Gooding, David: The Wonder of Worship

Well, the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus be with you. It is a great pleasure for me to be here this morning and to greet you in the name of the Lord Jesus. Thank you for your invitation. Thank you for the warmth of your welcome. I've been asked to introduce myself. My name is David Gooding. I am an Englishman, but I have lived in Northern Ireland for nearly forty years. I am therefore what the Irish would call an improved Englishman, not, not just an ordinary Englishman, do they? Uh, my chief qualification for standing before you here this morning is that I came to conscious faith in the Lord Jesus when I was ten years old, and though I wouldn't divulge my age to anybody, uh, let me see that's, uh, over sixty years ago. So it's delightful to come and to mix with fellow believers here in this beautiful country, and to do so on such a sunshiny morning. I have come to the conclusion, since being in New Zealand, that this world is an unfair place, and its benefits are not, uh, equally distributed, and seeing that you have so much sunshine in winter of all times, not alone in summer, I shall be applying, I think I must, to the United Nations to see if you can get taxed a little bit more in by way of compensation for us who have to live in so much darkness. Now, this morning you have asked me to talk, you have suggested that I lead you in a meditation on the topic of the wonder of worship. And for that purpose, I would like to read with you three short passages from the New Testament. The first of them is to be found in John chapter four and we shall beginning- begin to read at verse twenty one, John chapter four and verse twenty one. This is our Lord Jesus talking in this famous incident to a woman of Samaria. Verse twenty one of John four: Jesus said unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you know not. We worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such does the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a spirit, or rather God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ. When he is come, he will declare unto us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. And our second passage comes from the first epistle by Peter and chapter two. First Peter chapter two. And there we begin reading at verse four. Unto whom coming, that is unto our Lord Jesus Christ, unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect and precious, you also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in Scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him shall not be put to shame. And our final scripture is in the last book of the New Testament, the book of the Revelation, and chapter five, Beginning at verse nine. Revelation five verse nine: and they sing a new song, saying, Worthy art thou to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and made us them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests, and they shall reign upon the earth. And I saw and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a great voice, worthy is the Lamb that has been slain to receive the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. So may God give us to understand his word. You have asked me, therefore, to talk to you this morning on the wonder of worship. And as I thought about the topic that you gave me, it seemed to me that the greatest of all the wonders connected with worship is the wonder that God should seek for worship from us. What can it possibly matter to him, I ask myself? What can it possibly matter to God what we think about him? Let us remember, shall we, for a moment, just who God is. In Isaiah the prophet, God says to Isaiah about himself that the nations are but a, a drop in the bucket to God. Such is the immensity of God, that if you were to put all the nations together, they're like the dust in the balance when the greengrocer has weighed out your carrots, if that's what he does here in New Zealand, and he puts the carrots in your bag and is left with a few bits of dust in the bottom of his weighing scale. He tips it out on the floor. All the nations put together are but the like the dust in the balance. They are counted as a mere drop of water. So I ask myself, what can it possibly matter to God what I personally think of him. We're rather tiny, aren't we? We can see that if we ourselves look at the great universe around us, with its teeming billions of stars, and not only billions of stars, but billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, and he made them all, compared with which, how tiny we are, how infinitesimal. I say again, what can it possibly matter to God what I think about him? And then the prophet goes on to talk about God's great capacity. If you were going to offer something to God, what could you possibly offer to God that was big enough to satisfy God. Says the prophet, you know, if you were going to offer God a burnt offering upon the altar, a great sacrifice to God, as they did in those far off days, offering their animals, he says, you know, um, the whole of Mount Carmel with all its innumerable animals wouldn't be enough to satisfy God. How could we possibly satisfy him? God himself says in Holy