 Turn with me in your Bibles in your Old Testament to the book of Exodus and the 15th chapter. And we're going to read verses 1 through 18 of Exodus 15. So follow along in your Bible, please. Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord and spoke, saying, I will sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider, He has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song and He has become my salvation. He is my God and I will praise Him. My Father's God and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is His name. Pharaoh's chariots and his army, He has cast into the sea. His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have covered them. They sank to the bottom like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power. Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed the enemy in pieces. And in the greatness of Your excellence, You have overthrown those who rose against You. You sent forth Your wrath and consumed them like stubble. And with the blast of Your nostrils, the waters were gathered together. The floods stood upright like a heap. The depths congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desires shall be satisfied on them. I will draw my sword. My hand will destroy them. You blew with your wind. The sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? You stretched out Your right hand. The earth swallowed them. You and Your mercy have led forth the people whom You have redeemed. You have guided them in Your strength to Your holy habitation. The people will hear and be afraid. Sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed, the mighty men of Moab. Trumbling will take hold of them. All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away. Fear and dread will fall on them. By the greatness of Your arm, they will be as still as a stone till Your people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over whom You have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which You have made for Your own dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever. Our key verse is verse 11. Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? This verse is one of the loftiest descriptions of the majesty and excellence of God in all of Scripture. It's part of Moses' triumphant song after God's deliverance of His people from the hands of the Egyptians. It's the first song recorded in Scripture, and it looks back at what God had done for His people, as well as looks forward to what He will do for them in future ages. And it is such a song that whenever God promises a mercy to His people, one in which they should exceedingly rejoice, Scripture refers to this song. Hosea 2.15 says, And I will give her vineyards from thence in the valley of Acor for a door of hope, and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in the book of Revelation, chapter 15, after God has eliminated all of His enemies and delivered His people one last time, it said they sing this song of Moses once again. Now the song consists of a preface, verse 1. I will sing unto the Lord. And then there is a historical narration in verse 4. Pharaoh's chariots and his army, he has cast into the sea. And then in verse 6, he ascribes this completely and solely to God. Your right hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power. Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed the enemies in pieces. The manner of this deliverance is described in verse 8. With the blast of your nostrils, the waters were gathered together. And in verse 9, he magnifies the victory by showing how God had overridden the enemy's plans. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall be gratified against them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them. And then in verse 10, it tells us what God did in response. And it's almost comical. You blew with your wind, the sea covered them, they sank like lead. Talk about an in-your-face slam dunk. And then in verses 12 to 18, he describes the impact that this glorious victory of God's had on the nations through which the Israelites went to travel on their way to the promised land. But in the middle of this narration, Moses, who seems to be in total ecstasy, breaks out an estately exultation of God. Who is like you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like you, glorious or could be majestic in holiness? Now this comes to us in the form of a question, but you know it's not a question. In Scripture, questions are often the strongest possible affirmations or negations. Here is a strong affirmation of the incomparable-ness of God as well as a strong denial of the worthiness of any created being to be considered with Him. And the reason no one can be considered to Him is because of His holiness. I mean, think of it, if the perfect angels who live in His presence hide their faces, what possible response do you think a sinful creature like you and me could have? In the presence of God other than to prostrate Himself and cover as much of His sinfulness as He possibly can. Now note the four things here that set God apart from all others. There's none like the Lord, that's first. He's glorious in holiness, that's second. Third, He is awesome or fearful in praises. And four, He works wonders. Now we're only going to have time for the first two. There's none like God. The first expression of the glory of God is that there's no one like Him. We often see God basking in expressions of His glory. I'll just give you the references. You can look them up on your own. First Chronicles 720, 1720. Oh Lord, there is none like