.
And then he says,
Not one tittle of the law would pass until all was fulfilled.
And we saw Colossians two fourteen earlier that said when Christ was nailed to the cross,
that’s when that handwriting of ordinances was no longer was nailed to the cross or no
longer under it.
It’s no longer the system by which God judges the people of this earth.
The law was going to change then, but it still had not changed yet.
Which means the Chr what Christ is showing them is not a change in the law, but in how
they looked at the law.
He tells them, Don’t think I’m trying to change the law.
Don’t think I’m trying to destroy the law.
I came not to destroy, but to fulfill.
Everything Christ taught them could apply to the old law.
Which means what they were doing was not w which means Christ was not correcting the old
law itself, but how they looked at it.
Now this happened to the Jews.
This happened to the people who had the words.
They had the scribes who were copying the words as their life’s goal.
If it could happen to them, could it happen to us?
Could we take the scripture of God and instead of looking at it for what it says,
following it for what it says, could it be that we need to step back and ask, are we
following God’s word or are we following a checklist, a to-do list we make that we think
is based on God’s Word?
But where we’re but it’s not quite from there.
That’s not quite the source of it.
A checklist can be a good thing, but it can also be bad, and it is always going to be a
bad thing if it is used in religion rather than scripture.
It’s always going to be bad if it’s used instead of looking at God’s Word.
Today we are under the New Covenant.
We are under the covenant of the New Testament.
We have a new law.
Hebrews 9 15 says, And for this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament, that by
means of death were the redemption of transgressions that were under the first testament,
that which are called might that they which are called might receive the promise of
eternal inheritance.
We have the new law now.
Christ is the mediator of the New Testament.
If they needed to be careful about how they looked at the Old Law, how much more should we
be careful in looking at Scripture and looking at the New Law, the better law that we
have?
Today.
We’re going to ask some look at a line of reasoning when it comes to these this checklist
idea.
First, if we follow a checklist, then we follow something other than God’s plans.
If we follow something that we have written ourselves, even if we haven’t realized we’ve
written it, we follow something that is not God’s word.
Second Timothy three, sixteen and seventeen.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof.
For correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect,
thoroughly furnished unto every good work.
We have this saying that all Scripture is profitable, but also connect that with
Revelation, chapter twenty two, verses eighteen and nineteen.
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any
man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in
this book.
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take
away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city from the things which are
written in this book.
Now it needs to be kept in mind that this passage in Revelation is in Revelation.
This is about the book of Revelation itself.
But the principle applies to the whole of Scripture.
If we add to it, the curses that the Scripture shows against those who add to God’s word,
they’re going to come against us.
If we take away from it,
The promises God has for those who follow His Word, they will be taken away from us.
God is going to be just in how He treats that.
But now looking at this in conjunction with Second Timothy three, sixteen and seventeen,
you have the holy word of God, which is perfect for all.
But then you have the fact that if we add or take away from it, we’ve done something
wrong.
If we follow a checklist rather than God’s word, we can be following too little.
Even if it’s a part of God’s word, but not all of God’s word.
It’s not going to work.
It’s God is not going to accept it.
We read earlier Matthew 5, 17 through 19.
Verse 19 again says, Whosoever therefore shall break one of the least of these
commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of God.
Whoever breaks the least of these commandments, there’s going to be consequences for it.
Whoever doesn’t pay attention to what God has said, there is going to be repercussions
because of it.
Now the Lord is not looking down and waiting to strike us for anything we’d possibly do
wrong.
We’ll look more into the idea of how great our God is and how He doesn’t do that later on.
But Christ was showing the fact that they the details mattered.
The fact that they followed this law mattered and they could not leave out what God was
saying.
Even if it was uncomfortable, even if it took extra time.
What God wanted them to do was what God wanted them to do.
We can’t take the great commission out of Scripture.
And pretend like we’re following God’s way.
We can’t take God’s command to meet and gather as the church and worship Him and pretend
like we are following God’s religion, following God’s way.
If we do not do as He says the way He said it, if we’re doing too little, there’s no way
that God will accept it.
A checklist can be too little, but a checklist can also be too much.
Paul would write in 1 Timothy, starting in verse 1.
First Timothy verses one through five.
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter time some shall depart from the
faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and
hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and
commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving
of them which believe and know the truth.
God is showing that there are these who would come and they would have lies.
They would speak lies and hypocrisy and they would forbid to marry.
They would ab command people to abstain from meats.
They were commanding people to do things that God had not commanded himself.
You can have a checklist that has too little.
You can also have a checklist that has too much.
A checklist that says, you know, God didn’t say this, but we’re going to command it.
There’s a religion out there that
For hundreds of years has said, You can only be a priest of God if you never marry, if you
are celibate.
Well, they’ve never looked at God, they’ve apparently never looked at God’s word and saw
marriage is honorable and all in the bed undefiled.
They have added to God’s word.
And then that same religion wants to talk about Good Friday, wants to talk about not
eating meat, when God shows here specifically that there would be those that would come.
And would command to abstain from meats.
Now this applies to far more than any single denomination.
In fact, this applies more than just in the fact that there are there’s the commands to
abstain from meats that some people have, the commands to abstain from marriage that some
give.
If we put more on the brethren than what God’s word says, then we are hurting him.
If we condemn people for things that aren’t really God’s word but are just our culture,
Then there is going to be punishment because of that, because we follow lies and hypocrisy
as well if we do that.
We can have too little in our checklist, we can have too much, but also if we follow a
checklist instead of God’s word, it can be something entirely different from what God
commands us to follow.
Romans ten one through three talks about the Jews having a zeal for God, but not according
to knowledge.
They had a zeal for the Lord.
It’s not that they had a zeal for an idol, they had a zeal for God, but they didn’t know
how to serve him.
The way they were to serve him was now under the new law.
Colossians 2 14, the old law was nailed to the cross.
They were still following it.
The Israelites were still following that old way when it was entirely different from what
God commanded.
Again, if we follow what we think is right, if we follow our own to-do list rather than
the Word of God, it can result in us following something entirely different from what God
desires.
And that’s when we end up with religions that look like mythology.
That’s when we end up with tasks that we don’t know where they came from in Scripture.
God has given us a simple commands.
Simple commands.
He’s commanded us to be with one another as Christians, to edify one another, and to go
out and preach the gospel to others, being benevolent to the world outside.
God’s commands are simple.
He commands morality of us as well.
But when we add to it or when we entirely change it,
Even if we stick God’s name on as a label on whatever we’re doing, it’s not going to
change it if it is not from Him.
If we follow a checklist, then we follow something other than God’s plans.
Now, keep that in mind.
If we follow a checklist, then we follow something other than God’s plans.
Well, it then follows if we follow something other than God’s plans, we don’t follow God.
So then if we’re following a checklist, we have to ask, what is it we’re really following?
If we are doing too much, too little, or something entirely different, what is it that is
truly our goal?
What is it that we are truly serving?
It could be that we’re following what we’ve always heard.
Matthew fifteen, verses two and three.
Christ has the Pharisees come up to him and they ask, Why do your disciples disobey the
tradition of the elders and eat with unwashed hands?
And Christ shows them the fact that they are transgressing transgressing the law.
Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
And then go Christ is going to show that they different ways in which they undid the law.
They changed the law because they didn’t want to do it, and instead added their own
interpretations, additions, or subtractions to God’s word.
But keep in mind he says, they say
Look, we have the tradition of the elders.
This is what we’re supposed to do when Christ says you disobey God’s command by your
tradition.
If we follow what we’ve always heard, we can be in danger.
If we go to worship service because mom and dad said so, or because that’s what religious
people do in America, instead of doing it because that’s what God’s word says, we might be
following a to-do list rather than what God has told us to do.
If our
purpose is not centered on him, but rather centered on what we’ve heard.
Even if we think it’s right, it can be entirely wrong.
It’s a good thing to wash your hands before you eat.
That wasn’t a bad thing for them to say, but what was wrong was for them to bind it as
though it was something from God.
What man says, unless he is quoting Scripture or he is making a necessary inference from
Scripture, is never as powerful as Scripture itself.
That it is never going to be something
That we need to weigh as heavily as Scripture.
We might be following what we’ve always heard, but we could also be following wayward
priorities.
Matthew fifteen verses Matthew twenty three, sixteen through twenty four, rather.
Christ is also going to show another way in which the Pharisees were following wicked
ways, of following their own desires.
Starting in verse sixteen Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear
by the temple, it is nothing.
But whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor.
Ye fools and blind, for weather is greater the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the
gold.
And whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing, but whosoever sweareth by the gift
of upon the altar, he is guilty.
Ye fools and blind, for weather is greater the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the
gift.
They said, We have the temple, we have the gold.
And the gold’s more important.
The part that makes us rich, that’s what’s important.
What’s more important, the altar or the sacrifice?
The sacrifice that the priests get to eat a little part of, that’s the important part.
They took the part that was more valuable to them that could benefit them and said it was
more important than the part that was more tied to the Lord Himself, to His commands of
what to build, of what to make to worship Him.
Now it’s the fact that they were commanded to give these offerings, to have the gold in
the temple, but they had gold that was bea beyond what God had commanded.
They had the donations that were given.
By the rich and even the poor, but they made these riches and they made these temporal
offerings more important in their religion than the temple itself.
It can be the case that there are times where we make things more important rather that
God never even said a thing about.
It can be the case that we look at the church building and think, This is the sanctuary.
When God says, go and meet
And they met in each other’s houses in the New Testament.
Frankly, the auditorium, it was never called a sanctuary in Scripture.
It’s just as good as any other building to go and worship.
It is simply a place where we meet.
But with that, are there times where we make the building more important than God did?
Or we go and make any other physical aspect.
We go make the bank account more important than the work of the Lord.
This congregation does not do that.
This congregation goes
and supports and make sure that it’s following God’s word and thank you for that.
But there are many who hold on to the mighty dollar rather than looking for what our Lord,
our deity, desires of us to do with the funds He has given us.
Because they value this world’s goods more than the g work that can be done with this
world’s goods.
If we follow a checklist, then we might be following what we’ve always heard.
We might be following
our own priorities, or we could follow what makes us look righteous.
Christ in Matthew chapter six, three different times, is going to tell the Pharisees, You
have your reward already.
Matthew six, verse two Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet
before thee as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have
glory of men.
Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.
They took something that was a good and godly thing.
Going and spreading good goods to the poor, but they made it a tradition of making pe
having people look at them, of saying, look how righteous I am.
And then Christ told them, You have your reward already.
When those people looked at you and said, man, look at the good he’s doing, they already
had their reward, and there was nothing left good for them to receive from it.
Christ is going to say this again in verses five and sixteen.
But skip over to Matthew twenty-three, twenty-five through twenty-eight.
Matthew twenty-three, twenty-five through twenty-eight.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup
and platter, but within are full of extortion and excess.
The Pharisees were guilty of making the outside of the cup cup look like it sparkled,
while the inside was dirty.
