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Week Of: June 7, 2009
Title: Spiritual Types
Series: Ministry of Worship – Part 10
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:11-20; 14:26-40
In the 1950’s, researchers developed a personality type theory that described a pattern of behaviors that were considered to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease. At high risk of heart problems were Type A individuals that we described as impatient, excessively time-conscious, insecure about their status, highly competitive, over-ambitious, business-like, hostile, aggressive, incapable of relaxation, taking the smallest issues too seriously; and are somewhat disliked for the way that they're always rushing and demanding other people to serve to their standards of satisfaction.
1. Those at low risk were Type B individuals who were described as patient, relaxed, and easy-going, loving, kind, generous, peaceful, joyful, and all around great guys, like me. J
2. Today, personality theory is more complex and recognizes 16 personality types instead of two.
3. Some people believe there are spirituality types as well, and even churches seem to have a distinctive spirituality type.
4. Let me illustrate two spiritual types of churches that are very easy to recognize in the New Testament. Turn to Acts 2:42-47. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their home and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
5. The early church in Acts seems to be patterned after the synagogue style of worship; bible teachings, prayer, singing, praising God, and of course taking the Lord’s Supper.
6. Their style of worship was very orderly and very educational in nature.
7. Now turn to 1 Corinthians 14:26-35, 39-40. The style of worship here is different. The Corinthians, with many of them coming out of pagan worship centers, where having a problem keeping everything done in a fitting and orderly way. Things must have been wild and crazy with the Corinthians because Paul writes them in verse 26 saying: “Ok, everyone has a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation which should be done for the strengthening of the church, but keep the lid on it don’t let things get out of hand. Don’t have everyone talking and prophesying at once.”
8. This is evidently a different style of worship from the one practiced early on in the church at Jerusalem. One was calmer, and by nature more orderly and more educational; the other style was looser, and by nature more emotional.
9. Luke certainly does not condemn the way the early Christians worshiped in Acts, and Paul doesn’t condemn the style of worship in Corinth, except to say: “my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in fitting and orderly way.”
10. Where do these different styles of worship come from? From the Spirit according to our scripture in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, “the body is not made up of one part but of many” and “we were all given the one Spirit to drink” of. We are of the same Spirit but not everyone is the same person in Jesus Christ. Some people are more heady or intellectual in nature some are more emotional and approach God from a more emotional standpoint, while others are just the opposite. Just like people have different personality styles to express their personality people have different spirituality styles to express their spiritual nature as well.
11. A lady by the name of Corinne Ware wrote a book entitled, “Discover Your Spiritual Type: A guide to individual and congregational growth.” In the book she states that there are four major types of approaches to Christian Spirituality. Look at your handout this morning.
12. In which quadrant do you fall? Guess where we should be to have a healthy understanding of what worship and spirituality is about. We should be right in the middle! We should have a healthy blend of each of the four quadrants.
13. As your Pastor, this is what I would like our church to be like. Worship that is squarely in all four of the quadrants. Not too far to one side or the other—neither extreme.
Week Of: June 14, 2009
Title: The Beauty of the Lord
Series: Ministry of Worship – Part 11
Scripture: Psalms 27:1-6
1. What is beauty? Maybe, it is something that is extremely pleasing as far as sight or sound.
2. Is beauty always in the eye of the beholder? Yes and no… For example, yes in some instances our understanding of what is beautiful does require a kind of judgment that can either be cultivated and trained or distorted and dulled.
3. But beauty is not totally subjective because I would imagine that nearly everyone has the ability to be completely be surprised by something that they think is beautiful. And when we respond to this beauty with spontaneous expressions of awe, gratitude, appreciation, or reverence surely we are responding in some part to a beauty that is independent of us.
4. I say this because I believe that ultimately beauty is grounded in God Himself, the truly supremely beautiful Being.
5. If you doubt what I am saying, that God is beautiful or that He is the ultimate source of everything that is beautiful, look at our scripture today. Verse 4 reads: “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord and to seek Him in his temple.”
6. Now turn to Psalm 50:1-3, “The Mighty One, God, the Lord speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before Him and around Him a tempest rages.”
7. In the character of God there are deep connections between the goodness, the truth, and the beauty of God. Someone once wrote that God could be best described as the “Good that defuses itself.” Just like the sun that gives light to our world, God gives goodness to our world. I might add that among the many, many wonderful attributes of God, God is not only the Good, but also the Truth and the Beauty that defuses itself throughout this universe.
8. So along with truth and goodness, beauty is one of those wonderful attributes of God that points beyond this present reality to a beautiful Creator—a Divine Artist so to speak whose handiwork we see all around us.