Scripture somewhere, talking to Israel, he says, you know, if I were hungry, I wouldn't ask you. How could we possibly bring anything to God that could satisfy his hunger? So this is my first question this morning. What, how could it possibly mean anything to God what I think or don't think about him? How could my worship satisfy his heart? And yet, you know, here is the second big wonder, isn't it? Because we have it from the Lord Jesus himself in these verses where he was talking to the Samaritan woman, that it is the fact that the Father seeks worshippers. It was a long, dusty road from Jerusalem to Samaria, but our Lord came down that road and sat up on a well and asked water of this woman of Samaria to make the first initial contact. Almighty God incarnate coming down that dusty road to sit upon a well side and ask the woman of Samaria, please, could she give him a cup of water, beginning to get it through to that woman's heart, stranger though he was, that God needed her, God wanted her, God desired her heart, desired her love, and desired her worship. It was an even longer road that brought our blessed Lord from the glory of heaven, where he was continually adored by the angels of God. A longer road indeed, and an infinitely more painful one that took him to Calvary to buy for us the possibility that we should one day be priests of God and be able to satisfy the Father's heart by worshiping him. So this morning we have it on the authority of the Lord Jesus that the Father seeks our worship. But understandably, of course, isn't it, that if God Almighty is seeking our worship, we can't just bring him any old thing. We can't just bring him the odd five minutes that's left over from a busy life and present that to God and suppose it will satisfy God. As we think of his immensity and the extraordinary wonder that he asks us to come and worship him at all, we can understand that the Lord Jesus says there are certain necessities that must be met if we are to worship God acceptably. He says the true God is a spirit, or rather God is spirit. That is, God isn't material like this desk at which I stand. God is spirit, and therefore they that worship God must worship him in spirit, and they must worship him according to truth. So said he to the woman, the hour is coming when the true worshippers shall not worship God in this place or the other place. The place won't matter where they worship, but the true worship, the true worshippers must worship God in spirit and in truth. Why is that? Because of what God is. He is spirit. And therefore, if our worship is going to rise to God and satisfy God, our worship must be in spirit. You say, what do you mean by that, in spirit? I don't know, I hope you like dogs. I like dogs, though I don't have one. And dogs can be very intelligent creatures, can't they? If, uh, they see you sitting down at table eating a beautiful beef steak, the old dog, if he's allowed to, will come around wagging his tail. He understands what's going on, doesn't he? He likes beef steaks himself, you'll see. And he's got a stomach like you've got a stomach, yeah? And so when he sees you eating a beef steak and putting it down your mouth into the stomach, he's got some idea of all those lovely sensations that you experience when you're eating beef steaks, you see. He comes around wagging his tail and gently nudging you and suggesting that you share a bit of your beef steak with him. Yes, because he has certain things in common with you, and that he understands. But suppose you were to take, uh, uh, your, uh, lovely spider, or whatever you call him, i- into your sitting room and show him a beautiful picture on the wall, you see. Lovely. You say, look, my Fido, my boy, isn't that a beautiful landscape? That's a comfortable, you know. Ha ha. Uh, look at that. Now, what do you think of that? Well, the poor old dog would be a bit perplexed, wouldn't he? If you allowed him to, he'd try to lick the thing to see what it was like. He couldn't get much success that way around. So he'd smell it. Might do all sorts of other things to it, but you see, it, there you are, he'll have a go at understanding it, but he would never have a clue. Why not? Well, because painting pictures is a thing that humans do. You would have to have a human spirit to understand what the artist was trying to do, and that a dog would never have unless it somehow could be born again and be born a human being. And God is spirit. There used to be a little poem when, when I was a boy that says there's no place nearer the heart of God than being in a garden. Well, that's absolute nonsense. God made the flowers, and they're beautiful, and we can enjoy them, but God himself is spirit. And if we would understand God, then we must, says the Bible, be born of his spirit. We must, if you w- w- want to put it that way, we must be on God's wavelength. Our worship must be in spirit. And said the Lord Jesus to the Samaritan woman, the hour is coming when it won't be a question of worshiping God in the temple of Jerusalem or the temple on Mount Gerizim. Where you worship won't be the thing. The true worshippers will worship God in spirit. What did he mean by the word true worshippers? Are there false