High School | LLLB #4 Recalibrate in Worship

Note: Series outline and content supplemented by Live Lighter Love Better; Twelve Biblical Decisions for a meaningful life by Cary Schmidt. These lessons are prepared for the High School LifeGroup

Looking up aligns my heart

Ecclesiastes 5:1–3 KJV 1900

1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. 2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. 3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.

Ecclesiastes 5:7 KJV 1900

7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.

We are studying how the Lordship of Jesus should effect our lives.

This will unavoidable lead to a discussion about worship

Who is your Lord and how do you worship Him?

Solomon’s Three Looks

First and most often he looks around.

Ecc 4:7 “7 Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.”

He sees oppression, vanity, and futility.

The temporal nature of life is driving him crazy.

Second, and nearly as often, he looks with.

Ecc 2:20 “20 Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.”

When he looks within his heart he finds depression and emptiness

At times he wishes he had never been born

Third, and least often, he looks up.

We see in Solomon’s life, and in our own, that the external motions are never enough to sustain worship or a healthy soul for a lifetime.

In simple terms, we will worship Him for as long as we sincerely love Him. 1 John 4:19 “19 We love him, because he first loved us.”

Solomon’s idolatrous, wandering life has taken him far from God, which as given him a formal, distant, impersonal view of God.

Gratuitous Worship or Sincere Worship

Solomon has visited the courtroom, the marketplace, the highways, and the palace.

Now he passes by the temple - a temple he at one time was passionate about constructing.

When he visits he sees people worshipping in an insincere manner.

Their worship is more a from of negotiation than of joyful submission.

Sincere Worship Places me

Ecc 5:1-2 “1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. 2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.”

Ecc 5:7-8 “7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God. 8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.”

Worship is designed by God to put us in our place and to remind us of His place.

It is the recurring habit of uplifting God and of downgrading self.

Worship is a habit, a lifestyle, a heart condition that should be perpetual.

Life’s most significant distresses and anxieties come as a result of our “lesser lords” letting us down.

Worship is not the act of appeasing God.

It’s the act of adoring Him.

Modern day religion often attempts to “make God useful to us.”

The rush of our overburdened, over extended lives is not a product of God’s “crushing demands” but rather of our own.

Sincere Worship Profits Me

Ecc 5:10-16 “10 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. 11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? 12 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. 13 There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. 14 But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand. 15 As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. 16 And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?”

Mark 8:36 “36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

False worship, in whatever form, promises hope but it does not deliver.

Worship forces me to consider what is rally important in this world.

Sincere Worship Portions Me

Ecc 5:18-20 “18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion. 19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God. 20 For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.”

Worship gives us the ability to be contented and delighted by what God has already given us.

A heart of worship frees me to enjoy my work rather than to be driven by it.

Sincere worship frames and filters the world around you through the goodness and grace of the Savior with in.

It allows you to see God as your source of happiness, not merely a means to it.

Conclusion

Decision 4 - Jesus, I choose to worship you in sincerity