The Fruit of Worship // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 4

So often we try to make changes in our lives, you know, the difficult things, those entrenched behaviours that keep ruining things for us – but try as we might, somehow we always seem to fail. But worship, well, that's something that changes us – from the inside out. Worship Sets us Free Well, welcome to this programme; it's the last programme in our four part series called, "Worship as a Way of Life". I guess the guts of it has been getting our hearts and our minds around the fact that worship is more than just going to church and singing songs on Sunday morning – so much more. And over the last three weeks we have seen that there are really two aspects to worship. Two different words used for worship in the New Testament. Worship on the inside – bowing down our lives to God, the thing that happens in our hearts, and then what we go on and do with that – living out that worship through our service, on the outside. It makes sense – look at a marriage. I love my wife, Jacqui, with all my heart – I adore her but if that's all I did it wouldn't be a very great marriage. Once a week, if I just said, "Darling, I love you", come on, what sort of a marriage would it be? I have to live out that marriage; I have to live out that love. I don't always do that perfectly, but she has to know that I love her through how I treat her and what I say to her and what I do for her and as I live out that love, it changes me on the inside and I love her even more. So this "inside", "outside" thing, well they feed off each other. The question is, is it like that in our relationship with God? Today we are going to conclude this series by asking that question. Ok, so if I worship God, what happens to me? I mean, does it change me, does it transform me, does it change the way I am on the inside and the outside? We are going to start off today back in the Book of Exodus, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it. We will go to the Book of Exodus and we are looking where Moses went up to Mount Sinai and got the Ten Commandments. Something happened to him up there. Have a look at Exodus, chapter 34, beginning at verse 29. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he wasn't aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken to the Lord. When his brother Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him but Moses called to them. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him and he spoke with them. Afterwards all the Israelites came near to him and he gave them all the Commandments that the Lord had given him up on the mountain. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face but whenever he entered the Lord's presence to speak with Him he removed the veil until he came out again. And when he came out and told the Israelites what had been commanded they saw that his face was radiant again. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord again. See, when you go into God's presence, you can't help it, something happens to you. And with Moses, he went into God's presence up on Mount Sinai and then in the tabernacle (the tent), which was the tent of the meeting place. When Israel were out there in the desert for forty years in the exodus, they built a tent and in the centre of that tent; in a place called the Holy of Holies, is where the presence of God rested with them. And only Moses would go in and speak with God. And when he did that there was this radiance; something different about him, when he came out from having been in God's presence. He was transformed in a way that the people, well, they really noticed this. A few thousand years later the Apostle Paul looks back on all of that and comes up with the conclusion that when we turn to the Lord our God and worship Him, something like that happens, only much better. Let's again go to God's Word and have a look at Second Corinthians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 13. This is what Paul writes: We aren't like Moses who had to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. Their minds were made dull for to this day, that same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day, when Moses' laws are read, a veil covers their hearts but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. What's this thing that Paul is talking about here? I mean the Israelites in the first century, were bound up in God's law and in legalism. You know, it was all about rules – there were six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions in the Torah; in the Hebrew Law that was given through Moses and they got so rule-bound and legalistic and that's the thing that Jesus came to set us free from. I mean, Moses, in the Old Testament, was able to go into the presence of God, and when ...