The Fast Tracks of Faith February 23, 2003
Sunday AM
The Heart of Worship
Verse: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly, I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. 1 Cr. 9:24-27
Trans: While I understand Paul is using a running metaphor in this text, as I began to think on this passage, my mind was riveted to the sport of drag racing.
Intro: Drag Racing is a fast and dangerous sport requiring a powerful engine, great reflexes, and nerves of steel. It’s a sport in which the prelude takes longer than the actual event. Literally, in the flash, in the blink of an eye, the race is over.
Trans: In the sport of drag racing the race centers on the staging lights (or Christmas tree). The typical staging tree has seven levels of lights. Each of these lights plays a very important role in preparing the racers to compete.
Level 1 (White) Pre-stage (4” from the start)
Level 2 (White) Staging (on the starting line)
Level 3-5 (Amber) Race timing sequence
Level 6 (Green) Go
Level 7 (Red) Disqualified
Idea: In the race of the Christian life the pre-stage phase is worship – knowing God and knowing Him intimately. Before the race can begin, we must have a relationship w/ God and a commitment to growing in that relationship w/ Him.
The staging line of the Christian life is the Word of God. Every child of God must come to the place where they understand and believe that God’s Word is the very foundation to Christian living – it is our guidebook and road map.
And when a person comes into a relationship w/ God and then takes God at His Word, just like in a drag race, an unstoppable sequence of spiritual lights start, and a person begins to pray, give, and tell – doing the will of God.
Trans: I like this analogy for many reasons, but I believe many Christians have jumped the start and have disqualified themselves for the Christian life b/c they’ve attempted to be Christian w/out employing the disciplines of the Christian life.
Note: We need to understand that to go and fulfill God’s will we need be in sequence w/ God through prayer, evangelism, and good stewardship. And that these elements are established on the staging line of God’s Word. And before this can occur, the pre-stage of worship must be approached.
Trans: Take the Plunge – Reach Up – You were planned for God’s pleasure
Define: It’s been said that worship is worth-ship – It is all that I am crying out to all that He is to bring pleasure to Him in a spirit of celebration.
Quote: It is giving to God the best that He has given you. O. Chambers
Trans: Worship is both active and passive involving three elements. (Rm. 12:1-2)
A Intimacy (Into Me You See) Passive
B Discipline (Fulcrum)
Idea: Discipline is doing what you ought to do to do what you want to do.
C Sacrifice (Giving of yourself in service) Active
Trans: When the topic of worship is discussed in church, we typically talk about how to worship. This morning though, I want us to talk about the heart of worship.
Trans: In Exodus 20, we find a very intriguing statement chiseled in stone that God desires would be engraved on the tablet of our hearts.
Verse: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. Ex. 20:2-3
Idea: God lays it out pretty simple. I’m God and you’re not. You cannot, shall not, must not allow anyone or anything to displace me from being on the throne of your life. God is saying, “You’re to worship no one else but Me.”
Verse: Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Dt. 6:4-5
Idea: God wants to be the single object of affection in the hearts of His people.
Trans: Some of you are thinking, but He is talking to Israel in the O.T. Yes He is. But Jesus wasn’t. Jesus was speaking to His disciples when He reiterated the same truth in Mt. 22.
Verse: Love the Lord your God w/ all your heart and w/ all your soul and w/ all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. Mt. 22:37-38
Idea: Jesus is saying to all of us – Love God w/ all of your being, and love Him like no one else. The love you have for your parents, spouse, and children should look like hatred in comparison to your love for Him.
Literally, our first and greatest love should be reserved for God alone. Is it?
Question: Is Jesus the apple of your eye? Is He the love of your life?
Question: Is He the sole object of your affection and the sole ruler on the throne of your life? Is He the Lord of this church? He is supposed to be.
Trans: I ask this question b/c in Revelation 2 we find a very disturbing passage.
Verse: 1“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. 4Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place… 7He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Rev. 2
Idea: We find in this passage a church and people who became incredible careless w/ their relationship w/ God and w/ one another.
Note: We find a church where the communers became consumers – where the church and Christian life ceased being about God, and became about themselves.
Note: Ephesus was a church that had an impeccable pedigree and enjoyed stellar leadership. According to Acts 18, the church was planted by the Paul along w/ Aquila and Priscilla. It was a church that was pastored by Timothy and John. If any church had the opportunity to succeed this was the church.
Idea: But instead, some four decades later, located in a pagan and idolatrous city, the faithfulness of the Ephesian church was being greatly challenged.
But don’t get the wrong impression. This was not a church that had abandoned the faith or faltered in their obligations. No, they were hardworking, busy about the Lord’s work. They were serving, steadfast, and sacrificing – separated out from the pagan world striving to protect their orthodoxy and dogma. But something went wrong!
These spiritually minded people, who were fighting the good fight and striving to finish the race, forgot to make the necessary pit stops along the way in order to have enough fuel to complete the race.