9. But there is another way that we can see the beauty of God other than just looking around at His beautiful creation. Turn to John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The word grace has two meanings: one, meaning unmerited favor—which is the greatest blessing that God gives us. Grace is at the basis of our salvation.
10. And two, grace also means beauty and charm as in Jesus being the most beautiful and graceful person that has ever existed. Now I am not talking about physical beauty and charm, because we don’t know anything about what Jesus looked like, and there is no mention of Jesus’ physical looks in the Bible. Instead I believe John was talking about inward beauty and charm that could only come because of who Jesus was.
11. So when you look at the beauty of the divine/man Jesus you see the beauty of God Himself.
12. We see the beauty of Jesus in many things that He did and said, but we really see the beauty of the man Jesus when we look at Jesus dying on the cross. Because the beauty of Jesus and the true beauty of God is the beauty of love, especially of self-sacrificing love.
13. I mean there is nothing that touches us like someone sacrificing their life for someone else. As the Bible says, there is no greater love that one who lays down their life for another. Hence God becoming flesh, laying down his life for sinful humanity, is the most beautiful and almost incomprehensible thing we could imagine about God.
14. Yet, in this very act we discover how much we are truly loved by God, and what it means to be loved by God.
15. Worship is catching glimpses of this kind of beauty and love in God—an experience that moves us beyond praise and tears. Worship is discovering the depths of God’s love for each of us. Not that God really loves us, but that yes He really, really does love us!
16. Let’s put it this way… if your idea of God, or your idea of salvation and what it means for God to save you is vague or remote, then your idea of worship will be fuzzy and vague. The closer each of us comes to the truth of who God is and how much God loves us, and what He is willing to do to save us, the clearer the beauty and love of God will be, and more that worship will swell up inside of us. That is the reason that theology/ Bible study (learning who God is and what God has done) and worship belong together. We’ve got to understand more about Jesus, more about God, and more about the Bible, because the more we learn the more it makes it possible for us to worship God. Because, every day we will come to understand the beauty and wonder of God even more.
Week Of: June 21, 2009
Title: Sing and Make Music in Your Heart
Series: Ministry of Worship – Part 12
Scripture: Ephesians 5:15-20
1. For the last four weeks, as our call to worship, we have sung “You are My All in All” by Dennis Jernigan.
2. You may have gotten a little tired of it, but I’ve not. In fact, the first couple weeks I went around humming it and “trying” to sing it. I couldn’t get it off my mind. To me this illustrates just how important music is.
3. Is there anyone here who doesn’t particularly care for music??? Of any kind? We may not like to sing, but most people certainly like to listen to it.
4. Today’s scripture is one of my favorite scriptures in the New Testament because, to me, it speaks of what God’s people do when they are full of the Spirit and worshiping God.
5. I know that certain denominations and churches feel that anyone who is filled with the Spirit of God, anyone who feels the anointing of God, the presence of God, is going to speak in tongues…but that is not always true…especially of all Christians.
6. Instead, what Paul says if you are filled with the Spirit is “speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. (rather than unknown tongues) Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything.”
7. When touched by the presence of God, we are to express our joy in singing and making “music in your heart to the Lord.”
8. But really, everything we are doing here today is assuming that we have been touched by the presence of God.
9. In fact, worship is an assumption and an act of faith that God is here and that we are here to worship Him. It assumes that in His presence we stand in awe and in reverence of God.
The word reverence itself means the feeling of extreme respect that guides our intense love and admiration for the God we serve. Our love and admiration then ends up glorifying God as our Creator, Savior, and Lord.
10. One way that we express our desire to glorify and praise God is through our music.
11. If there was one thing that you didn’t do today that would spoil your worship time, what would it be? To you, is there anything that is synonymous with worship? I suppose to most Baptists, at least to most preachers anyway, it is preaching.
12. But music is worship as well. In fact, music is a very powerful way to direct and influence worship because music speaks to our emotions as well as our minds.
13. When we worship God, we need to worship him with our total being, and music helps us do that because it involves mind and emotions.
14. Besides, one of the things I hope you are realizing about worship is that it is not a spectator event. For you to worship today you have to participate. Someone who is just sitting in their pew with their bodies present, but their minds and hearts somewhere else, is not worshiping. I’m sorry the fact that you are here today doesn’t mean that you have worshiped. Just being here is not worshiping God unless you choose to participate in some fashion or another.
15. You can and should participate through the prayers that we say. Through the offering that you give! Through the scripture and responsive readings we do! And through the hymns that we sing. And because I know that worship is something that we are rewarded with when we participate, we’ve tried to give you opportunities to read the scripture, do the children’s sermon, sing in the choir, sing specials, take prayer requests, pray, make announcements, and do anything but preach the sermon (that’s mine). Not because I am lazy but because we want to make it as easy as possible for you to feel that you’ve worshiped.