Imagine bringing that to a fellowship meal.
You had a dish where it was sparkling on the outside.
But before that beautiful brownie dessert was put in, there was a casserole that should
have been washed out maybe about a week ago, still around the edges.
How many people are going to enjoy eating that?
It’s not going to happen.
The Pharisees were like that.
They were like a dish where it had been able to stay and stink, and then the next thing
put in it, no one’s going to want that.
God certainly doesn’t.
If we do what makes us look righteous rather than what is righteous, it could be that
we’re just following a checklist of, okay, do I think this is going to make me look
righteous rather than, okay, what has God said is righteous.
We can follow what makes us look righteous or what makes us feel righteous.
Earlier we referenced Romans ten verses two and three.
They have a zeal for God.
They have a genuine sincerity to follow Him, but not according to
To righteousness, not according to knowledge, rather.
Verse 3, for they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish
their own righteousness, have not submitted unto the righteousness of God.
If we follow a righteousness that we’ve established for ourselves, if we follow a rule
book that we’ve made, or a rule book that is obsolete, as the Jews did, even if it’s with
full sincerity, then it’s still something that God cannot accept.
Even though he desires all men to be saved, he by his very nature is required to be just.
We must ensure that what we follow is his word, is his will.
Rather than following what makes us feel righteous, we must follow what makes us
righteous.
Ezekiel chapter eighteen, verses eighteen and nineteen show that a man he is going to be
counted righteous if he does what’s righteous.
The one who does iniquity, he will be counted as wicked for his wickedness.
God is going to judge righteous those who do what is right, but for us to know what is
right, we need to know His word in His way.
If we follow something other than God’s plans, we don’t follow God.
So what is it that we follow?
It could be what I’ve always heard, it could be wayward priorities, it could be what makes
me look righteous or feel righteous, but a final idea.
If I follow something other than God’s plan,
It might be that I’m just going through the motions.
Hose Hosea verse six of chapter six.
In describing his judgment against the Jews, God says, For I desired mercy and not
sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offering.
They were offering things to God.
They were giving him of offerings, but God says, I desired mercy and
And not sacrifice.
This word mercy is translated as kindness and goodness.
It is something that is from it is a characteristic of God Himself.
Exodus 34, 5 and 6 shows that the first personality trait shown of God is his mercy.
God desired mercy.
He desired for man to have a characteristic of him more than he did sacrifice.
And then he desired knowledge of God more than burnt offering.
When God gives us
His commandments.
God’s commandments are important.
Let there be no doubt about that.
The Ecclesiastes, the ecclesiastical writer said, Fear God and keep His commandments.
He said, That is the whole of man.
But we need to remember why we follow God’s commandments.
God says he desires mercy and not sacrifice.
He desires something more than just following the written commandments.
There’s a motive behind it.
What’s the greatest commandment?
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, all thy mind, all thy
strength.
And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
You can have all of the things right.
You can have every single check mark done.
But if you don’t have the motive behind it, then it is nothing but a checklist.
It’s not God’s word.
It is not his way.
He desires mercy and not sacrifice.
His commandments, in and of themselves, are designed for us to grow closer to Him, to
become more like Him, and to grow in our love for Him.
He desires mercy, for us to have the same kind of mercy He does, not sacrifice.
He desires knowledge of God, for us to know more and more about Him, not just the burnt
sacrifice itself.
God gave those sacrifices so we would understand what it meant to give something, because
He was willing to give His Son for us.
Every single aspect of what God has done.
shows us more about who he is and why we follow him and why he is such an amazing and
great God.
But if we don’t follow him so we can grow closer to him, we have to ask, what is it that
we follow?
Brethren, if we follow God’s word in God’s way and we aren’t growing closer to him, if we
are not following him and growing in our love for him, then we’re either we either need to
Step back and follow Christianity for what it was designed to do, or stop following the
lie we have fed ourselves entirely.
If we are not growing closer to God, we have missed the entire aspect of why God gave us a
law in the first place.
We cannot just follow it.
We cannot just go to church on Sundays and Wednesdays.
We need to look at God’s word and say, I want to grow closer to Him, so I’m going to do
what He says, how He said it, the way He said it.
And if we do that, our Lord is merciful and gracious, and we might mess up occasionally.
There might be something we don’t quite get right, but if we are striving to follow him
and we do follow his word, then he is going to say, Well done, thou good and faithful
servant.
Our Lord desires us to desire him.
That is the heart of what he desires of us.
That is the greatest commandment.
If we follow a checklist, we miss
the beauty of what he has shown us.
But if we follow his word, if we do as he says for the reasons he has given us, then we
can be sure that we one day will have a place with him in eternity, because we desired him
on this earth, and then we will truly have him in the life to come.
If we follow a checklist, we follow something other than God’s plans.
If we follow something other than God’s plans, we don’t follow God and we’ve asked what is
it we could we could be following instead?
But looking at that, if we follow a checklist, we don’t follow the Lord.
Therefore, we must put away the checklist and hold to the Word of God.
Otherwise we follow a lie.
Otherwise we follow something that makes us feel righteous, seems like we’re doing what is
right, but is only going to end
In damnation.
We must hold to God’s word for what it says.
John 14, 15, if you love me, keep my commandments.
Now, this love is important.
This love is the very basis of it all.
But remember, those commandments are the way we express our love to God.
Humans have a love language, a way that they desire for love to be shown.
Some love having gifts.
Some want that physical touch from their spouse.
There’s different kinds of love languages.
What if spouses said, no, I’m going to choose your love language today?
It’s not going to be what you did what you said it was.
Is that going to go well?
The Lord has shown his love language.
And his love language is has he is d how he has described himself in his word.
We can’t say, Oh, I’m going to worship God the way I want to, and access expect him to
think that that is love.
Because love says, what is it that you need?
What is it you desire?
I’m going to do that.
Our Lord looks at us, and even when it might not be something we desire, he gives us what
we need.
God desires us to look at him and give him what he desires, what he wants of us.
Now there is nothing that God needs of us, but he has invested his son, Christ Himself,
into us being saved.
God wants you.
Like he needs you.
Even though he is going to exist and be perfectly fine without you, he has invested his
son’s life into you.
That’s how much he loves you and wants you.
Why follow a checklist when there is such a Lord wanting you with him for eternity?
The commands matter, but also the motive does.
Mark twelve, thirty and thirty one, as we described earlier, thou shalt love the Lord with
all thy heart, all thy soul.
All thy mind, all thy strength.
The Lord desires you.
He desires all of you.
And if we give him that, if we truly follow his word in his way, then he is going to
accept us.
He is going to look at us with love and happiness because we’ve done as he says and we can
be with him one day.
Do we follow Christ’s Christianity, a one that’s does as God says
For what he said, how he said it, or do we follow a checklist?
Brethren, today we we pray that we follow Christ’s.
But if we do not, if there is a discrepancy in the way that we live, the opportunity is
now here to say, you know what?
The Lord has shown me how I need to live.
The Lord has given us his word, so I want to live it for how why he said to live it, or do
as he said if I’ve strayed from his commandments.
If you’ve gone from his way as a Christian, the Lord desires you to come to him.
But if you are not a Christian, if you have not went to his word yet, if you have not
submitted to his word, then grant you salvation until you are willing to accept it.
If you are in need of the forgiveness of God today, would you please come forward as we
stand and as we stand?
Loving As A Servant – Aaron Cozort – August 09, 2026
We’ve spent some time in the last few weeks discussing the things love is not, the things
love does not do.
We’re going to continue that this morning as we open to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and I
encourage you to have your Bibles open, to go with me through the book of Corinthians,
because Paul, as he’s writing about love, we’ve mentioned this before and we’ll say it
again.
He’s not writing about love.
In the abstract.
He’s not writing about love from a dictionary perspective.
He’s not just defining what love is.
And he’s not writing about love in a specific context of marriage or of families.
He is writing in a specific context of love in the body of Christ.
He is writing about love as a comparison and a contrast to the miraculous gifts that the
first Corinthian church or the first century church in Corinth had received miraculously
by the laying on of the apostles’ hands in the first century.
And they were emboldened in their view of themselves because of these miraculous gifts.
Because they had the ability to speak in tongues, because they had the ability to
prophesy, because they had the ability to do these things that God had given them the
ability to do, and yet they had left off love.
And yet, when Jesus is answering the question concerning what is the greatest commandment
in the law, he doesn’t give an explanation concerning.
How to perform a a sacrifice on the altar.
He he doesn’t establish the laws and the ordinances of the Old Testament law in all of
their 613.
He dials straight into Deuteronomy chapter 6 and says, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.
And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, on these two hang
all the law and the prophets.
And so Paul, as he is writing to the church at Corinth, will begin by describing how if
they have all of these miraculous gifts, as he opens the chapter.
And they do not have love.
They’re nothing.
He writes to them in chapter 13, verse 1 of 1 Corinthians Though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels and have not love, I have become a sounding brass and a clinging
cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and
though I have all faith that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,
but have not love, it profits me nothing.
He says, I have produced nothing.
I am nothing, and I have gained nothing.
Verse 4, he writes, Love suffers long and is kind.
Love does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up.
We looked at that two weeks ago.
But he also says love does not behave rudely.
We noticed that last week.
That is to say, love refuses to cause others to be put down so that I might be put up.
It refuses to humiliate.
It refuses to dishonor.
And as we’ve gone through these lessons, we’ve noticed in the first twelve chapters of the
book of First Corinthians, Paul has.
Described where the church at Corinth is actively doing every single one of these things.
They have within their membership those who are behaving dishonorably toward their
brethren.
But he goes on to say: love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not
provoked, thinks no evil.
That’s where we’re going to spend our time this morning.
Love first does not seek its own.
As Paul writes to these Corinthian brethren, as he writes to them about this fundamental
character of God.
See, John would write to the first century church, and John would say, God
is and he doesn’t finish that with speaking in tongues.
He doesn’t say God is prophecy.
He doesn’t say God is knowledge.
He doesn’t say God is faith.
He says God is love.
Paul says, love does not seek its own.
The definition here literally is does not seek the things of itself.
In other words, it does not look at itself and say, you know what?
I am going to care exclusively and with the highest priority about me.
Now,
This is certainly not to say, and is no biblical context to say, that love does not care
for oneself.
Because if that was true, then Jesus’ statement in the second describing the second law in
the old testament law would mean nothing.
Because didn’t he describe it as thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself?
So
Love, in view of this, in this context, does not mean it has no consideration for itself.
That’s not the point.
Rather, that it does not seek its own.
There’s an active action here in seeking.
This is to desire and to motivate oneself to passionately fulfill.
Every desire you have for yourself.
Paul says love doesn’t do that.
Love doesn’t enumerate all of the things that you are interested in and that you value and
you want for yourself.
And now it doesn’t matter what happens to everybody else.
We’re going to do those things.
Love refuses to make itself the center.
Love asks what is best for someone else, for the other person.
In Roman chapter five.
