The only way which sinners like us can bring right worship (in our prayers & praise) is if we bring it in covenant. Every other attempt is really idolatry, self-worship, and sin. You’ve come to Mt. Zion, not to do God a favor, but because of His favor towards you.

One of the more vital needs of the church is for us to do what we do on purpose. In other words, while there’s a right sort of habitual piety, there’s also a very real threat of putting our worship on spiritless autopilot. We should ask ourselves, “What are we doing here?” And we should have an answer that’s derived from what God, in His Word, told us to do in our gathering.
This is a service of prayer (Acts 2:42) in which God renews His covenant with His people (Heb. 12:22-24). Let me break that into two parts. The reason we assemble is to offer our prayers up to the Lord. True prayer humbles itself before the Living God. As such, it brings praise for Who He is & petitions Him alone for deliverance from evil. Our songs are sung prayers; largely derived from the Psalms or from themes clearly tied to the text of Scripture.
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Today, and every day, we will come up against the hard commands of Jesus. And the temptation will be for us to regard Him as ungenerous. As uncaring. As persnickety. Anything but loving. But here is where we come back not to what we think in the moment, but what we know to be true. We know it to be true that Jesus loves us. Every command is evidence of that love.

God tells us to stop, and God tells us to start. The Bible is full of prohibitions, and the Bible is full of exhortations. Regardless, the “do’s” and the “do not’s” are filtered through God’s love.
We know that right? We think we do. We think we know the reason God tells us to do certain things in service to Him and others is not because He needs us to serve Him, but because He loves us. He knows that the best way to live is to live in this fashion, and He loves us enough to tell us so.
Similarly, we think we know that the reason God tells us not to do some things is not because He is a cosmic killjoy; it’s because He is a Father who wants the best for us. He doesn’t want us to waste our lives or settle for less than the best, so He tells us to flee from this and turn away from that.
We think we know that, but when it comes to actually living out these commands, we begin to question. We question it especially when God tells us to stop doing something we really enjoy doing. It’s in those moments we start to wonder if God really loves us, because if He does, then why would He want to take something away from us?
In other words, we tend to think of prohibitions as exceptions to love.
But all of God’s commands are filtered through His love. Even the painful ones.
Case in point is the rich, young ruler.

Written by Amy K. Hall |
Saturday, February 18, 2023

Nothing God does can be rightly understood apart from his being, character, and authority. We have to start there, interpreting his actions in light of who he is, not interpreting his character in light of how we would perceive a fallen human being who illegitimately took those same actions.

Many people misinterpret God’s character when looking at his demands and actions in history because they imagine what they would think of a fallen human being who did the things God has done, and they recoil. Failing to picture God as he is, they picture instead what they’re familiar with—a sinful, human tyrant imposing his preferred laws on people by force, destroying nations, or demanding worship.
But a fallen human being who has illegitimately grabbed power over others in order to use them for his own selfish purposes and vain ego is simply not analogous to a perfectly good being—a perfectly just and righteous Creator and Judge with legitimate authority over all, a God who sought the good of his enemies at his own expense, a loving Father of his people.
God, as the perfectly good and just Creator—the very standard of morality—has the kind of authority no fallen human being could ever rightly have, and so he can rightly do things no fallen human being could ever rightly do. That might sound odd to you at first, but the idea that a particular action can be wrong for one person but right for another is not a foreign concept to us. In our everyday life, we all live according to the understanding that the acceptability of a person’s actions can depend on his authority and role. For example, if I were to lock you in a building for a decade, my action would be morally wrong—even if you were, in fact, guilty of something. But if the government were to rightly convict you of a crime and lock you in a building for a decade, its action would be good and just. The difference in the morality of our actions—though it’s the same action in both cases—is determined by the authority and role of the government and my lack of those things.
Now apply that principle to God. Just as there are ways the government can act that are good and just that would not be good and just if I were to act in those ways, so there are things the ultimate being in the universe can rightly do such that if any fallen, finite human being did those things, we would rightly recoil.
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