Sermon Tone Analysis

*“Am I Living to Worship You?”*

 

John 4:21-24 -- 21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Have you ever desired something so bad that you felt that you would die if you couldn’t get it or achieve it?

Have you ever experienced emptiness that could not be met by people or things?

Then this sermon is for you.

You see I have longed for fulfillment in my life.

I thought that I could find it in a relationship, and when I had the relationship I still yearned for more.

I then tried to fill that void with education and when I had accomplished what I set out to do through education I still found that I had a void.

I thought that void was locked up in a career so I proceed to pursue a career that I thought was in my future.

I positioned myself in such a way that I had the grades to have that career and even in that I found closed doors and still a longing that was not met.

Even when I went into the door that God had for me I had a longing that still was not quiet within me.

It was then that I began to understand the difference from going to church and going to worship.

You see, there are a lot of us who use to just go through the rituals of church.

Someone out there knows what I am talking about.

You see I like others played the game.

I sang in the choir, I taught, I even went to bible study and Sunday school yet I was just a goer and not a worshipper.

I could talk the talk and walk the walk, why because I had watched so many before me do it.

They talked about God in church but when Sunday was over God was far from their minds.

Oh yeah they could discuss Him if someone asked a question because they wanted to make sure that people saw them as a church goer someone who knew things about God.

Yet they were not willing to really worship God.

Not on a serious level.

It was good to make appearances but to really be involved well that was something different.

You see as a worshipper you might not be in line for that next promotion as the world sees it because you spend to much time with God and not enough time in the world.

You see you are not as moved by the accomplishments that mean so much to the world as you are about how much time you spend with God.

The biggest reward we get from worship is in relationship.

It is in relationship with God that we learn not to be consumed by the things of the world because we are so consumed by the creator of the world.

I was reading a story in a book as a prepared for this sermon and it talked about a man who had amnesia and didn’t know who he was.

He approached a man sitting on a bench and said to him.

I am not sure what has happened to me but I must have fell and hit my head somewhere in this city because when I awoke I had been robbed and I don’t know who I am.

The man he approached was about to tell him about going to the police to get helped when someone recognized the man and told him what he was doing in the city and that they had been searching for him for three days.

While this story at this point may not make sense to you what will hopefully make sense it what the writer went on to say.

He compared the amnesia of this man to the amnesia that we have suffered as believers.

You see he said Adam and Eve fell into sin and thus they forgot who they were they had spiritual amnesia.

It is like we are today we have forgotten what our purpose really is.

We were created for the purpose of worship.

Not self worship or idol worship but to worship the one only true God.

Jehovah.

Now let us look at what the word worship is:  It is defined as the attitude and acts of reverence to a deity.

The term worship in the OT translates to the Hebrew word meaning to bow down, prostrate oneself, a posture indicating reverence and homage.

The concept of worship is expressed by the term serve.

In the Hebrew text the word worship is pronounced as shachah (shaw-khaw').

1.

Worship is initiated by God because it is in worship that God reveals His nature.

A.   His redemptive acts are revealed.

(What was done on the cross for us.)

B.   Worship is the reason for the existence of the church.

Yet the question is this, if God asked you to give everything in worship of Him, could you do that for Him?

What I am saying is if God said I want you to leave everything behind and come to me in full devotion could you make that choice.

4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.

5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there.

We will worship and then we will come back to you."  6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife.

As the two of them went on together,

1.     Worship does not just happen when we feel the presence of God.

Worship will also happen when we are at our darkest hour and it is in worship that God is able to help us through the hardest times in our lives.

“Until we know what it means to worship in the hardest of times, we have not grasped the most fundamental element in becoming a worshiper.

2.

Worship is learned.

We are not prone to worship.

It takes us opening ourselves and our lives to the moving of the holy spirit for us to learn to worship

 

3.

Worship is born in the heart by the move of the Holy Spirit.

Thus it is the Holy Spirit that imitates worship.

However, I want us to look closer and understand the *act *of worship.

What I mean by the act of worship is worship is an action in which we must participate.

It is something that is done individually as well as collectively.

Therefore we must understand the *posture* of worship.

The word posture is defined as a position of the body or of body parts:/ a sitting posture, as well as a/n attitude; a pose:/ assumed a posture of angry defiance./

/ /

So my question to you today is are you ready to enter into a posture of worship?

Are you willing to sacrifice all for the sheer joy and experience of knowing what it means to be in relationship with God?  Some of you are like those who bring their sacrifices to the priest during the time of Moses and Aaron.

You are on the outside and then there are those who have dared to venture into the courtyard.

Usually you come to that place because you want to see what is going on.

Why are they moved by the music what is this crying yet you fail to see the door to the holy of holies.

But what I am looking for is people who want to go into the holy of holies you see people who no longer want someone else to offer their sacrifice and they have not come for the show but you have said I want to worship.

I want to be so close that when I don’t find myself in worship I am helpless.

I can’t move I can’t breathe because it is worship that allows me to do so.