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Category: Traditional Worship
The Core 4: Worship God
Dr. Ron Scates
10/18/2009
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 10: 31-33
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© Dr. Ronald W. Scates
When I was a kid, I used to play sandlot football, and we’d create a playing field with markers, like a sweatshirt over here, a piece of paper with a rock on it over there. It wasn’t exact about where the sidelines necessarily were. Sometimes a gust of wind would blow one of the markers away or move it. Was that a touchdown or not? Was that receiver inbounds or out-of-bounds? It wasn’t always easy to answer those questions because well, the markers weren’t always very clear.
If you bring a boat from the Gulf of Mexico into the ship channel of Port Aransas, there are two lights that the Coast Guard has set up to help you navigate into the middle of the channel. Now the trick is to steer your craft so that those two lights suddenly become one light and when they do, you know that you’re supposed to be where you are. The navigational lights are very clear.
“Making disciples of Jesus Christ”, that is just a slogan, my friends. It’s not a mission statement. We talk ‘til we’re blue-in-the-face about how the mission of Highland Park Presbyterian Church is making disciples of Jesus Christ but that’s just a slogan until you and I are absolutely sure about where the markers are. For instance, what’s a disciple? What does disciple look like and act like? How do you know if you’re one or not? How do you know if you’re on the right track, in terms of following Jesus, or not? How do you know if you’re doing the right thing when you’re discipling another person?
You and I could write volumes in answering those questions. Instead of that, your Session, the elders of this church, have wrestled over the past 18 months with those questions in such a way that we’ve come up with some markers-navigational lights, so to speak, that help frame the playing field of who we are and who we are to be as disciples of Jesus Christ and a part of this congregation. We call them the Core 4—they are essentials that we’ve distilled down. They’re not exhaustive. They’re not infallible and inherent. They’re not perfect but these are 4 essentials that, well, have asserted themselves upon us—that we believe can function as markers, as navigational lights, for who we are as individuals and who we are to be as a congregation of people whom God has called to help fulfill our part of Jesus’ Great Commission.
Now we’re calling these essentials the Core 4. They are: Worshipping God; Growing in Christ; Building Community; and Blessing the World.
What we want you to do is memorize those Core 4; that’s not too hard. We want you to, like a grid, put that Core 4 up against your life, continually, to see how you’re doing. We want you to take those Core 4 and use them as sort of a plumb line to drop down into the midst of the ministries that you’re involved with so that, well, you’re really shaping the direction of where Highland Park Presbyterian Church is going for years and years and years in the future. And we roll out, officially, the Core 4 today with this sermon series. As I said earlier, I hope you’ll pick up one of those devotional and prayer guides. I hope you will use that. I hope you’ll put these 4 things up against your life, build them into your life and these are the markers that will put you into the middle of the ship channels, so to speak.
So today, we begin our sermon series on the Core 4 and we begin with the essential of worship—Worshipping God and we do so by taking a look at a text that at first glance may not look like it has anything to do with worship at all.
I invite you to turn in your bibles and keep them open this sermon to 1 Corinthians, chapter 10 as we look together at verses 31 through 33. Please pray with me before we read.
Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds now to Your Word that we might clearly understand it, that we might gratefully receive it and that we might faithfully apply it to our lives. For Jesus’ sake! Amen.
And now, if you’re able, please stand for the reading of 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verses 31 through 33.
This is the Word of God. The Apostle Paul writes:
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so they may be saved.
Please pray with me again. And now Father, as my words are true to Your Word may they be taken to heart but as my words should stray from Your Word, may they be quickly forgotten. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Please be seated.
Back during Medieval times, centuries ago, a man took a walk out onto the countryside and found himself stumbling across a stone quarry. A number of men were working in that quarry that day and he stopped and asked them what they were doing. One man responded rather irritably by saying, “What am I doing? I’m hewing stone.” The second man, without looking up, said, “I’m making about 10 lbs. a week.” A third man stopped, put his pick down, thrust his chest out and said, “You want to know what I’m doing? I’m building a cathedral.”
What I want to do this morning is what the Apostle Paul does in this text before us today. And that’s—take worship out of the sanctuary, off of Sunday, out of just our daily quiet times and into a panoramic view of all of life as being worship. You know, when you and I usually talk about worship and its place in the life of the disciple, we usually talk about things like how important, how crucial a daily quiet time or devotional time is. And that is absolutely true.