You. Neither is there any God beside You according to all that we have heard with our ears. Psalm 86.8 Among the gods there is none like You, oh Lord. Psalm 89.6 Who in heaven can be compared to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened under the Lord? And it's on this very ground that the Holy Spirit demands that everyone should honor and glorify God because there's no one like Him. Again, Psalm 86.8 There is no one like You among the gods nor are there any works like Yours. And in the very next verse, verse 9 says, All nations whom You have made shall come and worship before You, oh Lord, and glorify Your name. Now in our text in Exodus, where it says there's none like the Lord among the gods, it might as easily be translated among the mighties. In other words, God is lifted up not only among the heathen gods, so that there's no one like Him among them, but He's also lifted up over and above anything that has any excellence at all in it. Whoever or whatever is mighty and great, God is infinitely more mighty and infinitely more great as far as the heavens are above the earth, so to speak. It follows then that there is none to be worshiped like the Lord. There's none to be honored as the Lord. He demands a universal worship and obedience. We sing songs that speak as if we had done that. For thee all the follies of sin I resign, but a lie. But then who's going to sing the song within these sincerity for the a few of the follies of sin I'll resign? It just sounds so much better. It just doesn't happen to be true. Like that song I pick on all the time, I surrender all. What? When did you become perfect? But then who's going to sing I surrender some? Remember the great command, you shall worship the Lord your God with what? All your heart and all your soul and all your strength. Have you even come close once? If I've told this story before, just chalk it up to old age, when Martin Luther was in seminary, he did what seminarians often do, they did what we would call a bull session. Today it's called a Bible study. They sit in a semi-circle, somebody reads a verse, and then everybody gives their opinion of what the verse means. Cares. I don't care what your opinion is of that verse, I want to know what the verse means. So anyway, they were doing this, and the leader said, our discussion tonight will be what is the greatest sin? Let's start over here with you, Brother Ralph. The one thing you have to remember is that Luther had been a lawyer before he went to seminary. And so he thought like a lawyer. Brother Ralph, what do you think that is the greatest sin? Well, I think since man has created the image and likeness of God to take a life that's created in the image and likeness of God must be the greatest sin. Oh, very interesting, Brother. Brother Fred, what do you think? Well, when people get married, they make a covenant with God. And so I think to break covenant with God would have to be the greatest sin. Oh, very interesting, Brother Fred and Brother Tom. What do you think? And anyway, they get all the way over to Luther. This is Brother Luther. What do you think is the greatest sin? Well, since the Bible says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, I would say the greatest sin is to love Him with anything less. Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? There's none like God in the excellence of His nature. There's none like Him in the majesty of His holiness. There's none like Him in worthiness to be praised. And there's none like Him who can work wonders. There's none like God who's glorious in holiness. But that explains the second, doesn't it? That there's none so worthy to be praised. It's the holiness of God that gives Him His infinite worth. Now, the very idea of holiness, if we took a poll here, many of you would say it means purity. That's part of it, but it's not all of it. God's holiness is not just His purity. The Hebrew word, kadesh, and its close relative, kadesh, means sacred or set apart from a common use. Same as the New Testament word, hagias. The very idea of holiness is being set apart from a common use to a sacred use. We hollow something. Remember, that's what Christ prayed in the prayer He taught His disciples to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. We hallow or make holy the name of God when we don't use it in a crass, profane way, but rather in a reverential way. I doubt that it would be true of people here. Oh my God! No, no, no, no, no. Or if you're texting OMG. How significant is it that nothing mattered more to Jesus in His prayer than that the name of God be treated as holy? I mean, wouldn't we be totally different Christians if there was nothing more important to us than that the name of God be hallowed, honored, and treated as holy? Back when I was a young coach, I volunteered my summers for the fellowship of Christian athletes. And I would go to various sites around the country and they would ask me to lead the group singing. And I'd take my guitar and I met a lot of interesting people along the way. One of them was a man, I think he's still alive, named Bill Kreischer. Bill had been an all-American defensive lineman at the University of Oklahoma. And then he went on to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. We called him Thunder Thighs because he had these massive muscular thighs. He was about 6'2". I'm going to guess around 240 to 260 pounds. And Bill was a bold, professing Christian. Well anyway, we'd done a conference in Northfield, Minnesota at St. Olaf's College. And we were, we took the car back to Minneapolis to