Latest / Admonition Podcast / Worship - It's Background (Lesson 1) - Aaron Cozort - July 08, 2026
Transcript
- 0:03Good evening.
- 0:10Well I mentioned, I know it is a deep subject, isn't it?
- 0:17I mentioned uh last week if there was anything that uh or uh whenever it was, I think it was last week, if there was anything that that there was interest in studying that I was
- 0:29open to uh thoughts and suggestions concerning those things, and I got a little bit of feedback from a few people.
- 0:37Uh yes.
- 0:40Did you just raise your hand?
- 0:40Is it too late?
- 0:42Well I don't know.
- 0:43What's what's your thought or suggestion?
- 0:50The book of Acts.
- 0:55Mm.
- 1:06Well I suspect we're going to be there a little bit anyway, based upon what w what we are looking at doing.
- 1:14But the a couple of people gave me feedback and I'm gonna kinda combine uh the requests, uh one of which was spending some time with kind of an in-depth look at worship.
- 1:30What is worship?
- 1:32Biblical
- 1:33view of worship and the the background around worship and the other one was fundamental concepts of Christian and godly living.
- 1:45And so I thought you know what?
- 1:47Two kind of core basic ideas, let's let's bring those together because as you uh as we've talked about many times before, especially in the Old Testament prophets
- 1:58If our worship is being offered to God, but our lives are not in alignment with God, then our worship is worthless.
- 2:05And if we are seeking to do right things and live in good ways, but we do not honor God and worship Him as we ought, our actions and our life is worthless.
- 2:16So we're gonna kind of bring these ideas together.
- 2:20Uh and as we get over into the New Testament, we're certainly going to deal with the early church and some of the things pertaining to that.
- 2:28as well.
- 2:28So we're gonna begin tonight with the idea of worship.
- 2:34And I I'm kind of, as most of y'all know, one of these people that if I'm gonna start on something, I want to start at the beginning.
- 2:41Uh and really understand it from a conceptual level and then build up to the activity level as it were.
- 2:52Because if we were to discuss worship and we were to begin with the acts of worship as described in the New Testament, there's a lot of foundation behind what we understand
- 3:05worship to be that would simply be missing.
- 3:08So I want us to begin really where the scriptures begin with the concept of worship, and that is at creation.
- 3:19Uh when you go throughout the scriptures and you look at why God in revelation uh or in in the through the Holy Spirit given giving revelation to mankind, why God says that he, in
- 3:37contrast to others, are worthy of worship, so many occasions you find one of the very first reasons to be because he created everything that exists.
- 3:49And therefore he is worthy of worship.
- 3:51He is worthy of praise, because he is the creator.
- 3:55So that's where we're going to begin this evening, and probably where we'll spend most of our time, if not uh a couple of weeks, is this idea of God as being worthy of worship, and
- 4:08that worship is as old as creation.
- 4:12Turn with me, if you will, to Psalm nineteen.
- 4:21The nineteenth psalm.
- 4:25Із one of these
- 4:28Passages that is is a signal passage for revelation and how God speaks to mankind.
- 4:40But in being such, it is also one of these passages that differentiates the nature of God from everything else that mankind has tried to worship through the generations.
- 4:56In Psalm nineteen and in verse one we read The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.
- 5:08Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.
- 5:14There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
- 5:26In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
- 5:37Its rising is from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
- 5:46As the psalmist writer here begins to describe creation, he doesn't begin with the
- 5:57Makeup of creation in the sense of he doesn't describe how things correlate to one another.
- 6:05Rather, he describes in a personification that all of creation is involved in a continual activity.
- 6:20And what is the continual activity?
- 6:24that creation is involved in in view of this passage.
- 6:36Speaking but speaking what, specifically, the very first line.
- 6:44Declaring the glory of God.
- 6:50So there's two senses of worship that I want us to comprehend.
- 6:55um One is generic, okay?
- 7:00What and the way I'm going to term it is generic versus specific worship.
- 7:07Generic worship is to recognize the glory and the
- 7:14The worthiness of someone or something.
- 7:20It is something that is done, sometimes from afar, something that is done by nature of the activity that the person was involved in.
- 7:33Example of that might be uh if you were to cons uh if you were to observe or to have stood there in ancient times and looked at
- 7:43The temple of Solomon, you would have been able to describe it just the way we did.
- 7:52The Temple of Solomon, right?
- 7:56The very nature of the fact that he was involved in the building of it, the designing of it, the work of it, and finishing that work declared the wisdom and the insight and the
- 8:07glory of Solomon.