worshippers then? Well, there can be that, people that worship false gods. But our Lord wasn't thinking of that so much. He was thinking of worship in the Old Testament, where when you came to worship God, perhaps you brought a fluffy sheep and you offered that to God, and there was a priest all up in, dressed up in his beautifully colored garments, and there was a house you met in all covered, oh, met round, round about, all covered with gold, and there was incense and many a blast of a trumpet, and that was their idea of worship. And if you look at it, it was all material things. Offering of blood on an altar and sacrifices of sheep and beautiful looking clothes and a lovely looking building, all those lovely things, but it was outward and external. It has to do with matter. Yes, it was an a kind of worship that infants, spiritual infants might, uh, use, given of God to Israel in the days of their spiritual infancy. But the day is coming, says Christ, when you won't worship like that anymore. Do you see? That isn't the ideal worship. That isn't the true thing. Our Lord Jesus doesn't minister in a, in a literal physical building, like the tabernacle in the Old Testament. Uh, that was only a figure of the real thing. He ministers in the true tabernacle, in the very presence of God, even as we sit here this morning. In that realm of spirit, he ministers in that tabernacle. And the true worshippers nowadays, they must worship God in spirit and in truth. How could we possibly meet that requirement and worship God in spirit and in truth? How could we possibly meet that requirement and worship God in spirit? Left to ourselves, we couldn't. You might as well ask my dog Fido to be interested in the picture. How can we worship in spirit? Christ is the one who enables us to do it, because he gives all who trust him the very Holy Spirit of God. As that day he talked to the Samaritan woman and the secret of worshiping God in spirit, he said, my dear, I know you found worship very unsatisfactory hitherto, but if only you would ask of me, I would give you the living water. He spoke of the Holy Spirit that God gives to all who trust him. Once we were dead in trespasses and in sins, dead to God, but when Christ took us and saved us, he made us alive in spirit, that in spirit we may have access to the Father of spirits and worship God in spirit. That is important, isn't it? Well, we have to worship God not only in spirit, but, said our Lord Jesus, according to truth. We're going to worship, really worship God. We have to know what God is like, don't we? And worship him in reality. Suppose you found a, a, a, a, a, a, a person in the jungles, a pygmy perhaps in the jungles of Africa, he come to worship, and he got a bit of an old, uh, uh, animal or a bit of a plant, and he came and he offered that to God. What would you say about that? You say, well, he's doing his best, poor boy, you'll see. Suppose you say, found somebody in an enlightened country like New Zealand, and they're taking bread and wine, and they're offering it to God in order to get for God, from God forgiveness of sins. What would you say about that? You'll say, but God doesn't want an offering like that. You can't get forgiveness of sins by offering God anything. God isn't like that. The truth of his word is that Christ has offered one sacrifice for sin forever, and since our Lord finished the work at Calvary, there is no more process of offering God a sacrifice to get forgiveness of sins. And to come to God offering anything at all to get forgiveness of sins is contrary to the actual fact. God isn't like that. And to offer things to God that are not true according to his word is to offer worship that isn't acceptable. We must worship God in spirit and according to truth, and that is the truth of God's holy word. And you'll see when we worship God, then it is primary question of what God is like, isn't it? We're responding to what God is like. For true worship is not just me working up nice feelings in my, in my breast, in my mind. True worship is when I catch a glimpse of what God is like, and the glimpse of what God is really like bows my heart down in worship to him. True worship is a response to what God is really like. That's a very important thing, isn't it? Suppose one of these days you were in Paris, and you entered into the great art gallery there, and you found me standing opposite the famous painting of the Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa, you know, the Mona Lisa is the beautiful famous painting of that mysterious woman with her mysterious smile upon her face. So here am I, I'm standing in front of the Mona Lisa, and uh, I got my eyes shut, and I'm a bit dreamy, and I'm jigging a little bit, you see? And you come along and you say, hello, Gooding, and what are you doing? I say, I'm admiring this picture here. Yes, you say, it's a very nice picture, isn't it? Yes, you say, I say, it's a marvelous picture. Look at the landscape of it, you see. I think all those trees are beautiful in this picture, and look at the horses running across the plain, you'll see. Wait a minute, Gooding, are you looking at the same picture? Yes, I say, I'm admiring this picture. It fills me with wonderful