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Lessons and Sermons from the Longmire Road church of Christ in Conroe Texas USA
And the disciples of John and Jesus used
to fast.
And they came and said unto him,
Why do the disciples of John and the
Pharisees fast,
but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said
unto them,
Can the children of the bridegroom fast
while the bridegroom is with them?
As long as they have the bridegroom with
them,
they cannot fast.
But the days will come when the bridegroom
will be taken away from them,
and they shall fast than in those days.
No man soweth a piece of cl of frit and
new cloth on an old garment,
else the new piece filleth up taketh away
it from the old,
and the rent is made worse. And no man
putteth new wine into old bottles,
else the wine doth burst the bottles,
and the wine is spilled, and the bottles
are marred.
But new wine must be put in new bottles.
A lady was teaching a the four and
five-year-old in her Sunday school class,
and during one of the lessons they were
learning about the building of the temple.
And she explained to them that when the
temple was finished,
that the presence of God ~ filled the
temple.
And their eyes got wide and they all got
excited.
And she soon learned, however,
that the the what they were excited about
was not because of joy that
God had come to dwell in the temple,
but imagining.
That huge building being filled with
presence from God.
Aren't we often like those children?
we're easily more excited about our
presence from God than we are being
in the presence of God. And so I want us
this evening to ~
Think about this.
I'm already bum fuzzled here for my
Are we here to experience the presence of
God in his fullness?
Or are we here on another agenda?
~ Jesus has already challenged up to the
before
our reading the status quo of that day.
And now he sets another tradition in its
proper place.
So this evening, I want us to see how
Jesus shows us worship as it was meant to
be.
And so let's look first of all at the
fasting of worship.
Now, Jesus is challenged about his
priority of fasting with his disciples.
Now, the law of Moses did command fasting,
but only one day a year. And that day was
the day of atonement.
Now, you may have a calendar that has
various religious holidays listed on it.
And you may see a certain time,
something called Yom Kippur. That's the
day of atonement.
That's the only fast that is actually
commanded in the New Testament.
But the Pharisees fasted twice a week
in the time of Jesus. They fasted on
Thursday Monday and on Thursday.
And it was taken for granted that
everybody would do what they did because
they were
the religious leaders, you know,
and after all, they set the tone.
And so they expected everybody to fall
into line and do exactly what they.
What they did.
In fact, you remember the story that Jesus
tells in Luke chapter 18,
verses 9 through 14. He said that two men
went up to the temple to pray,
the one a Pharisee, the other a publican.
And the Pharisee stood and prayed thus
with himself.
God, I thank thee that I'm not like other
men.
Extortioners, unjust, adulterers,
or even as this publican. Then he says,
I fast twice in a week.
I give tithes of all that I possess.
But the public and standing afar off would
not lift up so much his eyes unto heaven,
but smote upon his breast, saying,
God, be merciful to me a sinner.
I tell you, this man went down to his
house justified rather than the other.
For he that humble exalteth himself shall
be humbled,
and he that humbleth himself raiseth
himself up will be exalted.
And so
If they just took it for granted that
everybody would fall in line.
But to fast or not to fast wasn't the
question.
You remember when Jesus' disciples were
down at the bottom of
the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter,
James, and John came down with Jesus after
the Transfiguration.
They had tried to cast an evil spirit out
of a young boy,
and they they weren't able. And they asked
Jesus,
why couldn't we cast it out after Jesus
had done it?
And Jesus told them in Matthew 17,
21, This come, this kind cometh out not
except by prayer and fasting.
So there was fasting of
Among the disciples and in general,
besides the Day of Atonement. In fact,
the Apostle Paul writes to married couples
in 1 Corinthians chapter 7,
verse 5, Defraud you not one the other,
except it be with consent for a time,
that you may give yourselves to fasting
and prayer,
and come together again, that Satan tempt
you not for your incontinency.
And so, while the Pharisees
Took it for granted that everybody would
fall in line and follow their practices,
I want to ask a question. What have we
taken for granted as worship?
What has become our routine in our avenue
of worship?
Is it possible that sometimes we're so
busy going through the motions of worship?
But in reality, can we say that we're
really fasting worship?
For example, is our singing really giving
praise to God from our heart?
My parents were Christians when I was
born.
And so I literally have gone to church all
my life.
And many of the songs that we've sung,
I have sung hundreds of times,
just like many of you. And I'm embarrassed
to say this.
But some of these songs, I've sung them so
many times,
I could be singing that song and thinking
about something else.
Is that song? Am I giving praise to God?
