True Worship

True Worship

Genesis 22: 1-19

Intro: Jim Dunn was serving as the pastor of the First Baptist Church, and his wife, Gladys, was very friendly and welcoming to people. One particular Sunday when the sermon seemed to go on forever, many in the congregation fell asleep. After the service, to be sociable, she walked up to a very sleepy looking gentleman. In an attempt to revive him from his stupor, she extended her hand in greeting, and said, "Hello, I’m Gladys Dunn."

To which the gentleman replied, "You’re not the only one!"

. Sadly, many who come to church these days have the same attitude

.

. They are just glad the service is over and they can, as a friend of mine says, get on about their rat killing.

. A parable is told of a community of ducks waddling off to duck church one Sunday to hear their duck preacher. After they waddled into the duck sanctuary, the service began and the duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly. He pounded the pulpit with his beak and said, with these wings, there is nowhere we ducks can not go! There is no God-given task we ducks cannot accomplish!

With these wings we no longer need walk through life.

We can soar high in the sky! Shouts of Amen!¨ were quacked throughout the duck congregation. The duck preacher concluded his message by exclaiming, With our wings we can fly through life!

WE......CAN.....FLY!!!!¨ more ducks quacked out loud AMENS! in response.

Every duck loved the service.

In fact all the ducks that were present commented on what a wonderfully convicting message they had heard from their duck preacher....

and then they left the church and waddled all the way home.

.Too often We waddle away from worship the same way we waddled in....Unchanged.

. We are back into our core values this morning.

. Last week we looked at Bible knowledge and Obedience.

. This week we will look at Worship.

. We defined worship as: surrendering our all to honoring and glorifying God.

. Wikipedia defines worship as: Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship — to give, at its simplest, worth to something.

. This means that our core value says that we are ascribing worth to God when He is worshiped.

. In order to worship something or someone they have to have worth.

. We arte stating that we believe that the Judeo Christian God, the God of creation, is worth our devotion.

. In order for us to truly worship, we need to understand what true worship is.

. Charles Stanley said this about worship. “I believe that most Christians in most churches have never worshiped God. We go to church, but we don’t worship. We sing songs, but we don’t worship. We listen to sermons, but we don’t worship. All of these things are elements of worship but they are not worship in and of themselves which means that you can do all of them and yet have failed to truly worship God. We Christians often mistake the means of worship for worship itself.”

. Questions like how was the service today or did you enjoy the sermon or did you like the music

or what did you get out of the service today are really the wrong questions.

. The right question should be do you think that God liked our worship today.

. You see, He is who we worship.

. We honor Him, not ourselves.

. Christians limit their worship to one hour a week. You know, the so called “worship hour.”

. When they come to that service they often come to observe and be entertained. I have been at services that were opened with the following statement: “We want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the program we have prepared for you.” If the people feel that they were entertained they say they had a good worship service. We have gotten the whole concept of worship backwards. We think that the pastor and worship leaders are the entertainers and we are the audience. But in true worship we are the performers, the pastors and worship leaders are the directors, and God is the audience. Because our concept of worship is backwards we want to know what’s in it for us. If we are going to truly worship, we must come to the realization that worship is not for us, but for God. Because God desires our worship, we must learn how to worship him.

. The word worship is not used in the bible until Genesis chapter 22. This is the story of Abraham and his worship of God.