You know, my friends, you don’t get the Christian faith until you realize that Christianity is all about relationship, not ritual. And if you and I, on a daily basis, are not developing and deepening our relationship with Jesus Christ through speaking with Him through prayer, listening to His voice as He speaks to us via His Word then I’m sorry, but I just think it’s impossible to move from being nominally Christian to being all of the disciple that Christ is calling us to be. A vital, growing healthy relationship with the Living Christ comes through daily connecting our hearts to His. But worship does not end there. The Scripture is clear that disciples of Jesus Christ are called to gather every week for corporate worship such as we’re doing right now.
But again, it’s all about relationship, not ritual. You can be in church every Sunday and never worship.
One Sunday night, a little boy knelt down beside his bed and prayed this prayer, “Dear Lord, we had such a great time in church today. Wish You had been there.”
You know, the truth is—God is always here! Jesus said, “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” You may leave here feeling like God was not here but that’s you, not the reality of whether or not God was there or not. He is always here. And He shows up every week and His desire above all others is to connect His heart with each one of us in this sanctuary every Sunday.
But that doesn’t always happen, does it? You know, it doesn’t happen when you and I are not here and I’m not just talking about when you and I are not physically present here. I’m talking about when we’re here but we’re not here; you know, when we’re here but we’re just going through the motions or we’re just doing our pietistic duty or we’re just kind of showing up because it’s the thing to do, something to check off for that week or, for us Revs and worship leaders, when we get so caught up in the logistics of the service that we miss connecting our hearts to God, that can happen very easily.
No, corporate worship together is a time, once again, when God wants to meet us in a personal way and as a corporate body of Christ equip us to then go out and be His hands and feet to this broken and hurting world. And so, when you come into this place, do you worship or do you just come and watch other people worship? That’s the question we always need to be asking ourselves.
But worship doesn’t just end there. Worship is that absolutely most important thing that you and I are going to do during this entire week. More important than any business deals you pull off, more important than any romances you’re involved in, more important than academic achievements or what the Cowboys do this afternoon.
You know, you hear people ask the question: What’s the meaning of life? As you heard Joe say, earlier in the service, our Westminster Catechism responds to that question by saying, “ The meaning of life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever,” which is a way of saying that anything and everything we do in life, if done to the glory of God, actually becomes worship.
So I want you this morning to begin to expand your understanding of worship from something you just do by yourself everyday or do in this sanctuary with a bunch of other brothers- and sisters-in-Christ once a week and begin to see the whole panorama of life as a possible time of worship.
Look what Paul does in verse 31 of the text before us this morning. First of all, you need to know, all the verbs in the text are in the imperative mood in the Greek which elevates verse 31 to the level of command. In other words, these are marching orders for those who would be disciples of Jesus Christ. He’s saying here that he wants all Christians to have a worship paradigm shift in their lives—taking worship from out of here to out there. From just one hour in here to something that encompasses an entire lifetime. From just being centered on a sermon coming from this pulpit to your lives actually becoming sermons as you live in the daily grooves of your routine but do so to the glory of God.
In other words, Paul is saying in verse 31, because he uses the word, “all,” he says, “Do all the glory of God.” He’s saying that anything and everything in our lives has the potential of being an act of worship.
Let’s see how that might play out. Have you ever thought of drinking orange juice to the glory of God? Now, at breakfast in the morning, you can drink orange juice to wash down your ham and eggs. Or what if you decided instead to intentionally savor the unique flavor of the orange juice? Savor the texture of the pulp? I like the high pulp orange juice. Savor the texture of the pulp and think about Who designed this? Where did it come from? It’s a gift! And give thanks to the Giver. That then turns drinking orange juice into an act of worship.
What if you began closing business deals, not just to make money but intentionally looking for ways to do that to actually glorify God? What if you returned to the classroom tomorrow, not just with the goal of imparting information to kids but began to look at your teaching something that would bring glory to God? What if you performed surgery this week, not just to fix people but to bring glory to the Great Physician? What if you packed your kids’ lunches, not just to give them something to eat at school but did it intentionally to the glory of God? What if you decided from this moment on, I’m going to start driving my car, not just to get somewhere, but to actually drive it to the glory of God? You know, if you drive through Hondo, Texas, (we used to live in San Antonio and we used to drive through there all the time), and there’s a billboard that greets you as you come to the city limits of Hondo and it says, “Welcome to God’s country. Don’t drive through it like hell.” One of the most awful things as Christians to participate in is road rage. What if you decide I’m going to drive my car, from now on, to the glory of God?
