Sermon Tone Analysis

The People were used to not losing when the presence was with them

The posture of worship was an afterthought

they only sought it after they were being defeated

v.3 They would bring it… as if it could be conjured

They gave the ritual battle cry

Hophni and Phineas (1 Sam 2:12)

Called worthless men they did not know God but wanted to carry His presence

Abused their anointing and refused to offer rightly

The Philistines knew about this God and were terrified, the Israelites had grown numb to it

The presence of the Lord departed from Israel because their worship was incompatible… they used it much like a sorcerer summons magic.

God desires right worship from His people He blesses those who posture their hearts for worship

We Serve a Jealous God

God does not share well

Friend who doesn’t like to share you with others

Not a question we are commanded to teardown the altars WE HAVE BUILT

The stage we have set

We become like Hophni and Phineas… we do not know God

Our worship can only be given to one… God.

we cannot worship what we don’t love and we cannot love what we do not know.

God Destroys Foreign Idols

*The command is that we teardown the idols there is an issue when we try to place God on the Altar of another.

The Philistines who know God try to keep Him in their house for gods

God will submit to no one but will teardown the idols… then we ask why…?

Replacing the Idols

God shatters the Idol

cuts its authority

cuts its power

cuts off its rulership

He opposes any who pretend to carry His presence and that of an Idol.

The tension inside us when we want to continue to go back to our idols.

v.11 those who don’t know His presence send it away over keeping His Presence.

Our worship cannot be incompatible, it will destroy everything inside of Us.

Blessing in Compatible Worship

Today the Lord is asking His body to return to a right posture of worship

Love Him… to love Him is to know Him

Serve Him… to serve is to know Him

Worship is not Passive

With all your Heart

With all your Soul

with everything

He withholds the blessings from those who think they can carry the presence of another… but to those who Give themselves over wholly to the Lord

Not just the early rain… the latter rain

Your grain, wine, and oil

Grain-bread to sustain life; financial material blessing

Wine- transformation in the Holy Spirit; move of God that is bringing harvest in the covenantal promise

Oil-anointing in the Spirit; God blesses every dimension of our life; spiritual physical and material

We cannot be like Hophni and Phineas who thought they could introduce a strange fire, take from the fatness that belonged to the Lord, abuse His people and think that by some stones or mantra like words we can conjure up His presence in worship

The fullness of God is given to those who dare to abandon incompatible worship, to take up a right posture of worship.

This abandon leads to spaces in which we are stretched but in the stretching a blessing beyond compare.