The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: But by faith, everything we do. And so now let us come to God and worship in faith and worship in spirit and in truth, worship from the heart because God has done great and mighty things for us. That's an inner believing.

I’ve been touched by the Lord. Here's where the faith comes. I can't see it, you can't see it, but it's in my heart. There's the drawing of the Holy Spirit, and I'm now in worship to the Lord. And when you leave church today, or any day you leave church and you're able to, on your way home, say, "I feel like I've been to church today," you know you've worshipped.

Guest (Male): Have you ever thought about why you were created by God and what your purpose on earth is? Today's message is focused on worship, that vital act that God desires from all those who are His, and is the key to moving forward in faith and humble service to others.

Pastor Jack Morris: Worship in faith. I've been preaching a series of sermons on faith, and today I want to talk about the worship of faith—how we need to worship the Lord and worship Him in faith.

I have a great desire in my heart to truly worship the Lord with my heart, authentic worship. To open my heart and allow my heart to be open, to speak praise and worship to the Lord, and allow Him to speak His word into my heart. He's worthy of all praise. He's worthy of all thanksgiving. He's done great and wonderful things for all of us.

And when I worship the Lord, I ask Him repeatedly, "Lord, am I doing it right?" When I do worship, do I truly worship You? Is my heart right? My disposition? My attitude? I want my heart to be right with God that I might worship Him, because He's worthy of true and authentic worship.

Now I'm not talking, no matter what you may hear today, I'm not talking about a particular style of worship. I'm not talking about a liturgical worship or a freestyle worship. That's not the intent of the message. The intent of the message is that I might worship God with my heart, that my heart might speak to Him of the blessing that He has given to me and the gratitude that I feel within, that it might be authentic and that it might come from my heart.

Now I want you to look at the screen. I think we have the scripture, Psalm 65, verse 4, and I want you to read it in unison.

Audience (In Unison): Blessed are those you choose and bring near to live in your courts. We are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple.

Pastor Jack Morris: Now the word says "blessed." That means those who truly worship the Lord are a blessed people, meaning we are made to be happy. We are made to experience joy and we are to experience, under God's blessing, prosperity.

Blessed are those you choose. This has been God's doing. God has brought us together. He has called us out of the world. As the choir sang, we have been forgiven. Our sins have been taken away. God chose to do this great work in our lives, and we give Him praise and we give Him glory.

And so now we come into His courts, meaning that when I approach the house of God, when I enter the narthex, when I come on the premises, this is a holy place dedicated to the Lord. I come here with one purpose only, a single purpose, and that is to focus on God, to worship the Lord, to give Him my undivided attention for this next hour and fifteen or twenty minutes.

The same is true when I kneel in prayer in my home or wherever I am, driving the car, that it might be authentic worship because God has chosen me to bless me. God has chosen you to bless you with happiness, with joy, and with prosperity. Chosen by God. God said, "I want to bless you. I want to bless you." Turn to your neighbor and say, "God wants to bless you."

That means He wants to put joy in your heart, put happiness in your heart. Today, somebody came into the service and told me, and I asked for permission to tell this—I won't give the person's name right now—they said, "I just lost two houses. Lost two houses. I just lost my business."

But he said, "Pastor, it's okay." Now, how can you say it's okay when you lose two houses and your business went under? But he said it's okay. He's carrying his bible with him. His faith is in God. He is blessed of the Lord, even though he has lost all of these material things.

And I asked him, I said, "Could I interview you this morning?" He said, "Well, not this morning. Not right now." But he's here right now, worshipping the Lord and giving praise to God because he has known the blessing of the Lord. Yes, amen.

And I know that there are others here who are going through difficult times, hard places, but God's going to bring you through. God's going to bring you through. He's going to bless you. And if you focus on the material, then yes, your disposition, your attitude will sink. But if you focus on the eternal, on Jesus, and say, "I'm blessed, I've been forgiven, God's my Father, God's going to bring me through. This is not all there is. It's not over until He says it's over," and give God glory and worship Him.

