Jude 20+21, But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith; praying in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. 
	We have spent the last number of Sundays in contemplation of some of what is involved in our diligent service of worship unto God. As His people, His Beloved Church, we should be in ever increasing earnestness to bring unto Him a more perfect offering of adoration and honor and reverence. There should be a welling up of the need to give greater and increasing tribute and glory to Our Lord God Almighty. 
	We have looked at the need for diligent preparation, and last week we considered the Biblical principle that preparation precedes blessing. We traced it through a number of scriptural aspects, concluding with the preparation of the inner examination necessary in order to bring our offering of praise unto God. We must open ourselves to the intense scrutiny of the Holy Spirit before we can partake of the Lord’s Supper in communion and fellowship together. This morning, let us continue with the introspection that is necessary for our diligent service of worship unto God.
	Now, lest this be misinterpreted, keep in mind that we are unable to do this of our own accord. If we trust ourselves to look into our hearts and minds, we will find only that which we choose to discover. There will be many areas that are left uncovered because we do not want to look at them. Or we may find ourselves unable to view those areas with eyes that truly see into the darkness past the façade that we build around our innermost hidden regions. It takes the solemn and intense prayer after the Holy Spirit to reveal that which He chooses to show us of ourselves. It is His work and His illumination that we must seek with every fiber of our yearning to please God in fullness and in truth. 
	Continuing then, as we prepare to come together to worship God, it must be on the basis of the utter abandonment of all our idols. 1 Sam 7:3+4, Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, "If you return to the Lord with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines." So the sons of Israel removed the Baals and the Ashtaroth and served the Lord alone. Notice there is the promise of the blessing of God inherent in the removal of all those idols, those things that prevent us from a dedicated concentration, consecration, and service unto God, Alone. 
Furthermore, we read in 2 Chron 19:3+4, "But there is some good in you, for you have removed the Asheroth from the land and you have set your heart to seek God." So Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem and went out again among the people from Beersheba to the hill country of Ephraim and brought them back to the Lord, the God of their fathers. … and you have set your heart to seek God. Please take in the fact that Jehoshaphat not only removed the idols from the land, but he set his heart upon seeking the Lord. In so doing, he brought the people back to God. There was a complete change in the focal point of their worship and the center of their attention and which resulted in a revival unto the true God. 
There must be this cleansing away of all those things, all those personal idols, which replace God’s preeminence in our hearts and minds. Many of us think this is an easy thing because we lack the full understanding of idolatry. We tend to think of it as a man-made object that we would be foolish to worship. There is often a tendency to limit idolatry to merely bowing before an image made of gold or silver or wood and we would never even consider such an action. But the truth is that the idol that we often honor above all else, including God, is the idol of ourselves.
Deut 6:13, You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him, and swear by His name. This is only possible as we give ourselves whole-heartedly and self-sacrificially to the mighty Hand of the Holy Spirit. He must be free to do all that He deems necessary in our lives with not a single thought of self-preservation. As He works, there will be no leeway given, no quarter available, and no respite for me, myself, and I. It will be the absolute ministry of death to all that I hold near and dear that the life of Jesus Christ can flourish and blossom forth in brilliant life from the ashes of my idolatry. 
In this scouring away and elimination of all our idols, please face the Lord and ask Him these questions. What is it that prevents me from coming to worship God? What are those activities that remove my heart, physically, or spiritually from being in worship? What are those things in my life, in my mind, in my heart that keep me away from joining into intimacy with God, which cause me not to come prepared to bless God? These could be hobbies, work, worries and concerns, earthly desires, physical discomfort, and stress, anything that takes my heart away from being centered in earnest worship before the Lord God Almighty. 
Consider, for example, those thoughts and concerns that distract us even in our time of worship. “What am I doing after church?” “I am so hungry.” “This is so boring.” “I really wish those parents would quiet those children because they are so distracting.” “Why does he have to use such big words?” “Boy, I sure got a lot done yesterday and if I get right to it today I could probably finish the job this afternoon.” “I really could have used another hour or two of sleep.”   
Then again, maybe the thoughts are on a very much more spiritual level, such as “Why is the Holy Spirit putting that song on my heart, He knows that I can’t sing.” “This would be a wonderful verse to read, but I don’t want anyone to laugh at my squeaky voice or mispronunciation.” Or, maybe it is along the line of “I’ll show everyone how spiritual I am, where is that passage I was reading the other day?” - flip, flip, flip. And these are just my thoughts of self-idolatry, I am sure that you have your own. 
The idol worship of self can be so pervasive as to destroy the very fiber of our good intentions of worship unto God. Matt 15:8+9, 'This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. 'But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.' When I am the focal point of why I come to church, when my every concern is how I am perceived and considered by others, when my words and teaching and singing and reading of scripture is based in any manner on what I am proving of my spirituality, when I am critical of others and their manner of worship, I am exalting myself and not God, and that is idolatry. That is the basest core of idolatry and it is a vial offense before God. We dare not bring before the most Holy and Awesome and Majestic God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Altogether Lovely One any worship of ourselves. It must be God and His glory Alone Who is the central and single purpose of my worship, of your worship, of our worship, as His Beloved Bride, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
This naturally brings us to the next matter necessary for our increasing perfection of worship, that of the cleansing of the Temple. 2 Chron 29:15+16, And they assembled their brothers, consecrated themselves, and went in to cleanse the house of the Lord, according to the commandment of the king by the words of the Lord. So the priests went in to the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and every unclean thing which they found in the temple of the Lord they brought out to the court of the house of the Lord. Then the Levites received it to carry out to the Kidron valley. There is a cleaning that is needed within the temple of the Lord. 