Paul, as he’s writing to the church at Rome, will describe the nature of God’s love.
As he writes, beginning in verse 6: For when we were still without strength in due time,
Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man, someone would
even dare to die.
But God demonstrates his own love toward us.
Notice the direction of love.
God is love, and the direction of his love is toward us.
Paul says if you have love and your love is entirely self-centered.
That your desires and your passions and your movements and your your energies are all
focused entirely on you.
Then what you have is not love.
Because love doesn’t seek its own.
Love is motivated toward someone else.
But notice the rest of the text.
Paul says God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
You see, God exemplifies this in sending his son to die on the cross for our sins.
What did Jesus say when he was speaking to Nicodemus in John chapter 3?
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
That whosoever notice all of the directional statements in that verse.
It was motivated not for God’s concern for Himself, but God’s concern for the world.
It involved sacrificing self for the benefit of the world.
It involved creating a path of salvation for the world.
Love does not seek its own.
It says what is best for you instead of what do I get?
But then consider some examples where Paul draws home the problem in the church at
Corinth.
In First Corinthians chapter six.
We read and in verse 1, Paul writes to the church at Corinth, and he says, Dare any of you
having a matter against another go to law before the unrighteous and not before the
saints?
Here’s the scenario.
You have the church at Corinth, which is growing.
Which is made up of Jews and Gentiles, which is made up of those who, some of whom were
taught directly by Paul, some who have been taught by other teachers along the way.
And within this congregation, you have individuals who have businesses.
They they have endeavors that they’re involved in in their daily lives.
And perhaps the scenario may come where one member of the church does business with
another member of the church.
But as they’re accounting for the business that they’ve done, they realize, you know what,
you didn’t do me right.
You you didn’t get do what you said you would do.
You didn’t give me everything you sold me.
You sold me this much of something, but you delivered this much of it.
And so here are these two members of the body of Christ, and they’re saints.
They’re Christians.
And one of them is saying, listen, you didn’t handle this relationship properly.
And so instead of dealing with it together, instead of dealing it with it in the body of
Christ, this member of the body of Christ says, You have not handled this properly.
You have not delivered what you said you would.
I’m going to go take you to the court in Corinth until you pay me everything you owe me.
Something to observe in this as we go through the text is Paul never says that the person
who’s bringing the case isn’t justified in bringing the case.
He never says that the one who did wrong to his brother didn’t actually do wrong to him.
Rather, Paul’s addressing it on a deeper level about the motivation in the heart of the
one who’s taking his brother to the courts.
Notice what he says.
He says, Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
First thing that Paul wants to address is do you not realize what the scripture and what
prophecy has said concerning those who belong to God?
You go all the way back to the life of Noah.
And you find there as the Bible speaks concerning Noah, that not only did Noah find grace
in the eyes of the Lord, but Peter will write concerning Noah that through Noah’s life he
preached righteousness, he judged the wicked world that he lived in.
Paul says, Do you not know that the people of God judge the world?
Do you not comprehend that as a Christian you stand in judgment of the world by your
obedience to Christ?
But then he goes on to say, and if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to
judge the smallest matters?
Here you are.
You are a Christian.
You are declaring that the world is lost, that the world is in sin, that the world is in
danger of eternal judgment by your actions, by your life, by your faithfulness to Christ.
You can judge in the single greatest, most weighty matter that there is eternity.
And are you telling me that as a Christian you can’t judge on a matter of business?
You can judge the world that they’re in sin.
You can judge the world that they stand condemned before God, but you can’t judge whether
one Christian or another Christian is right on a matter of business?
He says, Do you not know that we shall judge angels?
How much more things that pertain to this life?
Paul makes it clear that as a Christian, as a person living in this world who has received
the gospel, he says, you stand in a position of honor and judgment even before the angels
in heaven.
Consider what Jesus would say and what Paul would point out.
Even the angels believe.
They know who Jesus is, they know what his what authority he has.
But those who follow Satan, they know it doesn’t mean they obey him.
Paul says, You’re going to stand in judgment before angels as one who has been obedient to
the message of Jesus Christ.
So you can judge the world and you can judge the angels.
How is it you can’t be considered wise enough and faithful enough to the Word of God to
judge on a matter of this life?
He goes on to say, verse 4 If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this
life, if you’re seeking a judgment, you have a matter.
That needs to be judged.
But it’s not about eternal matters, it’s not about spiritual matters.
It’s about a matter in this life, he says.
If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you appoint those
who are least esteemed by the church to judge?
You’ve got a matter you need to deal with.
I tell you what, I know that that judge worships at the altar of Zeus, and I know that
that judge goes out and commits fornication with the worshipers of the altar of Zeus.
And I know that judge is dishonest and accepts bribes, but here’s what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna take my matter that I have with my brother in the body of Christ, and the two of
us, Christians, are gonna go stand before that judge to get him decide on a matter.
Paul says, I say this to your shame.
Is it so that there is not a wise man among you, not even one who will be able to judge
between his brethren?
Moses, look over the congregation.
Look around you in the body of Christ.
Can you not find one man who’s got any wisdom?
Can you not find one Christian with a shred of wisdom, so much so that they would become a
Christian, and they are therefore in a better position to judge matters of morality and
rightness and justice than the world?
Can you not find a Christian who can judge on this matter?
But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers.
Paul says, I’m going to declare this as shameful as it is.
He says, No.
Sorry, verse seven.
Now, therefore, it is already.
Look at this language that Paul uses.
He’s used shame, unbelievers, and he says, now it is already an utter failure, as the New
King James translates it.
You have missed it in every degree at every point.
In this scenario.
He says it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another.
Now here’s the question.
Here’s the position where we draw back to love does not seek its own.
Paul says, why do you not rather accept Rome?
Paul says, if you were to give me the option, am I going to take another person in the
body of Christ, a Christian, and in perspective of that, the reputation of the body of
Christ, and take it before a judge.
To allow an ungodly judge and an unrighteous person to declare one who is my brother and
by reputation the church to be an ungodly entity, an unjust entity, someone participating
in wrong.
He says, if you give me that choice or the choice to accept wrong done against me, I’ll
tell you which I’m taking.
You do wrong to me all you want, but don’t you dare do wrong to the church.
Don’t I dare do wrong to the church by taking it before a judge?
He says, Why do you not rather accept wrong?
Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?
No, you yourselves do wrong and cheat, and you do these things to your brethren.
Notice Paul’s not letting the guilty party off.
Paul is in no way allowing the guilty party who has done this to get away with it.
Paul needs to address first their heart.
And by the way, one of the things that you see here is you see a scenario very similar to
the wicked servant.
You remember the parable that Jesus gave?
The king had a servant who owed him a great debt.
A debt so large he would never be able to pay it.
And he brings the servant before him and he says, You’re going to have to be vanquished uh
vanquished, your your your family’s gonna be sold, we’re going to regain everything we
can, fire sale, this servant gone.
And the servant says, Give me time, give me time, and I will repay all of it.
And the king, knowing it is impossible for the servant to ever pay the debt, forgives the
debt.
The servant then, having been forgiven, goes out, finds a servant who owes him money.
And turns around and takes the servant who’s under his authority and throws him in prison
and says, You’re not getting out of prison until you pay me every penny.
had authority.
So the king calls for the servant who he had forgiven.
When he sees what the servant has done, what did I forgive you?
You had a debt you could never have paid.
And now you go and hold someone guilty and will not forgive a debt which they could have
paid?
Here’s a Christian.
who could never have paid the debt of sin that they owed God.
And they turn around and tell another Christian, if you don’t pay me what you owe me, I’m
going to get you sent to prison and to judgment and I’m going to pull you before the
court.
You see the parallel?
Paul says, why do you not rather let yourself be cheated?
The real question he’s asking is, haven’t you done worse to God?
Don’t you owe a debt you can’t pay?
Haven’t you defrauded the one who came and sacrificed his son for you?
He goes on to say, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of
God?
Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,
nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners
will inherit the kingdom of God, and such
W some of
um In direct parallel to Jesus’ parable.
Paul says, I want you to look at where you came from.
You want to be justified.
You want to be repaid.
You want to be made whole?
Let’s examine whether you can make God whole.
Let’s examine whether you can repay the debt you owe.
Mm-hmm.
Paul says, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, but you
were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Paul says, show me where you repaid your debt.
I know your condition.
I know that you stand sanctified and justified.
I know that he made you holy, but he made holy.
And how did he do it?
He did it by the love that he had for you.
And here you are seeking your own.
Here you are only worried about your debts that others owe you.
Here you are only worried about you being made whole.
And you’re willing to take the reputation of the church and draw it before the courts, the
body in which you found justification.
And sanctification and forgiveness.
Chapter eight.
Mm.
Paul will write in chapter 8, verse 1.
Now concerning things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
And if any one thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing, yet as he ought to know.
But if anyone loves God, this one is known by him.
Therefore, concerning the things, the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an
idol is nothing in this world, and that there is no other God but one.
For even if you there are so called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many
gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, who for whom of excuse me,
of whom are all things, and we for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things and through whom we live.
However, there is not in everyone that knowledge.
For some with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol,
and their conscience being weak is defiled.
But food does not commend us to God.
For neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse.
But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are
weak.
For if anyone sees you who have knowledge,
Eating in an idol’s temple.
Will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to
idols?
And because your knowledge uh shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died.
And but when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin
against Christ.
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my
brother stumble.
Paul, as he draws forward this point, to another scenario.
This one concerning the meats that were sold in the marketplace and the eating of the
meats there in the marketplace where the temples were.
Paul says here, you’ve got two brethren.
One brother is
Knows that an idol is nothing.
He’s read the book of Isaiah.
He knows what happened to create that idol.
The man went out into the forest and he chopped down a tree.
And with the tree, he cut up some wood to make a fire, some wood to build his house, and
some wood that he had left over.
He made an idol.
And then he set it up and then bowed down and worshipped it.
And God’s point in Isaiah, and God’s point to the Corinthians is that idol is nothing.
It’s a stick that was in the woods.
And someone decided to worship it.
And Paul says, I happen to know also that there are those around who are called lords.
They are called gods.
There are those who walk through the streets who are honored as gods.
He says, I also know they’re nothing.
But some of your brethren don’t understand that.
Some of those Christians in your church don’t fully comprehend that because they’re
novices, because they’re weak, because their conscience has not been fully trained by the
knowledge of the Word of God.
And so they walk into the marketplace and all they see is the paganism they used to be
involved in.
All they see are the idols that they used to worship when they were ignorant and unlearned
and unknowledgeable of the true God.
And they walk in and they see a brother sitting in an idol’s temple eating the food.
And for them to do that, to join their brother, would be to violate their own conscience.
And Paul says, here’s what you’re doing.
You’re not guarding them, you’re creating a stumbling block for them.
You’re saying, I have the liberty to do this because I know that this idol is nothing.
But when they come do it with you, they’re violating their conscience and they’re sinning.
And Paul says, Lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who
are weak?
For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the
conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols?
