We are in the process of our consideration of the manner in which we come before the Lord in our worship as those who have been redeemed by the precious blood of His Only Begotten Son, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is with a most prayerful heart seeking that which will build up and cause us to be more and more pleasing to the Lord in our worship that we want to discern those areas that we need to concentrate on in our hearts and in our minds and in our attitudes and in our habits. I thoroughly put myself at the very forefront of these matters and mannerisms and deeds, because these are those aspects which the Lord is revealing as necessary adjustments in me and in my participation with you in worship unto Him. 
As the very basis of what we are after, please turn to the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Philippian Church, Chapter two, verses 1-16. With all urgency, take to heart that this passage outlines exactly why I am so willing to bring before us those aspects of our worship that very much need to be addressed. 
Understand that I know that there will be elements of stubbornness and attitudes of hardness of heart and unwillingness to change evidenced in us. Change is extremely difficult and uncomfortable and often requires us to make adjustments that we do not want to make in our natural beings. Believe me, this is a hard-hitting dealing with many areas of my life that fully need to be brought into line with God’s heart and will. 
It is critical that we do so in order to please God in our worship rather than pleasing ourselves? If we truly are after that which is honoring to God, then we must do that which is unto Him with all our heart and with all our mind and with all our strength and with all our being. 
Our gathering together in worship finds its very basis of reality and truth in this Philippian passage. Phil 2:1-16. If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing; that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may have cause to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain. 
With this admonition at the very core of who we are and why we are here and unto Whom we are bringing our sacrifices of praise and adoration and honor, let us look at some elements in which we are not always on target to bless the very heart of Our Lord God Almighty. We ended last time with the fact that we are to come to God in reverence for Who He is and what He has done. There are many aspects to this reverence which will overshadow the rest of our dealings with the worship that honors Him. It is an area that we each need to take to Him to deal with specifically in our own lives as individuals and as family units joined together and seeking to please Him. 
First and foremost is the foundational question that we should each be asking ourselves every time we come to join our hearts together unto the Lord God Almighty. That question is this, “Do I really know that I am meeting God, Face-to-face and Spirit-to-spirit?” This question should be at the forefront of each member of this assembly as we are preparing to come together each Sunday morning in bringing our worship and adoration into this place. 
This is not just a time to gather together in some token tribute to a higher power. This is not some social gathering of like-minded and beneficent individuals. This is not a means of presenting ourselves as more spiritually minded than someone else. The plain and simple and awesome truth is that we are here, today, and every Sunday to meet together with God, the Lord God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Altogether Lovely and Perfect One, Our Savior and Our Redeemer and Our Life!
We are gathered together in His name for the expressed purpose of blessing His heart for all that He has done to make us part of His very family. This is the time that we have set aside to come with oneness of heart and mind and spirit to honor and to adore Him. It is the weekly opportunity that we share in order to proclaim His glory and His majesty and to testify to the great love with which He has so loved us in Jesus Christ. Everything else in our lives should be subordinate to this opportunity to join our hearts in devotion and adulation unto Him. 
Too often we find ourselves with the idea that this is just something we do because we are Christians. We do not prepare. We do not anticipate the opportunity to bless the Lord together. We do not even consider the fact that we are coming before God as a fellowship. It is habit and it is custom and it is expected that this is where we will spend a few hours each week. We get sloppy and lazy and haphazard in our approach to our gathering together in worship. 
If we are not very careful, we might find ourselves so caught up in everything else in life that we border on the warning proclaimed in Rom 1:21-25. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 
Before we recoil in shock at the full measure of what this passage states, search our hearts, in all honesty, before the throne of the Holy and Righteous Lord God, if we have often found ourselves worshipping the creature rather than the Creator. Where have we based our thoughts and our priorities in terms of coming before Him in our worship? How many times have we sat through this blessed time together, caught up in anything other than being honoring to God? We think of those things that we want to do or where we will go to eat or how this person or that person makes us angry or we judge others or we are caught up in worry and frustration and unforgiveness and fear. Sometimes we are just exhausted from all the pressures of the past week or are anticipating all the frustrations and duties and deadlines of the week ahead. We are thinking of and worshipping the elements of this age with our hearts and minds rather than the Lord God Almighty!
“Do I really know that I am meeting God, Face-to-face and Spirit-to-spirit?” If this were the real focal point of our hearts, we would be coming together in the reverence for God that would be evident in the honor with which we give Him our regard and our attention. 
Think, for example, and let us ask ourselves what would change in this morning’s attendance if we were coming to see some high ranking national leader or some other famous or important dignitary. How differently would we have anticipated this time together? How much emphasis would we have put on our choice of clothing, our demeanor, our excitement to be here? Would it have been imperative for us to be on time and to pay attention to what was shared? Would our songs and our scripture reading and our prayers and our total focus have been much more intense and defined and honoring to such an important visitor? 
How many people would we have told and invited to share with us in the experience of meeting that important person? Would our entire week have been filled and focused with the excitement and the preparation and the anticipation of that extraordinary and exceptional opportunity? Would we have gone out of our way to make certain that we presented ourselves in a fashion that would show that person how much we thought of him or her and wanted them to be blessed with the totality of their time with us? 
How much abundantly more should we regard being in the presence of the Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent Lord God Almighty! He is the One Who installs such people into power and Who removes them as He so chooses! He deserves exceedingly far more reverence in our hearts than any person on this earth!
Consider the facts as presented to us in Rom 5:1-11. Please turn to this passage and follow along. Rom 5:1-11, Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. 
This is the One unto Whom we bring our praise and our worship. This is the Lord God Who has reconciled us to Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ! We are only here because of Him and His demonstration of utmost love for us, even while we were yet helpless sinners. Does He not deserve the utmost praise and adoration and worship and honor and reverence from those whom He has redeemed unto Himself? Isn’t He far more important to us than anyone or anything else in our lives? 
Yet there are many of us who treat Him in a casual and nonchalant manner. It doesn’t seem to matter to us to be here, on time, at the appointed hour to meet with Him. It makes no difference how we are dressed and how tired we may be! There is no sense of wonder and amazement and thanksgiving that we have been called out of darkness into the marvelous light of our salvation! Everything is just status-quo, the same as it has always been in our gathering together. We place no real value or emphasis on the fact that we are meeting with God! Have we truly asked ourselves the question that we have poised this morning? “Do I really know that I am meeting God, Face-to-face and Spirit-to-spirit?” 
As we close this segment of our consideration, I do not want to be accusatory or judgmental or legalistic. I simply ask you and me to take this question before the Lord in the privacy of our hearts and minds. I ask each family to pray together and converse with one another in terms of what adjustments would and should be made. What is our response in obedience to what the Holy Spirit is telling us with respect to our reverent and more fervent worship of the Lord God Almighty? Can we mutually agree that we will pray about what it means to answer this question before the throne of God’s grace and mercy and love? “Do I really know that I am meeting God, Face-to-face and Spirit-to-spirit?” 
It will not be easy to answer and it will not be easy to bear. No one has every claimed that our life is an easy and painless one. Rather, as we have read over and over again, even in the passages of this morning, there are those adjustments, those trials, those tribulations, those hardships which God uses to make Himself very real and livingly known to us as He works to establish His life in us. We must never fall back on the excuse that we cannot change because that is just who we are, that we are only able to operate by the habits that we have learned.  
In response to that attitude, we conclude with the utmost encouragement and truth of who we are now in Jesus Christ, 2 Cor 5:14-17. 2 Cor 5:14-17, For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. So be it and amen!

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 150:6. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord! Amen.