Is my worship? Am I really involved in the
worship?
Am I singing in that regard? Is our
praying really touching the heart of God?
Or are we just saying a few phrases that
we've said over and over again?
Are we really hearing the word of God?
You remember Jesus spoke in parables,
and he explained why in Matthew 13,
verse 13, he says, Therefore I speak to
them in parables.
Because they seeing, see not, and hearing
they do not hear,
nor do they understand. So I asked the
question that I asked this morning,
are we building on the rock or on the
sand?
We talked about the firm foundation being
built on the rock and
the shifting sand and so forth.
And going back to James chapter 1,
verses 22 and following, James tells us,
be ye doers of the word, and not hearers
only,
deceiving your own selves. For if any be a
hearer of the word and not a doer,
he's like unto a man beholding his natural
face in a glass.
For he beholds himself and he goes his way
and straightway forgets what manner
of man he was. But whoso looketh into the
perfect law of liberty
and continueth therein, he being not a
forgetful hearer.
But a doer of the work, this man shall be
blessed in his deed.
And so, yes, it matters what we do when
we're here,
but just as important it matters why we
are here.
Have we come together to worship God?
And that leads us, secondly, to what I'm
going call the focus of worship.
John the Baptist was in prison.
Fasting was needed. They were in prayer
and fasting for him.
Now we'll have to give the Pharisees
credit.
You know, sometimes we just Jesus called
them hypocrites,
they were. But these men were,
~ they were observant of the law.
~ to them, fasting was a necessity.
And it reminds me that ~ what God has to
say about when we say we're gonna
do something.
For example, in Numbers 30, verse 2,
the Bible says, if a man makes a vow to
the Lord or swears an oath by
to to bind himself by some agreement,
he shall not break his word. He shall do
according to all that proceeds
out of his mouth. You know, there was a
time in our country when a man's word
was his bond. You know, you if your man
said he's gonna do something,
you could count on it. You didn't have to.
You didn't have to get him to sign a
contract and triplicate or anything like
that.
His word was his bond. In Deuteronomy
chapter 3,
verse 21, the Bible says, And when you
make a vow to the Lord your God,
you shall not delay to pay it.
For the Lord God will surely require it of
you,
and it would be sinned to you.
And so these Pharisees bound themselves
with an oath that they were going
to fast to God twice a week.
We're going to see about their motives in
a moment.
But they were doing what they bound
themselves to do.
A Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 5,
4, and 5: When thou vow'st to vow to God,
defer not to pay it, for he has no
pleasure in fools.
Pay that which thou hast vowed.
Better is it that thou shouldst not vow
and that thou shouldst vow and not pay.
So let's give the Pharisees a little
credit.
At least they were.
Binding themselves and they were doing
what they bound themselves to do.
But Jesus compares himself to the
bridegroom,
and it was not appropriate to fast during
a wedding celebration.
Now the Pharisees, on the other hand,
fasted to be seen of men.
And Jesus says in Matthew 6:16 through 18:
Moreover, when you fast, be not as the
hypocrites of a sad countenance.
Why? Because they appear unto men to fast.
But he said, when you fast, they disfigure
their faces.
He said, When you fast, anoint your head
and wash your face,
that you don't appear to men to fast,
but unto your father who is in secret.
And your father who sees in secret shall
reward you openly.
And so if we're going to fast,
you know, I I've known some people I've
been fasting two days now.
And they want you to know it.
It's sort of like have you ever noticed
when you go on a diet?
If you have a little success, you want
everybody to know about it.
But then when you fall off the wagon,
you kind of get quiet about it.
There's something about ~ you know,
certain things that w we we ~ we don't
want to be noticed.
But Jesus says if you're going to fast,
you just keep it to yourself. You don't go
around with your face all tore
up and talk, old man, I'm really
suffering.
But I want to relate this to worship.
Sometimes there's a self-centeredness in
our worship.
I don't like the songs that we sung today.
And you know what? The preacher preached
too long.
And I just,
you know, I just didn't get anything out
of worship today.
You know what I ask people when they tell
me what do you put into it?
Worship is not about us.
We've coined this phrase.
We talk about we got a good audience this
evening.
We're not the audience. God is the
audience.
And God is what.
God is watching our performance to see how
we are proceeding.
And so our real our focus in real worship
is on God.
We're here to worship God. In the next
place,
outward actions hold
a dangerous potential of seducing our
pride.
You know, no matter what we do,
if it becomes a performance,
evaluated on
What people thought, rather than as an
offering to God,
we are hypocritical. And it's at this
point that human pride is
at its most dangerous and seductive.