But in doing so, he’ll violate his conscience?
And because of your knowledge shall the weak
Brother perish for whom Christ died.
Paul says, you absolutely have the liberty.
You absolutely have the freedom.
But will you use your liberty and your freedom to cause your brother to stumble and to
fall?
And Christ paid his debt.
Paul says you’re only thinking about yourself.
You’re not practicing love because Christ loved you enough to die for you, and you don’t
even love your brother enough to not eat meat that will cause him to stumble.
He says, Because of your knowledge, shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?
But when you thus, and notice what the phrase is.
Sin against the brethren.
Paul says, you’re sinning against your brother.
By your liberty, by what you claim you have every right to do because you have knowledge
concerning these spiritual matters, you are violating your trust with your brother, and
you’re sinning against him.
He goes on to say But when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak
conscience, you sin against Christ.
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, Paul says, I will never again eat meat lest I
make my brother stumble.
Paul says, I’m not going to seek my own.
I’ll rather sacrifice so that my brother gets the benefit.
But then consider as well 1 Corinthians chapter 10.
First Corinthians chapter ten.
Paul has brought up the Old Testament example of Israel and their lack of faithfulness
toward God.
And he has told the Christians in Corinth verse 14 Therefore, my beloved brethren, flee
from idolatry.
I speak as to a wise man, judge for yourselves what I say.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?
The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
For we, though many, are one bread and one body.
For we are all partakers of that one bread.
Observe, Israel, after the flesh.
Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?
What am I saying then?
That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything?
Rather that the things which
The Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.
And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.
You cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons, or do we provoke the
Lord to jealousy?
Are we stronger than He?
All these things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.
Paul is establishing everything that God said was good is good.
But it doesn’t mean that everything that God said is good and is lawful should be done.
Because sometimes it doesn’t edify.
Sometimes it doesn’t build others up.
Sometimes it tears them down.
He goes on to say, let no one seek his own, but each one his other’s well-being.
What Paul is essentially saying is, you know, everything God said was good in this world.
Everything God created and said was lawful.
It is.
But you better measure whether you should participate in it based upon your love for one
another first.
Because not everything is edifying, not everything is building up some things that you
say, well, this is good, therefore I can do it.
Some things will tear down.
He goes on to say, verse 25: Eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions
for conscience’ sake.
He says, When you walk into the market and you see a piece of meat and it’s for sale, buy
the piece of meat, take it home, and eat it.
Don’t ask them what they did to it before you got to the market.
Don’t ask them if it was sacrificed to an idol.
Don’t ask any questions, just eat the meat.
But then he says, Whatever sold the meat market, asking no questions for conscience’ sake,
for the earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness.
If any of those who do not believe invites you to dinner and you desire to go, eat
whatever is said before you, asking no questions for conscience sake.
He says, Gentile pagan out there in the world in Corinth, they invite you over for dinner.
You walk into the house, you don’t ask them what they did with the food before you got
there.
You don’t ask them if they took the food and they put it on the altar to their house God
and offered it as a sacrifice before they put it on the table.
You walk in knowing full well that even if they did, the all the idol that they offered it
to is nothing.
And that everything belongs to the Lord.
He says, But if anyone says to you, this was offered to idols, they invite you in, you
walk into the house of the pagan, you walk into the house of this Gentile, and you walk
in, and they say, Now I want you to know we have blessed this food by offering it to the
gods.
Paul says If they say to you this was offered to idols, do not eat it for the sake of the
one who told you.
Notice the love isn’t exclusively toward other Christians.
Paul said, You need to love that person who’s lost enough to not eat the food.
To demonstrate that their God is not God.
He says, But if anyone says to you, this was offered to idols, do not eat it for the sake
of the one who told you, and for conscience’ sake.
For the earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness.
Conscience, I say, not your own.
But that of the other.
For why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience?
He says, I know what you’re gonna argue.
I know what you’re gonna say.
You’re gonna say, But I have every right to eat that food.
That food has nothing wrong with it.
There’s no problem with that food.
He says, I know.
And you’re gonna ask why your liberty should be restricted by another man’s conscience.
He says, But if I partake with thanks, why am I evil spoken of for the food over which I
give thanks?
Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Give no offense, either to the Jew, or to the Greeks, or to the church of God.
Just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of
many that they are.
May be savd.
Paul says, Let me tell you something about what matters more than your liberty.
Let me tell you something about what matters more than you being made whole.
Let me tell you something that matters more than you being justified in your actions.
that other person’s soul.
Because Christ died that that person might be saved.
But you’re impeding their salvation through your liberty, through your rights.
in the body of Christ, we have the right to do many things.
But we have the obligation to love one another.
And to not put our liberty or our position or our justification or our being made whole in
front of the thing that matters far more.
And that is another person’s soul.
If you have need of the invitation this morning, there is a
Lord, and there is a Christ who died on the cross for your sins, who shed his blood that
you might be made whole.
He paid a debt, the song says.
He did not owe.
I owed a debt I could not pay.
When we consider our actions as Christians, if you’re a member of the body of Christ, may
you always measure your actions first on your debt to God, and second on the benefit to
your brethren, and thirdly on the opportunity of
that this thing may provide or remove for a lost person to find Christ.
If you have need of the invitation this morning, why not come now as we stand and as we
sing?
Revelation 17 (Lesson 3) – Aaron Cozort – August 9, 2026
Good to see everyone here this morning.
I jinxed myself on the way here.
I made a comment to my mother in law that it’s a good thing she came for an extended visit
this particular year because this very well may be the smoothest ride you ever get on an
interstate in Memphis right now.
And I said that and not uh not five minutes later we get to the three eighty five exit to
get off two forty and come down three eighty five as completely blocked off.
And
They they didn’t bother to tell any of you know Google or Apple or anybody else that
they’re shutting down the uh the the entrance onto three eighty five.
Nothing.
Nothing.
No indication at all that hey by the way, three eighty five’s closed.
So it takes a little longer to get here on Poplar.
I’ll just tell I’ll just tell you that.
All right.
So it we’re we’re we’re just glad to be here and uh glad all of you are here and we can be
grateful for safety and smooth roads that we can’t eventually drive on.
So all right, let’s begin with a word of prayer and then we’ll get into our study.
Gracious Father in heaven, we come before you grateful for the day that you’ve blessed us
with, for the beauty of it, for all that you do for us.
And all that you have granted to us for the beauty of the world and the earth, the
provisions that you grant to us, the sunshine, the rain, all of the things that are upheld
by the word of your power.
Lord, we pray that you will be with us as we go through this day.
May the things that we say and the things that we do be right and in accordance with your
will, and in and may we help uh others and encourage one another to
Know what your word has in it that we might know how you would have us to live and how you
would have us to serve you.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
So a little bit of level setting because we’re we’re nearing the end of chapter 17.
So by way of review, going back through what we’ve discussed in the book of Revelation.
Chapter one, the book opens in John.
Is there on the Isle of Patmos?
It is the Lord’s Day.
He is in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, as the text says.
And interesting point, one worth continuing to bring up.
John states at the opening of the book, because so many people will in the religious world
will come to this book and they say, This is about when Christ returns to establish his
kingdom.
That’s what they’re gonna tell you it’s about.
That’s what uh all the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine tells you the book of Revelation is
about.
Th these are the signs and this is what’s gonna happen at the coming of the kingdom.
John writes in Revelation chapter 1, verse 9, that he is our brother in the kingdom.
Present tense.
He says, I am your brother in tribulation.
I’m going to go through this with you, and you and I are in the kingdom.
Jesus would say in Mark chapter 9, verse 1, as he spoke to his apostles.
He said, Some of you standing here shall not taste death till you see the kingdom of God
present or come with power.
And there’s one of those apostles who was not alive when that happened.
Which one?
Judas.
The other eleven were present on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem when the kingdom of God
came with power.
Whose power was it that it came with?
The power of the Holy Spirit.
It came as a direct fulfillment of what Joel prophesied in Joel chapter two, and Peter
said this is that which Joel prophesied.
So the kingdom came.
The kingdom is already here.
It came with power.
And John was in the kingdom when he wrote the book of Revelation, which tells us the book
of Revelation is not about the coming of the kingdom.
It is about the fulfilling of the prophecies concerning the kingdom that Daniel saw and
interpreted, and the fulfillment of what God promised to do in the kingdom in that he
would establish a kingdom that would never be destroyed.
And John is writing to the church, which makes up the kingdom of God on earth, and he is
writing to those Christians to tell them, I know it looks like the kingdom’s gonna fall.
I know it looks like the beast is gonna win.
I know it looks like the devil’s got a hold on you, and you are going to be crushed by the
Roman Emperor and his.
minions and I know it looks like everything that God said from A D six hundred all the way
forward is going to fail.
But I’m writing this book to let you know you win.
And it won’t look like it midway through.
But I’m going to tell you how it turns out.
So John is in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day on the Isle of Patmos as he begins to write the
vision and the things which he saw.
And he turns to hear a voice that spoke behind him, and he fell on the ground because of
the presence of the one whose presence was there speaking to him, and it looked like
Christ, but in a glorified state.
And Christ was standing there holding in his right hand the seven stars, which represent
the seven churches, and was surrounded by the seven golden lampstands, which represent the
messengers of the seven churches.
And John is told to write to the seven churches of Asia Minor because they’re going to go
through this because they’re Roman cities.
And he writes to them to tell them, I know your works.
I know what you’ve done.
I know what you’re good at, and I know what you’re bad at.
I know that some of you I’m putting no more burden on because you’re already going through
it.
And some of you, you repent, or I’m going to come make war with you.
Chapter 4 opens, and John sees an open door in heaven and is basically called to go
through the door.
He goes through the door and he enters into the throne room of God and he sees the one
who’s sitting on the throne.
And he doesn’t describe the one who’s sitting on the throne.
He describes the glory of the one who’s sitting on the throne, and the glory that
surrounds the throne, and the sea of glass that surrounds the throne, and the four beasts
that surround the throne, and the twenty-four elders that surround the throne.
And their singular message is this: the one who’s on the throne.
Reigns and is worthy.
Interestingly, if you had a throne and you had a person on the throne, and the person on
the throne was reigning, what might you call the person who’s on the throne?
A king.
What is a king if he’s reigning?
What does he have?
Power and a kingdom.
When John walks through the door to the throne room of God, he sees a king who is reigning
over his kingdom.
And then you find that not only is there a king reigning over his kingdom, but there’s
twenty four elders that are sitting on
What does John call the things they’re sitting on?
Front.
they come off those thrones and they take the crowns that they wear and they cast them
before the one who they sit before because they’re praising the one who’s sitting on the
throne, who is a king, who has a kingdom.
And they worship him.
And then as chapter six or chapter five opens, rather, the one who’s sitting on the throne
has a scroll in his right hand.
And John is desiring to see what is in the scroll, to know what is written on the scroll,
because it’s written on the inside and then on the out, and it’s sealed with seven seals.
