Sermon Nuggets Mon March 9
Theme- Ways of Worship
Verses Eccl 5:1,2 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.
Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.
2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
Worshipers need to be Responders
Last week we discussed the question of what God is doing about all the evil. He has done something by sending Christ, and He will do something by sending Christ again. We can be saved from evil's effects even though we live in an evil environment. It does not have to happen within us. We can respond as God intents. He will bring justice. That is a great thing about knowing Him and that is the worse thing if you don't know Him.
The two phrases I want to consider as we begin to reflect on Solomon’s wise words on ways to worship are “Guard your steps” and "God is in heaven and you are on earth.”
Worship means to ascribe worth. Specifically we ascribe worth to God. We realize our humility before Him and His awesome character. He is on the throne. He is in heaven. We are the ones who have sinned and fall short of His glory. We do not come to Him on our terms, but on His. We respond to Him in humility an guarding our steps according to His will and ways.
About the time of Stanchfield Baptist Church's beginning in 1866 De Tocqueville of France visited America. Upon his return home he wrote, "I sought for the greatness of America in her harbors and rivers and fertile fields and in her mines and commerce. It was not there. Not until I went into the churches and heard her pulpits flamed with righteousness did I understand the greatness of her power. America is great because she is good; and if America ever ceases to be good America will cease to be great."
What influenced the steps of our nation? It was the reverence for God. It was the response to His holiness and sovereignty. The beginning of wisdom certainly is positioning Him as Lord and ourselves as servants. It is opening our hearts for the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It is responding to his love by faith and living by His commands.
How does that enhance our worship from Sunday to Sunday? Are we not still responders to the holy and sovereign God? Ought we not to reflect on His power and our need for Him? Ought we not to acknowledge in our own hearts that we need holiness and have no place else to turn but come into His presence to be made holy, forgiven, and right before God?
We must remember the reality of the strength of our nation is God. The reality of the strength of our lives is God. We need worship. We need to come together before Him. We need to keep getting off the thrown of our lives and put Him in His rightful place in our hearts. We need prayer. We need the Bible. We need fellowship. We need to guard our steps according to Him in order to thrive in a upside down, lust filled world. Worship makes the difference. America is closing its doors to the very power that made it strong.
Who would have thought that evil would now be acceptable and part of society’s policies? The world view of this age has so filled the church. Worship needs to focus on God and not on us. We need to be responders. He declares what is good and bad. We respond in guarding our steps and seeking to submit to His authority and truth.
ACLU may be gaining increased power in these days limiting our freedom of Religion, but it cannot limit the works of God. Political laws can enforce relativism and restrictions against preaching the whole counsel of God, but He is still in his Heaven not to be judged by man, but to be the judge of all mankind. The schools may be required to teach acceptance of alternative life styles and outlaw prayer and Bible from curriculum but that does not change truth from the Lord. Planned Parenthood can continue to fight for the right of a woman’s choice and laws allow for embryos to be harvested for stem cell research, but the right to life belongs to God and He will bring about His power in His time. Our entertainment and media might continue with vulgarity, profanity, pornography, promiscuity, violence, and vices of all sorts until most of the popular considers that normal and rightful behavior, but to guard our steps is a commitment to a life designed by God to bless and not curse. Sexual freedoms of the day yield to any and all lusts of the mind and flesh but to come to the lawmaker of the universe is to guard our steps and find true freedom in being in sync with the purpose for our creation- to reflect the image of God and give Him glory.
The beginning thoughts on worship is responding to His sovereignty love and power by reverently coming before Him as HE is, not how we want to remake Him.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Tues March 10
Verse Eccl 5:1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.
Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.
Worshipers need to be Listeners
Since Worship is ascribing worth to God and recognizing His rightful place, we respond to who He is in our hearts and in our actions.
As we come to worship the Lord one important but often missing element is listening. We learn most by listening. We respond to what the Spirit of God reminds us or teaches us.
Quieting our hearts before the Lord is part of prayer asking the Lord to help us to listen. There is an important place for praise and singing and making our requests known, but silence help us to focus.
Worship is founded upon a relationship and it doesn't happen until first we hear from God. Part of listening according to the Psalmists to do to a bit of self review. “Search me of God and know my heart. Ps 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
The Bible is full of references that talk about vain sacrifice in worship, as also mentioned here. How often do we go through motions of worship without actually participating in it. I confess that trying to direct a worship service too often gets in the way of my actual worshipping as a pastor. My attention isn’t on the Lord but thinking of what to say, how many verses to use, The length of time things are going to take, whether this fits better with that or if a song is too high or too low, how long will that train whistle be this week? That gets in the way of worship for me.