- 8:10But it's also the temple of the Lord.
- 8:12So in that sense, the Lord has the greater glory, but if you were to compare the temple of the days of Zerubbabel or the temple of Herod to the temple of Solomon, you would have
- 8:24clearly seen that the glory of Solomon's temple was significantly more than the glory of Zerubbabel or Herod's temple.
- 8:34Okay, so when we see the activity of someone, when we see what they've produced, then
- 8:41There's some glorying, there's some recognition that comes with that.
- 8:48The greater degree of that idea of recognition and glory is at the level of worship.
- 8:58To give praise and honor to someone because they are worthy.
- 9:09And creation here by the psalmist writer is spoken of as doing that every day.
- 9:16That the heavens declare the glory of God.
- 9:22And the firmament shows his handiwork.
- 9:28And that creation is going about, personified here in this passage, as day in and day out.
- 9:38Creation does nothing other than declare the glory of God.
- 9:46We are constantly in our scientific world discovering something new that we did not know about the world that has been around ever since we started studying it.
- 10:03And there's no indication we're running out of things to study.
- 10:08There's no slowdown in discoveries.
- 10:12There's not a point at which scientists are going, you know what, I don't think any of us are gonna be employed uh a couple of years from now because we're going to have figured it
- 10:20all out by then.
- 10:24The reality is when you look at the world, the universe that we live in, it is continually involved in a generic concept from a biblical perspective of glorying God.
- 10:47Now, when you put together what it is that Scripture says about it,
- 10:52What you actually find is that God designed it to do that.
- 10:59That God's intent behind the universe that He created was to show and to reveal Himself to mankind to describe His glory.
- 11:14So look again at the passage.
- 11:17Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.
- 11:21There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
- 11:33The psalmist writer says it doesn't matter where you go on the planet, creation is going to talk to you every day about the fact that God exists.
- 11:42Creation is going to reveal to you that there is an intelligent creator, and you're going to actively have to lie to yourself to convince yourself it's not true.
- 11:56So turn to Genesis chapter one.
- 12:10Genesis chapter one.
- 12:15Moses' law opens with the words, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
- 12:27The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
- 12:38Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
- 12:43And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, God called the light day and the darkness he called night, so the evening and the morning were
- 12:53the first day.
- 12:57Some will come to this passage and they will attempt to argue the uh the gap theory.
- 13:08They'll argue that uh verse one and verse two are only separated, you know, when they started making the argument, they were only separated by a few uh hundred million years.
- 13:20You know, long enough for creation to or for evolution to have occurred.
- 13:24Uh and then
- 13:27you know, science kept flubbing the the timetable.
- 13:30So now we're up to 18 point something billion years between verse one and verse two.
- 13:36There's just a big gap in between.
- 13:39Um yeah, inconsistent with the text to say the least.
- 13:45But furthermore, you have in this passage a clear declaration from God
- 13:56About the timetable of the passage.
- 14:01Because as you open the reading, you vi you find that the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the face of the water.
- 14:10Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, the darkness, or sorry, God called the
- 14:19light day, and the darkness he called night.
- 14:21So the evening and the morning were the first day.
- 14:26Well, if you were to argue that
- 14:35The universe that we live in is 18 something billion years old.
- 14:41And if you were to argue that the sun in the solar system that we're in is however many billions of years old.
- 14:53Then how long was the first day?
- 15:00So some have come along and say, Well, actually what we have and what we need to understand is that each of these days is a long eon of time.
- 15:14There's no way to make scientific sense of that, by the way.
- 15:21reason number one.
- 15:24What's a long eon of time of sunlight with no darkness?
- 15:30Uh the answer is the end of everything.
- 15:34Because it all burns up.
- 15:37What's a eon of darkness with no sunlight?
- 15:42The answer is the end of everything, because it stops growing.
- 15:47You don't get past day one with the day-age theory until you finally have to admit, well, either God said darkness and light were a day, and there was one day, and then there was
- 16:01the next day, and he said, This is day one, and this is what I did on day two, or all of it's just myth and folklore and nonsense.
- 16:16But turn to Matthew chapter nineteen.
- 16:28Because many for f in the
- 16:32somewhat theological realm of things, and many in the uh scholarly realm of things and many in the uh skeptical realm of things are more than willing to throw Moses under the
- 16:47bus because most of the people that they interact with are Christians who don't really have a whole lot to do with Moses.