feelings. Ain't that a landscape, Gooding. That's a picture of a woman's face. That isn't a landscape with horses on it. And I open my eyes and say, now don't you be critical. You're trying to be too intellectual and too analytic, you see. I- I'm admiring the picture now. I'm having a marvelous time. Well, say you say so, you might be, Gooding. That's nothing to do with that picture. You're just worshiping the nice feelings conjured up in your imagination. You're not face to face with reality, old boy. And when we worship God, the prime necessity is that we're responding to what God is like. Not just working up emotions in our own hearts and imaginations. That is absolutely fundamental to the worship of God. And how shall I know what God is like? Oh, thank God, here once more we come to the Lord Jesus, don't we? He gives us, when we're born again, his Holy Spirit, that we might have access to God who is spirit and worship in spirit. He himself shows us what God is like. He that has seen me, said the Lord Jesus, has seen the Father. The preparation for worshiping God is to look at the Lord Jesus, to fill your heart and mind and soul with the Lord Jesus, and seeing the wonder of the Lord Jesus in the way he behaved, in what he said, in what he showed us about God, to feel our hearts and spirits move in response to the fact that in Christ we are looking upon God. Two things then that we have to fulfill if we would worship God acceptably. We have to worship in spirit. We have to worship according to objective reality, according to truth. Worship is a response to what God is. But there's another thing. Suppose I know what God is like in himself. First Peter chapter two reminds us that we are a spiritual priesthood, our task to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. So this is a slightly different question, isn't it? Not now, what is God like? My worship is a response to what he's like. Well, now my question is, well, what does God himself like to receive? For the spiritual sacrifices that we offer have got to be acceptable to God. That's only common sense, isn't it? Every husband here knows, I'm not sure about the rest of us, but every husband here knows that when it comes to birthday presents for their wives, the prime consideration is not what the husband likes, but what the wife likes, yes? Oh sir, you're going out with the morning, in the, in the morning, rushing out of the kitchen door to go to work, and your wife says to you, do you know what day it is today? And you pause like and think like lightning. Oh yes, yes, I hadn't forgotten. Dear, it's your birthday. Right, oh. Oh, yes, and I was going to get you a present. Now, my dear, what would you like, uh, for your birthday present? Would you like, uh, roses or would you like, uh, chocolates? And the dear wife says, oh, not chocolates, make you fat. Uh, uh, roses, please. I'd like, I prefer roses. And then you come home at night, sir, and, uh, here's your present, and it's a rectangular looking thing wrapped up in paper with pink ribbon and stuff, and you give it to your wife, who looks suspiciously at this object and eventually opens it, and it's a box of chocolate. And she says, it's chocolates. Yes, you say it's chocolates, yes. Well, I thought I said I, I prefer roses. Yeah, I know you said that. Well, weren't there any roses available? Oh yes, there were plenty of roses. Well, why have you brought chocolates? Well, because I like chocolates, you say. I enjoy chocolates. Don't think much of roses. Well, sir, if you did it, you'd have to beware that the dear lady didn't throw the box of chocolates in your face. It's going to be a present to your wife. The consideration is not what you like, but what your wife likes. And if you're coming to offer a sacrifice to God, my dear brothers and sisters, not question of what we like. Not a prime question of whether we enjoy it or don't enjoy it. Thank God when we worship, we, we, it is a joyful thing. But the prime consideration is not what I am feeling, whether I feel good or I don't feel good. The question, is it acceptable to God? That's a question. How shall I know what's acceptable to God? What God likes? The answer, of course, again, is our blessed Lord Jesus, isn't it? Here in this, uh, chapter two of First Peter, Peter says to us, you know, God is in process of building a spiritual house. Notice the term again, not a material one. God is concerned with building a spiritual house, not made with hands. It is made of living stones, not material stones. When I came to Christ, says Peter, you see, he looked on me and he said, ah, you are Simon, you shall become Peter, which being interpreted is a stone. Now you too, coming to Christ, are being built up as stones. What for? You're being built up into a spiritual house to offer, and this is the purpose of it, spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. Well, how will I know what God likes? Simple, says Peter, for in the building of this spiritual house, God has laid the foundation, a ginormous cornerstone. You go to the present, uh, Temple Mount in Jerusalem, you'll see perhaps, uh, an illustration of what Peter was talking about. At the angles of the Temple Mount that were supported the