I. Meeting someone who is famous or semi-famous – thoughts and feeling
a. Story about Kansas
II. All People Worship
a. All people worship. Atheist, pagan, faithful, or undecided, all human beings have the need deep within them to worship – or “serve” as Brother Bob put it. This need to worship is essential in how we develop as human beings.
III. What we worship matters
a. Bill Johnson – “What we fear is what we trust. What we trust is what we worship.”
b. Example of money
c. Example of anger
d. Talking about Gentiles – Jews come later - "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen." Romans 1:21-25 (NIV)
i. God revealed himself to all mankind
ii. Many rejected the truth
iii. Rejecting the truth lead to foolish thinking
iv. Foolish thinking lead to worshiping other things
v. Sin produced by wrong worship
e. Ask for thoughts
IV. Worship, at its heart is about Relationship
a. Martin Buber’s Dialogical personhood
i. I It relationships – one way, impersonal, exhaustive (e.g. my computer)
ii. I You relationships mutual, reciprocal, symmetrical, and inconsolable e.g. Karry
b. Idolatry is an I It relationship – Islam, Hinduism, idolatry
c. Sometimes we treat God as an I It relationship
V. Why do all people worship?
a. We are made in the image of God
i. God was in perfect communal Love before creation
ii. God desired – did not need but wanted to share His perfect love
iii. Out of Nothing God created everything and declared it good
iv. God created humanity out of nothing (the dust and the material that formed the first man was made form nothing), and declared it very good
v. "Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So, God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God, he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning —the sixth day." (Genesis 1:26-31 NIV)
1. Out of nothing He created humanity and stamped His image upon them so that they could be in loving community together
2. He gave humanity free will to choose to love Him back, but humanity choose to rebel
3. The image of God was damaged by sin
4. That damaged image causes us to worship other things instead of God
vi. The problem is: God Saves. Man suffers. Use e.g. of personal relationship
vii. The problem resolved: Jesus suffered. Jesus saves.
viii. Through the death, burial, resurrection, ascension of Jesus, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, we can have the image of God.
VI. ALL OF LIFE IS WORSHIP!!
a. Our indwelling deepest purpose is to have relationship with God. He created us out of nothing for the sole purpose of loving us. Through Jesus we are redeemed form our sin, restored in relationship with God, and transformed into the people God has created us to be.
b. Worship is the unending fellowship and relationship with God – every aspect of our lives is an act of worship.
VII. Worship is a spiritual weapon
In this part I am going to look at the wicked weapon of despair, and how God has given us a powerful weapon to defeat that weapon in worship.
What is despair? Despair sounds like this:
“It is hopeless.”
“It will never change.”
“There is no use in fighting; you will only lose.”
“You will always fail, you will never gain victory.”
“You are not loved by anyone, no matter how hard you try.”
All these statements and versions of them are demonic whispers that are aimed to keep you from knowing who you are. Even the great men of God succumbed to despair. Take Elijah in 1 Kings 19. In Chapter 18, the Lord did a mighty work by defeating the prophets of Baal. However, in 19:2, Satan worked through the words of Jezebel as she threatened Elijah. He retreated in the desert and vss. 3-4 recount his despair. John the Baptist, after he had baptized Jesus, experienced a fantastic sight of the Trinitarian God commissioning Jesus for ministry (Matthew 3:16). But when in prison, obviously forgot who he was and who Jesus was (Luke 7:20). Peter (after denying Jesus) was in bitter despair (Matthew 26:75).
Why were these great men of God in despair? Because when they heard the words of the enemy, the demonic whispers of death, they believed those words. They forgot who they were considering the God they served. It took God intervening in their lives to restore them. The word of despair we hear in our ear have that same power. They only work if we believe them. Our circumstances may accentuate the satanic words of discouragement. The choices we have made may have led us to a place where no hope seems possible. But God has a different view. He has a different plan.
To combat despair, God has given us a potent weapon in worship. When we worship God, we acknowledge three things:
1. His presence
2. His majesty
3. His love
Nothing can stand against God. If we truly believe that God is the all-powerful, holy, and benevolent God that He is, then the enemy cannot beguile us with demonic words of despair. In our time of despair, when we lift our praises and worship God, the Holy Spirit ministers to our soul, as He ministered to Elijah. God frees us from the prison of our self-imposed sentence of hopelessness. He restores us like he restored Peter (John 21:15-19).
Worship brings us into the presence of God by allowing Holy Spirit to work through us. We can bring our despair before the throne and through His love, He washes despair away. Look at Psalm 5. David starts in hopelessness and asks the Lord to listen to him. In vs. 5, David reminds himself of who God is. In that presence and majesty, in vs. 7, David worships God and knows his place before Him.
When we worship, the demons flee. They have no place in the presence of God. Our worship is like a horrible noise that they cannot stand. To illustrate, let me go back to a story from WWI. Last time I told a story about Christmas 1914. Just a few months earlier, on the 23rd August of 1914, England had had just entered the war. The Germans had fought Belgium and French armies but had not encountered the British until this summer day. The Germans, knowing that the British were on the other side, waited for them to come. Out in the distance, they heard the most horrible noise imaginable. First, it started with drums, and then out of the fog and the mist, marched the British troops, along with musicians playing the horrible music they had ever heard. What was more, the musicians were wearing skirts! It sounded something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdvE64aeJok&t=25s
The Germans called them “damen aus der Hölle” or “Ladies from Hell.” Who they were in fact, was the Scottish Black Watch. Now, to a German soldier, who had only heard Bach, Wagner, and Beethoven (and some German Umpa music from the Beer Gardens), the bagpipes were the most horrible sound one could imagine. But to someone of Scottish heritage (like myself) the sound of the drums and the bagpipes playing “Scotland the Brave” by folks wearing Kilts (not skirts!) fills our hearts with pride and a bit of joy.
It is like that with worship. The demons hear a horrible screeching noise and they must flee from it. To us, it is sounds of joy. Despair has no place in our lives. Although the enemy attempts to deceive us into thinking our circumstances are higher than our God, worship reminds us of the truth of a victory already won. Knowing who we are in Jesus through worship combats any lie the enemy can foster.