And they go through heaven and earth to find someone who’s worthy to open the scroll and
to read the message from the king who.
Who’s sitting on the throne?
And no one can be found.
John begins to weep, but one of the angels comes to tell John, don’t weep, for we found
the one who’s worthy to open the scroll.
And it’s the Lamb who was slain and who is alive.
It’s the lion of the tribe of Judah.
It’s the Christ.
And so the one who is the lion, who is the lamb.
who is the Christ goes and takes the scroll from the one who’s sitting on the throne.
And he opens the scroll.
And before he opens the scroll, as he is worthy to take the scroll, he is declared worthy
to be the one who is king.
And the Hebrew writer helps us with this, by the way.
Because the Hebrew writer tells us that all things were put under his feet.
That is Christ.
But the Hebrew writer makes it incredibly clear.
He says when we say all things were put under his feet, Christ, that of course excludes
the one who put all things under his feet, which is who?
God the Father.
Uh it’s this interesting thing about universal affirmatives.
All things well, technically the Hebrew writer says, well, it’s some things.
Because there’s one thing that is excluded from everything, and it’s God the Father is not
put under the feet of Christ.
Yes, sir.
Mm-hmm.
they controlled what would have been considered the known world at that time, in the sense
that yeah uh they didn’t control China, they didn’t control other parts of the region.
So, from a regional perspective, for a person in the Roman Empire, they they were the
world power.
But uh there were regions of the planet that that those people
had never traveled to and and would not have been cons they would have considered those to
be the the barbarian regions.
Yeah.
So so from from that perspective, the perspective of a first century person in that Middle
East region, they can they controlled the whole known world.
Good question.
um So when you when you look at chapter six
Chapter six, or sorry, chapter five, get my numbers right.
Chapter five says there’s one who’s sitting on the throne.
And there’s one who’s before the throne, who’s the lamb, who has all the same power and
all the same might and all the same worthiness as the one who sits on the throne.
He doesn’t supplant the one who sits on the throne.
He shares his glory.
Okay?
And you remember in John chapter 17, Jesus prayed to the Father that when he was about to
go to the cross, that God would restore to him the glory that he had with the Father
before the world was.
So Jesus says, I’m going back to my rightful position, sharing the glory of deity at the
throne.
Okay.
So if you have a lamb who’s worthy to reign, who shares the glory of God the Father who’s
sitting on the throne, then you might consider that the one who’s reigning, who is the
Lamb, has is a king who has a kingdom, and he is reigning over his kingdom.
And John’s point is, we’re supposed to know all of this already, because Daniel prophesied
that it was going to happen in the days of these kings, that the God of heaven was going
to set up a kingdom which would never be destroyed.
And for all the Jehovah’s Witnesses and for all those in the religious world who are of a
dispensational premillennialist mindset that say they’re still waiting for the kingdom.
You disagree with Daniel.
Because Daniel said it was going to happen in the days of the Roman Empire.
That these things would happen and the God of heaven would set up a kingdom.
So either you’re right or Daniel’s right, but you can’t both be right.
So chapter six opens, and the one who is worthy to sit on the throne, the one who is the
lamb who was slain, the lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ, begins to open the
scroll and begins to loose the seals, and he sees first the white horse, then the red
horse, then the black horse, then the pale horse.
And it begins, and it looks like the church is winning.
It looks like the kingdom of God is going forth and conquering all the other nations
because that’s what J Nebuchadnezzar saw in the vision.
He saw this mountain rise up, made without hands, and the mountain turned into a great
kingdom, and it wiped away all the other kingdoms.
The white horse goes forth and he’s conquering, and it looks like nobody’s gonna stop him
except then the red horse comes and and war begins, and the black horse comes and economic
pressures begin, and the pale horse comes, and who’s sitting on the pale horse?
If you know the Johnny Cash song, you know.
Death is sitting on the pale horse and hell follows with him.
And it looks like the kingdom is going to be decimated by the powers of Satan.
And then the fifth seal is open, and under the altar are the souls of the saints who have
been dying for the testimony of Jesus Christ and for his word, and they are crying out to
the Lord, how long are you going to let this happen?
How long, O Lord, faithful and true?
We’re not doubting your ability and we’re not doubting your faithfulness and we’re not
doubting your authority and we’re not doubting your power.
We’re just wondering how long until we see it.
Because we’re dead, and a whole lot of those who we know and love who are faithful to you
are going to die too.
And they’re given robes and they’re told to rest for a little while.
And the sixth seal is open, and God’s answer is forecasted.
Yeah, I’m going to deal with these people.
And when I’m close to being done, they’re going to go and call for the mountains to fall
on them to protect them from the wrath of the Lamb.
But before we do that, chapter 8 or chapter 7 opens, and God says, Hold on, before we
start this judgment thing, we need to mark those that belong to God because I’m not
judging them.
And so the angels go and they they mark all those who belong to the Lamb and who have the
testimony of his name.
And chapter 3 tells us, as John writes to the churches, that the churches are those who
wear the name of God.
So those who are in the kingdom and those who belong to God and are those who have his
name written on their forehead, and it’s the Christians in the churches that are being
persecuted by Rome.
And so you have seven angels.
After all those who belong to God are marked, you have seven angels, and they are given
seven trumpets, and they begin to pronounce partial judgment that goes out to the
persecutors of God’s kingdom.
God’s church.
And they begin to blow those trumpets, and with each trumpet comes uh a picture like an
Exodus plague.
But it’s all partial judgment.
A fourth of this dies, and a fourth of this is destroyed, and a fourth of this, and a
fourth of that.
And as these trumpets progress.
More judgments, more warnings come from God to those persecuting powers saying you can
repent, you’ve still got time.
Then the seventh trumpet blows, and inside the seventh trumpet, you have a warning as
those last three trumpets blow that there’s there’s more coming.
Repent now.
And then there’s a pause.
And John sees a mighty angel with one foot on the land and one foot on the sea.
God reigns over land and sea, right?
And his messenger can come put his feet down on land and sea because that’s part of God’s
kingdom.
And he’s got another message in his hand.
And John is told to go take the little book and to read the message.
And he says, it’s going to be sweet in your mouth and it’s going to be bitter in your
belly.
Because the message is going to be the Christians win, but they win through the
tribulation.
They win through the hardship that’s coming.
They’re victorious, but they’re going to go through it.
And so John sees two witnesses.
He sees the olive trees standing there.
And these witnesses declare the word of God, and they have the lampstands, and their light
never goes out.
And he sees the two witnesses in human form, and they look like Moses and Elijah in the
works that they perform.
This is the Old Testament prophet’s testimony that you’re going to speak the word of God,
you’re going to be faithful to the word of God, and the world is not going to hear you.
Rather, they’re going to kill you.
But as John watches the vision and he sees these things occur, he sees the testimony for
the Word of God proclaimed by the two witnesses.
And as long as they’re speaking the Word of God, the world can’t touch them.
That the moment the message is finished, the world kills them and leaves their bet their
bodies dead lying in the street.
For three and a half days, they don’t even bury them.
They just throw a party and rejoice that the people who were speaking the word of God are
dead.
But three and a half days later, half of a seven, there’s a lot of sevens, there’s a lot
of three and a halves in the book.
For a partial amount of time, it looks like the world wins.
But God says, Hold on, wait a minute.
He resurrects his witnesses back to life, brings them up into heaven, and judgment
commences.
Another picture saying, No, world, you don’t win.
But my people are going to be faithful to me.
You’re going to kill them.
You’re going to persecute them.
And then I’m going to judge you.
And then chapter 12 opens.
And John sees a woman.
And she looks like the church.
She looks like the people of God.
She looks like Israel of old that brought forth the Messiah.
And she brings forth a child and the devil, the dragon.
This red serpent is there and he’s waiting to consume the child.
He’s waiting to kill the Messiah.
He thinks, you know what, if I can just kill this baby, I win.
And just as he thinks he’s about to consume the child, God brings the child up in heaven.
So you see Satan and his minions follow him up into heaven and go make war with the
angels.
Now, are we being told about a literal physical event where the where Satan left the earth
with his minions and they went up into heaven and they made war, and Michael the archangel
sends them back down?
No.
The point is the devil loses to Christ on earth.
He loses to Christ in heaven.
And he even loses to the descendants of God’s people on earth.
The devil loses everywhere he goes.
But the dragon brings forth the sea beast and land beast.
And remember where the mighty angel put his feet?
He put his feet in the kingdom of God.
He put his feet where God has authority and God has power.
God rules over the kingdoms of men.
Isn’t that what God told Nebuchadnezzar?
Da way back in Daniel chapter four, when Nebuchadnezzar got to go eat grass like a cow,
and got to have his hair grow out like birds’ wings, birds’ feathers, a and got to spend
all that time not ruling over his kingdom that he thought he built.
And then God not only brought his right mind back to him, but put him back on the throne
that God had reserved for Nebuchadnezzar while all of this was transpiring?
Now you pause for a moment and think.
Do you not think that there was someone in the Babylonian kingdom that was ambitious, that
was power hungry, that would have in a moment usurped Nebuchadnezzar’s position on the
throne and taken the throne?
I’m not aware of many courts or kingdoms where there’s not somebody of that personality
and of that demeanor ready to take the throne at any moments of weakness.
And God makes it so clear that he rules in the kingdoms of men and gives it to whomever he
wills, that not a single one of those people was able to take the throne from
Nebuchadnezzar while Nebuchadnezzar was out grazing like a cow.
Mean how more vulnerable can you get?
What happens to cows?
huh.
Ground beef.
They get slaughtered.
And God makes it clear in Nebuchadnezzar.
I can put you in such a vulnerable position that you could be slaughtered tomorrow if you
were the cow that you’re acting like.
And I can take you out there and I can make you graze like a cow, and then I can put you
right back on that throne, and I can make sure nobody touches your throne while you’re
gone.
From which Nebuchadnezzar writes, The kingdom of God, or God rules in the kingdoms of men.
So when the angel comes down and sets his feet on the right on the land and on the sea,
and hands John a little book and says, Hey, this is how it’s going to work out, he’s
declaring God rules.
And his messengers can put their feet wherever they want to.
But then out of the land and out of the sea, the dragon brings forth his minions, his
kingdom, his
Roman armies and his false prophets and his false teachers and those who say if you want
to sell in the marketplace of Rome here in Ephesus, you’re going to have to declare that
Caesar is God.
Watch the thing from World Video Bible School.
They recently posted John Moore in his uh Bible Lands passages was discussing Ephesus.
And there at the gate of
To the marketplace, there was an image made to Domitian.
An image made to the Caesar, who’s going to be the one persecuting the church and
declaring him to reign as the son of God.
And so as you walked into that marketplace at the end of the first century and the
beginning of the second century, that same marketplace most likely that Paul would have
sat at with Aquila and Priscilla and made tents and sold them, that same marketplace you
would have walked under a gateway to an image, to a Caesar, declared to be the Son of God.
