If you would please turn with me to Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy 4. We read together verses 15 through 40. You recall we are considering the commandments of our God and the exposition of these commandments as we find it recorded in the High Library Catechism. In this portion of Scripture, once again here we find Moses reinforcing especially the second commandment. Just prior to this, the beginning of chapter 4 again, he is calling for obedience. And then beginning in verse 15, hear now the Word of God. You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman or like an animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the heavenly array, do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron smelting furnace out of Egypt to be the people of His inheritance as you now are. The Lord was angry with me because of you and He solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance. I will die in this land. I will not cross the Jordan, but you are about to cross over and take possession of that good land. Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He made with you. Do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time, if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and provoking Him to anger, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long, but will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart, with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey Him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers which He confirmed to them by oath. Ask now about the former days long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth. Ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire as you have and lived? Has any God ever tried to take for Himself one nation out of another nation by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God. Besides Him, there is no other. From heaven He made you hear His voice to discipline you. On earth He showed you His great fire and you heard His words from out of the fire because He loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, He brought you out of Egypt by His presence and His great strength to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for an inheritance as it is to this day. Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below there is no other. Keep His decrees and commands which I am giving you today so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time. If you would turn as well to page 49 in the back of the Psalter hymnal. Page 49, Lord's Day 35. As we consider Scripture's teaching of the Second Commandment, as we find its treatment in the Catechism, Lord's Day 35, page 49, we find the questions and answers 96, 97, and 98. And we confess together what we believe. with these answers. Question 96. What is God's will for us in the second commandment? That we in no way make any image of God, nor worship Him in any other way than He has commanded in His Word. May we then not make any image at all? God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Although creatures may be portrayed, Yet God forbids making or having such images if one's intention is to worship them or to serve God through them. But may not images be permitted in the churches as teaching aids for the unlearned? No, we shouldn't try to be wiser than God. He wants His people instructed by the living preaching of His Word, not by items that cannot even talk. Dear people of God, I suspect that if you go to any given bookstore today, you can find an assortment of how-to books or how-to manuals to help you in various aspects of life. You can find how-to manuals on how to fix your car, and how to prepare a certain meal, how to invest wisely and become rich, how to win friends and influence enemies, or just about anything that you can imagine. Actually, though, there is only one true and infallible how-to manual for life, isn't there? And that is the Holy Word of God. And one of the things that we need to know and that we can only learn from God Himself is how to approach Him. How to come before Him. With the first commandment, you recall that we consider that there is only One who is to be served in worship, that is the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. And therefore, the first commandment commands against idol worship. It commands against giving our trust to something else besides or in place of the one true God who has revealed Himself to us in His Word. The God of Scripture, the God of the Bible, is alone God. And therefore, as believers saved by grace through faith, how then are we to worship Him? Well, that's what our Lord teaches us in the second commandment. Not only must we worship the proper God, but we must worship Him properly. Our gratitude, our thanksgiving to the God of our redemption must be reflected. That thanksgiving must be reflected in our worship of Him. I preached to you this Word of God this morning. Grateful living through the proper manner of divine worship. We want to consider the negative requirement, the positive standard, and the two-fold promise. But before we go on, we need to consider what worship is. We know that God's people come together. We are called together as a body of Christ to worship. But what is it that takes place? Psalm 96, verse 9 says, Worship the Lord in the splendor or in the beauty of His holiness. And the idea of the word translated worship is to bow or sink down. To give oneself completely over. This is what God's people are called to do in response to the great things that God has done. In Exodus 4, when Moses returned to Egypt and told the people about what God sent him to do, verse 31 says, They bowed down and worshipped. The New Testament word translated worship has the same idea of prostrating oneself. Doing homage to God. Beloved, worship is an activity of response to the holiness and the greatness of God. And therefore, it involves our humble submission to Him. All of life, of course, we know is to be lived in humble awareness of God's holiness and therefore is to honor and glorify God. Everything we do is to honor Him. But especially in formal worship, God's people bow down. We lay our hearts