It’s been a crazy week and after a week like this I ask, “What should I preach on for Sunday?” We could’ve talked about a lot of different things, where is God when bad things happen, what to do in the midst of a storm, the basement was flooded so perhaps a sermon on stewardship would be good, maybe a sermon on faith – holding on would be good. But, in the midst of the abnormal, something normal like Mother’s Day felt comforting to me. So, we look at Hannah in 1 Samuel 1-3 today. She is a mother who has this incredible spiritual gift, faith. Whether you’re a mother this morning or not, we all have something to learn from Hannah.
But, first let me introduce you to the main characters, there’s two – three if you count God.
Eli the absentee father. (1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25)
- Eli was one in the great tradition of godly men with ungodly children. We see later in the text that Eli knows something about God, but nothing about his family and little about life.
- Nahum 1:11 – same word to describe Eli’s “worthless son’s” (1 Samuel 2:12, NASB)
- They did not fear God (1 Samuel 2:12)
- They cheated people (1 Samuel 2:16)
- They were fornicators and used women (1 Samuel 2:22)
- They would not honor their father (1 Samuel 2:25)
- The sons learned this from their father…
- He spoiled his sons instead of honoring God (1 Samuel 2:29)
- He envied God’s sacrifices (1 Samuel 2:29)
- He was absentee! (1 Samuel 2:22)
- How about you? Are you an Eli? Do you know all there is to know about God, but know nothing about life?
Matthew 25:31-46 can be a rather troubling read it appears that judgment is pretty definitive and decided by performance in one issue. A read through the New Testament reveals that the saving relationship is enabled by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) yet, this passage seems somewhat contradictory. It appears to determine salvation by works for the poor and disenfranchised. How do we reconcile these two seemingly opposite ideas? I’m not sure we have to, but I will try to give a framework that we can use to hold these ideas together in tension and draw one message from them.
Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7:16 (echoed elsewhere in scripture including James 2:18) reveals that we will know people by the fruit they produce. Certainly it is not up to us to judge and God is the ultimate and only true evaluator of our fruits (for some are hidden from our earthly view). One of these fruits we can see, maybe the most important fruit, is the way we take on the personhood of Christ through compassionate service (Philippians 2:8). If we are Christians, shouldn’t we look like Christ and bear the fruit he did? We must live lives that bear fruit in keeping with the character and ministry of Christ (Matthew 3:8). This is not “works salvation” for our works do not save us, they simply display our salvation! If cautiously evaluated our fruit can become a health check-up for us to examine our own Christlikeness. This check-up is available to every believer who would examine their own fruit for its consistency with Christ’s.
A checkup is designed to evaluate and motivate. It let’s us know where we stand and what we should improve. Perhaps that’s why this passage is so frightening, it’s designed to motivate those who fail the evaluation (or just fail to evaluate). It is always a challenge to examine a passage of scripture like Matthew 25 which is so full of hyperbole and judgment. But it’s written with strong language for a reason, it’s hyperbole shocks us out of complacency and into action. The challenge is to hear this passage (and others like it) on its own terms. We must first allow it to teach us something (in this case about compassion) before we explain it away as hyperbolic. We are often far too quick of dismissing passages like these as being out of touch with grace and miss their challenge to bear fruit for God which is to our loss. By justifying and explaining away this text we fail to evaluate our lives and miss out on the motivation to greater works for Christ.
Let us embrace this passage, let us fear this passage, but above all let us hear this passage. For it is in hearing this passage that we hear the call of Christ in the least of these.
Today we start fully exploring our new mission, prior to this we’ve been laying the foundation. Our mission starts in God’s personal nature and is realized when we connect with him in a saving relationship.
Our mission fully realized is: We exist to love God through worship, love the church through fellowship, love the world through evangelism and love the broken through compassion.
1. Meaning of Worship
- Hebrew for worship literally: fall down (prostrate), be weighted down.
- It seems to me that we have misunderstood God and worship. Many people seem to come to church on Sunday go through spiritual withdrawal throughout the week and pop in a worship track to get them through.
- We’ve come to God like a giant teddy bear, cuddling up for some spiritual warmth. But the truth is that when God is revealed to his people, particularly in the Old Testament they were afraid.
- Being weighted down is the natural response in God’s presence, becoming weak in the knees. This is clearly seen in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 which shows that the Israelites were totally incapacitated by God’s presence and were unable to do anything but worship.
- Worship continues with much of the same idea into the New Testament although there is less fear and more emotion with the Greek understanding.
- Greek predominantly meant: meaning to kiss, like a dog licking his master’s hand, also to bow, literally to kiss towards.
- Look at the beautiful picture and literal portrayal of worship in Luke 7:36-50.
- Here in this passage we see the culmination of this truth, this woman comes to Jesus, is weighted down with his glory and begins to weep at his feet, kissing them. Worship at its best.
- In both of these definitions worship is sacrifice.
- Both of these definitions require sacrifice – deep personal sacrifice. The woman’s hair represents a total humiliation before people, completely undignified.
- What is our worship today? What is our sacrifice? It is an hour on Sunday – given to praise. It is a commitment to honesty even at the cost of business dealings. It is a check given to the church. It is an hour in the nursery so others can worship.
2. Mode of Worship
- How is it that we offer this worship? In the Old Testament the mode of worship was so complicated that an army of full-time employees called priests were utilized to ensure the proper mode of worship.
- In John 4:1-42 Jesus cuts through all of this and reveals the that the mode of worship is to be both in…
- Spirit
- Worshipping God happens in the Spirit and is not confined to a place or time, neither this mountain nor Jerusalem.
- Worship is laying down everything before God and in return God lifts us up to his vantage point and shows us things from his perspective.
- When we worship in Spirit we see a connection and clarity. (Acts 13:2)
- Truth
- Romans 1:20-25 makes it clear that we can inappropriately give our worship to something else. False worship lays out the ugliness of our life and turns our life toward the debase.
- What makes true worship is a true object of worship. We must be clear that we worship God, why we worship him. We must consecrate ourselves for this task and focus on his worth.
3. Model of Worship
- Romans 12:1-8 makes it clear that worship is any sacrifice dedicated to God alone. Worship is the engine that drives all other relationships and is found in all other relationships.
- We need both a lifestyle of worship and pure worship to keep our lives strong. Like in a marriage Jenny and I go out 75% of the time with our kids, but we need that 25% of our time alone to strengthen that bond.
- We’re married the entire time – but sometimes you need some special quiet time together. So it is with God, we must have acts of devotion for him and him alone to guard and keep our relationship.
- We honor Romans 12 when we bow in prayer, when we have hearts bowed to God, when our bowed hearts lead to other activities in Jesus’ name then we extend our worship into those activities. But not before that.
- Sunday morning should inspire us to meet God daily. Meeting God daily should lead us to serving God daily. Sunday guides our daily meetings and our daily meetings guide our daily lives.
- How do we get to this point? We need time of pure worship, pure undistracted unadulterated worship with God to give us perspective.
- A story that illustrates this is in Matthew 25:1-13. Ten bridesmaids are found, only five kept their lamps lit and were accepted. Worship is the filling of our lamp.
- Worship keeps our hearts lit with the light of Christ so that we can see what God’s will is. Worship is where we surrender everything to God and focus solely on him and it’s here that God lifts us up out of the everyday, giving us eternal perspective.