original terror he- uh, temple of Herod, there are some gigantic, thirty five feet long stones. They form the corner angle. The building above takes the corner from it. The building stones are all built round that chief cornerstone, and they have to be shaped so they fit the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the thing that gives the angle to the building and the shape to the rest of the stones. They are all built on and around that chief cornerstone. God says, do you know what's acceptable to me? Would you like to bring something to me that's acceptable? Well, here's how you start. You come as a living stone to the chief cornerstone and see how you fit on him, round him. And where you don't fit, well, then those old odd bits will have to be cut off, and you'll have to be shaped round the great cornerstone, you see, so that you fit around him. And that's how we become acceptable to God and learn how to offer to God what God finds acceptable. God laid that chief cornerstone when he sent his dear son to Jerusalem, and the priests and the high priests came and looked at the chief cornerstone that was our blessed Lord Jesus, and they listened to him preach, and they listened to him do h- uh, his miracles and watched him, and in the end they turned up their lip at him and said, no, no. What him with all his talk of having to be born again? No. Who does he think he's talking to? We, the high priests, have to be born again? Absolute nonsense. And they preferred their temple. So they took the Lord Jesus and took him outside Jerusalem and put him on a tree, and then went back to their temple to worship God. And what do you think God said about that? Well, he gave them time to repent, of course. Forty years later, he allowed the Romans to come and destroy their temple completely. It's Christ that God is interested in. He is acceptable to God. He is the preciousness. He is God's concept of what a temple should be. We are to keep coming to him. Did you notice the phrase? It doesn't say to whom having come once and for all, when first we got converted, but to whom coming, constantly coming, from one Sunday through to the next Sunday, constantly coming in life to the Lord Jesus. For we too, as believers, need to be fitted, don't we, ever more closely around Christ. You see it happening with Peter himself. He was a dear believer, was Peter, and on the whole he respected the Lord, but there were occasions when he decided the Lord had got things wrong and suggested to the Lord he should change his ideas, you'll see. So when the Lord said to the apostles, I have to go to Jerusalem and be rejected and crucified, and the third day rise again, Peter said, oh no, Lord. Now, generally speaking, you get things right, Lord, but here you've got it wrong. I mean, this idea of being rejected and crucified, no, no, no, no, no, Lord, you mustn't think like that. You have to be positive in your thinking, positive thinking, you see. You want to say to yourself, I'm going to Jerusalem, I'm going to be a success, I'm going to be a success, I'm going to be a success, and that's what God wants us to be. He wants us to be a great success, you see. What a nonsense Peter was talking, and wicked nonsense, actually. The thoughts he was entertaining came from his satanic majesty. And our Lord had to rebuke him, and Peter had to have those ideas knocked out of his head, and he had to be fitted round the chief cornerstone, so that he might be built up a spiritual house to offer up sacrifices that would be acceptable to God. So we too. Preparation for this morning has been taking part place, hasn't it, all through this last week, as we have constantly come near to Christ and read his word and seen where we don't fit yet. We'll ask God to fit us more closely around Christ, the way he thinks, his attitudes, his teaching. That is the preparation, so that when we come, our spirits are prepared to offer a praise to God that is acceptable. And finally, what can Christ do to us and for us? We are presently to gather to the Lord's Supper, are we not? And to take the bread and the wine. In taking the bread and the wine, we remember how he gave his life for us and by his blood purchased our forgiveness. He did more than that. Revelation five says that he purchased to to God men and women out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and made them a kingdom, made them priests to God. What a lovely thing he did. You see the drama of it. In Revelation four. the high intelligentsia of heaven are seen bowing before the throne of God. That throne, they sing constantly, is the Creator's throne. And in their worship, they sing before God, Thou art worthy to receive the honor, the power, the might, and the glory, for thou hast created all things, and for thy will they were and were created. The whole great universe made for God to run as God wanted it to run. And every single man, woman, boy, and girl on earth made for God. That was the original cre- intent, intent of the Creator. For thy will they were and were created. Thus the great intelligentsia of heaven sing. And their marvel is that the creation has gone astray, hasn't it? We all, like sheep, have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own