A Ukulele, a songbook, a Frisbee, a toothbrush, a deck of playing cards, a guitar, bongo drums and a bible. Kind of a strange collection, but they all have one thing in common. They were luxury items that contestants from early episodes of survivor were allowed to take with them into the competition. They don’t get luxury items now, but from the looks of the contestants each week I have a sneaking suspicion that someone is sneaking grooming aids onto the island.
So during the early days of survivor each of the contestants had to a certain degree decide what one thing they couldn’t do without for thirty nine days.
What would it be for you, pictures of your family? Something to amuse yourself with? A musical instrument? Or maybe you’d be like the gentlemen who took his bible with him. Although it wouldn’t be fair to ask you here in church what you’d take with you. I’m sure we’d all be taking our bibles. Kind of like the little boy in Sunday School Class, the teacher asked “What’s grey, lives in a tree has a bushy tail and gathers nuts?” the boy thought for a minute and said “It sure sounds like a squirrel but I’m betting the answer is Jesus.” So you are thinking “I know what I’d like to take but this morning I’m betting the answer is my Bible.”
There are many ways to determine what it is that is the most important thing in our life, for those who had to make a decision about what one thing they couldn’t or wouldn’t do without it was fairly obvious. For some it was family so they took a picture of their kids with them. For others it was recreation, a Frisbee a deck of playing cards or an instrument. In at least one case it was a bible. For that person, he was publicly declaring that the one thing he couldn’t or wouldn’t do with out was his connection to God.
Last week we began our, “40 Days of Purpose” campaign. And we started by talking about God’s motive for creating you: You were created to be loved by God. That is ultimately what on earth you’re here for... God is love, and He loves you.
But beyond that, God has five purposes for your life. And today, we’re going to look at the first of those five purposes. Revelation 4:11b “You (God) created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.” And so the first reason we are here, our first purpose if you will, is: We Were Created For God’s Pleasure.
In the scripture that Mike read earlier Jesus was asked by a man what was required for eternal life, and this was his answer: Mark 12:29-30 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ Which coincidently is also our memory verse for this week.
Jesus said that is the most important commandment, if you can only do one, this is it. This is the one that you don’t want to miss. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. So we were created to be loved by God and the first purpose in our lives is to love him back. He should be the most important thing in our life. If we had to pick the one item that we couldn’t or wouldn’t do without it has to be God.
And there is a word for what we do when we love God that way and that is “Worship”. We worship God. Goes all the way back to the first book in the Bible, Genesis 4:26 When Seth grew up, he had a son and named him Enosh. It was during his lifetime that people first began to worship the LORD.
If we go all the way back to the beginning of the story you realize that Adam and Eve were created to be in fellowship with God. There was a direct connection and they deliberately rebelled and walked away from the relationship. And after they were banished from the Garden of Eden we have no idea what type of relationship they had with their creator. But it’s not very long into history that we read those words about their grandson Enosh, it was during his lifetime that people said “We need to have that relationship with the one who created us.” And they began to worship God. But what does that mean?
Does it mean that they started having church and part of that was the “Worship” service? Did they have drums and guitars and keyboards and sang songs by Matt Redman and Chris Tomlin, or did they have an organ and piano and sing hymns? Was it contemporary worship or more traditional worship?
The problem is that we limit worship either to what we do in church or narrow it down even further to half of what we do in church and then we make it the least significant part. And so we have the “worship”, that is the singing part of the service and it is the prelude to the important part which is the preaching.
Sometimes you will hear people say, “I really enjoyed the worship this morning.” And what they mean is that the music spoke to them. And that’s not bad, but it is personal and while it may be a small part of what worship is it certainly isn’t all of what worship is. When we limit worship to music then it become very personal and anything that is personal we become defensive of.
And that’s why musical styles in churches can sometimes result in conflict, because it is so personal. When we say that we don’t like a particular type of music then those who like that type of music take it personally. In other words if I don’t like singing traditional hymns in church then in some peoples minds I’m saying singing traditional hymns in church is wrong and so by implication that means that I’m saying that those who prefer singing traditional hymns in church are wrong as well.
No all that means is I personally don’t enjoy that style of music, and I don’t like classical music, I don’t like reading poetry, or putting anchovies on my pizza. And if you do like classical music, reading poetry and eating anchovies on your pizza you probably aren’t offended because I don’t. But worship is more personal then just our preferences.
So when we narrowly define worship as one style or type of anything it boxes in God.
Worship can’t be defined by style because style is too individualistic. And so worship music is really a mis-definition because it’s only worship music for some and for others it just plain annoying. Neat story, there is an elderly pastor on this district by the name of Walter Fernley, his wife passed away recently her name was Mabel but everyone called her Mabs. One day Walter asked Mabs to say grace at dinner, which she did, very quietly. To which Walter comments, “I couldn’t hear you.” To which Mabs replies “I wasn’t talking to you.”