What if you and I decided we’re not just going to hew stone anymore, we’re’ going to build cathedrals? You see, anything and everything in our lives if done to the glory of God has the potential of being worship. Therefore, we can live our whole lives as an act of worship, not just confined in here on Sunday mornings or in our quiet time in our easy chair in our house every day. This is the vision that Paul is laying out for us in this text this morning. And remember, it’s all about relationships.
So Paul moves then, in verse 32, to say that believers, disciples, should never cause anyone, Jews, Greeks or the church of God, fellow church members, believers, brothers and sisters in the faith, to stumble.
And what he’s getting at there, I think, is this—that you and I validate or invalidate what we do here, you and I confirm or deny the faith that we proclaim in here by how we live out there. Again, remember, the Christian faith is all about relationship, not ritual. So it’s chiefly about a relationship with God but then how you and I relate to others. How we treat other people.
Do you and I, in a casual relationship with someone else, is our goal to glorify God with how we meet with that person, how we interact with them or is it just to do whatever we need to do?
What if we don’t treat people in a way that glorifies God? What happens?
I’m sorry to say that I can answer that question for you. In fact, George Barna, in his Barna research group gives us the answer. They interviewed thousands and thousands, (and this is their latest release) of non-Christians and they asked them, “What keeps you away from following Christ? What keeps you away from the church of Jesus Christ?”
Do you know what their #1 answer was? The way they see Christians treating other Christians. Sadly, the church of Jesus Christ is the only army that shoots its wounded. What happens when Christians throw other Christians under the bus? Barna lays the data out there.
How do you treat your boss? How do you treat your employees? How do you treat the mailman or the checkout person at Tom Thumb? How do you treat your spouse? Your kids? Fellow Christians? When you and I treat those people in order to bring glory to God, that’s one thing. That becomes an act of worship. Have you ever thought about going to the grocery store as a time of worship? How you interact with people that you bump into in the aisles, how you go through the checkout line? That can be an act of worship or it can be just another throw-away moment in life.
What about though when somebody inside the church hurts you? I mean bad! Wounds you deeply! Offends you! How do you then react to them? Would you and I dare to begin to intentionally react by saying the way I’m going to deal with that is to bring glory to You, Lord! What would happen if you and I would do that? Or are we going to get revenge? Are we going to get vindicated?
Look at verse 33 of your text. Paul says that two of the markers, two of the navigational lights that guide him as he goes through his life is the glory of God and the salvation of every other person. He says, “I try to become all things to all people.” I don’t think he’s saying there to just be a yes man-a people-pleaser. He said, “I’m not doing this for my own good. But I am doing it because I have a greater goal and that’s the salvation of this person.” What would it look like then if you and I decided to treat every person, even the ones who do us wrong, the way Paul is laying out here.
It would mean this that for the glory of God, we would be willing to forego our rights and our comfort and our convenience and our need to get my way so that that person might come to know Jesus Christ in a saving way. When you and I do that, do you know what happens? We’re involved with worship.
John Calvin and the other Reformers, one of the things they rediscovered in the Reformation that Christians had lost sight of was that there is absolutely no sacred verse of secular. That’s a false thing. That’s a myth of Satan. The truth that Calvin discovered and proclaimed and we need to hear over and over again is this that God is just as interested in what you and I doing at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon as He is in what we are doing in here right now.
In fact, what do you think is more worshipful? Showing up here every week out of habit or picking up your dry cleaning on Thursday to the glory of God? What do you think Paul would say? Do you know what happens when we get that panoramic view of worship? When relationships replace ritual and the well-being, the salvation of others takes priority in our lives? What happens is those folk out there begin to see the unconditional love and the grace and the mercy of Jesus reflected in and through our lives and then what happens is they are drawn to Him like a moth to a light—to the Light of the world. And the outcome of that, well, disciple-making becomes the supernaturally natural outcome of lives lived to the glory of God.
I’m going to close with a prayer—a prayer prayed by one of the great minds of the 17th Century, Blaise Pascal who, after he became a Christian, realized that being a disciple wasn’t just about Sunday, it was about the great and the mundane things of his life lived for Jesus Christ.
Join me as we join with Pascal.
Lord, help me, help us to do great things as though they were little since I, since we, do them with Your power and little things as though they were great, since I, since we, do them in Your Name and for Your glory and for Jesus’ sake. Amen.