fly out. And before we got on the plane, we went into the newsstand to either get something to read or a snack or something. And so we were behind a businessman at the counter. And this businessman obviously didn't spend a lot of time in airport snack shops because he pulled out a Snickers bar and he put it on the counter. And he says, how much is this, please? And she said, that'll be $3. And he said, $3? Jesus Christ, lady! Now he didn't get the air out of his lungs. Before Bill Chrysler grabbed the man, spun him around, lifted him a good foot and a half off the ground and said, Jesus Christ, he's my savior! You must know him the way you were using his name! And this poor guy, this was shaking and trembling. We wouldn't let anybody do that with our wife. Why would we let anybody do that with our savior? God's holiness is His total otherness from what we are. God is totally other than we are, so much so that we define things by their negation of His character. God is righteous and we are unrighteous. God is holy, so we are unholy. In fact, Revelation 15.4 says that God alone is holy. Even the angels are not pure in His sight, we're told. And His angels, He charges with folly. Now this is all spoken relative to God Himself, compared to God, the very heaven and the angels that inhabit them are not pure. But they would have to be pure to be in His presence at all. But compared to God, they're not. In Scripture, God is often called the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob, the Holy One of Israel. In fact, He's called Holy more times than He is called Almighty. And the holiness of God is what makes Him to be God. It's the sum of all of His attributes in their infinite perfection. It's not one thing, it's not a single attribute, it's the conclusion of all of His other attributes. And what God is, no man can be. God is self-existent, you're not. You have a mother or a father, you had help getting here. God didn't have any help getting where He is. God is infinite. God has all knowledge of everything from before time through eternity. He has all the power and authority there is to have. He is infinitely wise. God is faithful. He's unable to do anything wrong and He can never change. And since no man can ever make those claims about himself, God is totally other than we are. And the sum of all of those things together is what makes God to be holy. Now as I said, holiness is purity, yes. But it's much more than that. And it's what makes God so God-like. I mean, if you took away God's holiness, He wouldn't be what He is. His power would be oppression. His wisdom would be manipulation. His sovereignty would be tyranny. His justice would be cruelty. His mercy would be foolish pity. And His truth would be falsehood. Now God is majestic in all of His attributes and works, and there's not one attribute of God that's more majestic than another, since every attribute is equally majestic. But in regard to their manifestation, and according to our comprehension, one thing appears more glorious than another, and God speaks to us according to our understanding. Now we Christians are to glory in God because He is a holy God, and because God glories in Himself for that reason. Because He's holy, we are to glory in Him and to praise Him. Psalm 99.3, let them praise your great and terrible name, for it is holy. Verse 5, exalt the Lord our God and worship at His footstool, for He is holy. Now, do you see that they praise Him for what He is, not for what He does? It's important that we learn to do that. We cannot define God's character based on what He does. We define God's character on what He says about Himself. What He does is simply a manifestation of what He is. He does what He does because He is what He is. Same with you. You do what you do because you are what you are. The angels in heaven look on God in His holiness, and especially exalt Him because of this. You're familiar with that passage in Isaiah 6. The cherubim and seraphim cry three times, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. That great and noble Puritan, Stephen Charnock, points out that you will never find any other of God's attributes mentioned in this way. God is infinite in power and wisdom, but you never find in Scripture that God is said to be wise, wise, wise, and you never hear that He is almighty, almighty, almighty, but you do hear in at least two passages of Scripture that He is holy, holy, holy. In Revelation 4 it's His holiness that makes the church to cry out, holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty. When we get to heaven, we will adore God's holiness more than any other attribute, and if then, why not now? God seems to glory in His holiness above any other attribute. When He wants to give you the highest expression of Himself, He says that He's holy. Isaiah 57.15, thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. So when God swears by Himself, and aim is four, He swears by His holiness. Heaven is the habitation of God's glory, and it's there that God lets His glory out fully, but what is that glory? Behold from the habitation of your holiness and your glory. I was talking with a lady this week at a business that I went to, and she professed herself to be a believer, and she started talking about heaven and how she couldn't wait to go because she wanted to see her mother again. I don't know how to break this to you, but when you get to heaven and you find your mother, she hadn't been waiting for you to get there. Mom, it's me. Later, we've got eternity. I'm looking at Jesus right now. That's what's going to