Sermon Tone Analysis

Purpose: Those who hear this message will understand the significance of worship in our daily lives

Subject: What does disciplined worship look like in our lives?

Complement: Making God the most valuable thing in our lives.

Big Idea: Whatever we value the most in our lives is what we worship, it’s up to us to decide if it will be temporal or eternal.

Introduction:

Moses Slide

Everywhere we look today we see people pouring their hearts into some cause or ideology that is usually supported by some celebrity or sports star they idolize.

We see more attention and adoration given to pop stars, movie stars, and sports stars than we do the men and women who vowed to give their life to protect our families, freedom, and country.

Fallen Soldiers slide

Just recently President Trump and his administration made a deal to bring back the remains of many of our fallen soldiers from North Korea.

It was interesting to me that you didn’t see or hear about that in the news, but we sure did hear a lot about what Lebron James said about President Trump and how President Trump responded.

Now don’t get me wrong here I don’t think we should idolize the military men and women, but we should put more value on someone that chose to serve, protect, and in some cases die for people they have never met than we should on some senseless word exchange between a sports star and the president.

Why do we place the most value on temporal things?

I think it all comes down to our fallen nature to want to idolize the things that have no value over the things that have true value.

We could trace this back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve placed more value on the words of the serpent than on the Word of God.

Worship Slide

No where in the world is this more evident than in how we worship.

Today we’ll continue the series of Spiritual Discipline with the Discipline of Worship.

The Webster Dictionary defines worship as: a : great respect toward a divine being or supernatural power b : the outward showing of such respect.

The word worship derives from the Anglo-Saxon word weorscipe which means “to ascribe worth unto” the essential idea is that whatever you place the highest value or worth on is what you worship.

People all around us live their lives with the sole purpose of gaining wealth, fame, or pleasure, all of which are temporary to this world.

That is what they worship and in most cases, with these temporal things, they are trying to fill the void left from the absence of God.

It’s not just society though, we as believers tend to value worldly things above the eternal things at times too don’t we?

In fact Jesus in warns us about that, He says: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

“

a : great respect toward a divine being or supernatural power b : the outward showing of such respect

Do we view worship as a celebration of things?

I understand that most of you here know that

You see we as believers have the Gospel of Jesus Christ and through that relationship with Him we are removed from our sin and are transformed.

Our eyes are opened to the fallacies of this world’s values and given the ability to see the true value in Christ Jesus.

Not that we always keep our sights on Christ, but once we are anointed with the Holy Spirit we know that only God is deserving of our worship and we have no excuse for the worship of anything else.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

(2016).

().

Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

Now I could talk about all the aspects of worship like gratitude, celebration, Holy Communion, and Viso Divina (worshipping God in the beauty of created things), but I want to talk about worship as a discipline.

If you have your Bibles turn them to Revelation chapters 4 and 5

I want to point out 3 things about worship

We’ll notice 3 things about worship

Worship is Theological

Worship is Practical

Worship is Extremely Personal

Worship is Theological

In the New Testament worship is described as how we act, or live our lives, in the presence of God.

True worship then can only happen once we come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

How can we worship Him if we don’t know Him?

Those that know Him best worship Him most.

You see worship is our response to knowing who God is and the better we know Him the more we worship Him.

The more we know God through His word the more we realize just how much he deserves our worship.

Rev 4

Exposition:

In and 5 John talks about a scene that describes how well 4 creatures and 24 elders know God and how deep their worship is.

It tells us that if we want to worship God better we need to know Him better.

We do that by being preoccupied with the study of God’s word thus developing a better relationship with Him.

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!”

You see worship is not about some ritual or just something we do on Sunday mornings with music or a choir.

It’s about knowing God and having a personal response to that knowledge.

Let’s be clear about this, worship is about God, not about what makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

Far to many people get upset or bent out of shape because the worship music is something they don’t like and that is precisely the wrong view about worship.

The music, instruments, or the people playing them shouldn’t matter, because it’s about God not us.

When we look at the four creatures and how they worship God we find that theology in several things they say.

First off in verse 8 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God...” they are talking about God’s holiness.

they are saying He is different, set apart, and perfect without sin.

They are saying eternal truths about God that comes from their knowledge of who He is.

That is theology, knowing the nature of God and eternal truths.

He is above our humanity and He is perfect.

First off in verse 8 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God...” they are talking about God’s holiness.

they are saying He is different, set apart, and perfect without sin.

They are saying eternal truths about God that comes from their knowledge of who He is.

This is theology, knowing the nature of God and eternal truths.

He is above our humanity and perfect.

they are talking about God’s holiness.

they are saying He is different, set apart, and perfect without sin.

They are saying eternal truths about God that comes from their knowledge of who He is.

This is theology, knowing the nature of God and eternal truths.

He is above our humanity and perfect.

He is sovereign.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”

As the four creatures sing praise they submit to God’s sovereignty over all creation.

They recognize Him for who He is Lord of Lord and King of Kings.

They know there is nothing outside His dominion and no one will escape His judgement.

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!”

I want to note here that John wrote this book at a time when the Roman Emperor was idolized and even elevated to deity status, money and power were idolized along with Roman philosophical ideology.

Christians were under intense persecution and were being killed for their faith in Jesus, but we see here a sovereign truth about our God.

He is almighty God, ruler of all creation, and He is for us.

Let’s look at the next part of that verse:

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!”

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

Now they are telling the truth of God’s eternal nature.

There has never been a time when He did not exist.

He has always been, and He does not change.

God is as He was and He will always be as He is and was.

What we should remember about God as we worship Him is the theological truth that He is Holy, He is Almighty, and He is eternal.

God is Holy, set apart from creation, God is Almighty and reigns over all creation.

God’s Holiness and reign are an eternal nature that never changes.

Let’s jump down to the last verse of chapter 4:

Rev

The theological nature of worship continues here.

Note how well the elders know God and recognize that He alone is worthy of worship because He is creator of all things.