16. But what occurs when it is finally time for you to just listen? How do you participate during the music that the Ladies Trio sang? Or during the sermon that I am trying to give this morning?
17. You do so by your imagination and emotions, you do so vicariously as you might share in the story someone is telling or the TV program that you might be watching.
18. Why do you enjoy the stories you hear, the books that you read, the movies or the TV programs you watch… because you have the ability to enter in to that reality for just a minute or two at times so that you escape into that reality.
19. You can do so with the sermon I am giving you right now. You can do so as you catch a glimpse of my excitement for preaching, teachings God’s word, and understanding what worship and God is about. Then it not only becomes my sermon but yours as well. Then you really participate in worship not just in body, but body, spirit, and mind.
20. Music is a powerful tool of worship because it can pull you in hook, line and sinker. Music effects us like no other media and can be a powerful tool in worship.
21. Especially done with the presence of the Holy Spirit!!!! Let’s talk about performance rather than worship leaders. Performing is when you are doing something for a human audience. Worship is when you are doing something for God. Choir, who are you singing for on Sunday morning, God or them? Ladies Trio, who did you sing for, God or them? Mike, who do you preach for God, or them? If the answer is them then we are performers.
Week Of: June 28, 2009
Title: A Perpetual Living Sacrifice
Series: Ministry of Worship – Part 13
Scripture: Romans 12:1-2; 14:13-18
1. In Ronald Allen’s and Gordon Borror’s book “Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel,” the authors define worship as “an active response to God whereby we declare His worth.”
2. This notion of “an active response” intrigues me because it can mean so many things. The “active response” to God that brings you here this morning is certainly one way that you are declaring His worth. Again… we sing, we pray, we praise, we participate in the sermon, the music, all of this and more is part of our active response to God in which we declare His supreme worth.
3. But even though doing what we are doing today is our joy and purpose for living as Christians, and even though we should never under any circumstances “forsake meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Hebrews 12: 25), our worship today is an outward expression of a more important inward grace.
4. In fact, what Paul says in our scripture this morning is more to the heart and soul of what worship is all about. Let’s look at it for a moment this morning.
5. In 12:1 Paul says, “Therefore, I urge you, brethren…in view of God’s mercy (literally in view of all that God has done for you…in how merciful and good that God has been to you…) present yourselves to God a living sacrifice.”
6. In general, a sacrifice refers to any animal or vegetable offering that was either completely or partially burned on an altar as an act of homage to God (Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, page 784).
7. If God chose to accept the sacrifice then the worshiper and God would enter into a mutually binding relationship.
8. In the history of the Old Testament, sacrifices were offered on family altars, local shrines, and some places that they shouldn’t have offered. Finally, the offering of sacrifices became an act of worship that centered itself in the Temple only.
9. Here, Paul says the sacrifice that Christians should make to God is on the altar of their hearts and in the deeds and actions of their everyday lives. Therefore, he reminds them and us that worship for the Christian is not only to be done every “Lord’s day” but also every other day as well.
10. He urges the Romans to make every day a day of worship by “presenting their bodies, or themselves as living sacrifices—Holy and pleasing to God.” He says “living sacrifices” because normally a sacrifice is killed or consumed in being presented to one’s deity. Here we are to be living—perpetual sacrifices to God that are not destroyed nor consumed but that continue to be presented to our Lord every day of our lives.
11. It is like Paul is saying: “take yourselves, take everything that you are, take all the tasks that you do; take the housework, the work on the job, the school you attend; the food you cook; the fun you have; the love you give and take. Take everything that you are and do; take it all and present it to God as a sacrifice in God’s name. All of this is your spiritual act of worship!!!!
12. But what if there is something that you are doing that you cannot offer to God in good faith—as a spiritual act of worship, what should you do? Don’t do it!!!
13. But Preacher…I do other things other than religious and churchlike things; can I offer them to God as well? As long as they are decent and good things, of course you can. In fact, the more spiritual and the more mature you become as a Christian the more you’ll come to believe that there is no longer a separation line between what is religious in nature and secular in nature. We can and we should offer every good thing that we are—and that we do to God as a sacrifice to Him.
14. According to William Barclay, “real worship is the offering of everyday life to Him, not (just) something transacted in a church, but something which sees the whole world as the temple of the living God” (DSBS, Romans, page 157).
15. So that “yes I am coming to church to worship God with my brothers and sisters in Christ, but when I leave this place and go out into the world I will still be worshiping my God—at home, work, play, or wherever I am.”
16. Why? Because my aim in life is to present who I am, what I am, what I am doing as a walking, talking, acting, and living person to God—as a living sacrifice.