And so the beast rises up and the beast is Rome, inhib in exhibiting the power of Satan to
destroy the kingdom, and the beast has his minions and it’s the land beast and the sea
beast, and they’re going forth and they’re declaring, Listen, if you don’t worship Caesar,
if you don’t worship Rome, you’re going to die.
Then chapter 14 opens up, and where do you see the saints?
Well, you see them dead and and slaughtered and lying all over.
No, you don’t.
You see them standing on Mount Zion with the lamb, rejoicing and singing because they’re
victorious.
They’re not dead.
They didn’t lose.
They weren’t vanquished.
They weren’t destroyed.
They win.
In chapter 14, you see the 144,000, an exemplification of God’s people.
You see a declaration in chapter 14: Babylon is fallen, that great city.
Hey, you know, look back in history.
Where’s Babylon?
It’s gone.
Guess what?
God said it would be.
Look at the new Babylon, Rome.
Where is it gonna be?
The same place the old one was, fallen.
Gone.
And there’s one who’s given a sharp sickle.
And he’s sitting on a cloud and he’s told, go reap the earth.
Go harvest the field that I’ve made ready.
And so the bowls begin to be poured out.
The judgments begin to commence.
God says, You didn’t repent, you didn’t follow my warning.
Now here comes final judgment.
And so in chapter 15 and 16, seven angels are handed seven bowls, and they proceed to pour
out the judgments of God.
And again,
These Egyptian plagues, like we saw in Exodus, are again rehearsed, and now it’s a full
judgment, not a partial judgment.
So, chapter 17, after these bowls are all poured out, John says, Hold on, uh we need to go
look deeper at who this beast is, who this dragon is, and the woman who rides on him that
looks like a harlot, because she is, because she seduced all the kingdoms of the earth.
to make war against God and to rebel against God and to worship Caesar instead.
And so John begins to describe the harlot as he sees in the vision.
And he she looks like she’s the one who’s in charge.
She looks like she has the power of all the kings of the earth.
She looks like she’s riding on Satan and she’s conquering.
But she’s drinking.
She’s drinking from the blood of the saints who she’s persecuting.
And God says, I’m going to show you how she falls.
But he identifies in chapter seventeen the one
Or the time where all this is going to occur, and the beginning of this judgment.
And as we discussed last week, it happens during the time of the seven heads that are
seven mountains, verse nine, which the woman sits.
There are seven kings, five have fallen, one is, and the other is not yet come, and when
he comes, he must continue for a short time.
The beast that was and is not is himself also the eighth.
and is of the seven and is going into perdition.
And so we looked last week at the kings of Rome, beginning with Augustus, and how they
match exactly what John is saying, and John is using the picture from Daniel seven, and
Daniel and John are right there in agreement.
The book is received during the days where the persecution has not yet begun, in the days
of the sixth king, which is Vespasian.
It is towards the end of his time on the throne, because there’s another king coming who’s
going to be the seventh, and he’s going to be there for a little while, and Titus will
come to the throne, the son of Vespasian, and he will reign for two years, two months, and
two days.
And then Domitian will come to the throne and he will be the eighth.
And he will come to the throne and he will make it governmental policy across the Roman
Empire to persecute Christians.
And persecution will commence that will continue for two hundred years.
But God says, don’t worry about it.
In the person of Domitian, I’m going to judge Rome and I’m going to declare her done.
Just the way I did in Nebuchadnezzar’s day.
And while it looks like you’re going to die, and it looks like you’re going to suffer, and
you are Christians, I’m going to tell you how it’s going to end.
I’m going to tell you how it’s going to turn out.
So we notice verse 11.
The beast that was and is not is himself also the eight, and is of the seven and is going
into perdition.
The ten kings which you saw, sorry, the ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have
received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the
beast.
That there’s there’s subjugated kings, the kings in the regions around Rome that they
would gain authority over.
And they would draw tribute from, and they would draw authority from, and they would
expand the power of Rome from the willingness of those kings to cooperate, would also
become the kings that would rebel against Rome and would ultimately lead to part of the
downfall of Rome.
Yes, sir.
Domitian.
The three that are taken out are Otho, Galba and Vitilius, and they come and go in two
years during a period of civil war in in Rome.
Correct, because uh Rome is in in the days that Nero falls, so Nero dies, and because Nero
had so corrupted the Senate and everything about the government in Rome, which is why he
was killing Christians, is it was an excuse to of not have people look at what he was
doing to the government, the the government is just in complete disarray.
So th s one faction will put Otho up as emperor.
And another faction will begin a civil war and overthrow Otho and kill him.
And so Galba’s put up as emperor by another faction and then they’ll kill him.
And another em the third emperor comes up and they kill him, right?
So uh in two years of just complete disarray in Rome are is the the three that Daniel
describes as being the ones who are uprooted.
Okay?
Yes, you even when you read Tertullian and and others, there were historians of the first
century in ancient times, they all wrote that Nero basic or sorry, Domitian was like
having a second Nero.
He he carried on and and by the way, you can see this idea in the Old Testament in the
kings of the northern kingdom of Israel, where God will say, This king did evil.
Like Jeroboam.
Right?
They’ll go back and the good kings, this one was faithful like David.
There’s set been seven kings between this one and David, but this one was faithful like
David.
And so what John is saying here is with the eighth, with Domitian, you’re going to look
back and you’re going to see him in the past.
And you’re going to see him in Nero.
You’re going to see him in number five.
Okay?
You’re going to see him, he’s in the seven that have already come and gone.
So you’re seeing this little Nero.
Not that they were by related by blood or relationship, family relationship, but that
their rule and their authority and their declaring themselves to be God is what is seen in
that.
Okay?
So, verse all good questions, and feel free to ask any questions as we go along.
He says, verse 13, these are of one mind.
And they will give their power and authority to the beast.
Notice these ten subjugated kings, they’re feeding the beast their authority and their
power.
They’re handing their power and authority over the beast, saying, Hey, do whatever you
want to.
Okay?
He says, These will make war with the lamb, and the lamb will overcome them.
For he is Lord of lords and king of kings, and those who are with him are called.
Chosen and faithful.
God says, I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen.
As Rome’s power coalesces around the throne and around Caesar, he’s going to start
employing his authorities around his empire to start persecuting Christians.
And they’re going to start killing them.
And they’re going to start persecuting them.
And when they do, I’m going to tell you how it’s going turn out.
They’re going to lose.
Because the Lamb.
Is going to make war with them.
And you won’t be able to open the books of history and go, look, in this province, the
Christians overthrew the government and took that king out.
No, that’s not how the Christians win.
How do the Christians win?
Well, you go look back in the text, and what does he say about those who are with the
Lamb?
They are called, chosen, and faithful.
The Christians don’t win by overthrowing the government.
Special note to those in America today.
The Christians don’t win by overthrowing the government.
They win by preaching the gospel.
They win by changing the hearts and minds of men.
It was in Paul’s day that they would accuse Paul of being one who had turned the world
upside down with the message of Jesus Christ.
And yet amazingly, Paul never raised an army.
Paul never went to war against Rome.
Paul is likely going to die at the very hand of Nero.
And yet Paul is said to have turned the world upside down with the message of the cross.
Revelation 17 says we win.
And we didn’t win by starting a rebellion or starting a war or taking up arms in the
physical sense.
We win by being called, chosen, and faithful.
And chapter 17, verse 15, then he said to me, The waters which you saw, where the harlot
sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.
Now what do we do when we get in the text and the text tells us what something is?
We know that’s what it is.
So what are the waters that the woman sits on?
There it is, peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.
This is a government.
Big surprise, isn’t it?
Because that’s the thing that sits over peoples and multitudes, nations and tongues.
A government.
And so he says, here’s the woman.
And the waters that you saw underneath her.
Are the upon which the harlot sits are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.
And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot.
Now, just a moment ago, we read that the kings that were the horns are giving their power
and authority to the harlot, right?
So John tells you they’re not doing it because they like her, they’re doing it while they
hate her.
He says these ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her
desolate and naked, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
For those who have read the history of Rome, did Rome fall from the inside or the outside?
The inside.
God says, I’m gonna win.
And I’m going to defeat the harlot.
And I’m going to defeat her minions.
And I’m going to do it by turning them against themselves.
Because where she thinks her power comes from are a group of people that hate her.
And he goes on to write For God has put it in their hearts to fulfill his purpose.
To be of one mind and to give their kingdom to the beast until the words of God are
fulfilled.
And the woman whom you saw is.
That great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.
When you open the book of Revelation.
And John tells you what something is, that’s what it is.
And in chapter 17, John says that the woman, the harlot, that rides on the dragon, that
has seven heads and ten horns and an eighth head that comes up, and the horns are ten
kings that give their power and authority to the harlot, and the horns are the ones who
are going to rebel and burn her and destroy her from the inside out.
That woman, in the present tense, is the city that rules over the kingdoms of the earth.
Now, when John was sitting on the Isle of Patmos in the first century in exile for the
testimony of Jesus Christ and his kingdom, and was writing that he was in the kingdom of
Jesus Christ as he was writing this, and that Christ was on the throne, and that God the
Father was on the throne, and that yet there was a kingdom and a harlot that was ruling
over the kings of the earth.
What
city at that moment in time was ruling over the kingdoms of the earth.
It’s really not hard, folks.
If you let the text speak for itself.
The book was written when that persecuting king hadn’t yet come up.
It was written in the lull between one persecutor and another.
And it was written about a city, about a kingdom that thought it was going to defeat the
one who sat on the real throne in heaven.
And the one who sits on the real throne in heaven says, Oh no, you’re not.
And I’m going to tell you how you’re going to fall.
And I’m going to tell you how I’m going to destroy you.
And then I’m going to say, everything I wrote in Old Testament prophecy has been
fulfilled.
You see, chapter 17 is the clear declaration that this book is the reassurance that what
God wrote and showed Daniel in a vision in Daniel chapter 7, in Daniel chapter 12, in
Daniel chapter 2, he was going to fulfill every single aspect.
And he wasn’t going to miss a single point.
And God says, I’ll tell you when the woman’s gonna fall.
When everything that I said I’d do is done.
And when she falls, everything I said I’d do will be done.
Okay?
Thank you for your attention.
Worship (Background and Fundamentals) (Lesson 3) – Aaron Cozort – August 05, 2026
Good evening.
Hmm.
It’s good to see everyone this evening.
We’re continuing our study of worship and so I encourage you if you will to uh take your
Bibles and open them to the book of Genesis.
We’ve been considering the background concepts of worship, initially examining the idea
that worship is as old as creation, and noticing that in the form of the way that the
Bible speaks concerning the creation glorying or glorifying God.
And that idea of a generic sense of worship, it brings honor and glory to him because he
created it and it serves its purpose.
It does exactly what he created it to do.
So we’re going to pick up from there this evening, but let’s begin with a word of prayer
in our and we’ll get into our class.
Our gracious God, one who is worthy of praise, worthy of glory.