down before His majestic glory in spirit and in truth to bring to Him the honor and the praise which belong only to Him. And to do this in and through Jesus Christ. Beloved, what we think about God, what we understand about God, what we know about God, good or bad, right or wrong, will be reflected in our worship. Question and answer 96 once again. What is God's will for us in the second commandment? That we in no way make any image of God nor worship Him in any other way than He has commanded in His Word. We notice there the negative requirement with regard to worship, to proper worship. Now first, we need to understand that it's not possible to make an image of God. It's not possible to make an image of God. That is, as He truly is. But when the Catechism says that we in no way make any image of God, it's talking about making a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth and then taking that image or that likeness and saying, this is Jehovah. that's what Aaron did didn't he when Moses was gone for all that time and the people became impatient Aaron fashioned the golden calf and said this is your God oh Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt and we say how ridiculous he just made it that thing didn't do all those miraculous signs and wonders before their eyes in Egypt It wasn't His calf. But you see, beloved, in ancient days, the false gods of the people of the world were crafted, molded, shaped, carved, whatever the case may be. And the people assigned to them, designated to those images, the powers that they thought the gods possessed that those images supposedly represented. But Jehovah is saying, you shall not do that with Me. Why? 97. Why may we then not make any image at all? God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Although creatures may be portrayed, yet God forbids making or having such images if one's intention is to worship them or to serve God through them. Now think about this. When man fashions something, boys and girls, when you too make something with your Play-Doh, you make some sort of a shape. When man fashions something, whatever that something may be, it can only be the image of some sort of creature. Something that we have seen. Because that's all that man, the creature, knows. That's all that he can conceive of. And therefore, to make some sort of an image of any creature and then try to worship the true God through this creature completely dishonors God, the Creator. It deprives him of his incomprehensibleness and glory, as well as it is to bring God down to the realm of the creature, and above all, it mocks him. Now again, Aaron proved that, didn't he? He claimed that he tossed the gold jewelry into the fire, and voila, what came out? An animal. He didn't even have the decency to create a man, which is also forbidden. But an animal. What a mockery of God. It was bad enough to claim that this calf was Jehovah, but it was a lower life form even than man. Another way in which man exalts himself over God. But our God may not and will not be worshipped or served by graven images because He cannot be visibly represented in any way. We read from Deuteronomy 4, of course, beginning at verse 15, but first of all, again, notice verse 12, backing up a couple of verses. Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form. There was only a voice. And then back to 15 and 16, You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol and image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman. You see, it's interesting to me that here we are not to make any forms of God. Now, it doesn't say that God doesn't have a form. He hasn't shown us a form, has He? It says, you did not see a form. God has not given to us a form. One day, as we sang, we shall see Him as He is. We shall gaze and gaze upon Him. But not yet has He given to us any form in which to recognize Him. Again, to seek to serve God in the form of an image completely distorts Him. For as Jesus said, God is spirit. That's what we have right now in this life. To seek to worship God in the form of an image as well limits and restricts Him and makes it seem as if man has some sort of a control over Him. God Himself speaks to the foolishness of this in Scripture. In Isaiah 44, He talks about the fact that man takes a piece of wood, he carves a wooden image out of it, he uses the scraps of the same wood to build a fire and to bake bread. And notice what he says in verses 16 and 17. He burns half of it in the fire. With this half he eats meat. He roasts a roast and is satisfied. He even warms himself and says, Ah, I am warm. I have seen the fire. And the rest of it he makes into a God. His carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, Deliver me, for you are my God. Hard for us to imagine, really. Taking a piece of wood, carving it out, and then bowing before it? Something that we've made with our own hands? You see, beloved, making images in order to worship God leads to idolatry. In boys and girls, that then leads to violating what other commandment? Well, the first commandment. And what we read in Psalm 115 also gives a powerful indication of how God is blasphemed through images. Physically speaking, especially as we consider how the idols, Some of the idol gods are described in Scripture. Physically speaking, idols have all the equipment for the senses. Noses, ears, eyes, mouth, and hands and feet and so forth. But these things don't work. And the psalmist says, those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them. They are dead. They are false. They represent power ascribed to them by people, but they don't have any. They are an abomination. They change the truth of God for a lie. But to see, our God, the God of Scripture, is alive. He is omnipotent. He is truth. Now, of course, we are not in the habit today of sculpting objects and worshiping and serving God by them and through them. And as an aside, we need to realize that in the second commandment, God did not prohibit making images of creatures. This commandment is in no way a prohibition against tasteful art. God Himself gave the design for the temple which included many art forms, but this commandment