make it to be heaven, although I'll tell you it's a tie. What makes heaven so heavenly is not going to see grandma. It will be to see Jesus, but for me it will be this, no more sin. And you'll all like me. I won't be the annoying guy I am here on earth. Same for you, by the way. You'll be easier to get along with than you are now. The throne of God is His holiness. Psalm 47, God sits on the throne of His holiness. Psalm 111, verse 9, holy and reverent is His name. The name of God is worthy of reverence because it is holy, because it is set apart, because it is not common and profane in every day. The special end of God's works is to advance holiness. You're probably familiar with the story of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. Sons of the priest, preacher's kids. It says they made strange fire, which the Lord had not commanded them. It's very interesting. Jeremiah Burroughs points this out in his book, Gospel Worship. God didn't kill them because they did something he told them not to do. God killed them because they did something he hadn't commanded them to do in his worship. That's why they believe so strongly in the regulative principle of worship, that God regulates his worship. God says this is okay and this is not. And if he doesn't say it is okay, it must not be okay. The other side of that spectrum is called the normative principle of worship. In other words, if God doesn't forbid it, we're okay. Well, you can imagine the kind of abuse that would bring. God killed Nadab and Abihu and here was his reason. By those who come near me, I will be treated as holy. That's true of every one of us who comes into God's presence in corporate worship. God's going to be treated as holy. That's the aim that God had in creating heaven and earth. It's what he aims at in all the ways of his providence. The great business for which the Son of God came into the world was that he might redeem a people to himself to serve him in holiness. And that's one reason why God can never lower his standards, because nothing is more dear to God than his own holiness. God's glory is dearer to him than you are. In the negative sense, the holiness of God is his perfect and unpolluted freedom from any and all evil. He's perfectly and wonderfully estranged from any shadow of evil or any imaginable contagion. It's got to be one of the greatest sins I know of that the metropolitan community church, the denomination made up of practicing homosexuals, uses the Bible to justify their sin. Man who started this whole thing was a man named Troy Perry. And he said Jesus hung around with men all of his life. And David and Jonathan had to be lovers. Can it be a greater sin than to use God's holy word to justify your unholy behavior? In the positive sense, the holiness of God is the integrity of his nature and his will. So God's law then is simply an expression of his own nature and will. He wills conformity to himself and his law expresses that conformity. So by obedience to God's law, we show conformity to his will and to his character. But just one example, in the Ten Commandments, thou shall not commit adultery. Why not? It's a natural biological function. Well, except God said don't, as if you needed more reason. And why not? Because God is a faithful God. Adultery is being unfaithful, infidelity. And we're not here for our own pleasure. We are here to express his character. In fact, one man said, we were put here to tell the truth about God. And God's great controversy with us that in a thousand ways every day we tell lies about him. We say that God is not gracious, by the way we act towards other people. We say that God is not faithful because we are unfaithful in our relationships. The law of God is simply the character of God in transcript form. So at least externally, we manifest his nature when we conform to his law. And we dishonor his nature when we charge the law with over severity. Because that is saying God is too holy as if that were possible. He's too holy and we don't like it. No. As Paul said, the law is holy and just and good. How do we know that? Because the God who gave it is holy and just and good. It's impossible that God could command anything but what has some similarity with his own nature. So all of his laws therefore are right because God can do no wrong. All of his laws are right because there's no one greater than he to impose a greater standard. So as we saw, whatever God is, he must be infinitely so. So if God is holy, he is infinitely holy. It is therefore infinitely holy in God to love himself supremely. It must be that way. He must love that which is infinitely pure because love is to that which is lovely. And nothing is more lovely than infinite purity. God can love himself infinitely because he has an infinite knowledge of himself. Knowing himself completely, he must of necessity love himself completely because he sees the infinite beauty in himself. Corresponding to that, God must infinitely hate that which is contrary to infinite purity. A love of holiness cannot exist without a hatred of everything that's contrary to it. As you've heard me say, you cannot love A and it's opposite at the same time. You can't love broccoli and apricots, not at the same time. One is the result of the fall, the other is the gift of God. If something is evil, it must be infinitely evil and must be infinitely hated by that which is infinitely holy. So God's wrath against sin is merely an expression of his love for himself. And the more God loves himself, the more he must hate that which is not like himself. The more love he