Worship
Sermon Series: 5 Scriptures that remind us who
we are.
#5 of 5: Worship
March 28, 2004
Matthew 28:9
5th Sunday in Lent
Galena-Warwick United Methodist Charge
Warwick & Galena, Maryland
Rev. Dr. Lawrence D. Jameson
larry@larryjameson.com
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SOFEW
Matthew 28:8-9
8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to
tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to
him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.
One day a king was riding his horse along the
road.
He met one of his subjects,
an older peasant woman, walking the other way.
The king felt magnanimous, so he stopped his horse,
and he said, “Hello! How are you today?”
The woman replied, “Very well your majesty.”
She also said, “Where is the king going today?”
The King replied, “I am on an important mission
that is vital to the safety of the kingdom”.
Then he added,
“My actions today may be the most important
thing I ever do”.
The woman said, “Very good your Majesty,
I wish you success!”
The King replied, “And what about you,
what is your task today?”
The woman said, “I too am going to perform
the most important action of my life.”
With curiosity, the King said, “And what is that?”
The woman said, “It’s Sunday, and I’m going to worship God.”
Dear ones, worship is the most profound, beautiful,
lasting, and important thing you and I will ever do.
There are other critical areas in our lives,
and God wants us to be faithful in those things too,
but worship is unique.
That’s why God created us.
This sermon is # 5 in a series
about Scriptures that remind us who we are.
I’ve been talking about the acronym SOFEW:
Stewardship, Outreach, Fellowship, Education, and Worship.
These five key words
help us to understand the basics of
what we do in ministry together.
Worship reminds us who we are.
My sermon will
strive to answer three questions: What? Who? How?
1) What is worship?
In the original language of the New Testament,
the word is: “proskuneo”.
“Proskuneo” means to protrate oneself,
to lay down in reverence, to worship.
see Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance #4352
When Jesus was raised from the dead,
his disciples worshiped him.
We read about this in Matthew 28:8 which says:
So the women hurried away from the tomb,
afraid yet filled with joy,
and ran to tell his disciples.
Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said.
They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.
Where do you have to be
to clasp someone’s feet?
You need to be laying down.
That’s what the Bible word for worship means.
Our English word “worship”
has changed over the years.
It used to be “worth-ship”.
“Worth-ship” is
the act of showing special honor or worthiness
to someone or some thing.
It’s all about what is valuable.
God made everything.
He himself,
is the most valuable and worthy person in the universe.
That’s why we worship God.
Worship is just acknowledging who God is,
and in the process we discover who we are.
Here is a Scripture that
shows both of these ideas,
the physical act of laying down
and
the acknowledgment of worthiness.
In Revelation 4:9 the Bible says:
Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on
the throne and who lives for ever and ever,
the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship
him who lives for ever and ever.
They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
"You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being."
When we acknowledge God
for who he is,
and respond appropriately to
his love,
his kindness,
his faithfulness,
his mercy,
his goodness,
his patience,
him awesome majesty,
we are not alone. Angels are joining in.
2) Who do we worship?
My second point asks the question,
“Who do we worship?”
The answer is pretty simple.
One Sunday morning
at First Congregational Church of Klamath Falls, California,
Pastor Jim Hawkins was giving the children’s sermon.
He looked at the children and said,
“What is gray, has a bushy tail and gathers nuts in the fall?”
Five year old Adam Bronson raised his hand and said,
“I know the answer should be Jesus,
but it sounds like a squirrel to me.”
(Page 71Encyclopedia of Humor by Lowell D. Streiker)
The answer is Jesus.
He is worthy.
He is worthy because
of his perfect life,
his sacrificial death,
and his resurrection from the grave.
It is because of Jesus
that we have learned
that God is three in one:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In Philippians 2:8 the Bible says:
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death--
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Every knee bow
every tongue confess
that’s worship.
Jesus Christ is worthy.
3) How do we worship?
My third point asks the question,
“How do we worship?”
In John chapter 4
Jesus talked to a Samaritan woman
and he said:
“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.
God is spirit,
and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
What does that mean?
It means there are NO SET RULES.
We have FREEDOM!
We get to honor God in a variety of ways,
through prayer
praise
music
silence
laughter
tears
alone, and in groups. We get to choose!
The important thing is this:
it has to come from our hearts
and it has to be our honest, respectful, loving response
that seeks to honor God.
A man and his ten-year-old son were on a fishing trip.
At the boy's insistence,
they decided to attend the Sunday worship service
at a small rural church.
As they walked back to their car after the service,
the father complained.
"The service was too long," he lamented.
"The sermon was boring, and the singing was off key."
Finally the boy said,
"Daddy, I thought it was pretty good for a dime."
(Encyclopedia of Humor by Lowell D. Streiker)
When you go to church,
what are you bringing?
Are you bringing a dime’s worth of generosity
and a load of criticism?
Or are you coming with a heart
that is ready to praise?
Are you focused on what’s wrong with your life
or
are you willing to set that aside for a few moments
and think about how wonderful God is?
(put the Hubble Picture on the overhead)
You are about to see a photograph
of a teeny-tiny patch of sky
that is simply empty according to ground based telescopes.
This picture was taken by the Hubble,
but only with great difficulty.
The image required 800 exposures
taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth.
The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days,
taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004.
This technology, called The Ultra Deep Field,
is described by NASA scientists
as looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw.
What does the photograph show? (Turn on the overhead)
It shows over 10,000 galaxies,
each as large as our own Milky Way.
Jesus made all this.
How do we worship a God who can do this sort of thing?
We get to choose.
As long as it comes from our heart,
and
as long as it shows respect, honor, and authentic gratitude
that’s worship!
PRAYER
Thank you, dear Jesus, for worship.
Thank you for letting us spend time with you and your people.
Lord, you alone are truly worthy!
Thank you for touching our emotions and our minds.
Thank you for healing us, and working miracles.
Thank you for giving us prayer, praise, Bible lessons, sermons, songs, prophesy,
offerings, baptism, and communion.
Thank you for your promise in Matthew 18:20
“where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”
Amen.
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