is against elevating images to the status of worship. We too must be careful, beloved, not to fashion a God in our imagination that is different from the God of Scripture. I read about a minister who is still alive in our day who had a conversation with a woman and they were talking about God and he was talking about the fact that God is a just God. He will punish sin. And she said, oh, no, no, no. My God would never do that. My God would never punish sin. My God would never send anyone to hell. And he said, of course, your God cannot do anything. Because your God is not real. But we need to be careful, beloved, not to, for example, imagine a God with blind eyes who cannot see. And therefore, we feel free to, for example, observe Sunday outwardly, but Monday through Saturday we look and act like the world because He won't see us anyway. Sometimes we might imagine a God without ears when He doesn't answer our prayers as we would like, when we would like. We might imagine a God without arms or legs who can't really help us in times of trouble. We might imagine a God who is tolerant for our tastes and our desires in worship more than His own glory. We might even imagine a God without a caring heart who really doesn't care about what we do with His Word and doesn't care how we raise our children and what we teach them about Him. See, beloved, as a rule, children see God through the eyes of their parents and they will worship the God of their parents. That's why there's nothing more important, no greater gift that parents can give to their children than to teach them about God and His Word and His worship properly. You see, either we compromise and we teach them that we know better than God how He is to be known and served, or by God's grace, we follow Paul's instruction to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1, verse 13, Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Beloved, the proper manner of divine worship forbids using images to worship or serve God and even using them to teach about Him. As answer 98 says, to do this is to try to be wiser than God. And instead, the proper manner of divine worship must follow the positive standard. There's something that we are to do instead. That standard, the only standard, is God and His Word. He is the one and the only one who regulates the believer's worship of Him. We are not, as the catechism rightly says, to worship Him in any other way than He has commanded in His Word. Instead, He wants His people instructed by the living preaching of His Word, not by idols that cannot even talk. When the Catechism says we are to worship God in no other way than He has commanded in His Word, that means that we are to worship Him His way and not our own way. Notice Deuteronomy 12, verses 29-32. The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, how do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same. You must not worship the Lord your God in their way because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. See that you do all I command you. Do not add to it or take away from it. Beloved, the only acceptable worship is not that which pleases us and makes us feel good and emotionally empowered first of all, but that which is glorifying to God. See, throughout Israel's history, God has shown time and time again what He thinks of worship man's way. Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons, died on the spot after they offered profane fire to the Lord. In 1 Samuel 13, King Saul offered the customary pre-war burnt offering and peace offering instead of waiting for Samuel, who was authorized to do it. Saul was not. And he thought that the act of offering was more important than the spirit of obedience to God. What happened? He lost the kingdom. He learned the Word of God to obey is better than sacrifice. What is true worship? It is serving God in total commitment to His Word. Our formal activity of worship is to be for God, done His way, and not to attract people first of all. You see, God will take care of that through the preaching of His Word and the witnessing of His Word. The worship that is attractive to man is most often, if not always, unattractive to God. Well, what is false worship today? Dr. Horton, in his book, which I've mentioned the last couple of weeks, is very helpful, I believe. He talks about human-centered or consumer-driven worship. And this is where churches become like fast food franchises, and you can come and you can have it your way. The truth is, beloved, you can tell who is being worshipped on Sunday in any given church according to whom the service is attempting to please. Today it seems that for many, the goal of getting people in no matter which way is more important than leading them in proper praise and thanksgiving by lifting their eyes to heaven. So therefore, the end justifies the means. But our God says, no, it doesn't. A minister friend of mine said to me once, people will stay in a church for the reason that they came. And the meaning is, if you come for the entertainment, you will stay as long as the entertainment suits your tastes. But if you think that through, look at all the different age groups here. Boys and girls like one entertainment. Teenagers like another. Young adults, another. Parents and older folks can't stand the entertainment of teenagers. It's all different. Who are you going to please? and anyone will only stay as long as the entertainment satisfies them but if you come for the Word of God which is changeless it's the same yesterday, today and forever yet always fresh each and every time we open the Word of God you have no reason to leave beloved God centered, Christ focused worship looks to the Word and the sacraments, as Dr. Horton says to inspire worship It doesn't look to entertainment or other gimmicks. He says with regard to the second commandment that our goal must be how can we enable God's people to worship their Creator and Redeemer correctly and not how can we pack Him in this Sunday? User-friendly churches often cater to the preferences of man. And think about it. Man doesn't really know what he truly needs. Instead, it caters to man instead of