You see, the Lord has blessed us with happiness, with joy, with prosperity, even though there is no material prosperity, there is in my spirit a wholeness and a completeness that makes me know that I'm in God and God's in me. And I have God and God has me, and God's going to take care of me. I may lose everything like Job did, but God's going to give it all back, double and more so. Hallelujah! God is our God and He is blessing us and He has promised to bless us.

Now the next scripture I want you to look up and read is Psalm 84, verse 2.

Audience (In Unison): My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Pastor Jack Morris: My soul yearns. There's a yearning, a desire, a pull, a drawing of the Holy Spirit. My mindset is on God. Worship is done in the house of the Lord. It's the kind of worship that stimulates me to worship all week long. It's that motivation. It's that fueling of my spirit. It energizes me to go out and worship now Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. Even Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I'm still in church and the church is still in me.

It's a residual carry-over, and I'm rejoicing in the Lord because of what God has put in me on the Lord's Day. But worship continues on, not only on Sundays. It may begin on Sunday, but it goes all the way to the next Sunday. It just stays there.

Now, some people are interested more in what time they're going to get out of church than what time they're going to get into church. That happens here. That's happened in some places. One little girl was real fidgety on a Sunday morning. She was just fidgety and her mother kept saying, "Settle down. Be quiet. Just stop that." Finally, the little girl looked up and said, "Mommy, can't we just give him the money and go?"

Now, here are the two brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain was the firstborn, Abel was the second born. Now, I don't know that perhaps that had something to do with the animosity that these two brothers had between them. Usually, the firstborn feels very special in a family. How many firstborn do we have here this morning? Let me see your hands. Okay, my hand's up. I'm a firstborn too. Don't you feel sort of special? Or at one time you did.

Now, behavioral scientists talk about birth order and the attitude, the personality, the behavioral characteristics of the different stages in birth that a child comes along. And the behavioral scientists say that the firstborn feels like his birth or her birth is the greatest event the world has ever seen, especially for the adult parents.

I remember when my sister was born. I was three and a half years old when my sister was born, and I remember looking in the hospital, my dad took me and showed me. He said, "Now, that's your sister." And then I remember my mother coming home in the car, and I looked out the window and I saw them coming in, and so far everything was so good. But when my mother sat down and held my sister on her lap, that's my place! You're taking my space!

And I told my mother—my mother to almost the time she passed, she would often remind me how I said to take my sister and throw her away. Get rid of her. I mean, she was crowding me. I was the crown prince and I had been dethroned.

Now, here was Cain. He was the only child, he was the first child. God had promised to Eve that through childbearing the Savior was going to come, and she apparently thought that Cain was going to be the Messiah. So you can imagine how she must have doted on him and then all of a sudden, she has another child, Abel, and Cain and Abel never did get along very well, and it became so desperate that in the end Cain killed Abel. You know about that, how that happened.

Now, birth order is not the only thing that determines our priorities in life, our personality, and our behavioral characteristics. Health will do that. Sex or gender will do that. And other things like age difference will do that.

These are some of the things that will determine, but I'm inclined to think that birth order does indeed have something to do with how we grow up and how our personality is formed. And I certainly think that of Cain and Abel.

Both boys had the same parents. They had the same home environment. They had the same teaching. And I would imagine, and I think I'd be correct in assuming, that Adam would talk to his boys about God because Adam came direct from the hand of God. And even after Adam sinned, God came and talked with him and there was the lamb that was slain and the covering of their shame.

So I'm sure that Adam talked to both of his boys the same. Both boys heard the same truth. Both boys heard the same story. Both boys had the same parents. Both boys grew up in the same environment. One became a murderer, one became a true worshipper of God. One worshipped God his own way, one worshipped God the way that God wanted him to worship.