has for himself, the more repugnant he must find those things that are contrary to himself. Or let me put it this way, if God did not infinitely hate sin and sinners, he'd be infinitely hating himself. It's the holiness of God that makes God so happy. Holiness and happiness are inseparable, that's what Jesus said in the Beatitudes, blessed are the pure in heart, or if you will, happy are the holy. God is happy in himself and with himself and it's because he is so holy. As holy as God is, that's how happy he is. And since God is infinitely holy, he is infinitely happy. Therefore God could never be unhappy unless he were to become unholy. God so completely loves himself and his holiness, that he was willing that his own son should die a disgraceful death on a cross and be exposed to his own infinite wrath, rather than that sin should live and his holiness remain forever disparaged by the violations of his law. I remember when Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ came out and entertainment tonight went to Dallas, Texas. I guess the opening night premiere was in the Bible Belt. And they were there and when people came out, and if you've ever seen the movie, it's basically a Roman Catholic infomercial. But they did get some things right and they had Jesus dying on the cross and the Roman soldiers doing this. And anyway, after the movie's over, the people coming out to entertain it tonight stuck a microphone in their face and said, well, what did you think? I can't believe he did that for me. The suffering of the cross was not what the Roman soldiers did do. The suffering of the cross was what God did to him. God unleashed his infinite wrath against sin and sinners, not against individual sinners, but for everyone who would ever believe on one person in a condensed amount of time. R.C. Sproul says, I doubt he even felt the nails. Well, I think he felt them. But he didn't cry out and say, my God, my God, these nails hurt so much. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But that was an expression of God's love for himself. And while we rightly say that God never showed his anger and hatred for sin more than when he inflicted infinite wrath on his own son to save sinners, we must also say that God never showed his love for himself more than when he inflicted infinite wrath on his son. You see, God's love for himself and his wrath against sin are two sides of the same coin. The holiness of God is a deathblow to antinomianism. Because no one will be a partaker of infinite blessedness who is not also a partaker of the divine nature. As God can never be the ever-blessed God apart from his holiness, so no one can be blessed by God without being holy. God would be repugnant to himself if he weren't holy. And we are repugnant to God without a stamp of his holiness on us. His spirit is called the holy spirit. And if that spirit resides within us, he will make us progressively holy. The idea of a carnal Christian then is a biblical impossibility and a complete falsehood. And if we say that we worship a holy God, then our worship must be holy worship. Not just pure. Something different. Our worship must be suitable to the object of our worship, not suitable to the nature of the worshiper. Too many churches have turned worship into an American bandstand. Some of you are old enough to remember that. The American bandstand was a rock and roll show from Philadelphia back in the 50s and 60s with Dick Clark as the host. And in the 75 years after that, he never got a gray hair. But there would be a section, I mean the kids would dance, and then they'd bring out some new tunes, platters, they call it. You've got a new pop platter today, we've got a play, and they would have a little group of three, four, five teenagers who would listen to the song and then rate it. Well that was, had a snappy beat and it was easy to dance through. I give it a six. That's what we've done with worship. We pulled the worshipers and asked them what they like. God nobody asked God what he likes. If God is set apart from the common and profane, our worship must be set apart from the common and profane. When we come into the sanctuary, the scripture says we come into His holy temple. That being the case, whatever goes on in that holy temple must itself be holy. It must be something different. It must be something sacred and worthy of a holy God. I remember many years ago, I'm going to guess about 40 years ago, I was a high school coach in Southern California and I used to volunteer with Youth for Christ. I think it's now called Young Life or something like that. And they were doing a Saturday night concert, which at the time in the early 70s really meant you had a loud rock and roll band of long haired people screaming Jesus at the top of their lungs over their guitars, which were already earth-shattering. Well that particular night John MacArthur was going to be the featured speaker. And I hadn't seen John in months, so I went backstage where he was waiting to be going on and we could barely hear each other. And so out of the corner of my eye, I noticed what we call then a hippie, hippie kid. His leave eyes were holy, different word, long haired, just looked like any other hippie of the day. So the group stopped screaming and John said, just hang around, I'll be back in 25 minutes. The John went off and the kids started to leave. So I went over and I said, don't you want to hear what he has to say? I'll never forget what he said. Now, I was hoping you people had something different. I can get this stuff anywhere. The world doesn't want us to be like them. Plus, they're better at it than we are. And the church keeps falling all over itself to be like the world when the world laughs at us for trying to be like them. You know who the largest group of unchurched people is anymore? 