obeying the commands of God. And in many respects, it's convenience-oriented. But if you think about it, that's nothing new either, is it? Why did Jeroboam set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan? So that the people wouldn't have to go all the way to Jerusalem to worship. Sure, there was a political motive there. But why go there when you can stay right here? And then there's self-centered worship that fits in with this very well. This is worship that aims to get and not to give. the kind of worship that says, Preacher, make me feel good when I'm here. Tell me what I like to hear. Give me a reason to come back tonight. Make it worth my while. You're taking up my time, you know. Beloved, worship is first for God. It's about what we come to give to Him as we bow down, as we lay our hearts before Him. and we are called to give Him adoration, thanksgiving and praise and when we do His blessing will be more than we could have ever expected because we cannot outgive God now it's true of course that we need to be careful about worship tradition for tradition's sake even our traditions are not to be about what we think or what we feel or about what makes us comfortable our traditions must be drawn from the Bible But we must also take into consideration our approach to worship. How do we prepare for worship? Maybe even going back to Saturday evening already. How do we prepare? And also, do we enter and leave God's house reverently and worshipfully? What do we talk about as we leave this room, as we walk down the aisles to exit after the service? We've just heard the Word of God. Almighty God, speak to us. Where do our conversations turn? And as I've thought about this, I have to confess that I've been guilty with some of you asking you at the door when I shake your hand, how was the ball game last night? How's your job going? I've got no business doing that. And I apologize to whomever I've done that to. I, or you, have no reason to distract anyone else from what God has said. We are to meditate upon it. We need to be challenged, beloved, to remember as we enter God's house whose presence we are entering. As we worship for this hour, we need to remember whose presence we are in. And as we leave, we must remember whose presence we have been in. Well, how do the Scriptures teach us to worship? Those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. It is to be from our whole heart directed by the Spirit of God and that according to the truth of His Word. Worship is spiritual business that is determined by the nature of God. The Bible emphasizes in Acts 17 that worship must honor God's person. Jeremiah 7, verse 4 teaches that it must be sincere. Hebrews 10, verse 25 instructs the church that corporate worship must be faithful and regular. Ephesians 5, verse 1 teaches us that the goal is to be imitators of God as dear children. And Scripture also makes clear that worship is a meeting between God and His people in which a dialogue, a conversation, if you will, takes place. It's a covenant renewal ceremony as we were taught last spring in adult Sunday school. In Exodus 29, verse 42, at the entrance to the tent of meeting, God promised, there I will meet you and speak to you. It's striking to me. Maybe you caught it as we read just those 25 verses of Deuteronomy 4. But the emphasis seems to draw our attention on God spoke. God said. God's word. You heard. Spoken words are the language of worship. God speaks and His people respond. And that's how we try to order our worship. If you look at your order of worship this morning, We try to order that with this dialogue, this conversation in mind. God speaks to His people in the call to worship, in the salutation or greeting, in the reading of the law, in the reading of Scripture, in the sacraments, in the sermon, in the benediction. And His people respond throughout all of these other elements with prayer and singing and confession and the giving of our offerings to Him. And all of these elements can be found in Scripture as that which God commands us to do. God reveals Himself through His Word. That's where He describes Himself. And therefore, that's where our understanding of Him is to come from. Not from some image of a creature. Through His Word. And especially through the living preaching of it. God teaches of Himself. He teaches of ourselves. He teaches of our desperate need. He teaches of His saving grace through Jesus Christ. Everything we need to know for salvation as the Belgian Confession states in Article 7 is sufficiently taught in the Bible. Now, living preaching is not necessarily talking about boring versus not boring. But it must be preaching of the truth in the power and with the blessing of the Holy Spirit for it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. God will not have His people taught by dumb images that cannot speak or hear or see or handle. Their very existence, as Habakkuk 2 teaches us, is teaching a lie. We often say, or you've heard it said, that a picture is worth a thousand words. A congregation, the Word of God, describes God as incomprehensible. He's almighty, sovereign, gracious, long-suffering, and so much more. The truth is, a thousand pictures could not even begin to image even one of God's attributes. No graven image, no picture, no banner, no drama, or anything other than the Word of God could even begin to teach the glorious truth of God's salvation through Jesus Christ. Any of these things, you see, only gives the impression of the person who made them or made them up. And now to get a little controversial with some of you, the same is true with pictures of Christ. The very same is true. Indeed, Jesus was a human being, a man, but He was also God. And that does not mean that we are allowed, we are not allowed, To take a picture of a man and try to teach about Jesus from that picture. I want you to think about something. Even after the resurrection, His disciples who had walked with Him for three years, they knew Him intimately. Sometimes even after the resurrection, His disciples didn't recognize Him unless God opened their eyes. Pictures violate the second commandment and are not to be used. But