This cleansing process is not something that makes us more worthy to fellowship with God. That is a misconception that many people have. They feel that they must earn the right to fellowship with God. That right of having the audience of the most High is ours singly and solely by the virtue of Jesus Christ. There is no other means of being worthy enough to come into His direct presence. 
	Eph 2:19-22, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. The temple that needs to be cleansed is our lives. 1 Cor 3:16, Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 
	The fact of the matter is, however, that it is a cleaning that we cannot accomplish, even with our best effort and endeavor. No matter how rigid we are in our determination, no matter how committed we are in our earnest work on the behalf of the Lord, the only cleaning that is of any value is that which He does in us. We might be willing to scrub this area, but will miss that small corner that we do not think needs to be cleaned. We might be very hard at work mopping and bleaching the floor of our heart, yet overlook or ignore the cobwebs in the windows of our minds. We can be set in pleasing God with the best of our intentions, but we will always fall far short. There is a purity of complete death that needs to take place in order for the beauty of the resurrected life of Jesus Christ to shine forth. Only the Holy Spirit can so cleanse our hearts and minds and beings.
	This does not, by any measure, mean that we are to just give up and live in the filth of our self-manifested hopelessness. Not in the slightest! It means that we ask God to do His cleansing work, thoroughly and effectively no matter how much time and effort it takes for Him to scrub away all the residue of our old nature. We set ourselves before Him with the absolute recognition that He, Alone, can clean out and sanitize every crevice and aspect of our life. We do not expect Him to complete this work according to our time-frame. We leave it up to Him to work at the pace that He has determined as the best for the complete accomplishment of His work. He has planned the perfect scouring away of all that is not Christ in our lives. In some areas, this might not take as long. In other quarters it might seem that He will never finish His perfecting work. It takes a constant effort of crying out to the Lord to continue to do His work no matter what. No matter how much it devastates our concepts and shatters our emotions and drains our strength – God, do your perfect work in me, in us, to your glory.
1 Cor 6:19+20, Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. Regardless of where He begins, no matter how long it takes, no matter what cleansing agents He chooses as the most effective, we need to keep the focal point on His certain outcome. 
He is doing His work for His purpose and to His glory in our lives. We dare not think of ourselves as the benefactors of this work. He is doing it because it will bring glory to His name in the resulting manifestation of what He accomplishes to perfection. The cleaning will only be finished when it is no longer our lives that are seen, but the perfectly reflected and transparent person and beauty of Jesus Christ Who sparkles forth in every increasing brilliance.
This is a perfect work that will result in the priceless and beloved bride of Christ. Eph 5:26+27, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. This is the heart of God’s work in us that He will have!
Rom 12:1-5, I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 
	This temple cleansing is a process that will never be completed on this earth. We must not expect, therefore, that we will be unable to fully worship God until this whole process is accomplished. That type of thinking will only prevent us from offering to God the worship that He deserves. Rather, because we come before Him on the basis of Christ’s perfection, we do bring Him the best worship that our hearts can offer. It will be an ever increasingly worthy praise as the Holy Spirit continues His work within us. No matter how large or small it may seem, it is an offering and sacrifice that we give to Him. It is based on the work that He has done in Christ and it is centered in the perfection that Jesus Christ is already in our lives. The key to this whole consideration is the fact that we desire and we ask and we pray for God to cleanse away all that is displeasing to Him in our lives, His temple, and then we celebrate the work that He has already done. We join our hearts into the complete joy of Jesus Christ.   
This is the heart that communes in its return to the Lord. Luke 1:17, "And it is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous; so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." We join our hearts together in the attitude of Christ’s righteousness and we beseech Him to prepare us for the service that is honoring to Him. All the cleansing, all the putting away of idolatry, all the heart-felt love that we share together is of value only as Jesus Christ is its source, its focus, and its object of worship. Yes, we are called upon to worship in spirit and in truth. The spirit is that of the Holy Spirit, viewed, sought after, and obeyed in all the hearts of His people. The truth is that of the risen Lord Jesus Christ by Whom life has been created within us for the divine purpose of bringing all glory and honor unto God. 
Let us set aside all else in our concepts of what God wants. Earnestly pray that He will work to His joy and honor in the earthly expression of His love in Jesus Christ, His Beloved Church, on this earth. We need to be of that one heart as we gather together and celebrate the life of Jesus Christ, to God’s glory Alone. So be it! 
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith; praying in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. Amen. 

This morning’s benediction is Neh 9:5a+6 …"Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! O may Thy glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! "Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before Thee. Amen.