Authentic Worship

Deuteronomy 12:1-5 - These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully observe in the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their Asherim with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods and obliterate their name from that place. You shall not act like this toward the LORD your God. But you shall seek the LORD at the place which the LORD your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come.

Is your life free of idols? Authentic worship is in the absence of idols. That's why God specifically commands that His people rid themselves of all distractions and destroy these false, man-made images. Today we're still struggling with idol worship. Idols usually aren't "bad" things... they're really good things that we love more than God, like our family. Most of the idol worship I struggle with is elevating gifts over the Giver.

Deuteronomy 12:29-32 - When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise? You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it.

Authentic worship is also completely separate from worldly influences. God commands in 1 John 2:15 to not love the things of this world and to prevent this. "If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in Him." Are you set apart from the world or are you just like the world? Our lifestyle of worship must not be molded by society, morality, and popular opinion. Are you carefully obeying the Lord's commands?