- 16:56So they're okay with that.
- 16:58The problem is when you start throwing Jesus under the bus.
- 17:02And when you start throwing Jesus under the bus, you're going have a real problem.
- 17:06So Matthew chapter 19, verse 1.
- 17:09Now it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings that he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.
- 17:17And great multitudes followed him, and he healed them there.
- 17:21And the Pharisees also came to testing him, and saying to him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?
- 17:29And he answered and said to them,
- 17:31Have you not read that he who made them now what's the next phrase?
- 17:40At the beginning.
- 17:44What was Moses' opening phrase of Genesis?
- 17:49In the beginning.
- 17:51But you notice Moses didn't begin in the beginning.
- 17:55God made man on the planet that already existed and had just waited a few billion, you know, umpteen billion years before he got around to doing it.
- 18:06That's not what he said.
- 18:08Moses didn't begin with.
- 18:10Man.
- 18:12Moses began with God.
- 18:17And so in the beginning, God created.
- 18:21Jesus says, Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?
- 18:28And said, For this reason, a man shall not leave his father or mother, and shall shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?
- 18:38So then they are no longer two but one flesh, therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.
- 18:48It's one thing in the minds of some to throw Moses' statements out and just go, first ten chapters of Genesis are just a myth.
- 19:00Uh except Jesus said they were factually accurate.
- 19:06And if Jesus says they're factually accurate, then of the two people whose opinion I think I'll go with, any man and Jesus, I'm gonna go with the guy who was there when it happened.
- 19:21Jesus said, Do you not know that he that made them at the beginning made them male and female?
- 19:27Furthermore, when you add into that both John chapter 1 and Hebrews chapter 1.
- 19:32Which both testify to us that the second person in the Godhead was the person who did the act of creating.
- 19:40Jesus is actually stating in Matthew nineteen, Do you not know that when I made them at the beginning, I made them male and female?
- 19:53Because the second person in the Godhead is the one who is described as doing the creative act, and the first person in the Godhead is the one who is spoken of as speaking.
- 20:05So you have in creation a testimony to the glory of God.
- 20:14But then consider as you go down through the text of Genesis 1, Genesis 1, verse 20, yeah, verse 20.
- 20:24Then God said, Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures.
- 20:30And let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.
- 20:36Now remember, just just a moment ago, we had great long eons of time in each day.
- 20:48I've seen some birds that can fly a long time.
- 20:52But I haven't seen any of them that can fly for any yon.
- 20:57In the midst of describing the day, God says, Here are the birds, and they're flying.
- 21:08And that's the act of creating.
- 21:12He says, So God created great sea creatures, and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind.
- 21:24And God saw that it was good, and God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the sea, and let the birds multiply on the earth.
- 21:33So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
- 21:37Then God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creatures according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing, beast of the earth, each according to its kind, and it was so.
- 21:50And God made the beast of the earth.
- 21:52according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and God saw that it was good.
- 22:02As the creation account is given to us, the first and unwavering principle of creation is everything only produces after its kind.
- 22:29And while many occasions will be found in archaeological evidence of changes inside of an animal family.
- 22:48resulting from breeding or catastrophe or dominant genes?
- 22:57What is the thing that's missing from all geograph geological and archaeological evidence?
- 23:12Any animal changing from one kind to another.
- 23:17There's not one example of it.
- 23:20There's not one piece of evidence for it.
- 23:24Many of the pieces of evidence that have been heralded for decades have long ago been debunked, but the scientific books in schools will still print them.
- 23:39And furthermore, when you look at the geological evidence and you look at the things that have been uncovered by archaeologists, they will argue that something is a certain age
- 23:52because of where it is in that historical descent down times uh view in that earth.
- 24:02The problem is that they also date the earth based upon what fossils they find in it.
- 24:08So if you date the earth based upon the a based upon which creatures are found in the fossil record, and you date the fossils by the earth that they're found in, what do you
- 24:20have?
- 24:22Circular reasoning.
- 24:25How do we know this is this old?
- 24:26Well, look at the fossils that are in it.
- 24:28How do we know the fossils are that old?
- 24:29Well, look at the Earth strata that it's in.
- 24:32Doesn't work, folks.
- 24:35Furthermore, many times there have been supposedly extinct animals that they are quite certain only live during a certain period of Earth's history, only to be found alive.
- 24:53in a part of the planet that we up until that point had not discovered.
- 25:00So when you keep having problems with a theory, you can adjust the theory, but there does become a point at which you go, maybe the theory just needs to be chucked.
