Worship: Expressing Your Love To God Series

SERIES: PRIORITIES FOR PLEASING GOD #1

WORSHIP: EXPRESSING YOUR LOVE FOR GOD

KBF & 00-01-14 & Tim Olson

INTRO: WORSHIP IS EXPRESSING YOUR LOVE FOR GOD

There’s a new "reality" TV show on Fox Network called "Temptation Island" that is the subject of discussion these days. Many people are very upset about it and various groups are fighting against it.

Temptation Island is a short-order unscripted series in which four unmarried couples travel to the Caribbean to test and explore the strength of their relationship. Once on the island, the couples are introduced to eligible singles and then separated from their partners until the final day of their stay. The object for the couples is to see if they love each other enough to overcome temptation. The object for the singles is to see if they can tempt the couples to be unfaithful. The object for Fox TV is to make a lot of money off people who can’t resist the temptation to watch such garbage. (Are people watching it? Yes. More than 16 million people found the debut of Fox’s reality series "Temptation Island" irresistible -- the network’s biggest audience ever for a Wednesday series debut. )

The object of this illustration is to point out a similarity between this "reality" TV show and a spiritual reality.

We all live on "temptation planet." Our object as Christians is to remain faithful to God. We have to deal with a "tempter" whose object is to get us to be unfaithful to God. The Christian life is a love relationship with God. Satan wants to ruin that relationship and will do anything he can to get you to put your desires on something besides God.

The object of this message is to get you to evaluate your relationship with God and to point out ways to strengthen your love for God. One of our 5 priorities at KBF is worship. On our Fuji model it is represented by the snow on the mountain that is a covering over everything we do.

What is worship? Our introduction says that: WORSHIP IS EXPRESSING YOUR LOVE FOR GOD. The Bible says that loving God is the most important thing we do. When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, he answered:

Mark 12:30

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

When we express our love for God we are worshipping him. If we say we love God then we must express that love.

Can you imagine a guy telling his girlfriend, "I love you, but let’s not let anyone else know that. We’ll just keep our love a secret. When we’re around other people we’ll just pretend like we don’t have a love relationship. And if we get married then I’d like you to agree that we’ll continue keeping our love a secret." Do you think the girl would be happy with such an arrangement? Of course not. When you love someone you naturally want to express your love to them.

If you love God you will not be ashamed of him. You’ll want to express your love to God in as many ways as possible. And there are many ways.

There’s a book with the title: 10,000 Ways to Say "I Love You." I thought about having my first sermon with 10,000 points but I don’t want to miss the Super Bowl next week! So let’s just look at 5 ways the Bible tells us we can express our love for God. And I’d like for you to evaluate yourself on how you’re doing in each of these 5 areas. After each point on your outline is a circle and a line. In the circle I’d like to ask that you rate yourself on a 1-10 scale. How are you doing in that area. Write a number between 1 and 10 in the circle. On the line I’d like you to write at least one specific thing that will help you improve in that area in the next month. Make it specific and make it attainable within the next month.

The first way. LOVE FOR GOD IS EXPRESSED THROUGH OBEYING.

1. LOVE FOR GOD IS EXPRESSED THROUGH OBEYING

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Jesus made the connection between love and obedience very clear when he told his disciples:

1 John 5:3

This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,

People obey authority for various reasons. Usually it’s because of fear – fear of punishment, or fear of other negative consequences.

We obey our parents so we don’t get spanked. We obey our teachers so we don’t get bad grades. We obey our bosses so we don’t get fired. But Jesus wants us to obey him because we love him – because we are devoted to him – not because we are afraid of him or because we want to get something from him. We obey him as an expression of our worship. He is worthy of our obedience. We love to do what pleases him.