What goes through your minds at set times of worship. Fortunately that is not the whole story. But listening and quieting our spirits before God is one of the ways of worship.
The reason I ask for people to pray before the service, the reason I wish our prayer warrior groups during the week will grow with people dedicated to prayer is that we might meet with God and Him with us, as a church and as individuals. God wants to meet us. Job offered many questions and complaints in his time of suffering, but it was when he listened that true connect with a holy and awesome God took place. There are different times in a service when God may speak. It may come through the preaching, it may come through S.S. class. It may come thorough special music, or listening to organ, or comment in the foyer, or something you read in a bulletin, or listen to on the radio, but do you desire to listen?
There is no better time to listen to God than also having time alone with God in personal prayer, Bible reading and devotions I will say that you cannot grow as a Christian unless you have personal prayer and time with God. S.M. Lockridge says, "It is important to pray in a dialogue, than a monologue because we wait to hear what God says, which is more important than what we have to say anyway because we don't know what to ask for in the first place."
What is God wanting to say to you today? What about when your come to church? The Sabbath was set aside to meditate and rest and listen to God to change our activities that we might be better listeners and worship.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Weds March 11
Verses – Eccl 5:2,3 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.
Worshipers need to Reflect
I would like to encourage you that if you are not involved in a Bible study to come to church Wednesday nights and take in the study on “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackabee.
The Scriptures and the study of them are an important part of worship. Study and meditation reflect on what God has to tell us and what we can learn from the Word of God. From the verses that call us to worship, it is great to remind ourselves of the greatness of grandeur of God. WE are blessed to reflect on His character as revealed in the Word. He is Holy. There is nothing like knowing Him. He is making himself known to you and me.
Worship is to think and meditate and reflect on the object of our worship. You come to birthday party or a retirement party for the purpose of honoring the person. You talk about that person you review what he has done, you give him gifts, you sing to him. In a much greater way we are blessed when we talk about Him, talk to him, share our love and honor him by singing to him and thinking about his great accomplishments. That's worship.
I think of the Hymn, "Have your own way Lord, have your own way. Thou art the Potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me after your will, while I am waiting, yielded and still." God is our creator, he is not our errant boy. Where we command the Lord around, Friends, we are His creatures and we are creatures for His glory we need to reflect on his person and see him as he rally is and see us as we really are, sinners saved by grace. We need to go into the house of God with receptive attitudes and gaze upon His presence. To be rebuked for our pretense and hypocrisy and superficiality and religiousity.
We are foolish mortals He is God. But the joy of worship is that this great God desires that we be blessed by meeting with Him and when we do it is awesome and the desire to know Him more grows.
We not only reflect on his glory, but reflect on man's situation. Before we can become what we want to be there must be a healing of things that might stand in the way between me and the Lord. And when Isaiah saw the presence of the Lord his response was "Woe is me I am ruined for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." Isn't it interested that this good man is immediately convicted of his mouth. Sin must come from the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that is only possible when we are open to him and realizing that in his purity we are selfish and prideful we are seeking our ways and not his ways. We want our pleasure and not his pleasures,
Prayer is not to change God, but to change us. More than confess reflection in prayer is to praise, to make our requests known to God, to thank Him for His goodness to us. Prayer begins by quieting ourselves before the Lord not only to listen, but to reflect and as the Spirit of God brings things to mind our reflection turns into praise and prayer. We set ourselves aside from our regular activity to gaze upon His beauty and reflect on Him, ourselves, and others from a divine perspective.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Thurs March 12, 2009
Verses- 4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow.
5 It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it.
6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the messenger, "My vow was a mistake." Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?
Worshipers need to Obey
In addition to our prayers we come to worship with our sacrifices. The sacrifice of a fool is one who does so without meaning or intention of giving without commitment. Commitment is to recognize the object of our worship and offer ourselves to be used by Him. It is the giving of one’s tithes and offerings (or sheep and oxen) and seek repentance, forgiveness and make promises of obedience to God.
We must act on our promises. In this passage worship is responding in obedience to the things that you say to God you are going to do. When you make a vow fulfill it, even if no one else does. We are to be obedient to what God wants of you and me.
We are cautioned not to make vows. Solomon is convicted, I believe because he has now been cursed and his family is going to lose most of the kingdom. IKing 11:11 “So the LORD said to Solomon, "Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.”