the proper manner of divine worship also contains the two-fold promise. And that is as Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 say, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments. Our God is jealous with a righteous jealousy. Now, we often think of jealousy as something bad. We treat it more like envy. And indeed, there is an unrighteous jealousy. Saul, of course, was a picture of this toward David as well. Joseph's brothers toward him. But proper jealousy deals with one's own possessions. God is jealous in that He has a righteous desire for that which is His. His own glory, but as well His own people. He is jealous for our good. Just as parents are jealous for their children's good, that they have the best care and the best food and the best education, and that they grow up to be the best godly people they can be. God is jealous for the devotion of His people and for His own glory. You see, He will not share either. And that's not being selfish. The simple fact is, they belong nowhere else. No one else can benefit from them. They belong to God alone. Remember, to worship an image is spiritual adultery. And God is intolerant of competition, which includes ways of worship that contradict what He has taught in His Word. Isaiah 42, verse 8 says, I am the Lord, that is My name. and my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to carve images. Beloved, God is jealous for the good of His people and that includes that they enjoy the best worship, the most faithful worship possible, and He knows what's best for us. But for those who hate Him, for those who don't worship and serve Him as He has commanded, there is a negative promise. We could say a warning. We know that it's not uncommon for three or four generations of family to be alive at any given time. Some of you here have great-grandchildren. We know in years past biblical times they lived for many, many generations. God is not saying here that He will punish the children for the sin of the fathers because that would completely contradict what He says in Ezekiel 18 where He says He won't do that. But instead He says they're the soul whose sins shall die. But again, children often adopt the sin of the fathers and they own it and they claim it and they live it as their very own. As someone once said, if I serve God half, my children will do that only a quarter and my grandchildren not at all. And the same can be said about worship attendance on Sunday. And we all know of examples of these very things. God will punish the children for the sin they adopted from their fathers. Hear that, fathers? Yet three or four generations is a demonstration of God's mercy. You see, for any who turn to Him in repentance and faith, they shall be saved. It's amazing to me as I think about these first two commandments that are directly against God. That He forgives them. He forgives them. And His promise for the faithful encompasses thousands. His blessing is upon those who by His grace pass the faith on to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And He gathers His church together in large part, not exclusively, but in large part through believers and their seed. Beloved, those born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to the grace of God, show gratitude to Him for such a great salvation as they worship Him according to His requirement. Believers are those to whom God has not only revealed Himself in His written Word, but He has also revealed Himself to us in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect image of the Father, even as He said, He that has seen me has seen the Father. You see, this second commandment also drives us to Jesus Christ because true worship and the proper manner of worship is only in Him. Through Him, we are restored to the image of God. And through His Holy Spirit, He lifts our souls on high to His Father and He feeds us with His truth. Any worship, divorced from the only begotten Son of God, distorts the truth of God and disobeys God's commands. Boys and girls, it's not a golden idol we serve this morning, which we believe is our God. You don't see a golden idol up here. We serve and worship the God of Scripture, the Father of Jesus Christ, whose promises are unchanging for the sake of the blood of Christ. As well, who forgives the sins of His people and promises us the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. And our comfort is, it must be that for those who believe, although we know that our worship is far from perfect, that our worship is often offensive to God, yet Jesus Christ, through His Holy Spirit, cleanses our worship and presents it to the Father for His own sake as a sweet-smelling aroma. And we take comfort in the truth of the words that we sometimes sing from the hymn, How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds. The stanza goes, Weak is the effort of my heart and cold my warmest thought. But when I see Thee as Thou art, I'll praise Thee as I ought. God says to those who make dumb, foolish, worthless, and godless dead images that they are like them, which means that they will not last. They will be destroyed. But those being renewed in the image of God, instead of seeking to make God in their image, they have eternal joy already today. Eternal joy of living forever with the Lord, their Maker. The One who made them. Beloved, may God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, direct our paths to worship only Him, His way only. Amen. Shall we pray? Dear Heavenly Father, we must confess that sometimes we have difficulty with Your commandments because we don't like to be told what not to do. We don't like to be told what we are to do. Sometimes we still try to be autonomous from You. But thank You, Lord, for loving Your people enough to give to us the instruction of what we need, the instruction of what's best for us. And we pray, Father, that You would bless our worship. As we grow in sanctification, May our worship be more and more acceptable and pleasing in Your sight. And may we look forward to the day that when we see You as You art, then we will praise You as we ought. Hear our prayer, O Lord, for Jesus' sake. Amen.