We come this evening bringing together our hearts and our minds to study your word, to
learn more about you, that we might come to a full knowledge of what you would have us to
do and how you would have us to live.
And Lord, we seek daily to bring that honor and that glory to your name in our lives, in
our actions, in our choices.
We know sometimes we fall short of your glory.
And we fail to do what you’ve commanded us to do, or we’ve failed to keep your
commandments.
And Lord, we pray that you will forgive us of those things when we do wrong.
Lord, we are mindful of those who are struggling because of ailments, illnesses,
difficulties.
And we pray that you will give them strength.
Pray that you will give them the health that they desire to have.
We pray for those with upcoming procedures and with
uh procedures that have occurred, we pray that you give them the desired health as well
that they uh would long for.
Lord, we pray for those who have lost loved ones and pray that you give them comfort and
strength.
Lord, we are mindful of our local elections that are coming and just uh tomorrow, and we
pray that your will be done in these matters, but we also pray that people
Have a mindset to look to your word to decide both how to conform their lives to it, but
also how to build a nation that is continually continually looking to your word for
guidance and for strength.
Lord, we pray that you will be with us as we go through this period of study.
May the things that we learn be things that we can apply to our hearts and our minds and
our daily lives.
Lord, will you forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory?
All this we pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
In Genesis chapter four
We read in chapter four verse one, Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore
Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord.
Then she bore again this time his brother Abel.
Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain a tiller of the ground.
And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of
the ground to the Lord.
Abel also brought of the offer uh of the firstborn of the flock and of their fat, and the
Lord respected Abel and his offering.
But he did not respect Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and his countenance
fell.
So the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry?
And why is your countenance fallen?
If you do well, will you not be accepted?
Want to spend just a moment with this phrase that we find here in verse 7.
Because God, as he presents this situation to Cain, there’s no indication in the text that
God spoke to Abel about this.
uh Rather, that God spoke to Cain, Cain went out and killed Abel.
But as God presents this to Cain, because Cain is angry that his offering is.
Not being accepted.
Now, bear in mind, we don’t know all the ins and outs of how did Cain know that, other
than the Lord addressing it with Cain.
What is it that was in the offering that was different?
What is it that was accepted versus unaccepted?
There’s a lot of things about this event that we do not understand.
But this we do understand.
The Lord specifically says to Cain, if you what?
Do well.
It is of interest and it is of note that the Lord did not say to Cain, if you feel like
you did well.
If you are of the opinion that you did well, was Cain already of the opinion that he did
well?
Yes, that’s why he’s angry and wroth because his sacrifice isn’t accepted.
Cain felt like he did well.
Cain felt like his sacrifice should have been accepted.
Cain was angry when it wasn’t accepted.
God’s point is: if you had done well, it would have been accepted.
And from the beginning of the discussion of worship, God sets a premise on this singular
fact.
God accepts the worship God prescribes.
And not the worship man decides.
Worship in Scripture is always prescriptive.
It is set by the Lord.
It is accepted in conditions with His terms.
It is either in accordance with His commandments or it is not.
But from the beginning of the discussion of worship in the scripture all the way to the
end, all the way to the point in Revelation chapter 22, where John in the vision sees
himself fall down and worship an angel in the very last chapter of the book, and the angel
says, get up, you don’t get to decide who to worship.
You worship God.
From beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, God makes it clear he accepts the
worship he prescribes and he alone is worthy of that worship.
And so God addresses with Cain.
If you do well, will you not will your uh will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door.
God, as he confronts Cain, points out that when it comes to worship, it’s up to the person
who is offering the worship to choose whether or not their worship will be accepted.
It’s not God being arbitrary.
And there’s no indication from the text whatsoever that God is being arbitrary with Cain.
That God has just allowed Cain and Abel to do whatever they so choose, and he will decide
on a whim whether or not to accept their worship, given that he gave them no instructions,
no information, no commandments, none of that.
He just decided to let them figure it out.
That’s not what the text tells us.
That’s not what the text indicates.
Turn over to Hebrews chapter eleven.
We spent just a few moments here two weeks ago.
We’re gonna just spend a a little bit of time here.
In Hebrews chapter eleven, as the Hebrew writer comments on the events that transpire.
We find in Hebrews chapter eleven, verse one, now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen.
For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things
which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Question.
When the Hebrew writer says by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word
of God,
Are we to suppose that the Hebrew writer is meaning we have looked at the stars and we
have looked at the sky and we have looked at the heavens and we’ve looked at the earth and
we’ve looked at creation and we’ve come to a general surmising that this is how it must
have been done?
Or is the Hebrew writer saying, God has revealed by inspired testimony that the worlds
were created by the word of God?
Which one?
The second one.
The Hebrew writer is by no means implying that faith is something that someone just
conjures up out of themselves.
His discussion of faith is that which is testified to by inspired revelations.
He says, By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that
the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he
obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he
being dead.
Still speaks.
The Hebrew writer draws forward that not only was Abel’s sacrifice accepted, but brings
home the point of the testimony of God concerning Abel’s sacrifice.
As God addresses this with Cain and says, This sacrifice was accepted because it was
right.
And this sacrifice was not accepted because it was wrong.
Now it’s up to you, Cain.
You can continue to offer a sacrifice that is wrong and it will continue to not be
accepted, or you can fix the problem.
But at all points in time the problem was Cain.
Because God had given instruction.
God had told uh Cain and Abel what was acceptable.
You say, Aaron, how do we know that?
Because you cannot obey by faith without revelation.
You cannot obey without testimony from God in some form or fashion.
Now it can be prophetic testimony from years gone by.
It can be a demonstration, as was the case in the book of Exodus, where God demonstrated
his existence and his power and his might through the plagues and demonstrated that Israel
was his people.
But without a demonstration of revelation, either verbal revelation or revelation through
the events that transpire or revelation through a miraculous event, you cannot come to
faith without testimony.
And the testimony originates with God.
The Hebrew writer says, By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of
God.
The Hebrew writer doesn’t say that because he was present when it happened.
He says that because the Holy Spirit documented it through Moses and said, This is exactly
how it happened.
When we first understand that we are responsible for whether or not our worship is
accepted or not, we then have to evaluate what makes worship acceptable.
And what makes it unacceptable?
Turn to Isaiah chapter one.
Izeah is going to write.
the nation of Israel he’s going to prophesy and his prophecies will be recorded.
Izea chapter one.
Beginning in verse four, we read, Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a
brood of evildoers, children who are corrupt.
You know, God’s got a whole list of compliments for these people, have you noticed?
Supposed to be about some foreign nation, right?
No.
This is about Israel.
He says they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel,
they have turned away backward.
Now notice who is at fault according to these three statements.
The people of Israel are they, they, they.
They have chosen.
They made the decision.
They have forsaken the Lord.
They have provoked anger the Holy One of Israel.
They have turned away backwards.
Why should you be stricken again?
You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick, the whole heart faints, from the sole of the foot to the head to
even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores.
They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment, your country is desolate,
your cities are burned with fire, strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is
desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of
cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a very small remnant.
We would have become like Sodom.
We would have been made like Gomorrah.
As Isaiah opens this prophecy, he immediately zeroes in on Israel.
And what Israel has done and will not repent from doing.
And Isaiah makes it clear that it is only by the nature of God’s own mercy.
That we, the nation of Israel, in Isaiah’s day, have not been wiped off the face of the
planet.
Have not been consumed as Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed in the book of Genesis.
He says, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.
Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah.
He points out this isn’t a problem at the top.
This isn’t just a problem with leadership.
This is a problem with the people, too.
He says, I want you to listen, you leaders, and I want you to listen, you t you people,
because it’s a problem with both of you.
You can’t stand over here and say, Well, they they they made us do it.
They told us to worship this way.
They told us to forsake the Lord, while the people come over here and say, Well, well.
Or sorry, the leaders come over here and say, Well, you know, we just did what the people
wanted.
You remember what Saul’s excuse was when he came back, bringing King Agag and all of the
riches and all of the bounty from from the Amalekites?
Well, the people wanted to offer sacrifices to your God.
Samuel.
Now, Isaiah says, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of
our God, you people of Gomorrah.
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?
says the Lord.
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle.
I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of the lambs or of goats.
And you pause for a moment and go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
wait.
Hold on.
Wasn’t it the Lord who from Mount Sinai delivered to Moses the very the very uh recipes,
as it were, of what the sacrifice was to contain?
The very cut of meat that was supposed to go into the sacrifice?
The very portion that belonged to the Lord and not to the priests?
The very specific part that could be saved and retained for the person who offered the
sacrifice or the person who brought the sacrifice to consume as their portion of the
worship?
Wasn’t it the Lord who did all of that?
The answer is yes.
So did the Lord just get tired of the sacrifices?
Very first thing we understand about worship when it comes to the prescriptive nature of
worship is that God demands more than the physical act.
He says, When you come to appear before me, verse 12, who has required this from your hand
to trample my courts?
Bring no more feudal sacrifices.
Incense is an abomination to me, the new moons, the Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I
cannot endure, iniquity and the sacred meeting.
God says, I have had enough of you persisting in your sin while trying to get access to my
grace.
and telling people that they can come worship me without repenting.
The very first principle of the prescription of worship is God demands everything, not
just a physical act.
God requires the heart.
Notice what he says your new moons, your appointed feasts, my soul hates.
They are a trouble to me.
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you.
Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
So God doesn’t just reject them, just like with Cain, God says, here’s your opportunity.
Not just a rejection, but rather an opportunity to fix the situation.
He says, Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your eyes, or of
your doings from before my eyes.
Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the
fatherless, plead for the widow.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool, if you are willing and obedient.
God makes it clear.
If your worship is going to be accepted, your relationship with God must first be right.
And all the worship offered by all the correct particulars without the relationship with
God being right means nothing.
God will reject it immediately.
When we
Look at wors.
We have first the instruction.
God commands us to worship.
It is not optional.
It is obligatory.
It was obligatory in Cain and Abel’s day.
It is obligatory today.
But it begins with more than just the act or the physical participation in worship?
It begins with a right relationship with God.
Now, interesting question.
Can a person who does not have a right relationship with God offer worship that is
viewed by God as good.
Pause for a moment before you answer that question.
Turn to Acts.
Chapter ten.
Acts chapter 10, verse 1.
There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what is called the
Italian regiment, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave
alms generously to the people and prayed to God always.
Pause for a moment and understand something.
Is this man lost or saved?
Lost.
Get to it in a minute.
Why is he lost or saved?
Well, the text will tell us why.
But the fact of the matter is, he is performing actions that are good because he honors
who God is.
While at the same time not yet being in a right relationship with God, we’re not going to
see this as an exclusive one time environment example.
We’re going to see it again in just a moment.
But I want us to set a level and a premise that there are those in the world who have come
to a knowledge of who God is in a uh
Conceptual way that honor him as God and are yet not saved.
But their worship is not rejected the same way that someone who knows who God is and have
rejected God in all points is rejected.
Okay?
So so I’m setting up a premise here that God establishes something that we should
understand.