So when you say I didn’t like the worship this morning, the response is “We weren’t singing to you.” I don’t think God has a preference for any one style of worship music. I think that we offer our worship to Him and if we do it with the right motives and a pure heart then He goes, “Thank you, that was so cool.” Because as good as it might be on any given Sunday he has heard much better. Think about it twelve hours ago he heard the worship team from Hills Christian Life Centre sing, and two hundred years ago he heard Beethoven play his fifth symphony. And heaven is filled with music, country music actually, it will sound a lot like Willie. But we are God’s children presenting our gift of worship to Him. When your child gives you a gift that they made themselves do you say, “Well it’s nice but it’s not very good compared to other art I’ve seen.” No you say “Thank you, that is so cool.”
So if worship isn’t what we do in church, and it isn’t just music, what is it?
Paul was writing to the early church in the book of Romans and this is what he said Romans 12:1 1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. (NIV)
So look at the last line, this is your spiritual act of worship. What is your spiritual act of worship? To offer your bodies as living sacrifices. But what does that mean? Well there are three things that we need to note about that statement.
1) Worship is Something You Give We are told to offer our bodies and when you offer something it is voluntary. From day one God created mankind with this incredible gift of free will. He didn’t create us to blindly serve him without thought or choice.
In 1942 Isaac Asimov wrote a short story called Runaround and in it he introduced us to the 3 laws of Robotics which state
1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Those laws were fiction of course but God could have put very similar restrictions on humanity. But then we would have been robots and not people and God wants us to choose to worship him and so he allows us to choose whether or not we would obey him and whether or not we would worship him. He wants it to be a conscious decision where we in effect say, “I offer this to you”
Francis De Sales summed it up when he said “There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love -- every man works his oar voluntarily!”
Of course free will is a double edged sword, author P.J. O’Rourke commented “One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.”
Nobody else can worship for you and if you don’t take that step there is nobody else you can blame for it not happening. Each of the contestants on Survivor chose for themselves what they wanted to take as a luxury item, in effect what they would worship, and if 19 days into the competition they had of said “darn I wish I had of brought something else.” It was their choice nobody else’s. And they couldn’t say “I want to pick something different now, they only got one chance.” But we can choose today to worship God, regardless of what we choose yesterday today we can choose to worship God.
2) Worship Involves Who You Are We told to offer our bodies, and that simply means that you are to offer “You”. While we are here we are here in our bodies, if we are going to do anything it will be done with our bodies.
Every once in a while someone will tell me, “I can’t be here next Sunday Denn, but I will be here in Spirit.” Do you know what that means? “Nothing, zip, nada.” If your bodies not here your spirit’s not here, they are interconnected and they go together. In this life you can’t have one without the other.
And so by asking for our bodies God is in effect asking for all of us. So understand you will be worshipping something and that will be indicated by what you are doing with your body and where your body is. It defines our priorities.
If you tell me “Denn I really want to be at church next Sunday but I have to be at . . .” What you are saying is “I really want to be at church but I want to be at . . . more.”
A thousand years ago when I was in college I was up until two in the morning at a hockey game and didn’t make it to an eight o’clock class I had. That afternoon I ran into my Prof and said “Sorry I didn’t make it to class Dr. K, I really wanted to be there.” To which Dr. Kanzlemar uttered these words of wisdom “If you had of wanted to be there you would have been there” and then he added this gem “You do what you want to do.”
So when we offer our bodies we are offering ourselves in a practical way to God, it’s not just something that happens here in our mind, kind of like a card I sent to my best friend one year for his birthday, on the cover it said “When it comes to gifts it’s the thought that counts.” And inside it said “And I thought about getting you a gift.” And it’s not just what happens here in our heart, where it is a good intention. When I was growing up my favorite Aunt would often remind me that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And Margaret Thatcher said “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. He had money as well.”
So it’s not enough to think about worshipping God or even wanting to worship God if we don’t actually worship God.
3) Worship Demands Something. When the players on survivor chose something as their luxury item they were in effect sacrificing something else, by choosing to bring their Frisbee they were choosing not to bring their toothbrush.
And so worshipping God, offering your body to Him will require a sacrifice. Sometimes it’s small. Maybe it means being in church instead of sleeping in or mowing the lawn. Maybe it means lifestyle choices. I will do this thing and will not do that thing. But ultimately it is large, it is saying “I will put God first in my life. Before my family, before my career, before my recreation, before habits.” And that’s not easy, and that’s probably why Jesus said in Matthew 10:38 If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.
Because he knew that it wouldn’t be easy, he knew that it would cost something, he knew that it would require a sacrifice. If it doesn’t cost something then it’s not a sacrifice. What is it that you are giving up, how are you making yourself a living sacrifice today? Because if you are going to find your purpose in life it will be discovering that you were made to worship God, that is the first purpose.
PowerPoint is available for this message contact me at denn@bccnet.ca
