The Cost of worship 2025
Romans 12:1 Paul starts by saying “In view of God’s mercy,” …this is response.
- Worship is a response to who God is, to His mercy.
- What is that response, what does this kind of worship look like?
- To start with, it says with “offer your bodies,”
- In other words, our whole being.
- But as a living sacrifice.
- Worship then is response to God with our whole body as an act of spiritual sacrifice.
- Worship is to have both a physical aspect and a Spiritual aspect.
- So often we think of worship as the part of the service when we sing.
- True worship is much more than a song or singing.
2 Samuel 24 The context here in this passage is that David disobeyed God and took a census of the men able to fight.
- David gave in to his fear and stopped trusting the Lord.
- And so, he counted his fighting men to see if he had enough men to go to war.
- God is not happy about this and sends a plague on the land for three days.
Verse 10 The first thing David does is repent. He confesses his sin and asks God to make it right
2 Sam 24:18 The Prophet Gad tells David what he needs to do to stop the plague.
- The prophet tells David to go worship with a sacrifice.
- He even gives David a specific location to make this sacrifice.
Verses 22-23 The servant Araunah bows before his king and says the land is yours take it.
- This was certainly the correct response by Araunah, the king had every right to take it.
- Araunah goes even further and offers his oxen for the sacrifice.
- Again, this was the correct response by Araunah, the king had every right to take it.
- Then Araunah even offers all of his tools and equipment as wood for the fire.
Verse 24 This verse illustrates a very important concept in worship and God’s economy.
- David recognizes that worship most be costly, there must be a price.
- This price of fifty shekels would have been about 100 grams of silver.
- David knows that he would be justified in just taking the land and animals, he was the king.
- But it would be dishonoring if he is going to present that as an offering to the Lord.
- If David had just taken everything and then Offered it to God, that would have been equal to offering a stolen sacrifice.
- For us the same applies, for our worship to be genuine it must be costly.
- We can’t offer someone else’s sacrifice.
2 Sam24:25 David demonstrated several different types of worship and sacrifice here.
- Costly in terms of repentance.
- Costly in terms of obedience
- Costly in terms of financial
- Costly in terms of time and labor.
- Costly in terms of prayer
- Most Importantly Costly in his heart
Mark 14:3 The first cost or price she paid here was just entering into this home to be near Jesus.
- Costly because of the exposure to the disease
- And costly because of the potential social shame.
- Her second cost or price of worship was the alabaster Jar.
- The Alabaster jar was very expensive.
- Alabaster was a stone commonly found in Israel. It was a hard stone resembling white marble and is referred to as one of the precious stones used in the decoration of Solomon’s temple.
- This was a perfume made of oil and spices that was very expensive.
- Then it also says Nard. It appears there are two perfumes are mentioned here.
- Nard was made from a plant growing in the Himalayas.
- The Himalayas are a long way from Iseral.
- This made both the perfume and the Nard very expensive.
- Scholars estimate that the perfume and Nard could have been worth a year’s wages.
- This was costly worship.