All To The Glory Of God Series

Scripture

For the next several Sunday Evening Worship Services, I plan to preach on the subject of worship. My purpose in delivering these messages is to help us understand what worship is and how to worship in private, in families, and in public. I have preached some of this series before, but I would like to do so again, although with some added material.

Today, however, I simply want to lay a foundation for this series on worship in a message titled, “All to the Glory of God.”

Let’s read 1 Corinthians 10:31:

31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Introduction

Years ago the Chicago Tribune reported the story of a New Mexico woman who was frying tortillas when she noticed that the skillet burns on one of her tortillas resembled what she believed to be the face of Jesus. Excited, she showed it to her husband and neighbors. They all agreed that there was a face etched on the tortilla and that it did bear a resemblance to Jesus.

So the woman went to her priest to have the tortilla blessed. She testified that the tortilla had changed her life. Her husband agreed that she had become a more peaceful, happy, and submissive wife since the tortilla arrived. The priest, not being accustomed to blessing tortillas, was reluctant at first but finally agreed to bless it.

The woman took the tortilla home, put it in a glass case on piles of cotton to make it look like it was floating on clouds, built a special altar for it, and opened the little shrine to visitors. Within a few months, more than eight thousand people came to the shrine of Jesus of the Tortilla. All of them agreed that the face in the burn marks on the tortilla was the face of Jesus—except for one reporter who said he thought it looked like the face of former heavy-weight boxing champ Leon Spinks!

It seems incredible that so many people would worship a tortilla, but such a distorted concept of worship is not really unusual in our contemporary society.

Consider another example of a church described in an article in The Wall Street Journal. This church wanted “to perk up attendance at Sunday evening services.” And so the church “staged a wrestling match, featuring church employees. To train for the event, 10 game employees got lessons from Tugboat Taylor, a former professional wrestler, in pulling hair, kicking shins, and tossing bodies around without doing real harm.”

No harm done to the staff members, perhaps, but what harm does this do to one’s view of God and our worship of him? And lest you think that this wrestling match took place in some backwoods church that no one has ever heard of, let me tell you that this wrestling match took place in one of America’s five largest churches!

The tragedy is that though the Bible is clear about the principles of worship, little true worship takes place today. Pastor John MacArthur writes, “Worship is one of the most misunderstood doctrines in all the Scriptures.”

As I mentioned earlier, it is my intention to preach several messages on the subject of worship. I want us to come to a clearer understanding of the Bible’s teaching on worship.

Today, I want to look briefly at the topic that all of life is worship.

Lord willing, in the coming sermons I shall preach on the principles and practices of personal, family, and public worship. I hope that we will be able to be as helpful and as practical as possible so that we will grow in our worship of God.

Lesson

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Today, I want to show briefly what is involved in worshipping God with all our lives. Or, to put the issue slightly differently, I want to show what it means to do all to the glory of God.

Let’s use the following outline for today’s message:

1. The Definition of Worship

2. The Importance of Worship

3. The Kinds of Unacceptable Worship

4. The Kind of Acceptable Worship

I. The Definition of Worship

First, let’s define the word worship.

John MacArthur has a simple, sound definition of worship. He defines worship in the following way: “worship is honor and adoration directed to God.” That simple definition is a good place to start. In the coming sermons that definition of worship will fill up with richness.

The New Testament uses several words for worship. Two of them are particularly noteworthy. The first word for worship is latreuo, which suggests “rendering honor,” or “paying homage.”

The second term is proskuneo, a term commonly used in the New Testament that literally means “to kiss toward,” “to kiss the hand,” or “to bow down.” This word for worship is used to signify humble adoration.