Not because it is what he desires for the final point, but because he desires the person
to take the journey.
Okay?
So we’re watching a journey occur.
This man, Cornelius, is praying to God.
He is giving alms to the people.
He fears God.
He is a devout man.
All of these characteristics.
describe him as someone who we would describe as a morally good person.
Who lives and acts out of his fear of the God who he knows exists, though he is at this
moment in time ignorant of what that God expects from him.
Okay?
So notice the position he’s in.
He knows God exists, he honors him as God.
That knowledge of who God is and that honor controls his actions.
And his life, and yet he is ignorant of God’s commandments.
Okay?
Watch the text.
About the ninth hour of the day, he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God coming in and
saying to him, Cornelius.
And when he observed him, he was afraid and said, What is it, Lord?
So he said to him, Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God.
Now
Just a moment ago, we read in Isaiah, God told Israel, because of your sin, your
rebellion, your rejection, I’m not even hearing your prayers.
Right?
And yet here the one who speaks to Cornelius says your prayers.
Have been brought before God.
True or false.
God hears the prayers of sinners.
True and false.
All right?
All right.
Text specifically states, in a passage that I don’t have the I don’t have the verse
reference memorized.
I believe it’s one of the Jewish count Sanhedrin that speaks it, but somebody’ll have to
check me on it.
We know oh I know, it’s it’s dealing with a man who was born who was born blind, who’s
healed by Jesus.
We know that God does not hear sinners.
That’s the statement that the man makes in justification of standing before the council
when they say, Who is this man who healed you?
He said, I know not.
But I can tell you what he isn’t.
He’s not a sinner.
Because we know God doesn’t hear sinners.
Okay?
But the distinction that is made here is important.
Here is a man seeking God.
And while he is ignorant of God’s commandments, he is seeking God out of a sincere heart.
And that is what comes before God as is described in the text as a memorial.
It is important when we define the idea of hears prayers that we actually give some
definition to what we mean by it.
Does the mother who has the child pestering her down every aisle of the entire store hear
the child say, Mom, can we get one?
Can we get one?
Can we get one?
For everything they see that is made of chocolate, candy, or anything else?
Does the mother hear the pleas of the child?
Is the mother going to buy everything the child says?
Can we get one?
No.
Might the pleas move the mother to do something benevolent for the child?
Maybe, maybe.
But it may not involve every piece of candy they see that they like.
that yes, that’s that’s correct.
That’s the difference between the grandmother and the mother.
I’m guilty.
So it notice here, we understand this from a mother’s perspective.
Here’s the request, denied.
That’s God and Israel in Isaiah 1.
I’m not listening to you.
Denied, denied, denied, denied, denied.
You expect me to give you buy you candy?
You haven’t behaved yet today.
And then there’s the, you know what?
You have been incredibly good today.
You’ve been long suffering through the last 17 stores that I’ve dragged you through.
And here we are at Kroger.
I’m going to not buy you everything you see that you want, but I am going to get you
something that’s good for you.
Okay?
We understand this concept.
Now, notice what happens.
When he observed him, he was afraid and said, What is it, Lord?
So he said to him, Your prayers, your alms have come up for a memorial before God.
Now send men to Joppa and send for Simon, whose surname is Peter.
He is lodging with Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea.
He will tell you what you must do.
And when the angel who spoke to him departed, Cornelius called two of his household
servants and a devout soldier from among those who waited on him continually.
So when he explained all things to them, he sent them to Joppa.
Here is the life of a man who motivates his decisions based upon his belief and his
devotion in who God is.
And so when the angel says, go do this, his immediate reaction, just like Abraham of old,
is to go do exactly what he was told.
But notice further, verse 34.
After they the two men go to Joppa, after they retrieve Peter, after Peter and six men who
are Jews come to the house of this Gentile.
We read in verse 34: then Peter opened his mouth and said, In truth I perceive that God is
shows no partiality, but in every nation
Whoever fears him and works righteousness is accepted by him.
Now that fears him and does righteousness.
Means here is a person who is motivated by their knowledge of who God is.
And when God tells them to do something, they do it.
That’s the description.
And Peter says, I have come to understand through the course of the vision that you read
about there.
in the text that it doesn’t matter which nation you come from.
If you fear God and do what he says, you’re going to be accepted by him.
So notice
He says verse thirty six, the word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching
peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all, that word you know which was proclaimed
throughout all Judea and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached, how God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Saint uh the Holy Spirit and with power, who went
about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews and in
Jerusalem, whom they killed by hanging on a tree.
Him God raised up on the third day and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to
witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with him after he arose from
the dead.
And he commanded us to preach to the people.
And to testify that it is he who was ordained by God to be judge of the living and the
dead, to him all the prophets witness that through his name whoever believes in him will
receive the remission of sins.
Now Peter
Has just begun to speak, to explain to Cornelius and his entire household and all those
who are present who are gathered there to listen that God has been doing something in the
nation of Israel.
But that the results of what God was doing in Israel were intended and commanded to go to
the entire world.
But Peter makes it clear.
That it is through the preaching of the name of Christ.
The authority of Christ.
The gospel of Christ.
That remission of sins comes.
Why would Peter say that to a man who was devout, who was moral, who was praying
continually to God?
Why would Peter discuss the remission of sins?
Because the people had sins that needed remission.
The angel did not tell Cornelius, go send for Peter from Joppa, because he preaches a good
sermon and you’ll enjoy it.
He said, He will tell you what must do.
And for some strange reason when Peter shows up, Peter immediately starts talking about
the remission of sins.
Almost like Peter knew their condition.
Almost like we finally come to a realization, wait a minute, doing good, believing in God,
praying to God isn’t enough.
It isn’t enough because God said there’s something more you must do.
But for the person who is doing those things already, it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t
honor what they’re doing.
It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t honor the fact that they’re seeking him.
But there’s a difference between honoring the someone seeking and saying you found me.
You know, in the game of hide and seek growing up, all the people who participated honored
the fact that the person was seeking.
How did they honor the fact that the person was seeking?
By hiding.
Right?
We’re we’re participating in the game.
Have you ever seen a game I’ve seen I’ve witch I’ve witnessed this.
We probably all have.
Where there was somebody seeking and the people hiding got so bored of hiding they quit
playing the game and didn’t tell the person who was seeking?
You watch it happen.
All the kids are at grandma and grandpa’s.
All the kids are playing hide and seek.
One person’s told to go count.
The others go hide.
Before the person comes and finds them, come to find out there’s food available inside the
house.
So all the kids who are hiding go in and get the food.
And the person outside seeking can’t find anybody.
Why?
Because they’re looking outside.
The kids are on the inside.
God honors.
And it is seen here the fact that someone knows he exists, fears him, and motivates their
life in accordance with that knowledge.
But that’s not the same as having the remission of sins.
It is rather a point at which someone should be seeking and open to hearing the gospel.
And so while Peter is still speaking these words, verse forty-four, the Holy Spirit fell
upon all those who heard the word, and those of the circumcision who believed were
astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been
poured out on the Gentiles also.
By the way, this is not an indication they were saved.
This is not the point at which they were saved.
You remember just a moment ago, verse thirty-eight, God, verse thirty-eight, anointed
Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.
Peter’s already described the fact that God poured out the Spirit on Jesus.
And demonstrated that he was who God said he was.
You’re going to go over to chapter 11, and you’re going to read where Peter is going to
describe the events that occur here to those back in Jerusalem, and he will describe it in
these words.
We saw the Spirit poured out on them just as on us at the beginning.
What he’s speaking of is Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost, where the Spirit was
poured out on them and they spoke in tongues.
That wasn’t the point at which the people on the day of Pentecost were saved, and it
wasn’t the point at which the apostles were saved.
The pouring out of the Spirit, just as it occurs here, was a stamp of approval by God on
the situation.
God put his stamp of approval on Jesus at John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus.
The Spirit descended like a dove, and God said, This is my beloved son.
God put his stamp of approval on the apostles when they began to preach on the day of
Pentecost, and the Spirit was poured out on them, and they spoke in tongues they had never
learned, never studied.
And God said, These are my spokesmen.
To every nation under heaven.
And God put his stamp of approval on the Gentiles being saved through the gospel.
When he caused the house of Cornelius to speak in tongues.
Now notice those of the circumcision were bel were astonished, who believed were
astonished, as many as came with Peter because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured
out on the Gentiles also, for they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.
Then Peter answered.
Now pause for a moment and don’t let me just read right past that sentence.
What did the co the house of Cornelius do when the spirit was poured out on them?
The text says they magnified God.
What is that if we were to give a one word descriptive term to it that begins with a W and
is followed up by W O R.
They worshipped God.
Do you think God honored that?
Yes.
But it was honored in view of the obedience they were about to participate in.
Do you remember what God said to Israel?
Come now, let us reason together.
Go fix your hearts and your lives first.
Then come worship me.
The house of Cornelius had been doing that.
They had been fixing their hearts and their lives for quite some time.
God honored that.
Okay?
So bef since we’re not gonna have time to, you know, spend another hour and a half going
through these examples tonight, let me leave you with this so there’s no d confusion,
hopefully.
Can a person who is not a Christian, who has not been obedient to the gospel, offer
worship that is honoring of God?
Yes.
They can offer worship that honors God.
Can they be in a right relationship with God without being obedient to the gospel?
And the answer is no.
Can a Christian who has rejected God’s commandments in their lives and rebelled against
God in their lives offer worship that is honoring to God?
No, no matter how much they follow the prescription.
Because they do not first honor God.
Now there’s a long discussion about this in the book of Romans.
We’re gonna spend some time with it.
But I want us to have this appreciation for this reason.
And I won’t I’m I’m kind of trying to preface it and preload it, but I’m gonna give you
kind of the conclusion that we’re headed towards for a reason.
Matthew chapter five.
You all all already know the answer.
We’re just needing to apply it in the realm of worship.
Matthew chapter five verse thirteen, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses
its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?
It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
You are the light of the world, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they
light a lamp or p uh and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand and it gives light to
all who are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and what?
Now, whose father is being discussed here?
Yours.
Yours.
You’re the one in a right relationship with God.
But your life is to cause others to do what?
Toward God?
Glorify.
You see, when it works the way God built it to work, there will be those who are not yet
in a right relationship with God.
glorifying and worshiping God saying, I don’t know who this God is, and I don’t know
exactly everything that He’s told for me to do yet, but I know He’s God.
And that honors God.
And that is not only.
Recognized by God, it is exactly what God commands us to create in the world, is a world
that honors and glorifies God who they have not yet fully obeyed.
So when the opportunity comes for you for you to invite that friend who you know’s not a
Christian to come worship with you, don’t think, well, I mean I won’t do them any good
because they’re not a Christian.
yeah, well.
Because it provides them an opportunity to glorify the God who exists.
And that’s a good thing that hopefully leads them to be open to being obedient to the
commands of the God who exists.
Okay?
Thank you for your attention.
We’ll discuss this.