LET’S PRAY
Father we ask for Your anointing on us today. Place Your anointing on me as Your messenger today. God move in our lives. Rip open the heavens and visit Your people today.
Open our eyes so that we may see Your Word. Open our ears so that we may hear Your Word. Open our minds so that we may understand Your Word. Open our hearts so that we may receive Your Word today. AMEN
“The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” Romans 13:11
What an awesome day to finish looking at our updated mission statement for our church and our plan to carry it out.
Winfield Open Bible a place that brings Transformation, Healing, Equipping. Those words sum up our mission statement and once we understand the mission we need a plan to carry it out. That plan is based upon focusing on five areas; Invest and Invite, Word of God and Prayer, Meaningful Relationships, Serving Each Other, and Praise and Worship.
Last week we looked at Serving Each Other.
Serving Each Other goes deeper than love. This is helping others so that we can make a difference in their life. We need to make a habit of serving others so that we can demonstrate God’s way of loving.
We looked at one of greatest examples of serving each other in God’s Word in John 13:1-17 when Jesus took upon Himself the position of a servant and washed His disciple’s feet.
The other example of serving each other that Christ gave us is found in His death. Jesus took His love for mankind to a higher level, when He laid His life down for us.
Jesus’ death on the cross was the greatest act of servant hood that has ever been recorded in history!
Jesus summed up the extent of His love and the extent to his servant hood by saying this, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13
This was a new concept for the disciples. Jesus had spoke of this kind of love but they had never seen it demonstrated in such a way as these.
He was their teacher as well as their friend and now He was washing their feet, and then getting arrested, and going to trial.
He went to trial and the judgment was guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of being the King of the Jews. So the punishment was crucifixion.
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13
As you may already know, death by crucifixion was the worst type of punishment that mankind could have ever dreamt up.
If the crucifixion was not enough, before they led Jesus to the place where they nailed them to the cross, the soldiers had beaten Him, whipped Him with a whip called a cat of nine, pulled His hair out, spat upon Him, made fun of Him, and placed a crown of sharp thorns upon His head.
All this before He was nailed to the cross.
And if the beating and whipping was not enough and being nailed to the cross was not enough they made Jesus carry the very cross He was to be nailed on.
Roman crucifixion was a gruesome form of capital punishment. The victim suffered excruciating pain for hours, even days, before the rigors of the cross finally snuffed out his life.
In its most common form, the cross consisted of two pieces of wood. The upright, called the stipes, was permanently fixed in the ground and the crosspiece, called the patibulum, was carried to the site of execution by the condemned man.
This task was in itself an ordeal, since the patibulum was a stout beam weighing more than a hundred pounds.
The crosspiece rested on the upright and probably had the shape of a capital "T".
I read in an article on the Internet that in 1968, archaeologists discovered the remains of a Jew who had been crucified during the era of Christ. It was possible from the skeletal evidence to determine exactly how the man had been fastened to a cross. The information left no doubt that this form of punishment was hideously and cruelly efficient.
A crude iron spike from five to seven inches long had been driven through each wrist. Also, after both feet with heels and toes together had been turned sideways against the cross, a third spike had been driven through a board and then through both heels.
When the man hung on his cross, the lower part of his body must have been twisted to one side.
During crucifixion, the victim was provided with a partial seat, called a sedile, a simple board nailed to the cross. But he could use the sedile only by allowing his torso to slump, with painful results. The weight of his sinking body forced his knees to bend sharply and stretched out his upraised arms to an unnatural extent.
In the strangely contorted sitting position, the victim could breathe in, but he could not relax the muscles of the rib cage sufficiently to breathe out. Thus, to exhale, he had to push himself up, using mainly his legs. In time, overcome by weakness, he was not able to raise himself for another breath, and he died of suffocation.
Some victims fought off death for two or more days.
Jesus was nailed to the cross at the ninth hour in the morning (about nine o’clock) and He died the same day at the third hour in the afternoon (about three o’clock).
He had suffered terribly during that time but He still possessed enough natural vigor to maintain His breathing on the cross for more than six hours.
To hasten their deaths so that no executions would be in progress during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the soldiers in attendance broke the legs of the criminals hanging with Jesus.
Once they could no longer push themselves up, they died rapidly. But when the soldiers came to Jesus, they found that He was dead already. Jesus could not have died by suffocation.
What then was the cause of His death?
Before this event Jesus was a healthy Jewish man in his thirties. But what human being can take such a punishment?
