The amount
of work and service that is done for him in these United States
in the way of church work and so on is enormous. An immense
amount of human energy is expended in what is called serving
God. I propose to consider briefly what serving God is and how
a man may serve God best, and I think I shall be able to make
plain that the conventional idea as to what constitutes service
to God is all wrong.
When Moses
went down into Egypt to bring out the Hebrews from bondage, his
demand upon Pharaoh, in the name of the Deity, was, “Let the
people go that they may serve me.” He led them out into the
wilderness and there instituted a new form of worship which has
led many people to suppose that worship constitutes the service
of God, although later God himself distinctly declared that he
cared nothing for ceremonies, burned offerings, or oblation,
and the teaching of Jesus if rightly understood, would do away
with organized temple worship altogether. God does not lack
anything that men may do for him with their hands or bodies or
voices. Saint Paul points out that man can do no thing for God,
for God does not need anything.
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