Hallelujah!  What an awesome God we serve; amen?  We’re sharing in the Word the great revelation of the majesty of our God and His mandate for you and me to recognize His sovereignty and His holiness and for us to make that a great part of our lives, in seeking to glorify Him; amen?  “Let men see your good works, that they might glorify your Father which is in heaven.”  

In Proverbs 3:5, we see that the Scripture tells us that we’re to “trust in the Lord with all of our hearts; and lean not to our own understanding, but in all of our ways acknowledge God;" amen?  In all of our ways acknowledge God, and He will direct our paths.  In all of our ways acknowledging God, realizing that without Him we can do nothing.  So, He gets all of the praise.

We recognize that in everything that we may have been successful in, God has gone before us and opened doors that no man can close.  God went before you.  He charges us, His covenant people, many times–don’t think for a moment that your victories are of yourself.  When you go in and possess the land and you drink from wells that you didn’t dig, when you’re living in houses that you didn’t build, let’s remember Who it was that gave you this provision; amen?  Some of us forget that, and we seem to think, “Well, what do you mean?  I worked hard.  I built these things.  I got these things for myself.”  Without Him you can do nothing that pleases Him.  As long as you’re going to receive the glory, God wants nothing to do with it.  Whatever it is you’re trying to present Him, it’s nauseating to Him.  He said, "You keep those sacrifices to yourself (amen?), or give them to your king, your governor."  But all that we do in ourselves and want to offer God is worthless.

King David, when he wanted to honor the Lord for His goodness and the deliverance, he came and looked for a place to build an altar.  There he ran into Araunah and David said, “I want to buy this land from you, and I want to have a place here to worship God.”  Let me remind you that the little place that David wanted to buy, that threshing floor area of Araunah, was nothing less than the holy Temple Mount today, where the Temple of God was built.  When he saw the king’s heart and his desire, Araunah said, “No, let me give this to you.”  Most of us would have said, “Hallelujah!  Oh, thank You, Lord, for the blessing.”  We would have snatched that thing so fast and given God the glory.  But David said, “No.  I’m going to pay you, because I won’t offer anything to God that hasn’t cost me.”  Amen?  “Oh, that men would have a heart to fear Me,” is what the Lord said.

We’re talking about heart attitude and being ready in all areas to bless Him, to honor Him.  His admonition to us, then, was to not be wise in our own eyes.  Isn’t that what gets us in trouble most of the time, when we think we know what we’re doing, when we have confidence in our flesh (any gifts or skills that God has given us, you know, whatever they might be)?  We’ve seen, in body ministry, how God puts gifts in the body as it pleases Him; how all of us, working in cooperation for the purpose of glorifying God, are fulfilling His will and His purpose, so that we, as the community of believers, the Scripture says, might have the same care one of another.