selfish way. Why doesn't God intervene and wipe the planet clean? We're done with rebels forever. And start afresh. I met a young gentleman once, he, he, he, he, he said he didn't like the idea of sin. He thought sin was an old-fashioned word, silly word. Oh, I said to him, oh. I said, my good friend, suppose you were able to make a motor car. He thought he was clever enough. I said, suppose this motor car went five times out of ten where you wanted it to go yourself, but five times out of ten when you sat behind the wheel, went where it liked. What do you do with that? He said, I'll scrap it. Oh, I said, I thought rather thought so. Yeah, suppose nine times out of ten it went where you wanted it to go, and just one in ten, whatever you did to the steering wheel and the brakes and anything, it just went where it wanted to go itself. What would you do with that? He said, I'd scrap that too. He said, if I made a motor car, it would have to go a hundred percent where I wanted it to go, ten times out of ten. and if it didn't, I should scrap it. I said, my good fellow, God made you to do his will on earth. You better look out that God doesn't scrap you on the scrap heap of eternity likewise. We were made to do God's will. One day God will rise up and execute the judgments on this earth, which will clear this earth of rebels completely. But who is worthy to, to execute that judgment? That is the question of Revelation five. Who is worthy to take that book, to unloose its seals, when the unloosing of every seal will launch on this world a devastating judgment for those that know not God? Who's worthy to do it? And first, no one was found worthy to open the book or to let loose the judgment. So creation has got to meander on, has it, in its rebellion against God? Not so. One has been found worthy to take the book and open its seals. That one is our blessed Lord Jesus. But why is he worthy to do it? And here is the marvel of the story of God's grace. You see, it isn't a question of somebody able to do it. I nearly said anybody could press the button. Anybody could press the nuclear button that would blow our planet and everybody in it to smithereens. Anybody could do it. The question is, who is worthy to do it? The worthiness depends on the fact that the Lamb himself lived here a life utterly pleasing to God. Never sought his own will. Always did the things that pleased his father. He has the right to do it. Ah, but before the blessed Lord will take those seals and start the judgments, listen to what else he did. He was slain, you'll see. What for? To redeem the rebels like you and me, that's what for, and bring us back to God. And not only to bring us back to God in the sense of our sins being forgiven, but to bring us back to God and to make us something for God in the place of rebels that go their own way through life with the odd hymn thrown in when it seems good to them. To make us men and women that have given up their rebellion and live for God. Constantly make it their business to please God. Men and women that come constantly to Christ to be fitted round Christ. A spiritual house, a kingdom to obey God and priests to worship God. And so we are to remember this morning our blessed Lord Jesus and the price he paid to bring us back to God and to fill the Father's secret longing to have men and women that shall worship him. I wonder, do you say our English preacher this morning, he's made life seem very difficult. We all thought worship was an easy thing. You could just run in and do it, so to speak, and then rush out. Now he seems to be saying it's very difficult. Yes, it is difficult. We are worshiping the Almighty God. Ah, but there's another wonderful thing that Christ does for us. He is our high priest, and the Bible puts it this way: there is the presence of God, there is an open road into the presence, the veil has been taken aside, and we have been prepared to enter to worship God, our hearts sprinkled with the blood of Christ from an evil conscience and the guilt of sin gone, our bodies bathed with pure water, regenerate by the Holy Spirit of God, able to worship God in spirit. And do we find ourselves saying, yes, but to enter the presence of God into the holiest of all? H- h- how shall I know what to say? How shall I, how shall I know how to behave if I were suddenly introduced into the presence of God? The Bible adds this, and having a great priest over the house of God. Oh, that's lovely, isn't it? We're called upon to be priests in the presence of God. And if we feel all incapable, there stands one ready to help us. It is our great high priest. So this morning, let us come to him, as we come to remember him, and so to speak, putting our hand into the hand of the high priest, say to him, blessed high priest, you are the one responsible to lead the praises of your people. We want to reme- we want to praise God, we want to worship him acceptably. Lord, help us now. Take me by the hand, Lord, and lead me to the Father, and help me to know how to behave and what to say and how to pour out my heart silently or audibly in worship and praise and gratitude that shall find acceptance with the Father, for the Father seeketh such to worship him.