18 to 35 year olds. The church has been over backwards for years to accommodate the youth and it's not working. As soon as they run away from home or leave home, they quit going to church. Whatever goes on in a holy temple must itself be holy, something different. So how do we worship this holy God? By singing praise choruses? No. Are clapping our hands? No. By raising them in the air? No. By doing what pleases us? No. We most worship this holy God by imitation. We don't so glorify God by elevated phrases or eloquent expressions or even reverential worship services as we do when we aspire to be like Him. Remember the psalmist tells us we're to worship God in the beauty of holiness. And that can be understood in several ways. We can worship God by being holy or pure ourselves and that is indeed an act of worship. I mean the angels aren't called holy for applauding His purity, but for conforming to it. And it's true here imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. There can be no greater calling, no greater glory than for a person to be a conspicuous, visible image of the invisible holy God. We go all the way back to Genesis 1, God created man in His own image. God's invisible. People can't see God. So He made us to let them know what He's like. That's why we're here. To let people know what God is like. How are we doing? And we understand why He's commanded us to be holy. He says, for I the Lord your God am holy. But we also worship God when our worship is befitting His character. Our worship has to be suitable to His nature. If God is lofty and exalted, as Isaiah 6 tells us, then our worship of Him must be lofty and exalted. It cannot be common. It cannot be ordinary. It cannot be every day and drawn from pop culture. If God is majestic, our worship must be majestic. If our worship is not conformed to His character, then it's not God. We're worshiping. We're worshiping ourselves. And that is God's complaint against the heathen in Romans 2. They worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. I dare say that most worship today is worshiping the creature. If God is glorious, our worship must be glorious. If He's pavilioned in splendor, our worship must be splendid. The word worship comes from two old English words put together, worth, sip. And it literally means homage given to someone based on their worthiness to receive it. But the root word is the word worth. So when we come together as a corporate body of believers, it is our chance as a congregation to declare to God how much we think He's worth. I really don't tell anybody anymore that they ought to go to church, but they ought to go to worship. Church is a building. Worship is a hard attitude and an activity. So I'll ask you this hard question. Just think about yourself today in God's corporate worship. If you were God, how much would you think you were worth to you by your attentiveness, by your manner of dress, by the way you sang the songs? I remember in both Uganda and India what amazed me was that the people sang as if they were afraid the whole nation might not hear them. Here in America we sing as if we're afraid the person next to us might. We're singing for God to hear. As we close, I want to say that God deserves and demands a holy worship. In fact, that's all He will accept. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 28. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably. We have grace. And what do we do if we have grace by which we may serve God acceptably, that word serve in the Greek means to pay homage, literally to worship, by which we may worship God acceptably. If we have grace, we're to worship God, but there's something that says worship apart is being acceptable. What is it that will make our worship acceptable with reverence and godly fear? Yeah, literally awe. If we worship God with reverence and godly fear, our worship is acceptable to Him. What other conclusion should we draw here? If we don't worship Him with reverence and godly fear, it's not the worship of God, it's rejected. We're only worshiping ourselves which is completely unacceptable. Doesn't it make you wonder how many people have come to church faithfully for 25 years and haven't worshiped yet? There's only one thing that matters about our worship, and that is was it acceptable to God. Was He pleased with it? Not were we pleased with it. And if we don't come into His holy presence with a sense of dread, a sense of awe, a sense of modesty, a sense of shame-facedness, if we don't have a reverential demeanor so that everything about us bows before Him in humility, it is not acceptable worship. And like God said of the people's worship in Amos, He shuts His eyes, He closes His ears, and He holds His nose. Wouldn't it be a terrible thing to think that's what God thought of your worship today? I don't want to look at it. I don't want to listen to it. It stinks. You know, whatever the world may think of God, at least let His own people declare His worth to Him. Let us pray. Rather, these are stinging indictments, but they are scriptural indictments, and so we stand condemned. We ask your forgiveness for treating you as if you were just our friend rather than our God. May our worship from here on be acceptable because we offer it with reverence and godly fear. And we offer this prayer in the name of Christ. Amen.