How easy it is to pray for human ears.
You know, I when I pray, I want to be sure
I say the right things and
say it the right way, and I hope people
are impressed with my vocabulary.
You know, back in the day before
television and maybe even radio,
I don't know. ~ newspapers would send a
reporter to these large,
fashionable churches, and then they would
write a column about that service that
day. And so there was a reporter from the
Boston Globe who attended some large
denomination, and he he wrote a review of
that service,
and he wrote a review about the prayer
that the main the main prayer that
was offered. He said it was the most
eloquent.
prayer ever offered to a Boston audience.
Not to God, but to the audience.
We have to be careful about such things ~
as that.
How easy it is to view our giving as just
support to the church rather than
as an offering ~ to God. How easy it is to
preach for applause.
You know, but if Paul warns us about those
who want to have their ears tickled,
there's plenty of us sorry to say plenty
of us preachers.
Let me rephrase that. There's plenty of
preachers who are willing to do that.
there, you know.
You these days ~ people are easily
offended.
I guess people have always been easily
offended.
And every once in a while I've preached a
sermon,
and some brother said, You sure stepped on
my toes today.
I said, Well, good, that's a good thing.
But that doesn't always make you popular,
but that we're not in a popularity
contest.
There was a preacher one time who stepped
up,
came out and a lady came up to him and
said,
Brother Jones.
You just outdid yourself today.
That was the that was the most wonderful
sermon I ever heard.
He said, I know. The devil told me that
when I stepped out of the pulpit.
But it's so easy for preachers to preach
for to you.
Everybody wants to be liked. And yet
sometimes when you preach the truth,
that offends people. And God's prophets
have always been people who take risks.
They're willing to stand up, stand up and
say what God.
wants them to say. It's easy to sing for
fame.
Have you noticed some churches these days
don't have song leaders anymore?
They have worship leaders. And I thought,
well, what's the difference between a song
leader and a worship leader?
Well I visited a church here a while back,
Church of Christ, that had a worship
leader,
and they had ~ what do you call it a group
that
Yeah, pr that's it. They all have they
they didn't stand up for it but they
all had a microphone. And so he's over
here directing.
~ he's actually directing
And he was doing all kinds of things.
He'd go, woo! It just to me he he I know y
you can't judge people's motives.
Not supposed to do that. But to me it was
all about him.
Look at me. And there's another time,
another place, where the song leader had
to be front and center.
And the the pulpit so he had to come
around and get in front of the pulpit.
Leave the sand. And it so happened that
that standard
way back to India that I'd I had worked
with.
I did his service. And so they'd put some
flowers there in front of the pulpit.
They were in it. You know what he did?
He kicked them out of the way.
It was all about him. And so my point is
that it we have to
be very careful because things like that
Our pride d deceives us.
You know it's even
Easy to to work for the adulation of
others.
so and so he brother so and he just does
so much for the church,
and but you don't put his name in the
bulletins and see how he reacts.
That can happen. The Christian life is to
be lived quorum deo,
that is, in the face of God. And our
worship is to be a time of celebration
for what God has done for us.
through Jesus Christ. And then God is
moving forward.
into hope and and in that movement our
true hope
and our faith ~ pursues the heart of God.
You know, the sound of Christianity that
should be heard in the world is joy.
I heard a preacher say one time,
if you're happy, notify your face.
You know, it's just ~ sometimes it just
seems like ~
Christian people should be holy and they
should be happy.
And our worship should lift us up to God.
Now there's a hundred ways to apply this
truth,
and many more to miss it. Now,
this is not a suggestion that our worship
should be entertainment.
Far from it. That's not what I'm talking
about.
But what I am saying is, if after all of
our insistence that that we're
worshiping and experiencing and
proclaiming Jesus,
that we are.
Dusty and dead, something's wrong.
Christian joy is not, it's not the
manipulation of emotion,
but rather it's the response of the whole
person,
spirit, mind, will, body, emotions,
to the presence and to the truth of God.
I want you, I don't have time to read it,
but read sometime Isaiah 58 and see what
I'm talking about here.
And it leads us thirdly then to the
freshness of worship.
You know, Jesus was not here to replace
the old.
He said in Matthew 5 17,
think not that I came to destroy the law
or the prophets.
I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5 17 if any
man be in Christ,
he's a new creature. Behold, all things
are passed away,
behold, all things are become new.
And so our worship should reflect.
The freshness of our experience with
Christ,
and we've become new creatures in Christ.