- 25:14In contrast, when it comes to creation, you have had a not a theory, but a declaration from God that has been proven to be accurate over and over and over and over and over and
- 25:29over and over again.
- 25:32Which is why in every single zoo everywhere there has never been an occasion where two of the primates
- 25:43mated and a lizard came out.
- 25:49There has never been an occasion where two of the parakeets mated and a fish came out.
- 25:54They weren't like suddenly, go get the water.
- 25:56This one's gonna need to go into the aqua display.
- 26:02It's never happened.
- 26:03You wanna know why?
- 26:04Because it doesn't happen.
- 26:07Do you know why?
- 26:08Because God said when He created everything that He created, it's going to produce after its
- 26:18own kind.
- 26:22So there's never been a transition fossil.
- 26:24There will never be a transition fossil.
- 26:26There will not be an occasion of the dog transitioning to the fish.
- 26:34You might get some dogs that you never had before.
- 26:39You might get some really weird dogs.
- 26:43And I've seen a few.
- 26:46But you're never going to get a fish instead of the dog.
- 26:50When the mama dog gives birth.
- 26:56When you pause and consider what the psalmist writer is saying.
- 27:05That creation itself declares God's glory.
- 27:14And then you examine what Genesis says, and let's notice verse 26.
- 27:21Then God said, Let us make man in our image.
- 27:30When creation is
- 27:33described as revealed by the Holy Spirit to the prophet Moses, it is described accurately, it is described factually in agreement with science, and it is described with a
- 27:54description at the beginning and the very outset of Scripture concerning the nature of God.
- 28:03That God is not as many in the cultural world or the pagan world believe Him to be.
- 28:14He is not as the Muslim world believes him to be.
- 28:21He is not as the Jehovah's Witness world believes him to be.
- 28:26He is most certainly not as the Buddhist or uh other uh Far Eastern religions believe him to be.
- 28:36But rather that he is one.
- 28:43and plural at the same time.
- 28:48That he is God, singular, and Elohim, plural, and us at the same time.
- 29:00That he is made up of a variety of natures all in complete agreement and unity with one another.
- 29:13This, unlike many philosophies of religion that have come around through the years, is one thing that the Bible does different than all other quote unquote religious books.
- 29:29And that is it is consistent.
- 29:33From Genesis one to John one, if you turned over to John chapter one.
- 29:44John, as he opens his record of the life of Christ, begins with the same three words that Moses began with in the beginning.
- 30:05But as John describes, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.
- 30:16And the word was God.
- 30:23Many of the religious doctrines that have been promoted by false teachers through the years have Jesus showing up sometime later.
- 30:36Some will argue, because of their failure to understand context, that Jesus was the first created being.
- 30:45The Jehovah's Witnesses went so far, or sorry, the Mormons went so far in their Bible and their translation to change the text from was God to was a God.
- 31:01He is deity light.
- 31:06The oneness will come along and say, Well, there's only one God.
- 31:15And the explanation is almost too befuddling to explain.
- 31:27But John says in the beginning, Christ was there.
- 31:36John says Christ was with the Father.
- 31:44that he was deity, that he was God.
- 31:52He was in the beginning with God.
- 31:55All things were made through him, the second person in the Godhead.
- 32:02And without him, the second person in the Godhead, nothing was made that was made.
- 32:13So
- 32:16Genesis tells us God created.
- 32:23John tells us the second person in the Godhead created.
- 32:33Jesus tells us.
- 32:37And Moses was accurate when he said it was in the beginning.
- 32:48Consider Psalm twenty four.
- 33:02Psalm twenty four opens the earth is the Lord's.
- 33:17If you watch children for very long, you will find invariably the moment in time where one child picks up another child's toy.
- 33:31And they are quickly reminded.
- 33:33That's mine.
- 33:37That's mine.
- 33:39Mom, that's mine Especially when it's a younger sibling.
- 33:48Almost Ryder.
- 33:51Doesn't leave any doubt.
- 33:55He says, the earth belongs to the Lord.
- 33:58It is his possession.
- 34:01He says, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
- 34:12Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?
- 34:16Or who may stand in his holy place?
- 34:19He who has clean hands and a pure heart.
- 34:22Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn sworn deceitfully, he shall receive blessing from the Lord and the r and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
- 34:33This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face.
- 34:39Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.
- 34:47Who is the King of Glory?
- 34:48The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
- 34:52Lift up your heads, you O you gates, lift up you everlasting doors, the King of Glory shall come in.