So parenting can be very challenging. We have a lot of parents here this morning. I'm thankful you're here and I'm thankful your children are over in the Sunday school, but parenting can be very challenging. One lady said it was so challenging, particularly the teenage years, she wished she could bury him when he was twelve and dig him up again when he was eighteen.

But children will hear, but they will filter it through their private logic. We wonder, why did Cain turn out the way he did? Why did Abel turn out the way he did? Well, children will filter what they hear through their private logic, and they will make up their own mind whether to believe and whether to apply or whether to reject, or whether to have a different priority or a goal in life. We're all free moral agents, and we take truth and we handle it differently. And these two boys certainly handled the truth that Adam had given them, handled it very, very differently.

Now here's what I want you to notice: both boys were religious. Both boys believed in God. Both boys worshipped. Abel brought a lamb. I think the reason he brought a lamb was because his father told him how that when Adam and Eve, his father and mother, had sinned, God brought a lamb. It was a blood sacrifice. It was an animal sacrifice. It was the first prophecy that someday the true Lamb of God would come, which would be Jesus who would take away the sin of the world once and for all and forever.

So perhaps that was the reason he brought the lamb, because of the teaching of his father. Now, Cain heard the same teaching, but Cain thought, "Well, I love God, I'm going to worship God, but I'm going to do it my way. I don't have to do everything the Bible says. I think there's various ways that we can interpret the Bible." Ever hear anybody say that?

There are different ways to interpret the Bible. Hey, there's only one way to interpret it, and that means the Bible says what it means and it means what it says. We don't take a passage of scripture and interpret—put our interpretation or our philosophy upon it.

The scripture is plain, it's simple, it's true, that even a wayfaring fool can understand. And the biggest fool is the person that says, "I don't have to interpret it the way you interpret it." Let it interpret itself. Let it bring us to God, for it will. But this was the idea of Cain.

And people who begin to interpret the Bible, put their own understanding upon it, they are following in the way of Cain. They have an intellectual, cerebral, smart-aleck religion that God is going to reject. God does not accept everything that is brought to Him. God will not accept my interpretation. God's word is forever settled in heaven. Heaven and earth will pass away, but this truth will abide forever.

So here come these two brothers. One offers to God the sacrifice that God asked for. He didn't put any private interpretation. He said, "This is the way Dad worshipped. This is the way Mom worshipped. This is the way Dad and Mom got back to God—a blood sacrifice, an animal sacrifice."

Cain thought, "Well, I'm a farmer. I'll bring God what I farmed, how I handled with my hands, the soil. I want to show God how clever, how smart I am. Doesn't God know how intelligent I am?" And so he tried to impress God. He put too much philosophy, too much logic, too much of him into it.

"Oh, I don't have to go to church to be a Christian. I don't have to believe everything the preacher says to be a Christian. I don't have to read the Bible every day to be a Christian." Only the people who do not read the Bible are the people who question the Bible. You find a person questioning the Bible and I will show you somebody who does not read the Bible. Isn't that true? The people who read it, believe it. The people who question it, you can mark it down, they don't read it. You still with me? All right.

Point B in your outline: both brought their offerings. One was a sacrifice of an animal, one was the vegetables that he brought. Look at Point C: the offering by faith. Now, I want you to read a passage of scripture. I'm going to ask them if they can put it on the screen now. It's Hebrews 11, verse 4. I want you to look up here and read it with me together.

Audience (In Unison): By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offering. And by faith he still speaks even though he is dead.

Pastor Jack Morris: Now notice three underlines: by faith, by faith, by faith. By believing the word of God, by not questioning the word of God, by just a simplistic understanding and accepting of the word of God. By faith, this is what Abel did.

By faith he was commended. You see, God commended him. When God says you're okay, then you're okay, right? When God says "well done," you're well done. There are too many people going around saying, "You know, I'm okay. I don't have to believe the Bible, I'm okay. I'm okay, I don't have to go to church." Hey, you're okaying yourself. That's what Cain was saying. "I'm okay. The way I worship is okay. It's okay, I'm worshipping. I believe in God. I brought God an offering."