Issue: THEY LOST THEIR FIRST LOVE! Somewhere along the way their Christian lives and their community of faith were disconnected from the source. They lost their focus. The lost their passion. They lost their heart. They lost the object of their affections. They lost their fire.
Note: And it was subtle. These well meaning believers allowed their religion to turn from a relationship into a habit.
But it was unintentional. They didn’t wake up one morning and decide to let their fire die out. They just forgot to maintain it. They forgot to stoke the fire and to put another log on the glowing embers to keep their faith a blaze.
Note: They took their eyes off of heaven long enough to gratify of their humanness – and b/c they were so busy, they never realized His presence had left them.
Quote: What we do for the Lord is important, but more importantly is why we do it.
Idea: Despite all of the qualities of the Ephesians, a fatal cancer had emerged and it was killing them – they had lost sight of the object of their affection. And we learn from them that it is possible to serve, to sacrifice, and even to suffer for God and yet not really be in love w/ Him.
Quick: They had separation, but they didn’t have adoration. There had labor, but there was no love. There had piety, but there was no purity.
Trans: So why do I tell you this? B/c I believe this same cancer is spreading among the body of Christ today.
Idea: The problem is that the majority of Christians don’t realize that busyness for God is not the same as intimacy w/ God.
Many Christians haven’t realized that they’ve lost their first love. Yet all the symptoms are present.
Burn Out – Fade Out – Drop Out – Poor Stewardship – Complaining Spirits
Note: Too many of us have lost our first love. Instead of returning to God we put up a spiritual façade thinking that no one will see through us.
Quote: Rather than facing God we put on a face for God.
Idea: And somewhere along the way we exchanged our love for Him for a love for self. We dethroned Him and enthroned us.
Quote: I’m convinced the most popular heresy among Christians today is the love of self.
Quick: We’re more concerned w/ how we do something than for whom we do it.
We’re more concerned about political correctness than personal connectedness.
We’re more concerned about the songs we sing than about the person for whom we sing them.
We’re more concerned about being right than we are about being righteous.
Trans: The problem is – God is not going to put up w/ it. He’ll pursue us. Prompt us. Page us. Praise us. Push us. Prod us. Punish us. But He will not put up w/ us. He demands our worship and He is worthy of it.
Verse: If we won’t praise Him… then he will have the rocks to cry out. If we will not bend our knees and bow our hearts, then he will not stay. That’s what he said to the Ephesians. And that is what He is saying to us.
Truth: God isn’t going to hang out in a place where He should be wanted but isn’t.
Idea: And why should He? And why should you.
Note: If a church has lost her fire b/c her members have lost their first love, then why should you hang around?
Trans: But listen – If the church has lost her fire b/c you have lost your first love, then the solution is not quitting – it’s returning. It’s not giving up – it’s giving in.
Reality: And here is the good news. God says here I am. Come and get me. I want to be wanted and I want to bless you w/ my presence and power – but you have to do your part.
Note: Worship is all that I am crying out to all that He is to bring pleasure to Him in a spirit of celebration. It’s knowing God and knowing Him intimately.
Trans: I tell you of this truth b/c God has established a standard. He has set the bar.
1 You and I must come to Christ in salvation through Christ alone.
2 Second, you and I must abdicate our throne relinquishing our control and authority to Him – then and only the can true worship begin.
Idea: Listen, God will not lower the standard of quality for the sake of quantity. He will never lower the requirement in the off chance that he might make you feel better about your sin. He loves you too much to lower the standard. He wants your heart and your life to desperately to cheat you.
Analogy: He didn’t lower the standard for Noah, Abraham, or Gideon, and he certainly isn’t going to lower it for us either.
Trans: So what does God require if we have lost our first love?
A Remember
Idea: We need to remember what it is like to have Him as our first love.
1 We need to remember what it cost Christ to love us.
2 We need to remember what has been lost and what can still be lost.
3 We need to remember what can be regained.
B Repent
Idea: We need to have a change of mind, heart, and direction.
C Repeat
Idea: We need to go back to those fundamental elements which incite and ignite our passion and fervor for God – Bible, worship, prayer and fasting, etc.
We need to return to the source of our joy and to the fast tracks of the faith.
Quote: The true worshipper is willing to go all the way to the cross and beyond w/ Christ in order to honor Him w/ their life. And their love for God will be measurable by their love for others.
Note: Worship is all that I am crying out to all that He is to bring pleasure to Him in a spirit of celebration. It is reaching up.
Question: Did you know that the highest activity of the church is corporate worship?
Trans: Imagine a worship service where actual worship breaks through the ceiling.
Note: By the way, in order for our worship to break through the ceiling, God must first break into our hearts. He must become our first love. It’s required!
Trans: Let’s pull up to the starting life of authentic Christian living. Let’s set our mind’s attention, heart’s affection, and life’s activity fully upon the Lord. Let’s get prepared for the ride of our lives. Now is the time to worship.