But I'm afraid too many times that we're
stuck in traditionalism.
Now, let me say this: that there are good
traditions and there are bad traditions.
You know, in 2 Thessalonians 2:15,
Paul says, Hold fast to the traditions
that you receive from me.
Now, again, I can tell by looking around,
and some of y'all have been around about
as long as I have.
How many of you remember when we had a
tablecloth on the Lord's table?
You know why that tablecloth was there?
A lot of people don't know. The reason the
tablecloth is there is to keep
the flies off of it. I'm serious.
You know, back in the old days it we
didn't have air-conditioned buildings,
had windows were open, flies came in,
so they put a tablecloth over it.
Well then, you know, ~ times progressed
and we we got nice buildings like this,
air conditioned and all that. Window had
windows open,
no flies in here. Do you know what
happened when people
Suggested we remove the tablecloth from
the Lord's table.
~ man. We've always had a tablecloth on
the Lord's table.
You're changing the rules of the church.
And I thought, where is it written that
you're supposed to have a tablecloth
on the Lord's table? There's nothing wrong
with it,
but there wasn't anything wrong with
taking it off.
I was over in India one time, or one of
the times I was over in India.
A man had a dishpan and he had a cloth
over it.
And it was black. ~ Literally black.
And I thought, well, surely could have
found a different color cloth for that.
It had the Lord's Supper in it.
And he set the thing down and the flies
went.
I'm glad we used a tablecloth over there
in India.
Well we don't need that, you know,
it was a nice in fact I can remember as a
boy there there's almost
a little ceremony about the way they took
it off and folded it up and just laid
it around and put it back on there.
Well, that's a tradition.
Do you realize that prior to World War II
there were no Sunday night services?
Did you know that? You think the church
always had Sunday night services?
You know why we started having Sunday
night services?
Because in World War II,
Everything started going 24 hours a day.
And so the factory workers didn't couldn't
go to church Sunday morning,
so started having Sunday evening services.
That's a good thing. Don't get me wrong.
I'm all for Sunday this Sunday evening.
I'm here. You're here. I think it's a good
thing.
I don't think it's right for me to say,
well, you know, the congregation over here
somewhere,
they quit having Sunday night services,
so there must be a bunch of liberals.
I don't know why they quit having Sunday
night services,
but I do know this that wherever the
elders suggest we're gonna have services
this
time and that time and another time.
As a member of that congregation,
I'm to be there.
First place I preached, we didn't have
Wednesday night service or Bible study.
We had it on Friday night. And the reason
we had it on Friday night
was because one family lived way off and
it made it too hard for the kids
to get home so late. So the church said,
well, we'll just have it on Friday night.
That's a good thing. And and they were all
there.
We were all there on Friday night.
But my point is that there's good
traditions and and then there's other
kinds
of traditions. But let me say this.
Tradition is the living faith of the dead.
Traditionalism is the dead faith of those
living.
Did you get that? You mean let me say it
again.
Tradition is the living faith of those
dead.
Traditionalism is the dead faith of those
living.
And what I'm saying is simply this:
that we need to be careful.
To clinging to the old without the solid
foundation,
the solid standard of the truth of God.
But we also need to realize that change
for change's sake
is not always what we need to do.
We need to be in a true understanding of
worship,
of focusing on God and His presence and
knowing what God is accomplishing.
And we will know what God wants us to do
to keep our keep us fresh
in our experience with him. In other
words,
it's what Jesus says in John 4.24.
God is a spirit. And they that worship him
must worship
him in spirit and in truth.
Little girl and her mother on ho on their
way home from church one day,
and she's little girl said, Mommy,
preacher said something in his sermon that
confused me.
And she said, what's that? She said,
Well, he said God is bigger than us.
Is that true? And Mama said, Yeah,
that's true. And then she said,
Well, he also said that God lives within
us.
Is that true? Said, Yeah, that's true.
And little girl said, Well, if God is
bigger than us and he lives in us,
Wouldn't he show through?
If we're worshiping the Lord as we should,
He will show through. It's not about us,
it's about Him. And so tonight we want to
come into the presence of
God as His children. And those who are His
children are those who have obeyed
the gospel, who have recognized that Jesus
is the only way to heaven,
and that Jesus is the one who,
as King of the Kingdom, makes the rules.
It is he who decides the condition,
who makes the conditions of faith,
repentance, confession, and baptism into
Christ.
As I said this morning, that's just the
beginning.
And then we are those who are to live
faithful Christian lives.
This evening, if you need to come to him,
we invite you to come as we stand and
sing.