He failed to keep a vow when he promised to God he would be faithful to Him and not worship any other gods, yet through lust, many wives, and adultery due to wealth and prestige and power, Solomon became an old fool and God judged him. Friend we need to take seriously the vows we make before God.
There are vows people make especially when they are faced with crises. They make solemn pledges to the Lord, as if we could bargain with God anyway. "Lord, if you will make me well I'll go to church faithfully, if you save the life of my son or daughter, then I'll give 10% of all I have. If you allow me to get out of this alive, I promise I'll be a preacher for you, Lord." There are examples of Kings in the Bible who make foolish and thoughtless vows. We must never think that making a vow will merit God's favor.
I believe our nation makes a mockery of the vow of marriage with such a flippant attitude toward divorce. I believe we are judged for weak Christian commitment that vows to trust and obey and we make the things of this world more important than the things of God. We sing I have decided to follow Jesus, the cross before me the world behind me, but no one would ever know it as the things of this world become increasingly important in our lives and God gets the leftovers. Do you think God will forget your commitments to him? People dedicate their children publicly to God and many never carry through on their vow to bring up their children in the admonition of the Word and with the people of God in fellowship.
The problem with the lack of growth in the Christians life boils down to simply to two problems: A lack of faith or a lack of obedience.
Jesus said, “If you love me, obey my commandments.” If you want to understand the will of God for your life the first thing is to be an obedience servant. God doesn't want you to marry people that are not Christians. If the Bible teaches tithing you will not get very far without fulfilling that promise. When Jesus teaches us to forgive our trespasses as we forgive others who trespass against us, that means we must take the first steps in seeking and also willing to forgive other's sins. That is part of worship not to be envious or drunk, or gossips, or busybodies or any such things.
Worship is not just receiving from God, but giving to God. We give him ourselves through sacrifices and obedience as His loving servants.
Pastor Dale.
Sermon Nuggets Fri. March 13, 2009
Verse Eccl 5:7 Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God.
Worshipers need to be in Awe
What helps us think about the awesomeness of God? Certainly the truth of the Word, the teachings from the Bible, reflections over how God has been active in the world as well as in your personal life are part of it. But God has also ordained music to be ways for us to respond by declaring and thinking about his awesomeness.
Music is an emotional expression of one’s self. It is a spiritual experience through which we can sing, listen, play and pray. Truths are also conveyed through music. Unfortunately, we can also convey false doctrine and trite man-centered theology. Hymns and spiritual songs need to be evaluated as to it’s Biblical truth. But music, even without words convey expressions of feeling. Is it entertainment, or praise worship or testimony to the Lord?
Lets be honest. Lots of music is subjective. So much of how different cultures worship is through various styles of music. Even within a Midwestern Baptist church people worship differently. Some enjoy classical, others country. Some like gospel, others like Spirituals. Some appreciate rock others prefer quieter expressions. Rather than force one another into their preferred style it does us well to recognize diversity and appreciate the awesomeness of God. He is the focus of all that should be done. But this is not saying everything goes. Much of music is only a tribune to our own egos and pride.
Worship music that lifts up our Lord and helps us declare His glory and His work and His ways with a heart that desires to be vertical in our attention is the goal. People that play guitar, or piano, or organ, or bongos can enhance sounds from which the awesomeness of God is expressed.
Look at Him and reflect on His presence, His sovereignty, His faithfulness, and loveliness. Realize that you can place all your faith upon Him. Give Him every area of your life for you can't do anything about it of much worth anyway. Then put to practice the things you have promised to Him that you would do.
The greatest act of God is the cross. The awesome mercy, justice, love and sovereignty is displayed by the crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of the Lord. The story of the Bible is God. His story shows how He redeems mankind unto Himself by faith in the works of His Son.
The problem with worship today is we're living in a self-centered era. We don't come to worship to have our needs met, we come to listen to God, to reflect on His beauty. We come declare His worth. We come to thank Him. We come to be changed by Him. We come to confess sin. We come to be empowered to make a difference in the world around us together as a body as we allow Him to live in and through us in a different way than our neighbors who do not know Christ. We are to be obedient people.
Where is your heart? Is it right with God today? Are you able to have the barriers removed by allowing him to do it?
Lets not forget the instruction of Amos 5:23-24 Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!
That’s awesome. That is worship that embraces the heart of God in all we are and do.
Pastor Dale