- 35:00Who is the King of Glory?
- 35:01The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory.
- 35:08As a psalmist writer goes through this description of God and of those who are in fellowship with him, of those who stand in his presence and those who are able to stand as
- 35:21he describes them, he keeps using this phrase King of glory.
- 35:33He's saying that when you look at what God has made, when you look at everything that exists, when you look at everything around you, you are going to come, if you are honest,
- 35:47to one conclusion.
- 35:51There is someone worthy of praise.
- 35:59There is someone worthy of glory.
- 36:03Turn to Revelation chapter four.
- 36:14John in Revelation as he sees the vision that we've described so many times in our Revelation class on Sunday.
- 36:24uh
- 36:40Immediately I was in the spirit and behold a throne set in heaven and one sat on the throne, and he who sat there was like a jasper and a Sardis stone in appearance, and there
- 36:51was a rainbow around the throne in appearance like an emerald.
- 36:55Around the throne were twenty four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty four elders sitting clothed in white robes, and they had crowns of gold on their heads, and the
- 37:04thrones were
- 37:05And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices, seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God.
- 37:14Before the throne there was a sea of glass like crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.
- 37:24The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had the face of a man, and the fourth living creature was like a
- 37:31flying eagle.
- 37:33The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within, and they do not rest day or night, saying Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty who was and is
- 37:54and is to come.
- 37:57As John's revelation
- 38:02Дискріб'свери презенс огод.
- 38:08He describes something which for those of us who read scripture shouldn't surprise us.
- 38:18But to many in the world, rather a big surprise.
- 38:22And I'm not talking about the vision.
- 38:24I'm talking about the fact that God appears more worthy of glory the closer you get.
- 38:35That he's worthy of glory when you're all the way out here with no verbal revelation, with no inspired revelation from God, with nothing more than the world around you to see and to
- 38:46observe, and you realize there is someone who is worthy of glory.
- 38:51And the closer you get to God, the more apparent it is that he's worthy of glory.
- 39:00You know, sometimes in life you see things that look amazing until you get up close, until you get a chance to inspect them.
- 39:09Uh un until you see uh the nature of them and so that looked like a really nice house and you get close to it and you're like, and it is run down and in terrible condition.
- 39:24Looked really good from afar when you couldn't see all the cracks.
- 39:29Except here are the beasts and the elders who are day after day before the throne of God and what are they doing every day?
- 39:46recognizing that God is worthy of glory.
- 39:52In other words, you have this picture of God from afar, and when you see God from afar through his works
- 40:00You go Whoever can do this is worthy of glory.
- 40:09And you get up close and you see God and you go, and He's worthy of so much more glory than I ever knew.
- 40:23When we consider the idea of worship.
- 40:28We need to understand.
- 40:31We need to grasp that the very most fundamental thing that we need to evaluate when we consider worship.
- 40:43Is that God is worthy of it.
- 40:47That God's glory and his acts and what he has done and the world that he has created and the universe that we live in and the rules that he has established and the timetable on
- 41:02which he performed all that he did are a testament to his worthiness when it comes to worship.
- 41:15There in Revelation chapter 4, I mentioned that this theme pervades the scriptures.
- 41:23Verse 8 describes the saying of the four living creatures: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
- 41:31Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever.
- 41:37The twenty four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, You are worthy, O
- 41:46Lord, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created.
- 41:58We don't leave that picture, that visionary image of the throne room of God until someone says God is worthy because he's the creator.
- 42:12And it is the reason
- 42:15Knowing that the humanist, the skeptic, the atheist, the agnostic, the unbeliever, and even the false teacher knows that they have to dethrone God before they can do anything
- 42:37They have to make it clear that God is not as worthy as is.
- 42:48so that they can appear to be something.
- 42:54Some reading.
- 42:54I'm gonna try I'm gonna hold me to this.
- 42:57I'm gonna try and do this each each week.
- 43:00As we get ready for the next class, I'm gonna give you something to spend some time reading on between the classes.
- 43:07My encouragement for you for this week into next week is Job thirty eight through the end of the book.
- 43:17That's thirty eight through forty two, I believe.
- 43:20Job thirty eight through forty two.
- 43:24And as you read that, you're gonna be reading a series of questions for the most part.
- 43:32A series of questions where God's asking Job, Job, where were you?
- 43:39Read it in view of is God worthy of worship?
- 43:49All right.
- 43:51Thank you for your attention.