Jesus had endured severe emotional and physical stress for almost 24 hours. The violent contractions of the heart induced by this severe emotional and physical stress so squeezed the blood inside the heart that internal pressure rose to bursting strength.
Jesus died literally of a broken heart. When we add to the physical torment that Jesus went through the tremendous agony of His soul, as He bore our sins and felt the infinite weight and coldness of the Father’s wrath His body could take no more.
Or could it? Could Jesus have lived through this event?
The answer is: Yes.
Jesus could have survived this event with no problem, no scars, no limp, nothing.
Listen to what Jesus taught His disciples in John 10:17-18.
“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, bit I lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” John 10:17-18
In other words Jesus could live or die as He willed. Even when His body reached a condition that would have been fatal to other men, He had the power to go on living.
Jesus died only when Jesus chose to die.
His next to last saying was, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”
Matthew declares that His death came when He “gave up His spirit.”
Jesus did not cling to life, He willingly commended His spirit to the Father and then He stopped breathing.
And when He had died, they took Him from the cross and they placed Him in a newly cut grave and they sealed the stone in front of the entrance. It was finished.
Not really, it wasn’t over. That is why we are here today. You see, Jesus didn’t stay in the grave. Remember, he had the authority to take His life up again.
Jesus is alive!
Jesus is alive!
Jesus is ALIVE!
So why did Jesus do all this and what does it have to do with our fifth focus point?
Why? READ John 3:16-21
Jesus did it for you and for me. So we could have a relationship with God the Father and so we could share in the benefits of being God’s children.
Salvation, provision, strength, healing, prosperity, wisdom, everything God offers His children is available to us through Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross and in the grave.
What does this have to do with our fifth focus point?
We were created to worship God. By lifting Him up in praise and worship we are surrendering our whole self to Him. Praising and worshipping God means that we are expressing our love to Him. This should be done all the time, when we are alone and when we are together.
We praise and worship God because He is God, because He created all things, and because He loves us enough to send His Son to die for our sins.
Let’s define what it means to praise and worship.
Praising and Worshipping God is opening our hearts to the love of God.
When we praise and worship Him we declaring God’s worth.
We see great examples of this in various Psalms in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament. Especially in the book of Revelation a book that gives us a look at what life in heaven is going to be like.
“In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them singing, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!” The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshipped.” Revelation 5:12-14
Praise and Worship is as natural for man as it is for him to breathe. We were created to worship God and have fellowship with Him.
Worship is to Christian what as engine to a car. It is an absolutely crucial and it is the center part of a Christian life.
Praising and Worshipping God is something that is supposed to be exciting and vibrant and heartfelt.
Did you know that some people say that church is boring?
True praise and worship of God is anything but boring.
The very essence of what worship is does not allow us to be bored. When we come before the majestic God of the universe, who has created everything and has done amazing things in our lives, we can’t help but break out into adoration.
The word worship means to appreciate the worth of something. The word praise means to glorify and exalt.
That what we are doing when we praise and worship Him.
True praise and worship is the heartfelt acceptance of God for who He is and what He has done. Praise and worship is showing our loyalty and admiration to our Heavenly Father!
One characteristic of the churches that are experiencing growth in the world today is that they offer up to God exciting praise and exalting worship.
As God’s children, we have to get this right.
We need to be excited and thankful for what God is doing and for what God is going to do.
We need to praise and worship God because when we do we are empowered by Him. Did you know that praise and worship can be a source of power in the life of a believer?
In the first century church, worship was a mighty source of power for the life and growth of the individual Christian and for the church as a whole. When they met together they were strengthened and encouraged, their lives were refined, they had a clear sense of identity and purpose and they became better equipped to serve their Lord.
The same is true today, when we meet to worship together we find strength in worship, we know our purpose and hopefully we are becoming better equipped to serve the Lord.
Worship must be a factor that must be present in the church if the church desires to be all that God wants it to be. God wants the church to live and grow today. He wants us to grow in numbers and He wants us to grow spiritually.
If we want the blessings of God and if we want to live in His anointing and with His presence daily guiding us then we need to spend time in praise and worship when we are alone and when we are together as a church.
We are called to worship.
We are called to take the focus off our own lives and focus on Him.
We need to praise and worship God because of who He is, what He has done, and what He will do.
Are you a person who praises and worships God?
We were created to worship God. By lifting Him up in praise and worship we are surrendering our whole self to Him. Praising and worshipping God means that we are expressing our love to Him. This should be done all the time, when we are alone and when we are together.