And God says, "But your offering is not acceptable." What? I'm not acceptable? Do you know who I am? Do you know how smart I am, how long I have studied, how much I have to offer? God says, "You do not count. Only the one who obeys counts." And He blessed Cain—no, He blessed Abel because Abel just did the right thing. And God says, "You're okay. Well done." Commended. Oh, to be commended of God. It's wonderful when people say nice things about you, but when God says something nice about you, then you must be pretty nice, right? This is what God said.

Now faith is not blind. Faith is based on the word of God, first and foremost, but as I have said so often, faith is also based on creation. We can see creation. It's all about us. Anybody can see creation and know that there's a God, a handiwork behind it all.

A singer that I read about today in the Parade just before I came to church, I flipped through the Parade very quickly, and he talked about how that now at 83, he can't walk very well. He can only walk maybe two or three blocks, but he said, "I do my two blocks and then I sit down and I just look at God's handiwork." Very popular singer. You may have heard of him: B.B. King.

"I just look at God's handiwork." Now, God speaks through His handiwork, but that's not the complete revelation. Here's the complete revelation of God: God's full and complete revelation comes through His word. And God is speaking to us of eternal things. God is telling us of His blessing that He wants to bestow upon us.

In the business world, in life, everything is done by faith. Everything. Just think about it. The farmer tills the soil and plants the seed and then by faith he believes that God is going to send the rain and the sunshine and he's going to have a harvest and we are going to be able to eat. Does that by faith.

The surgeon with an assignment to do surgery opens up the body, makes the correction, closes the body back up, and then waits and believes that God's going to bring about a healing and this person is going to get well.

By faith, the banker opens his doors and says, "Come on, I'm going to keep your money. I'm going to keep it safe." And by faith you take the money, you put it in the bank, and you trust that he's going to keep it safe and he believes that he's going to be able to by faith keep it safe for you.

I mean, everything in life works by faith. We have to worship by faith also. Have you ever noticed how in the business world, how the business people can't help but using religious terms, words that church people use?

This one dear lady called the bank, got the banker on the phone, and she wanted to talk about her bonds and the securities. And so the banker said, "Well, what denominations are they? And do you want conversion or do you want redemption?" She paused for a moment. She said, "Am I talking to First National Bank or is this the First Baptist Church?"

So but by faith, everything we do. And so now let us come to God and worship in faith and worship in spirit and in truth, worship from the heart because God has done great and mighty things for us. That's an inner believing.

But when you can leave church and say, "You know, I feel like I've been to church today," now you know you've been to church. You've been in the house of the Lord and you have truly worshipped the Lord.

Now, by faith Abel took the oral teachings of his father and applied them to his heart. He listened and he said, "It makes sense. I'm going to believe it. I'm going to take it. I'm going to stand upon it. It worked for Mom and Dad. My parents are now back in good standing with God. They've been reconciled. It works for me. I'm going to do it the way God showed them. I'm going to bring an animal sacrifice."

The other boy said, "I'm glad Mom and Dad are back in good standing with God. I don't really necessarily believe that it has to be every time we worship we have to do it that way." And so he begins to think about it a little bit and he put together his own worship plan and God rejected it.

But Abel was commended by the Lord. God Himself said, "You did it right, son. You did it right. You worshipped me from your heart. You understood true worship and it came from within." And the scripture says Abel went down in history under God's direction and God's commendation as a righteous man, meaning he was right with God.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to today's message focused on worshipping God. If the Lord has spoken to your heart today, I invite you to reach out to God in prayer right now and praise Him for His love and mercy showered upon us.

And if you have not accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, we invite you to pray and ask Him to come into your life and to provide the peace that is so needed in the world today. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.